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WATERLOO
[Illustration]
WATERLOO
BY
THOMAS E. WATSON
Author of “The Story of France,”
“Napoleon,” and “The Life of Thomas Jefferson.”
[Illustration]
New York and Washington
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1908
Copyright, 1908, by
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
WATERLOO
INTRODUCTORY
The warder of the Tower has his bout with the citizen on the green;
Sir Walter Raleigh looks on from above, and the lieutenant’s wife from
below and neither of the three--warder, lieutenant’s wife, nor the
prisoner, Sir Walter--can agree with either of the other two as to
what took place. Inside the Tower three different tales are told. It
is reasonably certain that still another version was given when the
citizen got back to town and began to talk.
How, then, can any one expect to learn exactly what occurred on
Sunday, June 18th, 1815, in front of the village of Mont-Saint-Jean?
Many witnesses testify, and the conflict of testimony is utterly
irreconcilable. Much of the battle was not seen by Napoleon, and much
of it was hidden from Wellington. Every officer who took part in it and
who afterward wrote about it contributed something to the story, but
what officer could tell it all?
From the day after the battle down to the present time, men and women
have studied the field itself, have pored over dispatches, have
devoured Memoirs, have eagerly listened to the slightest word which
anybody who was in possession of a fact had to say about Waterloo: yet
a mystery hangs over the entire campaign.
Did Wellington really believe that he fought D’Erlon’s corps at Quatre
Bras? He says so, positively, in his official report of the action.
Yet we _know_ that D’Erlon’s corps did not come even within striking
distance, at any time during the day. Full of inaccuracies as his
account of the battle is, the Duke would never correct the statement;
nor could he ever be persuaded to give any other. In fact, whenever the
subject was mentioned he grew testy; and curtly referred the questioner
to his official report.
On the Prussian side, there was a current of intense feeling against
Wellington; but there were such powerful motives for silence that the
truth crept out slowly, and at long intervals. At first, Waterloo
was claimed to be an English victory. Wellington led the way in this
by his slighting reference to “the flank movement of Bülow.” No one
would gather from the Duke’s report that 16,000 of the French troops,
during the afternoon of the 18th, had been fighting desperately, for
several hours to hold the Prussians in check. No one could possibly
learn from this report the fact that the French did not give way on
the English front until the cannon balls of the oncoming Prussians
of Zeiten’s corps were crossing those of the English batteries which
swept the approaches to Mont-Saint-Jean. Reading Wellington’s official
report of the battle, one would believe that the Prussians arrived
after the fight was won--that they had nothing to do but chase the
defeated. Only by degrees did the world learn that Wellington entirely
disregarded the pledge he had given Blücher at the conference in May;
that he wrote Blücher a letter on the morning of June 16th that was
full of deception; left his troops widely scattered when the enemy
was upon him; gave orders which his lieutenants had the nerve and the
wisdom to violate, and was saved from annihilation at the very opening
of the campaign by the incredible mistakes of Napoleon’s officers and
the heroic gallantry of the Prussians. Lord Wolseley complacently
states that Wellington was an English gentleman of the highest type
and, therefore, incapable of falsehood. Yet the Duke’s official report
states that on the 15th he ordered the concentration of his army at
Quatre Bras; _and Lord Wolseley demonstrates that the statement was
untrue_. It was on Nivelles that a partial concentration was ordered,
and had the orders been obeyed the campaign would have been wrecked.
Only of late years has it been perfectly clear that at half-past one
o’clock in the afternoon of June 18th Napoleon had to divide his army,
and to withhold the corps of Lobau which had been ordered to support
the great charge of D’Erlon and Ney. Suppose this corps of fresh men
had been thrown against the English line when it had already been
well-nigh broken. At the time the premature cavalry charges were being
made, and the English, in squares, were suffering so terribly from the
French skirmishers and artillery, suppose 16,000 men whom Napoleon had
sent to drive the Prussians back from Plancenoit, where they threatened
his rear, had been in hand to clinch the cavalry charges! How could the
English have prevented these fresh troops from pouring through the gap
in their line behind La Haye-Sainte?
Only of late years has it been generally known that it was the arrival
of Zeiten’s Prussians on his left that released the troops with which
Wellington filled this break in his line.
It was only when the Prussians of Zeiten’s corps, breaking through
to the right of the French who were attacking the English and to the
left of the French who were withstanding Blücher, came thundering on
their flank that the French army cried “_Treachery! Treachery!_” and
dissolved in universal dismay.
As to Napoleon, whenever he talked of Waterloo he either confined
himself to despairing ejaculations or involved himself in
contradictions. He blamed himself for not having reconnoitered
Wellington’s position; he admitted that he had not had a good view of
the field; he confessed that he had made a mistake in changing his plan
of assailing the English right; he denied giving the order for the
heavy cavalry to charge, although this order had been carried by his
own aide-decamp, Count Flahaut--the father of one or two of Hortense’s
queerly mixed brood of children; and he severely blamed D’Erlon, Ney
and Grouchy.
A curious evidence of the difficulty of learning the truth about
Waterloo is to be found in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Describing
the struggle for Hougoumont, he speaks of the fight in the chapel.
He represents the sacred building as having gone through all the
horrors of war, having been splashed with blood, having been torn
by shot and shell, and having been ravaged by fire. All this seems
probable enough, and yet the English authoress of “Waterloo Days”
visited the battlefield a few hours after the fight and she makes
particular mention of this same chapel; and she declares that it “stood
uninjured”! Listen to this lady--Charlotte Eaton: “No shot or shell
had penetrated its sacred walls; and no sacrilegious hand had dared
to violate its humble altar, which was still adorned with its ancient
ornaments and its customary care.” This is quite different from Hugo’s
“Soldiers massacred each other in the chapel.”
After Hugo’s famous description of Waterloo appeared, all the world
talked of “the old road of Ohain” which had, the novelist declared,
been the pitfall and the tomb of the French cavalry. Painters caught
up the theme, and the legend lives on imperishable canvas. But now
history discards the story. The road from Ohain to Braine l’Alleud
_does_ become a hollow way, between steep banks, for about 400 yards;
but the French were aware of the fact, and the cavalry did _not_ charge
across the trench. The charges passed over the road where it was on a
level with the plain. It _is_ true, however, that in the bewildering
movements incident to charge and countercharge, a small body of French
cavalry came upon this “hollow way,” walked their horses down the bank,
got upon the road, and were about to ride up the other bank to get
at the English, when the English cavalry charged the road, making it
impossible for the French to mount the bank. They then rode up “the
hollow way,”--hacked at by the English above,--until they reached the
level ground, when they retired into the open field to reform.
There has been much controversy as to whether the Duke of Wellington
rode over to Blücher’s camp on the night of the 17th. There is now
conclusive evidence that no such visit was made.
In Archibald Forbes’s “Camps, Quarters and Casual Places,” published
in 1896, we find: “Quite recently there have been found and are
now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the grandson
of the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a ‘conversation with the
Duke of Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams, Judges
on Circuit, at Strathfieldsaye House, on 24th February, 1837.’ The
annotator was Baron Gurney, to the following effect: ‘The conversation
had been commenced by my inquiring of him (the Duke) whether a story
which I had heard was true of his having ridden over to Blücher on the
night before the battle of Waterloo, and returned on the same horse.
He said, “No, that was not so. I did not see Blücher on the day before
Waterloo. I saw him the day before, on the day of Quatre Bras. I saw
him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He embraced me on horseback. I
had communicated with him the day before Waterloo.” The rest of the
conversation made no further reference to the topic of the ride to
Wavre.’”
In Houssaye’s “1815” the statement is made that the French troops
did not receive their rations on the night of the 17th until after
midnight, or even later.
The truth seems to be that some of the troops got nothing at all to
eat. They went into the fight on empty stomachs--stimulated by a drink
of brandy. The enemy, of course, suffered no such disadvantage, for
ample supplies came from Brussels. Again, the English had camp-fires
to keep themselves warm and to dry their clothing; the French had no
fires, and went into action chilled, and in wet clothing.
To understand the physical disadvantage against which the French had to
struggle, we should remember that they had to charge _up hill over miry
ground_. The English were stationary on the crest, excepting when they
charged, and _then_ they charged _down hill_. Those who have walked
over a ploughed field, or who have galloped a horse up a miry slope,
will know how to appreciate the immense difficulties under which the
French labored.
WATERLOO
CHAPTER I
In 1815 the Emperor was no longer a lean, sinewy, tireless, eternally
vigilant human tiger--the Napoleon of Rivoli and Marengo. He was no
longer the consummate General-in-Chief of Austerlitz and Wagram. The
mysterious lethargy which had overwhelmed him at the critical hour
of Borodino, when he withheld the order for the Old Guard to charge
and convert the Russian defeat into a decisive disaster, had been the
first visit of the Evil Genius which was to come again. The strange
loss of _the power to decide_ between two totally different lines of
action, which, at the Château Düben had kept him idle two days, lolling
on a sofa, or sitting at his writing-table tracing on the paper big
school-boy letters, was to become a recurrent calamity, puzzling all
who knew him, and paralyzing the action of his lieutenants in the most
critical emergencies.
At Leipsic the reins had fallen from his hands; only one permanent
bridge over the deep river in his rear had been provided to let him
out of the death trap; and when the strong currents of the rout tore
through the frantic city, the great Napoleon drifted with the furious
tide, whistling vacantly.
The same unexplainable _eclipse of genius_, which General E. P.
Alexander described as occurring to Stonewall Jackson, in the Malvern
Hill movements of our Civil War, happened to the French Emperor, time
and again, after that first collapse at Borodino.
In Spain he ordered a madly reckless charge of his Polish Light
Cavalry against the heights of Sommo Sierra, where the Spanish army
was entrenched and where the position easily admitted of successful
flanking, got his best troops wastefully butchered--and could not
afterward remember who gave the order to charge!
In Dresden, in 1813, he had won a brilliant victory which needed only
to be ruthlessly pushed; and he was pushing it with all his tremendous
driving power when, in the twinkle of an eye, his Evil Genius descended
upon him, took his strength away, held him in invisible but inexorable
bonds;--and when the spell passed, the fruits of the glorious triumph
were all gone, and Despair had thrown its baleful shadow athwart every
possible line of action.
The mighty Emperor, in years gone by, had overdrawn his account at the
bank of Nature, and his drafts were now coming back on him, protested.
He who had once slept too little, now slept too much. Often in the
earlier campaigns he had abstained from eating; now he over-ate.
The reckless exposures and the intensely sustained labor of sixteen
hours out of the twenty-four were taking their revenge. The corpulent
Napoleon now loved his ease, was soon fatigued, spent hours in the
tepid bath, and slept away the early morning when every advance of the
sunbeam meant lost ground to the eagles of France.
Talkative, when he had once been reticent; undecided, where he had
been resolute; careless, where he had been indefatigable and cautious;
despondent, where he had been serenely confident, the Emperor who had
sprung with hawk-like determination upon the plotting Bourbons, had
clutched their unsuspecting Duc D’Enghien, dragged him to Paris in the
night, shot him, and buried him in a ditch before day--this Emperor
did not have enough of that terrific energy left to even fling the
traitors, Fouché and Talleyrand, into prison.
He knew that these two men were at their old tricks again, but he could
not act. Looking at Fouché calmly, Napoleon said, “I ought to have you
shot.” Nothing could prove more conclusively that the Napoleon of old
no longer lived. Had he been the man of Brumaire, or Lodi, or Jena, he
would have shot the traitor first, and talked about it afterward.
In the sere and yellow leaf of life, but still Titanic in his
proportions, the Emperor, once the charity-boy of Brienne,--he who
fought the whole school when the young aristocrats of France made fun
of his shabby clothes and Corsican birth,--_stood at bay against a
world in arms_.
Feudalism against him: Caste against him: Hereditary Aristocracy
against him: The Divine Right of Kings against him; and above all,
the ignorance, the prejudice, and _the unwillingness of mankind
to be forced out of old ruts_ were against him. Against him was a
Church hierarchy which panted for ancient powers and immunities and
wealth. Against him were the Privileged Few of every government on
earth--_those who feast on Class legislation and resent interruption_.
Against him were all those who denied the right of a nation to choose
its own ruler, those who hated the dogma that the true foundation
to government is the consent of the governed. To meet so powerful a
combination, the _one_ sure resource was that from which Napoleon
shrank in horror--an appeal to the Jacobins, the Sansculottes, the
fierce men of the masses who hated the priest and the aristocrat.
“_When one has had misfortunes one no longer has the confidence which
is necessary to success._”
With this mournful remark, made in private to that noble old
Revolutionary patriot, Carnot, the Emperor made ready to leave Paris to
join his army.
In gathering up the scattered remnants of his former hosts Napoleon had
worked at a vast disadvantage. Time and money were what he needed most.
He had not enough of either.
His escape from Elba had found the Congress of Vienna still in
session. The Kings who had pulled him off his throne, in 1814, were
all in Vienna, together. The armies which had outnumbered him and
crushed him, were still in battle array. The traitors who had plotted
his overthrow, the traitors who had deserted him on the field of
battle--the Talleyrands, on the one hand, and the Marmonts on the
other--were all in lusty life, ready to make sure of their guilty heads
by bringing the wounded colossus down.
In the midst of the splendid festivities in Vienna; in the midst
of the pomps and parades, the jubilations over the fall of the one
Throned Democrat of the world; in the midst of the congratulations, the
gayeties, the feasting and dancing, the illuminations and the joyous
music, there comes the clap of thunder from the clear sky.
_Napoleon has left Elba!_
In Dumas’s story, “Twenty Years After,” do you remember that thrilling
chapter in which the news is brought to the immortal Three that their
deadly foe, Mordaunt, _whom they supposed they had killed_, is alive?
Do you remember how Athos, the loftiest man of the Three, rose _and
took down his sword_, which he had momentarily hung upon the wall,
_gravely buckling it around him_? A desperate man is on his track; his
sword must be at his hand.
So it was with the European Kings, at Vienna. They had banded
themselves together to break the scepter of the Crowned Democrat whose
Civil Code, with its glorious maxims, all tending to _Justice_ and
to _Equality before the law_, was a deadly menace to the existence
of _Divine Right_ and _Special Privilege_. They had deceived their
own peoples with lies about Napoleon, and with promises of reforms
which they never meant to keep; they had deluged France with a flood
of foreign invasion that swept all before it; they had bought the
Fouchés and Talleyrands; they had seduced the Murats and Bernadottes
and Moreaus and Marmonts; they had captured Napoleon’s wife and child,
and had deafened their ears and hardened their hearts to the appeals of
the husband and father. They had stricken the sword out of his hand,
the crown off his head. They thought that they had made an end of
this “Disturber of the Public Peace”--this enthroned Democrat, whose
levelling watchword of “_All careers open to talent_,” they hated as a
tyrant hates a rebel, as _despotism hates liberty_. And now _Napoleon
was in France again._ No wonder that consternation seized Vienna.
“_Look to yourself; the lion is loose!_” was the warning cry which a
King of France had sounded in the ears of a false and affrighted King
of England, ages before. If Richard Coeur de Lion’s escape from the
Castle of Dürrenstein turned to water the blood of Philip and John,
the sensation in Europe was as nothing compared to that created by
Napoleon’s escape from Elba.
_Back to France!_ In those three words burns the purpose of the
European Kings. The Russian army is far advanced on its homeward march,
but it must be halted; the tired feet of the soldiers must not rest
an hour. _Back to France!_ The Austrian legions are at home, ready
to enjoy the well-earned rest. Must the bugles call once more?--once
more the streets and the lanes thrill at the beat of the drums? _Back
to France!_ The Prussian and the British armies have not had time to
start home. They are in cantonments, in the Low Countries, close to the
frontier of France. Old Blücher--“_that drunken hussar who has given me
as much trouble as anybody_,” as Napoleon used to say--is already in
the saddle, with a splendid staff which plans his campaigns for him.
The Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Congress of Vienna, must now
hasten to Brussels to take command of his army. All the world believes
that Napoleon will force the fighting, and that he will strike the
enemy nearest him, there on the Belgian frontier.
Thus, in 1815, as the month of June lavishes its splendors on the
earth, the eyes of all Christendom are fastened upon Napoleon
Bonaparte. It is hardly too much to say that the world stands still,
this fateful month, to watch the unequal fight--Napoleon against the
Kings!
How hard it is to understand the delusion under which some of the best
men of the time labored! With eyes to see, why were they so blind? With
ears to hear, why were they so deaf?
Grattan!--why did _your_ electric oratory smite with its lightnings
this great enemy of tyranny, when Ireland, _your own home_, was
bleeding under the remorseless cruelty of the very system which
Napoleon had struggled to tear down? La Fayette!--why were _you_
throwing stumbling blocks in this big man’s way, fettering him with
shackles and cords, when your French Samson needed the uttermost length
of his locks?
Why was it that every Liberal in Europe could not realize as Carnot
did,--he of the Great Committee which piloted France through the storm
of the Revolution!--that in Napoleon’s fate, _at that time_, was bound
up the best interests of the human race?
Behind the confederated Kings _lurked the Ancient Régime_. It panted
for life. It wanted to re-establish the blessed order of things in
which the Few, booted and spurred, put into governmental form their
modest claim to the privilege of riding the Many. It wanted to stamp
out the revolutionary principles which had been _lifting the masses_,
and lowering the monstrous pretensions of the classes.
Had not Metternich declared, “There can be no peace with such
principles”? Had not the restored Bourbons of 1814 proved to an
astonished world that they had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing?
Had they not set about annihilating the glorious work of reform which
had cost France so much--so much in consecrated toil, so much in
well-spent treasure, so much in patriotic sacrifice, so much in heroic
blood? Had they not done their level best, in 1814, to blow the trump
of resurrection for every abuse, every wrong which France had buried
amid the rejoicings of the Progressives all over the world?
What was the “Revolution of July, 1848,” but the final triumph of
Napoleon Bonaparte? _It was that and nothing more._ Had France been
true to herself in 1815 there would have been no Bourbon Charles the
Tenth; there would have been no Bourbon Louis Philippe; there would
have been no occasion for the long postponement of the supremacy of the
Revolutionary Principles.
“_With such principles there can be no peace_,” said Metternich, the
favorite minister of the Confederated Kings; and what La Fayette ought
to have known, and Grattan ought to have known, and the Progressives
everywhere ought to have known, was that _the war of the allied Kings
was against those democratic principles_.
Had Napoleon been willing to be _just a king as they were_, there would
have been for him no Waterloo.
“_Emperor, Consul, Soldier!_--I owe everything _to the
people_!”--declared Napoleon, throwing down the gauntlet of
duel-to-the-death at the feet of Legitimacy, Divine Right and
Absolutism.
No wonder the crafty Metternich, who guided the policies of hereditary
kings, snatched up the glove and said, “_With such principles there
can be no peace._”
In America the masses of the people sympathized with the French
Emperor, and hoped that he would win. At the Hermitage, in Tennessee,
the dauntless warrior who had recently whipped the flower of
Wellington’s army at New Orleans, ardently hoped that Napoleon would
win.
In Great Britain tens of thousands of the followers of Fox hoped
that the right of the French to select their own rulers would be
vindicated. Throughout Continental Europe a powerful minority yearned
for the system of the Code Napoleon, and secretly prayed for the great
Law-giver’s success.
Byron’s friend, Hobhouse, wrote June 12, 1815: “Regarding Napoleon
and his warriors as the partisans of the cause of peoples against the
Conspiracy of Kings, I cannot help wishing that the French may meet
with as much success as will not compromise the military character of
my own countrymen. As an Englishman, I will not be a witness of their
triumphs; as a lover of liberty, I would not be a spectator of their
reverses. I leave Paris to-morrow.”
Wherever men understood the tremendous issues that were about to be
fought out; wherever there was an intelligent comprehension of the
consequences that were inevitably connected with the triumph of the
Allied Kings, there was intense longing for the triumph of the French.
The French masses eagerly besought the Emperor to give them arms--but
he shrank from the menace of Communism, even as he had done when he
refused to arm the Russian serf against his lord.
* * * * *
In the hours of trial, three of Napoleon’s brothers had drawn to
him again. They had been much to blame for his downfall. Joseph had
abandoned Paris in 1814, when there was no urgent necessity for it, and
when Napoleon was flying toward it, on horseback, at headlong speed.
Lucien had been wrong-headed, turbulent, making trouble at Rome and
elsewhere. Jerome’s management in Westphalia had incensed and disgusted
Germany. As to Louis, the fourth brother, that impossible dolt and
ingrate did not show his face, but retired into Switzerland. He was
the younger brother with whom Napoleon had shared his slender pay when
lieutenant, and who had lived with the elder brother and been taught
by him, and in every way treated by him as a father treats a son.
As to Madame Mère, the heroic old mother, she had refused to come to
Paris to take part in the gorgeous ceremonial of Napoleon’s Coronation;
she stayed away, at Rome, where Lucien Bonaparte, in temporary
disgrace, drew the maternal sympathy to the less fortunate son. No,
she would not go to Napoleon in 1800, when all Europe was at his feet,
and he was the King of Kings. She stayed at Rome with Lucien. But when
the awful reverses came, when the scepters were broken in the hands
of the Bonapartes, when Napoleon was prostrate and outlawed, Madame
Letitia,--Madame Mère,--remembered only that he was her son. Josephine,
frail at first, but at last loyal and loving, could not go to Elba;
she was dead. Maria Louise, the Austrian wife, frail as well as false,
would not go to Elba; she had already turned her lewd eyes toward the
gallant Neipperg. But Madame Mère could go to Elba, and she went. And
when Napoleon left for France, she soon followed. So, she is with him
now, heart and soul. For the day is dark and dreary. The somber clouds
hang low. Thunder rolls in the distance--rolls with sullen menace and
ominous reverberation. And because the whole world is against her son,
Madame Mère turns from the whole world _to him_! Heroic old woman! From
her adamantine character was drawn the strength which laid Europe at
Napoleon’s feet.
In the “Barrington Sketches” is drawn a vivid picture of the last
public occasion on which appeared together the most remarkable mother
and son that ever lived. It was on the 8th of June, four days before
Napoleon left Paris to join his army.
The dignitaries of the Empire were assembled in the Chamber of Deputies
to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor. It was a magnificent
ceremonial. In the streets, on the quays and in the parks were great
throngs of people, and among the military the enthusiasm was unbounded.
No longer crying “_Vive l’Empereur_,” their shouts rolled in thunder
tones, “_Empereur! Empereur!_” The roar of cannon shook the earth, and
the air thrilled with the music of the bands. In the great and splendid
Chamber of Deputies were assembled a brilliant array of the nobility
of France--those who had been born great, those who had achieved
greatness, and those who had had greatness thrust upon them. They had
assembled to swear loyalty to their Emperor, Napoleon--and not one
of those who were present knew better the frailty of such a bond of
allegiance than the Emperor himself. And when Fouché took the oath,
Napoleon turned his head and looked fixedly, calmly at the traitor. Sir
Jonah Barrington says that Fouché faltered and flushed. But I doubt
it. Sir Jonah Barrington says that he watched Napoleon’s countenance,
intently studying its every detail. He says that the Emperor sat
unmoved, his face somewhat shaded by the ostrich plumes of his black
Spanish hat, the size of his bust concealed by “the short cloak of
purple velvet, embroidered with golden bees.” Sir Jonah speaks of the
“high and ungraceful shoulders,” and declares that he was “by no means
a majestic figure.” “I watched his eye. It was that of a hawk.” He then
describes how this brilliant glance swept from one face to another,
throughout the assemblage, without a movement of the Emperor’s head.
Sir Jonah describes Napoleon’s mother as “a very fine old lady,
apparently about sixty, but looking strong and in good health, well
looking, and possessing a cheerful, _comfortable_ countenance. In
short, I liked her appearance; it was plain and unassuming.” Then Sir
Jonah tells how he settled down to study her expression to learn her
sensations during the splendid ceremonial. And after the most critical
attention to the varying expressions of the “comfortable countenance”
of this fine old lady, Sir Jonah reaches the conclusion that the
emotions which move her as the brilliant function progresses, are just
those _of a mother proud of her son_!
“I could perceive no lofty sensations of gratified ambition, no
towering pride, no vain and empty arrogance, as she viewed underneath
her the peers and representatives of her son’s dominions.”
What emotion was it, then, that filled her bosom on that last great day
in Paris? “A tear occasionally moistened her cheek, but it evidently
proceeded from a happy rather than a painful feeling--it was the tear
of parental ecstasy.”
After Napoleon had been caged at St. Helena, and was being denied
comforts that had become necessary to him, his mother was one of those
who supplied the captive with funds. Some one remonstrated with her,
telling her that she would reduce herself to poverty, and that she
would be destitute in her old age. The heroic old Corsican answered,
“What does it matter? When I shall have nothing more, I will take my
stick and go about _begging alms for Napoleon’s mother_.”