of the massacre of civil war, has on this occasiOn deserved well of
mankind.'
On 27 June Fouche stopped stalling and decided to let the Emperor go
on his own terms. Perhaps he wanted him out of the way while the
motion to restore the Bourbons was put to the Chamber, or perhaps he
feared the Allies might seize him anyway. But no sooner had Fouche
taken this decision than he learned from his envoys that the Allies were
making the settlement of Napoleon a precondition of peace. He now had
to force the Emperor out of Malmaison without giving him a safe
conduct. He therefore informed him that if he remained there he would
be put under house arrest. Again Napoleon checkmated him by saying
that he refused to travel to Rochefort without safe-conducts and was
prepared to take his chances at Malmaison.
As the Prussians began to close in on Malmaison, Fouche saw his
bargaining counter in danger of being whisked away from him. Fouche
sent the necessary orders, permitting an immediate sailing from
Rochefort. Napoleon, salving his pride, offered to lead the French armies
defending Paris as a mere general; unsurprisingly, Fouche indignantly
turned him down. Then it was time for final farewells at Malmaison. The
Emperor said goodbye to Madame Mere, then spent his last moments in
silent meditation in Josephine's room, before donning the garb in which
he was to travel incognito as Beker's secretary.
The imperial party departed Malmaison on 29 June and travelled in
three coaches, at first via Rambouillet and Chartres, with a diversionary
convoy travelling by way of Orleans and Angouleme. From Chartres
Napoleon's coaches proceeded through Vendome to Tours and then
through Poitiers to Niort. They entered Rochefort on 3 July, with the
Emperor all the time awaiting a call from Paris to return. He spent the
entire journey in an agony of uncertainty about whether he was doing
the right thing, a few crests of optimism always sinking into the deeper
troughs of pessimistic inertia. At Rochefort he discovered that a British
squadron was blockading the port; this development was hardly
surprising, as on 25 June Fouche had alerted Wellington that the
Emperor intended to sail to the U.S.A.
On the very day Napoleon arrived in Rochefort, Paris surrendered to
the Allies and Fouche put the final touches to his master-pian to restore
the Bourbons. On 3 July he, a famous regicide, went with Talleyrand to
St-Denis to 'wait on' Louis XVIII. Of this scene, a byword for humbug
and hypocrisy, even Chateaubriand, no friend of Bonaparte's, wrote in
his Memoires d'outre-tombe: 'Suddenly the door opened; and silently there
entered vice leaning on the arms of crime, M. Talleyrand supported by
marcin
(Marcin)
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