Memoirs of Napoleon, vol 14 | Page 4

sample the author's ideas before
making an entire meal of them. D.W.]

MEMOIRS OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, VOLUME 14.
By LOUIS ANTOINE FAUVELET DE BOURRIENNE

His Private Secretary
Edited by R. W. Phipps Colonel, Late Royal Artillery
1891

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER VII.
to
CHAPTER X.
1815

CHAPTER VII.
--[By the Editor of the 1836 edition]--
1815.
Napoleon at Paris--Political manoeuvres--The meeting of the Champ-
de-Mai--Napoleon, the Liberals, and the moderate Constitutionalists
--His love of arbitrary power as strong as ever--Paris during the Cent
Jours--Preparations for his last campaign--The Emperor leaves Paris to
join the army--State of Brussels--Proclamation of Napoleon to the
Belgians--Effective strength of the French and Allied armies --The
Emperor's proclamation to the French army.
Napoleon was scarcely reseated on his throne when he found he could
not resume that absolute power he had possessed before his abdication
at Fontainebleau. He was obliged to submit to the curb of a
representative government, but we may well believe that he only
yielded, with a mental reservation that as soon as victory should return
to his standards and his army be reorganised he would send the
representatives of the people back to their departments, and make
himself as absolute as he had ever been. His temporary submission was
indeed obligatory.
The Republicans and Constitutionalists who had assisted, or not
opposed his return, with Carnot, Fouche, Benjamin Constant, and his
own brother Lucien (a lover of constitutional liberty) at their head,

would support him only on condition of his reigning as a constitutional
sovereign; he therefore proclaimed a constitution under the title of
"Acte additionnel aux Constitutions de l'Empire," which greatly
resembled the charter granted by Louis XVIII. the year before. An
hereditary Chamber of Peers was to be appointed by the Emperor, a
Chamber of Representatives chosen by the Electoral Colleges, to be
renewed every five years, by which all taxes were to be voted,
ministers were to be responsible, judges irremovable, the right of
petition was acknowledged, and property was declared inviolable.
Lastly, the French nation was made to declare that they would never
recall the Bourbons.
Even before reaching Paris, and while resting on his journey from Elba
at Lyons, the second city in France, and the ancient capital of the
Franks, Napoleon arranged his ministry, and issued sundry decrees,
which show how little his mind was prepared for proceeding according
to the majority of votes in representative assemblies.
Cambaceres was named Minister of Justice, Fouche Minister of Police
(a boon to the Revolutionists), Davoust appointed Minister of War.
Decrees upon decrees were issued with a rapidity which showed how
laboriously Bonaparte had employed those studious hours at Elba
which he was supposed to have dedicated to the composition of his
Memoirs. They were couched in the name of "Napoleon, by the grace
of God, Emperor of France," and were dated on the 13th of March,
although not promulgated until the 21st of that month. The first of these
decrees abrogated all changes in the courts of justice and tribunals
which had taken place during the absence of Napoleon. The second
banished anew all emigrants who had returned to France before 1814
without proper authority, and displaced all officers belonging to the
class of emigrants introduced into the army by the King. The third
suppressed the Order of St. Louis, the white flag, cockade, and other
Royal emblems, and restored the tri-coloured banner and the Imperial
symbols of Bonaparte's authority. The same decree abolished the Swiss
Guard and the Household troops of the King. The fourth sequestered
the effects of the Bourbons. A similar Ordinance sequestered the
restored property of emigrant families.

The fifth decree of Lyons suppressed the ancient nobility and feudal
titles, and formally confirmed proprietors of national domains in their
possessions. (This decree was very acceptable to the majority of
Frenchmen). The sixth declared sentence of exile against all emigrants
not erased by Napoleon from the list previously to the accession of the
Bourbons, to which was added confiscation of their property. The
seventh restored the Legion of Honour in every respect as it had existed
under the Emperor; uniting to its funds the confiscated revenues of the
Bourbon order of St. Louis. The eighth and last decree was the most
important of all. Under pretence that emigrants who had borne arms
against France had been introduced into the Chamber of Peers, and that
the Chamber of Deputies had already sat for the legal time, it dissolved
both Chambers, and convoked the Electoral Colleges of the Empire, in
order that they might hold, in the ensuing month of May, an
extraordinary assembly--the Champ-de-Mai.
This National Convocation, for which Napoleon claimed a precedent in
the history of the ancient Franks, was to have two objects: first, to
make such alterations and reforms in the Constitution of the Empire as