violence, and hopeless of breathing in peace while that fierce and insatiable spirit continued at the head of affairs, were well prepared to take a part in his overthrow; nor was it long ere all these internal enemies, at whatever distance their principles and motives might have seemed to place them from each other, were content to overlook their differences and work together.  Talleyrand, there can be little doubt, and others only second to him in influence, were in communication with the Bourbons, before the Allies crossed the Rhine. Ere then, said Napoleon at St. Helena, I felt the reins slipping from my hands.

The allied princes issued, at Frankfort on the Mayne, a manifesto, the firm and temperate language of which was calculated to make a strong impression in France, as well as elsewhere.  The sovereigns announced their belief that it was for the interest of Europe that France should continue to be a powerful state, and their willingness to concede to her, even now, greater extent of territory than the Bourbon kings had ever claimed—­the boundaries, namely, of the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees.  Their sole object in invading France was to put an end to the authority which Napoleon had usurped over other nations.  They disclaimed any wish to interfere with the internal government—­it was the right of the nation to arrange that as they pleased; the hostility of Europe was against, not France, but Napoleon—­and even as to Napoleon, against not his person, but his system.  The same terms were tendered to Napoleon himself, through M. de St. Aignan, one of his own ministers, who happened to have fallen into the hands of the Allies at Weimar; and his answer was such that diplomatists from all the belligerent powers forthwith assembled at Manheim;—­Lord Aberdeen appearing on the part of the government of England—­a circumstance of itself sufficient to give to these new conferences a character of greater promise than had attended any of recent date.

But although Napoleon authorised Caulaincourt to commence this negotiation on his behalf, it was very soon manifest that he did so merely, as before, for the purpose of gaining time.  His military preparations were urged with unremitting energy.  New conscriptions were called for, and granted:  every arsenal resounded with the fabrication of arms:  and all the taxes were at once doubled by an imperial decree.  The enslaved press proclaimed that the national ardour was thoroughly stirred, and with its thousand voices reminded the Allies of the effects of the Duke of Brunswick’s proclamation when about to touch the sacred soil of France in 1793.