Napoleon’s fate, however, was to be decided, not at Paris, but by the statesmen assembled at Vienna.  There time was hanging somewhat heavily, and the news of Napoleon’s escape was welcomed at first as a grateful diversion.  Talleyrand asserted that Napoleon would aim at Italy, but Metternich at once remarked:  “He will make straight for Paris.”  When this prophecy proved to be alarmingly true, a drastic method was adopted to save the Bourbons.  The plenipotentiaries drew up a declaration that Bonaparte, having broken the compact which established him at Elba—­the only legal title attaching to his existence—­had placed himself outside the bounds of civil and social relations, and, as an enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, was consigned to “public prosecution” (March 13th).[468] The rigour of this decree has been generally condemned.  But, after all, it did not exceed in harshness Napoleon’s own act of proscription against Stein; it was a desperate attempt to stop the flight of the imperial eagle to Paris and to save France from war with Europe.

Public considerations were doubtless commingled with the promptings of personal hatred.  We are assured that Talleyrand was the author of this declaration, which had the complete approval of the Czar.  But Napoleon had one enemy more powerful than Alexander, more insidious than Talleyrand, and that was—­his own past.  Everywhere the spectre of war rose up before the imagination of men.  The merchant pictured his ships swept off by privateers:  the peasant saw his homestead desolate:  the housewife dreamt of her larder emptied by taxes, and sons carried off for the war.  At Berlin, wrote Jackson, all was agitation, and everybody said that the work of last year would have to be done over again.

In England the current of public feeling was somewhat weakened by the drifts and eddies of party politics.  Many of the Whigs made a popular hero of Napoleon, some from a desire to overthrow the Liverpool Ministry that proscribed him; others because they believed, or tried to believe, that the return of Napoleon concerned only France, and that he would leave Europe alone if Europe left him alone.  Others there were again, as Hazlitt, who could not ignore the patent fact that Napoleon was an international personage and had violated a European compact, yet nevertheless longed for his triumph over the bad old Governments and did not trouble much as to what would come next.  But, on the whole, the judgment of well-informed people may be summed up in the conclusion of that keen lawyer, Crabb Robinson:  “The question is, peace with Bonaparte now, or war with him in Germany two years hence."[469] The matter came to a test on April 28th, when Whitbread’s motion against war was rejected by 273 to 72.[470]