The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. volume 5 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 5Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
History
The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. volume 5 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 5
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de, 1768-1848
Had the Diplomatic Body gone to Saint-Cloud, Charles X.'s position
would have been different: the partisans of the Legitimacy in the
Elective Chamber would have gained a strength which they lacked at
first; the fear of a war would have alarmed the working class; the
idea of preserving peace by keeping Henry V.[306] would have drawn a
considerable mass of the population over to the royal infant's party.
M. Pozzo di Borgo stood aloof so as not to compromise his securities on
the Bourse or at his bankers', and especially not to expose his place.
He played at five per cent, on the corpse of the Capetian Legitimacy,
a corpse which will communicate death to the other living kings. He
will not fail, some time hence, to try, according to custom, to pass
off this irreparable fault, due to personal interest, as a profound
combination.
Ambassadors left too long at the same Court adopt the manners of the
country in which they reside. Charmed to live in the midst of honours,
no longer seeing things as they are, they are afraid of passing in
their dispatches a truth which might bring about a change in their
position. It is, in fact, a different thing to be Esterhazy[307],
Werther, Pozzo in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or to be Their
Excellencies the Ambassadors to the Court of France. It has been said
that M. Pozzo bore a grudge against Louis XVIII. and Charles X. in
the matter of the Blue Ribbon and the peerage. They were wrong not to
satisfy him; he had rendered services to the Bourbons, for hatred of
his fellow-countryman[308], Bonaparte. But if, at Ghent, he decided
the question of the throne, by provoking the sudden departure of Louis
XVIII. for Paris, he can now boast that, by preventing the Diplomatic
Body from doing its duty in the Days of July, he has helped to throw
from the head of Charles X. the crown which he assisted in placing on
the brow of his brother.
[Sidenote: The diplomatic body.]
I have long been of opinion that diplomatic bodies, born in centuries
subject to a different law of nations, are no longer in keeping with
the new society: public governments, easy communications bring about
that nowadays Cabinets are in a position to treat direct or simply
through the intermediary of their consular agents, whose number should
be increased and their condition improved: for, at this hour, Europe
is an industrial continent. Titled spies, with exorbitant pretensions,
who meddle with everything to give themselves an importance which they
cannot retain, serve only to disturb the Cabinets to which they are
accredited and to feed their masters with illusions. Charles X., on his
side, was wrong not to invite the Diplomatic Body to join his Court;
but what he saw seemed to him a dream: he went from one surprise to the
other. It was thus that he did not send for M. le Duc d'Orléans; for,
thinking himself in danger only from the side of the Republic, the risk
of an usurpation never entered his thoughts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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