THE EMPEROR OF ELBA[14]
[Footnote 14: References: Czartoryski, Memoirs, Vol. II.
Houssaye, Napoleon a l'ile d'Elbe, in Revue historique, tom.
51, pp. 1-25, Paris, 1893. Ussher, Napoleon's Last Voyage.
Peyrusse: Memorial.]
Napoleon and the Popular Frenzy -- Serious Dangers Incurred --
The Exile under the British Flag -- The Voyage to Elba -- The
Napoleonic Court at Porto Ferrajo -- Mysterious Visitors --
Estrangement of Maria Louisa -- Napoleon's "Isle of Repose" --
The Congress of Vienna -- Its Violation of Treaty Agreement --
Discontent in France -- Revival of Imperialism -- Bitterness of
the Army -- Intrigues against the Bourbons -- Napoleon's Behavior
-- His Fears of Assassination.
[Sidenote: 1814-15]
Napoleon's journey to Elba was a series of disenchantments. As has
been said, he had stipulated in his "treaty" that the Empress should
accompany him to St. Tropez, where he was to embark. Her absence, he
persisted in declaring, was explicable only by forced detention; and
he again talked of withdrawing his abdication at this breach of the
engagements made by the allies. But he grew more composed, and the
journey was sufficiently comfortable as far as Lyons. Occasionally
during that portion of it there were outbursts of good feeling from
those who stopped to see his train pass by. But in descending the
Rhone there was a marked change. As the Provencals had been the
radicals of the Revolution, so now they were the devotees of the
Restoration. The flood of disreputable calumny had broken loose: men
said the Emperor's mother was a loose woman, his father a butcher, he
himself but a bastard, his true name Nicholas. "Down with Bonaparte!
down with Nicholas!" was too often the derisive shout as he traversed
the villages. Maubreuil, the hired assassin, was hurrying from Paris
with a desperate band, ostensibly to recover crown jewels or
government funds which might be among Napoleon's effects. Recalling
Alexander's boast that his best servants had been found among the
assassins of his father, and recollecting that Francis sighed to
Metternich for Napoleon's exile to a far-distant land, Elba being too
near to France and to Europe, it is conceivable that Talleyrand might
reckon on the moral support of the dynasties in conniving at
Napoleon's assassination. Had he forgotten the murder of Enghien?
Probably not; but his conscience was not over-tender. Near Valence, on
April twenty-fourth, the imperial procession met Augereau's carriage.
The arch-republican of Napoleon's earlier career had given his
adhesion to the new government, and had been retained in office. He
alighted, the ex-Emperor likewise: the latter exhibited all the
ordinary forms of politeness, the former studiously disdained them.
Napoleon, with nice irony, asked if the general were on his way to
court. The thrust went home, but in a gruff retort Augereau, using the
insulting "thou," declared with considerable embarrassment that he
cared no more for the Bourbons than for Napoleon; that he had no
motive for his conduct except love for his country.
Partly by good fortune, partly by good management, the cortege avoided
the infuriated bands who, in various places, had sworn to take the
fallen Emperor's life. At Avignon his escape was almost miraculous.
Near Orgon a mob of royalists beset the carriage, and Napoleon shrank
in pallid terror behind Bertrand, cowering there until the immediate
danger was removed by his Russian escort. A few miles out he donned a
postilion's uniform and rode post through the town. At Saint-Cannat he
would not touch a morsel of food for fear of poison. Rumors of the
bitter feeling prevalent at Aix led him for further protection to
clothe one of his aides in his own too familiar garb. In that town he
was violently ill, somewhat as he had been at Fontainebleau. The
attack yielded easily to remedies, and the Prussian commissioner
asserted that it was due to a loathsome disease. Thereafter the
hounded fugitive wore an Austrian uniform, and sat in the Austrian
commissioner's carriage; thus disguised, the Emperor of Elba seemed to
feel secure. From Luc onward the company was protected by Austrian
hussars; but in spite of these military jailers, mob violence became
stronger from day to day in each successive town. Napoleon grew
morbid, and the line of travel was changed from the direction of St.
Tropez to that of Frejus in order to avoid the ever-increasing danger.
The only alleviation in the long line of ills was a visit from his
light and giddy but affectionate sister Pauline, the Princess
Borghese, who comforted him and promised to share his exile. At length
Frejus was reached, and Napoleon resumed his composure as he saw an
English frigate and a French brig lying in the harbor. Perhaps the
beautiful view recalled to an outcast monarch the return, in 1799, of
one General Bonaparte, who had landed on the same shore to overthrow
the Directory. If not, it must have been due to unwonted dejection or
dark despair.
Again Napoleon remarked a breach of his treaty. He was to have
sailed from St. Tropez in a corvette; here was only a brig.
Accordingly, as if to mark an intentional slight, in reality for his
safety and comfort, he asked and obtained permission to embark on
the English frigate, the _Undaunted_, as the guest of her captain.
The promised corvette was at St. Tropez awaiting its passenger, but
the hasty change of plan had made it impossible to bring her around
in time. Possibly for this reason, too, the baggage of Napoleon had
been much diminished in quantity; and of this he complained also, as
being a breach of his treaty. His farewell to the Russian and
Prussian commissioners was brief and dignified; the Austrian hussars
paid full military honors to the party; and as the Emperor,
accompanied by the English and Austrian commissioners, embarked, a
salvo of twenty-four guns rang out from the _Undaunted_. Already he
had begun to eulogize England and her civilization, and to behave as
if throwing himself on the good faith of an English gentleman,
exactly as a defeated knight would throw himself on the chivalric
courtesy of his conqueror. This appearance of distinguished
treatment heightened his self-satisfaction. His attendants said that
once again he was "all emperor."
It was a serious blow when, on passing aboard ship, he discovered that
the salutes had been in recognition of the commissioners, and that the
polite but decided Captain Ussher was determined to treat his
illustrious guest with the courtesy due to a private gentleman, and
with that alone. Although chafing at times during the voyage against
the restrictions of naval discipline, Napoleon submitted gracefully,
and wore a subdued air. This was his first contact with English
customs: sometimes they interested him; frequently, as in the matter
of after-dinner amusements and Sunday observance, they irritated him,
and then with a contemptuous petulance he withdrew to his cabin. In
conversation with Koller, the Austrian commissioner, he once referred
to his conduct in disguising himself on the road to Frejus as
pusillanimous, and admitted in vulgar language that he had made an
indecent display of himself. He was convinced that all the dreadful
scenes through which he had passed were the work of Bourbon
emissaries. In general his talk was a running commentary on the past,
a well-calculated prattle in which, with apparent spontaneity and
ingenuousness, interpretations were placed on his conduct which were
thoroughly novel. This was the beginning of a series of historical
commentaries lasting, with interruptions, to the end of his life.
There is throughout a unity of purpose in the explication and
embellishment of history which will be considered later. On May fourth
the _Undaunted_ cast anchor in the harbor of Porto Ferrajo.
Elba was an island divided against itself, there being both
imperialists and royalists among its inhabitants, and a considerable
party which desired independence. By representing that Napoleon had
brought with him fabulous sums, the Austrian and English commissioners
easily won the Elbans to a fervor of loyalty for their new emperor.
Before nightfall of the fourth the court was established, and the new
administration began its labors. After mastering the resources and
needs of his pygmy realm, the Emperor began at once to deploy all his
powers, mending the highways, fortifying the strategic points, and
creating about the nucleus of four hundred guards which were sent from
Fontainebleau an efficient little army of sixteen hundred men. His
expenses were regulated to the minutest detail, the salt-works and
iron-mines, which were the bulwarks of Elban prosperity, began at once
to increase their output, and taxation was regulated with scrupulous
nicety. By that supereminent virtue of the French burgher, good
management, the island was made almost independent of the remnants of
the Tuileries treasure, the sum of about five million francs, which
Napoleon had brought from France. The same powers which had swayed a
world operated with equal success in a sphere almost microscopic by
comparison. To many this appeared a sorry commentary on human
grandeur, but the great exile did not intend to sink into a
contemptible lethargy. If the future had aught in store for him, his
capacities must have exercise and their bearings be kept smooth by
use. The Princess Borghese had been separated from her second husband
soon after the marriage, and since 1810 she had lived an exile from
Paris, having been banished for impertinent conduct to the Empress.
But she cherished no malice, and before long, according to promise,
she arrived and took up her abode as her brother's companion. Madame
Mere, though distant in prosperity, came likewise to soothe her son in
adversity. The intercepted letters of the former prove her to have
been at least as loose in her life at Elba as ever before, but they do
not afford a sufficient basis for the scandals concerning her
relations with Napoleon which were founded upon them and industriously
circulated at the court of Louis XVIII. The shameful charge, though
recently revived and ingeniously supported, appears to have no
adequate foundation.
Napoleon's economies were rendered not merely expedient, but
imperative, by the fact that none of the moneys from France were
forthcoming which had been promised in his treaty with the powers.
After a short stay Koller frankly stated that in his opinion they
never would be paid, and departed. The island swarmed with Bourbon
spies, and the only conversation in which Napoleon could indulge
himself unguardedly was with Sir Neil Campbell, the English
representative, or with the titled English gentlemen who gratified
their curiosity by visiting him. During the summer heat, when the
court was encamped on the heights at Marciana for refreshment, there
appeared a mysterious lady with her child. Both were well received and
kindly treated, but they withdrew themselves entirely from the public
gaze. Common rumor said it was the Empress, but this was not true; it
was the Countess Walewska, with one of the two sons she bore her host,
whom she still adored. They remained but a few days, and departed as
mysteriously as they had come. Base females thronged the precincts of
the imperial residence, openly struggling for Napoleon's favor as they
had so far never dared to do; success too frequently attended their
efforts.
But the one woman who should have been at his side was absent.[15] It
is certain that she made an honest effort to come, and apartments were
prepared for her reception in the little palace at Porto Ferrajo. Her
father, however, thwarted her at every turn, and finally she was a
virtual prisoner at Schoenbrunn. So manifest was the restraint that her
grandmother Caroline, Queen of the Two Sicilies, cried out in
indignation: "If I were in the place of Maria Louisa, I would tie the
sheets of my bed to the window-frame and flee." Committed to the
charge of the elegant and subtle Neipperg, a favorite chamberlain whom
she had first seen at Dresden, she was plied with such insidious wiles
that at last her slender moral fibre was entirely broken down, and she
fell a victim to his charms. As late as August, Napoleon received
impassioned letters from her; then she grew formal and cold; at last,
under Metternich's urgency, she ceased to write at all. Her French
attendant, Meneval, managed to convey the whole sad story to her
husband; but the Emperor was incredulous, and hoped against hope until
December. Then only he ceased from his incessant and urgent appeals.
[Footnote 15: See Welschinger: Le roi de Rome, ch. vi, p.
17.]
The number of visitors to Elba was sometimes as high as three hundred
in a single day. Among these were a few English, fewer French, but
many Italians. As time passed the heaviness of the Austrian yoke had
begun to gall the people of Napoleon's former kingdom, and
considerable numbers from among them, remembering the mild Eugene with
longing, joined in an extensive though feeble conspiracy to restore
Napoleon to the throne of Italy. Lucien returned to Rome in order to
foster the movement, and Murat, observing with unease the general
faithlessness of the great powers in small matters, began to tremble
for the security of his own seat. With them and others Napoleon
appears to have corresponded regularly. He felt himself entirely freed
from the obligations he had taken at Fontainebleau, for he was sure
the people of southern France had been instigated to take his life by
royalist agents, and while one term after another passed, not a cent
was paid of the promised pension; his own fortune, therefore, was
steadily melting away. For months he behaved as if really determined
to make Elba his "isle of repose," as he designated it just before
landing; but under such provocations his temper changed. The
corner-stone of his treaty was his complete sovereignty; otherwise the
paper was merely a promise without any sanction, not even that of
international law. This perfect sovereignty had been recognized by the
withdrawal of all the commissioners as such, Campbell insisting that
he remained merely as an ambassador.
In a treaty concluded on May thirtieth between Louis XVIII and the
powers of the coalition, the boundaries of France were fixed
substantially as they had been in 1792, and the destiny of the lands
brought under her sway by the Revolution and by Napoleon was to be
determined by a European congress. This body met on November first,
1814, at Vienna. It was soon evident that the four powers of the
coalition were to outdo Napoleon's extreme endeavors in their reckless
disposition of European territories. Before the close of the month,
however, Talleyrand, by his adroit manipulations and his conjurings
with the sacrosanct word "legitimacy," had made himself the moving
spirit of the congress, and had so inflamed the temper of both
Metternich and Castlereagh against the dictatorial attitude of Russia
and Prussia as to induce Austria and Great Britain to sign, on January
third, 1815, a secret treaty with France whereby the parties of the
first part bound themselves to resist the aggressiveness of the
Northern powers, and that by force if necessary. This restored France
to the position of a great power. By the middle of February the
Northern allies were brought to terms, and in return for their
concessions it was agreed that Murat was to be deposed. This spirit of
compromise menaced, or rather finally destroyed, the sovereignty of
Napoleon, petty as it was. On the charge of conspiring with Murat, he
could easily be removed from Elba, and deported to some more remote
spot from which he could exert no influence on European politics.
From the opening sessions of the congress there had been a general
consensus of opinion as to this course. As to the place opinions
varied. Castlereagh favored the Azores, but others the Cape Verde
islands; St. Helena, then well known as a place of call on the long
voyage to the Cape, had been suggested much earlier, even before Elba
was chosen, but when or by whom is not known. It is quite possible
that Wellington, who succeeded Castlereagh as English plenipotentiary
in February, may have mentioned the name; he had been there, and knew
it as almost the remotest spot of land in the world. The formal
proposition to that effect appears to have been made by the Prussian
cabinet. The congress took no definite action in the matter, but the
understanding was so clear and general that a proclamation to the
national guard was printed in the "Moniteur" of March eighth, 1815,
stating that measures had been taken at the Congress of Vienna to
remove Napoleon farther away. It was easy for everybody, including the
captive himself, to believe that, all the other articles of the
agreement at Fontainebleau having been violated, that which guaranteed
the sovereignty of Elba was equally worthless.
It cannot be doubted that Napoleon was fully aware of whatever was
proposed at Vienna, and it is absolutely certain that he was
thoroughly informed as to the changed state of public opinion in
France. Having promised a fairly liberal constitution as the price of
his throne, Louis XVIII, with colossal stupidity, undertook to ignore
the past and promulgated the charter as his own gracious act, done in
the nineteenth year of his reign! The upper chamber, or House of
Peers, was his creature, since he could create members at will. Feeble
in mind and body, he was unable to check the reactionary assumptions
of his family, who, having deserted their country, had returned to it
by the aid of invaders despised and feared by the nation. These and
the returning emigrants were provided with rich sinecures, and began
to talk of restoring estates to their rightful owners; in some cases
the possessors, on their death-beds, were intimidated into making such
restitution. The extreme clerical party began even to hamper the
ministry in its efforts to grant the freedom of worship guaranteed by
the constitution. Secular business was forbidden on certain holy days,
and funeral masses were celebrated for Pichegru, Moreau, and Cadoudal,
that for the latter at the King's expense. When, finally, Christian
burial was refused to an actress, there were riots in Paris.
But the government continued its suicidal course; even the Vendee grew
disaffected, and, the suffrage having been greatly restricted, there
were murmurings about oligarchies and tyrants. At Nimes the
Protestants feared another St. Bartholomew, and said so. Even moderate
royalists grew troubled, and could not retort when they heard the new
order stigmatized by the fitting name of "paternal anarchy." Both
veterans and conscripts deserted in great numbers from the army as
they saw their officers discharged by the score to make places for the
young aristocracy, or their comrades retired, nominally on half-pay,
in reality to eke out a subsistence as best they could. It was not
long before men showed each other pocket-pieces bearing Napoleon's
effigy, whispering as watchwords, "Courage and hope," or "He has been
and will be," or "Frenchmen, awake; the Emperor is waking." As early
as July, 1814, rumors of his return were rife in country districts,
and by autumn the longing for it was outspoken and general. In Paris
there was greater caution, but as Marmont was called "Judas" for
having betrayed his master, so Berthier was known as "Peter" in that
he had denied him, and it was a common joke to tie a white cockade to
the tail of a dog. Before the Chamber met the various factions openly
avowed themselves as either royalists, Bonapartists, liberals, or
Jacobins. The money estimates presented made it clear that a king was
more expensive than an emperor, and when the peers not only voted to
indemnify the emigrants for the lands held by their families, but
likewise passed a bill establishing the censorship of the press, it
was common talk that the present state of things could not last.
The number of French prisoners of war and of soldiers released from
the besieged fortresses in central Europe was about three hundred
thousand, of whom a third were veterans of the Empire. To these must
be added the army which Soult, ignorant of Napoleon's abdication, had
led to defeat at Toulouse, and the soldiers who had served in Italy.
These men, long accustomed to much consideration, found themselves on
their return to be persons of no consequence. They learned that the
great officers of the Empire were everywhere treated with scant
courtesy, and that the great ladies of the imperial court were now
virtually driven from the Tuileries by the significant questions and
loud asides of the royal personages who had supplanted them. It was
told in all public resorts how Ney had resented the rude affronts put
on his wife by the Duchess of Angouleme. The well-trained subordinate
officers of these contingents were turned adrift by thousands on the
same terms as those of Napoleon's own army, half-pay if they showed
themselves good Catholics, otherwise nothing. For the most part,
again, this promise was empty; young royalists were put in their
places, the pay of the old guard was reduced, a new noble guard was
organized, promotion was refused to those who had received commissions
during the operations of war, and the asylums established for the
orphans of those who had belonged to the Legion of Honor were
abolished. So bitter was the outcry that the King felt compelled to
dismiss his minister of war, and, not daring to substitute Marmont,
who demanded the place, appointed Soult. He too was speedily
discredited for harshness to Exelmans, a subordinate who was
discovered to have been in correspondence with Napoleon; and by the
middle of February, 1815, nearly all the soldiers were at heart
Bonapartists, their friends for the most part abetting them.
[Illustration: Napoleon Exposition, 1895
THE KING OF ROME
Painted by Marie Louise under direction of Isabey belonging to Messrs.
Marquis and Comte de Las Cases.]
In less than two months after Louis XVIII took his seat, Talleyrand
and Fouche were deep in their element of plot and intrigue. They
thought of the son of Philippe Egalite as a possible constitutional
ruler; they talked of reestablishing the imperial regency; with
Napoleon placed beyond the possibility of returning, the latter
course would be safe. During the succeeding months they continued to
juggle with this double intrigue, and around their plots clustered
minor ones in mass. Lord Liverpool actually called Wellington to
London for fear the duke should be seized, and Marmont put the Paris
garrison under arms. On January twenty-first, 1815, the death of Louis
XVI was commemorated by the royalists with the wildest talk; and such
was the general fury over Exelmans's treatment that Fouche at last
stepped forward to give his conspiracy some form. Carnot and Davout
were both expected to cooeperate; but although they refused, enough
officers of influence were secured to make a plan for an extended
insurrection entirely feasible. For this all parties were willing to
unite; no one knew or cared what was to supplant the existing
government--anything was better than "paternal anarchy."
How accurate the information was which reached Napoleon at Elba we
cannot ascertain, for his feelings were masked and his conduct was
non-committal. He had entirely recovered his health, and though old in
experience, he was only forty-five years of age, and still appeared
like one in the prime of life. He was apparently vigorous, being
short, thick-necked, and inclined to corpulence. His cheeks were
somewhat heavy and sensuous, his hair receded far back on the temples,
his limbs were powerful, his hands and feet were delicately formed and
noticeably small. His movements were nervous and well controlled, his
eye was clear and bright, his passions were strong, his self-control
was apparent, and the cooerdination of his powers was easy. To the
Elban peasant he was gracious; with his subordinates he was dignified;
among his many visitors he moved with good humor and tact; his
kindness to his mother and sister made both of them devoted and
happy.
The only anxiety he displayed was in regard to assassination and
kidnapping: the former he said he could meet like a soldier; of the
latter he spoke with anxious foreboding. He had reason to fear both.
Every week either in France or Italy or both, there was a plot among
fanatical royalists and priests to kill him; and though the Barbary
pirates were eager to seize him and win a great ransom, they were
excelled in their zeal both by Mariotte, Talleyrand's agent in
Leghorn, and by Bruslart, a bitter and ancient enemy, who had been
appointed governor of Corsica for the purpose. For these reasons,
probably, the Emperor of Elba lived as far as possible in seclusion.
As time passed he grew less intimate with Campbell, but the Scotch
gentleman did not attribute the fact to discontent. Before leaving
Elba, on February sixteenth, to reside for a time in Florence and
perform the duties of English envoy in that place, he gave it as his
opinion that if Napoleon received the pension stipulated for in the
treaty he would remain tranquilly where he was.