RETURN OP 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 VEmpereur! 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 1'Isere 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 



