Napoleon must now have certain clear conceptions. Except Mortier, Drouot, and Gérard, his great officers were disaffected; but the ambitious minor generals were still his devoted slaves. The army was thoroughly imperialist, partly because they represented the nation as a whole, partly because they were under the Emperor's spell. Of such troops he appeared to have at hand sixty thousand, distributed as follows: Marmont, twelve thousand five hundred; Mortier, six thousand; Macdonald, two thousand seven hundred; Oudinot, five thousand five hundred; Gérard, three thousand; Ney, two thousand three hundred; Drouot, nine thousand; and about eleven thousand six hundred guard and other cavalry. Besides these, there were sixteen hundred Poles, two thousand two hundred and fifty recruits, and fifteen hundred men in the garrisons of Fontainebleau and Mélun. Farther away were considerable forces in Sens, Tours, Blois, and Orléans, eight thousand in all; and still farther the armies of Soult, Suchet, Augereau, and Maison. Although the allies had lost nine thousand men before Paris, they had quickly called up reinforcements, and had about a hundred and forty thousand men in readiness to fight. This situation may not have been entirely discouraging to the devotee of a dark destiny, to which as a hapless worshiper he had lately commenced to give the name of Providence. Be that as it may, when Macdonald arrived on the morning of the fourth the dispositions for battle had been carefully studied and arranged; every corps was ordered to its station. As usual, Napoleon appeared about noon for the ceremony of guard-mounting, and the troops acclaimed him as usual. But a few paces distant from him stood the marshals and higher generals in a little knot, their heads close bunched, their tongues running, their glances averted. From out of this group rang the thunderous voice of Ney: "Nothing but the abdication can draw us out of this." Napoleon started, regained his self-control, pretended not to hear the crushing menace, and withdrew to his work-room.
Concurrent with the resolve of the marshals at Fontainebleau ran the actual treason of one who alone was more important to Napoleon's cause than all of them. "I am ready to leave, with my troops, the army of the Emperor Napoleon on the following conditions, of which I demand from you a written guaranty," are the startling words from a letter of Marmont to the Czar, dated the previous day. On April first agents of the provisional government had made arrangements with a discredited nobleman named Maubreuil for the assassination of Napoleon; the next day Schwarzenberg introduced into the French lines newspapers and copies of a proclamation explaining that the action of the senate and of all France had released the soldiers from their oaths. Marmont forwarded the documents he received to Berthier, and while most of the officers flung their copies away in contemptuous scorn, some read and pondered. On April third an emissary from Schwarzenberg appeared at Marmont's headquarters, and what he said was spoken to willing ears. Still under the influence of the homage he had received in Paris, the vain marshal saw himself repeating the rôle of Monk; he beheld France at peace, prosperity restored, social order reëstablished, and himself extolled as a true patriot--all this if only he pursued the easy line of self-interest, whereby he would not merely retain his duchy, but also secure the new honors and emoluments which would be showered on him. So he yielded on condition that his troops should withdraw honorably into Normandy, and that Napoleon should be allowed to enjoy life and liberty within circumscribed limits fixed by the allied powers and France. Next morning, the fourth, came Schwarzenberg's assent, and Marmont at once set about suborning his officers; at four in the afternoon arrived an embassy from Fontainebleau on its way to Paris. The officers composing it desired to see Marmont.