Throughout the two months there were negotiations for peace. They varied according to the success or failure of the emperor or the allies. Napoleon had reached a point where he would gladly have accepted the terms offered at the close of 1813. But those were withdrawn. France must come down to her limits in 1789. “What!” cried Napoleon, “leave France smaller than I found her? Never.” The frightful combination of forces closed about him steadily, with the deadly precision of the chamber of torture, whose adjustable walls imperceptibly, but surely, draw together, day by day, until the victim is crushed. On the 30th of March Paris capitulated. The day before, the Regent Marie Louise with the King of Rome and her suite had left the city for Blois. The allied sovereigns entered Paris on the 1st of April. As they passed through the streets, they saw multiplying, as they advanced, the white cockades which the _grandes dames_ of the Faubourg St. Germain had been making in anticipation of the entrance of the foreigner, and the only cries which greeted them as they passed up the boulevards were, “_Long live the Bourbons! Long live the sovereigns! Long live the Emperor Alexander_.” The allies were in Paris, but Napoleon was not crushed. Encamped at Fontainebleau, his army about him, the soldiers everywhere faithful to him, he had still a large chance of victory, and the allies looked with uneasiness to see what move he would make. It was due largely to the wit of Talleyrand that the standing ground which remained to the emperor was undermined. That wily diplomat, whose place it was to have gone with the empress to Blois, had succeeded in getting himself shut into Paris, and, on the entry of the allies, had joined Alexander, whom he had persuaded to announce that the allied powers would not treat with Napoleon nor with any member of his family. This was eliminating the most difficult factor from the problem. By his fine tact Talleyrand brought over the legislative bodies to this view. From the populace Alexander and Talleyrand feared nothing; it was too exhausted to ask anything but peace. Their most serious difficulty was the army. All over the country the cry of the common soldiers was, “Let us go to the emperor.” “The army,” declared Alexander, “is always the army; as long as it is not with you, gentlemen, you can boast of nothing. The army represents the French nation; if it is not won over, what can you accomplish that will endure?” Every influence of persuasion, of bribery, of intimidation, was used with the soldiers and generals. They were told in phrases which could not but flatter them; “You are the most noble of the children of the country, and you cannot belong to the man who has laid it waste.... You are no longer the soldiers of Napoleon; the Senate and all France release you from your oaths.”