there
were continually upwards of 20,000 people assembled before his windows;
whose acclamations were unceasing. It would never have been supposed
that the Emperor had even for a moment been absent from the, country.
He issued orders, signed decrees, reviewed the troops, as if nothing had
happened. The military corps, the public bodies, and all classes of
citizens, eagerly came forward to tender their homage and their services.
The Comte d'Artois, who had hastened to Lyons, as the Duc and Duchesse
d'Augouleme had done to Bourdeaux, like them in vain attempted to make a
stand. The Mounted National Guard (who were known Royalists) deserted
him at this crisis, and in his flight only one of them chose to follow
him. Bonaparte refused their services when offered to him, and with a
chivalrous feeling worthy of being recorded sent the decoration of the
Legion of Honour to the single volunteer who had thus shown his fidelity
by following the Duke.

As soon as the Emperor quitted Lyons he wrote to Ney, who with his army
was at Lons-le-Saulnier, to come and join him. Ney had set off from the
Court with a promise to bring Napoleon, "like a wild beast in a cage, to
Paris." Scott excuses Ney's heart at the expense of his head, and
fancies that the Marshal was rather carried away by circumstances, by
vanity, and by fickleness, than actuated by premeditated treachery, and
it is quite possible that these protestations were sincerely uttered when
Ney left Paris, but, infected by the ardour of his troops, he was unable
to resist a contagion so much in harmony with all his antecedents, and to
attack not only his leader in many a time of peril, but also the
sovereign who had forwarded his career through every grade of the army.

The facts of the case were these:--

On the 11th of March Ney, being at Besancon, learned that Napoleon was at
Lyons. To those who doubted whether his troops would fight against their
old comrades he said, "They shall fight! I will take a musket from a
grenadier and begin the action myself! I will run my sword to the hilt
in the body of the first man who hesitates to fire." At the same time he
wrote to the Minister of War at Paris that he hoped to see a fortunate
close to this mad enterprise.

He then advanced to Lons-le-Saulnier, where, on the night between the
13th and 14th of March, not quite three days after his vehement
protestations of fidelity, he received, without hesitation, a letter from
Bonaparte, i