196 HISTORY OF FRA'CE. [chap. her cViild were sent for safety to Blois. Marmont made a last stand on the heights at Montinnrire, with the boys of the military collej^e to serve the guns. All was in vain ; he had to withdraw into P.iris, and there made terms with the allies. Napoleon, hastening back to defend Paris, heard, after pas ing Font lineileau on the evening of March ^oth, that Paris had actually surrender d. 31. The Peace of Paris, 1814. — On the 3[st of March, 1814, the allies entered Paris, and enc imped in its parks and gardens. The working men would have fought if there h id been anybodv to lead them. The upper classes, who were in great part friendly to the Bourbons, wel- comed t'^e allies, and applauded the generals who hid conquen-d the defenders of France. The allies were willing to let France have any government it chosp, pro- vide 1 it were not that of Napolon, the disturber of the peace of Europe ; with him they declared they would not treat. The senate declared hi.m deposed, and he himself ofi'^red to abdicate in favour of his son. This was not accepted, and Marmont, with the re nnant of the army, submirted to the allies. Buonaparte then signd an a:t of abdication for himself and his heirs on t'le 5th of April, 1814. On the nth the treatv was signed by which he was to keep the sovereignty of the little island of Elba in the Me:literranean, with the title ot emperor. His wife Maria Louisa received the duchies of Par.na and Piacenza for herself and her son. There was now a provisional go^ ernment. at the head of whi h was Prince TaJMyr^and. This man, eldest son of the noble family of Talleyrand- Perioord, had been forced into the priesthood in his youth, and had become Bishop of Autun. He had freed himself from all restraints oT his order during the revo- lution, and had become one of Napoleon's most useful ministers. He now took the direction of atTairs in France, and iaduced the senate to recall the old royal famdy, while he and the able men who workel with him made up sayings for them which might win the people, such as, " Only one Frenchman more," which was put into the mouth of the Count of .Artois. On the 3rd of May, 1814, Lewis XVIII. entered Pars with all his familv, and signed a treaty by which the French boundarv was fixed at nearly the same point at which it had stood before the Revolution. France however kept all tJie places which, like Avignon and some pnrts of Elsass, had lain within its own boundaries, though belonging to foreigners,
