They met no resistance until they reached Laffrey on 7 March, where they found the road barred by infantry. Napoleon rode forward and addressed the soldiers. He was answered with silence, so he unbuttoned his grey coat and, baring his breast, challenged them to shoot, at which, encouraged by his grenadiers who had stepped forward and started cheering, the royal troops burst into shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’3
A larger force drawn up outside Grenoble would have presented a greater obstacle had it not been for Colonel La Bédoyère leading his regiment over to Napoleon’s side. The royalist commander of Grenoble closed the gates of the city, but they were hacked open by workers, who ushered Napoleon in to a delirious welcome. At Lyon the populace tore down the barricades blocking the bridges and led him into the city in triumph. From then on the eagle did fly on to Paris with astonishing speed. Ney, who had been sent out to capture Napoleon and had solemnly promised Louis XVIII to bring him back in a cage, realised that his troops were wavering and, swayed by the prevailing mood, joined his former master.
By 20 March Napoleon was at Fontainebleau. At Essonnes later that day he was met by Caulaincourt and a multitude of officers and men who had driven out of Paris or from the surrounding area. The previous night Louis XVIII had left the Tuileries and fled for the Belgian frontier. As the news spread, supporters of the emperor came out all over the capital and the tricolour flag was hoisted on the palace and other public buildings. As Napoleon raced on to Paris his former staff and servants took over the Tuileries, so that by the time he arrived at nine o’clock that evening all was ready, and the salons were thronged with members of his erstwhile court. When he alighted, he had difficulty in making his way through the waiting crowd. As he mounted the staircase to repossess the palace, he closed his eyes and a smile lit up his face.4
Within an hour of reaching the Tuileries he was working in his study with Cambacérès and Maret, putting together a new government. He had some difficulty in persuading his old ministers to take up their jobs again, as most of them were feeling their age and were tired out by what they had been through. The memory of the uncertainties of 1814 was still fresh, and when they heard of his landing, some, like Pasquier and Molé, despaired for France, foreseeing more of the same. But most let themselves be swayed by the old charm. Daru, reluctant at first, soon melted. ‘I felt I was back in my world, where my memories and my affections lay,’ he recalled. ‘At no other moment had I felt more affection, more devotion for the emperor.’ But some, like Macdonald, resisted despite repeated efforts by Napoleon.5
Cambacérès agreed to serve as minister of justice, Maret took up again as secretary of state, Caulaincourt (under severe pressure) as foreign minister, Carnot took the ministry of the interior, Davout that of the army, Decrès resumed his old post at the navy, as did Gaudin and Mollien at finance and the treasury respectively. Napoleon appointed Fouché minister of police, with Savary and Réal briefed to keep an eye on him. ‘It was an extraordinary sight to see things put back in their place so quickly,’ reflected Savary. When he called on the evening of the next day, Lavalette felt as though he had gone back ten years in time; it was eleven o’clock at night, Napoleon had just had a hot bath and put on his usual uniform, and was talking to his ministers.6
But the appearances did not hold up for long. When the legislative bodies came to present their addresses of loyalty on 26 March, Miot de Melito, now a member of the Council of State, noticed that ‘the faces were sad, anxiety was etched on every feature, and there was general embarrassment’. The enthusiasm caused by the unexpected and almost miraculous return of Napoleon subsided, as, in the words of Lavalette, ‘it was not so much that people wanted the emperor; it was just that they no longer wanted the Bourbons’. Napoleon realised this. ‘My dear,’ he replied when Mollien congratulated him on his remarkable return to power, ‘don’t bother with compliments; they let me come just as they let the other lot leave.’ Few felt much confidence in the future.7
Taking in hand the administration of the country presented a formidable challenge. Napoleon’s authority did not reach far outside the mairie in many areas, and not even there in the north and west, where royalist sentiment was strong. In the Midi, the king’s nephew the duc d’Angoulême gathered 10,000 troops and national guards and marched on Lyon. He was forced to capitulate by Marshal Grouchy on 8 April and allowed to leave the country, but civil war simmered below the surface. In these circumstances, raising men for the army and funds to equip it would not be easy – Louis XVIII had emptied the coffers, leaving only two and a half million francs in the treasury.
Napoleon was no longer the man to galvanise the nation. He was forty-five years old and not well; his physical condition had been aggravated by haemorrhoids and perhaps other ailments. He had grown fat and had slowed down. ‘Great tendency to sleep, result of his illness,’ noted Lucien, who had turned up in Paris to support his brother. Napoleon himself admitted to being surprised that he had found the energy to leave Elba at all. ‘I did not find the emperor I had known in the old days,’ noted Miot de Melito after a long interview. ‘He was anxious. That confidence which used to sound in his speech, that tone of authority, that loftiness of thought that was manifest in his words and in his gestures, had vanished; he already seemed to feel the hand of adversity which would soon weigh down on him, and he no longer appeared to believe in his destiny.’ Most noticed the change, and it did not inspire confidence; all they could see was a small, fat, anxious man with an absent look and hesitant gestures.8
His hesitancy was partly a consequence of his not being able to find the right persona to adopt and image to project, as he had so successfully done on his returns from Italy and Egypt, after Tilsit and even following the disaster of 1812. He now had to be all things to all men. He left the Tuileries, which required a large maison and formal etiquette, both of which were expensive and inappropriate; Letizia, Fesch, Joseph, Lucien and Jérôme had all turned up to support the family business, but were given no formal status. He moved into the Élysée Palace, where he was freer to see whom he wished without the complications of a large court. His only regular company was his family, a few of the more faithful ministers, and Bertrand. He saw Hortense frequently, and soon after his return called in Dr Corvisart to enquire about Josephine’s illness and last moments. These less formal surroundings made it easier for him to engage the support of people he had previously disdained. He was more affable than in the past, and, according to Hortense, more open, extending a warm welcome to anyone who wished to see him, even to the extent of receiving Sieyès. He expressed his regret at having alienated Germaine de Staël, in the hope that she might rally to him.9
In the course of his march on Paris, aside from the army and former soldiers, those greeting him with the greatest enthusiasm were those most offended by Bourbon rule. From Lyon, where he paused, he had decreed the abolition of the two legislative chambers set up by the Bourbons, proscribed all émigrés who had returned with them, announced the confiscation of lands recovered by them, and voiced phrases about stringing up nobles and priests from lamp-posts. This won him support among former Jacobins and republicans. But galvanising the revolutionary masses flew in the face of his wish and need to keep on his side the nobles and former émigrés whom he had involved in his ‘fusion’, and it also opened up the prospect of a return to the civil war that had ravaged the country before he came to power in 1799. He felt he must enlist the support of all those moderate republicans and constitutional monarchists he had consistently bullied and pushed aside. In order to achieve that, he must bring in a new constitution.
To this end, he invited his former critic Benjamin Constant, who enjoyed a strong following and a Europe-wide reputation as a moderate liberal. Their collaboration was not an easy one; Constant noted that in conversation Napoleon displayed libertarian instincts, yet when it came to the question of power, he stuck to his old views that the only way of getting anything done was through variants of dictatorship. ‘I do not hate libe
rty,’ Napoleon told him. ‘I brushed it aside when it got in my way, but I understand it, as I was nourished on it.’ Constant was frustrated by his contradictory instincts and the continual swings they produced; Napoleon was still marked by the influence of Rousseau and his admiration for Robespierre.10
He intended the new constitution to derive from the imperial one, in order to ensure continuity and give it what he considered to be a deeper legitimacy. It therefore took the form of an ‘Additional Act’ to it, passed on 23 April. This was a compromise, which had the unfortunate effect of provoking a public debate (liberty of the press had been restored) that opened up the old animosities he had sought to reconcile since 1799. The elections, held in May, satisfied no one. Turnout was little over 40 per cent, and the new hierarchy Napoleon had sought to create with his fusion did not triumph. No more than 20 per cent voted in the plebiscite to endorse the Additional Act.11
Napoleon attempted to galvanise the nation through a ‘Champ de mai’, a version of the Federation of 1790, held on 1 June on the Champ de Mars in front of the École Militaire where he had been a cadet, watched by some 200,000 spectators. It was a ceremony in the mould of the old revolutionary festivals, with a stand for the dignitaries, graded seating for the members of the two chambers and other bodies of state, and an altar of the fatherland. But in attempting to also associate it with ceremonies of allegiance held by Charlemagne and the Capetian kings, he struck a false note. He arrived in a state coach drawn by eight horses, accompanied by his brothers, who, having no constitutional status, appeared as members of a royal family. He had designed fantastic costumes for them; they were decked out in white velvet tunics with lace frills and velvet bonnets surmounted by plumes (Lucien had protested vociferously before agreeing to wear it). Napoleon himself was encased in a similar costume, pink with gold embroidery, so tight he could hardly walk, and weighed down by an ermine-lined purple cloak.
The ceremony opened with a mass, with too many priests, after which Napoleon made a speech in which he hinted that he would recover France’s ‘natural frontiers’, and assured his people that his honour, glory and happiness were synonymous with those of France, enjoining them to make the greatest efforts for the good of the motherland. He then swore to abide by the constitution. A Te Deum was sung, after which he proceeded to distribute eagles to the regiments, and the ceremony ended with a parade, the only part the spectators enjoyed. He had failed to galvanise anyone. ‘It was no longer the Bonaparte of Egypt and Italy, the Napoleon of Austerlitz or even of Moscow!’ noted one observer. ‘His faith in himself had died.’ So had that of the crowd: for every ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ there were ten ‘Vive la Garde Imperiale!’12
On his return to Paris, Napoleon had written to all the monarchs of Europe announcing that he was by the will of the people the new ruler of France, that he accepted the frontiers fixed by the Treaty of Paris of 1814, that he renounced any claims he might have previously made, and that all he wanted was to live in peace. He followed this up with personal letters to Alexander and Francis, and to Marie-Louise, asking her to join him. Hortense, who had been befriended by the tsar when he was in Paris in 1814, also wrote to Alexander supporting Napoleon. Caulaincourt wrote to Metternich assuring him of France’s peaceful intentions. In an attempt to endear himself to the British, Napoleon abolished the slave trade.13
The news of his escape from Elba had sown astonishment and terror among the representatives of the Great Powers gathered at the congress in Vienna. With less than a thousand soldiers, he should have been no match for Louis XVIII’s army of 150,000. But within hours of hearing the news they began mustering their forces: 50,000 Austrians in Italy; 200,000 Austrians, Bavarians, Badenese and Württembergers on the upper Rhine; 150,000 Prussians further north; 100,000 Anglo-Dutch in Belgium; and, on the march from Poland, up to 200,000 Russians. The reappearance of Napoleon had re-established a solidarity which had been fraying in the course of the congress.14
Talleyrand, now foreign minister of Louis XVIII representing France in Vienna, was quick to realise that if Napoleon were to reach Paris and become ruler of France, there would be no legal basis for the Powers to do anything about it, unless he were to make a hostile move. If the allies were to accept this new status quo, Talleyrand’s career would be over. He therefore prepared the text of a declaration which he proposed the plenipotentiaries of the Powers should make, according to which by leaving Elba Napoleon had broken his only legal right to exist, and was therefore an outlaw and fair game for anyone to kill. Metternich and others protested at such a drastic step, but after much heated argument, an amended text was adopted. While it stopped short of sanctioning his murder, it did declare Napoleon to be outside the law, and closed the door to any negotiations.15
Fouché was also a worried man. He had hedged his bets while serving Louis XVIII by setting up a conspiracy among the military to bring Napoleon back from Elba. He had hoped Napoleon would make him foreign minister but accepted the ministry of police, which he would exploit to his own ends. Using his contacts in England, he sounded out the chances of the British cabinet agreeing to leave Napoleon in power, at the same time negotiating asylum for himself were he to need it. He also persuaded his old Jacobin friend Pierre Louis Guingené, now living in Geneva and in close contact with Alexander’s old tutor the philosopher César de la Harpe, to write to the tsar. Guingené had been purged from the Tribunate by Napoleon, but like many like-minded colleagues, he now saw in Napoleon the only hope for France. ‘Oppressed, humiliated, debased by the Bourbons, France has greeted Napoleon as a liberator,’ he wrote to Alexander. ‘Only he can pull it out of the abyss. What other name could one put in place of his? May those of the allies who are most capable of it reflect on this and attempt to address this question in good faith.’16
Fouché had been approached by an agent of a Viennese banking house at the behest of Metternich, who had been growing increasingly alarmed at Russian interference in European affairs and the lack of a reliable ally on the Continent to stand up to it – he had always sought one in France. He did not like war, and was not happy at the prospect of a huge Russian army marching through Central Europe while Austrian forces were engaged in Italy and France. He also knew that Alexander, who had never liked the Bourbons and had grown to despise them, might wish to take the opportunity to replace Napoleon with someone of his own choosing.
The invitation for both sides to meet at an inn in Basel was intercepted, and Napoleon substituted his own agent for Fouché’s. What transpired from this and subsequent meetings was that Austria and Russia might be prepared to treat with Napoleon on condition he abdicate in favour of his son. It might not have been what Napoleon wanted, although it was an opportunity to retrieve something from a venture that was beginning to appear doomed. But Napoleon had learned nothing from his experiences; in this tiny ray of hope he saw great promise, reading into Metternich’s tentative offer a sign of weakness. If the allies were split and no longer felt sure of themselves, then he would not step down and accept humiliating terms, he would play for higher stakes. He therefore cut short the negotiations and resolved to stand firm.17
‘I have been too fond of war, I will fight no more,’ Napoleon said to Pontécoulant on his return from Elba, but the man who had helped launch him on his military career believed he had not changed, and that ‘war was still his dominant passion’. Part of him undoubtedly would have preferred to be left in peace, and he made similar pacific statements to others. He admitted to Benjamin Constant that he had been lured by ambition, but said he now only wanted to lift France from her state of oppression. But war loomed, whether he liked it or not.18
France faced invasion by a formidable array of enemies, which suggested two possible courses of action for Napoleon: either assuming dictatorial powers and using them to regiment the country into an efficient military machine, or harking back to 1792 and calling out the nation in arms. That was something he recoiled from. He trusted in his army, which he liked to believe was
as good as ever and burning to fight. This was true of subaltern officers and the older men of the lower ranks, but not at the top. The marshals had not opposed him because they could not be bothered to fight for the Bourbons (only Marmont, Victor and Macdonald followed Louis XVIII into exile). That did not mean they could be bothered to fight for him, particularly in what looked like a lost cause. Typical was Masséna, commanding the region of Marseille, who had not lifted a finger to stop Napoleon but was living in a state of semi-retirement and just wanted to be left in peace. Most of them tried to avoid service, on either side. Much the same was true among the generals and senior officers, who were not wholly committed to Napoleon and merely went with the flow. Even where there was enthusiasm and devotion to Napoleon, there was no longer the dash of youth to support it.19
He also robbed himself of a major asset in not calling on Murat, who had washed up in the south of France at the end of May. Fearing that the allies at the congress in Vienna were going to depose him, Murat had seized the opportunity offered by Napoleon’s escape from Elba to march out and proclaim his intention of uniting Italy, calling on all Italian patriots to join him. Few did, and he was defeated by the Austrians at the beginning of April. He fled to France while Caroline took refuge on a British ship in the bay of Naples, from whose deck she listened to the crowds acclaiming the Bourbons returning from Sicily. Murat had betrayed Napoleon more than once, but at this stage he could do no damage, and his presence on the battlefield would have been a considerable asset.
According to Maret, Napoleon considered two possible plans. ‘One consisted in remaining on the defensive, that is to say letting the enemy invade France and to manoeuvre in such a way as to take advantage of his mistakes. The other was to take the offensive [against the allied armies concentrating] in Belgium and then act as circumstances suggested.’ Maret claimed that Napoleon wanted to adopt the first, but all the civilians invited to express an opinion were opposed to this, warning that the Chamber of Representatives would not support him in it.20
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