130 Memoir of Armand Carrel. 



ebullitions oF discontent which then showed themselves in many 

 directions against the French government. The military, disgusted 

 with the disposition shown by the court to place matters on the same 

 foundation as in the ancient regime before the revolution, were 

 deeply engaged in it, and especially Carrel's regiment, which was 

 stationed partly at Befort and partly at Neuf*Brisac. The object 

 of the conspiracy was to demand a redress of grievances, and the 

 plan adopted was to rise in both of these towns at the same time ; 

 but the majority of the officers at the latter place, where there was 

 only a battalion of the regiment, refused to move, until they received 

 intelligence of the revolt of the chief body at the former. Carrel 

 accordingly, who entered warmly into the plot, volunteered with a 

 friend to go to Befort to procure this information. He set out at 

 midnight disguised in plain clothes, and arrived there at the moment 

 when the conspiracy proved abortive, having been quelled at its out- 

 break by the government. He immediately retraced his steps, and 

 returned to Neuf-Brisac so quickly, that he appeared in his uniform 

 at parade next morning without its being suspected by the authori- 

 ties that he had passed the night upon the road. He thus saved 

 his brother-officers from committing themselves; and although the 

 government, which had received information that a nocturnal com- 

 munication had taken place between the two towns, made the 

 strictest inquiries to discover the agents of it, Carrel's youth and 

 apparent carelessness placed him beyond suspicion. The secret, 

 however, seems afterwards to have been found out ; and this, along 

 with some letter exposing the misconduct of the military com- 

 mander at Marseilles, to which the 29th had been removed, rendered 

 Carrel's situation so irksome, and so completely excluded all hopes 

 of promotion, that he resigned his commission in the French service. 



Shortly after his retirement from the French army, an event oc- 

 curred, which again called Carrel into military service and had the 

 deepest influence on his future career. Spain, which had long been 

 groaning under the tyrannical misrule of Ferdinand " the beloved," 

 made an effort to throw off its chains; and in 1823 the Constitution 

 of 1812, which is now triumphant, was proclaimed by Mina and 

 some of the other devoted friends of liberty in that country. In this 

 noble attempt for freedom Carrel warmly sympathized ; but he did 

 not, like many others, confine himself to mere sympathy; for he 

 resolved to enter hand as well as heart in the cause, and accordingly 

 embarked at Marseilles, in March 1823, for Barcelona, where he 

 joined the Legion Liberate Etrangere, or Foreign Liberal Legion, 

 which had been raised to assist the constitutional forces in Spain. 

 Carrel enrolled himself in this brigade merely as an ensign ; for he 

 did not, like many others who joined it, attempt to give himself any 

 adventitious rank, but entered in the same station which he had held 

 in the French service. 



But the time for the triumph of constitutional principles had not 

 yet arrived ; and the cause which, (now that it is indomitable,) is in 

 1836 apparently hailed by the governments of England and France, 

 was in 1823 received with no friendly feeling by the former, and 

 with open opposition by the latter. Some friends of freedom in 



