by Mark Braude
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HE HAD BEEN CALLED COWARD!
CAMPBELL RETURNED TO ELBA on December 3 and confirmed Ricci’s report that soldiers had loaded the Inconstant with guns and shells removed from the Porto Longone citadel. Campbell figured that Napoleon had realized there was little reward in maintaining fortifications relatively far from his capital and wanted to sell off whatever materiel he could spare. He’d just sold a building in Porto Longone that had been used as a barracks, for a mere fifteen hundred francs, and had discharged some of his servants, which Campbell interpreted as more evidence that he’d put himself on a tighter budget, like a retiree who finally accepts that he can no longer live in the same manner as during his most productive years.
During another talk at the Mulini, Napoleon asked if Campbell had seen the newspapers calling for him to be divorced from Marie Louise, to which he said that he’d read something along those lines but only in some “foreign papers,” which were always full of lies. He tried to cheer up Napoleon by saying that he’d heard during his recent travels that when the Princess of Wales complemented Marie Louise on her skill at music, she said she’d studied especially to please her husband. The story only seemed to sadden Napoleon, who complained to Campbell about how his capricious wife had broken her promise to write him every day after her time at the spa, and about his father-in-law, who had taken the King of Rome from him “like the children taken by conquerors in ancient times to grace their triumphs.” He told Campbell he would have done better to have married one of the Romanov girls.
As always, he tried to get some sense of how Louis XVIII was faring in France, adding that “the French knew what he had done for them” and then listing how much money he’d brought into the country and all the public works projects he’d started, which he said “were now ascribed to his predecessors. Before him there wasn’t a sewer in all the streets of Paris. . . . Posterity would do him justice.” He told Campbell he was tired of being abused in the papers and of having the words of Nero and Brutus applied to him; he ranted about Talleyrand, that “villain, a defrocked priest,” who he said would prove to be no more loyal to his king than he’d been to his emperor.
Campbell suggested that Napoleon might plead his case in the court of public opinion by following up on the promise he’d heard him make at Fontainebleau to write his memoirs in exile. He even offered to act as a kind of literary agent, saying that he “had received many letters from booksellers in London, totally unknown to me, expressing great anxiety on the subject. One in particular, who had published his brother Lucien’s poem of ‘Charlemagne,’ wished to propose terms.” Campbell wrote that Napoleon answered, “Yes, I shall publish my ‘Memoirs,’ but they won’t be very long.”
But literary dreams offered only momentary distraction. Napoleon was soon back to railing against his enemies. He rehashed the fall of Paris, saying that his men at Fontainebleau had been only a day’s march away from the capital and that if he’d seized the moment and attacked they would have taken it back easily. He could, he said, have carried on the war for years and his people would have continued to follow him. The worst of it, according to Campbell, parroting Napoleon, was that “he had been called coward! ‘I say nothing of my life as a soldier. Is it no proof of my courage to live here, shut up in this shack of a house, separated from the world, with no interesting occupation, no men of learning with me.’” And yet he said he harbored no regrets about abdicating and would do the same again, all in the name of protecting France. The rest of the night’s talk was dedicated to retracing his biography, “at great length . . . from the beginning of the Revolution, and with more fire and precision than usual.”
Afterward, Campbell wrote to Castlereagh that
if the means of subsistence which he was led to expect on coming to Elba are given to him, he will remain here in perfect tranquility, unless some great opening should present itself in Italy or France. He does not dissemble his opinion as to the latter, in regard to the present temper of the people, and what may be expected hereafter.
In the meantime, Campbell promised to “keep a lookout upon all vessels belonging to this island,” and produced a detailed list of all the ships under Napoleon’s command. He next wrote to Burghersh to assure him that any recent reports about Napoleon’s planning to return to the mainland had been overblown, because aside from worrying about Marie Louise he seemed very satisfied with life on Elba. “The more I see of him the more I am convinced of this. He is in good health and spirits!”
WINTER
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A LAST GOODBYE
A FEW WEEKS AFTER her twenty-third birthday, Marie Louise addressed a letter “To His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon at Portoferraio” and dated it January 3, 1815. It was the first time she’d written to her husband since leaving Aix-les-Bains in the summer. She gave the letter to her father to send on to Elba:
My Darling, it seems a hundred years since I was last able to write to you, or received any letters from you, then suddenly my father produced your dear letter from November 20. I felt a great weight lifted from my heart when I heard that you were well and did not doubt all my love for you. I can imagine how troubled you must have been at not getting news of your son or of me for such a long time. I know just what it feels like, from the anxiety which fills my own heart when I’m left for months at a time without a single scrap of news from you and without knowing whether you are well. I hope this year will be a happier one for you. At least you’ll be at peace in your island, and will live there happily for many, many years, to the joy of all who love you and who are, as I am, deeply devoted to you.
Your son sends you a kiss and begs me to wish you a happy New Year and to tell you he loves you with all his heart. He often talks about you, and is growing taller and stronger in the most astonishing fashion. He had been rather out of sorts this winter. I at once consulted Frank, who completely reassured me by saying they were only passing bouts of fever, indeed he recovered almost immediately. He’s beginning to know Italian fairly well and is learning German too. My father is treating him with the greatest kindness and affection, he appears to love him devotedly and spends a great deal of time playing with him. He is heaping kindnesses upon me too, in fact all my family are treating me with the utmost affection and going out of their way to make me forget all our misfortunes.
Hardly a day passes without my going to see my father, who often asks whether I have heard from you. It is he who had undertaken to send this letter to Portoferraio with the help of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. If it reaches you safely, I do most earnestly beg you always to use this channel of communication. I’ll take advantage of it too, then at least I’ll know how you are.
My health is completely restored. The waters, the Swiss climate and the mountain air have had a really wonderful effect on it. I’ve put on a lot of weight and feel none the worse for the bitterly cold weather we’ve been having for some time now. I’m living an extremely secluded life at Schönbrunn, befitting my personal inclinations and my position so long as the allied sovereigns remain here. I hardly ever see more than 3 or 4 people in the evenings. We have a little music, or I chat by my fireside. Please remember me to Madame and to Princess Pauline. Write to me soon. Once again I wish you a happy New Year and send you a loving kiss.
Louise
Napoleon never saw the letter. Marie Louise never wrote to him again.
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THE SADNESS OF MY RETIREMENT
CAMPBELL RETURNED TO ELBA in late December after another brief trip to Florence, where he’d learned that the Austrian commissioner Koller was heading from Vienna toward Elba for some unknown reason. At the Mulini, Napoleon asked Campbell what he thought of Koller’s impending visit. Did it mean his wife and child would finally be allowed to join him? Or could it mean the allies had finally arranged to ship him off somewhere else? Campbell had no idea what to make of it.
Campbell could sense that a distance was gr
owing between Napoleon and himself. “He has gradually estranged himself from me, and various means are taken to show me that my presence is disagreeable. Of this, however, I could not be certain for a long time, as it was done by hints which could not well be noticed.” When Lord Ebrington had come to Elba a few weeks earlier he was invited to dine at the Mulini, but Campbell, who had always been asked to join in meals with British visitors, received no invitation:
[This] was intended as a marked slight, for the purpose of inducing me to quit Elba entirely. But, always expecting the Congress to be brought to an end, I have resolved to make the sacrifice of my own feelings until that event, occasionally going to Livorno, Florence, and the baths at Lucca for my health and amusement, as well as to compare my observations here with the information of authorities on the Continent and the French Consul at Livorno. My return always gives me an opportunity of asking for an interview with Napoleon, to pay my respects. Of late he has evidently wished to surround himself with great forms of court, as well to preserve his own consequence in the eyes of the Italians as to keep me at distance; for I could not transgress on these without the probability of an insult, or the proffer of servile adulation inconsistent with my sentiments.
Over the next weeks Campbell began devoting less and less space in his journal to the details of his assignment. He recorded little by way of direct observation, relying mostly on secondhand chatter, and his letters to colleagues and superiors shrank to a few sentences each. In one, in which he thanked Mariotti for sending some newspapers, he wrote that the distraction had helped “diminish the sadness of my retirement.”
He received word from the Foreign Office refusing his request to be stationed somewhere on the continent close to Elba. Yet he would manage to spend about as much time that winter away from the island as he did at his post.
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THE (NEAR) WRECK OF THE INCONSTANT
IT SNOWED ON PORTOFERRAIO in the first week of the new year. Just as no one had been able to recall a hotter summer, nor could anyone remember ever having seen a bigger snowfall. Some of the more superstitious Elbans attributed the odd weather patterns to Napoleon’s presence among them.
The squall hit just as Captain Taillade had been piloting the Inconstant back from Civitavecchia, returning empty-handed from a trade run because the port’s merchants had orders from the pope not to deal with Napoleon’s representatives. Before sailing, Taillade had lost his valise during a dockside donnybrook orchestrated by Civitavecchia’s portmaster, who sought evidence of what he believed to be Napoleon’s forthcoming attack on the Holy See. The valise held a letter from Bertrand advising an unnamed confederate to prepare for a message that would be transmitted verbally by a Corsican tax official at some later date, which inflamed the portmaster’s fears of impending intrigue. After riffling through a shipment of books bound for Portoferraio, he also discovered an unsigned letter addressed to Bertrand advising him to read volume 127, and tucked into the volume in question he found letters from Murat to Napoleon and Pauline Bonaparte. They were brief and divulged nothing scandalous—Murat stressed to Pauline that she should say nothing about Napoleon in her reply, and his standoffish message to his brother-in-law said only that his family sent good tidings and that he heard Napoleon’s wife and son were in good health—but they were the first real signs of direct communication between Napoleon and the king of Naples, despite their public feud. The portmaster would have arrested Captain Taillade on the spot if he’d thought he could have done so without causing an international incident.
The Inconstant and its crew were left undisturbed by the Tuscan authorities only to be assailed by a powerful easterly gale that blew the ship so far off its intended course that it wound up past the northern tip of Corsica. Taillade finally secured a firm anchorage just off Saint-Florent, though this put him within firing range of Corsican guns.
Taillade elected to stay anchored in this unlikely position for more than a week, later claiming that he’d wanted to wait out the foul weather while repairing some rigging and that he’d judged that particular anchorage the safest place to do so. Taillade would never adequately address the later accusations that several Corsicans made contact with the Inconstant while it was moored off the coast, or that he spoke in clipped English (he had once been a British prisoner of war) with some of these visitors to keep their conversations from being understood by his second in command, an officer named Jean François Chautard. It’s unclear how seriously, if at all, Taillade flirted with switching allegiances during this time. On January 10 he abruptly decided to leave Corsica and guided the Inconstant back toward Elba despite fierce winds blowing sleet and snow.
It took two backbreaking days of sailing to get the ship close to Portoferraio. On the night of January 12, in choppy water, Taillade navigated the narrows between the lighthouse atop Fort Stella and the skerry a few hundred meters to its north, Lo Scoglietto (the Little Rock), sailing dangerously by the lee in the darkness. The Inconstant got caught in irons, stalled by oncoming winds, and was eventually blown westward at speed across the harbor toward a jagged beach. Taillade dropped two anchors, but they failed to hold. He fired a cannon shot in distress. The Inconstant ran aground.
Napoleon woke to alarm bells and reached the beach just as the first rays of sunlight came through the dark clouds. He saw the abandoned Inconstant pounded by waves and tangled in its rigging. The storm lifted just long enough for the crew to rush back on board and toss some guns and heavy cargo to save the ship from sinking. After a cursory investigation, Drouot officially blamed Taillade for “incapacity and peculation” and demoted him, though he would remain in Napoleon’s service. Command of the Inconstant passed to the inexperienced Chautard.
Writing a few days later, Campbell reported that “some persons say that Napoleon suspects [Taillade] of a secret understanding with the existing Government of France, and of a wish to destroy the brig.” And yet according to Peyrusse’s memoirs, Napoleon himself had planned the grounding of the Inconstant, as a way to provide cover for it to be outfitted for his escape while appearing to be under repair. But this seems doubtful. Even a master sailor couldn’t have been certain the Inconstant would survive a mock shipwreck, and Taillade was no master. To risk destroying the surest means of connecting Elba to the continent would have been foolishly bold. The near sinking of the Inconstant was more likely an accident, and if so, might have provided the final push that Napoleon needed to decide on quitting Elba for good. The narrowly avoided loss of the key ship in his meager fleet would have served as a blatant reminder of how vulnerable he remained so long as he stayed on the island.
* * *
• • •
CAMPBELL MISSED the drama of the Inconstant by a day, having gone to Genoa to offer a naval escort to Baron Koller, figuring that the Austrian diplomat would be arriving there shortly on his way to Elba and that it would be good for them to have a chance to discuss Napoleon’s situation privately before reaching the island. But he left Genoa after a few days of waiting, without any sign of Koller or news from Vienna concerning his whereabouts.
As soon as he reached Portoferraio, Campbell was subjected to the usual onslaught of questions. Napoleon had read another news item predicting his “removal” to Saint Helena or Saint Lucia, and swore to Campbell he would rather die defending Elba than be taken away. He then asked “with a kind of suspicious curiosity” whether Campbell had communicated with any of the French warships that had lately been seen cruising the channel between Corsica and Elba, but Campbell avoided answering. Growing more frantic as the conversation went on, Napoleon told him that he was certain the governor of Corsica had sent someone to kill him and that the assassin had already landed on Elba with the help of one of those French ships, but that the gendarmes would find him soon enough. “He appeared much agitated,” wrote Campbell, “and impressed with a belief in the truth of what he stated.”
Napoleon by that point would likely ha
ve learned that on Christmas Eve, British and American representatives at Ghent signed a treaty ending the War of 1812 that had tested the strength of the young republic across the ocean, whose capital had been burned to the ground a few months earlier. Now battle-hardened men would be returning to Europe, meaning more ships and crews would soon be available to be dispatched to patrol the waters of the Mediterranean. Peyrusse noticed that Napoleon’s temper seemed to be growing worse with the revelation of each new bit of news from abroad; his words that winter “were few, his evenings were short, and his ill humor was plain to see.”
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BOURBON DIFFICULTIES
DISTURBING REPORTS CONTINUED TO pile up on the bureaus of French officials that January. The governor of Corsica, Louis Guerin de Bruslart, wrote to the French minister of war, General Dupont, to say that Napoleon was so spooked by rumors he would be transported that his troops were marching at Portoferraio day and night, and that there were fifteen hundred men ready to sail with him at a moment’s notice. Members of the Mulini staff seemed less talkative than usual, “as though they had some secret to guard,” wrote Bruslart. One agent reported that the date of escape had been fixed for January 15, though the day came and went without incident.