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[Illustration: From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Co.
EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE
By Pierre Paul Prod'hon.]
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
BY
WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE
PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
_Professor of History in Columbia University_
Revised and Enlarged
With Portraits
VOLUME IV
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
Copyright, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910
BY
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, October, 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER Page
I. The Last Imperial Victory............................... 1
II. Politics and Strategy.................................. 11
III. The End of the Grand Army.............................. 23
IV. The Frankfort Proposals................................ 37
V. The Invasion of France................................. 47
VI. Napoleon's Supreme Effort.............................. 59
VII. The Great Captain at Bay............................... 71
VIII. The Struggles of Exhaustion............................ 84
IX. The Beginning of the End.............................. 101
X. The Fall of Paris..................................... 111
XI. Napoleon's First Abdication........................... 123
XII. The Emperor of Elba................................... 137
XIII. Napoleon the Liberator................................ 151
XIV. The Dynasties Implacable.............................. 164
XV. Ligny and Quatre Bras................................. 175
XVI. The Eve of Waterloo................................... 189
XVII. Waterloo.............................................. 199
XVIII. The Surrender......................................... 212
XIX. St. Helena............................................ 224
XX. Soldier, Statesman, Despot............................ 247
XXI. Napoleon and the United States........................ 268
XXII. Napoleon's Place in History........................... 285
Historical Sources.................................... 303
General Bibliography.................................. 307
Index................................................. 355
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Empress Marie Louise _Frontispiece_
Facing Page
Napoleon in 1813................................................. 50
Napoleon, Francois Charles Joseph, Prince Imperial;
King of Rome; Duke of Reichstadt............................... 98
Map of the Field of Operations in 1814.......................... 104
The King of Rome................................................ 148
Map of the Campaign of 1815..................................... 194
Napoleon, Francois Charles Joseph, Duke of Reichstadt,
etc., etc., son of Napoleon Bonaparte......................... 200
Napoleon sleeping by Las Cases on board the _Bellerophon_....... 224
Napoleon at St. Helena.......................................... 230
Napoleon I...................................................... 274
LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
CHAPTER I
THE LAST IMPERIAL VICTORY[1]
[Footnote 1: References: Pierron: Napoleon, de Dresde a
Leipzig. Pelet: Des principales operations de la campagne de
1813. York von Wartenburg: Precis militaire de la campagne de
1813 en Allemagne. Clement: Campagne de 1813. Luedtke: Die
strategische Bedeutung der Schlacht bei Dresden. Sorel:
L'Europe et la revolution francaise, Vol. VIII.]
Napoleon's Prospects -- The Preparations and Plans of the
Coalition -- Cross-purposes of the Combatants -- Condition of
Napoleon's Mind -- Strength and Weakness of the Allies -- Renewal
of Hostilities -- The Feint in Silesia -- Napoleon at Dresden --
First Day's Fighting -- The Victory Won on the Second Day.
[Sidenote: 1813]
In later years Napoleon confessed that during the interval between the
first and second Saxon campaigns he had been outwitted. His
antagonists had, in his own language, "changed for the better"; at
least they secured the war they so earnestly desired under conditions
vastly more favorable to themselves than to their opponent. Both
parties had been arming with might and main during the prolonged
truce, but each member of the dynastic coalition now had the backing
of a growing national enthusiasm, while Napoleon had to deal with
waning zeal and an exhausted people. Thus, then, at the opening of the
second campaign in Saxony, the allies had four hundred and thirty-five
thousand men, and Napoleon but three hundred and fifty thousand. With
this inferiority, it behooved the Emperor to use all his strategic
powers, and he did so with a brilliancy never surpassed by him.
Choosing the Elbe as his natural defensive line, Hamburg stood almost
impregnable at one end, flanked to the southward by Magdeburg,
Wittenberg, and Torgau, three mighty fortresses. Dresden, which was
necessarily the focal point, was intrenched and palisaded for the
protection of the army which was to be its main bulwark. Davout and
Oudinot, with seventy thousand men, were to threaten Berlin, and,
thereby drawing off as many as possible of the enemy, liberate the
garrisons of Stettin and Kuestrin; they were then to beleaguer Spandau,
push the foe across the Oder, and stand ready to fall on the flank of
the coalition army. Napoleon himself, with the remaining two hundred
and eighty thousand, was to await the onset of the combined Russian,
Prussian, and Austrian forces.
The allies now had in their camp two mighty strategists--Jomini, the
well-known Swiss adventurer and military historian, and Moreau, who
had returned from the United States. The former, pleading that he had
lost a merited promotion by Berthier's ill-will, and that as a
foreigner he had the right of choice, had gone over to the enemies of
his employer; the latter, yielding to the specious pleas of his silly
and ambitious wife that he might fight Napoleon without fighting
France, had taken service with the Czar. The arrow which penetrated
Napoleon's vitals was indeed feathered from his own pinions, since
these two, with another of Napoleon's pupils--Bernadotte, the Crown
Prince of Sweden--were virtually the council of war. Two of them, the
latter and Moreau, saw the specter of French sovereignty beckoning
them on. They dreamed of the chief magistracy in some shape,
imperial, monarchical, consular, or presidential, and were more
devoted to their personal interests than to those of the coalition. In
the service of their ambition was formed the plan by which not only
was Napoleon overwhelmed, but the fields of France were drenched with
blood. Under their advice, three great armies were arrayed: that of
the North, in Brandenburg, was composed of Prussians, Swedes, and a
few Russians, its generals being Buelow, Bernadotte, and Tchernicheff;
that of the East was the Prusso-Russian army in Silesia, now under
Bluecher, that astounding young cavalryman of seventy, and
Wittgenstein; finally, that of the South was the new Austrian force
under Schwarzenberg, with an adjunct force of Russian troops under
Barclay, and the Russian guard under the Grand Duke Constantine. Buelow
was in and near Berlin with about a hundred and fifty-six thousand
men; Bluecher had ninety-five thousand, and, having violated the
armistice, was on August fourteenth already within the neutral zone at
Striegau, before Breslau; the Austro-Russian force of almost two
hundred and fifty thousand was in northern Bohemia, near Melnik;
Bennigsen was in Poland building up a strong reserve. Schwarzenberg,
though commander of the main army, was reduced to virtual impotence by
the presence at his headquarters of all the sovereigns and of Moreau.
Divided counsels spring from diverse interests; there was at the
outset a pitiful caution and inefficiency on the part of the allies,
while at Napoleon's headquarters there was unity of design at least.
Both contestants were apparently under serious misapprehensions. The
allies certainly were, because Francis believed that, as so often
before, Napoleon's goal would be Vienna. The plan adopted by them was
therefore very simple: each division of the allied army was to stand
expectant; if assailed it was to yield, draw on the French columns,
and expose their flank or rear to the attacks of the other two allied
armies; then by superior force the invaders were to be surrounded. The
allies divined, or believed they divined, that Napoleon would hold his
guard in reserve, throw it behind any portion of his line opposite
which they were vulnerable, break through, and defeat them in
detachments. Their idea was keen, and displayed a thorough grasp both
of the principles on which their opponent had hitherto acted and of
his normal character. But nevertheless they were deceived. Napoleon
discarded all his old principles, and behaved most abnormally. In his
conduct there are evidences of a curious self-deception, and his
decisions contradicted his language. Perpetually minimizing in
conversation the disparity between the two forces, and sometimes even
asserting his own superiority, he nevertheless almost for the first
time assumed the defensive. This unheard-of course may have been due
to misapprehension and exaggeration, but it produced for the moment a
powerful moral effect on his generals, who, without exception, had
hitherto been clamorous for peace, and likewise upon his new boy
recruits; both classes began to have a realizing sense that they were
now fighting, not for aggression, but for life. If the Emperor had any
such confidence as he expressed, it must have been due to the fact
that boys had fought like veterans at Luetzen and Bautzen, and that at
last there were cavalry and artillery in fair proportion. Possibly,
likewise, he may have been desperate; fully aware that he was about to
cast the dice for a last stake, he may have been at once braggart and
timid. If he should win in a common defensive battle, he believed, as
his subsequent conduct goes to show, that he was safe indefinitely;
and if he lost--the vision must have been too dreadful, enough to
distract the sanest mind: an exhausted treasury, an exhausted nation,
an empty throne, vanished hopes, ruin!
Yet at the time no one remarked any trace of nervousness in Napoleon.
Long afterward the traitorous Marmont, whose name, like that of
Moreau, was to be execrated by succeeding generations of honorable
Frenchmen, recalled that the Emperor had contemptuously designated the
enemy as a rabble, and that he had likewise overestimated the
strategic value of Berlin. The malignant annalist asserted, too, that
Napoleon's motive was personal spite against Prussia. It has also been
studiously emphasized by others that the "children" of Napoleon's army
were perishing like flowers under an untimely frost, forty thousand
French and German boys being in the hospitals; that corruption was
rife in every department of administration; and that the soldiers' pay
was shamefully in arrears. An eye-witness saw Peyrusse, the paymaster,
to whom Napoleon had just handed four thousand francs for a monument
to Duroc, coolly pocket a quarter of the sum, with the remark that
such was the custom. He would be rash indeed who dared to assert that
there was no basis for this criticism. It is true that the
instructions to Davout and Oudinot made light of Buelow's army, and
that Berlin had vastly less strategic value than those instructions
seemed to indicate. But, on the other hand, both generals and men were
sadly in need of self-reliance, and to see their capitals occupied or
endangered had still a tremendous moral effect upon dynastic
sovereigns. As to the defects in his army, Napoleon could not have
been blind; but in all these directions matters had been nearly, if
not quite, as bad in 1809, and a victory had set them all in order.
What nervousness there was existed rather among the allies. Never
before in her history, not even under the great Frederick, had Prussia
possessed such an army; the Austrians were well drilled and well
equipped; the Russians were of fair quality, numerous, and with the
reserves from Poland would be a powerful army in themselves. Yet in
spite of their strength, the allies were not really able. Austria was
the head, but her commander, Schwarzenberg, was not even mediocre, and
among her generals there was only one who was first-rate, namely,
Radetzky. Frederick William and Alexander were of incongruous natures;
their alliance was artificial, and in such plans as they evolved there
was an indefiniteness which left to the generals in their respective
forces a large margin for independence. The latter were quick to take
advantage of the chance, and this fact accounts for the generally lame
and feeble beginning of hostilities.
For example, it was through Bluecher's wilfulness that the moral
advantage lay with Napoleon in the opening of the struggle. On July
ninth Bernadotte, Frederick William, and the Czar had met at
Trachenberg to lay out a plan of campaign. In this conference, which
first opened Napoleon's eyes to the determination of the allies,
Bluecher had secured for himself an independent command. The accession
of Austria rendered the agreement of Trachenberg null, but Bluecher did
not abandon his ambition. Impatient of orders or good faith, he broke
into the neutral zone at Striegau on August fourteenth, apparently
without any very definite plan. Napoleon, hearing that forty thousand
Russians from this army were marching toward Bohemia, advanced from
Dresden on August fifteenth, to be within reach of the passes of the
Iser Mountains on the Upper Elbe, and halted at Zittau as a central
point, where he could easily collect about a hundred and eighty
thousand men, and whence, according to circumstances, he could either
strike Bluecher, cut off the Russians, or return to Dresden in case of
need. That city was to be held by Saint-Cyr. On August twentieth
Bluecher reached the banks of the Bober at Bunzlau; owing to Napoleon's
nice calculation, Ney, Marmont, Lauriston, and Macdonald were
assembled on the other side to check the advance, he himself being at
Lauban with the guard. Had Bluecher stood, the Russo-Prussians would
have been annihilated, for their inferiority was as two to one. But
the headstrong general did not stand; on the contrary, retreating by
preconcerted arrangement behind the Deichsel, he led his antagonist to
the false conclusion that he lacked confidence in his army.
Napoleon was not generally over-credulous, but this mistake was
probably engendered in his mind by the steady stream of uneasy reports
he was receiving from his own generals. On the twenty-third he wrote
to Maret that his division commanders seemed to have no self-reliance
except in his presence; "the enemy's strength seems great to them
wherever I am not." Marmont was the chief offender, having severely
criticized a plan of operations which would require one or more of the
marshals to act independently in Brandenburg or Silesia or both,
expressing the fear that on the day when the Emperor believed himself
to have won a decisive battle he would discover that he had lost two.
Seventeen years of campaigning had apparently turned the great
generals of Napoleon's army into puppets, capable of acting only on
their leader's impulse. Whatever the cause, Napoleon was set in his
idea, and pressed on in pursuit. On the twenty-second Bluecher was
beyond the Katzbach, with the French van close behind, when word
arrived at Napoleon's headquarters that the Austro-Russians had
entered Saxony and were menacing Dresden. How alert and sane the
Emperor was, how thoroughly he foresaw every contingency, appears
from the minute directions he wrote for Macdonald, who was left to
block the road for Bluecher into Saxony, while Lauriston was to
outflank and shut off the perfervid veteran from both Berlin and
Zittau.
These instructions having been written, Napoleon at first contemplated
crossing the Elbe above Dresden to take Schwarzenberg on the flank and
rear in the passes of the Ore Mountains. This would not only cut off
the Austrian general from the Saxon capital, but prevent his swerving
to the left for an advance on Leipsic. But finding that his enemy was
moving swiftly, the Emperor resolved to meet him before Dresden. It
would never do to lose his ally's capital at the outset, or to suffer
defeat at the very head of his defensive line. Giving orders,
therefore, for the corps of Marmont, Vandamme, and Victor, together
with Latour-Maubourg's cavalry and the guard, to wheel, he hastened
back to reinforce Saint-Cyr at Dresden. On the twenty-fifth, as he
passed Bautzen, he learned that Oudinot had been defeated at Luckau;
but he gave no heed to the report, and next day reached Dresden at
nine in the morning. An hour later the guard came up, having performed
the almost incredible feat of marching seventy-six miles in three
days. Vandamme, with forty thousand men, had arrived at Pirna, a few
miles above, and Saint-Cyr was drawing in behind the temporary
fortifications of the city itself.
The enemy, too, was at hand, but he had no plan. In a council of war
held by him the same morning there was protracted debate, and finally
Moreau's advice to advance in six columns was taken. He refused "to
fight against his country," but explained that the French could never
be conquered in mass, and that if one assailing column were crushed,
the rest could still push on. This long deliberation cost the allies
their opportunity; for at four in the afternoon, when they attacked,
the mass of the French army had crossed the Elbe and had thus
completed the garrison of the city. For two hours the fighting was
fierce and stubborn; from three different sides Russians, Austrians,
and Prussians each made substantial gains; at six Napoleon determined
to make a general sally and throw in his guard. With fine promptness.
Mortier, at the head of two divisions of the young guard, attacked the
Russians, and, fighting until midnight, drove them beyond the hamlet
of Striefen. Saint-Cyr dislodged the Prussians, and pushed them to
Strehla; while Ney, with two divisions of the young guard, threw a
portion of the Austrians into Plauen, and Murat, with two divisions of
infantry and Latour-Maubourg's cavalry, cleared the suburb
Friedrichstadt of the rest. Napoleon, alert and ubiquitous, then made
his usual round, and knew when he retired to rest in the royal palace
that with seventy thousand men, or rather boys, he had repulsed a
hundred and fifty thousand of his foe. His inspiriting personal work
might be calculated as worth eighty thousand of his opponents' best
men. That night both Marmont and Victor, with their corps, entered the
city; and Vandamme in the early dawn began to bombard Pirna, thus
threatening the allies' connection with Bohemia and drawing away
forces from them to hold that outpost.
The second day's fighting was more disastrous to the allies than the
first. The morning opened in a tempest, but at six both sides were
arrayed. On the French right were Victor and Latour-Maubourg; then
Marmont; then the old guard and Ney with two divisions of the young
guard; next Saint-Cyr, with Mortier on the left. Opposite stood
Russians, Prussians, and Austrians, in the same relative positions, on
higher ground, encircling the French all the way westward and around
by the south to Plauen; but between their center and left was reserved
a gap for Klenau's Austrians, who were coming up from Tharandt in the
blinding storm, and were overdue. At seven began the artillery fire of
the young guard; but before long it ceased for an instant, since the
gunners found the enemy's line too high for the elevation of their
guns. "Continue," came swiftly the Emperor's order; "we must occupy
the attention of the enemy on that spot." The ruse succeeded, and the
gap was left open; at ten Murat dashed through it, and turning
westward, killed or captured all who composed the enemy's extreme
left. The garrison of Pirna then retreated toward Peterswald.
Elsewhere the French merely held their own. Napoleon lounged all day
in a curious apathy before his camp-fire, his condition being
apparently due to the incipient stages of a digestive disorder. Early
in the afternoon Schwarzenberg heard of Murat's great charge, but he
held firm until at five the flight from Pirna was announced, when he
abandoned the conflict. By six Napoleon was aware that the battle was
over, and, mounting his horse, he trotted listlessly to the palace,
his old gray overcoat and hood streaming with rain.