The Chamber Of Peers Is Occupied With The Trial Of Marshall Ney, The
Conseil De Guerre, Which Was Ordered To Assemble For That Purpose Having
Declared Itself Incompetent.
The friends of Ney advised him to claim the
protection of the 12th Article of the Capitulation of Paris,
And Madame
Ney, it is said, applied both to the Duke of Wellington and to the Emperor
of Russia; both ungenerously refused; to the former Nature has not given a
heart with much sensibility, and the latter bears a petty spite against Ney
on account of his title, Prince de la Moskowa. It is pretty generally
anticipated that poor Ney will be condemned and executed; for tho' at the
representation of Cinna a few nights ago, at the Theatre Francais, the
allusions to clemency were loudly caught hold of and applauded by the
audience, yet I suspect Louis XVIII is by no means of a relenting nature,
and that he is as little inclined to pardon political trespasses as his
ancestor Louis IX was disposed to pardon those against religion; for,
according to Gibbon, his recommendation to his followers was: "Si
quelqu'un parle contre la foi chretienne dans votre presence, donnez lui
l'epee ventre-dedans."
December 18th.
I met with an emigrant this day at the Palais Royal who was acquainted with
my family in London. It was the Vicomte de B*****ye.[58] He had resided
some time in England and also in Switzerland. He is an amiable man, but a
most incorrigible Ultra. He displayed at once the ideas that prevail among
the Ultras, which must render them eternally at variance with the mass of
the French nation. In speaking of the state of France, he said: "Je n'ai
jamais cesse et jamais je ne cesserai de regarder comme voleurs tous les
acquereurs des biens des emigres. Il faudroit, pour le bonheur de la
France, qu'elle fut places dans le meme etat ou elle etait avant la
Revolution." He would not listen to my reasons against the possibility of
effecting such a plan, even were the plan just and reasonable in itself. I
told him that for the emigrants to expect to get back their property was
just as absurd as for the descendants of those Saxon families in England,
whose ancestors were dispossessed of their estates by William the
Conqueror, to think of regaining them, and to call upon the Duke of
Northumberland, for instance, as a descendant of a Norman invader, to give
up his property as unjustly acquired by his progenitors. We did not hold
long converse after this; his ideas and mine diverged too much from each
other.
The English are very much out of favour with the emigrants, as well on
account of the stripping of the Louvre as on account of not having shot all
the liberaux. They had the folly to believe that the Allied troops would
merely make war for the emigrants' interests, and after having put to death
a considerable quantity of those who should be designated as rebels and
Jacobins by them (the emigrants), would replace France in the exact
position she was in 1789, and then depart.
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