Marshal Clarke
Governor of Vienna and Berlin
Henry James William Clarke, Duc de Feltre, Minister of War under the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and afterwards under the Bourbons, was born on the 17th October, 1765, at Landrecies, a town of France, situate on the Sambre, westward of Maubeuge, and about one hundred miles from Paris.
His father belonged to one of the many exiled Irish families who followed to France the abdicated James VII. of Scotland, and II. of England; and after serving King Louis as a subaltern officer, died at an early age on obtaining the rank of colonel, leaving his son, the future general, an orphan, to the care of his uncle, Colonel Shee, who was then “Sécretaire des Commandement du Duc d’Orléans,” and afterwards Prefect of Strasbourg, and a peer of France. It is strange how well fortune favoured all these Irish exiles in the various lands of their adoption.
By Colonel Shee, Henry Clarke was well and carefully reared, as he intended him for the service of Louis XVI. Thus, on the 17th of September, 1781, he entered the Military School at Paris as a cadet; and after going through a brief curriculum, left it on the 11th of November, 1782, to join the regiment of the Duc de Berwick as a sub-lieutenant. Wishing to join the cavalry, on the 5th of September, 1784, he was appointed cornet of hussars, with the rank of captain in the regiment of the colonel-general of this branch of the service.
On the 11th of July, 1790, he obtained a captaincy of dragoons, and in the same year received leave of absence to visit Great Britain, as a gentleman in the suite of the ambassador.
It was to the friendship and patronage of the Duke of Orleans that Clarke owed these favours, and generally, his rapid advancement in the army; and it was to this prince that the hussar regiment of the colonel-general belonged, according to a custom of the old régime.
On his return to France, Clarke applied immediately for active service, and on the 5th of February, 1792, was appointed a captain of the first class, and soon after he attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel of cavalry.
He remained in command of his regiment during all the horrors of the Revolution; and, at its head, served in the two campaigns which followed the attack on the Tuileries, the deposition of the king, and the murders of 1792. In September he assisted very materially at the capture of Spire, the ci-devant capital of a bishopric in the palatinate of the Rhine, along the upper circle of which Custine had spread his brilliant conquests.
The French attacked the Austrians, who were in order of battle in front of the city. They were outflanked, and driven back; the gates were cut down by axes, or blown to pieces by cannon, and the republicans stormed the place, taking 3000 prisoners, with a vast train of cannon and mortars. Clarke bore a conspicuous part as an active cavalry officer in all the subsequent operations of the French army, including the capture of Worms, with all its stores, and of Mentz, before which the army arrived on the 19th of October, after forced marches, performed amid torrents of rain; and the taking of Frankfort, which was ransomed from destruction and pillage on the payment of 500,000 florins.
On the 17th of March, after the rout of Bingen, he defended the passage of the Nahe, a German stream, which falls into the Rhine near the former place, and there he was of signal service to the retreating troops. He was present at the affair of Horcheim, which was afterwards annexed to France, and the capture of Landau, on the 17th of May. His distinguished bravery on these occasions obtained him the rank of General of Brigade, provisionally, the commission of which he received on the field of battle. He then received the command of three regiments of dragoons, which formed the advanced guard of the army of the Rhine.
Soon afterwards we find him exercising in this army the functions of Chef d’Etat-Major Général; but on the 12th of October, 1793, the Commissioners of the National Convention, in virtue of a most unjust decree of that tyrannical assembly, deprived him of his rank, as he happened to be at that time on their secret list of the suspected.
He received intelligence of this on the very evening before the Austrians stormed the French lines at Weissembourg, on the Lower Rhine, and he retired at once to Alsace, where he was confined on a species of parole; nor did he recover his military rank and position until after the downfall and death of the cruel and infamous Robespierre.
Under the protection of M. Carnot, who was then Minister of Public Safety, Clarke was placed at the head of a committee of military topography; and in this service he exhibited the greatest talent as a director and instructor, and spared no pains to fulfil the duties imposed upon him. The restless and suspicious Directory, in thus maintaining M. Carnot at the head of their affairs as minister, caused also the retention of Clarke, whose importance seemed to increase with that of his patron.
He was confirmed a General of Brigade in March, 1795; and on his appointment to the rank of General of Division, on the 17th of September, in the same year, our Irish exile could scarcely believe that fate had higher or more brilliant destinies in store for him; but now his talents as a diplomatist were about to be put in requisition. This was when the astonishing successes of Napoleon in Italy had alarmed the Directory, who dispatched Clarke to Vienna, entrusting to him the difficult mission of preparing the terms of the projected peace between Republican France and the Imperial Court; but, as he was adverse to the wishes of the Directory, and inimical to the task, his arrangements proved unfortunately disadvantageous to the French.
After this he visited the army of Italy, the General-in-Chief of which, being influenced by the Directory, placed him in a subordinate position, alike repugnant to his love of freedom and authority. As simple plenipotentiary, Clarke, after traversing Germany, showed himself at Vienna to be the political confidant of the powerful Directory, and, above all, of M. Carnot.
In the minute instructions given to General Clarke by the French Government we are enabled to trace him in his route, which lay through Piedmont, Milan, Medina, Bologna, and Venice; and by the Directory he—more than all their other diplomatic agents—was specially recommended to observe narrowly the secret purposes of the different great personages who held important positions at the court of Vienna.
“Your journey, M. Clarke,” said the minister De la Croix, in a letter written on the 17th November, 1796, “will be sufficiently useful when you have no longer anything to know or to discover for the profit of the Republic or the cause of humanity.” But it was generally believed—nay, it was openly asserted in Paris—that the mission of Clarke to Vienna was all a ruse, and was meant merely to conceal some artful plot woven by the Directory against Napoleon Bonaparte, before whose power and popularity they were beginning to tremble.
However, the Directory really wished a peace, and provisionally demanded an armistice; but Bonaparte, who had no desire to see a general peace in Europe, and, least of all, one formed by any person save himself, by his formidable interference and potent influence, caused the negotiations entirely to fail. We are enabled to perceive how the Directory, in their overtures for peace, above everything else counted on those territories which they could offer in exchange for Luxembourg and other provinces which they had annexed to France. This system of compensation admitted of alterations, which their envoy could vary at his pleasure, on perceiving the effect produced by each offer on the various members of the Austrian cabinet.
In the armistice extended to the two armies they wished the terms to be similar to those given by their general, Napoleon Bonaparte, when besieging Mantua, viz.:—That they should be supplied daily with ammunition and provisions, according to their numerical strength. But Bonaparte declared these terms absurd; and explained to them that the suspension of arms alone gave to France the prospect of greater advantages than could accrue from terms based on those framed at Mantua. But the commands of the Directory were imperative; and the cabinet of Vienna, on receiving their overtures, had already sent the Baron Vincent to Vicenza, to confer with General Clarke, who repelled with all his energy the advice and interference of Bonaparte; but the latter, on being supported by Barras against him, as one trusted by Carnot, said plainly to Clarke, “Si vous êtes venu ici pour faire ma volonté, je vous verrai avec plaisir; si c’est le contraire vous pouvez retourner d’où vous êtes venu.”
By this language he made Clarke feel that his patron, Carnot, was not secure in office, and that he must prepare other supporters for himself. Indeed, some rumour of this nature had reached him before. The result of these disagreements between Clarke and Napoleon caused the former to omit all praise of the latter in public communications to the government at Paris; but, in the first report of Clarke to the minister De la Croix, dated 7th December, 1796, we find him exculpating Bonaparte of all blame for the awful ravages and atrocities committed by his troops in Italy.
Bonaparte succeeded in postponing the conferences at Vicenza until the 3rd January, 1797; and so many despatches passed to and fro between the Directory, Carnot, and Clarke, that the Baron Vincent lost patience, and declared, that if France had any further communications to make, they must in future be addressed, not to him, but to Gherardini, the Austrian minister at Turin. Bonaparte took care that this resolution of the baron should be effectual. Clarke was several times at Turin and Lombardy, negotiating; and after happily completing a friendly arrangement with his general, was left without other duties to fulfil, than to complete, with the Piedmontese court, those amicable treaties which were terminated by an alliance with France on the 5th April, 1797.
After this, he brought before the Directory a series of complaints against certain generals and commissaries of the French army in Italy. With the substance of the charges against these officers he had been furnished by Bonaparte; and the result was, that many of them were displaced and recalled to France.
The complaints or charges furnished to Clarke were sometimes far from correct; but Bonaparte, by means of the envoy, wished to rid his army of those devastators and peculators, without drawing upon himself their lasting and personal hostility. To the honour of Clarke, it must be confessed that his dislike for those who had been guilty of mal-demeanour in Italy was at least sincere; and in this he proved himself worthy to be the friend of Carnot.
He found himself again at Turin during the discussion which ensued concerning the preliminaries of Leoben. Bonaparte, who had neither desire nor authority to conclude anything that resembled a peace, affected to wish much for the presence of Clarke as a plenipotentiary, while he secretly contrived such means to delay his journey, that it was impossible he could arrive in time. Thus ten days passed, and on the 17th of April Clarke had not appeared, so Bonaparte signed the articles alone; and on the 6th of the following month, the Directory invested them both with full power to sign the final treaty.
Two negotiators, the Marquis di Gallo and Meerfeldt, had been appointed by Austria to meet them; but at the very commencement of their proceedings the proud and haughty spirits of Bonaparte and Gallo domineered over their colleagues so completely, that they became as mere machines in their hands. Clarke had, nevertheless, occasionally sole charge of the negotiations at Udina, a town in Friuli, where they had many meetings concerning the entangled affairs of France and Austria; but this was only when the tergiversations of the latter, who wished to recommence the war, were embarrassing the conferences, which, according to the caustic expression of Bonaparte, “were nothing more than a series of pleasantries.”
In the midst of these incertitudes and delays, a new revolution took place at Paris, on the 4th September, 1797, when the legislative was entirely absorbed by the executive power, and when the famous pamphlet of Bailleul, which provoked such a violent debate in the Council of Five Hundred, was the tocsin of alarm. On this day—the 18th Fructidor—Clarke was declared a “creature of Carnot;” and, as such, was deprived of all power. Thus Bonaparte was left sole plenipotentiary of the Republic, and had the honour of signing alone the famous treaty of Campo Formio, which secured a peace between France and the Emperor Francis II., and which took its name from the place of meeting—a castle of maritime Austria, situated on a hill in the province of Friuli. It was signed on the 17th October, and was undoubtedly more glorious for France than the treaty which General Clarke had prepared for the same purpose in November, 1796. But Bonaparte behaved with great generosity towards his fallen colleague: he defended him against the virulence of the Parisian pamphleteers and journalists, protected him while in Italy, and employed him about his staff and person in many ways. “Could he do less to the star which he had so completely made his satellite?” exclaims a French writer.
The brilliant reception which awaited Bonaparte on his triumphant return to France, and still more, the high enthusiasm kindled by his departure for Egypt, threw Clarke completely into the shade; and he was almost forgotten by the volatile Parisians during two years that he lived in retirement.
M. Xavier Audoin, son-in-law of Pache, succeeded Clarke as chief of the Bureau Topographique et Militaire at the Directory. The Parisian journals accused the general of having enjoyed the confidence of Carnot too much, and to be too deeply attached to the House of Orleans, to which he and his family were indebted for much of their good fortune in France.
The Dublin Journal of the 7th October, 1797, contains a paragraph to the effect that it was known that Clarke had been “for forty hours, during the last week,” in that city, “that he had held conferences with the leaders of the United Irishmen, and having obtained his information and given his directions, had embarked in a fishing smack from Killinbay, on Sunday morning last. That he could have no other purpose than the arrangement of a French invasion we have no doubt,” adds the editor, “and when our readers have learned that there is strong ground to believe that he has been for some time past in the north of Ireland, they will naturally join in our opinion. Our readers will recollect that this General Clarke was announced in the French papers to have left the Italian army some time since on his way to Vienna to negotiate with the emperor—there has been no negotiation at Vienna—the treaty is under discussion at Udina—so that this journey has obviously been fabricated to conceal his real destination.”
But, notwithstanding all these details, there is no solid proof for believing that General Clarke ever visited the land of his forefathers on this secret duty.
He ought, perhaps, to have followed Napoleon, even as a volunteer, to the banks of the Nile; but being of a proud and jealous spirit, he was unfortunately without this feeling of devotion to his new protector. Bonaparte appeared to feel this; for on his return from his distant and dangerous expedition, and finding himself master of the government, by the 18th Brumaire (9th November, 1799), he seemed to look coldly on the general at times.
Clarke now neglected nothing that might serve to reinstate him in the good graces of the First Consul, who, in September, 1800, intrusted him finally with the charge of the negotiations at Luneville, and soon after with the military command of that large city, which lies in the departement of the Meurthe. But Clarke felt that these two posts were alike insignificant and unworthy one of his talent and enterprise; for the recent victories in Germany and Italy had greatly simplified his duties as a negotiator, and the little that remained Bonaparte directed in Paris. When the arrangements were completed, to the infinite annoyance of Clarke, he sent his brother Joseph to sign them.
Clarke had meanwhile been preparing for the departure of a body of Russian officers who were prisoners of war at Lisle; and the kindness with which he did so, caused the Emperor Paul I. to present him with a magnificent sword, and other marks of his approbation.
Such is the weakness of the human heart, that these honours inflated Clarke so much, that for a time he appeared to feel himself equal to the First Consul, and indeed he was rash enough, and unwise enough, to say so.
Coming early one evening to the opera, he entered the box usually appropriated to Napoleon, and assumed that august person’s place in the front seat. When the First Consul came, Clarke had the bad taste to sit still during the performance, and leave to his master the second place!
These mistakes of temper, united to his punctilious spirit, in affairs of state, and love of diplomatic work, caused the French government to give him the office of minister of France at Florence, that he might be away from Paris and near the young Duke of Parma, who wished to be named King of all Italy; but this post, say the Memoirs of St. Helena, proved exceedingly distasteful to him.
Clarke’s talent—a most useful, if not brilliant one—consisted in an amazing facility for keeping on the best possible terms with all the parties among whom he was cast. The secret of his influence with Bonaparte appears to have been, a sentiment of profound gratitude in the latter for the high praise bestowed by Clarke in his “Secret Report” to the Directory on the conduct of the young general in Italy. This document afterwards fell into the hands of the First Consul, who never forgot its contents.
Clarke, tired of his residence in Florence, wrote letter after letter, demanding his recal to Paris, terming his embassy a species of exile; and Bonaparte, believing that his punishment was sufficiently severe, at last gave him leave to return; but desired him to travel by the way of Lisle (a fortified city in the departement of the north), to the camp at Boulogne. In Belgium he gave him the title of Councillor of State, and created for him two places in the cabinet—one as secretary for the marine, and the other for the war.
Arrived at the camp of Boulogne, one of the earliest matters entrusted to the general was the proposed establishment of Irish brigades, to co-operate in the projected invasion of Britain; and these corps Clarke believed might be recruited among the Irishmen who were prisoners of war in France. While this project was on the tapis, he had many interviews with the famous Theobald Wolfe Tone, who had been appointed by the Directory chef-de-brigade, and afterwards adjutant-general; and with Lazarus Hoche, a frank, resolute, and zealous republican, who, from being a stable-boy and private of the French guards, raised himself to one of the highest positions in the army of France. In 1792, he was a corporal; in 1793, he was a general, commanding the army of the Moselle; and in the two subsequent years he subdued La Vendée.
Tone was introduced to Hoche by Clarke, and in his Memoirs he details the questions they asked him concerning the state of Ireland; where a landing might be effected; where provisions might be relied on, particularly bread; whether French auxiliaries might count on being able to form an Irish Provisional Government, either of the Catholic Committee, or of the chiefs of the Irish patriots? On these subjects Tone had many a long and anxious conference with his countryman Clarke, and with Hoche.
After a long interview with Hoche, in the cabinet of Fleury one day, Wolfe Tone was asked, what form of government the Irish would adopt, in the event of their successfully encountering the British troops?
“I was going to answer him with great earnestness,” says Tone, in his interesting Memoirs, “when General Clarke entered, to request that we would come to dinner with Citizen Carnot. We accordingly adjourned the conversation to the apartment of the President, where we found Carnot, and one or two more. Hoche, after some time, took me aside, and repeated his question. I replied, ‘Most decidedly a republic.’ He asked again, ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ’As sure as I can be of anything. I know nobody in Ireland who thinks of any other system——.’ Carnot joined us here, with a pocket-map of Ireland, and the conversation between Clarke, Hoche, and him became pretty general, every one else having left the room. I said scarcely anything, as I wished to listen. Hoche related to Carnot the substance of what passed between him and me. When he mentioned his anxiety as to bread, Carnot laughed and said, ‘There is plenty of beef in Ireland—if you cannot get bread, you must eat beef.’ I told him I hoped they would find both; adding, that within twenty years Ireland had become a great corn country, so that at present it made a considerable article in her exports.”—Vol. ii. pp. 14-18.
The patience of Wolfe Tone was sorely tried by many and unnecessary delays; and, after all, the hopes of the Irish exiles ended only in mustering a regiment of their countrymen, which, instead of embarking for Ireland, marched to the invasion of Spain, under the unfortunate Colonel Lewis Lacy, the son of a race of hereditary Irish soldiers, as related elsewhere.
In the year following his double appointment as minister for the war and marine, Clarke made the German campaign on the staff of Bonaparte, and was present at the capture of the free city of Ulm, in the Swabian circle, on the 17th October, 1805, and at other operations, which drove the army of the Archduke Ferdinand across the Danube; and, on the capture of Vienna by the corps of the brave Murat and Lannes, he was named governor of the city and also of Upper and Lower Austria, Carinthia, Styria, Friuli, Trieste, &c. His moderation and justice in this high command elevated him among the victors, and won him the love and esteem of the vanquished. He also received the cordon of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, and soon after was ordered to define the line of demarcation between Brisgau, in the kingdom of Wirtemberg, and the Grand Duchy of Baden.
Two months were spent by him in conferences and diplomacy. From the 9th to the 20th of July, 1806, he was engaged with the Russian plenipotentiary, and their interviews were terminated by the wonderful treaty which opened and ceded to France, Cattaro, a Venetian territory in Dalmatia, with its capital, harbour, and citadel; and which maintained Gustavus IV. in possession of the ancient Duchy of Pomerania, and left to be achieved, at an early period, the junction of Sicily to the kingdom of Murat—the whole being arranged by them, without condescending to ask the advice of Great Britain, which was then the faithful ally of Prussia. This treaty was never ratified by the Emperor Alexander. The other conferences took place between Clarke and Lord Yarmouth, to whom Charles Fox added the Scottish Earl of Lauderdale; while, to assist Clarke, the French government added Jean Baptiste Champagny, the Duc de Cadore, who was only a spectator of the negotiations, which were without result, and are of no consequence to the reader; but Clarke, who had displayed his usual acuteness, tact, and skill in all his meetings with the Lords Yarmouth and Lauderdale, was not a little proud of having prevailed upon M. D’Oubril to sign certain clauses he submitted to him.
Russia, however, was in no haste to evacuate Cattaro, and the Emperor Alexander began to augment his army; so from September, 1806, it became evident that if France declared war against Prussia, she would have to encounter Russia also. In the first meeting concerning these affairs Clarke said, “that the convention recently concluded with Russia was for France equivalent to a victory; and that henceforward his master, the Emperor Napoleon, had the right of proposing articles more advantageous than those he had lately made.” He qualified the terms of the treaty which he wished them to adopt, and in particular l’uti possedetis; of vague conversations on the politics of Rome, he said that Bonaparte had never adopted this uti possedetis for a basis, without which Moravia, Styria, and Carniola would have remained still in his hands.
Similar language, encumbered by diplomatic technicalities, was applied to the two envoys of Fox, but failed to succeed with them, as they were resolved not to depart in a single instance from the basis of the position taken before by the envoy of Prince Talleyrand. The death of Charles Fox put an end to all the hopes of peace, although Lauderdale and Champagny did not despair of procuring it until the 6th of October; but by this time Clarke had set out for Germany, having accompanied Napoleon to the Prussian campaign. After the two battles of the 14th October, he was named Governor of Erfurt, a fortified city on the Gera, and capital of the Elector of Mentz. It was then crowded with Prussian prisoners, and with sick and wounded Frenchmen.
For having been more in the palaces than in the camps of Bonaparte, and being, moreover, of foreign blood, Clarke was reproached with being more of a diplomatist than a soldier by those who were envious of the favour shown him by the Emperor. While at Erfurt he caused the Saxon grenadiers of Hündt to take arms, and supplied them with ammunition, colours, and several pieces of cannon.
On the 27th Napoleon summoned him to Berlin, and appointed him governor, saying:—
“I wish that in the same year you should have under your orders the capitals of two monarchies we have conquered—Prussia and Austria.”
“Thus Clarke, the inevitable Clarke, was appointed Governor of Berlin,” says De Bourienne, “and under his administration the wretched inhabitants, who could not flee, were overwhelmed by every species of impost and oppression. As in the execution of every measure there operated the most servile compliance with the orders of Napoleon, so the name of Clarke is held in detestation throughout Prussia.”
The measures of Clarke, as Governor of Berlin, were doubtless mortifying, ruinous, and often sanguinary; but then it must be remembered that he was compelled to enforce the iron will, and obey the stern orders, of his inflexible master; though it must be acknowledged that it would have been more noble in him to have softened them to the vanquished Prussians. The military contributions were rigorously levied, and those were not the least of the severities exercised upon the people of Berlin. Offences were uselessly created, and then barbarously judged of by a military commission.
The punishment of the unfortunate Burgomaster of Ciritz is forgotten amid the many barbarous executions of which Prussia became the theatre, and against which her people dared not protest. When the king, Frederick William, found himself seated with Clarke at the table of Louis XVIII. in 1815, he could not refrain from bitterly reproaching Clarke with what he termed “the useless murder of the father of a family.”
“Sire,” responded Clarke, “it was an unfortunate error.”
“An error, monsieur?” reiterated the king, striking his hand upon the table; “an error—it was a crime!”
Withal, it must be acknowledged that Clarke, in the high place he occupied, fulfilled, in every way, the trust reposed in him by Napoleon; and that during his command at Berlin, which occupied a year, he gave ample proof of his inflexible probity; and we may perhaps believe, that many of the accusations made against him were the echoes of those complaints which are naturally raised by the vanquished against the troops of the victor. Doubtless he would have received greater praise had he striven to please others more, and his master less. By the official collections of Schœll, we are informed that Vendomme one day wished to appropriate to himself the magnificent furniture in the palace of Potsdam, where he resided; but that Clarke, by his determined intervention, forced him to relinquish the idea.
Clarke was again named minister of war, vice Marshal Berthier, Duke of Neufchatel and Prince of Wagram. He acquitted himself with great credit during his administration, which was prolonged without interruption for several years; but it was marked by two remarkable episodes—the descent upon Walcheren in 1809, and the conspiracy of Mallet in 1812. But we ought previously to have mentioned that in 1808 Clarke had been ennobled by the title of Count Hunebourg, and in 1809 he was created Duc de Feltre, from a town in Venetian Lombardy.
The descent of the British upon Walcheren took Clarke by surprise; but seconded by Bernadotte and Fouche he collected, in less than five weeks, an army of 100,000 men, near the mouths of the Scheldt, to watch their operations; but the swamps of South Beveland, and the Walcheren fever, proved more deadly to the British troops than the bayonets of France.
When Napoleon was absent on his disastrous Russian campaign, the unfortunate disturbance, or rather wild enterprise of the republican General Mallet, with his compatriots Guidal and Lahoire, placed Paris for some hours in the hands of an armed mob. The coolness and presence of mind exhibited by Clarke during this momentous crisis is above all common praise. Mallet forged an account of Bonaparte’s death; and on obtaining twelve hundred men from the 10th cohort of the National Guard, made prisoners M. Pasquer and Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, and assailing General Hullin, Commandant of Paris, in his quarters, shot him through the head by a pistol-ball. Mallet led his party to seize Clarke as minister of war; but the plot was soon discovered, and Mallet was captured and disarmed. This finished his proposed reassertion of the Republic, and fourteen of his followers were put to death, while Clarke ordered the arrest of many others upon very slight suspicions. He then dispatched to Bonaparte a report, which displayed his own vigilance and acuteness in escaping the snare into which General Hullin, Colonel Soulier, Savary, and Pasquer had fallen so easily.
The excessive zeal of Clarke began to relax about the end of 1813, although his language always continued the same; thus, when Napoleon, acting under the pressure of his disasters in Russia, proposed to make a peace, and yield up some of his conquests, the Duc de Feltre, knowing how to touch one of the sensitive chords in his breast, said, “that he would consider the Emperor dishonoured if he consented to abandon the smallest village which had been united to the Empire by a senatorial decree!”
“What a fine thing it is to talk!” added old Bourienne.
Clarke’s opinion, however, prevailed with Napoleon, and the war, so fatal to him, continued; though without doubt, in his secret soul, he had begun to see the exact and perilous position of the Emperor. Before the startling events of March, 1814, when the allies advanced upon Paris, and before the communications of Joseph had forced the determination of the Assembly, the acute Clarke had advised, very decidedly, the departure of Maria Louisa, who set out at once for Blois. The ostentatious language with which he accompanied this advice failed to deceive any one; but in spite of his efforts it was singularly cold and discouraging.
He commenced his oration by a vivid picture of the conflicting state of parties, and of the state of Paris and its environs; and his enemies accused him not only of exaggerating the dangers which menaced the capital, but of concealing its actual resources; but one fact is evident, Clarke was clearly and honestly of opinion that Paris was indefensible, and that to resist would be to destroy it! It is said that Bonaparte had a contrary opinion, though it was not then publicly avowed.
When once Maria Louisa had left Paris, Clarke, foreseeing its certain capitulation, did not take the necessary measures either to defend it or to check the progress of the allies. For three days he did not open the arsenals to the Parisians, nor would he allow them to transport the cannon from the Hôtel des Invalides, and the Ecole Militaire to the heights about the city; finally he clubbed all the troops of the line about Montmartre. “Posterity,” says a recent writer, “will decide if these measures were correct.”
Then followed the battle of Paris; Marshal Marmont’s return within its walls; the nights of the 30th and 31st of March; the capitulation; the entry of the allies, and the strange enthusiasm with which the vacillating population received them. Napoleon was dethroned by a decree of the Senate, and a Provisional Government was formed; and changing, like many others, in that time of change, to this new government, Clarke sent in his formal adhesion on the 8th of April, about one week after Paris was taken.
On the 4th of the following June he was created, by Louis XVIII., a peer of France.
When Marshal Soult retired from office, King Louis appointed Clarke Minister of War—the same post he had held under the Emperor, who was then maturing plans of new operations in the little isle of Elba.
It was tauntingly said of Clarke that it was his destiny and misfortune to see the affairs of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons go to wreck, while entrusted to his care.
The Memoirs of St. Helena assure us that Clarke, during the events of the Hundred Days, wished to retake service under the Emperor Napoleon! If so, how different was his conduct from the faith that characterized Ney, Cambronne, and Macdonald! A rumour of this, in 1815, led to the immediate departure of Clarke for Ghent, where, at the fugitive court of Louis XVIII., he exercised his functions as Minister of War; and from thence, some time after, he travelled to London, charged with a mission from the king to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.
During the time the allied armies occupied Paris, Clarke had a remarkable interview with the King of Prussia. On this occasion he was accompanied by M. de Bourienne and Marshal Berthier. They remained for some time in the saloon, before his Prussian Majesty appeared from his closet, and when he did so, the embarrassment of his manner, and the cloudy severity of his countenance, was apparent to the three visitors.
“Marshal,” said he to Berthier, “I should have preferred receiving you as a peaceful visitor at Berlin; but war has its successes, as well as its reverses. Your troops are brave and ably led; but you cannot oppose numbers, and Europe is armed against the Emperor; patience has its limits. You have passed no little time, marshal, in making war on Germany, and I have great pleasure in saying to you that I shall never forget your conduct, your justice, and moderation in those seasons of misfortune.”
Marshal Berthier, who deserved this eulogium, made a suitable reply; after which the King of Prussia turned sternly to the Duc de Feltre, saying,—
“As for you, General Clarke, I cannot say the same of your conduct as of the marshal’s. The inhabitants of Berlin will long remember your government. You abused victory strangely, and carried to an extreme measures of rigour and vexation. If I have an advice to give you, it is—never show your face in Prussia.”
“Clarke was so overwhelmed by this reception from a crowned head,” says M. de Bourienne, “that Berthier and myself, each taking an arm, were absolutely obliged to support him down the grand stair.”
On returning to King Louis, at Ghent, he resumed his duties of Minister for the War Department; and assuredly his task was both a severe and a difficult one.
He had to arrange the disbanding of the Imperial and the re-organization of a Royal army; he had to examine and decide upon the various claims presented by hundreds of soldiers; he had to satisfy the demands of two thousand officers who adhered to the king, and to send them into the interior; he had to classify nine thousand officers of the disbanded army; to arrange for the pay of six thousand others who were re-formed—that is, continued on pay, but without being regimented; he had to examine six thousand claims for arrears of pay and pensions, claims that could admit of no delay, and which amounted to forty-six millions of francs; he had to organize the Royal Garde du Corp; to reconstitute the gendarmerie; to provide for the maintenance of the allied armies of occupation; and all this he had to do, amid obstacles, disorders, and complexities without example.
Such was the mighty mass of labour submitted to the care of Clarke; and of this herculean task he nobly and ably acquitted himself in less than two years.
All impartial writers unite in exculpating him from the angry and unjust accusation of peculating with the enormous sums which were required and absorbed by the re-organization of the French army. But he was severely handled by military men for instituting those tribunals styled Les Cours Prévotales.
In June, 1815, Clarke was with Louis XVIII. at Arnouville, and while there saved his friend, François Marquis de Lagrange, a lieutenant-general who in 1813 commanded the 3rd Regiment of Gardes d’Honneur, from great danger, if not from death. The marquis had been accused of offering his services to Napoleon, and hastily arrived at Arnouville with his son, on the 30th June. As he was about to wait upon Louis he was assailed by several soldiers, in whose hearts the love of Napoleon was strong. They called him a traitor, and tore away his sword, cross, and epaulettes. On becoming aware of these outrages, Clarke sent two influential officers to repress the tumult, and himself led the marquis to Louis XVIII., who appointed him captain of the Black Musketeers.
The zeal which Clarke now employed in the cause of the house of Bourbon was ultimately the means of his downfall. Louis XVIII., who each day conceded more and more to the enemies of his dynasty, after bestowing upon Clarke the bâton of a Marshal of France, displaced him from office, and appointed Gouvin St. Cyr in his room.
We know that after his dismissal all was changed in the department of the Minister of War.
The position in which Clarke found himself during the last years of his stirring, active, and useful life was very painful and humiliating, especially to one of so proud a spirit as his. Some of the more favoured personages who crowded the court of Louis XVIII., could not behold with a favourable eye this foreigner, who had been the War Minister of the great Napoleon, a confidant of his, and his co-operator in a thousand schemes of conquest; on the other hand, his old comrades of the Imperial army affected to see in Clarke a deserter, a transferer of his allegiance, and, indeed, all but a traitor. Those whose base extortions he had repressed in other times now joined their clamours against him, and the Royalists cared not to say a word in his defence.
Thus, at the end of his career, he was unjustly despised alike for his talents and virtues, as for his mistakes and weaknesses—for the good he had done as well as for evil. Clarke now found himself isolated and abandoned, and the conviction of this, together with the coldness with which he was treated, sank deeply into his proud and sensitive heart.
It aggravated an illness which preyed upon him, and he died on the 28th of October, 1818, in his fifty-third year.
Such was the career of the Duc de Feltre, one of the most famous of the Irish exiles.
Clarke was master of many languages. He wrote with ease, with elegance, and with correctness; his style was often brilliant, and he knew thoroughly all that appertained to the details of a war administration. The state of complete disorganization in which he found the French service after March, 1814, proves the admirable tact and skill with which he could bring order out of disorder.
Many of the old Imperialists, his enemies, coarsely accused him of treason and treachery, but Napoleon takes care partly to exculpate him from charges so severe. On being asked at St. Helena if he believed that Clarke had been true to him, the fallen Emperor said, with a sigh—
“True to me—yes, when I was in my strength;” and after a time he added—“I cannot boast of him being more constant to me than Fortune.”
This lessens the alleged crime of Clarke, while, at the same time, it lessens his nobility of conduct; though it must be acknowledged that he did not leave Napoleon until he could no longer be of service to him. The Emperor was not easily deceived as to the fidelity of a follower.
From Bourienne we know that, in 1796 and 1797, after all that passed between Napoleon and Clarke, the former still trusted in the latter, and never attempted to interrupt his despatches to the Directory or to the Chevalier de la Croix; and nothing was ever found in them displeasing to the Commander-in-chief.
Two great traits in the character of Clarke were, first, his hatred of all peculation and political knavery; the other was his mania for office, and the despatches and details connected therewith. So poor was he during the earlier years of his career, that Napoleon had to portion one of his daughters; and no instance of profusion or luxury has been cited against him.
Inflated by his patent of nobility, he wished to make his genealogy great and lofty, and one day he believed that he had discovered his descent, by the female side, from the Plantagenets—an idea which exceedingly amused Napoleon, who once said to him in a numerous company, about the time of his projected invasion of Britain,—
“Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English throne—you ought now to make them good!”16
Notes
16 Biographie Universelle, &c.