emned to
lose all property and all privileges, and were sent to the strong
fortress of Ham. After a few years they were released, and took
refuge in England.
There were riots in Paris when it was known that the ministers
and ill-advisers of the late king were not to be executed; one
of the leaders in these disturbances was an Italian bravo named
Fieschi,--a man base, cruel, and bold, whom Louis Blanc calls a
_scelerat bel esprit_.
The _emeute_ which was formidable, was suppressed chiefly by a
gallant action on the part of the king, who, while his health was
unimpaired, was never wanting in bravery. "The king of the French,"
says Greville, "has put an end to the disturbances in Paris about
the sentence of the ministers by an act of personal gallantry. At
night, when the streets were most crowded and agitated, he sallied
from the Palais Royal on horseback, with his son, the Duc de Nemours,
and his personal _cortege_, and paraded through Paris for two hours.
That did the business. He was received with shouts of applause,
and at once reduced everything to tranquillity. He deserves his
throne for this, and will probably keep it."
The next trouble in the new reign was the alienation of public
favor from Lafayette, who had done so much to place the king upon
the throne. He was accused by one party of truckling to the new
court, by the other of being too much attached to revolutionary
methods and republican institutions. He was removed from the command
of the National Guard, and his office of commander-in-chief of
that body was abolished.
All Europe becomes "a troubled sea" when a storm breaks over France.
"I never remember," writes Greville at this period, "days like
these, nor read of such,--the terror and lively expectation that
prevails, and the way in which people's minds are turned backward and
forward from France to Ireland, then range exclusively from Poland
to Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots, and executions
that are going on in England."
Meantime France was subsiding into quiet, with occasional slight
shocks of revolutionary earthquake, before returning to order and
peace. The king was _le bon bourgeois_. He had lived a great deal
in England and the United States, and spoke English well. He had
even said in his early youth that he was more of an Englishman
than a Frenchman. He was short and stout. His head was shaped like
a pear, and was surmounted by an elaborate brown wig; for in those
da
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