Napoleon’s journey to Elba was a series of disenchantments. As has been said, he had stipulated in his ‘treaty’ that the Empress should accompany him to St. Tropez, where he was to embark. Her absence, he persisted in declaring, was explicable only by forced detention; and he again talked of withdrawing his abdication at this breach of the engagements made by the allies. But he grew more composed, and the journey was sufficiently comfortable as far as Lyons. Occasionally during that portion of it there were outbursts of good feeling from those who stopped to see his train pass by. But in descending the Rhone there was a marked change. As the Provencals had been the radicals of the Revolution, so now they were the devotees of the Restoration.
The flood of disreputable calumny had broken loose: men said the Emperor’s mother was a loose woman, his father a butcher, he himself but a bastard, his true name Nicholas. “Down with Bonaparte! down with Nicholas!” was too often the derisive shout as he traversed the villages. Maubreuil, the hired assassin, was hurrying from Paris with a desperate band, ostensibly to recover crown jewels or government funds which might be among Napoleon’s effects. Recalling Alexander’s boast that his best servants had been found among the assassins of his father, and recollecting that Francis sighed to Metternich for Napoleon’s exile to a far-distant land, Elba being too near to France and to Europe, it is conceivable that Talleyrand might reckon on the moral support of the dynasties in conniving at Napoleon’s assassination.
Had he forgotten the murder of Enghien? Probably not; but his conscience was not over-tender. Near Valence, on April 24th, the imperial procession met Augereau’s carriage. The arch-republican of Napoleon’s earlier career had given his adhesion to the new government, and had been retained in office. He alighted, the ex-Emperor likewise: the latter exhibited all the ordinary forms of politeness, the former studiously disdained them. Napoleon, with nice irony, asked if the general were on his way to court. The thrust went home, but in a gruff retort Augereau, using the insulting ‘thou,’ declared with considerable embarrassment that he cared no more for the Bourbons than for Napoleon; that he had no motive for his conduct except love for his country.
Partly by good fortune, partly by good management, the cortege avoided the infuriated bands who, in various places, had sworn to take the fallen Emperor’s life. At Avignon his escape was almost miraculous. Near Orgon a mob of royalists beset the carriage, and Napoleon shrank in pallid terror behind Bertrand, cowering there until the immediate danger was removed by his Russian escort. A few miles out he donned a postilion’s uniform and rode post through the town. At Saint-Cannat he would not touch a morsel of food for fear of poison.
Rumours of the bitter feeling prevalent at Aix led him for further protection to clothe one of his aides in his own too familiar garb. In that town he was violently ill, somewhat as he had been at Fontainebleau. The attack yielded easily to remedies, and the Prussian commissioner asserted that it was due to a loathsome disease. Thereafter the hounded fugitive wore an Austrian uniform, and sat in the Austrian commissioner’s carriage; thus disguised, the Emperor of Elba seemed to feel secure. From Luc onward the company was protected by Austrian hussars; but in spite of these military jailers, mob violence became stronger from day to day in each successive town.
Napoleon grew morbid, and the line of travel was changed from the direction of St. Tropez to that of Frejus in order to avoid the ever-increasing danger. The only alleviation in the long line of ills was a visit from his light and giddy but affectionate sister Pauline, the Princess Borghese, who comforted him and promised to share his exile. At length Frejus was reached, and Napoleon resumed his composure as he saw an English frigate and a French brig lying in the harbour. Perhaps the beautiful view recalled to an outcast monarch the return, in 1799, of one General Bonaparte, who had landed on the same shore to overthrow the Directory. If not, it must have been due to unwonted dejection or dark despair.
Again Napoleon remarked a breach of his treaty. He was to have sailed from St. Tropez in a corvette; here was only a brig. Accordingly, as if to mark an intentional slight, in reality for his safety and comfort, he asked and obtained permission to embark on the English frigate, the ‘Undaunted’, as the guest of her captain. The promised corvette was at St. Tropez awaiting its passenger, but the hasty change of plan had made it impossible to bring her around in time.
Possibly for this reason, too, the baggage of Napoleon had been much diminished in quantity; and of this he complained also, as being a breach of his treaty. His farewell to the Russian and Prussian commissioners was brief and dignified; the Austrian hussars paid full military honors to the party; and as the Emperor, accompanied by the English and Austrian commissioners, embarked, a salvo of 24 guns rang out from the ‘Undaunted’. Already he had begun to eulogize England and her civilization, and to behave as if throwing himself on the good faith of an English gentleman, exactly as a defeated knight would throw himself on the chivalric courtesy of his conqueror. This appearance of distinguished treatment heightened his self-satisfaction. His attendants said that once again he was ‘all emperor.’
It was a serious blow when, on passing aboard ship, he discovered that the salutes had been in recognition of the commissioners, and that the polite but decided Captain Ussher was determined to treat his illustrious guest with the courtesy due to a private gentleman, and with that alone. Although chafing at times during the voyage against the restrictions of naval discipline, Napoleon submitted gracefully, and wore a subdued air. This was his first contact with English customs: sometimes they interested him; frequently, as in the matter of after-dinner amusements and Sunday observance, they irritated him, and then with a contemptuous petulance he withdrew to his cabin. In conversation with Koller, the Austrian commissioner, he once referred to his conduct in disguising himself on the road to Frejus as pusillanimous, and admitted in vulgar language that he had made an indecent display of himself.
He was convinced that all the dreadful scenes through which he had passed were the work of Bourbon emissaries. In general his talk was a running commentary on the past, a well-calculated prattle in which, with apparent spontaneity and ingenuousness, interpretations were placed on his conduct which were thoroughly novel. This was the beginning of a series of historical commentaries lasting, with interruptions, to the end of his life. There is throughout a unity of purpose in the explication and embellishment of history which will be considered later. On May 4th the ‘Undaunted’ cast anchor in the harbor of Porto Ferrajo.
Elba was an island divided against itself, there being both imperialists and royalists among its inhabitants, and a considerable party which desired independence. By representing that Napoleon had brought with him fabulous sums, the Austrian and English commissioners easily won the Elbans to a fervor of loyalty for their new emperor. Before nightfall of the 4th the court was established, and the new administration began its labours. After mastering the resources and needs of his pygmy realm, the Emperor began at once to deploy all his powers, mending the highways, fortifying the strategic points, and creating about the nucleus of four hundred guards which were sent from Fontainebleau an efficient little army of sixteen hundred men. His expenses were regulated to the minutest detail, the salt-works and iron-mines, which were the bulwarks of Elban prosperity, began at once to increase their output, and taxation was regulated with scrupulous nicety.
By that supereminent virtue of the French burgher, good management, the island was made almost independent of the remnants of the Tuileries treasure, the sum of about five million francs, which Napoleon had brought from France. The same powers which had swayed a world operated with equal success in a sphere almost microscopic by comparison. To many this appeared a sorry commentary on human grandeur, but the great exile did not intend to sink into a contemptible lethargy. If the future had aught in store for him, his capacities must have exercise and their bearings be kept smooth by use. The Princess Borghese had been separated from her second husband soon after the marriage, and since 1810 she had lived an exile from Paris, having been banished for impertinent conduct to the Empress.
But she cherished no malice, and before long, according to promise, she arrived and took up her abode as her brother’s companion. Madame Mere, though distant in prosperity, came likewise to soothe her son in adversity. The intercepted letters of the former prove her to have been at least as loose in her life at Elba as ever before, but they do not afford a sufficient basis for the scandals concerning her relations with Napoleon which were founded upon them and industriously circulated at the court of Louis XVIII. The shameful charge, though recently revived and ingeniously supported, appears to have no adequate foundation.
Napoleon’s economies were rendered not merely expedient, but imperative, by the fact that none of the moneys from France were forthcoming which had been promised in his treaty with the powers. After a short stay Koller frankly stated that in his opinion they never would be paid, and departed. The island swarmed with Bourbon spies, and the only conversation in which Napoleon could indulge himself unguardedly was with Sir Neil Campbell, the English representative, or with the titled English gentlemen who gratified their curiosity by visiting him. During the summer heat, when the court was encamped on the heights at Marciana for refreshment, there appeared a mysterious lady with her child. Both were well received and kindly treated, but they withdrew themselves entirely from the public gaze.
Common rumour said it was the Empress, but this was not true; it was the Countess Walewska, with one of the two sons she bore her host, whom she still adored. They remained but a few days, and departed as mysteriously as they had come. Base females thronged the precincts of the imperial residence, openly struggling for Napoleon’s favor as they had so far never dared to do; success too frequently attended their efforts.
But the one woman who should have been at his side was absent. It is certain that she made an honest effort to come, and apartments were prepared for her reception in the little palace at Porto Ferrajo. Her father, however, thwarted her at every turn, and finally she was a virtual prisoner at Schonbrunn. So manifest was the restraint that her grandmother Caroline, Queen of the Two Sicilies, cried out in indignation: “If I were in the place of Maria Louisa, I would tie the sheets of my bed to the window-frame and flee.” Committed to the charge of the elegant and subtle Neipperg, a favorite chamberlain whom she had first seen at Dresden, she was plied with such insidious wiles that at last her slender moral fibre was entirely broken down, and she fell a victim to his charms. As late as August, Napoleon received impassioned letters from her; then she grew formal and cold; at last, under Metternich’s urgency, she ceased to write at all. Her French attendant, Meneval, managed to convey the whole sad story to her husband; but the Emperor was incredulous, and hoped against hope until December. Then only he ceased from his incessant and urgent appeals.
The number of visitors to Elba was sometimes as high as three hundred in a single day. Among these were a few English, fewer French, but many Italians. As time passed the heaviness of the Austrian yoke had begun to gall the people of Napoleon’s former kingdom, and considerable numbers from among them, remembering the mild Eugene with longing, joined in an extensive though feeble conspiracy to restore Napoleon to the throne of Italy. Lucien returned to Rome in order to foster the movement, and Murat, observing with unease the general faithlessness of the great powers in small matters, began to tremble for the security of his own seat. With them and others Napoleon appears to have corresponded regularly.
He felt himself entirely freed from the obligations he had taken at Fontainebleau, for he was sure the people of southern France had been instigated to take his life by royalist agents, and while one term after another passed, not a cent was paid of the promised pension; his own fortune, therefore, was steadily melting away. For months he behaved as if really determined to make Elba his ‘isle of repose,’ as he designated it just before landing; but under such provocations his temper changed. The corner-stone of his treaty was his complete sovereignty; otherwise the paper was merely a promise without any sanction, not even that of international law. This perfect sovereignty had been recognized by the withdrawal of all the commissioners as such, Campbell insisting that he remained merely as an ambassador.
In a treaty concluded on May 30th between Louis XVIII and the powers of the coalition, the boundaries of France were fixed substantially as they had been in 1792, and the destiny of the lands brought under her sway by the Revolution and by Napoleon was to be determined by a European congress. This body met on November 1st, 1814, at Vienna. It was soon evident that the four powers of the coalition were to outdo Napoleon’s extreme endeavours in their reckless disposition of European territories. Before the close of the month, however, Talleyrand, by his adroit manipulations and his conjurings with the sacrosanct word ‘legitimacy,’ had made himself the moving spirit of the congress, and had so inflamed the temper of both Metternich and Castlereagh against the dictatorial attitude of Russia and Prussia as to induce Austria and Great Britain to sign, on January 3rd, 1815, a secret treaty with France whereby the parties of the first part bound themselves to resist the aggressiveness of the Northern powers, and that by force if necessary.
This restored France to the position of a great power. By the middle of February the Northern allies were brought to terms, and in return for their concessions it was agreed that Murat was to be deposed. This spirit of compromise menaced, or rather finally destroyed, the sovereignty of Napoleon, petty as it was. On the charge of conspiring with Murat, he could easily be removed from Elba, and deported to some more remote spot from which he could exert no influence on European politics.
From the opening sessions of the congress there had been a general consensus of opinion as to this course. As to the place opinions varied. Castlereagh favoured the Azores, but others the Cape Verde islands; St. Helena, then well known as a place of call on the long voyage to the Cape, had been suggested much earlier, even before Elba was chosen, but when or by whom is not known. It is quite possible that Wellington, who succeeded Castlereagh as English plenipotentiary in February, may have mentioned the name; he had been there, and knew it as almost the remotest spot of land in the world. The formal proposition to that effect appears to have been made by the Prussian cabinet. The congress took no definite action in the matter, but the understanding was so clear and general that a proclamation to the national guard was printed in the ‘Moniteur’ of March 8th, 1815, stating that measures had been taken at the Congress of Vienna to remove Napoleon farther away. It was easy for everybody, including the captive himself, to believe that, all the other articles of the agreement at Fontainebleau having been violated, that which guaranteed the sovereignty of Elba was equally worthless.
It cannot be doubted that Napoleon was fully aware of whatever was proposed at Vienna, and it is absolutely certain that he was thoroughly informed as to the changed state of public opinion in France. Having promised a fairly liberal constitution as the price of his throne, Louis XVIII, with colossal stupidity, undertook to ignore the past and promulgated the charter as his own gracious act, done in the nineteenth year of his reign!
The upper chamber, or House of Peers, was his creature, since he could create members at will. Feeble in mind and body, he was unable to check the reactionary assumptions of his family, who, having deserted their country, had returned to it by the aid of invaders despised and feared by the nation. These and the returning emigrants were provided with rich sinecures, and began to talk of restoring estates to their rightful owners; in some cases the possessors, on their death-beds, were intimidated into making such restitution. The extreme clerical party began even to hamper the ministry in its efforts to grant the freedom of worship guaranteed by the constitution. Secular business was forbidden on certain holy days, and funeral masses were celebrated for Pichegru, Moreau, and Cadoudal, that for the latter at the King’s expense. When, finally, Christian burial was refused to an actress, there were riots in Paris.
But the government continued its suicidal course; even the Vendee grew disaffected, and, the suffrage having been greatly restricted, there were murmurings about oligarchies and tyrants. At Nîmes the Protestants feared another St. Bartholomew, and said so. Even moderate royalists grew troubled, and could not retort when they heard the new order stigmatized by the fitting name of “paternal anarchy.” Both veterans and conscripts deserted in great numbers from the army as they saw their officers discharged by the score to make places for the young aristocracy, or their comrades retired, nominally on half-pay, in reality to eke out a subsistence as best they could. It was not long before men showed each other pocket-pieces bearing Napoleon’s effigy, whispering as watchwords, “Courage and hope,” or “He has been and will be,” or “Frenchmen, awake; the Emperor is waking.”
As early as July, 1814, rumors of his return were rife in country districts, and by autumn the longing for it was outspoken and general. In Paris there was greater caution, but as Marmont was called ‘Judas’ for having betrayed his master, so Berthier was known as ‘Peter’ in that he had denied him, and it was a common joke to tie a white cockade to the tail of a dog. Before the Chamber met the various factions openly avowed themselves as either royalists, Bonapartists, liberals, or Jacobins. The money estimates presented made it clear that a king was more expensive than an emperor, and when the peers not only voted to indemnify the emigrants for the lands held by their families, but likewise passed a bill establishing the censorship of the press, it was common talk that the present state of things could not last.
The number of French prisoners of war and of soldiers released from the besieged fortresses in central Europe was about 300 thousand, of whom a third were veterans of the Empire. To these must be added the army which Soult, ignorant of Napoleon’s abdication, had led to defeat at Toulouse, and the soldiers who had served in Italy. These men, long accustomed to much consideration, found themselves on their return to be persons of no consequence. They learned that the great officers of the Empire were everywhere treated with scant courtesy, and that the great ladies of the imperial court were now virtually driven from the Tuileries by the significant questions and loud asides of the royal personages who had supplanted them.
It was told in all public resorts how Ney had resented the rude affronts put on his wife by the Duchess of Angouleme. The well-trained subordinate officers of these contingents were turned adrift by thousands on the same terms as those of Napoleon’s own army, half-pay if they showed themselves good Catholics, otherwise nothing. For the most part, again, this promise was empty; young royalists were put in their places, the pay of the old guard was reduced, a new noble guard was organized, promotion was refused to those who had received commissions during the operations of war, and the asylums established for the orphans of those who had belonged to the Legion of Honor were abolished.
So bitter was the outcry that the King felt compelled to dismiss his minister of war, and, not daring to substitute Marmont, who demanded the place, appointed Soult. He too was speedily discredited for harshness to Exelmans, a subordinate who was discovered to have been in correspondence with Napoleon; and by the middle of February, 1815, nearly all the soldiers were at heart Bonapartists, their friends for the most part abetting them.
In less than two months after Louis XVIII took his seat, Talleyrand and Fouche were deep in their element of plot and intrigue. They thought of the son of Philippe Egalite as a possible constitutional ruler; they talked of reestablishing the imperial regency; with Napoleon placed beyond the possibility of returning, the latter course would be safe.
During the succeeding months they continued to juggle with this double intrigue, and around their plots clustered minor ones in mass. Lord Liverpool actually called Wellington to London for fear the duke should be seized, and Marmont put the Paris garrison under arms. On January 21st, 1815, the death of Louis XVI was commemorated by the royalists with the wildest talk; and such was the general fury over Exelmans’s treatment that Fouche at last stepped forward to give his conspiracy some form. Carnot and Davout were both expected to cooperate; but although they refused, enough officers of influence were secured to make a plan for an extended insurrection entirely feasible. For this all parties were willing to unite; no one knew or cared what was to supplant the existing government—anything was better than ‘paternal anarchy.’
How accurate the information was which reached Napoleon at Elba we cannot ascertain, for his feelings were masked and his conduct was non-committal. He had entirely recovered his health, and though old in experience, he was only 45 years of age, and still appeared like one in the prime of life. He was apparently vigorous, being short, thick-necked, and inclined to corpulence. His cheeks were somewhat heavy and sensuous, his hair receded far back on the temples, his limbs were powerful, his hands and feet were delicately formed and noticeably small. His movements were nervous and well controlled, his eye was clear and bright, his passions were strong, his self-control was apparent, and the coordination of his powers was easy. To the Elban peasant he was gracious; with his subordinates he was dignified; among his many visitors he moved with good humour and tact; his kindness to his mother and sister made both of them devoted and happy.
The only anxiety he displayed was in regard to assassination and kidnapping: the former he said he could meet like a soldier; of the latter he spoke with anxious foreboding. He had reason to fear both. Every week either in France or Italy or both, there was a plot among fanatical royalists and priests to kill him; and though the Barbary pirates were eager to seize him and win a great ransom, they were excelled in their zeal both by Mariotte, Talleyrand’s agent in Leghorn, and by Bruslart, a bitter and ancient enemy, who had been appointed governor of Corsica for the purpose. For these reasons, probably, the Emperor of Elba lived as far as possible in seclusion. As time passed he grew less intimate with Campbell, but the Scotch gentleman did not attribute the fact to discontent. Before leaving Elba, on February sixteenth, to reside for a time in Florence and perform the duties of English envoy in that place, he gave it as his opinion that if Napoleon received the pension stipulated for in the treaty he would remain tranquilly where he was.
