Labedoyere among them, and they threw away the white cockade as a badge of their nation’s dishonour.  The peasantry of Dauphiny, the cradle of the Revolution, lined the roadside:  they were transported and mad with joy.  The first battalion, which has just been alluded to, had shown some signs of hesitation, but thousands of the country people crowded round it, and by their shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” endeavoured to urge the troops to decision, while others who followed in Napoleon’s rear encouraged his little troop to advance by assuring them that they would meet with success.  Napoleon said he could have taken 2,000,000 of these peasants with him to Paris, but that then he would have been called “the King of the Jaequerie.”

Napoleon issued two proclamations on the road.  He at first regretted that he had not had them printed before he left Elba; but this could not have been done without some risk of betraying his secret designs.  He dictated them on board the vessel, where every man who could write was employed in copying them.  These copies soon became very scarce; many of them were illegible; and it was of till he arrived at Gap, on the 5th of March, that he found means to have them printed.  They were from that time circulated and read everywhere with the utmost avidity.

The address to the army was considered as being still more masterly and eloquent, and it was certainly well suited to the taste of French soldiers, who, as Bourrienne remarks, are wonderfully pleased with grandiloquence, metaphor, and hyperbole, though they do not always understand what they mean.  Even a French author of some distinction praises this address as something sublime.  “The proclamation to the army,” says he, “is full of energy:  it could not fail to make all military imaginations vibrate.  That prophetic phrase, ’The eagle, with the national colours, will fly from church steeple to church steeple, till it settles on the towers of Notre Dame,’ was happy in the extreme.”

These words certainly produced an immense effect on the French soldiery, who everywhere shouted, “Vive l’Empereur!” “Vive le petit Caporal!” “We will die for our old comrade!” with the most genuine enthusiasm.

It was some distance in advance of Grenoble that Labedoyere joined, but he could not make quite sure of the garrison of that city, which was commanded by General Marchand, a man resolved to be faithful to his latest master.  The shades of night had fallen when Bonaparte arrived in front of the fortress of Grenoble, where he stood for some minutes in a painful state of suspense and indecision.