The episode of "the Hundred Days" interrupted, but did not break up, the councils of the congress at Vienna. It cannot be said that Napoleon's escape from Elba took the negotiators altogether by surprise. They were already aware of his correspondence with the neighbouring shores of Italy, and his removal to St Helena or some other distant island had been proposed by the French government, though never discussed at the congress. Sir Neil Campbell, the British commissioner at Elba, had gone so far as to warn his government of Napoleon's suspected "plan," and to indicate, though erroneously, the place of his probable descent upon the Italian coast. Owing to an almost incredible want of precaution, he embarked on February 26 with the least possible disguise, and accompanied by 400 of his guards, on board his brig the _Inconstant_, eluded the observation of two French ships, and landed near Cannes on March 1. Thence he hastened across the mountains to Grenoble, passing unmolested, and sometimes welcomed, through districts where his life had been threatened but a few months before. The commandant of Grenoble was prepared to resist his further progress, but a heart-stirring appeal from Napoleon induced a regiment detached to oppose him to join his standard, and the rest of the garrison was brought over by Colonel Labedoyère, one of the officers who had conspired to bring him back. Thence he proceeded to Lyons, issuing decrees, scattering proclamations, and gathering followers at every stage. He was lavish of promises, not perhaps wholly insincere, that he would adopt constitutional government--already established by the charter of Louis XVIII.--and cease to wage aggressive wars. He relied unduly on the discontent provoked by the blind partisans of the Bourbons, who, it was said, had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. This was true, if the spirit of the restoration were to be measured by the parade of expiatory masses for the execution of royalists under the revolution, the ostentatious patronage of priests, the preference of returned _émigrés_ to well-tried servants of the republic and the empire, or the anticipated expulsion of landowners in possession of "national domains" for the purpose of dividing them among their old proprietors. All this naturally exasperated those who had imbibed the principles of the revolution, but it was more than compensated in the eyes of millions of Frenchmen by the cessation of conscription and the infinite blessings of peace. [Pageheading: _"THE HUNDRED DAYS."_]