And thus ended the great impulse which had gone forth from Paris since 1789, which had flooded the plains of Germany, the plateaux of Spain, the cities of Italy, and the steppes of Russia, levelling the barriers of castes and creeds, and binding men in a new and solid unity.  The reaction against that great centrifugal and international movement had now become centripetal and profoundly national.  Thanks to Napoleon’s statecraft, the peoples of Europe from the Volga to the Tagus were now embattled in a mighty phalanx, and were about to enter in triumph the city that only twenty-five years before had heralded the dawn of their nascent liberties.

And what of Napoleon, in part the product and in part the cause, of this strange reaction?  By a strange Nemesis, his military genius and his overweening contempt of Schwarzenberg drew him aside at the very time when the allies could strike with deadly effect at the heart of his centralized despotism.  On the 29th he hears of disaffection at Paris, of the disaster at La Fere Champenoise, and of the loss of Lyons by Augereau.  He at once sees the enormity of his blunder.  His weary Guards and he seek to annihilate space.  They press on by the unguarded road by way of Troyes and Fontainebleau, thereby cutting off all chance of the Emperor Francis and Metternich sending messages from Dijon to Paris.  By incredible exertions the men cover seventeen leagues on the 29th and reach Troyes.

Napoleon, accompanied by Caulaincourt, Drouot, Flahaut, and Lefebvre, rushes on, wearing out horses at every stage:  at Fontainebleau on the 30th he hears that his consort has left Paris; at Essonne, that the battle is raging.  Late at night, near Athis, he meets a troop of horse under General Belliard:  eagerly he questions this brave officer, and learns that Joseph has left Paris, and that the battle is over.  “Forward then to Paris:  everywhere where I am not they act stupidly.”—­“But, sire,” says the general, “it is too late:  Paris has capitulated.”

The indomitable will is not yet broken.  He must go on; he will sound the tocsin, rouse the populace, tear up the capitulation, and beat the insolent enemy.  The sight of Mortier’s troops, a little further on, at last burns the truth into his brain:  he sends on Caulaincourt with full powers to treat for peace, and then sits up for the rest of the night, poring over his maps and measuring the devotion of his Guard against the inexorable bounds of time and space.  He is within ten miles of Paris, and sees the glare of the enemy’s watch-fires all over the northern sky.

On the morrow he hears that the allied sovereigns are about to enter Paris, and Marmont warns him by letter that public opinion has much changed since the withdrawal, first of the Empress, and then of Joseph, Louis, and Jerome.  This was true.  The people were disgusted by their flight; Bluecher now had eighty cannon planted on the heights of Montmartre; and men knew that he would not spare Paris if she hazarded