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grant any terms to Napoleon was merely to put it into his power to renew the military struggle sooner or later.* But whom to put in his place? The Bourbons alone

appeared as candidates; but could they sustain themselves? That was the important question which the Czar asked of Talleyrand, and to which he replied that the Bourbons could reign, nay, alone could reign.

The result of this hasty council at Prince Talleyrand's was a declaration of the allied sovereigns, placarded immediately on the walls of Paris, that, as they could grant France much better terms under any other prince than Bonaparte, they had determined to set him aside, and no longer treat with him. They were ready to accept and guarantee such a constitution as the nation should devise, and prayed the senate to lose no time in appointing a provisional government to take charge of affairs and prepare the new constitution.

Thus was the superior power apparently made over to the senate. These nominees of Napoleon were but too ready to abandon him. And Caulaincourt, who visited them to awaken their imperial loyalty, found none to listen to him. All preferred following the suggestions of Prince Talleyrand, whom they elected chief of the provisional government, with the Duke d'Alberg, Beurnonville, Jaucourt, and Montesquieu for colleagues. All were Royalists. It was almost tautology to follow up this by a declaration that Napoleon Bonaparte had forfeited the throne.

The bar thus removed, which alone obstructed the legal restoration of the Bourbons, the partisans of the exiled dynasty rushed to take possession of its ancient authority. And an agent of the Count d'Artois, who was at Nancy, insisted on his being governor of the

"Si j'avais signé les anciennes limites," wrote Napoleon to Joseph on Feb. 18, "j'aurais couru aux armes deux ans après, et j'aurais

dit à la nation, que ce n'était pas
une paix que j'avais signée, mais une
capitulation."-Mém. de Joseph.

CHAP.

XLIII.

XLIII.

CHAP. kingdom. Prince Talleyrand and the senate resisted, pleading the necessary preliminary of a constitution. Disputes arose as to the nature of this constitution, and of the right of the senate to impose it. The Royalists mocked the very idea, but Alexander was serious in as yet holding the Bourbons at arm's length.

Napoleon was at Fontainebleau with 70,000 men. He had sent Caulaincourt to negotiate merely in order to gain time, and he meditated no less than an attack on the scattered quarters of the allies, the success of which appeared to him not doubtful. The royalists, therefore, and the greater number of even Bonaparte's functionaries which had embraced their cause, used their utmost efforts to persuade the high military officers to abandon the imperial standard, and to put an end to the war. All were anxious for this latter result, for Napoleon, they knew, would battle interminably, and, recent events proved, to no good purpose. Such a war as they had been waging, odious to all, was more odious for the prospect that the first act of its renewal would be a battle fought in the streets of the capital. Macdonald, who had his family in Paris, shrank especially from this.

Ney, Oudinot, Lefebvre were equally averse to a renewal of the combat. Marmont still more so. Talleyrand had himself visited the marshal after the capitulation of Paris, and pointed out to him that the sole security of France and of its military chiefs lay in a Bourbon restoration. Napoleon had not any support left upon which he could depend; Massena, he thought afterwards, would have stuck by him to the last, but he was absent. The Emperor placed least reliance upon Macdonald, most upon Marmont. Yet the former proved the more loyal, the latter a traitor. Ney, he said, was a child.

Whilst Napoleon was arranging his design of an attack on Paris, Marmont, who commanded the advanced corps of 15,000 men at Essone, had come to a secret agreement with Schwarzenberg to pass to the

XLIII.

enemy! Ney, Oudinot, Macdonald took the more manly CHAP. part of protesting in Napoleon's presence against his project of attacking the allies in the capital. What, if he desisted? His abdication, no doubt, in favour of the King of Rome and the Empress. To this, after much remonstrance, passion, quarrel, and at length resignation, Napoleon consented. Caulaincourt, Ney, and Macdonald were to go to Paris with the offer. They passed through Marmont's quarters as they went, and learned the more extreme step that he had taken. They expostulated with him, and he promised to suspend the execution of his design, and await the issue of their negotiations. They proceeded to Paris to the residence of Alexander, and in their first interview shook that monarch in his design of dethroning the Bonaparte family altogether for the Bourbon. What might have come of his indetermination must remain uncertain. For in the night, the chief officers of Marmont's corps, Souham and Bourdesoult, summoned to Napoleon's presence, feared that this was an indication of his resolve to inflict immediate punishment upon their treason. They had fully agreed in Marmont's stipulations with Schwarzenberg. In the apprehension, therefore, of their discovered treason, they precipitated it, by ordering the troops under arms, and marching them through the enemies' lines, which opened to receive them, to Versailles. The soldiers and officers, all but their chiefs, had remained in ignorance of what was intended. And they were no sooner arrived at Versailles than they mutinied, and threatened the leaders who had betrayed them with death. Marmont, who was in Paris, was despatched by his royalist friends to tranquillise his division, in which he succeeded, by promises and explanations as false as his whole conduct. Marmont, in fact, betrayed his master and his cause. Alexander, who still hesitated to sacrifice Maria Louisa and her son, and who would have been sustained by Austria in any scheme for retaining them on the throne, no sooner

XLIII.

CHAP. learned the defection of Marmont than he definitively gave up all idea of resuming negotiations with Napoleon, dismissed Ney and his colleagues, flinging himself irrevocably in the path of the already commenced restoration. Caulaincourt and Macdonald had thus but to return on the evening of the 5th of April to Fontainebleau, and intimate to Napoleon the necessity of complete abdication. They offered from Alexander the island of Elba in independent sovereignty, with Parma and Piacenza for the Empress. Napoleon besought that Tuscany, rather than Parma, might be the principality of the Empress. He, however, did not insist, but told his murmuring marshals that, had they and Marmont supported him, he could certainly have driven the allies from Paris, and wrung from these a peace honourable to France and to them. They would not, and in consequence he wrote the following abdication:

"The allied sovereigns having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the sole obstacle to peace, he, faithful to his engagements, renounces for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, there being no personal sacrifice, not even that of life, which he is not prepared to make for the interests of France."

On the 6th, the marshals brought the documents to Prince Talleyrand. In exchange for it, they received the island of Elba for Napoleon, Parma and Piacenza for the Empress and her son. 80,000l. was to be paid annually to the new sovereign of Elba, and as much more to be divided amongst his family. A principality was promised to Eugène. On the 11th of April, 1814, the treaty was signed, and the act of abdication delivered by Caulaincourt to the provisional government. All was consummated.

CHAPTER XLIV.

LOUIS THE EIGHTEENTH.

1814-1824.

XLIV.

WHAT tremendous flux and reflux of the tide of empire! CHAP. It had swept at the commencement of the century eastward over the continent, submerging all from the Sound to the Sicilian Straits, and from the Rhine to the Niemen. Old dynasties rose from the inundation, which covered Germany, merely like some towers and steeples, which barely out-topped the flood. The ebb was more rapid than the flow. In 1813, Napoleon was still victorious at Bautzen, Russia and Prussia retreating to the Oder and the Vistula, yet in the spring of 1814, the back tide had brought the Cossacks from the Don to stable their steeds in the court-yards of the palaces of Paris.

The great fault of Napoleon was in reality his excuse. He attempted what was impossible, to dominate the east of Europe from the west. No matter how he tried it,

he could not have succeeded. His chroniclers blame him for not having stopped short on the Vistula or the Niemen. It would have been all the same. Had he indeed not thrown away half a million of soldiers in Russia, he might have held Germany longer in his grasp. Eventually or permanently he could not have kept it. The land was in a ferment, the popular passions swelling to a height that no force could have withstood, at a time when military science and strength had become equalised, or when whatever strategic superiority remained to the French was more than

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