the courts of justice and tribunals which had taken place during the absence of Napoleon.  The second banished anew all emigrants who had returned to France before 1814 without proper authority, and displaced all officers belonging to the class of emigrants introduced into the army by the King.  The third suppressed the Order of St. Louis, the white flag, cockade, and other Royal emblems, and restored the tri-coloured banner and the Imperial symbols of Bonaparte’s authority.  The same decree abolished the Swiss Guard and the Household troops of the King.  The fourth sequestered the effects of the Bourbons.  A similar Ordinance sequestered the restored property of emigrant families.

The fifth decree of Lyons suppressed the ancient nobility and feudal titles, and formally confirmed proprietors of national domains in their possessions. (This decree was very acceptable to the majority of Frenchmen).  The sixth declared sentence of exile against all emigrants not erased by Napoleon from the list previously to the accession of the Bourbons, to which was added confiscation of their property.  The seventh restored the Legion of Honour in every respect as it had existed under the Emperor; uniting to its funds the confiscated revenues of the Bourbon order of St. Louis.  The eighth and last decree was the most important of all.  Under pretence that emigrants who had borne arms against France had been introduced into the Chamber of Peers, and that the Chamber of Deputies had already sat for the legal time, it dissolved both Chambers, and convoked the Electoral Colleges of the Empire, in order that they might hold, in the ensuing month of May, an extraordinary assembly—­the Champ-de-Mai.

This National Convocation, for which Napoleon claimed a precedent in the history of the ancient Franks, was to have two objects:  first, to make such alterations and reforms in the Constitution of the Empire as circumstances should render advisable; secondly, to assist at the coronation of the Empress Maria Louisa.  Her presence, and that of her son, was spoken of as something that admitted of no doubt, though Bonaparte knew there was little hope of their return from Vienna.  These various enactments were well calculated to serve Napoleon’s cause.  They flattered the army, and at the same time stimulated their resentment against the emigrants, by insinuating that they had been sacrificed by Louis to the interest of his followers.  They held out to the Republicans a prospect of confiscation, proscription, and, revolution of government, while, the Imperialists were gratified with a view of ample funds for pensions, offices, and honorary decorations.  To proprietors of the national domains security was promised, to the Parisians the grand spectacle of the Champ-de-Mai, and to.  France peace and tranquillity, since the arrival of the Empress and her son, confidently asserted to be at hand, was taken as a pledge of the friendship of Austria.