The Invisible Emperor
Page 32
Over a roast beef: Semmel, Napoleon and the British, 149.
“Nap the Mighty”: Uglow, In These Times, 600.
At a time: Uglow, In These Times, 598. To give some sense of London readership in that era, we can draw on Peter Ackroyd, who counts the total number of newspapers sold in London in 1801 at sixteen million copies. The city’s journalists and their readers gained a reputation for being extremely fickle, and such was the case with the coverage of Napoleon in the 1810s and 1820s. Ackroyd, London, 400.
Caricaturists competed to: I have consulted caricatures from the period at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) too numerous to list here. See, for example, “Départ pour l’île d’Elbe,” undated, not credited, BNF, De Vinck, 8993. My other main sources on Napoleonic caricatures are Ashton, English Caricature (especially 195–200), and Broadley, Napoleon in Caricature.
“He is deserted”: Graham, Byron’s Bulldog, 122. Around the same time, the wealthy Irishwoman Frances Calvert wrote to a friend that she’d learned Napoleon was “to retire to Elba. I own I would rather there was an end to him. I dread his starting up again. Everybody seems to despise Bony for his submission.” Calvert, An Irish Beauty, 220.
At one time: Clubbe, “Between Emperor and Exile.”
“ought to have died”: Gourgaud, Talks, 158.
Talleyrand also hoped: Castlereagh, Correspondence, IX, 487–88; Mansel, Paris, 24; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 54; Underwood, A Narrative, 189; Uglow, In These Times, 602. As Duff Cooper put it, the French in 1814 were “loth to pretend that during the days when the eagles and the tricolor swept invincibly over Europe the fat old gentleman at Hartwell had really been the King of France.” The king and his most influential minister jostled for position from the start. When they were first reunited, at Compiègne, Louis kept Talleyrand waiting for hours and then gave him an elaborate greeting cut with irony, saying, “I am very happy to see you. Our houses date from the same period. My ancestors were cleverer. If yours had been more, you would say to me today: Take a chair, come forward, let us speak of our affairs. Today it is I who say: Sit down and let us talk.” Cooper, Talleyrand, 238; Harris, Talleyrand, 390.
“a cloudless sky” . . . “was most horrible”: Underwood, A Narrative, 190. For another description see Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 55. The literary scholar Margaret Cohen has remarked on the heavy symbolic charge of the Porte Saint-Denis, quoting André Breton on his feeling strangely drawn to this “very beautiful and very useless” gate, a deep and unconscious connection, perhaps, with “the political and often explicitly revolutionary resonance of this monument.” Cohen quotes from a guidebook: “In 1830, during the days of 27, 28, and 29 July which cost Charles X the throne, cobblestones were thrown from the top of the monument onto the cuirassiers of Maréchal Marmont.” Cohen, Profane Illumination, 90.
“There was but little”: Underwood, A Narrative, 191. Additional details from Houssaye, 1815, 1; Mansel, Paris, 25; “I must own that as far as I was concerned the morning had been painful in every way,” wrote the royalist comtesse de Boigne. “The people in the open carriage didn’t respond to the hopes I had formulated.” Boigne, Memoirs, 348.
There were still: Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 46.
“brought their great”: Chateaubriand, Memoirs, 271.
Parisians were soon: Mansel, Paris, 26.
Another caricature showed: Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 71.
He could play: Louis XVIII was “able to make a majestic trait out of his idol-like immobility.” Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 57.
Shouts of “Long”: Mansel, Paris, 25.
A few hundred meters: Horne, Seven Ages of Paris, 204.; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 56. A bronze version of the statue was completed in 1818.
The new king slept: Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, 288; Jones, Paris, 266; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 46.
“To be at”: Baring-Gould, The Life, 253.
He’d watched over: Schama, Citizens, 14.
An 1815 bestseller: Mansel, Paris, 20. Regarding the Dictionary as Michelin Guide, see Dutourd, “‘Le Dictionnaire des girouettes.’”
“by invoking . . . by glory”: Price, Napoleon, 228.
10: PRETTY VALLEYS, TREES, FOREST, AND WATER
In his first week: Napoleon once opined, “Work is my element. I am both born and built for work. I have known the limitation of my legs, I have known the limitations of my eyes; I have never been able to know the limitations of my working capacity.” When asked after his final surrender how he would pass the time on Saint Helena, Napoleon answered, “We must work. Work is also the scythe of time.” MacKenzie makes a similar point about Napoleon taking pleasures in the picayune while on Elba, perhaps inspired by Walter Scott, who not long after the events in question described Napoleon on Elba as “like a thorough-bred gamester who, deprived of the means of depositing large stakes, will rather play at small game than leave the table.” Mackenzie, The Escape from Elba, 82; Scott, The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, 167; Herold, The Mind of Napoleon, xx–xxi; Kauffmann, The Black Room at Longwood, 25.
“dictated letters about”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 122.
“On Sunday hoist”: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXVII, 366–67.
Next, in a three-page: “Napoleon to Drouot, May 28 and 29, 1814,” Napoleon, Le registre, 1–9. See also Branda, La guerre secrète, 78–81; Marchand, Mémoires, III; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 88.
“I defy you”: Englund, Napoleon, 191.
“gotten by . . . Emperor’s door”: Pons, Souvenirs, 77–78.
Napoleon did manage: Campbell, Napoleon, 232; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 89; Gruyer, Napoleon, 102.
“A hat of”: Berneaud, A Voyage, 11.
“the most beautiful”: Bartlett, Elba, 39.
“went round the”: Campbell, Napoleon, 231.
Drouot settled into: Descriptions of Drouot’s furnishings can be found in Chevallier et al., Le Mobilier, 64–65.
“to wish . . . for her”: “Drouot to Dupont, April 18, 1814,” Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 116. The transcript of Drouot’s trial, in Saint-Edmé, Repertoire, has also been helpful.
“I’ve been ordered”: “Drouot to Evain, May 5, 1814,” Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 118.
“I’m still . . . inexpressible pleasure”: Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 118–19.
He was set to propose: Macdonald, Souvenirs, 446; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 137. Branda speculates that Napoleon enjoyed Henriette Vantini’s favors at some point during the exile. Branda, La guerre secrète, 169, 183.
“You should get married”: Houssaye, Le retour, 1.
“I would love”: Branda, La guerre secrète, 83.
“a young queen”: Rosebery, Napoleon, 137–38. Concerning the education of her children: Rosebery makes a similar point about Fanny’s worries about the quality of education for her children, in this case during the exile on Saint Helena. Rosebery, 139.
In the end, Henri: A family relation remembered Bertrand as “a man of limited ideas,” though “said to possess much capacity in his own profession . . . but I think that his true merit was blind and unlimited devotion.” Boigne, Memoirs, 242.
He closed the letter: Vasson, Bertrand, 130.
“pretty valleys . . . passable”: “Henri to Fanny, May 4, 1814,” Bertrand, Lettres à Fanny, 432–33.
“playing the adventurer”: Branda, La guerre secrète, 83.
They assumed: “Henri to Fanny, April 11, 1814,” Bertrand, Lettres à Fanny, 425.
“We’ll go see Naples”: “Henri to Fanny, May 4, 1814,” Bertrand, Lettres à Fanny, 432–33.
Campbell asked Koller: Campbell, Napoleon, 218.
“I’m having fairly”: “Napoleon to Marie Louise, May 9, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 203.
Napoleon gave Koller: Campbell, Napoleon, 226.
“obtain i
nformation of”: As quoted in MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 84.
Campbell’s presence was: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 83, 96.
“His best information”: Campbell, Napoleon, 219–26.
“by leading our fleet”: Campbell, Napoleon, 228–29.
“movements upon a coast”: Campbell, Napoleon, 338–39.
“so openly . . . of war”: Campbell, Napoleon, 242, 244.
11: THE EMPEROR IS DEAD
By the time Napoleon: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 85.
“All of Europe”: Campbell, Napoleon, 217.
They would plant: Campbell, Napoleon, 217, 233.
“after getting up half-way”: Campbell, Napoleon, 234.
On another occasion: Gruyer, Napoleon, 119.
Back at Portoferraio: We can date the first night at the Mulini thanks to the itinerary provided by Schuermans, Souverain, 419.
“The Emperor is”: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1070.
They would eventually: Campbell, Napoleon, 241; Gruyer, Napoleon, 89–92; Marchand, Mémoires, II; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 91.
“how little Napoleon”: Campbell, Napoleon, 218.
“The éclat given”: Campbell, Napoleon, 230.
Campbell also figured: Campbell, Napoleon, 230.
“who is more your”: Marchand, Memoirs, II.
“Smiling, with an air”: Campbell, Napoleon, 232–33.
The British navy: I’ve deduced the rough number of ships in the Royal Navy by drawing from the 1813 count of 899 and patterns of previous years that put the number in the nine hundreds. There are no figures for 1814. Morriss, The Royal Dockyards, 12.
The allies had honored: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 93.
“interrupted from attending”: Campbell, Napoleon, 237.
“had seduced him . . . Englishman?”: Campbell, Napoleon, 239. Campbell’s report about Ussher’s claims about these rumors is corroborated by Calvert’s memoirs: “Bonaparte has arrived at Elba, in spite of many ridiculous reports which have been circulated to the contrary. It was said that he would not be received at Elba, that he was gone to Gibraltar, about to come to England etc., etc.” Calvert, An Irish Beauty, 222.
“Oh! the Emperor”: Campbell, Napoleon, 239. Exile as death dated back to the time of Seneca, at least. Germaine de Staël once wrote, “One is dead when one is exiled. It is merely a tomb where the post arrives.” Boigne, Memoirs, 231.
They took turns: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 93. King et al., A Sea of Words, helped me to understand how night-glasses were constructed, and that whatever one saw through a night-glass would have appeared upside down.
12: AND EVERY TUNA BOWS TO HIM
Technically this was: Campbell, Napoleon, 240; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 94.
Montcabrié wasn’t actually: Campbell, Napoleon, 240. More details about the arrival of the Guard can be found in Pons, Souvenirs, 132–35.
He heard how: Concerning Portoferraio’s being like an amphitheater: along with direct observation, I consulted the contemporary account of Vivian, Minutes, 6.
“try the disposition”: Campbell, Napoleon, 240.
“more unsteady, more vague”: Las Cases, Memorial, 183 (I have slightly reworked this translation after consulting the original French).
“Napoleon speaks most gratefully”: Campbell, Napoleon, 241.
He ended by seeing: Gruyer, Napoleon, 89–92; Marchand, Mémoires, II. The horses Coco and Tauris were collectively known as “the white charger.”
His face was: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXXI, 2.
In the last days: Branda, La guerre secrète, 139–40.
“also had French hearts”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 94.
While they were crossing: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 94.
Cambronne told of: Gruyer, Napoleon, 79.
“to tire myself out”: Campbell, Napoleon, 244.
By evening he was: For details on lodging for Napoleon’s entourage, see Chevallier et al., Le Mobilier. See also Branda, La guerre secrète, 100; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 94.
Drouot tried to bolster: Gruyer, Napoleon, 81; Chevallier et al., Le Mobilier; Houssaye, Retour, 3–4; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 97–98. Napoleon had the idea of dividing this local militia into four companies of roughly a hundred men (each one consisted of three officers, ten noncommissioned officers, eighty-seven men, and a drummer), with each company putting only twenty-five men on duty for a week out of the month in rotation, meaning he would have four hundred Elbans on active reserve but paid the wages of a fraction of that number. Drouot also hired some miners from Rio to come to Portoferraio and put their laboring skills to use as sappers.
Pons claimed that: Pons, Souvenirs, 133.
The ships were: In regular service the Inconstant required a crew more than a hundred strong, while at Portoferraio it was never manned by more than sixty men at any one time.
Campbell was nonplussed: Campbell, Napoleon, 252; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 97.
There was no chance: On the importance of a sense of collective purpose, see Adam Gopnik’s sharp comments in a review essay on Napoleonic biographies: “Napoleon’s crucial insight was that it was not, in the long run, the romance of the nation, or of the cause, or of the Republic, that would keep a democratized army in battle. It was the army’s romance of itself, of its own existence.” Gopnik, “The Good Soldier.”
Of the six hundred thousand: Price, Napoleon, 15.
“New tuna soldiers”: The image, as well as the translation of the caption, comes from the University of Warwick’s “100 Days in 100 Objects” project. The source is listed as “Coloured etching, 160 x 200 mm/copper below centre: caption in Italian; below right: Milano 1814,” contributed by Alberto Milano from a “Private Collection.” www.100days.eu/items/show/4. The print carried a Milan address to mislead authorities. Another caricature from the period shows Napoleon firing a cannon at four straw men (the cannon is also built of straw) while a fisherman nearby worries that the “Madman’s Amusement” will scare away all the fish.
“that in case”: Campbell, Napoleon, 241.
“indispensable for his”: Campbell, Napoleon, 241.
“I can only reiterate”: Campbell, Napoleon, 242.
13: A DEATH, A TREATY, AND A CELEBRATION
“as if he had ruled”: Mansel, Paris, 19. His sentiment was echoed by a British magistrate who wrote to Mary Berry in London, “Paris is certainly at this moment the most wonderful show-box in the world. It has within its walls as many live emperors, kings, generals, and eminent persons of all kinds, as the ingenious Mrs. Salmon ever exhibited in wax. Of the five great sovereigns of the Christian world, four are here actually present. . . . This is very curious, at least to those that, like me, partake largely in the gratification the vulgar feel in staring at famous people. But what is a matter of greater interest and greater surprise is to see France—to see the great nation that only a few months ago seemed so near realizing its old plan of universal dominion—not only beaten, but delivered over bound hand and foot to foreign masters.” Berry, Extracts, 11.
Allied diplomats and soldiers: Lieven, Russia, 519–20; Horne, Seven Ages of Paris, 204. During this heady time the Prussian field marshal Blücher reportedly lost more than a million francs in a single night’s play at the Palais-Royal. Elite members of the Russian guard received a special allowance to partake in the city’s delights. “Never has so much gold flowed through Paris,” wrote a French officer to a friend in Vienna. “Millions of ducats change hands each day in this immense *******; the sellers are running out of goods; 60,000 c***s, without counting the honest wives, civilian and military, are in constant service.” Montet, Souvenirs, 122.
“This capital is”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 101.
“It is only”: Wolff, The Island Empire
, 185. “Desolated at” in Wolff’s translation sounds clunky to my ear, which I have guessed is likely due to a too-literal translation of “désolée,” and I have changed it to “saddened by,” though some might prefer “sorry for.”
“permit my accompanying”: d’Abrantès, Memoirs, 454.
“Goodbye, my friend”: Napoleon, Lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine, II, 194–95.
With the redrawing: Dallas, The Final Act, 48; Harris, Talleyrand, 226; King, Vienna, 6; Lentz, Nouvelle histoire, I; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 64; Uglow, In These Times, 602. The French had to relinquish claims in the Low Countries and Holland and withdraw from Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, but were allowed to keep some recently acquired lands and recover many of their Caribbean colonies (but not Saint-Domingue, which had declared a hard-won independence), the onetime papal headquarters of Avignon, and lands in the northeast and in Savoy. The British even returned a few territories that they had taken from the French over the years. Regarding reparations: this was aside from the costs incurred by evacuating allied troops from certain territories. The allies would eventually change course on the issue of looted artworks. Note that the French government, by the terms of the treaty, still had to make good on any debts to private individuals as a result of contracts or loans enacted during wartime.
“No sooner than”: Lentz, Nouvelle histoire, I.
Their word for “quickly”: Dallas, The Final Act, 70; Harris, Talleyrand, 226; Hussey, Paris, 222; Mansel, Paris, 27. The allies would for the moment leave seventy thousand troops stationed nearby at various points beyond Paris, at Talleyrand’s behest, to help enforce the authority of the Bourbon government.
Castlereagh also left: “You never saw such a beauty as Lord Castlereagh has become,” wrote Priscilla Burghersh to her mother. “He is brown as a berry, with a fine bronzed colour, and wears a fur cap with gold and is really quite charming.” Weigall, Letters of Lady Burghersh, 205–6.
Guns were fired: Zamoyski, Rites, 192.
“England is never”: Bew, Castlereagh, 358. As Edward Cooke had written to Castlereagh when Napoleon’s surrender was being negotiated, “It will be hard if France is to pay nothing for the destruction of Europe, and we are to pay all for saving it.” Metternich had predicted the treaty’s terms would be “found too harsh in France and too soft beyond the frontiers.” Even though he and the other allied representatives had shown mercy, given that complete destruction of France was their right after “the evils she has brought Europe for twenty years,” people would still manage to fault their good intentions; such was the fate “of all human things.” Indeed this was no less true in France than it was in Britain or Austria. French police reports noted that “the armistice conditions have seemed harsh, they satisfy no one.” Castlereagh, Correspondance, IX, 454; Dallas, The Final Act, 42, 70, 258; Mansel, Paris, 27; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 50; Zamoyski, Rites, 200.