ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH EMIGRATION.* FOR a long time it
was the habit of historians to sneer at the French loyalists who, at the beginning of the great Revolution, left their country to serve in the army of Conde, and to earn their bread as they best could in England, Switzerland, Austria, and America. They were accused of a want of spirit, patriot- ism, and resolution, and stigmatised as the degenerate members of a privileged caste. But juster views of their conduct now prevail. According to their lights, they were not unpatriotic— they were only unintelligent. Deprived of their honours and estates, harried, hunted, and threatened with death, utterly unfitted by training or education to make head against the furious violence of the Jacobin revolt, they saw in exile their Only chance of safety. Their king was in exile; and for them to throw in their lot with their royal master seemed, in their eyes, far more patriotic than to remain among a frenzied people, who had repudiated every restraint of honour, of loyalty, and of religion. But the emigrants made a serious mistake in allying themselves with the foreign enemies of France. It was quite within their right to raise the standard of civil war and try to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne of his ancestors by force of arms. But when they placed their swords at the service of the Allies, and above all of Austria, they became the sport of fate, and ran the risk of being made instruments in the dismemberment of the country for whose integrity they were as anxious as the most patriotic member of the Jacobin Club. This was an error of judgment ; but even had they been more astute and retained their freedom of action, their wrongheadedness would have rendered abortive the best-laid schemes for effecting the objects they had at heart. They seemed to labour under an actual physical disability to comprehend the character of the events which were passing before their eyes. They dreamt of nothing less than the restoration of the old regime in all its integrity, with its absolutism and hierarchies, its haughty nobles and subservient people. They thought that everything which had befallen since the assembling of the States General might be wiped out as with a sponge. France was simply labour- ing under temporary insanity ; when she came to her senses she would be the old France once more. The Bourbon who afterwards became her King was very little wiser than his followers. Yet it was in his restoration that the English Government of 1794 saw the sole chance of securing peace. And peace at that time was ardently desired. In England, as well as in France, the suffering was severe, the taxes were heavy, and the people discontented. In Paris, the populace were de- manding the Constitution of 1793, and clamonring for bread ; in London, the mob were crying "Down with Pitt I" "Down with the war !" and "Down with famine!" and when the King went to open Parliament his carriage was beset by an angry mob, and he himself was hooted and threatened. Pitt also wanted peace; he had no liking for war for its own sake, but he wanted peace on his own terms. He was resolved to retain all the Colonies which England had conquered; and so long as France remained mistress of Belgium and suzerain of Holland, he did not believe that permanent peace was possible. Hence the conditions of peace, in Pitt's mind, were independent of the form of government. At the same time, he doubted that the Republicans could make peace • L'Angleferre et VEmigralion Fravicaise, de 1794 d 1801. Par Andre Lebon. Avee une Preface par Albert Sorel. Paris : Plon at Cie. if they would, or would if they could. He thought that war was - necessary to their political existence, and feared that the advent to power of a military dictator might render peace unattainable. For these reasons he desired the restoration of the Monarchy, not for the sake of the Bourbons, but for the sake of England and peace. He believed that if the French people could le reconciled with their ancient Kings, they would prefer repose to ambition ; and that the King, de jure, would willingly compound for his crown by surrendering the conquests of the Revolution. But, to be lasting, the restoration would need to be effected by the joint efforts of the King and the Royalists, with the consent of the majority of the French people, who were credited with an ardent desire to throw off the yoke of the Convention and the Clubs. It would not have been politic, even if it had been possible, for England openly to engage in this work ; but the Government were quite ready to contribute to its success by every means in their power. They sent Mr. Wickham, a confidential agent of the Foreign Office, to Basel, with instructions to enter into relations with the emigrants who had taken refuge there with the army of Conde, and with the Royalists who still remained in France, to offer them money and counsel, and, if possible, organise in the East a Royalist insurrection like to that which had broken out two years before in La Vendee.
L' Angleterre et l'Emigration Franaise is the history of Wickham's mission. The author, M. Andre Lebon, chief of the Cabinet to the President of the Senate. was trained in that Ecule Libre des Sciences Politiques which has rendered so many services to France and to historical research. The remarkable preface, as clear, impartial, and exact as the summing-up of an
ideal judge, is the work of M. Albert Sorel, one of the principal secretaries of the President of the Senate. Hence both these
gentlemen combine with wide historic lore a knowledge of practi- cal politics, and command access to the best sources of informa- tion. The author has found much of his material in the archives of the English Foreign Office, the Record Office, and Wickham's Correspondence, published in 1870. At the time in question Switzerland, as she is still, was a neutral country ; and Basel, as being close to Germany, and not far from France, became a city of refuge, a centre of intrigue, and a laboratory of plots
There the emigrants planned their conspiracies. Basel was the central manufactory of royalist pamphlets and false assignats. All the political waifs in Europe assembled there. Grace-of-God Royalists, who expected salvation by miracle, met there Constitutional Royalists, who discussed, as warmly as ever, the separation of powers and the question of two Chambers. It was there that Barth6lemy conducted his embassy, which was really a Ministry in partib us, and collected information on the condition of Europe for the Republican leaders at Paris. It was there that Mallet du Pan, who had organised a marvellous inquiry agency, prepared the admirable reports on the condition of France which European statesmen may have read, but which they certainly did not understand. Re has painted the crowd of emissaries, itinerant ministers, crack-brained enthusiasts, and pro- fessional plotters who at that time swarmed in Switzerland, gossiping, intriguing, committing stupidity after stupidity, and disgusting all, men of sense! They abounded especially among the emigrants."
It was in this strange world that Wickham was destined for three years to play a leading part. The Foreign Office could hardly have made a better choice. A man with a fine sense of honour would probably have declined so equivocal a mission ; but the English Envoy was not a man with a fine sense of honour. He never doubted that he was doing a good work ; and though he failed in his task, the fault was not his, and more than once he seemed within measurable distance of success. Nominally a Minister accredited to the Swiss Republic, be was in reality Chief Director of Royalist
conspiracies against the Government of France. His own Government supplied him with ample funds, and he employed a small army of spies, messengers, informers,. and agents. He bad highly-placed correspondents in the French capital, entered into secret relations with some of the Republican leaders, and almost succeeded in corrupting a Member of the Directory. He was ready, in fact, to corrupt
anybody who could be of use to him ; and he found few who. were not ready to take his money, though they did not
always earn their wages. He tried hard to organise risings among the Royalists of the interior, and to persuade Austria to co-operate with the army of Conde in an invasion of France. But the infatuation of the emigrants and the greed of the Hapsburgs wrecked his best-laid schemes. The Monarchy desired by the Legitimist party in France, as well as by the Government of England, was a Constitutional Monarchy, and the former were fully aware that no movement not based. on the retention by the peasantry of their purchases of national property—the forfeited estates of fugitive owners—and the integrity of the national territory, had, any chance of suc- cess. But to these facts both the emigrants and the Allies were utterly blind. The Revolution had taught them absolutely nothing. The policy of the emigrants was the restoration of the ancient regime pure and simple, nothing less. To the new France, which had beaten every army sent against her, they had only one offer to make,—unconditional surrender to her rightful King and heaven-sent nobles, of whom her horror was so great that, to escape their domination, she had met Europe in arms and submitted to the degrading tyranny of the Terror. The future Louis XVIII. declared his intention of reinstating the dispossessed proprietors in their previous position ; and when Lord Macartney visited his throneless Majesty at Verona, in 1795, the King surprised the shrewd British Envoy by affirming that the old French Constitution was "the wisdom of ages and the perfection of reason," and that without the "scale of subordination" which it indicated, society could not exist. Rebellion against it he looked upon as the worst, because most causeless of crimes ; and the only sort of Assembly he was prepared to tolerate was one purely deliberative. The Austrians, on their part, were hungering after more territory ; and although they had been worsted in the war, they wanted, if they did not openly demand, Alsace—or some equally substantial recompense—for their ser- vices in restoring King Louis to the throne of his ancestors. In this policy they had, to a certain extent, the support of the English Government, who thought that the Allies had a claim to "indemnities." All this was known at Paris, for Barthelemy kept a constant watch over Macartney and his movements ; and the Frenchman's secret service was even better organised than that of the British Envoy.
In these circumstances the French had nothing for it but to resist to the death. They did not care particularly for political liberty, but they did care for the security of their possessions, and the integrity of the territory which they had inherited from their forefathers, and conquered from their enemies; and they were ready to-welcome any ruler who would guarantee the one and protect the other. The European statesmen of that age seem to have been stricken with judicial blindness ; in their dealings with France they did not display even that small modicum of wisdom with which Oxenstiern told his son the world was governed. It was they who rendered Napoleon possible ; they created a monster, a Frankenstein, whom in the end Europe had to destroy at the cost of vast treasure, in- numerable lives, and untold suffering.
Pitt's schemes and Wickham's intrigues came to naught, as they deserved to do. As for the emigrants, "repulsed by France, isolated in the middle of Europe, they were doomed to continual deceptions, to neglect, and to ruin. Their alliance with foreigners alienated them from their countrymen ; the hatred of their countrymen lost them, in the end, the friendship of foreigners. The restoration of the Monarchy was the sole object of their alliance with foreign confederates, and that very alliance rendered the restoration impossible. Hence the inevitable failure of the mission confided to Mr. Wickham and Lord Macartney."
M. Lebon's book is fall of interest. His quotations are frequent and at times perhaps rather too long; but the remedy for this defect, which is not a serious one, is in the reader's own hands, and the work must be pronounced a valuable contribution to the history of one of the most fateful episodes of modern times.
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