73

ment, in the restoration of Napoleon. In the surprise and apprehensions, which the novelty of the circumstances might excuse, he applied for passports to join the King of France; and on receiving no answer to his request, is said to have suffered, for some days, a terror, with which the armies of the dreaded usurper had never inspired him. Confused, perplexed, he at last learned from a countryman, that if he chose to withdraw, as the missions of other powers had withdrawn, he must follow the steps adopted by these gentlemen; he must apply, not for the passports to join the King of France, an unacknowledged inimical potentate, but for passports to return home.

He followed the advice, and had an immediate answer in the affirmative from the Duke of Vicenza. Neither his lordship nor the Duke of Wellington's baggage was detained*; and after this trial, it may be expected that a clearer view of the sort of bloodless danger to which he was exposed will prevent a similar panic in any such diplomatic difficulties, and communicate the courage of the soldier to the inexperience of the secretary. Lord Fitzroy Somerset was one of the best scholars of his form in Westminster school-the pride of the master, and the favourite of such of his schoolfellows as had the pleasure of his acquaintaince. He has not dropped his capacity and attraction in the active scenes in which he has been employed, so much to his own credit, and the service of his country. But the resolution of civil life, and what I shall call political presence of mind, are not the portion usually either of his age or profession; and it was unfortunately not much to the credit of our nation, that its representative should not be exempt from the terrors that drove every man, woman, and child, to the coast, in a flight, where neither the dignity of the one sex, nor the delicacy of the other, neither the strength nor the weakness of any age, seemed to be the object of regard. Nothing could show a more decided ignorance of the politics of France, of the feelings of the people, of the conduct which Napoleon, or any one at the head of the government, must necessarily pursue, than to apprehend the of detention of our countrymen as the necessary consequence the return of the Emperor. His former measure, however it might appear justified by the seizure of the French merchant vessels, previously to the declaration of war, in order to swell our iniquitous droits of admiralty, had been evidently against, the general feeling in France; and as Napoleon could not hope

Amongst the many falsities of the English newspapers, it was asserted that the noble secretary had been detained, and, said the journal (the Sun) "we need not "add the Duke's plate was not permitted to leave Paris.”

K

to succeed, except by an anxious deference to that feeling, and as it must no less clearly be his interest. to refrain from every irritating measure against England, no Englishman needed, upon reflection, to have dreaded a repetition of the former injustice, and a visit to Verdun. One of the first inquiries made by Napoleon, upon his return, of one of the ladies of his court, was, if many English were in Paris? and on hearing nearly all of them had retired, he exclaimed, "Ah! they recollect what I did before, but those times are past." Our politicians, and notably our ministers, are blind to all seasons and their change-regulated by their own precious precedents, the canons of folly, inattentive to, or extracting nothing from, the varying march of manners, principles, and times, they are incapable of conceiving that any one should be found willing to resign a favourite system, merely because a change of circumstances should appear to render it inapplicable, and therefore unwise. With some people, the times that require and justify violence and revenge are never passed. Our ministers, as I mentioned in my first letter, certainly expected an immediate irruption into Belgium, and a recurrence of all those harsh, impetuous, rapid measures of open force, which before distinguished the enterprises of Napoleon-as certainly did they know nothing of France;

"And having once been wrong, will be so still."

But if the Bourbons themselves knew nothing of the true state of their affairs, you cannot expect our minister to have had any acquaintance with them, when, with the ingenuous unsuspicious candour of a soldier and a youth, he put his entire trust in the court of the Tuilleries, and favoured his own cabinet with the impartial statements of the Abbé Montesquiou and M. de Blacas. It was the endeavour of former ambassadors to make the most of the cause of their own countrymen at the court to which they were sent; and it would be scandal to assert that the modern rule of our diplomatists is to consult the interests and to create a cabal, ooth at home and abroad, in favour of that particular potentate to whom they are attached; or that our legations at the separate capitals, and at the head-quarters of the European monarchs, are but so many agents of foreign powers, employing themselves to direct the resources of their own country to that one of the magnanimous sovereigns of whose suite they happen to be the honourable appendage, and whose splendour and preponderance they are accustomed to consider as their own. Russia, Austria, Prussia, nay even the roitelets of Palermo, Brussels, Stockholm, and Stutgard, might, were this the case, have each an advocate at the cabinet of St.

James's, whom they would not need be at the charge of paying, except with some paltry ribbon, that would put him in the first, second, or third class of the court sewers or apothecaries; and our agents would have no other employment than that of finding out, in the course of their commerce with the prince or his ministers, how short is the distance between a devoted admirer and an egregious dupe. The Metternichs, the Hardenbergs, the Nesselrodes, might then hug themselves at the facility with which an English diplomatists might be converted into an useful agent, to increase the subsidies, and diminish the pretensions of his own court. The supposed rivalry of the separate British missions, to augment the importance and extol the sincerity of their own foreign prince, in annihilation of all selfish interest for their employers, has, indeed, amongst those I presume unacquainted with the truth, been one of the diversions of all the many congresses, head-quarters, conferences, &c. of these three years. We at home have missed the pleasantry, but the scandal may hit us at last.

Note. If praise from such a quarter might not look like presumption in the author, or might not possibly have even a baneful effect upon its object, Sir Charles Stuart, his majesty's present ambassador at the court of Paris, should be excepted by name from every thing said in any degree unfavourable to our English agents abroad. No one who has had the satisfaction of seeing that gentleman can doubt that a better selection could not have been made from our diplomatic body, to fill so important a mission.

LETTER IX.

Paris, April.

THE king, retreated to Abbeville; and it should appear, by the Universal Journal published at Ghent, that he thought of making some stand there. He might have mistaken the facilities afforded to his retreat for an inclination in some portion of his people not to abandon his cause; but on the 21st, at twelve o'clock, Marshal Macdonald arrived from Paris, and represented the necessity of retiring towards the frontier. The king had wished to fix upon Lille for the head quarters of his household troops, and was disappointed at hearing that the Duke of Treviso had remarched the garrison into the town: he arrived there, however, on the 22d, at one o'clock, and was well received by the inhabitants, but by the troops in silence.

The declaration of the 13th of March here reached his majesty, who hoped, by the dispersion of this document, to frighten the French into a return to their allegiance, and accordingly took care to placard it in the town. The effect was contrary to his expectations; for so alarming were the appearances of the next day, that Marshal Mortier was obliged to inform Louis that he could not answer for the garrison, and that an immediate retreat was necessary. The king took the road to Menin, which was in possession of an English regiment, the colonel of which, upon receiving notice that his majesty was approaching, thought it his duty, upon advice from General Vandeleur, to state in reply, that no French troops would be allowed to pass the frontier. A picquet of the national guard of Lille, and about two hundred cuirassiers, formed the whole escort; but these took leave of the king at the barrier, where also Marshal Macdonald left him. The marshal has since returned to his country seat; and although Napoleon has sent two messages to see him, he has persisted in his retreat. His constancy is still a topic of admiration even amongst the friends of the court; so much so, that the amiable Madame- was pointed out to me by the following half serious designation-"That is the

"daughter of the only honest man in France, and very fairly piques herself upon the fidelity of Marshal Macdonald."

Louis left France unaccompanied by a single soldier-only a drunken dragoon on a lame horse pushed his way after him through the British picquets, and toppled into Menin, crying vive le roi. He waited in his carriage, drawn up at the inn door, half an hour, for post horses, one of those trifling but levelling wants which must have told him he was king no more. An English officer approached, and asked whether he would accept of a guard of honour-he said he should be thankful for a few dragoons, and also for an estafette, which should order thirty horses at the next and following posts. Never was a crown so won and lost. Napoleon travels to his capital as Louis leaves it, in a chariot; and the lives and fortunes of the invading, as well as the retreating monarch, seem to have been intrusted principally to post-masters; one of whom, had he been like the man who stopped Louis XVI. at Varennes, might have changed the destinies of France. Four thousand of the king's household, under the orders of Monsieur and the Duke of Berri, and Marshal Marmont, directed themselves to the frontier, where, being refused entrance into Dutch Flanders, they were disbanded by Monsieur in the neighbourhood of Bethune, in which place they were shut up, and received the orders of Napoleon relative to their final destination. Only about 200 of the household, with a major-general at their head, after great difficulties, have been at last allowed to pass into Flanders-and this is the French force with which Louis is to recover his crown. The Universal Journal says nothing of the real cause which prevented the household from following the king, but ascribes to the miry roads and marshes that impediment which was produced only by the jealousy of the court of Brussels. A General Ricard, who came in with the king, was even sent under a guard to Courtray; such was the apprehension of French interference in the affairs of the Netherlands, and in the common cause of Europe. The same Journal asserts, that an order to arrest the king and princes arrived at Lille both before and after the king's departure; but that Marshal Mortier, to whom it was addressed, took care not to publish it, until the Duke of Orleans, some hours after Louis, had left the town. The Duke of Berri told Colonel Morris at Menin, my informant, of the same fact. If it be true, I am one of those who regret that it was not carried into effect. No measures of violence would have been pursued with the Bourbon princes. The conduct of Napoléon to the Duke of Angouleme sufficiently shews the line of