MEMOIR OF ARMAND CARREL.

ON the 20th of March, 1823, a young man of twenty-three-stealthily embarked at Marseilles in a Spanish fishing vessel bound for Barcelona; but the evening before, he had worn the epaulette of sub-lieutenant of the 29th regiment of the line. Somewhat compromised in the opinion of his superiors by his liberal opinions, he had been ordered to remain at the depôt at Aix, while his regiment was sent to share in the expedition directed by the government of the elder branch of the Bourbons against the Spanish revolution. The young officer, thirsting for action, had vainly protested against the order which condemned him to repose; having received as an only reply, a threat of dismissal, he decided upon sending in his resignation, and thus restored to liberty, precluded from fighting in the French ranks, and, moreover, drawn by his opinions to the cause of the Spanish constitutionalists, he departed, all joyous, unknown to his parents or friends, to place his sword and his life at the service of that cause.

On his arrival at Barcelona, he found the town filled with refugees from all nations, mostly old soldiers of the empire, attracted to Spain by the love of war, the taste for adventure, and the hope of revenge upon the white flag. While other refugees, encamped upon the banks of the Bidassoa, vainly endeavoured to gain over the army of the Bourbons by waving the tri-coloured flag before their eyes, the French assembled at Barcelona, formed themselves into a battalion, called the battalion of Napoleon II., clothed in the uniform of the old guard, and marching under the imperial eagle. Soon reduced in numbers by the rapid successes of the army of invasion, this French battalion was organized, with the other foreign companies, into a single corps, which, under the name of the Foreign liberalist legion, formed a battalion of infantry, and a small squadron of lancers. Many companies of it were composed entirely of officers; there were two generals in the ranks carrying the lance; one half of them were Frenchmen, and the rest had served in the Imperial armies. The uniform and colours were those of the empire; a brilliant and gallant officer, colonel Pachioretti, had organized this legion, and commanded it. It was under him that for many months were seen men, collected from all parts of Europe, almost all old soldiers of the great captain come to a strange country to defend a cause which they looked upon as their own, rallied under the ascendancy of a lofty mind, marching where it

led them, suffering and fighting without the hope of praise or in any way changing, do what they might, the desperate state of their cause; having no other prospect before them but that of a miserable end amidst a country in arms against them, or death in the court-yard as prisoners, if they escaped that of the battle-field.

It was in this rude school of strife and misery, in this campaign of Catalonia, of which he was one day to be the eloquent historian, that the young officer from Marseilles fought his first fight, with a bravery and a talent worthy a better fate; for the Foreign liberalist legion, ill seconded by the Spanish troops, after having been decimated in numerous encounters, was at length overwhelmed before Figuiéres, after a combat of two days, the fierce determination of which proved that they were Frenchmen who fought on either side. On the third day, the small foreign phalanx, diminished by two-thirds, but resolved to die weapon in hand rather than incur the punishment reserved by the French laws for most of the survivors, prepared to fight till the death of the last man, when general baron de Damas proposed a capitulation, by which he granted the ordinary conditions to the Spaniards and other foreigners, and pledged himself to obtain the pardon of the French refugees.

This capitulation, the terms of which were afterwards contested by the refugees, was not fully ratified by the government of the restoration, at least, not as to the latter, for immediately that, re-entering France, wearing their swords and uniforms, they appeared at Perpignan, they were seized and carried before councils of war. M. de Damas, whose guarantee they appealed to, declared that he had engaged only to obtain their life from the king's mercy, but not to protect them from the condemnation which they might incur for having borne arms against France.

Most of them refused to admit of any modification of the convention of Figuières, and among the most determined in demanding the honourable fulfilment of a capitulation of which he was denied the security, the young officer in question was chiefly distinguished. The idea of being regarded by military judges as a deserter taken in arms, and who had surrendered at discretion, was odious to him; and rather than place himself at the royal mercy, he preferred, despite the remonstrances of his family, to take the chance of a judicial struggle, which, in case of failure, would endanger his position.

Twice condemned to death at Perpignan, he contrived to have those two sentences annulled for defects of form; brought before a third council of war at Toulouse, he was ably defended by the celebrated advocate, Romiguières. The passions which had given birth to the war in Spain were already somewhat calmed; the bravery, the youth, the noble and open physiognomy of the accused, some earnest and touching expressions which he himself delivered in his defence, all moved the hearts of the judges; and upon the simple proof of the existence of the capitulation, he was acquitted by a majority of six to one, and re-entered society, not as a pardoned criminal, but as a conquered soldier, who had owed his life to his sword alone.

However, that sword was now broken; the military career, which he had embraced from taste, was for ever closed to the young sub-lieutenant, but Fortune reserved brilliant compensation for him.

But a few years, and this obscure officer, changing his sword for a pen,

MEMOIR OF ARMAND CARREL.

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was to achieve with that pen, which he wielded like a sword, the rank of general in chief of the grand army of journalists, that most undisciplined army of all that ever existed, numbering as many generals as it does soldiers. Again, a few years, and aided by a revolution, this sub-lieutenant was to become, both in the eyes of his adversaries and of his friends, the loftiest, the most brilliant personification of the political press of France; and yet again a few years, and the bloody and premature death of this simple journalist, unhappily too adherent to the manners of the soldier, was to produce in France and in Europe a sensation as vivid as that produced by the death of a powerful king. Thirty thousand persons of every rank were to escort his remains to his grave, and men were to see the greatest literary genius of our age, the statesman who, from his cabinet, gave motion, in 1823, to the army of Spain, the most illustrious of the emigrants of the white flag, weeping over the tomb of the bravest emigrant of the tri-coloured flag.

JEAN BAPTISTE NICOLAS ARMAND CARREL was born at Rouen, on the 8th of May, 1800, of a mercantile family; after having partly gone through his classical studies in the college of that city, he obtained his father's permission to follow the inclination which drew him to a military career, and he entered the school of Saint Cyr.

"At Saint Cyr," says M. Littré, "he distinguished himself by his taste for military exercises and the boldness of his political opinions. He was looked upon, from the outset, as an ill-affected person, and was consequently kept under close surveillance, and even persecuted by the superior general, d'Albignac. One day, the general having said to him that, with opinions like his, he should take to the yard measure at his father's counter: "General," answered Carrel," if I do take it up, it will not be to measure cloth with it." This daring reply occasioned his arrest, and there was a question even of expelling him. But Carrel wrote direct to the minister of war, explained the facts to him, and completely gained his cause. Caring little for the studies which might make him attain a first rank as an officer, Carrel paid indifferent attention to mathematics, but much to literature, and as his compositions were solely narratives of battles and military harangues, he left his fellow-pupils far behind him, as well by the purity and precision of his style, as by the bold ideas which he made such admirable use of when peculiar energy was required."

Having, in 1821, entered, as sub-lieutenant, the 29th regiment of the line, then in garrison at Béfort and Neuf-Brisach, he had some share in the military conspiracy known as the conspiracy of Béfort; but, fortunately for him, his complicity escaped the investigations of the police.

Being with his regiment at Versailles, he wrote, as his débût in the career of journalism, a letter to the Spanish cortes, which procured him, from general de Damas, general of his division, a paternal admonition, and doubtless contributed to his being left at the depôt at the time of the expedition.

We have seen how he indemnified himself for the inactivity sought to be imposed upon him, and how his campaign in Catalonia brought him before the councils of war.

After his last acquittal, and his release from the prison of Toulouse, he came, in September, 1824, to Paris, where he found himself, without resources, without profession, under the displeasure of his family, and pressed to adopt some profession instead of that he had lost. He first thought of studying the law, with a view to the bar, but he had entered Saint Cyr before taking a degree in philosophy, and had not, accordingly, the diploma of bachelor, without which he could not enter. Although, during his garrison life, and