There is no doubt that the genius that had sent Napoleon to victory after victory with almost clairvoyant intelligence was now failing. He lacked decision and his generals were not trained to help him. He made blunder after blunder coldly disheartening to sorrowful France. “Have the people of Paris gone crazy?” he cried angrily when he heard that public prayers were being offered for the success of the campaign. Prayers were needed. The “army of boys,” all that Napoleon could raise after the disastrous retreat from Moscow, was defeated at Leipsic late in 1813, and the allies--England, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Austria--pressed upon Paris both from the north and the south. The city was no longer guarded by defensible walls and her reliance could be only in her garrison of about twenty-five thousand men. Marie Louise, the regent, fled from the city on March 29, 1814, and on the next day Napoleon left Fontainebleau at the head of a few cavalry to lend his aid, but found that the city already had yielded. On the thirty-first the King of Prussia and the Czar entered Paris on the north by the faubourg Saint Martin, finding a welcome from the white-cockaded royalists. Within three weeks Napoleon had abdicated and had started for his modest throne on the island of Elba, and a fortnight later Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, made his formal entry. The people, trained to Napoleon’s magnificence, looked coldly on the fat, plainly dressed elderly man who drove to the Tuileries in a carriage belonging to his predecessor, whose arms had been badly erased and imperfectly covered by those of the Bourbons. Paris was glad to be rid of the man it had come to look upon as a vampire draining the strength of France to feed his personal ambition, yet the city by no means enjoyed the presence of the allies. They insisted on the return to Italy of many of the art treasures on which the Parisians had come to look with the pride of possession. There were constant quarrels of citizens with the invading officers and the townsfolk were nettled at the frank curiosity with which they and their [Illustration: NAPOLEON’S TOMB.] city were scrutinized by the many travelers of all nations who poured in immediately. It was then that a rope was laid about the neck of Napoleon on the Vendôme column and he was lowered to the ground to be replaced by the Bourbon flag.