nation, in whom the Bourbons saw, at best, but repentant rebels. Too timid as yet to strike an open blow, they alledged that the king and his ministers sought every means to disqualify and displace all who had taken any active share in the events of the revolution, and to evade the general promise of amnesty. Under pretext of national economy, they were disbanding the army and displacing the officers of government, depriving thus the military and civil servants of France of the provision which their long services had earned. Louis, they said, had insulted the glory of France, and humiliated her heroes, by renouncing the colours and symbols, under which twenty-five years had seen her victorious; he had rudely refused a crown, offered to him by the people, and snatched it as his own right by inheritance, as if the dominion of men could be transferred from father to son, like the property of a flock of sheep. The right of Frenchmen to chuse their own ruler was hereditary and imprescriptible; and the nation, they said, must assert it, or sink to be the contempt, instead of being the pride at once and dread of Europe.

Such was the language which nettled, while it alarmed, the idle Parisians; the departments were assailed by other arts of instigation. The chief of these was directed to excite the jealousy so often alluded to concerning the security of the property of national domains. Not content with urging every-where that a revocation of the lands of the church and emigrants was impending over the present proprietors, and that the clergy and nobles did not even deign to conceal their hopes and desigus, a singular device was in many instances practised to inforce the belief of such assertions. Secret agents were dispatched into the departments where property was advertised for sale. They

made enquiries as if in the character of intending purchasers, and where the property appeared to have been derived from revolutionary confiscation, instantly objected to the security as good for nothing, and withdrew their pretended offers; thus impressing the proprietor, and all in the same situation, with the unavoidable belief, that such title was considered as invalid, owing to the expected and menaced revocation of the Bourbon government.

It is generally believed that Buonaparte was not originally the object of these intrigues. He was feared and hated by the jacobin party, who knew what a slender chance his iron government afforded of their again attempting to rear their fantastic fabrics, whether of a pure republic, or a republican monarchy. It is supposed their eyes were turned in preference towards the Duke of Orleans. As the son of the foster-father of the revolution, as the pupil of Madame Genlis, as having, during the very early part of his youth, worn the colours and fought under the banners of the revolution, the jacobins founded hopes upon this prince, which his upright and loyal character ought to have checked. They reckoned probably on strength of the temptation, and they thought that in supplanting Louis XVIII., and placing his kinsman in his room, they would obtain, on the one hand, a king, who should hold his power by and through the revolution, and, on the other, would conciliate both foreign powers and the constitutionalists at home by chusing him out of the family of Bourbon. The more cautious of those concerned in the intrigue recommended that nothing should be attempted during the life of the reigning monarch; but that they should reserve their force for an effort after his decease, an event which probably was not dis

tant, to set aside his brother, and call the Duke of Orleans to the throne. It was supposed that the unpopularity of Monsieur and his sons, with the general belief that they were devoted to the interests of the emigrants and clergy, would render it comparatively easy to contest their right of succession. Others were more impatient and less cautious, and the Duke of Orleans received an intimation of their plan in an unsigned billet, containing only these words, "We will act it without you-we will act it in spite of you-we will act it FOR you,"* as if putting it in his choice to be the leader or victim of the intended revolution. The Duke of Orleans, though his intimacy with the king and princes is not supposed to be great or cordial, inmediately communicated this note to the former, and acted otherwise with such prudence as greatly to cool the hopes which the jacobins had founded upon him. It became necessary that they should turn their to some other central point.

eyes

The court, aware of the disaffection of the army, and the intrigues of the jacobins, seems to have formed no other plan of defence, than by flattering the military with the pros pect of a speedy call to war. On the frontiers towards Flanders, the fortresses were put into a state of defence, and the inhabitants of fortified

towns were commanded to desist from erecting buildings, or laying out gardens, within three hundred toises of the outermost works. The army was recruited and furnished with clothing and arms, while great magazines were formed in centrical places for their regular supply. Many disbanded officers, who were, preparing to seek their fortune in America, were commanded to remain in France, with an intimation that their services might be required.

All these military preparations received a fresh impulse, in consequence of the nomination of Soult to re-place Dupont, as minister of the war department. A general who had been usually successful would be more popular, it was supposed, with the army, than one who was only known by his disaster at Baylen; and Soult improved this favourable impression by an order of the day, promising a speedy settlement of the arrears of the army.

The language of court flatterers and court poets, who had hitherto hailed the Bourbons as the restorers of peace, began to anticipate their glory as conquerors in war. The popular aversion to foreigners, and particularly to the English, whom they regarded, not unjustly, as the original cause of the depression of France in the scale of Europe, as

sumed a tone unusually rancorous. In theatres and public places every scurrilous reflection and commonplace satire on English customs was applied personally to our countrymen who chanced to be present, by an audience calling themselves the most civilized in the civilized world.

It was unreasonably argued, that the British government had excited, or at least aggravated, this irritation, by sending the Duke of Wellington, on whom no Frenchman could look without feelings of national humiliation, to be the resident ambassador of his Majesty at the court of France. But, not to mention that no such effects were to be apprehended, from the unbounded applause with which Paris had at first received the British general, we see no reason that our country should have lost the advantage of the duke's diplomatic talents, in deference to the unreasonable sensibility of the French, to which perhaps but too much respect had been paid in other respects. It is generally known, that Wellington, like Marlborough, (the only name in British history which approaches his own) has been as successful in treaties as in battles. Not that he possesses the winning address of Churchill, which almost gained the iron heart of Charles of Sweden; but because, open, manly, and decisive, in the cabinet as in the field, he has substituted strong reason and plain sense for artifice and finesse, and carried his point in political discussion, as in war, by marching straight up to it. He had claims upon the gratitude of many of the French generals, from his active interference with Louis in their behalf; and if his presence at Paris was disagreeable to the French, it was only because they hated in him the representative, as he had been the sustainer, of the honour of his country.

France, by the intrigues, and even open declaration of Talleyrand, her minister at the Congress, held a course hostile to Britain, and endeavoured by various means to force upon the Congress the revisal, or rather alteration, of the maritime law of nations, in hopes of arriving at the establishment of the long desiderated principle, that free bottoms make free goods. With what plausibility such a discussion could be proposed, or how it was expected that England, triumphant, and over whom not one of the powers whose plenipotentiaries were assembled in Congress, could pretend to exercise a coercive influence, should yield rights to which she had adhered as her palladium in the darkest hour of her history, it is not for us to conjecture. The attempt was probably made to shew, that the heads of the Bourbons were entirely French at heart, and free from any partiality in favour of England; or perhaps they gave way to the ebullition of national feeling, as a timid horseman contents himself with an attempt to guide the run-away steed, whose course he cannot check.

Other intrigues of France at the Congress were more consistent with the interests, or at least the feelings, of the royal family. An attempt was made to instigate the other powers against Bernadotte and Murat, whose authority in Sweden and Naples emanated originally from that of Buonaparte, and shared his taint of usurpation. Bernadotte lay distant from France, and had besides, in the campaign of 1813, deserved well of the European league. The merits of Murat were more questionable, and there were hopes of embittering against him Austria, always jealous of her Italian possessions. Various documents were exhibited to the Duke of Wellington, as tending to establish that King Joachim had play

ed a double part during the Italian campaign of 1814, and continued to maintain an under-hand correspondence with Buonaparte. But, in the Duke of Wellington's opinion, these documents failed to make out the case founded upon them. They indicated, he allowed, that Murat acted with reluctance against his brother-in-law; but did not imply his being untrue to the allies. The repulse of the British minister did not prevent the Bourbons from assuming an hostile attitude towards Joachim. His name was not permitted to appear as King of Naples in the Royal Almanack of France, a trifle in itself, but one of those trifles which are important among sovereigns. A proclamation of Louis recalled all Frenchmen, eivil and military, from the service of Murat, and numbers left Naples in consequence. This was a measure decidedly hostile. Talleyrand, instigated, it is said, partly by personal resentment for the loss of his principality of Beneventum, the revenues of which had been confiscated by Murat, urged his ruin by every art of persuasion, and we shall presently see that the versatile imprudence of Joachim himself precipitated his catastrophe.

In the mean while, Murat was not without friends and abettors in France, as appeared from a remarkable incident, peculiarly illustrative of the discontent of the army, and the weakness of the government. Lord Oxford, with his lady, had resided for some time in the court of King Joachim, where they were treated with the distinction which their rank required. His lordship, leaving his family at Naples, had proceeded to England apparently on important business, where he demanded and obtained from the Prince Regent an audience, in his capacity of a peer of the realm, in which his lordship is supposed to have reclaimed the protection

of the British government in behalf of his royal friend of Naples. It is probable that Lord Oxford received no other answer than is usually given at a compulsory audience. But his lordship, however, directed his course again to Naples, as a mediator, who returned to give an account of his mission, and he took Paris in his road. Those to whom the noble earl is known will not suspect him of hatching or abetting high treason, and the British public therefore learned with surprize, that his lordship had been arrested by the French police at a stage beyond Paris, called Ville Juif, and compelled to deliver up his papers, from which was taken by the commissary of police a quantity of letters addressed to different persons at Naples, and elsewhere beyond the bounds of France. This violence was slightly covered by the intimation, that his lordship had no title to diminish the revenue of the French post-office by taking so voluminous a correspondence under his charge; and with this supercilious explanation the commissary acquainted his lordship he might proceed on his journey. Lord Oxford chose rather to return to Paris, and carry his complaint to the Duke of Wellington. Apparently the French government alleged serious grounds for this strong measure against a British nobleman; for the explanations which were given were satisfactory to the British ambassador, and the letters were not returned to Lord Oxford, or any apology made for the manner in which he had been treated. Extraordinary precautions were adopted for the safety of the Tuilleries, as if some extraordinary conspiracy had been discovered; the gates of the gardens, and of the Place de Carousel, were shut at an unusually early hour; ballcartridges were served out to the guards of the palace, and an air of

apprehension, real or assumed, characterized all the movements of the government. About the same time, General Maison published an order for the regular observance of the patroles of Paris, which breathed a spirit of greater apprehension of insurrection than the king had yet manifested. This intercepted packet is also supposed to have given rise to the arrest of General Dufour and others; but no case was completely canvassed before the public, except ing that of Count Excelman.

This officer, long colonel of the first regiment of the chasseurs-à-cheval, had been created by Buonaparte a general of division and count of the empire, and now resided at Paris as inspector-general of the first division. It appears, that among the letters of which Lord Oxford condescended to be the bearer, was one from General Excelman to Murat, expressive of his own devoted attachment, and assuring him," that thousands of brave officers, formed in his school, and under his eye, would have been ready at his call, had matters not taken a turn in his favour." Dupont, then minister at war, contented himself with admonishing General Excelman to be more cautious in his correspondence in future; but his successor Soult, affecting greater rigour, placed the general on half-pay, and ordered him to retire to Bar-surOrnain, which he named as the place where he was in future to receive it. Excelman alleged the situation of bis wife, then on the eve of being confined, as an excuse for delaying his departure, and entered into farther expostulations, which terminated in his formal refusal to obey the order for leaving Paris, and in his escape from the officers sent to arrest him, in consequence of his disobedience. While thus in open resistance to the authority, which, as a soldier, he was

bound to acknowledge, Excelman petitioned the Chamber of Deputies for redress against what he termed an abuse of power, and violation of domicile, and his wife lodged a similar petition, complaining of the rigour exercised by the officers while searching for her husband. After a warm debate, in which the opposition members voted for receiving both peti-, tions, the general's was rejected, and that of Madame Excelman was referred to the government.

By a singular coincidence, while the Chamber was occupied in deliberating whether they ought to entertain a petition from an officer, who, being accused of military disobedience, had fled from arrest and trial, one of a very different nature came under their cognizance, serving to remind them how similar dilinquencies, nay, even the disproved suspicion of them, was treated under the government of Buonaparte. Field-Marshal Grissolles had been tried as a Vendean by a special commission, and solemnly acquitted. But, instead of regaining his liberty, he was for three years imprisoned in the Temple, and from thence transferred to the Bicetre. Here he was loaded with irons, and immured in a dungeon eight feet square, which had been recently plastered, lest his constitution should resist the mere confinement, and the ordinary damp of the den. For two years he suffered tortures only equalled by those of the celebrated Baron Trenck, and his petition (which was referred to the government), set forth in the most horrid colours the secrets of Buonaparte's prison-house. It may seem impossible, that, comparing the case of Marshal de Grissoles with that of General Excelman, there should exist such blinded folly and prejudice, as would prefer the domination of the iron-handed despot to that of the legitimate, and perhaps too feeble mo.