d on every side. Napoleon ordered the
battalion to wheel round to the right, and all marched on together.

At a short distance from Grenoble Colonel Labedoyere, who had been sent
at the head of the 7th regiment to oppose his passage, came to join the
Emperor. The impulse thus given in a manner decided the question.
Labedoyere's superior officer in vain interfered to restrain his
enthusiasm and that of his men. The tri-coloured cockades, which had
been concealed in the hollow of a drum, were eagerly distributed by
Labedoyere among them, and they threw away the white cockade as a badge
of their nation's dishonour. The peasantry of Dauphiny, the cradle of
the Revolution, lined the roadside: they were transported and mad with
joy. The first battalion, which has just been alluded to, had shown some
signs of hesitation, but thousands of the country people crowded round
it, and by their shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" endeavoured to urge the
troops to decision, while others who followed in Napoleon's rear
encouraged his little troop to advance by assuring them that they would
meet with success. Napoleon said he could have taken 2,000,000 of these
peasants with him to Paris, but that then he would have been called "the
King of the Jaequerie."

Napoleon issued two proclamations on the road. He at first regretted
that he had not had them printed before he left Elba; but this could not
have been done without some risk of betraying his secret designs. He
dictated them on board the vessel, where every man who could write was
employed in copying them. These copies soon became very scarce; many of
them were illegible; and it was of till he arrived at Gap, on the 5th of
March, that he found means to have them printed. They were from that
time circulated and read everywhere with the utmost avidity.

The address to the army was considered as being still more masterly and
eloquent, and it was certainly well suited to the taste of French
soldiers, who, as Bourrienne remarks, are wonderfully pleased with
grandiloquence, metaphor, and hyperbole, though they do not always
understand what they mean. Even a French author of some distinction
praises this address as something sublime. "The proclamation to the
army," says he, "is full of energy: it could not fail to make all
military imaginations vibrate. That prophetic phrase, 'The eagle, with
the national colours, will fly from church steeple to church steeple,
till it settles on the towers of No