WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
OFTEN and often it has been savagely pointed out that Napoleon enjoyed
greater good fortune than anyone could with reason expect. Every
incident in Napoleon’s life, from his employment by Barras in 1795 to
the collapse of Francis I.’s nerve in 1809, has been used to prove this,
while his later misfortunes have been casually mentioned as being
inevitable considering his careless taking of risks. The former
criticism is undoubtedly fair, but the latter is open to serious
disagreement, and has hardly received the opposition it deserves.
Napoleon’s domination of Europe from 1805 onwards depended entirely upon
his military supremacy; nobody would dream of saying that he would have
received the homage of the Confederation of the Rhine, the submission of
Prussia and the co-operation of Austria simply because of the force of
his personality, if that personality had not also been supported by the
menace of four hundred battalions. Consequently Napoleon’s policy could
not be questioned so long as his army was invincible, and mistakes of
policy could be rapidly erased by a victory in the field. Similarly a
military error was of far more importance than a political one; if the
Bonapartes had never met with a defeat in battle their line would still
inevitably hold the throne of France, with a ring of subject countries
round them. It is therefore of the first importance to inquire into the
failure of the army; the other failures are merely secondary. Thus if
anyone says that he has just quitted a certain building for three
reasons, one of them being that he was thrown out, the other two reasons
are of secondary importance.
Various dates have been assigned to the commencement of the decline of
Napoleon’s military ascendancy, and the very fact that this is so proves
how difficult it is to be dogmatic on the subject. Napoleon lost battles
in 1807, and he won battles in 1813—and 1814 and 1815 for the matter of
that. The quality of the material at his disposal certainly grew more
and more inferior as time went on, but it is easy to make too much of
this point, for Napoleon was _never_ defeated except by superior
numbers. However, the first time he met with serious disaster was,
undoubtedly, in the campaign of 1812. The catastrophe has been described
times without number; what has not so often been mentioned is the
nearness of Napoleon’s approach to another triumph.
A Napoleonic army never took the field without the full expectation of
losing half its numbers through hardship, as distinct from the action of
the enemy. This was the price it paid for its rapidity of marching and
its freedom from a rigid dependence upon its base. If Napoleon led half
a million men to attack Russia, he expected to lose a quarter of a
million before he was in a position to gain a decisive success; he
certainly lost the quarter million, and he certainly gained a success,
but the losses continued and the success was not decisive. And yet on
several occasions it appeared as if a new Austerlitz or a new Friedland
were at hand.
The irony of the situation lies in the fact that in 1812 Napoleon took
much more extensive measures to ensure that losses due to poverty of
supplies would be minimized than he did in any other campaign. He
organized an elaborate Intendance, with vast trains of wagons, and he
collected enormous depôts of stores wherever possible. The system broke
down almost at once, partly on account of the inexperience of the
commissariat staff, partly because of torrential rains which ruined the
roads as soon as the army started, and partly because the army and train
were so huge that they had already absorbed every available horse in
Europe, so that losses (which necessarily increased with the distance
marched from the depôts) could not be replaced at all. This threw
additional work on the surviving horses, thereby increasing the wastage,
so that the Intendance went to pieces at a rate increasing by
geometrical progression. Before very long the Grand Army was once more
dependent entirely on the country through which it marched, and the
numbers were vast and Lithuania and White Russia were miserably poor. It
was a combination of circumstances apparently almost justifying the
Russian boast that God was on their side.
Yet matters were not progressing any too well for the Russians. Their
field army was hopelessly divided; one portion, from the Danube, could
not be expected for months, while of the other two parts one was almost
in the clutches of the French, and the two together were hopelessly
inferior in numbers to the forces at Napoleon’s disposal. The tide of
war came surging back across Russia; the Russians were marching
desperately to escape from the trap; the French were pursuing equally
desperately in the hope of closing the last avenue of escape. The
balance wavered, but at length turned in favour of the Czar. The roads
were mere mud tracks, churned by the Russians into quagmires, and the
French were delayed. Jerome Bonaparte was not as insistent on speed as
he might have been, and at last, after fierce rearguard fighting,
Bagration escaped from the snare laid for him. A little more—ever so
little!—and Smolensk might have been another Ulm.
The two main Russian armies were now combined, and, a hundred and twenty
thousand strong, with a numerous cavalry, they were able to sweep the
country bare before the French advance. Had the French movements round
Smolensk been successful, the Russians would have had only half these
numbers, and they would probably have been panic-stricken in addition;
the French advance would have been proportionately easier and less
expensive. In fact, it is difficult to see how Russia could have
continued the war, for Alexander’s nerve would have been shaken, the war
party would have received a severe rebuff, and altogether an entirely
different atmosphere would have arisen. The Russians fell slowly back
towards Moscow, the French, starving and disease-ridden, toiled
painfully after them. Barclay de Tolly was relieved from his command in
consequence of his inaction, and Kutusoff, the disciple of the great
Suvaroff, took his place. A battle was fought at Borodino. For Napoleon,
it was the first victory which did not give him huge captures of
prisoners and the prompt and abject submission of his enemies; for the
Russians it seemed as good as a victory, for they had met the great
conqueror _en rase campagne_, and had escaped.
Yet they should not have done. The late Lord Wolseley declares that
Napoleon’s plan of attack at Borodino “could not be more perfectly
conceived or better elaborated,” and he goes on to say that it was a
sudden attack of illness which prevented Napoleon from controlling the
battle when it reached its height, and from sending adequate supports to
Ney at the crucial moment. This is the first mention we find of the
mysterious illness on which a large number of writers lay so much
stress; in the next campaign we shall find a much more important
example. But whether Napoleon was ill or not, a little better luck for
Ney or Davout would certainly have brought about important results. The
destruction of Kutusoff’s army would have had a great effect on the rest
of the campaign, even if it had not appalled Alexander into making
peace.
The next mistake of the Emperor’s was in staying too long at Moscow;
during the five weeks he spent there his own army became demoralized,
the Russians had time to rally and to bring up the Army of the Danube,
and winter closed down on the countryside. When at last Napoleon decided
to retreat Kutusoff was able at Malo-Jaroslavetz to bar the way to
Kaluga, and to force him to go back through the pillaged districts
through which he had come; this could mean nothing less than the
destruction of his army, and, as everyone knows, the Grand Army was
destroyed. It is needless here to tell once more the tale of the
Beresina and Krasnoi; the interest of “what might have been” ceases with
the battle of Malo-Jaroslavetz.
The points to be remembered are that during the fighting round Smolensk
Napoleon was within a hairbreadth of an overwhelming victory; at
Borodino he might have gained a satisfactory victory; a prompt retreat
from Moscow would at least have minimized disaster; a success at
Malo-Jaroslavetz would have saved part of the army, while the check
which was actually experienced here was due to the accumulated effects
of the earlier bad luck. In a military sense the campaign of 1812 was
not merely justifiable but it was very nearly justified. A little—a
very little more thrown into the scale would have saved his Empire for
Napoleon and set him on a higher throne than ever before.
The campaign of 1813 was in this sense even more striking. It was waged
with untrained, immature forces, for the most part against overwhelming
odds, but during the course of the fighting Napoleon was not once, but
many times, within an ace of successes more splendid than Austerlitz.
The actions of the Allies seemed to portend failure for them from the
start. Although Prussia joined Russia as soon as the extent of the
French disaster became known; although there was nothing to bar their
way except a few thousand starving survivors of the Grand Army; although
all Germany was in a ferment, and the French domination of the Rhenish
Confederation was tottering, the Russians advanced with pitiful caution
and delay. Napoleon had returned to Paris, had raised, organized,
equipped and set in motion a new army of a quarter of a million men by
the time the Russians reached the Elbe. Almost before the Russian
commander-in-chief, Wittgenstein, knew what was happening, Napoleon had
rushed back at the head of his new army, had won the battle of Lützen,
had reconquered Saxony, and had flung the Allied army back across the
Oder.
At Bautzen they stood once more to fight. Napoleon drew up the most
gigantic battle plan ever conceived up to that time; with half his force
he assailed the Allied centre, while Ney with sixty thousand men marched
against the right. The struggle lasted for twelve bitter hours. Somehow
Napoleon held his own command together and kept the Allies pinned to
their position, while Ney was slowly wheeling his immense force round
for the decisive movement. But the stars in their courses fought against
the Emperor. Ney failed lamentably. He lost sight of the main object of
his march, and he showed his hand and then wasted his strength in a
fierce attack on Blücher at Preistitz. Blücher struggled gamely; more
and more of Ney’s forces were drawn into the fight; the turning movement
was delayed, and the Allies, warned in time, writhed out of the trap.
Fifty thousand prisoners and two hundred guns might have been captured;
as it was, Napoleon was left to deplore a massacre—for nothing!
Alluding to Soult’s capture of Badajoz in 1811, Napoleon had said,
“Soult gained me a town and lost me a kingdom.” He might well have said
of Ney’s attack on Preistitz that Ney gained him a village and lost him
an Empire. It is inconceivable that the war could have been prolonged if
Ney had obeyed orders at Bautzen; the allied army comprised all the
troops that Russia and Prussia could at that time put into the field;
its destruction would have meant the reconquest of Prussia and of
Poland, the intimidation of Austria, and the regaining of Napoleon’s
European ascendancy.
After Bautzen Napoleon concluded an armistice with his enemies. He still
hoped for an advantageous peace, and even if he failed to obtain this he
expected that the delay would enable him to rest the weary boys who
filled the ranks, to drill his wretched cavalry into some semblance of
order, and to clear his rear of the bandits and partisans who were
swarming everywhere. Moreover, for the last eighteen months he had been
working at a pace which would have killed most men, and he himself was
undoubtedly feeling the strain. The armistice would give him a little
rest. But it meant disaster, nevertheless. From all over Russia new
recruits were plodding across the unending plains to fill the gaps in
the ranks of the field army; Prussia was calling out her whole male
population, and Bernadotte’s Swedes were gradually moving up into line.
Worse than all, Austria turned against him. The delay enabled Francis to
bring his army up to war strength on the receipt of lavish English
subsidies, and, even while he still hesitated to attack his son-in-law,
the news arrived that Wellington had routed Joseph Bonaparte at
Vittoria, had cleared Spain of the French, and was about to attack the
sacred soil of France herself. The news was decisive, and the demands of
the Allies promptly increased inordinately. When, in August, the
armistice came to an end, Napoleon found himself assailed by forces of
twice his strength.
Yet he did not despair; he thrust fiercely into Silesia, and then,
finding the Austrians moving against Dresden, he wheeled about, marched
a hundred and twenty miles in four days, and gained at Dresden the most
surprising of all his victories. With a hundred thousand men he flung
back a hundred and sixty thousand Russians and Austrians in utter
disorder; Vandamme had cut off their retreat, and once again it seemed
as if Ulm and Austerlitz were to be repeated. And then once more
occurred a startling change of fortune. Napoleon might have taken a
hundred thousand prisoners; the Emperors of Austria and of Russia might
have fallen into his power; Austria would have been ruined, and Napoleon
could have dictated peace on his own terms. But Napoleon handed over the
pursuit to Murat and St. Cyr, and returned to Dresden. In consequence,
the retreating Austrians were not pressed, Vandamme was overwhelmed, and
the action at Kulm gave the Allies twenty thousand prisoners instead of
placing the whole Allied army in the hands of the French.
No one knows why Napoleon returned to Dresden when victory was in his
grasp. The advocates of the illness theory certainly have a strong case
here; but perhaps it was news of the disasters in Silesia which recalled
him; perhaps he was merely too tired to continue; perhaps he only had a
bad cold as the result of sitting his horse all day in the pelting rain
which fell all day during the battle of Dresden. However it was,
Napoleon’s mastership of Europe was lost irreparably when he came to his
decision to leave his army.
For two months disaster now followed disaster. Macdonald had already
been routed on the Katzbach; Oudinot was beaten at Gross Beeren, Ney was
beaten at Dennewitz, St. Cyr surrendered at Dresden, and Napoleon
himself tasted the bitter cup of defeat at Leipzig. The astonishing
feature of the autumn campaign of 1813 was not that Napoleon was
defeated, but that he ever escaped from Germany at all. But he did,
blotting out on his path the Bavarian army which opposed him at Hanau.
Once again the Allies advanced too slowly, and once again Napoleon was
able to organize a fresh army to defend France. Soult had grappled with
Wellington in the south, and was stubbornly contesting every inch of
French soil in his desperate campaign of Toulouse. Napoleon prepared to
make one more effort for success in the north. Russia, Austria, Prussia,
Sweden, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland and even Belgium had
sent every man available against him. Four hundred thousand men were
about to pass the Rhine while Napoleon had not a quarter of this force
with which to oppose them. However, the prospect was not as hopeless as
it would appear. The Allies were bitterly jealous of each other, and
Napoleon had good grounds for hoping to divide them even now. Besides,
they were all of them intent upon gaining possession of whatever
territory they wished to claim at the conclusion of peace, and an army
guided solely by political motives is at the mercy of another which is
directed only in accordance with the dictates of military strategy.
This early became obvious. Austria had bought the alliance of the
smaller German states only by means of extensive guarantees of their
possessions; in consequence she determined to find compensation for her
losses by acquisitions in Italy. But Italy was stoutly defended by the
Viceroy Eugène; she could make no progress there, and in consequence she
did not yet desire Napoleon’s fall. Schwartzenberg, the Austrian
general, was therefore held back by Metternich’s secret orders until
Venetia and Lombardy should be in Austrian hands. Metternich was quite
capable of leaving the Russians and Prussians in the lurch while he
played his own tortuous game; however, the situation was saved by
Murat’s betrayal of Napoleon. With Murat on his side, and the Neapolitan
army moving forward against Eugène, Metternich was sure of Italy, and
Schwartzenberg was allowed to proceed into France. Once more the
weakness and treachery of a subordinate had prevented Napoleon from
gaining a decisive success.
The prospect grew gloomier and gloomier for the French. Napoleon was
beaten at Brienne and at La Rothière; immediate and utter ruin seemed
inevitable. Suddenly everything was changed. Napoleon fell upon the
dispersed army of the Allies. At Champ-Aubert, Vauchamp, Château-Thierry
and Mormant the Allies were beaten and hurled back. More than this, the
Prussians under Blücher, thirty thousand strong, hard pressed by
Napoleon, came reeling back towards Soissons and the Marne—and Soissons
was held by a French garrison. With an unfordable river before him; the
only bridge held by the enemy; a panic-stricken army under his command,
and Napoleon and his unbeaten Frenchmen, flushed with victory, at his
heels, Blücher seemed doomed to destruction. The officer in command at
Soissons bore the ominous name of Moreau; he was intimidated into
surrender when one more day’s defence would have had incalculable
results. Blücher escaped across the Marne not a minute too soon.
This was Napoleon’s last chance before his abdication. His armies were
weakened even by their victories; the Allied forces seemed
inexhaustible. All Napoleon’s efforts were unavailing; his final threat
at Schwartzenberg’s communications was disregarded, and the Allies
reached Paris. Marmont’s surrender here has often been brought forward
as one more instance of treachery in high places, but it was not
treachery, it was only timidity and fear of responsibility. One cannot
imagine Blücher surrendering under similar circumstances. Be that as it
may, Paris fell, and Napoleon abdicated.
After the abdication came the descent from Elba; after the descent from
Elba came the Hundred Days; and at the end of the Hundred Days came the
Waterloo campaign. It was during the Waterloo campaign that there
occurred, not one but half a dozen chances for Napoleon to win the
decisive victory for which he had been striving ever since 1812, but all
these half-dozen chances were spoilt by unexpected happenings and by
sheer hard luck.
Many critics have inveighed against Napoleon’s decision to take the
initiative into his own hands and to carry the war into the enemy’s camp
by his invasion of Belgium, but there is hardly one who can find any
fault with the plan of invasion once it had been decided upon. The chief
fault-finder, indeed, is Wellington, who, to his dying day, maintained
that the movement should have been commenced through Mons, against the
English right, and not through Charleroi, against their left. However,
Wellington’s opinion on this matter does not carry as much weight as it
might, because the Iron Duke was guilty of several serious mistakes
during the campaign, and was only too anxious to draw any red herring
that offered across their trail, especially as these mistakes were
nearly all committed while he was under the impression that Napoleon’s
ultimate objective was his right and not his centre. The whole weight of
later opinion is in favour of Napoleon’s plan.
Napoleon decided, then, to invade Belgium via Charleroi, to interpose
between the Prussian and the Anglo-Allied armies and defeat them in
detail. The fact that he had only 130,000 men against 120,000 Prussians
and 100,000 English and Allies does not seem to have caused him any
grave apprehension. The greatest handicap under which he suffered was
the absence of Berthier and Davout; both staff work and the higher
commands suffered because of this, for Soult had no aptitude for the
task of Chief of Staff, and Ney and Grouchy had no skill either in
higher strategy or in the handling of large numbers of men.
Nevertheless, the initial movements, without the interference of the
enemy, were carried out with brilliant success; the 130,000 men
available were assembled on the Sambre without either Blücher or
Wellington having any suspicion as to the storm that was gathering. Next
day the advance across the Sambre was ordered, and the storm burst.
The two vitally important factors for success were extreme simplicity of
movement and the utmost secrecy of design. But these were rendered
impossible at the very moment of the opening of the campaign. First, a
general of division, as soon as he was over the river, deserted to the
Prussians and disclosed the very considerable information of which he
was possessed, and secondly the officer bearing orders to Vandamme to
advance met with an accident and broke his leg. This held up both
Vandamme’s corps and the one behind it, Lobau’s, and delayed the advance
after the movement had become known for six valuable hours. All chance
of surprising the Prussians in their cantonments was now lost, but for
all that the plan of campaign was so perfect that on the next day the
English and Prussians could only bring slightly superior numbers to bear
on the French force. At Ligny the Prussians were beaten; at Quatre Bras
the English were held back. Ney’s and d’Erlon’s mistakes on this day
have already been described. Had Ney acted with all possible diligence,
or had d’Erlon used his wits, either a completely crushing victory over
the Prussians or a nearly equally satisfactory success over the English
could have been obtained. Even both were possible. But Napoleon’s chance
was spoiled owing to the inefficiency of his subordinates. Soult, Ney
and d’Erlon were all equally to blame.
The next point is more mysterious. After Ligny was fought and won, it
was clearly to Napoleon’s advantage to follow up his success without a
moment’s delay. No other general had ever been so remorseless in hunting
down a beaten enemy, and in wringing every possible advantage from his
victory. But at Digny Napoleon paused. No order for an advance was
issued. For twelve hours paralysis descended upon the Imperial army. The
Prussians struggled out of harm’s way, and crawled painfully by by-roads
to Wavre to keep in touch with the English. The cavalry reconnaissances
which were sent out later the next morning to find the Prussian army did
their work badly, and left Napoleon convinced that they had fallen back
on Liège and not on Wavre. It was the delay, however, and not the faulty
scouting, which proved most disastrous. Like Napoleon’s return to
Dresden in 1813, it has never been explained. Some historians say that
he was struck down by an attack of the same nameless illness which had
overcome him at Borodino, at Moscow, at Dresden and at Leipzig. In this
case it is the only possible explanation. For four or five hours
Napoleon must have suffered from a complete lapse of his faculties.
Those four or five hours were sufficient to ruin the Empire. Napoleon
was left completely in the dark as to the moral, strength and position
of the Prussians, and consequently he detached Grouchy with ambiguous
orders in pursuit, gave him a force too small for decisive operations
and yet much too large for mere observation, and sent him by a route
which precluded him either from assisting the main body or from
interfering seriously with the operations of the Prussians. Grouchy
might possibly have done both if only he had possessed vast insight,
vast skill and vast determination, but he did not; he was merely
ordinary. So Wellington turned to bay at Waterloo; the Prussians
assailed Napoleon’s flank, and the day ended in despair and disaster.
Thus, on looking back through the years of defeat, 1812, 1813, 1814 and
1815, we find that there were a great number of occasions when Napoleon
might have gained a success which would have counter-balanced the
previous reverses. At Smolensk he might have gained another Friedland;
at Borodino he might still have snatched some slight triumph out of the
Moscow campaign. At Bautzen he came within an ace of destroying the
Russian and Prussian armies, at Dresden he nearly captured the whole
Austrian army and the two most powerful autocrats of Europe. The
surrender of Soissons just saved the Prussians in 1814. In 1815 he might
have shattered either or both of the armies opposed to him. It is not
too much to say that with the good luck which had attended him during
his earlier campaigns not only might he not have been forced to abdicate
in 1814, but he might have enjoyed his continental ascendancy for a very
considerable additional length of time.
Beside these undoubted possibilities there are others not as firmly
based. Marbot tells a story that on the eve of Leipzig, while at the
head of his Chasseurs, he saw a party of horsemen moving about in the
darkness a short distance ahead. For various reasons he refrained from
attacking—to discover later that the hostile force had consisted of the
King of Prussia, the Emperors of Austria and Russia, and their staffs. A
resolute charge by Marbot would have brought back as prisoners all the
brains and authority of the opposing army. The Spanish victory at Pavia,
when Francis the First lost “everything except honour,” would have been
a poor success in comparison. We have, however, only Marbot’s word for
this incident, and Marbot is distinctly untrustworthy. Edward III.’s
army was not the only one which used the long bow.
It is more to the purpose to consider Dupont’s surrender at Baylen. When
Dupont was sent out from Madrid to conquer Andalusia, there was only one
Spanish field army in being, and that was the one he was to attack. As
it happened, his nerve failed him, he frittered away weeks of valuable
time, and finally he was hemmed in and forced to surrender rather
feebly. The news of the disaster spread like wildfire over the
Peninsula. Moncey was repulsed from Valencia; Catalonia broke into
insurrection and hemmed Duhesme into Barcelona. Galicia and Aragon began
to arm. The Peninsular War was soon fully developed; it was to absorb
the energies of an army of three hundred thousand men for five years; it
was to shed the blood of half a million Frenchmen; it was to encourage
first Austria, then Russia, to rebel against the Napoleonic domination,
and it was only to end when the British flag waved over Bordeaux and
Toulouse. Had Lannes or some other really capable officer been in
command of Dupont’s twenty thousand men, the Army of Andalusia might
have been thoroughly beaten and the Peninsula overawed, for Baylen was
the battle which destroyed the French army’s reputation for
invincibility. Had not the Spaniards been victorious there, there would
not have been an opportunity for the simultaneous call to arms which set
all Spain in an inextinguishable blaze; isolated outbreaks might
naturally have occurred, but the long respite given to the Spaniards
during the summer of 1808, while Madrid was evacuated, would not have
taken place to give the Peninsula its opportunity for arming and
organizing. Baylen is as great a turning-point in Napoleonic history as
even Bautzen or Leipzig—and but for Dupont history might have turned in
another direction.
Instances such as this might be multiplied indefinitely, from Marmont at
El Bodin (where he hesitated when half the British army was in his
power) to Jourdan in his retreat to Vittoria; from Jerome’s
mismanagement of Westphalia to Ney at Dennewitz; but it is useless to
continue. It is obvious that Napoleon’s military set-backs were due very
largely, not to his own failings, but to the incapacity of his
subordinates. Napoleon made mistakes, enormous ones, sometimes (a few
will be considered in the next chapter), but none of them as utterly
fatal as those of the other generals. And yet these other generals were
quite good generals as far as generals go—they were far and away
superior to Schwartzenberg and Wittgenstein, for instance. Only
Wellington and perhaps Blücher can be compared to them. The only moral
to be drawn is that nothing human and fallible could sustain the vast
Empire any longer; the dead weight of the whole was such that the least
flaw in any of the pillars meant the progressive collapse of the entire
fabric.
This conclusion enables us to approach a definite decision as to “what
might have been.” It is unnecessary to argue as to whether the English
Cabinet would have survived a defeat at Waterloo, or whether Francis
would have made peace if he had been captured at Dresden. The result
eventually would have been the same. There was only one Napoleon, and
the Empire was too big for him to govern. Sooner or later something
would go wrong, and the disturbance would increase in geometrical
progression, and with a violence directly proportionate to the length of
time during which the repressive force had been in action. It was
inevitable that the Empire should fall, although as it happened the fall
was accelerated by a series of unfortunate incidents. Victor Hugo meant
the same thing when he said “God was bored with Napoleon”; and Napoleon
himself had occasional glimpses of the same inevitable result—as
witness the occasion when he said, “After me, my son will be lucky if he
has a few thousand francs a year.”
Thus, if Napoleon by good fortune had reestablished his Empire in 1813,
and taken advantage (just as he did in 1810) of peace in the east to
reconquer Spain in the south, even then he would not long have retained
his throne. The persistent enmity of England would have continued to
injure him, and to seek out some weak spot for the decisive blow. Even
if Ferdinand had been sent back to Spain, and French prestige survived
such a reverse, there would have still remained various avenues of
attack. England was suffering severely, but France was suffering more.
Perhaps the patience of the French would have become exhausted, and some
trivial revolt in Paris would have driven Napoleon into exile. A very
similar thing happened in 1830, and the house of Orleans was always
anxiously awaiting some such chance. There could hardly have arisen a
Napoleonic Legend in that event. To the French mind Napoleon the Great
and Napoleon the Little would have been the same person, instead of
uncle and nephew.
However it was, Napoleon was not destined to live long, and even if his
Empire had survived him, at his death one can hardly imagine Europe
remaining under the thumb of any Council of Regency he might appoint,
with Joseph and Jerome and the Murats all scheming and conspiring to
grasp the main power. Poor silly Marie Louise could never have kept
order; some Monk would have arisen to restore the Bourbons, and Napoleon
II. would have received the same treatment as did Richard Cromwell. The
legend of l’Aiglon would then have been very different. A Bonaparte
restoration in France might be as feasible as ever was a Protectorate
restoration in England. Not all Louis Napoleon’s wiles could have built
up a reactionary party; not all the glamour of Austerlitz and Jena could
have masked the discredit of a new dynasty being cast out by its own
people instead of by a league of indignant autocrats; even Sedan was not
the death-blow to Bonapartism. As it is, there will be a Third Empire in
France as soon as there arises a Napoleon the Fourth.
[Illustration: DAVOUT
(PRINCE D’ECKMÜHL AND DUC D’AUERSTÄDT)]