It was on the 7th of March, at nightfall, that Bonaparte thus stood before the walls of Grenoble.  He found the gates closed, and the commanding officer refused to open them.  The garrison assembled on the ramparts shouted “Vive l’Empereur!” and shook hands with Napoleon’s followers through the wickets, but they could not be prevailed on to do more.  It was necessary to force the gates, and this was done under the mouths of ten pieces of artillery, loaded with grapeshot.  In none of his battles did Napoleon ever imagine himself to be in so much danger as at the entrance into Grenoble.  The soldiers seemed to turn upon him with furious gestures:  for a moment it might be supposed that they were going to tear him to pieces.  But these were the suppressed transports of love and joy.  The Emperor and his horse were both borne along by the multitude, and he had scarcely time to breathe in the inn where he alighted when an increased tumult was heard without; the inhabitants of Grenoble came to offer him the broken gates of the city, since they could not present him with the keys.

From Grenoble to Paris Napoleon found no further opposition.  During the four days of his stay at Lyons, where he had arrived on the 10th, there were continually upwards of 20,000 people assembled before his windows; whose acclamations were unceasing.  It would never have been supposed that the Emperor had even for a moment been absent from the, country.  He issued orders, signed decrees, reviewed the troops, as if nothing had happened.  The military corps, the public bodies, and all classes of citizens, eagerly came forward to tender their homage and their services.  The Comte d’Artois, who had hastened to Lyons, as the Duc and Duchesse d’Augouleme had done to Bourdeaux, like them in vain attempted to make a stand.  The Mounted National Guard (who were known Royalists) deserted him at this crisis, and in his flight only one of them chose to follow him.  Bonaparte refused their services when offered to him, and with a chivalrous feeling worthy of being recorded sent the decoration of the Legion of Honour to the single volunteer who had thus shown his fidelity by following the Duke.

As soon as the Emperor quitted Lyons he wrote to Ney, who with his army was at Lons-le-Saulnier, to come and join him.  Ney had set off from the Court with a promise to bring Napoleon, “like a wild beast in a cage, to Paris.”  Scott excuses Ney’s heart at the expense of his head, and fancies that the Marshal was rather carried away by circumstances, by vanity, and by fickleness, than actuated by premeditated treachery, and it is quite possible that these protestations were sincerely uttered when Ney left Paris, but, infected by the ardour of his troops, he was unable to resist a contagion so much in harmony with all his antecedents, and to attack not only his leader in many a time of peril, but also the sovereign who had forwarded his career through every grade of the army.