Napoleon seems to have been fully aware of French sentiment. In addition, he understood that not merely for this sufficient reason could he never be king of France in name or fact, but also that, having elsewhere harried and humiliated both peoples and dynasties in the name of revolutionary ideals, the masses had found him out, and were as much embittered as their rulers, believing him to be a charlatan using dazzling principles as a cloak for personal ambition. In May, 1813, the Emperor Francis, anxious to salve the lacerated pride of the Hapsburgs, produced a bundle of papers purporting to prove that the Bonapartes had once been ruling princes at Treviso. "My nobility," was Napoleon's stinging reply, "dates only from Marengo." He well knew that when the battle should be fought that would undo Marengo, his nobility would end. In other words, without solid French support he was nothing, and that support he was fully aware he could never have as king of France. If the influence of what France improperly believed to be solely the French Revolution were to be confined to her boundaries, revolutionary or otherwise, not only was Napoleon's prestige destroyed, but along with it would go French leadership in Europe. An imperial throne there must be, exerting French influence far abroad. What happened at Paris, therefore, may be regarded as a counter-feint to Metternich's effort at securing an advantageous peace from the French nation when it should have renounced Napoleon. It was merely an attempt to collect the remaining national strength, not now for aggressive warfare, but for the expulsion of hated invaders.