The Age of Napoleon

by Will Durant

  When the people of Paris learned of the military disaster many of them gathered before the Élysée, affirmed their continued faith in Napoleon with cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” and asked for arms that they might defend the city. Hearing them, Napoleon said to Benjamin Constant, “You see, it is not these people upon whom I heaped honors and money. What do they owe me? I found them poor, and I have left them poor…. If I willed it, in an hour the rebellious Chamber would cease to exist…. But the life of one man is not worth this price. I do not wish to be the King of Jacqueries. I did not come from Elba in order that Paris should be inundated with blood.”3

  Even during his flight from Waterloo he had planned to raise another army, this time of 300,000 men.4 Between June 22 and June 24 the remains of his defeated army gathered and were reorganized at Laon, seventy-seven miles northeast of Paris; and there, on June 26, Grouchy, after a brilliant retreat, joined them with 30,000 men. Meanwhile, however, Blücher had assembled his victorious forces, and was leading them toward Paris, carefully bypassing Laon. Wellington, his army badly hurt, hesitated to join the impetuous Prussian, but soon he too was on the road, also avoiding Laon. At the same time, June 22–25, the armies of Austria, Bavaria, and Württemberg crossed the Rhine and headed for Paris. History repeated itself.

  The Chamber of Representatives, after passionate debates, concluded that resistance to the Allies was impracticable, and that they would insist on Napoleon’s abdication. Fouché, still Napoleon’s minister of police, worked in his subtle ways to secure this abdication. He had predicted, before Waterloo, “The Emperor will win one or two battles; he will lose the third; at that point our role will begin.”5 But Fouché did not wait that long. Napoleon’s brother Lucien rushed to the Chamber to urge delay; Fouché worked against him, and Lafayette asked, Had not Napoleon consumed enough lives? Lucien, victor in 1799, admitted failure now. He advised Napoleon to forcibly overthrow the chambers; Napoleon refused. The exhaustion of battle and defeat had weakened his will, but had clarified his vision; and while the crowd outside the palace continued to shout “Vive l’Empereur!” he dictated to Lucien, June 22, 1815, his Second Abdication, addressed to the two chambers:

  In beginning the war for national independence, I counted on the reunion of all efforts,… and on the agreement of all the nation’s governing bodies. Circumstances seem to me to have changed…. I offer myself as sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies of France. May they be sincere in their declarations, and in having really desired nothing more than my person. Unite, all of you, for the public safety, and for our remaining independent action…. I proclaim my son in the name of Napoleon II.6

  All his ministers agreed to his abdication except Carnot, who wept. Fouché rejoiced.

  The two chambers accepted the abdication, ignored its nomination of Napoleon’s four-year-old son (then in Vienna) as his successor, and chose five of its members—Fouché, Carnot, Caulaincourt, Grenier (an obscure general), and Ouinette (a member of the old revolutionary Convention) —to serve as a “Commission Exécutive” and a Provisional Government. Fouché was chosen president of the commission, and negotiated directly with the Allies and Napoleon. Fearing a popular uprising in favor of Napoleon, he persuaded Davout, military commander in the capital, to prevail upon Napoleon to leave Paris and retire to Malmaison. On June 25, accompanied by Bertrand, Gourgaud, Comte de Las Cases, and Comte de Montholon, Napoleon left for Malmaison, where Hortense welcomed him to her late mother’s home. Walking with Hortense in the garden, he spoke fondly of Josephine. “Truly,” he said, “she was more full of grace than any woman I have ever seen.”7

  He thought now of seeking refuge and peace in America. He asked Bertrand to secure for him several books about the United States.8 He had read Alexander von Humboldt’s Voyages aux contrées équinoctiales du nouveau continent; he proposed to give the remainder of his life to science; now he would go to America and explore its soil, flora, and fauna from Canada to Cape Horn. On June 26 he sent to the Provisional Government a request for passage to Rochefort, with a view to sailing thence for America.9 Fouché at once ordered the Minister of Marine to “prepare two frigates at Rochefort to carry Napoleon Bonaparte to the United States.”10 On that same day Napoleon was visited by his brothers Joseph, Lucien, and Jérôme, who had all decided to leave France—Joseph for America. Perhaps it was they who brought to him a message from their mother, offering him “all that she possessed.” He thanked her, but took no advantage of her offer. He still had a substantial fund with the banker Jacques Laffitte, who came in person to Malmaison to arrange Napoleon’s finances.

  On June 28 an officer of the Garde Nationale came to warn him that the Prussians were near enough to Malmaison to send a detachment to capture him. Actually Blücher had ordered a flying column to get Napoleon alive or dead, and had expressed his intention to shoot him as an outlaw.11 Hearing of this intention, Gourgaud vowed, “If I see the Emperor fall into the hands of the Prussians I will shoot him.” Even so, Napoleon was loath to leave Malmaison, where every room and walk was rich with happy memories. On June 29 Fouché commissioned General Becker to go to Malmaison with a squad of troops to compel Napoleon to leave for Rochefort.

  Napoleon agreed to go. Hortense prevailed upon him to accept her diamond necklace, concealed in a belt and worth 200,000 francs. He bade farewell to the few soldiers who had been protecting him. At 5 P.M., June 29, riding in a caleche drawn by four horses, and with a small military escort, he left Malmaison. A few hours later Blücher’s cavalry arrived.

  II. THE SECOND RESTORATION: JULY 7, 1815

  The chambers and the Provisional Government debated whether to fight the oncoming Allies or negotiate for the best obtainable terms. Davout offered to lead his city militia against Wellington and Blücher if these insisted on restoring Louis XVIII. The representatives feared that resistance and defeat would lead to the dismemberment of France, and something short of that for themselves. The remnants of Napoleon’s “Army of the North” were in no mood for another Waterloo; they were inadequately supplied, and the enemy were united between Laon and Paris.

  Louis XVIII, learning that one faction among the Allies was working for his replacement by Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, moved down anxiously from Ghent to Cateau-Cambrésis, and there issued (June 25) a declaration promising conciliation and a liberal regime. The chambers were pleased, and on June 30 the Provisional Government and the Allies signed preliminary terms for the capitulation of the capital. All French troops were to retire beyond the Loire, but the security and property of the citizens were guaranteed. On July 7 the Allies entered Paris. On July 8 Louis XVIII rode down the Champs-Élysées in state, and resumed the throne of France. The prefect of the Seine department, in welcoming him, used—apparently for the first time—the term “Cent Jours,” or Hundred Days, to describe the period between Napoleon’s second usurpation (March 20) and the restoration of the King.

  Most of the country accepted this da capo al fine as the only practical solution of the problems raised by the sudden collapse of Napoleon’s regime. Blücher, however, raised an outcry by announcing that he would ask his engineers to blow up the Pont d’Iéna—the bridge commemorating the French victory over the Prussians in 1806; moreover, he proposed to destroy all monuments to Napoleon. Wellington united with Louis XVIII in urging Blücher to desist; he persisted; but Czar Alexander I, King Frederick William III, and Emperor Francis II, arriving with the Russian, Austrian, and Piedmontese armies, commanded the old patriot to calm his fury.12

  The foreign troops in France now totaled some 800,000, all requiring to be fed by the people, and policing them in return. Castlereagh calculated that it cost France 1,750,000 francs per day to feed its occupiers. In addition each district had to pay a heavy indemnity. Louis XVIII told the Allied leaders that if, contrary to their proclamation of March 25, they continued to treat his subjects as enemies, he would leave France and seek asylum in Spain. The Allies agreed to limit the indemnities to 50 million francs, and ar
gued that they were fully justified by the laws of war and the precedents established by Napoleon in Prussia and Austria.

  Likewise the royalists in some French cities indulged themselves in a “White Terror” to avenge the Red Terror that had killed so many royalists in 1793–94. They were not always without immediate excuse. When the royalist faction in Marseilles made a demonstration demanding the restoration of Louis XVIII, some soldiers of the local garrison, still pledged to Napoleon, fired on them. The commander soon stopped this, and tried to lead his troops out of the hostile city; but on their way some hundred of them were shot from windows or roofs (June 25). On that day and the next armed royalists ran about the city, shooting Bonapartists and Jacobins; two hundred victims died, many of them still crying “Vive l’Empereur!” Royalist women danced with joy around the corpses.13 At Avignon the royalists imprisoned and killed all captured Bonapartists. One man they sought especially—Guillaume Bruné, who was accused of having carried the head of the Princesse de Lamballe on his pike in 1792. He hid in an Avignon hotel; the crowd found him, shot him, and dragged his corpse through the streets, beating it ecstatically; then, having thrown it into the Rhone, the men and women danced with joy (August 2, 1815). There were similar scenes at Nîmes, Montpellier, and Toulouse.

  These barbarities could hardly be attributed to Louis XVIII, who was basically a forgiving man. But he could never forgive Ney, who had promised to bring to him Napoleon alive or dead, had gone over to Napoleon, and had dealt out so many deaths at Waterloo. Ney fled from Paris on July 6, and wandered from town to town in disguise; he was recognized and arrested; was tried by a court of 161 peers, and was found guilty of treason. He refused all priestly services, and was executed by a firing squad on December 7, 1815.

  Fouché and Talleyrand, now in Louis XVIII’s ministry, were triumphant but unhappy. The royalists in the Cabinet shunned Fouché as a regicide, and advised the King to dismiss him. Louis compromised by appointing him minister to Saxony (September 15); but three months later he recalled him and banished him from France. Fouché wandered unwanted from Prague to Linz to Trieste, and died there in 1820, having crowded an incredible amount of deviltry into sixty-one years.

  Talleyrand rivaled him in wiles, and surpassed him in durability. Louis XVIII judged him with lines from Corneille: “He has done me too much good that I should speak ill of him, and too much harm that I should speak well of him.”14 It was apparently Talleyrand who said of the Bourbons (in 1796), “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing”;15 but this could hardly have been said of Louis XVIII, who learned to deal with elected chambers, welcomed Napoleon’s generals, and preserved much of Napoleon’s legislation. The royalist ministers hated Talleyrand as not only a regicide and an apostate but a traitor to his class. Yielding to them, Louis dismissed him (September 24, 1815). Talleyrand recovered, outlived Louis XVIII, survived the abdication of Charles X (1830), and was appointed ambassador to Great Britain (1830–34) at the age of seventy-six. When the Marquess of Londonderry, in the House of Lords, criticized Talleyrand, Wellington defended him; he had dealt with M. de Talleyrand in many situations (said the Duke), and never had he found a man more vigorous and skillful in protecting the interests of his country, and more upright and honorable in dealing with other countries. When Talleyrand read this he came close to tears, than which nothing could have been more unbecoming in him. “I am all the more grateful to the Duke, since he is the one statesman in the world who has ever spoken well of me.”16 Having helped to organize the Quadruple Alliance in 1834, he died in 1838, aged eighty-four, having outwitted everybody, almost the Reaper himself.

  On November 20, 1815, Louis XVIII signed with the Allies the Second Treaty of Paris, which formulated the penalties France was to suffer for allowing Napoleon to resume his rule. She was compelled to cede the Saar and Savoy, and four frontier towns, including Philippeville and Marienburg; to restore the art her conquering generals had taken; to pay an indemnity of 700 million francs, plus 240 million on private claims; to be occupied by the commissioners and troops of the Allies for from three to five years, and to pay for their maintenance.17 Talleyrand refused to sign this document; his successor as foreign minister, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, signed it under protest, and then cried out, “I am dishonored.”18

  III. SURRENDER: JULY 4-AUGUST 8, 1815

  Riding south from Malmaison, Napoleon was joined at Niort by his brother Joseph and his brother-in-arms Gourgaud. They reached Rochefort (thirteen miles southeast of La Rochelle) late on July 3, and found the expected frigates—the Saale and the Méduse—anchored in the harbor; but behind these was a small squadron of British warships blockading the port and apparently forbidding unlicensed egress.

  On July 4 Napoleon sent an inquiry to the captain of the Saale—could rooms be prepared for him and some friends for a voyage to America, and could the Saale get through the blockade? He was told that the frigates were ready, and might try to elude the warships at night, at the risk of being stopped or bombarded; but if they got through, their superior speed would soon lose the men-of-war. Napoleon now revealed the effects of his recent ordeals by beginning nine days of vacillation, turning from one plan to another for escape, and from one companion to another for advice. Joseph, who resembled him in appearance, offered to disguise himself as the Emperor, and to let himself be detained by the British, while Napoleon, in civilian dress, might be allowed to leave on one of the frigates on an apparently routine voyage. Napoleon refused to endanger his brother. Joseph himself later sailed on one of the frigates to America.

  Forgetting fifteen years of war, Napoleon now played with the fancy that England, if he voluntarily surrendered, might treat him as a distinguished prisoner, and allow him a modest plot of land on which he might live as a peaceful squire. On July 10 he sent Las Cases and Savary (Duc de Rovigo) to ask Captain Frederick Maitland, on H.M.S. Bellerophon, if any passports had been received by him for Napoleon’s passage to America. The captain, of course, had none. Then Las Cases asked whether, if Napoleon surrendered himself to the British, he might expect to be treated with the usual generosity of the English people. Maitland replied that he would be glad to receive Napoleon and take him to England, but that he had no authority to make any promise about his reception there.

  Shortly before or after or during that conversation Captain Maitland received from his superior, Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Hotham (then cruising off the northwest coast of France), a message apprising him that Napoleon was in or near Rochefort, and was intending to cross to America. The admiral added: “You will employ the best means of preventing him from sailing on the frigates…. If you have the good fortune to capture him, you will put him under good guard, and proceed with all careful speed to a port in Britain.”19

  On or about July 14 Napoleon received warning that Louis XVIII had ordered General Bonnefours to proceed to Rochefort and arrest him.20 Bonnefours acted as slowly as he dared. Napoleon now felt restricted to three choices: to surrender to Louis XVIII, who had every reason to hate him; to risk capture in an attempt to defy the British blockade; or to surrender to Captain Maitland in the hope of British generosity. He chose the last course. On July 14 he wrote to the Prince Regent, who was then ruling Great Britain:

  YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS:

  Exposed to the factions which distract my country, and to the disunity of the greatest powers in Europe, I have ended my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to sit at the hearth of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws, which I invoke from Your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most determined, and the most generous of my enemies, to grant me this protection.

  NAPOLEON21*

  Napoleon entrusted this letter to Gourgaud, and asked him to seek permission to take it to London by the next boat. Maitland agreed, but the boat that carried Gourgaud was long detained by quarantine, and there is no evidence that the letter ever reached its destination.

  On July 15 Napoleon and his
companions were taken to the Bellerophon, and offered themselves in voluntary surrender to Great Britain. “I come aboard your ship,” said Napoleon to Maitland, “to place myself under the protection of the laws of England.”22 The captain received them courteously, and agreed to give them passage to England. He told them nothing of Admiral Hotham’s message, but he warned Napoleon that he could not guarantee him a favorable reception in England. On July 16 the Bellerophon sailed for England.

  In retrospect Maitland gave a good mark to his prize captive:

  His manners were extremely pleasing and affable. He joined in every conversation, related numerous anecdotes, and endeavoured in every way to promote good humour. He admitted his attendants to great familiarity,… though they generally treated him with much respect. He possessed, to a wonderful degree, a facility in making a favorable impression upon those with whom he entered into conversation.23

  The British crew were charmed, and treated him with the greatest deference.

  On July 24 the Bellerophon reached Tor Bay, an inlet of the English Channel on the coast of Devonshire. Soon two armed frigates placed themselves on either side of the ship; Napoleon was clearly a prisoner. Admiral Viscount Keith came on board and greeted him with simple courtesy: Gourgaud followed to tell Napoleon that he had been unable to get his letter through to the Prince Regent, but had been compelled to give it to Keith, who made no mention of it.24 Keith bade Maitland bring his ship into Plymouth harbor, thirty miles away; there the Bellerophon remained till August 5. During that time it became a goal of British curiosity; from every corner of southern England men and women rode to Plymouth, crowded into boats, and waited for the imperial ogre to take his daily walk on the deck.