"Taking into consideration that, instead of reigning with a sole view to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people, according to the terms of his oath, Napoleon has completed the misfortunes of the country by his refusal to treat on conditions which the national interest obliged him to accept and which did not compromise the honour of France; by his abuse of all the means entrusted to him in men and money; by his abandonment of the wounded without aid, medical requisites, or supplies; by various measures which resulted in the ruin of the towns, the depopulation of the rural districts, famine and infectious disease; "Taking into consideration that, owing to all these causes, the Imperial Government established by the Senatus-Consultum of the 28 Floréal Year XII., or 18 May 1804, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest desires of all Frenchmen call into being an order of things of which the first result would be the restoration of general peace, and which would also mark the epoch of a solemn reconciliation between all the States of the great family of Europe, the Senate declares and decrees as follows: Napoleon deposed from the throne; hereditary right abolished in his family; the French people and the army released from their oath of fidelity to him." The Roman Senate was less harsh when it declared Nero a public enemy: history is but a repetition of the same facts applied to varying men and times. Can one picture to one's self the Emperor reading this official document at Fontainebleau? What must he have thought of what he had done, and of the men whom he had summoned to be his accomplices in his oppression of our liberties? When I published my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_, could I have expected to see it amplified and converted into a decree of deposition by the Senate? What prevented those legislators, in the days of prosperity, from discovering the evils of which they reproached Bonaparte with being the author, from perceiving that the Constitution had been violated? What zeal suddenly seized these mutes for "the liberty of the press"? How did they, who had overwhelmed Napoleon with adulation upon his return from each of his wars, now come to find that he had undertaken those wars "only in the interest of his own unmeasured ambition"? How did they, who had flung him so many conscripts to devour, suddenly melt at the thought of the wounded soldiers "abandoned without aid, medical requisites, or supplies"? There are times at which contempt should be but frugally dispensed, because of the large number of those in need of it: I pity them for this moment, because they will need it again during and after the Hundred Days. [Sidenote: By the Decree of the Senate.]