XLVI. CHAP. under the control of constitutioual government and a parliamentary majority, Louis-Philippe spoke as minister and sovereign in one. The worst consequence of this personal government of the monarch was that, however wise the King's direction of affairs might be, ministerial management remained in weak, because dependent, hands. On Casimir Périer's death, the Home Office was given to Montalivet, considered altogether a King's friend. With more zeal than discretion, this young minister, immediately after the insurrection, first declared the capital in a state of siege, for which there was not the least necessity, and then arrested the chief Carlist notabilities, the Duc de Fitzjames, Châteaubriand, and Berryer, for which there was less. All these had in fact deprecated, not encouraged, the Duchess of Berry's attempts, and had done nought to draw down upon them incarceration. The fact was confirmed by the speedy acquittal of Berryer. This blunder compelled the King to think at once of strengthening his ministry. But every personage whom he addressed demanded, as the first condition, the appointment of a governing President of the Council. Talleyrand was thought of, and when he came to Paris, on his way to his usual baths, at Bourbon, the offer was made him. Talleyrand, however, would not accept the presidency, and at the same time did not desire that there should be any prime minister. The King had previously sounded Dupin, and at first was not averse to have that personage in the shoes of Périer. Royer Collard had said that Casimir Périer's administration had owed its success to his ignorance and brutalityharsh words, with a spice of truth in them. They might be equally applied to Dupin. But he would not take office, along with either Sebastiani or Montalivet. And Talleyrand mocked his pretensions. The King and Dupin therefore came to a rupture in a conversation on the evening of the 28th at St. Cloud, where the future СНАР. ministers were all assembled.* Marshal Soult did not want the two precious qualities attributed to Casimir Périer; but he was more manageable than Dupin. Hence the King ended by appointing him President of the Council, with the War Office. The Duc de Broglie was chosen for Foreign Affairs. He would not accept without having for colleague his friend M. Guizot, who became Minister of Public Instruction. The most important nomination was that of M. Thiers to the Home Department. He had been introduced to office by Laffitte, of whom, however, he was more a personal than a political disciple. His history, many volumes of which had appeared, sufficiently pronounced him a son of the Revolution. His appointment was therefore considered as a liberal set-off to that of the unpopular Doctrinaires. Humann, of Strasburg, took the Finances.† M. Thiers, in accepting the Home Office, gave up many of its attributes, in order to devote his attention. to what had become an urgent necessity, that of arresting the Duchess of Berry. Although the open insurrection in La Vendée had been prostrated or put down, still the presence of the Princess kept alive agitation and disquietude, and, what was worse, excited the very general suspicion that the King connived at her efforts to disturb the country and shake his throne. Rumours are sometimes not the less credited and not less dangerous for being absurd. Had the Princess limited her confidence to French nobles and peasants, she might have concealed her presence and her movements, but she had admitted to her intimacy, even when in Italy, an Israelite of the name of Deutz, who had become con * Nouvion makes the King speak harshly to Dupin. It is not at all likely that Louis-Philippe would use language so unhabitual to him. Dupin's own account, in his Me- † Memoirs of Guizot, of Dupin, XLVI. CHAP. XLVI. verted to Catholicism at Rome, and whom the Church in consequence patronised. Previous to her entering France, the Princess despatched Deutz on a mission to Spain and Portugal. She created him a baron, and gave him power to raise a loan; yet no sooner was he in Madrid than he wrote to the French Government to offer to betray the Princess. It has been said that jealousy was his motive, he having been first taken into favour and then sent away. At all events, Deutz made the offer to the Home Minister Montalivet, who did not consider it as aught worth following up. M. Thiers no sooner took the Home Office, and received renewed offers from Deutz, than he grasped at them, saw him, promised him half a million of francs, accompanied by menaces should he prove untrue. Deutz, under his directions, proceeded to Nantes. The Duchess was already informed that some one had undertaken to betray her. For she undoubtedly had friends in the council of the King; but the suspicion falling upon another than Deutz, he was admitted to the Duchess's presence. The police, however, had been unable to follow his track, and no more came of it. He demanded another interview to repair the failure of the first. It was granted, and the police then saw Deutz enter the house of Mademoiselle Duguigny; he there had his second interview. On one occasion the Duchess said to him, "Perhaps you are the person who, they say, is to betray me." Deutz smilingly observed, "It might be so;" and it was so. For Deutz had but taken his departure when the police burst in. The Princess, with Mademoiselle de Kersabiec and two gentlemen of her suite, had had time to retreat to a recess that had been prepared behind the fire-place of an upper room. And here they remained sixteen hours, defying all the ingenuity and resources of the police; at last the gendarmes, occupying the room where the recess was, lit a fire on the hearth to warm themselves, and this fire soon rendered the recess untenable by its occupants, 4444 XLVI. whose clothes even took fire, as the iron plate at the back СНАР. heated. At last they cried out, saying they surrendered, and the Duchess and her companions were drawn half fainting from their hiding-place. She was treated with all respect, but conveyed as a prisoner to the Castle of Blaye, on the Garonne, below Bordeaux.* On the 6th of November, not a month after the entrance of M. Thiers into the Home Office, the Duchess of Berry became a prisoner. But the throne of LouisPhilippe was beset by so many and such different enemies that the marvel is how it so long endured. As the monarch was proceeding to open the Chambers on the 19th of the same month, a pistol shot was fired at him; the assassin escaped, but the pistol which he used was found near to a young woman, who had seen him fire it. Bergeron, a young usher at a school, was no doubt the person who fired the pistol. He belonged to the Societé des Droits de l'Homme, two members of which had previously pointed him out as one who had engaged to protect another member of the society in an act of regicide. The Republican Society, as well as the Legitimists, who so often fomented conspiracy, had in fact begun to despair of street insurrections. Châteaubriand wrote to the Duchess of Berry that nothing was to be hoped from them. The conspirators therefore resorted to assassination plots, and Bergeron's attempt was the first. He was tried before the Court of Assizes, denied, of course, the act of regicide, but gloried in the profession of a Republican and an enemy to the throne. The jury aquitted him; but no one had a doubt of his guilt, which did not prevent many of even the most respectable Republicans from receiving and patronising him. To such a pitch had swelled party and personal feuds. The act was a godsend to the ministry of the 11th of October. An opposition that *Mémoires de Gisquet; accounts moncourt's Vendée; Madame et La of Nouvion and Louis Blanc; Der- Vendée, &c. CHAP. had been gathering in the Chamber disappeared at the sound of Bergeron's pistol. Dupin was voted president, and the address was couched and carried in a sense quite laudatory of the new Cabinet and its ideas. About the period of this criminal attempt upon the King, the breaches were opened before the citadel of Antwerp, which the Dutch persisted in holding. The enthronement of Leopold at Brussels, and the rejection of the Dutch from a second invasion of Belgium by the intervention of a French army, had not brought to a conclusion the difficult question of a delineation of frontier. Neither the King of Holland nor the Belgians were satisfied with the arrangement in Luxemburg, on the Scheldt or the Meuse. King William expected fresh insurrections in France, and sedulously adjourned every settlement in consequence; whilst the Duchess of Berry, at Nantes, awaited the first cannon-shot at Antwerp, as the signal of European war, to be followed by another Vendean one. It was necessary to put an end to the hopes and machinations of all those parties, who built upon the prospect of a general war. of the most intricate points in the adjustment or interchange of frontier were proposed to be left for afternegotiations between Belgium and Holland. One of these points concerned the territory east of Antwerp, and the Scheldt. And the Dutch monarch insisted on holding this frontier, the very key of the dispute, a fortress too within a few leagues of Brussels. To put an end to his pretensions, the new French Cabinet decided on Marshal Gérard's marching to Antwerp and investing its citadel. The English not only gave their adhesion, but blockaded the Dutch coast with a fleet, until such time as its monarch should yield. Such were the difficulties which reigned, and such the rash hopes and thoughts which actuated the most sensible men, that the first demand of Marshal Gérard was permission to attack the Prussians. He was told to confine himself Some |