your Majesty to
remain here. It is necessary to secure the Palace of the Tuileries
against a surprise, and to prepare it for resisting a siege, in which it
would be indispensable to use cannon. You must shut yourself up in your
palace, with the individuals of your household and the principal public
functionaries, while the Due d'Angoulome should go to Bordeaux, the Duc
de Berri to La Vendee, and Monsieur to, the Franche-Comte; but they must
set off in open day, and announce that they are going to collect
defenders for your Majesty.--[Monsieur, the brother of the King, the
Comte d'Artois later Charles X.]

". . . This is what I said to the King this morning, and I added that I
would answer for everything if my advice were followed. I am now going
to direct my aide de camp, Colonel Fabvier, to draw up the plan of
defence." I did not concur in Marmont's opinion. It is certainly
probable that had Louis XVIII. remained in his palace the numerous
defections which took place before the 20th of March would have been
checked and some persons would not have found so ready an excuse for
breaking their oaths of allegiance. There can be little doubt, too, but
Bonaparte would have reflected well before he attempted the siege of the
Tuileries.

--[Marmont (tome vii. p. 87) gives the full details of his scheme
for provisioning and garrisoning the Tuileries which the King was to
hold while his family spread themselves throughout the provinces.
The idea had nothing strange in it, for the same advice was given by
General Mathieu Dumas (Souvenirs, tome iii. p. 564), a man not
likely to suggest any rash schemes. Jaucourt, writing to
Talleyrand, obviously believed in the wisdom of the King's
remaining, as did the Czar; see Talleyrand's Correspondence, vol.
ii. pp. 94, 122, 129. Napoleon would certainly have been placed
in a strange difficulty, but a king capable of adopting such a
resolution would never have been required to consider it.]--

Marmont supported his opinion by observing that the admiration and
astonishment excited by the extraordinary enterprise of Napoleon and his
rapid march to Paris would be counterbalanced by the interest inspired by
a venerable monarch defying his bold rival and courageously defending his
throne. While I rendered full justice to the good intentions of the Duke
of Ragusa, yet I did not think that his advice could be adopted. I
opposed it as I opposed all the propositions