Policy of the Allies with respect | to France. Our readers will be at no loss to make the proper application of them. "As to the faction exercising power in France, to suppose that monarchy can be supported by principled regicides, religion by professed atheists, order by clubs of jacobins, is to be sanguine in a degree of which I am incapable." "A royal democracy would infallibly be again set up in France to run exactly the same round, if the predominant power should so far be forced to submit, as to receive the name of a king, leaving it to those who had subverted royalty and destroyed property, to modify the one and distribute the other as spoil." "I believe we shall be in a great error, if we act upon an idea that there exists in that country any organized body of men who might be willing to treat on equitable terms, for the restoration of their monarchy, but who are nice in balancing those terms, and who would accept such as to them appeared reasonable, but who would quietly submit to the predominant power, if they were not gratified in the fashion of some constitution which suited their fancies. I take the state of France to be totally different.*" The character of the civil functionaries alone was of fatal portent to the throne of Louis XVIII. They could be restrained from conspiring singly against it, only so long as they were actuated by the dread of vengeance from abroad. This apprehension could not influence the army or its lead The whole of this admirable dissertation of Mr. Burke should be attentively read in connection with the present subject. ers, whose despite at their ovērs throw, and the exile of their chief, no favours of the Bourbons could cure; who contemned the unwarlike temper and exterior of their new sovereign; who were impa tient under inactivity, and panted for war as the means of reinstating themselves in their supremacy over France and her neighbours. The considerable part of them whom the government had been forced to disband, were doubly fierce in their resentment and discontent. The genius of the French armies implies, that they could not be open to any considerations of remote consequences, either to themselves, or their country, and must have been ready, at the first signal, to declare in favour of any leader from whom they could expect employment and largesses. Abundant evidence can be adducduced of systematic machinations among the military from the outset. Commissioners were stationed with every regiment to prepare for an explosion. The seduction was nearly universal before the debarkation of Bonaparte, especially among the troops stationed on the route from Grenoble to Paris. The imperial eagles had never been discarded, but were hidden, (and in this the officers set the example) to be re-produced when the crisis should arrive. The military addresses, proclamations, and orders of the day, which crowd the newspapers of the month of April, 1815, boast of unremitting devotion to the emperor, of steady detestation of the Bourbons, and of indefatigable zeal to keep alive these sentiments in all the camps and barracks. In default of Bonaparte, some other bold spirit would have been borne to Paris, and installed in the Thuileries, by a multitude of desperate officers and soldiers of fortune, whose plea- | their old position, and restore France to her darling supremacy. This could only be done at the moment, by means of the army, and best, as to the chances of success, with Bonaparte, whose adversity might render him more pliable to their ulterior purposes, whether of a more reserved and circumspect scheme of domination abroad, or of the conversion of the domestic government into a jaco We may safely infer, a priori, that many of the great civil func-binical and military oligarchy. tionaries plotted in collusion with the military. The offspring (the harvenus) of the revolution, the heroes of the Convention, however metamorphosed externally by titles -the family connexions of Bonaparte, the creatures of his munificence, who filled Paris, could never be reconciled to the sway of the Bourbons. Their sympathies must always have been with their benefactor, with the Man of the Revolution, whom they had, personally indeed, known as a tyrant, but who had placed them above the miseries resulting to the mass of the nation from his government. They could only feel secure in their overgrown fortunes and dignities with him, or a rule composed of men of the same origin. It was not in their complexion to sit down quietly, and fall, as it were, into the shade, after the career of turbulence and satrapism which they had run; to be content with seeing France contracted to her natural dimensions, and within her natural sphere of action, after having so long given laws to the Continent, and counted forty millions of helota. We may suppose, that, under the incitement of their disquietudes, regrets, and morbid ambition, of their irresistible antipathies and predilections, they would hazard all in an attempt to regain His position in the island of Elba furnished facilities of intelligence with him, too tempting to be neglected.* At the same time, the excusable errors of the Bourbons, and the indiscretions of the more ardent loyalists, affording pretexts for treachery, the captious spirit and jealous alarms of a considerable part of the French population, the opportunities which their official stations afforded of provoking discontent and suspicion; the confidence inspired, and the advantage afforded by the unbounded lenity of the narch, and the incredible supineness of his ministers; the uncharitable and unfriendly distrust expressed abroad of the proceedings of the royal administration; the hopes of an easy forgiveness and acquiescence on the part of the Allies, particularly of Austria and Russia, derived from their fraternization at Paris, and a certain compromising and hesitating tone towards the Bourbons-all these were powerful stimulants to immediate action. If the disgust of the French politicians at the sup mo * "No correspondence," says H. M. Williams, "had been for a long time more active than that of Paris and Porto Ferrajo, and its frequency seem. ed to pass unnoticed by the government." posed decline of their country from her pre-eminence among the European nations, their thirst for her exterior aggrandizement, and the aspiration of the enterprizing talents, and tiers etat, after the honours and emoluments of the state, were sufficient to produce the ruin of the monarchy in 1790, we will not wonder at the revolution of 1815, when we reflect that, in this latter period, to still fiercer desires and passions of the same kind, there was added such a new host of assailants as the army of Bonaparte, than which there never existed in any of the despotic empires, antient or modern, a similar body, likely, from long habit of preponderance, conquest, and pillage, to be more incapable of repose and civil subordination. The belief of a wide-spread conspiracy, of a traiterous concert with Bonaparte, does not rest merely upon general reasoning, and the vauntings of his friends after his reintegration. We have as direct evidence, the peculiar distribution and composition of the troops on his route, and the resignation of Soult, the minister of war, at the precise period when his station would have compelled him to act efficiently for the Bourbons. His immediate and hearty declaration in favour of the usurper, confirms the suspicions which these circumstances had raised. How much he had it in his power, as minister of war, to inflame the discontents of the army, may be seen at once; and the disclosures since made concerning his conduct in his department, would lead to the conclusion that he did so industriously. Early in the month of February, all furloughs were re * See Burke's Regicide Peace. | called by the department of war; the utmost industry was exerted to prevent and punish desertion; the regiments were filled up from every source of supply, and dis rected to be in complete marching-order for the first week of March, under pretence of reviews and inspections, which, if they had been contemplated, would not have exacted or explained the extent and tone of these measures. The political assemblies at the house of Hortensia, the ex-queen of Hol. land, of which the fact is now fully established, as well of her regular communication with Napoleon in the island of Elba; the correspondence of general Excelmans with Murat;-the march of general Lefebre-Desnouettes upon Paris, simultaneously with the approach of Bonaparte to Lyons; the movements in particular of generals Erlon and Lallemand, and the conformity of the measures and declarations of most of the principal commanders throughout France, with those of their hero, from the moment of his re-appearance; the usurpation of the postoffice establishment by Lavallette; the violet carried by such numbers, and so boldly, as the watchsign and emblem of treason, in allusion to the revolution which was to happen at the opening of the spring; the numberless letters received by the French ministry— particularly during the months of February and January, announcing the projected debarkation; together with the cabals and correspondence of which it was the object; infor mation, which was either treacherously, or most preposterously disregarded-these, and several other incidents, might be cited to support the assumption of extensive intelligence, and well-digested arrangements. The active intrigues, now circumstantially known, which were carried on by Bonaparte, in regard to his return, with his relatives in Italy, and particularly with Murat, whose ill-fated movements of the month of March were accommodated to his designs, fortify the supposition of a similar understanding with the interior of France. Whatever may have been his share of audacity, it is not probable that he would have thrown himself upon any part of the French coast, had not his reception been well-arranged and secured. de Berry was detained purposely at Paris, because it was feared that his presence might excite some enthusiasm among the troops." "The marshal declared to me," says baron Capel," and general de Bourmont informed me before of his having made the same declaration to him, that every thing had been some time previ ously arranged between him, some other marshals, and, I believe, the minister of war, that their first project was to change the dynas ty; that they had, for a moment, thought of the duke of Orleans, But, if there remained a doubt on but they learned that he would not this head, it would be removed by lend himself to their project;* what transpired on the trial of that, in the interval, madame Hormarshal Ney. The marshal himself tensia (the ex-queen of Holland) is reported to have held the fol- had laid a plan to bring back Bo lowing language, by witnesses of naparte to France; that they were the highest character, and un- obliged, in spite of themselves, to questioned veracity, general de accede to this arrangement." "I Bourmont, the marquis of Vaul- believe he added," continues baron chier, prefect of the department of Capel," that at the moment he the Jura, and baron Capel, prefect was speaking the duke of Dalmaof Doubs. "The marshal said to tia (Soult) was taking his mea me on the 16th March," says the sures in Paris."-The depositions general, “but, comrade, were you of general Lecourbe, and of anonot surprised to see, that the half ther officer, ascribe similar asserof the command of your divisiontions to Ney; and it is not to be was taken from you; to see that imagined, that he would have made the troops were made to march by them at the particular period men. two battalions and three squadrons? tioned, had they not been wholly, Well! the same has been done or, in great part, true. throughout all France. All this was settled; it is three months that we are all agreed. If you had been at Paris, you would have known it as well as myself. All the troops are so disposed in their march as that they may arrive to escort the emperor. The king must have quitted Paris; if he does not quit it, he will be carried off." "The marshal told me," says the prefect," that all the troops were a long time before so distributed (by échellons) as to favour the march of Bonaparte; that the duke "I recollect," says Ney himself, "that Bonaparte in order to persuade me that the English protected him, caused it to be told me, that he had dined, eight days before he left the island of Elba, on board an English man of war; that Colonel Campbell who was English commissary in the island, had set out the day after the dinner, *Fouche's letter to the duke of Wellington, furnishes confirmation of this project. and that, in consequence he was able to make his preparations, and embark. When I joined Bonaparte he spoke to me of his interview with general Kohler, and of his dinner aboard an English vessel. We dined with him to the number of fifteen, Cambronne, Bertrand, &c. were of the party. He told us that the affair of his escape was one of early arrangement. He spoke of the smallest matters, as well as of the most important. He knew, for example, what had passed at the dinner of the king, at the Hotel de Ville in Paris, remarking to me that the marshals had no particular places assigned them; he mentioned even that my wife had not been invited. He was perfectly well informed of all that had passed and was passing at Paris. He specified the names of the wives of several marshals, who had not been invited to the dinner just mentioned. He spoke of the funeral ceremony of the 21st January. He knew that Soult had divided the military divisions into two coordinate jurisdictions, by sending two lieutenant generals to each division, each of whom corresponded directly with the minister, and had, thus, contrived to have functionaries devoted to him, and others belonging to the king." There is yet another corroboratory circumstance which deserves to be mentioned. After the arrival of Bonaparte at the island of Elba, two French frigates, the Fleur de Lys and the Melpomene, were appointed to cruise in the direction of that island. Their instructions and their equipment were such as directly to counteract the ostensible object of the cruize-the prevention of Bonaparte's escape. The Fleur de Lys was to keep constantly towards the island of Capraia to the north of Elba, the route to France. The other was stationed towards the south. They were independent of each other. It was strictly forbidden them, whatever might be the weather, to cast anchor near the island of Elba, the only port, nevertheless, of the archipelago, consisting of six islands, and two very dangerous shoals called the Ants. Both frigates were left without an advice, or fly-boat, or any small vessel whatever, and without the means of communication with the land. An order for the recal of the captain of the Fleur de Lys, distinguished for his ardent loyalty, was sent, about the middle of February, to the governor of Corsica, General Bruslart, who, knowing the political feelings of the captain, kept the order in his pocket. The captain, in his interesting report on his cruise and the escape of Bonaparte, asserts that his instructions rendered his errand ne cessarily futile, and that had he been apprised of his flight from Elba only twelve hours sooner than he was, (which would have been the case with a different equipment) he would have overtaken him in Gulf St. Juan; since he cast anchor there, only twenty hours after him, although he was not acquainted with his escape until fifty-four hours subsequent to it, and was then left to conjecture what course he had steered. Whether it be admitted that the Bourbons were, on every side, systematically betrayed, or that the whole army, officers and soldiers, together with a considerable number of the civil functionaries of the greatest influence and means of coercion, were, at the moment of the re-appearance of Bonaparte, ready to declare and act in his favour-which case at least facts have put beyond question,there |