Napoleon's Exile

by Patrick Rambaud

  ‘I’m getting old,’ said the Emperor. ‘I need to rest.’

  ‘Old, sire? You’re the same age as me. Come and deliver us from this evil crew of aristocrats, who have started making so much noise, and who are talking of re-establishing feudal laws. The priests have even started calling for tithes.’

  ‘Pamphlets?’

  ‘They’re pouring in from all over the place.’

  ‘Have you brought me any?’

  ‘I have a few in my wallet, but they’re a bit ragged, and they don’t all sing your praises . . .’

  ‘I’m happy to read the pros and cons.’

  ‘You’ve left it a bit late. You should have listened to everyone when you were in a position of strength.’

  ‘Have you read Chateaubriand?’ asked the Emperor, to avoid explaining his behaviour over the past few years.

  ‘Chateaubriand?’ echoed Marceau. ‘Far from loyal, and he’s got it in for you.’

  ‘He’s a genius: the purists don’t like him, but he carries you along.’

  ‘I should like, sire, to be able to carry you along as his style does.’

  ‘Fine. Go and rest. We’ll give you ten thousand francs.’

  ‘Sire, one doesn’t come to the island of Elba for money, unless one has been sent to betray you.’

  Octave was summoned and attended to the messenger, lending him the room in the Mulini Palace that he himself shared with Monsieur Marchand, the first valet (when Octave did not sleep in town with Gianna, ‘on a mission', as he put it). Alone at his window as dawn broke, Napoleon considered the information he’d gleaned over the previous two months - brought to him by travellers or sailors whose tongues were loosened after a few glasses at the Buono Gusto (on whom Octave gave him daily reports), as well as the comments from well-known visitors and articles, however biased, from the foreign newspapers that were translated for him. Piecing everything together, Napoleon was able to form a fairly accurate opinion of France, and pondered it as he looked through the window, admiring the flowers in his little garden.

  In Vienna, at the beginning of autumn, the allies had formed a congress to divide up Europe among their nations; they seemed to be spending their time on trivialities, they gave dances, galas, hunts, but the real work was being done behind the scenes: treaties, promises, deals, threats, lies, verbal agreements, alliances forged and broken. Everyone was taking advantage of the negotiations to increase their influence over their territories. Napoleon knew the kings were dismantling his Empire, but he also knew that this would lead to future wars and quarrels among his adversaries. Did Tsar Alexander want the Duchy of Warsaw; would he try to consolidate a vassal Poland? Austria dreaded this new state when, in Saxony, Prussia was already threatening its borders. England, for its part, was interested in strengthening Prussia as a bulwark against Russia. The powers were lining up in rival clans. Talleyrand, who had been invited as a spectator because he reluctantly found himself in the losers’ camp, played the disinterested witness while at the same time stirring up discord. His sly talent was practised with pleasure, even if France had nothing to say; it had no army now.

  France has no army now,’ Napoleon repeated to himself - but the soldiers who’d returned to civilian life, the prisoners of war who’d been repatriated, all dreamed of his return. The Emperor learned that in the Ain region, working-class gangs were roaming the villages shouting his name and braying Bonapartist chants. That in Rennes a play called The Return of the Lily had been booed and whistled. That St Napoleon’s Day had been celebrated in the Vosges. That in Auxerre, some enthusiasts had walked through the streets with a mannequin of the King in women’s skirts. An architect from Calais, commissioned to build a column commemorating the landing of Louis XVIII, had received an anonymous letter: Tut some trundle-wheels on your column, and it can follow your fat king into exile!’ The garrison soldiers waited dejectedly, keeping tricolour cockades hidden in the bottom of their haversacks. If the marquises who had been appointed as officers forced them to shout ‘Long live the King!', they added in an undertone the words: ‘of Rome'. When playing cards, they called not the king but the ‘pig’ of spades or clubs. Often, in the barracks, trumpets played ‘He will return'. And in the evening, the old soldiers of the Grande Armée raised their glasses to the Absent One.

  *

  ‘Sunday i January 1815. I’m opening a new notebook for the New Year, which was, for reasons of economy, celebrated modestly in the Mulini Palace. What we have at present in our coffers will only last us a year. The Emperor is whittling away at the military funds, has sold his plough horses, cut wages by half, and got rid of the post boat to save 4,200 francs. Despite the priests’ sermons, taxes aren’t coming in as well as they might be, and he has even had to send the gendarmes to some recalcitrant villages. The grenadiers who have chosen to go back to France have a fine certificate to hang on their walls but not a penny in their pockets, and they are being replaced by mercenaries, Hungarians, Tyroleans who’ve come to offer their services, and large numbers of French officers fleeing the royal army: soon we will have more officers than soldiers. The men of the Corsican battalion are deserting, and the Elbans only ever don their uniforms for the Sunday parade, and spend the week in the fields.’

  Then Octave finally jotted down some personal observations, as though he were no longer concerned about malicious glances that might fall upon his notebooks. Thus, on Thursday 5 January, after writing: ‘Yesterday we paid a visit to the forts because vigilance never relaxes now, even though the three French ships disappeared a long time ago’, he added: ‘The more worried the Emperor is in private, the more impulsive he is in public. He is concealing his anxiety behind exaggerated bonhomie, or practical jokes unworthy of his proper rank. As Colonel Campbell brought him the Morning Chronicle, an English periodical unfavourable to the Bourbons, His Majesty adopted a cynical pose, scorning the paper and saying, ‘From now on I want to live as a justice of the peace, Sir Neil. Nothing interests me now as much as my little house, my cattle and my mules.’ As soon as he has an audience, his personality changes. As he puts it, this island is a drum, and you need only strike it to make the sound you wish to hear. On his last outing to the farm of San Martino, because a group of tourists was watching him from a nearby hill, he started running around the vines after some chickens that had escaped from their pen; he knew that the visitors, startled by this unexpected and far from Imperial spectacle, would later tell stories about the Ogre being toothless, and in no fit state to govern an Empire. In the middle of a stroll, out he gets from his barouche, pounces on a ditch full of water, sits down, splashes about, gets back on his feet and asks to travel along the coast in a boat. He does not complain his boots are damp until the evening. Some people think he is going mad, but as soon as he is back in the small circle of his confidants, at the Mulini, he is serious and often irritable.’

  Clearly and bluntly, Octave gave an account of the fits of fury he had witnessed. When, for example, the Emperor learned that the King of France had just issued naturalisation papers to Masséna, because he was born in Nice on Italian territory, the Emperor was livid: ‘These people have lost their minds! After all the Battle of Zurich and the defence of Genoa didn’t naturalize the Prince of Essling!’

  Or else it was Princess Pauline who infuriated her brother. She thought she was doing the right thing in asking His Majesty’s bookseller in Livorno to change his bindings to make his library prettier. She thought, but she thought wrong, and Napoleon was so displeased that he called his guards and had them use their bayonets to rip to shreds some thirty geographical and medical textbooks before his very eyes.

  ‘The Emperor’s life is shrinking', Octave recorded, ‘and as the assassination threats accumulate he barely leaves the Mulini Palace, where he lives a cloistered life. His mood sours over the merest trifles.’

  This dismal climate did not prevent balls and receptions, however, which were to present the outside world with an image of serene and joyful royalty. It was up t
o Bertrand to organize such parties, and more particularly to assess their cost, which the Emperor was to approve. He brought his big accounts book and some invoices to the study for a signature of approval. Napoleon studied them in detail, crossed out some expenses and corrected others.

  ‘Sunday evening, sire ...’

  ‘Mustn’t cost more than a thousand francs.’

  ‘Just the refreshments we agreed before ...’

  ‘Get rid of the ice cream.’

  ‘The buffet...’

  ‘Not before midnight, in the town hall. The guests aren’t going to spend a whole evening nibbling away at our supplies!’

  ‘If Your Majesty would care to look at the guest list...’

  ‘Vicentini? No,’ said the Emperor, glancing through the list. ‘He takes advantage, that one does, he stuffs himself and costs us a fortune for nothing.’

  ‘He’ll sulk ...’

  ‘Find a mission for him, Bertand, get him away from the Mulini on the day of this damned party.’

  ‘I’ll come up with something...’

  ‘Baroness Skupinsky?’

  ‘Not her, sire, she’s, the wife of a Polish commander. She’ll dance a fandango at the end of the party, as she always does. It’s very amusing and it doesn’t cost us a penny.’

  ‘And that? What’s that?’

  ‘The invitation card, Sire.’

  ‘Remove that idiotic phrase!’

  ‘Which one, sire?’

  ‘Sovereign of the island of Elba.’

  ‘To put what in its place?’

  ‘The Emperor invites you, etc., etc. That’s sober and less ridiculous. And what about this invoice?’

  ‘Ah, the invoice is something else, sire. Her Highness the Princess Pauline has had eight blinds put up in her drawing-room.’

  ‘Sixty francs?’

  ‘She supplied the fabric, but making and installing them cost sixty-two francs.’

  ‘That expense isn’t within the budget, the Princess can pay it herself. Ha? Look who’s here.’

  Monsieur Pons was crossing the garden, and in a moment would present himself before the Emperor, who said to Bertrand, ‘You can give him his invitation, it will be one less to carry.’

  Monsieur Pons de l’Hérault’s face looked different. A man of strong convictions, he thought only in terms of black and white. After remaining hostile to the tyrant for a long time, the Emperor’s familiarity and trust had turned him into a fervent Bonapartist, and now he was worried.

  ‘Do you know, sire, what they are chattering about in town?’

  ‘A lot of old nonsense!’

  The Emperor gestured to Bertrand, who slipped out with his files to leave Napoleon in a tête-à-tête with his devoted administrator, who had difficulty finding his words.

  ‘Well, sire, they’re saying that at the Congress, in Vienna, our enemies are trying to remove you from the coasts of Europe, to take you away from Elba and put you on some incredible island . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  From letters sent by his brothers sewn into the lining of a messenger’s clothes, Napoleon had learned that Talleyrand was demanding that the Emperor be deported to the Azores or the Antilles, or worse, to St Helena, as some English travellers had specified. The Emperor had immediately done some research. St Helena was a wind-battered, fog-bound, volcanic rock between Africa and Brazil, far from the normal maritime routes. A tomb. Pons asked in a faint voice: ‘So it’s true?’

  ‘Yes, but they won’t do it.’

  ‘St Helena, sire, I’ve looked it up in my books, and it’s an island shat out by the devil!’

  ‘I can hold out here for two years, and anything can happen in two years.’

  The Emperor mentioned the treaty that the King of France was refusing to respect, the subsidies he was refusing to pay in order to starve his enemy; this attitude was a declaration of war: by betraying his word, he said, the King was putting the Emperor back on the throne, and suddenly, mid-sentence, he asked:

  ‘Were you a sailor, Pons?’

  ‘In the Republic, you know that.’

  ‘I have a mission for you.’

  ‘Sire, I thank you for your trust. . .’

  ‘Don’t say a word about it.’

  ‘I will be silent as the grave.’

  ‘Without saying a word to anyone, you will organize an expeditionary flotilla.’

  ‘An expeditionary flotilla? With my barges?’

  ‘You put ore on them, why not men? And you’ll find other boats to fit out.’

  Monsieur Pons withdrew, puffed up with his mission. He imagined landing in Italy, where Napoleon was considered as a potential saviour in the major regions, where patriots were working to turn public opinion in his favour. Throughout the whole of the peninsula, Austria had revived the smaller states the better to control him, but some of those states were resisting the occupying forces. Murat did not bow, but he knew he was threatened. His Kingdom of Naples was to revert to the Bourbons, whose police were printing pamphlets presenting him variously as a commis chef, a cut-throat, a butcher, and the man who shot the Duke of Enghien. Even if his sniggering wife Caroline, the Emperor’s sister, was backing Austria because Prince Metternich had been her lover, Murat still felt isolated. Talleyrand’s support? He would have had to pay him, but how much, and with what? So Murat became Napoleon’s subject once more. Was Napoleon going to land in Naples? Pons wondered.

  *

  Octave was doing his rounds as the Emperor came back to his bedroom in the Mulini Palace. Each evening Octave cursed because of a door that hadn’t been properly closed, or guards who were missing from one side of the fortifications. Now he leaned over the parapet and studied the piles of rocks at the bottom of the cliff: no sentry there, despite his recommendations, and a rope ladder and a grappling iron would be enough for killers to climb up from the sea unseen, tiptoe across the garden, and disperse around the drawing-rooms to attack first the guards and then the Emperor in his bed. Octave immediately put his mattress outside, on the ground in the promenade gallery, beneath the windows of the Imperial bedroom.

  One January morning, he was pulled from sleep by a raging gale. He got up. Because of a thick mist he couldn’t see six feet in front of him, but he heard the gusts, the foliage being blown about, a clattering shutter, orange-trees being toppled by the gale. Huge waves crashed against the walls and rained back down on the terrace. Octave listened hard, and discerned a loud report amid all the hubbub, but it wasn’t the rumble of thunder; it was crisper than that, and repeated at almost regular intervals. It sounded like a cannon. Doubled over by the squall, he walked to the edge of the fortifications. The noise was coming from the sea: a ship in distress was signalling for help. The mist faded away, the sky brightened. Lashed by gusts of wind, Octave clung to the stones of the parapet. He could just make out the shape of a brig washed up on a beach in the bay of Bagnajo. Lying on its side, battered by malevolent waves, one of the ship’s masts was dislodged or broken, its sails in shreds. Napoleon had heard the cannon too, and he now, in his dressing-gown, a knotted madras scarf on his head, and a pair of opera-glasses in his hand, joined Octave.

  ‘A ship in distress, sire! But take care! The wind is very strong!’

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  With his hair in his eyes and his coat flapping around like a cape, Octave relinquished his grip on the parapet. He tried get the unsteady Emperor to crouch close to the ground lest he be blown over, but His Majesty refused, protesting that he wanted to go straight there, and back he went along the walls, bent so low that he was almost on all fours. Inside the palace he dressed and, before the gale subsided, jumped on his horse and galloped towards the wreck with a platoon of his grenadiers.

  Below, dozens of Elbans were at work, fishermen, soldiers, miners. They couldn’t put in their boats, because high and powerful waves tipped them over or threw them back on to the shore.

  At that moment, the Emperor recognized the ship with its sides thrashed b
y the crashing sea: it was the Inconstant. Issuing orders with hands and voice, yelling himself hoarse, Napoleon ordered that ropes be thrown - but how? On the overturned ship half-naked sailors, constantly tossed about by the wind and the sea, were trying to save their passengers and help them to the shore, but those boats that had not been smashed already were wedged immovably against the upturned hull. As the squall finally began to ease, the rescuers prepared to tackle the wreck, although her planks were groaning, and she was still being lashed by a heavy sea. One man fell shivering on his knees on the beach and thanked them. On some flat rocks, the Emperor spotted Monsieur Pons, whose miners were scaling the wrecked ship. He approached him.

  ‘Does this sad picture pierce your heart?’

  ‘I would say that I’m choking back my anger, sire. If you hadn’t appointed that fool Taillade as captain, your brig would be safe in the roads of Portoferraio.’

  ‘You’re getting as cross about Taillade as Monsieur Sénécal does.’

  ‘He’s incompetent and corrupt! I’ve just learned some amazing things about him from some of the passengers whose lives we’ve saved. Taillade has gone on holiday to Corsica, and had dinner there with one of Bruslart’s aides-de-camp . . .’

  ‘Pfft! He’s more of an idiot than a danger.’

  ‘Idiots are always dangerous, sire!’

  The sea grew calmer, although the waves were still grumbling offshore. Harbour pilots arrived to tow away the wreckage.

  ‘Give me your opinion, Pons. How long will it take us to raise it?’

  ‘If the hull isn’t broken, about three weeks.’

  ‘Make sure that the hull is intact, oversee the work, stay within your time limit. And you will have the Inconstant repainted in black and white.’

  ‘Like an English merchant ship?’

  *

  Princess Pauline acted as a screen. Napoleon needed her lightness to hide his angers, his worries, his fears for the future. Everyone felt sorry for Paoletta, who was in poor health; previously a regular visitor to spa resorts, she nevertheless persisted in a state of morbid languor even though she had nothing in particular to worry about: she was wealthy, and no one wanted her dead. She wished only to amuse herself and, for the duration of a quadrille, she radiated wit and vivacity. The Emperor had put her in charge of entertainments, so she rehearsed little comedies in the old Mulini barn, organized concerts of flutes and fifes which were attended by the fashionable people of the island. Young lieutenants argued over her, billing and cooing (but none of them got into her bed, since the rooms of the palace were so noisy and all intercommunicated. Even where love affairs were concerned, a minimum of discretion was required so that gossips did not circulate bawdy rumours). The old soldiers of the Guard called her Paoletta and adored her: the tourists admired her when she took a gondola around the gulf or passed through the town lying in a palanquin, the Elbans loved her from the moment she opened a ball by inviting poor, clumsy Cambronne to dance, and had been amused to watch the General trying not to crush her pink silk ballet shoes.