No one knew better than Napoleon himself that he was, as the Convention and the directory had been, bound hand and foot by the war and its conquests. He must defend those conquests to the end, or perish with them, as the Revolution had perished. The very nature of his power and the conditions on which he had received it, forbade him that honourable and prudent peace which he has been vainly reproached for failing to achieve. First the allies would have none of it, though their unwillingness was veiled to give the impression in France that only the insensate ambition of the emperor stood in the way ; secondly, no government of revolutionary origin could accept the former boundaries. The situation was the same as in 1799. "As things are," said Na poleon, "no one but a Bourbon can succeed me." The Bourbons, however, succeeded him for another reason. When the Allies invaded France in 1814, they were not in agree ment on the form of government. They had not made war for the re-establishment of the monarchy before or now. The Austrian emperor preferred the regency of his daughter Marie-Louise, which would have given him control of French policy. The emperor of Russia dreamed of a king of his making, such as Bernadotte, one of the luckiest adventurers of the Revolution, who by an unprecedented combination of circumstances had become crown prince of Sweden and had betrayed Napoleon. Prussia, concerned only with her own aggrandisement, cared little who ruled in France provided that she obtained her share of the spoils.
Thus Castlereagh, who wished to see France smaller, but free and in subjection neither to Austria nor to Russia, became con vinced that a Bourbon monarchy alone would fulfil England's conditions, since, according to Albert Sorel, "this government of principles and not of expedients would be neither the debtor nor the client of any of the Allies." Unknown to, or uncomprehended by the French, this was the reason for the restoration, which to them seemed to be arbitrarily imposed by the enemy, though, in accordance with the English theory of the balance of power, it was intended to preserve their national independence.
Napoleon's campaign in France, the most brilliant of them all, was a barren masterpiece. Albert Sorel has compared his victories, Brienne, Champaubert, Montmirail, Montereau, to that of Valmy. The Allies hesitated and wondered whether to negotiate. But just as the Revolution had demanded that the enemy should quit French territory, so Napoleon insisted on the guarantee of "natural frontiers." He could do no less, but the object of the coalition was to deprive France of them. "We must reassume the uniform and the courage of '93," he said in Feb. 1814. He clung instinctively to the Revolution, and welcomed the proffered assist ance of Carnot, former comrade of Robespierre, and one of the few revolutionaries who had held aloof from the empire. The allies on their side remembered that when, after Valmy, the in vaders had retired behind the Rhine, Revolutionary France had decided to pursue them. This recollection stiffened their deter mination, and strengthened their alliance. The four powers bound themselves afresh by the pact of Chaumont, and resumed the offensive, determined to dictate terms of peace.
Everything was crumbling around Napoleon. With the last levies which France could give him, scarcely more than children, he again tried to hold back the enemy, then to outflank and defeat them. His plans failed for want of men. On March 3o the Allies were masters of Paris, and a German wrote from Mont martre, "Nine and a half centuries ago our emperor Otto planted his eagles on these hills." Abdication.—On April I1, 1814, at Fontainebleau, Napoleon abdicated. Not only had his Senate, the child of the Corps Legis latif of Brumaire, itself the child of the Convention, deserted him and declared for the Bourbons, but his marshals fiercely urged him to renounce his sovereignty and leave the country. They had returned to the position before the 18 Brumaire, from which the Directory had sought to escape. It is again Albert Sorel who notes that the empire ended, as the consulate began, by one of those "days" which had overthrown so many revolutionary govern ments. On May 5, Louis XVIII. entered Paris, while the fallen emperor landed on the island of Elba where his sovereignty was recognized. The former master of Europe now reigned over a few square miles. But he was only forty-five and in the full force of his powers. A man of such immense energy and such ardent imagination could not resign himself so easily to defeat.