Imagine news like this, announced to France in such a fashion!
Whether the subscribers to the Moniteur understood it at first glance, or had to re-read it twice, the shock was just as startling and sudden in its character.
Ten minutes after the Moniteur had been opened by the Mayor of Villers-Cotterets, the event was known throughout the town, and every house divested itself of its inmates, who rushed out into the streets.
Every other journal kept silence.
This is how the news reached Paris, and led to the Proclamation and Ordonnance we have just read.
From Lyons, on the morning of March 5th, the news of the landing of Napoleon in the Gulf of Juan had been transmitted to Paris by telegraph.
The delay was explained by the telegraph lines stopping short at that period at Lyons. A courier had been sent off post haste from Marseilles on the 3rd, by the military commander, and had brought the news to his colleague of the Department of the Rhone during the night of the 4th and 5th.
The telegraph was under the jurisdiction of M. de Vitrolles, cabinet minister and State secretary. He it was who received the despatch, in the place Vendôme, where his offices were situated: he did not even wait to have his horses put to his carriage, but ran on foot to the Tuileries, to communicate the despatch to the king.
It was worded thus:—