Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

by Alan Schom

  But on learning of the Senate’s vote and determination to dethrone him, supported by the Corps Législatif, he finally agreed to order the army to stand down. He would abdicate after all, after summoning his marshals and generals again to sound them out. “The marshals and many of the generals have lost their heads,” Napoleon later complained. “They said nothing, but I could see that they wanted my abdication...The imbeciles simply cannot see that the health and safety of France depends on me alone...Born a soldier I could get on very well without an empire, but France cannot get on without me.” In spite of everything, he still was not convinced, nor was he rational.

  He ordered Caulaincourt back to Paris, with Marshals Macdonald and Lefebvre this time, for one last attempt to sway the Allies. En route they stopped at Essonnes and tried to win over Marmont. But no sooner had they arrived in Paris on April 4, with Marmont at their side, than they learned that General Souham, in Marmont’s absence, had taken over the entire corps of eleven thousand men to the Austrians. The game was up. That corps had been Napoleon’s trump card. “If I win,” he had told Caulaincourt before setting out for Paris, “we will have an honorable peace settlement. If I lose, it is our poor France that will have to suffer the consequences.”

  The next day, Caulaincourt received a summons to the rue Saint-Florentin where the czar was waiting for him. His worst fears were immediately borne out. “Bad news...we are lost,” he recorded. “He knows all about it.” News of the defection of Marmont’s corps had arrived earlier. “At this unhappy conference we were ordered to return promptly with an unconditional abdication.”

  Reaching Fontainebleau at two o’clock in the morning of April 6 with Marshals Lefebvre and Macdonald, Caulaincourt found Napoleon with Marshal Oudinot waiting for him. On receiving the news, Napoleon attacked everyone viciously, from the Senate to Marshal Marmont, accusing him “of deserting to the enemy with his corps...And when?...At the very moment when an almost certain victory would have crowned our last great effort, making Europe truly repent for having occupied my capital.”

  Napoleon had reached the breaking point, his hysteria, his illusions, his utterances embarrassing to them all. “That’s the lot of sovereigns for you!” Napoleon went on irrationally. “They merely create a lot of ungrateful people.” After hours of tirade, an exhausted Napoleon conceded defeat. “They want me to abdicate, all right then, I’ll abdicate!”

  Caulaincourt rushed back to Paris again, this time to conclude the negotiations, drawing up and signing the necessary documents. The Senate having already proclaimed Louis Stanislas Xavier, the comte de Lille, Louis XVIII, king of France, the stage was set. Between the seventh and eighth, Marshals Lefebvre, Oudinot, and Jourdan surrendered to the Allies while Talleyrand insisted to Caulaincourt that Napoleon, Marie-Louise, and their son must all disappear from France and French history forever. On April 11 Napoleon drafted and signed his abdication at the Palace of Fontainebleau:

  The allied powers having proclaimed the Emperor Napoleon to be the sole remaining obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares his renunciation of the thrones of France and Italy, for himself and his heirs, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of life itself, that he is not prepared to make in the interests of France.

  NAPOLEON

  He had already been informed that his wife and son would not be allowed to join him, and that the island of Elba had been assigned as his place of exile, over which he would be granted complete sovereignty — against the strong objections of Talleyrand and Fouché, who demanded that he and his entire clan be sent far from European shores. Napoleon, fearful of assassination attempts by the Bourbons and his many other enemies, had ironically first hinted at exile in England, with Marie-Louise and their son. But of course Lord Castlereagh, who had just reached Paris with Metter-nich, was adamantly against that. What Napoleon really desired was protection, and therefore next insisted that the British government place an English army officer at his side on Elba to protect him. This “Perfidious Albion” that he had so vehemently denounced throughout his entire career was in the end the only country he could literally trust with his life. At first taken aback, Castlereagh and the British government agreed to this extraordinary request.

  Meanwhile all was chaos in Napoleon’s mind and world. Marie-Louise and his son, whom he had ordered from Blois to Orléans, soon found their “treasury” of jewels and cash taken from them by the Allies and she and her son ordered back to Rambouillet. Napoleon would never see his wife or son again.

  The Allies signed all the final documents pertaining to Napoleon’s dethronement at 1:00 A.M. on April 12. Only Napoleon’s signature was missing.

  An exhausted Caulaincourt and Macdonald reached Fontainebleau with their precious portfolios that same afternoon. But instead of finding the thousands of troops and hundreds of staff officers, court officials, and servants, there remained only the loyal Polish lancers under General Krasinski and a few units of the Old Guard. When Napoleon asked Berthier and Caulaincourt to follow him into exile, they both declined, as did Constant. Napoleon retaliated against his valet alone, calling him a thief, which was as untrue as the accusation against Bourrienne years earlier when he, too, had tried to leave his service. “Ah, Caulaincourt, I have lived too long,” Napoleon sighed, “Poor France...I don’t want to see her dishonored!” clearly referring to himself and his own humiliating position now. “A little more effort by everyone, a few more months of suffering and she would have triumphed over all her enemies.” He continued to ramble on for hours, lost in a world very far from reality, his mind wandering in and out of the past and present, then suddenly reverting back to his great triumphs of yesteryear.

  At three o’clock in the morning on April 13, Napoleon sent for Caulaincourt. He was in bed, the usual night lamp giving off a feeble light. “Come close, sit down,” he said in a weak voice. He made Caulaincourt promise to hand-deliver a letter he had just written to Marie-Louise.

  My good Louise, I have received your letter. I approve of your going to Rambouillet where your father will come to rejoin you. That is the only consolation that you can expect to receive under the present circumstances. I have been waiting for this moment for an entire week. Your father has separated us and has been bad for us, but nevertheless he will be a kind father to you, and your son. Caulaincourt has returned here. Yesterday I sent you a copy of the arrangements he has agreed to and signed on your behalf and that of your son. Goodbye, my good Louise. I love you more than anyone else in the world. My misfortunes hurt me only because of the pain they cause you. Love your most tender husband always. Give a kiss to my son. Adieu, chère Louise. All the very best.

  Napoleon

  He had in fact just taken the vial of poison he always carried around his neck, prepared a couple of years earlier by his doctor, in the event of capture by the enemy. He now soon became incoherent and then cried out in agony as the poison took effect, perspiring and vomiting all over his bed. Caulaincourt realized what he had done and sent for Dr. Yvan:

  The Emperor suffered atrociously...I cannot begin to express the great pain this scene caused me. “How difficult it is to die,” Napoleon cried out. “Tell Josephine that I have been thinking about her...Give me your hand. Kiss me!” and he pulled me to his heart, breathing heavily. I choked and could not hide my tears, which flowed in spite of me, falling on to his cheeks and hands.

  For hours Dr. Yvan and Caulaincourt remained by his bedside, helpless, as the poison ate into his system. But finally by morning the crisis was over. The poison was too old, having lost its potency, and Napoleon slowly recovered over the next couple of days.

  By April 16 he was strong enough to write a final letter to Josephine:

  Today I congratulate myself, for an enormous burden has been removed. My fall has been great, but at least it is useful, or so they say.

  When I go into my retreat, I am going to replace my sword with a pen. The history of my reig
n should prove to be most curious, for I have been seen only in profile, but I shall reveal the whole...I have heaped benefits upon thousands of wretches. But what have they done for me in return, at the end?

  They have betrayed me, yes, all of them, except the good Eugène, so worthy of you and me...

  Good-bye, my dear Josephine, resign yourself, as I have had to do, and never forget him who has never forgotten you and never will.

  Napoleon

  Brother Jérôme’s reaction to the news of Napoleon’s abdication and failed suicide attempt was typical: “The Emperor, after having caused all our troubles, has survived!”

  *

  Louis XVIII would be reaching France and Compiègne on April 29, preparing for his grand entrance into the French capital, even as his new naval minister ordered two frigates to transfer Napoleon to the island of Elba. Only Generals Drouot and Bertrand of his entourage would be accompanying Napoleon immediately, along with six Allied officers as far as the French coast. They insisted on disguising their prisoner in an Austrian general’s uniform later for his own protection, against hostile French crowds. The carriages and escort finally prepared to depart on the twentieth as Napoleon bade farewell to the Old Guard assembled before him, most of whom would be left behind. The procession then pulled out of the Cour du Cheval Blanc through the Forest of Fontainebleau for the Mediterranean coast. Reaching St.-Raphael on April 27, Napoleon boarded the English frigate HMS Undaunted the following morning, the two French vessels not yet having arrived — or did Napoleon simply feel safer aboard a British warship? Unknown to him, on the very day of his sailing, Josephine had died of pneumonia at her beloved Malmaison. Aboard the Undaunted Napoleon was, according to Caulaincourt, “received with all due consideration and distinction possible and treated with all the privileges of his rank.”

  On May 30 the various Treaties of Paris concluding the peace settlement were signed and exchanged, reducing French frontiers to what they had been in 1792, while England generously returned the French colonies taken during the long wars, except for Mauritius, Tobago, and St. Lucia. No reparations of any kind were to be demanded by the aggrieved parties, for a war that had cost England alone £600 million. Lord Castlereagh, never an orator, tried to pacify his outraged fellow countrymen about the unusual leniency of the peace terms. He explained: “It is better for France to be commercial and pacific, than a warlike and conquering State.” Peace was worth the price, he felt. Never had a more lenient treaty been adopted, given the tormented and ravaged Europe that France and Napoleon had left in their wake over the past fifteen years: the hundreds of burned towns and villages; the hundreds of thousands of rapes; the looted cities; the occupied lands; the tortured and murdered citizens; the three million dead European soldiers alone (one million of them French); the destruction of an entire continent’s economy, industry, and trade; and the sowing of international hatred and distrust that in some instances have lasted to this very day.[773]

  In Napoleon’s eyes all his marshals and generals had abandoned him in the end, although he finally excused a few of them. Berthier, whose health had been shattered permanently as a result of the Russian campaign, was a changed man, now over sixty and looking much older. All he wanted was to spend his last days with his German wife and children, away from soldiers, fighting, and Napoleon’s almost daily abuse. Macdonald had stayed to the very end, failing to follow the course of the other “traitors.” As for Caulaincourt, no man had served with greater dedication and loyalty under the most unpleasant of circumstances, until the very last moment. Napoleon could never thank him enough for what he had done, including all through the night and early morning hours of that dreadful April 13.

  As HMS Undaunted left him behind and hove out of the harbor of Portoferraio on May 4, 1814, Napoleon instructed the island’s French governor that he had specially selected Elba “because of its climate and for the gentle ways of its people.” He of course had had no say in the matter of his exile, but that was Napoleon, and in any event, it sounded good. Most of minuscule Elba’s population of 13,700 had come out to greet their new sovereign, the outlawed war criminal, with “Evviva l’Imperatore!” It had a nice ring to it.

  Accompanying him were Gen. Henri Bertrand, who had replaced Christophe Duroc as grand marshal of the palace (although there was no building on this island even remotely resembling a palace, the island itself appearing as a mere dot on the map). Guillaume-Joseph, baron Peyrusse, served as his new treasurer and finance minister, and Gen. Antoine Drouot as war minister, while at the same time replacing the departing French governor. The hapless General Cambronne commanded the nearly thousand-man force the Allies had foolishly allowed Napoleon as protection. Dr. Labi headed the Directory of Domains [state lands and property], and André Pons de l’Hérault managed the island’s iron mines (the main source of state revenue; the Allies, although sworn to provide Napoleon with 2 million francs a year, were never to pay a single centime). The English government had been as good as its word, however, sending the good-natured Col. Sir Neil Campbell to remain with him, to help avert any would-be assassination attempt, and to report back to the Allies on Napoleon’s activities. The Allies would do their best to intercept all mail to and from Napoleon and Europe, including with his own family. His mother and Pauline, his favorite sister, whom some claimed also to be his lover, would soon come to join him permanently.

  Marie-Louise and the king of Rome were whisked off to Vienna and kept virtual prisoners in the Schönbrunn, on Metternich’s particular insistence. As for the rest of the clan, that was a complex issue as they flitted about Europe. No country really wanted anyone bearing the name “Bonaparte” on its territory; they were all to move several times over the next few years. Louis had been allowed to settle temporarily in Lausanne, under heavy police surveillance; and Joseph, thereafter known as the comte de Survilliers, nearby at the castle of Prangins, overlooking Lake Geneva, though ultimately he ended up a resident of the state of New Jersey, much to the surprise of the American people. Jérôme (with Catherine) was chased out of Württemberg by his irate father-in-law, moving to Graz, Austria, for a while. Elisa was even more peripatetic, moving several times before finally settling in Trieste temporarily. Caroline and Joachim Murat were allowed to remain in the royal palace at Naples for the time being, until the following spring, when Murat suddenly declared war on Austria while trying to capture the whole of Italy, only to be defeated. Fleeing to France during Napoleon’s One Hundred Days, he was offered refuge in the wilderness mountains between Grenoble and Sisterone, but he preferred the balmy breezes and palms of Cannes. (Following Napoleon’s second fall in June 1815, the mad Murat attempted to invade Corsica, only to be ejected. Landing in Calabria and proclaiming himself king again, he was ordered by King Ferdinand to be summarily executed by a firing squad, on October 13.) As for Lucien and his wife, Alexandrine, whom he had refused to give up even for a kingdom, they were permitted by the British government to exchange their Shropshire manor house for a sprawling Italian villa, he apparently considered the only “neutral” Bonaparte. Hortense, who had remained temporarily in France and now was known as the Duchess of Saint-Leu, was eventually forced to move to northern Switzerland. Her brother, Prince Eugène, and the lovely Augusta were given permanent refuge by the king of Bavaria, her father.

  On the island there were no women, at least until the arrival later of Pauline. Hortense, whom he dearly missed, was still in mourning at Malmaison. Countess Marie Waleska had come to Fontainebleau at Napoleon’s behest, only to be kept waiting hour after hour, Napoleon then changing his mind and refusing to see her. She had left in tears, without Napoleon either bothering to say good-bye or even to inquire about their son. Had he not risen to such power, it is unlikely that any woman would have been attracted to this emperor whose favorite pastime remained insulting the fair sex in public and in private.

  His new kingdom was not much, a mountainous spot in the sea. He selected as his “palace” the former garrison-cum-court-
cum-windmill, appropriately called I Mulini (the mills), situated some thousand feet above his port-capital of Portoferraio, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The palace was small, and even with the addition of apartments upstairs, where Pauline would later reside, it came to less than a dozen rooms. Madame Mère, with whom he barely got on, would be shunted to a smaller house of her own in a nearby village. Napoleon also acquired a small seaside house at Portolon-gone, “the grange” at San Martino (a gift of Pauline), and he later built a small bungalow atop Mt. Capanna. The island had just a few miles of road, which Napoleon immediately began extending, while improving the facilities of his capital. His other major building project was military in nature — fortifications — for he was still obsessed with the idea that assassins would be landed here, and in fact plots were already being hatched.

  Without money, however, on Elba — “a great refuge for an old fox,” as one soldier dubbed it — Napoleon’s hands were tied. Louis XVIII stated quite openly that he had no intention of sending the annual sum of 2 million francs stipulated by the Allies in the Fontainebleau treaty (signed by everyone, in fact, but the Bourbons). The island’s mines provided him with a total of 607,309 francs annually, and that was it. Apart from the money he brought with him, and the generosity of Pauline, Napoleon had nothing. Sir Neil Campbell wrote angry letters to the Allies, reminding them of their unfulfilled obligations. It was vital, he insisted. “I persist in my opinion that if Napoleon receives the sums stipulated by the treaties, he will remain perfectly contented [at Elba], barring any unforeseen event in Italy or France,” he informed Castlereagh.[774]