The final resurrection and triumph of Napoleon no one could foresee on
March 31, 1814, when he lay in a stupor of weariness and soul-sickness
at Fontainebleau, while the Allies were entering Paris.
It was a sad day out there at the old palace; in the capital was
spasmodic jubilation. Talleyrand, of the Council of Regency, had
managed to remain in Paris when the Empress fled. Talleyrand became the
moving spirit of royalist intrigue. He may not have intended the return
of the Bourbons, may have been tricked by Vitrolles as Lord Holland
relates; but he had meant all the while to overthrow Napoleon, and had
countenanced, if not suggested, plans for his assassination.
To prove to Czar Alexander that France hungered and thirsted for
the Bourbons, Talleyrand got up cavalcades of young aristocrats who
rode about shouting, “Down with the tyrant! Long live Louis XVIII.!”
High-born ladies, also, began to take active part in the business, it
being an axiom with Talleyrand that if you wish to accomplish anything
important, you “must set the women going.” Ladies of the old nobility,
elegantly dressed, were in the streets, distributing white cockades,
and drumming up recruits. Royalism and clericalism bugled for all their
forces; and while Napoleon’s friends, disorganized, awaited leaders,
the day was carried for the Bourbons.
So that when the Allies marched into Paris, as masters, on March 31,
1814, the royalist faction welcomed the invaders as “Liberators.”
How had these royalists got back to France, to freedom, and to wealth?
Through the magnanimity of “the tyrant” whom it was now so easy to
abuse. How had those high-priests of the Church, who were Talleyrand’s
aides in treachery, regained their places, their influence, their
splendid importance? Through the leniency of the man who was now
abandoned, denounced, sold to the enemies of France.
And how had the wars commenced which Napoleon had inherited, and
which he had never been able to end? By the determination of kings
and aristocracies to check the spread of French principles, to crush
democracy in its birth, and to restore to its old place organized
superstition, class-privilege, and the divine right of kings. In the
long fight, the new doctrine had gone down; and the old had risen
again. Royalists, clericals, class-worshippers, fell into transports
of joy. Glorious Easter, with a sun-burst, flooded them with light.
They thronged the streets in gala dress; they filled the air with glad
outcry; they kissed the victor’s bloody hand, and hailed him as a god.
They followed Czar Alexander through the streets to Talleyrand’s house,
with such extravagance of joyful demonstration that you might have
thought him a French hero fresh from victories won over foreign foes.
Cossacks, driving before them French prisoners, were enthusiastically
cheered as they passed through the streets. Aristocratic women, by
the hundred, trooped after the foreigners who led the parade, threw
themselves with embraces upon the horses, and kissed the very boots of
the riders. And these troops, mark you, were those who had made havoc
in the provinces of France, with a ferocity and a lust which had not
only wreaked its fill upon helpless maid and matron, but had revelled
in the sport of compelling fathers, husbands, and sons to witness what
they could neither prevent nor revenge, and which had coldly slain the
victims after the bestial appetite had been glutted.
Cheer the Cossack bands as they prod with lances the bleeding French
captives who have seen their homes burnt, and their wives and
daughters violated and butchered! Hug the horses, and kiss the feet
of the foreigners who have come to beat down your people, change your
government, quell your democracy, force back into power a king and a
system that had led the nation to misery and shame!
Do all this, O high-born ladies of France, for the triumph of to-day
is yours! But when passion has cooled and reason returned; when
overwhelming pressure from without has been removed and France has
become herself again, your excesses of servility to-day will but have
hastened the speed of the To-morrow in which your precious Bourbons,
and your precious feudalism will be driven forever forth from the land
into which foreign bayonets have brought them. The man who lingers
at Fontainebleau is to-day no longer Emperor to the high and mighty
ones in Paris. To confederated monarchs he is “Bonaparte”; to banded
conspirators he is “Bonaparte”; to recreant marshals, ungrateful
nobles, grasping clericals, treacherous Dalbergs and Talleyrands, he
is “Bonaparte.” Foreign and domestic foes make their appointment at his
triumphal column in the Place Vendome, tugging and pulling to drag his
statue down, as they have dragged _him_ down.
The Empire is a wreck, the Napoleonic spell broken for all time to
come. Down with the Corsican and his works! Up with the Bourbon lilies,
and the glories of the Old Régime!
So runs the current--the shouts of the honest devotee and of the
time-server whose only aim in life is to find out which is the
winning side. Far-seeing, indeed, would be the sage,--wise as well as
brave,--who, in this hour of national degradation, should dare to say
that all this carnival of royalism would pass like a dream;--would dare
to say that the fallen Emperor would rise again and would sweep his
enemies from his path, and would come once more to rule the land--with
the majesty and the permanence which belongs to none but the immortal
dead.
* * * * *
Troops had collected in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau to the
number of forty or fifty thousand. The younger officers and the men
of the rank and file were still devoted to the Emperor. Whenever he
appeared he was met with the same old acclamations; and shouts of
“To Paris” indicated the readiness of the army for the great battle
which it was thought he would fight under the walls of Paris. After
his first torpor, Napoleon had recovered himself, had formed his
plans, and had convinced himself that the allied army could be cut
off and destroyed. But in order for him to succeed it was necessary
that treason in Paris should give him a chance to win, and treason
gave him no such chance. The high-priests and the nobles whose hands
Napoleon had strengthened by his Concordat and the recall of the
émigrés, made the streets of Paris hot with the hurry of their feet
as they ran here, there, and yonder, marshalling their partisans. The
Abbés Montesquieu and Louis, the Archbishop of Malines, cordially
working with Talleyrand and Dalberg, and assisted by banker Laffitte
and others of that kind, honeycombed the Senate and the various public
bodies with conspiracy, drawing into one common net those who merely
wished to end the war by getting rid of Napoleon, as well as those who
were original Bourbonites. In this crisis there was none to take the
lead for Napoleon. He had deprived the masses of the people of all
initiative; had given them civil liberty, but had taken away from them
all political importance. Into the hands of the nobles and the priests
he had replaced power, wealth, influence, class organization. When
the Church and the aristocracy turned upon him, where was the power
of resistance to come from? The army was a tower of strength to the
Emperor, it is true; but even here there was mortal weakness, for the
higher officers, who had been ennobled, were imbued with the spirit
of their class. If the Senate, and the Church, and the aristocracy
should declare against Napoleon, it soon became evident that his
marshals would declare against him also. He had so bedizened them with
titles, loaded them with honors, and gorged them with riches, that
they could get nothing more by remaining loyal, even though he should
finally triumph. Upon the other hand, should he fail, they would lose
everything; hence to desert him was plainly the safe thing to do.
Napoleon was holding a review of his troops at Fontainebleau when
Caulaincourt was seen to approach him, and whisper something in his
ear. He drew back as though he had been struck, and bit his lips, while
a slight flush passed over his face. Recovering himself at once, he
continued the review. Caulaincourt’s whispered news had been that the
Senate had deposed him.
“The allied sovereigns will no longer treat with Bonaparte nor any
member of his family.” This declaration had cleared the way for the
creation (April 1) of a provisional government by the French Senate,
which provisional government was composed of Talleyrand and four other
clerical and aristocratic conspirators.
The beginning having been made, the rest was easy. On April 3 the
Senate decreed the Emperor’s deposition, alleging against him
certain breaches of the Constitution, which breaches the Senate had
unmurmuringly sanctioned at the time of their commission. Various
public bodies in and around Paris began to declare against him, having
no more right to depose him than the Senate possessed, but adding very
sensibly to the demoralization of his supporters. Even yet the army was
true; even yet when he appealed to the troops, the answering cry was,
“Live the Emperor!” Thus while in Paris his petted civil functionaries,
his restored clericals, and his nobles were jostling one another in
the tumultuous rush of desertion, and while the swelling stream of the
great treason was rolling onward as smoothly as Talleyrand could wish,
there was one cause of anxiety to the traitors,--the attitude of the
French army.
On April 4 the Emperor held his usual review; it proved to be the last.
The younger officers and the troops were as enthusiastic as ever, but
the marshals were cold. After the parade they followed Napoleon to his
room. Only in a general way is known what passed at this conference.
The marshals were tired of the war, and were determined that it should
come to an end. Napoleon had formed his plans to march upon Paris and
fight a great battle to save his crown. Marshal Macdonald had approved
the plan and was ready to second his chief; the others would listen
to no plans, and were resolute in their purpose to get rid of this
chief. It seems to be certain that if a surrender could not be got from
Napoleon by fair means, the marshals were ready to try those that were
foul. If he could not be persuaded, he was to be intimidated; and if
threats failed, he was to be assassinated. Talleyrand’s provisional
government was equally determined and unscrupulous. Napoleon was to
be killed if he could not otherwise be managed. Foremost among the
marshals demanding his abdication, and apparently threatening his life,
was Marshal Ney, whose tone and bearing to his chief are said to have
been brutally harsh.
After having exhausted argument and persuasion upon these officers,
Napoleon dismissed them, and drew up his declaration that he resigned
the throne in favor of his son.
“Here is my abdication!” he said to Caulaincourt; “carry it to Paris.”
He appeared to be laboring to control intense emotion, and Caulaincourt
burst into tears as he took the paper.
As long as the French army appeared to be devoted to the Emperor, the
Allies had not openly declared for the Bourbons. They had encouraged
the idea that they would favor a regency in favor of Napoleon’s son,
conceding to its fullest extent the right of the French people to
select their own rulers. It was by the skilful use of this pretence
that many of the French officers had been led astray. It was by this
mingling of the sweet with the bitter that Napoleon’s first act of
abdication had been wrung from him by the marshals. Succeeded by
the son he adored, France would not be wholly lost to him, since it
remained to his dynasty.
But here again Marmont ruined all. Played upon by Laffitte and
Talleyrand’s clique,--flattered, cajoled, and adroitly seduced,--this
marshal of France made a secret bargain with the Allies which took from
the Emperor the strongest body of troops then at hand.
Thus it happened that when the Ney-Macdonald delegation, bearing the
conditional abdication, returned to Paris, and were urging upon the
Czar the claims of Napoleon’s son, the conference was interrupted by an
excited messenger who had come to announce to Alexander that Marmont’s
corps had been led into the allied lines. This astounding intelligence
ended the negotiations. The Czar promptly dropped the veil, and
disclosed the real policy of the Allies. The marshals went back to
Fontainebleau to demand an abdication freed from conditions.
Marmont had dealt the final blow to a tottering cause--“Marmont, the
friend of my youth, who was brought up in my tent, whom I have loaded
with honors and riches!” as the fallen Emperor exclaimed, in accents of
profound amazement and grief. Yes, when the miserable renegade sat down
to plot with Talleyrand the complete ruin of the Empire, it was in a
luxurious palace which Napoleon had given him.
What officer had ruined a campaign in Spain and thereby done grievous
injury to the Emperor in Russia? Who had disobeyed orders, brought on
the night surprise at Laon, and wrecked Napoleon’s pursuit of Blücher?
Who had lost the line of communications, by movements against orders,
and had let Napoleon’s most important despatches fall into the hands
of the enemy? Who had caused the defeat at Fère-Champenoise; who had
so feebly resisted the allied advance upon Paris that their progress
astonished themselves? Who had surrendered a vast city of eight hundred
thousand souls to foreigners, when he must have known that Napoleon
was coming to the rescue as fast as horse could run? Marmont, the
spoiled favorite; Marmont, the vainglorious weakling; Marmont, the
false-hearted traitor! Verily he reaped his reward. To the Bourbons
he became a hero, and so remained for a season. But France--the real
France--hated him as North America hates Benedict Arnold. The time came
when he who had betrayed Napoleon for the Bourbons, betrayed the elder
Bourbons for the House of Orleans. Despised by all parties, he wandered
about Europe as wretched as he deserved to be. And the day came when
the gondoliers at Venice pointed him out scornfully to each other, and
refused to bend an oar for the miscreant.
“You see him yonder! That is Marmont. Well, he was Napoleon’s friend,
and he betrayed him!”
* * * * *
Undaunted even by Marmont’s defection, Napoleon issued a proclamation,
and began his preparations to retire beyond the Loire, and fight it
out. His conditional abdication rejected, war could not be worse than
peace, and he explained his plan of campaign to his marshals. They cut
him short, brusquely, menacingly. The Emperor stood alone, forsaken by
all his lieutenants, and made an imploring address to them, pleading
with them to make one final effort for France. His words fell on hearts
that were turned to stone. They harshly declared that the confidence
of the army was gone. Macdonald said that they must have unconditional
abdication.
The Emperor promised to reply next day, and, as his marshals filed
out, he said, in bitterness of spirit,--“Those men have neither heart
nor bowels; I am conquered less by fortune than by the egotism and
ingratitude of my companions-in-arms.”
Who has not read of that panic of apostasy which now ran like a
torrent? From the setting sun at Fontainebleau to that which was
rising in Paris, all turned--turned with the haste of panic-stricken
pardon-seekers, or of greed-devoured place-hunters. From the highest to
the lowest, the fallen Emperor’s attendants left him. Princes, dukes,
marshals, generals,--all creations of his,--fled from him as from the
contagion of pestilence. Even Berthier, the favorite, the confidant,
the pampered and petted--even Berthier bit his nails for a brief season
of hesitancy, and then abandoned his friend to his misery. Marmont’s
treason had hurt, had wrung a cry of amazement and pain from that
tortured spirit; but Berthier’s was a crueller stab. “Berthier, you see
that I have need of consolation, that my true friends should surround
me. Will you come back?” Berthier went, and he did not come back.
They left him, singly and in squads, till he and his faithful guard
were almost all that remained. His very valets, the Mameluke he
brought from Egypt, and Constant whose _Memoirs_ portray his master so
lovingly, could not resist the panic of the hour; they turned their
backs upon their master, and, according to that master’s statements in
his instructions to his executors, they robbed him before they fled.
But there were some who did not go, a few who stood the storm. May
their glorious names live forever! Among these it is pleasant to find
the name of his old schoolmate, Colonel Bussy.
Bertrand, Gourgaud, Montholon, Bassano, Cambronne, Caulaincourt,
Lavalette, Druot, and some others did not blanch. Nor did the Old Guard
falter. The “growlers” had followed the chief--murmuring sometimes,
but following--all through the terrors of the last campaign; they were
ready to follow him again.
And there were womanly hearts that warmed to the lonely monarch, and
would have consoled him--first of all, Josephine. She had watched
his every movement though the campaign with an agony of interest and
apprehension. His name was ever in her thoughts and on her lips. Of
all who came from the army she would ask: How does he look? Is he
pale? Does he sleep? Does he believe his star has deserted him? Often
the harassed Emperor found time to write to her, brief notes full of
kindness and confidence. These she would take to her privacy, read, and
weep over. She understood the great man, at the last; she had not done
so at first. From Brienne he wrote her, “I have sought death in many
battles, but could not find it. I would now hail it as a boon. Yet I
should like to see Josephine once more.” This note she carried in her
bosom.
When she heard of the abdication, she was frantic with grief, and
she would have flown to his side, only she thought of one who had
the better right,--Maria Louisa. As the broken monarch sat in the
gloom, his great head sunk on his breast, two other noble-hearted
women appeared at Fontainebleau. One of them was the beautiful Polish
lady, Madame Walewski; the name of the other is not given. They
were announced, and the Emperor promised to see them. After waiting
many hours, they went away. Napoleon had fallen into revery again
and had forgotten they were there. It is said that he took poison,
intending to kill himself. This has been questioned; but it is certain
that he swallowed some drug which brought on a sudden and alarming
illness, during which he said he was going to die. “I cannot endure
the torments I experience. They have dragged my eagles in the dirt!
They have misunderstood me! Marmont gave me the last blow! I loved
him. Berthier’s desertion has broken my heart! My old friends, my old
companions-in-arms!”
Says Constant: “What a night! what a night! While I live I shall never
think of it without a shudder.”
On the morning after this attempted suicide, Napoleon “appeared much
as usual,” and met his marshals to give them his answer to their
demand for unconditional abdication. Even yet he made one more attempt
to inspire them to effort, to infuse into them something of his own
courage. It was all in vain. Then he scrawled the few lines in which he
laid down his great office, and handed them the paper.
“You claim that you need rest! Very well, then, take it!”
“What shall we demand of the Allies in your behalf?” the marshals
inquired.
“Nothing. Do the best you can for France; for myself, I ask nothing.”
They went away upon their errand, and once more the Emperor sank into
a stupor of despondency. Much of the time he spent seated upon a stone
bench, near the fountain, in the English garden which he had himself
laid out at the back of the palace. Just as he had lain, novel in hand,
upon the sofa at Moscow, silent and moody day by day; and just as he
had sat in the château of Düben, in 1813, idly tracing big letters on
white paper; so he now sat by the hour on the stone bench in the garden
at Fontainebleau, saying nothing, and kicking his heel into the gravel
until his boot had made a hole a foot deep in the earth.
Deserted as he had been, Napoleon was yet a man to be dreaded; and the
Allies were most anxious to come to terms with him, and to get him
out of the country. Partly from fear of what he might do if driven
to despair, and partly out of generosity to a fallen foe, the Czar
influenced the other powers to sign the treaty of Fontainebleau with
Napoleon, whereby he was to retain his title of Emperor, to receive
a yearly pension of $400,000 from France, and remain undisturbed as
Emperor of Elba. His son, as successor to his wife, was to have a realm
composed of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla.
Resigning himself to his fate, Napoleon received the Commissioners whom
the Allies sent to take charge of his journey to his new empire, and
busied himself in the selection of the books and baggage he intended to
take with him.
With assumed gayety he said to Constant, whom the Emperor evidently
believed would follow him, “Eh, well, my son, get your cart ready: we
will go and plant our cabbages.”
But every now and then the full sweep of bitter reality would come over
him, and he would clap his hand to his forehead, crying:--
“Great God! Is it possible?”
His departure was fixed for April 20, 1814. The Imperial Guard formed
in the White Horse Court of the palace. The Emperor appeared upon the
stairs, pale and firm. A dozen or more stanch friends waited to bid
him farewell. He shook hands with them all. The line of carriages
was waiting; but he passed hastily by them, and advanced toward the
soldiers drawn up in the court.
It was seen then that he would speak to the troops, and dead silence
reigned. The old, proud bearing was there again,--pride softened by
unutterable sadness,--and the voice was full and sonorous as he spoke
the few words which reached all hearts that day, reach them now, and
will reach them as long as human blood is warm.
“Soldiers of the Old Guard, I bid you farewell! For twenty years I
have led you in the path of honor and glory. In these last days, as
in the days of our prosperity, you have never ceased to be models of
fidelity and courage. With men such as you, our cause could never have
been lost; we could have maintained a civil war for years. But it would
have rendered our country unhappy. I have therefore sacrificed all my
interests to those of France. Her happiness is my only thought. It will
still be the object of my wishes. Do not regret my fate. If I have
consented to live, it is in order to promote your glory. I trust to
write the deeds we have achieved together. Adieu, my children! I would
that I could press you all to my heart. Let me embrace your general and
your eagle!”
He took General Petit, commander of the Guard, in his arms, and he
pressed the eagle to his lips.
The soldiers sobbed, even the Commissioners were touched; and Napoleon,
hurrying through the group which had gathered round him, reached his
carriage, fell back on the cushions, and covered his face with his
hands.
There was the word of command, the crunching and grinding of wheels,
and the carriages were soon lost to sight.