February 14th, 1820
The Cabinet sat till past two o’clock this morning. The King refused several times to order the Queen to be prayed for in the alteration which was made in the Liturgy. The Ministers wished him to suffer it to be done, but he peremptorily refused, and said nothing should induce him to consent, whoever might ask him. Lord Harrowby told me this last night.
I think Fleury’s book38 almost the most interesting memoir I ever read; it is excessively well written, and his partiality to Bonaparte has not blinded him to the errors he committed. This book was wanted to bring under the same view the immediate causes of his return to France and the situation in which he found himself when seated on the throne. This was essentially different from that in which he had been before his abdication; so much so that I do not believe, if he had concluded a peace with the Allies, he could have remained upon the throne. Not only his civil power was NAPOLEON IN THE HUNDRED DAYS. reduced within very narrow limits, but his military authority was no longer the same; men seemed to have lost that reverential submissiveness which caused all his orders to be so blindly and implicitly obeyed. During the height of his power none of his generals would have dared to neglect or oppose his orders as Ney did at the battles of the 16th of June. It is impossible now to determine what might have been the political result in France of the success of Bonaparte’s arms had he gained the battle of Waterloo. He would probably have made peace with the Allies. Had he returned to Paris triumphant, he might have dissolved the Chambers and re-established the old Imperial Government. In such a measure he must have depended upon his army for success. But a spirit of liberty had sprung up in France during his absence, which seemed to be the more vigorous from having been so long repressed. The nation, and even the army, appear to have imbibed the principles of freedom; and if upon this occasion Bonaparte was placed on the throne by the force of opinion, he could not have restored the ancient despotism without exciting universal dissatisfaction. Men seem formerly to have been awed by a conviction of his infallibility, and did not suffer themselves to reason upon the principles of action of a man who dazzled their imaginations by the magnificence of his exploits and the grandeur of his system.
Notes
38 [M. Fleury de Chabaulon was a young auditeur at the Conseil d’État who had joined Napoleon at Elba, and afterwards returned with him to France, when he was attached to the Imperial Cabinet during the Hundred Days. His memoir of that period is here referred to.]