“It is certainly a very extraordinary thing that right-thinking people should be the first to find fault with the government. For heaven’s sake, ladies and gentlemen, do give the ministers credit for common sense! If you think them indifferent to passing events, you are strangely mistaken. They watch everything, see everything, and take precautions against everything. Do not be alarmed about Elba. Every step Bonaparte takes is carefully noted. Elba is surrounded by numerous cruisers. All who come and all who go are carefully examined. Government receives a daily report of all that takes place there. Now, to convince you that your alarms are silly, I will read you the report we received yesterday.”
With this the complacent police minister drew from his pocket the official bulletin, and read it. His agent represented that Napoleon was reduced to a very low state of health, that he had the scurvy, and was assailed by the infirmities of premature old age; that he rarely went out, and that he would sometimes be seen on the seashore amusing himself by tossing pebbles into the sea—a sure sign of approaching lunacy. And so forth.
Having read this valuable report, d’André looked down upon his auditors with a glance of triumph. He had demonstrated to his complete satisfaction that Napoleon was not only in Elba, but that he was pitching idle pebbles into a listless sea, and was on the direct route to the lunatic asylum.
This was March 2; on the day previous Napoleon had landed at Cannes, and was marching upon Paris!
The shock which Europe felt when the signal telegraph flashed the news that the lion was loose again, was such as Europe had probably never felt before, and will probably never feel again. It paralyzed the King and the court at the Tuileries; it created consternation among the kings and statesmen at the Congress of Vienna. The royalist lady who wrote the Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII., declares that the King’s ministers looked like men who had seen a ghost. They were frightened into such imbecility that they were incapable of forming any plan or giving any sane advice.
On the other hand, Wellington’s belief was that Napoleon had acted on false information, and that the King would “destroy him without difficulty, and in a short time.”
How Wellington ever managed to conjure up the mental picture of Napoleon being destroyed by Louis XVIII. is one of the psychological mysteries.
The man who, of all men, best knew that Louis XVIII. could never stand his ground against Napoleon was Louis himself; and he began to arrange to go out at one gate while Napoleon came in at the other. Proclamations he issued, but no man read them. A price he set on Napoleon’s head, but no man was eager to earn it. Generals and troops he sent to stop the daring intruder, but the troops cried “Live the Emperor!” and the officers had to flee, or join the Napoleonic procession. The Duchess of Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI., exhorted the soldiers at Bordeaux, but even her appeals fell flat. The Count of Artois and Marshal Macdonald were equally unsuccessful at Lyons; their troops deserted them, and they were forced to gallop away. Marshal Ney was quite sure that he could manage the soldiers committed to him, and that he could cage the monster from Elba. Pledging his word to the quaking King, he set forth upon his errand, drew up his troops, harangued them, and proposed the capture of Napoleon. They laughed at him, drowned his voice in cries of “Live the Emperor!” and the inconstant Ney fell into the current, surrendered to his men, proclaimed his adherence to the man he had been sent to capture, and went in person to lay his offer of service at the feet of his old master!
Sadly Louis XVIII. turned to Blacas upon whom he had too trustfully leaned for guidance and counsel. “Blacas, you are a good fellow, but I was grievously deceived when I mistook your devotedness for talent.” With nobody to fight for him, it was time he was leaving; and on the night of March 19 he left. With him on his doleful way to the frontier went a terror-stricken renegade, who dreaded of all things that Napoleon should lay hands upon him,—Marmont, the Arnold of France.