Part 19

"Thus Clarke, the inevitable Clarke, was appointed Governor of Berlin," says De Bourienne, "and under his administration the wretched inhabitants, who could not flee, were overwhelmed by every species of impost and oppression. As in the execution of every measure there operated the most servile compliance with the orders of Napoleon, so the name of Clarke is held in detestation throughout Prussia."

The measures of Clarke, as Governor of Berlin, were doubtless mortifying, ruinous, and often sanguinary; but then it must be remembered that he was compelled to enforce the iron will, and obey the stern orders, of his inflexible master; though it must be acknowledged that it would have been more noble in him to have softened them to the vanquished Prussians. The military contributions were rigorously levied, and those were not the least of the severities exercised upon the people of Berlin. Offences were uselessly created, and then barbarously judged of by a military commission.

The punishment of the unfortunate Burgomaster of Ciritz is forgotten amid the many barbarous executions of which Prussia became the theatre, and against which her people dared not protest. When the king, Frederick William, found himself seated with Clarke at the table of Louis XVIII. in 1815, he could not refrain from bitterly reproaching Clarke with what he termed "the useless murder of the father of a family."

"Sire," responded Clarke, "it was an unfortunate error."

"An error, monsieur?" reiterated the king, striking his hand upon the table; "an error--it was a crime!"

Withal, it must be acknowledged that Clarke, in the high place he occupied, fulfilled, in every way, the trust reposed in him by Napoleon; and that during his command at Berlin, which occupied a year, he gave ample proof of his inflexible probity; and we may perhaps believe, that many of the accusations made against him were the echoes of those complaints which are naturally raised by the vanquished against the troops of the victor. Doubtless he would have received greater praise had he striven to please others more, and his master less. By the official collections of Schoell, we are informed that Vendomme one day wished to appropriate to himself the magnificent furniture in the palace of Potsdam, where he resided; but that Clarke, by his determined intervention, forced him to relinquish the idea.

Clarke was again named minister of war, _vice_ Marshal Berthier, Duke of Neufchatel and Prince of Wagram. He acquitted himself with great credit during his administration, which was prolonged without interruption for several years; but it was marked by two remarkable episodes--the descent upon Walcheren in 1809, and the conspiracy of Mallet in 1812. But we ought previously to have mentioned that in 1808 Clarke had been ennobled by the title of Count Hunebourg, and in 1809 he was created Duc de Feltre, from a town in Venetian Lombardy.

The descent of the British upon Walcheren took Clarke by surprise; but seconded by Bernadotte and Fouche he collected, in less than five weeks, an army of 100,000 men, near the mouths of the Scheldt, to watch their operations; but the swamps of South Beveland, and the Walcheren fever, proved more deadly to the British troops than the bayonets of France.

When Napoleon was absent on his disastrous Russian campaign, the unfortunate disturbance, or rather wild enterprise of the republican General Mallet, with his compatriots Guidal and Lahoire, placed Paris for some hours in the hands of an armed mob. The coolness and presence of mind exhibited by Clarke during this momentous crisis is above all common praise. Mallet forged an account of Bonaparte's death; and on obtaining twelve hundred men from the 10th cohort of the National Guard, made prisoners M. Pasquer and Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, and assailing General Hullin, Commandant of Paris, in his quarters, shot him through the head by a pistol-ball. Mallet led his party to seize Clarke as minister of war; but the plot was soon discovered, and Mallet was captured and disarmed. This finished his proposed reassertion of the Republic, and fourteen of his followers were put to death, while Clarke ordered the arrest of many others upon very slight suspicions. He then dispatched to Bonaparte a report, which displayed his own vigilance and acuteness in escaping the snare into which General Hullin, Colonel Soulier, Savary, and Pasquer had fallen so easily.

The excessive zeal of Clarke began to relax about the end of 1813, although his language always continued the same; thus, when Napoleon,

## acting under the pressure of his disasters in Russia, proposed to make

a peace, and yield up some of his conquests, the Duc de Feltre, knowing how to touch one of the sensitive chords in his breast, said, "that he would consider the Emperor dishonoured if he consented to abandon the smallest village which had been united to the Empire by a senatorial decree!"

"What a fine thing it is to talk!" added old Bourienne.

Clarke's opinion, however, prevailed with Napoleon, and the war, so fatal to him, continued; though without doubt, in his secret soul, he had begun to see the exact and perilous position of the Emperor. Before the startling events of March, 1814, when the allies advanced upon Paris, and before the communications of Joseph had forced the determination of the Assembly, the acute Clarke had advised, very decidedly, the departure of Maria Louisa, who set out at once for Blois. The ostentatious language with which he accompanied this advice failed to deceive any one; but in spite of his efforts it was singularly cold and discouraging.

He commenced his oration by a vivid picture of the conflicting state of

## parties, and of the state of Paris and its environs; and his enemies

accused him not only of exaggerating the dangers which menaced the capital, but of concealing its actual resources; but one fact is evident, Clarke was clearly and honestly of opinion that Paris was indefensible, and that to resist would be to destroy it! It is said that Bonaparte had a contrary opinion, though it was not then publicly avowed.

When once Maria Louisa had left Paris, Clarke, foreseeing its certain capitulation, did not take the necessary measures either to defend it or to check the progress of the allies. For three days he did not open the arsenals to the Parisians, nor would he allow them to transport the cannon from the Hotel des Invalides, and the Ecole Militaire to the heights about the city; finally he clubbed all the troops of the line about Montmartre. "Posterity," says a recent writer, "will decide if these measures were correct."

Then followed the battle of Paris; Marshal Marmont's return within its walls; the nights of the 30th and 31st of March; the capitulation; the entry of the allies, and the strange enthusiasm with which the vacillating population received them. Napoleon was dethroned by a decree of the Senate, and a Provisional Government was formed; and changing, like many others, in that time of change, to this new government, Clarke sent in his formal adhesion on the 8th of April, about one week after Paris was taken.

On the 4th of the following June he was created, by Louis XVIII., a peer of France.

When Marshal Soult retired from office, King Louis appointed Clarke Minister of War--the same post he had held under the Emperor, who was then maturing plans of new operations in the little isle of Elba.

It was tauntingly said of Clarke that it was his destiny and misfortune to see the affairs of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons go to wreck, while entrusted to his care.

The _Memoirs of St. Helena_ assure us that Clarke, during the events of the Hundred Days, wished to _retake_ service under the Emperor Napoleon! If so, how different was his conduct from the faith that characterized Ney, Cambronne, and Macdonald! A rumour of this, in 1815, led to the immediate departure of Clarke for Ghent, where, at the fugitive court of Louis XVIII., he exercised his functions as Minister of War; and from thence, some time after, he travelled to London, charged with a mission from the king to the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.

During the time the allied armies occupied Paris, Clarke had a remarkable interview with the King of Prussia. On this occasion he was accompanied by M. de Bourienne and Marshal Berthier. They remained for some time in the saloon, before his Prussian Majesty appeared from his closet, and when he did so, the embarrassment of his manner, and the cloudy severity of his countenance, was apparent to the three visitors.

"Marshal," said he to Berthier, "I should have preferred receiving you as a peaceful visitor at Berlin; but war has its successes, as well as its reverses. Your troops are brave and ably led; but you cannot oppose numbers, and Europe is armed against the Emperor; patience has its limits. You have passed no little time, marshal, in making war on Germany, and I have great pleasure in saying to you that I shall never forget your conduct, your justice, and moderation in those seasons of misfortune."

Marshal Berthier, who deserved this eulogium, made a suitable reply; after which the King of Prussia turned sternly to the Duc de Feltre, saying,--

"As for _you_, General Clarke, I cannot say the same of your conduct as of the marshal's. The inhabitants of Berlin will long remember your government. You abused victory strangely, and carried to an extreme measures of rigour and vexation. If I have an advice to give you, it is--_never show your face in Prussia_."

"Clarke was so overwhelmed by this reception from a crowned head," says M. de Bourienne, "that Berthier and myself, each taking an arm, were absolutely obliged to support him down the grand stair."

On returning to King Louis, at Ghent, he resumed his duties of Minister for the War Department; and assuredly his task was both a severe and a difficult one.

He had to arrange the disbanding of the Imperial and the re-organization of a Royal army; he had to examine and decide upon the various claims presented by hundreds of soldiers; he had to satisfy the demands of two thousand officers who adhered to the king, and to send them into the interior; he had to classify nine thousand officers of the disbanded army; to arrange for the pay of six thousand others who were _re-formed_--that is, continued on pay, but without being regimented; he had to examine six thousand claims for arrears of pay and pensions, claims that could admit of no delay, and which amounted to forty-six millions of francs; he had to organize the Royal Garde du Corp; to reconstitute the gendarmerie; to provide for the maintenance of the allied armies of occupation; and all this he had to do, amid obstacles, disorders, and complexities without example.

Such was the mighty mass of labour submitted to the care of Clarke; and of this herculean task he nobly and ably acquitted himself in less than two years.

All impartial writers unite in exculpating him from the angry and unjust accusation of peculating with the enormous sums which were required and absorbed by the re-organization of the French army. But he was severely handled by military men for instituting those tribunals styled _Les Cours Prevotales_.

In June, 1815, Clarke was with Louis XVIII. at Arnouville, and while there saved his friend, Francois Marquis de Lagrange, a lieutenant-general who in 1813 commanded the 3rd Regiment of Gardes d'Honneur, from great danger, if not from death. The marquis had been accused of offering his services to Napoleon, and hastily arrived at Arnouville with his son, on the 30th June. As he was about to wait upon Louis he was assailed by several soldiers, in whose hearts the love of Napoleon was strong. They called him a _traitor_, and tore away his sword, cross, and epaulettes. On becoming aware of these outrages, Clarke sent two influential officers to repress the tumult, and himself led the marquis to Louis XVIII., who appointed him captain of the Black Musketeers.

The zeal which Clarke now employed in the cause of the house of Bourbon was ultimately the means of his downfall. Louis XVIII., who each day conceded more and more to the enemies of his dynasty, after bestowing upon Clarke the baton of a Marshal of France, displaced him from office, and appointed Gouvin St. Cyr in his room.

We know that after his dismissal all was changed in the department of the Minister of War.

The position in which Clarke found himself during the last years of his stirring, active, and useful life was very painful and humiliating, especially to one of so proud a spirit as his. Some of the more favoured personages who crowded the court of Louis XVIII., could not behold with a favourable eye this foreigner, who had been the War Minister of the great Napoleon, a confidant of his, and his co-operator in a thousand schemes of conquest; on the other hand, his old comrades of the Imperial army affected to see in Clarke a deserter, a transferer of his allegiance, and, indeed, all but a traitor. Those whose base extortions he had repressed in other times now joined their clamours against him, and the Royalists cared not to say a word in his defence.

Thus, at the end of his career, he was unjustly despised alike for his talents and virtues, as for his mistakes and weaknesses--for the good he had done as well as for evil. Clarke now found himself isolated and abandoned, and the conviction of this, together with the coldness with which he was treated, sank deeply into his proud and sensitive heart.

It aggravated an illness which preyed upon him, and he died on the 28th of October, 1818, in his fifty-third year.

Such was the career of the Duc de Feltre, one of the most famous of the Irish exiles.

Clarke was master of many languages. He wrote with ease, with elegance, and with correctness; his style was often brilliant, and he knew thoroughly all that appertained to the details of a war administration. The state of complete disorganization in which he found the French service after March, 1814, proves the admirable tact and skill with which he could bring order out of disorder.

Many of the old Imperialists, his enemies, coarsely accused him of treason and treachery, but Napoleon takes care partly to exculpate him from charges so severe. On being asked at St. Helena if he believed that Clarke had been true to him, the fallen Emperor said, with a sigh--

"True to me--yes, when I was in my strength;" and after a time he added--"I cannot boast of him being more constant to me than Fortune."

This lessens the alleged crime of Clarke, while, at the same time, it lessens his nobility of conduct; though it must be acknowledged that he did not leave Napoleon until he could no longer be of service to him. The Emperor was not easily deceived as to the fidelity of a follower.

From Bourienne we know that, in 1796 and 1797, after all that passed between Napoleon and Clarke, the former still trusted in the latter, and never attempted to interrupt his despatches to the Directory or to the Chevalier de la Croix; and nothing was ever found in them displeasing to the Commander-in-chief.

Two great traits in the character of Clarke were, first, his hatred of all peculation and political knavery; the other was his mania for office, and the despatches and details connected therewith. So poor was he during the earlier years of his career, that Napoleon had to portion one of his daughters; and no instance of profusion or luxury has been cited against him.

Inflated by his patent of nobility, he wished to make his genealogy great and lofty, and one day he believed that he had discovered his descent, by the female side, from the Plantagenets--an idea which exceedingly amused Napoleon, who once said to him in a numerous company, about the time of his projected invasion of Britain,--

"Clarke, you have not yet spoken of your claims to the English throne--you ought _now_ to make them good!"[16]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: _Biographie Universelle_, &c.]

GENERAL KILMAINE,

COMMANDANT OF LOMBARDY AND GENERAL OF THE ARMEE D'ANGLETERRE.

Charles Jennings Kilmaine, a gallant and celebrated general in the French army, was born in Dublin in the year 1750, and was descended from an ancient Irish family which had always been strongly attached to the Roman Catholic religion, and opposed to the interests of England. So deep was the animosity of his father to the church and government as established in Ireland, that in 1765 he took Charles to France, and there recommended him, when only in his fifteenth year, to enlist as a private hussar in the Regiment de Lauzun, a distinguished cavalry corps of the old French service, raised originally in the departement of the Garonne. He accompanied this corps to America, where he served in the War of Independence under the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette, Grand Provost of the kingdom of France, and was present in most of those battles in which Washington and his generals so signally discomfited the troops of Great Britain. Association with officers of the United States army, added to those impressions made upon him during his youth in Ireland and the teachings of his father, caused Kilmaine to imbibe strongly the sentiments of a revolutionist.

He repeatedly distinguished himself in action; and his colonel, the gallant Biron, after passing him through the more subordinate ranks, appointed him sous-lieutenant of a troop.

On the conclusion of the war, the Irish hussar returned with his regiment to France, full of those ideas of liberty and insurrection which he had seen so signally triumphant in the New World; and nearly all his brother officers had imbibed the same opinions. Thus it was with ill-concealed joy that the young Kilmaine and his comrades, the Hussars de Lauzun, in 1789, saw a Revolution which seemed destined to achieve results like those they had witnessed in America, break forth in old monarchical France.

In 1789 he was appointed captain of his troop, and continued to serve with the hussars, who became so much attached to him, that during the tumults of 1794 he contributed greatly, by his influence, presence and example, to retain under their colours nearly the whole of the regiment, which like the regiment of Royal Germans and the Hussars de Saxe, seemed disposed to desert _en masse_. Thanks to the patriotic zeal displayed by Kilmaine in the cause of his adopted country, the officers of noble family who chose to become emigrants were alone lost to the service; but this proved to him a new source of advancement, and he was soon appointed a _chef d'escadre_, which in the French army is equal to the rank of a general officer, being commander of a division; and about this time he enjoyed the friendship of his countryman, the Comte O'Kelly, who was ambassador of France at Mayence, with an income of 30,000 livres per annum.

As a chef d'escadre Kilmaine served throughout the first campaigns of the Revolution, and under Dumourier and Lafayette commanded a corps of that army which burst into the Netherlands and annexed that territory to republican France.

He fought with remarkable bravery at the great battle of Gemappes, on the 6th November, 1792, and with his hussars repeatedly charged the Austrians, driving them _sabre a la main_ along the road that leads from Mons to Valenciennes; and so pleased was his general, the unfortunate Dumourier, that in the moment of victory he named him colonel; but this nomination was not confirmed by the minister of war. However, he was soon after gratified by a brevet of marechal de camp, which made him, in rank, second only to a lieutenant-general.

He continued to serve with this army, and to be one of its most

## active and able officers, during all the sufferings which succeeded

the victory at Gemappes. It consisted of forty-eight battalions of infantry, and three thousand two hundred cavalry. In December, by the neglect of the Revolutionary Government, these troops were shirtless, shoeless, starving and in rags; fifteen hundred men deserted; the cavalry of Kilmaine were soon destitute of boots, saddles, carbines, pistols and even sabres; the military chest was empty, and six thousand troop and baggage horses died at Lisle and Tongres, for want of forage. "To such a state," says Dumourier, "was the victorious army of Gemappes reduced after the conquest of Belgia!"

Honourable testimony has been given to the unceasing efforts of Kilmaine to preserve order among his soldiers amid these horrors; and with other staff-officers, he frequently endeavoured by private contribution to make out a day's subsistence for their men, who roved about in bands, robbing the villages around their cantonments at Aix-la-Chapelle, and in revenge many were murdered by the peasants when found straggling alone beyond their out--posts.

After the defection and flight of General Dumourier, Kilmaine adhered to the National Convention, and by that body was appointed a general of division; and now he redoubled his energies to restore order in the army, which by the defection of its leader was almost disbanded; thus, in one month after General Dampierre took command, so ably was he seconded by Kilmaine, the discipline was completely established.

He commanded the advance-guard of Dampierre in the new campaign against the allied powers, on the failure of the congress at Antwerp on the 8th of April, 1793; and his leader bears the highest testimony to the gallantry and noble conduct of Kilmaine, in the "murderous affairs of the 1st and 2nd May;" in which, according to the official report, he had two chargers shot under him.

Six days of incessant skirmishing succeeded, during which Kilmaine never had his boots off, nor returned his sabre once to the scabbard; and he displayed the most reckless valour on the 8th of May, in that battle fought by Dampierre to deliver Conde.

The French were routed with great loss; Dampierre was slain; and on Kilmaine as an active cavalry officer devolved the task of covering the retreat of the infuriated and disorderly army, which fell back from Conde-sur-l'Escaut, which is a barrier town, and was then the nominal lordship of the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien.

On General la Marche succeeding Dampierre, he sent Kilmaine with his division to the great forest of Ardennes, which formed a part of the theatre of war, on the invasion of France by the allies; but he remained there only a short time, and rejoined the main army, which he found in the most critical circumstances.