Story of the battle of Waterloo Author:George Robert Gleig Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Arrival of Napoleon in Paris, and its immediate Consequences. Into the minute details of Napoleon's progress from Frejus to Paris it is not ne... more »cessary to enter. Not one arm was raised to oppose him,—not a shot was fired either upon him or upon his followers. Wherever he presented himself the troops, sometimes headed by their leaders, sometimes deserting them, gathered round his standard. The peasantry, in like manner, not only exhibited no signs of hostility, but supplied his retinue with abundance of provisions, and wished them God speed. It was to little purpose that the Princes of the House of Bourbon put themselves at the head of corps, and marched out to give him battle. The soldiers refused to act against a chief whose name sounded in their ears like a watch-word; and though they abstained from making prisoners of their generals, the latter scarcely quitted them to return to Paris ere they passed over to tbe enemy. At length Ney's treason, and the defection of the army of reserve, which, under the Duke de Berri and Marshal Oudinot, had been assembled at Essonne and Fontainebleau, put an end to all hope; and Louis XVIII., after an uneasy reign of ten months, bade adieu to the courtiers who still remained faithful to him, and fled towards Lille. It was on the evening of the 19th of March that the King of France set out from Paris. The same day Napoleon reached Fontainebleau, well nigh unattended; for he travelled with such rapidity that his guard could not keep pace with him ; and it affords one of the strongest proofs of the disposition of the nation towards him that his equipage met with no interruption. Here, at an early hour in the morning of the 20th, tidings of the flight of the King were conveyed to him; nevertheless he delayed his onward journey t...« less