The first victim put upon his trial was General Labedoyère, who commanded the regiment at Grenoble that deserted its post and joined Napoleon in his famous march from Cannes to Paris. His defection had given the first signal to the universal revolt against the King’s authority that followed, and was one of the causes of the Emperor’s success; the partisans of the King were therefore more than ordinarily embittered against him. He admitted the facts of his treachery; he contented himself by defending his honour by declaring that, though he might have been misled by illusions, by recollections of his former master, and by a false idea of honour and of what was due to his country, he was no traitor or conspirator, and hoped that his death might atone his error. He was shot on the 19th of August. Next day Marshal Ney, who had been previously apprehended in the Department of Lot, was examined at the Conciergerie; but his case was adjourned till later in the year. Meanwhile the King’s Government was overthrown, in September, and an ultra-Royalist Ministry established, with the avowed intention of showing no clemency to the proscribed. Ney’s trial accordingly took place early in November, and he was at first arraigned before a court-martial of four Marshals.[68] But the latter decided that the prisoner, being a Peer, was entitled to be judged by his peers, and it devolved upon the Upper House to do so. His guilt was clearly established, and it was rendered all the more heinous by the protestations of loyalty with which he quitted Louis when he left Paris to arrest the progress of Napoleon, promising to bring the latter back in an iron cage. For some days he remained true to his duty, but, though a brave man, he was singularly impulsive, and was not endowed with much discretion or judgment. A frenzy of delirium had seized hold of the Royal troops, who were flocking to Napoleon’s standards, and Ney began to fear that he had not sufficient force to resist his former master; his moral courage began to fail. Dreading, above all things, a civil war, he resolved that no step of his should precipitate such a calamity; believing that the cause of the Bourbons was irretrievably lost, and, carried away by the violent excitement of the moment, he forgot his promises and the trust reposed in him, and wildly threw in his lot with the Emperor.[69] Thereby he dealt a final blow to the fortunes of the King. For his defence, it was pleaded that the Military Convention of the 3rd, had guaranteed that no person in the capital should be disturbed or called to account, for his conduct or political opinions; but the Chamber refused to entertain the plea, and he was condemned to death by one hundred and thirty-nine votes against seventeen (December 6th). Strenuous efforts were made to obtain the prisoner’s release on account of the Convention, and applications were addressed to the Duke of Wellington, Lord Liverpool, and even to the Prince Regent on the subject.