Under these circumstances, the zeal of the friends of Louis was of no avail. Monsieur and the Duke of Or leans had advanced along with Macdonald to Lyons; but the military were disaffected, and the people either indif ferent, and unwilling to expose themselves to danger, or they were attached to Bonaparte. The inhabitants of Mar seilles, indeed, offered two millions of francs to the regi ment which should take Bonaparte alive ; but no regiment moved to obtain the reward.
Louis, finding that the army was ainst him, endeavoured to attach the republican party to his interest, by promising them a freer constitution; but, at the same time, he impolitically th•eateried the French nation with the invasion of 300,000 foreigners, if Bonaparte should triumph. In reality, surrounded as he was by traitors, and destitute of talents which were so necessary at the present moment, his conduct was undecided and vacillating:—at one moment lie threw himself on the loyalty of the nation, and declared his resolution to terminate his career by dying in their defence :—at another moment, he must have irrita ted, rather than intimidated the people, by threatening them with the return of those foreigners, by whose presence, in their opinion, France had been so much degraded, and from whom she had received that sovereign, who was now about to claim their assistance.
In the mean time, Bonaparte advanced ; and his advance resembled a triumph, rather than the invasion of a country under the dominion of another. It does not appear that the troops which were sent against him, or which flocked towards him from all quarters, actually joined him; but they were equally serviceable by their presence, in keep ing down such parts of the population as might have been disposed to oppose his progress. Thus, with soldiers pre ceding, following, and accompanying him, he marched ra pidly from Lyons towards Paris. On the 16th of March, his advanced guard was at Auxerre, 40 leagues from the capital. In the evening of the 19th, Louis left Paris ; and, at 4 o'clock in the morning of the 20th, Bonaparte entered it. The departure of Louis was unmolested ; and, during his journey into the Netherlands, he experienced no insult from the people ; and even the soldiery treated him with silent respect.
As soon as Bonaparte landed at Cannes, he issued ad dresses to the French people and to the army. In these addresses, he assigns as his reasons for returning to France, the degradation which that country had suffered from the allies, and by the presence of the emigrants ; those men who, for twenty-five years, had been traversing all Europe to raise up enemies against their country ; and he lays down the principle on which the French nation Was in fu ture to act ;—to forget that they had been masters of na tions, but not to suffer any to intermeddle in their affairs.
In subsequent official declarations, however, the breach of some of the articles of the treaty of Fontainebleau, by Louis and by the congress of Vienna, was assigned for his hav ing reclaimed the throne of France.
The two great objects to which Bonaparte immediately directed his attention, as soon as he arrived at Paris, where the preservation of peace with the allies, and the complying with the terms on which the republican party had agreed to his return, by decreeing the forms of a free constitution. In reference to the former object, he addressed a letter to the sovereigns of Europe, filled with declamation against the Bourbons, as a dynasty not fitted for the French people, from which therefore the nation had separated herself, call ing upon him as their liberator ; and with sentimental effu sions in praise of peace, which he declared himself most anxious to preserve. Convinced, however, that the allies would not believe his protestations, but were preparing to act most vigorously against him, he had recourse to the usual methods of deceiving the French nation, who were now beginning to be alarmed at the probable consequences of his return, by representing the English as friendly to him, and by fixing the day of the arrival of the Empress, as a proof that the Emperor of Austria would not support the Bourbons.
The most superficial knowledge of human nature will not permit us to believe, that a man of such a decided cha racter as Bonaparte, with military and despotic habits so long indulged and so strongly formed, could, during his short residence in Elba, become a sincere convert to peace and liberty. His declarations, therefore, in favour of both, must be traced to the same motive. Perceiving that war was inevitable, and that the people required a strong sti mulus to rouse them, and being under the controul of the republican party, he consented to the drawing up of an ad ditional act to the constitution of the French empire. In this, there were certainly many excellent enactments; but even if France had remained at peace, they must, with the habits and feelings of her population, have been complete ly nugatory. In order to give the appearance of the free and general acceptance of this additional act, and to afford the Parisians a spectacle, a decree was passed, ordering the assembly of 20,000 representatives of the whole people, after the ancient manner of the Ft arks, in the Champ de Mai.