anded a _corps d'armee_, and
fought in most of the celebrated actions, but he never had 4,000
men; at Paris, which he said was 'the most honourable part of his
whole career,' he had 7,500.[5] Napoleon committed a great fault
in throwing himself into the rear as he did; he should have
fallen back upon Paris, where his own presence would have been of
vast importance, and sent Marmont into the rear with what troops
he could collect. I repeated what the Duke of Wellington had once
told me, that if the Emperor had continued the same plan, and
fallen back on Paris, he would have obliged the Allies to
retreat, and asked him what he thought. He rather agreed with
this, but said the Emperor had conceived one of the most splendid
pieces of strategy that ever had been devised, which failed by
the disobedience of Eugene. He sent orders to Eugene to assemble
his army, in which he had 35,000 French troops, to amuse the
Austrians by a negotiation for the evacuation of Italy; to throw
the Italian troops into Alessandria and Mantua; to destroy the
other fortresses, and going by forced marches with his French
troops, force the passage of Mont Cenis, collect the scattered
_corps d'armee_ of Augereau (who was near Lyons) and another
French general, which would have made his force amount to above
60,000 men, and burst upon the rear of the Allies so as to cut
off all their communications. These orders he sent to Eugene, but
Eugene 'revait d'etre roi d'Italie apres sa chute,' and he sent
his aide-de-camp Tascher to excuse himself. The movement was not
made, and the game was up. Lady Dudley Stewart was there,
Lucien's daughter and Buonaparte's niece. Marmont was presented
to her, and she heard him narrate all this; there is something
very simple, striking, and soldierlike in his manner and
appearance. He is going to Russia.

[5] [This assertion of Marmont's is the more curious as it
was to his alleged treachery that Napoleon when at
Fontainebleau chose to ascribe his defeat.]

[Page Head: CRADOCK'S MISSION TO CHARLES X.]

He was very communicative about events at Paris, lamented his own
ill-luck, involved in the business against his wishes and
feelings; he disapproved of Polignac and his measures, and had no
notion the _ordonnances_ were thought of. In the morning he was
going to St. Germain for the day; when his aide-de-camp brought
him the newspaper with the _ordonnances il tomba de son haut_.
Soon after the D