The Prince thoroughly understood the character of the French people. Napoleon I. had called the English a nation of shopkeepers. Napoleon III. knew that the French were entitled in a far greater degree than the English to that depreciatory epithet. He knew that in their hearts they did not care so much for liberty and fraternity as they did for equality, that what they wanted in the first place was peace, so that trade and industry might have a chance to prosper; and secondly, that France as a nation might be the predominant power in Europe. For the first reason, they required a master who would maintain order; for the second reason, they idolised the name of the first Napoleon. These two things were patent to the mind of Napoleon III., and formed the keystone of his domestic and foreign policy.
When London, about three months after the breakfast at Mr. Rogers, was threatened, on April 10, 1848, by an insurrectionary mob of Chartists, under the guidance of a half-crazy Irishman, named Feargus OConnor, who afterwards died in a lunatic asylum, the Prince volunteered to act as a special constable, for the preservation of the peace, in common with many thousands of respectable professional men, merchants, and tradesmen. I met him in Trafalgar Square, armed with the truncheon of a policeman. On this occasion, the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief of the British army, had taken the precaution to station the military in sufficient numbers at all the chief strategical points of the metropolis ready, though concealed from the notice of the multitude, to act on an emergency. Happily their services were not required. The sovereign was popular; the upper and middle classes were unanimous; a large section of the laboring classes had no sympathy with Chartism, and the display of the civic force, with bludgeons and staves only, without firearms of any kind, was quite sufficient to overawe the rioters. I stopped for a minute to exchange greetings with the Prince, and said I did not think from all that I had heard that the Chartists would resort to violence, and that their march through the streets would be orderly. The Prince was of the same opinion, and passed upon his beat among other police special constables in front of the National Gallery.
As Lord William Lennox was of the breakfast party, I took the opportunity to ask him a question with regard to a disputed point. I had lately visited Brussels, the city in which I had passed my school-boy days, and which was consequently endeared to my mind by many youthful associations. The mother of Lord William, the beautiful Duchess of Richmond, had given a great ball on the night preceding the battle of Waterloo, in June, 1815, at which Lord William, then in his sixteenth year, was present. Every lover of poetry will remember the splendid description of this ball and of the subsequent battle which occurs in the third canto of Byrons Childe Harold. The passage is unsurpassed in any language for the vigor, the picturesqueness, and the magnificence of its thought and diction, and in its relation to one of the most stupendous events in modern history.
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgiums capital had gatherd then
Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone oer fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes lookd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark: a deep sound strikes like a rising knell.
It has been generally asserted and believed that the ball was given by the duchess in the grand hall of the stately Hôtel de Ville in the Grande Place, and when in Brussels I heard the assertion repeated by many people, though denied by others. One old citizen, who remembered the battle well, affirmed it to have been at the Hôtel de Ville, which he saw brilliantly lighted up for the occasion, and passed among the crowd of equipages that filled the Grande Place, when setting down and taking up the ladies who graced the assembly with their presence. Another equally old and trustworthy inhabitant declared that to his personal knowledge the ball was given in the Palais dAes, a large building that adjoins the palace of the King of the Belgians, and is now used as a barrack; while a third affirmed it to have been held in the handsome hotel, adjoining the Chamber of Deputies, which was formerly occupied by Sir Charles Bagot, the British Ambassador to Brussels and the Hague in 1830. Thinking there could be no better authority than one who was present on the occasion, one, moreover, who was so nearly allied to the giver of the entertainment, I asked Lord William to decide the point. He replied at once that all these assertions were unfounded. His father, the Duke, took a large house in a back street, called the Rue de la Blanchisserie (street of the laundry), abutting on the boulevard, opposite the present Botanic Garden, and that the ball took place in the not extraordinarily spacious drawing-room of that mansion. He said, moreover, that the lines
Within the windowd niche of that high hall
Sat Brunswicks fated chieftain,
conveyed an idea of magnitude which the so-called high hall did not in reality possess.
Archbishop Whately here said: If we may be permitted without breach of good manners to speak of Waterloo in the presence of Prince Napoleon, I may remark that the correction of the very minor error just made by Lord William, though exceedingly interesting is not of great importance. Though contradicted again and again, the report still circulates, and is still believed, that the Duke of Wellington was surprised on the eve of the battle of Waterloo by the rapid march of the emperor, and was thus taken at a disadvantage.
I never believed the report, said the Prince, though I have my own views about the battle. I visited Waterloo in the winter of 1832, with what feelings you may imagine.
The truth as regards the alleged surprise, said the Archbishop, appears to be, as Lord Byron explained in a note to the passage in Childe Harold, that the Duke had received intelligence of Napoleons march, and at first had the idea of requesting the Duchess of Richmond to countermand the ball; but, on reflection, considered it desirable that the people of Brussels should be kept in ignorance of the course of events. He, therefore, desired the duchess to let the ball proceed, and gave commands to all the general officers who had been invited to appear at it, each taking care to quit the room at ten oclock quietly, and without giving any notification, except to each of the under officers, to join their respective divisions en route. There is no doubt that many of the subalterns who were not in the secret were surprised at the suddenness of the order.
I heard, when I visited the field of Waterloo less than a month ago, I said, that many of the officers joined the march in their dancing shoes, so little time was left for them to obey orders.
It has been proved to the satisfaction of every real inquirer into the facts, said Mr. Rogers, that as far as the duke himself and his superior officers were concerned, there was no surprise in the matter. You know the daring young lady, who presumed on her beauty to be forgiven for her impertinence, who asked the Duke point-blank at an evening party whether he had not been surprised at Waterloo. Certainly not! he replied but I am now.
A proper rebuke, said Lord William, I hope the lady felt it.
Byron, in the beautiful stanzas to which allusion has been made, describes the wood of Soignes, erroneously called Soignies, in the environs of Brussels, a portion of the great Forest of Ardennes: