Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V. Walter Scott
than on facts. Of the preferment of emigrants in the army, we shall speak hereafter; but in the civil departments of the state, few of the old noblesse obtained office. To take a single example, in the course of eleven months there were thirty-seven prefects nominated to the departments, and the list did not comprehend a single one of those emigrants who returned to France with Louis; and but very few of those whose exile had terminated more early. The nobles felt this exclusion from royal favour, and expressed their complaints, which some, yet more imprudently, mingled with threatening hints, that their day of triumph might yet arrive. This language, as well as the air of exclusive dignity and distance which they affected, as if, the distinction of their birth being all that they had left to them, they were determined to enforce the most punctilious deference to that, was carefully remarked and recorded against the King.
The noblesse were supposed to receive particular encouragement from the princes of the blood, while, upon the whole, they were rather discouraged than brought forward or distinguished by Louis, who, as many of them spared not to say, was disposed to act upon the ungenerous maxim of courting his enemies, and neglecting those who could not upon principle become any thing save his friends. They did not, perhaps, make sufficient allowance for the great difficulties which the King incurred in governing France at so critical a period.
The state of the Clergy is next to be considered. They were, generally speaking, sincerely attached to the King; and had they been in possession of their revenues, and of their natural influence upon the public mind, their attachment would have been of the utmost consequence. But without this influence, and without the wealth, or at least the independence, on which it partly rests, they were as useless, politically speaking, as a key which does not fit the lock to which it is applied. This state of things, unfortunate in many respects, flowed from a maxim adopted during the Revolution, and followed by Buonaparte, who had his reasons for fearing the influence of the clergy. "We will not put down the ecclesiastical establishment by force; we will starve it to death." Accordingly, all grants and bequests to the Church had been limited and qualified by so many conditions and restrictions, as to intercept that mode of acquisition so fruitful in a Catholic country; while, on the other hand, the salary allowed by the State to each officiating curate was only five hundred livres (£26, 16s. 8d.) yearly. No doubt each community were permitted to subscribe what they pleased in addition to this miserable pittance; but in France, when the number of those who care for no religion at all, and of those whose zeal will not lead them the length of paying for it, is deduced, the remainder will afford but a small list of subscribers. The consequence was, that at the period of the restoration, many parishes were, and had been for years, without any public worship. Ignorance had increased in an incalculable degree. "We are informed," was the communication from Buonaparte to one of his prefects, "that dangerous books are distributed in your department." – "Were the roads sown with them," was the answer returned by the prefect, "your Majesty need not fear their influence; we have not a man who would or could read them." – When we add to this the relaxed state of public morals, the pains taken in the beginning of the Revolution to eradicate the sentiments of religion, and render its professors ridiculous, and the prevalence of the military character, so conspicuous through France, and so unfavourable to devotion; and when it is further remembered that all the wealth of the Church had fallen into the hands of the laity, which were fast clenched to retain it, and trembling at the same time lest it should be wrested from them – the reader may, from all these causes, form some notion of the low ebb of religion and of the Church in France.
The disposition of the King and Royal Family to restore the formal observances of the Romish Church, as well as to provide the suitable means of educating in future those designed for the ministry, and other religious institutions, excited among the Parisians a feeling of hatred and contempt. It must be owned, also, that though the abstract motive was excellent, there was little wisdom in attempting to bring back the nation to all those mummeries of Popish ceremonial, which, long before the Revolution, only subsisted through inveterate custom, having lost all influence on the public mind.
This general feeling was increased by particular events. Alarming tumults took place, on the subject of enforcing a rule unworthy of Christianity and civilisation, by which theatrical performers are declared in a constant state of excommunication. The rites of sepulture being refused to Mademoiselle Raucour, an actress, but a person of decent character and morals, occasioned a species of insurrection, which compelled from the government an order for interring her with the usual forms.76
The enforcing of the more regular observation of the Sabbath, an order warranted alike by religion and good morals, gave also great offence to the inhabitants of the capital. The solemn obsequies performed for the death of Louis XVI. and his unfortunate queen, when their remains were transferred from their hasty grave to the royal mausoleum at Saint Denis, a fraternal action, and connected with the forms of the Catholic Church – was also construed to the King's prejudice, as if, by the honour paid to these poor relics, he had intended to mark his hatred of the Revolution, and his recollection of the injuries he had sustained from it.77 Some honours and attention bestowed on the few surviving chiefs of La Vendée, were equally the subject of misrepresentation. In short, whatever Louis XVIII. did, which had the least appearance of gratifying those who had lost all for his sake, was accounted an act of treason against freedom and the principles of the Revolution.
None of the circumstances we have noticed had, however, so much effect upon the public feeling as the fear which prevailed, that Louis, in his veneration for religion and its members, might be led to form some scheme of resuming the Church lands, which, having been confiscated by the decrees of the National Assembly, were now occupied by a host of proprietors, who watched, with vigilant jealousy, incipient measures, which they feared might end in resumption of their property. Imprudent priests added to this distrust and jealousy, by denunciations against those who held Church lands, and by refusing to grant them absolution unless they made restitution or compensation for them. This distrust spread far wider than among the actual proprietors of national domains. For if these were threatened with resumption of the property they had acquired under authority of the existing government for the time, it was most probable that the divine right of the clergy to a tithe of the produce of the earth, might next have been brought forward – a claim involving the interest of every landholder and farmer in France to a degree almost incalculable.
It is plain, from what we have stated, that the Royalist party, whether lay or clerical, were so little in a condition to be effectually serviceable to the King in the event of a struggle, that while their adherence and their sufferings claimed his attachment and gratitude, every mark which he afforded them of those feelings was calculated to render his government suspected and unpopular.
Whilst the Royalists rather sapped and encumbered than supported the throne to which they adhered, their errors were carefully pointed out, circulated, and exaggerated, by the Jacobin, or as they called themselves, the Patriotic party. This faction, small in numbers, but formidable from their audacity, their union, and the dreadful recollection of their former power and principles, consisted of ex-generals, whose laurels had faded with the Republic; ex-ministers and functionaries, whose appointments and influence had not survived the downfall of the Directory; men of letters, who hoped again to rule the state by means of proclamations and journals; and philosophers, to whose vanity or enthusiasm abstract principles of unattainable liberty, and undesirable equality, were dearer than all the oceans of blood, and extent of guilt and misery, which they had already cost, and were likely again to occasion. It cannot be denied, that, in the discussion of the original rights of humanity, and constitutions of society, several of this party showed distinguished talent, and that their labours were calculated to keep up a general love of liberty, and to promote inquiry into the principles upon which it is founded. Unfortunately, however, their theoretical labours in framing constitutions diverted their attention from the essential points of government, to its mere external form, and led them, for example, to prefer a republic, where every species of violence was practised by the little dictator of the day, to a limited monarchy, under which life, person, and property, were protected. The chiefs of this party were men of that presumptuous and undoubting class, who, after having failed repeatedly in political experiments, were as ready as ever again to undertake them, with the same unhesitating
Savary, tom. iv., p. 235.
Annual Register, vol. lvi., p. 51.