We left the wreck of Napoleon’s beaten army south of the Loire, where they were under the command of Marshal Davoût. There was nothing more for them now to hope, and their Commander soon persuaded them to conform to the circumstances of the hour, and, throwing aside their Eagles, to hoist the white flag of the Bourbons, and to adopt the white cockade. This they did, and shortly after, by Royal decree, dated the 23rd of July, they were disbanded. At the same time, a new army was forthwith to be formed, to consist of eighty Legions of infantry (103 officers and 1,687 men each), one to be raised in every Department, and to bear its name; forty-seven regiments of cavalry, and twelve regiments of artillery,—or a military force of some 200,000 regular troops. Disbanded Imperialists were allowed to engage after proper examination.[59] The command was entrusted to Marshal Macdonald, who had remained firm in his allegiance to the King, during the whole of the Hundred Days of the second French Empire; and he replaced Davoût, who resigned.
Baines, _Wars of the French Revolution_ , ii. 519.
Immediately hostilities came to an end by the Convention of the 3rd, a large number of English people went over to Paris, on business or pleasure, and settled in that gay capital, almost as if it had been their own. Coaches were soon brought over, and horse-racing introduced, contrasting very much in the disfavour of the native _sport_, which the King endeavoured to encourage, but which was then quite in its infancy. In short, the English made themselves thoroughly at home.
“Going along the _Rue du Faubourg St. Denis_, we saw many of the British privates sauntering with a lazy air of enjoyment, looking at the print stalls where they were caricatured, cheapening grapes with the fruit girls, or treating themselves to a glass of lemonade. Our Officers, too, swarmed about, mounted—some well, some very badly; for those who could not procure a decent animal, put up with almost any creature that had four legs. Contrasting remarkably with the heavy cabriolets and clumsy dirty coaches—the awkward calèches and grotesque voitures—English equipages, complete, light, and genteel, glanced rapidly by, spattering, as foreigners, mortification from their wheels on the vehicles of the country. To estimate this exhibition properly, it is necessary to fancy its counterpart displayed by Frenchmen in London; to imagine a Frenchman of fashion, vested with magnificent amplitude of box-coat and commanding longitude of whip, spanking his four blood greys down Bond Street and St. James’s Street, or drawing up smartly, in a knowing style of driving, to talk over the topics of the morning with the Officer of the French Guards, on duty at the Palace of the King of England!”[60]