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CHAP. the Flemish states in which the government had been overthrown. The Cabinet of Vienna, under the cautious guidance of Prince Metternich, was still more apprehensive at the democratic fervour in Switzerland and the excitement in Northern Italy, which their huge army and vigilant police had the utmost difficulty in repressing. Even the distant Court of St Petersburg took the alarm, and, well aware of the sympathy of feeling between Paris and Warsaw, began to direct forces, to be prepared for any event, in great numbers, to the banks of the Vistula. The Prussians sent troops as rapidly as possible to their Rhenish provinces, and Austria did the same to Northern Italy. Everywhere on the Continent were to be seen armaments and heard the sound of marching men. England alone, secure in her sea-girt isle, and entirely engrossed with domestic questions, made no warlike preparations, and regarded the distant din on the Continent as the precursor of a conflict with which she had no immediate concern.1

1 Cap. iii. 275, 279.

2.

Cabinet divisions,

and fall

of the

This great change of necessity induced a corresponding alteration in the French Cabinet. The original government, formed by a coalition of the three parties-the Ministry. Doctrinaires, headed by the Duke de Broglie and M. Guizot; the burgher interest, by Count Molé and M. Casimir Périer; and the Republicans, represented by M. Dupont de l'Eure-soon underwent the fate of all administrations formed by a combination of interests, not a union of principles. Dissensions of the most violent kind speedily appeared; the debates and recriminations were as tumultuous at the council-board as at the tribune; and it soon became evident that the differences of opinion were so great that anything like united action was impossible. In truth, each of these sections of the Cabinet was the representative of a party in the state, the passions or apprehensions of which had become so violent that they could no longer be restrained. The Republicans in the clubs, the press, and the streets, loudly proclaimed the

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necessity of instantly establishing the sovereignty of the CHAP. people, installing the citizens in possession of real power by a great reduction of the suffrage qualification, receiving with open arms the friends of freedom in other countries, and regaining the frontier of the Rhine, and all that had been lost by the treaty of Vienna, by accepting the proffered amalgamation of Belgium with France. The burghers, whose strength, always great, had been doubled by their forming the greater proportion of the National Guard, both in the metropolis and the provincial towns, were mainly set on the maintenance of order and the preservation of general peace, and dreaded alike any foreign demonstration which might revive the hostile alliance of 1815, and any domestic innovation which might restore the internal sway of the Jacobins in the state. And the Doctrinaires, to whose enlarged and philosophic ideas the sagacious and experienced mind of the sovereign was most inclined, earnestly inculcated the principles that the Government, to be stable, must be one of progress and of order; that measures must be taken to coerce the extra-Cap. iii. vagance and restrain the influence of the clubs; and that Louis the only lasting security for internal freedom was to be 157, 159 found in the maintenance of external peace.1

336, 341;

Blanc, ii.

ment of the

ters.

With such discordant opinions agitating both the 3. Cabinet, the Chamber, and the people, it was impossible Commencethat the Government could long hold together; but an trial of the event which strongly roused and agitated the nation, in- late Minis duced its dissolution even earlier than might have been anticipated. This was the trial of Prince Polignac and the other ministers of Charles X., who, by the officious zeal of inferior functionaries rather than the real wishes of the Government, had been arrested in various places and brought to Vincennes, where they awaited the determination of the Cabinet and Legislature on their fate. Had it been practicable, Louis Philippe and the majority of his Cabinet would gladly have avoided so embarrassing a proceeding as the trial of these state prisoners; but

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CHAP. their alleged delinquence and real infraction of the laws had been too recent, the passions of the people too strongly excited, the risk of anything like a compromise to the new Government too great, to admit of such a course being thought of. Reluctantly, therefore, they were compelled to authorise the institution of proceedings against them. On September 23d the Chamber of Deputies, after Sept. 23. long debates on the form to be adopted in the prosecution, had invested three commissioners with the power of conducting it on the part of the popular branch of the Legislature, and the trial was to take place before the Chamber of Peers. That body forthwith held an extraordinary meeting to commence the cognisance of the affair; and according to the form of the French law, where the court takes so large a share in the preliminary steps of the trial, three peers were appointed, and conjoined with the commissioners of the Deputies to conduct it. The judicial examinations commenced, and were conAnn. Hist. ducted with great strictness and ability, though in an equitable spirit, by the Government commissioners; and the result was communicated to the Chamber of Peers in a detailed and very impartial report on the 29th November.1

Oct. 4.

xiii. 325,

359, 423;

Louis

Blanc, ii. 119, 120, 121.

4.

the accused

trial.

The conduct of the accused during the prolonged inConduct of terrogations was calm and dignified, but at the same time before the strongly characterised by that political infatuation and insensibility to the realities of their situation by which their conduct when in power had been distinguished. When they approached the gloomy towers of Vincennes, there was enough to quell the most undaunted spirit. In its fosse the Duke d'Enghien had fallen a victim to the jealousy and anger of Napoleon; within its walls Prince Polignac had undergone the weary hours of a nine years' captivity, for having conspired against that sovereign power which he was now accused of having abused. The carriage which bore them to the gloomy fortress was surrounded by an immense crowd, which never ceased to

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exclaim, "La mort, la mort! la mort aux Ministres!" CHAP. So savage was their demeanour, so fierce and unrelenting their cries for vengeance, that the prisoners were relieved, and felt as if the worst of their dangers were over, when the drawbridge was passed, the gates entered, and the doors of the fortress closed upon their pursuers. During the examinations, the prisoners, who were kept apart and in close confinement, exhibited a very different demeanour. M. de Chantelauze, on seeing the commissioners, with some of whom he had formerly been intimate, enter his apartment, burst into tears; M. de Peyronnet evinced more resolution, admitted his accession to the ordinances, and justified them by the necessities of his situation, and the kindness of the King towards him. M. Guernon de Ranville was equally firm. But although the pale countenance, prominent forehead, and emaciated figure of Prince Polignac evinced the wearing influence of anxiety and meditation, yet the smile on his lips and the serenity Louis of his manner revealed a mind at ease with itself and the Blanc, ii. 120, 121; world. He constantly believed that the acknowledged Cap. iii. irresponsibility of the King must, by a legal fiction, be Ann. Hist. extended to his Ministers. 'When am I to be set at 428. liberty?" he often said to the commissioners.1

388, 389;

xiii. 425,

During the progress of these examinations, however, 5.

state of

the state of Paris became such as dreadfully alarmed the Disturbed court, and fearfully endangered the accused. The Re- Paris before. publicans were indefatigable in their endeavours to excite this. the people, and awaken the savage thirst for blood which had for ever disgraced France during the Reign of Terror. The continued and increasing distress which existed among the working classes, and which the agitators contrived to impute solely to the acts of the late Ministers, which originated the convulsion, added immensely to the success with which their efforts were attended. On the 18th Oct. 18. October, in particular, an émeute of so serious a kind took place in the Faubourg St Antoine, that it assumed almost the character of an insurrection. A furious band

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1830.

CHAP. then surrounded Vincennes, and were making preparations for storming the castle, in order to execute justice on the state prisoners with their own hands. They were only repelled by General Daumenil, the governor, threatening, if they did not desist, to blow up the building. Repulsed from thence, the waves of insurrection rolled to the westward, and broke on the Palais Royal, where it was only averted by the firm countenance of the National Guard. The King and his Ministers were all assembled. "Hark!" said Odillon Barrot, "I hear the cry, 'Vive Barrot!"" "And I," said the King, "have heard the cry "Vive Petion!" Groups of disorderly persons singing the Marseillaise, and exclaiming " Mort aux Ministres!" crowded the streets leading to Vincennes, and in the evening they were generally swelled to several thousand perThe apprehensions of the Government were extreme it was thus that the massacres in the prisons on 2d September 1792 had commenced. The garrison of Vincennes was greatly strengthened, the guards doubled, the drawbridge kept up, and the guns loaded, as in a state of siege, with grape-shot. Thanks to these wise precautions, the revolutionists were deterred from an 1 Ann. Hist. attack upon the fortress, and the agitators confined them430; Cap. selves to incessant efforts at the clubs and in the press to 394; Louis excite the public mind, and keep it in that state of feverish anxiety when the most desperate resolutions are most likely to meet with a favourable reception.1

xiii. 429,

iii. 392,

Blanc, ii. 120, 128.

6.

ment of the

trial. Dec. 15.

sons.

At length, on the 15th of December, the trial comCommence- menced in the hall of the Peers, in the palace of the Luxembourg. Everything had been done which could give dignity and solemnity to the august spectacle. Seats were provided for all the foreign ambassadors and their families, as well as the principal dignitaries of the kingdom; and a guard of two thousand men, with several guns, was provided for daily service around the hall, besides powerful reserves in all the barracks of the capital, ready to turn out at a moment's notice. No less than