The return from Elba, the Chancellor states in his _Mémoires_, so far from being desired by the nation at large, was viewed with terror; and the unpopularity of the government of the Bourbons, after their return to power, he ascribes to the very poor opinion that it caused to be entertained "of its strength and of its capacity." Of its gross violation of law and justice, one of the most striking instances was that of the execution of Marshal Ney, after Waterloo, and the Duc de Richelieu, Louis XVIII's minister of foreign affairs,--whom the latest historical researches seem to combine to elevate, and of whom even Pasquier was an admirer,--here appears in the ignoble _rôle_ of judge and accuser combined. Scarcely was he settled in the Tuileries again when the new king proceeded to draw up a list of eighteen citizens and eighteen superior officers to be proscribed, though in so doing he formally violated the articles of the capitulation of Paris, which provided that no citizen or soldier was to be prosecuted for having taken part in the preceding events. The presidency of the council of war which was to try, and condemn, "the bravest of the brave," was offered to the eldest of the marshals, Moncey, Duc de Conegliano. He declined it, in an indignant letter to the king, as "sanctioning an assassination," and was imprisoned for three months in a fortress for disobedience of orders. By a majority of five votes against two, the council, in fact, declared itself incompetent, and Ney, with a sigh of relief, exclaimed: "You see, _ces b ... là_ would have shot me like a rabbit."
He rejoiced too soon; the Duc de Richelieu made a furious speech before the Chamber of Peers in which he openly demanded the condemnation of the marshal; in the _acte d'accusation_, read before this new court, "the truth was so outrageously abused and mutilated that it was justly characterized as a masterpiece of hatred." In vain his defenders demonstrated that this prosecution was a violation of the solemn engagements made by the Allies _in the name of the king_; Davout and his chief-of-staff, General Guilleminot, deposed that they would have "delivered battle," instead of capitulating, had it not been for article 12 of this capitulation, in which an amnesty for all persons was expressly stipulated; they were peremptorily silenced, and at nine o'clock the next morning the marshal was shot by his old comrades in arms in the grand alley of the garden of the Luxembourg. A recent monograph by M. Henri Leyret, from which we draw these details, quotes the remark of a foreigner who was present at this execution: "The French act as if they had neither history nor posterity."