RETURN OF NAPOLEON FROM ELBA. 431 
glacis of the fortress, in presence of the numerous popu- 
lation which crowned the ramparts, the fifth regiment of 
the line to a man assumed the tricolour cockade, substi- 
tuted for the white flag the eagle,—witness of twenty 
battles,—which it had preserved, and departed with 
shouts of Vive 1 Hmpereur! After such a commence- 
ment, to attempt to hold the country would have been 
an act of folly. General Marchand caused accordingly 
the gates of the city to be shut. He still hoped, notwith- 
standing the evidently hostile disposition of the inhabi- 
tants, to sustain a siege with the sole assistance of the 
third regiment of engineers, the fourth regiment of ar- 
tillery, and some weak detachments of infantry, which 
had not abandoned him. 
From that moment, the civil authority had disappeared. 
Fourier thought then that he might quit Grenoble, and 
repair to Lyons, where the princes had assembled to- 
gether. At the second restoration, this departure was 
imputed to him as a crime. He was very near being 
brought before a court of assizes, or even a provost’s 
court, Certain personages pretended that the presence 
of the Prefect of the chief place of l’Isére might have 
conjured the storm; that the resistance might have been 
more animated, better arranged. _ People forgot that 
nowhere, and at Grenoble even less than anywhere 
else, was it possible to organize even a pretext of re- 
sistance. Let us see then, finally, how this martial city, 
—the fall of which Fourier might have prevented by his 
mere presence,—let us see how it was taken. It is eight 
o'clock in the evening. The inhabitants and the soldiers 
garrison the ramparts. Napoleon precedes his little 
troop by some steps; he advances even to the gate; he 
knocks (be not alarmed, Gentlemen, it is not a battle 
