Chapter XVII (5)

Mr Nolte has a habit of interlarding his German, especially the scraps of dialogue scattered through his volumes, with a great deal of English and French, both of which languages he evidently understands as well as his mother-tongue. To readers in the same case, this practice gives to the book additional character and pungency; but to those to whom German alone is familiar it will prove troublesome, since he does not subjoin translations. As an instance of this, we will give his account of a casual meeting with a man who has since become universally celebrated. It was during his journey on horseback from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, where he was to join a friend with whom he had entered into partnership, and whence they were to proceed, with a couple of flat boats laden with flour, two thousand miles down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, there to form their mercantile establishment. Steam had not at that date annihilated distance in America; there were no boilers bursting on the rivers, or trains on railroads rattling through the States, and travelling was slow work, particularly with goods. The voyage by flat boats from Pittsburg to New Orleans was a forty or fifty days’ business. On a cold December morning, after a solitary ride over Laurel Hill, the highest of the Alleghanies, Mr Nolte halted, towards ten o’clock, at a small tavern by the falls of the Juniata river, and asked for a solid breakfast.

“The hostess showed me into a room, and said I might just take my food with a strange gentleman who was seated there already. ‘He is quite a stranger,’ she said. On stepping in, the man at once struck me as being what is commonly called an odd fellow. He sat at a table, in front of the fire, with a Madras handkerchief round his head, after the fashion of a French sailor, or of labourers in a French seaport. I courteously approached him, with the words: ‘I hope I don’t incommode you, by coming to take my breakfast with you?’ The reply was: ‘No, sir!’ spoken with a strong French accent, and sounding like ‘No, serre.’ ‘Ah!’ I continued, ‘_vous êtes Français_, Monsieur?’ ‘No, serre!’ was the reply; ‘ai em en Henglieshmen’ (I am an Englishman). ‘Why,’ I continued, ‘how do you make that out? You look like a Frenchman, and you speak like one.’ ‘I am an Englishman, because I got an English wife,’ replied he, with the same accent. Without further investigation of the matter, we agreed, over our breakfast, to ride together to Pittsburg. He showed himself more and more of an oddity, but at last admitted that he was a born Frenchman, from La Rochelle, had been brought to Louisiana when a child, had grown up in the sea-service, but had gradually become a real American. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘but how do you reconcile that with your quality of an Englishman?’ To which he replied, in French at last: ‘_Au bout du compte, je suis un peu cosmopolite; j’appartiens à tous les pays._’”

When we mention that all the dialogue in the above extract, with the exception of one sentence, is, in the original, in the same languages in which we here give it, and that such polyglot passages are of constant occurrence throughout these volumes, it becomes evident that Mr Nolte will sorely puzzle and tantalise such of his German readers as are unacquainted with French, and with that composite Anglo-Saxon tongue for which the learned German has declared his preference over all other modern languages. The eccentric traveller was Audubon, the famous ornithologist, who was also bound for New Orleans. On reaching Pittsburg, no means of conveyance offered except Mr Nolte’s boat, and as he had by this time discovered that the naturalist was not only an accomplished draughtsman, but a good and amiable man, he offered him a cot in his little cabin, a service which Audubon afterwards thankfully recorded and acknowledged in the third volume of the text to his great work on “American Ornithology.” Mr Nolte knew nothing of the object of his guest’s journey until they reached Limestone, a small place in the north-western corner of Ohio State. There they landed their horses, intending to visit Lexington, and thence proceed to Louisville, where Audubon expected to find his wife—the daughter of an Englishman named Bakewell. “At Limestone,” says Mr Nolte, “we had hardly finished our breakfast, when Audubon suddenly sprang up. ‘Now, then,’ he cried to me, in French, ‘I must begin to lay the foundations of my establishment!’ Thereupon he took from his pocket a parcel of address-cards, a hammer, and some small nails, and began nailing one of the cards upon the door of the little tavern. It contained the words:

AUDUBON & BAKEWELL,
COMMISSION MERCHANTS.
PORK, LARD, AND FLOUR.
NEW ORLEANS.

So, said I to myself, you have found a rival before reaching your journey’s end. But I felt little inclination to deal in the flesh of swine, or apprehensive of very formidable opposition from my new acquaintance. We rode on to Lexington, chief town of Kentucky, a flourishing place, where I heard much talk of a certain highly-gifted lawyer, who, during the elections for Congress, had distinguished himself by his pugilistic prowess in the streets and taverns. This man, who soon afterwards became more and more celebrated, was Henry Clay, whose exterior was no way calculated to give a high idea of his intellectual qualities, but who had already acquired great fame as an orator.

“A horrible custom was at that time almost universal amongst the inhabitants (for the most part rough and brutal people) of the Western States. It was that of allowing the finger-nails to grow until they could be cut into the shape of small sickles, which were used, in the quarrels and fights that continually occurred, to scoop out the eyes of an opponent. This barbarous art was called gouging. During our ride through Kentucky, we saw several persons who wanted an eye, and others who had lost both. The excitement then prevalent in the United States on account of the misunderstanding with England, was much greater in the western provinces than on the seaboard, and the feeling of irritation in the former was very considerable. Passing through Frankfort on my way to Louisville, I learned that the Kentucky State Legislature was just then sitting, and I determined to witness its proceedings, in order to compare it with the Territorial Legislature of Louisiana, which was composed of the strangest mixture of born Americans, and of French and Spanish creoles. Hardly had I entered the hall, when I heard a very animated orator indulging in a violent diatribe against England. ‘We must have war with Great Britain,’ he said. ‘War will ruin her commerce! Commerce is the apple of Britain’s eye—there we must _gouge_ her!’ This flower of rhetoric was prodigiously applauded, and I could not deny that for a Kentucky audience it must have a certain poetical charm.”

Thus, sketching by the way a state of society which a lapse of forty years has fortunately greatly altered for the better, Mr Nolte reached Louisville. The Ohio had been for some days frozen, and his boats, with his friend and partner, Hollander, were fast bound in the ice some distance higher up the stream. “Three days afterwards, just as we sat down to dinner, the whole house was violently shaken; glasses, plates, and bottles fell from the table—most of the guests sprang up, with the cry: ‘There is the earthquake, by jingo! There is no humbug about it!’ and ran out into the street. The commotion was soon over, and people returned to their houses. Early next morning I learned that the shock had broken up the ice on the river, and that several boats had come down to Shippingport, a little town about a league off.” Among them were Nolte’s craft, and he continued his journey, presently quitting the clear transparent stream of the Ohio, and entering the slimy waters of the Mississippi. In voyages of that kind it was customary to bring-to at nightfall, and make fast the boats to the shore until next morning, snags and sawyers rendering progress unsafe during the darkness. On the evening of the 6th February 1812, the halting-place was hard by the little town of New Madrid. About twenty boats, which had left Shippingport together, were there assembled. “It was a bright moonlight night,” says Mr Nolte; “at eleven o’clock my partner, Hollander, had gone to bed, and I was sitting at a little table drawing a caricature of President Madison—who had just published a flaming proclamation, calling upon the nation to ‘put on armour and warlike attitude,’ but who was said to be himself completely under petticoat government—when a terrible report, like the sudden roar of cannon, echoed without, immediately succeeded by innumerable flashes. The Mississippi foamed up like the boiling water in a kettle, and then again receded with a rushing sound; the trees of a little wood near to which we had moored our boats, cracked, broke, and were overthrown. The terrible spectacle lasted for several minutes: there seemed no end to the vivid lightning, to the alternate rise and fall of the troubled water, and to the crash of falling trees. Hollander, startled from his sleep, called out, ‘What is that, Nolte?’ I could only tell him that I myself did not know, but took it for an earthquake. I went on deck. What a sight! The river, which had resumed its ordinary course, was covered with floating trees and branches, borne rapidly along by the current. Of the town, only a few very distant lights were to be seen. It was a real chaos. Our little crew consisted of three sailors, whom want of employment, in consequence of the embargo, had driven to Pittsburg, and of a river-pilot. They told me that the other boats had all cut loose from the shore and floated on, and asked me if we should not do the same. It struck me that if, under ordinary circumstances, it was unsafe to proceed by night, it must be doubly dangerous now that the river was covered with floating trees. And so we remained where we were. The rising sun showed us the unfortunate city of New Madrid more than three parts destroyed, and flooded, with here and there one of the wretched inhabitants making his way out of the ruins. Our boats were in the centre of a sort of island formed by falling trees, and several hours passed before we could extricate ourselves. At Natchez, which we reached on the thirty-second day, and where we remained a week, we heard full particulars of the earthquake, but we saw nothing of any of the boats that had surrounded us on the evening of the 6th February. At New Orleans, the only sign perceived of the commotion was a swinging to and fro of the chandeliers in the ball-room, and the sickness and fainting of a great number of ladies. This remarkable earthquake commenced in the north-west of Missouri state, was felt more or less throughout Louisiana, and extended through the Gulf of Mexico to Caraccas, where it played great havoc, destroying nearly the whole city, and swallowing up or reducing to poverty forty thousand persons. Nothing more was ever heard of the boats, and if we had not remained stationary we should doubtless have shared their fate.”

After five years’ absence, Mr Nolte found New Orleans greatly increased in size, but very little improved with respect to the character of its inhabitants, who had added to their former bad qualities a taste for lawsuits and chicanery, introduced amongst them by an immigration of greedy advocates from the Northern States. Mr Nolte—who, as somebody said of him, many years later, when he was an inmate of the Queen’s Bench at the suit of the litigious and crack-brained ex-duke of Brunswick, was all his life the plaything of misfortune, and whose best concerted and most prudent plans were invariably marred by some unforeseen incident or disaster—had no sooner taken and furnished a house in the chief city of Louisiana than news came from Washington of war having been declared against England—a crushing blow to our poor adventurer’s well-founded hopes of extensive and profitable transactions with the great European houses who wished him well and favoured his enterprise. There was no help for it; he could but cross his hands and pray for peace. The Mississippi was blockaded by British men-of-war. The state of things at New Orleans resembled the intolerable monotony and inactivity of a calm at sea, with the difference that the latter can last but a few days or weeks, whilst the former might endure for years. The only incidents that varied the monotony of life at New Orleans during that war were of an unpleasant nature. In August 1812, a frightful hurricane drove on shore eighteen of the ships in harbour, and unroofed nearly the whole city. A few months later, Mr Nolte broke his right arm at the elbow by a fall from his horse, and the limb ever afterwards remained stiff and crooked. Party-spirit ran high; private scandal, quarrels, and duels, were resorted to by the restless and disreputable citizens of New Orleans as a refuge from ennui. This portion of Mr Nolte’s book abounds in curious details. “The whole neighbouring coast was kept in a state of alarm by the piracies of the brothers Laffitte from Bayonne, by Jauvinet, Beluche, Dominique, Gamba, and others, who might be seen promenading the streets of New Orleans in broad daylight, and wholly unmolested. They had their friends and connections and warehouses in the city, and sold, almost openly, their stolen goods, especially English manufactures. But the slave trade was their great resource. They captured Spanish and other slavers on the high seas, and took them to their chief depôt, the little island of Barataria on the coast near New Orleans, whither the planters, chiefly of French extraction, went to purchase the slaves—for one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars, instead of six hundred or seven hundred, which they would have paid in the market—and conveyed them to their plantations, up the numerous _bayous_ or creeks intersecting that district. And as the pirates would be paid in hard dollars, specie soon began to be rare in the city.” Brought into contact, by certain banking operations, with reckless and unscrupulous men, Mr Nolte managed to get involved in a couple of duels, in which his stiff arm was of course highly disadvantageous to him, and, with his usual good luck, he received a bullet in his leg, which he still carries about with him. A serious danger put a temporary end to these squabbles. An attack was expected from the English, and General Jackson made his appearance at New Orleans with fifteen hundred men, the most efficient amongst whom were five hundred riflemen who had served with Jackson in the Indian war, and were known as Coffee’s Brigade, from their commander’s name. These were the fellows who picked off the British officers from behind the cotton-bale barricades, of which the materials proceeded from Mr Nolte’s stores. Trained in repeated encounters with the savages, they were the sort of men Sealsfield has so vividly painted, totally ignorant of military organisation and discipline, but inaccessible to fear, perfectly cool in danger, of great presence of mind and personal resource, and, above all, unerring marksmen. Mr Nolte, although his stiff arm exempted him from service, did not choose to see his friends go out to fight and himself remain behind—the less so that he was already suspected of partiality to the English—and he joined the light company of a battalion of militia, several of whose officers had served under Napoleon. According to Mr Nolte’s account, Jackson, blustering, presumptuous, and overweeningly self-confident, would have led his militia and irregulars to certain destruction at the hands of the well-drilled British troops, but for the advice given him by Livingston, who acted as one of his aides-de-camp, to consult a French emigrant major named St Gême, who had formerly been in the English service in Jamaica, and now commanded a company in the battalion in which Mr Nolte had enrolled himself. “This officer had been a great deal with Moreau, when the latter, on a visit to Louisiana a few years previously, had scanned, with the critical eye of a tactician, the position of New Orleans and its capabilities of defence. St Gême rendered General Jackson and the American cause the great service of making him understand that, in the open field, the English would surround him and his handful of inexperienced followers, who had but the name of soldiers, would utterly rout and certainly capture them; and he pointed out to him the M’Carthy canal as the position which Moreau had himself fixed upon as the most defensible, especially for raw troops.” Mr Nolte, who writes impartially, and without visible leaning either to English or to Americans, praises Jackson for the self-command (a quality he did not often display) with which he waived his own wishes in deference to the opinion of the French general (he must have been mad to have disregarded it), and abandoned plans which assuredly, if carried out, would have led to the annihilation of his army and the capture of New Orleans. Livingston, by whose representations he was induced to take counsel of the French major, was a much better lawyer and statesman than warrior, according to Mr Nolte, and showed himself but little where bullets were flying. When the position decided upon was to be taken up and redoubts built, the ground was found to be swampy and slimy, and the earth unavailable for any sort of fortification, whereupon a French engineer suggested the employment of cotton bales. The plan adopted, Jackson would lose no time. “It was observed to him,” says unlucky Mr Nolte, lugubriously, “that he certainly might have plenty of cotton in the city for six or seven cents a pound, but its conveyance would cause a day’s delay, whereas a barque, already laden with cotton, and whose departure for the Havana had only been prevented by the arrival of the English squadron, lay close to the shore. It had on board two hundred and forty-five bales, which I myself had shipped just before the invasion, and sixty others belonging to a Spaniard of New Orleans. I was ill-pleased, when they could have had cheap cotton for six or seven cents in the town, to see them land, from a ship all ready to sail, my best quality, which had cost me ten or eleven cents, and I said as much to Livingston, who was my usual legal adviser in New Orleans, and whom I fell in with at Battery No. 3. He was never at a loss for an answer. ‘Well, Nolte,’ said he, ‘since it is your cotton, you will not mind the trouble of defending it.’ A reply which was the foundation of the story that, when the owner of the cotton complained of its seizure, Jackson sent him a musket, with the message that upon no man was it so incumbent to defend the bales as upon their owner, and that he therefore hoped he would not abandon them.” Mr Nolte’s whole account of the operations at New Orleans is clear and graphic, but that brief campaign has been so often described that we are not induced to dwell at much length upon his narrative, although it contains some passages that, proceeding from an actor on the American side, possess particular interest. On the left wing were the best sharpshooters of Kentucky and Tennessee, invisible in the cypress wood, and loading their rifles with three or four buckshot besides the bullet. Their good weapons and sure aim sent destruction through the ranks of the English, who saw no foe, but beheld all their officers picked off. The whole right flank of the English column was raked by this deadly fire, whilst in front the American batteries kept up an uninterrupted discharge. “From time to time,” says Mr Nolte, “when the smoke blew aside, I and my company obtained a view over the battle-field, and there we saw the whole English centre retreating, throwing away their fascines, and a staff-officer on a black horse gallop forward, his hat in his hand, which he angrily waved as if threatening the flying column. Suddenly, struck by several bullets, he fell backwards from his horse—some soldiers wrapped him hastily in blankets and carried him off. We learned in the evening that the staff-officer was the commander-in-chief, General Pakenham.” The fight was soon over. As Mr Nolte justly observes, it was a butchery rather than a battle. The Americans, completely sheltered, had but some thirty men killed and wounded, whilst their opponents had to deplore the loss of many hundred good soldiers, than whom none braver ever bore muskets, but whose commander’s good fortune was, upon that occasion, unfortunately not equal to his often-tried valour, and who, moreover, was misled by false information.

Mr Nolte does ample justice to the coolness, energy, and resolution of General Jackson, and shows that even the gasconades and exaggerations in which he constantly indulged had their use, since he thereby deluded his own people, and all the prisoners taken by the English concurred in such formidable accounts of the forces at his disposal as could not fail to influence the proceedings of the invaders. But after the affair of the 8th January, Jackson, prodigiously elevated by his triumph, was anxious to assume the offensive. For the second time he was indebted to Livingston for sound advice. “What would you have more?” said the lawyer; “the city is saved; the English will not renew the attack. Against troops like those, whose intrepidity amidst the most frightful slaughter you yourself have witnessed, what is the use of exposing yourself and your handful of men to be roughly handled, to the diminution of your glory and at risk of valuable lives?” As in the case of the position, the general took his aide-de-camp’s sensible advice, and, as is not unusual, got the whole credit of adopting the only rational course. Livingston, some of whose eulogists have made of him a hero as well as a lawgiver, was seized, it appears from Mr Nolte’s version of the campaign, with a bad colic on the evening of the 7th, just after it became known that the English would attack next morning, and retired into New Orleans, where he next day received news of the action. An hour afterwards he was back in camp—the English and the colic having retreated together. Another of Jackson’s volunteer aides-de-camp, also a lawyer, was off into the city before daybreak on the 8th, without even a pretext, and passed the morning riding about the streets, shouting out that the foe was at hand, and calling upon all to arm and hasten to the field—whereas all capable of bearing arms were in the field, except a few skulkers like himself. No notice was taken of these gentlemen’s shy behaviour, and Jackson, in his despatch, drawn up by Livingston, thanked his military and voluntary aides-de-camp “for their cool and deliberate bravery!”

The cotton bales used for the redoubts, and a quantity of blankets that had been taken from Mr Nolte’s warehouse during his absence from the city, gave rise to discussions which brought out the least favourable side of Jackson’s character. Immediately after the embarkation of the English, a commission was appointed to settle all claims. Mr Nolte’s was for 750 blankets and 245 bales of cotton. The former he was allowed for at the price of the day on which the English landed—namely, eleven dollars a-pair; but when the order was submitted to Jackson for his signature and ratification, he said that as the blankets had been taken (almost forcibly) by the Tennessee riflemen, they should be paid for in Tennessee notes—then worth 10 per cent less than New Orleans paper-money. Mr Nolte was fain to submit to this shabby trick, worthy of a Connecticut pedlar. As regarded his cotton he had much more trouble. He produced the invoice, proving that he had bought it, two years previously, at 10 cents a pound, from a well-known wealthy cotton-grower. He claimed that price, with the addition of two years’ interest. During the whole of that time, it had never been lower than 10 to 11 cents a pound, and a few days before the landing of the English he had bought some at 12½ cents. But when the British troops were on shore, and close at hand, there was a panic; markets fell, the timid realised at any price, and a small parcel of cotton of the same quality was sold at 7 cents. When Mr Nolte’s claim was submitted to Jackson, he allowed it, and said the cotton must be paid for at the price it would have fetched upon the day the American troops marched out of the town. No notice being taken of Mr Nolte’s written protest against such manifest injustice, he went to Jackson, then in all the intoxication of his triumph, and of the exaggerated homage paid him by his countrymen, and very well disposed to exert the arbitrary power given him by the military law he still quite unnecessarily maintained—a stretch of authority for which it will be remembered that he was afterwards fined by the civil tribunals. In reply to Mr Nolte’s representation and remonstrance—

“‘Aren’t you very lucky,’ he asked, ‘to have saved the rest of your cotton through my defence of the city?’

“‘Certainly, general,’ answered I, ‘as lucky as every other man in the place, but with this difference, that it costs them nothing, and that I have to bear all the loss.’

“‘Loss?’ cried the general, getting rather angry—‘loss? You have saved everything!’

“I saw it was no use arguing with such an obstinate man, and remarked to him that I only wanted compensation for my cotton, nothing more, and that the best compensation would be to give me back the same quantity and quality that had been taken from me; that I would appoint one merchant, he another; they would agree as to quality, buy the cotton, deliver it me, and he should pay for it.

“‘No, no, sir!’ replied Jackson; ‘I like straightforward business, and that is too complicated. You must take 6 cents for your cotton. I have nothing more to say.’

“I wanted to make the whole thing clear to him, but he cut me short: ‘Come, sir, come! Take a glass of whiskey-and-water; you must be damned dry after all your arguing.’

“All I could do was to say: ‘Well, general, I did not expect such injustice at your hands! Good morning, sir!’ And I went away. Three days afterwards news came of the conclusion of peace, and the consequence was an immediate rise of cotton to 16 cents, at which price I bought several parcels. The committee of claims were embarrassed; they felt that it was now impossible to fob me off with 6 cents. At last I was asked if I would _now_ be content with payment of my invoice; and I agreed to be so, since I must else have complained to Congress, and the affair might have dragged on for years.”

Some pages are devoted by Mr Nolte to an appreciation of Old Hickory’s character. He condemns his arbitrary and overbearing disposition, and his cruelty to the unfortunate Indians, whom he so implacably and perseveringly hunted down, but does justice to his shrewdness and other good qualities, considering, however, that good luck had more to do than commanding talent with the distinction and popularity he attained to in the States—an opinion which we suspect to be now entertained by a very large number of Jackson’s countrymen. Of the general’s tone and manners—rough as those of a far-west woodsman—Mr Nolte gives some humorous examples. After the action in front of New Orleans, demonstrations innumerable were made in the hero’s honour. On his return into the city, Mrs Livingston placed a crown of laurel upon his head, which seemed considerably to embarrass the slayer of Seminoles, who took it off as if it burned his brow; the ladies subscribed for a costly set of jewels for Mrs General Jackson; and the principal inhabitants got up a grand ball in the French Exchange. Mr Nolte, who had seen more public festivities than most of the people of New Orleans, was a prominent and active member of the committee.

“The upper part of the Exchange was arranged for dancing, the lower part for supper, with flowers, coloured lamps, and transparencies. Before supper, Jackson desired to go alone and take a view of the arrangements, and I had to show him the way. On one of the transparencies, between the arcades, were to be read the words: ‘Jackson and victory, they are but one.’ The general turned round to me, in a more cordial manner than I might have expected, and asked, ‘Why did you not say Hickory and victory, they are but one?’ After supper the hero of the day gave us the diverting spectacle of a _pas de deux_ between him and his wife—an Irish emigrant of low origin and considerable corpulence, whom he had taken away from a planter in Georgia. To see those two, the general a long lean man with skeleton-like limbs, and his wife, a short thick specimen of the female figure, dancing opposite to each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild tune of ‘Opossum up a gum tree,’ was truly one of those remarkable spectacles which would be sought in vain in any European ballet.”

During the second year of the war between England and the States, a fine West Indiaman of 900 tons burthen, the “Lord Nelson,” was captured by the Yankee privateer Saratoga, taken into New Orleans, and sold by auction for a fourth of its value. Mr Nolte was the purchaser. Now that the war was over, he loaded her with cotton and deerskins, altered her name to the “Horatio,” and sailed for Nantes, with several passengers on board. The ship was but just outside the mouths of the Mississippi, when she spoke a vessel that had made an unusually short voyage from Havre, and brought news of Napoleon’s landing at Cannes, rapid march through France, and reinstallation in the Tuileries. Two Frenchmen, who were amongst the passengers, and one of whom had served under the emperor, were overjoyed. Presently it was discovered that the “Horatio” had not enough ballast for her two thousand bales of cotton, and she put into the Havana to supply the deficiency, thus somewhat lengthening her voyage. Off the Scilly Islands she spoke the monthly packet from London to New York. After the interchange of a little nautical information: “What news from France?” roared Mr Nolte’s captain through his speaking-trumpet. “The Duke of Wellington and the British army are in Paris,” was the reply. “Where is Buonaparte?” “Fled—nobody knows where.” And the two ships pursued their respective courses. The French passengers would not believe a word of it. It was English news, they said, manufactured in London; and they proved to each other, as clear as sunlight, that it was physically and morally impossible the intelligence should be true. It took the testimony of a French pilot, and the sight of the white flag on the banks of the Loire, to convince them that Napoleon had again fallen. The French population of New Orleans went yet farther in their incredulity. The Buonapartist _Courrier de la Louisiane_ analysed the news, and ingeniously proved that the pretended victory of the Allies was merely a mask for a total defeat; that the emperor had achieved one of his great triumphs, which should forthwith be celebrated. And accordingly Napoleon’s bust, crowned with laurels, was that evening carried in procession, by the light of hundreds of torches, with several bands of music playing French national airs;—premature rejoicings, which the confirmation of the defeat of the French converted into profound consternation.

Paris, whither Mr Nolte hastened as soon as possible after landing, was full of novelty and excitement, and the focus on which the eyes of Europe were fixed. He devotes an interesting chapter to sketches of “Paris after Waterloo.” Amongst the crowds of foreign uniforms were here and there to be seen, he says, “spectral figures, in long blue coats buttoned to the chin, spurred boots, and hats pressed down over their eyes. These men, who cast such gloomy glances around them, were the officers of the disbanded French army. The ribbon of the Legion of Honour had disappeared from their button-hole, but it was easy to recognise them by their flashing eyes and fierce expression when an English uniform drew near. An accidental push or touch on the foot, often unavoidable in a crowd, and they would burst out, in great bitterness, with an angry—‘_Je suis Français, Monsieur!_’ or, ‘_No, Padrone, questa e l’uniforme di Amburgo!_’ and if the ‘_Pardon, Monsieur!_’ was not forthcoming, a quarrel was the almost inevitable result. The police had the difficult task of keeping these remnants of the French army out of Paris, but they were not very successful in so doing. Notwithstanding the violent irritation of the French military, which was kept under only by the strong hand, nobody in Paris went amongst them more fearlessly than the Duke of Wellington, who showed himself everywhere in a plain blue frock, with the English red scarf round his waist, and a simple red and white feather in his cocked hat, and usually rode about alone, followed only by a sergeant. Thus plainly equipped and slenderly escorted, I saw him one morning ride into the court of the Hotel de l’Empire, and ask for the celebrated London banker Angerstein, who was stopping there.” Ney’s death, the restaurants and coffeehouses then in vogue, and which were thronged with English and Prussian officers, and grand reviews of the allied troops, are in turn glanced at. At the review of the Russian guard, drawn up along the whole length of the boulevards, Mr Nolte had a particularly good view of the sovereigns. By favour of a colonel, with whom he had fallen into conversation, he was allowed to remain within the line cleared by the sentries, and close to the colonel’s horse. “Suddenly the three monarchs came riding rapidly up, the Emperor Alexander in the middle, his eyes directed to the ladies in the balconies and at the windows—on his right the Emperor Francis, with a serious straightforward gaze—on his left King Frederick-William III., who seemed to be examining the grisettes in the crowd rather than the ladies at the windows. The staff, according to the estimate of my obliging colonel, comprised more than a thousand military men of all nations. As good luck would have it, the sovereigns and their whole retinue paused in front of the regiment on my right, and the colonel pointed out to me the Russian grand-dukes, the Austrian archdukes, several Prussian princes, Wellington, Schwarzenberg, Blucher, Platoff,” &c. &c. Of all the commanders then assembled in Paris, the most dissatisfied was the American general, Scott (since noted for his campaign in Mexico), who had been opposed to the English on the Canadian frontier, had taken a fort or two, and was looked upon by his countrymen as a military star of the very first magnitude—second only to Jackson, and equal to any other warrior then extant. He had been sent to Europe to increase his military knowledge and study the art of war, and reached Paris fully convinced that all the great chiefs of the Continental armies would hasten to greet and compliment him. “To his visible vexation, he found himself completely mistaken. In the great military meetings in the French capital, where Wellington, Blucher, Schwarzenberg, Kutusoff, Woronzoff, and a host of other celebrities, laden with stars and orders, were assembled—the long thin man, in his blue coat without embroidery, and with only a pair of moderate-sized epaulets, excited no attention. Scott could not get over the contrast between the figure he had so recently cut in his native land, and the insignificance he was condemned to in France, and he often exhibited bitter and somewhat laughable ill-humour.” After a visit to the field of Waterloo, Mr Nolte returns to America, on cotton speculations intent—of which, and of Baring Brothers, he for some time discourses, until we are not sorry to see the theme changed, and him back in Paris, passing a Sunday at the country-house of _Maison sur Seine_, built by Louis XIV., and then just purchased from the French government by the banker Jacques Laffitte, whom he found in his park, accompanied by two plainly-dressed and plain-mannered Englishmen, who talked knowingly about cotton, and whom he took for Manchester cotton-spinners. At dinner, to his surprise, although Casimir Perrier and several deputies and Frenchmen of mark were present, the places of honour were for the Englishmen. He made up his mind that they must be very great people in the cotton-spinning line—perhaps the first in Manchester—and that they must have large credits on Laffitte’s house—that giving, not unfrequently, the measure of the hospitality of Parisian bankers. Laffitte, who was a great talker—given to discourse for hours together, with scarcely a break, and with innumerable digressions totally irrelevant to the subject under discussion—was loquacious as usual, and related many things that had occurred during the Hundred Days. At that time Napoleon had sent for and consulted him almost daily. Laffitte said that he had never been a worshipper of Napoleon’s, but he then had opportunity of convincing himself that the emperor possessed, in the highest degree, the art of popularity. “‘He was very confidential with me,’ said Laffitte, ‘spoke without reserve, and once made a striking remark concerning our nation. “To govern the French,” he said, “one must have arms of iron and gloves of velvet.”’ My readers may probably have heard this remark, but not the reply immediately made by Madame Laffitte’s right-hand neighbour (one of the Manchester cotton-spinners aforesaid). ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is very true, but—he often forgot to put on his gloves.’ The remark was so apt and true that all present laughed heartily. I asked my next neighbour who the witty foreigner was, and learned that it was the Marquis of Lansdowne.”

Involved in the commercial disasters of 1825–6, Mr Nolte left New Orleans, sixteen years after his first establishment there, and went to seek in Europe that fortune which had constantly eluded his grasp in the States. His success in the Old World was little better than in the New. In after years, he again more than once visited America, and engaged in enormous cotton speculations, in which he burnt his fingers. Cotton seems to have had for him the same irresistible attraction that dice have for the veteran gambler. Although many of his misfortunes were the result of circumstances neither to be foreseen nor guarded against, and although we may suppose that he makes out the best case he fairly can, the impression left by his book upon the reader’s mind is, that Mr Vincent Nolte has been, to say the least, a very venturesome person, and that his abilities and opportunities would have amply sufficed to insure him ultimate affluence, had he been less impatient to acquire a large and rapid fortune. On the other hand, he deserves credit for his unflinching pluck, and for his elasticity under misfortune. When he left New Orleans, he attempted to form a partnership at Havre, but in vain; and he himself frankly admits that he was unsuccessful, because the merchants with whom he would have associated himself were deterred by his reputed taste for the vast and daring operations in which he had been early initiated. The slow but sure gains of the steady trader he never had patience to collect; the ordinary routine of commercial affairs was to him wearisome and intolerable; he carried into the peaceful paths of trade something of that venturesome and aspiring spirit which, upon the battle-field, insures the soldier high distinction or sudden death—a bullet or a marshal’s baton. We regret to fear that it has led Mr Nolte, after his long and busy life, to no very prosperous position; although he seems to preserve to the last the spirit and vigour that have borne him through so many trying vicissitudes. At the time now referred to, he was still in his prime, and full of hope and confidence. From Havre he betook himself to his favourite city of Paris, where, by the assistance and introduction of his staunch friends the Barings, he was on the eve of concluding a partnership for the establishment of a house at Marseilles. The circulars were printed; Mr Nolte took a run to Hamburg, Holland, and England, to visit commercial friends, and everywhere he met a kind and encouraging reception. He reached Southampton, on his return to Paris, two hours after the departure of the packet, and, with characteristic impatience, rather than wait two days, hired an open boat, whose owner undertook to land him at Havre early the next morning. It was a moonlight night, and a fair wind at starting, but he was becalmed in the Channel, and lay a whole day roasting in the sun. Upon the morning of the 26th July 1830, he landed at Havre, and posted on to Paris. At Rouen he remarked signs of uneasiness, and the troops were under arms; at Courbevoie he received the first news of the fatal ordinances; outside the Paris barrier, a few persons stopped his chaise, and tore the white cockade from the postilion’s hat. Paris was enacting the most peaceful and respectable of its numerous revolutions.

Mr Nolte witnessed the proceedings of the three days of July, and betook himself to Marseilles, where he had scarcely commenced business when the failure of the Irish-French bankers who were to advance the greater part of the capital on behalf of his partner compelled him again to abandon it, and once more to return to Paris. He had been on very intimate terms with General Lafayette during that veteran revolutionist’s visit to the United States in 1825, had travelled with him, acted as his banker, rendered him some service, and shown him many attentions; for which he deemed himself far more than compensated by the privilege of the general’s society, and by the interest of his conversation. Alone with him, in the cabin of the American steamer which the authorities of New Orleans had allotted to the use of Washington’s old friend and comrade, Lafayette spoke freely of his past life and present opinions, and Mr Nolte was astonished by the revelation of plans which he would never have suspected to have lingered in that venerable head—so soon, in all probability, to be laid in the grave. The man who, at least as well as any living, had had opportunities of judging the Bourbon character—before and since the day when, upon the balcony at Versailles, he kissed, in sign of peace and good understanding, the hand of the defamed and martyred Marie Antoinette, amidst the acclamations of assembled thousands, whose discontent the symbol and the promised return of the royal family to Paris promptly, although but temporarily, appeased—declared his conviction of its unworthiness. For the good of France, in his opinion, she must expel the race of whom Talleyrand so truly said, that they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing. “‘France cannot be happy under the Bourbons,’ said Lafayette, ‘and we must get rid of them. It would be already done, had Laffitte chosen.’

“‘Indeed!’ I exclaimed; ‘how so?’

“‘It is not so long ago,’ continued the general, ‘that you will have forgotten how two of the regiments of guards that were ordered to Spain under the command of the Duke of Angoulême, halted in Toulouse, and showed signs of raising the banner of revolt. The affair was quickly suppressed, and kept as quiet as possible. But the plan was ripe! I knew that from my private correspondence with several officers, and nothing but money was wanting for a successful insurrection then to have occurred. I addressed myself to Laffitte; he had scruples; he would and he would not. At last I offered to carry the thing through without his participation. On the first occasion when we are alone together—I said to him—but as soon as possible, lay a million of francs in bank-notes upon the chimney-piece—I will put them in my pocket without your perceiving it. The rest you may leave to me! Laffitte hesitated, was undecided, and at last declared he would have nothing whatever to do with the affair. And so the whole project fell through!’

“I could not conceal my surprise. ‘Had I heard what you have just told me from any other lips than yours, general,’ I said, ‘I would not have believed a word of it.’ The general merely replied, ‘_C’etait pourtant ainsi._’”

In 1830 Lafayette’s desire was fulfilled—not to its full extent, for he wished the Bourbons to be replaced by a republic, partly because he believed that form of government the best suited to render France happy and prosperous, and partly because it would have best enabled him to gratify his unbounded greed of popularity. But the Bourbons had fled, and France had a citizen king and a national guard. Arms were required for the latter, and Mr Nolte thought that their supply would be a profitable business—quite in his way, because there was much money to be made in a short time. Lafayette, besides being commander-in-chief of the national guard, was the intimate friend of Gerard, Louis Philippe’s first minister of war, in whose department the matter lay, and who was desirous of making contracts for the supply of muskets. Mr Nolte betook himself to Lafayette, who received him most cordially (embracing him, to the infinite astonishment of his aide-de-camp, who had taken Nolte for an Englishman), and gave him the strongest recommendation to Gerard; the result of which was, that he obtained extensive contracts for the supply not only of muskets, but of the _briquets_ or short Roman swords which Soult, who succeeded Gerard at the war-office, introduced into the army, and by which the mercenary old marshal—so his enemies affirmed, and thousands to this day believe—himself pocketed no inconsiderable sum. Be this true or not—and Soult’s proved rapacity at many previous periods of his life gave but too much probability to the accusation—Mr Nolte had occasion, whilst carrying out his contracts, which extended over a considerable time, to note several instances of that venality of French officials which rose to such a height under Louis Philippe’s reign as at last to extend to his very ministers, and to constitute one of the prominent causes of his dethronement. As early as 1831, Mr Nolte assures us, itching palms were plenty in France, and that amongst personages of no humble rank. But as far as military men were concerned, this was a mere continuation of the traditions and usages of the Empire—that period of unrefined sensuality and reckless extravagance, during which Napoleon’s subalterns, following their leader’s unscrupulous example, filled their pockets whenever and wherever they could, without much regard to the delicacy of the means employed. Amongst the anecdotes illustrative of this state of corruption to be found in Mr Nolte’s Reminiscences, is one of a certain general officer, not named, whom he thought it advisable to propitiate by a present. In this case, as in all others of the kind in which he had to deal with men of good breeding and position, the puzzle was how to administer the _douceur_ so that it might be taken without embarrassment. Mrs Nolte, to whom her husband communicated his difficulty, undertook to ascertain, through her acquaintances, the tastes and partialities of the high functionary in question. She discovered that he was very fond of snuff-boxes.

“This ascertained,” says Mr Nolte, “I chose a very handsome box, and placed a bank-note in it, in such a manner that on opening the box the amount, 1000 francs, must immediately catch the eye. Then I took the first opportunity that presented itself, when my friend had recourse to his own box for a pinch, to produce mine, as if for the same purpose. It immediately attracted his attention. ‘That snuff-box is really in excellent taste!’ he exclaimed. ‘Since it pleases you, general,’ I replied, ‘oblige me by accepting it as a keepsake!’ He thanked me, took the box, and at once opened it. I did not long remain in doubt as to the manner in which my present would be received. ‘Aha!’ he cried, ‘but it is right you should know that I am a great snuff-taker. A double pinch never does any harm, my dear sir!’ and so saying, he pocketed the box. The hint sufficed. On my return home, I enclosed a second thousand-franc note, with my card, in an envelope, and sent it to him.”