.

That the Revolution of 1789 left the citizens of Chauny much less
determined to do battle for their rights than their ancestors were in
the days of the English invaders, may be fairly inferred, I think, from
the very curious circumstance that, in 1815, they actually made a public
subscription for the purpose of presenting a very handsome gold medal,
weighing two ounces, to the Prussian Commander of Chauny, Colonel Von
Beulwitz.

This medal bore the inscription, in French, 'The grateful city of Chauny
to M. Von Beulwitz, Commandant of Chauny.' The local authorities also
asked, and obtained, for their Prussian satrap and his secretary the
cross of the Legion of Honour!

All this was no doubt very creditable to the German authorities, and not
discreditable to the good people of Chauny. But it certainly seems to
show that at the end of the Napoleonic era, the French people in the
provinces were thoroughly weary of the Revolution and all its
consequences. They welcomed peace at any price from any quarter. The
testimony of all impartial contemporary observers accords with the
deliberate opinion given by Gouverneur Morris to Alexander Hamilton in
1796, that the French people in general were royalists at heart, and
utterly averse to the general overthrow of their institutions by the
legislative mob at Paris, or, as Mirabeau comprehensively called them,
'that Wild Ass of the National Assembly.'

At Chauny, in 1816, the inhabitants held a meeting under the presidency
of the mayor, at which they declared, with great unanimity, that 'the
people of Chauny had never, in fact and of their own free will, adopted
the impious and seditious principles introduced in France by a factious
minority, and that they regarded the death of the most Christian king,
Louis XVI., as the most execrable of crimes.'

Chauny was a city then of less than 4,000 inhabitants, but the
peripatetic 'patriots' of 1793 had contrived to do mischief enough, even
in this small and quiet corner of France, to earn the detestation of its
people. They desecrated its churches, turning Notre-Dame into a
saltpetre factory, stealing the church bells to sell them, pulling down
the steeples and towers, and defacing the monuments.

They arrested and imprisoned numbers of the best citizens, broke up the
ancient hospitals, driving away the Sisters of Charity, and brought
about the murder, by the revolutionary tribunals, of a celebrated French
admiral, who co-operated in