France has recorded her past history and her present condition, in
the regal palaces she has reared. Upon these monumental walls are
inscribed, in letters more legible than the hieroglyphics of Egypt,
and as ineffaceable, the long and dreary story of kingly vice,
voluptuousness and pride, and of popular servility and oppression.
The unthinking tourist saunters through these magnificent saloons,
upon which have been lavished the wealth of princes and the toil
of ages, and admires their gorgeous grandeur. In marbled floors
and gilded ceilings and damask tapestry, and all the appliances of
boundless luxury and opulence, he sees but the triumphs of art, and
bewildered by the dazzling spectacle, forgets the burning outrage
upon human rights which it proclaims. Half-entranced, he wanders
through uncounted acres of groves and lawns, and parterres of
flowers, embellished with lakes, fountains, cascades, and the most
voluptuous statuary, where kings and queens have reveled, and he
reflects not upon the millions who have toiled, from dewy morn till
the shades of night, through long and joyless years, eating black
bread, clothed in coarse raiment--the man, the woman, the ox,
companions in toil, companions in thought--to minister to this
indulgence. But the palaces of France proclaim, in trumpet tones,
the shame of France. They say to her kings. Behold the undeniable
monuments of your pride, your insatiate extortion, your measureless
extravagance and luxury. They say to the people, Behold the proofs
of the outrages which your fathers, for countless ages, have endured.
They lived in mud hovels that their licentious kings might riot
haughtily in the apartments, canopied with gold, of Versailles, the
Tuileries, and St. Cloud--the Palaces of France. The mind of the
political economist lingers painfully upon them. They are gorgeous
as specimens of art. They are sacred as memorials of the past.
Vandalism alone would raze them to their foundations. Still, the
judgment says, It would be better for the political regeneration
of France, if, like the Bastile, their very foundations were plowed
up, and sown with salt. For they are a perpetual provocative to
every thinking man. They excite unceasingly democratic rage against
aristocratic arrogance. Thousands of noble women, as they traverse
those gorgeous halls, feel those fires of indignation glowing in
their souls, which glowed in the bosom of Madame Roland. Thousands
of young men, with compressed lip and moistened eye, lean against
those marble pillars, lost in thought, and almost excuse even the
demoniac and blood-thirsty mercilessness of Danton, Marat, and
Robespierre. These palaces are a perpetual stimulus and provocative
to governmental aggression. There they stand, in all their
gorgeousness, empty, swept, and garnished. They are resplendently
beautiful. They are supplied with every convenience, every luxury.
King and Emperor dwelt there. Why should not the President ? Hence
the palace becomes the home of the Republican President. The expenses
of the palace, the retinue of the palace, the court etiquette of
the palace become the requisitions of good taste. In America, the
head of the government, in his convenient and appropriate mansion,
receives a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. In
France, the President of the Republic receives four hundred thousand
dollars a year, and yet, even with that vast sum, can not keep up
an establishment at all in accordance with the dwellings of grandeur
which invite his occupancy, and which unceasingly and irresistibly
stimulate to regal pomp and to regal extravagance. The palaces of
France have a vast influence upon the present politics of France.
There is an unceasing conflict between those marble walls of
monarchical splendor, and the principles of republican simplicity.
This contest will not soon terminate, and its result no one can
foresee. Never have I felt my indignation more thoroughly aroused
than when wandering hour after hour through the voluptuous sumptuousness
of Versailles. The triumphs of taste and art are admirable, beyond
the power of the pen to describe. But the moral of exeerable
oppression is deeply inscribed upon all. In a brief description of
the Palaces of France. I shall present them in the order in which
I chanced to visit them.
1. Palais des Thermes .--In long-gone centuries, which have faded
away into oblivion, a wandering tribe of barbarians alighted from
their canoes, upon a small island in the Seine, and there reared
their huts. They were called the Parisii. The slow lapse of
centuries rolled over them, and there were wars and woes, bridals
and burials, and still they increased in numbers and in strength,
and fortified their little isle against the invasions of their
enemies; for man, whether civilized or savage, has ever been the
most ferocious wild beast man has had to encounter. But soon the
tramp of the Roman legions was heard upon the banks of the Seine,
and all Gaul with its sixty tribes, came under the power of
the Caesars. Extensive marshes and gloomy forests surrounded the
barbarian village; but, gradually, Roman laws and institutions were
introduced; and Roman energy changed the aspect of the country.
Immediately the proud conquerors commenced rearing a palace for
the provincial governor. The Palace of Warm Baths rose, with its
massive walls and in imposing grandeur. Roman spears drove the people
to the work; and Roman ingenuity knew well how to extort from the
populace the revenue which was required. Large remains of that palace
continue to the present day. It is the most interesting memorial
of the past which can now be found in France. The magnificence of
its proportions still strike the beholder with awe. "Behold," says
a writer, who trod its marble floors nearly a thousand years ago:
"Behold the Palace of the Kings, whose turrets pierce the skies,
and whose foundations penetrate even to the empire of the dead."
Julius Caesar gazed proudly upon those turrets; and here the shouts
of Roman legions, fifteen hundred years ago proclaimed Julian emperor;
and Roman maidens, with throbbing hearts, trod these floors in the
mazy dance. No one can enter the grand hall of the haths, without
being deeply impressed with the majestic aspect of the edifice, and
with the grandeur of its gigantic proportions. The decay of nearly
two thousand years has left its venerable impress upon those walls.
Here Roman generals proudly strode, encased in brass and steel,
and the clatter of their arms resounded through these arches. In
these mouldering, crumbling tubs of stone, they laved their sinewy
limbs. But where are those fierce warriors now? In what employments
have their turbulent spirits been engaged, while generation after
generation has passed on earth, in the enactment of the comedies
and the tragedies of life? Did their rough tutelage in the camp,
and their proud hearing in the court, prepare them for the love,
the kindness, the gentleness, the devotion of Heaven? In fields of
outrage, clamor, and blood, madly rushing to the assault, shouting
in frenzy, dealing, with iron hand, every where around, destruction
and death, did they acquire a taste for the "green pastures and
the still waters?" Alas! for the mystery of our being! They are
gone, and gone forever! Their name has perished--their language is
forgotten.
"The storm which wrecks the wintry sky. No more disturbs their
deep repose, Than summer evening's gentlest sign, Which shuts
the rose."
Upon a part of the rums of this old palace of Caesars, there has
been reared by more modern ancients , still another palace, where
mirth and revelry have resounded, where pride has elevated her
haughty head, and vanity displayed her costly robes--but over all
those scenes of splendor, death has rolled its oblivious waves. About
four hundred years ago, upon a portion of the crumbling walls of
this old Roman mansion, the Palace of Cluny was reared. For three
centuries, this palace was one of the abodes of the kings of France.
The tide of regal life ebbed and flowed through those saloons, and
along those corridors. There is the chamber where Mary of England,
sister of Henry VIII., and widow of Louis XII., passed the weary
years of her widowhood. It is still called the chamber of the
"white queen," from the custom of the queens of France to wear
white mourning. Three hundred years ago, these Gothic turrets, and
gorgeously ornamented lucarne windows, gleamed with illuminations,
as the young King of Scotland, James V., led Madeleine, the blooming
daughter of Francis I., to the bridal altar. Here the haughty family
of the Guises ostentatiously displayed their regal retinue--vying
with the Kings of France in splendor, and outvying them in power.
These two palaces, now blended by the nuptails of decay into one,
are converted into a museum of antiquities--silent despositories
of memorials of the dead. Sadly one loiters through their deserted
halls. They present one of the most interesting sights of Paris.
In the reflective mind they awaken emotions which the pen can not
describe.
2. The Lourre .--When Paris consisted only of the little island in
the Seine, and kings and feudal lords, with wine and wassail were
reveling in the saloons of China, a hunting-seat was reared in the
the dense forest which spread itself along the banks of the river.
As the city extended, and the forest disappeared, the hunting-seat
was enlarged, strengthened, and became a fortress and a state-prison
Thus it continued for three hundred years. In its gloomy dungeons
prisoners of state, and the victims of crime, groaned and died;
and countless tragedies of despotic power there transpired, which
the Day of Judgment alone can reveal. Three hundred years ago,
Francis I, tore down the dilapidated walls of this old castle, and
commerces the magnificent Palace of the Louver upon their foundations.
But its construction has required candle, while Gilpin, who was
taller and stronger than either of the other boys, bored the hole
in the door, in the place which Rodolphus indicated. When the hole
was bored, the boys inserted an iron rod into it. and running this
rod under the hasp, they pried the hasp up and unfastened the door.
They opened the door, and then, to their great joy, found themselves
all safe in the office.
They put the dark lantern down upon the table, and covered it with
its screen, and then listened, perfectly whist, a minute or two,
to be sure that nobody was coming.
"You go and watch at the shed-door," said Gilpin to Rodolphus,
"while we open the desk."
So Rodolphus went to the shed-door. He peeped out, and looked up
and down the village-street, but all was still.
Presently he heard a sort of splitting sound within the office,
which he knew was made by the forcing open of the lid of the desk.
Very soon afterward the boys came out, in a hurried manner--Griff
had the lantern and Gilpin the box.
"Have you got it!" said Rodolphus.
"Yes," said Griff.
"Let's see," said Rodolphus.
Griff held out the box to Rodolphus. It was very heavy and they
could hear the sound of the money within. All three of the boys
seemed almost wild with trepidation and excitement. Griff however
immediately began to hurry them away, pulling the box from them
and saying, "Come, come, boys, we must not stay fooling here."
"Wait a minute till I hide the tools again!" said Rodolphus, "and
then we'll run."
Rodolphus hid the tools behind the wood-pile, in the shed, where
they had been before, and then the boys sallied forth into the
street. They crept along stealthily in the shadows of the houses
and the most dark and obscure places, until they came to the tavern,
where they were to turn down the lane to the corn-barn. As soon as
they got safely to this lane, they felt relieved, and they walked
on in a more unconcerned manner; and when at length they got fairly
in under the corn-barn they felt perfectly secure.
"There," said Griff, "was not that well done!"
"Yes," said Rodolphus, "and now all that we have got to do is to
get the box open."
"We can break it open with stones," said Griff.
"No," said Gilpin, "that will make too much noise. We will bury
it under this straw for a few days, and open it somehow or other
by-and-by, when they have given up looking for the box. You can
get the real key of it for us, Rodolphus, can't you!"
"How can I get it?" asked Rodolphus.
"Oh, you can contrive some way to get it from old Kerber, I've no
doubt. At any rate the best thing is to bury it now.'
To this plan the boys all agreed. They pulled away the straw,
which was spread under the corn-barn, and dug a hole in the ground
beneath, working partly with sticks and partly with their fingers.
When they had got the hole deep enough, they put the box in and
covered it up. Then they covered it up. Then they spread the straw
over the place as before.
During all this time the lantern had been standing upon a box pretty
near by, having been put there by the boys, in order that the light
might shine down upon the place where they had been digging. As
soon as their work was done, the boys went softly outside to see
if the way was clear for them to go home, leaving the lantern on
the box; and while they were standing at the corner of the barn
outside, looking up the lane, and whispering together, they saw
suddenly a light beginning to gleam up from within. They ran in
and found that the lantern had fallen down, and that the straw was
all in a blaze. They immediately began to tread upon the fire and
try to put it out, but the instant that they did so they were all
thunderstruck by the appearance of a fourth person, who came rushing
in among them from the outside. They all screamed out with terror
and ran. Rodolphus separated from the rest and crouched down a
moment behind the stone wall, but immediately afterward, feeling
that there would be no safety for him here, he set off again and
ran across some back fields and gardens, in the direction toward
Mr. Kerber's. He looked back occasionally and found that the light
was rapidly increasing. Presently he began to hear cries of fire.
He ran on till he reached the house; he scrambled over the fences
into the back yard, climbed up upon a shed, crept along under the
chimneys to the window of his room, got in as fast as he could,
undressed himself and went to bed, and had just drawn the clothes
up over him, when he heard a loud knocking at the door, and Mrs.
Kerber's voice outside, calling out to him, that there was a cry
of fire in the village, and that he must get up quick as possible
and help put it out.
The Expedition to Egypt was one of the most magnificent enterprises
which human ambition ever conceived. The Return to France combines
still more, if possible, of the elements of the moral sublime.
But for the disastrous destruction of the French fleet the plans
of Napoleon, in reference to the East, would probably have been
triumphantly successful. At least it can not be doubted that a
vast change would have been effected throughout the Eastern world.
Those plans were now hopeless. The army was isolated, and cut off
from all reinforcements and all supplies. the best thing which
Napoleon could do for his troops in Egypt was to return to France,
and exert his personal influence in sending them succor. His return
involved the continuance of the most honorable devotion to those
soldiers whom he necessarily left behind him. The secrecy of his
departure was essential to its success. Had the bold attempt been
suspected, it would certainly have been frustrated by the increased
vigilance of the English cruisers. The intrepidity of the enterprise
must elicit universal admiration.
Contemplate, for a moment, the moral aspects of this undertaking.
A nation of thirty millions of people, had been for ten years
agitated by the most terrible convulsions. There is no atrocity,
which the tongue can name, which had not desolated the doomed land.
Every passion which can degrade the heart of fallen man, had swept
with simoom blast over the cities and the villages of France.
Conflagrations had laid the palaces of the wealthy in ruins, and the
green lawns where their children had played, had been crimsoned with
the blood of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. A gigantic
system of robbery had seized upon houses and lands and every
species of property and had turned thousands of the opulent out
into destitution, beggary, and death. Pollution had been legalized
by the voice of God-defying lust, and France, la belle France
, had been converted into a disgusting warehouse of infamy. Law,
with suicidal hand, had destroyed itself, and the decisions of
the legislature swayed to and fro, in accordance with the hideous
clamors of the mob. The guillotine, with gutters ever clotted
with human gore, was the only argument which anarchy condescended
to use. Effectually it silenced every remonstrating tongue.
Constitution after constitution had risen, like mushrooms, in
a night, and like mushrooms had perished in a day. Civil war was
raging with bloodhound fury in France, Monarchists and Jacobins
grappling each other infuriate with despair. The allied kings of
Europe, who by their alliance had fanned these flames of rage and
ruin, were gazing with terror upon the portentous prodigy, and were
surrounding France with their navies and their armies.
The people had been enslaved for centuries by the king and the nobles.
Their oppression had been execrable, and it had become absolutely
unendurable. "We, the millions," they exclaimed in their rage, "will
no longer minister to your voluptuousness, and pride, and lust."
"You shall, you insolent dogs," exclaimed king and nobles, "we
heed not your barking." "You shall," reiterated the Pope, in the
portentous thunderings of the Vatican. "You shall," came echoed back
from the palaces of Vienna, from the dome of the Kremlin, from the
seraglio of the Turk, and, in tones deeper, stronger, more resolute,
from constitutional, liberty-loving, happy England. Then was France
a volcano, and its lava-streams deluged Europe. The people were
desperate. In the blind fury of their frenzied self-defense they
lost all consideration. The castles of the nobles were but the
monuments of past taxation and servitude. With yells of hatred
the infuriated populace razed them to the ground. The palaces of
the kings, where, for uncounted centuries, dissolute monarchs had
reveled in enervating and heaven-forbidden pleasures, were but
national badges of the bondage of the people. The indignant throng
swept through them, like a Mississippi inundation, leaving upon
marble floors, and cartooned walls and ceilings, the impress of
their rage. At one bound France had passed from despotism to anarchy.
The kingly tyrant, with golden crown and iron sceptre, surrounded
by wealthy nobles and dissolute beauties, had disappeared, and
a many-headed monster, rapacious and blood-thirsty, vulgar and
revolting, had emerged from mines and workshops and the cellars of
vice and penury, like one of the spectres of fairy tales to fill his
place. France had passed from Monarchy, not to healthy Republicanism,
but to Jacobinism, to the reign of the mob. Napoleon utterly abhorred
the tyranny of the king. He also utterly abhorred the despotism of
vulgar, violent, sanguinary Jacobin misrule. The latter he regarded
with even far deeper repugnance than the former. "I frankly
confess," said Napoleon, again and again, "that if I must choose
between Bourbon oppression, and mob violence, I infinitely prefer
the former.
Such had been the state of France, essentially, for nearly ten
years. The great mass of the people were exhausted with suffering,
and longed for repose. The land was filled with plots and counterplots.
But there was no one man of sufficient prominence to carry with
him the nation. The government was despised and disregarded. France
was in a state of chaotic ruin. Many voices here and there, began
to inquire "Where is Bonaparte, the conqueror of Italy, the conqueror
of Egypt? He alone can save us." His world-wide renown turned the
eyes of the nation to him as their only hope.
Under these circumstances Napoleon, then a young man but twenty-nine
years of age, and who, but three years before, had been unknown
to fame or to fortune, resolved to return to France, to overthrow
the miserable government, by which the country was disgraced, to
subdue anarchy at home and aggression from abroad, and to rescue
thirty millions of people from ruin. The enterprise was undeniably
magnificent in its grandeur and noble in its object. He had two
foes to encounter, each formidable, the royalists of combined Europe
and the mob of Paris. The quiet and undoubting self-confidence with
which he entered upon this enterprise, is one of the most remarkable
events in the whole of his extraordinay career. He took with him
no armies to hew down opposition. He engaged in no deep-laid and
wide-spread conspiracy. Relying upon the energies of his own mind,
and upon the sympathies of the great mass of the people, he went
alone, with but one or two companions, to whom he revealed not his
thoughts, to gather into his hands the scattered reins of power.
Never did he encounter more fearful peril. The cruisers of England,
Russia, Turkey, of allied Europe in arms against France, thronged
the Mediterranean. How could he hope to escape them? The guillotine
was red with blood. Every one who had dared to oppose the mob had
perished upon it. How could Napoleon venture, single-handed, to
beard this terrible lion in his den?
It was ten o'clock at night, the 22d of August, 1799, when Napoleon
ascended the sides of the frigate Muiron, to France. A few of his
faithful Guards, and eight companions, either officers in the army
or members of the scientific corps, accompanied him. There were
five hundred soldiers on board the ships. The stars shone brightly
in the Syrian sky, and under their soft light the blue waves of
the Mediterranean lay spread out most peacefully before them. The
frigates unfurled their sails. Napoleon, silent and lost in thought,
for a long time walked the quarter deck of the ship, gazing upon
the low outline of Egypt as, in the dim starlight, it faded away.
His companions were intoxicated with delight, in view of again
returning to France. Napoleon was neither elated nor depressed.
Serene and silent he communed with himself, and whenever we can
catch a glimpse of those secret communings we find them always
bearing the impress of grandeur. Though Napoleon was in the habit
of visiting the soldiers at their camp fires, of sitting down and
conversing with them with the greatest freedom and familiarity,
the majesty of his character overawed his officers, and adoration
and reserve blended with their love. Though there was no haughtiness
in his demeanor, he habitually dwelt in a region of elevation
above them all. Their talk was of cards, of wine, of pretty women.
Napoleon's thoughts were of empire, of renown, of moulding the
destinies of nations. They regarded him not as a companion, but
as a master, whose wishes they loved to anticipate; for he would
surely guide them to wealth, and fame, and fortune. He contemplated
them, not as equals and confiding friends, but as efficient and
valuable instruments for the accomplishment of his purposes. Murat
was to Napoleon a body of ten thousand horsemen, ever ready for a
resistless charge. Lannes was a phalanx of infantry, bristling with
bayonets, which neither artillery nor cavalry could batter down or
break. Augereau was an armed column of invincible troops, black,
dense, massy, impetuous, resistless, moving with gigantic tread
wherever the finger of the conqueror pointed. These were but the
members of Napoleon's body, the limbs obedient to the mighty soul
which swayed them. They were not the companions of his thoughts,
they were only the servants of his will. The number to be found
with whom the soul of Napoleon could dwell in sympathetic friendship
was few--very few.
Napoleon had formed a very low estimate of human nature, and
consequently made great allowance for the infirmities incident
to humanity. Bourrienne reports him as saying, "Friendship is but
a name. I love no one; no, not even my brothers. Joseph perhaps a
little. And if I do love him, it is from habit, and because he is
my elder. Duroc! Ah, yes! I love him too. But why? His character
please me. He is cold, reserved, and resolute, and I really believe
that he never shed a tear. As to myself, I know well that I have
not one true friend. As long as I continue what I am, I may have
as many pretended friends as I please. We must leave sensibility
to the women. It is their business. Men should have nothing to do
with war or government. I am not amiable. No; I am not amiable. I
never have been. But I am just."
In another mood of mind, more tender, more subdued, he remarked,
at St. Helena, in reply to Las Casas, who with great severity was
condemning those who abandoned Napoleon in his hour of adversity:
"You are not acquainted with men. They are difficult to comprehend
if one wishes to be strictly just. Can they understand or explain
even their own characters? Almost all those who abandoned me would had
I continued to be prosperous, never perhaps have dreamed of their
own defection. There are vices and virtues which depend upon
circumstances. Our last trials were beyond all human strength! Besides
I was forsaken rather than betrayed; there was more weakness than
of perfidy around me. It was the denial of St. Peter . Tears and
penitence are probably at hand. And where will you find in the
page of history any one possessing a greater number of friends
and partisans? Who was ever more popular and more beloved? Who was
ever more ardently and deeply regretted? Here from this very rock
on viewing the present disorders in France who would not be tempted
to say that I still reign there? No; human nature might have appeared
in a more odious light."
Las Casas, who shared with Napoleon his weary years of imprisonment
at St. Helena says of him: "He views the complicated circumstances
of his from so high a point that individuals escape his notice. He
never evinces the least symptom of virulence toward those of whom
it might be supposed he has the greatest reason to complain. His
strongest mark of reprobation, and I have had frequent occasions
to notice it, is to preserve silence with respect to them whenever
they are mentioned in his presence. But how often has he been heard
to restrain the violent and less reserved expressions of those
about him?"
"And here I must observe," say Las Casas, "that since I have become
acquainted with the Emperor's character, I have never known him to
evince, for a single moment, the least feeling of anger or animosity
against those who had most deeply injured him. He speaks of them
coolly and without resentment, attributing their conduct in some
measure to the place, and throwing the rest to the account of human
weakness."
Marmont, who surrendered Paris to the allies was severely condemned
by Las Casas. Napoleon replied: "Vanity was his ruin. Posterity
will justly cast a shade upon his character, yet his heart will be
more valued than the memory of his career." "Your attachment for
Berthier," said Las Casas, "surprised us. He was full of pretensions
and pride." "Berthier was not with out talent." Napoleon replied,
"and I am far from wishing to disavow his merit, or my partiality;
but he was so undecided!" He was very harsh and overbearing." Las
Casas rejoined. "And what, my dear Las Casas," Napoleon replied,
"is more overbearing than weakness which feels itself protected
by strength! Look at women for example." This Berthier had with
the utmost meanness, abandoned his benefactor, and took his place
in front of the carriage of Louis XVIII. as he rode triumphantly
into Paris. "The only revenge I wish on this poor Berthier," said
Napoleon at the time, "would be to see him in his costume of captain
of the body-guard of Louis."
Says Bourrienne, Napoleon's rejected secretary, "The character
of Napoleon was not a cruel one. He was neither rancorous nor
vindictive. None but those who are blinded by fury, could have
given him the name of Nero or Caligula. I think that I have stated
his real fault with sufficient sincerity to be believed upon my
word. I can assert that Bonaparte, apart from politics, was feeling
kind, and accessible to pity. He was very fond of children, and a
bad man has seldom that disposition. In the habits of private life
he had and the expression is not too strong, much benevolence and
great indulgence for human weakness. A contrary opinion is too
firmly fixed in some minds for me to hope to remove it. I shall,
I fear, have opposers; but I address myself to those who are in
search of truth. I lived in the most unreserved confidence with
Napoleon until the age of thirty-four years, and I advance nothing
lightly." This is the admission of one who had been ejected from
office by Napoleon, and who become a courtier of the reinstated
Bourbons. It is a candid admission of an enemy.
The ships weighed anchor in the darkness of the night, hoping
before the day should dawn to escape the English cruisers which
were hovering about Alexandria. Unfortunately, at midnight, the wind
died away, and it became almost perfectly calm. Fearful of being
captured, some were anxious to seek again the shore. "Be quiet,"
said Napoleon, "we shall pass in safety."
