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in any other way than becomes their character and former conduct. I must add, that the best friends of their country begin to despair of the cause, and think the return of the Bourbons inevitable, since the sacrifice of Napoleon seems not to have satisfied the allies, and arrested the progress of the victorious armies. I see, by the English papers of the 23d of June, that our politicians think the restoration of the Bourbons as the immediate, necessary, and peaceable consequence of the fall of Napoleon. This is what might be expected from those who held the language of the Castlereaghs and the Grattans. I doubt whether the victory of Waterloo has gained that family a single partisan, and how many they had before that event you have already seen if they come back, it will be at the point of the bayonet. The duke's dispatch, copied into the Moniteur of the 27th, would make one think his Grace was not aware of the

extent of his victory. Neither he nor any man in Europe could indeed divine its consequences, which are of that kind, to use the phrase of Napoleon, talking of the disasters of the campaign of 1814, "that baffle all human calcula"tion." A letter of Marshal Ney's to the Duke of Otranto, in which he vindicates himself from

the aspersions industriously cast against him by the Emperor's personal friends, is making a great noise. Napoleon's generalship is by no means spared in this letter, which is certainly well written, and which is, moreover, believed to give a fair representation of that terrible battle. The mar shal told our friend yesterday, what he says in his letter, that the reports of treason, and cries of alarm, were utterly unfounded. The day was lost because the patient intrepidity of the British infantry was not to be overcome by the desperate effort made, late in the evening, with tired troops, when the battle was a drawn one, and when the English would have been happy to be left in possession of their ground. One of the Emperor's aid-de-camps says, that he was unworthily betrayed; but I was unable to get a single fact to the proof of this, except that the officer who was sent to order Marshal Grouchy to co-operate on the right of the army went four hours out of his way, for fear of the Prussian patroles; the assigned cause both condemns and acquits the messenger. Some of the personal staff of Napoleon were struck with what they thought the obstinacy of the last attack upon the strong position of the English; and General Haxo was beginning to remonstrate-" Mais,

VOL. II.

"Sire"-when the Emperor gave him a flap with his glove, in the face-" Taisez vous, mon "ami, voilá Grouchy, qui vient de nous donner de " ses nouvelles." They were Bulow's cannons which he mistook for Grouchy's, and which he announced as such to Ney, by Labédoyère. The marshal fought with his accustomed bravery, and having had three horses killed under him, was seen in advance of the line, with his sword drawn, and on foot, attended by a single corporal, who at last bore him away, exhausted and covered with contusions, from the scene of car nage. How dreadful must have been the rout may be collected from the confession of the marshal, who tells us that he, the second in command, arrived alone, totally ignorant of what had become of the Emperor or the army, at Marchiennes sur Pont, at four o'clock in the morning. He says, that he concluded the Emperor to be either taken or killed. The last sight the marshal had of him was when he was conducting the four regiments of the middle guard, in person, to the attack*.

* Lieutenant-colonel of the guards informed me, that he saw Napoleon about musquet-shot in front of the English line. An authority on which I have not the same entire reliance, but which is backed by common rumour,

assured me, at Paris, that Napoleon made several efforts to plunge forwards into the enemies' ranks, but was stopped by his staff, who held his horse by the reins. I see now, that all this is said to be a concerted scene between Bertrand and Drouot and their Emperor. What pleasure or profit can be derived from the support of the paradox, that a man who has commanded in fifty pitched battles is a coward?

LETTER XXVI.

Paris, June 29.

THE terrific truth is displayed; Paris is to be saved, if it can be saved, only by a battle, to be fought under its walls. The law declaring the city in a state of siege is placarded; as also is an ordonnance of the government, commanding the army of the north to repair without delay to the capital, providing for the subsistence of the inhabitants and garrisons, the defence of the heights, and the maintenance of tranquillity by the national guard. But care has been taken to show that the approaches only of the capital shall be defended, and by the troops of the line only, encamped without the walls, and seconded by the riflemen of the national guard. The guard itself is not to be employed, except upon the demand of its own body *. Besides these notices, appears an order of the day, from the minister of war, making dispositions for a battle to be fought to-morrow morning, so says

*See Appendix-No. 28.

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