And yet it is by no means clear that even at the time when this apparently most solemn declaration was uttered, the resolution of the Allies had been unalterably taken.  Nesselrode personally inclined to a regency, and preserving the crown to the King of Rome; nor is it to be doubted that that scheme, if at all practicable, would have been preferred by the Emperor of Austria.  But the Frenchmen who had once committed themselves against Napoleon could not be persuaded but that his influence would revive, to their own ruin, under any Buonapartean administration; and the events of the two succeeding days were decisive.  The Municipal Council met, and proclaimed that the throne was empty.  This bold act is supposed to have determined the Conservative Senate.  On the 1st of April that body also assembled, and named a provisional government, with Talleyrand for its head.  The deposition of Napoleon was forthwith put to the vote, and carried without even one dissentient voice.  On the 2nd the Legislative Senate, angrily dispersed in January, were in like manner convoked; and they too ratified the decrees proposed by the Conservative.  On the 3rd the senatus-consultum was published, and myriads of hands were busy in every corner of the city pulling down the statues and pictures, and effacing the arms and initials of Napoleon.  Meantime the Allied Princes appointed military governors of Paris, were visible daily at processions and festivals, and received, night after night, in the theatres, the tumultuous applause of the most inconstant of peoples.

It was in the night between the 2nd and the 3rd that Caulaincourt returned from his mission to Fontainebleau, and informed Napoleon of the events which he had witnessed; he added, that the Allies had not yet, in his opinion, made up their minds to resist the scheme of a regency, but that he was commissioned to say nothing could be arranged, as to ulterior questions, until he, the Emperor, had formally abdicated his throne.  The Marshals assembled at Fontainebleau seem, on hearing this intelligence, to have resolved unanimously that they would take no further part in the war; but Napoleon himself was not yet prepared to give up all without a struggle.  The next day, the 4th of April, he reviewed some of his troops, harangued them on “the treasonable proceedings in the capital,” announced his intention of instantly marching thither, and was answered by enthusiastic shouts of “Paris!  Paris!” He, on this, conceiving himself to be secure of the attachment of his soldiery, gave orders for advancing headquarters to Essonne.  With the troops which had filed through Paris, under Marmont’s convention, and those which had followed himself from Troyes, nearly 50,000 men were once more assembled around Fontainebleau; and with such support Napoleon was not yet so humbled as to fear hazarding a blow, despite all the numerical superiority of the Allies.