As a last resource, Louis convoked a general council at the Tuileries on the 18th March. The generals present declared there could be no effectual opposition offered to Buonaparte. The royalist nobles contradicted them, and, after some expressions of violence had been uttered, much misbecoming the royal presence, Louis was obliged to break up the meeting, and prepare himself to abandon a capital, which the prevalence of his enemies, and the disunion of his friends, left him no longer any chance of defending.
Meantime, the two armies approached each other at Melun; that of the King was commanded by the faithful Macdonald. On the 20th, his troops were drawn up in three lines to receive the invaders, who were said to be advancing from Fontainbleau. There was a long pause of suspense, of a nature which seldom fails to render men more accessible to strong and sudden emotion. The glades of the forest, and the acclivity which ascends to it, were full in 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. At length, about noon, the galloping of horse was heard. An open carriage appeared, surrounded by a few hussars, and drawn by four horses. It came on at full speed; and Napoleon, jumping from the vehicle, was in the midst of the ranks which had been formed to oppose him. His escort threw themselves from their horses, mingled with their ancient comrades, and the effect of their exhortations was instantaneous on men, whose minds were already half made up to the purpose which they now accomplished. There was a general shout of Vive Napoleon!—The last army of the Bourbons passed from their side, and no farther obstruction existed betwixt Napoleon and the capital, which he was once more—but for a brief space—to inhabit as a sovereign.
Louis XVIII. had anticipated too surely the defection which took place, to await the consequence of its actual arrival. The King departed from Paris, escorted by his household, at one in the morning of the 20th March. Even at that untimely hour, the palace was surrounded by the national guards, and many citizens, who wept and entreated him to remain, offering to spend the last drop of their blood for him. But Louis wisely declined accepting of sacrifices, which could now have availed nothing. Escorted by his household troops, he took the way to Lisle. Maréchal Macdonald, returning from the fatal position of Melun, assumed the command of this small body, which was indeed augmented by many volunteers, but such as considered their zealous wishes, rather than their power of rendering assistance. The King's condition was, however, pitied and respected, and he passed through Abbeville, and other garrison towns, where the soldiers received him with sullen respect; and though indicating that they intended to join his rival, would neither violate his person nor insult his misfortunes. At Lisle he had hoped to make a stand, but Maréchal Mortier, insisting upon the dissatisfied and tumultuary state of the garrison, urged him to proceed, for the safety of his life; and, compelled to a second exile, he departed to Ostend, and from thence to Ghent, where he established his exiled court. Maréchal Macdonald took leave of his Majesty on the frontiers, conscious that by emigrating he must lose every prospect of serving in future either France or her monarch. The household troops, about two hundred excepted, were also disbanded on the frontiers. They had been harassed in their march thither by some light horse, and in their attempt to regain their homes in a state of dispersion, some were slain, and almost all were plundered and insulted.
In the meanwhile, the Revolution took full effect at Paris. Lavalette, one of Buonaparte's most decided adherents, hastened from a place of concealment to assume the management of the post-office in the name of Napoleon, an office which he had enjoyed during his former reign. He was thus enabled to intercept the royal proclamations, and to announce to every department officially the restoration of the Emperor. Excelsman, the oath of fealty to the king, à toutes épreuves, scarce dry upon his lips, took down the white flag, which floated on the Tuileries, and replaced the three-coloured banner.
RE-ENTERS PARIS.
It was late in the evening ere Napoleon arrived in the same open carriage, which he had used since his landing. There was a singular contrast betwixt his entry and the departure of the King. The latter was accompanied by the sobs, tears, and kind wishes of those citizens who desired peace and tranquillity, by the wailing of the defenceless, and the anxious fears of the wise and prudent. The former entered amid the shouts of armed columns, who, existing by war and desolation, welcomed with military acclamations the chief who was to restore them to their element. The inhabitants of the suburbs cheered in expectation of employment and gratuities, or by instigation of their ringleaders, who were chiefly under the management of the police, and well prepared for the event. But among the immense crowds of the citizens of Paris, who turned out to see this extraordinary spectacle, few or none joined in the gratulation. The soldiers of the guard resented their silence, commanded the spectators to shout, struck with the flat of their swords, and pointed their pistols at the multitude, but could not, even by these military means, extort the expected cry of Liberty and Napoleon, though making it plain by their demeanour, that the last, if not the first, was returned to the Parisians. In the court of the Carousel, and before the Tuileries, all the adherents of the old Imperial government, and those who, having deserted Napoleon, were eager to expiate their fault, by now being first to acknowledge him, were assembled to give voice to their welcome, which atoned in some degree for the silence of the streets. They crowded around him so closely, that he was compelled to exclaim—"My friends, you stifle me!" and his adjutants were obliged to support him in their arms up the grand staircase, and thence into the royal apartments, where he received the all-hail of the principal devisers and abettors of this singular undertaking.
Never, in his bloodiest and most triumphant field of battle, had the terrible ascendency of Napoleon's genius appeared half so predominant as during his march, or rather his journey, from Cannes to Paris. He who left the same coast disguised like a slave, and weeping like a woman, for fear of assassination, reappeared in grandeur like that of the returning wave, which, the farther it has retreated, is rolled back on the shore with the more terrific and overwhelming violence. His looks seemed to possess the pretended power of northern magicians, and blunted swords and spears. The Bravest of the Brave, who came determined to oppose him as he would a wild beast, recognised his superiority when confronted with him, and sunk again into his satellite. Yet the lustre with which Napoleon shone was not that of a planet duly moving in its regular sphere, but that of a comet, inspiring forebodings of pestilence and death, and
"with fear of change,
Perplexing nations."
The result of his expedition was thus summed by one of the most eloquent and best-informed British statesmen.[107]
"Was it," said the accomplished orator, "in the power of language to describe the evil? Wars which had raged for twenty-five years throughout Europe; which had spread blood and desolation from Cadiz to Moscow, and from Naples to Copenhagen; which had wasted the means of human enjoyment, and destroyed the instruments of social improvement; which threatened to diffuse among the European nations the dissolute and ferocious habits of a predatory soldiery—at length by one of those vicissitudes which bid defiance to the foresight of man, had been brought to a close, upon the whole happy beyond all reasonable expectation, with no violent shock to national independence, with some tolerable compromise between the opinions of the age and the reverence due to ancient institutions; with no too signal or mortifying triumph over the legitimate interests or avowable feelings of any numerous body of men, and, above all, without those retaliations against nations or parties which beget new convulsions, often as horrible as those which they close, and perpetuate revenge and hatred and blood from age to age. Europe seemed to breathe after her sufferings. In the midst of this fair prospect, and of these consolatory hopes, Napoleon Buonaparte escaped from Elba; three small vessels reached the coast of Provence; their hopes are instantly dispelled; the work of our toil and fortitude is undone; the blood of Europe is spilt in vain—