Louis an impression unfavourable to constitutional limitations, a disgust to those by whom they were recommended and supported, and a propensity to resume the arbitrary measures by which his ancestors had governed their kingdom. Those who nourished these apprehensions could not but allow, that they were founded in the fickleness and ingratitude of the people themselves, who had shown them selves unworthy of, and readily induced to conspire against the mild and easy rule of a limited monarchy. But they involved, nevertheless, tremendous consequences, if the king should be disposed to act upon rigo rous and vindictive principles; and it was such an apprehension on the part of some, joined to the fears of others for personal consequences, the sullen shame of a third party, and the hatred of the army to the princes whom they had betrayed, which procured for the provisional government a show of obedience. But, far from the mass of the people being animated by any zeal in the cause of freedom and national independence, those watchwords which the directors endea

voured to substitute for Vive l'Empereur, far from the nation rising in a mass to annihilate and destroy the invaders, they assumed the badges of royalty in many of the departments, and in almost all the others passively awaited the current of events. The Representatives found themselves totally unable to excite any enthusiasm, excepting the momentary explosions which were discharged within the walls of their own Chamber, gratifying no ears, and heating no brains, excepting their own. Men were sick of hearing a jargon, so often sounded in their ears in the earlier times of the Revolution, and the phrases of liberty and equality had lost all their currency since they had been discovered to be only words. The ruling

party in the Chamber, however, were of that thorough-paced class of theo, rists, who never grow wise by experience; and although it was likely that no resistance would be made by the army, excepting in the name of the Emperor, whom they had just condemned to deportation, and that resistance of any kind, and in what ame soever, must be totally ineffectual, they continued to maintain the quarrel upon a ground which probably interested few bosons in France but their own.

An instance occurred to show how determined the Chambers were in their opposition to the only remedy which could be applied to the miseries of France. Monsieur Malleville, a representative for the department of Dordogne, had distinguished himself soon after the opening of the Assembly, by pro June 15. posing a law against seditious writings, emblems, and rallying cries in favour of the house of Bourbon. The lapse of ten days, and the great event which bad such an effect on the minds of individuals, as well as on the destiny of France, caused Monsieur Malleville to be one of the first to fall under the penalties of his own law. He published an opinion on the state of France, addressed to the two Chambers and the Provisional Government, in which he exposed the difficulties of the crisis. He demanded of them, by what powers they assumed the right of naming a new Sovereign for France, and whether their powers would be recognized by the allies. Since the calamity of the 21st, he contended, they had no other mission, save to exert the power, while it was still in their possession, for preventing the dangers of anarchy, and, if possible, to save the country nation, he said, was divided into two parties, Buonapartists and Royalists to reject both these sovereigns, in

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order to chuse a third dynasty, even were the Chambers empowered by the nation to do so, would be to contradict the desires of nine-tenths of the population, and to hear their act disavowed by them in consequence. By Buonaparte's abdication, the competition was ended on his part, and there remained, therefore, only one candidate, who possessed a party of wellwishers in France. This candidate was the ally of the invading sove reigns, who regarded him still as monarch of France; and although they recognized the independence of the nation, would not conceive it in any respect attacked by his resumption of the government. These sovereigns were now in a state of war with France, of war proceeding from what they termed a breach of treaty; they had obtained over France the rights which victory has been in all ages supposed to confer, and, without the in terference of action and powerful mediation, it was to be apprehended they would use them to the uttermost. The dismemberment of France would be the certain consequence of a po sitive rejection of Louis XVIII. He was, therefore, neither a bad Frenchman, nor an indifferent patriot, who recommended the only measure which could preserve the honour, power, and territory of the nation. The writer denied that the government of the Bourbons was inconsistent with national liberty. On the contrary, he reminded those whom he addressed, it was under the reign of Louis, not under that of Buonaparte, that a free constitution had first been given to France; and it was in the course of amelioration, by the free discussion of the Chamber, when it was des troyed by the predominance of Buonaparte. Those, said Monsieur Malleville, who oppose the return of the Bourbons, are sophists, who, moved by their own fears and interests, of

fer a fruitless resistance to an event which would soon take place in their despite, and are dragging the nation after them into approaching ruin. He adverted to the sixty-seventh article of the Additional Act, which deprived every subject of the right to propose the restoration of the Bourbons, and to the scruples founded upon it; on which he argued, that the Chambers and Provisional Government were neither in a condition to observe or to violate that engagement. Louis XVIII. was about to remount his throne, without the aid of the Chambers; he was called to it at once by the declared preference of the great body of the people, no longer overawed by their government, and by the success of his allies. Nothing was required of the Representatives and the Provisional Government, excepting to cease a fruitless and dangerous opposition, to which he urged their oath could not possibly bind them. He proceeded to point out circumstances, which ought to have had peculiar weight with these pretended friends of liberty. The only purpose which their opposition could serve, would be to answer for some time as a rallying point to individuals, who were willing to sacrifice the cause of the nation to their own interests and prejudices, and to those who, with force and obstinacy, would persist in maintaining the cause which Buonaparte had himself abandoned. This conduct, he urged, could not but enhance the hatred and animosity of the fanatics of royalty, increase the fury of the factions, prolong the calamities of civil war, and finally perhaps deprive the nation of the confidence of the king, and suggest to him the unhappy plan of surrounding his authority by military forms, and supporting it by other force than that of the nation. He implored, therefore, the French of every description, as they loved li

berty, and were willing to preserve the object they had so long fought for, and so lately gained a free and limited constitution to hasten to acknowledge the king, while there was yet some merit in doing so; and instead of receiving a master from the hands of the invaders, to lay before him voluntarily their own homage, and that of the nation, informing him at the same time, that they could only be safely and securely enjoyed under the shadow and guarantee of a free constitution. By this timely acknowledge. ment, he urged, with great force and truth, they would have the opportunity of pointing out the imprudence of his courtiers-the abuses of his ministry-the alarms and suspicions which had been spread abroad among several classes of his subjects. Such respectful remonstrances, accompanied with timely submission, could not fail to be favourably listened to by the monarch; and thus in resuming his crown, Louis would form a new compact with his subjects, confirming not only their former constitutional rights, but erecting a barrier against those acts of real or apprehended aggression, which had been founded upon as justifying the interruption of the king's authority.

It was as clear as the sunbeam, that the Chambers, supposing them to have the liberty of their country at their heart, had no other probable course to save it than that recommended by Malleville. The government of Louis was already restored, without their consent or interference, over a great part of France; and it only remained, by a timely surrender on their part, to secure his re-ascending the throne as a constitutional monarch, since otherwise a few days might place him there in the character of a conqueror, free from any engagements with the ostensible representa

June 30.

But so different were the sentiments of the Chamber of Representatives, that Malleville, furiously denounced by Gareau for expressing the only course by which wise men saw a glimpse of safety for France, would have been subjected to severe penalties, but for the protection which was claimed for his character as a representative. The accuser, Gareau, declared that the army had been terrorized (terrorifiés) at the audacity and enormity of this criminal proposal; and it was not the least whimsical part of this occurrence, that (like the patients in Bedlam, who think all beyond the bounds of their college in a state of derangement, and themselves alone possessed of a sane mind,) he demanded that Malleville, for the absurdity of the doctrines he had announced, should be declared deranged, and sent to the hospital for lunatics.

While these republican statesmen

held this haughty language, their temporary power was crumbling away on all hands, and fugitive members of the Chambers, driven from the frontiers where they had resided as imperial commissioners, came to report to the assembly, that the invading armies, like the billows of an irresistible and tremendous inundation, were sur rounding and overflowing at all points the barriers of the frontier. BouvierDumoulard announced the total occupation of the department of the Meurthe, by movements so rapid, that, although thirty leagues in extent, it had been the work of one day. The arrival of the army commanded by Grouchy and Vandamme under the walls of Paris, augmented the forces destined for the defence of the capital to about forty thousand men, exclusive of national guards, who shewed no inclination for actual service, and federates, of whom only about seven thousand had received arms. But, at the same time, they announced that the English and Prussian armies might be every moment expected to assault the capital.

We have already noticed the fortifications of the city. On the northern side of the Seine they were of a most formidable description. The heights of Belleville and Montmartre, which cost the allies so much loss the last year, were now so completely strengthened with redoubts, entrenchments, and field-works, as to render this line of defence, which surrounds as with a belt the northern side of the city, seemingly impregnable. A large quantity of artillery, to the number of six hundred pieces, had been collected by the efforts of Napoleon, at the expence of dismantling Brest and Havre, and other sea-ports, but they had not all as yet been mounted. On the line of Montmartre there were about two hundred guns in position. The right flank of this line rested on

VOL. VIII. PART I.

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the Seine, and was strengthened by the castle and wood of Vincennes, and by a fort constructed about half way betwixt the barriers of Trone and Vincennes. The left flank extended as far as Saint Denis, the ancient mausoleum of the Kings of France, which was converted into a place of arms, every house being garrisoned, with ditches and entrenchments around the little town. level space betwixt Saint Denis and Montmartre was inundated by means of two small brooks and the Čanal de l'Ourcq, which made it as strong as the rest of the line. But though Paris was thus fortified upon the one side of the Seine, it was totally defenceless upon the other, unless by battle. The extensive plains of Grenelle, Montrouge, Bicetre, and Ivri, extend to the wall of the city, which is merely an inclosure about ten feet high, built to prevent smuggling and assist the police. Buonaparte had attempted some slight entrenchments on these defenceless plains, but had deserted them in the conviction that nothing effectual could be done to cover the capital upon that exposed side, unless the Parisians could be prevailed upon to offer that desperate species of defence in the streets and houses which immortalized Saragoza. The village of Issy, and other hamlets on this side of Paris, were, however, occupied as military posts, and fortified by palisades, and houses loop-holed to accommodate musketry.

The Chambers and provisional government endeavoured to make such interest as was possible with the troops, by whom these defences were to be made good, and to fix their attachment upon themselves and the abstract principles which they professed as the ground of the continued resistance. In this they had little success. The soldiers, faithful to the principles by which they had been guided since the

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18th of March, adhered to the cause of Napoleon and his dynasty; more reasonable as well as more honourable in thus acting up to a fixed and steady principle, than those who were willing that the allies should dictate to them the choice of any monarch excepting the lawful one. When, therefore, Garat, and other commissioners, from the assembly of deputies, visited the army of Paris in its entrenchment, and endeavoured to excite them to cry Vive la Liberté, Vive la Nation, they found that their rallying shout was still Vive l'Empereur! or, at most, Vive Napoleon II.! It was, however, an easy matter to induce them to express sentiments hostile to the Bourbons; and so far the Chambers and the soldiers act ed on the same negative principle. The army, indeed, made a profession of political faith, by June 30. an address to the Chambers, signed by Pajol, D'Erlon, and other general officers, in which they declared, that the princes of the House of Bourbon were renounced by the French nation; and that, in consenting to their recall, the representatives would subscribe the death-warrant of the army, which had been for twenty years the palladium of France. The Bourbons, they said, offered no guarantee to the nation. When formerly received with the most generous confidence, they had treated the army as rebels and slaves. "Inexorable history," concluded these military orators, "will relate what the Bourbons have done to replace them selves on the throne of France-she will relate also the conduct of the army, that army so essentially national, and posterity will judge which has best merited esteem."

The violence and imprudence with which the army committed themselves, by pledging their faith to an opposition which they were shortly after

June 30.

compelled to abandon, was imitated by the Chamber of Representatives, whose character of statesmen and legislators ought to have rendered them more cautious. It was in vain that Manuel (acting under the guidance of Fouché) reminded the Representatives, that they were not mere soldiers, who could acquit by an obscure death the duties they owed the public, but that they were bound to act so as to save the state if it were possible. Carefully avoiding to pledge their faith to any particular person or family, or to put the stamp of rejection on any, he proposed the Chamber should declare in general, that on no condition would they acknowledge for chief any prince who should refuse to ratify the national liberties by such a compact as might guarantee them. This proposal was rejected, because expressed so indefinitely as to leave an opening for the Bourbons to reascend the throne, and as placing the Chamber in opposition to the army, by whom the cause of Louis XVIII. was proscribed. A speech and motion of Bory de Saint Vincent carried the imprudence of the assembly to the utmost, and plainly showed, that rather than adopt a liberal constitution, with the dynasty of a peaceful and legitimate sovereign, these lovers of freedom, in their wounded pride, and their sentiments of hatred and fear for the Bourbons, were willing to consign France to the horrors at once of foreign and domestic war. This hotheaded enthusiast demanded a solemn pledge from the assembly, that they would adhere to the proscription of the Bourbons, as their reign," he said, "could not be reconciled with the safety of national domains. The partizans of this family have threatened us," he proceeded, "with the royalist insurrections of La Vendee, and the defenders of the country