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[ Beugnot, ibid., I., 395. Everywhere, on the Emperor's passage (1811), the impression experienced was a kind of shock as at the sight of a wonderful apparition.]
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[ Thiers, "Histoire du Consulat et l'Empire," XVI., 246 (January, 1813). "A word to the prefect, who transmitted this to one of the municipal councilors of his town, was enough to insure an offer from some large town and have this imitated throughout the empire. Napoleon had an idea that he could get towns and cantons to offer him troops of horse, armed and equipped."—In fact, this offer was voted with shouts by the Paris municipal council and, through contagion, in the provinces. As to voting this freely it suffices to remark how the annexed towns voted, which, six months later, are to rebel. Their offers are not the least. For instance, Amsterdam offers 100 horsemen, Hamburg 100, Rotterdam 50, the Hague 40, Leyden 24, Utrecht 20, Dusseldorf 12.—The horsemen furnished are men enlisted for money; 16,000 are obtained, and the sum voted suffices to purchase additionally 22,000 horses and 22,000 equipments.—To obtain this money, the prefect himself apportions the requisite sum among those in his department who pay the most taxes, at the rate of from 600 to 1000 francs per head. On these arbitrary requisitions and a great many others, either in money or in produce, and on the sentiments of the farmers and landed proprietors in the South, especially after 1813, cf. the "Mémoires de M. Villèle," vol. I., passim.]
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[ Comte Joseph d'Estourmel, "Souvenirs de France et d'Italie," 240. The general council of Rouen was the first to suggest the vote for guards of honor. Assembled spontaneously (meetings are always spontaneous), its members pass an enthusiastic address. "The example was found to be excellent; the address was published in the Moniteur, and sent to all the prefects.... The councils were obliged to meet, which generously disposed of other people's children, and very worthy persons, myself first of all, thought that they might join in this shameful purpose, to such an extent had imperial fanaticism fascinated them and perverted consciences!">[
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[ Archives nationales (state of accounts of the prefects and reports of the general police commissioners, F7, 5014 and following records.—Reports of senators on their senatoreries, AF, IV., 1051, and following records).—These papers disclose at different dates the state of minds and of things in the provinces. Of all these reports, that of Roederer on the senatorerie of Caen is the most instructive, and gives the most details on the three departments composing it. (Printed in his "æuvres complètes," vol. III.)]
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[ The reader will find in the Archives nationales, the fullest and most precise information concerning local administration and the sentiments of the different classes of society, in the correspondence of the prefects of the first Restoration, of the hundred days, and of the second Restoration from 1814 to 1823 (Cf. especially those of Haute-Garonne, the Rhine, Côte d'Or, Ain, Loiret, Indre-et-Loire, Indre, Loire-Inférieure and Aisne.) The letters of several prefects, M. de Chabroe, M. de Tocqueville, M. de Remusat, M. de Barante, are often worth publishing; occasionally, the minister of the interior has noted with a pencil in the margin, "To be shown to the King.">[