The Invisible Emperor
Page 34
“the emperor has”: Masson, Napoleon et sa famille, 361.
“It pains . . . be done”: “Napoleon to Bertrand, September 6, 1814,” Napoleon, Le registre, 100.
“I’ve seen eminent”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 119.
Though Napoleon sometimes: Englund, Napoleon, 13; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 119–20.
Napoleon typically rose: Branda, La guerre secrète, 190.
As he left: “Ali” added that “as the broth was very good and the quantity they sent from the kitchen was much more than the Emperor needed, the valets de chambre would take it when the Emperor had gone to his study, and, like their master, they would each drink a drop of Constance. They thought that what the Emperor liked they also ought not to dislike. It prepared their stomachs for breakfast.” We know that Napoleon ordered Groot Constantia during his Saint Helena exile; whether he ordered wine from this same estate while on Elba is unclear. “Ali,” Napoleon, 79. Detailed descriptions of life at the Mulini can also be found in Marchand, Mémoires, III.
“We ate, we drank”: Pons, Souvenirs, 250.
During these trips: Pons, Souvenirs, 250–51.
Pons recalled that: Gruyer, Napoleon, 105–6.
After the initial: Branda, La guerre secrète, 191.
During one of these: Marchand, Mémoires, III.
In the early evenings: “Ali,” Napoleon, 79.
“in continual movement”: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXXI, 11.
Occasionally he and: Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 119.
A valet recalled: Marchand, Mémoires, IV.
“a perfectly bourgeois”: Pons, Souverain, 149.
“Napoleon, you’re cheating . . . mother”: Roberts, Napoleon, 724; Peyrusse, Mémorial, 239. Michelet and Barthes were both fascinated by Napoleon’s “lucky” name: Bonaparte, the good part, or the lucky share. “Grace, which is at the origin of all Micheletist evil, wears many masks,” wrote Barthes in his study of Michelet. “Consider the magnificent theme of gambling: in the eighteenth century, politics is a gamble, a throw of the dice. . . . Napoleon? Doomed to Chance (Buona-parte), his reign is one of farce and lottery.” Barthes, Michelet, 56.
This was the signal: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 137.
He sang to himself: “Ali,” Napoleon, 76; Marchand, Mémoires, III.
21: TALL FANNY AND THE TWO EMPRESSES BONAPARTE
They had even: Concerning the couple’s various plans for the exile, see Henri’s letters to Fanny from April–May 1814, Lettres à Fanny, 423–36.
Most of the family’s: Paulin, Notice biographique, 28.
He pressured her: “Henri to Fanny, April 11, 1814,” and “Henri to Fanny, April 22, 1814,” Bertrand, Lettres à Fanny, 426, 429–30.
Word got round: Branda, La guerre secrète, 211; Caulaincourt, Mémoires, 415; Christophe, Napoleon on Elba, 100; Marchand, Mémoires, IV; Welvert, Napoléon et la police, 62–63.
Later, on Saint Helena: Gourgaud, Talks, 138. Napoleon may have first learned of Joséphine’s death from a letter from Caulaincourt that evaded the censors, in which he assured Napoleon that even in her last feverish moments Joséphine had been thinking of him. If he did learn the news this way, perhaps Fanny was remembering a particularly emotional discussion with Napoleon about the subject, or less likely, Napoleon out of politeness didn’t tell her that he already knew about the death. Napoleon also received two letters from Eugène de Beauharnais about the death, but long after the fact. Eugène told his stepfather, “Everything she said to us about you in the last moments of her life showed us clearly how sincerely she was devoted to you. . . . My sister and I hope that when Your Majesty learns of the irreparable loss we have just suffered, and of the deep sorrow which overwhelms us, you will feel you are sharing it with us.” See “Eugène de Beauharnais to Napoleon, May 31, 1814,” and “Eugène de Beauharnais to Napoleon, June 11, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 235–36; Branda, La guerre secrète, 188; Caulaincourt, Mémoires, 413.
“What, Sire! Bertrand!”: Boigne, Memoirs, 241.
“his face did not”: Gourgaud, Talks, 138.
“humane instincts and”: Gourgaud, Talks, 138.
“The Devil shit”: Kauffmann, The Black Room at Longwood, 9.
“I think, although”: Gourgaud, Talks, 136.
As with Napoleon: Roberts, Napoleon, 70.
“the wife who”: Gourgaud, Talks, 56.
“France . . . the head”: Roberts, Napoleon, 800. Roberts includes an alternate version of Napoleon’s final words that is also sometimes cited: “France . . . Army . . . head of the Army.”
He admonished Marie Louise: Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 184.
“in September . . . is despicable”: “Napoleon to Marie Louis, August 18, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 219–20.
22: TAKING THE CURE
“I’ll never . . . to die”: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1078–79.
“Her complexion . . . cruel absence”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, July 31, 1814,” and “Marie Louise to Napoleon, August 3, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 215–17.
“surrounded by . . . devoted Louise”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, August 18, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 221–22.
“he may be extremely useful”: Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 222.
He found Marie Louise: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 133; Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 186.
“the idea of the journey”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 134.
“Be assured that”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 134.
“thoughtless . . . to do so”: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1073; Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 186; Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 223.
23: TOURIST SEASON
“came up tripping”: Campbell, Napoleon, 281.
As he readied: Campbell, Napoleon, 284.
“He told me . . . a spy!”: Campbell, Napoleon, 287–88.
“require immediate dispatch”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 121.
“did not wish”: Campbell, Napoleon, 290.
Pons won a prize: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 122; Marchand, Mémoires, IV.
The night could: Bell, Napoleon, 82.
“I am here”: “Napoleon to Marie Louise, August 28, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 222–23.
“considers his exile”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 129. Branda, La guerre secrète, XXI, FN 732, cites the correspondence between Napoleon and Murat concerning Napoleon’s son with Walewska. For details on Walewska’s visit, see Marchand, Mémoires, IV; Pons, Souvenirs, 212–14; Campbell, Napoleon, 135–37, 303–4; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 126–30; Branda, La guerre secrète, 184–86. Branda (Annexe I) includes a lengthy report on Walewska’s visit from Mariotti to Talleyrand. Marie Walewska was briefly reunited with Napoleon during his return and then went to Naples. She married Napoleon’s cousin General d’Ornano in 1816 and died the following year. Her son Alexandre Walewski, said to look like Napoleon though he was much taller, gained some renown as a French diplomat.
“the person of”: Campbell, Napoleon, 293; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 164.
The mayor of: Branda, La guerre secrète, 224; Campbell, Napoleon, 299; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 128; Marchand, Mémoires, IV.
“the Algerines . . . of Moscow”: Campbell, Napoleon, 297.
“so weak as to”: Campbell, Napoleon, 299.
“nothing beyond my”: Campbell, Napoleon, 299.
“with warmth . . . to Elba”: Campbell, Napoleon, 297.
“I bowed and told”: Campbell, Napoleon, 298.
“Enlarging for some time”: Campbell, Napoleon, 302–3.
“It strikes me”: Campbell, Napoleon, 303.
“with the hope”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 145.
“I’
m an object”: Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, 297.
“A more hot unwholesome”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 157.
“whiff their cigars”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 157.
“now took a nap”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 163.
“pointing and giving”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 170–71.
“his majesty had”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 172–73.
“the film seemed”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 175–76.
“I now . . . human heart”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 176.
“asked if the Genoese”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 181.
“We’re neighbors!”: Maxwell, My Adventures, 183.
“Campbell,” he wrote: Scott, An Englishman, 80–94. See also Young, Napoleon in Exile, 250–51.
He landed at: Campbell, Napoleon, 306.
24: THE POLITICS OF FORGETTING
Louis XVIII spent: Dallas, The Final Act, 86.
“It seems that his”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 158.
“tavern war against”: Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 81.
Some even spoke: Horne, Age of Napoleon, 175; Englund, Napoleon, 424. The king’s top general, Dupont, who in April had gone from imprisonment in the Jura mountains to minister of war, had demobbed more than three hundred thousand men and the shakeup left about half of the armed forces on inactive duty at half-pay. Paris experienced a spike in petty crime along with their return.
French public opinion: Hussey, Paris, 224; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 74–81.
“multitude of English”: Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, 282. Despite the police chatter, foreigners were on the whole welcomed openly, especially by shopkeepers and innkeepers.
While financial markets: Lentz, Nouvelle histoire, I; Horne, Age of Napoleon, 175.
So many British: Alger, Napoleon’s British Visitors, 280.
“watch, judge . . . discontented”: Horne, Age of Napoleon, 175. Concerning émigrés feeling out of time and place, see Fritzsche, Stranded, 56; Mansel, Paris, 29.
Exiled intellectuals returned: Fritzsche, Stranded, 66. Though concerning a later period, Kramer, Threshold of a New World, was also helpful.
“a stranger in”: Fritzsche, Stranded, 75.
“was born on the”: De Staël, Ten Years Exile, 188–89. De Staël was soon petitioning Louis XVIII for two million francs that she felt was owed to her father. “The first article of the rights of man in France is the right of every Frenchman to a government job,” she’d once quipped. She could have pointed to Chateaubriand, whom the grateful king had recently named a colonel and ambassador to Sweden though he performed no real diplomatic duties.
The official tasked: Mansel, Paris, 32; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 73. It would take several years to sort all the claims for lost privileges and lands.
“There is not one”: Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 77.
Under pressure from: Kroen, Politics and Theater, 161. “Suffrage was limited to one in 360 men,” writes Kroen. “The right to hold office was even more restricted. . . . Freedom of expression, freedom to meet in public, and to express one’s views were all officially restricted during the Restoration.” Article VIII of the charter reads, “The French people have the right to make public and to print their opinions, while conforming to the laws that must repress abuses of this freedom.” Todorov, in Hollier, A New History, 618.
The result was: Mansel, Paris, 28; Sauvigny, Bourbon Restoration, 74.
Some royalists combined: Chateaubriand, Memoirs, 273; Englund, Napoleon, 424; Harris, Talleyrand, 222; Plongeron, Des résistances religieuses. The Knights of the Faith wanted a clean break from everything that had happened in France since the Revolution, including the ascendancy of Talleyrand, who had to outmaneuver the Knights during the regime change to retain his powers.
“While patriotism exists”: Constant, Political Writings, 161–63. Constant’s critique of the Napoleonic cult of personality reads in retrospect as a “prophetic statement about the true nature of twentieth-century totalitarianism,” as the historian Andrew Hussey has suggested. Hussey, Paris, 224–25.
Had the fall: Hussey, Paris, 222.
“such public . . . being wagered”: Guizot, Mémoires, I, 24–25. See also Lefebvre, Napoléon, 580.
The republican experiment: On French political culture, see Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, and Ozouf, Festivals.
“Death-Birth of a World!”: Carlyle, French Revolution, 213.
“Nowadays,” wrote Chateaubriand: Fritzsche, Stranded, 55.
“nothing less than”: Kroen, Politics and Theater, 6–7.
Just as they: Dallas, The Final Act, 87; Jones, Paris, 266; Mansel, Court of France, 98, 102–5. Antoine Lilti has described how “the revolutionary era profoundly changed the autonomous nature of political power because of the phenomenon of public opinion. . . . Even the status of royal family members had profoundly changed, with the nature of celebrity progressively contaminating the traditional concept of monarchical representation.” Lilti, Celebrity, 161.
“bind all memories”: A full English translation of the charter can be found in Maloy, The Constitutions.
A complicated kind: Kroen, Politics and Theater, 40–41. As Kroen points out, oubli can be translated as “oblivion, disregard, or forgetting.” See also Carpenter, Aesthetics, 73–84; Englund, Napoleon, 424.
With the budget: Branda, La guerre secrète, 201–2.
“Vesuvius . . . the violets”: Thibaudeau, Mémoires, 417; Horne, Seven Ages of Paris, 204. The violet became a Napoleonic symbol during the Hundred Days and was sometimes called “the Emperor’s flower.” An unfounded rumor held that before leaving Fontainebleau, Napoleon had said he would return within a year, just like the violets in the palace gardens.
25: HE IS TOLERABLY HAPPY
“had been assured”: Campbell, Napoleon, 307–8.
By Campbell’s rough calculations: Campbell, Napoleon, 253–56; Mackenzie, The Escape from Elba, 100.
He learned that Bertrand: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 174.
“So many people”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 174.
But many saw: Branda, La guerre secrète, 216.
The annual surplus: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXXI, 14. He did complain that for the whole of his time on Elba “Josephine’s bills came pouring in upon me from all parts of Italy. . . . She possessed in an eminent degree the taste for luxury, gaiety, and extravagance, natural to Créoles. It was impossible to regulate her expenditure; she was constantly in debt.” Las Cases, Memorial, 299.
Napoleon had always: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 99. See some of Peyrusse’s Elban accounting and calculations in Peyrusse, Mémorial, 264–68. Herold has written that “the best clue to Napoleon’s aim in life lies in his curious way of making budgets. If, for instance, he ordered the construction of some public work or edifice, he would make sure that it was built in stages and that at the end of each stage it could be put to some use, no matter how many years might elapse before the whole was completed. If the wing of a palace, or a stretch of road or canal, could be put to use after the first year, then its cost could be amortized in the following year and could be charged off the budget. By the time the whole was completed, it had paid for itself. By this sleight of hand, Napoleon combined long-term objectives with his passion for immediate usefulness. He did not expect the present generation to sacrifice itself for an indefinite future, nor did he wish future generations to pay the debts of the present. Such husbanding does not bespeak an unprincipled mind. In precisely the same manner, he seems to have looked upon his destiny as something that was revealed to him in installments, as the occasion arose. Each installment had to pay for itself, regardless of what the future might bring. To look too far beyond the present installment was futile. When the last installment came and he sat dying for six years on his rock, he still regarded
it as a positive stage in his destiny. ‘My downfall raises me to infinite heights,’ he said. It was amortization of immortality.” Following Herold’s logic, one could point to Napoleon’s relatively unsystematic spending on Elba as evidence of his struggle to make sense of his life’s meaning in this intermittent stage when he was still dealing with loss of true power and had yet, as on Saint Helena, to fully resign himself to defeat so that he might concentrate on posterity. Herold, The Mind of Napoleon, xxx.
When Drouot presented: Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 121.
“Napoleon is never”: Campbell, Napoleon, 304.
Streetlights were installed: Branda, La guerre secrète, 98, 118.
“Great Lord of”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 165.
“It appears certain”: Campbell, Napoleon, 318. It doesn’t appear that Napoleon had any direct involvement with Tunisia while on Elba. A few years later, during the final exile, Bertrand remembered the time he had asked some Tunisian sailors docked at Portoferraio if they had come to do ill, to which they replied, “Against the Great Napoleon! . . . Oh! Never. . . . We do not wage war on God!,” and Napoleon added that the flag of Elba was held sacred by all Barbary ships and that even “the Algerines” worshipped him like a deity. Las Cases, Memorial, February 20, 1816.
“with some ladies”: Campbell, Napoleon, 305.
“receiving persons from”: Campbell, Napoleon, 305–6.
“I can’t say”: Campbell, Napoleon, 312.
“presumed that His Majesty’s”: Campbell, Napoleon, 312.
Louis XVIII had made: Indeed Parisians decried the ambassadorship of “Monsieur le duc de Vilainton,” though they had greeted him with cheers at the opera only a few months before. Mansel, Paris, 59.
“a violent . . . a torrent”: Campbell, Napoleon, 313–16.
He told Campbell: Campbell, Napoleon, 313.
“personal motives or”: Campbell, Napoleon, 317.
“I am a dead man”: Campbell, Napoleon, 317.
“He has four places”: Campbell, Napoleon, 304–5.
“We’ve made it through”: Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 120. By using the word “agreeable” I risk a too-literal translation of Drouot’s agréable, which would be more commonly translated as “pleasant” or “nice,” but I like that “agreeable” implies a kind of joint decision by Drouot and factors beyond his control to make this a happy summer.