“The present ministers will constitute provisionally the council of state.
“My interest in my son’s well-being leads me to invite the Chambers to proceed without delay to provide a regency by an enactment for this purpose.
“Make united efforts to preserve the public peace and your national independence.
“Napoleon.”
This production neither aroused the French to make fresh sacrifices for his sake, nor stayed the victorious march of the allies upon Paris.
On the 24th of June we took Cambray, which was given up on the following day to Louis XVIII. This was the last occasion on which I saw a shot fired in a hostile manner.
Our first brigade of guards took Péronne on the 26th. The Duke on this occasion had a narrow escape. After directing his staff to get under shelter in the ditch of an outwork, he posted himself in a sally-port of the glacis. A staff officer, having a communication to make to his Grace, came suddenly upon him and drew the attention of the enemy, who treacherously discharged a howitzer loaded with grape at the point; it shattered the wall against which the Duke was standing, and made (to use the words of one who saw him immediately afterwards,) “his blue coat completely red.”
Meanwhile Grouchy, who was at Wavre, having heard of the utter failure of his Imperial master at Waterloo, commenced a retreat on Paris, vigorously followed by the two Prussian corps under Thielmann and Pirch. During this retreat, Grouchy displayed more skill, energy and decision, than in his pursuit of the Prussians, on the 17th and 18th.
The Prussians, who were on our left, had several sharp engagements with the enemy during their advance upon Paris; and both armies reached the environs of the capital on the 1st of July. Hostilities ceased, and a military convention was signed in the evening of the 3d. On the morning of this day Zieten’s corps had a sharp action, in which they were victors, at Issy near Paris.
The campaign thus, by a singular coincidence, was brought to a close by the same troops that opened it. The allied and Prussian armies entered Paris on the 7th of July, and were followed next day by Louis XVIII. Before the end of the month, the armies of Europe congregated in and round Paris, amounted nearly to the enormous number of a million of men in arms.