During the Hundred Days, the government of Louis XVIII of France frantically tried to stop Napoleon's march on Paris. Marshal Michel Ney was ordered to report to Besançon where he was to receive his orders from Bourmont. It irritated the proud Ney, Prince of Moscow, to take instructions from such a junior general, so he demanded to see the king. During his interview with Louis, Ney boasted to the king that he would bring back the ex-emperor in an iron cage. By the time Ney arrived in Besançon, he found that the royalist position was rapidly deteriorating and that Bourmont's assignment was to spy on him. On 11 March 1815, Ney told Bourmont that he was going over to Napoleon's camp. Shortly afterward, the Bourbon cause collapsed and Louis fled to Belgium, followed by hundreds of royalists.