LETTER IV.

TO THE SAME.

I LEFT off in my last with some account of the Constitutionalists, Liberalists, or whatsoever they are called, who opposed, from various causes, the measures of Louis XVIII., without having originally any purpose of throwing themselves into the arms of Buonaparte. To this desperate step they were probably induced by the frank and universal adhesion of the army to the commander under whom they had so often conquered. No man ever better understood both how to gain and how to maintain himself in the hearts of

his soldiers than Buonaparte. Brief and abrupt in his speech, austere and inaccessible in his manners to the rest of his subjects, he was always ready to play the bon camarade with his soldiers; to listen to their complaints;

to redress their grievances, and even to receive their suggestions. This accessibility was limited to the privates and inferior officers. To the mareschals and generals he was even more distant and haughty than to his other subjects. Thus he connected himself intimately and personally with the main body of the army itself, but countenanced no intermediate favourite, whose popularity among the troops might interfere with his own.

To the motives of personal attachment, so deeply rooted and so industriously fostered, must be added the confidence of the soldiers in military talents so brilliantly displayed, and in the long course of victory which had identified the authority of Napoleon with the glory of the French arms. To a train of the most uniform and splendid success, they might indeed have opposed the reverses of the peninsular war, or the disastrous retreat from Moscow and the battle of Leipsic, with all the subsequent reverses. But, as soldiers and as Frenchmen, they were little inclined to dwell upon the darker shades of the retrospect. Besides, partiality and national vanity found excuses

for these misfortunes. In the peninsula, Buonaparte did not command; in Russia, the elements fought against him; at Leipsic, he was deserted by the Saxons; and in France betrayed by Marmont. Besides, a great part of the soldiers who, in 1814-15, filled the French ranks, had been prisoners of war during Buonaparte's last unfortunate campaigns, and he was only experimentally known to them as the victor of Marengo, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Wagram. You cannot have forgotten the enthusiasm with which the prisoners on parole at used to speak of the military renown of the emperor; nor their frank declaration at leaving us, that they might fight with their hands for the Bourbons, but would fight with hand and heart for Napoleon. Even the joy of their return seemed balanced, if not overpowered, by the reflection, that it originated in the dethronement of the emperor. To recollect the sentiments of these officers, unsuppressed even in circumstances most unfavourable for expressing them, will give you some idea of the ardour with which they glowed when they

found themselves again in arms, and forming part of a large and formidable military force, actuated by the same feelings.

It was the obvious policy of the Bourbons to eradicate, if possible, this dangerous at tachment, or to give it a direction towards the reigning family. For this purpose, every attention was paid to the army; they were indulged, praised, and flattered; but flattery, praise, and indulgence, were only received as the surly mastiff accepts, with growling sullenness, the food presented to him by a new master. There was no common tone of feeling to which the Bourbons could successfully appeal. It was in vain they attempted to conjure up the antiquated fame of Henri Quatre to men who, if ever they had heard of that monarch, must have known that his martial exploits were as much beneath those of Buonaparte, as his moral character was superior to the Corsican's. In the reigning family there was no individual who possessed so decided a military character as to fill, even in appearance, the loss which the army had sustained in their formidable com

mander, and the moment of national difficulty was unfortunately arrived, in which the personal activity of the monarch, a circumstance which, in peaceful times, is of little consequence, was almost indispensably essential to the permanence of his authority.

Burke says somewhere, that the king of France, when restored, ought to spend six hours of the day on horseback. "I speak," he adds, "according to the letter." The personal infirmities of the good old man, who has been called to wear this crown of thorns, put the required activity out of the question. But the justice of the maxim has not been the less evident. Not only the soldiers, but the idle and gaping population of Paris, despised the peaceful and meritorious tranquillity of Louis XVIII., and recalled with regret the bustling and feverish movements of Buonaparte, which alternately gave them terror and surprise and amusement. Indeed, such was the restless activity of the ex-emperor's disposition, that he contrived, as it were, to multiply himself in the eyes of the Parisians. In an incredibly short space of time, he might

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