XIV.

1815.

77.

Return of

from Elba,

But while England was indulging in a legitimate pride CHAP. at the glorious termination of the war, and doing justice. to the statesman by whom it had been brought about, an event occurred, unexpected by all save the ministers of Louis XVIII., which threatened to undo it all, and again Napoleon involve Europe in bloodshed and conflagration. On the March 3. 7th March, four days after Lord Castlereagh landed at Dover, information was received at Vienna from the consul at Leghorn, by whom it was transmitted, partly by telegraph, that Napoleon had set sail on the evening of 26th February from Elba with his Old Guard, about eight hundred in number; and the next day news arrived from Genoa that he had arrived on the 1st of March in the Gulf of San Juan, on the coast of Provence, where he had landed with his entire force without experiencing any opposition, and had set out for Grenoble by the mountain road on his way to Paris. Everything now

would depend, according to the prophecy of Fouché, on the conduct of the first regular regiments he encountered on his march; and the event proved that he had rightly judged the tempers and feelings of the troops. The memorable event occurred on the road leading from Frejus to Grenoble, where he was met by a body of regular troops under General Labedoyère, who, at the sight of their ranks, and in a transport of enthusiasm, 1 Cap. i. threw themselves at his feet. His progress thereafter 177, 182; was a continued triumph; and the telegraph announced 477; Cast. successively that he had entered Grenoble, Lyons, and and MS. Paris.1

Had a bomb exploded in one of the meetings of the assembled diplomatists at Vienna it could not have occasioned greater consternation than this intelligence. The

ability he combines all the graces of the most exquisite politeness. Moderate, but firm, he conceives laudable projects only, and executes them by honourable means. He is a statesman without guile, a courtier without falsehood. Such a man is a glory to his country; and if England is proud of a Nelson, of a Wellington, so ought she to be of having produced a Castlereagh."-New Times, March 4, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 23.

Hard. xii.

Cor. x. 472

Effect it

the Con

gress.

CHAP. different dispositions of men clearly appeared on its reXIV. ceipt. "He is mad," said Pozzo di Borgo; "he will be 1815. hung up on the first tree." The Emperor Alexander, 78. though sanguine of the result, judged the event more corproduced on rectly. "It will prove a trifle," said he, “unless we regard it as such." Talleyrand, who knew what he had to expect if he fell into Napoleon's hands, was in an agony of terror, and evinced a pusillanimity which seriously damaged his character in the eyes of all who witnessed it.* But fortunately, in the midst of the universal tumult, there were some cool heads and intrepid hearts, which, boldly looking the danger in the face, adopted at once the measures calculated to arrest it. The Emperor Alexander, who had been luckily detained at Vienna beyond the time for which his departure had been fixed, was still there, and immediately had a long conference with M. de Metternich, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Stewart.t They unanimously agreed to publish the declaration of 13th March 1815, which was signed by the representatives of Austria, Spain, France, England, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden, which set forth: "Napoleon Buonaparte is put beyond the pale of social and civil relations, and as enemy and disturber of the repose of the world, he is delivered over to public vengeance." Nothing additional required to be done to carry this resolution into effect: Lord Castlereagh's forethought had provided a year before for the very case which had occurred. The treaty of Chaumont of 25th March 1814, which bound Austria, England, Russia, and Prussia in an alliance offensive and defensive for twenty years, and stipulated that each of the contracting parties should furnish 150,000 men to serve the common cause, at once rose into activity, and formed the basis of the whole subsequent arrangements. Lord

"Cet evènement d'effroi pour le plus grand mombre fit passer M. de Talleyrand d'une hauteur insultante à la plus honteuse pusillanimité."-HARDENBERG, Mémoires, xii. 475.

+ Lord Castlereagh's brother, the object of this memoir, who had been raised to the peerage shortly after being appointed to the Embassy at Vienna

XIV.

Castlereagh immediately measured the full extent of the CHAP. danger, and wrote to the Duke of Wellington at Vienna, enjoining the adoption, without a moment's delay, of 1815. the most vigorous measures, and sent authority to his chargé d'affaires, Lord Clancarty, at the same place, to sign a treaty binding Great Britain to pay a subsidy of £5,000,000 sterling, and £2,100,000 in lieu of part of the military force she was bound to produce by the treaty of Chaumont, as in the present year the native British troops that could be brought into the field would not exceed 50,000.*

I

* "You will see that we are preparing, as usual, to bear our part with the Continent in the good and great cause, which, if we remain united and in earnest, we shall bring to a glorious and secure conclusion, I doubt not. know all your pecuniary wants, and you may rely on our doing our best; but the heavy charge of the last war, and the Commissariat debts in Spain and America, yet press upon us. I fear we shall be obliged to borrow this year from £35,000,000 to £40,000,000 to liquidate arrears, &c. We shall, nevertheless, make every effort to aid the Continent. I have authorised Lord Clancarty to sign an additional article to the Treaty of the 25th, binding the Prince Regent to supply £5,000,000 to the three Powers. We shall also give about £2,100,000 in lieu of deficiencies under our quota, which, in British troops, we shall not be able, in this campaign, to carry above 50,000 men, exclusive, however, of Hanoverians or Dutch. The Duke writes to me in raptures of Gneisenau and your troops, and relies upon them as he does upon his own." -LORD CASTLEREAGH to PRINCE HARDENBERG, April 17, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, x. 316, 317.

To the Duke of Wellington Lord Castlereagh wrote :-' "If we are to undertake the job, we must leave nothing to chance. It must be done upon the largest scale. With Mayence, Luxemburg, and Lille, you start on solid grounds, and no fortresses in the rear to blockade as before. If Buonaparte could turn the tide, there is no calculating upon his plan; and we must always recollect that Poland, Saxony, and much Jacobinism, are in our rear.

"I wish you would turn in your mind the principles to be acted upon in France. The applying those you acted upon in the South to the force you will now command of all nations, is out of the question. The utmost we could attempt would be, to be honest ourselves, and this would only make our Allies more odious. My notion is, that France must pay the price of her own deliverance that the King should consider the Allied troops-that every corps should be accompanied by a French ordonnateur, through whom all requisitions for forage and subsistence should be made; the value to be paid in Bons, the liquidation of which should be assured on a peace, either in whole, or in the greater proportion, at the expense of the French Government. Unless some system of this kind is agreed upon, the war will either degenerate, as it did last year, into an indiscriminate and destructive pillage, or we shall be bankrupts, and driven out of the field in three months. I know the difficulties of what I suggest; but the alternative in the less objectionable sense leads at once to impossibilities and ruin. Pray consider whether the territorial acquisitions of Austria must not be reduced into articles. I think she cannot

CHAP.

XIV.

1815.

79.

Effect of

return in

the Saxon

question.

Feb. 22.

March 8.

The first effect of the return of Napoleon from Elba, was to occasion an immediate and final settlement of the

Saxon question. It has been already mentioned that this delicate question had been adjusted, so far as the Napoleon's sovereigns were concerned, before Lord Castlereagh left concluding Vienna, and the portion to be ceded by Prussia agreed on. In pursuance of this concert, the King of Saxony was required to cede the territory thus settled by a formal deed to the King of Prussia; but he excused himself on the ground that he was a prisoner in the hands of the Allied Powers, and that any cession of territory made by him in such circumstances would be invalid. Upon this they invited him to come to Vienna, where he would be entirely at liberty; and in pursuance of the invitation, he set out on the 22d February from Frederichsfeld, where he was, and arrived at Presburg, in the Austrian dominious, on the 4th March, where Prince Metternich, M. de Talleyrand, and the Duke of Wellington, waited on him on the 8th. They endeavoured to persuade the unfortunate monarch to resign himself to his fate, and sign the required concession; but they could not prevail on him to do so. He alleged that he might by violence be deprived of his dominions, but he would not be a voluntary party to their alienation. It is impossible to avoid feeling a certain admiration for a sovereign in misfortune; he could break but not bend; but in a worldly point of view, never was a refusal more unhappily timed. The intelligence of the landing of Napoleon in France had rendered his case hopeless all jealousies and animosities were stilled, from the sense of the impending danger. Upon learning the King's continued refusal, the Congress passed a resolution, declaring that, "considering the manner in which the King of Saxony had reunited himself to the most cruel enemy of Germany, Prussia was put in possession of the portion of

rest her title merely upon the secret and very general article in the treaty of Paris."-LORD CASTLEREAGH to the DUKE OF WELLINGTON, March 26, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, x. 285, 286.

СНАР.

XIV.

1815.

Saxony assigned to her, reserving to justify the step by an exposition of their grounds of complaint against him, in order that public opinion may not be misled on the subject." This resolution was immediately acted upon; and the district of Saxony, thus transferred, has ever since remained part of the Prussian dominions. The portion thus transferred amounted to a third of the inhabitants, but embraced nearly a half of the superficial territory of Saxony, leaving, however, its beautiful capital to the divided monarchy. Serious apprehensions were felt by the ministers of France, Austria, and England, that the discovery of the secret treaty of 3d January by Napoleon, in the archives. of Paris, of which he would of course make the most, would sow dissension among the European Powers, by showing the Emperor Alexander the decisive steps which had been taken to restrain his ambition. But although it immediately appeared in the columns of the Moniteur, it had no such effect. The Czar had magnanimity enough to overlook the slight, and sense enough to see that it was not the time to open up fresh divisions, when Europe was again threatened with a restoration of the military domina- 212, 228. tion under which it had so long groaned.1 *

1

Hard. xii. grès de

474; Con

Vienne, vi.

80.

The event proved the justice of Fouché's prognostications before Napoleon landed in the bay of Frejus; the Great predefection of a single regiment drew after it that of the of the Allies whole army; and the ex-Emperor's march to Paris was for war with

It is to be presumed, in the hurry of their departure, the Foreign Office at Paris has not been stripped by the King's ministers of any of its contents, and consequently that our secret treaty with France and Austria, as well as all Prince Talleyrand's correspondence, will fall into Buonaparte's hands. He will of course try to turn this to account, first in privately sowing discord; and, if he fails in this, he will expose the whole in the Moniteur. I have desired Sir Charles Stewart to ascertain how the fact stands, and leave it to your judgment to take such steps as you deem most suitable for counteracting any unfavourable impression. I flatter myself, after all he knew long since, it cannot produce any unfavourable impression upon the Emperor of Russia. He must feel assured that the whole grew out of differences now settled, and a most indiscreet declaration of Prince Hardenberg's. The treaty is, upon the face of it, purely defensive; and all our proceedings since have proved this beyond a doubt."-LORD CASTLEREAGH to the DUKE OF WELLINGTON, March 27, 1815; Castlereagh Correspondence, x. 286, 287.

parations

France.