Meanwhile the consequences of his intrigue were strange and various. The army received the news of what was going on at Oporto with puzzled surprise. Of those who were not present at the centre of affairs, some refused to believe the stories that reached them, and merely observed that the Marshal was not such a fool as to take in hand a plan that was both treasonable to his master and preposterous in itself[330]. Others, particularly his personal enemies, not only credited the information but began to concert measures for resisting him if he should try to carry out his scheme. This party was very strong among the officers of Junot’s old army of Portugal, who had been transferred in large numbers to the 2nd Corps. They disliked the expedition, had been prophesying disaster from the first, and had criticized every move of the Marshal. Now they found in the news of his intrigue another excuse for running counter to his orders. There is good reason for believing that Loison and Delaborde had actually conferred on the necessity for seizing and imprisoning the Marshal if he should take the final step and allow himself to be proclaimed king. Both these generals were faithful adherents of Napoleon, and had no thought save that of serving their master. But there were other officers who watched the progress of affairs with very different eyes. [330] So writes Naylies, of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, who, being absent at Amarante and elsewhere, never saw the doings in Oporto: ‘Il s’est répandu dans l’armée qu’il aspirait à la souveraineté du pays: on en conçut d’abord quelques inquiétudes, qui furent bientôt dissipées’ (p. 119). There had existed in the French army from the day when the empire was first proclaimed, a party of malcontents who still regarded Bonaparte as a usurper, and were only biding their time till it might be safe to deal a blow at him. Hitherto his career had been so uniformly successful that no opportunity had arisen. But secret societies, of which the _Philadelphes_ was the best known, were at work all through the years of the Emperor’s reign: their one object was to be ready for a _coup d’état_ when the favourable moment should arrive. The history of these associations is so obscure that it is impossible to estimate their strength at any given time--no trustworthy historian ever arose from their ranks to tell the story of their schemes, when lips were unsealed by the fall of Napoleon[331]. It is only by the sudden appearance of phenomena like Malet’s conspiracy of 1812, and the plot which we are now about to describe, that the reality of the existence of these secret societies is proved. [331] Charles Nodier’s _Histoire des conspirations militaires sous l’Empire_ is unfortunately quite untrustworthy. He was never among the _Philadelphes_, and writes as a credulous and ill-informed outsider. Nevertheless there is a basis of fact underlying his work.