are
defeated--King Joseph escapes--Marmont capitulates--the Allies
enter Paris--Napoleon at Fontainebleau--His abdication.

Napoleon continued for several days to manoeuvre on the country beyond
St. Dizier. Having thus seized the roads by which the Grand Army had
advanced, he took prisoners many persons of distinction on their way to
its headquarters--and at one time the Emperor of Austria himself escaped
most narrowly a party of French hussars. Meanwhile petty skirmishes were
ever and anon occurring between Napoleon's rear-guard and Austrians,
whom he took for the van-guard of Schwartzenberg. They were, however,
detached troops, chiefly horse, left expressly to hang on his march, and
cheat him into this belief. The Grand Army was proceeding rapidly down
the Seine; while Blucher, having repeatedly beaten Marmont and Mortier,
was already within sight of Meaux.

It has been mentioned that Napoleon, ere he commenced his campaign,
directed some fortifications to be thrown up on the side of Paris
nearest to the invading armies. His brother Joseph, however, was, as
Spain had witnessed, neither an active nor a skilful soldier; and the
civil government of this tempestuous capital appears to have been more
than enough to employ what energies he possessed. The outworks executed
during the campaign were few and inconsiderable; and to occupy them,
there were now but 8000 fresh regulars, the discomfited divisions of
Marmont and Mortier, and the National Guard of the metropolis. This last
corps had 30,000 names on its roll: but such had been the manifestations
of public feeling, that the Emperor's lieutenants had not dared to
furnish more than a third of these with firearms: the others had only
pikes: and every hour increased the doubts of the Regency-council
whether any considerable portion of these men--who were chiefly, in
fact, the shopkeepers of Paris--would consent to shed their blood in
this cause.

Meanwhile the royalists within the city had been watching the progress
of events with eagerness and exultation. Talleyrand was ere now in close
communication with them, and employing all the resources of his talents
to prevail on them to couple their demand for the heir of the Bourbons,
with such assertions of their belief that that dynasty ought never to be
re-established otherwise than on a constitutional basis, as might draw
over to their side the more moderate of the republicans. Nor had these
efforts been unsuc