By various measures, the result of which has been the ruin of cities, the misery and depopulation of the country districts, famine and contagious diseases;
Considering, That, by all these causes, the Imperial Government, established by the Senate-Consulate on the 28th Floreal, year XII, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest will of all the French calls for an order of things whose first result shall be the re-establishment of general peace and which may be also an epoch of solemn reconciliation among all the states of the great European family,
The Senate declares and decrees as follows:
Article 1.—Napoleon Bonaparte is deposed from the throne, and the hereditary right set up in his family is abolished. The French people and the army are released from their oath of fidelity towards Napoleon Bonaparte, who has ceased to be Emperor.
The heart rises with indignation and disgust at the thought of the shamefulness of these miserable senators. Not alone did not one among them dare to protest, even by his silence, against these acts which they now condemned, but these very acts in their time had had no more vociferous upholders than they themselves.
One last test was reserved for France and Napoleon. The latter was furnished later (in 1815) with the opportunity to expiate and redeem the past. His monarchical pride, his hatred for the Revolution both contrived to render impossible this supreme expiation, and a terrible chastisement fell upon him. In 1814 Bonaparte, although his throne was forfeit, was recognized sovereign of the island of Elba. The coalized Kings assigned him that place as a residence, and thither, attended by several officers and soldiers faithful to him in his misfortune, he repaired.
So great was the need felt by France for peace, repose, and independence, after these ten years of warfare and hard service, that in spite of her profound aversion for the Bourbons, their return was hailed with joy. The kingdom of 1814, a new usurpation of the sole, indivisible, indefeasable and inalienable sovereignty of the people, consecrated again the iniquitous principle of monarchy, against which the republican minority in vain protested.
Louis XVIII, accordingly, made his solemn entry into Paris on the 3rd of May, 1814, in the midst of the princes of his family, escorted by the greater part of the Marshals of the Empire, among whom mingled Emigrants and foreign generals: legitimate punishment to Napoleon!
The Bourbons deeply wounded the sentiment of the nation by a return to the usages of the Old Regime and by outrages against the acts of the Revolution. Decrees restored to the Emigrants the estates and property that had not yet been sold; the loans contracted by Louis XVIII in various countries were placed among the debts of the state. Ordinances prescribed the observation of church days and Sundays; the censorship was retained almost as rigorous as under the Empire. Processions commenced again to circulate about the churches. Thus the royal government in a short space became as odious as the imperial government had been. Several military conspiracies were organized. One faction of the bourgeoisie thought of calling to the throne the Duke of Orleans, while the republican party thought, on its part, to turn the trend of events to its own profit. But, as has well been said, the fate of France lay in the hands of the army, attached to Napoleon by the privileges he had showered upon it, and by the memories of its glory. The people, long grown disused to political life, switched off by Napoleon, and wounded by the Bourbons in its revolutionary instincts, lay inert, all save a few old patriots of the illustrious days of the Revolution. The army alone, then, was the deciding factor in the fate of the Restoration. Such was the state of mind in France from the 3rd of May, 1814, the day of Louis XVIII's entry into Paris, up to the beginning of the month of March, 1815, at which period begins our next chapter.