derstood, in the true drift, by many of his old coadjutors. It was enough for him to know how the army was to be cherished, and the offices of the government were to be filled, under the Bourbons, to be sanguine in the expectation of regaining the Thuileries. In the island of Elba, he was, from the outset, not a writer of memoirs, or a fantastical mimic, but a serious and indefatigable conspirator, at once the parent and the subject of innumerable dark intrigues. It was not a Dioclesian, or a Charles V. with whom the allies had to deal.

While we reject as extravagant the supposition, that the British cabinet could have connived at the escape of Bonaparte,-a conduct which, with possible consequences of such moment so plainly in view, would imply either downright insanity, or the blackest malignitywhile, we say, we acquit them of this charge, we hold them chiefly to blame for the event, and are at a loss to account for their supineness. The Terror of Europe, and the Scourge of France was in their custody; France and Europe relied on them, so far, whether fairly or not, for security from a relapse into the military chaos.Their vigilance should have been tenfold what it is now, when the means of flight and ultimate success are incalculably less for their prisoner. However mysteriously devised, or skilfully combined, his plan could scarcely, under all circumstances, have eluded a course of close observation; and, with so much at stake, any degree of unguardedness was but little less pardonable than direct collusion. Colonel Campbell, upon whom was devolved a loose, undefined superintendance of the court of Elba, had been, when Bonaparte set sail on

the 26th February 1815, six days absent from Porto Ferrajo, on a visit of private business to Florence. We have never seen any satisfactory explanation of this act of remissness, and are sure that none can be adduced as relates to the British government, although their agent might be, according to the confident assurances which he gave in his printed account, able to justify himself completely.* But one English vessel was descried by the fugitive on his route from Elba to Gulf St. Juan, a 74-which gave him no trouble, and seemed to be wholly inattentive. The battle of Waterloo has, indeed, yielded a rich harvest of glory, but how uncertain was such a result! and if certain, how poor a compensation, in the eye of humanity, for so terrible an effusion of blood, and so calamitous a revolution!

The officers of Bonaparte's band were at a ball given by the Princess Borghèse, his sister, when the general order for embarkation was issued-Sunday 26th February. All hastened on board the fleet prepared for them, which consisted of nine transports, small vessels. In these were distributed four hundred of the old guard, two hundred infantry, a hundred Polish lancers, and two hundred flankers, making a total of nine hundred men. Bonaparte stationed himself on board of the brig, the Inconstant, which contained the four hundred of the guard, and took with him Generals Bertrand, Drouot, Cambronne, and the other principal officers who had followed him in

*The defence of Lord Castlereagh on this head, in his speech of April 5th, 1815, is far from being sufficient. It furnishes, however, much curious information. The adverse reasonings of Lords Wellesley and Grenville, on the same point, in their speeches of the 12th of April, seem to us irresistible.

his adversity. His departure was announced only on the 28th at Porto Ferrajo, in a proclamation from a General Lapi whom he had left as governor of the Island, and who addresses the inhabitants in a strain of mock heroic, correspondent to that with which they had at first greeted their sovereign. They are assured that the emperor attaches the highest importance to their island; that their glory and their happiness depend on their care of his mother and sister confided to their protection, &c.

On the same day, the 28th, Colonel Campbell returned to lorto Ferrajo, and immediately set sail for the coast of France. At two o'clock in the morning of the first of March, he fell in with the Fleur de Lys, the French frigate which we have already mentioned, and apprised her of the escape of Bonaparte. The captain, the Chevalier de Garat, gave signs of incredulity, but the English officer, without taking offence, requested permission to write, in his cabin, a dispatch to the British ambassador at Paris, informing him of the event. With this dispatch under his charge, the captain of the frigate consented to steer towards France, and Colonel Campbell followed in the same direction, until the former hailed him again, and suggested the idea, that Bonaparte, on leaving Elba, might have thrown himself upon one of the neighbouring islands, as a better point of departure. The English colonel coincided in this opinion, and veered about to explore the islands.

In the mean time, the object of their pursuit was quietly advancing towards the coast of France. On the 27th-Monday-he fell in with the royal French brig the Zephir,

commanded by a Captain Andrieux, an acquaintance of Lieutenant Taillade who acted as general pilot of the fleet, on board the Inconstant. The two brigs hailed, interchanged civilities, and continued each on its course. The Zephir was bound to Corsica, and the bearer, for the second or third time, of the order for the recall of the Chevalier Garat, of which we have already spoken.

On Wednesday the 1st of March about one o'clock P. M. the imperial fleet entered Gulf St. Juan, and a debarkation ensued without delay. Only twenty hours afterwards, as we have said, the Fleur de Lys frigate cast anchor in the same Gulf.

The first men landed were stationed as videttes, and arrested some individuals whom chance had drawn to the coast. Among these was the commandant of the national guard of Cannes, who, with his wife, had come for the purchase of olives. They, with the commissary of the marine, had remarked the flag of Elba, on its approach, but imagined it to be employed in the transportation of the sick from Porto Ferrajo. His surprise, when he found himself a prisoner in the hands of the supposed valetudinarians, may be easily conceived. The man and his wife were told by the soldiery that they had brought back the Emperor, and were not released until two companies had been dispatched, one upon Cannes and the other on Antibes. The ass, which the prisoners had borrowed to bear the load of the olives, was, however, unlucky enough to be retained as good prize.

On their return to Cannes, which they had left in a state of profound tranquillity, they found all in the utmost agitation and dis

order. General Cambronne had taken it unawares at the head of forty of the vanguard, and posted them at the principal gate with orders to allow of no egress. He had, moreover, called upon the mayor for three thousand six hundred rations, and summoned him to do homage to the emperor at Gulf St. Juan. The mayor had granted the rations, but refused the allegiance.

At the same time, there had happened a circumstance of particular interest at the gates of Cannes. The duc de Valentinois,* on his way to Monaco, with an escort of Gendarmerie, had appeared before them, and to his great astonishment, found a general officer, Cambronne, in person, decorated with the tri-coloured cockade, who civilly told him he was his prisoner, and requested him to alight from his carriage. The duke professed himself at a loss to comprehend this language, and was still more confounded when he looked round on the platoon of chasseurs that were encircling him, with an air of peremptoriness, of which the spirit could not well be mistaken. He was allowed to remain without, under the eye of Cambronne, who spoke of having sent for orders concerning him to head-quarters, without disclosing to whom they belonged, or intimating the arrival of Bonaparte. When these orders were received, the duke and his suite were conducted to an inn of the town, and closely watched as prisoners. The duke relates, that Cambronne and his brother-officers. seemed much agitated, and questioned him, from time to time,

with the greatest earnestness, concerning the state of France, and the dispositions of the people of the south. The soldiers who were appointed to guard him, boasted of several debarkations having taken place; of their emperor being supported by the allied powers, and showed the cross of the legion of honour, which he had given to all of them previous to their departure. They had been promised an unmolested march to Paris, and instructed to abstain from demonstrations of hostility.

During these proceedings at Cannes, Bonaparte was occupied in pacing the great road of Nice, near the beach, and interrogating travellers. The well-mounted horsemen were stopped without exception, not so much with a view to the information they could communicate, as to the confiscation of their horses, of which the invaders stood particularly in need. Much solicitude was felt among them for the fate of the expedition against Antibes, and with good reason; for the detachment sent thither, was arrested and disarmed, not by the garrison, but by the mayor and the inhabitants, who were animated with another sort of zeal. Bonaparte, hearing nothing from this quarter, dispatched an officer to summon the place; he, also, was arrested; a third was deputed, but encountered the same fate. Disconcerted by this early check, he transferred his watch, about midnight, to the gates of Cannes, at the opening of the road to Grasse.

At two o'clock he caused the duke de Valentinois to be brought into his presence. The duke found him, standing alone before a large fire, dressed in gray, and having

hat. His guards formed a circle at

some distance, and beyond them | was another, composed of a large number of the inhabitants, who bore a strong expression of alarm in their countenances. At four o'clock the duke was sent back under the guard that brought him, to his inn in the town. In the official narrative of Bonaparte, it is stated, that the people of Cannes received the emperor with_sentiments, which were a happy presage of the success of his enterprise. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They displayed only mortification and dismay, and put forth not one acclamation of welcome. | He did not venture into the town; and it was, some time afterwards, nearly sacked by general Brune in revenge for its loyalty.

From the outset, no opportunity was lost of distributing the three proclamations, bearing date, Gulf St. Juan, the 1st of March. The first, from the emperor, by the grace of God and the constitutions, to the French people, asserts -that the nation was never on the point of being more powerful, than immediately before the surrender of Paris, through the treachery of Marmont, duke of Ragusa;*—that their prince had traversed the seas in the midst of dangers of every description, &c. The second, from the same to the army, declares, that it was never vanquished; that the existence of their general, raised under their shields, was made up but of theirs; and the third, signed by Cambronne, Drouot, &c., is from the imperial guard to the army, and pronounces illegal

* See Marmont's letter from Ghent, to Caulincourt, in answer to this charge. Marmont recriminates, by the heaviest accusations, and styles Bonaparte the murderer of Pichegru and D'Enghein.

whatever was done, without_consulting them.* All three are filled with the most extravagant accusations against the Bourbons, and are highly ingenious in the choice of topics intended for the soldiery.

Bonaparte speedily abandoned his position at Cannes, and, pretending to follow the road to Frejus, took that of Grasse. Grasse has a population of twelve thousand souls, and had received at seven o'clock the evening before, intelligence of the debarkation. The mayor, a spirited loyalist, would have summoned the inhabitants to arms, and sounded the tocsin in the country, but was opposed by the more prudent counsels of general Gazan, who was a native of the place, and possessed great influence. The night was lost in disheartening deliberation; the enthusiasm of the youth, who were eager to sally forth, was repressed; General Cambronne arrived, had an amicable interview with Gazan, demanded, and obtained, four thousand rations.

Bonaparte was approaching slowly, and is said to have betrayed considerable alarm at the tolling of the bells for an interment, which he mistook for the tocsin, until undeceived by a waggoner, whom he questioned on the subject. He did not enter the town, but went round it, and encamped on a height half a league beyond. His corps breakfasted on food obtained at Grasse by requisition,

* Generals Drouot and Cambronne, furnish, on their trials, an instance of the system of fraud pursued by Bonaparte as to state-papers, when they point out the material difference be tween the proclamation, which they signed at Gulf St. Juan, and the one inserted in the Moniteur with their sig

natures.

while generals Cambronne and Bertrand excited them, by toasts, to cries of vive l'empereur, in order to draw a similar note from a few of the inhabitants, whom curiosity had attracted to the foot of the hill. These, however, maintained a dead silence.

When the breakfast was finished, his Imperial majesty left his vehicle and cannon at the gates of the town; impressed a number of mules and horses, and, with his force disposed before and behind him, continued his march among the mountains by the most rugged and unfrequented paths. The only inhabitant of Grasse who joined his standard, was a tanner of infamous character. The printer of the town, whom he wished to employ on his proclamations, took to flight. In the evening he arrived at the village of Ceranon, and occupied the chateau of the loyal mayor of Grasse. He found himself thus, on the second day, on the borders of the department of Var, having journeyed twenty leagues. While he advanced rapidly towards the north, the military commander of the department of Var, who had collected the garrison of the town of Draguignan, and a body of national guards, at Frejus, manœuvred in the opposite direction towards the coast, in order to cut off the retreat of the invader. The civil prefect of the same department dispatched, instantaneously, couriers to Paris, to marshal Massena at Marseilles, to

The prefect of this department, count de Bouthilliers, had, six weeks before, written to the minister of the interior at Paris, to inform him, that, from the active intercourse of suspicious persons with the island of Elba, he believed some treasonable plot to be in agitation.

the prefects of Avignon, Valence, and Lyons, and in a line parallel to Grasse and Grenoble. He, himself, at the head of a few national guards, bent his steps along the route which Bonaparte must necessarily have taken, had he retained his cannon. It was supposed that the prefect of the lower Alps would secure the bridge of Siste. ron, being but a few leagues distant from it. This, however, was a false calculation, and the movements towards Frejus were alto. gether nugatory.

On Friday, 3d March, our hero set out from Ceranon. He breakfasted at Castellane, in the house of the sub-prefect, who had just been displaced by the Bourbons, and whom he promised to reinstate. He here forced the mayor to give him three passports in blank, halted three hours, and continued his march towards Barreme, where he took possession for himself and his officers, of the best house of the hamlet, and passed the night. On his arrival, he immediately sent for the mayor, questioned him much about the route of Sisteron, and caused him to procure some maps of Provence, which he examined, although he had that of Cassini with him. He made a re quisition of two hundred vehicles with double harness, designating the villages which were to furnish them, and selecting those in preference by which he was to pass with his troops, so as to be secure of compliance. He stated, that his artillery had taken the main road with the cavalry, and spoke of several simultaneous landings at different points of Provence. After the mayor was dismissed, the curate was summoned, but did not appear. During this interview, the soldiery filled the place, quartered themselves upon the inha