corps is advancing. The Emperor turns pale, and sends Grouchy orders to
come back. Will the orders reach him? If they do, will he be able to
disengage himself from the enemy? Everything turns upon the fortune of
the next hour. The English must be beaten before the Prussians can come
to their aid. Napoleon delivers a great cavalry attack on the centre, but
the English stand firm. Shall he use the old guard? Not yet! Not yet!
Bülow is already beginning to fire. At all costs he must keep the line
of retreat open, for otherwise there may be a catastrophe. But, in fact,
the English forces are already half defeated. It is five o’clock, and the
guard might have finished their defeat, for at this hour Wellington sent
a message to his Prussian ally: “Unless your corps keeps marching, and
attacks without respite, the battle will be lost.” This would have been
the moment for an attack by the old guard, but once more caution makes
the Emperor hold his hand at the critical moment. He sees that a second
Prussian corps is about to attack.
A dread decision! A brilliant gamester staking his last coins, but to-day
he must not be beaten. At length, towards seven, he sends the last five
thousand guardsmen, the veterans, to the attack. Now, it is only a
forlorn hope. “Vive l’Empereur!”
This cry has shaken half Europe. Is it not a century old? In a decade
it has gained a legendary force throughout the Continent. But what is
imperishable? Even the eagles of Marengo are not imperishable. Is the
mythical energy of this cry, Vive l’Empereur, to subside with the setting
of to-day’s sun? Yes, to-morrow it will be heard no more!
The second Prussian corps pours a deadly fire on the guard, which yields
ground. The opposing force continues to grow; at eight, the third army
corps appears on the scene, and a hundred and twenty thousand of the
allies are now attacking half that number of Frenchmen. The battered
French army takes to flight, and Bonaparte, in his last hour as a
commander, is for the first time in his life commander of a routed army.
After an hour on horseback in the open, exposed to the British fire, the
Emperor rides into the centre of one of the two remaining French squares.
When these, likewise, break up, he gallops across country protected only
by mounted grenadiers. Though in bodily pain, he has to stay in the
saddle until five in the morning, when he is able at length to secure a
few hours rest in an old cart.
Is he discouraged?
By no means! What is Paris saying? This is the thought which continually
drives him onward. He does not venture, as he had done last year, to
assemble the guards in Laon or Soissons, or to betake himself to one of
the fortresses. He thinks only of Paris, as the place from which more
soldiers can be gathered. Calculations, as of old: “I can still mobilise
a hundred and fifty thousand men; with the National Guard, there will be
three hundred thousand in all. That will be enough to stop the advance
of the enemy.” The last orders he sends to Paris end with the words:
“Courage! Firmness!”
Two days later, he is once more in the Elysée, which he had left so
recently. Has the whole campaign been a dream? In nine days he has lost
the empire which he had fought nine years to win.
XIX
Not lost yet!
In the cabinet and in the Chambers, opinions are divided. He sits in
council with his brothers and his ministers; he is worn out, but there
is no sign of collapse. What does he propose? To work hand in hand with
the Chambers? Far from it; he proposes dictatorship. In this national
crisis, he needs, for a short time, full freedom of movement. Some of
the ministers point out to him that the Chambers no longer trust him.
Then Lucien takes the floor, and with all the fire of a youth urges the
Emperor to dissolve the Chambers, declare Paris in a state of siege, take
all power into his hands, get together the remaining troops—thus alone,
now, can France be saved!
He listens. Sixteen years have passed since that November day at
Saint-Cloud when this very Lucien had made the same proposal, and, with a
single speech, had snatched his brother from the abyss. Then Lucien had
raised Napoleon higher than he had wished. The Emperor approves the plan,
but does not instantly act on it. Instead, he listens while Davoust, the
Minister for War, refuses to place the remnants of the armed forces at
his disposal. While they are disputing, news comes from the Chamber of
Deputies. It has declared itself in permanent session, will regard any
attempt to dissolve it as high treason, and will impeach any one who may
dare to try. “I can see only one man between us and peace,” said old
Lafayette from the rostrum. “If we rid ourselves of him, peace will be
ours for the asking!”
Is this the cry of the people? Paris is perfectly calm, so it is nothing
more than the cry of a liberated democracy. But it is also the cry of a
society which loves change and bears adversity badly, for the House of
Peers now passes a vote identical with that of the Chamber of Deputies.
The Chambers demand that the Emperor shall appear before them. Why does
he not go? Who would venture to oppose him openly? “I ought to have
gone,” he said subsequently, “but I was tired out. I could have dissolved
them, but I lacked courage; I am only a man, after all. My memories of
the Nineteenth Brumaire terrified me.”
Now the Chambers send for the ministers. The Emperor replies that he
has forbidden them to go. The Chambers rejoin that they will depose
him unless the ministers come. He gives way. He sends Lucien and the
ministers to the Chamber of Deputies, and they report that he has formed
a commission to negotiate with the enemy. “The powers will not treat with
him!” cry the Chambers. “They have outlawed him. He must abdicate. If he
refuses, we shall depose him!”
While this is going on in the Chambers, the Emperor, much agitated, is
walking to and fro in the garden with Constant. At length he is roused,
and flames out:
“Not my own future, but that of France is at stake! Have they considered
the consequences of my abdication? The army is grouped round me. Do they
think they can fight the general dissolution with ideology? I could
have understood it if I had been repelled when I landed three months
ago. But to-day, when the foe is only a hundred miles from Paris, they
cannot overthrow a government without suffering for it. A fortnight
back, to repudiate me would have been a bold action. Now, I am part of
what the enemy is attacking, a part of France which it is their business
to defend. France will sacrifice itself if it sacrifices me! It is not
liberty which would fain depose me, it is Waterloo—fear!... All I want
now is to be the commander; but even if part of the troops were to fall
away, I should promptly replace them by workmen, who can readily be moved
to revolt.”
At this moment, the two men in the garden hear shouts from the avenue,
“Vive l’Empereur!” Whose are these last voices raised for Napoleon? The
workers from Saint-Antoine; men whose troubles he had remembered in
days of need, men who cared little about the suppression of liberty,
for equality had made them free. There they were, peering through the
railings which separated the son of the revolution from them just as
it had separated the kings, but shouting through the bars of the cage
into which he had shut himself: “Dictatorship! National Guard! Vive
l’Empereur!”
“You see?” said Napoleon to Constant. “I never loaded those fellows
with honours. What have they got to thank me for? I left them poor men,
just as I had found them. Nothing but instinct leads them to me. If I
liked, these rebellious Chambers would be dissolved within the hour....
I need merely say the word, and all the deputies who oppose me would be
butchered! But for one man, the price is too high. Blood must not flow in
Paris!”
This mood of renunciation, which is akin to justice, this refusal to
employ brute force in his extremity, just as he had refused (to begin
with) sixteen years earlier, resembles the mood of Brumaire. But what was
then the prudence of a statesman who did not wish to tarnish the origins
of his long career of power, is now a prudence which does not beseem
the adventurer he is to-day. Nevertheless, his unwillingness to use the
bayonets with which, to-day, he could again have cleared the Chambers,
is one more sign of his recognition of the new epoch, which wants more
freedom and less force.
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Deputies is in secret session. Lucien has
presented the imperial message. The deputies are willing to discuss
matters. Some of them speak, in civil terms, of the abdication as a
sacrifice necessary for France. Honest Carnot mounts the rostrum, and, in
this moment of disaster, is almost alone in espousing the cause of the
Emperor whom almost alone he had openly attacked in the days when all
others had been subservient to the man of the hour. But now Sieyès, too,
speaks in favour of the Emperor, speaks like a Roman of old: “Napoleon
has lost a battle.... Let us help him to drive the barbarians from our
country, for no one else is equal to the task. If, when he has done it,
he wants to play the despot, we can hang him. But to-day we must march
with him shoulder to shoulder!”
Lafayette springs to the rostrum once more: “Have you forgotten where the
bones of our sons and our brothers whiten? In Africa, on the Tagus, on
the Vistula, amid the snows of Russia. Two million have been the victims
of this one man who wanted to fight all Europe! Enough!” In the small
hours, the Chamber demands Napoleon’s abdication.
The Emperor hesitates. In the morning there is another cabinet council.
Much agitated, he paces the room, uttering gibes about these Jacobins,
foreseeing a new Directory. Then the commandant of the Palais Bourbon
arrives with a message from the Chambers. He stammers when he attempts to
discharge his commission, but at length manages to get the words out. If
the Emperor does not abdicate, the Chambers will outlaw him. Savary and
Caulaincourt come in. All present urge him to the step, for even Lucien
has given up the game. The Emperor says:
“I have accustomed them to great victories, and now they do not know how
to endure a single day of adversity. What will happen to France?” He adds
in low tones: “I have done what I could.”
After this epilogue of six words, which tells the whole story, at noon
he dictates his declaration to the people. He is making the sacrifice,
his political life is at an end, he proclaims his son emperor as Napoleon
II., the Chambers must establish a regency. To whom does he dictate these
words? Who among his intimates can hold the pen firmly enough to write
them down?
Lucien! The brother who for years from the enemy coast had gazed
enviously at this city and this throne; who, if he had been a little
less of a poet, might long since have collected the malcontents around
him; and who might even now come to the front, not indeed as a second
Napoleon, but at least as a second Bonaparte—and that would be something.
Lucien sits there, a man of forty now. He had been no less ambitious
than the Emperor, but had had to content himself with the modest career
of a virtuoso and a Mæcenas. For four whole weeks, now, he has been
an imperial prince! Smiling inwardly, he pens his great brother’s
abdication; writes from dictation, still a mere hodman, but this time
animated with a humorous sympathy which atones for the old discords.
For, in truth, it is the eternal recurrence of the similar. As before,
come cries from the Chambers, “Outlaw him!” As before, five Directors,
like those Bonaparte had once deposed, are appointed. They call
themselves a provisional government. But when they proceed to elect from
among their own number one to function as president of the Directory, who
is chosen to take over the authority from Napoleon’s hands? Who, by his
own vote, has decided his own choice as president?
Fouché.
But the Chamber has become less turbulent. Those who, yesterday, were
thirsting for Napoleon’s blood, to-day send a deputation to thank him
for his abdication. To these polite gentlemen the Emperor says: “I fear
things will turn out badly, now that there is no head. I trust France
will never forget that my sole object in abdicating was to promote the
welfare of the nation, and that I have abdicated in favour of my son.
Only under my dynasty, will France remain free and happy.”
At the very time when he is saying this, Fouché and the others are
considering the possibility of having one of the Orleanist Bourbons,
a member of the Brunswick family, or even the king of Saxony, as
Napoleon’s successor. Moreover, the five Directors are appointed to form
a government, not a regency; and, in his decrees, Fouché often speaks of
the nation, but never of Napoleon II. The Emperor notes all this, but
holds his peace. Slowly his dream of a dynasty vanishes, the dream for
whose realisation he has fought half a lifetime. It has become for ever
unattainable. When Lavalette comes to see him in the evening, he is in a
hot bath, has been there for several hours.
“Where am I going? Why not to America?”
“Because Moreau went there.”
To the Emperor this answer seems surcharged with emotion, for he has
serious thoughts of seeking an asylum in the United States, and he asks
the government for a frigate. But the only answer is a request that he
should leave Paris, for crowds are flocking round the Elysée, clamouring
for a dictatorship. He burns a number of documents, and then betakes
himself to Malmaison.
In the garden there, the garden that is full of memories of Josephine,
he passes two whole days in a state of reverie. The few who remain
faithful to him are there: his mother, Hortense, Caulaincourt, Lavalette,
Lucien, even Joseph. But when the Emperor asks who will go with him, the
answers are evasive. Letizia, indeed, will go gladly, but he thinks that
at her age it would be dangerous. Lavalette has a daughter growing up,
and his wife is expecting another child; perhaps he will follow later.
Drouot, who shared the Elba exile, is wanted in France. The secretary had
promised the day before to accompany Napoleon into exile, but now his
mother, who is blind, has implored him not to leave her. “You are right;
you must stay with your mother,” says the Emperor, turning away.
Pauline, before the last campaign, had pressed her jewels on him; now
Hortense offers him a diamond necklace; a quixotic return of imperial
gifts, a gesture suitable to the strange turn in his fortunes. He tells
Hortense she will have a million, but no one knows if it will ever be
paid. Lucien and Eugene get money, and he gives little Léon something for
his mother—still dealing in hundreds of thousands.
But he does all these things like a man in a dream. He does not say a
word about the last few weeks, but talks only of old times, and chiefly
of Josephine. “I have promised the minister to go away. I shall start
to-night. I am weary of myself, of France, and of Paris. Make your
preparations.”
Whither away? Conjectures, deliberations. Spectral is the tone of the
manifesto he now addresses to the army:
“Soldiers!... I am with you even though I am away. I know every corps.
If any one wins a victory, I shall approve his courage.... Show, in days
to come, that, before all, you serve your country, show it by obeying
me; and show that I have earned your affection (if indeed I have earned
it) by my ardent love for our common mother. One more storm, and the
coalition will be shattered! Napoleon will know you by the blows that
you deal out. Save the honour and the liberty of the French. Be what you
have been for twenty years, and you will be unconquerable!”
The government suppresses the document, but could have published it
without risk. No one could be more aloof, no living man could have become
more completely a part of history, than this man who speaks of himself as
if he were speaking of a stranger. He seems to be no longer present in
the flesh.
Suddenly he is startled! The old sounds assail his ears. The noise of
cannon shots reaches him from the plain of Saint-Denis; the foe is at the
gates. Officers and soldiers, scarred and tattered, but hastily patched
up, bring him the news, vague and dispersed like the sound of the firing.
Instantly he returns to life. “In two detachments? You must attack and
defeat them separately; first one and then the other.” At night he
elaborates a plan for the defence of Paris. Next morning it seems as
if the familiar sounds had rejuvenated him, and he writes to the five
Directors as General Bonaparte had written of old:
“I offer to place myself at the head of the army. At sight of me, the
soldiers will recover their courage, hurl themselves on the foe, and
punish him. I pledge you my word as general, soldier, and citizen that I
will not retain the command an hour after the victory has been won. I vow
to conquer, not for myself but for France.”
It is impossible that after such words he should fail to conquer, unless
he is slain in the first onslaught. In this mood of impending death, he
writes his magnificent letter. Napoleon, in the garden, surrounded by his
remaining officers, restlessly awaits the answer.
Fouché’s great moment has come. To this ex-master of his, to the man whom
he so cordially detests, he does not even vouchsafe a written answer.
The Emperor, who is trembling with eagerness to take up arms, and who
has never since he grew to full manhood had to wait for another man’s
permission, tears the response out of the returning messenger. It is
curt: The Emperor is mistaken if he thinks the members of the government
are such fools as to entertain his proposal; all they ask is that he
should go away as soon as possible. Napoleon says bitterly: “I ought to
have hanged him long ago. Now I must leave the job to the Bourbons.”
Mufti; a rapid gathering together of necessaries; Hortense sews her
necklace for him into a black silk belt. For a few minutes he entertains
the thought of Corsica, with Lucien as governor of the island. His
mother’s eyes sparkle. But he knows that the scheme is impracticable.
America is his last resource. The only thing lacking is the frigate
for which he has been asking. All are aware that every hour increases
the risk to his liberty. It is said that Wellington has demanded his
surrender, and the number of the deputies in favour of his being handed
over is steadily increasing. Lavalette urges him to start, but the
Emperor is stubborn.
“I cannot leave without an order from the government to the captain.”
“Why not, Sire? Have the anchor weighed, promise the crew money, send
the captain ashore if he won’t set sail. You may be sure that Fouché has
already promised to hand you over to the allies.”
“Drive to the Minister for the Navy!”
The councillor drives to Decrès’, and finds him in bed. Decrès refers the
messenger to Fouché, saying: “I can do nothing.”
Fouché cannot be found. The councillor gets back to Malmaison at one in
the morning. The Emperor is awakened, gets up, still thinks the United
States will be best, but hesitates. “Over there, they will grant me land,
or I will buy an estate and till it. I shall end where mankind began. I
shall live upon the produce of my fields and my herds.”
“But what if they propose to hand you over?” enquires the secretary.
“Then I shall go to Mexico. There I shall find patriots at whose head I
can place myself.”
“The leaders there might turn against you.”
“All right; I shall leave them and go to Caracas. If I don’t like it,
I shall go on to Buenos Ayres or to California. I shall sail across
the seas until I find a city of refuge where I can be safe from the
persecutions of my fellows.”
“But what if the English catch you, Sire?”
“I must risk that. A bad government, but a great nation, noble and
generous. England will treat me properly. Besides, there is no choice. Am
I to allow myself, like a ninny, to be taken prisoner here by Wellington,
to be led in triumph through the streets of London like King John the
Good of old? Since they have no use for my services here, I must go
elsewhere. Ability will do the rest.”
“Your Majesty was not made for flight.”
“Flight! What are you talking about?” He looks at the secretary
“questioningly and proudly.”
“The English must certainly be on the watch for you already. Your end
ought to be the worthiest possible.”
“Suicide, like Hannibal? Leave that to weaklings and persons of
disordered mind! Whatever fate may hold in store for me, I would never
deliberately shorten my life by a single day.”
“I did not mean that, Sire. But what if you were to hand over liberty
and life to the enemies of France in order to save France? That is how
Napoleon the Great should act.”
“All very fine, but to whom am I to hand myself over? To Blücher? To
Wellington? They have no plenipotentiary powers. They would simply take
me prisoner, and do what they pleased with France and with me.”
“The tsar, perhaps?”
“You do not know the Russians! Still, I will think the matter over. To
sacrifice my own person would be easy enough. The question is, whether it
would help France?”
Almost every element that goes to make the statesman seems to have been
eliminated from this all-too-human dialogue. Here is an adventurer
hankering after fresh voyages in every corner of the world. Here is the
man without a country, the ocean traveller without any earth under his
feet, always on board, always driven hither and thither, a bold pirate
fearless of death. Ay, fearless of death! The dry manner in which, once
again, he waves aside the idea of suicide, the sober realism of his
outlook, this grasp at the flying moment, the old-time dauntlessness of
the islesman—what unconquerable vital energy!
Now he is to start. The last person with whom the Emperor has a quiet
talk is his mother. But a soldier rushes in; he will not let any hold him
back: the soldier is Talma. The call of his heart and his love of the
tragical have urged him to come for a great farewell; he feels he must be
there. Later he is to represent this leave-taking between mother and son,
in all its dignified simplicity, in a pathetic scene on the stage. Then
the Emperor invites young General Gourgaud, the scatter-brained idealist,
into his dilapidated carriage. Bertrand and his wife, who had lived with
him in Elba, and two others, accompany him. They drive to Rochefort, to
the port where they hope to find a frigate. The pace is too slow for a
fugitive. He still looks over his shoulder, listening for the call which
shall summon him back at the eleventh hour. They meet two regiments
marching northward. The men raise a cheer, and the Emperor discusses with
the generals the possibility of overthrowing the government if he places
himself at their head and marches on Paris.... Away again, at length the
long drive is over, and he stands gazing at the Atlantic Ocean. Joseph is
there, and urges Napoleon to charter a brig which is taking a cargo of
spirits to America. The Emperor assumes the name of Muiron, his seventh
name. This name calls up the vision of another coast, the Mediterranean
with its many isles, and Corsica, and then Italy; and again he sees the
young, small, lean general, with long hair falling on his shoulders
and cold grey-blue eyes, and the bridge of Arcola where the fate of a
man and a country hung in the balance; and he sees Lieutenant Muiron
fling himself before the young general in the mêlée, he sees Muiron
fall, and he knows that by this love-death the lieutenant’s name will
be immortalised. It would seem that once again a new epoch is opening
before the genius of energy, and that across the seas, in new zones, on
uninhabited prairies, the adventurer will swing himself into the saddle,
will watch the increase of his herds; maybe, even, will travel to Mexico
and become the leader of a band of rebels!
But God is wiser.
He sees to it that this great life shall have an epilogue such as no
man has ever lived through before, an epilogue which shall fitly round
off its tragical poesy. Once more the Almighty stifles the adventurous
impulse in the soul of Napoleon; once more there are days of questioning,
negotiation, vacillation—ten days before the final decision.