The hermitage of La Madonna di Marciano (which can today be reached after a 3-mile hike up the mountain) is a romantic and secluded spot with fabulous views over the island’s bays and inlets, from where one can see the outlines of both Corsica and mainland Italy. On September 1, Marie Walewska arrived with Napoleon’s four-year-old natural son Alexandre, and they stayed there for a couple of nights with Napoleon. She had divorced her husband in 1812, and now she had lost the Neapolitan estates that Napoleon had given her when he had broken off their affair before marrying Marie Louise. But loyalty drew her to Napoleon, however briefly. For when General Drouot warned Napoleon that island gossip had uncovered his secret – indeed a local mayor had climbed the hill to pay his formal respects to the woman everyone thought was the Empress – Marie had to leave the island.70
Napoleon gave the first of a series of interviews to visiting British Whig aristocrats and politicians in mid-November, when he spent four hours with George Venables-Vernon, a Whig MP, and his colleague John Fazakerley. In early December he twice met Viscount Ebrington, for a total of six and a half hours, and on Christmas Eve the future prime minister Lord John Russell. Two other Britons, John Macnamara and Frederick Douglas, the latter the son of the British minister Lord Glenbervie, met him in mid-January. All of these intelligent, well-connected and worldly interlocutors marvelled at the grasp of Napoleon’s mind and his willingness to discuss any subject – including the Egyptian and Russian campaigns, his admiration for the House of Lords and his hopes for a similar aristocracy in France, his plans for securing the colonies through polygamy, the duplicity of Tsar Alexander, the ‘great ability’ of the Duke of Wellington, the Congress of Vienna, the mediocrity of Archduke Charles of Austria, the Italians (‘lazy and effeminate’), the deaths of d’Enghien and Pichegru (neither of which he admitted was his fault), the Jaffa massacre (which he said was), King Frederick William (whom he called ‘a corporal’), the relative merits of his marshals, the distinction between British pride and French vanity, and his escape from circumcision in Egypt.71
‘They are brave fellows, those English troops of yours,’ he said during one of the encounters, ‘they are worth more than the others.’72 The Britons reported that he ‘talked with much cheerfulness, good humour and civility of manner’ and defended his record, on one occasion pointing out that although he had not burned Moscow, the British had set fire to Washington that August.73 Napoleon may have been trying to make a good impression in anticipation of an eventual move to London, but his intelligence and candour induced his visitors to lower their guard. ‘For my own part,’ he often said, ‘I am no longer concerned. My day is done.’ He also regularly used the expression ‘I’m dead.’74 Yet he asked lots of questions about the popularity of the Bourbons and the whereabouts of various British and French military units in southern France. He was less subtle in questioning Campbell on these subjects, to the point that the commissioner wrote to Castlereagh in October 1814 to warn him that Napoleon might be contemplating a return.75 Yet the Royal Navy’s watch was not increased beyond the lone frigate HMS Partridge, and Napoleon was even allowed a sixteen-gun brig, L’Inconstant, as the flagship of the Elban navy.
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On September 15, 1814 the Great Powers convened the Congress of Vienna at the instigation of Metternich and Talleyrand, where it was hoped all the major disagreements – over the futures of Poland, Saxony, the Rhine Confederation and Murat in Naples – might be settled. After nearly a quarter of a century of war and revolution the map of Europe had to be redrawn, and each of the Powers had desiderata which needed to be accommodated with those of the others to provide the permanent peace that it was hoped would follow a general settlement.76 The fall of Napoleon had reignited some long-standing territorial differences between the Powers, but unfortunately for him, although it stayed in formal session until June 1815, the outlines of agreement on all the major questions were in place by the time he decided to leave Elba in late February.
Precisely when Napoleon decided to try to retake his throne is unknown, but he watched closely the seemingly endless series of errors the Bourbons made after Louis XVIII’s return – under Allied escort – to Paris in May 1814. Napoleon increasingly believed that the Bourbons would soon experience what he called ‘a Libyan wind’ – a violent sirocco desert wind that reaches hurricane speeds and was then believed to originate in the Libyan Sahara.77 Although the king had signed a wide-ranging Charter guaranteeing civil liberties on his arrival, his government had failed to alleviate fears that they secretly wished to re-establish the Ancien Régime. Indeed, far from it. Louis’ reign was officially recorded as being in its nineteenth year, as if he had ruled France ever since the death of his nephew Louis XVII in 1795 and everything that had taken place since – the Convention, Directory, Consulate and Empire – had been merely an illegal hiatus. The Bourbons had agreed that France should go back to her 1791 borders, thereby shrinking her from 109 departments to 87.78 There were increases in the Ancien Régime-era droits réunis taxes and food prices, and the Catholic Church returned to some of its pre-revolutionary power and prestige, which irritated liberals as well as republicans.79 Official ceremonies were held at Rennes to honour the ‘martyred’ Chouans, and the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were disinterred from the Madeleine cemetery and reinterred with much pomp in the Abbey of Saint-Denis. Although building work resumed at Versailles and the king appointed a ‘premier pousse-fauteuil’, whose sole job it was to push in his chair as he sat down at the table, pensions were cut, even to wounded veterans.80 Paintings that Napoleon had brought together at the Louvre were removed from it and returned to the occupying powers.
As Napoleon had predicted, the pre-revolutionary 1786 trade agreement with Britain was reintroduced, reducing tariffs on some British goods and abolishing them on others, thus triggering a new slump for French manufacturers.81 The British government hardly improved matters by choosing Wellington as its ambassador to France.* ‘Lord Wellington’s appointment must be very galling to the army,’ Napoleon told Ebrington, ‘as must the great attentions being shown him by the king, as if to set his own private feelings up in opposition to those of the country.’82 Napoleon later described what he thought the Bourbons ought to have done. ‘Instead of proclaiming himself Louis XVIII he should have proclaimed himself the founder of a new dynasty, and not have touched on old grievances at all. If he had done that, in all probability I should never have been induced to quit Elba.’83
The Bourbons’ most self-defeating policies were towards the army. The tricolour, under which French soldiers had won victories across Europe for over two decades, was replaced by the white flag and fleur-de-lys, while the Légion d’Honneur was downgraded in favour of the old royal orders (one of which the grognards promptly nicknamed ‘the bug’).84 Senior army posts were awarded to émigrés who had fought against France, and a new Household Guard superseded the Imperial Guard, while the Middle Guard, which Napoleon had instituted in 1806 and which boasted many proud battle honours, was abolished altogether.85 Large numbers of officers were retired by the despised Dupont and 30,000 more put on half-pay, while aggressive searches continued for draft evaders.86* ‘My first hope came when I saw in the gazettes that at the banquet at the Hôtel de Ville there were the wives of the nobility only,’ Napoleon later recalled, ‘and none of those of the officers of the army.’87 In gross defiance of orders, many in the army openly celebrated Napoleon’s birthday on August 15, 1814, with cannon-fire salutes and cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ as sentries presented arms only to officers wearing the Légion d’Honneur.
Of course it was not only the Bourbons’ mistakes which helped decide Napoleon to risk everything to try to regain his throne. Emperor Francis’s refusal to allow his wife and son to rejoin him was another, and the fact that his expenses were running at two and a half times his income. There was also sheer ennui; he complained to Campbell of being ‘shut up in this cell of a house, separated fro
m the world, with no interesting occupation, no savants with me, nor any variety in my society’.88* Another consideration was paragraphs in the newspapers and rumours from the Congress of Vienna that the Allies were planning forcibly to remove him from Elba. Joseph de Maistre, the French ambassador to St Petersburg, had nerve-wrackingly suggested the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay as a possible destination. The exceptionally remote British island of St Helena in the mid-Atlantic had also been mentioned.89
On January 13, 1815, Napoleon spent two hours with John Macnamara and was delighted to hear that France was ‘agitated’.90 He admitted that he had stayed in Moscow too long and said ‘I made a mistake about England in trying to conquer it.’ He was adamant that his role in international affairs was over. ‘History has a triumvirate of great men,’ Macnamara stated, ‘Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon.’ At this, Napoleon looked steadfastly at him without speaking, and Macnamara said ‘he thought he saw the Emperor’s eyes moisten.’ It is what he had wanted people to say ever since he was a schoolboy. Eventually Napoleon replied: ‘You would be right if a ball had killed me at the battle of Moscow but my late reverses will efface all the glory of my early years.’91 He added that Wellington was ‘a brave man’ but that he should not have been made ambassador. Napoleon laughed frequently during the conversation, as he did when told that the Prince Regent had welcomed his divorce from Josephine, as it had set a precedent for him to divorce the wife he hated, Caroline of Brunswick. Macnamara asked if he feared assassination. ‘Not by the English; they are not assassins,’ he said, but he conceded that he did have to be cautious with regard to the nearby Corsicans.92 As he left, Macnamara told Bertrand that the Emperor ‘must be a very good-humoured man and never in a passion’. Bertrand replied with a smile: ‘I know him a little better than you.’93
By the beginning of February Campbell noted that Napoleon had ‘suspended his improvements as regards roads and the finishing of his country residence’, all on grounds of expense, and had also attempted to sell Portoferraio’s town hall.94 He again warned Castlereagh that ‘If the payments promised to him at the time of abdication were withheld, and the want of money pressed upon him, I considered him capable of any desperate step.’95 Tsar Alexander later lambasted Talleyrand for not paying the funds due to Napoleon: ‘Why should we expect him to keep his word with us when we did not do so with him?’96
When Napoleon’s former secretary Fleury de Chaboulon visited him in February 1815 he brought a message from Maret that France was ripe for his return. Napoleon asked about the attitude of the army. When forced to cry ‘Vive le Roi!’, Fleury told him, the soldiers would often add in a whisper ‘de Rome’. ‘And so they still love me?’ Napoleon asked. ‘Yes, Sire, and may I even venture to say, more than ever.’ This accorded with what Napoleon was hearing from a large number of French sources and from his network of agents in France, including people like Joseph Emmery, a surgeon from Grenoble who helped plan his coming expedition and to whom he left 100,000 francs in his will. Fleury said the army blamed Marmont for the Allied victory, which prompted Napoleon to claim: ‘They are right; had it not been for the infamous defection of the Duke of Ragusa, the Allies would have been lost. I was master of their rear, and of all their resources; not a man would have escaped. They would have had their [own] 29th Bulletin.’97
On February 16 Campbell left Elba in HMS Partridge ‘upon a short excursion to the continent for my health’. He needed to visit either his ear doctor in Florence or his mistress, Countess Miniacci, or possibly both.98 This gave Napoleon his chance, and the next day he ordered L’Inconstant to be refitted, stocked for a short voyage and painted the same colours as Royal Navy vessels.99 On Campbell’s arrival in Florence, Castlereagh’s deputy at the British foreign office, Edward Cooke, told him: ‘When you return to Elba, you may tell Bonaparte that he is quite forgotten in Europe: no one thinks of him now.’100 At much the same time, Madame Mère was telling her son: ‘Yes, you must go; it is your destiny to do so. You were not made to die on this desert island.’101 Pauline, ever the most generous-hearted of his siblings, gave him a very valuable necklace that could be sold to help pay for the coming adventure. When Napoleon’s valet Marchand tried to console her by saying that she would soon be reunited with her brother, she presciently corrected him, saying that she would never see him again.102 A year later, when asked whether it was true that Drouot had tried to dissuade him from leaving Elba, Napoleon answered that it was not. In any case, he retorted curtly, ‘I do not allow myself to be governed by advice.’103 The night before Napoleon left he had been reading a life of Emperor Charles V of Austria, which he left open on the table. His elderly housekeeper kept it untouched, along with ‘written papers torn into small bits’ that were strewn about. When British visitors questioned her soon afterwards, she gave them ‘unaffected expressions of attachment, and artless report of his uniform good humour’.104
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Napoleon left Elba on L’Inconstant on the night of Sunday, February 26, 1815. Once the 300-ton, 16-gun ship had weighed anchor, the 607 Old Guard grenadiers aboard were told they were headed for France. ‘Paris or death!’ they cried. He took generals Bertrand, Drouot and Cambronne, M. Pons the inspector of mines, a doctor called Chevalier Fourreau, and a pharmacist, M. Gatte. They were attempting to invade a great European country with eight small vessels, the next three largest of which were only 80, 40 and 25 tons, carrying 118 Polish lancers (without their horses), fewer than 300 men of a Corsican battalion, 50 gendarmes, and around 80 civilians (including Napoleon’s servants) – a total force of 1,142 men and 2 light cannon.105 A moderate breeze carried them to France, and they narrowly missed two French frigates on the way. Napoleon spent a lot of time on deck, chatting to officers, soldiers and sailors. The commander of the lancers, Colonel Jan Jermanowski, recorded:
Lying down, sitting, standing, and strolling around him, familiarly, they asked him unceasing questions, to which he answered unreservedly and without one sign of anger or impatience, for they were not a little indiscreet, they required his opinions on many living characters, kings, marshals and ministers, and discussed notorious passages of his own campaigns, and even of his domestic policy.106
During this he spoke openly of ‘his present attempt, of its difficulties, of his means, and of his hopes’.
L’Inconstant sailed into Golfe-Juan on the southern French coast on Wednesday, March 1, unloading Napoleon’s force by 5 p.m. ‘I have long weighed and most maturely considered the project,’ Napoleon harangued his men just before they went ashore, ‘the glory, the advantages we shall gain if we succeed I need not enlarge upon. If we fail, to military men, who have from their youth faced death in so many shapes, the fate which awaits us is not terrific: we know, and we despise, for we have a thousand times faced the worst which a reverse can bring.’107 The following year he reminisced about the landing: ‘Very soon a great crowd of people came around us, surprised by our appearance and astonished by our small force. Among them was a mayor, who, seeing how few we were, said to me: “We were just beginning to be quiet and happy; now you are going to stir us all up again.”’108 It was a sign of how little Napoleon was seen as a despot that people could speak to him in that way.
Knowing that Provence and the lower Rhône valley were vehemently royalist, and that for the moment he needed above all else to avoid any Bourbon armies, Napoleon resolved to take the Alpine route to the arsenal of Grenoble. His instinct was proved right when the twenty men under Captain Lamouret whom he sent off to Antibes were arrested and interned by the local garrison. He hadn’t the troops to attack Toulon, and was conscious of the need to move faster than the news of his arrival, at least until he could augment his force. ‘That is why I hurried on to Grenoble,’ he later told his secretary General Gourgaud. ‘There were troops there, muskets, and cannon; it was a centre.’109 All he had was the capacity for speed – horses were soon bought for the lancers – and a genius for propaganda. On landi
ng he issued two proclamations, to the French people and the army, which had been copied out on board ship by hand by as many of the men as were literate.
The army proclamation entirely blamed the 1814 defeat on the treason of Marmont and Augereau: ‘Two men from our ranks have betrayed our laurels, their country, their prince, their benefactor.’110 He turned his back on bellicosity, declaring: ‘We must forget that we were masters of nations, but we must not suffer anyone meddling in our business.’ In the proclamation to the people, Napoleon said that after the fall of Paris, ‘My heart was torn apart, but my spirit remained resolute . . . I exiled myself on a rock in the middle of the sea.’111 It was only because Louis XVIII had sought to reintroduce feudal rights and rule through people who had for twenty-five years been ‘enemies of the people’ that he was acting, he claimed, despite the fact that the Bourbons had certainly not yet got around to reviving feudalism. ‘Frenchmen,’ he continued, ‘in my exile I heard your complaints and wishes; you were claiming that government of your choice, which alone is legitimate. You were blaming me for my long sleep, you were reproaching me for sacrificing to my repose the great interests of the State.’ So, ‘amid all sorts of dangers, I arrived among you to regain my rights, which are yours.’112 It was tremendous hyperbole, of course, but Napoleon knew how to appeal to soldiers who wanted to return to glory and full pay, better-off peasants who feared the return of feudal dues, millions of owners of the biens nationaux who wanted protection from the returning émigrés and churchmen who wanted their pre-1789 property back, workers hit by the flood of English manufactured goods and imperial civil servants who had lost their jobs to royalists.113 The Bourbons had failed so comprehensively in less than a year that even after the defeats of 1812 and 1813 Napoleon was able to put together a fairly wide-ranging domestic coalition.
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