But while the Congress was dividing between the princes who composed it its acquisition of territory by conquest, and quarrelling about their respective shares like the members of a family that had come into a large fortune, news arrived of the escape of Napoleon from Elba, after a brief ten months' detention, the adherence to him of the French army, and the consequent dethronement of Louis XVIII. The Congress at once dispersed, forgetting all its differences, while the great monarchs united once more in pouring such an avalanche of troops into France and Belgium that Napoleon stood no chance of retaining his throne, whatever military genius he might display. After his defeat at Waterloo the allies occupied Paris, and this time exacted a large war indemnity of L40,000,000, and left an army of occupation of one hundred and fifty thousand men in France until the money should be paid. They also returned to their owners the pictures of the Louvre which Napoleon had taken in his various conquests.

It was while the allies were in Paris settling the terms of the second peace, that what is called the "Holy Alliance" was formed between Alexander, Frederick William, and Francis (to whom were afterward added the kings of France, Naples, and Spain), which had for its object the suppression of liberal ideas throughout the Continent, in the name of religion. Some of these monarchs were religious men in their way,—especially the Czar, who had been much interested in the spread of Christianity, and the king of Prussia; but even these men thought more of putting down revolutionary ideas than they did of the triumphs of religion.

We must, however, turn our attention to Metternich as the administrator of a large empire, rather than as a diplomatist, although for thirty years after this his hand was felt, if not seen, in all the political affairs of Europe. He was now forty-four years of age, in the prime of his strength and the fulness of his fame,—a prince of the empire, chancellor and prime minister to the Emperor Francis. On his shoulders were imposed the burdens of the State. He ruled with delegated powers indeed, but absolutely. The master whom he served was weak, but was completely in accord with Metternich on all political questions. He of course submitted all important documents to the emperor, and requested instructions; but all this was a matter of form. He was allowed to do as he pleased. He was always exceedingly deferential, and never made himself disagreeable to his sovereign, who could not do without him. From first to last they were on the most friendly terms with each other, and there was no jealousy of his power on the part of the emperor. The chancellor was a gentleman, and had extraordinary tact. But his labors were prodigious, and gave him no time for pleasure, or even social intercourse, which finally became irksome to him. He was too busy with public affairs to be a great scholar, and was not called upon to make speeches, as there was no deliberative assembly to address. Nor was he a national idol. He lived retired in his office, among ministers and secretaries, and appeared in public as little as possible.

After the final dethronement of Napoleon, the policy of Metternich with reference to foreign powers was pacific. He had seen enough of war, and it had no charm for him. War had brought Germany to the verge of political ruin. All his efforts as chancellor were directed to the preservation of peace and the balance of power among all nations. At the close of the great European struggle the finances of all the German States were alike disordered, and their industries paralyzed. Compared with France and England Germany was poor, and wages for all kinds of labor were small. It became Metternich's aim to develop the material resources of the empire, which could be best done in time of peace. Austria, accordingly, took part in no international contest for fifty years, except to preserve her own territories. Metternich did not seem to be ambitious of further territorial aggrandizement for his country; it required all his talents to preserve what she had. Indeed, the preservation of the status quo everywhere was his desire, without change, and without progress. He was a conservative, like the English Lord Eldon, who supported established institutions because they were established; and any movement or any ideas which interrupted the order of things were hateful to him, especially agitations for greater political liberty. A constitutional government was his abhorrence.

Hence, the policy of Metternich's home rule was fatal to all expansion, to all emancipating movements, to all progress, to everything which looked like popular liberty. Men might smoke, drink beer, attend concerts and theatres, amuse themselves in any way they pleased, but they should not congregate together to discuss political questions; they should not form clubs or societies with political intent of any kind; they should not even read agitating tracts and books. He could not help their thinking, but they should not criticise his government. They should be taught in schools directed by Roman Catholic priests, who were good classical scholars, good mathematicians, but who knew but little and cared less about theories of political economy, or even history unless modified to suit religious bigots of the Mediaeval type. He maintained that men should be contented with the sphere in which they were born; that discontent was no better than rebellion against Providence; that any change would be for the worse. He had no liking for universities, in which were fomented liberal ideas; and those professors who sought to disturb the order of things, or teach new ideas,—anything to make young scholars think upon anything but ordinary duties,—were silenced or discharged or banished. The word "rights" was an abomination to him; men, he thought, had no rights,—only duties. He disliked the Press more than he did the universities. It was his impression that it was antagonistic to all existing governments; hence he fettered the Press with restrictions, and confined it to details of little importance. He would allow no comments which unsettled the minds of readers. In no country was the censorship of the Press more inexorable than in Austria and its dependent States. All that spies and a secret police and priests could do to ferret out associations which had in view a greater liberty, was done; all that soldiers could do to suppress popular insurrection was effected,—and all in the name of religion, since he looked upon free inquiry as logically leading to scepticism, and scepticism to infidelity, and infidelity to revolution.

In the Catholic sense Metternich was a religious man, since he recognized in the Roman Catholic Church the conservation of all that is valuable in society, in government, and even in civilization. He brought Catholics to his aid in cementing political despotism, for "Absolutism and Catholicism," as Sir James Stephen so well said, "are but convertible terms." Accordingly, he brought back the Jesuits, and restored them to their ancient power and wealth. He formed the strictest union with the Pope. He rewarded ecclesiastics, and honored the great dignitaries of the established church as his most efficient and trusted lieutenants in the war he waged on human liberty.

But I must allude to some of the things which gave this great man trouble. Of course nothing worried him so much as popular insurrections, since they endangered the throne, and opposed the cherished ends of his life. As early as 1817, what he called "sects" disturbed central Europe. These were a class of people who resembled the Methodists of England, and the followers of Madam von Kruedener in Russia,—generally mystics in religion, who practised the greatest self-denial in this world to make sure of the promises of the next. The Kingdom of Wuertemberg, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and Suabia were filled with these people,—perfectly harmless politically, yet with views which Metternich considered an innovation, to be stifled in the beginning. So of Bible societies; he was opposed to these as furnishing a class of subjects for discussion which brought up to his mind the old dissertations on "the rights of man." "The Catholic Church," he writes to Count Nesselrode, the Russian minister, "does not encourage the universal reading of the Bible, which should be confined to persons who are calm and enlightened." But he goes on to say that he himself at forty-five reads daily one or two chapters, and finds new beauties in them, while at the age of twenty he was a sceptic, and found it difficult not to think that the family of Lot was unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great criminal, and David a terrible man; that he had tried to understand everything, but that now he accepts everything without cavil or criticism. Truly, a Catholic might say, "See the glorious peace and repose which our faith brings to the most intellectual of men!"

In 1819 an event occurred, of no great importance in itself, but which was made the excuse for increased stringency in the suppression of liberal sentiments throughout Germany. This was the assassination of Von Kotzebue, the dramatic author, at Manheim, at the hands of a fanatic by the name of Sand. Kotzebue had some employment under the Russian government, and was supposed to be a propagandist of the views of the Czar, who had lately become exceedingly hostile to all emancipating movements. In the early part of his reign Alexander was called a Jacobin by Metternich, who despised his philanthropical and sentimental theories, and his energetic labors in behalf of literature, educational institutions, freer political conditions, etc.; but when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, the Russian ruler, wearied with great events and dreading revolutionary tendencies, changed his opinions, and was now leagued with the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria in supporting the most stringent measures against all reformers. Sand was a theological student in the University of Jena, who thought he was doing God's service by removing from the earth with his assassin's dagger a vile wretch employed by the Russian tyrant to propagate views which mocked the loftiest aspirations of mankind. The murder of Kotzebue created an immense sensation throughout Europe, and was followed by increased rigor on the part of all despotic governments in muzzling the press, in the suppression of public meetings of every sort, and especially in expelling from the universities both students and professors who were known or even supposed to entertain liberal ideas. Metternich went so far as to write a letter to the King of Prussia urging him to disband the gymnasia, as hotbeds of mischief. His influence on this monarch was still further seen in dissuading him to withhold the constitution promised his subjects during the war of liberation. He regarded the meeting of a general representation of the nation as scarcely less evil than democratic violence, and his hatred of constitutional checks on a king was as great as of intellectual independence in a professor at a gymnasium. Universities and constituent assemblies, to him, were equally fatal to undisturbed peace and stability in government.

In the midst of these efforts to suppress throughout Germany all agitating political ideas and movements, the news arrived of the revolution in Naples, July, 1820, effected by the Carbonari, by which the king was compelled to restore the constitution of 1813, or abdicate. Metternich lost no time in assembling the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, with their principal ministers, to a conference or congress at Troppau, with a view of putting down the insurrection by armed intervention. The result is well known. The armies of Austria and Russia—170,000 men—restored the Neapolitan tyrant to his throne; while he, on his part, revoked the constitution he had sworn to defend, and affairs at Naples became worse than they were before. In no country in the world was there a more execrable despotism than that exercised by the Bourbon Ferdinand. The prisons were filled with political prisoners; and these prisons were filthy, without ventilation, so noisome and pestilential that even physicians dared not enter them; while the wretched prisoners, mostly men of culture, chained to the most abandoned and desperate murderers and thieves, dragged out their weary lives without trial and without hope. And this was what the king, supported and endorsed by Metternich, considered good government to be.

The following year saw an insurrection in Piedmont, when the patriotic party hoped to throw all Northern Italy upon the rear of the Austrians, but which resulted, as will be treated elsewhere, in a sad collapse. The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete, and all people seeking their liberties became the object of attack from the three great Powers, who obeyed the suggestions of the Austrian chancellor,—now unquestionably the most prominent figure in European politics. He had not only suppressed liberty in the country which he directly governed, but he had united Austria, Prussia, and Russia in a war against the liberties of Europe, and this under the guise of religion itself.

Metternich now thought he had earned a vacation, and in the fall of 1821 he made a visit to Hanover. He had previously visited Italy with the usual experience of cultivated Germans,—unbounded admiration for its works of art and sunny skies and historical monuments. He was as enthusiastic as Madame de Stael over St. Peter's and the Pantheon. In his private letters to his wife and children, so simple, so frank, so childlike in his enjoyment, no one would suppose he was the arch and cruel enemy of all progress, with monarchs for his lieutenants, and governors for his slaves. His journey to Hanover was a triumphant procession. The King George IV. embraced him with that tenderness which is usual with monarchs when they meet one another, and in the fulsomeness of his praises compared him to all the great men of antiquity and of modern times,—Caesar, Cato, Gustavus Adolphus, Marlborough, Pitt, Wellington, and the whole catalogue of heroes. On his return journey to Vienna, Metternich stopped to rest himself a while at Johannisberg, the magnificent estate on the Rhine which the emperor had given him, near where he was born, and where he had stored away forty huge casks of his own vintage, worth six hundred ducats a cask, for the use of monarchs and great nobles alone. From thence he proceeded to Frankfort, a beautiful but to him a horrible town, I suppose, because it was partially free; and while there he took occasion to visit five universities, at all of which he was received as a sort of deity,—the students following his carriage with uncovered heads, and with cheers and shouts, curious to see what sort of a man it was who had so easily suppressed revolution in Italy, and who ruled Germany with such an iron hand.

And yet while Metternich so completely extinguished the fires of liberty in the countries which he governed, he was doomed to see how hopeless it was to do the same in other lands by mere diplomatic intrigues. In 1822 the Spanish revolution broke out; and a year after came the Greek revolution, with all its complications, ending in a war between Russia and Turkey. From this he stood aloof, since if he helped the Turks to put down insurrection he would offend the Emperor Alexander, thus far his best ally, and commit Austria to a war from which he shrank. It was his policy to preserve his country from entangling wars. It was as much as he could do to preserve order and law in the various States of Germany, at the cost of all intellectual progress. But he watched the developments of liberty in other parts of Europe with the keenest interest, and his correspondence with the different potentates—whether monarchs or their ministers—is very voluminous, and was directed to the support of absolutism, in which alone he saw hope for Europe. The liberal views of the English Canning gave Metternich both solicitude and disgust; and he did all he could to undermine the influence of Capo D'Istrias, the Greek diplomatist, with his imperial master the Czar. He hated any man who was politically enlightened, and destroyed him if he could. The event in his long reign which most perplexed him and gave him the greatest solicitude was the revolution in France in 1830, which unseated the Bourbons, and established the constitutional government of Louis Philippe; and this was followed by the insurrection of the Netherlands, revolts in the German States, and the Polish revolution. With the year 1830 began a new era in European politics,—a period of reform, not always successful, but enough to show that the spirit of innovation could no longer be suppressed; that the subterranean fires of liberty would burst forth when least expected, and overthrow the strongest thrones.

But amid all the reforms which took place in England, in France, in Belgium, in Piedmont, Austria remained stationary, so cemented was the power of Metternich, so overwhelming was his influence,—the one central figure in Germany for eighteen years longer. In 1835 the Emperor Francis died, recommending to his son and successor Ferdinand to lean on the powerful arm of the chancellor, and continue him in great offices. Nor was it until the outbreak in Vienna in 1848, when emperor and minister alike fled from the capital, that the official career of Metternich closed, and he finally retired to his estates at Johannisberg to spend his few declining years in leisure and peace.

For forty years Metternich had borne the chief burdens of the State. For forty years his word was the law of Germany. For forty years all the cabinets of continental Europe were guided more or less by his advice; and his advice, from first to last, was uniform,—to put down popular movements and uphold absolutism at any cost, and severely punish all people, of whatever rank or character, who tempted the oppressed to shake off their fetters, or who dared to give expression to emancipating ideas, even in the halls of universities.

In view of the execrable tyranny, both political and religious, which Metternich succeeded in establishing for thirty years, it is natural for an ordinary person to look upon him as a monster,—hard, cruel, unscrupulous, haughty, gloomy; a sort of Wallenstein or Strafford, to be held in abhorrence; a man to be assassinated as the enemy of mankind.

But Metternich was nothing of the sort. As a man, in all his private relations he was amiable, gentle, and kind to everybody, and greatly revered by domestic servants and public functionaries. By his imperial master he was treated as a brother or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,—orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court. Metternich had better manners and more self-control. Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went. He was the hardest worked man in the empire; and he worked from the stimulus of what he conceived to be his duty, and for the welfare of the country, as he understood it. Though one of the richest men in Austria, and of the highest social rank, he lived in frugal simplicity, despising pomp and extravagance alike. His highest enjoyment, outside the society of his family, was music. The whole realm of art was his delight; but he loved Nature more even than art. He enjoyed greatly the repose of his own library,—an apartment eighteen feet high, and containing fifteen thousand volumes. The only unamiable thing about Metternich was his fear of being bored. He maintained that it was impossible to find over six interesting men in any company whatever. With people whom he trusted he was unusually frank and free-spoken. With diplomatists he wore a mask, and made it a point to conceal his thoughts. He deceived even Napoleon. No one could penetrate his intentions. Under a smooth and placid countenance, unruffled and calm on all occasions, he practised when he pleased the profoundest dissimulation; and he dissimulated by telling the truth oftener than by concealing it. He knew what the ars celare artem meant. When he could find leisure he was fond of travelling, especially in Italy; but he hated and avoided the discomforts of travel. If he made distant journeys he travelled luxuriously, and wherever he went he was received with the greatest honors. At Rome the Pope treated him as a sovereign. The Czar Alexander commanded his magnates to give to him the same deference that they gave to himself.

While the world regarded Metternich as the most fortunate of men, he yet had many sorrows and afflictions, which saddened his life. He lost two wives and three of his children, to all of whom he was devotedly attached, yet bore the loss with Christian resignation. He found relief in work, and in his duties. There were no scandals in his private life. He professed and seemed to feel the greatest reverence for religion, in the form which had been taught him. He detested vulgarity in every shape, as he did all ordinary vices, from which he was free. He was self-conscious, and loved attention and honors, but was not a slave to them, like most German officials. Nothing could be more tender and affectionate than his letters to his mother, to his wife, and to his daughters. His father he treated with supreme reverence. No public man ever gave more dignity to domestic pleasures. "The truest friends of my life," said he, "are my family and my master;" and to each he was equally devoted. On the death of his second wife, in 1829, he writes,—

"I feel this misfortune most deeply. I have lost everything for the remainder of my days. The other world is daily more and more peopled with beings to whom I am united by the closest ties of affection. I too shall take my place there, and I shall disengage myself from this life with all the less regret. My only relief is in work. I am at my desk by nine in the morning. I leave it at five, and return to it at half-past six, and work till half-past ten, when I receive visitors till midnight."

Time, however, brought its relief, and in 1831 he married the Princess Melanie, and his third marriage was as happy as the others appear to have been. In the diary of this wife, December 31, I read:—

"We supped at midnight, and exchanged good wishes for the new year. May God long preserve to me my good, kind Clement, and illuminate him with His divine light. It touches me to see the pleasure it gives him to talk with me on business, and read to me what he writes."

Such was the great Austrian statesman in his private life,—a dutiful son, a loving and devoted husband, an affectionate father, a faithful servant to his emperor, a kind master to his dependants, a courteous companion, a sincere believer in the doctrines of his church, a man conscientious in the discharge of duties, and having at heart the welfare of his country as he understood it, amid innumerable perils from foreign and domestic foes. As a statesman he was vigilant, sagacious, experienced, and devoted to the interests of his imperial master.

But what were Metternich's services, by which great men claim to be judged? He could say that he was the promoter of law and order; that he kept the nation from entangling alliances with foreign powers; that he was the friend of peace, and detested war except upon necessity; that he developed industrial resources and wisely regulated finances; that he secured national prosperity for forty years after desolating wars; that he never disturbed the ordinary vocations of the people, or inflicted unnecessary punishments; and that he secured to Austria a proud pre-eminence among the nations of Europe.

But this was all. Metternich did nothing for the higher interests of Germany. He kept it stagnant for forty years. He neither advanced education, nor philanthropy, nor political economy. He was the unrelenting foe of all political reforms, and of all liberal ideas. What we call civilization, beyond amusements and pleasures and the ordinary routine of business, owes to him nothing,—not even codes of law, or enlightened principles of government. Judged by his services to humanity, Metternich was not a great man. His highest claims to greatness were in a vigorous administration of public affairs and diplomatic ability in his treatment of foreign powers, but not in far-reaching views or aims. As a ruler he ranks no higher than Mazarin or Walpole or Castlereagh, and far below Canning, Peel, Pitt, or Thiers. Indeed, Metternich takes his place with the tyrants of mankind, yet showing how benignant, how courteous, how interesting, and even religious and beloved, a tyrant can be; which is more than can be said of Richelieu or Bismarck, the only two statesmen with whom he can be compared,—all three ruling with absolute power delegated by irresponsible and imperial masters, like Mordecai behind the throne of Xerxes, or Maecenas at the court of Augustus.

AUTHORITIES.

The greatest authority is the Autobiography of Metternich; but Alison's History, though dull and heavy, and marked by Tory prejudices, is reliable. Fyffe may be read with profit in his recent history of Modern Europe; also Mueller's Political History of Recent Times. The Annual Register is often quoted by Alison. Schlosser's History of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a good authority.



CHATEAUBRIAND.

1768-1848.

THE RESTORATION AND FALL OF THE BOURBONS.

In this lecture I wish to treat of the restoration of the Bourbons, and of the counter-revolution in France.

On the fall of Napoleon, the Prussian king and the Austrian emperor, under the predominating influence of Metternich, in restoring the Bourbons were averse to constitutional checks. They wanted nothing less than absolute monarchy, such as existed before the Revolution. On the other hand, the Czar Alexander, generous and inclined then to liberal ideas, was willing to concede something to the Revolution; while the government of England, mindful of the liberty which had made that country so glorious and so prosperous, also favored a constitutional government in the person of the legitimate heir of the French monarchy. Such was also the wish of the French nation, so far as it could be expressed; for the French people, under whatever form of government they may have lived, have never forgotten or repudiated the ideas and bequests of the greatest movement in modern times.

Prussia and Austria, therefore, were obliged to yield to Russia and England, supported by the will of the French nation itself. Russia had no jealousy of French ideas; and England certainly could not, consistently with her struggles and her traditions, oppose what the English nation resolutely clung to, and of which it was so proud. Prussia and Austria, undisturbed by revolutions, wished simply the restoration of the status quo, which with them meant absolute monarchy; but which in France was not really the status quo, since the Revolution had effected great and permanent changes even under the regime of Bonaparte. Russia and England, in conceding something to liberty, were yet as earnest and sincere advocates of legitimacy as Prussia and Austria; for constitutional rights may exist under a monarchy as well as under a republic. Moreover, it was felt by enlightened statesmen of all parties that no government could be stable and permanent in France which ignored the bequests of the Revolution, which even Napoleon professed to respect.

Accordingly it was settled that Louis XVIII.,—the younger brother of Louis XVI., who had fled from France in 1792,—should be recalled from exile, and restored to the throne of his ancestors, since he agreed to accept checks to his authority, and swore to defend the new constitution, although he insisted upon reigning "by the grace of God,"—not as a monarch who received his crown from the people, or as a gift from other monarchs, but by divine right. To this all parties consented. He maintained the dignity of the royal prerogative at the same time that he recognized the essential liberties of the nation. They were not so full and complete as those in England; but the king guaranteed to secure the rights both of public and private property, to respect the freedom of the Press, to grant liberty of worship, to maintain the national obligations, to make the judicial power independent and irremovable, and to admit all Frenchmen to civil and military employment, without restrictions in matters of religion. These in substance constituted the charter which he granted on condition of reigning,—an immense gain to France and the cause of civilization, if honestly maintained.

Louis XVIII. was neither a great king nor a great man; but his long exile of twenty years, his travels and residences in various countries in Europe, his misfortunes and his studies, had liberalized his mind without embittering his heart. He never lost his dignity or his hopes in his sad reverses; and when he was thus recalled to France to mount the throne of his murdered brother, he was a very respectable man, both from natural intelligence and extensive attainments. He possessed great social and conversational powers, was moderate in his views of Catholicism, virtuous in his private character, affectionate with his friends and the members of his family, prudent in the exercise of power, and disposed to reign according to the constitution which he honestly had accepted; but socially he restored the ancient order of things, surrounded himself with a splendid court, lived in great pomp and ceremony, and appointed the ancient nobles to the higher offices of state. According to French writers, he was the equal in conversation of any of the great men with whom he was brought in contact, without being great himself, thereby resembling Louis XIV. He had handsome features, a musical voice, pleasing manners, and singular urbanity, without being condescending. He was infirm in his legs, which prevented him from taking exercise, except in his long daily drives, drawn in his magnificent carriage by eight horses, with outriders and guards.

The king delegated his powers to no single statesman, but held the reins in his own hand. His ability as a ruler consisted in his tact and moderation in managing the conflicting parties, and in his honest abstention from encroaching on the liberties of the people in rare emergencies; so that his reign was peaceable and tolerably successful. It required no inconsiderable ability to preserve the throne to his successor amid such a war of factions, and such a disposition for encroachments on the part of the royal family. In contrast with the splendid achievements and immense personality of Napoleon, Louis XVIII. is not a great figure in history; but had there been no Revolution and no Napoleon, he would have left the fame of a wise and benevolent sovereign. His only striking weakness was in submitting to the influence of either a favorite or a woman, like all the Bourbons from Henry IV. downward,—except perhaps Louis XVI., who would have been more fortunate had he yielded implicitly to the overpowering ascendency of such a woman as Madame de Maintenon, or such a minister as Richelieu.

The reign of Louis XVIII. is not marked by great events or great passions, except the unrelenting and bitter animosity of the Royalists to everything which characterized the Revolution or the military ascendency of Napoleon. By their incessant intrigues and unbounded hatreds and intolerant bigotry, they kept the kingdom in constant turmoils, even to the verge of revolution, gradually pushing the king into impolitic measures, against his will and his better judgment, and creating a reaction to all liberal movements. These turmoils, which are uninteresting to us, formed no inconsiderable part of the history of the times. The only great event of the reign was the war in Spain to suppress revolutionary ideas in that miserable country, ground down by priests and royal despotism, and a prey to every conceivable faction.

The ministry which the king appointed on his accession was composed of able, moderate, and honest men, but without any ascendant genius, except Talleyrand; who selected his colleagues, and retained for himself the portfolio of foreign affairs and the presidency of the Council, giving to Fouche the management of internal affairs. Loth was the king to accept the services of either,—the one a regicide, and the other a traitor. The whole royal family set up a howl of indignation at the appointment of Fouche; but it was deemed necessary to secure his services in order to maintain law and order, and the king remained firm against the earnest expostulations of his brother the Comte d'Artois, his niece the Duchesse d'Angouleme, and all the Royalists who had influence with him. But he despised and hated in his soul Fouche,—that minion of Napoleon, that product of blood and treason,—and waited only for a convenient time to banish him from the councils and the realm. Nor did he like Talleyrand (at that time the greatest man in France), but made use of his magnificent talents only until he could do without him. When the king felt established on his throne, he sent Talleyrand away; indeed, there was great pressure brought to bear for the dismissal by those who found the minister too moderate in his views. The king did not punish him, but kept him in a subordinate office, leaving him to enjoy his dignities and the immense fortune he had accumulated.

Talleyrand was born in 1754, and belonged to one of the most illustrious families in France. He was destined to the Church against his will, being from the start worldly, ambitious, and scandalously immoral; but he accepted his destiny, and soon distinguished himself at the Sorbonne for his literary attainments, for his wit and his social qualities. At twenty, as the young Abbe de Perigord, he was received into the highest society of Paris; his noble birth, his aristocratic and courtly manners, his convivial qualities, and his irrepressible wit made him a favorite in the gay circles which marked the early part of the reign of Louis XVI., while his extraordinary abilities and consummate tact naturally secured early promotion. In 1780 he was appointed to the office of general agent for the clergy of France, which brought him before the public. Eight years after, at the early age of thirty-four, he was made Bishop of Autun. In May, 1789, he became a member of the States-General, and with his fascinating eloquence tried to induce the clergy to surrender their tithes and church lands to the nation,—a result which was brought about soon after, nolens volens, by the genius of Mirabeau. Talleyrand hated the Church and despised the people, but, like Mirabeau, was in favor of a constitution like that of England, In all his changes he remained an aristocrat from his tastes, his education, and his rank, but veiled his views, whatever they were, with profound dissimulation, of which he was a consummate master. The laxity of his morals, the secret hatred of his order, and his infidel sentiments led to his excommunication, which troubled him but little. Out of the pale of the Church, he turned his thoughts to diplomacy, and was sent to London as an ambassador,—without, however, the official title and insignia of that high office,—where he fascinated the highest circles by the splendor of his conversation and the causticity of his wit. On his return to Paris he was distrusted by the Jacobins, and with difficulty made his escape to England; but the English government also distrusted a man of such boundless intrigue, and ordered him to quit the country within twenty-four hours. He fled to America at the age of forty, with straitened means, but after the close of the Reign of Terror returned to Paris, and six months later was made foreign minister under the Directory. This office he did not long retain, failing to secure the confidence of the government. The austere Carnot said of him:—

"That man brings with him all the vices of the old regime, without being able to acquire a single virtue of the new one. He possesses no fixed principles, but changes them as he does his linen, adopting them according to the fashion of the day. He was a philosopher when philosophy was in vogue; a republican now, because it is necessary at present to be so in order to become anything; to-morrow he would proclaim and uphold tyranny, if he could thereby serve his own interests. I will not have him at any price; and so long as I am at the helm of State he shall be nothing."

When Bonaparte returned from Egypt, Citizen Talleyrand had been six months out of office, and he saw that it would be for his interest to put himself in intimate connection with the most powerful man in France. Besides, as a diplomatist, he saw that only in a monarchical government could he have employment. Napoleon, who seldom made a mistake in his estimate of character, perceived that Talleyrand was just the man for his purpose,—talented, dexterous, unscrupulous, and sagacious,—and made him his minister of foreign affairs, utterly indifferent as to his private character. Nor could he politically have made a wiser choice; for it was Talleyrand who made the Concordat with the Pope, the Treaty of Luneville, and the Peace of Amiens. Napoleon wanted a practical man in the diplomatic post,—neither a pedant nor an idealist; and that was just what Talleyrand was,—a man to meet emergencies, a man to build up a throne. But even Napoleon got tired of him at last, and Talleyrand retired with the dignity of vice-grand elector of the empire, grand chamberlain, and Prince of Benevento, together with a fortune, it is said, of thirty million francs.

"How did you acquire your riches?" blandly asked the Emperor one day. "In the simplest way in the world," replied the ex-minister. "I bought stock the day before the 18th Brumaire [when Napoleon overthrew the Directory], and sold it again the day after."

When Napoleon meditated the conquest of Spain, Talleyrand, like Metternich, saw that it would be a blunder, and frankly told the Emperor his opinion,—a thing greatly to his credit. But his advice enraged Napoleon, who could brook no opposition or dissent, and he was turned out of his office as chamberlain. Talleyrand avenged himself by plotting against his sovereign, foreseeing his fall, and by betraying him to the Bourbons. He gave his support to Louis XVIII., because he saw that the only government then possible for France was one combining legitimacy with constitutional checks; for Talleyrand, with all his changes and treasons, liked neither an unfettered despotism nor democratic rule. As one of those who acted with the revolutionists, he was liberal in his ideas; but as the servant of royalty he wished to see a firmly established government, which to his mind was impossible with the reign of demagogues. When the Congress of Vienna assembled, he was sent to it as the French plenipotentiary. And he did good work at the Congress for his sovereign, whose representative he was, and for his country by contriving with his adroit manipulations to alienate the northern from the southern States of Germany, making the latter allies of France and the former allies of Russia,—in other words, practically dividing Germany, which it was the work of Bismarck afterward to unite. A united Germany Talleyrand regarded as threatening to the interests of France; and he contrived to bring France back again into political importance,— to restore her rank among the great Powers. He did not bargain for spoils, like the other plenipotentiaries; he only strove to preserve the nationality of France, and to secure her ancient limits, which Prussia in her greed and hatred would have destroyed or impaired but for the magnanimity of the Czar Alexander and the firmness of Lord Castlereagh.

On his return from the Congress of Vienna, the reign of Talleyrand as prime minister was short; and as his power was comparatively small under both Louis XVIII. and his successor Charles X., and as he was not the representative of reactionary ideas or movements, but only of a firm government, I do not give to him the leadership of the counter-revolution. He was unquestionably the greatest statesman at that time in France, though indolent, careless, and without power as an orator.

Who was then the great exponent of reaction, and of antagonism to liberal and progressive opinions, during the reigns of the restored Bourbons? It was not the king himself, Louis XVIII.; for he did all he could to repress the fanatical zeal of his family and of the royalist party. He despised the feeble mind of his brother, the Comte d'Artois, his narrow intolerance, and his court of priests and bigots, and was in perpetual conflict with him as a politician, while at the same time he clung to him with the ties of natural affection.

Was it the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the great cardinal, whom the king selected for his prime minister on the retirement of Talleyrand? He hardly represents the return to absolutism, since he was moderate, conciliatory, and disposed to unite all parties under a constitutional government. No man in France was more respected than he,—adored by his family, modest, virtuous, disinterested, and patriotic. As an administrator in the service of Russia during the ascendency of Napoleon, he had greatly distinguished himself. He was a favorite of Alexander, and through his influence with the Czar France was in no slight degree indebted for the favorable terms which she received on the restoration of the monarchy, when Prussia exacted a cruel indemnity. He wished to unite all parties in loyal submission to the constitution, rather than secure the ascendency of any. While able and highly respected, Richelieu was not pre-eminently great. Nor was Villele, who succeeded him as prime minister, and who retained his power for six or eight years, nearly to the close of the reign of Charles X., a great historical figure.

The man under the restored monarchy who represented with the most ability reactionary movements of all kinds, and devotion to the cause of absolute monarchy, I think was Francois Auguste, Vicomte de Chateaubriand. Certainly he was the most illustrious character of that period. Poet, orator, diplomatist, minister, he was a man of genius, who stands out as a great figure in history; not so great as Talleyrand in the single department of diplomacy, but an infinitely more respectable and many-sided man. He had an immense eclat in the early part of this century as writer and poet, although his literary fame has now greatly declined. Lamartine, in his sentimental and rhetorical exaggeration, speaks of him as "the Ossian of France,—an aeolian harp, producing sounds which ravish the ear and agitate the heart, but which the mind cannot define; the poet of instincts rather than of ideas, who gained an immortal empire, not over the reason but over the imagination of the age."

Chateaubriand was born in Brittany, of a noble but not illustrious family, in 1769, entered the army in 1786, and during the Reign of Terror emigrated to America. He returned to France in 1799, after the 18th Brumaire, and became a contributor to the "Mercure de France." In 1802 he published the "Genie du Christianisme," which made him enthusiastically admired as a literary man,—the only man of the time who could compete with the fame of Madame de Stael. This book astonished a country that had been led astray by an infidel philosophy, and converted it back to Christianity, not by force of arguments, but by an appeal to the heart and the imagination. The clergy, the aristocracy, women, and youth were alike enchanted. The author was sent to Rome by Napoleon as secretary of his embassy; but on the murder of the Due d'Enghien (1804), Chateaubriand left the imperial service, and lived in retirement, travelling to the Holy Land and throughout the Orient and Southern Europe, and writing his books of travels. He took no interest in political affairs until the time of the Restoration, when he again appeared. A brilliant and effective pamphlet, "De Bonaparte et des Bourbons," published by him in 1814, was said by Louis XVIII. to be worth an army of a hundred thousand men to the cause of the Bourbons; and upon their re-establishment Chateaubriand was immediately in high favor, and was made a member of the Chamber of Peers.

The Chamber of Peers was substituted for the Senate of Napoleon, and was elected by the king. It had cognizance of the crime of high treason, and of all attempts against the safety of the State. It was composed of the most distinguished nobles, the bishops, and marshals of France, presided over by the chancellor. To this chamber the ministers were admitted, as well as to the Chamber of Deputies, the members of which were elected by about one hundred thousand voters out of thirty millions of people. They were all men of property, and as aristocratic as the peers themselves. They began their sessions by granting prodigal compensations, indemnities, and endowments to the crown and to the princes. They appropriated thirty-three millions of francs annually for the maintenance of the king, besides voting thirty millions more for the payment of his debts; they passed a law restoring to the former proprietors the lands alienated to the State, and still unsold. They brought to punishment the generals who had deserted to Napoleon during the one hundred days of his renewed reign; they manifested the most intense hostility to the regime which he had established. Indeed, all classes joined in the chorus against the fallen Emperor, and attributed to him alone the misfortunes of France. Vengeance, not now directed against Royalists but against Republicans, was the universal cry; the people demanded the heads of those who had been their idols. Everything like admiration for Napoleon seemed to have passed away forever. The violence of the Royalists for speedy vengeance on their old foes surpassed the cries of the revolutionists in the Reign of Terror. France was again convulsed with passions, which especially raged in the bosoms of the Royalists. They shot Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, and Colonel Labedoyen; they established courts-martial for political offences; they passed a law against seditious cries and individual liberty. There were massacres at Marseilles, and atrocities at Nismes; the Catholics of the South persecuted the Protestants. The king himself was almost the only man among his party that was inclined to moderation, and he found a bitter opposition from the members of his own family. Added to these discords, the finances were found to be in a most disordered state, and the annual deficit was fifty or sixty millions.

All this was taking place while one hundred and fifty thousand foreign soldiers were quartered in the towns and garrisons at the expense of the government. The return of Napoleon had cost the lives of sixty thousand Frenchmen and a thousand millions of francs, besides the indemnities, which amounted to fifteen hundred millions more. No language of denunciation could be stronger than that which went forth from the mouth of the whole nation in view of Napoleon's selfishness and ambition. But one voice was listened to, and that was the cry for vengeance; prudence, moderation, and justice were alike disregarded. All attempts to stem the tide of ultra-royalist violence were in vain. The king was obliged to dismiss Talleyrand because he was not violent enough in his measures; at the same time he was glad to get rid of his sagacious minister, being jealous of his ascendency.

So the throne of Louis XVIII. was anything but a bed of roses, amid the war of parties and the perils which surrounded it. All his tact was required to steer the ship of state amidst the rocks and breakers. Most of the troubles were centred in the mutual hostilities, jealousies, and hatreds of the Royalists themselves, at the head of whom were the king's brother the Comte d'Artois, and the Vicomte de Chateaubriand. So vehement were the passions of the deputies, nearly all Royalists, that the president of the Chamber, the excellent and talented Laine, was publicly insulted in his chair by a violent member of the extreme Right; and even Chateaubriand the king was obliged to deprive of his office on account of the violence of his opinions in behalf of absolutism,—a greater royalist than the king himself! The terrible reaction was forced by the nation upon the sovereign, who was more liberal and humane than the people.

Of course, in the embittered quarrels between the Royalists themselves, nothing was done during the reign of Louis XVIII. toward useful and needed reforms. The orators in the chambers did not discuss great ideas of any kind, and inaugurated no grand movements, not even internal improvements. The only subjects which occupied the chambers were proscriptions, confiscations, grants to the royal family, the restoration of the clergy to their old possessions, salaries to high officials, the trials of State prisoners, conspiracies and crimes against the government,—all of no sort of interest to us, and of no historical importance.

In the meantime there assembled at Verona a Congress composed of nearly all the sovereigns of Europe, with their representatives,—as brilliant an assemblage as that at Vienna a few years before. It met not to put down a great conqueror, but to suppress revolutionary ideas and movements, which were beginning to break out in various countries in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain. To this Congress was sent, as one of the representatives of France, Chateaubriand, who on its assembling was ambassador at London. He was, however, weary of English life and society; he did not like the climate with its interminable fogs; he was not received by the higher aristocracy with the cordiality he expected, and seemed to be intimate with no one but Canning, whose conversion to liberal views had not then taken place.

In France, the ministry of the Duc de Richelieu had been succeeded by that of Villele as president of the Council, in which M. Matthieu de Montmorency was minister of foreign affairs,—member of a most illustrious house, and one of the finest characters that ever adorned an exalted station. Between Montmorency and Chateaubriand there existed the most intimate and affectionate friendship, and it was at the urgent solicitation of the former that Chateaubriand was recalled from London and sent with Montmorency to Verona, where he had a wider scope for his ambition.

Chateaubriand was most graciously received by the Czar Alexander and by Metternich, the latter at that time in the height of his power and glory. Alexander flattered Chateaubriand as a hero of humanity and a religious philosopher; while Metternich received him as the apostle of conservatism.

The particular subject which occupied the attention of the Congress was, whether the great Powers should intervene in the internal affairs of Spain, then agitated by revolution. King Ferdinand, who was restored to his throne after the forced abdication of Joseph Bonaparte, had broken the Constitution of 1812, which he had sworn to defend, and outraged his subjects by cruelties equalled only by those of that other Bourbon who reigned at Naples. In consequence, his subjects had rebelled, and sought to secure their liberties. This rebellion disturbed all Europe, and the great Powers, with the exception of England,—ruled virtually by Canning, the foreign minister,—resolved on an armed intervention to suppress the popular revolution. Chateaubriand used all his influence in favor of intervention; and so did Montmorency. They even exceeded the instructions of the king and Villele the prime minister, who wished to avoid a war with Spain; they acted as the representatives of the Holy Alliance rather than as ambassadors of France. The Congress committed Russia, Austria, and Prussia to hostile interference, in case the king of France should be driven into war,—a course which Wellington disapproved, and which he urged Louis XVIII. to refrain from. In consequence, the French king temporized, dreading either to resist or to submit to the ascendency of Russia, and dissatisfied with the course his negotiators had taken at the Congress, especially his minister of foreign affairs, on whom the responsibility lay. Montmorency accordingly resigned, and Chateaubriand took his place; in consequence of which a coolness sprung up between the two friends, who at the Congress had equally advocated the same policy.

The discussions which ensued in the chambers whether or not France should embark in a war with Spain,—in other words, whether she should interfere with the domestic affairs of a foreign and independent nation,—were the occasion of the first serious split among the statesmen of France at this time. There was a party for war and a party against it; at the head of the latter were men who afterward became distinguished. There were bitter denunciations of the ministers; but the war party headed by Chateaubriand prevailed, and the French ambassador was recalled from Madrid, although war was not yet formally declared. In the Chamber of Peers Talleyrand used his influence against the invasion of Spain, foretelling the evils which would ultimately result, even as he had cautioned Napoleon against the same thing. He told the chamber that although the proposed invasion would be probably successful, it would be a great mistake.

M. Mole, afterward so eminent as an orator, took the side of Talleyrand. "Where are we going?" said he. "We are going to Madrid. Alas, we have been there already! Will a revolution cease when the independence of the people who are suffering from it is threatened? Have we not the example of the French Revolution, which was invincible when its cause became identical with that of our independence?" "This man," exclaimed the king, "confirms me in the system of M. de Villele,—to temporize, and avoid the war if it be possible."

Chateaubriand replied in an elaborate speech in favor of the war. From his standpoint, his speech was masterly and unanswerable. It was a grand consecutive argument, solid logic without sentimentalism. While he admitted that, according to the principles laid down by the great writers on international war, intervention could not generally be defended, he yet maintained that there were exceptions to the rule, and this was one of them; that the national safety was jeopardized by the Spanish revolution; that England herself had intervened in the French Revolution; that all the interests of France were compromised by the successes of the Spanish revolutionists; that a moral contagion was spreading even among the troops themselves; in fact, that there was no security for the throne, or for the cause of religion and of public order, unless the armies of France should restore Ferdinand, then a virtual prisoner in his own palace, to the government he had inherited.

The war was decided upon, and the Duke of Angouleme, nephew of the king, was sent across the Pyrenees with one hundred thousand troops to put down the innumerable factions, and reseat Ferdinand. The Duke was assisted, of course, by all the royalists of Spain, by all the clergy, and by all conservative parties; and the conquest of the kingdom was comparatively easy. The republican chiefs were taken and hanged, including Diego, the ablest of them all. Ferdinand, delivered by foreign armies, remounted his throne, forgot all his pledges, and reigned on the most despotic principles, committing the most atrocious cruelties. The successful general returned to France with great eclat, while the government was pushed every day by the triumphant Royalists into increased severity,—into measures which logically led, under Charles X., to his expulsion from the throne, and the final defeat of the principle of legitimacy itself,—another great step toward republican institutions, which were finally destined to triumph.

Among the extreme measures was the Septennial Bill, which passed both houses against the protest of liberal members, some of whom afterward became famous,—such as General Foy, General Sebastiani, Dupont (de l'Eure), Casimir Perier, Lafitte, Lanjuinais. This law was a coup d'etat against electoral opinions and representative government. It gave the king and his government the advantage of fixing for seven years longer the majority which was secured by the elections of 1822, and of closing the Chamber against a modification of public opinions. Villele and Chateaubriand were the authors of this act.

Another bill was proposed by Villele, not so objectionable, which was to reduce the interest on the loans contracted by the State; in other words, to borrow money at less interest and pay off the old debts,—a salutary financial measure adopted in England, and later by the United States after the Civil War. But this measure was bitterly opposed by the clergy, who looked upon it as a reduction of their incomes. Here Chateaubriand virtually abandoned the government, in his uniform support of the temporalities of the Church; and the measure failed; which so deeply exasperated both the king and the prime minister that Chateaubriand was dismissed from his office as minister of foreign affairs.

The fallen minister angrily resented his disgrace, and thenceforward secretly took part against the government, embarrassing it by his articles in the journals of the day. He did not renounce his conservative opinions; but he became the personal enemy of Villele. Chateaubriand had no magnanimity. He retired to nurse his resentments in the society of Madame Recamier, with whom he had formed a friendship difficult to be distinguished from love. He had been always her devoted admirer when she reigned a queen of society in the fashionable salons of Paris, and continued his intimacy with her until his death. Daily did he, when a broken old man, make his accustomed visit to her modest apartments in the Convent of St. Joseph, and give vent to his melancholy and morbid feelings. He regarded himself as the most injured man in France. He became discontented with the Crown, and even with the aristocracy. On the day of his retirement from the ministry the intelligence of the Royalist party followed him in opposition to the government, whose faults he had encouraged and shared. The "Journal des Debats," the most influential newspaper in France, deserted Villele; and from this defection may be dated, says Lamartine, "all those enmities against the government of the Restoration which collected in one work of aggression the most contradictory ideas, which alienated public opinion, which exasperated the government and pushed it on from excesses to insanity, irritated the tribune, blindfolded the elections, and finished by changing, five years afterward, the opposition of nineteen votes hostile to the Bourbons into a heterogeneous but formidable majority, in presence of which the monarchy had only the choice left between a humiliating resignation and a mortal coup d'etat."

Chateaubriand now disappears from the field of history as one of its great figures. He lived henceforth in retirement, but bitter in his opposition to the government of which he had been the virtual head, contributing largely to the "Journal des Debats," of which he was the life, and by which he was supported. In the next reign he refused the office of Minister of Public Instruction as derogatory to his dignity, but accepted the post of ambassador to Rome,—a sort of honorable exile. But he was an unhappy and disappointed man; he had taken the wrong side in politics, and probably saw his errors. His genius, if it had been directed to secure constitutional liberty, would have made him a national idol, for he lived to see the dethronement of Louis Philippe in 1848; but like Castlereagh in England, he threw his superb talents in with the sinking cause of absolutism, and was after all a political failure. He lives only as a literary man,—one of the most eloquent poets of his day, one of the lights of that splendid constellation of literary geniuses that arose on the fall of Napoleon.

Soon after the retirement of Chateaubriand, Louis XVIII. himself died, at an advanced age, having contrived to preserve his throne by moderation and honesty. In his latter days he was exceedingly infirm in body, but preserved his intellectual faculties to the last. He was a lonely old man, even while surrounded by a splendid court. He wanted somebody to love, at least to cheer him in his isolation; for he had no peace in his family, deeply as he was attached to its members. He himself had discovered the virtues and disinterestedness of his minister Decazes, and when his family and ministers drove away this favorite, the king was devoted to him even in disgrace, and made him his companion. Still later he found a substitute in Madame du Caylus,—one of those interesting and accomplished women peculiar to France. She was not ambitious of ruling the king, as her aunt, Madame de Maintenon, was of governing Louis XIV., and her virtue was unimpeachable. She wrote to the king letters twice a day, but visited him only once a week. She was the tool of a cabal, rather than the leader of a court; but her influence was healthy, ennobling, and religious. Louis XVIII. was not what would be called a religious man; he performed his religious duties regularly, but in a perfunctory manner. He was not, however, a hypocrite or a pharisee, but was simply indifferent to religious dogmas, and secretly averse to the society of priests. When he was dying, it was with great difficulty that he could be made to receive extreme unction. He died without pain, recommending to his brother, who was to succeed him, to observe the charter of French liberties, yet fearing that his blind bigotry would be the ruin of the family and the throne, as events proved. The last things to which the dying king clung were pomps and ceremonies, concealing even from courtiers his failing strength, and going through the mockery of dress and court etiquette to almost the very day of his death, in 1824.

The Comte d'Artois, now Charles X., ascended the throne, with the usual promises to respect the liberties of the nation, which his brother had conscientiously maintained. Unfortunately Charles's intellect was weak and his conscience perverted; he was a narrow-minded, bigoted sovereign, ruled by priests and ultra-royalists, who magnified his prerogatives, appealed to his prejudices, and flattered his vanity. He was not cruel and blood-thirsty,—he was even kind and amiable; but he was a fool, who could not comprehend the conditions by which only he could reign in safety; who could not understand the spirit of the times, or appreciate the difficulties with which he had to contend.

What was to be expected of such a monarch but continual blunders, encroachments, and follies verging upon crimes? The nation cared nothing for his hunting-parties, his pleasures, and his attachment to mediaeval ceremonies; but it did care for its own rights and liberties, purchased so dearly and guarded so zealously; and when these were gradually attacked by a man who felt himself to be delegated from God with unlimited powers to rule, not according to laws but according to his caprices and royal will, then the ferment began,—first in the legislative assemblies, then extending to journalists, who controlled public opinion, and finally to the discontented, enraged, and disappointed people. The throne was undermined, and there was no power in France to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. In Russia, Prussia, and Austria an overwhelming army, bound together by the mechanism which absolutism for centuries had perfected, could repress disorder; but in a country where the army was comparatively small, enlightened by the ideas of the Revolution and fraternizing with the people, this was not possible. A Napoleon, with devoted and disciplined troops, might have crushed his foes and reigned supreme; but a weak and foolish monarch, with a disaffected and scattered army, with ministers who provoked all the hatreds and violent passions of legislators, editors, and people alike, was powerless to resist or overcome.

The short reign of Charles X. was not marked by a single event of historical importance, except the conquest of Algiers; and that was undertaken by the government to gain military eclat,—in other words, popularity,—and this at the very time it was imposing restrictions on the Press. There were during this reign no reforms, no public improvements, no measures of relief for the poor, no stimulus to new industries, no public encouragement of art or literature, no triumphs of architectural skill; nothing to record but the strife of political parties, and a systematic encroachment by the government on electoral rights, on legislative freedom, on the liberty of the Press. There was a senseless return to mediaeval superstitions and cruelties, all to please the most narrow and intolerant class of men who ever traded on the exploded traditions of the past. The Jesuits returned to promulgate their sophistries and to impose their despotic yoke; the halls of justice were presided over by the tools of arbitrary power; great offices were given to the most obsequious slaves of royalty, without regard to abilities or fitness. There was not indeed the tyranny of Spain or Naples or Austria; but everything indicated a movement toward it. Those six years which comprised the reign of Charles X. were a period of reaction,—a return to the Middle Ages in both State and Church, a withering blast on all noble aspirations. Even the prime minister Villele, a legitimatist and an ultra-royalist, was too liberal for the king; and he was dismissed to make room for Martignac, and he again for Polignac, who had neither foresight nor prudence nor ability. The generals of the republic and of the empire were removed from active service. An indemnity of a thousand millions was given by an obsequious legislature to the men who had emigrated during the Revolution,—a generous thing to do, but a premium on cowardice and want of patriotism. A base concession was made to the sacerdotal party, by making it a capital offence to profane the sacred vessels of the churches or the consecrated wafer; thus putting the power of life and death into the hands of the clergy, not for crimes against society but for an insult to the religion of the Middle Ages.

But the laws passed against the Press were the most irritating of all. The Press had become a power which it was dangerous to trifle with,—the one thing in modern times which affords the greatest protection to liberty, which is most hated by despots and valued by enlightened minds. A universal clamor was raised against this return to barbarism, this extinction of light in favor of darkness, this discarding of the national reason. Royalists and liberals alike denounced this culminating act of high treason against the majesty of the human mind, this death-blow to civilization. Chateaubriand, Royer-Collard, Dupont (de l'Eure), even Labourdonnais, predicted its fatal consequences; and their impassioned eloquence from the tribune became in a few days the public opinion of the nation, and the king in his infatuation saw no remedy for his increasing unpopularity but in dissolving the Chamber of Deputies and ordering a new election,—the blindest thing he could possibly do. It was now seen that he was determined to rule in utter defiance of the charter he had sworn to defend, and on the principles of undisguised absolutism. All parties now coalesced against the king and his ministers. The king then began to tamper with the military in order to establish by violence the old regime. It was found difficult to fill ministerial appointments, as everybody felt that the ship of State was drifting upon the rocks. The king even determined to dissolve the new Chamber of Deputies before it met, the elections having pronounced emphatically against his government.

At last the passions of the people became excited, and daily increased in violence. Then came resistance to the officers of the law; then riots, then barricades, then the occupation of the Tuileries, then ineffectual attempts of the military to preserve order and restrain the violence of the people. Marshal Marmont, with only twelve thousand troops, was powerless against a great city in arms. The king thinking it was only an emeute, to be easily put down, withdrew to St. Cloud; and there he spent his time in playing whist, as Nero fiddled over burning Rome, until at last aroused by the vengeance of the whole nation, he made his escape to England, to rust in the old palace of the kings of Scotland, and to meditate over his kingly follies, as Napoleon meditated over his mistakes in the island of St. Helena.

Thus closed the third act in the mighty drama which France played for one hundred years: the first act revealing the passions of the Revolution; the second, the abominations of military despotism; the third, the reaction toward the absolutism of the old regime and its final downfall. Two more acts are to be presented,—the perfidy and selfishness of Louis Philippe, and the usurpation of Louis Napoleon; but these must be deferred until in our course of lectures we have considered the reaction of liberal sentiments in England during the ministries of Castlereagh, Canning, and Lord Liverpool, when the Tories resigned, as Metternich did in Vienna.

Yet the reign of the Bourbons, while undistinguished by great events, was not fruitless in great men. On the fall of Napoleon, a crowd of authors, editors, orators, and statesmen issued from their retreats, and attracted notice by the brilliancy of their writings and speeches. Crushed or banished by the iron despotism of Napoleon, who hated literary genius, they now became a new power in France,—not to propagate infidel sentiments and revolutionary theories, but to awaken the nation to a sense of intellectual dignity and to maturer views of government; to give a new impulse to literature, art, and science, and to show how impossible it is to extinguish the fires of liberty when once kindled in the breasts of patriots, or to put a stop to the progress of the human mind among an excitable, intelligent, though fickle people, craving with passionate earnestness both popular rights and constitutional government in accordance with those laws of progress which form the basis of true civilization.

There was Count Joseph de Maistre,—a royalist indeed, but who propounded great truths mixed with great paradoxes; believing all he said, seeking to restore the authority of divine revelation in a world distracted by scepticism, grand and eloquent in style, and astonishing the infidels as much as he charmed the religious.

Associated with him in friendship and in letters was the Abbe de Lamennais, a young priest of Brittany, brought up amid its wilds in silent reverence and awe, yet with the passions of a revolutionary orator, logical as Bossuet, invoking young men, not to the worship of mediaeval dogmas, but to the shrine of reason allied with faith.

Of another school was Cousin, the modern Plato, combating the materialism of the eighteenth century with mystic eloquence, and drawing around him, in his chair of philosophy at the Sorbonne, a crowd of enthusiastic young men, which reminded one of Abelard among his pupils in the infant university of Paris. Cousin elevated the soul while he intoxicated the mind, and created a spirit of inquiry which was felt wherever philosophy was recognized as one of the most ennobling studies that can dignify the human intellect.

In history, both Guizot and Thiers had already become distinguished before they were engrossed in politics. Augustin Thierry described, with romantic fascination, the exploits of the Normans; Michaud brought out his Crusades, Barante his Chronicles, Sismondi his Italian Republics, Michelet his lively conception of France in the Middle Ages, Capefigue the Life of Louis XIV., and Lamartine his poetical paintings of the Girondists. All these masterpieces gave a new interest to historical studies, infusing into history life and originality,—not as a barren collection of annals and names, in which pedantry passes for learning, and uninteresting details for accuracy and scholarship. In that inglorious period more first-class histories were produced in France than have appeared in England during the long reign of Queen Victoria, where only three or four historians have reached the level of any one of those I have mentioned, in genius or eloquence.

Another set of men created journalism as the expression of public opinion, and as a lever to overturn an obstinate despotism built up on the superstitions and dogmas of the Middle Ages. A few young men, almost unknown to fame, with remorseless logic and fiery eloquence overturned a throne, and established the Press as a power that proved irresistible, driving the priests of absolutism back into the shadows of eternal night, and making reason the guide and glory of mankind. Among these were the disappointed and embittered Chateaubriand, who almost redeemed his devotion to the royal cause by those elegant essays which recalled the eloquence of his early life. Villemain wrote for the "Moniteur," Royer—Collard and Guizot for the "Courier," with all the haughtiness and disdain which marked the Doctrinaire or Constitutional school; Etienne and Pages for the "Constitutionel," ridiculing the excesses of the ultra-royalists, the pretensions of the clergy, and the follies of the court; De Genoude for the "Gazette de France," and Thiers for the "National."

In the realm of science Arago explored the wonders of the heavens, and Cuvier penetrated the secrets of the earth. In poetry only two names are prominent,—Delille and Beranger; but the French are not a poetical nation. Most of the great writers of France wrote in prose, and for style they have never been surpassed. If the poets were few after the Restoration, the novelists were many, with transcendent excellences and transcendent faults, reaching the heart by their pathos, insulting the reason by their exaggerations, captivating the imagination while shocking the moral sense; painting manners and dissecting passions with powerful, acute, and vivid touch. Such were Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, and Alexandre Dumas, whose creations interested all classes alike, not merely in France, but throughout the world.

The dignity of intellect amid political degradation was never more strikingly displayed than by those orators who arose during the reign of the Bourbons. The intrepid Manuel uttering his protests against royal encroachments, in a chamber of Royalists all heated by passions and prejudices; Laine and De Serres, pathetic and patriotic; Guizot, De Broglie, and De St. Aulaire, learned and profound; Royer-Collard, religious, disdainful, majestic; General Foy, disinterested and incorruptible; Lafitte, the banker; Benjamin Constant, the philosopher; Berryer, the lawyer; Chateaubriand, the poet, most eloquent of all,—these and a host of others (some liberal, some conservative, all able) showed that genius was not extinguished amid all the attempts of absolutism to suppress it. It is true that none of these orators arose to supreme power, and that they were not equal to Mirabeau and other great lights in the Revolutionary period. They were comparatively inexperienced in parliamentary business, and were watched and fettered by a hostile government, and could not give full scope to their indignant eloquence without personal peril. Nor did momentous questions of reform come before them for debate, as was the case in England during the agitation on the Reform Bill. They did little more than show the spirit that was in them, which under more favorable circumstances would arouse the nation.

There was one more power which should be mentioned in connection with that period of torpor and reaction, and that was the influence of the salons. To these all the bright intellects of Paris resorted, and gave full vent to their opinions,—artists, scholars, statesmen, journalists, men of science, and brilliant women, in short, whoever was distinguished in any particular sphere; and these composed what is called society, a tremendous lever in fashionable life. In the salons of Madame de Stael, of the Duchesse de Duras, of the Duchesse de Broglie, of Madame de St. Aulaire, and of Madame de Montcalm, all parties were represented, and all subjects were freely discussed. Here Sainte-Beuve discoursed with those whom he was afterward to criticise; here Talleyrand uttered his concise and emphatic sentences; here Lafayette won hearts by his courteous manners and amiable disposition; here Guizot prepared himself for the tribune and the Press; here Villemain, with proud indifference, broached his careless scepticism; here Montlosier blended aristocratical paradoxes with democratic theories. All these great men, and a host of others,—Beranger, Constant, Etienne, Lamartine, Pasquier, Mounier, Mole, De Neuville, Laine, Barante, Cousin, Sismondi,—freely exchanged opinions, and rested from their labors; a group of geniuses worth more than armies in the great contests between Liberty and Absolutism.

And here it may be said that these kings and queens of society represented not material interests,—not commerce, not manufactures, not stocks, not capital, not railways, not trade, not industrial exhibitions, not armies and navies, but ideas, those invisible agencies which shake thrones and make revolutions, and lift the soul above that which is transient to that which is permanent,—to religion, to philosophy, to art, to poetry, to the glories of home, to the certitudes of friendship, to the benedictions of heaven; which may exist in all their benign beauty and power whatever be the form of government or the inequality of condition, in cottage or palace, in plenty or in want, among foes or friends,—creating that sublime rest where men may prepare themselves for a future and imperishable existence.

Such was the other side of France during the reign of the Bourbons,—the lights which burst through the gloomy shades of tyranny and superstition, to alleviate sorrows and disappointed hopes,—the resurrection of intellect from the grave of despair.

AUTHORITIES.

The History of the Restoration by Lamartine is the most interesting work I have read on the subject; but he is not regarded as a high authority. Talleyrand's Memoirs, Memoires de Chateaubriand; Lacretelle, Capefigue, Alison; Biographie Universelle, Memoires de Louis XVIII., Fyffe, Mackenzie's History of the Nineteenth Century,—all are interesting, and worthy of perusal.



GEORGE IV.

1762-1830.

TORYISM.

Where an intelligent and cultivated though superficial traveller to recount his impressions of England in 1815, when the Prince of Wales was regent of the kingdom and Lord Liverpool was prime minister, he probably would note his having been struck with the splendid life of the nobility (all great landed proprietors) in their palaces at London, and in their still more magnificent residences on their principal estates. He would have seen a lavish if not an unbounded expenditure, emblazoned and costly equipages, liveried servants without number, and all that wealth could purchase in the adornment of their homes. He would have seen a perpetual round of banquets, balls, concerts, receptions, and garden parties, to which only the elite of society were invited, all dressed in the extreme of fashion, blazing with jewels, and radiant with the smiles of prosperity. Among the lions of this gorgeous society he would have seen the most distinguished statesmen of the day, chiefly peers of the realm, with the blue ribbon across their shoulders, the diamond garter below their knees, and the heraldic star upon their breasts. Perhaps he might have met some rising orator, like Canning or Perceval, whose speeches were in every mouth,—men destined to the highest political honors, pets of highborn ladies for the brilliancy of their genius, the silvery tones of their voices, and the courtly elegance of their manners; Tories in their politics, and aristocrats in their sympathies.

The traveller, if admitted as a stranger to these grand assemblages, would have seen but few lawyers, except of the very highest distinction, perhaps here and there a bishop or a dean with the paraphernalia of clerical rank, but no physician, no artist, no man of science, no millionaire banker, no poet, no scholar, unless his fame had gone out to all the world. The brilliancy of the spectacle would have dazzled him, and he would unhesitatingly have pronounced those titled men and women to be the most fortunate, the most favored, and perhaps the most happy of all people on the face of the globe, since, added to the distinctions of rank and the pride of power, they had the means of purchasing all the pleasures known to civilization, and—more than all—held a secure social position, which no slander could reach and no hatred could affect.

Or if he followed these magnates to their country estates after the "season" had closed and Parliament was prorogued, he would have seen the palaces of these lordly proprietors of innumerable acres filled with a retinue of servants that would have called out the admiration of Cicero or Crassus,—all in imposing liveries, but with cringing manners,—and a crowd of aristocratic visitors, filling perhaps a hundred apartments, spending their time according to their individual inclinations; some in the magnificent library of the palace, some riding in the park, others fox-hunting with the hounds or shooting hares and partridges, others again flirting with ennuied ladies in the walks or boudoirs or gilded drawing-rooms,—but all meeting at dinner, in full dress, in the carved and decorated banqueting-hall, the sideboards of which groaned under the load of gold and silver plate of the rarest patterns and most expensive workmanship. Everywhere the eye would have rested on priceless pictures, rare tapestries, bronze and marble ornaments, sumptuous sofas and lounges, mirrors of Venetian glass, chandeliers, antique vases, bric-a-brac of every description brought from every corner of the world. The conversation of these titled aristocrats,—most of them educated at Oxford and Cambridge, cultivated by foreign travel, and versed in the literature of the day,—though full of prejudices, was generally interesting; while their manners, though cold and haughty, were easy, polished, courteous, and dignified. It is true, most of them would swear, and get drunk at their banquets; but their profanity was conventional rather than blasphemous, and they seldom got drunk till late in the evening, and then on wines older than their children, from the most famous vineyards of Europe. During the day they were able to attend to business, if they had any, and seldom drank anything stronger than ale and beer. Their breakfasts were light and their lunches simple. Living much in the open air, and fond of the pleasures of the chase, they were generally healthy and robust. The prevailing disease which crippled them was gout; but this was owing to champagne and burgundy rather than to brandy and turtle-soups, for at that time no Englishman of rank dreamed that he could dine without wine. William Pitt, it is said, found less than three bottles insufficient for his dinner, when he had been working hard.

Among them all there was great outward reverence for the Church, and few missed its services on Sundays, or failed to attend family prayers in their private chapels as conducted by their chaplains, among whom probably not a Dissenter could be found in the whole realm. Both Catholics and Dissenters were alike held in scornful contempt or indifference, and had inferior social rank. On the whole, these aristocrats were a decorous class of men, though narrow, bigoted, reserved, and proud, devoted to pleasure, idle, extravagant, and callous to the wrongs and miseries of the poor. They did not insult the people by arrogance or contumely, like the old Roman nobles; but they were not united to them by any other ties than such as a master would feel for his slaves; and as slaves are obsequious to their masters, and sometimes loyal, so the humbler classes (especially in the country) worshipped the ground on which these magnates walked. "How courteous the nobles are!" said a wealthy plebeian manufacturer to me once, at Manchester. "I was to show my mill to Lord Ducie, and as my carriage drove up I was about to mount the box with the coachman, but my lord most kindly told me to jump in."

So much for the highest class of all in England, about the year 1815. Suppose the attention of the traveller were now turned to the legislative halls, in which public affairs were discussed, particularly to the House of Commons, supposed to represent the nation. He would have seen five or six hundred men, in plain attire, with their hats on, listless and inattentive, except when one of their leaders was making a telling speech against some measure proposed by the opposite party,—and nearly all measures were party measures. Who were these favored representatives? Nearly all of them were the sons or brothers or cousins or political friends of the class to which I have just alluded, with here and there a baronet or powerful county squire or eminent lawyer or wealthy manufacturer or princely banker, but all with aristocratic sympathies,—nearly all conservative, with a preponderance of Tories; scarcely a man without independent means, indifferent to all questions except such as affected party interests, and generally opposed to all movements which had in view the welfare of the middle classes, to which they could not be said to belong. They did not represent manufacturing towns nor the shopkeepers, still less the people in their rugged toils,—ignorant even when they could read and write. They represented the great landed interests of the country for the most part, and legislated for the interests of landlords and the gentry, the Established Church and the aristocratic universities,—indeed, for the wealthy and the great, not for the nation as a whole, except when great public dangers were imminent.

At that time, however, the traveller would have heard the most magnificent bursts of eloquence ever heard in Parliament,—speeches which are immortal, classical, beautiful, and electrifying. On the front benches was Canning, scarcely inferior to Pitt or Fox as an orator; stately, sarcastic, witty, rhetorical, musical, as full of genius as an egg is full of meat. There was Castlereagh,—not eloquent, but gifted, the honored plenipotentiary and negotiator at the Congress of Vienna; the friend of Metternich and the Czar Alexander; at that time perhaps the most influential of the ministers of state, the incarnation of aristocratic manners and ultra conservative principles. There was Peel, just rising to fame and power; wealthy, proud, and aristocratic, as conservative as Wellington himself, a Tory of the Tories. There were Perceval, the future prime minister, great both as lawyer and statesman; and Lord Palmerston, secretary of state for war. On the opposite benches sat Lord John Russell, timidly maturing schemes for parliamentary reform, lucid of thought, and in utterance clear as a bell. There, too, sat Henry Brougham, not yet famous, but a giant in debate, and overwhelming in his impetuous invectives. There were Romilly, the law reformer, and Tierney, Plunkett, and Huskisson (all great orators), and other eminent men whose names were on every tongue. The traveller, entranced by the power and eloquence of these leaders, could scarcely have failed to feel that the House of Commons was the most glorious assembly on earth, the incarnation of the highest political wisdom, the theatre and school of the noblest energies, worthy to instruct and guide the English nation, or any other nation in the world.

From the legislature we follow our traveller to the Church,—the Established Church of course, for non-conformist ministers, whatever their learning and oratorical gifts, ranked scarcely above shopkeepers and farmers, and were viewed by the aristocracy as leaders of sedition rather than preachers of righteousness. The higher dignitaries of the only church recognized by fashion and rank were peers of the realm, presidents of colleges, dons in the universities, bishops with an income of L10,000 a year or more, deans of cathedrals, prebendaries and archdeacons, who wore a distinctive dress from the other clergy. I need not say that they were the most aristocratic, cynical, bigoted, and intolerant of all the upper ranks in the social scale, though it must be confessed that they were generally men of learning and respectability, more versed, however, in the classics of Greece and Rome than in Saint Paul's epistles, and with greater sympathy for the rich than for the poor, to whom the gospel was originally preached. The untitled clergy of the Church in their rural homes,—for the country and not the city was the paradise of rectors and curates, as of squires and men of leisure,—were also for the most part classical scholars and gentlemen, though some thought more of hunting and fishing than of the sermons they were to preach on Sundays. Nothing to the eye of a cultivated traveller was more fascinating than the homes of these country clergymen, rectories and parsonages as they were called,—concealed amid shrubberies, groves, and gardens, where flowers bloomed by the side of the ivy and myrtle, ever green and flourishing. They were not large but comfortable, abodes of plenty if not of luxury, freeholds which could not be taken away, suggestive of rest and repose; for the favored occupant of such a holding, supported by tithes, could neither be ejected nor turned out of his "living," which he held for life, whether he preached well or poorly, whether he visited his flock or buried himself amid his books, whether he dined out with the squire or went up to town for amusement, whether he played lawn tennis in the afternoon with aristocratic ladies, or cards in the evening with gentlemen none too sober. He had an average stipend of L200 a year, equal to L400 in these times,—moderate, but sufficient for his own wants, if not for those of his wife and daughters, who pined of course for a more exciting life, and for richer dresses than he could afford to give them. His sermons, it must be confessed, were not very instructive, suggestive, or eloquent,—were, in fact, without point, delivered in a drawling monotone; but then his hearers were not used to oratorical displays or learned treatises in the pulpit, and were quite satisfied with the glorious liturgy, if well intoned, and pious chants from surpliced boys, if it happened to be a church rich and venerable in which they worshipped.

Not less imposing and impressive than the Church would the traveller have found the courts of law. The House of Lords was indeed, in a general sense, a legislative assembly, where the peers deliberated on the same subjects that occupied the attention of the Commons; but it was also the supreme judicial tribunal of the realm,—a great court of appeals of which only the law lords, ex-chancellors and judges, who were peers, were the real members, presided over by the lord chancellor, who also held court alone for the final decision of important equity questions. The other courts of justice were held by twenty-four judges, in different departments of the law, who presided in their scarlet robes in Westminster Hall, and who also held assizes in the different counties for the trial of criminals,—all men of great learning and personal dignity, who were held in awe, since they were the representatives of the king himself to decree judgments and punish offenders against the law. Even those barristers who pleaded at these tribunals quailed before the searching glance of these judges, who were the picked men of their great profession, whom no sophistry could deceive and no rhetoric could win,—men held in supreme honor for their exalted station as well as for their force of character and acknowledged abilities. In no other country were judges so well paid, so independent, so much feared, and so deserving of honors and dignities. And in no other country were judges armed with more power, nor were they more bland and courteous in their manners and more just in their decisions. It was something to be a judge in England.

Turning now from peers, legislators, judges, and bishops,—the men who composed the governing class,—all equally aristocratic and exclusive, let us with our traveller survey the middle class, who were neither rich nor poor, living by trade, chiefly shopkeepers, with a sprinkling of dissenting ministers, solicitors, surgeons, and manufacturers. Among these, the observer is captivated by the richness and splendor of their shops, over which were dark and dingy chambers used as residences by their plebeian occupants, except such as were rented as lodgings to visitors and men of means. These people of business were rarely ambitious of social distinction, for that was beyond their reach; but they lived comfortably, dined on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Sunday, with tolerable sherry or port to wash it down, went to church or chapel regularly in silk or broadcloth, were good citizens, had a horror of bailiffs, could converse on what was going on in trade and even in politics to a limited extent, and generally advocated progressive and liberal sentiments,—unless some of their relatives were employed in some way or other in noble houses, in which case their loyalty to the crown and admiration of rank were excessive and amusing. They read good books when they read at all, educated their children, some of whom became governesses, travelled a little in the summer, were hospitable to their limited circle of friends, were kind and obliging, put on no airs, and were on the whole useful and worthy people, if we can not call them "respectable members of society." They were, perhaps, the happiest and most contented of all the various classes, since they were virtuous, frugal, industrious, and thought more of duties than they did of pleasures. These were the people who were soon to discuss rights rather than duties, and whom the reform movement was to turn into political enthusiasts.

Such was the bright side of the picture which a favored traveller would have seen at the close of the Napoleonic wars,—on the whole, one of external prosperity and grandeur, compared with most Continental countries; an envied civilization, the boast of liberty, for there was no regal despotism. The monarch could send no one to jail, or exile him, or cut off his head, except in accordance with law; and the laws could deprive no one of personal liberty without sufficient cause, determined by judicial tribunals.

And yet this splendid exterior was deceptive. The traveller saw only the rich or favored or well-to-do classes; there were toiling and suffering millions whom he did not see. Although the laws were made to favor the agricultural interests, yet there was distress among agricultural laborers; and the dearer the price of corn,—that is, the worse the harvests,—the more the landlords were enriched, and the more wretched were those who raised the crops. In times of scarcity, when harvests were poor, the quartern loaf sold sometimes for two shillings, when the laborer could earn on an average only six or seven shillings a week. Think of a family compelled to live on seven shillings a week, with what the wife and children could additionally earn! There was rent to pay, and coals and clothing to buy, to say nothing of a proper and varied food supply; yet all that the family could possibly earn would not pay for bread alone. And the condition of the laboring classes in the mines and the mills was still worse; for not half of them could get work at all, even at a shilling a day. The disbanding of half a million of soldiers, without any settled occupation, filled every village and hamlet with vagrants and vagabonds demoralized by war. During the war with France there had been a demand for every sort of manufactures; but the peace cut off this demand, and the factories were either closed or were running on half-time. Then there was the dreadful burden of taxation, direct and indirect, to pay the interest of a national debt swelled to the enormous amount of L800,000,000, and to meet the current expenses of the government, which were excessive and frequently unnecessary,—such as sinecures, pensions, and grants to the royal family. This debt pressed upon all classes alike, and prevented the use of all those luxuries which we now regard as necessities,—like sugar, tea, coffee, and even meat. There were import duties, almost prohibitory, on many articles which few could do without, and worst of all, on corn and all cereals. Without these it was possible for the laboring class to live, even when they earned only a shilling a day; but when these were retained to swell the income of that upper class whose glories and luxuries I have already mentioned, there was inevitable starvation.