A Provisional Government was set up in Paris on the evening of the 22nd of June, composed of five persons, among whom was Fouché, Duc d'Otranto, late Minister of Police under Napoleon, and one of his bitterest enemies. He had the address to be named President, and in the anarchy produced by the panic which the crisis created, he alone preserved his faculties unimpaired. Seizing the supreme control of the State during the moment of interregnum, he became dictator, and the sole and irresponsible advocate of his country’s cause. A Republican by conviction, a regicide, and holding to the extravagant tenets which were enunciated in 1789, he was far more keenly alive to his own immediate interests than to his avowed principles; and perceiving clearly that his credit and reward could best be secured by obliging France to accept—even against her will—a Bourbon _régime_, he devoted his great talents and his incomparable powers of intrigue to bring about the unconditional restoration of King Louis. His treachery was deeply resented by the nation, but what could they do? Napoleon had been abandoned, and there was no one to replace him,—none to form a patriotic administration, none to give effect to the national aspirations of the people, none to cope with the difficulties that had arisen, none to secure those terms which a proud and vigorous race had a right to expect, even when overwhelmed by adversity. In the universal prostration which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, Fouché, “one of the most hateful among the hateful tribunes of the Terror,”[10] reigned in France, an autocrat, hated by all, feared by all, and obeyed by all.[11] ----- Footnote 10: B: M. Guizot, _History of France, 1789-1848_ , edited by Madame de Witt, _née_ Guizot, viii. 231 (London, 1881). Footnote 11: Hooper, p. 286, etc. -----