ents as they march
through the city to tear the white cockades from their hats! And
Chalon-sur-Saone, where the workpeople commandeer a convoy of artillery
destined for the army of M. le Comte d'Artois!

The prefets of the various departements, the bureaucracy of provinces
and cities, are not only amazed but struck with terror:

"This is a new Revolution!" they cry in dismay.

Yes! it is a new Revolution! the revolt of the peasantry of the poor,
the humble, the oppressed! The hatred which they felt against that old
regime which had come back to them with its old arrogance and its former
tyrannies had joined issue with the cult of the army for the Emperor who
had led it to glory, to fortune and to fame.

The people and the army were roused by the same enthusiasm, and marched
shoulder to shoulder to join the standard of Napoleon--the little man in
the shabby hat and the grey redingote, who for them personified the
spirit of the great revolution, the great struggle for liberty and its
final victory.

The army of the Comte d'Artois--that portion of it which remained
loyal--was powerless against the overwhelming tide of popular
enthusiasm, powerless against dissatisfaction, mutterings and constant
defections in its ranks. The army would have done well in Provence--for
Provence was loyal and royalist, man, woman and child: but Napoleon took
the route of the Alps, and avoided Provence; by the time he reached
Lyons he had an army of his own and M. le Comte d'Artois--fearing more
defections and worse defeats--had thought it prudent to retire.

It has often been said that if a single shot had been fired against his
original little band Napoleon's march on Paris would have been stopped.
Who shall tell? There are such "ifs" in the world, which no human mind
can challenge. Certain it is that that shot was not fired. At Laffray,
Randon gave the order, but he did not raise his musket himself; on the
walls of Grenoble St. Genis, in command of the artillery and urged by
the Comte de Cambray, did not dare to give the order or to fire a gun
himself. "The men declare," he had said gloomily, "that they would blow
their officers from their own guns."

And at Lyons there was not militiaman, a royalist, volunteer or a pariah
out of the streets who was willing to fire that first and "single shot":
and though Marshal Macdonald swore ultimately that he would do it
himself, his determination failed him at the last when surrounded by his
wa