The Count of Provence was living in England when Napoleon’s Senate
called him to the throne. He was one of those who had “digged the pit”
for his brother, Louis XVI.; and who, when that brother was falling
into it, discreetly ran away to foreign lands. After several changes
of asylum on the Continent, he had gone to England as a last refuge.
France had well-nigh forgotten him. A generation of Frenchmen who knew
not the Bourbons had grown up; and the abuses of the Old Order were
known to the younger generation only as an almost incredible story,
told in the evenings by older people, as the family circled about the
hearthstone. So completely had the Revolution swept away the foul
wrongs of the Bourbon system, that the younger generation could never
be made to understand why their fathers hated it with such bitterness.
Reined in by the iron hand of Napoleon, the nobles and the clericals of
the Empire seemed to be harmless enough. Why should the noble and the
priest of the Old Order have been so much worse than these?
The graybeards in France knew; but the younger people could no more
realize the former situation than could the children of Daniel Boone,
George Rogers Clarke, John Sevier, or of the New England pioneers,
understand the horrors of Indian warfare. The story of Bourbon
misrule, class tyranny, and church greed fell upon the ear with a sound
deadened by the lapse of twenty odd years.
Bourbon emissaries had pledges and soft words for all parties. To
Napoleon’s nobles were given the assurance that they should remain
noble; to his generals, that they should retain their honors and their
wealth. To the priests it was not necessary to say that they should
have even more than the Concordat gave, for the priests knew how dearly
the Bourbons loved the old pact between Church and State. To pacify men
of liberal ideas, promises were made that the restored Bourbons would
rule as constitutional kings, recognizing in good faith the changes
wrought by the Revolution. Napoleon’s Senate was not so forgetful of
its own safety, and of the interests of France, that it failed to put
the contract in writing. The Constitution of a limited monarchy was
formulated, and the Count of Artois, brother and representative of
Louis XVIII., accepted its conditions.
In England the new King was given an ovation upon his departure for
France, and he took occasion to write to the Prince Regent that, next
to God, he owed his crown to Great Britain. This statement was not
good policy, for neither in France nor among the potentates of the
Continent did it tend to popularize the speaker; but it was the truth,
nevertheless. The settled purpose of Pitt had been the restoration
of the Bourbons, and upon this basis it is now known that he built
the first European coalition against republican France. Canning and
Castlereagh had but inherited the principles of the abler Pitt. In a
speech in Parliament (April 7, 1814), Lord Castlereagh proclaimed that
his “object had long been to restore Europe to that ancient social
system which her late convulsions had disjointed and overthrown.”
As Hobhouse says, “When he talks so plainly, even Lord Castlereagh can
be understood; when he professes such principles, even Lord Castlereagh
may be believed.”
Fresh from his London ovation, and full of his ideas of divine right,
Louis met the French legislative body at Compiègne, and evaded their
request for a declaration of the royal policy. It became evident that
he intended to set aside the pledges made in his name, and to rule as
absolute sovereign. To this purpose he was urged by clericals, nobles,
and his own inclinations, for, as Napoleon said, “the Bourbons had
learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” With a royal disregard of
facts, he had mentally abolished Napoleon’s empire, all of its glories,
all of its shame, and had appropriated the entire era to himself. In
his own mind he had become King of France at the death of the boy,
Louis XVII.; and the year 1814 was the nineteenth year of his reign!
Here, indeed, was cause for tribulation among the eminent turncoats who
had exchanged Napoleon for the Bourbon! If the Empire had been but a
hallucination, what would become of the nobles created by the Emperor,
the honors conferred by him, the lands whose titles had been granted by
him, the great institutions which had been founded by him? What would
become of his peers, his judges, his marshals, his schools, hospitals,
and public charities? Where would the Legion of Honor be? What was to
become of the revolutionary principle that all Frenchmen were equals
in law, and that all careers were open to merit? Questions like these
buzzed throughout the land, and the hum of inquiry soon grew into the
murmurs of alarm, of anger. If Bourbons came back to power in any
such temper as that, what would become of eminent statesmen who had
overturned the ancient monarchy, abolished the nobility, confiscated
the wealth of the Church, and guillotined the King? What would be the
fate of Talleyrand, Fouché, and Company? Aghast at such a prospect as
unhampered and vengeful Bourbonism threatened, eminent renegades who
had negotiated Napoleon’s downfall with the Czar Alexander appealed to
the Russian monarch to stand between themselves and the danger. Like
most mortals, the Czar had a strict code of morals for his neighbors.
Ready to break pledges himself, it shocked him to see Louis ignore the
conditions upon which he had been summoned to France. In courtly phrase
the Bourbon was notified that until he confirmed the promises Artois
had made to the Senate, there should be no royal entry into Paris. Even
under this pressure, Louis would not yield an iota of the precious
dogma of divine right. Refusing to concede that the people had any
inherent powers whatever, and stubbornly maintaining that all power,
privilege, and sovereignty rested in him alone, he graciously published
a proclamation in which he granted to the people, of his own free will,
certain civil and political rights, ignoring the Senate altogether.
This “Charter” having been signed, the King made his triumphal entry
into Paris, May 3, 1814.
On the evening of the same day, as the sun was sinking in the
Mediterranean, the mountains of the island of Elba rose upon the sight
of the crew of the British vessel, the _Undaunted_, and Napoleon had
his first glimpse of his little realm in the sea.
His journey from Fontainebleau to Fréjus, on the French coast, had
been, at first, soothed by many expressions of kindness and of sympathy
from the people who thronged the line of travel; but as the fallen
Emperor reached the province where the White Terror had once raged, and
was to rage again, popular expressions underwent a complete change.
Mobs of hooting royalists surrounded his carriage, and dinned into his
ears the most brutal insults. Only his escort saved him from being torn
to pieces. At Avignon he missed, almost by miracle, the dreadful fate
which overtook Marshal Brune there, after Waterloo. Napoleon believed
that these royalist mobs were set upon him by Talleyrand’s provisional
government, and perhaps his suspicion was correct. It is certain that a
certain nobleman, Maubreuil by name, afterward charged Talleyrand with
having employed him to kill Napoleon; and when Talleyrand denied the
story, Maubreuil took the first occasion to beat him--a beating which
Talleyrand was wise enough not to endeavor to punish by prosecution.
Surrounded by savage mobs who jeered him, insulted him, threatened
him, and made desperate efforts to seize him, Napoleon is said to
have lost his nerve. Unfriendly witnesses allege that he trembled,
paled, shed tears, and cowered behind Bertrand, seeking to hide. What
is more certain, is that he disguised himself in coat and cap of the
Austrian uniform, mounted the horse of one of the attendants, and rode
in advance of the carriages to escape recognition. Courage, after all,
seems to be somewhat the slave of habit: a soldier may brave death a
hundred times in battle, and yet become unnerved at the prospect of
being torn to pieces by a lot of maddened human wolves. It should be
remembered, however, that the only real evidence we have of Napoleon’s
terror was the wearing of the disguise. If this makes him a coward, he
falls into much distinguished company, for history is full of examples
of similar conduct on the part of men who are admitted to have been
brave.
Napoleon had banished from court his light sister Pauline, because of
some impertinence of the latter to the Empress Maria Louisa. This light
sister was now living at a château which was on his route to the coast,
and he spent a day and a half with her. Shocked to see her imperial
brother in the Austrian uniform, she refused to embrace him until he
had put it off and put on his own.
While Napoleon was staying at the château, a crowd of people from the
surrounding country gathered in the courtyard. He went down and mingled
with them. Soon noticing an old man who wore a red ribbon in his
button-hole, Napoleon went up to him and said:--
“Are you not Jacques Dumont?”
Too much surprised to reply at once, the veteran at length faltered,
“Yes, my lord; yes, General; yes, yes, sire!”
“You were with me in Egypt?”
“Yes, sire!” and the hand was brought to the salute.
“You were wounded; it seems to me a long while ago?”
“At the battle of Trebbia, sire.”
The veteran by this time was shaking with emotion, and all the crowd
had clustered thickly about these two.
Taking off his cross of the Legion of Honor, Napoleon put it upon his
old soldier; and while the veteran wept, the crowd shouted, “Live the
Emperor!”
“My name! To remember my name after fifteen years!” the old man
continued to repeat; and so great was the sensation this little
incident was creating that the Commissioners who had charge of the
exile grew alarmed, and hastened to get him back into the house.
The captain and the crew of the British frigate had never seen the
French Emperor save through the glasses of the English editors. Any one
who knows how great is the power of an unbridled press to blacken the
fairest name, distort beyond recognition the loftiest character, and
blast the hopes of the noblest career, can readily comprehend what was
the current British opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814. Seen through
the eyes of Tory editors and pamphleteers, he was a man contrasted with
whom Lucifer might well hope to become a popular hero.
Great was the surprise of Captain Usher and his sailors to see a
handsome, quiet, polite, and self-controlled gentleman, who talked
easily with everybody, conformed without fuss to all the ship
regulations, gave himself no airs of superhuman loftiness, and took an
intelligent interest in the ship and in the folks about him. So great
was the charm of his manner, and of his conversation, that English
prejudice wore away; and the sailors began to say, “Boney is a good
fellow, after all.”
It is amusing to note that Sir Walter Scott records with pride the
fact that there was one sturdy sailor who was not to be softened, who
retained his surliness to the last, and whose gruff comment upon all
the good-humored talk of the Emperor was the word, “_Humbug!_” The
name of this unyielding Briton was Hinton; and both Sir Walter and his
son-in-law Lockhart record his name with a sort of Tory veneration.
In spite of the unyielding Hinton, the sailors of the _Undaunted_ grew
fond enough of Napoleon to accept a handsome gratuity from him at the
journey’s end; and the boatswain, addressing him on the quarter-deck in
the name of the crew, “Thanked his honor, and wished him long life and
prosperity in the island of Elba, _and better luck next time_.”
Neither Sir Walter Scott nor his son-in-law Lockhart, report Hinton’s
remarks upon this occasion; and they leave us in doubt as to whether
his virtue held out against the golden temptation, or whether he
pocketed his share, with a final snort of, “Humbug!”
On May 4, 1814, the Emperor made his official landing in Elba, whose
inhabitants (about thirteen thousand souls) received him well. He made
a thorough investigation of his new empire, its industries, resources,
etc., and sitting his horse upon a height from which he could survey
his whole domain, remarked good-humoredly that he found it rather small.
Soon joined by his mother and by his sister Pauline, also by the
seven hundred troops of the Old Guard assigned him by the Treaty of
Fontainebleau, Napoleon’s establishment at Porto Ferrajo resembled
the Tuileries in miniature. Imperial etiquette stiffened most of its
joints, and put on much of its formidable armor. Visitors poured into
Elba by the hundred, and with many of these Napoleon conversed with
easy frankness, speaking of past events with the tone of a man who was
dead to the world.
His restless energies found some employment in the affairs of his
little kingdom, and in the planning of all sorts of improvements upon
which he lavished freely the funds he had brought from France. With
Pauline’s money he bought a country-seat, where he spent much time, and
where he could occasionally be seen helping to feed the chickens.
His mother had come and his sister, but where was wife and child? The
allied sovereigns had pledged themselves by formal treaty to send Maria
Louisa to him under escort, and the promise had been broken. Wife and
child had been enveloped with hostile influences, kept well out of his
reach, hastened from France, and carried to Vienna.
Historians gloss over the intrigue which followed--as foul a conspiracy
against human virtue and sacred human relations as ever soiled the
records of the human race.
The Emperor Francis of Austria and Metternich, his minister, were
determined that Maria Louisa should never rejoin her husband, treaty
or no treaty. They knew her character, and for his daughter the royal
father laid the most infamous snare. He deliberately encouraged
Neipperg, an Austrian libertine of high degree; and Napoleon’s wife,
entangled in the meshes of this filthy intrigue which had found her all
too ready to yield, no longer wished to return to the husband she had
betrayed.
No wonder the authors who gloat over Napoleon’s sins find no comfort
here; and hurry on to other topics. They have made horrible accusations
against him and his sister Pauline, on the mere word of a spiteful
Madame de Rémusat, and of an unscrupulous liar like Fouché. But the
accusations might be true, and nevertheless Napoleon would shine like a
superior being beside such an exemplar of divine right as the Emperor
Francis, who coldly and deliberately, as a matter of state policy,
pushed his own daughter into the arms of a libertine!
We have read of the crimes of the vulgar, the canaille, the Marats,
and the Héberts; does any page of modern history hold a story more
sickening than this? Did any criminal of the vulgar herd stoop to
depths more loathsome than Francis, Emperor “by the grace of God,”
wallowed in?
After having broken their treaty upon the sacred subject of wife and
child, the allied kings found it easy enough to violate it upon matters
less important. They did not respect the property of the Bonaparte
family as they had agreed; they did not pay the Bonaparte pensions;
they did not bestow the principalities promised for Napoleon’s son; and
they paid no respect to that provision of the compact which secured
to Napoleon inviolably the island of Elba. Bitter personal enemies
of the fallen Emperor, Pozzo di Borgo, Lord Wellington, Talleyrand,
and others, agreed that he must be removed to a greater distance from
Europe, St. Helena being the place which met with most favor. The fact
that the allied kings had pledged themselves to allow him to remain at
Elba, seems not to have entered into the discussions at all. He who had
broken no treaties was already an outlaw in the counsels of those who
had broken all: they could deal with him as they chose. “In the name
of the most Holy Trinity” they had pledged faith to him; they could as
easily breach the last treaty as its predecessors, being kings by the
grace of God, and owing no fealty to ordinary moralities.
The British ministry began to negotiate with the East India Company for
the island of St. Helena; and the purpose of the allied kings to send
him there as a prisoner of war not only reached Napoleon at Elba, but
actually found its way into the _Moniteur_, the official gazette of
France.
The fact that Louis XVIII. did not pay one cent of the $400,000 which
the Treaty of Fontainebleau had provided for Napoleon’s annual revenue,
was of itself a source of serious embarrassment to him, justifying him
in setting aside a contract which his enemies did not regard; but it
had less to do with his movements, perhaps, than any other breach of
the treaty. He cared nothing for money; little for personal luxury. “I
can get along with one horse, and with a dollar a day,” he declared
with democratic independence. Besides, he could easily have secured
from Europe the sums he needed, as he himself publicly declared on
his return to France. But when he found that his wife and child would
never be surrendered; that Talleyrand and the Bourbons were still bent
upon having him assassinated; that if he could not be killed he was
to be taken away to a distant rock and held as a prisoner of war, the
impulse became irresistible to make one desperate effort to escape the
impending doom. Those who watched over his personal safety had already
stopped, disarmed, and sent away two would-be assassins: who could tell
whether the third would be stopped? It came to him that the Allies
had agreed to send him to St. Helena: who could say when a British
man-of-war might bear down upon little Elba? Brooding over his wrongs,
and over the perils of his situation, Napoleon gave way to occasional
bursts of anger, declaring that he would die the death of a soldier,
arms in hand, before he would submit to the proposed removal.
A Scotchman of rank who visited Elba at this time wrote: “Bonaparte
is in perfect health, but lodged in a worse house than the worst
description of dwellings appropriated to our clergy in Scotland,
yet still keeping up the state of Emperor, that is, he has certain
officers with grand official names about him. We were first shown into
a room where the only furniture was an old sofa and two rush-bottom
chairs, and a lamp with two burners, only one of which was lighted. An
aide-de-camp received us, who called a servant and said that one of the
lights had gone out. The servant said it had never been lighted. ‘Light
it, then,’ said the aide-de-camp. Upon which the servant begged to be
excused, saying that the Emperor had given no orders upon the subject.
We were then received by Bonaparte in an inner room. The Emperor wore a
very old French Guard uniform with three orders, and had on very dirty
boots, being just come in from his country house.”
Then the writer describes a conversation in which Napoleon spoke
without apparent reserve of his past life. Referring to the doings of
the Bourbons in France, he remarked that they had better mind what
they were about, as there were still five hundred thousand excellent
soldiers there. “But what is all that to me?” he exclaimed with a rapid
turn; “I am to all intents and purposes dead.”
“His manner,” says the Scotchman, “was that of a blunt, honest,
good-hearted soldier’s, his smile, when he chose it, very insinuating.
He never has anybody to dinner. Bertrand says that they are in the
greatest distress for money, as the French court does not pay the
stipulated salary to Bonaparte.
“The following day the Emperor set off for his country house. He was in
an old coach with four half-starved horses; on the wheel-horse sat a
coachman of the ordinary size, and the bridles had the imperial eagle
on them; on the leaders there was a mere child, and the bridles had the
coronet of a British viscount on them. He had General Bertrand in the
carriage, and two or three officers behind on small ponies, which could
not, by all the exertions of their riders, keep up with the carriage,
emaciated as those poor horses were.”
The Scotchman contrasts the wretched little establishment at Elba with
the splendor of the Tuileries where he went to see Louis XVIII. dine in
public,--separate table for king, separate tables for princes of the
blood-royal; attendant courtiers standing in full dress, duchesses only
being permitted to sit; everything served on gold plate; the dining
hall, a hundred feet long, brilliantly lighted and hung with gobelin
tapestries, “and a very fine concert going on all the time.”
The contrast between these two pictures, striking as it was to the
Scotchman, was no less so to Napoleon, who felt the squalor of Elba
and longed for the lost grandeur of France. If there had been a secret
bargain between the fallen Emperor and the Bourbons that they should
prepare the country for his speedy return, they could hardly have gone
to work in a more effective manner to accomplish that result. They had
not been in possession of the throne six months before the nation was
fairly seething with discontent.
NOTE.--While the Congress of Vienna was in session, Dr. Richard
Bright, an Englishman, was visiting the city and saw the
pageant. He describes many of the august sovereigns who were in
attendance, and gives an account of the festivities, amusements,
and polite dissipations which were in progress. But perhaps the
most interesting page the Doctor wrote was that in which he
relates his visit to Napoleon’s son, who was then with his mother
at the palace of Schönbrunn. “We found that all the servants
about the palace were Frenchmen, who still wore the liveries of
Napoleon.... We ... were ushered into a room where the infant
[King of Rome] was sitting on the floor amusing himself amidst
a profuse collection of playthings.... He was at that moment
occupied with a toy which imitated a well-furnished kitchen. He
was the sweetest child I ever beheld; his complexion light, with
fine, white, silky hair, falling in curls upon his neck. He was
dressed in the embroidered uniform of an hussar, and seemed to
pay little attention to us as we entered, continuing to arrange
the dishes in his little kitchen. I believe he was the least
embarrassed of the party. He was rather too old to admit of
loud praise of his beauty, and rather too young to enter into
conversation. His appearance was so engaging that I longed to
take him in my arms, but his situation forbade such familiarity.
Under these circumstances, we contrived a few trifling questions,
to which he gave such arch and bashful answers as we have all
often received from children of his age.”
Madame Montesquieu was still with the child, but, after a while,
she and all the other French attendants were dismissed. The
effort was made to wean the poor boy of all things French, and to
transform him into an Austrian.
It may be proper here to add that he died of consumption at
the early age of twenty-one. It is darkly hinted that the same
malevolent influences which destroyed the respectability of
Napoleon’s wife led the son into excesses which undermined his
constitution. To the last he was passionately fond of his father,
and when Marmont visited Vienna in 1831 the Duke de Reichstadt
(as the boy was called in Austria) eagerly drew from him all that
he would tell of the great Emperor.
The cage in which Napoleon’s only legitimate son was kept was
gilded with pension and title and outward show of deference, but
it was a cage, nevertheless, and he died in it (1832).