XLIV. CHAP. Bellune, War; Clermont Tonnerre, Marine. Thus the close of 1821 brought as the necessary consequence of an exclusively Royalist chamber, an exclusively Royalist administration. Whilst the panic and anti-revolutionary tendencies of the governing and more wealthy proprietorial class was thus transferring power to the ultra-Royalists and ultrareligious party, the more active and educated ranks of life, including the professional and the military, being denied the open warfare of Parliament and of the press, turned to the formation of secret societies and conspiracies. There were numbers of the former, but they all merged at last into that of the Carbonari, of which the name and organisation was borrowed from Italy. Not sure of the sincerity of the King or government, the ultra-Royalists did the same. They formed societies, at least semi-secret, for the enforcement rather than the propagation of religious observances, and for the restoration of the country to its ancient state of political subjection to a King, an aristocracy, and a priesthood. Such was the aim of what was called the Congregation. Its opponents mustered in gatherings called Ventes or Venta of Carbonari. The future judge, counsellor, minister, and legislator of Louis-Philippe, even those who like Barthe became the Justice Minister of the Orleans dynasty, enrolled their names at this time in the Haute Vente or the subordinate one. Lafayette was president. Notwithstanding the care of successive war ministers to purify the army, it was necessarily filled by the generation which, if it did not witness, had heard of, the warlike exploits of Napoleon, and who saw in his memory, apotheosised by his recent death, a more noble object of reverence than aught the restoration could offer. The non-commissioned officers were universally anxious for another such emperor, to restore their profession its old advantages. Military plots were thus formed in the east, west, and south, in the great garrison town of Befort, the cavalry school of Saumur, and at Marseilles. The conspiracy of Béfort was the most important, as the plan of insurrection comprised Strasburg and Metz, whilst funds to organise and support it were supplied by the rich manufacturers of Mulhausen.* The time of the plot exploding was fixed for the first days of 1822. Lafayette and his son, Manuel, and Dupont de l'Eure, Scheffer, and D'Argenson, were hastening to the scene of action, when they were stopped on the road by the intelligence, that the plot had been discovered, one of the conspirators seized, and the rest in flight. The officers in the secret had ordered their soldiers to prepare for a march, without acquainting them with the purpose. They unconsciously divulged it, and the attempt was so prematurely quashed, that the chief conspirators had full time and opportunity to escape and avoid detention. No sufficient proofs to warrant death was found against those seized, but for an attempt or rather an intent, to rescue them, Colonel Caron was condemned to death and executed. The military plot at Marseilles evaporated by the discovery of that of Befort. Those of Saumur and La Rochelle, though equally failures, still took a deep hold of public interest, from the fact of a general being found to be at the head of them, and from the circumstance of the existence and activity of a Carbonari Vente being completely disclosed to the government. Saumur was one of the most disaffected towns of the Loire, the entire region, indeed, being more or less so. The existence of a cavalry school in the town, as well as a garrison, added combustibles. A Vente of Carbonari was formed there, as at Nantes and La Rochelle. The chiefs had been at Paris, had seen and consulted with Vaulabelle's Histoire des Deux Restorations, well informed of the plans and doings of the Liberals of the epoch, offers here the fullest XLIV. CHAP. the leading liberal deputies there, and had agreed to The Berton and his accomplices fled to the coast, some to escape, he to redeem his failure by another attempt. In the mean time, a regiment quartered in Paris, and found to be deeply infected with Carbonarism, was ordered out of it to proceed to La Rochelle. It was the noncommissioned officers of the regiment, and especially the sergeants that had engaged in the plot. Four of them formed a kind of fraternity, known in popular language as the four sergeants of La Rochelle.* government, alarmed by the frequency and universality of these conspiracies, made at this time extraordinary efforts, and disseminated spies and agents, especially throughout the regiments. Some insinuated themselves amongst the conspirators of La Rochelle, others attached themselves to Berton in an insurrectionary movement, which he was preparing at Saumur. The Carbonari were thus betrayed, their chief members, military and civil, at La Rochelle seized, some not remaining proof to the interrogations, menaces, and cajoleries of the law and police officers. * Even to this day 1866, their tombs are religiously visited by crowds of the people, in the cemetery of Mont Parnasse, on the commemoration of All-Saints. XLIV. The Rochellois were brought before a Paris tribunal, CHAP. whilst General Berton underwent his trial in the provinces. His treason could not be denied, but the public sympathy was awakened in his favour, not only by the ill-treatment which he had previously received, but by the baseness of the officer who had wormed himself into the general's confidence, and betrayed him. Although Lafayette and his brother Carbonari were far more deeply implicated in the Béfort conspiracy, than in that of Saumur and La Rochelle, still the latter elicited more evidence against them. The sergeants of La Rochelle had been introduced to the chiefs of the Haute Vente, and received instructions from them, and of the conspiration of Saumur. Baudrillet and Grandmesnil had spoken with Lafayette in Paris, and received encouragement and information from him. Baudrillet had admitted this in his first interrogation, but being reproached for his weakness by Grandmesnil, he afterwards evaded the importance of what had escaped him, by giving a very different description of the Lafayette he had seen and talked to, from what that personage really was. Still, as the public accuser of the time maintained the complicity of Lafayette and others, the Liberals in the Chamber were most vehement in their indignant remonstrance. Lafitte and Périer, who were alluded to, though they had ever refrained from the conspiracies in which Lafayette meddled, were as loud in their abnegation. There cannot be imagined a more striking scene, or more critical moment, than that which occurred during one of these debates-Grandmesnil, the physician of Saumur, had escaped to Paris. Whilst his friends were preparing the means for his further evasion, one of them brought him to the gallery of the Chamber of Deputies to witness the debates. He there heard himself attacked as contumace by the ministerial side, and as an agent provocatif of the police by the other. Several times he XLIV. CHAP. arose in agitation, about to declare himself and belie such charges. Once he put his leg over the wooden barrier before him, as though he would jump into the house and denounce both parties. Fortunately, his friend was able to restrain him, and save him from a position so dangerous to all parties. If Grandmesnil was thus persuaded to hold his peace, and Baudrillet to unsay what he had said, the four sergeants of La Rochelle, though offers of life were held out to them, if they would make disclosures, were also firm in preferring death to what they considered dishonour. And thus Lafayette and others escaped, through the stern fidelity of the victims, the fate to which the Royalists would have gladly doomed them. The failure of this wide-spread conspiracy or conspiracies is surprising. The merest chance defeated one or two of the attempts, which, had they succeeded, would have generated an instantaneous and irresistible rising throughout the country. The French, indeed, showed themselves bad conspirators on the occasion. Lafayette, especially, was little fitted for such a task. Sanguine, easy, scrupulous, he was as unfit a chief, as the Carbonari could have chosen. Still the House of Bourbon owes much to fortune for having escaped the conspiracies of 1822. And yet fortune, at the time, played them but a sorry trick, for the triumph, then so easily obtained over disaffection and rebellion, civil and military, inspired the ultra-Royalists with a hardihood, and with a contempt of their antagonists, which induced them to venture upon acts more bold and more rash, till the popular resentment was sufficiently roused to effect that in the open day which the Carbonari, in their secret Ventes, had utterly feared to conceive, much less to accomplish. It is probable, that had the Royalist minister been other than M. de Villèle, he would have rushed into a prosecution of the chief Liberals, and produced increased |