Read Ebook: The History of Cuba vol. 2 by Johnson Willis Fletcher

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Ebook has 717 lines and 145165 words, and 15 pages

BOOK I

My birth--My name is disputed--Extracts from the official registers of Villers-Cotterets--Corbeil Club--My father's marriage certificate--My mother--My maternal grandfather--Louis-Philippe d'Orl?ans, father of Philippe-?galit?--Madame de Montesson--M. de Noailles and the Academy--A morganatic marriage

My father--His birth--The arms of the family--The serpents of Jamaica--The alligators of St. Domingo--My grandfather--A young man's adventure--A first duel--M. le duc de Richelieu acts as second for my father--My father enlists as a private soldier--He changes his name--Death of my grandfather--His death certificate

My father rejoins his regiment--His portrait--His strength--His skill--The Nile serpent--The regiment of the King and the regiment of the Queen--Early days of the Revolution--Declaration of Pilnitz--The camp at Maulde--The thirteen Tyrolean chasseurs--My father's name is mentioned in the order of the day--France under Providence--Voluntary enlistments--St.-Georges and Boyer--My father lieutenant-colonel--The camp of the Madeleine--The pistols of Lepage--My father General of Brigade in the Army of the North

My father is sent to join Kl?ber--He is nominated General-in-Chief in the Western Pyrenees--Bouchotte's letters--Instructions of the Convention--The Representatives of the People who sat at Bayonne--Their proclamation--In spite of this proclamation my father remains at Bayonne--Monsieur de l'Humanit?

My father is appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of the West--His report on the state of La Vend?e--My father is sent to the Army of the Alps as General-in-Chief--State of the army--Capture of Mont Valaisan and of the Little Saint-Bernard--Capture of Mont Cenis--My father is recalled to render an account of his conduct--What he had done--He is acquitted

The result of a sword-stroke across the head--St. Georges and the remounts--The quarrel he sought with my father--My father is transferred to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse--He hands in his resignation and returns to Villers-Cotterets--A retrospect over what had happened at home and abroad during the four years that had just elapsed

My father in the Army of Italy--He is received at Milan by Bonaparte and Jos?phine--Bonaparte's troubles in Italy--Scurvy--The campaign is resumed--Discouragement--Battle of Arcole

The despatch is sent to Bonaparte--Dermoncourt's reception--Berthier's open response--Military movements in consequence of the despatch--Correspondence between my father and Serrurier and Dallemagne--Battle of St.-Georges and La Favorite--Capture of Mantua--My father as a looker-on

My father's first breeze with Bonaparte--My father is sent to Mass?na's army corps--He shares Joubert's command in the Tyrol--Joubert--The campaign in the Tyrol

BOOK II

The bridge of Clausen--Dermoncourt's reports--Prisoners on parole--Lepage's pistols--Three generals-in-chief at the same table

Joubert's loyalty towards my father--"Send me Dumas"--The Horatius Codes of the Tyrol--My father is appointed Governor of the Tr?visan--The agent of the Directory--My father f?ted at his departure--The treaty of Campo-Formio--The return to Paris--The flag of the Army of Italy--The charnel-house of Morat--Charles the Bold--Bonaparte is elected a member of the Institute--First thoughts of the expedition to Egypt--Toulon--Bonaparte and Jos?phine--What was going to happen in Egypt

Admissions of General Dupuis and Adjutant-General Boyer--The malcontents--Final discussion between Bonaparte and my father--Battle of Aboukir--My father finds treasure--His letter on this subject

Revolt at Cairo--My father enters the Grand Mosque on horseback--His home-sickness--He leaves Egypt and lands at Naples--Ferdinand and Caroline of Naples--Emma Lyon and Nelson--Ferdinand's manifesto--Comments of his minister, Belmonte-Pignatelli

Report presented to the French Government by Divisional-General Alexandre Dumas, on his captivity at Taranto and at Brindisi, ports in the Kingdom of Naples

My father is exchanged for General Mack--Events during his captivity--He asks in vain for a share in the distribution of the 500,000 francs indemnity granted to the prisoners--The arrears of his pay also refused him--He is placed on the retired list, in spite of his energetic protests

Brune and Murat--The return to Villers-Cotterets--L'h?tel de l'?p?e--Princess Pauline--The chase--The chief forester's permission--My father takes to his bed never to rise again--Delirium--The gold-headed cane--Death

My love for my father--His love for me--I am taken away to my cousin Marianne's--Plan of the house--The forge--The apparition--I learn the death of my father--I wish to go to heaven to kill God--Our situation at the death of my father--Hatred of Bonaparte

My mother and I take refuge with my grandfather--Madame Darcourt's house--My first books and my first terrors--The park at Villers-Cotterets--M. Deviolaine and his family--The swarm of bees--The old cloister

The two snakes--M. de Valence and Madame de Montesson--Who little Hermine was--Garnier the wheelwright and Madame de Valence--Madame Lafarge--Fantastic apparition of Madame de Genlis

The dog lantern-bearer--Demoustier's epitaph--My first fencing-master--"The king drinks"--The fourth terror of my life--The tub of honey

My horror of great heights--The Abb? Conseil--My opening at the Seminary--My mother, much pressed, decides to enter me there--The horn inkstand--C?cile at the grocer's--My flight

The Abb? Gr?goire's College--The reception I got there--The fountains play to celebrate my arrival--The conspiracy against me--Bligny challenges me to single combat--I win

The Abb? Fortier--The jealous husband and the viaticum--A pleasant visit--Victor Letellier--The pocket-pistol--I terrify the population--Tournemolle is requisitioned--He disarms me

A political chronology--Trouble follows trouble--The fire at the farm at None--Death of Stanislas Picot--The hiding-place for the louis d'or--The Cossacks--The haricot mutton

The quarry--Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the Cossacks--The Duc de Treviso--He allows himself to be surprised--Ducoudray the hosier--Terrors

The return to Villers-Cotterets, and what we met on the way--The box with the thirty louis in it--The leather-bag--The mole--Our departure--The journey--The arrival at Mensal and our sojourn their--King Joseph--The King of Rome--We leave Mensal--Our visit to Crispy in Valois--The dead and wounded--The surrender of Paris--The isle of Elba

BOOK IV

Auguste Lafarge--Bird-snaring on a large scale--A wonderful catch--An epigram--I wish to write French verses--My method of translating Virgil and Tacitus--Montanan--My political opinions

General Exelmans--His trial--The two brothers Lallemand--Their conspiracy--They are arrested and led through Villers-Cotterets--The affronts to which they were subjected

Napoleon and the Allies--The French army and the Emperor pass through Villers-Cotterets--Bearers of ill tidings

Waterloo--The ?lys?e--La Malmaison

Caesar--Charlemagne--Napoleon

Trapping larks--I wax strong in the matter of my compositions--The wounded partridge--I take the consequences whatever they are--The farm at Brassoire--M. Deviolaine's sally at the accouchement of his wife

M. Moquet de Brassoire--The ambuscade--Three hares charge me--What prevents me from being the king of the battue--Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just escape being disembowelled by it--Sabine and her puppies

BOOK V

The second period of my youth--Forest-keepers and sailors--Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin--La Maison-Neuve

Boars and keepers--The bullet of Robin-des-Bois--The pork-butcher

A wolf-hunt--Small towns--Choron's tragic death

Who the assassin was and who the assassinated--Auguste Picot--Equality before the law--Last exploits of Marot--His execution

Spring at Villers-Cotterets--Whitsuntide--The Abb? Gr?goire invites me to dance with his niece--Red books--The Chevalier de Faublas--Laurence and Vittoria--A dandy of 1818

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

BY ANDREW LANG

The grandfather of Alexandre Dumas, Antoine Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, was more or less noble. It has not been my fortune to encounter the name of his family in the field of history. They may have "borne St. Louis company," or charged beneath the banner of the Maid at Orl?ans and Pathay; one can only remark that one never heard of them. The grandfather, at all events, went to San Domingo, and became the father, by a negro woman, of the father of the novelist. As it is hardly credible that he married his mistress, Marie Dumas, it is not clear how the great Alexandre had a right to a marquisate. On this point, however, he ought to have been better informed than we are, who have not seen his parchments. His father at all events, before 1789, enlisted in the army under the maternal name of Dumas. During the Revolution he rose to the rank of General. He was a kind of Porthos. Clasping his horse between his knees and seizing a beam overhead with his hands, he lifted the steed off the ground. Finding that a wall opposed a charge which he was leading, he threw his regiment, one by one, over the wall, and then climbed it himself. In 1792 he married the daughter of an innkeeper at Villers-Cotterets, a good wife to him and a good mother to his son. In Egypt he disliked the arbitrary proceedings of Napoleon, went home, and never was employed again. He had mitigated, as far as in him lay, the sanguinary ferocities of the Revolutionaries. A good man and a good sportsman, he died while Alexandre, born July 24th, 1802, was a little boy. The child had been sent to sleep at a house near his father's, and was awakened by a loud knock at the moment of the General's death. This corresponds to the knocks which herald deaths in the family of Woodd: they are on record in 1661, 1664, 1674, 1784, 1892, 1893, and 1895. Whether the phenomenon is hereditary in the House of la Pailleterie we are not informed. Dumas himself had a firm belief in his own powers as a hypnotist, but thought that little good came of hypnotism. Tennyson was in much the same case.

Madame Dumas was left very poor, and thought of bringing up her child as a candidate for holy orders. But Dumas had nothing of Aramis except his amorousness, and ran away into a local forest rather than take the first educational step towards the ecclesiastical profession. In later life he was no Voltairean, he held Voltaire very cheap, and he believed in the essentials of religion. But he was not built by lavish nature for the celibate life, though he may have exaggerated when he said that he had five hundred children. The boy, like most clever boys, was almost equally fond of books and of field sports. His education was casual; he had some Latin and a little German. Later he acquired Italian. His handwriting was excellent; his writing-master told him that Napoleon's illegible scrawls perplexed his generals, and certainly Napoleon wrote one of the worst hands in the world. Perhaps his orders to Grouchy, on June 17-18th, 1815, were indecipherable. At all events, Dumas saw the Emperor drive through Villers-Cotterets on June 12th, and drive back on June 20th. He had beaten the British at 5.30 on the 18th, says Dumas, but then Bl?cher came up at 6.30 and Napoleon ceased to be victorious. What the British were doing in the hour after their defeat Dumas does not explain, but he expresses a chivalrous admiration for their valour, especially for that of our Highlanders.

After the British defeat at Waterloo the world did not change much for a big noisy boy in a little country town. He was promoted to the use of a fowling-piece, and either game was plentiful in these days or the fancy of the quadroon rivalled that of Tartarin de Tarascon. Hares appear to have been treated as big game, the huntsman lying low in ambush while the doomed quarry fed up to him, when he fired, wounded the hare in the leg, ran after him, and embraced him in the manner of Mr. Briggs with his first salmon. The instinct of early genius, or rather of the parents of early genius, points direct to the office of the attorney, notary, or "writer." Like Scott and other immortals, Dumas, about sixteen or eighteen, went into a solicitor's office. He did not stay there long, as he and a friend, during their master's absence, poached their way to Paris, defraying their expenses by the partridges and hares which they bagged. Every boy is a poacher, but in mature life Dumas is said to have shot a large trout in Loch Zug--I find I have written; the Lake of Zug is meant. This is perhaps the darkest blot upon his fame.

The following two years of the governorship of D. Martinez were turbulent with the discord of rivals and their factions. The immediate cause of these regrettable disturbances was Hoyo Solorzana, the governor of Santiago de Cuba. He had some time before taken a prominent part in the removal of the treasures lost in el Palmer de Aiz. The charge was raised against him that he had appropriated a certain portion of these treasures and he was suspended and proceedings were begun against him. The case was pending when the accused, who enjoyed great popularity with the people, suddenly without the knowledge of the Captain-General or the Dominican Audiencia, took possession of the government office in which he had formerly exercised his official functions. The authorities were indignant and sent a complaint to his Majesty in Madrid. When the reply arrived a few months later, it ordered his immediate removal from office, annulled his earlier appointment and demanded that he be sent to Madrid. The commander-in-chief took steps for his removal, but the municipal government claimed that the cause could not be pursued as long as an appeal was pending. Governor Martinez, too, waited with the execution of the royal decree in order to learn what decision the Ayuntamento of Havana would take. But the latter was kindly disposed to Hoyo Solorzano, remembering the undeniable services he had rendered the city.

Both sides held stubbornly to their opinions and the lawyers also could not be swayed by any arguments. Suddenly there appeared in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba a few galleons under command of the chief of the squadron, Barlavente, and acting under orders of Fra D. Antonio de Escudero. They were to apprehend the governor and his supporters, and take them as prisoners to Vera Cruz on the Admiral's ship. True to his character and antecedents, Solorzano bravely defended himself and with the help of his adherents managed to elude his pursuers and to escape to the country. After visiting places where many of his friends lived, he ventured into Puerto Principe, whose inhabitants were such loyal partisans of his that they decided upon protecting him arms in hand. A detachment of troops had been sent from Havana and surrounded the house in which Solorzano was staying. They succeeded in crushing the riotous demonstrations in his favor and seized him. Manacled and chained he was taken to el Morro and imprisoned. Although he was evidently the victim of misaimed ambition, the court that tried his case condemned him to death.

The first rector of the University was Fra Tomas de Linares. According to the custom of the period and the country the rector, vice-rector and assistants were all selected from the clergy. The curriculum comprised courses in grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, theology, canons of economic laws, jurisprudence and medicine. But it seems strange that for a number of years no professor could be found to occupy the chair of mathematics. The peripatetic system prevailed. After two years of existence the university won such hearty approbation from the king that it was granted by royal decree of the twenty-seventh of June, 1734, the same concessions and prerogatives as were accorded to the University of Alcala. In the year 1733 Cuba lost her most revered and beloved spiritual leader, Bishop Valdes, who expired on the twenty-ninth of March. He lived in the memory of many generations that followed not only by the many parishes which he had founded in the smaller towns and rural districts, and by the seminary of San Baulie el Magne, which he had called into being, but also by his many personal virtues that had endeared him to his people.

An important innovation was made at this period concerning land tenure. The Ayuntamentos or municipal corporations started to rent lands, that is to give them in usufructu for the pasturing of cattle, to swine herds, for labor or as ground plots. The person receiving such a grant paid to the propios six ducats annually for the first, four for the second, and two for the others. The land-surveyor, D. Luis de la Pena, resolved to give a plot of land in the radius of two leagues to the haciendas that raised black cattle, called hatos, and to the raisers of hogs, cordos or corroles . But there was such a lack of precision in determining the boundaries of the lands covered by these concessions, that one overlapped the others and caused innumerable heated lawsuits. The abuses committed by the corporation concerned in these land deals, finally caused the king to strip these bodies of the power of renting the lands. This important royal decree was according to the historian Pezuela dated 1727, according to La Torre 1729.

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