CHAP. X.

1815.

300K XIV. to cut off his hair, in order to send it to his wife, but this was cruelly refused. He then intreated that he might be shot by the small detachment of his guard which was at Pizzo; this was also refused. His request that the execution might take place in the Great Hall of the Commandant of Pizzo was acceded to. Twelve Sicilian soldiers were then placed close to the door of the apartment. Murat bid farewell to the priest who accompanied him, entered resolutely the hall, uncovered his breast, gave the word "Fire," and Fire," and immediately fell, pierced by eight balls. That Murat's character had been deeply marked by cruelty, especially by the massacre of Madrid, at the beginning of Bonaparte's attempt against the independence of Spain, all must acknowledge. At the same time it is but justice to him to remark, that, during the short period of his reign over Naples, he did much to benefit that fine portion of Italy. The great faults and vices of the Neapolitan character were extreme indolence, the want of enterprise and ambition, excessive ignorance and superstition, and a large portion of Italian cowardice and cruelty. To eradicate these he used all his endeavours, and, by the testimony of travellers who had seen Naples under Ferdinand and under him, he had been tolerably successful. If, therefore, he could

have rested content, and had not suffered himself to have been made the tool of Bonaparte, it is highly probable, not only that he would have been suffered to retain the throne of Naples, but that he would have affected a great reform in the cha racter of the Neapolitans. Britain had no reason to exert herself in favor of the old dynasty, since the conduct of the Queen of Naples in Si cily had for many years been hostile to the views of Britain, and most strongly favorable to Bona parte; and, there was reason to believe, that even Ferdinand and his subjects did not feel all the gratitude towards Britain which her exertions and sacrifices on their behalf justly intitled them to expect.

The indifference with which the fate of Murat was viewed, affords a striking proof how soon the public mind becomes callous, because habituated to great and sudden reverses. Half a century ago the fate of Theodore, who called himself King of Corsica, though he merely had the semblance of kingly power over a small and barren island, excited more interest than the fall of Murat did. It may be added, however, that the ap proaching war between Bonaparte and the allies called off public attention and interest from the dethronement of Murat.

THE treaty of the allied powers, which was signed at Vienna on the 25th of March, having been ratified by the British government, it was sent back to Vienna; and it appears from the following official letter, from the Earl of Clancarty, the British ambassador there, to Lord Castlereagh, that the views and intentions of the other allied powers were the same as those of Britain :

Vienna, May 6, 1815. "My Lord.-Adverting to your lordship's dispatch of the 8th ult. and to its inclosures, conveying a proposal made by the existing government in France, and your lordship's answer thereto, I have the honor to acquaint you, for the information of his majesty's government, that at a conference held on the 3d instant, bis highness Prince Metternich acquainted us, that a M. de Strassant, who had been stopped on his way hither, at Lintz, from not having been furnished with proper passports, had addressed a letter to his imperial majesty, and therewith forwarded some unopened letters, which the emperor had directed him to unseal in the presence of the plenipotentiaries of the allied powers. These proved to be a letter from Bonaparte, addressed to his majesty, professing a desire to continue at peace, to observe the stipulations of the treaty of Paris, &c.; and a letter from M. de Caulincourt to Prince Metternich, containing similar professions. After reading these papers, it was considered whether any, and what, answer should be made thereto, when the general opinion appeared to be, that none should be returned, and no notice whatever taken of the proposal. Upon this, as indeed upon all other occasions subsequent to the resumption of authority by Bonaparte, wherein the present state of the continental powers with regard to France has come under discussion, but one opinion has appeared to direct the councils of the several so

CRAP. I.

1815.

vereigns. They adhere, and from the commence- BOOK XV. ment have never ceased to adhere, to their declaration of the 13th of March, with respect to the actual ruler of France. They are in a state of hostility with him and his adherents, not from choice, but from necessity, because past experience has shewn, that no faith has been kept by him, and that no reliance can be placed on the professions of one who has hitherto no longer regarded the most solemn compacts, than as it may have suited his own convenience to observe them; whose word, the only assurance he can afford for his peaceable disposition, is not less in direct opposition to the tenor of his former life, than it is to the military position in which he is actually placed. They feel that they should neither perform their duty to themselves, or to the people committed by Providence to their charge, if they were now to listen to those professions of a desire for peace which have been made, and suffer themselves thus to be lulled into the supposition that they might now relieve their people from the burthen of supporting immense military masses, by diminishing their forces to a peace-establishment, convinced as the several sovereigns are, from past experience, that no sooner should they have been disarmed, than advantage would be taken of their want of preparation, to renew those scenes of aggression and bloodshed' from which they had hoped that the peace so gloriously won at Paris would long have secured them. They are at war, then, for the purpose of obtaining security for their own independence, and for the re-conquest of that peace and permanent tranquillity for which the world has so long panted. They are not even at war for the greater or less proportion of security which France can afford them of future tranquillity, but because France, under its present chief, is unable to afford them any security whatever. In this war, they do not desire to interfere with

1815.

BOOK XV. any legitimate right of the French people; they have no design to oppose the claim of that nation CHAP. I. to choose their own form of government, or intention to trench, in any respect, upon their independence as a great and free people; but they do think they have a right, and that of the highest nature, to contend against the re-establishment of an individual at the head of the French government, whose past conduct has invariably demonstrated, that, in such a situation, he will not suffer other nations to be at peace-whose restless ambition, whose thirst for foreign conquest, and whose disregard for the rights and independence of other states, must expose the whole of Europe to renewed scenes of plunder and devastation. However general the feelings of the sovereigns may be in favor of the restoration of the king, they no otherwise seek to influence the proceedings of the French in the choice of this or any other dynasty, or form of government, than may be essential to the safety and tranquillity of the rest of Europe;_ such reasonable security being afforded by France in this respect, as other states have a legitimate right to claim in their own defence, their object will be satisfied, and they shall joyfully return to that state of peace which will then, and then only, be open to them, and lay down those arms which they have only taken up for the purpose of acquiring that tranquillity so eagerly desired by them on the part of their respective empires.

"Such, my lord, are the general sentiments of the sovereigns and of their ministers here assembled; and it should seem, that the glorious forbearance observed by them, when masters of the French capital in the early part of the last year, ought to prove to the French, that this is not a war against their freedom and independence, or excited by any spirit of ambition or desire of conquest, but one arising out of necessity, urged on the principles of self-preservation, and founded on that legitimate and incontrovertible right of obtaining reasonable security for their own tranquillity and independence to which, if France has on her part a claim, other nations have an equal title to claim at the hands of France.

"I this day laid before the plenipotentiaries of the three allied powers in conference, the note proposed to be delivered upon the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty of the 25th of March. After the opinions which I have detailed, as those with which the allied sovereigns are impressed, with respect to the object of the war, it is scarcely necessary for me to add, that the explanation af forded in this note, as the construction put by his royal-highness the prince-regent on the eighth article of that treaty, was favorably received. Immediate instructions will consequently be issued to the ambassadors of the imperial courts of Austria and Russia, and to the minister of his

Prussian majesty, to accept of this note on the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty in question. "In order to be assured that I have advanced nothing in this dispatch which does not accord with the views of the cabinets of the allied sovereigns, I have acquainted the plenipotentiaries of the high allied powers with the contents thereof, and have the honor to inform you, that the senti ments contained in it entirely coincide with those of their respective courts. I have the honor to be, &c. "CLANCARTY."

(Signed)

The Congress of Vienna, however, in conse quence of Bonaparte's publishing his circular letter, deemed it proper to appoint a committee to examine whether, after the events that had passed since the return of Napoleon Bonaparte to France, and in consequence of the documents published at Paris on the declaration which the powers issued against him on the 13th of March, it would be necessary to proceed to a new declaration. On the 12th of May, the committee presented the following report:

Report of the Committee.

The declaration published on the 13th of March last, against Napoleon Bonaparte and his adherents, by the powers who signed the treaty of Paris, having, since his return to Paris, been discussed in various shapes by those whom he has employed for that purpose; these discussions having acquired great publicity, and a letter addressed by him to all the sovereigns, as well as a note addressed by the Duke of Vicenza to the heads of the cabinets of Europe, having been also published by him, with the manifest intention of influencing and misleading public opinion, the committee appointed in the sitting of the 9th instant, was charged to present a report on these topics; and, considering that, in the above-mentioned publications, it has been attempted to invalidate the declaration of the 13th of March, by laying it down,

1. That that declaration, directed against Bonaparte, at the period of his landing on the coast of France, was without application now that he had laid hold of the reins of government without open resistance, and that this fact sufficiently proving the wishes of the nation, he had not only re-entered into possession of his old rights in regard to France, but that the question even of the legitimacy of his government had ceased to be within the jurisdiction of the powers;

2. That by offering to ratify the treaty of Paris, he removed every ground of war against him; The committee has been specially charged to take into consideration

1. Whether the position of Bonaparte, in re

gard to the powers of Europe, has changed by the fact of his arrival at Paris, and by the circumstances that accompanied the first success of his attempt on the throne of France;

2. Whether the offer to sanction the treaty of Paris, of the 30th of May, 1814, can determine the powers to adopt a system different from that which they announced in the declaration of the 13th of March;

3. Whether it be necessary or proper to publish a new declaration to confirm or modify that of the 13th of March;

The committee having maturely examined these questions, submits to the assembly of plenipotentiaries the following account of the result of its deliberations :

FIRST QUESTION. Is the position of Bonaparte, in regard to the powers of Europe, altered by the first success of his enterprise, or by the events which have passed since his arrival in Paris ?The powers, informed of the landing of Bonaparte in France, could see in him only a mau who, by advancing on the French territory, with force and arms, and with the avowed project of overturning the established government, by exciting the people and the army to revolt against their lawful sovereign, and by usurping the title of Emperor of the French, had incurred the penalties which all legislations pronounce against such outrages, a man, who, by abusing the good faith of the sovereigns, had broken a solemn_treaty, a man, in fine, who, by recalling upon France, happy and tranquil, all the scourges of internal and external war, and upon Europe, at a moment when the blessings of peace must have consoled her for her long sufferings, the sad necessity of a new general armament, was justly regarded as the implacable enemy of public warfare. Such was the origin, such were the grounds of the declaration of the 13th of March:-a declaration of which the justice and necessity have been universally acknowledged, and which general opinion has sanctioned.

The events which conducted Bonaparte to Paris, and restored to him for the moment the exercise of supreme power, have, doubtless, in

* The first article of the convention of the 11th of April, 1814, is as follows:-"The Emperor Napoleon renounces for himself, his successors, and descendants, as well as for all the members of his family, all rights of sovereignty and of power, not only over the French empire and the kingdom of Italy, but also over every other country." Notwithstanding this formal renunciation, Bonaparte, in his different proclamations from the gulph of Juan, from Gap, Grenoble, and Lyons, entitled himself "by the grace of God and the constitutions of the empire, Emperor of

CHAP. I.

1815.

fact, altered the position in which he was at the BOOK XV. period of his entering France; but these events, brought on by criminal collusion, by military conspiracies, by revolting treasons, can create no right; they are absolutely null in a legal point of view; and, in order to the position of Bonaparte being essentially and legitimately altered, it would be necessary that the steps which he has taken to establish himself on the ruins of the government overturned by him, should have been confirmed by some legal title.

Bonaparte lays it down in his publication, that the wishes of the French nation in favor of his re-establishment on the throne suffice to constitute this legal title.

The question for the powers to examine may be stated as follows:-Can the consent, real or factitious, explicit or tacit, of the French nation. to the re-establishment of Bonaparte's power, operate a legal change in the position of the latter in regard to foreign powers, and form a title obligatory on these powers?

The committee are of opinion that such cannot by any means be the effect of such consent; and the following are their reasons:

The powers know too well the principles which ought to guide them in their relations with an independent country, to attempt (as it is endeavoured to accuse them) "to impose upon it laws, to interfere in its internal affairs, to prescribe to it a form of government, to give it masters according to the interests or passions of its neighbours." But they also know, that the liberty of a nation to change its system of government must have its just limits, and that if foreign powers have not the right to prescribe to it the exercise which it shall make of that liberty, they have, at least, indubitably the right of protesting against the abuse which it may make of it at their expense. Impressed with this principle, the powers do not deem themselves authorised to impose a government on France; but they will never renounce the right of preventing the establishment in France of a focus of disorders and of subversions to other states, under the title of a government. They will respect the liberty of France in every way in which it shall not be incompatible with their own security, and the general tranquillity of Europe.

In the existing case, the right of the allied sovereigns to interfere in the question of the internal government of France, is the more incontestible, inasmuch as the abolition of the power which now claims to be re-established there, was the fundamental condition of a treaty of peace, on which rested all the relations which, up to the

+ It is thus that Bonaparte's council of state express themselves in their report on the inten

CRAP. I. 1815.

BOOK XV. return of Bonaparte to Paris, subsisted between France and the rest of Europe. On the day of their entrance into Paris, the sovereigns declared that they would never treat of peace with Bonaparte.* This declaration, loudly applauded by France and by Europe, produced the abdication of Napoleon, and the convention of the 11th of April; it formed the principal basis of the negociation; it was explicitly pronounced in the preamble of the treaty of Paris. The French nation, even supposing it perfectly free and united, cannot withdraw itself from this fundamental condition, without abrogating the treaty of Paris and all its existing relations with the European system. The allied powers, on the other hand, by insisting on this very condition, only exercise a right which it is impossible to contest to them, unless it be maintained that the most sacred compacts can be perverted as suits the convenience of either of the contracting parties.

It hence follows, that the will of the people of France is by no means sufficient to re-establish, in a legal sense, a government proscribed by solemn engagements, which that very people entered into with all the powers of Europe; and that they cannot, under any pretext, give validity as against these powers to the right of recalling to the throne him whose exclusion was a condition preliminary to every pacific arrangement with France; the wish of the French people, even if it were fully ascertained, would not be the less null and of no effect in regard to Europe, towards re-establishing a power against which all Europe has been in a state of permanent protest from the 31st of March, 1814, up to the 13th of March, 1815; and, in this view, the position of Bonaparte is precisely at this day what it was at these last-mentioned periods.

SECOND QUESTION.-Should the offer to sanction the treaty of Paris change the dispositions of the powers?-France has had no reason to complain of the treaty of Paris. This treaty reconciled France with Europe; it satisfied all her true interests, secured an her real advantages, all the elements of prosperity and glory, which a people called to one of the first places in the European system could reasonably desire, and only took from her that which was to her, under the deceitful exterior of great national eclat, an inexhaustible source of sufferings, of ruin, and of misery. This treaty was even an immense benefit for a country reduced by the madness of its chief to the most disasterous situation.†

* Declaration of the 31st of March, 1814. +"The emperor, convinced of the critical situation in which he has placed France, and of the impossibility of saving it himself, appeared to resign himself, and consent to an entire and unconditional abdication."-Letter from Ney to Talleyrand.

The allied powers would have betrayed their interests and their duties, if, as the price of so much moderation and generosity, they had not, on signing the treaty, obtained some solid advan tage; but the sole object of their ambition was the peace of Europe and the happiness of France, Never, in treating with Bonaparte, would they have consented to the conditions which they granted to a government which, "while offering to Europe a pledge of security and stability, relieved them from requiring from France the guarantees which they had demanded under its former government." This clause is inseparable from the treaty of Paris; to abolish, is to break that treaty. The formal consent of the French nation to the return of Bonaparte to the throne would be equivalent to a declaration of war against Europe; for the state of peace did not exist between Europe and France, except by the treaty of Paris, and the treaty of Paris is incompatible with the power of Bonaparte.

If this reasoning had need of further support, it might be found in the very offer of Bonaparte to ratify the treaty of Paris. This treaty had been scrupulously observed and executed: the transactions of the Congress of Vienna were only its supplements and developements: and, without the new attempt of Bonaparte, it would have been, for a long series of years, one of the bases of the public right of Europe: but this order of things has given place to a new revolution; and the agents of this revolution, although they proclaim incessantly" that § nothing has been changed," conceive and feel themselves that all is

changed around them. The question is no longer the maintenance of the treaty of Paris, but the making of it afresh. The powers find themselves, with respect to France, in the condition in which they were on the 31st of March, 1814. It is not to prevent war, for France has, in fact, re-kindled it, it is to terminate it that there now offers itself to Europe a state of things essentially different from that on which the peace of 1814 was founded. The question, then, has ceased to be a question of right; it is no more than a question of political calculation and fore sight, in which the powers have only to consult the real interests of their people and the common interest of Europe.

The committee thinks it may dispense with entering here into an exposition of the considerstions which, under this last view, have directed the measures of the governments. It will be sufficient to recall to notice, that the man who, in now offering to sanction the treaty of Paris, pretends to substitute his guarantee for that of a

Preamble of the treaty of Paris. 8 This idea recurs perpetually in the report of the council of state of Bonaparte.