in the same iron toils, were seen writhing to the last in the grasp of their conquerors. Generals La Borde, Cassagne, and Cassan, had carefully trained the garrison to the declaration in favour of Bonaparte, which took place on the fourth of April. This declaration it was necessary to support by pointing the park of cannon, with lighted matches, against the city, and introducing privately at night a reinforcement of four companies of artillery. A few weeks antecedent, general Cassagne, as commandant ad interim of the tenth military division, had written a letter to the duke D'Angoulême, some phrases of which will be found below,* and which deserves to be collated with the report of general De Laborde, from Toulouse, of the 4th April, to the minister at war, sanctioned by general Cassagne. The temper and attitude of the population of Bordeaux on hearing of the debarkation of Bonaparte, the courageous deportment of the duchess D'Angoulême in that city, the measures of seduction and violence pursued by generals Clausel and Decaen,† and the revolt of the troops, were so amply detailed in all our gazettes of the day, as to render it needless for us to dwell upon them. Montpelier and Nismes were reduced at the same time and in the same manner as Bordeaux and Thoulouse. On the ninth of March, the duke d'Angoulême received, at Bordeaux, the intelligence of the landing of Bonaparte. He immediately concerted with the military about him, an extensive plan for making head in the rear of the invader, and preserving the South from his yoke. The execution of this plan depended, however, upon the cooperation of the generals commanding the troops in that quarter, and these-particularly marshal Massena and general Gardannewhile they continued to maintain with him an active correspondence full of assurances of inviolable fidelity, studied only to obstruct his progress and throw him into the hands of his enemy. His march to Valence was in some sort triumphant, so eagerly did the inhabitants of the South flock to his standard, and such was the enthusiasm of the national guard by whom he was followed. But he was doomed to experience the most disgusting treachery on every side, and soon, from the defection of the regular troops, upon whom he counted, obliged to retreat to Montelimart. Pursued by general Gilly who, with a strong imperial corps, occupied Pont Saint Esprit, he here found every avenue shut to his escape. Nothing remained but to capitulate, and this was done on condition of impunity to his followers, and permission to himself to embark at the port of Cette. General Decaen is soon after entrusted by the emperor with the command of the 9th and 10th military divisions. of which marshal Soult was honorary governor, as the most to be dreaded, was the best secured, and the duke had but time to embark at Nantz on the 26th, to escape captivity. The troops and the emissaries of Bonaparte moving in every direction in considerable numbers, precluded all opportunity of combined or concerted resistance. General Morand, one of his aid-decamps, was deputed, at the head of several columns, to patrol the west by forced marches, and overawe the inhabitants with a mock display of power and resolution. The general published on the 3d of April, at Nantz, a proclamation worthy of any one of his predecessors of 1796, or of the era of '93. In point of ribaldry, fanfaronade and bombast of every kind, there is nothing beyond it, even in the reports of Barrere, or the addresses of the revolutionary committee to the unfortunate, but noble peo The convention was ratified in form. on the 8th of April, by general Gilly, styling himself commander in chief of the imperial army of the south, and as such, acting of course with full powers. Yet, general Grouchy, charged also with the pursuit of the royal corps, refused, on his approach, to permit the execution of that part of the capitulation which concerned the prince himself, whom he declared his prisoner, until the will of Bonaparte on the subject could be known. For this act Grouchy received immediately the staff of marshal of the empire, with instructions, however, to cause the duke to be safely escorted to Cette, and there to be allowed to embark. The motive of this seeming generosity cannot be mistaken. The new position of the usurper both as to his domestic and foreign relations, made it too hazardous a policy either to consign the prince to the fate of the duke d'Engheinple, who have been so often the or to retain him in France. victims of these blustering apostles of despotism. General Morand tells them that a numerous army had been confided to him, by his august and magnanimous emperor, which was, then, traversing, in divisions, their cities and fields, to secure tranquillity; that the blood flowing in the veins of the brave soldiers, was the most noble and pure; that they had done more for the glory of France, in twenty-five years,than their ancestors had done for four centuries; that the miracle wrought in the return of Bonaparte proved him to be the man of Providence; that he had arrived in his capital, * Whoever has read the interesting Memoirs of Madame La Roche-Jacquelin will readily concur in giving this epithet to the Vendeans. borne like a father upon the shoulders of his people, amid their shouts of joy and their benedic tions, and shielded by the buckler of the Eternal; that full of the thought of his great destinies, inaccessible to all human passions, he comes to snatch them from assassins, &c. &c. &c. Thus was the West kept down, soon, however, to break out into eruptions which it would have required more of the glitter of bayonets, and the phantasmagoria of proclamations to quell, had not the buckler of the Eternal been strangely withdrawn from the man of Providence, and his miraculous reign brought to a speedy close. In the North, as elsewhere, the garrisons early settled the question of submission for the inhabitants. Marshal Jourdan had been entrusted with the command of the 15th military division, and fixed his head quarters at Rouen. We have an order of the day of the marshal of the 10th March, and an address to the king in the name of all the military of his division, of the same date, which denounce Bonaparte as a despot and public enemy, swear inviolable fidelity to the Bourbons, and pledge the last drop of blood in their defence. Yet, at the end of the same month, the banners of the "public enemy" waved throughout the 15th military division, and on the 5th June, we find the marshal himself-member of his house of peers, under a new double oath of allegiance in his military and civil character. In his "order of the day" just cited the marshal adds, "The ridiculous enterprize of Bonaparte tends to deliver over our country to the horrors of civil war, and to bring the foreign troops back upon our territory." He had, thus, as every intelligent officer of the army must have likewise had, VOL. I. a clear foresight of the fatal conisequences of the return of Bonaparte. This circumstance constitutes mainly the guilt of their concurrence, while the mode of it is so shockingly disgustful. Who but the most selfish or reckless of men could consent to engage in so desperate a game at the expense of country? What was there in the administration or tendency of the government of Louis XVIII. to be compared with the evils incident to a new struggle with all Europe without even taking into the account the great probability of his prompt restoration under circumstances still more favorable to the success of the pretended designs of his family? At Caen, the emperor was in. stalled on the 22d March, by a proclamation with the signature of marshal Augereau, whose ardent address to the army in favour of the Bourbons, of the 14th April, 1814, remains upon record in the files of the Moniteur. The duke of Albufera, marshal Suchet, the royal governor of Alsace, hailed his old master in an enthusiastic order of the day, on the 23d, at Strasbourg; planted the tri-coloured ensigns throughout his jurisdiction; became a member of the imperial house of peers on the 5th June; and so far forgot Napoleon, after his second abdication, as to hasten again in August, from Roanne to Paris, to bear to Louis XVIII. the homage of his personal devotion. At Orleans, general Pa◄ jol, the commandant, hoisted the tri-coloured flag, on the 21st of March, but marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, with general Dupont and a part of his division, entered the city immediately after, put Pajol under arrest, and re-established nominally, the authority of the king. In the course of three days, G tiers of France, according to arrangements concluded at the island of Elba, between him, England and Austria; that the empress Maria Louisa and the king of Rome were to remain at Vienna as hostages, until he had given a free constitution to France, and executed all the conditions of the treaty; after which she was to join him with her son at Paris." In the great scheme of delusion, with which the hero came already armed from the island of Elba, the points upon which be laid most stress, were—an amicable understanding between him and the two great powers, Austria and England; the re-establishment of liberty in France, in the shape of a limited monarchy; and a complete reformation of his foreign policy, founded on a supposed radical change in his charac ter and views. By means of the first, he hoped to intimidate the friends of the royal cause; of the second-to propitiate the mass of the people, and to afford a pretext to the soi-disant republicans to devote themselves to his service; of the third, to conciliate the public opinion of Europe, and dupe the foreign cabinets. All his old auxiliaries in the innumerable devices of imposture† which entered into his original plan of domination, were now set to work on ad No delay occurred, nor were any means neglected which sagacity and diligence could supply, in providing, after the arrival of Bonaparte at Paris, for the submission of every part of the kingdom. Personages of more authority than could be found in the course of his march, were sent forth as missionaries, clothed with ample power of violence, menace, cajolery, and fiction ad libitum. General Drouet count d'Erlon, but a few days before the royal commandant of the 16th military division, and who as we have said, presided at the acquital of general Excelmans, was deputed to Lille, and caused the return of Bonaparte to be celebrated in the cathedral on Easter Sunday, by a te deum, at which marshal Ney most devoutly assisted. Ney was also, on a mission, the honorable nature of which, and of the others, may be understood from the following statement, which he made on his trial. "I set out from Paris on the 23d of March, by order of Bonaparte, for Lille: I received in that city a very long letter from him,. in which he directed me to travel the whole northern and eastern frontier of France, from Lille as far as Landau. I exercised the character of extraordinary commissary. My in-force of circumstances--that is, of imstructions expressly enjoined it upon me to declare every where that the emperor neither would nor could wage war beyond the fron *“ In order to engage the public opinion," says Fouché, in his late plaintive epistle to the duke of Wellington, 66 Napoleon was forced to announce that England and Austria supported him." Such is the moral code of the revolutionary school. Convenience is always compulsion. Nothing can withstand the mediate interests, or desperate passions. *"Considering," says his Senate in their act for his deposition, of April 3d, 1814, "that he has always made 1 dresses, and replies, circulars, and reports, adapted to give a temporary credit to the falsehoods abovementioned, and to bring the Bourbons into disrepute by the repetition of the story of feudal rights, tithes, priest-craft, &c. We have seen that he had the hardihood to announce, in his decree of the 18th March, from Lyons, that "the dearly beloved" spouse and son were to be crowned in Paris in the course of the ensuing month of May. This tale, imagined to produce the belief of an understanding with Austria, was repeated in every possible form. He had selected Carnot as his minister of the interior-obviously to secure for his domestic frauds the support of the reputation of the inflexible republican,upon whose subserviency to any established government, he knew he could rely. Accordingly, in the first circular, dated 22d March, which the new minister of the interior addressed to the prefects, he did not hesitate to declare that "the emperor would soon present his august spouse, and the prince, the hope of the nation, to his people; that they would be crowned in the midst of the field of May, and take their place on the throne, by the side of the great Napoleon." In addition to this official statement, the newspapers were made to speak of couriers from Austria, who announced the speedy presence of these precious pledges, while, throughout the departments, and even within ten leagues of Paris, bulletins were use of the press to fill France and Eu rope with misrepresent; tions, false maxims, doctrines favourable to despotism, and insults on foreign governments," &c. circulated, containing an account of their arrival, and of all the ceremonies that had accompanied their entrance into the capital. There was a littleness in some of the expedients of imposition practised on this head, which beggars all description, and must, indeed, be nearly without parallel unless in the transactions of the native governments of Corsica. We have it from undoubted authority, that the principal tradesmen of Paris, especially the milliners and jewellers, were instructed, and for a long time continued, to affect to be monopolized by preparations for the re-appearance of the empress in surpassing splendour. The government entered directly into this petty game of inuendos. "The apartment of the empress in the Thuileries," says the official journal of the 6th of April—“ is · now receiving its furniture;" and, earlier, on the 31st March-" The equipages of the empress set out from Versailles the 27th of this month," &c. The tenacity of the emperor Francis in refusing intercourse of whatever kind with his son-in-law, and his full, hearty concurrence in all the hostile measures of the league, of which he was, in some sort, the chief, are now facts of admitted notoriety. We beg the reader not to lose sight of them, in perusing the following series of extracts from the official journals of Bonaparte. Journal de l'Empire of the 30th March "M. de Montron has been sent to Vienna with important despatches."-Of the 2d. April. The emperor received yesterday at his levee the most favourable news from Vienna."-Of the 29th April." The emperor. of Austria has refused to sign the manifesto against France."-Mo |