This invitation to make the last earthly sacrifices in behalf of a military despot, to which Zaragossa had submitted in defence of her national independence, was ill received by the inhabitants. A free state has millions of necks, but a despotic government is in the situation desired by the Imperial tyrant--it has but one. When it was obvious that the Emperor Napoleon had lost his ascendency, no shop-keeper in Paris was fool enough to risk, in his cause, his shop, his family, and his life, or to consent to measures for preserving the capital, which were to commence by abandoning to the allied troops, and the scum of their own population, all that was, to him individually, worth fighting for. The placards we have mentioned were pulled down, therefore, as fast as they were pasted up; and there was an evident disposition, on the part of the better class of citizens and the national guards, to discourage all counsels which tended to stimulate resistance to the desperate extremity therein recommended.
Nevertheless, the state of the capital continued very alarming, the lower classes exhibiting alternately the symptoms of panic terror, of fury, and of despair. They demanded arms, of which a few were distributed to them; and there is no doubt, that had Napoleon arrived among them in the struggle, there would have been a dreadful battle, in which Paris, in all probability, would have shared the fate of Moscow. But when the cannonade ceased, when the flight of Joseph, and the capitulation of the city became publicly known, this conflict of jarring passions died away into silence, and the imperturbable and impassive composure of the national guard maintained the absolute tranquillity of the metropolis.
On the morning of the 31st, the Royalists were seen in groups in the Place Louis Quinze, the Garden of the Tuileries, the Boulevards, and other public places. They distributed the proclamations of the allies, and raised the long-forgotten cry of _Vive le Roi!_ At first, none save those engaged in the perilous experiment, durst echo back a signal so dangerous; but by degrees the crowds increased, the leaders got on horseback, and distributed white cockades, lilies, and other emblems of loyalty, displaying banners, at the same time, made out of their own handkerchiefs. The ladies of their party came to their assistance. The Princess of Leon, Vicomtesse of Chateaubriand, Comtesse of Choiseuil, and other women of rank, joined the procession, distributing on all hands the emblems of their party, and tearing their dress to make white cockades, when the regular stock was exhausted. The better class of the bourgeois began to catch the flame, and remembered their old royalist opinions, and by whom they were defeated on the celebrated day of the Sections, when Buonaparte laid the foundation of his fame in the discomfiture of the national guard. Whole pickets began to adopt the white, instead of the three-coloured cockade; yet the voices were far from unanimous, and, on many points, parties of different principles met and skirmished together in the streets. But the tendency to discord was diverted, and the attention of the Parisians, of all classes and opinions, suddenly fixed upon the imposing and terrible spectacle of the army of the allies, which now began to enter the city.