France Volume 7; 1789-1848, with Supplementary Chapter, 1848-1898 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. GLOKY AND SUCCESS (1804?1805). On the eve of the declaration of the Senate in favor of the empire, Cambaceres had said to Lebrun, '' All is over! the monarchy is re-established! But I have a presentiment that what they are now constructing will not be durable. We made war upon Europe to give it republics, which should be daughters of the French Republic; now we shall make it to give Europe monarchs, sons or brothers of ours; and France, exhausted, will finally succumb to such fatal attempts." A year before that, when the consulship for life was proclaimed, the wise and virtuous Tronchet, when a sorrowful witness of the revolutionary crimes against which he had defended King Louis XVI., had shown the same inquietude and fatal presentiment. " This young man begins like Caesar," he said of General Bonaparte; "I am afraid he may end as he did." The daggers of the Roman conspirators had arrested Csesar in his course. Napoleon had found neither a Brutus nor a Oassius: he reigned without contest, by a triumphal acclamation of 3,572,329 suffrages against 2569 " Noes." The country was eager to salute its new master, with a curiosity mixed with confidence in the unexpected resources of his genius. fhe courtiers alone around him who had found no place in the prodigal distribution of honors, muttered their murmurs. They served him nevertheless; and Talleyrand remained minister of foreign affairs, even when all the important posts of the empire had escaped Ms desires. With more calmness and pride than the courtiers, Moreau and the royalist conspirators waited in prison for their verdict. Napoleon was as eager as they were, being in haste to rid himself of an embarrassment which could become a danger. In proportion as the trial proceeded, Moreau's case was more and ...