The History of Napoleon Buonaparte Part 27

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

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 p.r.o.nounce 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 ash.o.r.e in disguise the same evening, in order to ascertain for himself whether the feelings of the Elbese at all resembled those of the Provencals. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 circ.u.mference 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 sh.o.r.es 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 const.i.tution, as composed of a hereditary sovereign and two houses of a.s.sembly, 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 t.i.tles 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 a.s.sumptions, 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 t.i.tles 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 n.o.bles, meanwhile, were naturally the personal friends and companions of the restored princes: their ill.u.s.trious 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 t.i.tle, 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 n.o.bles 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 cla.s.s--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 ma.s.s 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 t.i.tle, 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]

[Footnote 67: When the King first came to Paris, there appeared a caricature representing an eagle flying away from the Tuileries, and a brood of porkers entering the gate; and His Majesty was commonly called by the rabble, not Louis _dix huit_, but Louis _Cochon_ (the pig), or Louis _des huitres_ (of the oysters).]

[Footnote 68: The Emperor Alexander alone preserved perfect self-possession; and, turning to the Duke of Wellington, exclaimed "Eh bien, Wellington, c'est a vous encore une fois sauver le monde."]

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

Napoleon lands at Cannes--his progress to Gren.o.ble--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 "Caesar 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 reveille 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 pa.s.sed through the town of Gra.s.se, 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 Provencals 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 Gren.o.ble 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 Gren.o.ble.

Some s.p.a.ce ere they reached that town, Colonel Labedoyere, an officer of n.o.ble 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 c.o.c.kades; 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 Gren.o.ble, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Gren.o.ble 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 Gren.o.ble, 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 a.s.sistance 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 circ.u.mstance of this unparalleled adventure. Monsieur, meanwhile, had departed, we have seen with what success, to Lyons; the Duke of Angouleme was already at Ma.r.s.eilles, organising the loyal Provencals, and preparing to throw himself on Gren.o.ble 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 n.o.bility 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 a.s.sembled 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 ma.s.se_--nothing could prevent the outlaw from taking possession of the Tuileries ere a fortnight more had pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sistance; 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 a.s.sertions no other proof has. .h.i.therto 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 hors.e.m.e.n, with their lances reversed, followed the equipage. The little flat c.o.c.ked 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 c.o.c.kades 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.semblage of those who had in former times filled the most prominent places in his own councils and court: among the rest was Fouche. 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."