Part 6 (1/2)
28, 1836. The next morning he had an interview with Colonel Vambery, who endeavored to dissuade him from his enterprise.
Vambery's prudent reasons made no impression on the prince, and he then promised his a.s.sistance. Having done so, Louis Napoleon offered him a paper, securing a pension of 10,000 francs to each of his two children, in case he should be killed. The colonel tore it up, saying, ”I give, but do not sell, my blood.” Major Parquin, an old soldier of the Empire, who was in the garrison, had been already won. On the night of the prince's arrival the conspirators met at his lodging.
Three regiments of infantry, three regiments of artillery, and a battalion of engineers formed the garrison at Strasburg. The wisest course would have been to appeal first to the third regiment of artillery; but other counsels prevailed. The fourth artillery, whose adhesion to the cause was doubtful, was chosen for the first attempt. All depended upon the impression made upon this regiment, which was the one in which Napoleon had served when captain of artillery at Toulon.
The night was spent in making preparations. Proclamations were drawn up addressed to the soldiers, to the city, and to France; and the first step was to be the seizure of a printing-office.
At five o'clock in the morning the signal was given. The soldiers of the fourth regiment of artillery were roused by the beating of the _a.s.semblee_. They rushed, half-dressed, on to their parade-ground.
Louis Napoleon, whose fate it was never to be ready, was not prompt even on this occasion; he was finis.h.i.+ng two letters to his mother.
One was to be sent to her at once if he succeeded, the other if he failed.
On entering the barrack-yard he found the soldiers waiting, drawn up in line. On his arrival the colonel (Vambery) presented him to the troops as the nephew of Napoleon. He wore an artillery uniform.
A cheer rose from the line. Then Louis Napoleon, clasping a gilt eagle brought to him by one of the officers, made a speech to the men, which was well received. His cause seemed won.
Next, followed by the troops, but exciting little enthusiasm in the streets of Strasburg as he pa.s.sed along them in the gray dawn of a cloudy day, Louis Napoleon made his way to the quarters of General Voirol. The general emphatically refused to join the movement, and a guard was at once set over him.
Up to this moment all had smiled upon the enterprise. The printing of the proclamations was going rapidly on, the third regiment of artillery was bringing out its guns and horses, and the inhabitants of Strasburg, roused from their beds, were watching the movement as spectators, prepared to a.s.sist it or to oppose it, according as it made its way to success or failure.
The prince, and the troops who supported him, next marched to the barracks of the infantry. On their road they lost their way, and approached the barracks in such a manner that they left themselves only a narrow alley to retreat by, in case of failure.
On the prince presenting himself to the guard, an old soldier of the army of Napoleon kneeled and kissed his hand, when suddenly one of the officers, who had his quarters in the town, rushed upon the scene with his sword drawn, crying: ”Soldiers, you are deceived!
This man is not the nephew of the Emperor Napoleon, he is an impostor,--a relative of Colonel Vambery!”
This turned the tide. Whilst the soldiers stood irresolute, the colonel of the regiment arrived. For a few moments he was in danger from the adherents of the prince. His own soldiers rushed to his rescue. A tumult ensued. The little band of Imperialists was surrounded, and their cause was lost.
Louis Napoleon yielded himself a prisoner. One or two of the conspirators, among them Madame Gordon, managed to escape; the rest were captured.
News was at once sent by telegraph to Paris; but the great wooden-armed telegraph-stations were in those days uncertain and unmanageable.
Only half of the telegram reached the Tuileries, where the king and his ministers sat up all night waiting for more news. At daybreak of October 30 a courier arrived, and then they learned that the rising had been suppressed, and that the prince and his confederates were in prison.
Meantime the young officer in charge of Louis Napoleon's two letters to Queen Hortense had prematurely come to the conclusion that the prince was meeting with success, and had hurried off the letter announcing the good news to his mother.
How to dispose of such a capture as the head of the house of Bonaparte was a great puzzle to Louis Philippe's ministers. They dared not bring him to trial; they dared not treat him harshly. In the end he was carried to Paris, lodged for a few days in the Conciergerie, and then sent off, without being told his destination, to Cherbourg, where he was put on board a French frigate which sailed with orders not to be opened till she reached the equator. There it was found that her destination was Rio Janeiro, where she was not to suffer the prince to land, but after a leisurely voyage she was to put him ash.o.r.e in the United States.
As the vessel was about to put to sea, an official personage waited on the prince, and after inquiring if he had funds enough to pay his expenses on landing, handed him, on the the part of Louis Philippe, a considerable sum.
On reaching Norfolk, Virginia, the prince landed, and learned, to his very great relief, that all his fellow-conspirators had been tried before a jury at Strasburg, and acquitted!
He learned too, shortly afterwards, that his mother was very ill.
The shock of his misfortune, and the great exertions she had made on his behalf when she thought his life might be in danger, had proved too much for her. Louis Napoleon recrossed the ocean, landed in England, and made his way to Arenenberg. He was just in time to see Queen Hortense on her death-bed, to receive her last wishes, and to hear her last sigh.
After her death the French Government insisted that the Swiss Confederacy must compel Louis Napoleon to leave their territory.
The Swiss refused, repaired the fortifications of Geneva, and made ready for a war with France; but Louis Napoleon of his own free will relieved the Swiss Government from all embarra.s.sment by pa.s.sing over into England, where it was not long before he made preparations for a new attempt to overthrow Louis Philippe's government.
He lived quietly in London at that period, visiting few persons except Count D'Orsay at Gore House, the residence of Lady Blessington, and occupying himself a great deal with writing. He had already completed a Manual of Artillery, and was engaged on a book that he called ”Les Idees napoleoniennes.” Its princ.i.p.al ”idea” was that France wanted an emperor, a definite head, but that she also needed extreme democratic principles. Therefore an empire ought to be founded on an expression of the will of the people,--in plain words, on universal suffrage. The mistake Napoleon III. made in his after career, as well as in his ”Idees napoleoniennes,” was in not perceiving that an empire without military glory would become a pool of corruption, while vast military efforts, which would embroil France with all Europe, would lose the support of the _bourgeoisie_. ”In short,” as Louis Blanc has said, ”he imagined a despotism without its triumphs; a throne surrounded by court favorites, but without Europe at its footstool; a great name, with no great man to bear it,--the Empire, in short, _minus_ its Napoleon!”
During the months that Louis Napoleon pa.s.sed in London he was maturing the plot of a new enterprise. He was collecting round him his adherents, some of them Carbonaro leaders, with whom he had been a.s.sociated in Italy. Some were his personal friends; some were men whose devotion to the First Napoleon made them ashamed to refuse to support his nephew, even in an insurrection that they disapproved; while some were mere adventurers.
Very few persons were admitted to his full confidence; the affair was managed by a clique, ”the members of which had been previously sounded; and in general those were set aside who could not embark in the undertaking heart and hand.”