The Sword of Honor Part 72

Lucien Bonaparte, on the other hand, surrounded by his escort of soldiers, marched rapidly from the hall of the Five Hundred towards a large a.s.semblage of troops drawn up in the middle of the park of St.

Cloud. A great drove of people, inhabitants of the commune or arrivals from Paris, drawn thither by curiosity, crowded behind the ranks of soldiers; among these spectators were John Lebrenn and Duresnel.

Bonaparte and his staff were in front of the troops. The General was pale and seemed a prey to keen anxiety; for the rumor had spread among the throng of onlookers and the soldiers that he had just been outlawed by the Council of Five Hundred. When Lucien, feigning intense indignation, ran up and spoke to his brother, his first words rea.s.sured and put new heart into the would-be dictator. a.s.suredly, failing of Lucien's presence of mind, the fortune of that day would have gone against the house of Bonaparte, for the youngster at once faced the troops and cried, in ringing tones:

"Citizens! Soldiers! I, president of the Council of Five Hundred, declare to you that the majority of the Council is at this moment under the terror of several Representatives armed with stilettos, who besiege the tribunal, threatening their fellow-members with death, and carrying on the most frightful deliberations.

"Soldiers," he continued, "I declare to you that these audacious brigands, who are without doubt sold to England, have set themselves up in rebellion against the Council of Ancients; they have dared to declare a sentence of outlawry against the general charged to execute its decree, just as if we were still living in the frightful times of the Reign of Terror, when that one word--'outlaw'--sufficed to cause the dearest heads of the fatherland to fall under the knife."

The aides and generals about Bonaparte began to utter threats against the members of the Council of Five Hundred. Colonel Oliver, drawing his sword and brandis.h.i.+ng it aloft, cried:

"These bandits must be put an end to!"

"Aye! Aye!" replied several voices from the ranks of the soldiery. "Long live General Bonaparte!"

"Soldiers, I declare to you," continued Lucien, "that this little handful of rabid Representatives has read itself outside the law by its a.s.saults on the liberty of the Council. Well, in the name of that people which is a by-word with this miserable sp.a.w.n of the Terror, I confide to you, brave soldiers, the necessity of delivering the majority of its Representatives, so that, freed by the bayonet from the stiletto, they may deliberate on the welfare of the Republic."

Prolonged acclamation on the part of the officers and soldiers greeted these words of Lucien's. Exasperation ran high against the 'Representatives of the stiletto.' "The villains," exclaimed several soldiers, "it is with poniard at throat that they have forced the others to decree our general an outlaw. They should be shot on the spot!

Death to the a.s.sa.s.sins! To the firing squad with these aristocrats."

Noticing that his brother was more and more regaining his confidence, at the success of this jugglery with facts, Lucien continued, addressing him at first:

"General! And you, soldiers! You shall not recognize as legislators of France any but those who follow me. As to those who remain in the Orangery, let force be invoked to expel them. These folks are no longer Representatives of the people, but Representatives of the poniard. Let that t.i.tle stick to them--let it follow them forever, and when they dare to show themselves before the people, let all fingers point them out under that well-deserved designation, 'Representatives of the poniard'!

Long live the Republic!"

While Lucien was thus haranguing his brother's troops, the Representatives of the people, no longer doubting the complicity of their president in the schemes of the aspiring dictator, and beset by inexpressible anxiety, set about averting the evils which they felt impending. Motion after motion followed hard upon one another, and pa.s.sed unnoticed amid the tumult.

"Let us die for liberty!" "Outlawry for the dictator!" "Long live the Const.i.tution!" "Long live the Republic!" Such were the cries that rang within the Orangery.

All at once the roll of drums was heard approaching, then the heavy and regular tread of a marching army. The Orangery door was battered down with the b.u.t.ts of muskets. General Leclerc, his sword drawn, entered, followed by grenadiers. At this apparition, a death-like stillness fell as if by enchantment upon the a.s.sembly. The Representatives, calm and grave, regained their benches, where they sat immovable as the Senators of ancient Rome. Right, succ.u.mbing to the blows of brutal force, protested as it fell, and denounced Iniquity triumphant, a denunciation which will ring through the ages.

From the tribunal General Leclerc gave the word of command:

"In the name of General Bonaparte, the Council of Five Hundred is dissolved. Let all good citizens retire. Forward, grenadiers! Strike for the breast!"

The grenadiers swarmed down the length of the hall, presenting the points of their bayonets to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the elected legislators of the nation. Most of the Representatives of the people fell back slowly, step by step, still facing the soldiers and crying "Long live the Republic!" Others threw themselves upon the bayonet-blades; but the grenadiers raised their guns and dragged the Representatives out of the hall.

Caesar triumphed; but the day of Brutus will come! Execration on Bonaparte!

Such were the days of Brumaire.

CHAPTER VII.

GLORY; AND ELBA.

The war, immediately after the Brumaire coup d'etat, was pushed with vigor. Moreau received the commanders.h.i.+p-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine, and Bonaparte, on the 16th Floreal of the same year (May 6, 1800), left Paris to put himself at the head of the Army of Italy. On the 25th Prairial (June 14), he achieved the brilliant victory of Marengo, which, completing the work begun under the Directorate, expelled the Austrians from Italy.

Between January 8, 1801, and the 25th of March, 1802, the various powers at war with France were one by one forced to sue for peace. The first treaty was signed by England at Amiens. The peace was to be short-lived, but Bonaparte improved his days of calm to restore a great part of the abuses overthrown by the Revolution, and to lay the foundations for his future hereditary power. Himself a sceptic, but considering religion in the light of an instrument of domination, he treated with the Pope of Rome toward the end of re-establis.h.i.+ng Catholicism in all its splendor.

He founded the order of the Legion of Honor, a ridiculous and anti-democratic body, and in so much a restoration of social inequality.

Shortly thereafter the Revolutionary calendar was replaced by the Gregorian; in short, the First Consul set himself against the current of public opinion, by returning, more and more, to the traditions of the Old Regime.

On May 6, 1802, the Tribunate promulgated the suggestion that the powers of the First Consul be extended for ten years; and two months later upon motion of the Senate, the docile tool of Bonaparte, he was voted the Consulate for life. Pope Pius VII came to Paris to anoint and crown the brow of Napoleon, Emperor of the French by the grace of G.o.d.

The consequences of the restoration of hereditary monarchy in France were not long to await. One by one Napoleon forcibly seized all the budding republics of Europe which the breath of the Revolution had fanned into being, and bestowed them as benefices upon his family. Part of Italy, incorporated into France, was given into the vice-regency of Prince Eugene Beauharnais, the Emperor's brother-in-law; and one of the Emperor's sisters received the Duchy of Modena.

The 11th of April, 1803, was marked by a new coalition between England, Austria and Russia. For a moment bent on a descent upon England, Napoleon abandoned the adventurous project. Recalled from Boulogne to face a war on the continent, Bonaparte, whose military genius still attended him, gained on the 2nd of December, 1805, the wonderful victory of Austerlitz. Peace was again imposed upon Austria; on the 26th of the same month she signed the treaty of Presburg by which she surrendered enormous slices of territory.

In 1806 the King of Naples broke his treaties with France. He was summarily dispossessed of his throne to the profit of Joseph Bonaparte, brother to Napoleon. A short time thereafter, the republic of Batavia was presented to Louis Bonaparte, another brother.

Now dreaming of universal empire, and retrograding toward the era of feudal barbarism, Napoleon attached foreign duchy after foreign duchy as fiefs to his throne. His continual inroads into the neighboring territories rekindled the war. A fourth coalition was formed against the Empire. Prussia, neutral in the previous war, this time took an active part; but October 14, 1806, saw her crus.h.i.+ng defeat at Jena; on the 26th the French army entered Berlin in triumph.

Russia, defeated at Friedland and at Eylau, begged for peace; it was concluded at Tilsitt, June 21, 1807.

At each of these new and crowning victories Napoleon's vertigo grew.

Drunk with constant success, a universal monarchy now became his fixed idea, and still another of his brothers, Jerome Bonaparte, was invested with a kingdom formed out of several states of the Germanic Confederation. The single member of the Bonaparte family who took no part in the rich quarry of thrones distributed by the conqueror was Lucien. Did he seek thus voluntarily to expiate his complicity in the events of Brumaire, or was he victim to the Emperor's ingrat.i.tude?

Lucien received not a single crown out of the booty.

Napoleon's return to the traditions of the Old Regime, even to those most execrated by the nation, became more and more extravagant. For instance, the right of primogeniture, abolished by the Revolution, was re-established. This iniquity, from the point of view of society and of the family, was forced upon the Emperor by the logic of his mistakes: if he reconst.i.tuted the n.o.bility, he could not but ensure its existence by restricting the part.i.tion of property.

On March 1st, 1813, the Prussian government, yielding to the public voice of Germany, which was ever more and more hostile to Napoleon, gave the signal for treachery by breaking its alliance with the French Empire and again joining hands with England and Russia. The new coalition was reinforced by Sweden, where Bernadotte, the old general of the Republic, had become King. The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen at first seemed to a.s.sure Napoleon's success. Austria proffered its mediation to the belligerent parties, and they concluded, on June 4, 1813, the armistice of Plessewitz. A congress, in session at Prague, offered Napoleon as national limits those won by the armies of the Republic--the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Alps. But Napoleon rejected the proposal with disdain; he feared to lose by it his prestige in the eyes of the world and of France, which he believed he could hold in subjection only by the glamor of his victories.

The war recommenced, but soon, blow upon blow, began the reverses.

Macdonald was defeated in Silesia, Ney in Prussia, Vandamme at Culm. The princes of the Germanic Confederation, encouraged by these checks, and yielding to the pressure of their people, abandoned Napoleon on the battle-field of Leipzig. They turned their troops against him. The French army, in full rout, retreated within its frontiers, October 31, 1813; soon the allies threatened them even there. Napoleon rushed to Paris on November 9th, and ordered new levies of troops. Thousands of families, at extortionate prices, had previously bought off their sons from conscription. This last draft took them all. The Corsican ogre devoured the whole generation.

The situation was desperate. The Austrians advanced by way of Italy and through Switzerland; the English, masters of Spain and Portugal, poured over the Pyrenees, under the command of Wellington; the Prussians, led by Bluecher, invaded Frankfort; and the army of the North, with Bernadotte at its head, penetrated France by way of Belgium. In vain the French soldiers performed miracles of valor; in vain were the Prussians annihilated at Montmirail, at Champaubert, and at Chateau-Thierry, and the Austrians overthrown at Montereau. These sterile victories were the final effort of Napoleon's warrior genius.

On the 30th of March, 1814, the foreign armies entered the capital, a shame which France had undergone but once before across the ages, under the monarchy, in the reign of King John. Talleyrand and Fouche, so long the servile tools of their master, were the first to betray him. On April 11, 1814, Napoleon abdicated the Empire after a reign of ten years.

The Senate, whose conduct during the Empire had been marked with abject servility, put the final touches to its ignominy by decreeing with the following justifications the deposition of the man of whom its own members had been the accomplices:

The Senate Conservator,

Considering, That under a const.i.tutional monarchy the monarch exists only in virtue of the Const.i.tution, or the social contract;

That Napoleon Bonaparte, for some time head of a firm and prudent government, gave to the nation and his subjects reason to depend for the future upon his wisdom and justice; but thereupon he sundered the pact which bound the French people, notably by levying imposts and establis.h.i.+ng taxes not warranted by the law, and against the expressed tenor of the oath which he swore to before his ascension to the throne, according to Article 43 of the Act of Const.i.tution of the 28th Floreal, year XII;

That he committed this a.s.sault upon the rights of the people just when he had without necessity adjourned the legislative body and had caused to be suppressed as criminal a report of that body in which it contested his t.i.tle and his part in the national representation;

That he undertook a series of wars in violation of Article 50 of the Const.i.tutional Act of the 22nd Frimaire, year VIII, which states that declarations of war must be moved, discussed, decreed and promulgated the same as laws;

That he unconst.i.tutionally rendered several decrees carrying the penalty of death, namely the decrees of the 5th of March, last; that he presumed to consider national a war which he entered upon in the interest alone of his own unbridled ambition;

That he violated the laws and the Const.i.tution by his decrees on State Prisons;

That he has abolished ministerial responsibility, confounded all powers, and destroyed the independence of the judiciary;