Alongside this astonishing invasion by a single individual, one must set another, a repercussion of the first: the Legitimacy was seized by stupor; the paralysis at the heart of the State spread through its limbs and rendered France immobile. For twenty days, Bonaparte advanced stage by stage; his eagles flew from steeple to steeple, and throughout his journey of six hundred miles, the Government, master of all, with money and labour at its disposal, had neither the time nor the means to blow a bridge, or fell a tree, to delay for even an hour the advance of this man whom the population chose not to oppose, but whom they no longer followed.

This torpor on the part of the Government seemed so much the more deplorable in that public opinion in Paris was extremely confused; it was open to any suggestion, despite Marshal Ney’s defection. Benjamin Constant wrote in the newspaper:

‘Having scourged our nation, he left French soil. Who did not believe he had left forever? Suddenly he appears again, promising the French liberty, victory and peace. The author of the most tyrannical constitution ever to bind France, does he now speak of liberty? Yet he is the one who, for fourteen years, has eroded and destroyed liberty. He has not the justification of lineage, the customary excuse of power; he was not born to the purple. He has enslaved his fellow citizens, enchained his equals. He did not inherit power; he desired and meditated tyranny: what liberty can he promise? Are we not a thousand times freer than under his Empire? He promises victory, and has abandoned his troops three times, in Egypt, Spain, and Russia, leaving his companions in arms to the triple agonies of cold, misery and despair. He has brought on France the humiliation of being invaded; he has lost the conquests we made prior to him. He promises peace yet his mere name is a signal for war. The nation so unfortunate as to serve him would become an object of hatred to all Europe; his triumph would be the beginning of mortal combat against the whole civilised world… He has nothing to re-claim or to offer. Who could he convince, who could he sway? Internal strife, external war, those are the gifts he brings us.’

Marshal Soult’s order of the day, dated the 8th of March 1815, followed Benjamin Constant’s ideas closely, in an outburst of loyalty:

‘Soldiers,

That man who recently abdicated, in the sight of all Europe, the power he had usurped, which he had used so fatefully, has landed on French soil which he should never have seen again.

What does he desire? Civil war: what does he seek? Traitors: where will he find them? Shall it be among those soldiers he has deceived and sacrificed so many times, wasting their bravery? Shall it be in the bosoms of those families whom his name alone fills with fear?

Bonaparte despises us enough to believe that we will desert our legitimate and beloved sovereign, to share the fate of a man who is no better than an adventurer. He believes it, the madman! And his last foolish act is to make it known.

Soldiers, the French army is the bravest in Europe, it will also be the most loyal.

Let us rally to the banner of the fleur-de-lis, to the voice of the father of the nation, of that worthy heir to the virtues of the great Henry. He himself decreed for you the duties which you have to fulfil. He places at your head that prince, a model of French knighthood, whose happy return to our country has already driven out the usurper, and who now by his presence will destroy the usurper’s sole and final hope.’

Louis XVIII appeared before the Chamber of Deputies on the 16th of March; it was a question of France and the world. When His Majesty entered, the Deputies and spectators in the gallery bared their heads and stood; their acclamations made the walls of the room shake. Louis XVIII climbed slowly to the throne; the Princes, Marshals and Captains of the Guard ranged themselves on either side of the King. The cries ceased; all were silent: in that hush, it was as though Napoleon’s distant tread could be heard. His Majesty, seated, looked at the assembly for a moment and uttered this speech in a firm voice:

‘Gentlemen,

‘At this moment of crisis, when a public enemy has penetrated one region of my kingdom and threatens the liberty of all the rest, I come amongst you to tighten further the bonds which, by uniting you and I, create the strength of the State; I come to address you and reveal my feelings and wishes to all France.

I have seen my country once more; I have achieved her reconciliation with the foreign powers, who, be in no doubt, will stay faithful to the treaties which have brought us peace; I have laboured for the happiness of my people; I have received, I do receive, every day the most touching marks of their affection; could I end my career more gloriously, at sixty years of age, than by dying in her defence?

I fear nothing now as regards myself, but I fear for France: he who comes to light the torch of civil war amongst us carries also the scourge of foreign war; he comes to set our country once more beneath his iron yoke; he comes to destroy finally the Constitutional Charter I have granted you, that Charter, which will be my finest title in the eyes of posterity, that Charter which every French person cherishes and which I swear now to maintain: let us rally round it then.’

The King was still speaking when a cloud deepened the gloom in the chamber; all eyes turned to the ceiling to discover the reason for this sudden darkness. When the monarch and legislator ceased to speak, cries of: ‘Long live the King!’ rose again in the midst of tears. ‘The Assembly,’ reported the Moniteur accurately, ‘electrified by the King’s sublime speech, were standing, hands outstretched towards the throne. Nothing could be heard but the words; ‘Long Live the King! Our lives for the King! The King: in life and death!’ repeated in a delirium that all French hearts shared.’

Indeed, the spectacle was filled with pathos: an old infirm King, who, as a reward for the massacre of his family and twenty-three years of exile, had brought France peace, liberty, and an amnesty for all the insults and all the misfortunes; this patriarch of sovereigns came to tell the nation’s Deputies that at his age, having seen his country once more, he could find no finer end to his career than dying in defence of his people! The Princes swore loyalty to the Charter; the belated pledges were terminated by those of the Prince de Condé and the adherence of the father of the Duc d’Enghien. That heroic race about to be extinguished, that race of patrician swords, seeking in liberty a shield against a younger, longer and crueller plebeian sword, offered, in the light of a multitude of memories, something sad in the extreme.

Louis XVIII’s speech, once known beyond those walls, inspired inexpressible transports of joy. Paris was wholly Royalist, and remained so during the Hundred Days. Women in particular supported the Bourbons.

The young today adore Bonaparte’s memory, because they are humiliated by the role the present Government forces France to play in Europe; youth, in 1814, welcomed the Restoration, because it felled tyranny and elevated liberty. In the ranks of the Royalist cause were to be found Monsieur Odilon Barrot, a large number of the students of the School of Medicine, and the whole of the Law School; the latter addressed the following petition to the Chamber of Deputies on the 13th of March:

‘Gentlemen,

‘We offer ourselves for King and country; the whole LawSchool asks permission to march. We will not abandon our sovereign, or our Constitution. Loyal to French honour, we ask you for weapons. The feeling of affection we have towards Louis XVIII matches yours in constancy and devotion. We desire no more chains, we desire liberty. We will have it: they come to tear it from us: we will defend it to the death. Long live the King! Long live the Constitution!’

In this energetic language, natural and sincere, you can feel the generosity of youth and its love of liberty. Those who tell us today that the Restoration was received by France with sadness and disgust are either ambitious individuals promoting their party, or young men who knew nothing of Bonaparte’s oppression, or old revolutionary and Imperialist liars who, having applauded the return of the Bourbons with everyone else, now insult, according to their custom, whatever has fallen, and return instinctively to assassination, a police state, and servitude.