[Footnote 25: Marshal Soult had just succeeded General Dupont.]
Excelmans was brought to trial, and the court acquitted him[26]. The council of war, by sanctioning the disobedience of the General, declared that the government did not possess that authority over reduced officers which they had assumed; and from this moment the government was ruined. The decision by which the half-pay military were enfranchised, and which left them at liberty to brave the commands of the government, was a shock which beat the royal authority to the ground.
[Footnote 26: M. Comte, one of the acute and courageous editors of the Censor, was chosen by the general as his "counsel." General Fressinet was his advocate. (According to the forms of the French courts of judicature, the counsel assists by his advice, the advocate pleads.) This officer, equally distinguished by his firmness, his talents, and his bravery, was afterwards punished and exiled on account of the generous assistance which he gave on this important occasion to General Excelmans, his fellow soldier and friend.]
Here I shall stop. It would be of no further use to lengthen the history and the investigation of the absurd tyranny of the government. If we trace the progress of the principles successively enounced by the ministry, and the actions of which they were the authors, we shall see that they had formed and executed the project of re-establishing the old monarchy, and of overturning the constitutional government either by artifice or by main force. The royal charter was spurned by them, and they trampled without scruple on the civil and political rights which it consecrated. Every guarantee given to the army, the magistracy, the public functionaries, or the nation, was forgotten, attacked, or violated. Our national glory was insulted; public feeling was wounded. The manners and customs and opinions of the new era were all treated with harshness: all ranks and classes of citizens experienced those vexations which filled them with discontent. By injustice and bad faith the government deprived the King of our confidence and love, and caused the restoration of the Emperor to become the hope of the nation. In spite of the obstacles experienced by the ministry, in spite of the affronts to which they had been subjected, in spite of the retrograde steps which they had been compelled to take, they still clung to the baneful system which they had fostered; and, bigoted to these plans, they continued to persevere in those errors which recalled Napoleon from his exile, just as Napoleon persevered in the errors which recalled the Bourbons back from theirs.