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nity; and to have shewn that they had lost their activity and omniscience, so soon as embarked in the service of legitimate monarchy.

Under the connivance, therefore, if not with the approbation of the police, conspiracy assumed a more open and daring aspect. Several houses of dubious fame, but especially the Caffé Montanssier, in the Palais Royale, were chosen as places of rendezvous for the subordinate satellites of the cause, where the toasts given, the songs sung, the tunes performed, and the language held, all bore allusion to Buonaparte's glories, his regretted absence, and his desired return. To express their hopes that this event would take place in the spring, the conspirators adopted for their symbol the violet; and afterwards applied to Buonaparte him. self the name of Corporal Violet. The flower and the colour were publicly worn as a party distinction, before it would seem the court had taken the least alarm; and the health of Buonaparte, under the name of Corporal Violet, or Jean d'Epée, was pledged by many a royalist without suspicion of the concealed meaning.

Paris was the centre of the conspiracy; but its ramifications extended through France. Clubs were formed in the chief provincial towns. Regular correspondences were established between them and the capital; an intercourse much favoured, it has been asserted, by Lavallette, who, having been long director-general of the posts under Buonaparte, retained considerable influence over the subordinate agents of that department, none of whom had been displaced upon the king's return. It appears from the evidence of Mons. Ferrand, directorgeneral under the king, that the couriers, who, like the soldiers and po

lice-officers, had found more advantage under the imperial than under the royal government, were several of them in the interest of their old master. And it is averred, that the correspondence relating to the conspiracy was carried on through the royal post-office, contained in letters sealed with the king's seal, and dispatched by public messengers wearing his livery.

Such open demonstrations of treasonable practices did not escape the observation of the royalists, and they appear to have been communicated to the ministers from different quar ters. But each of these official personages seems scrupulously to have entrenched himself within the routine of his own particular department, so that what was only of general import to the whole, was not considered as the business of any one in particular. Thus, when the stunning catastrophe had happened, each endeavoured to shift the blame from himself, like the domestics in a large and ill-regulated family; and although all acknowledged that gross negligence had existed elsewhere, no one admitted that the fault lay with himself. This general infatuation surprises us upon retrospect; but Heaven, who frequently punishes mankind by the indulgence of their own foolish or wicked desires, had decreed that peace was to be restored to Europe by the extermination of that army to whom peace was a state so odious; and for that purpose it was necessary that they should be successful in their desperate attempt to dethrone their peaceful and constitutional sovereign, and to reinstate the despot who was soon to lead them to the completion of their destiny, and, it may be presumed, of his own.

CHAP. IX.

Buonaparte embarks at Elba-And lands in France-And marches to GapSuspicions of Treachery in the War Department.-Labedoyere joins Buonaparte with his Regiment.-Revolt of the Troops at Grenoble.-Measures of the Royal Party-Soult is displaced from the Ministry.-The Treason of Lefebre Desnouettes, and Lallemand is discovered, and prevented.-Defection of the Troops under Macdonald. Decrees of Lyons.-Buonaparte's progress to Auxerre-His Interview with the Vicar-General.-Ney is appointed to command against Buonaparte.-He deserts and joins him.-The King visits the Chamber of Deputies. Their Enthusiasm in the Royal Cause.-A Camp formed at Melun-But its Fidelity is doubted.-The King leaves Paris-İs expelled from Lisle-And compelled to Retreat to Ghent-Disasters of his Followers.-Defection of the Army at Melun.-State of Affairs at Paris.— Buonaparte enters the Capital and completes the Revolution.-Fickleness of the People and their Leaders.

ALL was now prepared in France, and waited but the presence of the head of the conspiracy. It is said, that for some time previous to his taking the last desperate step a gloom was observed to hang upon Buonaparte's mind. He shunned society, was solitary and moody, relinquished his usual exercises and amusements, and seemed to brood over some dark and important thoughts. That he deeply considered the consequence to others of the measure he was about to adopt, we cannot believe; but it was fraught with such personal risk and danger as might well have startled him. If he failed in making the desired impression on the mind of the French soldiers and the people, he could hardly expect to avoid death; and if he succeeded, he had still to oppose the force of a lately subdued and divided nation against the united strength of Europe, grown wise by experience, and familiar at once with

the road to Paris and with the safest path to peace through the temple of victory. The die, however, was cast, and it was no longer time to draw back.

Some previous steps had been cautiously ventured upon. Three hundred of Buonaparte's old guard had been landed at Frejus, under the character of disbanded soldiers. It was by means of these men that the allegiance of the military was corrupted and seduced, and their minds prepared for what was to ensue. We cannot suppose that such a number of persons were positively entrusted with the secret, but every one of them was prepared to sound forth the praises of the emperor in his exile, and all entertained and disseminated the persuasion that he would soon appear to reclaim his rights.

On Sunday, 26th February, the troops who had fol- Feb. 26. lowed Buonaparte to the is

land of Elba received orders to embark. That the imprudence of the treaty of Fontainbleau might be complete, the mimic emperor had been left in possession of a small flotilla that he might have another chance of becoming master of a real one. The vessels were, a brig called the Inconstant, some zebecks and row-boats, in all seven transports, on board of which nine hundred soldiers were embarked. The final resolution was kept so secret, that even Bertrand was a stranger to it until an hour before its being carried into execution. The officers were most of them engaged at a ball given by Pauline Borghese, the sister of Buonaparte, and only left it to go on board the little squadron. The general officers who attended Buonaparte, were Bertrand, Drouet, and Cambronne, together with the director of the mines, Monsieur Porrs de Cette, who had contributed largely to the expence of the expedition. A procla mation from General Lapi, calling himself governor of the island of Elba, first announced to the inhabitants that their temporary emperor was recalled by Providence to a wider career of glory.

Sir Niel Campbell, appointed by the British government to reside in the isle of Elba at the court of Buonaparte, was absent on a short expedition to the coast of Italy, a circumstance which doubtless had some share in determining the moment of the embarkation; for although the British officer had neither the authority nor the efficient means to prevent Buona parte and his guards from going whenever they thought fit, yet his absence might be represented as a connivance on the part of England at the step which the ex-emperor of France had adopted, and no means of delusion were now to be omitted. When, on its return, the English sloop of war Partridge, in which Sir Niel

Campbell was, approached the isle, the appearance of the national guard on the batteries, instead of the hel metted grenadiers of the imperial guard, at once apprised the British resident of what had happened. When he landed, he found the mother and sister of Buonaparte in a well-painted agony of anxiety about the fate of their emperor, of whom they affected to know nothing, except that he had steered towards the coast of Barbary. They appeared extremely desirous to detain Sir Niel Campbell on shore. Resisting their entreaties, and repell ing the more pressing arguments of the governor, who seemed somewhat disposed to use force to prevent him from reimbarking, Sir Nie Campbell regained his vessel, and set sail in pursuit of the adventurer. But it was too late; they only attained a distant sight of the flotilla, after Buonaparte and his forces had landed.

In their passage the adventurers made a narrow escape, as they fell in with a royal French frigate. The soldiers on board of the Inconstant were commanded to put off their caps and lie down upon the deck, while the captain of the brig exchanged some questions of ordinary civility with the captain of the frigate, to whom he chanced to be known. This done, each vessel" followed her own course, and Buonaparte, on the 1st of March, found himself once more on the coast of France, off Frejus, in the gulf of St. Juan. Here, in token of his resumed pretensions to the throne of France, he caused his attendants and soldiers assume the tri-coloured cockade, and throw into the sea those which they had worn in Elba. This was done with shouts of Vive l'Empereur; and under these colours and auspices they commenced their disembarka tion.

It seemed essential to the success of an enterprise, which rested entirely

on popular opinion, that all its first steps should be prosperous; but this was not the case: A party of twentyfive men, disembarked as a forlorn hope to possess themselves of Antibes, were arrested by General Corsin, the commandant of the place. The Elbese officer, in an attempt to escape, precipitated himself into the ditch of the fort, and broke his back. Such another example of fidelity to the Bourbons as that of Corsin, would have entirely ruined the expedition of the Emperor of Elba, but he hastened to seek out men with minds better prepared to receive him. The general disembarkment took place at Cannes, about five in the afternoon, and the adventurers instantly commenced their march, with a band of scarce a thousand men, into the heart of a kingdom, from which their leader had been so lately expelled with execration, and where his rival enjoyed in undisturbed peace a hereditary throne. The people of the country looked on them with doubtful and wondering eyes, fearful alike to hail them as friends, or to resist them as invaders; for if, on the one hand, appearances seemed to declare the attempt desperate, on the other, the very fact of its being adventured, in despite of these appearances, shewed that Buonaparte had some secret grounds for confidence. In their first marches they were avoided by all who had property or reputation to risk. No proprietors appeared, no clergy, no public functionaries. Some of the lower order of peasants assembled and shouted Vive Empereur, won by the daring and romantic circumstances of the undertaking; but there was nothing which seemed to give the enterprize the solidity of well-grounded hope. From Cannes they marched to Grasse without halting, and leaving

at Grasse six field-pieces, which retarded their march, pressed forward to Cerenon, where they made a halt on the evening of the 2d of March, after a march of twenty leagues. The marches of the two succeeding days brought Napoleon into Dauphiné, called the cradle of the revolution, and of all the provinces of France most partial to its tenets and its heroes. Here the resort to Buonaparte became more general, and the accla mations of welcome more decided. In the district of the Lower Alps, as the Moniteur afterwards informed the public, the peasants thronged from every quarter, and testified their joy with an energy which left no doubt of its sincerity. Still, however, those who hailed the march with accla mations, were persons of the lowest ranks. All who had anything to hazard stood alot and waited the event.

Buonaparte was fast approaching a point where he must come into collision with a considerable body of troops; for the government, long and late in taking the alarm, had at length received intelligence, or rather had listened to that which facts forced upon them, and were adopting measures to defeat his enterprise, and directing forces against the invader.

Among all the wonderful circumstances attending this singular revolution, the stupid insensibility of the royal ministers to the imminent danger in which they were involved, is by far the most remarkable. Repeated intimations of the conspiracy (a conspiracy embracing so wide a circle could hardly be kept secret) had been offered to the government. Yet while the opposite faction were so well informed, that a public journal (Le Naine Jaune) actually alluded enigmatically to Buonaparte's landing at Cannes on the very day when it took place,

It was thus expressed, "Our correspondent writes to-day with a pen made of cane (plume de Canne,) to-morrow he will write with a goose-quill.”

repeated informations dispatched to the Abbé Montesquieu by the Marquis de Bouthillier, prefect of the department of Var, had no force to compel the attention of the minister in whose cabinet the dispatches were found unopened. In the mean while, large bodies of troops had received orders from Soult, the minister at war, to move towards Grenoble. In the defence which this officer afterwards published, he allows that this circumstance, joined with the subsequent defection of those troops, which seemed, as it were, thrown into Buonaparte's way on purpose that they might join him, must necessarily excite doubts on the purity of his intentions. But he alleges that the cause of these movements was a request from Talleyrand, then representative of France at the Congress, that an army of 30,000 or40,000 men should be formed in the south, between Lyons and Chamberri, in order that the kingdom's state of military preparation might authorise the high language he had begun to hold to the other powers. If this excuse was more than a mere pretext, Soult unintentionally served Buonaparte as effectually as if he had been in the secret of the conspiracy; for the number, the appointments, and, above all, the spirit, both of soldiers and officers, were such as exactly suited his purposes. The same day brought to Paris an account of these military dispositions, with the astounding intelligence that Buonaparte had landed at Cannes. All, therefore, rested on the temper of these troops. If zealous in the royal cause, they were ten times more than sufficient to crush Buonaparte's project in the bud; if they proved disloyal, they might afford him almost the certain means of accom

plishing it with safety. There was a strong garrison at Grenoble, which Buonaparte now approached. All seemed to turn upon the manner in which these troops should conduct themselves.

man.

The commandant of Grenoble was General Marchand, a loyal and brave The Mareschal-de-camp Des Villiers, who commanded in the neighbouring town of Chamberri, had justly the same character. His force had been augmented on the 7th of March by the junction of the seventh regi ment of the line, under their colonel, La Bedoyere. This man had scarce attained the age of twenty-nine; he was distinguished for personal grace and military accomplishment. His birth was noble; and the romantic misfortunes of some of his ancestors had already furnished a subject for a fictitious narrative, to which his own story might make a melancholy sequel. Married to a lady of the family of Damas, distinguished for nobility alike and loyalty, La Bedoyere had availed himself of their interest to obtain the command which he now held in the army, and his wife's relations had become guarantees to the king for the loyalty of their relative. With all these motives for maintaining his allegiance, La Bedoyere had engaged frankly and deeply in the conspiracy, seduced by the military talents of Buonaparte, and the distinctions which he had formerly received from him. He entered into the treason with all the boiling audacity of his character, and came prepared to be the first in the path of apostacy. He had secretly brought with his regiment, when it marched from Chamberri, one of those eagles, which, like that of Marius worship. ped by Catiline, had been reverently preserved to be, on some fitting occa

See a romance by Arnaud de Baculier, entitled "Le Epoux Malhereux, ou L'His toire de Monsieur et Mademoiselle La Bedoyere," printed at the Hague in 1773.

VOL. VIII. PART I.

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