THE SURRENDER[26]
[Footnote 26: References: Ernouf: Histoire de la derniere
capitulation de Paris, 1815. Redigee sur des documents
officiels et inedits. Houssaye: 1815, La seconde abdication.
La terreur blanche.]
Nature of Napoleon's Defeat -- Its Political Consequences --
Napoleon's Fatal Resolution -- The State of Paris -- Napoleon at
the Elysee -- His Departure for Rochefort -- Thoughts of Return
-- Procrastination -- Wild Schemes of Flight -- A Refuge in
England -- His Only Resource -- The White Terror and the Allies.
The battle of Waterloo is so called because Wellington's despatch to
England was dated from his headquarters at that place. The world-wide
celebrity of the fight was due to the failure of a tremendous cause
and the extinction of a tremendous genius. That genius had been so
colossal as to confuse human judgment. Even yet mankind forgets that
its possessor was a finite being and attributes his fall to any cause
except the true one. Western Europe had paid dearly for the education,
but it had been educated, learning his novel and original methods in
both war and diplomacy. We have followed the gradual decline of the
master's ability, physical, mental, and moral; we have noted the rise
of the forces opposed to him, military, diplomatic, and national.
Waterloo is a name of the highest import because it marks the final
collapse of personal genius, the beginning of reaction toward an order
old in name but new in spirit. Waterloo was not great by reason of the
numbers engaged, for on the side of the allies were about a hundred
and thirty thousand men, on the other seventy-two thousand
approximately; nor was there any special brilliancy in its conduct.
Wellington defended a strong position well and carefully selected. But
he wilfully left himself with inferior numbers; he did not heartily
cooeperate with Bluecher; both were unready; Gneisenau was suspicious;
and the battle of Ligny was a Prussian blunder. Napoleon committed,
between dawn and dusk of June eighteenth, a series of petty mistakes,
each of which can be explained, but not excused. He began too late; he
did not follow up his assaults; he did not retreat when beaten; he
could attend to only one thing at a time; he failed in control of his
subordinates; he was neither calm nor alert. His return from Elba had
made him the idol of the majority in France, but his conduct
throughout the Hundred Days was that of a broken man. His genius
seemed bright at the opening of his last campaign, but every day saw
the day's task delayed. His great lieutenants grew uneasy and
untrustworthy, though, like his patient, enduring, and gallant men,
they displayed prodigies of personal valor. Ney and Grouchy used their
discretion, but it was the discretion of caution most unlike that of
Desaix at Marengo, or of Ney himself at Eylau. Their ignorance cannot
be condoned; Grouchy's decision at Walhain, though justified in a
measure by Soult's later order, was possibly the immediate cause of
final disaster. But such considerations do not excuse Napoleon's
failure to give explicit orders, nor his nervous interference with
Ney's formation before Quatre Bras, nor his deliberate iterations
during his captivity that he had expected Grouchy throughout the
battle. Moreover, the interest of Waterloo is connected with its
immediate and dramatic consequences rather than with its decisive
character. If Napoleon had won on that day, the allies would have
been far from annihilation; both Wellington and Bluecher had kept open
their respective lines of retreat. The national uprising of Europe
would have been more determined than ever; 1815 would have been but a
repetition of 1814. Finally, the losses, though terrible, were not
unparalleled. Grouchy won at Wavre, and, hearing of the disaster at
Mont St. Jean, first contemplated falling on the Prussian rear as they
swept onward in pursuit. But he quickly abandoned this chimerical
idea, and on receipt of Napoleon's order from Quatre Bras, withdrew to
Namur, and thence, by a masterly retreat, conducted his army back into
France. Including those who fell at Wavre, the allies lost about
twenty-two thousand five hundred men, of whom seven thousand were
British and a like number Prussians. The records at Paris are very
imperfect, but they indicate that the French losses were about
thirty-one thousand.
The booty captured after Waterloo was unimportant; but the political
spoils were immense, and they belonged to the Prussians. Their high
expectation of seizing Napoleon's person was disappointed; but the one
great result--the realization, namely, of all the tyrannical plans
formed at Vienna for the humiliation of liberal France--that they
secured by their instant, hot pursuit. It is hard to discern the facts
in the dust of controversy. Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Great
Britain have each the national conviction of having laid the Corsican
specter; France has long been busy explaining the facts of her defeat,
but seems to have at last completed the task; the most conspicuous
monument on the battle-field is that to the Dutch-Belgians!
Napoleon was fully aware that at Waterloo he had made the last cast of
the dice and that he had lost. It cannot be proven, but the charge is
made, that far earlier he had ceased to reckon with facts and had
begun to juggle with unrealities. The return from Elba has all the
elements of romance, but events proved that it was based on a sound
judgment. Had the allied powers been willing to give France the
privilege of choosing her own government, which in spite of all that
had occurred was hers by every principle known to international law,
Europe would have enjoyed some years of repose, at any rate;
considering Napoleon's shattered health and premature old age, France
might for a long period have ceased to be a disturber of the public
peace, working out then as now, perhaps in equal tribulation, the
enduring principles of the Revolution; forty years of turmoil might
have been spared to the Continent and the gory floods poured on the
ground at Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo might have coursed
unmolested in the veins of the innocent men from which they welled
out. The responsibility for all the blood which was shed after the
first treaty of Paris must be shared with Napoleon by dynastic Europe,
in particular by the diplomatists who represented the hate of Russia,
Austria, and Prussia and suffered it to find an outlet in a war of
revenge; a portion too belongs to the factious bitterness which
reigned supreme in the various French parties, awakening civil strife
and endangering French nationality. From first to last there had been
little consistency or continuity in Napoleon's character--it is by no
means certain that he might not well have played, and perhaps
magisterially, the role of a national ruler; it is of course also
possible that he might have remained the same untamed, cosmopolitan
adventurer to the end. In view of the political history of France
during the Hundred Days, the former is more probable. But after
Waterloo he was clearly aware that he could no longer be either the
one or the other. It was not to be expected that every instinct would
disappear at once, that he would resign himself to obscurity without
an effort.
After a short rest at Philippeville, Napoleon composed the customary
bulletins concerning his campaign, and despatched them to the capital,
together with a letter counseling Joseph to stand firm and keep the
legislature in hand. If Grouchy had escaped, he wrote, he could
already array fifty thousand men on the spot; with the means at hand,
he could soon organize a hundred and fifty thousand; the troops in
regimental depots, together with the national guard, would raise the
number to three hundred thousand. These representations were based on
a habit of mind, and not on genuine conviction. He believed Grouchy's
force to have been annihilated, and though he paused at Laon as if to
reorganize an army, he went through the form of consulting such
officers as he could collect, and then, under their advice, pressed on
to Paris. The officers urged that the army and the majority of the
people were loyal, but that the aristocracy, the royalists, and the
liberal deputies were utterly untrustworthy. "My real place is here,"
was the response. "I shall go to Paris, but you drive me to a foolish
course." This was the voice of reason, but he obeyed the behest of
inclination. Yet he halted at the threshold, and, entering the city on
the night of June twenty-first, made no public announcement of his
presence. On the contrary, he almost slunk into the silent halls of
the Elysee, where a sleepy attendant or two received the unexpected
guest without realizing what had happened. He must have felt that the
moral effect of Waterloo had been his undoing; unlike any other of his
defeats, it had not ruined him as general alone, nor as ruler alone:
his prestige as both monarch and soldier was gone.
The news of Ligny had been received in the city with jubilations; at
the instant of Napoleon's arrival the truth about Mont St. Jean was
passing all too swiftly on the thousand tongues of rumor from quarter
to quarter throughout the town, creating consternation everywhere.
Early in the morning, Davout, fully aware of public sentiment, and
true to his instincts, advised the shrinking Emperor to prorogue the
chambers, and throw himself on the army; Carnot believed the public
safety required a dictatorship, and urged it; Lucien was strongly of
the same opinion. But the old Napoleon was no more; vacillating almost
as if in partial catalepsy, murmuring empty phrases in quick,
indistinct utterance, he refused to decide. Members of the council
began to gain admittance, and, waxing bolder as Napoleon grew more
silent, the word "abdication" was soon on every tongue. At last a
decision was taken, and such a one! Lucien was sent to parley with the
chambers, and Fouche was summoned. The latter, with insidious
eloquence, argued that in the legislature alone could Napoleon find a
support to his throne. The talk was reported, as if by magic, in the
assembly halls, and Lafayette, supported by Constant, put through a
motion that any attempt to dissolve the chambers would be considered
treason. Lucien pleaded in vain for a commission to treat with the
invaders in his brother's name; the deputies appointed a committee of
public safety, and adjourned.
Broken in spirit, Napoleon spent the evening in moody speculation,
weighing and balancing, but never deciding. Should he appear at dawn
before the Tuileries, summon the troops already in Paris, and prorogue
the hated chambers, or should he not? The notion remained a dream.
Early in June the court apothecary, Cadet de Gassicourt, had been
ordered by the Emperor to prepare an infallible poison. This was done,
and during this night of terrible vacillation the dose was swallowed
by the desperate fugitive. But, as before at Fontainebleau, the
theory of the philosopher was weaker than his instincts. In dreadful
physical and mental agony, the would-be suicide summoned his
pharmacist, and was furnished with the necessary antidotes. But the
morning brought no courage, and when the chambers met at their
accustomed hour, on the motion of an obscure member they demanded the
Emperor's abdication. The message was borne by the military commander
of the Palais Bourbon, where the legislature, which had now usurped
the supreme power, was sitting, and he asserted of his own motion
that, if compliance were refused, the chambers would declare Napoleon
outlawed. The Emperor at first made a show of fierce wrath, but in the
afternoon he dictated his final abdication to Lucien. No sooner was
this paper received than the wild excitement of the deputies and peers
subsided, and at once a new Directory, consisting of Carnot, Fouche,
Caulaincourt, and Quinette, took up the reins of government. The city
acquiesced, and hour after hour nothing interrupted the deep seclusion
of the Elysee, except occasional shouts from passing groups of
working-men, calling for Napoleon as dictator.
But there was a change as the stragglers from Waterloo began to
arrive, vowing that they still had an arm for the Emperor, and
denouncing those whom they believed to have betrayed him. The notion
of sustaining Napoleon by force began to spread, and when the soldiers
who were coming in, after suppressing the insurrection in Vendee,
added their voices to those of their comrades from Waterloo, the new
authorities feared Napoleon's presence as a menace to their power.
Davout had been the first to suggest an appeal to force, but when
Napoleon recurred at last to the idea, the marshal opposed it. On June
twenty-fifth, therefore, the fallen man withdrew to Malmaison; where,
in the society of Queen Hortense and a few faithful friends, during
three days he abandoned himself for long intervals to the sad memories
of the place. But he also wrote a farewell address to the army, and,
in constant communication with a committee of the government,
completed a plan for escaping to the United States, "there to fulfil
his destiny," as he himself said. For this purpose two frigates were
put at the disposal of "him who had lately been Emperor." All was
ready on the twenty-ninth. That day a passing regiment shouted, "Long
life to the Emperor," and, in a last despairing effort, Napoleon sent
an offer of his services, as a simple general, to save Paris, and
defeat the allies, who, though approaching the capital, were now
separated. Fouche returned an insulting answer to the effect that the
government could no longer be responsible for the petitioner's safety.
Then, at last, Napoleon knew that all was over in that quarter. Clad
in civilian's clothing, and accompanied by Bertrand, Savary, and
Gourgaud, he immediately set out for Rochefort. General Becker led the
party as commissioner for the provisional government.
It was the exile's intention to hurry onward, but at Rambouillet he
halted, and spent the evening composing two requests, one for a supply
of furniture from Paris, the other for the library in the Petit
Trianon, together with copies of Visconti's "Greek Iconography" and
the great work on Egypt compiled from materials gathered during his
ill-starred sojourn in that country. Next morning a courier arrived
from Paris with news. "It is all up with France," he exclaimed, and
set out once more. Crowds lined the highways; sometimes they cheered,
and they were always respectful. Such was the enthusiasm of two
cavalry regiments at Niort that Becker was induced to send a despatch
to the government, pleading that an army, rallied in Napoleon's name,
might still exert an important influence in public affairs. Just as
the general was closing the document there arrived the news of the
cannonade heard before the capital on the thirtieth. Napoleon dictated
a postscript: "We hope the enemy will give you time to cover Paris and
bring your negotiations to an issue. If, in that case, an English
cruiser stops the Emperor's departure, you can dispose of him as a
common soldier."
By a strange coincidence, English cruisers had, as a matter of fact,
appeared within a few days in the offing before Rochefort. Whatever
the relation between this circumstance and his suggestion, Napoleon
studied every possible means of delaying his journey, and actually
opened a correspondence with the commanders in Bordeaux and the
Vendee, with a view to overthrowing the "traitorous" government. It
was July third when he finally reached Rochefort. Again for five days
he procrastinated. But the allies were entering Paris; Wellington was
bringing Louis XVIII back to his throne; in forty-eight hours the
monarchs of the coalition would arrive. Bluecher had commissioned a
Prussian detachment to seize and shoot his hated opponent, wherever
found. On the eighth, therefore, the outcast Emperor embarked; but for
two days the frigates were detained by unfavorable winds. On the
tenth, English cruisers hove in sight, and on the eleventh Las Cases,
who had been appointed Napoleon's private secretary, was sent to
interview Captain Maitland, of the _Bellerophon_, concerning his
instructions from the British government. The envoy returned, and
stated that the English commander would always be ready to receive
Napoleon, and conduct him to England, but he could not guarantee that
the ex-Emperor could settle there, or be free to betake himself to
America.
This language was almost fatal to the notion of a final refuge in
England, which Napoleon had begun to discuss and consider during the
days spent in Rochefort; so Las Cases sought a second interview.
According to his account, Maitland then changed his tone, remarking
that in England the monarch and his ministers had no arbitrary power;
that the generosity of the English people, and their liberal views,
were superior to those entertained by sovereigns. To the speaker this
was a platitude; to the listeners it was a weighty remark. A prey to
uncertainty, Napoleon entertained various schemes. He bought two
small, half-decked fishing-boats, with a view to boarding a Danish
ship that lay outside, but the project was quickly dropped. Two young
officers of the French frigate suggested sailing all the way to New
York in the little craft. Napoleon seriously considered the
possibility, but recalling that such vessels must get their final
supplies on the coasts of Spain or Portugal, rejected the plan, for he
dared not risk falling into the hands of embittered foes. Word was
brought that an American ship lay near by, in the Gironde. General
Lallemand galloped in hot haste to see whether an asylum for the
outlawed party could be secured under her flag. He returned with a
reply that the captain would be "proud and happy to grant it."
But in the interim Napoleon had determined to throw himself on the
"generosity of England." On the thirteenth Gourgaud was sent to
London, with a request to the Prince Regent that the Emperor should be
permitted to live unknown in some provincial English place, under the
name of General Duroc. On the fifteenth Napoleon embarked on the
_Bellerophon_, where he was received with all honors; next day the
vessel sailed, and on the twenty-fourth she cast anchor in Torbay.
During the voyage the passenger was often somnolent, and seemed
exhausted; but he was affable in his intercourse with the officers,
and to Maitland, who unwisely yielded the expected precedence. To his
kindly keeper, in a sort of beseeching confidence, the prisoner showed
portraits of his wife and child, lamenting with tender sensibility his
enforced separation from them. The scenes in Torbay were curious.
Crowds from far and near lined the shores, and boats of all
descriptions thronged the waters; the sight-seers dared everything to
catch a glimpse of the awful monster under the terrors of whose power
a generation had reached manhood. If, perchance, they succeeded, the
air was rent with cheers. After two days the ship was ordered round
into Plymouth Sound, but the reckless sensation-seekers gathered there
in still greater numbers.
Many have wondered at Napoleon's surrender of his person to the
English. There was no other course open which seemed feasible to a
broken-spirited man in his position. His admirers are correct in
thinking that it was more noble for him to have survived his greatness
than to have taken his own life. To have entered on a series of
romantic adventures such as were suggested--concealment on the Danish
vessel, flight in open boats, concealment in a water-cask on an
American merchantman, and the like--would have been merely the
addition of ignominy to his capture; for his presence under the
American flag would have been reported by spies, and at that day the
standard of the United States would have afforded him little immunity.
It is possible that on the morrow of Waterloo Napoleon might, with
Grouchy's army, the other survivors, and the men from Vendee, have
reassembled an army in Paris, but it is doubtful. Nothing in
Revolutionary annals can surpass the horror of royalist frenzy, known
as the White Terror, which broke out in Provence and southern France
on receipt of the news from Waterloo. The ghastly distemper spread
swiftly, and when Napoleon embarked the tricolor was floating only at
Rochefort, Nantes, and Bordeaux; his family was proscribed, Ney and
Labedoyere were imprisoned and doomed to execution. To have
surrendered either to Wellington or Bluecher would have been seeking
instant death; to have collected such desperate soldiers as could be
got together would have been an attempt at guerrilla warfare. To take
refuge with the officers of England's navy was the only dignified
course with any element of safety in it, since Great Britain was the
only land in Europe which afforded the privileges of asylum to certain
classes of political offenders. Naturally, the negotiators did not
proclaim their extremity. Considering the date of Gourgaud's embassy,
it is clear they were in no position to demand formal terms, and
Maitland's character forbids the conclusion that he made them. It is
unfortunate that he did not commit to writing all his transactions
with Lallemand, Savary, and Las Cases; perhaps he was injudiciously
polite, but it is certain that, contrary to their representations, he
made no promise, even by implication, that under England's flag
Napoleon should find a refuge, and not a prison.