ven they could feel the full
ignominy of the flight to Ghent.

While they had been chanting the glories of the Restoration, the devotion
of the people, the valour of the Princes, Napoleon had landed, the
Restoration had vanished like a bad dream, and the Princes were the first
to lead the way to the frontier. To protest that there had been a
conspiracy, and that the conspirators must suffer, was the only possible
cloak for the shame of the Royalists, who could not see that the only
conspiracy was the universal one of the nation against the miserable men
who knew not how to govern a high-spirited people.

Ney, arrested on the 5th of August, was first brought before a Military
Court on the 9th of November composed of Marshal Jourdan (President),
Marshals Massena, Augereau, and Mortier, Lieutenants-General Gazan,
Claparede, and Vilatte (members). Moncey had refused to sit, and Massena
urged to the Court his own quarrels with Ney in Spain to get rid of the
task, but was forced to remain. Defended by both the Berryers, Ney
unfortunately denied the jurisdiction of the court-martial over him as a
peer. In all probability the Military Court would have acquitted him.
Too glad at the moment to be free from the trial of their old comrade,
not understanding the danger of the proceeding, the Court, by a majority
of five against two, declared themselves non-competent, and on the 21st
of November Ney was sent before the Chamber of Peers, which condemned him
on the 6th of December.

To beg the life of his brave adversary would have been such an obvious
act of generosity on the part of the Duke of Wellington that we maybe
pardoned for examining his reasons for not interfering. First, the Duke
seems to have laid weight on the fact that if Ney had believed the
capitulation had covered him he would not have hidden. Now, even before
Ney knew of his exception from the amnesty, to appear in Paris would have
been a foolish piece of bravado. Further, the Royalist reaction was in
full vigour, and when the Royalist mobs, with the connivance of the
authorities, were murdering Marshal Brune and attacking any prominent
adherents of Napoleon, it was hardly the time for Ney to travel in full
pomp. It cannot be said that, apart from the capitulation, the Duke had
no responsibility. Generally a Government executing a prisoner, may,
with some force, if rather brutally, urge that the fact of their being
able to try and execute him in itself shows their