Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott

possibility of a peace with Napoleon, upon sufficient guarantees; 2d, The plan of a regency; 3d, The restoration of the Bourbons.

PROCLAMATION OF THE ALLIES

      The first proposition seemed inadmissible. The second was carefully considered. It was particularly urged that the French were indifferent to the cause of the Bourbons – that the allied monarchs would observe no mark of recollection of them exhibited by the people of France – and that the army seemed particularly averse to them. The united testimony of the French gentlemen present was offered to repel these doubts; and it was at length agreed, that the third proposition – the restoration of the ancient family, and the ancient limits – should be the terms adopted for the settlement of France.33 A proclamation was immediately dispersed, by which the sovereigns made known their determination not to treat with Buonaparte or any of his family.34

      But more formal evidence, in the shape of legal procedure, was necessary to establish the desire of the French people to coincide in the proposed change of government. The public body which ought naturally to have taken the lead on such an important affair, was the Legislative Assembly, in whom Napoleon's constitution vested some ostensible right of interference when the state was in danger; but so far had the Emperor been from recognising such a power in practice, that the instant when the Assembly assumed the right of remonstrating with him, though in the most respectful terms, he suspended their functions, and spurned them from the footstool of his throne, informing them, that not they, but He, was the representative of the people, from whom there lay no appeal, and besides whom, no body in the state possessed power and efficacy. This legislative council, therefore, being dispersed and prorogued, could not take the initiative upon the present occasion.

      The searching genius of Talleyrand sought an organ of public opinion where few would have looked for it – in the Conservative Senate, namely, whose members had been so long the tools of Buonaparte's wildest projects, and the echoes of his most despotic decrees – that very body, of which he himself said, with equal bitterness and truth, that they were more eager to yield up national rights than he had been to demand the surrender, and that a sign from him had always been an order for the Senate, who hastened uniformly to anticipate and exceed his demands. Yet when, on the summons of Talleyrand, who knew well with whom he was dealing, this Senate was convoked, in a meeting attended by sixty-six of their number, forming a majority of the body, they at once, and without hesitation, named a Provisional Government, consisting of Talleyrand, Bournonville, Jaucourt, Dalberg, and the Abbé de Montesquieu; men recommended by talents and moderation, and whose names, known in the Revolution, might, at the same time, be a guarantee to those who dreaded a renovation of the old despotic government with the restoration of the ancient race of kings.

DECREE OF FORFEITURE

      On the 2d and 3d of April the axe was laid to the roots. A decree of the Senate sent forth the following statement: – 1st, That Napoleon, after governing for some time with prudence and wisdom, had violated the constitution, by raising taxes in an arbitrary and lawless manner, contrary to the tenor of his oath. – 2d, That he had adjourned without necessity the Legislative Body, and suppressed a report of that assembly, besides disowning its right to represent the people. – 3d, That he had published several unconstitutional decrees, particularly those of 5th March last, by which he endeavoured to render national a war, in which his own ambition alone was interested. – 4th, That he had violated the constitution by his decrees respecting state prisons. – 5th, That he had abolished the responsibility of ministers, confounded together the different powers of the state, and destroyed the independence of judicial authorities. – 6th, That the liberty of the press, constituting one of the rights of the nation, had been uniformly subjected to the arbitrary censure of his police; while, at the same time, he himself had made use of the same engine to fill the public ear with invented fictions, false maxims, doctrines favourable to despotism, and insults upon foreign governments. – 7th, That he had caused acts and reports, adopted by the Senate, to be altered by his own authority, before publication. – 8th, That instead of reigning, according to his oath, for the honour, happiness, and glory of the French nation, he had put the finishing stroke to the distresses of the country, by a refusal to treat on honourable conditions – by the abuse which he had made of the means intrusted to him, in men and money – by abandoning the wounded, without dressing or sustenance – and by pursuing measures of which the consequences have been the ruin of towns, the depopulation of the country, famine and pestilence. From all these inductive causes, the Senate, considering that the Imperial government, established by the decree of 28th Floreal, in the year XII., had ceased to exist, and that the manifest desire of all Frenchmen was to obtain an order of things, of which the first result should be peace and concord among the great members of the European family: Therefore, the Senate declared and decreed, 1st, That Napoleon Buonaparte had forfeited the throne, and the right of inheritance established in his family. – 2d, That the people and army of France were disengaged and freed from the oath of fidelity, which they had taken to Napoleon and his constitution.35

DECLARATIONS OF PUBLIC BODIES

      About eighty members of the Legislative Body, at the summons of the Provisional Government, assembled on the 3d April, and formally adhered to the above decree of forfeiture. The consequences of these bold measures showed, either that Napoleon had in reality never had more than a slight hold on the affections of the people of France, or that the interest they took in his fortunes had been in a great degree destroyed by the fears and passions excited by the immediate crisis. Even before the Senate could reduce its decree into form, the council-general of the department of the Seine had renounced Napoleon's authority, and imputed to him alone the present disastrous state of the country. The decree of the Senate was followed by declarations from all the public bodies in and around Paris, that they adhered to the Provisional Government, and acquiesced in the decree of forfeiture. Numerous individuals, who had been favoured and enriched by Buonaparte, were among the first to join the tide when it set against him. But it had been always his policy to acquire adherents, by addressing himself rather to men's interests than to their principles; and many of his friends so gained, naturally became examples of the politic observation, "that if a prince places men in wealthy circumstances, the first thing they think of, in danger, is how to preserve the advantages they have obtained, without regard to his fate to whom they owe them."

      We do not believe that it occurred to any person while these events were passing, to question either the formality or the justice of the doom of forfeiture against Napoleon; but Time has called out many authors, who, gained by the brilliancy of Napoleon's reputation, and some of them bound to him by ties of gratitude or friendship, have impugned, more or less directly, the formality of the Senate's procedure, as well as the justice of their sentence. We, therefore, feel it our duty to bestow some consideration upon this remarkable event in both points of view.

      The objection proposed against the legality of the Senate's acting as the organ of the people, in pronouncing the doom of forfeiture, rests upon the idea, that the right of dethroning the sovereign, who shall be guilty of oppression beyond endurance, can only be exercised in a peculiar and formal manner, or, as our law-phrase goes, "according to the statute made and provided in that case." This seems to take a narrow view of the subject. The right of redressing themselves under such circumstances, does not belong to, and is not limited by, any peculiar forms of civil government. It is a right which belongs to human nature under all systems whatever. It exists in every government under the sun, from that of the Dey of Algiers to the most free republic that ever was constructed. There is, indeed, much greater latitude for the exercise of arbitrary authority in some governments than in others. An Emperor of Morocco may, with impunity, bathe his hands to the elbows in the blood of his subjects shed by his own hand; but even in this the most absolute of despotisms, there are peculiar limits which cannot be passed by the sovereign without the exercise of the natural right of resistance on the part of his subjects, although their system of government be as arbitrary as words can declare it to be, and the Emperor is frequently dethroned and slain by his own guards.

      In limited governments, on the other hand, like that of Great Britain, the law imposes bounds, beyond which the royal authority shall not pass; but it makes no provision for what shall take place, should a monarch, as in the case of James II., transgress the social compact.

33

De Pradt, Précis Hist. de la Restauration, p. 54.

34

Dated Paris, March 31, three o'clock in the afternoon. "After some discussion, the Emperor of Russia agreed not to treat with Napoleon, and, at the suggestion of Abbé Louis, nor with any of his family. De Pradt told me he retired into a corner of the apartment, with Roux Laborie, to whom he dictated the Emperor's declaration, which was hastily written with a pencil, and shown to Alexander, who approved of it. Michaud, who was in waiting, caused it immediately to be printed, putting, under the name of the Emperor, 'Michaud, Imprimeur du Roi,' and two hours afterwards it was stuck up in Paris. It was read by the people with great eagerness, and I saw many of them copying it." —Memorable Events, p. 128.

35

On the 3d of April, the Moniteur, in which these documents are given, was declared, by the provisional government, the only official journal.