his unhappy parent, and her early treatment of him, must in like manner be meditated deeply and continually. By her rude and unaided hand were the seeds planted of a sadly mingled crop, in which that the tares at last overtopped the wheat, should move perhaps any other feelings rather than surprise. Let no man who in his day sat on a happy mother's lap, and was taught to lisp his first prayer by a peaceful fireside, refuse compassion to the circumstances under which this miserable woman's gifted child imbibed that nervous suspiciousness which afterwards ripened into a quarrel with human nature, and was remarked among his earliest companions at once for solitary pride, and passionate fervours of affection, for sitting in a churchyard to watch the sunset, and for silent rages.' We presume no one can doubt what was in Lord Byron's mind when he put the following words into the mouth of his Manfred. 'There is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become These lines form a prophetic epitome of this tragic story-a story of which no good man will ever think without mingled emotions of awe, pity, and reprobation. We do not forget what he wished to be the only inscription on his tombstone, IMPLORA PACE;' but all the respect that is justly claimed for buried genius must not make us shrink from our duty to the living; and we feel assured that few who have read Mr. Moore's work, with the attention which its theme and its execution deserve, will think we dismiss the subject unappropriately, by recalling the solemn words in which a man of genius, at least equal to any of our age, was accustomed to humble himself before his Maker. Jeremy Taylor's nightly prayer for himself and his friends was for God's merciful deliverance and preservation From the violence and rule of passion; from a servile will and a commanding lust; from pride and vanity; from false opinion and ignorant confidence; VOL. XLIV. NO. LXXXVII. Q • From From improvidence and prodigality; from envy and the spirit of slander; from sensuality; from presumption, and from despair; 'From a state of temptation and hardened spirits; from delaying of repentance and persevering in sin; from unthankfulness and irreligion, and from seducing others; From all infatuation of soul, folly, and madness; from wilfulness, self-love, and vain ambition; from a vicious life and an unprovided death.' ART. VI.-1. Military Events of the late French Revolution; or, an Account of the Conduct of the Royal Guard on that occasion. By a Staff-Officer of the Guards. From the French. Fourth Edition. 8vo. London. 1830. 2. Dix Jours de 1830, Souvenirs de la dernière Révolution. Par A. S-, Officier d'Infanterie de la Garde Royale. Paris. 1830. Paris. 1830. 3. Procès des Ex-Ministres. 3 tom. 4. Evènemens de Paris des 26, 27, 28, 29 Juillet, 1830. Par plusieurs Témoins Oculaires. Paris. 1830. 5. Une Semaine de l'Histoire de Paris. Paris. 1830. 6. La Dernière Semaine de Juillet, 1830. Par Léonard Gallois. Paris. 1830. 7. The French Revolution of 1830. By D. Turnbull, Esq. London. 1830. 8. Full Annals of the French Revolution. By William Hone. London. 1830. T is not our intention to discuss, in the following article, any of the political considerations connected with the late French revolution. We shall, we fear, have but too many and too serious occasions for such inquiries. We mean at present to confine ourselves exclusively to the military events of the Three Days, with the view of explaining the phenomenon of the triumph of an unorganized and ill-armed population over disciplined and well-affected troops, directed by most distinguished officers. We are well aware that every voice, and almost every publication, in France and throughout Europe, offer a short and easy solution of the apparent difficulty, in the enthusiasm of popular feeling and the omnipotent power of public opinion.' No doubt these are the springs by which nations are moved and revolutions finally effected; but we doubted, from the first, whether these causes existed in France to so great an extent as to account for results so sudden and so stupendous; and an attentive, and we hope impartial, examination of all the circumstances, has led us to a conclusion that the degree of zeal zeal and courage exhibited by the Parisians (considerable as in the progress of events it became) could not have achieved successes so extraordinary, without great blunders, strange unreadiness, and marvellous imbecility, of all kinds, on the part of the ministers and the generals. The ministers, as appears by the Procès, had not only made no preparation to enforce their measures, but had left the garrison of Paris weaker than it usually was; and Marshal Marmont, to whom, at the eleventh hour, the command was given, showed himself to be wholly incompetent to the management of the forces placed at his disposal. The contest was begun, on the part of the royal authorities, with blind neglect, was pursued feebly, irresolutely, and erroneously, and finally terminated by an accident which common sense would have prevented, and a very ordinary exertion of presence of mind might have repaired; nor can there be any rational doubt that such was the real state of the case. It is not at all wonderful that the confusion and excitement of such scenes should have led to much misstatement and great exaggerations on the part of the conquerors; while, on the other hand, the astonishing rapidity and importance of the results seemed to confirm all the claims of the Parisians. But prejudice and popular excitement have their time, and historical truth has, on this occasion, asserted its right sooner than usual. The works, whose titles we have enumerated above, though they are in number but a small part of the publications which these events have produced, contain such a mass of evidence from all sides, as puts us in full possession of the facts of the case. By far the most important of these works, and indeed one of the most lucid, able, and interesting military narratives which we have ever read, is the Military Events by a Staff Officer of the Royal Guard.' เ We must premise a word or two as to this writer. He was, as the title-page announces, an officer of the staff of the late Royal Guard, and seems to have been concerned in most, and cognisant of all, the proceedings in which that body were engaged; and, as the translator justly observes, the history of the Guard is the history of all the fighting of the three days, because there was no resistance made to the people, except by the Guards, or in conjunction with them.'-(Advertisement.) The work is anonymous, but the author is understood to be M. Bermond de Vachères, one of the field-officers of the 3d regiment of French Guards. We learn, too, that his personal character and position afford a strong guarantee of the accuracy and impartiality of his statements. He was no courtier-no emigrant-he has served long and well in the old army-his work proves him to be a most able judge and perspicuous narrator of military movements—and, finally, his political senti Q 2 ments ments were decidedly hostile to the ministerial measures in support of which his duties as a soldier engaged him. The correctness of his facts is established by those parts of the evidence given on the trial of the ex-ministers which relate to the military operations, and is further confirmed by a very remarkable fact that, although the author's task has, as he has himself observed, obliged him to depreciate a popular triumph, and to offend individual amour propre as well as national vanity, his work has gone through several editions, and been reviewed in the public journals, without having received any contradiction, or having had produced against it one single charge of error or inaccuracy. In so wide a field of operations as that which he describes, and under such circumstances of interruption and confusion as distracted every mind, it would not have been surprising if many mistakes had been made; but the absence (in these days of journalism and pamphlets) of any kind of reply, and the acquiescence in the author's statement of all those whose interests and passions would doubtless have prompted them to contradict him if they could, confirm that reliance on both his veracity and his accuracy which the clearness and apparent fairness of his narrative at first excited. The work of Lieut. S has neither the scope nor the importance of that of his brother officer, but, as far as it goes, fully corroborates it. The other French works are, for the most part, selections from the journals of the days immediately succeeding the revolution, and are therefore very vague, much exaggerated, and very contradictory. Mr. Turnbull's book, though it claims the dignity of an original work, and comes forth in the shape of a portly octavo, is a mere collection and translation of all the vague and contradictory trash just mentioned, and Mr. Hone's Annals are little better. We shall generally make our quotations from Turnbull and Hone, to save the trouble of translation; but it must be understood that they are nothing but servile repetitions of the French pamphlets. We now proceed to follow the course of the events, taking M. de Bermond as our principal guide. On Sunday, the 25th July, the fatal Ordonnances were signed. On the 26th they surprised every man in France-except the King, the seven ministers, and the printers of the Moniteur-by their appearance in that official journal. On that day the armed force in Paris was as follows: Guards (horse, foot, and artillery) The Line (5th, 15th, 50th, and 53d regiments) Fusiliers Sedentaires (veterans) Gendarmerie (horse and foot) 4750 4400 1100 1300 11,550 But was. But nothing like this force was ever employed in subduing the insurrection. First, M. de Bermond deducts the 4400 men of the Line, who not only professed neutrality early on the 27th, but in fact were, as we shall see, sometimes rather auxiliaries to the people; secondly, the 1100 Fusiliers Sédentaires, or veterans, who gave their arms to the people on the first demand; and thirdly, 1300 of the Guards and Gendarmerie, who were marched off the parade on the morning of the 27th, as usual, for the daily service, in guards of honour, sentinels, &c., of Paris, and St. Cloud, where the court then These little scattered detachments were all seized on the first disturbances, and disarmed in detail on their several posts, and of course with little or no resistance. This left a real force, on the morning of the 28th July-the fighting day, as we shall see of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, of four thousand two hundred men only, all Guards, except about seven hundred Gensdarmerie. The infantry were divided into small battalions of only 220 each, except the three battalions of the Swiss regiment, which were 400 each. The cavalry were in squadrons of 100 men each. We request our readers to bear these numbers in mind. Well might M. de Polignac allege on his trial that no preparation had been made!-there were three battalions of infantry and twelve squadrons of cavalry of the Guards, at Versailles, only ten miles off ;-two battalions of infantry, and two squadrons of cavalry, at Sèvres, and at St. Denis, about four miles distant;-one with the regiment of artillery, at Vincennes, close to the gates of Paris-none of whom were called into the town till it was too late to employ them. There were other regiments of Guards at no great distance; and if any preparation had been thought of, twenty-five thousand men might have been collected within a week. The report of the managers of the impeachment, and the evidence adduced on the Procès, fully admit the fact of nonpreparation, and prove even that the garrison at Paris was, on the 26th, short of its usual force by three full battalions of Guards, which the ministers had lately detached into Normandy, to assist in quelling the incendiary disturbances in that province. To swell the triumph of the people, this supineness, this apathy of the ministers has not only been disguised, but they have been represented as on the alert.' 'In the meantime, on the 26th, the Government was on the alert, and sent a general officer to Angers, and another to Grenelle, for military purposes. The military command of Paris was entrusted to Marshal Marmont. Troops were ordered in from the barracks fifty miles round. It was evident the King and the ministers were bent on enforcing obedience to their ordonnances by arms; the Guards in the city were doubled.'-Hone's Annals, p. 16, What |