Buonaparte appointed Caulaincourt to bear this document to Paris on his behalf; and the Marshals proposed that Ney should accompany him as their representative. It was suggested that Marmont also should form part of the deputation; but he was in command of the advanced division at Essonne, and Macdonald was named in his stead. These officers now desired to know on what stipulations, as concerned the Emperor personally, they were to insist. "On none," he answered; "obtain the best terms you can for France—for myself I ask nothing."

Hitherto nothing could be more composed or dignified than his demeanour. He now threw himself on a sofa, hid his countenance for some minutes, and then starting up with that smile which had so often kindled every heart around him into the flame of onset, exclaimed—"Let us march, my comrades; let us take the field once more."

The answer was silence and some tears; and he, also in silence, dismissed the messengers and the assemblage.

Caulaincourt, Ney and Macdonald immediately commenced their journey; and on reaching Essonne received intelligence which quickened their speed. Victor, and many other officers of the first rank, not admitted to the council at Fontainebleau, and considering the events of the two preceding days in the capital as decisive, had already sent in their adhesion to the provisional government; and Marmont, the commander of Napoleon's division in advance, had not only taken the same step for himself personally, but entered into a separate convention the night before, under which it had been settled that he should forthwith march his troops within the lines of the allied armies. The Marshals of the mission entreated Marmont to suspend his purpose, and repair with themselves to Paris. He complied; and on arriving in the capital they found themselves surrounded on all sides with the shouts of Vive le Roi! Such sounds accompanied them to the hôtel Talleyrand, where they were forthwith admitted to the presence of the Czar. The act of abdication was produced; and Alexander expressed his surprise that it should have contained no stipulations for Napoleon personally; "but I have been his friend," said he, "and I will willingly be his advocate. I propose that he should retain his imperial title, with the sovereignty of Elba or some other island."

When Buonaparte's envoys retired from the Autocrat's presence, it still remained doubtful whether the abdication would be accepted in its present form, or the Allies would insist on an unconditional surrender. There came tidings almost on the instant which determined the question. Napoleon had, shortly after the mission left him, sent orders to General Souham, who commanded at Essonne in the absence of Marmont, to repair to his presence at Fontainebleau. Souham, who, like all the upper officers of Marmont's corps (with but two exceptions), approved of the convention of the 3rd, was alarmed on receiving this message. His brethren, being summoned to council, participated in his fears; and the resolution was taken to put the convention at once in execution. The troops were wholly ignorant of what was intended, when they commenced their march at five in the morning of the 5th; and for the first time suspected the secret views of their chiefs, when they found themselves in the midst of the allied lines, and watched on all sides by overwhelming numbers, in the neighbourhood of Versailles. A violent commotion ensued; some blood was shed; but the necessity of submission was so obvious, that ere long they resumed the appearance of order, and were cantoned in quiet in the midst of the strangers.

This piece of intelligence was followed by more of the like complexion. Officers of all ranks began to abandon the camp at Fontainebleau, find present themselves to swear allegiance to the new government. Talleyrand said wittily when some one called Marmont a traitor, "his watch only went a little faster than the others."

At length the allied princes signified their resolution to accept of nothing but an unconditional abdication; making the marshals, however, the bearers of their unanimous accession to the proposals of Alexander in favour of Napoleon and his House; which, as finally shaped, were these:—

1st, The imperial title to be preserved by Napoleon, with the free sovereignty of Elba, guards, and a navy suitable to the extent of that island, a pension from France of six millions of francs annually: 2nd, The Duchies of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla to be granted in sovereignty to Maria Louisa and her heirs: and 3rd, Two millions and a half of francs annually to be paid, by the French government, in pensions to Josephine and the other members of the Buonaparte family.

Napoleon, on hearing the consequences of Marmont's defection, exclaimed, "Ungrateful man! but I pity him more than myself." Every hour thenceforth he was destined to meet similar mortifications. Berthier, his chosen and trusted friend, asked leave to go on private business to Paris, adding that he would return in a few hours. The Emperor consented; and, as he left the apartment, whispered with a smile, "He will return no more." What Napoleon felt even more painfully, was the unceremonious departure of his favourite Mameluke, Rustan.

Ere the Marshals returned from Paris he reviewed his guard again; and it was obvious to those about him that he still hankered after the chances of another field. We may imagine that his thoughts were like those of the Scottish usurper:—

He sometimes meditated a march southwards, collecting on his way the armies of Augereau and Soult, and re-opening the campaign as circumstances might recommend, behind either the Loire or the Alps. At other times the chance of yet rousing the population of Paris recurred to his imagination. Amidst these dreams, of which every minute more clearly showed the vanity, Napoleon received the ultimatum of the invading powers. He hesitated and pondered long ere he would sign his acceptance of it. The group of his personal followers had been sorely thinned; and the armies of the Allies, gradually pushing forward from Paris, had nearly surrounded Fontainebleau, when he at length (on the 11th of April) abandoned all hope, and executed an instrument, formally "renouncing for himself and his heirs the thrones of France and of Italy."

Even after signing this document, and delivering it to Caulaincourt, he made a last effort to rouse the spirits of the chief officers still around his person. They, as the Marshals had done on the 4th, heard his appeals in silence; and the Duke of Vicenza, though repeatedly commanded to give him back the act of abdication, refused to do so. It is generally believed that, during the night which ensued, Napoleon's meditations were, once more, like those of the falling Macbeth:—

Whether the story, very circumstantially told, of his having swallowed poison on that night, be true, we have no means of deciding. It is certain that he underwent a violent paroxysm of illness, sank into a death-like stupor, and awoke in extreme feebleness, lassitude, and dejection; in which condition several days were passed.

Napoleon remained long enough at Fontainebleau to hear of the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy, and the triumphant entrance of the Count d'Artois (now Charles X.) into Paris, as Lieutenant for his brother, Louis XVIII.; and of another event, which ought to have given him greater affliction. Immediately on the formation of the provisional government, messengers had been sent from Paris to arrest the progress of hostilities between Soult and Wellington. But, wherever the blame of intercepting and holding back these tidings may have lain, the English General received no intelligence of the kind until, pursuing his career of success, he had fought another great and bloody battle, and achieved another glorious victory, beneath the walls of Toulouse. This unfortunate, because utterly needless, battle, occurred on the 11th of April. On the 14th the news of the fall of Paris reached Lord Wellington; and, Soult soon afterwards signifying his adhesion to the new government, his conqueror proceeded to take part in the final negotiations of the Allies at Paris.

It was on the 20th of April that Napoleon once more called his officers about him, and signified that they were summoned to receive his last adieus. Several of the marshals and others who had some time before sworn fealty to the king, were present. "Louis," said he, "has talents and means: he is old and infirm; and will not, I think, choose to give a bad name to his reign. If he is wise, he will occupy my bed, and only change the sheets. But he must treat the army well, and take care not to look back on the past, or his time will be brief. For you, gentlemen, I am no longer to be with you;—you have another government; and it will become you to attach yourselves to it frankly, and serve it as faithfully as you have served me."

He now desired that the relics of his imperial guard might be drawn up in the courtyard of the castle. He advanced to them on horseback; and tears dropped from his eyes as he dismounted in the midst. "All Europe," said Napoleon, "has armed against me. France herself has deserted me, and chosen another dynasty. I might, with my soldiers, have maintained a civil war for years—but it would have rendered France unhappy. Be faithful to the new sovereign whom your country has chosen. Do not lament my fate: I shall always be happy while I know that you are so. I could have died—nothing was easier—but I will always follow the path of honour. I will record with my pen the deeds we have done together. I cannot embrace you all" (he continued, taking the commanding officer in his arms)—"but I embrace your general. Bring hither the eagle. Beloved eagle! may the kisses I bestow on you long resound in the hearts of the brave; farewell, my children—farewell, my brave companions—surround me once more—farewell!"

Amidst the silent but profound grief of these brave men, submitting like himself to the irresistible force of events, Napoleon placed himself in his carriage, and drove rapidly from Fontainebleau.

Of all that lamented the fall of this extraordinary man, no one shed bitterer tears than the neglected wife of his youth. Josephine had fled from Paris on the approach of the Allies; but being assured of the friendly protection of Alexander, returned to Malmaison ere Napoleon quitted Fontainebleau. The Czar visited her frequently, and endeavoured to soothe her affliction. But the ruin of "her Achilles," "her Cid" (as she now once more, in the day of misery, called Buonaparte), had entered deep into her heart. She sickened and died before the Allies left France.

Maria Louisa, meanwhile, and her son, were taken under the personal protection of the Emperor of Austria, and had begun their journey to Vienna some time before the fallen "Child of Destiny" reached Elba.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Napoleon's Journey to Frejus—Voyage to Elba—his conduct and occupations there—Discontents in France—Return of Prisoners of War—Jealousy of the Army—Union of the Jacobins and Buonapartists—Their intrigues—Napoleon escapes from Elba.

Four commissioners, one from each of the great Allied Powers, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England, accompanied Buonaparte on his journey. He was attended by Bertrand, Grand Master of the Palace, and some other attached friends and servants; and while fourteen carriages were conveying him and his immediate suite towards Elba, 700 infantry and about 150 cavalry of the Imperial Guard (all picked men, and all volunteers), marched in the same direction, to take on them the military duties of the exiled court.

During the earlier part of his progress Napoleon continued to be received respectfully by the civil functionaries of the different towns and departments, and with many tokens of sympathy on the part of the people; and his personal demeanour was such as it had been wont to appear in his better days. At Valence he met Augereau, whose conduct during the campaign had moved his bitterest displeasure; the interview was short—the recriminations mutual, and, for the first time perhaps, the fallen Emperor heard himself addressed in that tone of equality and indifference to which, for so many years, he had been a stranger. Thenceforth the course of his journey carried him more and more deeply into the provinces wherein his name had never been popular, and contemptuous hootings began by degrees to be succeeded by clamours of fierce resentment. On more than one occasion the crowd had threatened personal violence when the horses were changing, and he appears to have exhibited alarm such as could hardly have been expected in one so familiar with all the dangers of warfare. But civil commotions, as we have seen in the case of the revolution of Brumaire, were not contemplated by Napoleon so calmly as the tumults of the field. At this time besides he was suffering under a bodily illness, the fruit of debauchery, which acts severely on the stoutest nerves. It is admitted on all hands that he showed more of uneasiness and anxiety than accords with the notion of a heroic character. At length he disguised himself, and sometimes appearing in an Austrian uniform, at others riding on before the carriages in the garb of a courier, reached in safety the place of embarkation.

A French vessel had been sent round from Toulon to Cannes, for the purpose of conveying him to Elba; but there happened to be an English frigate also in the roads, and he preferred sailing under any flag rather than the Bourbon. His equanimity seemed perfectly re-established from the moment when he set his foot on the British deck. He conversed affably with Captain Usher and the officers; and by the ease and plainness of his manners, his intelligent curiosity as to the arrangements of the ship, and the warm eulogies which he continued to pronounce on them, and on the character of the English nation at large, he succeeded in making a very favourable impression on all the crew—with the exception of Hinton, a shrewd old boatswain, who, unmoved by all the imperial blandishments, growled, at the close of every fine speech, the same homely comment, "humbug." Saving this hard veteran, the usual language of the forecastle was, that "Buonaparte was a very good fellow after all"; and when, on finally leaving the Undaunted, he caused some 200 Napoleons to be distributed among the sailors, they "wished his honour long life, and better luck the next time."

He came within view of his new dominions on the afternoon of the 4th of May, and went ashore in disguise the same evening, in order to ascertain for himself whether the feelings of the Elbese at all resembled those of the Provençals. Finding that, on the contrary, the people considered his residence as likely to increase in every way the consequence and prosperity of their island, he returned on board the ship, and at noon, the day after, made his public entrance into the town of Porto Ferraio, amidst all possible demonstrations of welcome and respect.

The Russian and Prussian commissioners did not accompany him beyond the coast of Provence: the Austrian Baron Kholer, and the English Sir Neil Campbell, landed with Napoleon, and took up their residence at Ferraio. He continued for some time to treat both of these gentlemen with every mark of distinction, and even cordiality: made them the companions of his table and excursions; and conversed with apparent openness and candour on the past, the present, and the future. "There is but one people in the world," said he to Colonel Campbell—"the English—the rest are only so many populaces. I tried to raise the French to your level of sentiment, and failing to do so, fell of course. I am now politically dead to Europe. Let me do what I can for Elba.... It must be confessed," said he, having climbed the hill above Ferraio, from whence he could look down on the whole of his territory as on a map—"it must be confessed," said the Emperor, smiling, "that my island is very small."

The island, however, was his; and, as on the eye itself a very small object near at hand fills a much greater space than the largest which is distant, so, in the mind of Napoleon, that was always of most importance in which his personal interests happened for the time to be most concerned. The island—mountainous and rocky, for the most part barren, and of a circumference not beyond sixty miles—was his; and the Emperor forthwith devoted to Elba the same anxious care and industry which had sufficed for the whole affairs of France, and the superintendence and control of half Europe besides. He, in less than three weeks, had explored every corner of the island, and projected more improvements of all sorts than would have occupied a long lifetime to complete. He even extended his empire by sending some dozen or two of his soldiers to take possession of a small adjacent islet, hitherto left unoccupied for fear of corsairs. He established four different residences at different corners of Elba, and was continually in motion from one to another of them. Wherever he was, in houses neither so large nor so well furnished as many English gentlemen are used to inhabit, all the etiquettes of the Tuileries were, as far as possible, adhered to; and Napoleon's eight or nine hundred veterans were reviewed as frequently and formally as if they had been the army of Austerlitz or of Moscow. His presence gave a new stimulus to the trade and industry of the islanders; the small port of Ferraio was crowded with vessels from the opposite coasts of Italy; and, such was still the power of his name, that the new flag of Elba (covered with Napoleon's bees), traversed with impunity the seas most infested with the Moorish pirates.

Buonaparte's eagerness as to architectural and other improvements was, ere long, however, checked in a manner sufficiently new to him—namely, by the want of money. The taxes of the island were summarily increased; but this gave rise to discontent among the Elbese, without replenishing at all adequately the Emperor's exchequer. Had the French government paid his pension in advance, or at least quarterly, as it fell due, even that would have borne a slender proportion to the demands of his magnificent imagination. But Napoleon received no money whatever from the Bourbon court; and his complaints on this head were unjustly and unwisely neglected. These new troubles embittered the spirit of the fallen Chief; and the first excitement of novelty being over he sank into a state of comparative indolence, and apparently of listless dejection; from which, however, he was, ere long, to be roused effectually, by the course of events in that great kingdom, almost in sight of whose shores he had been most injudiciously permitted to preserve the shadow of sovereign state.

Louis XVIII., advanced in years, gross and infirm in person, and devoted to the luxuries of the table, was, in spite of considerable talents and accomplishments, and a sincere desire to conciliate the affections, by promoting the interests, of all orders of his people, but ill-adapted for occupying, in such trying times, the throne which, even amidst all the blaze of genius and victory, Napoleon had at best found uneasy and insecure.[67] The King himself was, perhaps, less unpopular than almost any other member of his family; but it was his fatal misfortune, that while, on the whole, every day increased the bitterness of those who had never been sincerely his friends, it tended to chill the affections of the royalists who had partaken his exile, or laboured, ere success was probable, for his return.

Louis had been called to the throne by the French senate, in a decree which at the same time declared the legislative constitution, as composed of a hereditary sovereign and two houses of assembly, to be fixed and unchangeable; which confirmed the rights of all who had obtained property in consequence of the events of the Revolution, and the titles and orders conferred by Buonaparte: in a word, which summoned the Bourbon to ascend the throne of Napoleon—on condition that he should preserve that political system which Napoleon had violated. Louis, however, though he proceeded to France on this invitation, did not hesitate to date his first act in the twentieth year of his reign; and though he issued a charter, conferring, as from his own free will, every privilege which the senate claimed for themselves and the nation, this mode of commencement could not fail to give deep offence to those, not originally of his party, who had consented to his recall. These men saw, in such assumptions, the traces of those old doctrines of divine right, which they had through life abhorred and combated; and asked why, if all their privileges were but the gifts of the King, they might not, on any tempting opportunity, be withdrawn by the same authority? They, whose possessions and titles had all been won since the death of Louis XVI., were startled when they found, that, according to the royal doctrine, there had been no legitimate government all that time in France. The exiled nobles, meanwhile, were naturally the personal friends and companions of the restored princes: their illustrious names, and, we must add, their superior manners, could not fail to excite unpleasant feelings among the new-made dukes and counts of Buonaparte. Among themselves it was no wonder that expectations were cherished, and even avowed, of recovering gradually, if not rapidly, the estates of which the Revolution had deprived them. The churchmen, who had never gone heartily into Napoleon's ecclesiastical arrangements, sided of course with these impoverished and haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the revolution of 1792.

Of these the most powerful and dangerous remains to be noticed; and, indeed, had the Bourbons adopted judicious measures concerning the army, it is very probable that the alarms of the other classes now alluded to might have subsided. The Allies, in the moment of universal delight and conciliation, restored at once, and without stipulation, the whole of the prisoners who had fallen into their hands during the war. At least 150,000 veteran soldiers of Buonaparte were thus poured into France ere Louis was well-seated on the throne; men, the greater part of whom had witnessed nothing of the last disastrous campaigns; who had sustained themselves in their exile by brooding over the earlier victories in which themselves had had a part; and who now, returning fresh and vigorous to their native soil, had but one answer to every tale of misfortune which met them: "These things could never have happened had we been here."

The conquerors, in their anxiety to procure for Louis XVIII. a warm reception among the French, had been led into other mistakes, which all tended to the same issue. They had (with some exceptions on the part of Prussia) left the pictures and statues, the trophies of Napoleon's battles, untouched in the Louvre—they had not even disturbed the monuments erected in commemoration of their own disgraces. These instances of forbearance were now attributed by the fierce and haughty soldiery of Buonaparte, to the lingering influence of that terror which their own arms under his guidance had been accustomed to inspire. Lastly, the concessions to Napoleon himself of his imperial title, and an independent sovereignty almost within view of France, were interpreted in the same fashion by these habitual worshippers of his renown. The restored King, on his part, was anxious about nothing so much as to conciliate the affections of the army. With this view he kept together bands which, long accustomed to all the licence of warfare, would hardly have submitted to peace even under Napoleon himself. Even the Imperial Guard, those chosen and devoted children of the Emperor, were maintained entire on their old establishment; the Legion of Honour was continued as before; the war ministry was given to Soult, the ablest, in common estimation, of Buonaparte's surviving marshals; and the other officers of that high rank were loaded with every mark of royal consideration. But these arrangements only swelled the presumption of those whose attachment they were meant to secure. It was hardly possible that the King of France should have given no military appointments among the nobles who had partaken his exile. He gave them so few, that they, as a body, began to murmur ere the reign was a month old: but he gave enough to call up insolent reclamations among those proud legionaries, who in every royalist, beheld an emblem of the temporary humiliation of their own caste. When, without dissolving or weakening the Imperial (now Royal) Guard, he formed a body of household troops, composed of gentlemen, and entrusted them with the immediate attendance on his person and court, this was considered as a heinous insult; and when the King bestowed the cross of the Legion of Honour on persons who would have much preferred that of St. Louis, the only comment that obtained among the warriors of Austerlitz and Friedland, was, that which ascribed to the Bourbons a settled design of degrading the decoration which they had purchased with their blood.

In a word, the French soldiery remained cantoned in the country in a temper stern, gloomy, and sullen; jealous of the Prince whose bread they were eating; eager to wipe out the memory of recent disasters in new victories; and cherishing more and more deeply the notion (not perhaps unfounded) that had Napoleon not been betrayed at home, no foreigners could ever have hurled him from his throne. Nor could such sentiments fail to be partaken, more or less, by the officers of every rank who had served under Buonaparte. They felt, almost universally, that it must be the policy of the Bourbons to promote, as far as possible, others rather than themselves. And even as to those of the very highest class—could any peaceful honours compensate, to such spirits as Ney and Soult, for a revolution, that for ever shrouded in darkness the glittering prizes on which Napoleon had encouraged them to speculate? Were the comrades of Murat and Bernadotte to sit down in contentment as peers of France, among the Montmorencies and the Rohans, who considered them at the best as low-born intruders, and scorned, in private society, to acknowledge them as members of their order? If we take into account the numerous personal adherents whom the Imperial government, with all the faults of its chief, must have possessed—and the political humiliation of France, in the eyes of all Europe, as well as of the French people themselves, immediately connected with the disappearance of Napoleon—we shall have some faint conception of that mass of multifarious griefs and resentments, in the midst of which the unwieldy and inactive Louis occupied, ere long, a most unenviable throne—and on which the eagle-eyed Exile of Elba gazed with reviving hope even before the summer of 1814 had reached its close.

Ere then, as we have seen, the demeanour and conduct of Napoleon were very different from what they had been when he first took possession of his mimic empire. Ere then his mother, his sister Pauline (a woman, whose talents for intrigue equalled her personal charms), and not a few ancient and attached servants, both of his civil government and of his army, had found their way to Elba, and figured in "his little senate." Pauline made repeated voyages to Italy, and returned again. New and busy faces appeared in the circle of Porto Ferraio—and disappeared forthwith—no one knew whence they had come or whither they went; an air of bustle and of mystery pervaded the atmosphere of the place. Sir Neil Campbell found it more and more difficult to obtain access to the presence of Buonaparte—which the refusal of the English government to acknowledge the Imperial title, and this officer's consequent want of any very definite character at Elba, left him no better means of overcoming than to undertake journeys and voyages, thereby gaining a pretext for paying his respects at every departure and return. Sir Neil early suspected that some evil was hatching, and repeatedly remarked on the absurdity of withholding Napoleon's pension, thereby tempting him, as it were, to violence. But neither the reports nor the reclamations of this gentleman appear to have received that attention which they merited.

What persons in France were actually in communication on political subjects with the turbulent court of Elba, during that autumn and the following winter, is likely to remain a secret: that they were neither few nor inactive, nor unskilful, the event will sufficiently prove. The chiefs of the police and of the post-office had been removed by Louis; but the whole inferior machinery of these establishments remained untouched; and it is generally believed, that both were early and sedulously employed in the service of the new conspiracy. We have seen that Soult was commander-in-chief of the army; and it is very difficult, on considering the subsequent course of events, to doubt that he also made a systematic use of his authority with the same views, distributing and arranging the troops according to far other rules than the interests of his royal master.

Ere the autumn closed, Buonaparte granted furloughs on various pretexts to about 200 of his guardsmen; and these were forthwith scattered over France, actively disseminating the praises of their chief, and, though probably not aware how soon such an attempt was meditated, preparing the minds of their ancient comrades for considering it as by no means unlikely that he would yet once more appear in the midst of them. It is certain that a notion soon prevailed that Napoleon would revisit the soil of France in the spring of the coming year. He was toasted among the soldiery, and elsewhere also, under the soubriquet of Corporal Violet. That early flower, or a ribbon of its colour, was the symbol of rebellion, and worn openly, in the sight of the unsuspecting Bourbons.

Their security was as profound as hollow; nor was it confined to them. The representatives of all the European princes had met in Vienna, to settle finally a number of questions left undecided at the termination of the war. Talleyrand was there for France, and Wellington for England; and yet it is on all hands admitted, that no surprise was ever more sudden, complete, and universal than theirs, when on the 11th of March, 1815, a courier arrived among them with the intelligence that Napoleon Buonaparte had reared his standard in Provence.[68]

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Napoleon lands at Cannes—his progress to Grenoble—Lyons—Fontainebleau—Treason of Labedoyere and Ney—Louis XVIII. retires to Ghent, and Napoleon arrives in Paris.

The evening before Napoleon sailed (February the 26th), his sister Pauline gave a ball, to which all the officers of the Elbese army were invited. A brig (the Inconstant) and six small craft, had meanwhile been prepared for the voyage, and at dead of night, without apparently any previous intimation, the soldiery were mustered by tuck of drum, and found themselves on board ere they could ask for what purpose. When the day broke, they perceived that all the officers and the Emperor himself were with them, and that they were steering for the coast of France; and it could no longer be doubtful that the scheme which had for months formed the darling object of all their hopes and dreams was about to be realised.

Sir Neil Campbell, who had been absent on an excursion to Leghorn, happened to return to Porto Ferraio almost as soon as the flotilla had quitted it. The mother and sister of Buonaparte in vain endeavoured to persuade the English officer that he had steered toward the coast of Barbary. He pursued instantly towards Provence, in the Partridge, which attended his orders, and came in sight of the fugitive armament exactly when it was too late. Ere then Napoleon had encountered almost an equal hazard. A French ship of war had crossed his path; but the Emperor made all his soldiery lie flat on the decks, and the steersman of the Inconstant, who happened to be well acquainted with the commanding officer, had received and answered the usual challenge without exciting any suspicion. Thus narrowly escaped the flotilla which carried "Cæsar and his fortune."

On the 1st of March he was once more off Cannes—the same spot which had received him from Egypt, and at which he had embarked ten months before for Elba. There was no force whatever to oppose his landing; and his handful of men—500 grenadiers of the guard, 200 dragoons, and 100 Polish lancers, these last without horses, and carrying their saddles on their backs—were immediately put in motion on the road to Paris. Twenty-five grenadiers which he detached to summon Antibes were arrested on the instant by the governor of that place; but he despised this omen, and proceeded without a pause. He bivouacked that night in a plantation of olives, with all his men about him. As soon as the moon rose, the réveille sounded. A labourer going thus early afield, recognised the Emperor's person, and, with a cry of joy, said he had served in the army of Italy, and would join the march. "Here is already a reinforcement," said Napoleon; and the march recommenced. Early in the morning they passed through the town of Grasse, and halted on the height beyond it—where the whole population of the place forthwith surrounded them, some cheering, the great majority looking on in perfect silence, but none offering any show of opposition. The roads were so bad in this neighbourhood, that the pieces of cannon which they had with them were obliged to be abandoned in the course of the day, but they had marched full twenty leagues ere they halted for the night at Cerenon. On the 5th, Napoleon reached Gap. He was now in Dauphiny, called "The cradle of the Revolution," and the sullen silence of the Provençals was succeeded by popular acclamations; but still no troops had joined him—and his anxiety was great.

It was at Gap that he published his first proclamations; one "To the Army," another "To the French people," both no doubt prepared at Elba, though dated "March 1st, Gulf of Juan." The former, and more important of the two, ran in these words—"Soldiers! we have not been beaten. Two men, raised from our ranks,[69] betrayed our laurels, their country, their prince, their benefactor. In my exile I have heard your voice. I have arrived once more among you, despite all obstacles, and all perils. We ought to forget that we have been the masters of the world; but we ought never to suffer foreign interference in our affairs. Who dares pretend to be master over us? Take again the eagles which you followed at Ulm, at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Montmirail. Come and range yourselves under the banners of your old chief. Victory shall march at the charging step. The Eagle, with the national colours, shall fly from steeple to steeple—on to the towers of Notre Dame! In your old age, surrounded and honoured by your fellow-citizens, you shall be heard with respect when you recount your high deeds. You shall then say with pride—I also was one of that great army which entered twice within the walls of Vienna, which took Rome, and Berlin, and Madrid, and Moscow—and which delivered Paris from the stain printed on it by domestic treason, and the occupation of strangers."

It was between Mure and Vizele that Cambronne, who commanded his advanced guard of forty grenadiers, met suddenly a battalion sent forwards from Grenoble to arrest the march. The colonel refused to parley with Cambronne; either party halted until Napoleon himself came up. He did not hesitate for a moment. He dismounted, and advanced alone; some paces behind him came a hundred of his guard, with their arms reversed. There was perfect silence on all sides until he was within a few yards of the men. He then halted, threw open his surtout so as to show the star of the Legion of Honour, and exclaimed, "If there be among you a soldier who desires to kill his general—his Emperor—let him do it now. Here I am."—The old cry of Vive l'Empereur burst instantaneously from every lip. Napoleon threw himself among them, and taking a veteran private, covered with chevrons and medals, by the whisker, said, "Speak honestly, old Moustache, couldst thou have had the heart to kill thy Emperor?" The man dropped his ramrod into his piece to show that it was uncharged, and answered, "Judge if I could have done thee much harm—all the rest are the same." Napoleon gave the word, and the old adherents, and the new, marched together on Grenoble.

Some space ere they reached that town, Colonel Labedoyere, an officer of noble family, and who had been promoted by Louis XVIII., appeared on the road before them, at the head of his regiment, the seventh of the line. These men, and the Emperor's little column, on coming within view of each other, rushed simultaneously from their ranks, and embraced with mutual shouts of Live Napoleon! Live the Guard! Live the Seventh! Labedoyere produced an eagle, which he had kept concealed about his person, and broke open a drum which was found to be filled with tricolor cockades; these ancient ensigns were received with redoubled enthusiasm. This was the first instance of an officer of superior rank voluntarily espousing the side of the invader. The impulse thus afforded was decisive; in spite of all the efforts of General Marchand, Commandant of Grenoble, the whole of that garrison, when he approached the walls, exclaimed Vive l'Empereur! Their conduct, however, exhibited a singular spectacle. Though thus welcoming Napoleon with their voices, they would not so far disobey the governor as to throw open the gates. On the other hand no argument could prevail on them to fire on the advancing party. In the teeth of all the batteries, Buonaparte calmly planted a howitzer or two, and blew the gates open, and then, as if the spell of discipline were at once dissolved, the garrison broke from their lines, and he in an instant found himself dragged from his horse, and borne aloft on these men's shoulders towards the principal inn of the place, amidst the clamours of enthusiastic and delirious joy. Marchand remained faithful to his oath; and was dismissed without injury. Next morning the authorities of Grenoble waited on Napoleon, and tendered their homage. He reviewed his troops, now about 7000 in numbers, and on the 9th recommenced his march.

On the 10th, Buonaparte came within sight of Lyons, and was informed that Monsieur and Marshal Macdonald had arrived to take the command, barricaded the bridge of Guillotierre, and posted themselves at the head of a large force to dispute the entrance of the town. Nothing daunted with this intelligence, the column moved on, and at the bridge of Lyons, as at the gates of Grenoble, all opposition vanished when his person was recognised by the soldiery. The Prince and Macdonald were forced to retire, and Napoleon entered the second city of France in triumph. A guard of mounted gentlemen had been formed among the citizens to attend on the person of Monsieur. These were among the foremost to offer their services to the Emperor, after he reached his hotel. Surrounded by his own soldiery, and by a manufacturing population, whom the comparatively free admission of English goods after the peace of Paris had filled with fear and discontent, and who now welcomed the great enemy of England with rapturous acclamations, Napoleon could afford to reject the assistance of these faithless cavaliers. He dismissed them with contempt; but finding that one of their number had followed Monsieur until his person was out of all danger, immediately sent to that individual the cross of the Legion of Honour.

This revolution had been proceeding during more than a week, ere the gazettes of Paris ventured to make any allusion to its existence. There then appeared a royal ordonnance, proclaiming Napoleon Buonaparte an outlaw, and convoking on the instant the two chambers. Next day the Moniteur announced that, surrounded on all hands by faithful garrisons and a loyal population, this outlaw was already stripped of most of his followers, wandering in despair among the hills, and certain to be a prisoner within two or three days at the utmost. The Moniteur, however, was no very decisive authority in 1815, any more than in 1814; and the public mind continued full of uncertainty, as to the motives and every circumstance of this unparalleled adventure. Monsieur, meanwhile, had departed, we have seen with what success, to Lyons; the Duke of Angouleme was already at Marseilles, organising the loyal Provençals, and preparing to throw himself on Grenoble and cut off the retreat of Buonaparte; and Louis continued to receive addresses full of loyalty and devotion from the public bodies of Paris, from towns, and departments, and, above all, from the marshals, generals, and regiments who happened to be near the capital.

This while, however, the partisans of Napoleon in Paris were far more active than the royalists. They gave out everywhere that, as the proclamation from the Gulf of Juan had stated, Buonaparte was come back thoroughly cured of that ambition which had armed Europe against his throne; that he considered his act of abdication void, because the Bourbons had not accepted the crown on the terms on which it was offered, and had used their authority in a spirit, and for purposes, at variance with the feelings and the interests of the French people; that he was come to be no longer the dictator of a military despotism, but the first citizen of a nation which he had resolved to make the freest of the free; that the royal government wished to extinguish by degrees all memory of the revolution—that he was returning to consecrate once more the principles of liberty and equality, ever hateful in the eyes of the old nobility of France, and to secure the proprietors of forfeited estates against all the machinations of that dominant faction; in a word, that he was fully sensible to the extent of his past errors, both of domestic administration and of military ambition, and desirous of nothing but the opportunity of devoting, to the true welfare of peaceful France, those unrivalled talents and energies which he had been rash enough to abuse in former days. With these suggestions they mingled statements perhaps still more audacious. According to them, Napoleon had landed with the hearty approbation of the Austrian court, and would be instantly rejoined by the Empress and his son. The Czar also was friendly; even England had been sounded ere the adventure began, and showed no disposition to hazard another war for the sake of the Bourbons. The King of Prussia, indeed, remained hostile—but France was not sunk so low as to dread that state single-handed. It was no secret, ere this time, that some disputes of considerable importance had sprung up among the great powers whose representatives were assembled at Vienna; and such was the rash credulity of the Parisians, that the most extravagant exaggerations and inventions which issued from the saloon of the Duchess de St. Leu (under which name Hortense Beauharnois, wife of Louis Buonaparte, had continued to reside in Paris)—and from other circles of the same character, found, to a certain extent, credence. There was one tale which ran louder and louder from the tongue of every Buonapartist, and which royalist and republican found, day after day, new reason to believe; namely, that the army were, high and low, on the side of Napoleon; that every detachment sent to intercept him, would but swell his force; in a word, that—unless the people were to rise en masse—nothing could prevent the outlaw from taking possession of the Tuileries ere a fortnight more had passed over the head of Louis.

It was at Lyons, where Napoleon remained from the 10th to the 13th, that he formally resumed the functions of civil government. He published various decrees at this place; one, commanding justice to be administered everywhere in his name after the 15th; another abolishing the Chambers of the Peers and the Deputies, and summoning all the electoral colleges to meet in Paris at a Champ-de-Mai,[70] there to witness the coronation of Maria Louisa and of her son, and settle definitively the constitution of the state; a third, ordering into banishment all whose names had not been erased from the list of emigrants prior to the abdication of Fontainebleau; a fourth, depriving all strangers and emigrants of their commissions in the army; a fifth, abolishing the order of St. Louis, and bestowing all its revenues on the Legion of Honour; and a sixth, restoring to their authority all magistrates who had been displaced by the Bourbon government. These proclamations could not be prevented from reaching Paris; and the Court, abandoning their system of denying or extenuating the extent of the impending danger, began to adopt more energetic means for its suppression.

It was now that Marshal Ney volunteered his services to take the command of a large body of troops, whose fidelity was considered sure, and who were about to be sent to Lons-le-Saunier, there to intercept and arrest the invader. Well aware of this great officer's influence in the army, Louis did not hesitate to accept his proffered assistance; and Ney, on kissing his hand at parting, swore that in the course of a week he would bring Buonaparte to his majesty's feet in a cage, like a wild beast.

On reaching Lons-le-Saunier, Ney received a letter from Napoleon, summoning him to join his standard as "the bravest of the brave." In how far he guided or followed the sentiments of his soldiery we know not, but the fact is certain, that he and they put themselves in motion forthwith, and joined the march of Buonaparte on the 17th at Auxerre. Ney, in the sequel, did not hesitate to avow that he had chosen the part of Napoleon long ere he pledged his oath to Louis; adding that the greater number of the marshals were, like himself, original members of the Elbese conspiracy. Of the latter of these assertions no other proof has hitherto been produced; and the former continues to be generally as well as mercifully discredited.

In and about the capital there still remained troops far more than sufficient in numbers to overwhelm the advancing column, and drag its chief to the feet of Louis. He entrusted the command of these battalions to one whose personal honour was as clear as his military reputation was splendid—Marshal Macdonald; and this gentleman proceeded to take post at Melun, in good hope, notwithstanding all that happened, of being duly supported in the discharge of his commission.

On the 19th, Napoleon slept once more in the chateau of Fontainebleau; on the morning of the 20th he advanced through the forest in full knowledge of Macdonald's arrangements—and he advanced alone. It was about noon that the marshal's troops, who had for some time been under arms on an eminence beyond the wood, listening, apparently with delight, to the loyal strains of Vive Henri Quatre and La Belle Gabrielle, perceived suddenly a single open carriage coming at full speed towards them from among the trees. A handful of Polish horsemen, with their lances reversed, followed the equipage. The little flat cocked hat—the grey surtout—the person of Napoleon was recognised. In an instant the men burst from their ranks, surrounded him with the cries of Vive l'Empereur, and trampled their white cockades in the dust.

Macdonald escaped to Paris; but his master had not awaited the issue of the last stand at Melun. Amidst the tears and lamentations of the loyal burghers of the capital, and the respectful silence of those who really wished for the success of his rival, Louis had set off from the Tuileries in the middle of the preceding night. Macdonald overtook him, and accompanied him to the frontier of the Netherlands, which he reached in safety. There had been a plan organised by Generals Lallemand and Lefevre for seizing the roads between Paris and Belgium, and intercepting the flight of the King; but Marshal Mortier had been successful in detecting and suppressing this movement.

On the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon once more entered Paris. He came preceded and followed by the soldiery, on whom alone he had relied, and who, by whatever sacrifices, had justified his confidence. The streets were silent as the travel-worn cavalcade passed along; but all that loved the name or the cause of Napoleon were ready to receive him in the Tuileries; and he was almost stifled by the pressure of those enthusiastic adherents, who the moment he stopped, mounted him on their shoulders, and carried him so in triumph up the great staircase of the palace. He found, in the apartments which the King had just vacated, a brilliant assemblage of those who had in former times filled the most prominent places in his own councils and court: among the rest was Fouché. This personage was not the only one present who had recently intrigued with the Bourbons against Buonaparte—with as much apparent ardour, and perhaps with about as much honesty, as in other times he had ever brought to the service of the Emperor. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon, as he walked round the circle, "it is disinterested people who have brought me back to my capital. It is the subalterns and the soldiers that have done it all. I owe everything to the people and the army."

CHAPTER XXXIX

The Hundred Days—Declaration of the Congress at Vienna—Napoleon prepares for War—Capitulation of the Duke d'Angouleme—Insurrection of La Vendée—Murat advances from Naples—Is Defeated—And takes refuge in France—The Champ-de-Mai—Dissatisfaction of the Constitutionalists.

The reports so zealously circulated by the Buonapartists, that some at least of the great European powers were aware, and approved, of the meditated debarkation at Cannes—and the hopes thus nourished among the French people, that the new revolution would not disturb the peace of the world—were very speedily at an end. The instant that the news of Napoleon's daring movement reached Vienna, the Congress published a proclamation in these words:—"By breaking the convention which established him in Elba, Buonaparte destroys the only legal title on which his existence depended. By appearing again in France, with projects of confusion and disorder, he has deprived himself of the protection of the law, and manifested to the universe that there can be neither peace nor truce with him. The powers consequently declare that Napoleon Buonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations, and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance." These sentiments underwent no change in consequence of the apparently triumphant course of Napoleon's adventure. All Europe prepared once more for war. It was evident that the usurper owed everything to the French soldiery—that body to which the treaty of Paris had at once restored 150,000 veterans, idle, and indisposed for ordinary labour—and that until this ferocious military were effectually humbled there could be no peace for the world.

A formal treaty was forthwith entered into, by which the four great powers bound themselves to maintain each of them at least 150,000 troops in arms, until Buonaparte should either be dethroned, or reduced so low as no longer to endanger the peace of Europe. The other states of the continent were to be invited to join the alliance, furnishing contingents adequate to their respective resources. The King of France was to be requested to sign the treaty also; but with reference to this article an explanatory note was affixed, by the representatives of the Prince Regent of England, denying, on the part of his royal highness, any wish to force a particular government on the people of France: and it was further stipulated that in case Britain should not furnish all the men agreed on, she should compensate by paying at the rate of £30 per annum for every cavalry soldier, and £20 per annum for every foot soldier under the full number. Such was the treaty of Vienna; but the zeal of the contracting parties went far beyond the preparations indicated in its terms. Napoleon was hardly re-seated on his throne ere he learned that he must in all likelihood maintain it against 300,000 Austrians, 225,000 Russians, 236,000 Prussians, an army of 150,000 men furnished by the minor states of Germany, 50,000 contributed by the government of the Netherlands, and 50,000 English, commanded by the Duke of Wellington;—in all one million eleven thousand soldiers.

His preparations to meet this gigantic confederacy began from the moment when he re-established himself in the Tuileries. Carnot became once more minister of war; and what Napoleon and he, when labouring together in the re-organisation of an army, could effect, had been abundantly manifested at the commencement of the consulate. The army cantoned in France, when Buonaparte landed at Cannes, numbered 175,000; the cavalry had been greatly reduced: and the disasters of 1812, 1813, and 1814, were visible in the miserable deficiency of military stores and arms, especially of artillery. By incredible exertions, notwithstanding the pressure of innumerable cares and anxieties of all kinds, and although the temper of the nation prevented him from having recourse to the old method of conscription—the Emperor, ere May was over, had 375,000 men in arms—including an imperial guard of 40,000 chosen veterans, in the most splendid state of equipment and discipline, a large and brilliant force of cavalry, and a train of artillery of proportional extent and excellence.

Napoleon, however, made sundry attempts to open a negotiation with the Allies—nor wanted there statesmen, even in England, to lend their best support to his reclamations. He urged three arguments in defence of his breach of the convention by which he had become sovereign of Elba: 1st, the detention of his wife and son by the court of Austria—an affair with which the king whose dominions he had invaded could have had nothing to do: 2nd, the nonpayment of his pension—a grievance which might have furnished a legitimate ground of complaining to the powers that guaranteed its punctual discharge, and which, if so complained of at the Congress of Vienna, there is no reason to doubt would have been redressed: and 3rd, the voice of the French nation, which he, according to his own statement, had but heard and obeyed. But the state of public feeling in France could not be effectually misrepresented now: and the answer that met him from every quarter was one and the same—namely, that he had ascended the throne of Louis in consequence of the treason of the army, and the intrigues of a faction, in direct opposition to the wishes of almost all the upper classes of society throughout France, and, as regarded the mass of the nation, amidst profound indifference.

Meanwhile the royalists at home had failed in all their endeavours to prevent his authority from being recognised all over France. The Duke d'Angouleme was soon surrounded by the superior numbers of General Gilly, and capitulated—on condition of being permitted to disband his followers, and embark at Cette for Spain—a convention which Napoleon did not hesitate to ratify. The Duchess of Angouleme, daughter of Louis XVI., displayed at Bourdeaux such heroism as drew from Napoleon himself the sarcastic eulogy, "She is the only man of her race;" but in spite of the loyalty of the inhabitants all her efforts were vain. The garrison was strong; they had caught the general flame; and the Princess was at length compelled to take refuge in an English frigate. The Duke of Berri repaired, on the first alarm, to La Vendée: but the regular troops in that faithful province were, thanks to the previous care of King Louis's war-minister, so numerous and so well posted, that this effort failed also, and the Duke escaped to England. Before March had ended, the tricolor flag was displayed on every tower of France.

Having discovered that there was no chance—if indeed he had ever contemplated one—of persuading the Emperor of Austria to restore his wife and son to him, Napoleon, ere he had been many days at the Tuileries, set on foot a scheme for carrying them off from Vienna, by a mixture of stratagem and force. There were French people in the suite of Maria Louisa who easily embarked in this plot; and forged passports, relays of horses, and all other appliances had been so well provided, that but for a single individual, who betrayed the design, there seems to have been a considerable probability of its success. On discovering this affair the Emperor of Austria dismissed the French attendants of his daughter, and caused her to discontinue the use of the arms and liveries of Napoleon, which she had hitherto retained—nay, even the imperial title itself, resuming those of her own family, and original rank as archduchess. This procedure could not be concealed at Paris, and completed the conviction of all men, that there was no hope whatever of avoiding another European war; and almost at the same time a rash expedition of Murat, which, if successful, might have materially influenced the conduct of Austria, reached its end.

Napoleon, when at St. Helena, always persisted in denying any participation in this design of his brother-in-law; but, however this may have been, it is certain that much intercourse subsisted, during his stay at Elba, between the Queen of Naples and the female branches of the family at Porto Ferraio; nor can anyone doubt either that Murat had received some pretty distinct intimation of Napoleon's intended descent in France—or that he ventured on his movement in the confidence that this and the Emperor's would lend to each other much moral support—or that, if Joachim had prospered, Napoleon would have considered what he did as the best service that could have been rendered to himself.

Among the subjects which, prior to Buonaparte's reappearance, occupied the Congress of Vienna, one of the chief was the conduct of Murat during the campaign of 1814. Talleyrand charged him with having, throughout, been a traitor to the cause of the Allies; and exhibited a series of intercepted letters, from him to Napoleon, in proof of this allegation. The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, considered these documents as proving no more than that Murat had reluctantly lifted his banner against the author of his fortunes. Talleyrand had always hated Murat and despised him—(the father of the King of Naples had originally been steward in the household of the Perigords)—and persisted in urging on the Congress the danger of suffering a sovereign of Buonaparte's family and creation to sit on the throne which belonged of right to the King of the Sicilies. The affair was still under discussion, to the mortal annoyance of the person whose interests were at stake, when Napoleon landed at Cannes. Murat resolved to rival his brother's daring; and, without further pause, marched, at the head of 50,000 men, to Rome, from which the Pope and cardinals fled precipitately at his approach. The Neapolitans then advanced into the North of Italy, scattering proclamations by which Joachim invited all true Italians to rally round him, and assist in the erection of their country into one free and independent state, with him at its head. The Austrian commander in Lombardy forthwith put his troops in motion to meet Murat. The rencontre took place at Occhiobello. The Neapolitans fled in confusion almost at the sight of the enemy; and Murat, unable to rally them, sought personal safety in a fishing vessel, which landed him near Toulon, about the end of May. Napoleon was in vain entreated to receive him at Paris. He refused, asking, with bitter scorn—if the war between France and Naples, which subsisted in 1814, had ever been terminated by treaty? Murat lingered for some time in obscurity near Toulon; and, relanding on the coast of Naples after the King of the Two Sicilies had been re-established on that throne, in the vain hope of exciting an insurrection and recovering what he had lost, was seized, tried, and executed. This vain, but high-spirited, man, met his fate with heroic fortitude; and Napoleon, at St. Helena, often said that the fortune of the world might have been changed, had there been a Murat to head the French cavalry at Waterloo.

The result of this rash expedition enabled Austria to concentrate all her Italian forces also for the meditated re-invasion of France. The Spanish army began to muster towards the passes of the Pyrenees: the Russians, Swedes, and Danes were already advancing from the north: the main armies of Austria, Bavaria, and the Rhenish princes were rapidly consolidating themselves along the Upper Rhine. Blucher was once more in command of the Prussians, in the Netherlands; and Wellington, commanding in chief the British, Hanoverians, and Belgians, had also established his headquarters at Brussels by the end of May. Every hour the clouds were thickening apace, and it became evident, that, if Napoleon remained much longer in Paris, the war would burst simultaneously on every frontier of his empire.

He had no intention to abide at home the onset of his enemies; but the situation of civil affairs was such as to embarrass him, in the prospect of departure, with difficulties which, in former days, were not used to perplex the opening of his campaigns.

Hard indeed was his task from the beginning—to conciliate to himself heartily the political faction who detested, and had assisted in overthrowing the government of the Bourbons, and this without chilling the attachment of the military, who despised these coadjutors, both as theorists and as civilians, and had welcomed Napoleon only as the certain harbinger of war, revenge, and plunder. How little his soldiery were disposed to consider him as owing anything to a civil revolution, appeared almost from the commencement of his march from Cannes. It was observed that these haughty bands moved on in contemptuous silence whenever the populace cheered his approach, and shouted Vive l'Empereur only when there were no pequin[71] voices to mingle in the clamour. Every act of Napoleon after he reached Paris, that was meant to conciliate the common people of the capital, was the theme of angry comment among these martial circles. Such measures as he adopted in deference to the prejudices of the old republican party, were heard of with equal contempt. The pacific language of his first proclamations was considered as a fair stratagem—and no more. To them the man was nothing but as the type of the system: they desired to hear of nothing in France but the great Cæsar, and the legions to whom he owed his greatness, and who had the same right to a new career of battles, as he to his Imperial crown, at once the prize of past, and the pledge of future victories.

With the views of these spirits, eager for blood and plunder, and scornful of all liberty but the licence of the camp, Napoleon was engaged in the endeavour to reconcile the principles and prejudices of men who had assisted in rebuilding his throne, only because they put faith in the assertions of himself and his friends, that he had thoroughly repented of the despotic system on which he had formerly ruled France—that ten months of exile and reflection had convinced him how much better it was to be the first citizen of a free state, than the undisputed tyrant of half the world—in a word, that his only remaining ambition was to atone for the violence of his first reign by the mildness of his second. As a first step to fasten the goodwill of these easy believers, he, immediately on arriving in Paris, proclaimed the freedom of the press; but he soon repented of this concession. In spite of all the watchfulness, and all the briberies of his police, he could never bend to his own service the whole of this power. The pure republicans—even the pure royalists—continued to have their organs; and the daily appeals of either to the reason and the passions of a people so long strange to the exercise of such influence, otherwise than in subservience to the government of the time, whatever that might be, produced such effects, that, almost from the time in which he bestowed the boon, he was occupied with devising pretexts for its recall. He ere long caused, perhaps, more resentment by some efforts to thwart the conduct of the press, than would have resulted from the absolute prolongation of its slavery. Some even of the decrees of Lyons were hard to be reconciled with the professions of one who disclaimed any wish to interfere with the sacred right of the nation to frame its constitution for itself. But in almost every act of his government after he reached Paris, he furnished additional evidence how imperfectly his mind had divested itself of the ancient maxims. Even the edict, emancipating the press from all control, was an assumption on his part of the complete power of legislation. The same might be said of another decree, abolishing negro slavery and the slave trade, which he published shortly after: but this second measure exposed him to other comments. Who could seriously believe that at that moment of tumult, ere France was even in semblance entirely his, and while all Europe was openly arming against him, he had leisure for the affairs of the negroes? This display of philanthropy was set down universally for a stage-trick; and men quickened their eyes, lest such unsubstantial shows in the distant horizon might be designed to withdraw their attention from the foreground.

The great assemblage of Champ-de-Mai had been originally announced for the 10th of May; and its principal business as the formation of a new constitution. The meeting did not take place so early, and the task of proposing a constitutional scheme for its consideration, proved far more difficult than the Emperor had contemplated. He had the assistance, in this labour, of Carnot and Sieyes, whose names would have carried great weight with the republican party—had not both of these old jacobins and regicides accepted, on entering the Emperor's service, high rank in his peerage—a proceeding in direct violation of all the professions of their lives. He was further favoured with the aid of his brother Lucien, who, in spite of all previous misunderstandings, returned on this occasion to Paris; influenced, probably, by the same egregious vanity which made him fancy himself a poet, and hoping, under existing circumstances, to impress Napoleon with such a sense of his value as might secure him henceforth a commanding influence in the government of France. The Abbé Sieyes, and Lucien also, had had some experience ere now of Napoleon in the character of a constitution-maker. He was no longer so powerful as he had been when they formerly toiled together upon such a task: disputes arose; and the Emperor, to cut these short, and give a decisive proof of his regard for freedom of debate, soon broke up the discussion, retired from the Tuileries to the small palace called the Elysée, and there drew up the scheme which pleased himself, and which was forthwith published under the title of "Act Additional to the Constitutions of the Empire."

This title gave great offence, because it seemed to recognise many anterior enactments, wholly irreconcilable with the tenor of the document itself; and the mode of its promulgation furnished even more serious ground of objection. This constitution was, on the face of it, not a compact between the prince and the people, but the record of boons conceded by the former to the latter. In a word, all they that had condemned Louis XVIII. for his royal charter, were compelled to acknowledge that their own imperial champion of freedom was beginning his new career by a precisely similar display of presumption.

The substance of the "additional act" disappointed all those who hankered after the formal exposition of first principles; but it must be allowed that its provisions seem to include whatever is needful for the arrangement of a free representative constitution; hereditary monarchy; a hereditary peerage; a house of representatives, chosen by the people, at least once within every five years; yearly taxes, levied only by the whole legislature; responsible ministers; irremovable judges; and, in all criminal cases whatever, the trial by jury. The act, however, was published; the electoral colleges accepted of it, as they had done of all its predecessors; and it by degrees came out that the business of the Champ-de-Mai was to be—not even the discussion of the imperial scheme, but only to swear submission to its regulations, and witness a solemn distribution of eagles to those haughty bands who acknowledge no law but that of the sword.

This promised assemblage was preceded by one of the rabble of Paris, convoked in front of the Tuileries on the 17th of May, and there feasted and harangued by Napoleon—a condescension which excited lively displeasure among his soldiery. He himself looked and spoke as one thoroughly ashamed of what he had done and was doing. It had been his desire to stimulate among these people something of the old zeal of the revolutionary period, in case Paris should be once more threatened by a foreign enemy; but he had the double mortification to find that the army considered their touch as contamination, and that among themselves the name of Louis was almost as popular as his own. Even the Dames des halles, so conspicuous in the revolutionary tumults, screamed royalist ditties in his ear as they drank his wine; and the only hearty cheers were those of the day-labourers, who had profited by his resumption of some great public works suspended by the King's government.

The Champ-de-Mai itself, which, despite its name, fell on the 1st of June, turned out hardly a more successful exhibition. Napoleon, his brothers, and the great civil functionaries, appeared in theatric dresses, in the midst of an enormous amphitheatre, where the deputies, sent from the departments to swear allegiance to the Emperor and the "additional act," were almost lost in the military among whom the eagles were to be distributed. The enthusiasm was confined to these. The same ominous silence which prevailed at the coronation of 1804 was preserved among the people. The sun shone bright, and the roar of cannon filled every pause of the martial music. It was a brilliant spectacle; but Napoleon retired from it in visible dejection.

Three days after, the two houses met; and while that of the peers, composed of persons who all owed their rank, and most of them much besides, to Napoleon, showed every disposition to regulate their conduct by his pleasure, there appeared from the beginning a marked spirit of independence in a considerable proportion of the representative body. The Emperor's address to both was moderate and manly. He requested their support in the war which circumstances had rendered unavoidable, and professed his desire that they should consider the "additional act" and all other subjects of national interest, and suggest whatever alterations might appear to them improvements. Some debates, by no means gratifying to Napoleon, ensued; but he had no leisure for witnessing much of their proceedings. It was now needful that he should appear once more in his own element.