Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
On the morning of the 31st, the Royalists were seen in groups in the
Place Louis Quinze, the Garden of the Tuileries, the Boulevards, and
other public places. They distributed the proclamations of the allies,
and raised the long-forgotten cry of _Vive le Roi!_ At first, none save
those engaged in the perilous experiment, durst echo back a signal so
dangerous; but by degrees the crowds increased, the leaders got on
horseback, and distributed white cockades, lilies, and other emblems of
loyalty, displaying banners, at the same time, made out of their own
handkerchiefs. The ladies of their party came to their assistance. The
Princess of Leon, Vicomtesse of Chateaubriand, Comtesse of Choiseuil,
and other women of rank, joined the procession, distributing on all
hands the emblems of their party, and tearing their dress to make white
cockades, when the regular stock was exhausted. The better class of the
bourgeois began to catch the flame, and remembered their old royalist
opinions, and by whom they were defeated on the celebrated day of the
Sections, when Buonaparte laid the foundation of his fame in the
discomfiture of the national guard. Whole pickets began to adopt the
white, instead of the three-coloured cockade; yet the voices were far
from unanimous, and, on many points, parties of different principles met
and skirmished together in the streets. But the tendency to discord was
diverted, and the attention of the Parisians, of all classes and
opinions, suddenly fixed upon the imposing and terrible spectacle of the
army of the allies, which now began to enter the city.
[Sidenote: ENTRANCE OF THE ALLIES.]
The sovereigns had previously received, at the village of Pantin, the
magistrates of Paris, and Alexander had expressed himself in language
still more explicit than that of their proclamation. He made war, he
said, on Napoleon alone; one who had been his friend, but relinquished
that character to become his enemy, and inflict on his empire great
evils. He was not, however, come to retaliate those injuries, but to
make a secure peace with any government which France might select for
herself. "I am at peace," said the Emperor, "with France, and at war
with Napoleon alone."
These gracious expressions were received with the more gratitude by the
citizens of Paris, that they had been taught to consider the Russian
prince as a barbarous and vindictive enemy. The measure of restoring the
Bourbons seemed now to be regarded by almost every one, not particularly
connected with the dynasty of Napoleon, like a haven on the leeward,
unexpectedly open to a tempest-tossed and endangered vessel. There was
no loss of honour in adopting it, since the French received back their
own royal family--there was no compulsion, since they received them upon
their own free choice. They escaped from a great and imminent danger, as
if it had been by a bridge of gold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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