LOUIS XVIII. 



561 



July 16, with his two sons. He was followed by 

 the princes of Conde and Conti, and the dukes of 

 Bourbon, Enghien and Luxembourg. Monsieur 

 remained. As the people were clamorous for the 

 execution of the marquis of Favras, who had sought 

 means for the escape of the king, and had attempted 

 a counter revolution, in which the count of Provence 

 had taken part, the latter went to the hotel de ville, 

 in Paris, the day after the arrest of the marquis 

 (December 26, 1789), to defend himself in person. 

 He asserted that the only connexion he had ever 

 had with the marquis, was, that he had bargained 

 with him for 2,000,000 of livres, wherewith to pay 

 his debts. The people believed that this money was 

 to have been appropriated to the levying of troops. 

 The. marquis was condemned to death, by the chdtelet, 

 and hanged February 19. At last, the violence of 

 the factions in Paris induced the king, June 21, 

 1791, to attempt to escape to the frontiers of the 

 kingdom. Louis took the road to Montmedy, and 

 the count of Provence that of Mons. The former 

 was arrested at Varennes ; the latter reached Brus- 

 sels in safety. From Coblentz, he protested against 

 the decrees of the national assembly, and the re- 

 straints put upon the freedom of the king. When the 

 king, October 30 and 31, 1791, called upon him to 

 return, the princes issued a declaration, that they 

 regarded the constitution as the work of rebels, and 

 that the king held the throne merely in trust, and 

 was obliged to leave it to his posterity as he had 

 received it. January 16, 1792, the legislative as- 

 sembly, therefore, declared the count of Provence to 

 have forfeited his right to the succession. The two 

 brothers of the king, at the head of 6000 cavalry, 

 now joined the Prussian army. After the death of 

 Louis XVI. Monsieur, who had previously been 

 residing at Hamm, in Westphalia, lived at Verona, 

 under the name of count of Lille. In 1795. he was 

 here proclaimed, by the emigrants, king of France 

 and of Navarre. The calamities which afterwards 

 befell him he bore with dignity and resolution. 

 In the following year, wiien the Venetian senate, 

 through fear of Bonaparte, obliged him to leave 

 Verona, he declared himself ready to do so, but 

 required that the names of six princes of his house 

 should first be struck from the golden book of the 

 republic, and that the armour, which his ancestor, 

 Henry IV. had given it, should be restored. He now 

 led a wandering life, supported by foreign courts, 

 especially the British, and by some friends of the 

 house of Bourbon. He first went to the army of 

 Conde, on the Rhine, to serve as a volunteer, but 

 was afterwards obliged to leave it, and went to Dil- 

 lingen, in Suabia. July 19, 1796, at 10 o'clock in 

 the evening, as he was standing at a window, with 

 the dukes of Grammont and Fleury, a musket ball 

 was fired at him, which grazed his temple. " Never 

 mind it," said he immediately to the alarmed dukes ; 

 " a blow on the head, that does not bring a man 

 down, is nothing." When the count D'Avaray ex- 

 claimed, " If the ball had struck a line deeper " 

 Louis replied, " then the king of France would have 

 been called Charles X." From thence he went to 

 Blackenburg, a small town in the Hartz, where he 

 lived under the protection of the duke of Brunswick, 

 and carried on a correspondence with his friends in 

 France, especially with Pichegru. After the peace 

 of 1797, he went to Mittau, where he celebrated the 

 marriage of the duke of Angouleme with the daugh- 

 ter of Louis XVI. When Paul I. refused to permit 

 him to reside any longer in his states, the Pmssian 

 government allowed him to remain in Warsaw. While 

 here, Bonaparte, in 1803, attempted to induce him to 

 renounce his claims to the throne. But he answered 

 to the messenger of the first consul, February 28, " I 



do not confound M. Bonaparte with his predecessors ; 

 I esteem his valour and his military talents, and thank 

 him for all the good he has done my people. But, 

 faithful to the rank in which I was born, I shall never 

 give tip my rights. Though in chains, I shall still 

 esteem myself the descendant of St Louis. As suc- 

 cessor of Francis the first, I will at least say like him 

 'We have lost all except our honour." April 23, 

 the princes concurred in the answer of the king. 



In 1805, Louis, with the consent of the emperor 

 Alexander, returned to Mittau; but the peace of 

 Tilsit obliged him to leave the continent, and he, 

 at last, took refuge in England, in 1807. His 

 brother, the count of Artois, had lived in Great 

 Britain, principally in Edinburgh, from 1796. Louis 

 had taken several steps to procure the restoration of 

 his family in France. With this view, he had writ- 

 ten to Pichegru, and given him full powers. His 

 letter of May 24, 1796, is a proof of the great con- 

 fidence which he had in this " brave, disinterested, 

 and modest " general, to whom, as he then thought, 

 " was reserved the glory of restoring the French 

 monarchy." When the army of the prince of Conde, 

 in which, since 1798, the duke of Berri had com- 

 manded a cavalry regiment of nobles, first in Rus- 

 sian, and afterwards in British pay, had been by 

 circumstances gradually broken up, and had obtained 

 from the Russian emperor the liberty of residing in 

 Volhynia, the princes of the Bourbon family ceased 

 to take an active part in the operations of the war. 

 Louis XVIII., until the conclusion of the great 

 struggle, remained in England, where he lived at 

 Hartwell, in Buckinghamshire, in a very simple 

 manner, occupying himself partly with the Roman 

 classics, especially Horace, of whom he translated 

 much, and retained in memory a large part, and 

 partly with political studies. That he resembled in 

 character his unfortunate brother, we know from 

 several examples of his kind feelings. Soon after 

 the disastrous expedition of the French to Russia, 

 he wrote to the emperor Alexander a letter, recom- 

 mending the French prisoners of war, as his chil- 

 dren, to the magnanimity of that monarch, and he 

 refused to join in the rejoicings in England, for he 

 could not but mourn the death of so many French- 

 men. When the allies invaded France, the count of 

 Artois went to Bale, February 2, 1814. His eldest 

 son, the duke of Angouleme, had gone to join Wel- 

 lington. They published a proclamation from Louis 

 XVIII. to the French, dated Hartwell-house, 1st 

 February, 1814, which induced a party, first in 

 Bourdeaux, and afterwards in Paris, to declare for 

 the Bourbons. The king promised entire oblivion 

 of the past, the support of the administrative and 

 judicial authorities, the preservation of the new code, 

 with the exception of those laws which interfered 

 with religious doctrines; security to the new proprie- 

 tors against legal processes; to the army, all its 

 rights, titles and pay; to the senate, the support of 

 its political rights; the abolition of the conscription; 

 and, for himself and his family, every sacrifice which 

 could contribute to the tranquillity of France. Soon 

 after the dissolution of the congress of Chatillon, the 

 count of Artois entered Nancy, March 19. But the 

 duke of Angouleme first saw the lilies of the Bourbons 

 planted on French ground at Bourdeaux, March 12. 



The restoration of the Bourbons was a subject first 

 brought strongly home to the French, at the time o 

 the entrance of the allies into Paris, by the declara- 

 tion of the emperor Alexander, March 31, that they 

 would treat neither with Napoleon nor with any 

 member of his family. Talleyrand, Jaucourt, the 

 duke of Dalberg, Louis, and De Pradt contributed 

 not a little to this in an interview with Alexander, the 

 king of Prussia, Schwartzenberg, Nesselrode, Pozzo 



tM 



