“The 13th article provides that _les troupes étrangères_, (the foreign troops) shall not obstruct the carriage of provisions by land or water to the capital. “Thus it appears that every article in the convention relates exclusively to the operations of the different armies, or to the conduct of the allies and that of their generals, when they should enter Paris; and, as the duke of Wellington states in his dispatch of the 4th of July, with which he transmitted the convention to England, it ‘decided all the military points then existing at Paris, and touched nothing political[104].’ “But it appears clearly that, not only was this the Duke’s opinion of the convention at the time it was signed, but likewise the opinion of Carnot, of marshal Ney, and of every other person who had an interest in considering the subject. “Carnot says, in the _Exposé de la conduite politique de M. Carnot_, (page 43,) _Il fut résolu d’envoyer aux généraux anglais et prussiens une commission spéciale chargée de leur proposer une convention purement militaire, pour la remise de la ville de Paris entre leurs mains, en écartant toute question politique, puisqu’on ne pouvait préjuger quelles seraient les intentions des alliés, lorsqu’ils seraient réunis_. (It was decided to forward to the English and Prussian generals a special commission, to the purport of proposing to them a convention, purely military, for the surrender of the city of Paris into their hands, setting aside all political questions, since it was impossible to foresee what might be the ultimate intentions of the allies, when they should be assembled.) “It appears that marshal Ney fled from Paris in disguise, with a passport given to him by the duc d’Otrante, under a feigned name, on the 6th of July. He could not be supposed to be ignorant of the tenor of the 12th article of the convention; and he must then have known whether it was the intention of the parties who made it, that it should protect him from the measures which the king, then at St.-Denis, should think proper to adopt against him. “But if marshal Ney could be supposed ignorant of the intention of the 12th article, the duc d’Otrante, could not, as he was at the head of the provisional government, under whose authority the prince d’Eckmühl must have acted when he signed the convention[105]. “Would the duc d’Otrante have given a passport under a feigned name to marshal Ney, if he had understood the 12th article as giving the marshal any protection, excepting against measures of severity by the two commanders in chief?