Incredible as the step might seem, when one considered that it was taken by so great a strategist as Napoleon, the fugitive was fleeing to Paris!
Meanwhile, M. le comte d'Artois had gone to Lyons.
It was indeed an honour to send the first prince of the blood to block the advance of such a man.
He was accompanied by the duc d'Orléans and the marshal duc de Taranto.
And, in addition to this, a royal proclamation, upon the advice of the duc de Dalmatia, minister of war, had called up the Royal Standard officers on half-pay in order to form a select corps, in all the principal places of each Department.
Another mandate, issued the same day, mobilized the Parisian National Guards.
On the 10th the news of a grand victory gained by the duc d'Orléans over the usurper spread over Paris, and so into the provinces. An officer of the king's household appeared on the balcony of the Tuileries, and, waving his hat, announced that the king had just received official information that the duc d'Orléans had attacked the usurper at the head of 20,000 men of the National Guard, in the direction of Bourgoin, and had completely beaten him.
Unluckily the papers of the 12th announced the return to Paris of the would-be conqueror.
The Moniteur even gave out that Napoleon had slept at Bourgoin on the night of the 9th; and that they expected he might perhaps enter Lyons on the evening of the 10th of March, but that it seemed certain Grenoble had not yet opened its gates to him.
This was the extent of our news at Villers-Cotterets, which was a day behind that of Paris, when a conspiracy broke out which, without seeming to be connected therewith in any way, yet gave rise to the feeling that there was an extraordinary coincidence between it and Napoleon's landing and march towards Paris.