RULER OF THE ISLAND OF ELBA—RETURN TO PARIS—THE HUNDRED DAYS—THE SECOND
ABDICATION
A week after bidding his Guard farewell, Napoleon sent from Fréjus his
first address to the inhabitants of Elba:
“Circumstances having induced me to renounce the throne of France,
sacrificing my rights to the interests of the country, I reserved
for myself the sovereignty of the island of Elba, which has met with
the consent of all the powers. I therefore send you General Drouot,
so that you may hand over to him the said island, with the military
stores and provisions, and the property which belongs to my imperial
domain. Be good enough to make known this new state of affairs to
the inhabitants, and the choice which I have made of their island
for my sojourn in consideration of the mildness of their manners and
the excellence of their climate. I shall take the greatest interest
in their welfare.
“NAPOLEON.”
The Elbans received their new ruler with all the pomp which their means
and experience permitted. The entire population celebrated his arrival
as a _fête_. The new flag which the emperor had chosen—white ground with
red bar and three yellow bees—was unfurled, and saluted by the forts of
the nation and by the foreign vessels in port. The keys of the chief
town of the island were presented to him, a _Te Deum_ was sung. If these
honors seemed poor and contemptible to Napoleon in comparison with the
splendor of the _fêtes_ to which he had become accustomed, he gave no
sign, and played his part with the same seriousness as he had when he
received his crown.
His life at Elba was immediately arranged methodically, and he worked as
hard and seemingly with as much interest as he had at Paris. The affairs
of his new state were his chief concern, and he set about at once to
familiarize himself with all their details. He travelled over the island
in all directions, to acquaint himself with its resources and needs. At
one time he made the circuit of his domain, entering every port, and
examining its condition and fortifications. Everywhere that he went he
planned and began works which he pushed with energy. Fine roads were
laid out; rocks were levelled; a palace and barracks were begun. From
his arrival his influence was beneficial. There was a new atmosphere at
Elba, the islanders said.
The budget at Elba was administered as rigidly as that of France had
been, and the little army was drilled with as great care as the Guards
themselves. After the daily review of his troops, he rode on horseback,
and this promenade became a species of reception, the islanders who
wanted to consult him stopping him on his route. It is said that he
invariably listened to their appeals.
Elba was enlivened constantly during Napoleon’s residence by tourists
who went out of their way to see him. The majority of these curious
persons were Englishmen; with many of them he talked freely, receiving
them at his house, and letting them carry off bits of stone or of brick
from the premises as souvenirs.
His stay was made more tolerable by the arrival of Madame _mère_ and of
the Princess Pauline and the coming of twenty-six members of the
National Guard who had crossed France to join him. But his great desire
that Marie Louise and the King of Rome should come to him was never
gratified. It is told by one of his companions on the island, that he
kept carefully throughout his stay a stock of fireworks which had fallen
into his possession, planning to use them when his wife and boy should
arrive, but, sadly enough, he never had an occasion to celebrate that
event.
While to all appearances engrossed with the little affairs of Elba,
Napoleon was, in fact, planning the most dramatic act of his life. On
the 26th of February, 1815, the guard received an order to leave the
island. With a force of eleven hundred men, the emperor passed the
foreign ships guarding Elba, and on the afternoon of the 1st of March
landed at Cannes on the Gulf of Juan. At eleven o’clock that night he
started towards Paris. He was trusting himself to the people and the
army. If there never was an example of such audacious confidence,
certainly there never was such a response. The people of the South
received him joyfully, offering to sound the tocsin and follow him _en
masse_. But Napoleon refused; it was the soldiers upon whom he called.
“We have not been conquered [he told the army]. Come and range
yourselves under the standard of your chief; his existence depends
upon you; his interests, his honor, and his glory are yours. Victory
will march at double-quick time. The eagle with the national colors
will fly from steeple to steeple to the towers of Notre Dame. Then
you will be able to show your scars with honor; then you will be
able to boast of what you have done; you will be the liberators of
the country....”
At Grenoble there was a show of resistance. Napoleon went directly to
the soldiers, followed by his guard.
“Here I am; you know me. If there is a soldier among you who wishes to
kill his emperor, let him do it.”
“Long live the emperor!” was the answer; and in a twinkle six thousand
men had torn off their white cockades and replaced them by old soiled
tricolors. They drew them from the inside of their caps, where they had
been concealing them since the exile of their hero. “It is the same that
I wore at Austerlitz,” said one as he passed the emperor. “This,” said
another, “I had at Marengo.”
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON’S RETURN FROM THE ISLAND OF ELBA, MARCH, 1815.]
From Grenoble the emperor marched to Lyons, where the soldiers and
officers went over to him in regiments. The royalist leaders who had
deigned to go to Lyons to exhort the army found themselves ignored; and
Ney, who had been ordered from Besançon to stop the emperor’s advance,
and who started out promising to “bring back Napoleon in an iron cage,”
surrendered his entire division. It was impossible to resist the force
of popular opinion, he said. From Lyons the emperor, at the head of what
was now the French army, passed by Dijon, Autun, Avallon, and Auxerre,
to Fontainebleau, which he reached on March 19th. The same day Louis
XVIII. fled from Paris.
The change of sentiment in these few days was well illustrated in a
French paper which, after Napoleon’s return, published the following
calendar gathered from the royalist press.
February 25.—“The _exterminator_ has signed a treaty offensive and
defensive. It is not known with whom.”
February 26.—“The _Corsican_ has left the island of Elba.”
March 1.—“_Bonaparte_ has debarked at Cannes with eleven hundred men.”
March 7.—“_General Bonaparte_ has taken possession of Grenoble.”
March 10.—“_Napoleon_ has entered Lyons.”
March 19.—“_The emperor_ reached Fontainebleau to-day.”
March 19.—“_His Imperial Majesty_ is expected at the Tuileries
to-morrow, the anniversary of the birth of the King of Rome.”
[Illustration:
BEFORE WATERLOO.
After a lithograph by Charlet.]
Two days before the flight of the Bourbons, the following notice
appeared on the door of the Tuileries:
“_The emperor begs the king to send him no more soldiers; he has
enough._”
“What was the happiest period of your life as emperor?” O’Meara asked
Napoleon once at St. Helena.
“The march from Cannes to Paris,” he replied immediately.
His happiness was short-lived. The overpowering enthusiasm which had
made that march possible could not endure. The bewildered factions which
had been silenced or driven out by Napoleon’s reappearance recovered
from their stupor. The royalists, exasperated by their own flight,
reorganized. Strong opposition developed among the liberals. It was only
a short time before a reaction followed the delirium which Napoleon’s
return had caused in the nation. Disaffection, coldness, and plots
succeeded. In face of this revulsion of feeling, the emperor himself
underwent a change. The buoyant courage, the amazing audacity which had
induced him to return from Elba, seemed to leave him. He became sad and
preoccupied. No doubt much of this sadness was due to the refusal of
Austria to restore his wife and child, and to the bitter knowledge that
Marie Louise had succumbed to foreign influences and had promised never
again to see her husband.
If the allies had allowed the French to manage their affairs in their
own way, it is probable that Napoleon would have mastered the situation,
difficult as it was. But this they did not do. In spite of his promise
to observe the treaties made after his abdication, to accept the
boundaries fixed, to abide by the Congress of Vienna, the coalition
treated him with scorn, affecting to mistrust him. He was the disturber
of the peace of the world, a public enemy; he must be put beyond the
pale of society, and they took up arms, not against France, but against
Napoleon. France, as it appeared, was not to be allowed to choose her
own rulers.
[Illustration:
“MARENGO,” NAPOLEON’S WAR-HORSE, LAST RIDDEN BY HIM AT THE BATTLE OF
WATERLOO, AND AFTERWARDS THE PROPERTY OF CAPTAIN HOWARD.
Painted and engraved by James Ward, R. A. The skeleton of “Marengo” is
now preserved in the museum of the Royal United Service Institution,
London, and stands under the picture painted by Ward from which this
engraving is taken. “A hoof of Marengo, made into a snuff-box, makes
its nightly round after dinner at the Queen’s Guard in St. James’s
Palace. In the lid is the legend: ‘Hoof of Marengo, barb charger of
Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the
Russian campaign, and finally at Waterloo.’ Around the hoof the
legend continues: ‘Marengo was wounded in the near hip at Waterloo,
when his master was on him in the hollow road in advance of the
French position. He had been frequently wounded before in many
battles.’”]
The position in which Napoleon found himself on the declaration of war
was of exceeding difficulty, but he mastered the opposition with all his
old genius and resources. Three months after the landing at Cannes he
had an army of two hundred thousand men ready to march. He led it
against at least five hundred thousand men.
On June 15th, Napoleon’s army met a portion of the enemy in Belgium,
near Brussels, and on July 16th, 17th, and 18th were fought the battles
of Ligny, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo, in the last of which he was
completely defeated. The limits and nature of this sketch do not permit
a description of the engagement at Waterloo. The literature on the
subject is perhaps richer than that on any other subject in military
science. Thousands of books discuss the battle, and each succeeding
generation takes it up as if nothing had been written on it. But while
Waterloo cannot be discussed here, it is not out of place to notice that
among the reasons for its loss are certain ones which interest us
because they are personal to Napoleon. He whose great rule in wars was,
“Time is everything,” lost time at Waterloo. He who had looked after
everything which he wanted well done, neglected to assure himself of
such an important matter as the exact position of his enemy. He who once
had been able to go a week without sleep, was ill. Again, if one will
compare carefully the Bonaparte of Guérin (page 108) with the Napoleon
of Girodet (page 240), he will understand, at least partially, why the
battle of Waterloo was lost.
[Illustration:
THE EIGHT EPOCHS OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON.
This original series of hats presented in different significant
positions is from the pencil of Steuben, one of the most fertile
painters of the First Empire, and symbolizes the eight principal
epochs in Napoleon’s career.
1. Vendémiaire.
2. Consulate.
3. Empire.
4. Austerlitz.
5. Wagram.
6. Moscow.
7. Waterloo.
8. St. Helena.]
The defeat was complete; and when the emperor saw it, he threw himself
into the battle in search of death. As eagerly as he had sought victory
at Arcola, Marengo, Austerlitz, he sought death at Waterloo. “I ought to
have died at Waterloo,” he said afterwards; “but the misfortune is that
when a man seeks death most he cannot find it. Men were killed around
me, before, behind—everywhere. But there was no bullet for me.”
He returned immediately to Paris. There was still force for resistance
in France. There were many to urge him to return to the struggle, but
such was the condition of public sentiment that he refused. The country
was divided in its allegiance to him; the legislative body was
frightened and quarrelling; Talleyrand and Fouché were plotting.
Besides, the allies proclaimed to the nation that it was against
Napoleon alone that they waged war. Under these circumstances Napoleon
felt that loyalty to the best interest of France required his
abdication; and he signed the act anew, proclaiming his son emperor
under the title of Napoleon II.
Leaving Paris, the fallen emperor went to Malmaison, where Josephine had
died only thirteen months before. A few friends joined him—Queen
Hortense, the Duc de Rovigo, Bertrand, Las Cases, and Méneval. He
remained there only a few days. The allies were approaching Paris, and
the environs were in danger. Napoleon offered his services to the
provisional government, which had taken his place, as leader in the
campaign against the invader, promising to retire as soon as the enemy
was repulsed, but he was refused. The government feared him, in fact,
more than it did the allies, and urged him to leave France as quickly as
possible. In his disaster he turned to America as a refuge, and gave his
family rendezvous there.
Various plans were suggested for getting to the United States. Among the
offers of aid to carry out his desire which were made to Napoleon, Las
Cases speaks of one coming from an American in Paris, who wrote:
“While you were at the head of a nation you could perform any
miracle, you might conceive any hopes; but now you can do nothing
more in Europe. Fly to the United States! I know the hearts of the
leading men and the sentiments of the people of America. You will
there find a second country and every source of consolation.”
Mr. S. V. S. Wilder, an American shipping merchant who lived in France
during the time of Napoleon’s power, and who had been much impressed by
the changes brought about in society and politics under his rule,
offered to help him to escape. He proposed that the emperor disguise
himself as a valet for whom he had a passport. On board the ship the
emperor was to conceal himself in a hogshead until the danger-line was
crossed. This hogshead was to have a false compartment in it. From the
end in view, water was to drip incessantly. Mr. Wilder proposed to take
Napoleon to his own home in Bolton, Massachusetts, when they arrived in
America. It is said that the emperor seriously considered this scheme,
but finally declined, because he would leave his friends behind him, and
for them Mr. Wilder could not possibly provide. Napoleon explained one
day to Las Cases at St. Helena what he intended to do if he had reached
America. He would have collected all his relatives around him, and thus
would have formed the nucleus of a national union, a second France. Such
were the sums of money he had given them that he thought they might have
realized at least forty millions of francs. Before the conclusion of a
year, the events of Europe would have drawn to him a hundred millions of
francs and sixty thousand individuals, most of them possessing wealth,
talent, and information.
“America [he said] was, in all respects, our proper asylum: It is an
immense continent, possessing the advantage of a peculiar system of
freedom. If a man is troubled with melancholy, he may get into a
coach and drive a thousand leagues, enjoying all the way the
pleasures of a common traveller. In America you may be on a footing
of equality with everyone; you may, if you please, mingle with the
crowd without inconvenience, retaining your own manners, your own
language, your own religion.”
On June 29th, a week after his return to Paris from Waterloo, Napoleon
left Malmaison for Rochefort, hoping to reach a vessel which would carry
him to the United States; but the coast was so guarded by the English
that there was no escape.
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON EMBARKING ON THE “BELLEROPHON.”
Designed and engraved by Baugeau.]