firing buildings should be executed on the spot. The army was directed
to use every effort to extinguish the flames. But the high wind set all
their efforts at defiance. It increased in fury and varied in direction,
carrying the conflagration over new quarters. From the Kremlin could be
seen vast columns of fire, shooting from building to building, wrapping
the wooden structures in lurid sheets of flame, sweeping destruction
forward at frightful speed. The roar of the flames, the explosions that
from time to time took place, the burning fragments which filled the
air, borne on the wings of the wind, all went to make a scene as grand
and fearful as human eye has ever gazed upon. To Napoleon and his men,
who saw their hopes of safe and pleasant winter-quarters thus vanishing
in flame, it must have been a most alarming and disquieting spectacle.
After blowing for some hours from the north-west, the wind shifted to
the south-west, and the conflagration invaded new regions of the city.
The Kremlin, hitherto out of the range of the flames, was now in danger.
Fiery sparks, borne by the wind, fell on its roof and in its court-yard.
The most frightful danger of the whole night now threatened the
imperilled army. In the court-yards of the Kremlin had been placed more
than four hundred wagons of ammunition; in its arsenal were a hundred
thousand pounds of powder. Should the flames reach these, Napoleon and
his guards would be blown into the air.
All who were near him pressed him to hasten from this imminent peril.
General Lariboisière begged him to fly, as a duty which he owed to his
army. Officers who came in from the streets reported that it was almost
impossible to pass through the avenues of the town, and that delay would
increase the danger. To remain where they were much longer might render
escape impossible.
Napoleon, convinced by these words, left the Kremlin, after some
twenty-four hours' possession of this old palace of the czars, and
descended to the quay of the Moskowa, where he found his horses awaiting
him. Mounting, he rode through the fire-invaded streets towards the
north-west, but with no little difficulty and danger, for the flames
from the other quarters of the city were now spreading here.
The wind seemed steadily to increase in violence, torrents of smoke,
cinders, and sparks were driven down into the streets; sheets of flame
seemed to bend downward as if to sweep the ground; on every side the
troops were flying for their lives, on every side the conflagration
pursued them; it was through imminent peril that the grand army, which
on the morning before had marched so triumphantly into that abandoned
city, now succeeded in gaining a safe location outside, whence they
could look back in despair on that hell of flames in which their dearest
hopes were being consumed.
A small number of the inhabitants who had remained concealed in their
houses now came out, carrying away with them what treasures they most
esteemed; in some cases, women their children, men their aged parents;
many of them barely saving their clothes, and disputing the possession
of even these with the band of robbers whom Rostopchin had let loose,
and who, like spirits of evil, danced with glee in the midst of the
terrible conflagration which had been kindled by their hands.
So ended one of the most startling events in history,--the burning of a
great city to dispossess a victorious foe. It proved successful. When
Napoleon left the Kremlin on that fearful night he began his downward
career. The conflagration, it is true, did not drive him at once from
Moscow. He lingered for more than a month amid its ruins, in the vain
hope that the czar would ask him for terms of peace. But the czar kept
silent, the city was untenable for winter-quarters, and retreat became
imperative. When, at length, the grand army marched, winter marched with
it,--a winter such as even Russia had rarely seen. Napoleon had delayed
too long. The north gathered its forces and swooped upon his shivering
ranks, with death in its blasts. The Russians, recovering from their
losses, rushed upon his freezing columns, pouring destruction upon them
as they marched. All was at an end. The great victor's tide of success
had definitely turned. He had entered Russia with nearly half a million
of men; hardly a tenth part of this great army followed him from that
fatal land.
_NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA._
All was quiet in Elba. Nothing was talked of at Porto-Ferrajo but the
ball to be given by Pauline, the sister of Napoleon, who had exchanged
his imperial dominion over half Europe for kingship over that little
Mediterranean island. Evening came. The fête was a brilliant one.
Napoleon was present, gay, cheerful, easy, to all appearance fully
satisfied with his little kingdom, and without thought of wider empire
or heavier cares. He stayed till a late hour, and went home with two of
his old generals, Bertrand and Drouet, to tell them the news which had
come to him from the continent. This news was not altogether to his
liking. The Congress at Vienna had decreed his transportation to the
Azores. Elba was too near France.
Such was the state of affairs on the night of February 25, 1815. At
sunset of the next day there might have been seen a small flotilla
moving before a south wind along the shores of Elba. It consisted of a
brig, the Inconstant by name, a schooner, and five smaller vessels. The
brig evidently carried guns. The decks of the other vessels were crowded
with men in uniform. On the deck of the Inconstant stood Napoleon, his
face filled with hope and joy, his hand waving an adieu to his sister
Pauline, who watched him from the château windows, on the island shore.
The next day came. The sea was motionless. Not a breath of wind could be
felt. The island was still close at hand. At a distance might be seen
the French and English cruisers which guarded that side of the island,
now moveless upon a moveless sea. It was doubtful if the flotilla had
not better return. But the wind rose again, and their progress was
resumed.
Four in the afternoon found them off the heights of Leghorn. Five
leagues to leeward lay one frigate; near the shores of Corsica was
another; to windward could be seen a third, making its way towards the
flotilla. It was the Zephyr, of the French navy, commanded by Captain
Andrieux. Now had come a vital moment in the enterprise. Should the
Emperor declare himself and seek to gain over Andrieux? It was too
dangerous a venture; he bade the grenadiers on the deck to conceal
themselves; it was a situation in which strategy seemed better than
boldness. At six the two vessels were close together. Lieutenant
Taillade of the Inconstant knew and saluted Captain Andrieux. A
speaking-trumpet colloquy followed.
"Where are you bound?" asked Taillade.
"To Leghorn. And you?"
"To Genoa. Have you any commissions I can execute there?"
"Thanks, not any. How is the Emperor?"
"Very well."
"So much the better."
The two vessels moved on, and soon lost sight of each other in the
growing darkness. The other frigates had disappeared.
The next day dawned. There was visible a large frigate in the distance,
but it was not moving towards the flotilla. No danger was to be feared
from this source. But the vessel's head had been turned to the
southward, to Taillade's surprise.
"Gentlemen," he called to the officers on the bridge, "are we bound for
Spain or for Africa?"
Napoleon, who had perceived the same thing, summoned Taillade from his
conference with the officers.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Sire, we are headed for Africa."
"I don't wish to go there. Take me to France."
"Your Majesty shall be there before noon to-morrow."
The face of Napoleon beamed on hearing these words. He turned to the
soldiers of the Old Guard who accompanied him, and said,--
"Yes, grenadiers, we are going to France, to Paris." Enthusiastic
"_vivas_" followed his announcement, which told a tale of future glory
to those war-hardened veterans. They had fought for the Emperor on many
a mighty field. They were ready to dare new dangers in the hope of new
triumphs.
On the morning of Wednesday, March 1, the shores of France were visible
from the vessel's deck. At three in the afternoon anchor was dropped in
the Bay of Juan. Cheers and salvos of artillery greeted those welcome
shores; the boats were quickly dropped, and by five o'clock the whole
expedition was on shore. The soldiers made their bivouac in an olive
grove on the borders of the bay.
"Happy omen!" said Napoleon; "the olive is the emblem of peace."
He plucked some violets, and then sat down and consulted his maps, which
were spread on a table before him. There were two routes which might be
taken; an easy one through Provence, and a difficult one over the snowy
mountains of Dauphiny. But on the former he could not count on the
loyalty of the people; on the latter he could: the difficult route was
chosen.
It proved a cold and wearying journey. The men were obliged to march in
single file along narrow roads which bordered precipices. Several mules,
one of them laden with gold, lost their footing and were plunged down
the cliff. Napoleon was forced to dismount and go on foot to keep warm.
For a short time he rested beside the brush-wood fire of a cabin whose
only tenant was an old woman.
"Have you any news from Paris?" he asked her. "Do you know what the king
is doing?"
"The king? You mean the Emperor," answered the old woman. "He is always
down yonder."
So, here was a Frenchwoman who had not heard a word of the last year's
doings. Was this the stuff of glory? Napoleon looked at General Drouet,
and said, in pensive tones, "Do you hear this, Drouet? What, after all,
is the good of troubling the world in order to fill it with our name?"
We cannot follow their progress step by step. That small army of a
thousand men was marching to conquer a kingdom, but for days it had only
the mountains and the snows to overcome. As yet not a soldier had been
encountered, and they had been a week on shore. But the news of the
landing had now spread far and wide, and soldiers were marching to stop
the advance of the "Brigand of Elba," as the royalists in Paris called
Napoleon. How would they receive him,--with volleys or acclamations?
That was soon to be learned. The troops in that part of France were
concentrated at Grenoble and its vicinity. The Emperor was approaching
them. The problem would soon be solved.
At nine o'clock of March 7 Napoleon separated his small force into three
divisions, himself taking station in the midst of the advance-guard, on
horseback, wearing his famous gray overcoat and the broad ribbon of the
Legion of Honor. About one o'clock the small battalion approached a
regiment of the troops of the king, who were drawn up in line across the
road. Napoleon dismounted.
"Colonel Mallet," he said, "tell the soldiers to put their weapons under
their left arms, points down."
"Sire," said the colonel, "is it not dangerous to act thus in presence
of troops whose sentiments we do not know, and whose first fire may be
so fatal?"
"Mallet, tell them to put the weapons under their arms," repeated
Napoleon.
The order was obeyed. The two battalions faced each other, at short
pistol-shot, in absolute silence. Napoleon advanced alone towards the
royal troops.
"Present arms!" he commanded.
They obeyed, levelling their guns at their old commander. He advanced
slowly, with impassive face. Reaching their front, he touched his cap
and saluted.
"Soldiers of the Fifth," he cried, loudly, "do you recognize me?"
"Yes, yes," came from some voices, filled with barely-repressed
enthusiasm.
"Soldiers, behold your general; behold your emperor," he continued. "Let
any of you who wishes to kill him, fire."
Fire?--Their guns went to the earth; they flung themselves on their
knees before him, called him father, shed tears, shouted as if in
frenzy, waved their shakos on their bayonets and sabres.
"All is over," said Napoleon to Bertrand and Drouet. "In ten days we
shall be in the Tuileries."
In a brief time the Emperor moved on, the king's regiment, now wearing
the tricolor cockade, following with his former troop. As they drew near
Grenoble throngs of peasantry gathered, with enthusiastic cheers.
Another regiment approached, the seventh of the line, commanded by
Colonel de Labédoyère. He had taken the eagle of the regiment from a
chest, brandished his sword, and crying "Long live the Emperor! Those
who love me follow me!" led the way from Grenoble. The whole regiment
followed. Meeting Napoleon, the colonel and the Emperor sprang from
their horses and warmly embraced.
"Colonel," said Napoleon, "it is you who will replace me on the throne."
It was night when they reached Grenoble. The royalist authorities had
closed the gates, but the ramparts were thronged with men. The darkness
was profound, but Labédoyère called out loudly,--
"Soldiers, it is I, Labédoyère, colonel of the Seventh. We bring you
Napoleon. He is yonder. It is for you to receive him and to repeat with
us the rallying-cry of the former conquerors of Europe: Live the
Emperor!"
His words were followed by a ringing shout from the ramparts. Many ran
to the gates. Finding them closed and barred they furiously attacked
them with axes, while the peasants outside hammered on them as fiercely.
Thus doubly assailed they soon gave way, and the stream of new-comers
rushed in, torches and flambeaux illuminating the scene. Napoleon had no
little difficulty in making his way through the crowd, which was
delirious with joy, and reaching an inn, the Three Dauphins, where he
designed to pass the night.
On the 9th he left Grenoble, followed by six thousand of his old
soldiers. His march was an ovation. He reached Lyons on the 10th.
Several regiments had been collected here to oppose him, but they all
trampled the white cockade of the king underfoot, assumed the tricolor,
and fraternized with the Emperor's troops.
Marshal Ney was the only hope left to the royalists. He had, they said,
promised Louis XVIII. to bring back Napoleon in an iron cage. This hope
vanished when Ney issued a proclamation beginning, "The cause of the
Bourbons is lost forever;" which was followed, on March 18, by his
embracing the Emperor openly at Auxerre.
All was over for Louis XVIII. Near midnight of March 19 some travelling
carriages rolled away from the court-yard of the Touileries in a torrent
of rain, and amid a furious wind-storm that extinguished the carriage
lights. It was Louis XVIII. going into exile. On the 20th, at nine
o'clock in the evening, the Emperor Napoleon drove through the streets
of Paris towards the abandoned palace through hosts of shouting soldiers
and a population that was wild with joy. The officers tore him from his
carriage and carried him on their arms, kissing his hands, embracing his
old gray overcoat, not letting his feet touch ground till they had borne
him to the foot of the grand stairway of the Tuileries.
It was twenty days since he had landed, and France was his, the people,
the soldiers, alike mad with delight, none, to all appearance, dreaming
of what renewed miseries this ill-omened return of their worshipped
emperor meant.
It meant, as we now know, bloodshed, slaughter, and ruin; it meant
Waterloo and St. Helena; it meant a hundred days of renewed empire, and
then the final end of the power of the great conqueror. On August 7,
less than five months from the date of the triumphant entry to the
Tuileries, Napoleon stepped on board the British frigate Northumberland,
to be borne to the far-off isle of St. Helena, his future home.
Twenty-five years after the date of these events Napoleon returned again
to France, but under very different auspices from those described. On
the 29th of November, 1840, there anchored at Cherbourg, amid the
salutes of forts and ships, a French war-vessel called the Belle Poule,
on which were the mortal remains of the great conqueror, long since
conquered by death, and now brought back to the land over which he had
so long reigned. On December 8 the coffin was transferred to the steamer
Normandie, amid a salute of two thousand guns, and taken by it to the
Seine. On December 15 the coffin, placed on a splendid car drawn by
sixteen horses, moved in solemn procession through the streets of Paris,
attended by the noblest escort the city could provide, and passing
through avenues thronged with adoring multitudes, who forgot the
injuries the great soldier had done to France and remembered only his
fame. The funeral train was received by King Louis Philippe, the royal
family, and all the high dignitaries of the government at the Church of
the Invalides, in which a noble and worthy final resting-place had been
prepared for the corpse of the once mighty emperor. "Napoleon," says
Bourrienne, "had again and finally conquered. While every throne in
Europe was shaking, the Great Conqueror came to claim and receive from
posterity the crown for which he had sacrificed so much. In the
Invalides the Emperor had at last found a resting-place, 'by the banks
of the Seine, among the French people whom he had loved so well.'"
_THE PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE PARIS COMMUNE._
There have been two critical periods in the story of France in which
history was made at a rate of rapidity rarely equalled in the history of
the world. The first of these was the era of the Revolution and the
Napoleonic régime, which has no parallel among human events in the
rapidity and momentous gravity of its changes. The second was the period
from August, 1870, to the summer of 1871, less than a year in length,
yet crowded with important events to an unprecedented degree.
Within that year was fought a great war between France and Germany, in
which the military power of France, in an incredibly brief period, was
utterly overthrown, and that nation left at the mercy of its opponent.
Within the same period the second empire of France came to a sudden and
disastrous end, and a republic, the third in French history, was built
upon its ruins. Simultaneously a new and powerful empire was founded,
that of Germany, the palace at Versailles being the scene of this highly
important change in the political conditions of Europe. During this
period also a political revolution took place in Italy, in consequence
of the French war, and Paris sustained two sieges; the first by the
German army; the second and most bitter by the French themselves,
fighting against a mob of fanatical revolutionists and ending in a
frightful saturnalia of murder, ruin and revenge.
Has there ever been a year in the world's history more crowded with
momentous events? Within that year the political status of France,
Germany, and Italy was transformed, the late emperor of France suddenly
found himself a throneless fugitive, and the people of Paris passed
through an experience unparalleled in the diversified history of that
ancient city. Of all the sieges to which Paris has been subjected, far
the strangest was that in which the scum of the city, miscalled the
commune, fought with tiger-like ferocity against the forces of the
newly-formed republic, filled with the revengeful and murderous spirit
which had inspired the masses in the first revolution.
It is the story of this tragic interlude which we propose here to tell,
premising with a brief résumé of the events which led up to it.
Louis Napoleon, posing as Emperor Napoleon III. of France, a position
which he had been enabled to gain through the glamour of the name of his
famous uncle, was infected throughout his reign with the desire to
emulate the deeds of the great Napoleon. He hoped to shine as one of the
military stars of Europe, and was encouraged by the success of the war
which he fomented in Italy. His second effort in this direction was the
invasion of Mexico and the attempt to establish an empire, under his
tutelage, upon American soil. In this he ran counter to the Monroe
Doctrine and the power of the United States and was forced to retire
with his feathers scorched and his prestige sadly diminished.
But what he probably proposed to make the great military triumph of his
reign came in 1870, when, on a flimsy pretence, a misunderstanding which
called only for diplomatic adjustment, he suddenly declared war against
Germany and rashly put his armies into the field to cope with that
powerful rival. Never had there been a more unwise or suicidal
proceeding. In shameful ignorance of the real condition of the army,
which he was made to believe was "five times ready," "ready to the last
gaiter button," he marshalled against the thoroughly prepared military
power of Germany an army ill-organized, ill-supplied, without proper
reserves, and led by commanders of appalling incapacity. Maps and plans
were bad; strategy was an unknown quantity; no study had been made of
the use of the railway in war; almost everything except courage was
lacking, and courage without leadership was hopeless against the
thoroughly drilled and supplied German army and the science of Yon
Moltke, the great German strategist.
Had it been the first Napoleon, he would have made himself sure
personally as to "the last gaiter button" and all other details, but
with sublime self-satisfaction and inane blindness the Second Napoleon
put himself at the head of this unready army, inspired apparently with
the "on to Berlin" confidence of the cheering Parisian mob.
He was to be awakened suddenly and painfully from his dream of victory
and military fame. The first collision of the two armies took place on
August 2. On September 2, just one month later, the derelict emperor was
a prisoner of war in the hands of the King of Prussia, together with his
army of more than 80,000 men. He had proved an utter failure as a
commander, a mere encumbrance, without a plan of campaign, a conception
of leadership, or an idea of strategic movements. Recognizing, when too
late, his incapacity, he had resigned the general command to Marshal
Bazaine, who withdrew with a large army into Metz, and subsequently, in
a northward movement for Bazaine's relief, he found himself surrounded
at Sedan by an irresistible force and was obliged to surrender to save
his army from impending annihilation.
Such was the first act in this lugubrious drama. Two days later, on
September 4, France was proclaimed a republic. Before the end of October
Bazaine surrendered Metz to the Germans and his great army of 180,000
men was lost to France. The military force of France was vanishing with
alarming rapidity. Another event of the period, of interest in this
connection, was the loss of the temporal power of the pope, above
alluded to. The papacy had been defended by Napoleon III. against the
Italian revolutionists, and the withdrawal of the French force from Rome
left that city open to the army of Victor Emmanuel. It was occupied in
September and became the capital of the new kingdom of Italy. In
December another important event took place, the King of Prussia being
proclaimed at Versailles the head of a new empire of Germany, which
embraced all the German states except Austria.
Events of great moment, as may be seen, were occurring with startling
rapidity. Before the surrender of Bazaine the advance of the German army
had appeared before Paris and on September 19 the siege of that city
began. Soon it was so closely invested that food could not enter and the
only way out was by balloon. The German bombardment did little damage to
the great city, which was defended obstinately. But the Germans had a
powerful ally within, where the grisly demon of famine threatened the
defenders.