M. Regnault, with
not having maintained the rights of his son: and made them sensible,
that it was incumbent on them, as they regarded their honour and
duty, to oblige the chambers to declare themselves. "I have not
abdicated," said he, "in favour of a new directory. I abdicated in
favour of my son. If they do not proclaim him, my abdication must be
null, and not made. The chambers well know, that the people, the army,
public opinion, desire it, will it; but the foreigners check them. It
is not by presenting themselves before the allies with their ears
hanging down, and their knee on the ground, that they will compel them
to acknowledge the independence of the nation. Had they been sensible
of their situation, they would spontaneously have proclaimed Napoleon
II. The foreign powers would then have seen, that you know how to have
but one will, one object, one rallying point: they would have seen,
that the 20th of March was not a party affair, the attempt of a
faction; but the result of the attachment of the French to me and to
my dynasty. The unanimity of the nation would have had more effect
upon them, than all your mean and degrading deference."

The effect produced by the sitting of the chamber of peers, in spite
of the pains taken to misrepresent it, roused the attention of the
Duke of Otranto, and of the Anti-Napoleon faction, of which he was
become the director and the head.

On the other hand the army of Marshal Grouchy, which was supposed to
be destroyed, had just re-entered France[67]. Prince Jerome, Marshal
Soult, Generals Morand, Colbert, Poret, Petit, and a number of other
officers, whom I regret not being able to name, had succeeded in
rallying the wreck of Mont St. Jean; and the army already formed a
body of fifty or sixty thousand men, whose sentiments in favour of the
Emperor had undergone no alteration.

[Footnote 67: Conformably to the orders given him,
Marshal Grouchy had confined himself on the 17th, to
observing the Prussians: but this he had not done with
the ardour and sagacity, that might have been expected
of such a consummate general of horse. The timidity,
with which he followed them, no doubt inspired them with
the idea, that they might fall on the Emperor's rear
with impunity.

On the 18th, at nine in the morning only, he quitted his
cantonments to m