When Lyons opened to him its gates, I was free: I spontaneously embraced his cause: it appeared to me, as to the immense number of Frenchmen, that of liberty, honour, and our country. The laws of Solon declared infamous those, who took no part in civil troubles. I followed their maxims. If the misfortunes of the 20th of March must fall on the heads of the guilty, these guilty, I repeat, will not be in the eye of posterity, the Frenchmen who abandoned the royal standard, to return to the ancient colours of their country; but those imprudent and senseless men, who, by their threats, their acts of injustice, and their outrages, compelled us to choose between insurrection and slavery, between honour and infamy. During the Hundred Days, there was no person to whom I did an ill turn; frequently I had an opportunity of doing good, and seized it with joy. Since the return of the regal government, I have lived tranquil and solitary; and, whether from forgetfulness, or from a sense of justice, I escaped in 1815 the persecutions, which the partisans and servants of Napoleon experienced. This explanation, or this apology, appeared to me necessary: it is right the reader should know, who it is that addresses him. I could have wished, to abstain from speaking of the royal government in the first part of this work: but it was impossible. It was necessary for me, prominently to exhibit the errors and faults of the king's ministers one by one, to render evident this truth, _that they were the sole authors of the 20th of March_. When elsewhere, as here, I say the government, I mean not to designate the King, but his ministers. In a constitutional monarchy, in which the ministers are responsible, we cannot, and ought not to confound them with the King. "It is from the King," said the keeper of the seals, when he proposed to the deputies of the nation the project of a law on the responsibility of ministers, "that every act of equity, protection, and clemency, and every regular employment of power, emanates: it is to the ministers alone, that abuses, injustice, and misconduct, are to be imputed." MEMOIRS, &c. &c. Until the close of the Spanish war, Napoleon, whether as the First Consul of the Republic, or as the Chief of the Empire, had never ceased to be the object of the love, the pride, and the confidence of the people. But the multitude neither judge, nor can judge of the actions of their rulers but from appearances which often mislead them in their judgment; and the loyalty of the nation then became enfeebled. The conduct of Napoleon was stigmatized as a series of hateful aggressions; the war, as an unjustifiable act of violence. Disaffection increased. Napoleon was assailed by the anger of his subjects, and, for the first time, they upbraided him with having spilt their blood, and wasted their riches, in gratifying his vain and culpable ambition.