by Mark Braude
At midmonth a young man calling himself Pietro St. Ernest arrived at Portoferraio, claiming to be a sailor from Lerici. Campbell doubted that story, after learning that Cambronne and a few other officers had gone to meet with St. Ernest at the nondescript inn to which he’d retired after clearing customs, and then “ordered him not to be disturbed.”
Pietro St. Ernest was in reality an out-of-work French official named Fleury du Chaboulon, who had served as subprefect of Reims until Napoleon’s abdication. He’d been sent to Elba by Napoleon’s former private secretary and minister, Hugues-Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano. Though French travelers to Elba were closely watched by authorities and sometimes denied passports if they were thought to be sympathetic to Napoleon, Maret trusted that the wily Fleury would get through if he was properly disguised. He told Fleury that he was in no position to explicitly advise Napoleon about whether or not he should return to France. His only mission was to deliver what turned out to be the most detailed firsthand account of how things stood in France that Napoleon had heard since sailing from Fréjus. Maret told Fleury that the emperor would know best what to do with the information he presented.
In his memoir Fleury claimed to have crossed from Lerici with the help of a roguish gang of smugglers. After Cambronne became aware of his presence in Portoferraio, Fleury was quietly taken to meet Bertrand, who after grilling him about his background sent him back to his inn, telling him to hide his army decorations and reveal nothing about himself to anyone. Under the empire, Fleury had done little to distinguish himself from the pack of minor officials and there was no one on Elba to vouch for him, but he managed to gain Bertrand’s trust and a half hour later a messenger came to tell him to stroll up to the edge of Napoleon’s garden, as if he were a sightseer.
Napoleon met him at the garden gate, made a bit of small talk, and then motioned for Fleury to join him inside. They talked privately, with Drouot and Bertrand in another room nearby trying to listen in as best they could. Fleury said that people in France were growing increasingly restless, especially the soldiers, who felt humiliated by defeat. Foreign competition was hurting certain industries and many people were underemployed or had no work at all. Housing markets had cooled because speculators were unsure if lands purchased during wartime would remain in French hands or be reconstituted to former enemies. People protested against the exporting of grain to England and there were food riots at several ports. In the countryside, he said, lingering resentments between royalists and Bonapartists had bubbled over into bloody feuds and vendettas. Former revolutionaries were feeling reinvigorated, while liberals who had hoped to advance their platform within the new regime had become disillusioned, and each side lacked for leadership or bold direction. Fleury said that people complained about the Bourbons and regretted having abandoned their emperor, and that they stood at the precipice of “a general insurrection.” Napoleon asked if the soldiers “still loved” him, to which Fleury answered, “Yes, Sire, and may I even venture to say, more than ever.”
After the interview Fleury dined with the Bertrands at the Biscotteria, where Henri offered the “misery” of their bare quarters as proof that Napoleon had not taken any huge amount from the French treasury before going into exile, as he assumed was being said of him in France. Fleury sailed back to the mainland that same evening. A few months later he would become Napoleon’s personal secretary in Paris.
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CAMPBELL FOUND HIS LIFE becoming increasingly “disagreeable . . . remaining at Elba as an obnoxious person, upon a kind of sufferance, and gradually slighted by inattentions.” He cheered himself with the thought that he wouldn’t be required to stay for too much longer, since the congress was sure to end any day now, which he assumed would result in either Napoleon’s transportation to another remote island, or a more permanent and official codification of his status on Elba. Either way, Campbell’s assignment would come to an end. In the meantime he would give himself a break with “a short excursion to the continent for my health,” to see a “medical man at Florence on account of the increasing deafness, supposed to arise from my wounds.” He may also have planned to see the Contessa Miniaci.
On February 16, Adye took Campbell toward Livorno aboard the Partridge, with the arrangement being that they would meet back in Livorno ten days later to return together to Elba. In the meantime he wanted Adye to continue patrolling around the island and to “visit Palmaiola for my information.” Though Bertrand had blocked his own request to investigate, there was nothing stopping Adye from passing by Palmaiola on his regular route and asking to land so he could take a look around.
The Partridge was escorted out of the harbor by Napoleon’s schooner, the Étoile, which Campbell assumed was heading on to Porto Longone for a standard supply pickup. In reality Napoleon had sent out the Étoile to sail just far enough to make sure that Campbell and Adye were indeed heading for Livorno as they had claimed.
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THE EAGLE PREPARES FOR FLIGHT
PREPARATIONS FOR NAPOLEON’S DEPARTURE started as soon as the Étoile returned to report that Campbell and the Partridge had sailed out of sight. Napoleon ordered Drouot to have the Inconstant brought into dry dock so it could be repainted like a British merchant brig and outfitted with salted beef, rice, cheese, biscuits, eau-de-vie, and wine, much of which was drawn from the last of his personal supply of Chambertin and Constantia. He specified that the supplies should last 120 men for three months at sea, which, calculated another way, would also supply 1,000 men for ten days, and he wanted the ship ready to sail by February 24 or 25. He told Drouot to prepare his map case and campaign riding bags and he repeated a version of Fleury’s report, telling him that the whole of France regretted having deposed him and wanted him back.
Drouot later claimed that he and Napoleon had never spoken about returning to France before that point, and that when Napoleon finally did reveal his plan, he tried everything “humanly possible” to make him see that the results would be disastrous. He said that he also voiced his opposition to Pauline, Madame Mère, and to one of the commanding officers, Lacour, telling him that he was “convinced we’re making a huge mistake in quitting Elba, and if it were up to him we would be staying.” When asked on Saint Helena if Drouot had opposed his decision to leave Elba, Napoleon denied it, saying, “I do not allow myself to be governed by advice.”
A year after the escape, under interrogation in a trial that could have ended with the order of his execution, Drouot explained his state of mind during those last days at Portoferraio:
Abandoning the sovereign, to whom I had promised fidelity, seemed to me to be an act of cowardice. . . . I was dogged on one side by the desire to withdraw and on the other by the shame of abandoning, in a moment of danger, the sovereign with whose fate my own had until then been entwined. I chose the side of honor and fidelity.
While confiding in Drouot and Pons, Napoleon wanted to keep Bertrand from discovering the upcoming mission until the last possible moment, for unknown reasons. On February 19, he wrote a long letter to Bertrand detailing the work that would need to be done for a retreat to the Madonna hermitage that upcoming summer, for himself, Madame Mère, Pauline, Bertrand, Drouot, and fifty members of the Guard. He told Bertrand to organize a barge to bring across supplies and to arrange for additional housing near the hermitage. Then he called an inaugural session for the newly formed court of appeal, setting the meeting for March 6, and he approved Bertrand’s budget for bringing a small opera troupe to the island, booked for twenty-two performances.
Soldiers were meanwhile given new allotments of land and told to devote their energies to the spring sowing. Gardeners planted a line of mulberry trees on the road to the San Martino property, while painters started whitewashing the interior of the Mulini, whose exterior was being outfitted with a wooden balustrade. The gunners were drilled at an exhausting pace and soldiers put on round-the-clock patrols.
THE OIL MERCHANT RETURNS
THE OIL MERCHANT RETURNED to Portoferraio on February 21 after a few weeks on the mainland. Right off, he felt a change in the atmosphere. The soldiers were jumpy. They were dutifully working on their gardens “more as if they were settling in than as if they were getting ready to leave,” which only made him want to watch them more closely. The customs officials at Portoferraio were inspecting passports and personal papers more intensely than they ever had and every arriving ship was boarded and searched with special scrutiny. He heard that Napoleon now rarely attended any public functions, which he attributed to another round of reports of a would-be assassin on Elba. Contacts at the Mulini told him Napoleon lurked about the palace like a jungle cat ready to spring.
He saw supplies coming into Portoferraio from other parts of the island. Sixty crates of cartridges were loaded onto the Inconstant in a single night. Three companies of the Guard had just been kitted out with fresh topcoats and boots. The horses of the Polish lancers were brought back from pasturage on Pianosa. He learned of the arrival and quick departure of the mysterious Pietro St. Ernest. Someone told him that two British aristocrats had also arrived at Portoferraio, were granted an audience with Napoleon, gave him two packages, and left soon afterward. He heard from one of Napoleon’s officers that the British were fed up with Louis XVIII and secretly arranging for Napoleon to sail to France on the condition that he accept harsh new terms imposed by the British. He grew increasingly suspicious of Campbell, who just before leaving Portoferraio had participated in “several interviews with Napoleon.” All of the isolated signs the Oil Merchant had seen over the past weeks were coalescing into a frightening whole.
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CAMPBELL IN FLORENCE
IN FLORENCE, CAMPBELL RECEIVED a dressing-down from Lord Burghersh, who chastised him for the lax way he’d been carrying out his duties in the past months, during which he had been so often away from Elba. Burghersh had already written to Castlereagh to suggest that the Foreign Office should make the most out of his colleague’s apparent wanderlust, advising him to send Campbell to Naples to get the lay of the land there. Castlereagh, in his usual enigmatic way, had answered, “I should be glad to know what is going on everywhere, but I do not wish Colonel Campbell to engage in the proposed mission. When I have anything more precise to say to you, you may rely on hearing from me.”
At dinner with Burghersh and Edward Cooke, the undersecretary of state, who had come down from Vienna, Campbell tried to explain what it would be like for him when he returned to Elba. Napoleon, he said, would harangue him with a thousand questions about the congress, his unpaid annuity, and the whereabouts of his wife and child. He asked the other officials to give him even the slightest bit of information he could pass on to Napoleon, which would help to calm him and keep him from doing anything rash. Cooke answered that such “uneasiness” about Napoleon’s state of mind was unwarranted and that when he got back to Elba he should tell him “that everything is amicably settled at Vienna; that he has no chance; that the sovereigns will not quarrel. Nobody thinks of him at all. He is quite forgotten—as much as if he never existed!” Campbell underlined this final sentence in his journal.
Cooke was a seasoned diplomat, more experienced than Campbell in clandestine affairs, and for a moment Campbell believed he’d overreacted to what he’d recently seen at Portoferraio and heard about troops on Palmaiola. Perhaps, he thought, he was too close to the situation to see things clearly:
I did feel very uneasy at the position of Napoleon and the seeming inconsistencies of his conduct; but, after Mr. Cooke’s remarks I began to fancy that my near view of him and of the state of Elba had induced me to exaggerated circumstances.
But Campbell abandoned that line of thinking as soon as he arrived in Livorno on February 25, when he received several “very absurd, contradictory, and confused reports” from Elba. The most alarming one came from Ricci, who said that the Inconstant was being loaded with salts and meats and military stores and that all the horses had been recalled from Pianosa, while saddlers were seen working steadily. “The troops,” wrote Ricci, “are full of expectation of some great event.” Ricci reported that he’d heard Napoleon spent a whole night out on his boat, and that he and Madame Mère had held a long and heated conversation, after which she was seen leaving for her own apartments, full of emotion, and giving orders to have her luggage packed.
Campbell had always been skeptical of Ricci’s abilities, and so the next morning he compared Ricci’s letter with Mariotti’s own intelligence and with reports gathered by the governor of Livorno. Between them they learned that chests full of Pauline’s expensive plate had been sent to be sold at Livorno and that this transaction’s timing coincided neatly with an order Campbell had already traced to an unknown person on Elba requesting a British merchant vessel to be hired in the same town; that all horses belonging to Napoleon’s Polish lancers had been recalled from Pianosa and that gendarmes were seen frequently at the harbor giving all sorts of instructions to the portmaster and the health inspectors; that an unusual amount of grain had been sent from Porto Longone to Portoferraio to be stored; and that two of the transport ships used for the Rio mines had sailed to Portoferraio, but carrying no cargo.
The three men agreed that Napoleon was “prepared to quit the island immediately with his troops.” While Campbell waited for Adye to arrive at Livorno to ferry him back to Elba, he tried to make sense of his recent actions in his journal, writing, as if for posterity:
My access to Napoleon has for some time past been so much less than at first, as to afford me very little opportunity of personal observation; and besides, the etiquette of a sovereign and court were studiously adhered to. So that during the last few months our intercourse has been continued under different feelings upon both sides, although no expression to that effect was ever pronounced by either of us; and when he did grant me an interview he always received me with the same apparent courtesy as formerly. Sometimes I could only ascribe his reserve to a dislike of his appearing in the eyes of the world as a prisoner, and to my stay being prolonged beyond the period which he perhaps expected, owing to the duration of the Congress. Or possibly he had projects and communications of an improper nature, which he was afraid might be discovered by me, in case of my associating with his mother and sister. The latter, I know, desired such intimacy, and had taken several steps for that purpose, in which she was counteracted.
I nevertheless considered it my bounden duty not to break off the ties which still existed, in hopes of being useful to my sovereign and his ministers, who had been pleased to honour me with this confidential appointment. So that I have looked forward for a long time, with impatience and daily anxiety, to the conclusion of the Congress of Vienna, as the period which would produce an order to that effect from Lord Castlereagh and close my mission. By absenting myself occasionally from the island, I had a pretext for requesting an interview both before my departure and again upon my return, and this became latterly my only opportunity of conversing with Napoleon.
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MARDI GRAS
NAPOLEON POPPED HIS HEAD into Peyrusse’s room, interrupting a conversation between the paymaster and an Elban official. He seemed distracted and kept staring out the window toward the barracks where some grenadiers were marching. He left without saying much, no doubt because he’d expected Peyrusse to be alone. Peyrusse ended his meeting with the Elban official as quickly as he could and rushed over to the Mulini, where Napoleon asked him what they had been talking about; he admitted that they had been speculating about his escape and had come to the conclusion that he was about to leave for Naples.
Napoleon touched Peyrusse on the cheek and told him he was silly to think such things. But then he asked how much ready money he could get his hands on and what he thought the precise weight of such a stash might be. He told Peyrusse to arrange for the gold reserves to be stowed away in s
ome traveling cases filled with books from the palace library and instructed him to “pay . . . but don’t pay,” which Peyrusse took to mean he should settle up as many outstanding accounts as he thought fair, but do so as cheaply as possible. As Peyrusse was leaving, Napoleon added that he should start preparing for a journey and to pack lightly.
Peyrusse wrote that Napoleon had spoken to him as though they were planning a holiday jaunt, which led him to seek out his next-door neighbor, Drouot, hoping he would reveal the details of the plan. Drouot, however, was in a foul mood and unwilling to talk, aside from saying that the time had come for them to leave, although he’d done all he could to convince Napoleon otherwise. Peyrusse left Drouot’s apartments more anxious than ever. He turned his attention to settling accounts across the island, though he was sure that people would notice he was paying them mostly in silver rather than the customary gold.
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THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 22 was Pauline Bonaparte’s Elban triumph. She organized a Mardi Gras procession that wound through Portoferraio’s lanes and ended with a lavish masked ball at the palace. One of Napoleon’s officers headed up the cortege dressed as a sultan, riding a white charger draped in Pauline’s cashmere shawls. A skinny Polish lancer rode alongside him on the most run-down horse that could be found, as a kind of mock Don Quixote. Pauline arrived sporting the latest Neapolitan fashions. The night reached its peak when some members of the Guard carried Pauline around the Mulini in a mock funeral to mourn the end of her long career of lovemaking, at least momentarily, as she had to give up on fun for the holy season. Pons thought she’d carried off the festivities with “exquisite taste, and a seductive grace, looking even more beautiful than ever.”