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To these it may well seem that it matters little whether we were on one side or the other in a fight in which all the figures are antiquated; Bonaparte and Blucher are both in old cocked hats; French kings and French regicides are both not only dead men but dead foreigners; the whole is a tapestry as decorative and as arbitrary as the Wars of the Roses.
In every action of his life Bonaparte had some particular object in view. I recollect his saying to me one day, "Bourrienne, I cannot yet venture to do anything against the regicides; but I will let them see what I think of them. To-morrow I shall have some business with Abrial respecting the organisation of the court of Cassation.
Nor were his honours wholly of a civil character, for he was made an M.A. at Oxford, and so secured himself a notice in Anthony Wood's biographies, where his story concludes with a set of mistakes, so relishably served up, that I must give it in the very words of the Fasti, as follows: "In 1660, a little before the restoration of King Charles II., he betook himself to his heels to save his neck, without any regard had to his majesty's proclamation; wandered about fearing every one that he met should slay him; and was living at Lausanna in 1664, with Edmund Ludlow, Edward Whalley, and other regicides, when John l'Isle, another of that number, was there, by certain generous royalists, despatched.
Yes, I am in hell torment! The regicides who were racked and nipped and torn into quarters by four horses were on roses compared with me, for their bodies only were dismembered, and my heart is torn in quarters " Crevel's thumb moved from his armhole, he placed his hand on the work-table, he abandoned his attitude, he smiled!
The better to deceive his companions, he would read aloud to the Royal Family all the debates of the regicides, which those who were with him encouraged, believing it meant to torture and insult, when the real motive was to prepare them to meet every accusation, by communicating to them each charge as it occurred.
The tribunate and legislative corps are worthy to figure by its side; their members are also ci-devant mechanics of all descriptions, debased attorneys or apostate priests, national spoilers or rebellious regicides, degraded nobles or dishonoured officers.
He told me he wished Her Majesty to be convinced that he was a Frenchman; that he only desired his country might be governed by salutary laws, and not by the caprice of weak sovereigns, or a vitiated, corrupt Ministry; that the clergy and nobility ought to contribute to the wants of the State equally with every other class of the King's subjects; that when this was accomplished, and abuses were removed, by such a national representation as would enable the Minister, Necker, to accomplish his plans for the liquidation of the national debt, I might assure Her Majesty that both the King and herself would find themselves happier in a constitutional government than they had ever yet been; for such a government would set them free from all dependence on the caprice of Ministers, and lessen a responsibility of which they now experienced the misery; that if the King sincerely entered into the spirit of regenerating the French nation, he would find among the present representatives many members of probity, loyal and honourable in their intentions, who would never become the destroyers of a limited legitimate monarchy, or the corrupt regicides of a rump Parliament, such as brought the wayward Charles the First, of England, to the fatal block.
Under him Serbia has for the first time enjoyed real constitutional government. Quietly, as occasion arose, the regicides were removed to the background, the old methods of favouritism were steadily discouraged, and it is not too much to say that an entirely new atmosphere has been created in Belgrade since 1903.
Is it to Genoa that we make this kind promise, a state which the Regicides were to defend in a favorable neutrality, but whose neutrality has been, by the gentle influence of Jacobin authority, forced into the trammels of an alliance, whose alliance has been secured by the admission of French garrisons, and whose peace has been forever ratified by a forced declaration of war against ourselves?
It required great heroism to attempt such a course; for the popular excitement was intense, and the idea of holding any further intercourse with England was scouted as pusillanimous. The tri-colored cockade was seen upon every side, and the partisans of the French regicides appeared again to rule the popular will for the hour.
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