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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XXI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
emperor
elba
march
france
himself
paris
island
waterloo
army
see
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see
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}
$Date{1906}
$Log{See Defeat At Waterloo*0005401.scf
}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XXI

Ruler Of Island Of Elba - Return To Paris - Hundred Days - Second Abdication

     A week after bidding his Guard farewell, Napoleon sent from Frejus 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
fete.  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 fetes 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 mere 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."

     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 Besancon 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 today."

          March 19. - "His Imperial Majesty is expected at the Tuileries to-
     morrow, the anniversary of the birth of the King of Rome."

     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.

     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 Guerin (page 108) with the Napoleon of Girodet
(page 240), he will understand, at least partially, why the battle of Waterloo
was lost.

     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."

[See Defeat At Waterloo: The defeat was complete; and when the emperor saw it,
he threw himself into the battle in search of death.]

     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 Fouche 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 Meneval.  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.