Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

  But the Emperor remains another nine days in his palace, and he is not alone. Around him, unshaken, his guards are encamped ; they still muster twenty-five thousand men. Who else is with him ? His brothers have taken to their heels. What is Josephine doing, at Malmaison ? After she has wept, and sworn that she will follow the forsaken Emperor, she receives Napoleon's conqueror with sparkling eyes and adorned with all the pitiful appeal of a Niobe. The tsar wishes to play the part of a knightly cavalier, and succumbs to the renowned charms of the first empress. But Hortense, her daughter, receives the tsar's visit coldly and off-handedly. As soon as he is gone, she hastens to Fontainebleau and remains with the Emperor till his departure.

  At first, his mother is with him. But, wishing to see her in safety, he persuades her to go away with Jerome. They will meet again later. When the empress says good-bye to Letizia,

  His Successors Steal His Property

  she utters polite commonplaces and wishes her mother-in-law well. The old lady, who sees through Marie Louise, and knows that all she cares for is security and enjoyment, answers this daughter of the Habsburgs : " That will depend upon you, and upon your future conduct."

  The Emperor has no word from wife or son in reply to his numerous letters and messengers. While for himself he asks neither land nor money, for her he demands that, in addition to Parma, she should have Tuscany, or at least a strip of it which would bring her lands nearer to Elba and thus set up a link between man and wife. He writes to her advising as to the best halting-places on the route ; Corvisart is to decide which waters will do her health most good; she is to take her personal treasure with her. Then he writes to the palace prefect that all the diamonds which are not her or his personal property must be given back to the treasury, for they belong to France.

  Meanwhile the government has sent a confidential agent to the Tuileries with orders to seize the imperial treasure. All the gold and securities, valued at one hundred and fifty millions, were taken away; in plain words, stolen. These sums had been saved by Napoleon from his civil list during the fourteen years of his rule. His silver plate, all personal articles of value, his golden snuff-boxes, and even his handkerchiefs embroidered with the initial N., were taken at the same time. The order for this bears, among others, Talleyrand's signature. The Emperor, who until yesterday was the wealthiest man in Europe, journeys to Elba with three million francs as his fortune !

  He is profoundly disheartened. Can anything disillusion him further ? Lucien writes to the pope the day after the abdication, and becomes a Roman prince. Murat, acting on the advice of Fouche (who holds the net of intrigues during these last weeks), has entered Rome, has advanced his troops towards Tuscany, invading Elise's realm—always spurred on by Caroline, and always in alliance with England, which has occupied Tuscany. Elise, who at the last moment has staked on the wrong hazard,

  He Cheers Up

  and has through a false calculation remained faithful to her brother, flees before her sister's troops, brings a child into the world while lying up at a mountain tavern, and in Bologna is taken prisoner by the Austrians. The only two of the pack who have behaved decently are Jerome and his wife.

  The last days pass in sinister silence. " If a carriage drives into the palace yard, all prick up their ears. Is any one coming to bid Napoleon farewell ? No one comes while affairs are being wound up. But a day or two before the departure, a veiled lady arrives, late in the evening. No one knows her, and she is not admitted. Countess Walewska waits a whole night, and when she goes away in the morning she leaves a letter for him. He sends after her, but she has gone. He writes :

  " Marie ! . . . The feelings which animate you touch me profoundly. They are worthy of your lovely soul and the goodness of your heart. . . . Think affectionately of me ! Never doubt me ! N."

  As soon as he has recovered his old tranquillity of mind, the Emperor is promptly animated with new energy. Has he not an island as base of operations ? Who knows what may come of it ? Corsica, too, is an island in the Mediterranean! He orders a monograph and studies the geography and statistics of Elba. " The air is wholesome, the inhabitants are honest folk, and I hope that my good Louise will like the place well enough." He chooses his four hundred men ; but the whole guard wants to go with him, though this will involve leaving wife and children. Among them are men whose hearts he had won two-and-twenty years earlier when he had been captain in Toulon, men who had followed his fortunes from Cairo to Moscow, through sixty battles.

  He cheers up. Discussing predetermination with the palace prefect, and how death has passed him by during the last battles, he adds :

  Farewell to the Guard

  " A violent death is cowardice. I can see no greatness in shirking responsibility in that manner, like one who has gambled away his fortune. . . . Suicide is incompatible with my principles and with the position I have occupied in the world." They walk up and down the terrace in silence for a time, and then he says with a smile : " Between ourselves, a living drummer is better than a dead emperor ! "

  All the formalities have been accomplished; the allied commissioners who are to accompany him to Elba, four in number, have arrived; the start is fixed for noon. He writes in simple terms to tell his wife, and concludes: " Farewell, my good Louise. You can rest assured of the courage, the tranquillity, and the affection of your husband. N." He adds as a postscript : " A kiss for the little king ! "

  The start will be an easy matter, for no one has come to take leave.

  But there are to be leave-takings after all. The old guard is waiting for him in the palace yard, drawn up in a square. As he comes down the steps, thousands of eyes are fixed on him. He must say something. What can he say ? For twenty years he has only spoken to these men just before a battle and just after a victory, to inspire them or to thank them. Well, he will thank them now, though there has been no victory; he will thank them for the hundred victories of the past. He steps forward. " Vive l'Empereur ! " He enters the square, and says :

  " Soldiers of my old guard, I take leave of you. For twenty years I have seen you always upon the path of honour and glory. During the last few weeks, you have been models of bravery and fidelity, just as in the years of good fortune. . . . But there would have been civil war. That is why I sacrificed all other interests to those of the country. I am going away. , . . You, friends, continue to serve France. Her happiness has been my only thought. My good wishes go with you. Do not mourn my fate. If I have determined to go on living, it is that I may increase your fame. I shall write the story of the great deeds we

  Kissing the Colours

  wrought together. Farewell, my children. I would gladly press you all to my heart. At least let me kiss your colours ! "

  The general holds out the colours. Napoleon embraces him, and kisses the flag. " Good-bye, comrades ! " He gets into the carriage. " Vive l'Empereur ! " He drives away.

  The war-hardened veterans stand there, blubbering like children. Their father has gone away. Never had he spoken to them more movingly. The dignified pathos of ancient Rome, the ardent imagery of his manifestoes, the similes and the exaltations, have vanished with the fever of battle. This Emperor spoke like a commander, this commander spoke like a company leader. His words were manly, blunt, and restrained. When he kissed the colours, it was an unparalleled gesture ; never before had he done anything of the kind. They will tell their grandchildren what the great Emperor, their " petit caporal," has said to them this day. The grandchildren will tell their grandchildren in turn, and so the story will go down the generations.

  But hardly has he left this soldierly atmosphere, in which he grew to manhood and then to greatness, when he has to face the mob. After the sobs of his old soldiers, come clamour, cries, and curses ! As the train of carriages drives swiftly through Provence, the threatening shouts of the people deafen him : " Down with the tyrant! Kill the wretch ! " In the villages where the horses are changed, women rage round his carriage, screaming at him, flinging stones, trying to force the c
oachman to shout" Vive le Roi ! " At one of these villages, the crowd has prepared an effigy, a uniform coat stuffed with straw and smeared with mire and blood. Here they hail him with the cry : " Kill the murderer ! " The carriages press on at top speed and the journey becomes a flight. Napoleon's first flight.

  With rigid face, the Emperor looks at the mob and listens to the cries of execration. Are these the same people who ran

  Execrated by the Mob

  beside his carriage, eager to catch a glance from his eyes ? They are indeed the same ! What he is now experiencing, he had foreseen, with the seer's vision of the misanthrope, at his first entry into Paris when the crowd had jubilantly welcomed him as conqueror. He sits huddled in a corner of the carriage, pale and silent; at each halt, the foreign commissioners jump out to guard the windows of his coach. Will he bear all this without making a sign ? Will he draw his sword ? He does not wear one now. In mufti, he can get away from his country, but not in his green uniform. Only once before has he had such an experience. It was on the Nineteenth Brumaire, when the radicals were shaking their fists at him. Then he did not draw his sword. Then, as now, he was powerless against the mob, for it was not his trade to beat the mutable many, nor was it his talent to persuade them. He is not a tribune ; he is an emperor. One who can command as well as he, can do nothing but command. If he fights, it must be in a battle.

  Movement! Air! In a lonely road, he has the carriage stopped, and one of the post-horses taken out of the traces. He fixes a white cockade on his plain round hat, and rides in front of the carriages, outstripping them, his servant following. Thus he makes his way to Aix, but halts short of the town, enters a wayside inn, and gives his name there as Campbell, a British colonel. This is his sixth name.

  The little Provencal maid who waits at table prattles : " They'll finish him off before he reaches the sea ! " " Colonel Campbell " nods, saying " Of course, of course ! " to all her utterances. Then, when he is left alone with his servant, his head droops on the man's shoulder, he has a nap to make up for two sleepless nights. Kindly nature, this is your gift to the greatest of your warriors ! When he wakes, the recent sounds and sights recur to his mind. With a shudder, he says in low tones :

  " Never again ! I shall be happier in Elba than ever before.

  In Motley

  The sciences now, nothing more. I do not want to wear another European crown. You have seen what the people really is. Was I not right to despise man ? "

  When the carriages reach the inn, he thinks it wise, warned by his previous experiences, to change his clothes once more. Since time presses, he puts on the uniform of an Austrian general which belongs to Commissioner Roller ; surmounts it with the cap of Truchsess, the Prussian colonel; and has a Russian cloak hung round his shoulders by Shuvaloff. Thus bedecked in a carnival costume, pieced together from garments belonging to the three allied powers, a fool on the heath, does Emperor Napoleon escape from his country.

  Frejus at last! This is the port where he landed on his return from Egypt, a beaten commander, who had lost all the battleships of France, and ought to have been tried by court-martial ! But how enthusiastic, then, had been his reception by this leaderless people, for the memory of his successful Italian campaign was still fresh. Then, he had driven through triumphal arches on the journey to Paris ; the journey he had now been making in the reverse direction, in danger of being stoned, and escaping murder only by a mummer's disguise ! Fifteen years lie between, the rebirth of a State, the glory of a nation. Europe lies between, the clash of arms, dead soldiers rotting in their graves, the returning hero received with frenzied acclamations, a marshal rising from pothouse to palace, men of genius taking sides for and against the conquering nation—and a circlet of little golden leaves which the foreigner from the Mediterranean island had, with the simplicity of the self-made man, placed on his own brow.

  XV

  How big Corsica is ! How high her mountains ! Bastia is an admirable harbour; its fortifications can be seen through a spyglass. If taken from the eastern side . . .

  Energy in Narrow Bounds

  When the ruler of Elba rides among the hills of his new home, the silhouette of his old home lies spread before him; everything looms larger across the water. Forty times bigger, ten times as many inhabitants ; he has all the figures, to a unit, in his head. Elba is nothing more than a mole-hill.

  On the clear May morning when he landed, he was welcomed by a deputation of peasants and petty burghers in Porto Ferrajo. Timidly they had paid their compliments to the man who was to reign over them. But their astonishment was great when, instead of inviting them to a banquet, he leapt into the saddle and rode off to inspect the fortifications. On the morrow, orders began to fly about the sleepy little isle : Pianosa was to have two more batteries; the mole must be lengthened ; the roads improved. When first the four hundred grenadiers appeared in the land, the natives looked at them askance as men of a foreign race. Soon, however, the forces were increased by the creation of a foreign battalion, and a National Guard. Napoleon once more has an army of over a thousand men ; soon he has a small flotilla likewise. What for ? Just for him to see after and take care of. He has a Council of State ; Bertrand and Drouot (the generals who have accompanied him into exile) and a dozen inhabitants of the island, are members ; and, together with Napoleon who presides over the assembly, they discuss improvements in the iron mines and the salt pits. Have you no mulberry culture here ? The silkworms bring in good money over there, in Lyons ; and if the French government imposes a tariff upon our produce, we can easily sell to Italy.

  Save ! We are so poor, and France makes no move to pay the promised allowance. The white house is smaller than the one in Ajaccio, and very much simpler; but there is no money for building additional accommodation ; and when the " grand marshal" Bertrand draws up a list of mattresses and other bedgear, his master underlines the mistakes,—for he has every detail of his establishment by heart.

  Inward Reserves

  Is this indefatigable man never to realise what a parody is his administration over the tiny island, the diminutive army, the small household ? Never ! Here in Elba, where in the best of spirits and health he throws himself whole-heartedly into his undertakings, he comes to realise that it was not the masses that had allured him. To order, to build, to press his finger into the wax of humanity, these things he must do, urged onward by the impulse of his artist's soul. But, since humanity is not as wax, and since his constructions can never be finished and are always vibrant with life; since the opposition of material forces also takes a hand in the game, even when matter seems to have been conquered—he can only fulfil his mission by coercing and conquering the human spirit, by issuing orders and bringing suggestions to bear, by constant vigilance and constant upbuilding; in a word, by ruling. He has never been a dilettante or a parvenu ; and, this being so, he drives the little wheel today with just as much precision and earnestness as he had driven the earth's sphere in former days.

  But soon, when most of his enterprises are in good going order, he feels he is becoming lazy, even when he is studying mathematics. This causes him to reconsider his position.

  "It is by no means difficult to accustom oneself to a life of meditation," he writes, " if one possesses within oneself the necessary reserves. I work hard in my study ; when I emerge I have the delightful spectacle of my old grenadiers in front of me. . . . Born kings must suffer terribly when they are dethroned, for pomp and etiquette are the very marrow of their lives. For my part, I have always been a soldier, and became a king only by chance, so that these things have been nothing but a burden to me, whereas wars and camps come naturally. Out of my great past, I regret naught but my soldiers. After all my treasures and my crowns, my most cherished possessions are the couple of French uniforms they have allowed me to keep."

  These are the words of an unpretentious king. Do people

  The Homely Monarch

  not believe him ? And does Europe laugh when, in his kingdom of Lilliput,
he preserves the forms of kingship ? Does Europe begin to suspect a secret in the island ? The innate dignity, whereby long ago the young general had wrung respect from the bearers of inherited rank, to-day is still able to hold satirical visitors in check. Every one admires the natural simplicity of the lonely man who, despite the exiguity of his dwelling, still holds to the title of" Majesty." He lives in his island sans palace or fittings, sans court or ministers, only surrounded with the aureole of his deeds.

  This return home brings solace to his heart—for Elba is Italy. The peasant speaks to him in the language Napolione had learned at Letizia's knee. The Mediterranean amid whose waters he was born and reared, the islands with their quiet shores, do they not all of them bring back memories of youthful days ? Stone-pines, fig trees, and crags ; the white houses among the vineyards ; the sails, and the fishermen's nets ; pride of clan, and the headkerchief worn at church; all these things seem to take him gently by the hand and lead him back to the dreams of childhood. Now the storm-racked nerves relax, and at length know a spell of repose. In these wholesome months, the Emperor comes to look upon his career as a visionary flight into the land of childish imagination; and it is only when he contemplates the men of his old guard that he realises something did happen during the years that separate Corsica from Elba.

  " The Emperor lives very contentedly on his island," writes one who accompanied him there. " He seems to have forgotten the past. The management of his small household gives him occupation; he is now looking out for a suitable site to build his country-seat; we ride, and drive, and sail round the coasts as much as we please."

  Since he has plenty of time on his hands, and since thrift is essential, he examines everything, to the minutest details. Just as, in the Tuileries, he himself drew up the list of his clothing, so

  Joyful Days for Letizia