Most were harmless enough - coteries of disgruntled aristocrats sending letters denouncing Napoleon and declaring their loyalty to the Bourbon cause. They were kept under watch and any contacts they made duly noted. Other plots were more dangerous. Groups of army officers planning to compel the Emperor to sue for peace, or have him forced from power. The minister’s agents were busy compiling evidence against them in readiness to make arrests. Such officers were destined for a dank cell in a far-flung prison, or to be placed up against a wall in the cool light of dawn and shot. Then there was the minority of traitors who planned to kill Napoleon, and his heir too if possible. There was little common cause between the groups. Some wanted the restoration of a Bourbon monarchy. Others wanted a return to the values and institutions of the early years of the Revolution. And there were those who merely wanted revenge for a past grievence.

Whatever their causes, Napoleon did his best to ensure that he was protected against them all and did not expose himself to danger any more than was necessary. Since his return he had seldom ventured outside the Tuileries, save for visits to St-Cloud to see the Empress and his son. There was a beleaguered air about the palace, and the Parisians no longer gathered in vast crowds to acclaim their Emperor. Most of them were already looking to the future, making sure that they did not openly support a regime that might well fall at any time. Yet the grip of Napoleon’s reputation, and the optimistic pronouncements of the newspapers, ensured that the people dared not openly question whether the Emperor’s days were numbered.

He turned slowly away from the window and crossed the room to his desk. Tomorrow he would be leaving the capital to return to the army, or what was left of it, he mused bitterly. After Leipzig the exhausted soldiers had been forced to make one retreat after another, pressed back by the allied armies who clung to their heels like hunting dogs scenting the kill. By the end of the year France had a mere eighty thousand men to hold off nearly four times that number across a front that stretched from the North Sea to the Alps. In Italy Prince Eugène, also outnumbered, was holding on. In the south Soult was struggling to contain the recently promoted Field Marshal Wellington, who had crossed the frontier into France.

Napoleon smiled briefly. Soon Wellington would be taken care of. Two months earlier he had signed a treaty with Prince Ferdinand, returning the Spanish crown to him in exchange for an alliance against Britain. Once Ferdinand’s grip on power was assured, then his soldiers would turn on the British and Wellington would be compelled to retreat. That would free Soult and his army to march north.