AFTER the downfall of Napoleon the monarchs of Europe had a very difficult task to perform. Not only were the domestic institutions of their states, which had been overthrown by the French conquest and in many cases altered by French decrees, to be regulated anew or reinstated on a firm footing, but the relations between governments and subjects were to be reorganized on a new basis, in conformity with the liberal principles which had spread from France and been adopted readily by the intelligent and educated classes in Germany. Solemn promises had been made by the German princes to their peoples in order to enlist their sympathies in their final efforts against Napoleon, and after the Corsican had been dethroned, they were expected to carry out these promises. Especially was this true of Prussia and the smaller German states, whose inhabitants had been promised a system of representative government and a constitution limiting the powers of the executive. Such promises were very inconvenient to some of these governments, and they were rather inclined to forget and abandon them than to carry them out in good faith. Moreover Russia and Austria, the representatives of autocratic power in Europe, exerted their influence on the German governments in a direction opposite to the popular aspirations, and encouraged them to ignore their pledges given under the stress of invasion. It should be remembered that the Holy Alliance, of which Metternich was the inspiring genius, had been formed not only against Napoleon, but also against the freedom and the popular rights of the nations of Europe. In spite of its high-sounding and sanctimonious title, the Holy Alliance was the curse of nations, and it would have extended its nefarious influence even beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and would have crushed the national aspirations for independence and self-government in the states of Central and South America but for the timely issue of the Monroe Doctrine, which saved the Western hemisphere from “Holy Alliance” interference.
It was only after the united efforts of the nations culminated in the final dethronement of Napoleon, and after the Vienna Congress had apportioned the heritage of the Empire among the victorious monarchs that the nations became aware that the liberal promises they had received while these monarchs were in distress were either not to be redeemed at all, or redeemed only in part. The sagacity of the statesmen of continental Europe was bent on defrauding the people of those civil and political rights which had been held out to them as part of the reward to be won by repelling the attacks of Napoleon, and the sovereigns were only too willing to assist them in carrying out this deception.
Unfortunately some of these sovereigns were of inferior mental calibre and not at all fitted for the great work of reconstructing their shattered monarchies after the tremendous convulsions of the preceding twenty years, and they were perfectly dwarfed by a comparison with the colossus who had moulded Europe so long solely according to the inspirations of his genius or ambition. Alexander of Russia had the reputation of being a man of ability; but this reputation was without solid foundation. At the period immediately following the overthrow of Napoleon he was entirely under the influence of Madame Krüdener, a religious enthusiast and visionary, who skilfully concealed her immorality under pietistic propagandism. She filled Alexander’s mind with vague and mystic ideas of his divine mission as a ruler, in which the human rights of his subjects had no place. Frederick William the Third, King of Prussia, was a weakling of the worst sort. He had actually been forced into the anti-Napoleonic movement by the enthusiasm of his people, and after national independence had been accomplished he trembled lest anything might occur to endanger the public order and tranquillity so dearly purchased. It was therefore comparatively easy for the reactionary elements to get full control of the Prussian government and to prevent any bold reform in a democratic direction. All they had to do was to fill the mind of the timid King with a vague fear that the scenes of the French Revolution might be renewed by inviting the people to coöperation in the government. Even less reliable was the Emperor of Austria, Francis the First, a man naturally distrustful and suspicious, who knew how to conceal his cunning and his antagonism to liberal ideas under the appearance of great personal kindness and bonhomie. These were the three men of whom Europe expected a great political reform, and never perhaps, in political history, were hopes and expectations so woefully misplaced and doomed to more cruel disappointment than in this case.
It would be unjust to assert that the great mass of the German people felt a deep interest in the introduction of those measures of political reform which the sovereigns had promised when they appealed to the patriotism of their subjects. Most of the Germans, even those belonging to the educated classes, had up to that time paid but little attention to politics, and their political indifference had survived the war for national independence. The nobility, with a few noble exceptions, were not at all anxious to see measures of political reform introduced, because they knew that such measures would curtail their aristocratic privileges and prerogatives.
But there was one class of citizens which had hailed the promises of the sovereigns with unbounded enthusiasm, for they had hoped from their realization a political renaissance for the whole Fatherland and a new era of greatness and world-wide influence recalling the days of the Hohenstaufen,—the glorious days when the German Empire was the first power in the world, and when all civilized nations from the Baltic Sea to the southern shores of the Mediterranean bowed their necks in obedience to the demands of its rulers. This class was the students of the many German universities, scattered over Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, and the smaller German states. Inspired by Schiller, Körner, Arndt, and other poets, these young men had flocked to the standards of Blücher, Scharnhorst, York, and Bülow, and had fought with the courage of lions on the battle-fields of Germany and France for the holy cause of German independence. The hope and dream of another Germany, greater, nobler, more progressive and worthier of being the leader of nations than they had known it before the war, had fanned their enthusiasm into a flame which nothing could extinguish, and which after their return from the war burst forth, here and there, in great patriotic demonstrations.
Dreamers and idealists though they were, they began to transform some of their dreams into reality. They formed a great association embracing the students of all the German universities, north and south,—the German Burschenschaft, in whose organization they embodied the noblest principles of manhood, patriotism, and civic devotion. The ancient German colors, black, red and gold, were revived to adorn their banners, their caps, their sashes and badges. Quite a literature of patriotic and students’ songs suddenly sprang into existence, in which the dream of a great united Germany appeared in the mind’s eye as a living reality. Many of the professors of the universities, who had also been volunteers in the war and had shared the enthusiasm of the students, joined them in their patriotic devotion and lent the authority of their names and writings to their aspirations of national political revival. Arndt’s famous national song, “Where is the German’s Fatherland?” with the reply, that the German fatherland embraces all the countries in which the German tongue is heard and in which German song rises heavenward, is the typical expression of that most enthusiastic period of German student-life.
The Burschenschaft became an organization of national importance. It had its admirers, but it had also its enemies; and unfortunately the latter were mostly to be found among the nobility. The feeling prevailing against the Burschenschaft in the government circles of the different German states was therefore decidedly hostile, and waited only for an opportunity to show that hostility. This opportunity soon presented itself and, it must be admitted, was brought about by the reckless audacity of the members of the association. In the year 1817 the tercentenary of the great German Reformation was to be celebrated with unusual splendor, and the Burschenschaft profited by this occasion to make a public demonstration in behalf of its patriotic principles. It selected as the place of its convention the Wartburg, where Martin Luther resided upon his return from the Diet of Worms and, to make the convention especially noteworthy and solemn, had chosen the eighteenth of October, the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic, as the principal day for the celebration.
An immense number of visitors from all parts of Germany came to Eisenach, situated at the foot of the Wartburg, and delegations of students from all German universities, adorned with their German colors and carrying black, red and gold banners with patriotic inscriptions, assembled on the historic ground and participated in the festivities, for which an elaborate programme had been arranged. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and for the time being all those petty jealousies which had so often disturbed the cordial fellowship of the inhabitants of different German states had disappeared, and all those present revelled in the exuberance of patriotic sentiment; they were all the children of one great fatherland, a great united nation! The songs and the speeches repeated and echoed this one thought. It lived uppermost in the hearts of those young enthusiasts, but presented itself to their minds rather as a vague poetic ideal than as a stern political reality. Among the thousands of visitors there was, perhaps, not one who had seriously thought of the political realization of the dream. Imprudent as these too boisterous demonstrations had been during the day, there was enacted late in the evening, when most of the guests had already left the famous castle, a sort of theatrical performance, which irritated the conservative and reactionary classes exceedingly and resulted disastrously for the Burschenschaft. This performance was gotten up in imitation of a famous scene in Luther’s life—the burning of the papal bull. Massmann, a student of the university of Jena, represented the Luther of the nineteenth century. A large bonfire was built, and amidst boundless enthusiasm a number of books and other materials, odious to the students, were thrown into the flames and destroyed. Among the books was Kotzebue’s “History of the German Empire,” Haller’s “Restoration of Political Science,” Section 13 of the Federal Constitution, etc. Besides the books, a corset such as used to be worn by the officers of the Prussian guards, a Hessian queue, and an Austrian corporal’s mace were also thrown into the fire.
The Wartburg celebration produced tremendous excitement throughout Germany. The reactionary elements were wild with indignation. They accused not only the managers of the festivity and the Burschenschaft of revolutionary tendencies, but they included in this charge all the young men of the Empire, averring that they had grown up under the influence of the pernicious doctrines of the French Revolution and French armies of occupation, and wanted now to apply those doctrines to the reorganization of German institutions. They also demanded that the organizers of the Wartburg celebration should be prosecuted and punished as traitors. All the conservative and government papers opened a regular war upon the seditious and revolutionary tendencies of the universities, and the agitation reached its climax by the publication of a memorandum addressed by Baron Stourdza, a Russian councillor of state, to the Emperor Alexander, in which he predicted that a bloody revolution would result unless these seditious tendencies were speedily repressed. The Stourdza memorandum had originally been intended for the use of the governments only. The Czar had sent a copy to each European government, but one copy of it had found its way to the office of a Paris newspaper and had been published. The excitement among the German students rose to the boiling-point, and their wrath was concentrated against Russia. It was only too well known that Russia had in her employ a number of spies scattered throughout the German states, who kept her government well posted on the political and social currents. The most prominent of these spies was August von Kotzebue, a man of great literary talent and distinguished as the author of many comedies and dramas, but politically of extreme conservative views. The attacks of the liberal press were therefore mainly directed against Kotzebue, whose reports to the Russian government were supposed to have inspired Stourdza’s memorandum.
At that time there was at Jena a student of the University, of irreproachable character, excellent conduct, not especially distinguished by eminent ability or talent, but inclined to religious and patriotic exaltation. His name was Carl Ludwig Sand; he came from Wunsiedel, the birthplace of the famous German humorist, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. He had been a volunteer in the war against France and had embraced the doctrines of the Burschenschaft with the greatest enthusiasm. The denunciations of the German students in Stourdza’s memorandum filled him with profound indignation, especially against Kotzebue, whom he blamed as the principal sinner. Moreover the frivolous, half indecent character of many of Kotzebue’s plays had often revolted Sand’s moral sentiment. He considered him a source of corruption for the young men and women of the nation, and when to this wrong the charge of political treason and espionage was added, Sand thought that nothing but death was an adequate punishment for Kotzebue. He considered also that it was not only a moral, but a patriotic duty to inflict upon him that punishment. He knew that the act would cost him his life, but that consideration did not for a moment deter him from undertaking it. He did not consult with anybody about it, but he conceived, planned, and executed it all alone.
On the ninth of March, 1819, Sand left Jena and proceeded to Mannheim, where Kotzebue lived. Two weeks later, on the twenty-third of March, 1819, a young stranger appeared at the Kotzebue residence, and said that he wished to see the councillor in order to hand him personally a letter of introduction. The servant delivered the message, and after a few minutes Kotzebue himself appeared in the hall and invited Sand—for it was he—to come in. Sand handed him the letter; but no sooner had Kotzebue opened it and begun to read it than Sand plunged a long dirk-knife into his breast with the words, “Take this as your reward, traitor to your country!” And he stabbed him again and again with fatal effect. Thereupon he thrust the knife into his own breast, but had strength enough to run out into the hall, where he handed the astounded servant a sealed document containing a well-written justification of his murderous act, and inscribed: “Death Punishment for August von Kotzebue in the name of virtue.” Running out into the street, where a crowd of people assembled, attracted by the screams of the servant, he called out in a loud voice: “Long live my German fatherland!” and kneeling down he forcibly plunged the knife into his breast once more, exclaiming: “Great God, I thank thee for this victory.”
Sand’s wound was serious, but a skilful operation saved his life. On the twentieth of May, 1820, he was executed at Mannheim, after a lengthy trial and a painstaking investigation, in the course of which the German and the Russian police made great efforts to discover accessories to his crime. All these efforts failed, however, and the murder of Kotzebue could be accounted only an individual act of patriotic exaltation. The result of Sand’s self-sacrifice was very different from what he had expected. In fact, Kotzebue’s assassination proved disastrous to the liberal movement throughout Germany; it furnished a welcome pretext for the most repressive measures against the press, against the universities, against the Burschenschaft, against liberty in whatever shape or form it might manifest itself. That long era of political reaction was inaugurated against which the German people rebelled with only partial success in 1848 and 1849, and from which only the ejection of Austria and the reorganization of a new German Empire on a more liberal basis in 1871 gave them permanent relief.
THE political situation in France, after the overthrow of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, was even more difficult and more precarious for the governing classes than it was in Germany. The French nation, proud in the consciousness of having occupied the first place in Europe for twenty years, chafed at the idea of living under a king whom foreign rulers and foreign armies had imposed on France, and who, in consequence, had to act in blind obedience to the dictates of these foreigners. The danger of a new violent outbreak against the Bourbon government was therefore ever present not only to the French mind, but to the mind of Europe, and to guard against it the foreign powers had made it one of the terms of peace with France that a foreign army of occupation should hold possession of the northern and northeastern provinces of France until the entire war indemnity exacted from the vanquished country had been paid. While the foreign occupation was ostensibly a financial measure, it was in reality a military measure giving to the foreign powers the keys to the interior of France and to Paris, in case a new invasion should become necessary. Not only was the position of the King rendered difficult by his political opponents, the Imperialists and the Republicans, but its hardships and difficulties were materially aggravated by the senseless and extravagant demands of the Royalists, who had in large number returned to France with the foreign armies. These Royalists, many of whom had been absent from France for twenty years or more, on their return from their voluntary exile, found their estates and manors, which had been confiscated under the Revolution, in the possession of strangers; all the superior offices in the civil service and the higher positions in the army, which they claimed as their own by right of birth, were filled by men of low extraction. They therefore turned to the King and demanded of him the restoration of their lost estates of their aristocratic privileges.
The King, Louis the Eighteenth, was perhaps the most intelligent of all the monarchs of Europe, but he lacked force of character, and, moreover, his long life in exile, with its pleasures and enjoyments as a sybarite and epicurean, had but poorly qualified him for his suddenly imposed tasks. He was expected by Europe to hold his own in a population the majority of whom were opposed to him, and who had learned that a king could be easily got rid of, if the people did not want him. Although Louis the Eighteenth, with his penetrating sagacity, clearly saw the instability of his throne, he honestly wished to make the best of the chance the fortune of war had given him. He was willing to give the French people a liberal government, provided it could be done without endangering the throne, and without violating the pledges given to the monarchs who had reinstated him. He might have even more energetically opposed the reactionary demands of the ultra-Royalists, who recognized his younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, as their leader, if his experiences, especially during the “Hundred Days,” had not filled him with disgust and suspicion toward the Imperialists. While Napoleon was in Elba, Louis the Eighteenth kept all the Bonapartist generals and high officials in office, relying on their promises and assurances of fidelity; but on Napoleon’s return they all betrayed him, and either flocked to the standards of the Emperor or declared their adhesion to his cause as soon as he had set foot on French soil.
Perhaps the man who had sinned most in this respect was Marshal Ney, who in a personal interview asked of the King as a personal favor to be placed in command of an army corps and to be sent against the Emperor, pledging himself to bring Napoleon in chains before his throne. Louis granted the Marshal’s request, but instead of capturing the Emperor, Ney went over to him with his entire army corps and fought at Waterloo again as the “bravest of the brave” in the imperial army. In vain he sought death on the field, when he saw that the battle was lost; it was reserved for him to die by French bullets in the Luxembourg garden of Paris, fired by royalist officers, disguised as common soldiers. From party hatred, these men had volunteered to act as executioners of one of the greatest military heroes of revolutionary France. Labédoyère and other famous generals who were traitors to Louis were executed; others saved their lives by flight. The great Carnot and other Imperialists were banished from France.
The impression made upon the ultra-Royalists by these severe measures against men who had shed lustre upon France, was in the highest degree deplorable. These fanatics supposed that the Bonapartists and Republicans of the whole kingdom were utterly at their mercy. They secretly organized a special government, under the presidency of the Comte d’Artois, at the Pavilion Marsan for the purpose of bringing to justice all those who had participated in the Napoleonic coup d’état or in the Revolution of 1789. A new era of terrorism was organized by these “white Jacobins,” as they were significantly called, and the most cruel excesses were committed in the provinces. La Vendée, which had fought so heroically for the Bourbon dynasty, treated the Imperialists and Republicans generously; but in the South, where religious fanaticism added fuel to the flame of political hatred, the most atrocious excesses and murders were committed. Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, Toulouse and other cities of the South were disgraced by the butchery of hundreds of Protestants; in some of them the victims of religious and political persecution died at the stake. At Avignon the famous Marshal Brune was assassinated; at Toulouse, General Ramel; at Nîmes, Count de la Garde. Wholesale assassinations and butcheries were organized; armed bands, fanaticized by the priests, roamed through the country, and butchered the Protestants en masse. Ten thousand of the unfortunates fled to the mountain recesses of the Cevennes, choosing rather to die from hunger and cold than to be tortured to death. Juries composed of the most intolerant Royalists lent their aid to these outrages, by condemning the Protestants to death and acquitting the assassins. The veterans of Napoleon’s army and forty thousand officers, many of whom had served with distinction under the imperial eagles, were driven from their homes and wandered from village to village begging for bread and shelter. The northern provinces were spared these outrages, but the one hundred and fifty thousand foreign soldiers stationed in their towns and fortresses were terrible reminders of the humiliation and shame which the restoration of the Bourbons had brought upon France.
The French Chambers were entirely under the control of the extreme Royalists. They enacted laws which reduced the political conditions of France to those which had existed prior to 1789. They looked upon the Revolutionary era and the Empire as upon a lawless interregnum which should be ignored by the government, and they demanded that all the old institutions of the kingdom should be revived. They were so bold and so insolent that they overawed the government for a while. Very reluctantly the King consented to several tyrannical laws,—for instance, the law referring all political crimes to special courts, composed of one officer and four judges, from whose decision no appeal could be taken. But the King saw to his regret that his acquiescence in these immoderate demands had no other effect than to make the ultra-Royalists bolder and more arrogant. They demanded a curtailment of the right of suffrage, a reënactment of the right of primogeniture and other feudal measures.
The King’s patience was exhausted; he refused to sanction any of these laws and dissolved the Chambers. In their impotent rage the disappointed ultra-Royalists applied to the foreign powers, asking their intervention in behalf of absolute royalty, and imploring them to compel the King to desist from his pernicious protection of Jacobins and regicides. Metternich sent this strange petition to the French government. But neither the King nor his favorite minister, M. Decazes, was scared by such foolhardy steps. They coolly ignored them and courageously inaugurated a series of political reforms in order to reassure public opinion. Instead of reducing the number of electors (as the ultras demanded), they largely increased it. To the periodical press and the daily newspapers was given greater liberty; the censorship, which had been exceedingly annoying, was abolished. At the same time, by the able financial management of the Duc de Richelieu, the 1,600,000,000 francs war indemnity was reduced to 502,000,000 francs and a large number of the foreign troops were withdrawn from the northern provinces. These liberal and patriotic measures followed one another in quick succession and made a very favorable impression upon the people. The liberal parties were willing to coöperate with the government in its endeavor to restore the prosperity of the country, to relieve the distress of the masses, and to free France from foreign occupation. The Chambers of 1818 and 1819 also coöperated with the government, and the liberal party was represented in them by a small number of illustrious men,—such men as Lafayette, General Foy, Benjamin Constant,—men who were more patriots than partisans. In fact, everything indicated a return of speedy prosperity, when an event occurred which at one blow crushed the hopes of the patriots, paralyzed the hand of the government, and reinstated the extremists in power. This event was the assassination of the Duc de Berry, the hope of the Bourbon dynasty.
On its return from exile the royal family of France consisted of:
The King, formerly Comte de Provence.
The King’s brother, the Comte d’Artois, and his two sons:
The Duc d’Angoulême, and
The Duc de Berry.
The Comte d’Artois, the presumptive heir to the throne, was born in 1757, and was consequently fifty-seven years old on his return to Paris. He was ultra-Royalistic in his political views and was considered the head of the extremists. His eldest son, the Duc d’Angoulême, was born in 1775, and had retired from France with his father at the commencement of the Revolution. He was a man of very mediocre ability, but of exemplary character. In 1799 he was married to his cousin Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, daughter of Louis the Sixteenth, who had passed her unhappy childhood in prison, which she had left only in 1795. She was worshipped by the entire royal family as an angel of kindness and mercy. They had no children.
The younger son, the Duc de Berry, was born in 1778, and had passed his youth and early manhood in exile. He had a more manly character than his brother, and the French nobility of the old régime looked upon him as the hope of the Bourbon dynasty. Far from being a genius, the Duc de Berry was a man of good intelligence, brave, dashing, and the very type of a French officer, prior to the Revolution. He had many of the generous traits, but also some of the vices of that elegant and high-spirited class of young men. While living in exile, in England, he formed a liaison with a young Englishwoman, who bore him two daughters, to whom he was greatly attached and whom he took to Paris and placed in a young ladies’ academy. In 1816 the King married him to a Neapolitan princess, Caroline, daughter of the Crown Prince of that kingdom, a handsome, high-spirited, healthy young woman, who gave promise of giving the dynasty direct heirs. The newly married couple lived very happily together, and enjoyed life in the French capital to its fullest extent. They were really the official representatives of royalty and its splendors,—neither the King nor the Duc d’Angoulême caring much for the entertainments, balls, and receptions of court life. The prominence thus given to the Duc de Berry, and the expectation that through him the elder line of the Bourbons would be continued explain fully why he was singled out as the victim of assassination. He was not only identified with the extreme Royalists, so odious to the people, but, with him out of the way, it was only a question of time when the elder branch of the dynasty would die out entirely, no more issue being expected from the Duc d’Angoulême, who had been married already twenty years without having children. Such were at least the considerations of the young man who undertook the perilous task of killing the Duc de Berry, and who fully accomplished his purpose.
This young man was Jean Pierre Louvel, a resident of Versailles, an enthusiastic admirer of Napoleon, whom he considered the living embodiment of the greatness and honor of France. Napoleon’s dethronement he wanted to revenge on the Bourbons, in whose interest it had taken place, and who, in his opinion, were utterly unworthy to rule over the French nation. Louvel was a saddler, thirty-two years of age, debilitated in appearance, and considered a political fanatic by all who knew him. He had no family or relations except one sister, considerably older than himself, who had brought him up, and with whom he lived. He hated the Bourbons so intensely that in 1814, when the royal family landed at Calais on their return from exile, he intended to make an attempt on the life of Louis the Eighteenth; but the great enthusiasm of the people discouraged him. During all these years his wrath against the Bourbons had steadily grown, and he had never for a moment abandoned his plan of killing the whole family,—first the Duc de Berry, then the Duc d’Angoulême, then the Comte d’Artois, and finally the King. He considered De Berry the most important and the most dangerous man of the whole family because in him were centred the hopes of continuing the dynasty.
He had been very persistent; he had found employment in the royal stables at Versailles, and whenever the Duc de Berry was out hunting, he tried to find an opportunity to get near him; he frequently went to Paris and studied the advertisements of new plays or operas, expecting that the Duke would attend a first performance. Twenty times he had been close to him on such occasions, but had always been prevented by the number of friends or attendants surrounding him from getting near enough to stab him, and stab him so well that he could not escape; for everything depended on making a success of the attempt.
After long and patient waiting he found his opportunity. It was during the last days of the carnival preceding the season of Lent, in February, 1820. The grand masquerade ball at the opera was to take place on the thirteenth, and it was a matter of absolute certainty that both the Duc and the Duchesse de Berry, who were very fond of dancing, would attend it. When Louvel got up and dressed, he had a joyful presentiment that that day would bring him the realization of his long-cherished plan. He had in his possession two daggers of very superior quality, both sharp as razors and strong enough to penetrate flesh and sinew to the handle. He had studied the human anatomy well enough to know exactly where to strike his victim. He chose the smaller dagger of the two because he could more easily conceal it; took his supper with good appetite and without betraying unusual agitation; and then he started on his mission of death. He was promptly at his post at eight o’clock when the carriage of the Duc de Berry drove up to the private entrance reserved for the members of the royal family. The Duke was not expected so early in the evening, and consequently there were not so many attendants gathered near the entrance. The Duke jumped out of the carriage, and held out his arm to help the Duchess to alight. This was the proper moment for Louvel, if he wanted to commit the crime. He was on the point of rushing toward the Duke, when the smiling and lovely face of the Duchess appeared in the light of the lantern, and this sight paralyzed the arm of the murderer. He hesitated at the thought that his crime would plunge these two happy persons into nameless misery, and before he had recovered his equanimity, the Duke and his wife had disappeared behind the entrance door of the theatre.
Louvel blamed himself for his faintness of heart and wanted to postpone the deed to some later day; but the thought that he would have to go back to Versailles in a few days and that no such opportunity might offer itself for a long time, caused him to change his mind. That very night his plan must be executed, and either the Duke or himself should perish. For several hours he strolled through the streets in the neighborhood of the Opera House, went to the garden of the Palais Royal and back again, always keeping a watchful eye on the carriages that stood waiting for the call of their owners. At twenty minutes past eleven the carriage of the Duc de Berry drove up to the entrance door. Louvel stood near by, almost hidden in the shadow of the wall, and entirely unnoticed by the attendants of the royal equipage. He was not kept waiting for a long time; for a little accident had occurred which induced the Duchess to return much sooner than they had anticipated. Their box at the Opera House was near that of the Duc and Duchesse d’Orléans, who were also at the theatre that evening; the two families were on terms of great intimacy, especially the two duchesses, both being Neapolitan princesses. At one of the intermissions of the performance De Berry and his wife went to the box of the Duc d’Orléans for a friendly chat, but on their return to their own box, a door opposite was quickly opened and struck the Duchess with such violence that she felt very unwell. In her delicate condition (she was enceinte at the time) she thought it would be better for her to return home than to wait for the close of the performance and the masquerade ball. The Duke therefore conducts his wife back to the carriage and lifts her into it; the Comtesse de Bétysi, her lady of honor, takes her seat by her side; the duke shakes hands with both ladies and with a smiling “au revoir, I’ll be home soon,” steps back from the carriage. At this moment Louvel rushes forward, lays his left hand on the duke’s right shoulder and plunges his dagger with so much force into the Duke’s right side that the weapon remains in the wound. The Duke, mortally wounded, sinks to his knees, and utters a slight scream, more of surprise than of pain. As is usually the case in such assaults, the victim had rather felt the shock than the wound, and only when he reached out with his hand to the spot where he had been hurt, he found the handle of the dagger, and comprehended the meaning of the attack. He then cried out: “I am struck to death, I have been assassinated!” and as he pulled the dagger from the wound, a stream of blood gushed forth. The Duke fainted in consequence of the loss of blood, and was carried back into the Opera House, where the Duchess followed him with loud screams. In the first confusion Louvel made his escape, but he was soon overtaken and brought back to the scene of the murder. The excitement and the indignation of the people were so great that he would have been torn to pieces but for the active protection of the police and of the servants of the Duc de Berry who were afraid that by his death his accomplices and accessories to the crime might be shielded.
The most eminent surgeons of Paris were immediately summoned to the assistance of the Prince. But the wound was fatal, and all their efforts were in vain. In the presence of death the Duc de Berry showed a very generous and magnanimous heart. He implored his wife, his brother, and all others surrounding his bed to use their influence with the King to get his murderer pardoned, and expressed his profound sorrow that he had been stabbed by a Frenchman. Up to his last moment the thought that his murderer would be executed in a cruel manner disturbed him, and when toward morning the King came to bid him farewell, he repeated his request that the murderer should be forgiven and not be executed; but without eliciting the promise from his uncle. With this dying request for the life of his murderer on his lips, he expired very early in the morning.
The sensation which the assassination of the Duc de Berry created not only in Paris, but throughout France and Europe, was enormous. All parties equally condemned and lamented the crime. While the ultra-Royalists deplored in the murder the extinction of all their hopes for the establishment of the old Bourbon dynasty on a sure foundation, the liberal parties foresaw that it would put an end to the liberal tendencies of the government of Louis the Eighteenth. The sinister forebodings of the liberals were only too well founded. The Royalists tried at first to create the impression that the murder was but the symptom of a widespread conspiracy organized by the revolutionary elements of the kingdom against the royal family and the entire nobility, and boldly charged the liberal policy of the government as being the cause of it. In a session of the Chambers one of the deputies went even so far as to move the impeachment of M. Decazes, Minister of the Interior, as an accessory to the crime committed by Louvel. While the Chambers refused to act upon this infamous motion, the entire Royalistic press demanded the dismissal of Decazes, and the King reluctantly yielded to the universal demand. “M. Decazes has slipped in the blood shed by Louvel’s dagger,” wrote Chateaubriand in commenting on the dismissal of the liberal minister. And that era of reaction and repression commenced which ten years later ended in the dethronement of the elder branch of the Bourbon dynasty and in the flight and exile of Charles the Tenth. The entire liberal party was punished for the crime of one fanatic.
Louvel was tried before the Chamber of Peers. He pleaded guilty. He denied having any accomplices. He had conferred with nobody. He recognized the dagger as his own; he gave his hatred and abhorrence of the Bourbon family as his only motive for the crime. He was convicted unanimously. He expressed no regret for what he had done, and died with stoical indifference. He was guillotined June 7, 1820.
IN the annals of this nation no tragedy more pathetic has been recorded than the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.
The Civil War which had divided the country into two hostile camps for four years and had laid waste the Southern States of the Union—or the Confederate States of America, to designate them by the name they adopted—was at an end. General Lee had surrendered the army of Virginia, the flower of the Confederate fighting forces, to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, and while General Johnston’s army in North Carolina, and a few separate minor corps, still remained in the field, Lee’s surrender was generally construed as the termination of the long and cruel war, and joy ruled supreme throughout the North. Liberty had triumphed, and four million slaves had been emancipated!
The surrender of Lee took place on the eighth of April, 1865. On the following day President Lincoln visited the late capital of the Confederacy. He traversed the city in all directions, and everywhere he manifested the kindest disposition towards the South, and expressed the wish that all traces of the unfortunate war should disappear as soon as possible and that cordial relations between the two sections of the country should be reëstablished at once. Very likely there was not a man in all the Northern States happier at the prospect of a lasting peace than Abraham Lincoln. His great and noble heart, sensitive as a woman’s, had been bleeding for years at the sight of the gigantic fratricidal war, of which Providence had made him the most conspicuous figure. But five weeks before, he had entered upon his second presidential term, and in his inaugural address he had foreshadowed the policy of leniency and moderation which he intended to show to the “rebels” in case of the final victory of the Union armies. That address revealed the true inwardness of the great man; it was spoken with an eloquence peculiarly his own; it was full of thought, sweetness, firmness, unswerving fidelity to duty, high morality made more impressive even by the simplicity and originality of language. At the same time it breathed a tenderness for the vanquished which made it almost an olive-branch tendered to those who were still in arms against the government and inviting them to return to the hearthstones of the nation of which they had been the favored sons and daughters for nearly a century. Although the triumph of the Union and its armies was already in sight as an event of the near future, nothing in that address indicated boastfulness and supercilious pride. No arrogance, no pompous reference to the superiority of the North in heroism or exploits! On the contrary, the President humbles himself before the decrees of the Almighty, he confesses the great national crime and the justice of the immense punishment.
In the tone of sadness pervading the beautiful oration there is almost the presentiment of death and that supreme resignation which sometimes takes possession of the soul on the verge of the grave. Already he had planned a proclamation of pardon,—a general amnesty, excluding none, a full and complete restoration of concord and brotherhood between the North and the South, when all at once the terrible news “Lincoln has been assassinated! Lincoln is dead!” flashed over the telegraph wires and filled the whole North with terror. As if nothing was to be wanting to make this gigantic Civil War a tragedy to both sides, the man whose very name was the embodiment of liberty and the symbol of emancipation, and who more than any other man had contributed to the great triumph, had to succumb at the moment of victory. The election of Abraham Lincoln had given the signal for the organization and outbreak of the slaveholders’ rebellion, and it was certainly a remarkable coincidence that the tolling of the church-bells in towns and cities through which Lincoln’s funeral train slowly wended its way from the capital to his Western home was heard simultaneously with the news of the collapse of that rebellion and of the final extinction of human slavery on American soil. This coincidence was almost providential, and if the great Emancipator could have chosen his own time for his death, he certainly could not have made a more appropriate and glorious choice. He became, so to speak, the hero of the great epic of the Civil War—one of the greatest the world had seen,—and his tragical death marked the conclusion of the strife. In the eyes of the fanatical advocates of the Southern cause Abraham Lincoln had always held this prominent position as the principal author of the feud dividing the North and the South, and it is therefore not surprising that some of these fanatics had formed a conspiracy to assassinate him and some of his most intimate advisers. About a week after Mr. Lincoln’s visit at Richmond this plot was to be executed.
On the fourteenth of April, 1865, an especially brilliant performance was to be given at Ford’s Theatre, Washington, and Mr. Lincoln, General Grant, and Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, were expected to be present; in fact, the Washington newspapers of that date had announced that they would be present. But at the very last moment General Grant was compelled to leave Washington and go North. Mr. Stanton, being overburdened with business and unable to find time to go to the theatre, remained at his office, and only Mr. Lincoln went, accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and a few friends. His appearance was the signal for a grand ovation. He seemed to follow the presentation of the play with close attention and great interest. The third act had just commenced, when the audience was startled by the sound of a pistol-shot proceeding from the President’s box. At the same moment a man appeared in the foreground of that box, jumped upon the balustrade, and thence down to the stage, shouting, “Sic semper tyrannis!” In leaping from the box, one of the man’s spurs got entangled with the flag with which Mr. Lincoln’s box was decorated. He fell and broke a leg, but immediately recovering himself and getting on his feet he had sufficient presence of mind and power of will to make his escape. He knocked down those who tried to stop him, ran through the aisles of the scenery, jumped upon a horse which was kept in readiness for him by an accomplice, and disappeared in the darkness of the night.
This man, who with lightning-like rapidity had appeared on the stage and disappeared from it, was the murderer of Abraham Lincoln; and the murder had been committed so suddenly that the great majority of the audience, even after his flight, were in profound ignorance of what had happened. It was then only that the cries of horror, the loud lamentations of Mrs. Lincoln and of the other persons in the President’s box conveyed to the awe-stricken audience the news of the tragedy which had occurred in their midst. The President, shot through the head from behind, had lost consciousness immediately, and the blood oozed slowly from the wound. However, life was not extinct, and immediately the hope arose that Mr. Lincoln’s life might be saved. He was carried into a neighboring house, and the best surgeons were called to his assistance. But alas! the murderer’s ball having passed through the cerebellum had pierced the cerebrum, and the wound was fatal beyond all hope. Mr. Lincoln died early in the morning without having regained consciousness. The North had lost its greatest citizen and the South its best friend.
While this murder was being committed at Ford’s Theatre, another assassin entered the residence of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been seriously injured by an accident a few days before. The assassin pretended to be the bearer of a medical prescription, and demanded to be admitted to the room of the patient. The servant refused to admit him, but was rudely pushed aside, whereupon the visitor, who evidently was familiar with the location of the rooms, burst into the one where Mr. Seward was lying ill in bed, rushed toward him, seriously wounded Mr. Seward’s son, who threw himself in his way, and thereupon engaged the invalid in a furious combat, stabbing him several times. In spite of his disability, the Secretary defended himself bravely and fought with the courage of despair, until at last the assassin, after having badly cut and disfigured his face, made his escape.
As has been stated already, the plan of the conspirators was to kill not only President Lincoln, but other prominent men, such as Andrew Johnson, the new Vice-President, Secretary Seward, Secretary Stanton, and General Grant. On several occasions the assassins had been on the point of perpetrating these murders, but always unforeseen circumstances had occurred and prevented them. At last this gala performance at Ford’s Theatre seemed to invite them to execute their plot, and they resolved to assassinate Lincoln, Grant, and Stanton at the theatre, and Seward and Johnson at their private residences. By removing these five men the assassins hoped to decapitate the republic itself and imagined that very likely during the terror and confusion which these assassinations would cause, the Southern rebels would take up arms again and capture Washington city. But only one of the five victims designated was killed—alas! it was the most illustrious one of the five—while the others escaped owing to fortuitous circumstances.
As to the murderer of Lincoln, who was identified as John Wilkes Booth, it was ascertained that he had been inspired by an implacable and sincere fanaticism. Son of a celebrated English tragedian who had lived several years in the United States, John Wilkes Booth was himself an actor of considerable ability, who had frequently played on the very stage which he was to desecrate by one of the most infamous assassinations of modern times. Young, handsome, eloquent, and audacious as he was, Booth had a certain prestige among his companions and great success with the ladies of his profession. He was an enthusiastic Democrat, became a prominent member of the “Knights of the Golden Circle,” and believed in the divine origin of the institution of slavery. He had been among the lynchers of John Brown and frequently boasted of his participation in that crime. He often expressed the wish that all such abolitionists should die on the gallows. He and some others, equally extreme in their views on the slavery question, met frequently at the house of a Mrs. Surratt, who was also fanatically devoted to the Southern cause, and concocted there the plot to murder the President and his associates.
After having performed that part of the plot which he had reserved for himself—the assassination of the President—with almost incredible boldness, Booth fled to Virginia. He had intended to continue his flight until he had reached the extreme South, and possibly Mexico, but his injury prevented him from carrying out this plan. In company with one of his accomplices he hid himself in an isolated barn on the banks of the Rappahannock, hoping that as soon as the first storm of indignation had blown over, the search for the murderer would gradually relax, if not cease altogether, and that he would then have an opportunity to escape. But in this calculation he was mistaken. A roving detachment of federal soldiers discovered him in his hiding-place, during the night of the twenty-sixth of April. His companion, realizing that all resistance would be useless, surrendered immediately. But Booth wanted to sell his life as dearly as possible. He tried to break out and escape from his pursuers, but a pistol-shot brought him down with a fatal wound in his head, from which he soon afterwards died. The assassin who had assaulted and seriously wounded Secretary Seward had, a few days before, been captured at Mrs. Surratt’s house.
The effect of Mr. Lincoln’s assassination on the people of the North was indescribable. It filled their hearts with bitterness and their minds with thoughts of revenge. It was averred that the murderer in crossing the stage of the theatre and defiantly brandishing a long knife had exclaimed: “The South is avenged!” This exclamation seemed to implicate the whole South, or at least its government, in the murderous act of Booth. The natural consequence was that the people of the North, who immediately after the surrender of Lee’s army were inclined to great leniency toward the vanquished and willing to receive them back into the Union with open arms, suddenly turned against them. The army and the government circles, and in fact the entire population of the national capital, who had learned to love Mr. Lincoln, demanded the most severe punishment for the rebels. Then began the long and tedious work of reconstruction, retarded by party spirit and retaliatory measures on both sides. It was terminated to the satisfaction of both only during the last few years, when the sons of the South fought shoulder to shoulder with the sons of the North for the deliverance of Cuba from Spanish oppression under the glorious banner of the Union. But how often during these years of contention, was the great man missed whose truly humane spirit would have contributed so much to bring the discordant elements of both sections together in fraternal harmony and mutual respect, and whose hands had penned the noblest document of the nineteenth century—the proclamation of emancipation—setting free four million slaves. Such deeds as his can never be forgotten.
The assassination did a great deal for Mr. Lincoln’s standing in history. It added the halo of martyrdom to his renown as a statesman, and it has made him a national hero, who, next to Washington—or with Washington—holds the highest place in the estimation of the American people. It is doubtful whether Abraham Lincoln, if he had not crowned his career with a martyr’s death, would have held this place. It had especially the effect of wiping out an impression which many had formed of Mr. Lincoln’s character, and which, during the first years of his presidential term, lowered him considerably in the eyes of the people. His Southern enemies and detractors made a great deal of Mr. Lincoln’s “undignified bearing,” his “lack of tact,” “his mania for telling funny stories, in and out of season,” and the Northern Democrats were only too busy repeating and circulating these stories, because they could not forgive Lincoln for having beaten their idol, Stephen Arnold Douglas.
Mr. Lincoln’s distinction was his strong originality and self-reliance. As a young man, with no adviser to guide him through the hardships and embarrassments of life, he took counsel with his own mind, which fortunately was of peculiar depth, rich in resources,—and the advice he received from this consultation, the instruction he gained by this appeal to the fund of his own knowledge and experience served him splendidly as schooling for the task which was in store for him. And joined to this self-education nature had bestowed on him some of her rarest gifts,—humor, kind, genial, and peculiarly humane, blending tears with laughter, and a mother-wit always ready to make fun of his own misfortunes and shortcomings, and to joke away any embarrassing situation in which either untoward circumstances or his own mistakes might have placed him. In addition to all this he possessed that truly American characteristic—shrewdness, which far from being an objectionable quality with him, was modified by his kindness of heart and his moral uprightness.
In that great and distinctly English book, Robinson Crusoe, we find a young Englishman in consequence of a shipwreck thrown upon a deserted island in midocean. He is cut off from civilization and its resources and thrown upon his own ingenuity to carve out a living for himself which, to a degree at least, comes up to the experience which he has had while living in civilized society. A few tools and instruments which he saves from the wrecked ship are the only things to assist him in the building up of his future life, yet by industry, shrewdness, and perseverance he really succeeds in making that life not only tolerable, but to a degree comfortable. Possibly the trying circumstances in which young Robinson was placed whetted and sharpened his wits, strengthened his nerve, and inspired him with enough confidence to become equal to his difficult task; at all events, he succeeded, and the book narrating his experience, his trials, and his sufferings forms one of the most delightful and at the same time one of the most instructive books for young and old ever written. Its educational value can hardly be overestimated. It may be said that Robinson Crusoe is but a novel, and that his adventures and achievements all originated in the fertile mind of Daniel Defoe. But even if it was so, which is by no means proven, the feat of Defoe’s genius shows that a young man of strong character and full of resources, with an ideal placed before his mental eye, can find the means to raise himself to a higher level than he could have reached under ordinary circumstances and without the stimulating influence of personal hardships and pressing necessity.
It was so with Abraham Lincoln. The means of education which the wild West offered to him were of the most elementary kind, but his innate genius and energy knew how to make them serviceable to the high aim and to the ideals which he had proposed to himself. The loneliness of the primeval forests in which his childhood was passed fostered the tendency to reverie and thoughtfulness which formed one of the principal traits of his character. An American boy in the full meaning of the word he learned to love and appreciate that Union from which the West expected its development, and on which it depended as on the natural source of its future greatness. As if to prepare him for the great part he was to act in American history, he was made to see at an early day the wrongs and cruelties of slavery. His pure mind, which had been strengthened and refined by immediate contact with nature, felt the stain which soiled the American name and flag. As he went down the Mississippi river on a flatboat and became witness of a slave-auction, where family ties were brutally torn asunder, he vowed to himself to do his share as a man and citizen to wipe out that wrong against humanity. How nobly he redeemed that vow and how cruelly he suffered for redeeming it, we have told in the preceding pages, and the crown of immortality is his just reward.
If we should wish to compare the great martyr-president with any historical personage of preceding ages, it would be Henry the Fourth of France. While unquestionably there are many differences in their traits of character, they have nevertheless so many traits in common that the comparison is, in our opinion, a decidedly just one. Both were placed in leading positions at a time when their country was torn up by civil war. In the case of Henry the Fourth religion, or rather Protestantism, was the cause of the fratricidal strife; in the case of Abraham Lincoln it was negro slavery. Both were enlisted in the cause of humanity and progress. It is true, Henry the Fourth renounced Protestantism to win a crown, in the possession of which he alone could hope to render immortal service to the Protestant Church and the principle upon which it is founded, religious toleration; and by the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes he gloriously performed the historical task which Providence had allotted to him. Abraham Lincoln was willing to make any sacrifice for the maintenance of the American Union, for only as President of the United States and as conqueror of the rebellious South, could he hope to become the champion of the abolition of negro slavery. He was fortunate enough to live through the gigantic Civil War, and Clio, the Muse, of History, has entered in imperishable letters on the asbestos leaves of our national annals his immortal declaration of the emancipation of the black race. As two great reformers they will both live in history,—Henry the Fourth, as the embodiment of the principle of religious toleration, Lincoln as the evangelist of negro emancipation. It is a strange coincidence that these two great men were endowed by nature with so many analogous traits, but rarely found in other great men. Both had a keen relish for humor, fun, and wit, and indulged this taste under the most trying circumstances; both were lenient and forgiving to a fault; both displayed statesmanship and executive ability of a high order; and if Henry the Fourth has won greater laurels as a warrior, Lincoln has crowned his great life with the glory of being a great orator. Mankind has grown better by having produced these two men.