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of local government proved singularly uncooperative in the implementation of taxation and conscription alike. Faced by this situation, the Minister of the Interior, Lazare Carnot - the ‘architect of victory’ of 1793- dismissed large numbers of officials and attempted to replace them with men who were loyal to the regime, only to find that he could obtain few reliable alternatives. ‘As was clearly necessary, there were many changes in the prefects’ appointments, but favouritism combined many mistaken selections with some good ones. There were appointed many young men who were zealous, but who could not inspire much confidence. On all sides it was proclaimed that the law should prevail, and yet the majority of the emperor’s special commissioners who were sent to the departments everywhere dismissed underlings in order to find room for men who had formerly held the appointments or for those who in past days had given proof of patriotism. Not only did that procedure hinder the transaction of official business . . . but it added a further increase to the number of the discontented.’37 As for the lower classes, there had in some areas been demonstrations of popular support for Napoleon - in Metz, for example, an angry crowd besieged the headquarters of the governor and raised the tricolour on the tower of the cathedral; at Nevers the governor was chased out of the town when he tried to hold it for Louis XVIII; and at Grenoble, Lyons and, finally, Paris, Napoleon had been greeted by cheering multitudes.

However, whether such events were indicative of feelings in France as a whole was another matter, for they were most often to be found either in districts ravaged by the enemy in1814 or in places which had some particular reason to remember the empire with gratitude. If the lyonnais turned out in strength to greet Napoleon, it was in part because the city’s silk industry had consistently been protected by him, while Paris, too, had consistently been favoured. Elsewhere the picture was very different. From large parts of the country came reports of rioting and draft evasion, and the Vendée erupted in a fresh revolt. In the strongly Catholic north the fleeing Louis XVIII was greeted in such towns as Lille by crowds of inhabitants begging him not to leave France. In Marseilles, Lady Bessborough, whom the Hundred Days had caught on holiday in France, reported that the news of the emperor’s landing had led to ‘strong dissensions between the soldiers and the people’.38 ‘Even in our peaceful valley of the Saulx,’ wrote Madame Oudinot, ‘the population were becoming both suspicious and hostile . . . The emperor cannot have long retained his illusions on the chances of power which remained to him, because in 1815 it was much less the wish of the nation than of the army that had brought him back from Elba.’39 Not surprisingly, then, there was considerable confidence amongst the Allies. As Castlereagh wrote to Sir Charles Stewart on 26 March 1815:

The accounts received today speak favourably of the public spirit in the western departments and [announce] that a considerable force is forming there in support of the king’s cause. The south, also, is represented as extremely well disposed. Should these reports be confirmed, we may hope that Bonaparte will not be enabled to draw much in men and money from the country beyond the Loire.40

Popular enthusiasm for Napoleon in 1815 therefore centred very much on a domestic agenda. As even the enthusiastic Bonapartist Lavallette, put it, ‘The wish to have Napoleon was less insistent than the desire to get rid of the Bourbons.’41 No sooner was a new war on the agenda than enthusiasm fell away. In these circumstances it did not help in the slightest that both Joseph and Jerome appeared once more in Paris. ‘It was feared,’ wrote Hortense de Beauharnais, ‘that they still entertained pretensions to their old kingdoms, and did not believe that it would cost France anything to get them back.’42 In these circumstances, it was amazing that Napoleon succeeded in raising a fresh army at all, but, for many