that shelter. He then endeavoured to penetrate into Paris, and making a circuit round the town, applied for admisssion successively at the gates of the Conference (which was situated at the western extremity of the garden of the Tuileries), of St. Honoré, of St. Denis, and of St. Martin; but at none of them could he induce the guards to allow him to enter. At last he came to the Porte St Antoine, when, to his great joy, he found that the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, who had always been his friend, and was very popular with the Parisians, had been exerting herself here in his behalf, and had actually prevailed upon the citizens to admit him. At her solicitation the cannons of the Bastile were even turned against the royal army, to prevent Turenne from attempting to pursue his enemy into the asylum he had so unexpectedly found. Nearly three thousand men, however, had already fallen in this action. As for the prince himself, "he entered Paris," says the Count de Chavagnac, who was present, "like a god Mars, mounted on a steed full of foam, holding his head aloft, and all proud of the deeds he had just been performing; he held his sword in his hand, steeped to the hilt in the blood of his enemies; and thus did he pass along the streets in the midst of the acclamations and praises which it was impossible to withhold from his valour and his excellent generalship *"

After the cessation of these troubles, Paris remained for a long period unacquainted with the miseries either of domestic or foreign war. The descendants of those militant burgesses who, during the stormy times of the League and the Fronde used to be so ready to transform their city into a camp, learned during the protracted reigns of Louis

Mémoires du Comte de Chavagnac, quoted by Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, vi, 349.

XIV. and his successor, to cultivate the arts and the habits of peace, and, if not literally to beat the swords of their ancestors into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, at least to find that life might be supported without the excitement arising from the incessant clashing of those weapons in their streets, or around their walls. The chains with which the streets had been so often barricaded were allowed to rust away; the walls themselves were at last pulled down. This tranquillity was first interrupted by the hurricane of the Revolution; many of the more tumultuous scenes of which, in so far as Paris was their theatre, we have elsewhere described. Yet even this mighty convulsion, which shook the utmost limits not only of France but of Europe, for a long time brought no hostile army to the gates of the French capital. That came only at the winding-up of the great drama which had filled. the quarter of a century.

When the first apprehensions of the arrival of the Allies were felt at Paris in the beginning of the year 1814, although some measures were adopted by the authorities with the view both of provisioning the city for a siege, and of rendering it otherwise defensible, the notion of its being able to make any effectual resistance appears to have soon been pretty generally abandoned. The troops which the Emperor had left to protect it were both so inconsiderable in number, and so insufficiently armed, as to give it no chance of being able to hold out long against the united armies by which it was menaced. But, besides this, the inhabitants themselves were in no temper to resist. The burthen of the empire, of late more oppressive than ever in consequence of the heavy exactions of men and money to which Bonaparte's reverses had compelled him to resort, was now universally felt to be intolerable; and many who

in other circumstances would have shrunk from opening the gates to a foreign force, reconciled themselves to the idea even of that humiliation, in their impatience under the domestic tyranny from which it promised to deliver them. Few, except those who felt themselves in some degree called upon to make a stand by considerations of personal honour, thought of any serious opposition now to the overwhelming combination which had already so far turned the fortunes of him who used to carry victory in his right hand. The military portion of the community alone manifested any zeal in regard to the preparations for the defence of the city. The general population evidently felt that the cause was none of theirs, and looked forward to the issue almost with indifference.

Paris however, on this occasion, was not exempted from a considerable share at least of the agitation and alarm which never fail to herald the approaching footsteps of war. We regret that we cannot afford space to lay before the reader a few extracts from the highly interesting narrative which an English writer, who was in the city at the time, has given us of the occurrences that preceded the arrival of the allied forces*. His representations agree in the main with the picture which has been drawn of the state of the town by another foreign resident, who has also published an account of what fell under his observation at this memorable crisis †. Both authorities mention particularly the extraordinary fact, that the inhabitants, notwithstanding the rumours of all sorts which were brought during the two or three previous days by the crowds of country-people who came to seek an asylum within the walls, actually remained in the * See the Journal of a Détenu, 8vo., Lon. 1828.

+ Relation Historique sur la Déchèance de Napoleon, par M. Rodriguez, 8vo. Paris, 1814,

belief that the enemy were not within many miles of them up to the moment when it was announced that they were within sight of the ramparts. The only fighting which took place, as probably most of our readers recollect, was the severe action of the 30th of March, the day of the capitulation. The scene of this battle, which lasted with little interruption from daybreak till half-past three in the afternoon, was the plains immediately behind Montmartre, Belleville, the Butte Chaumont, and the other elevated grounds to the north and north-east of the city. The Allies eventually succeeded in gaining possession of these heights, but not before their loss had amounted to ten thousand in killed alone, their enemies having lost about a third part of that number. Of the French troops none distinguished themselves more on this occasion than the scholars of the Polytechnic School, two hundred and seventy of whom continued during a great part of the day to work a battery of cannon, planted at the entrance of the wood of Vincennes, the point where the battle raged with the greatest fury. The National Guards also on this day, to the number of about twelve thousand men, were partly stationed at the barriers and partly in the field of battle, much of the brunt of which they sustained. As the history of the origin and subsequent exploits of this force is both interesting in itself and intimately connected with many of the most important events of the Revolution, we shall conclude our present volume by a rapid sketch of the principal incidents.

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CHAPTER XV.

THE NATIONAL GUARD.

THE National Guard, as is well known, took its rise in the early days of the Revolution of 1789. The deputies to the States-General which were convoked that year, were not chosen directly by the people; but the inhabitants of each bailiwick, having first assembled, selected a certain number of persons from their own body, and these latter nominated the National Representatives. It was intended of course that the several bodies of actual electors, or the electoral colleges, as they might be called, should be considered as divested of all power, and to all intents and purposes dissolved, as soon as they should have exercised the single function, that of nominating the deputies, for which they had been constituted. This act performed, there was nothing else appointed for them to do. And such was the view that was generally taken of their duties by these bodies themselves. In Paris, however, it happened otherwise. The number of electors which the inhabitants of this city were permitted to choose amounted to three hundred, two hundred being the largest number fixed for any other place. The primary assemblies in which these three hundred persons were named, were all held in the sixty arrondissemens or districts of the capital on the same day, the 21st of April*—and the business was finished before night. The election of

* Histoire de la Garde Nationale, par Ch. Comte, p. 10, 11. Dulaure says the elections took place on the 20th of April; Histoire de Paris, viii. 547,