“So here is once more broken the bond of love and confidence that was uniting the people to the Monarch.  Here once again are the court with its old rancors, the Emigration with its prejudices, the priesthood with its hatred of liberty, coming to throw themselves between France and her King.  What she has conquered by forty years of travail and misfortune is taken from her; what she repels with all the force of her will, all the energy of her deepest desires, is violently imposed upon her.  Ill-fated France!  Ill-fated King!”

The 15th of August the Debats reached a paroxysm of fury:—­

“If from all the battle-fields of Europe where our Grand Army has left its members, if from Belgium, where it left the last fragments of its body, and from the place where Marshal Ney fell shot, there arise cries of anger that resound in our hearts, if the column of the Grand Army seems to tremble through all its bronze battalions, whose is the fault?  No, no; nothing is lacking in this ministry of the counter-Revolution.  Waterloo is represented. ...  M. de Polignac represents in it the ideas of the first Emigration, the ideas of Coblenz; M. de La Bourdonnaye the faction of 1815 with its murderous friendships, its law of proscription, and its clientele of southern massacres.  Coblenz, Waterloo, 1815, these are the three personages of the ministry.  Turn it how you will, every side dismays.  Every side angers.  It has no aspect that is not sinister, no face that is not menacing.  Take our hatreds of thirty years ago, our sorrows and our fears of fifteen years ago, all are there, all have joined to insult and irritate France.  Squeeze, wring this ministry, it drips only humiliations, misfortunes, dangers.”

The Abbe Vedrenne, historian of Charles X., wrote:—­

“How is the language of the writers of the Debats, who called themselves royalists, to be understood?  Was not Charles X. at Coblenz?  Did not Chateaubriand emigrate with the King and the princes?  Did he not follow Louis XVIII. to Ghent?  Was he not in his council at the very hour of the battle of Waterloo?  They might as well have stigmatized the white flag and demanded the proscription of the King’s dynasty.  But such was their blindness that they feared nothing for it.  ‘The throne runs no risk,’ said Chateaubriand, ‘let us tremble for liberty only.’  Yet the nomination of the Polignac ministry was an error.  It appeared to be a provocation, a sort of defiance.  Charles X. doubtless only wished to defend himself, but in choosing such ministers at such an hour, he appeared to be willing to attack.”

From the debut of the new cabinet, the Opposition, to use a recent expression, showed itself irreconcilable.  It raised a long cry of anger, and declared war to the death on Prince Polignac.