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43 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson · A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo

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  Speaker 1: Section forty three of A Short History of France by
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  Speaker 1: Mary Duclox. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Pamela and Nagami epilogue. Not since Henry the
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  Speaker 1: sixth of England was crowned King of France, and Notre
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  Speaker 1: Dame had the Great Nation suffered a humiliation so entire
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  Speaker 1: as during that Conference of Allies which occupied Paris during
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  Speaker 1: the summer of eighteen fifteen in order to arrange the
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  Speaker 1: future of Europe and to assume the government of France.
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  Speaker 1: The defeat of eighteen fourteen had been nothing compared to
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  Speaker 1: this complete abasement. France lay prone, while her enemies yelped
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  Speaker 1: and bade about her, each eyeing some juicy, tender morsel
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  Speaker 1: to set its fangs in snatch asunder and carry to
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  Speaker 1: its lair unreproved. The leanest states were the hungriest and
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  Speaker 1: the most pitiless Usia, and the Germans greedy beyond all bounds.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing was too small for them. They stripped the walls
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  Speaker 1: of the public picture galleries. They threatened to blow up
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  Speaker 1: the Yna Bridge memorial of their defeat. Do as you will,
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  Speaker 1: said Louis the eighteenth I warn you, I shall have
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  Speaker 1: myself carried onto the bridge in my arm chair, and
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  Speaker 1: no project for the dismemberment of France appeared to them preposterous.
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  Speaker 1: They would fain have had the kingdom occupied for the
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  Speaker 1: space of seven years by an army of two hundred
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  Speaker 1: and forty thousand men. They wanted a war indemnity of
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  Speaker 1: twelve hundred millions. They claimed French, Flanders, Alsace, Lorraine, Savoy, Burgundy,
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  Speaker 1: Franche Conti, part of Champagne and part of Dauphine. They
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  Speaker 1: wished to separate from the mother country some four million,
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  Speaker 1: seven hundred and sixty thousand souls, And naturally they required
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  Speaker 1: the fortresses dunco ierk Lille, mess Strasbourg, Besonson, Chamberie. At
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  Speaker 1: least the very spirit of destruction possessed them. Austria, indifferent,
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  Speaker 1: well bred, looked on mildly, disapproving this excess of Prussian cupidity.
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  Speaker 1: For her own part, she was less exacting, proposing merely
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  Speaker 1: a return to the historical frontiers of seventeen ninety, an
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  Speaker 1: indemnity of six hundred millions, and the dismantling of the
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  Speaker 1: first line of French defenses in Flanders and Alsace. Yet
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  Speaker 1: she did nothing to oppose the hungrier despoilers, hypocritically benign,
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  Speaker 1: secretly not a little ferocious, as is the wont of Austria.
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  Speaker 1: The unhappy King of France could do nothing. These furies
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  Speaker 1: who spoke of dismembering his kingdom were the allies who
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  Speaker 1: had restored his throne. In its secret sessions, the conference
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  Speaker 1: had drawn up a map of France of the miserable
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  Speaker 1: remnant left when all these avidities should be satisfied. Such
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  Speaker 1: mysterious meetings were never so occult as their members imagine. Somehow,
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  Speaker 1: their de marcana are generally violated. A copy of the
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  Speaker 1: map came into the hands of the old king, sitting forlorn,
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  Speaker 1: unfriended in his Tuileriy. Louis the eighteenth, whatever were his faults,
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  Speaker 1: never failed in dignity. He sent for the Duke of Wellington,
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  Speaker 1: for the Emperor Alexander. He spoke first to the conqueror
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  Speaker 1: of Waterloo. My Lord, Duke, I thought, on my return
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  Speaker 1: to France to reign over the kingdom of my forefathers.
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  Speaker 1: It seems that I was mistaken. Will your government, my lord,
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  Speaker 1: grant me a refuge if for the second time I
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  Speaker 1: ask the hospitality of England the impulse of Alexander left
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  Speaker 1: the Duke no time to answer, No, No, your majesty
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  Speaker 1: shall not lose those provinces. I will not suffer it.
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  Speaker 1: From that moment, perhaps before else, why did the wise
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  Speaker 1: old king send especially for those two representatives of his allies.
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  Speaker 1: But at any rate, certainly from that moment, France, in
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  Speaker 1: her extremity, saw two unexpected angels, two miraculous champions, detached
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  Speaker 1: themselves from the rout of her oppressors and stand by
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  Speaker 1: her side. They were Alexander and Wellington. At first they
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  Speaker 1: were much more Alexander and Wellington than Russia and England,
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  Speaker 1: but that was to follow. Alexander was an autocrat who
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  Speaker 1: summed up in his person all the Russias. But Wellington
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  Speaker 1: and Castlereagh had some difficulty and some merit, in bringing
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  Speaker 1: the English at home round to their point of view.
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  Speaker 1: In their chivalrous action, as in Alexander's, there was more
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  Speaker 1: than the magnanimity that met the eye. The character of
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  Speaker 1: Alexander of Russia is one of the most interesting and
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  Speaker 1: modern history. Only a mystic could be at once so
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  Speaker 1: dreamily high minded and so alertly practical, so ingenuous, and
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  Speaker 1: so shrewd A calculator, so noble and so full of guile.
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  Speaker 1: Alexander was the Saint Francis Xavier of nineteenth century politics,
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  Speaker 1: more spiritualized than ever in eighteen fifteen, being under the
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  Speaker 1: influence of Madame de Crudenais and pledged to further the
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  Speaker 1: reign of Christ on Earth. But for the last year
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  Speaker 1: he had looked with suspicion on the new importance of
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  Speaker 1: Prussia of Germany. France, bounding these countries upon their further
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  Speaker 1: side would be an incomparable ally for the government of
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  Speaker 1: the Czar in the east. Also, France might prove for
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  Speaker 1: Russia an excellent counterpoise to the influence of Great Britain. No,
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  Speaker 1: from every point of view, moral or mundane, it was
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  Speaker 1: clear that conquered France must not be too much enfeebled.
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  Speaker 1: Wellington and Castlerey, meanwhile, were ruminating thoughts not wholly dissimilar.
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  Speaker 1: England too might want one day a friend in need,
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  Speaker 1: and who's so handy as a neighbor? Especially, did they
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  Speaker 1: dread too close an alliance between France and Russia. The
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  Speaker 1: principal arguments of Castlereagh, wrote Gagern, the representative of the Netherlands,
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  Speaker 1: are the necessity of keeping Russia within bounds. For Russia
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  Speaker 1: has a kindness for France and tends to an alliance,
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  Speaker 1: while England seeks to outlive her in generosity and moderation.
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  Speaker 1: May Ilia la maniere, Alexander spoke from an impulse of
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  Speaker 1: the heart, no less than from a deep political calculation.
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  Speaker 1: He had never forgotten those words of Tyleerance at Erfurt.
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  Speaker 1: The French nation is civilized, the sovereign of Russia is civilized.
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  Speaker 1: Let the Emperor of Russia be the ally of the
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  Speaker 1: people of France. Alexander felt a moral duty of protection
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  Speaker 1: toward the French, and in his then mood of Vicar
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  Speaker 1: of Christ on Earth, we may suppose that he regarded
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  Speaker 1: the distressful country as his lost sheep, whom he would
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  Speaker 1: bring back to the fold on his shoulder. After all
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  Speaker 1: these years. The accents of his arguments are moving, as
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  Speaker 1: he complains of the Germans who degrade the cause of
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  Speaker 1: the Allies by their violence and their vengeance, their unmannerly avarice,
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  Speaker 1: their pretensions to Alsace and Lorraine lesalsascien repugne, a deevignier
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  Speaker 1: a lament. I entirely share your Majesty's opinion as to
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  Speaker 1: the extravagant character of the Prussian proposals chimed in the
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  Speaker 1: Duke of Wellington. The Duke's task was not light, for,
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  Speaker 1: as I have said, he had to convert his government
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  Speaker 1: at home, and above all to sway and manage that
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  Speaker 1: tremendous force. The British public inclined to look on the
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  Speaker 1: French as a sort of Catholic heathen. Better than cannibals,
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  Speaker 1: and manners and morals take something, wrote Lord Liverpool. Wellington
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  Speaker 1: took as little as he could, filched a few works
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  Speaker 1: of art, and that with so bad a grace that
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  Speaker 1: he set the French against him, while he barely calmed
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  Speaker 1: the folks at home. But in essentials no less than Alexander,
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  Speaker 1: he stood the friend of France. Langeletaire novupa quilarive de
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  Speaker 1: mal a la Franz, complains the German diplomatist Nisenow in
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  Speaker 1: a letter to the poet Aren't and he scarce knows
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  Speaker 1: what to argue from en pare per versite. But Wellington
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  Speaker 1: stood firm. He had not Alexander's mystical magnanimity, but he
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  Speaker 1: had a sportsman's liking for fair play, a soldier's fellowship
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  Speaker 1: for the adversary. He had found it so hard to
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  Speaker 1: beat a gentleman's dislike for the avarice of the Germans.
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  Speaker 1: Both he and Castlereagh wrote to Lord Liverpool that the
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  Speaker 1: prosperity of France once was England's advantage. Thanks to England
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  Speaker 1: and Russia, France was not dismembered. She lost but a
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  Speaker 1: recent acquisition Savoy, and a few frontier fortresses not of
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  Speaker 1: the first rank, these last which were French. Since Louis
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  Speaker 1: Catours being cruel sacrifices still mauled and maulcted, France was
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  Speaker 1: left alive, with all her limbs and all her faculties
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  Speaker 1: organically perfect. Here let me quote again that verse of
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  Speaker 1: Renzard's which I have printed in my second fly leaf,
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  Speaker 1: Le coulois samble o soule verdissent plu zont le coupes
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  Speaker 1: et pluci lea nisson erechton en branche d'a vondage prenan
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  Speaker 1: viger de Saint prot pre do homage. The Gaul is
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  Speaker 1: like the verdant willow bush. The more uprune, the more
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  Speaker 1: it's lithe and lush, shooting a crown of branchy twigs,
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  Speaker 1: all round and draws new life and vigor from a
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  Speaker 1: wo ouned We know what life, what vigor, our pruned
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  Speaker 1: Laurel France was to find in the nineteenth century in art,
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  Speaker 1: in letters. For just as we take leave of her,
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  Speaker 1: the first Romantics arrive on the horizon in science too,
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  Speaker 1: with La Marque le Verrier, Claude Bernard Pastor, and the
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  Speaker 1: rest in industry, in social science, and also in politics,
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  Speaker 1: tending ever more and more as her history evolves to
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  Speaker 1: that alliance which was foreshadowed more than a hundred years
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  Speaker 1: ago in the Tragic Paris of eighteen fifteen. End of
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  Speaker 1: section forty three, read by Pamel Andagami, m d. In Encino, California,
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  Speaker 1: November twenty twenty one. End of a short history of
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  Speaker 1: France from Caesar's Invasion to the Battle of Waterloo by
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  Speaker 1: Mary du Clou