Everywhere the adventurer received a hearty
welcome, which attested at once the unpopularity of the Bourbons and
the singular attractiveness of his own personality. The French people,
being but human, put imagination in the place of reason. Without firing
a shot in his defense, Napoleon's bodyguard swelled until it became an
army. Marshal Ney, the "bravest of the brave," who had taken the oath
of allegiance to the Bourbons and had promised Louis XVIII that he
would bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage, deserted to him with
6000 men, and on 20 March the emperor jauntily entered the capital.
Louis XVIII himself, who had assured his parliament that he would die
in defense of his throne, was already in precipitate flight toward the
Belgian frontier.
[Sidenote: Napoleon and France]
Napoleon clinched his hold upon the French people by means of an astute
manifesto which he promptly published. "He had come," he declared, "to
save France from the outrages of the returning nobles; to secure to the
peasant the possession of his land; to uphold the rights won in 1789
against a minority which sought to reestablish the privileges of caste
and the feudal burdens of the last century; France had made trial of
the Bourbons; it had done well to do so, but the experiment had failed;
the Bourbon monarchy had proved incapable of detaching itself from its
worst supports, the priests and nobles; only the dynasty which owed its
throne to the Revolution could maintain the social work of the
Revolution.
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