groups, escorting the bust of Buonaparte. They insulted several of the posts of the national guards, and even fired on some of their centinels. In some instances mischief happened; but the firmness of the national guard, their numbers, and their moderation, easily subdued these tumultuary rabble, whose principal inducement to riot was the hope of pillage. It was equally necessary to reduce to civil submission the students of the Polytechnic school, and other seminaries, who had taken up arms, and now refused to lay them down, or forego the independence and life of adventure, which they attached to the character of soldiers. Nothing could more strikingly illustrate the policy of Buonaparte, who, in giving a military education, and instilling military feelings into the youth of France, had succeeded so perfectly in rendering them the voluntary and precipitate implements of continuing the state of war and confusion to which he had abandoned his capital. News of insurrections in the suburbs, of a general mutiny in the army, of a meditated storm by the allies, continued to agitate Paris during the whole night intervening betwixt the 2d and 3d days of July.

The troops of the line perpetrated several disorders in the posts where they were quartered, before they could be made sensible of the necessity of the armistice; and the garrison of St Denis failed not to pillage some part of that little town. Only one mode could be devised of rendering them tractable, and that was an instant distribution of pay. The banking-house of Perigaux, Lafitte, and Co. furnished a large sum for this purpose, on receiving security in government stock. At length the soldiers were collected by their officers, and slowly, sullenly, with dejected countenances, in which shame and

wounded pride were blended with disappointed ferocity, defiled through the city and the suburbs to their place of destination. Occasionally their wonted shouts of Vive l'Empereur, burst from their ranks, no longer in the tone of triumphant exultation, but of determined despair. In this state of dejection they commenced their march for the Loire, many deserting their ranks and colours, and renouncing a service which seemed no longer to promise victory or glory.

On the 7th of July, the national guards, at the several barriers of Paris, delivered up their posts to the allies; and their various forces of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, to the number of perhaps 50,000 men, took possession of the capital of France, defiling along the Boulevards and the alleys of the Champs Elysees. It was a scene very different from the joyous procession of 1814, when the foreigners and Frenchmen, animated by the same universal joy, mingled their ranks as part of the same general procession. The appearance of the allied military, on the present occasion, was strictly regular, but severely solemn; they showed no exultation, but neither did they intimate any desire to fraternize with the inhabitants, who looked on them with a mixture of fear and humiliation, especially when it was remarked that the troops were all either British or Prussians, the nations of the confederacy whom they least liked to acknowledge as victors, from recollection of the wrongs they had inflicted upon the latter, and the constant hostility in which they had so long stood to the other. The victors marched with all the stern apparatus of loaded arms, lighted matches, and the other preparations for instant action, which form the awful distinction between a peaceful procession and the actual operations of war. The city was occupied as a

captured town, and precautions were taken against insurrection. The British took possession of the heights of Montmartre; the bridges, squares, and principal posts of the city were occupied by military posts, and cannon were planted on the Pont Neuf and Pont Royale, ready loaded, and attended by soldiers having their matches lighted.

The Chamber of Representatives, in the meanwhile, proceeded in their sittings, as if they had been still under the protection of the French army. They continued to labour and polish the constitution, which they intended to impose on the king who should be elected, and they maintained the same air of indecision as to the person of the monarch. They acted as if they said to the allies, "Allow us the task of making the constitution, and do you take that of chusing a king for us-from any family but that of Bourbon-or even from the Bourbons, if you will forbear to name Louis, or his three nearest relations." The statue of Buonaparte was removed from their hall, as a prince whom a proclamation of the provisional government had declared" abandoned by fortune and by the nation." The place was supplied by a three-coloured banner, that it might appear to present a symbol of national power emanating from the people.

They next published a declaration, blending together the most sacred rights of society and of constitutional freedom, all of which had been already granted to them by the royal charter, with other questions in which their own interests were peculiarly committed.

"The Chamber declares, that a monarch cannot offer any real guarantee, if he does not swear to observe the constitution framed by the national representation, and accepted by the people it hence follows, that every

government which should have no other titles than the acclamations and will of a party, or which should be imposed by force; every government which should not adopt the national colours, and would not guarantee, "The liberty of the citizens, "The equality of civil and political rights,

"The liberty of the press, "The liberty of worship, "The free consent with respect to levying of men and taxes,

"The responsibility of ministers, "The irrevocability of the sale of national property,

"The inviolability of property, "The abolition of tithes, of the old and new hereditary nobility, and of feudality,

"The entire oblivion of all opinions and political votes expressed up to the present moment,

"The rewards due to the officers and soldiers,

"The succours due to their widows and children,

"The institution of juries, "The non-removal of judges, "The payment of the public debt, "would only have an ephemeral existence, and would never secure the tranquillity of France nor of Europe."

By this specious declaration the Chamber proposed themselves as the assertors of privileges, which, so far from having been attacked by Louis, had been first communicated to the nation during his brief reign, and as the righters of those erroneous measures which the king had already, by repeated proclamations, deciared his own intentions of undoing and correcting. But they blended those topics on which their interference was unnecessary, with the demands in favour of an insurgent and rebellious army, with the requisition of an entire amnesty, which would have been little less than a ratification of all the pro

ceedings which had taken place since the landing of Buonaparte at Cannes, and with the adoption of the national colours, instead of the white flag and cockade. This last point was pressed on the king by Fouché in an interview he had with his majesty at St Denis. "It was here," said the statesman, "that your majesty's great ancestor, Henry IV., swallowed a mass for the good of his people, and will not your majesty consent to sacrifice a rib band?" His majesty is said to have answered, “that for himself, he was indifferent on the subject, but that his family were so much determined against the measure, that they would rather he should return to Hartwell than consent to it." If this statement be correct, the princes of the house of Bourbon were, in one instance, wiser than its representative. For the act of renouncing the royal colours, and adopting those of the Chambers, would have been an acknowledgment of the justice and legality of the government of Buonaparte, and the legislature he had convoked,-an admission that the king only held his crown by the gift of the Chambers, a ratification of the mock Senate, or House of Peers, elected for their devotion to Buonaparte,-above all, an acknowledgment that those who had so lately dethroned and banished their sovereign, had a right to repeat the experiment so soon as ever they felt themselves strong enough to carry it through.

--

The Chamber of Representatives, however, continued their deliberations, though there appeared no chance of the king subscribing to the result. After as much grave discussion as if their resolutions could have any serious effect, upon the questions whether there should be suffered to exist a rank of nobility independent of the Chamber of Peers? Whether the number of the peers should be limited or unlimited? How the king's guards

should be constituted, and what force. they should comprize? What ought to be their rank, their decorations, their facings, and form of epaulet? After the discussion of these, and other objects equally minute, they achieved a new scheme of constitution, which it took til five o'clock July 6. to read over.

In the meanwhile, the communication between the Parisian royalists and Louis, who still remained at St Denis, became close and constant. Arms were sent out from Paris to equip his followers, and preparations were made for his public entry. It would have been something equally absurd and indelicate that Louis should enter Paris, while the men by whom he had been so lately dethroned and proscribed continued to exercise the authority of legislators within its walls. Fouché, who was in close correspondence with Louis, recommended that he should temporize with the Chambers, which he asserted might be gained, on according to them a guarantee of the charters, as promised by the king. The Duke of Wellington, to whom this proposal was submitted by Macirone, who acted as a secret agent of Fouché on this occasion, saw at once the danger of recognizing as independent legislators a Senate and Chamber of Representatives, convoked and chosen on purpose to secure the late usurpation." "I am of opinion,” was his reply," that, the allies having declared the government of Napoleon an usurpation, all authority which emanates from it ought to be considered as null and of no effect. All that remains for the Chambers and commission is to give in their resignation, and declare that they only took on themselves their temporary authority, to insure the public tranquillity and the integrity of the kingdom of Louis XVIII.”

The commission having shewn no disposition to take this step voluntari.

ly, the ministers of the allies directly required of the provisional government to surrender the supreme power which they had hitherto exercised. A squadron of cavalry, and two battalions of infantry, marched into the Place du Carousel, and the commissioners, on their appearance, evacuated the council chamber of the Tuilleries. But they previously sent a message to the Chambers of Peers and Representatives in the following

terms:

"Mr President,-Hitherto we believed that the intentions of the allied sovereigns were not unanimous upon the choice of the prince who is to reign in France. Our plenipotentiaries gave us the same assurances upon their return.

"However, the ministers and generals of the allied powers have declared yesterday in the conference they have had with the president of the commission, that all the sovereigns had engaged to replace Louis the XVIII. upon the throne, and that he is to make this evening, or to-morrow, his entrance into the capital.

"Foreign troops have just occupied the Tuilleries, where the government is sitting.

"In this state of affairs, we can only breathe wishes for the country, and our deliberations being no longer free, we think it our duty to separate.

"Marshal Prince of Essling, and the Prefect of the Seine, have been charged to watch over the maintenance of the public order, safety, and tranquillity.

"I have the honour, &c.
(Signed)

"The DUKE of Otranto,

« Count Grenier,

"QUINETTE,

CARNOT,

In this document the government attempted a last deception upon the French, by representing to the Chambers and the public that they had been left in doubt, until after the occupation of Paris, of the ultimate designs of the allies. We have already mentioned, that the first negociators whom they dispatched to the headquarters of the sovereigns at Haguenau, had been at the first conference distinctly informed, that though the allies had no purpose of dictating as to the internal government or constitution of France, yet they insisted on her receiving back the pacific and friendly dynasty of the Bourbons, as the best guarantee for the tranquillity of Europe. But this answer the government did not venture to make public; and the concealment of the truth at first now forced them on a second falsehood.

The Peers were in debate upon the declaration of national rights of the French nation which had been concocted by the Representatives, when the fatal message of the provisional government was read to them by the Compte de Valence. They dispersed in silence, resigning to superior force

the

power and rank which force alone had conferred on them.

The Representatives, contumacious by profession, were less passive under the sentence of dissolution. Monsieur Manuel concluded an animated protest with the words of Mirabeau. "We are here by the will of the people; we will not be removed otherwise than by the point of the bayonet." They continued accordingly to sit and debate for some hours, after receiving the message of the government, until the president prorogued the meeting till eight o'clock the next morning. This adjournment he performed in defiance

"Paris, July 7, 1815."

him to maintain the literal perma