The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey
Robert Southey to John May, 25 April 1814
“Keswick, April 25. 1814.
“My dear Friend,
“If the King of
France has any stray cordon
bleu to dispose of here, Herbert has a fair claim to one, having been the first person
in Great Britain who mounted the white cockade. He appeared with one
immediately upon the news from Bordeaux, and wore it till the news from Paris.*
My young ones
* Of the occupation of Paris by the Allied Armies,
and the restoration of the Bourbons. |
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| 66 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 40. |
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were then all as happy as paper cockades could make them;
and, to our great amusement, all the white ribband in Keswick was bought up to
follow their example. My own feelings, on the first intelligence, were unlike
anything that I ever experienced before, or can experience again. The curtain
had fallen after a tragedy of five-and-twenty years. Those persons who had
rejoiced most enthusiastically at the beginning of the revolution, were now
deeply thankful for a termination which restored things, as nearly as can be,
to the state from which they set out. What I said, with a voice of warning, to
my own country, is here historically true,—that ‘all the
intermediate sum of misery is but the bitter price which folly pays for
repentance.’ The mass of destruction, of wretchedness, and of
ruin which that revolution has occasioned, is beyond all calculation. Our
conception of it is almost as vague and inadequate as of infinity. This,
however, occurred to me at the time less than my own individual history; for I
could not but remember how materially the course of my own life had been
influenced by that tremendous earthquake, which seemed to break up the great
deeps of society, like a moral and political deluge. I have derived nothing but
good from it in every thing, except the mere consideration of immediate worldly
fortune, which is to me as dust in the balance. Sure I am that under any other
course of discipline I should not have possessed half the intellectual powers
which I now enjoy, and perhaps not the moral strength. The hopes and the
ardour, and the errors and the struggles and the difficulties of my early life
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| Ætat. 40. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 67 |
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crowded upon my mind; and, above all, there was a deep
and grateful sense of that superintending goodness which had made all things
work together for good in my fortunes, and will, I firmly believe, in like
manner uniformly educe good from evil upon the great scale of human events.
“I fear we shall make a bad peace. Hitherto the people
have borne on their governors (I except Prussia, where prince and people have
been worthy of each other). The rulers are now left to themselves, and I
apprehend consequences which will flill heavy upon posterity, though not,
perhaps, upon ourselves. I had rather the French philosophy had left any other
of its blessings behind it than its candour and its liberality. It was very natural that the Emperor of Austria should not choose to have his
son-in-law hanged. But here is
Alexander breakfasting with Marshal Ney, who, if he had more necks than the
Hydra or my Juggernaut*, owes them all to the gallows for his conduct in
Galicia and in Portugal. Caulincourt is
to have an asylum in Russia, and no doubt will be permitted to choose his
latitude there. Candour is to make us impute all the enormities which the
French have committed to Bonaparte. All the horrors,
absolutely unutterable as they are, which you know were perpetrated in
Portugal, and which I know were perpetrated in Spain, but which I literally
cannot detail in history, because I dare not outrage human nature and common
decency by such details,—all these must in candour be put out of re-
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membrance. All was Bonaparte’s
doing, and the most amiable of nations were his victims rather than his
agents,—so this most veracious of nations tells us, and so we are to
believe. But if the Devil could not have brought about all the crimes without
the Emperor Napoleon, neither could the Emperor
Napoleon have discharged the Devil’s commission without
the most amiable of nations to act up to the full scope of his diabolical
desires. At present, I admit, our business is to conciliate and consolidate the
counterrevolution. But no visitings to Marshal Ney, no
compliments to his worthy colleagues, no asylums for the murderers of the
Duc d’Enghien. In treating for
peace, liberality will not fail to be urged by the French negotiators as a
reason for granting them terms which are inconsistent with the welfare of
Europe. Alexander is a weak man, though a good one; and
our ministers will be better pleased to hear themselves called liberal by the
Opposition, than to be called wise by posterity. . . . .
Francis II, emperor of Austria (1768-1835)
He succeeded Ludwig II as emperor of Hungary and Bohemia and took the title of emperor of
Austria in 1804; with his minister Meternich he dominated the Holy Alliance.
Louis XVIII, king of France (1755-1824)
Brother of the executed Louis XVI; he was placed on the French throne in 1814 following
the abdication of Napoleon.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Michel Ney, first Duc d'Elchingen (1769-1815)
Marshall of France who covered Napoleon's retreat from Moscow and led the Old Guard at
the battle of Waterloo, for which he was tried and executed by firing squad.
