Memoirs of Napoleon — Volume 13 by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
page 65 of 86 (75%)
page 65 of 86 (75%)
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would be indispensable to use cannon. You must shut yourself up in your
palace, with the individuals of your household and the principal public functionaries, while the Due d'Angoulome should go to Bordeaux, the Duc de Berri to La Vendee, and Monsieur to, the Franche-Comte; but they must set off in open day, and announce that they are going to collect defenders for your Majesty.--[Monsieur, the brother of the King, the Comte d'Artois later Charles X.] ". . This is what I said to the King this morning, and I added that I would answer for everything if my advice were followed. I am now going to direct my aide de camp, Colonel Fabvier, to draw up the plan of defence." I did not concur in Marmont's opinion. It is certainly probable that had Louis XVIII. remained in his palace the numerous defections which took place before the 20th of March would have been checked and some persons would not have found so ready an excuse for breaking their oaths of allegiance. There can be little doubt, too, but Bonaparte would have reflected well before he attempted the siege of the Tuileries. --[Marmont (tome vii. p. 87) gives the full details of his scheme for provisioning and garrisoning the Tuileries which the King was to hold while his family spread themselves throughout the provinces. The idea had nothing strange in it, for the same advice was given by General Mathieu Dumas (Souvenirs, tome iii. p. 564), a man not likely to suggest any rash schemes. Jaucourt, writing to Talleyrand, obviously believed in the wisdom of the King's remaining, as did the Czar; see Talleyrand's Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 94, 122, 129. Napoleon would certainly have been placed in a strange difficulty, but a king capable of adopting such a resolution would never have been required to consider it.]-- |
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