As soon as the Allies entered the Netherlands after the French reverses of 1812 and 1813, they were made welcome. Between four and five o'clock on the evening of February 1, 1814, the French rearguard left Brussels; and about an hour later the first Cossacks, a party of half a dozen, rode in by the Porte de Louvain, passed quickly through the city, and went on after the French army. These scouts were followed by a large force of cavalry and infantry. The Prussian infantry found billets, and the Cossacks lay down and slept beside their horses on the snow in the Rue des Fripiers,[41] the townsfolk standing near, and wondering at their strange dress and language. Soon the town was full of soldiers, some of whom remained there, while others pressed on to France. The news that Paris had capitulated reached Brussels on March 3. The bells were rung, cannon were fired, and the houses were illuminated. Then, one after another, the towns which still held out surrendered. Carnot alone, who was in command of Antwerp, gave no sign of yielding; but in the middle of April, while the last arrangements were being made for the departure of Napoleon to Elba, he pulled down the tricolor, and the great stronghold on the Scheldt fell, with the rest of Belgium, into the hands of the Allies. It was almost a fixed rule of international politics in Europe, when some great war was finished and some treaty of peace was on the boards, that people should ask each other what was to be done next with the Catholic Netherlands. The rich inheritance of the House of Burgundy was passed from hand to hand by Austrians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen, without any statesman ever considering what might be the wishes of the inhabitants; and now, in 1814, the Great Powers, at first in secret, resolved to set up a new State, consisting of Holland and Belgium united, and call it the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with William of Orange-Nassau on the throne. He came to Brussels in July, 1814, not yet as King, for the Congress of Vienna was to settle the map of Europe and parcel out the spoils, but as Governor on behalf of the Allies; and at the end of the year his son, the Prince Royal, took command of the allied army in Belgium. They had a gay time in Brussels during that winter of 1814-15, as everyone knows. But on March 1 the Great Man landed in France; and a fortnight later the Orange flag was hoisted in Brussels, and the new King announced that he had not intended to assume the royal authority till the work of the Congress at Vienna was finished, and all their decisions could be executed together, but that the recent event in France had made him resolve to wait no longer. On April 5 the Duke of Wellington came post-haste from Vienna, and went to live in a house next door to the Hôtel de France, at the corner of the Rue de la Montagne du Pare and the Rue Royale.