The effect was electric. The soldiers of Macdonald could no longer restrain their long-smothered enthusiasm. They, at least, had sworn no fealty to King Louis. With a shout they responded, and, waving their caps and muskets in welcome, tore aside the barricade, and rushed to meet the Emperor, leaving the marshal on horseback, and by the roadside _alone_. The 4th Hussars wished to seize and deliver him to the Emperor, but, animated by a high sense of chivalry, his own dragoons, who had come with him from Lyons, would by no means permit this, and drew their ranks across the road until he escaped. He returned immediately to Paris, and was desired by Louis XVIII. to command in the army formed under the Duc de Berri. This army proved, however, but a phantom, as the soldiers composing it almost to a man joined the banner of the Emperor. Left thus alone, Macdonald repaired to the unfortunate king, and on the night of the 20th of March accompanied him on his retreat to Menin; but he again returned to Paris, where pleading his oath of fidelity, sworn by the Emperor's desire to the Bourbons, he declined to serve the imperial cause or become one of the Chamber of Peers under it--a refusal, doubtless, most painful to one who knew that he owed all his rank and honours to Napoleon. Relinquishing all these, as it were, for a time, the marshal duke enrolled himself as a simple grenadier in the National Guard of Paris, and as such did military duty during the usurpation, as it was named; and in the plain uniform of this corps, divested of medals, crosses, and epaulettes, he appeared as a private sentinel before Louis XVIII. on his return to the Tuileries. On the capitulation of Paris to the allies the remains of Napoleon's army, then encamped beyond the Loire, were placed under the command of Macdonald, whose instructions were to remodel and re-organize the regiments, a difficult and arduous mission, which he accomplished with equal fidelity and address; but the soldiers, dispirited by the defeat at Waterloo, awed into submission by the flight of their idol Napoleon, and the presence of the overwhelming masses of the allies, obeyed him in silence and dejection. All was over now with the Bonapartists. The army of the Empire was broken and scattered, like the marshal dukes who had led it to those glories and conquests of which there remained but the memory now! In the words of M. Fleury de Chabulon, "Marshal Ney was the first to give the alarm and despair of the safety of his country. Marshal Soult had abjured his command, Marshal Massena, exhausted by victory, had no longer the strength required by circumstances; Marshal Macdonald, deaf to the war-cry of his old companions, left his sword peacefully in its scabbard; Marshal Jourdan was on the Rhine; Marshal Mortier had the gout at Beaumont; Marshal Suchet evinced repugnance and irresolution; and finally, the Marshals Davoust and Grouchy no longer enjoyed the confidence of the army."