Tents were erected outside Antibes in a grove of olive trees, but Napoleon did not allow his troops to rest there for long. He needed no reminding of the abuse and ill-treatment he had met with in the South of France eleven months earlier, on his way into exile; and, apart from being anxious to get away from this hostile territory, he was determined to reach Paris as soon as possible. In the early hours of the morning they were on the march along the coast, and a few hours later entered the little township of Cannes. From there the column turned inland up the winding road to Grasse.
There, in the foothills of the Alps, it was bitterly cold, snow still lay on the ground and the road ended. Napoleon had expected it to continue, as plans to extend it had been approved by him before his abdication; but, like many other matters, the Bourbons had neglected to have the work carried out. To his annoyance, this necessitated his having to abandon his carriage and four cannon he had landed from Inconstant. Throughout the day the Quartermaster had been buying up all the horses they came upon, and a number of the Poles were now mounted, providing the Emperor with a small escort of cavalry, but ahead lay only mountain paths. Pressing on along the icy, rock-strewn tracks for another fifteen miles they reached the village of Séranon. At last, after the terrible twenty-four hours’ forced march, Napoleon ordered camp to be made and the exhausted troops were allowed a few hours’ sleep.
There followed another two days’ march up and down precipitous slopes and over passes, at times having an altitude of three thousand five hundred feet. With their heads bowed and their bearskins pulled right down over their ears the men tramped doggedly through blizzards. On the 4th they entered the little town of Digne. Here the Emperor received his first encouragement. The amazed inhabitants welcomed him with cheers. Elated by this reception, he produced his third proclamation, calling on the French army to join him.
By then the startling news that Napoleon had landed at Antibes was spreading through France like a prairie fire. It reached Paris on the 5th. The government there was not perturbed, as it seemed that so small a force could be dealt with easily. King Louis, as was his custom, shrugged off personal responsibility and sent a message to his Minister of War, now Marshal Soult, simply telling him to do whatever he might think necessary.
General Cambronne, with an advance guard, was some way ahead of Napoleon’s main body. Early on the morning of the 7th the Emperor was wakened from a brief sleep in the village of Gap by a message from the General, to say that a battalion of the 5th Regiment of the Line was assembled, ready to attack them a few miles further north. Napoleon set off there at once. Having observed the position of the battalion, he sent an officer ahead to parley with its commander, a Major Delessart. The officer asked, ‘Do you intend to oppose us?’ The Major shouted back, ‘Yes. I shall do my duty.’
The battalion was about seven hundred strong, whereas the Emperor had over one thousand men, the majority of whom were his ‘old moustaches’; so, had this confrontation led to a conflict, there can be little doubt that Napoleon could have forced his way through the defile. But the last thing he wanted was bloodshed, for, almost certainly, it would have been the first spark to ignite civil war. In fact, such was his abhorrence of it that in the aftermath of the Revolution, when only a junior general, he had risked his whole career by evading an order to take command of an army despatched to La Vendée to suppress a rising there by the Royalist peasants under their Chouan leaders.
A matter that had caused him intense annoyance while in Elba had been reports reaching him from France that his surrender and ignominious journey into exile had been due to cowardice—a failing he had never been accused of in the field. To show that he was not a coward was, he claimed, one of his main reasons for invading France with all the odds against him. Now he performed an act that demonstrated forever that he possessed supreme bravery.
Having drawn up his Guards, he ordered the tricolour to be unfurled and their band to play the Marseillaise, that immortal marching song of the Revolution and the Empire, sung by the French troops on their way to victory from one end of Europe to the other, yet forbidden by the Bourbons since the Restoration. He then rode forward, dismounted and walked to within fifty feet of the soldiers from Grenoble. Their muskets were raised and trained on him. A young Captain named Randon gave the order to his men, ‘Fire.’
For a moment there was utter silence in the valley. Every man on both sides held his breath. Roger was no exception, and was torn by conflicting emotions. He had spent so many years in Napoleon’s company, witnessed so many acts of kindness, forbearance and generosity by him that he could not bear the thought of seeing him fall, riddled by bullets, never again to laugh, exercise his quick wit and receive homage for his genius. Yet he knew that he deserved death for the countless thousands of other men he had sent to their deaths, solely for the gratification of his own insatiable self-glorification; and that, if he survived, thousands more would surely die in battles yet to come.
As the order to fire rang out, Napoleon halted, grasped the lapels of his grey greatcoat, threw it open to reveal his white waistcoat and cried in a loud voice:
‘If you wish to kill your Emperor, here I am!’
Instantly a soldier in the front rank threw down his musket; others followed suit and there rang out a great shout, ‘Vive l’ Empereur! Vive l’ Empereur!’
There followed a scene of joyous confusion. The soldiers from Grenoble broke ranks and rushed forward, cheering madly, to embrace Napoleon and fraternise with the Guard, waving their shakos, firing their muskets in the air, tearing off the white cockades they wore to trample them underfoot and replacing them with the old tricolour ones which they had long treasured in their haversacks.
At last order was restored and the march resumed. That evening a vedette of the Polish Lancers galloped back to the Emperor, to tell him they had sighted a strong column of troops approaching. Napoleon deployed his men in battle formation. With bated breath they waited to learn whether this would prove the end, or if the sight of the Emperor would again have the magical effect of bringing another formation of King Louis’s army over to him.
Again there came the confrontation. These troops from Grenoble were the 7th Regiment of the Line, commanded by Colonel de Labédoyère. Halting his men, he advanced alone, carrying a drum, toward Napoleon. He then smashed in the top of the drum as a sign of surrender, and handed the regimental colours to Napoleon. Again there were deafening shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ from the troops, and joyous fraternisation.
Now, with nearly four thousand men devoted to his cause, the Emperor advanced on the walled city of Grenoble, arriving before it at nine o’clock that evening.
Inside there was a strong garrison and a considerable number of cannon. As Napoleon had no artillery, it is doubtful if he could have taken it had a determined resistance been put up; but here it was the farmers and townsfolk who came to his aid. News of his approach had gone before him. Two thousand of them went up on to the ramparts, restrained the soldiers from firing, waved torches and greeted him with shouts of welcome. He called on the Commander of the garrison to open the gates, but the officer refused. The people then smashed down a gate from inside and, to wild cheers, Napoleon rode through the streets to the Trois Dauphins hostelry, where the excited citizens carried him upstairs to the best bedroom.
The next obstacle to be overcome was the great city of Lyons. By this time intelligence had come in about the situation in Paris. King Louis and his Court were still not seriously worried. Every Marshal, with the one exception of Davout, had gone over to the Bourbons, and had been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Louis. A few had gone into retirement, but Marmont, Berthier, Ney, Macdonald, Augereau, Suchet, St. Cyr, Masséna, Oudinot, Mortier and Soult were all still on the active list. At the time of the abdication several of them had endorsed Ney’s statement that the troops would no longer take orders from the Emperor, only from their officers. How then, argued the Bourbons, could the Corsican usurper, with only a few battalions behind him, possibly defeat the armies commanded by these paladins?
Soult, as Minister of War, directed all the readily available artillery to be concentrated in the neighbourhood of Lyons, and Monsieur, the King’s brother, Charles d’Artois, was given command of a considerable army, to kill or capture Napoleon and his handful of troops. D’Artois was accompanied by Marshal Macdonald, to advise him, and they reached Lyons with three regiments of the line, plus one thousand five hundred National Guards.
On March 10th, Napoleon arrived before the city. That morning Macdonald had assembled his troops in the Place Bellecour. After addressing them in a rousing speech, he called on them to show their loyalty by shouting ‘Vive le Roi!’ Not a single man complied. Glumly, in the pouring rain, d’Artois inspected the troops. As he did so, catcalls and abuse were hurled at him by citizens looking on from the windows round the big square. Napoleon had always been popular in Lyons, because it was he who had started the silk industry there that had made the city so prosperous. The silence of the troops and the hostility of the people proved too much for d’Artois. A quarter of an hour later he had jumped into his travelling berlin and was being driven hell for leather back to Paris.
That night, after receiving a great ovation, Napoleon slept in the Archepiscopal palace which, before his abdication, had been the official residence of his mother’s half-brother, Cardinal Fesch. But, as Roger moved about among the excited crowds celebrating in the streets, he had reason to take an ominous view of future possibilities. There were frequent shouts of ‘To the guillotine with the Bourbons,’ and ‘Let’s burn those fat pigs of priests!’
This put a new aspect on the reception given to Napoleon by the people of Grenoble and Lyons. They were not welcoming back the Emperor as a person, much less the war lord who had deluged Europe in blood. Their cheers were for a symbol about which to rally, in order that they might drive out the Bourbons who, in less than a year, had made themselves so hated by reviving the oppression of the ancien régime. It was from the Revolution that Napoleon had emerged, and they were envisaging another, in which in the name of freedom they could despoil the rich, desecrate the churches and murder masters whom they felt had ill-used them.
Napoleon also soon realised this, and became acutely aware that if he allowed himself to be carried back to power as the figurehead of anarchist mobs, that power would be short-lived. He would find himself subservient to a committee of Jacobins. To counteract that possibility, he promptly issued a series of proclamations, calculated to assert himself and reassure the upper classes, yet retain the support of the workers. He declared himself Emperor, but appeased the democrats by summoning the ‘electoral colleges’, abolished feudal titles and confiscated the estates of the Bourbon Princes. Then he again set off for Paris, now at the head of fourteen thousand men.
Meanwhile, Marshal Ney, Prince de la Moskwa and Duc d’Elchingen, had assembled an army at Besançon, and had boasted to the King that he would ‘bring Napoleon back to Paris in an iron cage’.
During the retreat from Moscow, Ney had made his name immortal by performing prodigies of valour. Yet, as a result of that terrible campaign, his mentality had undergone a change. Previously he had cared nothing for honours, titles, money and displayed no interest in politics. His sole desire had been to acquire glory. Since then his mind had become more and more concerned about the damage that unending war was inflicting on the French people. It was he who had led the other Marshals at Fontainebleau the previous April to defy the Emperor, refuse to fight further, and insist on Napoleon’s abdication. Now, it seemed, it was his conviction that Napoleon’s return would lead to further war that made him fanatically determined to oppose him.
On the night of March 13th Ney was staying at the Sign of the Golden Apple in Lons-le-Saunier. For several days past he had been exhorting his troops to remain loyal to the King and pay no heed to the peasant proprietors along the wayside, who openly displayed their joy at the news that Napoleon had returned to France. He had need to do so, for one of his regiments had already deserted and there were many men among the others who took little trouble to conceal that at heart they had always remained Bonapartists.
During this night in March, Ney suffered an appalling mental conflict. Should he keep the solemn oath of allegiance he had sworn to Louis XVIII, or should he return to the service of the usurper under whom he had won so much glory?
Only the previous day he had declared, ‘Bonaparte is a wild beast, a mad dog upon whom one must throw oneself in order to avoid its bite.’ Later it was said that, during the night, an officer had secretly brought him a letter from General Bertrand, written by the order of Napoleon, appealing to him to abandon the cause of the King. Be that as it may, his second-in-command, General Bourmont, had brought to him Baron Cappelle, the Prefect of the Ain, who came with the news that Lyons had gone over to the Emperor. He then talked for two hours with Generals Bourmont and Lecourbe, both devoted Loyalists.
Everyone knew that Ney’s attitude would almost certainly prove decisive. If he ordered his men to fire upon Napoleon and they did so, it would be the signal for civil war, and the Emperor’s few thousand men would be overwhelmed by the tens of thousands under officers who had taken the oath of loyalty to the Bourbons. But, if Ney abjured his oath, who else would dare oppose the advance of the Corsican?
On the morning of the 14th Ney assembled his men, called his senior officers round him and took a paper from his pocket. Sitting his horse, in his brilliant uniform, he made a splendid figure. Among the men he was called le Rougeaud, on account of the mass of copper-red curls which crowned his head, the side-whiskers coming right down his cheeks and his red face, now sadly haggard. Lifting the paper, he read in the clarion voice that had rallied thousands of men on the battlefield:
‘Officers, non-commissioned officers and men. The Bourbon cause is lost for ever … ’
His next words were drowned in a storm of frantic cheering. The troops broke ranks, tore the white cockade from their hats and surged round him, yelling their unbounded joy at his declaration. It was many minutes before he could continue to read out the speech he had written in the early hours of that morning:
‘The legitimate dynasty which the French nation has adopted is about to reascend the throne. It is the Emperor Napoleon alone to whom the duty belongs of ruling over our fair land.
‘Whether the Bourbons and their nobility exile themselves or consent to live in our midst, of what matter to us? The sacred cause of our liberty and our independence will suffer no longer from their baneful influence. They have sought to debase, to wipe out our military glory, but they have been unable to do so.…’
These were the sentiments enshrined in the hearts of ninety-nine out of every hundred men in the Army. Only a small group of senior officers stood about the Marshal, silent, thunderstruck and appalled by this sudden volte-face from Ney’s boasts that he would bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage. One old Colonel, the Comte de Grivel, broke his sword across his knee, others refused to break their oath and asked to be relieved of their commands. Ney accepted their resignations.
The parade dissolved, the people of Lons mingled with the troops, delirious with joy, shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur’, and toasting him in gulps of brandy poured freely from the casks carried by the vivan-dières. Ney had thrown himself from his horse, embraced the nearest of his men and danced with them in wild abandon.
That evening at the Golden Apple he entertained his senior officers and staff to a magnificent supper. The choicest dishes and the finest wines were served to his fifteen guests. From outside the hotel could be heard the drunken shouts of the soldiers and poorer citizens, celebrating in a saturnalia the anticipated downfall of the hated Bourbons; but inside there was no laughter and only halting conversation. The Prefect of the Jura had bluntly told Ney that he held his office from the King, and could not serve two masters. When the Marshal, his face drawn and blotched, proposed the health of the Emperor, his supper guests rose out of courtesy and drank the toast, but without enthusiasm. His favourite A.D.C., Levavasseur; bitterly reproached him and warned him that, in spite of what he had done, Napoleon would never forgive him for his conduct at Fontainebleau. He replied that he had had no alternative, since to have attacked Napoleon would have started a civil war. He then added a sentence that revealed all the pent-up bitterness felt by the Bonapartist nobility for the slights put upon them by the ancient aristocracy of France. His wife was a lovely creature, but the daughter of a chambermaid.
‘I can no longer bear,’ he snapped, ‘to see my wife return home in tears from the insults put upon her by those émigré women at the Tuileries.’ And that perhaps discloses the fundamental reason why Ney had that afternoon sent his submission to his old master.
By that day, the 14th, Napoleon was in Mâcon. A number of his adherents had gone ahead of him. Over posters issued by the government, calling upon the people to remain loyal to the King, they had pasted copies of the Emperor’s proclamation issued on the 1 st at Golf Juan. It read:
Frenchmen, in my exile I heard your laments and your prayers; you demanded the government of your choice, which alone is legitimate. You blamed my long sleep, you reproached me for sacrificing to my repose the great concerns of our motherland. I have crossed the seas amid perils of every kind. I arrive among you to resume my rights, which are your own.
The wind was cold, patches of snow still lay on the fields and there were gusts of chilly rain; but that did not preyent the citizens of Mâcon from giving the returned exile a tremendous welcome. Five regiments of infantry and the 5th Hussars, coming from Moulins and Bourg, had mutinied and were pouring into Macon to fight for him. There were also scores of small groups or single junior officers and N.C.O.s who had deserted from other units there displaying their passionate devotion to Napoleon.
Leaving the bulk of his now considerable force behind, he pressed on through Tournus to the big town of Chalon. When approaching the gates, he saw a line of vehicles along one side of the road. As he came nearer, he realised that they were guns and limbers, and was told by soldiers who had run out of the town to greet him that this was the artillery sent to be used against his men, but they had confiscated it and it was now his.
At Chalon he slept for a few hours at the Hôtel du Pare, but was up again before dawn on March 15th and off in his carriage, with only a small escort. As protection in front of him he had now only General Brayer, with the 13th Regiment of Dragoons. Brayer had come over to him at Lyons and, as a reward, had been given the advance guard. When Napoleon reached Autun, he found that the General had already taken it. There, as in other towns, he cynically accepted the homage of the Royalist-appointed Mayor; then he received from Baron Passings a despatch written by Ney, declaring his adherence. Overjoyed, the Emperor sent the Baron back with the message:
‘My friend, keep your command. Set all your troops on the march right away, and come and join me at Auxerre. I shall receive you as on the morrow of Elchingen and Moscow.’
On the 16th he sped on to Avallon, along roads beside which there were cheering groups of small landowners who had come many miles to see him pass. From there, having covered fifty miles in a day, he reached Auxerre. In the town that morning a General Ameil, who commanded the light cavalry, had declared for the Emperor, but the Royalist General, Boudin de Roville, promptly had him arrested. By evening the picture had changed. The Prefect, Monsieur Gamot, read a proclamation to General Boudin which he had just written, heartily welcoming the Emperor. Jeered by his troops, the unhappy Boudin mounted his horse and, abandoning his wife and children, galloped off along the road to Paris, while Ameil was released and feted.
The plaudits of the troops and people in the towns through which Napoleon had ridden would have turned most men’s heads; but, having arrived in Auxerre, he took serious stock of his situation, based on the information he was now receiving from many quarters.
He had made a triumphant progress through southwestern France, but Marshal Masséna, who commanded in Marseilles, had now closed the whole coast of Provence, making retreat impossible, and had also sent an army in pursuit of him. Bordeaux had always been a Royalist city and, at this moment, the troops there were virtually commanded by that bitter, pious woman, the Duchess d’Angoulême, who would cheerfully have seen him crucified. Her husband was in Nîmes, organising an army for the reconquest of the towns that had welcomed the invader. In central France the Duc de Bourbon commanded a strong force at Angers, and in Normandy there was another army commanded by Marshal Augereau, whom he had denounced as a traitor for surrendering Lyons to the Austrians. In addition, Marshals Marmont and Macdonald, now his inveterate enemies, were both in Paris mustering yet another army to bar his way to the capital. With amazing rapidity he had succeeded in being accepted by a considerable part of the population, and some twenty thousand troops had rallied to his colours; but he still had four-fifths of France to subdue.
The almost unceasing shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ along the way had greatly heartened him, and he continued to declare, with unshakeable optimism, that he would be master of Paris by the 20th; but he had yet either to suborn or defeat the army gathering outside it, which would be officered by the hard core of the Royalists. He believed he would succeed in that, but another matter was causing him far greater concern.
In every town through which he had passed, he had been received by country people, workers and troops as a ‘liberator’; but that had not proved at all the case with the officials. Many of them had fled on his approach, or come reluctantly to him with hypocritical excuses for having accepted from the Bourbons posts as Prefects or Mayors. It had been the same with most of the senior officers. And the better-off citizens in the towns had not joined the cheering mobs. Many of them were National Guards, and they had remained in their houses.
He had for too long been the all-powerful Emperor to enjoy having rough soldiers and toil-stained workers shake him vigorously by the hand, pat him on the back and embrace him. From long habit he had become fastidiously clean. The smell of stale sweat revolted him, and he had never had any liking for the common people. Yet it was they, not the educated and well-to-do, who looked upon him as their champion. Again and again he had heard them yelling, ‘Death to the aristos! Burn the priests! Throw out the Bourbons! Down with the rich! Long live the people!’
The majority of them had lived through the Revolution. It was he who had restored law and order and, by his skilful measures, gradually forced them again into servitude as the underdogs who provided cannon fodder and paid heavy taxes. By bringing glory to France he had duped them into accepting him as a despot. Yet they had clearly forgotten that, and now hailed him again as the young Revolutionary general. It was not to play that role that he had returned, but once more to sit on his throne in the Tuileries, surrounded by pomp and splendour.
Now his problem was to control the mobs, prevent them from starting a new Terror and protect the wealthy and the middle classes upon whom the prosperity of France depended. The answer lay in Paris. Somehow he must secure the support of men there who had held office under him in the past, and had influence with the people.
It was at Auxerre that he called Roger into his room and said to him:
‘Breuc, so far things have gone excellently. Not a shot fired, and now that Ney has come over to us I greatly doubt if there will be. The troops who have acclaimed me come from every part of France, so they are a fair sample of the feeling throughout the whole army. I am told that the Bourbons are massing many formations to bar my path to the capital. The attempt will prove futile. The troops will either lay down their arms, or turn them on those young émigré popinjays who have been made officers.’
‘You are right, Sire,’ Roger agreed. ‘While you reigned, any private could hope to end his days as a Duke and a Marshal of the Empire; but under the Bourbons, however brave, he could not hope to become even a Second Lieutenant. And, under them no junior officer can hope to reach high command unless he comes from a noble family. This insane return to pre-revolutionary custom has given you back the Army—lock, stock and barrel.’
‘It has. And the workers and small proprietors are for me, too. But the fools seem to think that I shall abolish all taxes. They haven’t the sense to realise that one cannot run a country without money.
‘Now, to come to the point. I am most averse to entering Paris as King of the Mob. In no time I should find myself reduced to chairman of a revived Committee of Public Safety, and we’d have the guillotine at work again. Most regrettably, judging by the towns through which we have passed, the middle classes are opposed to me. They fear I shall start new wars which will end by our enemies again invading France; and, as happened last year, Cossacks and Prussians being billeted on them, getting drunk, smashing up their furniture, stealing their valuables and raping their women.
‘But I have done with war. I intend to reign henceforth as a liberal monarch, giving equal opportunity to all, but protecting those who have money from lawlessness and disorder. This must be made known, and proclamations are not enough. It is necessary to convince a dozen or so really influential people. To do so I need your help.’
Roger raised his eyebrows. ‘Willing as I am to give it, Sire, I fail to see how I could influence anyone.’
‘Oh yes, you can. You know everyone of importance in Paris, and I wish you to go there. Although you have not served the Bourbons, you have a clean slate with them because, at the time of my abdication, you were one of the Czar’s people, and living in Talleyrand’s mansion. You will not, of course, let it be known that you came to Elba. You can tell the truth about having spent the last eleven months in retirement, at that little chateau of yours near St. Maxime. You could easily have been noticed there by some of my people, and felt that discretion was the better part of valour, so decided to join me temporarily. Naturally, as one of my old A.D.C.s, during the past fortnight we should have had many talks together. Say that, having arrived within, easy distance of Paris, you made up your mind to leave me and find out how things were going there. You will give the impression that you still have an open mind on the question of my restoration, as must be the case with hundreds of other men there who served me in the past. But your position will differ from theirs, because you have had the opportunity of learning my intentions. Without committing yourself, you can reassure them. Tell them that I mean to issue an amnesty to all who went over to the Bourbons, so they have nothing to fear; that I will make war no more and, given the support of the Chambers, will be in a position to prevent the Jacobins from initiating another reign of terror.
Smiling, Roger willingly agreed to do as he had been asked, said he would set off at once, and bowed his way from the room.
Nothing could have suited him better than this mission which he had so unexpectedly been given. In the early days of the landing he had several times contemplated deserting; but the extraordinary enthusiasm with which Napoleon’s arrival had been greeted in town after town had led him to believe the Corsican’s mad venture would succeed, and that if it did his own future prospects would be immeasurably better than they had been when he left Vienna. He would again be high in favour and in receipt of a handsome income. In Paris only Talleyrand’s intimates knew that he had been to Vienna. To others he could tell the story he had told Napoleon—that he had been living in retirement at St. Maxime. This was a marvellous chance to hedge his bet. Should Napoleon’s bid to regain his throne fail after all, the Comte de Breuc would appear only to have played a part in it until he had an opportunity to desert; so at least he would escape the vengeance of the Bourbons.
By riding hard and stopping only to eat and rest at Sens and Melun, he reached Paris early on the following afternoon. Along the road and in the towns, he had encountered small bodies of troops, but it was not until he came to Melun that he met with any large formations, so it was evidently in that neighbourhood that the Royalists meant to make their stand in defence of the capital. As he was still wearing the civilian clothes in which he had left Vienna, no-one halted him, and to those who eagerly questioned him in the inns where he stopped, he replied that he had come from Chinon—which was far to the south of the route being taken by Napoleon—so he knew nothing of the movements of the invaders.
The attitude of the troops through which he had ridden that morning had convinced him that the chances of their standing and fighting for the Bourbons were almost non-existent; so he had decided to carry out Napoleon’s instructions and reap the benefit of gaining a few important adherents for him.
In Paris he rode straight to Talleyrand’s mansion and asked for the Marquis de Jaucourt, one of the Prince’s cronies and deputy Foreign Minister, whom he had left in charge of his office and establishment there. Within a few minutes he was shown into the Marquis’s cabinet, where he was working on some papers. He rose at once, welcomed Roger as an old friend, and asked, ‘What news from Vienna and of our Prince?’
Tired and dusty, Roger sank into a chair, then replied, ‘I do not come from there, but from Bonaparte, whom I left last night in Auxerre.’
‘The devil you did,’ exclaimed de Jaucourt. ‘Whatever were you doing …? But that can wait. Is it really true that in every town he enters, the mob goes mad with joy at the sight of him, and that the troops are deserting to him by the thousand?’
‘It is. So far not a shot has been fired, and from the coast it has been one long triumphant progress. Now that Ney has defected and gone over …’
‘What!’ The Marquis gave a gasp of amazement and consternation. ‘Ney defected! And the King set such high hopes on him. This is indeed a setback.’
‘It trebles Bonaparte’s chances. As I was about to say, he vows he’ll be in Paris by the 20th and, short of a miracle, I believe he will.’
‘God help us! I had no idea things were as bad as this. But tell me, how comes it that you were in the South of France when he landed?’
‘I was at my little château there, near St. Maxime. But how I got caught up in this affair is a long story, and must wait till later. I have ridden all night, so am desperate fatigued. I’ve taken our Prince at his word, that there is always a bed for me here, and am eager to get to it.’
‘Of course. You are most welcome. I’ll order one to be prepared for you without delay.’ The Marquis took up the bell on the desk and rang it for a footman. Then he added, ‘I would to God Bonaparte had broken his neck in Elba or drowned on the way over. His return could be worse than a visitation of the plague; for, if he does get to Paris, it will result in the death of thousands more soldiers.’
Roger shook his head. ‘I judge you wrong there. I had several long talks with him and, believe me, he is a changed man. His only wish now is to regain his throne, rule as a liberal monarch and work to preserve a lasting peace for the people. Soon after I met him, he told me that the Congress of Vienna had broken up and the Czar, having quarrelled with the others, gone off in a huff; so there is no likelihood of their again combining against him. With Marie Louise as his Empress, the Austrians will give him no trouble, and he plans to adopt the policy that our Prince has favoured in secret for so many years—an alliance with England.’
With a little laugh, de Jaucourt said, ‘Luckily for us all, this is naught but moonshine. He was wrongly informed about the Congress. ’Tis true that Russia and Prussia were at daggers drawn with Austria and England when the news that Bonaparte had left Elba reached Vienna on March 7th. But the Congress had not broken up. The news was received with the utmost consternation. They thought he had gone to Italy, but by now will know that he is in France. In any case, the Allies at once agreed that, in the face of this new menace, they must continue in conference and devise measures to meet it. I had a despatch from our Prince only yesterday. It was he who persuaded them to sink their differences, and he now has every hope of renewing the Grand Alliance. Have no illusions, Breuc. If Bonaparte does succeed in reaching Paris, he’ll not have regained his throne for long. Whether you are right or not about his pacific intentions, the Allies will drive him from it by unremitting war.’