University of Virginia Library

PARIS AT THE RESTORATION.

Paris presented a singular aspect just after the downfall of
Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbons. It was filled
with a restless, roaming population; a dark, sallow race, with
fierce moustaches, black cravats, and feverish, menacing looks;
men suddenly thrown out of employ by the return of peace;
officers cut short in their career, and cast loose with scanty
means, many of them in utter indigence, upon the world; the

broken elements of armies. They haunted the places of public
resort, like restless, unhappy spirits, taking no pleasure; hanging
about, like lowering clouds that linger after a storm, and
giving a singular air of gloom to this otherwise gay metropolis.

The vaunted courtesy of the old school, the smooth urbanity
that prevailed in former days of settled government and long-established
aristocracy, had disappeared amidst the savage republicanism
of the revolution and the military furor of the empire:
recent reverses had stung the national vanity to the quick;
and English travellers, who crowded to Paris on the return of
peace, expecting to meet with a gay, good-humored, complaisant
populace, such as existed in the time of the “Sentimental Journey,”
were surprised at finding them irritable and fractious,
quick at fancying affronts, and not unapt to offer insults. They
accordingly inveighed with heat and bitterness at the rudeness
they experienced in the French metropolis: yet what better had
they to expect? Had Charles II. been reinstated in his kingdom
by the valor of French troops; had he been wheeled triumphantly
to London over the trampled bodies and trampled standards
of England's bravest sons; had a French general dictated
to the English capital, and a French army been quartered in
Hyde-Park; had Paris poured forth its motley population, and
the wealthy bourgeoisie of every French trading town swarmed to
London; crowding its squares; filling its streets with their
equipages; thronging its fashionable hotels, and places of amusements;
elbowing its impoverished nobility out of their palaces
and opera boxes, and looking down on the humiliated inhabitants
as a conquered people; in such a reverse of the case, what de

gree of courtesy would the populace of London have been apt to
exercise toward their visitors?[2]

On the contrary, I have always admired the degree of magnanimity
exhibited by the French on the occupation of their
capital by the English. When we consider the military ambition
of this nation, its love of glory, the splendid height to
which its renown in arms had recently been carried, and with
these, the tremendous reverses it had just undergone, its armies
shattered, annihilated, its capital captured, garrisoned, and overrun,
and that too by its ancient rival, the English, toward whom
it had cherished for centuries a jealous and almost religious hostility;
could we have wondered, if the tiger spirit of this fiery
people had broken out in bloody feuds and deadly quarrels; and
that they had sought to rid themselves in any way, of their invaders?
But it is cowardly nations only, those who dare not
wield the sword, that revenge themselves with the lurking dagger.
There were no assassinations in Paris. The French had
fought valiantly, desperately, in the field; but, when valor was
no longer of avail, they submitted like gallant men to a fate
they could not withstand. Some instances of insult from the
populace were experienced by their English visitors; some personal
rencontres, which led to duels, did take place; but these
smacked of open and honorable hostility. No instances of lurking
and perfidious revenge occurred, and the British soldier patrolled
the streets of Paris safe from treacherous assault.

If the English met with harshness and repulse in social intercourse,

it was in some degree a proof that the people are more
sincere than has been represented. The emigrants who had just
returned, were not yet reinstated. Society was constituted of
those who had flourished under the late régime; the newly ennobled,
the recently enriched, who felt their prosperity and their
consequence endangered by this change of things. The broken-down
officer, who saw his glory tarnished, his fortune ruined, his
occupation gone, could not be expected to look with complacency
upon the authors of his downfall. The English visitor, flushed
with health, and wealth, and victory, could little enter into the
feelings of the blighted warrior, scarred with a hundred battles,
an exile from the camp, broken in constitution by the wars, impoverished
by the peace, and cast back, a needy stranger in the
splendid but captured metropolis of his country.

And here let me notice the conduct of the French soldiery
on the dismemberment of the Army of the Loire, when two hundred
thousand men were suddenly thrown out of employ; men
who had been brought up to the camp, and scarce knew any other
home. Few in civil, peaceful life, are aware of the severe trial
to the feelings that takes place on the dissolution of a regiment.
There is a fraternity in arms. The community of dangers, hard-ships,
enjoyments; the participation in battles and victories;
the companionship in adventures, at a time of life when men's
feelings are most fresh, susceptible, and ardent, all these bind
the members of a regiment strongly together. To them the regiment
is friends, family, home. They identify themselves with

its fortunes, its glories, its disgraces. Imagine this romantic tie
suddenly dissolved; the regiment broken up; the occupation of
its members gone; their military pride mortified; the career of
glory closed behind them; that of obscurity, dependence, want,
neglect, perhaps beggary, before them. Such was the case with
the soldiers of the Army of the Loire. They were sent off in
squads, with officers, to the principal towns where they were to
be disarmed and discharged. In this way they passed through
the country with arms in their hands, often exposed to slights
and scoffs, to hunger and various hardships and privations; but
they conducted themselves magnanimously, without any of those
outbreaks of violence and wrong that so often attend the dismemberment
of armies.

The few years that have elapsed since the time above alluded
to, have already had their effect. The proud and angry spirits
which then roamed about Paris unemployed, have cooled down,
and found occupation. The national character begins to recover
its old channels, though worn deeper by recent torrents. The
natural urbanity of the French begins to find its way, like oil, to
the surface, though there still remains a degree of roughness and
bluntness of manner, partly real, and partly affected, by such as
imagine it to indicate force and frankness. The events of the last
thirty years have rendered the French a more reflecting people.
They have acquired greater independence of mind and strength
of judgment, together with a portion of that prudence which results
from experiencing the dangerous consequences of excesses.
However that period may have been stained by crimes, and filled

with extravagances, the French have certainly come out of it a
greater nation than before. One of their own philosophers observes,
that in one or two generations the nation will probably combine
the ease and elegance of the old character with force and
solidity. They were light, he says, before the revolution; then
wild and savage; they have become more thoughtful and reflective.
It is only old Frenchmen, now-a-days, that are gay and trivial;
the young are very serious personages.

P.S. In the course of a morning's walk, about the time the
above remarks were written, I observed the Duke of Wellington,
who was on a brief visit to Paris. He was alone, simply attired
in a blue frock; with an umbrella under his arm, and his hat
drawn over his eyes, and sauntering across the Place Vendome,
close by the column of Napoleon. He gave a glance up at the
column as he passed, and continued his loitering way up the Rue
de la Paix; stopping occasionally to gaze in at the shop-windows;
elbowed now and then by other gazers, who little suspected that
the quiet, lounging individual they were jostling so unceremoniously,
was the conqueror who had twice entered their capital
victoriously; had controlled the destinies of the nation, and
eclipsed the glory of the military idol, at the base of whose column
he was thus negligently sauntering.

Some years afterwards I was at an evening's entertainment
given by the Duke at Apsley House, to William IV. The Duke
had manifested his admiration of his great adversary, by having
portraits of him in different parts of the house. At the bottom
of the grand staircase, stood the colossal statue of the Emperor,

by Canova. It was of marble, in the antique style, with one arm
partly extended, holding a figure of victory. Over this arm the
ladies, in tripping up stairs to the ball, had thrown their shawls.
It was a singular office for the statue of Napoleon to perform in
the mansion of the Duke of Wellington!