Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Without doing his master the service of a premier, or holding either the
power or the responsibility of that high situation, De Blacas had the
full share of odium usually attached to it. The royalists, who pressed
on him for grants which were in the departments of other ministers,
resented his declining to interfere in their favour, as if, having
satisfied his own ambition, he had become indifferent to the interest of
those with whom he had been a joint sufferer during the emigration. The
opposite party, on the other hand, represented Count Blacas as an
absolute minister, an emigrant himself, and the patron of emigrants; a
royalist of the highest class, and an enemy, of course, to all the
constitutional stipulations in favour of liberty. Thus far it is
certain, that the unpopularity of M. de Blacas, with all ranks and
parties in the state, had the worst possible influence on the King's
affairs; and as his credit was ascribed to a blind as well as an
obstinate attachment on the part of Louis, the monarch was of course
involved in the unpopularity of the minister of the household.
[Sidenote: TERMS OF THE TREATY.]
The terms of the peace, as we have already hinted, had been studiously
calculated to recommend it to the feelings of the French people. France
was, indeed, stripped of that extended sway which rendered her dangerous
to the independence of other European nations, and reduced, generally
speaking, to the boundaries which she occupied on the 1st of January
1792. Still the bargain was not harshly driven. Several small additions
were left with her on the side of Germany and the Netherlands, and on
that of Savoy she had the considerable towns of Chamberri, Annecy,
Avignon, with the Venaisson and Mont Belliard, included in her
territories.[73] But these concessions availed little; and looking upon
what they had lost, many of the French people, after the recollections
had subsided of their escape from a dreadful war, were naturally,
however unreasonably, disposed to murmur against the reduction of their
territories, and to insist that Belgium, at least, should have remained
with them. This opinion was encouraged and pressed by the Buonapartists,
who considered the cession of that country with the more evil eye,
because it was understood to have been a point urged by England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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