It was on this popular indignation that Murat now built his hopes.  After throwing over Napoleon, he had looked to find favour with the allies; but his movements in 1814 had been so suspicious that the fate of his kingdom remained hanging in the balance.  The Bourbons of Paris and Madrid strove hard to effect his overthrow; but Austria and England, having tied their hands early in 1814 by treaties with him, could only wait and watch in the hope that the impetuous soldier would take a false step.  He did so in February, 1815, when he levied forces, summoned Louis XVIII. to declare whether he was at war with him, and prepared to march into Northern Italy.

The disturbed state of the peninsula caused the Powers much uneasiness as to the presence of Napoleon at Elba.  Louis XVIII. in his despatches, and Talleyrand in private conversations, two or three times urged his removal to the Azores; but, with the exception of Castlereagh, who gave a doubtful assent, the plenipotentiaries scouted the thought of it.  Metternich entirely opposed it, and the Czar would certainly have objected to the reversal of his Elba plan, had Talleyrand made a formal proposal to that effect.  But he did not do so.  The official records of the Congress contain not a word on the subject.  Equally unfounded were the newspaper rumours that the Congress was considering the advisability of removing Napoleon to St. Helena.  On this topic the official records are also silent; and we have the explicit denial of the Duke of Wellington (who reached Vienna on the 1st of February to relieve Castlereagh) that “the Congress ever had any intention of removing Bonaparte from Elba to St. Helena."[460]

Napoleon’s position was certainly one of unstable equilibrium, that tended towards some daring enterprise or inglorious bankruptcy.  The maintenance of his troops cost him more than 1,000,000 francs a year, while his revenue was less than half of that sum.  He ought to have received 2,000,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII.; but that monarch, while confiscating the property of the Bonapartes in France, paid not a centime of the sums which the allies had pledged him to pay to the fallen House.  Both the Czar and our envoy, Castlereagh, warmly reproached Talleyrand with his master’s shabby conduct; to which the plenipotentiary replied that it was dangerous to furnish Napoleon with money as long as Italy was in so disturbed a state.  Castlereagh, on his return to England by way of Paris, again pressed the matter on Louis XVIII., who promised to take the matter in hand.  But he was soon quit of it:  for, as he wrote to Talleyrand on March 7th, Bonaparte’s landing in France spared him the trouble.[461]