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 cooperate with Blucher; both were unready; Gneisenau was suspicious; and the battle of Ligny was a Prussian blunder.
Napoleon committed, between dawn and dusk of June 18th, 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 valour. 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 Blucher 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 22500 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 31 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; 40 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 300 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 rumour 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 25th, 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 29th. 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 30th. 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 3rd 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. Blucher had commissioned a Prussian detachment to seize and shoot his hated opponent, wherever found. On the 8th, therefore, the outcast Emperor embarked; but for two days the frigates were detained by unfavourable winds. On the 10th, 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 nearby, 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 13th 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 15th Napoleon embarked on the ‘Bellerophon’, where he was received with all honours; 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 Blucher 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.