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being in all likelihood to direct their principal effort upon Vaugirard.

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"The enemy's army was much stronger than our's, yet we had reason to hope, by our position, to be able to resist him with advantage in case of an attack on his part, but not, in my opinion, to attack him ourselves with decisive success. In such a case, a complete victory is necessary; the enemy's army must be totally routed, or nothing undertaken; otherwise, as we would be obliged to remain after the action to cover Paris against his fresh reinforcements and his corps of reserve, he would have always kept us in the same perplexity, deprived by the first action of a great part of our force. It would have been necessary for us to have had a sufficient number of troops to form a corps of observation to act on the enemy's flanks with the view of harassing and pursuing him, after having made him experience a first reverse. But we were far from being able to detach a part of our force, and it would have been great imprudence in us to leave the point which it was above all necessary for us to cover. The enemy, as I have already said, had refused his right, over which we might have

had some advantage, and it would have been necessary for us to have followed it: but its retreat was secured by the heights of Chatillon and Meudon, and while we should have been engaged on that side, in endeavouring to obtain a success which could decide nothing, the enemy would have directed his attack on Vaugirard, where we should not have been in a condition to resist him.

"Such would have been the most probable result of an inconsiderate attack; and yet it would have been necessary to have made that attack, had the enemy continued longer to refuse the convention which had been proposed to him; for we had to fear, above all, that, without attacking us, he would continue to close and press upon us more and more, to intercept the remainder of our communications, and finally, by forming entrenchments, so to fortify himself around the city, as to prevent our cutting a passage to gain the Loire."

Such is the reasoning of Carnot, which we insert here, to shew that the surrender of Paris was an event necessary in a military point of view, as equally important and fortunate when considered in a political light.

CHAP. XVIII.

Disturbances in the Capital.-The Army evacuates Paris.-Entrance of the Allied Troops.-Conduct of the Provisional Government.-Dissolution of the Chambers-Entrance of the King-Difficulties of his Situation. He appoints a Ministry-Fouché named Minister of Police. He recommends Lenity.-Ordinances of the 24th of July. They are not strictly executed. Disturbances in Paris and the Provinces. Submission of various Corps of the Army-Catastrophe of General Ramel.-Submission and Murder of Marshal Brune.-Macdonald endeavours to re-organize the Army of the Loire. Their disorderly State. They are disbanded.-Disturbances in the South-And at Nismes.-General de la Garde attacked and wounded.-New Commotions in Paris.-Trials and Executions of Labedoyere and the Twe Fauchers.-The King assembles the Chamber of Representatives.

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THE convention of Paris did not seem to have altered the dispositions of the parties within the city. The royalists made an effort to declare themselves, and take possession of the capital for the king, whose white flag was now flying at Saint Denis, and who was arrived there in person, with the princes of his family and his household. But the attempt was premature, and was prevented by the orders of Massena, that all persons should continue to wear the national cockade.

The troops and federates were outrageous upon hearing that the capitulation had been signed. Vociferations, menaces, seditious July 4. declarations, began to be heard about three in the afternoon. Small detached groups of haranguers were formed at short distances, and solitary soldiers scat tered about seemed to be waiting for a

signal of alarm. And, in fact, at six o'clock a kind of commotion took place in different parts of the town. Muskets were fired on all sides, in the midst of the streets, on the bridges, and on the boulevards; cries of rage, menacing gestures, clamours, soldiers riding about, discharges of fire-arms repeated from the heights of Montmartre to beyond the barriers of the Fauxbourg St Antoine. All this apparatus of sedition, of violence, and of tumult, occasioned the greatest anxiety and agitation of mind among the citizens. Some of the soldiers endeavoured to break off the treaty, by firing on the posts of the allies, who had the generosity to disdain the provocation. Others discharged the cannon on the heights of Montmartre, to the great alarm of the citizens. The federates, upon the night of the 3d of July, paraded the streets in frantic

groups, escorting the bust of Buonaparte. They insulted several of the posts of the national guards, and even fired on some of their centinels. In some instances mischief happened; but the firmness of the national guard, their numbers, and their moderation, easily subdued these tumultuary rabble, whose principal inducement to riot was the hope of pillage. It was equally necessary to reduce to civil submission the students of the Polytechnic school, and other seminaries, who had taken up arms, and now refused to lay them down, or forego the independence and life of adventure, which they attached to the character of soldiers. Nothing could more strikingly illustrate the policy of Buonaparte, who, in giving a military education, and instilling military feelings into the youth of France, had succeeded so perfectly in rendering them the voluntary and precipitate implements of continuing the state of war and confusion to which he had abandoned his capital. News of insurrections in the suburbs, of a general mutiny in the army, of a meditated storm by the allies, continued to agitate Paris during the whole night intervening betwixt the 2d and 3d days of July.

The troops of the line perpetrated several disorders in the posts where they were quartered, before they could be made sensible of the necessity of the armistice; and the garrison of St Denis failed not to pillage some part of that little town. Only one mode could be devised of rendering them tractable, and that was an instant distribution of pay. The banking-house of Perigaux, Lafitte, and Co. furnished a large sum for this purpose, on receiving security in government stock. At length the soldiers were collected by their officers, and slowly, sullenly, with dejected countenances, in which shame and

wounded pride were blended with disappointed ferocity, defiled through the city and the suburbs to their place of destination. Occasionally their wonted shouts of Vive l'Empereur, burst from their ranks, no longer in the tone of triumphant exultation, but of determined despair. In this state of dejection they commenced their march for the Loire, many deserting their ranks and colours, and renouncing a service which seemed no longer to promise victory or glory.

On the 7th of July, the national guards, at the several barriers of Paris, delivered up their posts to the allies; and their various forces of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, to the number of perhaps 50,000 men, took possession of the capital of France, defiling along the Boulevards and the alleys of the Champs Elysees. It was a scene very different from the joyous procession of 1814, when the foreigners and Frenchmen, animated by the same universal joy, mingled their ranks as part of the same general procession. The appearance of the allied military, on the present occasion, was strictly regular, but severely solemn; they showed no exultation, but neither did they intimate any desire to fraternize with the inhabitants, who looked on them with a mixture of fear and humiliation, especially when it was remarked that the troops were all either British or Prussians, the nations of the confederacy whom they least liked to acknowledge as victors, from recollection of the wrongs they had inflicted upon the latter, and the constant hostility in which they had so long stood to the other. The victors marched with all the stern apparatus of loaded arms, lighted matches, and the other preparations for instant action, which form the awful distinction between a peaceful procession and the actual operations of war. The city was occupied as a

captured town, and precautions were taken against insurrection. The Bri tish took possession of the heights of Montmartre; the bridges, squares, and principal posts of the city were occupied by military posts, and cannon were planted on the Pont Neuf and Pont Royale, ready loaded, and attended by soldiers having their matches lighted.

The Chamber of Representatives, in the meanwhile, proceeded in their sittings, as if they had been still under the protection of the French army. They continued to labour and polish the constitution, which they intended to impose on the king who should be elected, and they maintained the same air of indecision as to the person of the monarch. They acted as if they said to the allies, "Allow us the task of making the constitution, and do you take that of chusing a king for us-from any family but that of Bourbon-or even from the Bourbons, if you will forbear to name Louis, or his three nearest relations." The statue of Buonaparte was removed from their hall, as a prince whom a proclamation of the provisional government had declared "abandoned by fortune and by the nation." The place was supplied by a three-coloured banner, that it might appear to present a symbol of national power emanating from the people.

They next published a declaration, blending together the most sacred rights of society and of constitutional freedom, all of which had been already granted to them by the royal charter, with other questions in which their own interests were peculiarly committed.

"The Chamber declares, that a monarch cannot offer any real guarantee, if he does not swear to observe the constitution framed by the national representation, and accepted by the people it hence follows, that every

government which should have no other titles than the acclamations and will of a party, or which should be imposed by force; every government which should not adopt the national colours, and would not guarantee, "The liberty of the citizens, "The equality of civil and political rights,

"The liberty of the press, "The liberty of worship, "The free consent with respect to levying of men and taxes,

"The responsibility of ministers, "The irrevocability of the sale of national property,

"The inviolability of property, "The abolition of tithes, of the old and new hereditary nobility, and of feudality,

"The entire oblivion of all opinions and political votes expressed up to the present moment,

"The rewards due to the officers and soldiers,

"The succours due to their widows and children,

"The institution of juries,
"The non removal of judges,

"The payment of the public debt, "would only have an ephemeral existence, and would never secure the tranquillity of France nor of Europe."

By this specious declaration the Chamber proposed themselves as the assertors of privileges, which, so far from having been attacked by Louis, had been first communicated to the nation during his brief reign, and as the righters of those erroneous measures which the king had already, by repeated proclamations, declared his own intentions of undoing and correcting. But they blended those topics on which their interference was unnecessary, with the demands in favour of an insurgent and rebellious army, with the requisition of an entire amnesty, which would have been little less than a ratification of all the pro

ceedings which had taken place since the landing of Buonaparte at Cannes, and with the adoption of the national colours, instead of the white flag and cockade. This last point was pressed on the king by Fouché in an interview he had with his majesty at St Denis. "It was here," said the statesman, "that your majesty's great ancestor, Henry IV., swallowed a mass for the good of his people, and will not your majesty consent to sacrifice a rib band?" His majesty is said to have answered, "that for himself, he was indifferent on the subject, but that his family were so much determined against the measure, that they would rather he should return to Hartwell than consent to it." If this statement be correct, the princes of the house of Bourbon were, in one instance, wiser than its representative. For the act of renouncing the royal colours, and adopting those of the Chambers, would have been an acknowledgment of the justice and legality of the government of Buonaparte, and the legislature he had convoked,-an admission that the king only held his crown by the gift of the Chambers, a ratification of the mock Senate, or House of Peers, elected for their devotion to Buonaparte,-above all, an acknowledgment that those who had so lately dethroned and banished their sovereign, had a right to repeat the experiment so soon as ever they felt themselves strong enough to carry it through.

The Chamber of Representatives, however, continued their deliberations, though there appeared no chance of the king subscribing to the result. After as much grave discussion as if their resolutions could have any serious effect, upon the questions whether there should be suffered to exist a rank of nobility independent of the Chamber of Peers? Whether the number of the peers should be limited or unlimited? How the king's guards

should be constituted, and what force they should comprize? What ought to be their rank, their decorations, their facings, and form of epaulet? After the discussion of these, and other objects equally minute, they achieved a new scheme of constitution, which it took till five o'clock July 6. to read over.

It

In the meanwhile, the communication between the Parisian royalists and Louis, who still remained at St Denis, became close and constant. Arms were sent out from Paris to equip his followers, and preparations were made for his public entry. would have been something equally absurd and indelicate that Louis should enter Paris, while the men by whom he had been so lately dethroned and proscribed continued to exercise the authority of legislators within its walls. Fouché, who was in close correspondence with Louis, recommended that he should temporize with the Chambers, which he asserted might be gained, on according to them a guarantee of the charters, as promised by the king. The Duke of Wellington, to whom this proposal was submitted by Macirone, who acted as a secret agent of Fouché on this occasion, saw at once the danger of recognizing as independent legislators a Senate and Chamber of Representatives, convoked and chosen on purpose to secure the late usurpation," "I am of opinion," was his reply, "that, the allies having declared the government of Napoleon an usurpation, all authority which emanates from it ought to be considered as null and of no effect. All that remains for the Chambers and commission is to give in their resignation, and declare that they only took on themselves their temporary authority, to insure the public tranquillity and the integrity of the kingdom of Louis XVIII."

The commission having shewn no disposition to take this step voluntari,

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