Napoleon's British Visitors and Captives, 1801-1815
9781465678621
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The French Revolution, of which—philosophers regarding it as still unfinished—this book is really a chapter, produced a greater dislocation of individuals and classes than had been known in modern times. It scattered thousands of Frenchmen over Europe, some in fact as far as America and India, while, on the other hand, it attracted men of all nationalities to France. It was mainly a centrifugal, but it was partly a centripetal force, especially during the Empire; never before or since was France so much as then the focus of political and social life. Men of all ranks shared in both these movements. If princes and nobles were driven from France there were some who were attracted thither even in the early stages of the Revolution, while Napoleon later on drew around him a galaxy of foreign satellites. To begin with the centrifugal action, history furnishes no parallel to such an overturn of thrones and flight of monarchs. With the exception of England, protected by the sea, Scandinavia and Russia by distance, and Turkey by Oriental lethargy, every dynasty of Europe was shaken or shattered by the volcano. The Bourbons became wanderers on the face of the earth. Louis XVI.’s two brothers went hither and thither before finding a secure resting-place on British soil. The elder, ‘Monsieur,’ Comte de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.), fled from Paris simultaneously with his crowned brother, but, more fortunate than poor Louis, safely reached Belgium. The younger, Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.), had preceded him by nine months. Both re-entered France in 1792 with the German and Royalist invaders, but had soon to retreat with them. Monsieur betook himself first to Ham in Westphalia, and next to Verona, but the Doge of Venice, fearful of displeasing revolutionary France, ‘invited’ him to withdraw. Russian hospitality likewise proved ephemeral, but in England, first at Gosfield, then at Wanstead, and lastly at Hartwell, he was able quietly to await the downfall of the Corsican usurper. D’Artois found halting-places at Venice, Mantua, Brussels, and St. Petersburg, and for a few days he was a second time on French soil in the island of Yeu; but the failure of the expedition to western France soon obliged him to recross the Channel, where Holyrood and eventually London afforded him a refuge. Of the jealousies of these two exiled princes, and of the mortifications and dissensions of their retinues, it is needless to speak. The Duke of Orleans (the future Louis Philippe), deserting the Republican army along with Dumouriez, after teaching in a school in Switzerland, and after a visit to America, where he spent a night in an Indian wigwam, also repaired to England. There he was doomed to long years of inactivity, though he would fain have joined the English forces in Spain, in which case, as having fought against France, he could scarcely have grasped the French crown. The Duc de Bourbon likewise settled in England, and it would have been well had his unfortunate son, the Duc d’Enghien, followed his example. The king’s two aunts, one of them the reputed mother of the Comte de Narbonne, himself escorting them and destined to ten years of exile, found their way to Rome, but driven thence by the French, after many buffetings they ended their wanderings and their lives at Trieste.
