Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I — John Shaqi
Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. IFleury de Chaboulon, Pierre Alexandre Édouard, baron
History
Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I
Fleury de Chaboulon, Pierre Alexandre Édouard, baron
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Elba and the Hundred Days, 1814-1815
On the other side were arrayed the party designated as that of the
Bonapartists, led on by our most honourable and most virtuous
citizens, and numbering within its ranks the great body of the people;
this party strove to withstand the impending resuscitation of the
privileges and abuses of the old government, and which was to be
effected only by the total subversion of our existing institutions.
The pure royalists endeavoured to annihilate the charter, which their
opponents defended, and thus a strange contradiction took place. The
royal charter had the royalists for its enemies, whilst its defenders
were only found amongst those who were stigmatized as the adherents of
Bonaparte.
Abortive attempts were made by the pure royalists to palliate the
treachery of the government. They tried to persuade the people that
the tranquillity and welfare of the nation depended but on the
re-establishment of an absolute monarch, of a feudal aristocracy, and
of all the trumpery of superstition. Such was the tendency of the
publications which issued from the ministerial press, owing their
birth to writers who had either sold themselves to the government, or
who had denationalized themselves by their political intolerance. But
it must not be supposed that liberty could remain in need of
advocates.
Each of the earliest stages of the growth of the young government of
royalty had been marked by obscure yet decisive symptoms of bad faith,
not the less mischievous because they were restricted to signs, and
symbols, and phrases. Instead of the constitution voted by the senate,
and which the king had engaged to accept and ratify, he graciously
granted and conceded a charter, by which he gave a new form to the
government; and which, according to its tenor, emanated from the
sovereign in the full and free exercise of his royal authority. The
tricoloured cockade worn by Louis XVI. and which our armies had
rendered illustrious, was exchanged for the white, though to the
mind's eye the latter was seen drenched in the blood of the people.
Louis took the title of Louis XVIII. King of France and Navarre, and
he dated his proclamations and ordinances in the 19th year of his
reign, and thus it was to be inferred, that the nation had been in a
state of rebellion during five and twenty years. He had disdained to
receive his crown from the will of the people, and rather chose to
hold it by divine right and the good offices of the Prince Regent.
These ungracious affronts wounded the national feelings, but no notice
was taken of them at the time, because it was apprehended that angry
recriminations might endanger the profit which had resulted from the
important sacrifices to which we had consented for the public good.
But when the government unveiled its deformity, the silence of the
patriotic party was at end, and they attacked the government most
unrelentingly. The editors of the Censeur were most conspicuous. Every
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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