BOOK ELEVENTH. The Count d'Artois - His character- His position at Court and in France in 1789-His flight from Versailles-His travels in Belgium, Italy, Germany, and Russia-The Count d'Artois and the Count de Provence at Coblentz-Their respective positions during the emigration-War against France-The Count d'Artois retires to England -His intrigues-He leaves England to make a descent upon Brittany-He stops at l'Isle Dieu-His return to London-Letter from Charette-Attempt of the Emigrants of London against the life of the First Consul-Death of Madame de Polastron-Grief of the Count d'Artois-Influence of this death upon the character and politics of the Count d'Artois-The Duke d'Angoulême-The Duke de Berry-The Duchess d'Angoulême-Her life in the prison of the Temple-Death of her brother-She is released from prison, and goes into Germany Her marriage at Mittau-The Duke d'OrleansThe Prince de Condé-The Duke de Bourbon-The Duke d'Enghien -His character-His love-His life at Ettenheim-Napoleon has him watched-The kidnapping of the Duke d'Enghien-He is conducted to Strasbourg-His letter to the Princess Charlotte-His diary-He is taken to Paris, and imprisoned at Vincennes. - I. THE Count d'Artois was younger in point of age than his brother Louis XVIII.; but had he lived a century he would always have been inferior in intellect. His was one of those natures that never come to maturity, because they only possess the qualities and defects of youth. In his adolescence the Count d'Artois had been the idol of his family, of the court, and of Paris. His handsome person, his gracefulness, the thoughtlessness of his character, even the frivolity of his mind, the better corresponded with the mediocrity surrounding him. He had an open and good heart, a prodigal liberality, an integrity of disposition, and chivalric fidelity to his word. His passion for the fair sex-a vice considered excusable, and often honour1 in heroes,—the appearance rather than the reality of mili Character of the Count d'Artois. tary taste a quick and ready wit in repartee-that fertility which his flatterers called the genius of the French-had rendered this young prince popular amongst the aristocratic party; and they had held him up in contrast to his brother, the Count de Provence. The more the Count de Provence had shown himself favourable to the reforms of the kingdom and the popular inclinations of Louis XVI., the more had the Count d'Artois declared himself the disdainful opponent of all concessions, and the determined conservative of the vices and rottenness of the government. He affected to look upon the impending Revolution as one of those transient commotions of the lower orders which should be suppressed and not discussed. None of those ideas which then filled the rest of the world had ever entered into his soul; for these ideas pre-supposed intelligence, and he never reflected. II. Spoiled by the court, flattered by a circle of the young aristocracy, as frivolous and unreflecting as himself, held forth to the army and nobility as the prince who would shortly rally them around the standard of absolute monarchy, and who was to dissipate, with the point of his sword, all the liberal dreams of the nation, and all the cowardly concessions of the throne,-this prince was blind to the Revolution. He went on hunting, acting, loving, finding fault with the court, feeding on the air of antirevolutionary opinion, and recommending to Louis XVI. such violent or daring measures as his counsellors suggested to him. The Revolution, which had long ascertained the impotence of this senile foolery in a young prince, treated it with contempt, while it forgave him his antipathy to itself, not fearing him sufficiently to hate him, and either forgetting him, or considering him of secondary importance. Mirabeau, the Duke d'Orleans, Barnave, the constitutional party, and the Jacobins were all satisfied that there was to be found, in this young prince, neither resource for the government nor serious danger for the Revolution. He was looked upon with indifference. The Queen alone, and those of her own court, such as the Polignacs, the Bezenvals, Lamballes, Vaudreuils, Coiguys, Adhémars, and His flight from Versailles in 1789. Fersens, secretly fomented the imaginary heroisms of the Count d'Artois and the young noblemen who surrounded him. The King loved but never consulted him. The Count de Provence pitied his boastings, and both wished he would quit the court, and thereby remove the unpopularity which he drew upon the King his brother; while the party most opposed to innovation desired still more strongly to constitute this young prince the ambassador of absolute monarchy and the French aristocracy in Europe, to collect around him the emigrants on the frontiers, and establish him, as he had already established himself, the heroic liberator of the throne, and its avenger on the audacity of the nation. The antipathy which the people of Paris felt towards hin, the first popular disturbances, the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, the taking of the Bastile, the ministry of Necker, who had been forced upon the crown, as a foretaste of the dangers and insults the court would be subject to, soon decided him on adopting the last resource of emigration and war against his country. He fled from Versailles at the end of 1789, went to Brussels, and from thence to Irwin, to his wife's family, where he solicited succours and subsidies from the court of Sardinia, collected around him some few members of the discontented French nobility at Chambéry, on the extreme frontier, dispatched some agents to Lyons and through the south of France to agitate in his behalf, failed everywhere, re-crossed the Alps, had some conferences at Mantua with the Emperor of Austria, to induce him to form one of a league of the sovereigns against his country, obtained nothing but promises, met with nothing but tardiness, and at last went to St. Petersburg to Catherine II. This princess, who saw at a glance the bearing of the insurrectionary principles of the Revolution on all nations, was in search of a hero to oppose to the popular leaders. All that had been told her of the Count d'Artois, of his opinions, of his ardour and impatience for the combat, led the Empress to hope that he would prove to be the Maccabeus of thrones. She received him as the future restorer of monarchy in the west, bestowed on him sub He visits all the Courts of Europe. sidies and encouragements, and prepared for him contingents of troops for the Coalition, in which she wished to induce Prussia and Austria to join. She presented him with a sword studded with diamonds, and addressed him in words that enhanced the value of this gift, signifying a declaration of war with France; but she was not long in discovering that the young prince was pos sessed only of the heart and outward appearance of a hero, and that his intelligence, dissipated by a court life, and enervated by the adulations of his flatterers, would be wasted in unsatisfactory attempts and empty boasts, unprofitable to the common cause; and having thus seen him she no longer hoped for anything from his efforts. IV. The Count d'Artois visited in this manner all the courts of Europe, leaving behind him everywhere a favourable impression as to his agreeable manners, his vivacity, and honesty of purpose; but at the same time, a conviction of his insufficiency; and then returning to the banks of the Rhine, he became the hero of Coblentz. The emigration, increased by terror at each fresh attack of the Revolution, and now become almost a fashion amongst the nobility in the court and in the army, had gathered around him with all its fears, its threats, and its imbecilities. He was the prince that suited its fallacies, while he reigned over it by right of self-delusion and shortsightedness, and possessed that popularity which is derived from community of cause and of folly. He drew around him all those unpopular persons and professors of doctrines, whom a sense of their incompatibility with the state of the nation obliged to desert their native land; his was a court composed of the aged and the youthful. The old emigrants talked, wrote, and intrigued for him; the young ones devotedly proffered him their arms and their lives. This little fugitive France in a strange land imagined itself sufficiently strong to combat, hand to hand, with the Revolution, and to subjugate revolted France to their young Coriolanus. His intrigues and denunciations against the French Government. ས. The intrigues and threats of the Count d'Artois compromised Louis XVI. in the eyes of his people, and immensely aggravated his embarrassment and his danger in Paris. The young prince was inciting all the powers of the North, and of the German Empire, to war; at the same time that the king, a hostage to France, in the Tuileries, was negociating peace. This unfortunate monarch knew too well that the war, demanded by the Jacobins and Girondists with cunning obstinacy, would give a decisive impetus to the slumbering Revolution, and that the first reverses which France suffered would be the signal for all sorts of accusations and outrages against his family and himself. Robespierre was the only one at this time who, with more policy than the Jacobins and more honesty than the Girondists, opposed the universal impulse in favour of war, and seemed to second the king in his efforts to preserve peace. The fact was, that Robespierre had a theory to work out, and the Jacobins and Girondists nothing but interest and ambition to gratify. The determined tribune, which was destined later to make such criminal use of the axe, was at this time in dread of the sword. He felt, with all the accuracy of instinct, that if the war was unsuccessful, it would crush the Revolution; and that, if it was successful, it would quickly turn the army against the National Assembly, create an armed populace, which is the worst of all for a democracy, and cause arms to dominate over ideas. But the King and Robespierre, by themselves, could not control the Count d'Artois, the emigrants, the Jacobins, and the Girondists, who all believed their interest lay in a war, to which they all sacrificed the King, and war accordingly broke forth. VI. The Count d'Artois left the conduct of the war to the Prince de Condé, the Duke de Bourbon, and the young Duke d'Enghien, who was born a soldier. He had been rejoined at |