As soon as the Emperor quitted Lyons he wrote to Ney, who with his army was at Lons-le-Saulnier, to come and join him. Ney had set off from the Court with a promise to bring Napoleon, "like a wild beast in a cage, to Paris." Scott excuses Ney's heart at the expense of his head, and fancies that the Marshal was rather carried away by circumstances, by vanity, and by fickleness, than actuated by premeditated treachery, and it is quite possible that these protestations were sincerely uttered when Ney left Paris, but, infected by the ardour of his troops, he was unable to resist a contagion so much in harmony with all his antecedents, and to attack not only his leader in many a time of peril, but also the sovereign who had forwarded his career through every grade of the army.
The facts of the cane were these:—
On the 11th of March Ney, being at Besancon, learned that Napoleon was at Lyons. To those who doubted whether his troops would fight against their old comrades he said, "They shall fight! I will take a musket from a grenadier and begin the action myself! I will run my sword to the hilt in the body of the first man who hesitates to fire." At the same time he wrote to the Minister of War at Paris that he hoped to see a fortunate close to this mad enterprise.
He then advanced to Lons-le-Saulnier, where, on the night between the 13th and 14th of March, not quite three days after his vehement protestations of fidelity, he received, without hesitation, a letter from Bonaparte, inviting him, by his old appellation of the "Bravest of the Brave," to join his standard. With this invitation Ney complied, and published an order of the day that declared the cause of the Bourbons, which he had sworn to defend, lost for ever.
It is pleaded in extenuation of Ney's defection that both his officers and men were beyond his control, and determined to join their old Master; but in that case he might have given up his command, and retired in the same honourable way that Marshals Macdonald and Marmont and several other generals did. But even among his own officers Ney had an example set him, for many of them, after remonstrating in vain, threw up their commands. One of them broke his sword in two and threw the pieces at Ney's feet, saying, "It is easier for a man of honour to break iron than to break his word."
Napoleon, when at St. Helena, gave a very different reading to these incidents. On this subject he was heard to say, "If I except Labedoyere, who flew to me with enthusiasm and affection, and another individual, who, of his own accord, rendered me important services, nearly all the other generals whom I met on my route evinced hesitation and uncertainty; they yielded only to the impulse about them, if indeed they did not manifest a hostile feeling towards me. This was the case with Ney, with Massena, St. Cyr, Soult, as well as with Macdonald and the Duke of Belluno, so that if the Bourbons had reason to complain of the complete desertion of the soldiers and the people, they had no right to reproach the chiefs of the army with conspiring against them, who had shown themselves mere children in politics, and would be looked upon as neither emigrants nor patriots."
Between Lyons and Fontainebleau Napoleon often travelled several miles ahead of his army with no other escort than a few Polish lancers. His advanced guard now generally consisted of the troops (miscalled Royal) who happened to be before him on the road whither they had been sent to oppose him, and to whom couriers were sent forward to give notice of the Emperor's approach, in order that they might be quite ready to join him with the due military ceremonies. White flags and cockades everywhere disappeared; the tri-colour resumed its pride of place. It was spring, and true to its season the violet had reappeared! The joy of the soldiers and the lower orders was almost frantic, but even among the industrious poor there were not wanting many who regretted this precipitate return to the old order of things—to conscription, war, and bloodshed, while in the superior classes of society there was a pretty general consternation. The vain, volatile soldiery, however, thought of nothing but their Emperor, saw nothing before them but the restoration of all their laurels, the humiliation of England, and the utter defeat of the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians.
On the night between the 19th and 20th of March Napoleon reached Fontainebleau, and again paused, as had formerly been his custom, with short, quick steps through the antiquated but splendid galleries of that old palace. What must have been his feelings on revisiting the chamber in which, the year before, it is said he had attempted suicide!
Louis XVIII., left the Palace of the Tuileries at nearly the same hour that Bonaparte entered that of Fontainebleau.
The most forlorn hope of the Bourbons was now in a considerable army posted between Fontainebleau and Paris. Meanwhile the two armies approached each other at Melun; that of the King was commanded by Marshal Macdonald. On the 20th his troops were drawn up in three lines to receive the invaders, who were said to be advancing from Fontainebleau. There was a long pause of suspense, of a nature which seldom fails to render men more accessible to strong and sudden emotions. The glades of the forest, and the acclivity which leads to it, were in full view of the Royal army, but presented the appearance of a deep solitude. All was silence, except when the regimental bands of music, at the command of the officers, who remained generally faithful, played the airs of "Vive Henri Quatre," "O Richard," "La Belle Gabrielle," and other tunes connected with the cause and family of the Bourbons. The sounds excited no corresponding sentiments among the soldiers.