Part 16

Orders and counter-orders were given on the one hand, and revoked on the other. Schemes of every kind, all equally inconsiderate and impracticable, were approved and rejected, resumed and abandoned.

The chambers and the government had ceased to act in unison. The ministers complained of the deputies; the deputies publicly demanded of the King the dismissal of his ministers, and that he would place around himself men, "who have been the constant defenders of justice and liberty, and whose names shall be a guarantee for the interest of all."

1. To dismiss MM. de Blacas, Montesquiou, Dambray, and Ferrand:

2. To call to the Chamber of Peers forty new members, chosen exclusively from men of the revolution:

3. To confer on M. de la Fayette, the command of the national guard: and

4. To despatch patriotic commissioners, to stimulate the attachment, the zeal, and the fidelity of the troops.]

The same disorder, the same disunion, manifested themselves every where at the same time: there was only one point in which people agreed; that all was lost.

In fact so it was.

The people, whom the nobles had humbled, vexed, or terrified by haughty and tyrannical pretensions;

They who had acquired national domains, whom they had wished to dispossess;

The protestants, who had been sacrificed;

The magistrates, who had been turned out;

The persons in office, who had been reduced to want;

The soldiers, officers, and generals, who had been despised and ill-treated;

The revolutionists, who had been incessantly insulted and menaced;

The friends of justice, and of liberty, who had been abused;

All the French, whom the government had reduced, as it were, in spite of themselves, to wish for another order of things; eagerly embraced the cause of Napoleon, which had become the national cause through the faults of the government.

Royalty had no defenders left but women and their handkerchiefs; priests without influence; nobles without courage; body guards without youth, or without experience.

The legions of the national guard, on which such great reliance had been placed, were reviewed by their colonel-general: he harangued them on the charter, and the tyranny of Bonaparte; he told them, that he would march at their head, and said: "Let those, who love their King, come out from their ranks, and follow me." Scarcely two hundred obeyed the order.

The royal volunteers, who had made so much noise, when they expected to be victors without incurring any peril, had gradually dispersed; and those, whom the approach of danger had neither intimidated nor cooled, were too few to have any weight in the balance.

The government had one sole and last hope remaining: it was, dare I say it? that Napoleon would be assassinated.

The same men who had preached up a civil war, and declared, that it would be shameful not to have one; soiled the walls of Paris with provocations to murder, and fanatic praises bestowed beforehand on murderers. Emissaries, mixing in the various groups of the people, endeavoured to put the poniard into the hands of the new Jacques Clements. A public act had proscribed Napoleon; a reward was publicly offered for his head. This call for a crime, which indignant France first heard from the assassins of Coligny, was repeated by men, who, like them, had the sacred words of morality, humanity, and religion, continually in their mouths, and who, like them, thirsted only after vengeance and blood.

But while they were conspiring at Paris to assassinate Napoleon, he peaceably pursued his triumphant march.

Quitting Grenoble on the 9th, he came that night and slept at Burgoing. ""The crowd and the enthusiasm continued to increase: "We have long expected you," said all these brave fellows to the Emperor; "at length you are come, to deliver France from the insolence of the nobility, the pretensions of the priests, and the disgrace of a foreign yoke."

""The Emperor, being fatigued, was in his calash, the horse walking, surrounded by a crowd of peasants, singing songs, that expressed the noble sentiments of these brave Dauphinese. "Ah!" said the Emperor, "I here find again the sentiments, which twenty years ago led me to hail France by the name of the great nation! Yes, you are still the great nation, and you shall ever be so."""

They approached Lyons: the Emperor had sent his emissaries before him, who informed him, that the Count d'Artois, the Duke of Orleans, and Marshal Macdonald, had determined to defend the city, and that they were going to break down the bridges de la Guillotiere and Moraud. ""The Emperor laughed at these ridiculous preparations: he could not doubt the disposition of the Lyonese, still less those of the soldiers; yet he gave orders to General Bertrand, to collect boats at the Mirbel, intending to cross the river in the night, and cut off the roads to Moulins and Macon for the Prince, who wanted to prevent his passing the Rhone. At four o'clock a reconnoitring party of the fourth hussars arrived at la Guillotiere, and were received with shouts of "Long live the Emperor!" by the immense population of the suburb, that has always been distinguished for its attachment to its country.""

The Emperor immediately countermanded the passage at Mirbel, and desirous of availing himself of this first enthusiastic movement, as at Grenoble, galloped forward to the suburb of Guillotiere.

The Count d'Artois, less fortunate, could not even succeed in opposing to his adversary a shadow of defence.