Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  The allies were hoping, in vain, that the French would rally round their king. On the same day that Napoleon was dismantling the Bourbon regime from Lyons, 13 March, the allies issued a declaration in Vienna stating that Napoleon had placed himself beyond the ‘pale of civil and social relations’ and that the French people would consequently ‘annihilate this last attempt of a criminal and impotent delirium’.45 They argued, hypocritically under the circumstances since they had been contemplating his forced removal from Elba, that as Napoleon had broken the Treaty of Fontainebleau he had ‘destroyed the sole legal title by which his existence was bound’. The objective was clear – the allies declared war not against France or the French people, but against Napoleon. It was a well-worn tactic that had been used during the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, and as far back as 1804, when the Russians declared that they were waging war not on the people of France, but on its government, ‘as tyrannic for France as for the rest of Europe’.46 In that way, the coalition would appear to be anti-Napoleonic rather than anti-French.

  It was also a call for assassination. Most of the other allied representatives baulked at assassination, but they did agree that Napoleon had placed himself outside the law, which essentially meant that he could be treated as a mad beast and shot on sight by any peasant who wanted to take a crack at him.47 The idea of killing Napoleon had been around for a long time and had been contemplated by at least some of the allies. During the campaign for Germany in 1813 Bernadotte had declared, ‘Bonaparte is a scoundrel. He has to be killed.’48 In Paris, Louise Cochelet, reader to Hortense de Beauharnais, reported that many royalists were glad that Napoleon had had the idea of leaving his island, and that he would be ‘hunted down like a wild beast’.49 In England, on the other hand, radical writers and thinkers were outraged. An article by William Godwin appeared in the Morning Chronicle dubbing the appeal for assassination counter-productive and ludicrous.50 More practically, there were some in the allied military camp who thought Napoleon should be captured and shot. The Prussian general, Gneisenau, was one.51

  Rumours

  The people of Vienna appear quickly to have overcome their consternation.52 For a brief period, rumours abounded about where Napoleon had landed and what had become of him: he had been defeated in battle and forced to re-embark; he had been victorious in battle and had seized Lyons; he had taken Louis XVIII prisoner; he had been shot by Ney.53 Reports of his impending return had circulated as early as late spring 1814, that is, almost ten months before he actually did return, often spread by disgruntled demobilized soldiers (more than 300,000 of them), former imperial officers on half-pay (the vast majority fervent Bonapartists) of which there were about 10,000–12,000, schoolteachers and even, in one particular case, a clairvoyant. In the department of the Aisne, north-east of Paris, stories had circulated that Napoleon was about to return at the head of 200,000 troops.54 At the end of 1814, in the Lower Rhine, ‘absurd rumours’ were spread about his arrival in Lyons.55 Often they would be started by the appearance of a poster on a city wall announcing his return, put there by Bonapartists who only half believed what they were writing.56 News of an impending return could take other forms. In the Lower Rhine, for example, medallions of an eagle with the inscription Elle dort, elle se reveillera (It is asleep, it will awaken) were in circulation.57 Bonapartists meeting each other in the streets would cry out, ‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ?’, to which the other would reply, ‘Yes, and in his resurrection.’58 By the month of July 1814, reports of Napoleon’s imminent return flared up all over the country, repeated by veterans, workers, peasants and habitués of the Paris salons: he had arrived in Leghorn; he had landed somewhere on the Italian coast;59 he had returned to France at the head of a Turkish, German or Austrian army.60 The rumours were often accompanied by public demonstrations of support for Napoleon and/or contempt for the Bourbons, especially in the army. It was, for example, difficult to get some regiments to stop shouting out ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ during assembly.61 But this pro-Napoleon sentiment could also be found in the civilian population. At Saint-Etienne, for example, a wag posted the following on the church door:

  Maison à vendre

  Prêtre à pendre

  Louis XVIII pour trois jours

  Napoléon toujours

  (House for sale

  Priest to hang

  Louis XVIII for three days

  Napoleon for ever.)62

  At Nancy, in the evening of 6 December 1814, four individuals entered the town in a chariot, shouting, ‘Long live Bonaparte! Down with the Bourbons!’ They were followed by a ‘considerable multitude’.63 At Dole, during the festival of St Louis to celebrate the monarchy, a house was set upon because the inhabitants dared illuminate their windows.64 Not all demonstrations in favour of Napoleon were so public; the Bourbon regime prosecuted individuals caught expressing anti-Bourbon sentiments. Many displayed their pro-Napoleon tendencies more discreetly, buying and wearing objects that contained effigies of Napoleon.65

  A number of reasons can be put forward to explain why the Bourbon regime collapsed so quickly, and whether the dangers associated with a landing could have been predicted.66 First, the royal administration was badly organized. This was especially the case for the ministry of the interior, incapable of dealing with the reports with which it was being flooded from the provinces, not to mention the complete lack of communication between ministries. Then there was the police. Louis’ spy network was not as extensive nor as efficient as Napoleon’s. It meant that the monarchy was incapable of measuring the extent of the danger it faced. Finally, those in charge of the Bourbon regime were incompetent; there is no other word for it. In retrospect, a general with a couple of thousand loyal troops should have dealt easily with the problem of Napoleon’s sudden arrival.

  Marching to Paris with their Hands in their Pockets

  The reception Napoleon and his followers received as far as Grenoble had been lukewarm. At Digne, reached after an arduous trek through snow-covered mountain passes, Napoleon harangued the crowd, which acclaimed him, although most of the locals appear to have been less than impressed by his arrival. Only four people rallied to his flag – two soldiers, a gendarme and a shoemaker.67 Admittedly, this was a sparsely populated region; things started to look up as they got on to the main road to Grenoble. At Sisteron, the mayor came out to greet Napoleon. When asked whether he thought the people of France would welcome him back on the throne, the mayor was forthright enough to tell him that they would, as long as they did not have to put up with conscription that had led to such appalling losses of life.68 It was not until Gap that a certain amount of enthusiasm greeted Napoleon and his men; they were welcomed by the National Guard, the town was illuminated, and the men danced and drank all night. Fantin des Odoards was in Gap when Napoleon arrived ‘like a bomb in the middle of the town’.69 He was immediately faced with the painful choice between ‘honour and duty’ on the one hand and feelings of loyalty towards Napoleon on the other.

  About the time Napoleon arrived in Sisteron, on Sunday 5 March, shortly after mass, the overweight director of telegraphs, Ignace Chappe, was seen running down one of the corridors of the Tuileries Palace, holding a telegraph message in his hand.70* He was heading for the office of the secretary of the King’s Council, the Baron de Vitrolles. When he reached Vitrolles, out of breath and quite beside himself, he insisted the message be given to the king immediately. It was hardly correct procedure but Vitrolles understood that the circumstances were exceptional. At this time Louis was suffering terribly from arthritis to the point where he was spending most of his day on a couch with his feet wrapped in sheepskins. He was in that position when the Baron de Vitrolles entered. Louis opened the message and read in silence; his head sank into his hands. It was news that Napoleon had landed on the coast of Provence. ‘It is Revolution once more,’ the king pronounced; at least it was from his perspective. The monarchy tried to keep it secret as long as it could. A proclamation inserted into the Moniteur unive
rsel on 7 March referred only obliquely to Napoleon’s landing by an order of the king declaring him a traitor and a rebel.71 Official confirmation did not appear until the next day.72 By then, news of Napoleon’s arrival was already circulating, and some had begun sporting the tricolour cockade, although to do so meant being manhandled if not lynched by royalists.73

  Reports about how Paris reacted to the news vary according to the political bent of the witnesses. For Germaine de Staël, the reaction was so great that she thought ‘the earth was about to open up beneath my feet. For several days . . . the aid of prayer failed me entirely . . . it seemed to me that the Deity had withdrawn from the earth and would no longer communicate with the beings whom he had placed there.’74 The Duchesse d’Abrantès described the news of Napoleon’s return as ‘lightning in the middle of a clear day’. She recalled that she and her friends looked at each other with ‘an astonishment that was almost stupid’.75 Antoine Marie Chamans, comte de Lavalette, former minister of posts, confessed that when he heard the news, he was ‘half choked by emotion’.76 Hippolyte Carnot, the son of the minister Lazare Carnot, was still a schoolboy at the time. He recalls the streets of Paris full of people who were sombre and dejected, and that it had ‘the characteristic air of a great city on the eve of a catastrophe’.77 Victor de Broglie, a royalist, asserted that the news made no discernible impression. The public squares were deserted, the shops closed and the cafés half opened.78 There were no public outbursts of enthusiasm as there had been fifteen years previously when Bonaparte landed in the south of France on his return from Egypt.79 But it is possible that royalists either did not comprehend or refused to admit the danger they were facing. The Comte Claude Donatien de Sesmaisons, who rallied to the Bourbons and was part of the Royal Guard, wrote, ‘There is no cause for alarm. The man’s folly was inconceivable. The situation is being well handled. Everything ought to be over in a week.’80 He was right on that count at least; everything would be over in a week but not in the way he thought.

  Another witness, a young American by the name of James Gallatin, noticed that if people in the streets looked depressed, and all the shops were closed, the cafés were overflowing with people.81 Jules Michelet, also a schoolboy at this time, had a distinctly different memory. The news of Napoleon’s landing exploded in Paris like a ‘clap of thunder’.82 Many Bonapartists appear to have gathered at the Palais Royal, and especially around the Café Montansier. On the evening of 20 March, someone brought along a bust of Napoleon and placed it with a certain amount of pomp on a platform, while the public sang songs in honour of the French army and its commander-in-chief.83 It was from that café too that the first bouquets of violets, a flower that was going to become a Bonapartist symbol, appeared in Paris.84

  From Adventurer to Prince

  Laffrey, twenty-odd kilometres south of Grenoble, was the turning point for Napoleon. There, he broke a stand-off between his own troops and nominally royalist forces under the command of General Lessard.85 Accounts of what occurred vary but, at the head of his Guard, Napoleon stood before the troops sent to arrest him and said something like ‘Soldiers! If there is anyone among you who wishes to kill the Emperor, here I am.’86 He then allowed himself a melodramatic gesture; he opened his greatcoat and bared his chest.87 Before that, though, it is possible that Lessard’s troops dissolved as soon as they saw Napoleon and ran crying, shouting, cheering towards him. The gesture was not as courageous as has sometimes been portrayed, especially by artists in later years. What is often not said is that there had been a considerable coming and going between the two groups of soldiers. Intermediaries would have indicated to Napoleon the mood of the men facing him.

  Till then, even those who supported Napoleon had thought that he would be ‘shot like a dog’.88 Napoleon summed it up best on St Helena when he said, ‘Before Grenoble I was an adventurer. At Grenoble I became a reigning prince again.’89 At one point, Louis XVIII relied on Ney to put a stop to Napoleon’s journey. Ney, in a fit of zeal, promised to bring Napoleon back in a cage. It was just what the regime wanted to hear; Ney’s bon mot quickly did the rounds of Parisian society. When confronted with the reality, though, at Besançon and Lons, where the troops were in no mood to fight for the monarchy, Ney had a change of heart.90 He went over to Napoleon, and with him went any chance the Bourbons had of remaining in power.

  In Grenoble, Napoleon decided to rest his men for thirty-six hours. The number now under his command had increased to 4,000 battle-hardened troops, twenty cannon and a regiment of hussars, hardly enough to wage a standing battle, but an army that was growing all the time as deserters, veterans and Bonapartists from around the region started arriving. That number was to increase, once he entered Lyons, to eleven infantry regiments, two cavalry regiments and fifty cannon, plus about six battalions of individuals who had answered the call. By the time Napoleon reached Avallon on 16 March (fifty kilometres south of Auxerre), 14,000 or so troops had rallied to him, stretched out along the road behind him for at least 160 kilometres.

  The ‘flight of the eagle’, as Napoleon’s return is called, is one of the foundational stories of the Napoleonic legend.91 Even the Emperor’s enemies understood that his return was a ‘superb’ gesture, a ‘grandiose spectacle’,92 admired all the more because they also realized the adventure could not possibly succeed. The passage from Grenoble to Paris has been compared to a royal entry, during which time an accord was reached between the Emperor and the people of France who greeted him along the way.93 At Gap, people prevented the prefect and the commanding general from placing the city in a state of siege.94 At Grenoble, the cartwrights of the Faubourg Saint-Joseph broke down the gate at the Porte de Bonne to let Napoleon and his men in.95 At Lyons, the silk workers tore down the barricades on the bridges across the Rhône that had been erected in order to prevent Napoleon from passing. Crowds of people gathered along the bridges and on the quays in such numbers, according to Napoleon’s valet, that they risked being crushed, so desperate were they to get a glimpse of the Emperor.96 At Villefranche, a crowd of 50,000–60,000 people had gathered outside the town hall to see and cheer him, despite the cold weather. Similar crowds gathered at Mâcon, Tournus and Châlons. At Autun, the tanning workers laid siege to the Hôtel de Ville and entered the cathedral with the tricolour flag three days before Napoleon reached the town. There were risings in Nevers, Dijon, Dole, Beaune, Auxonne and many villages throughout Burgundy and the Franche-Comté. In short, Bonapartist urban insurrections preceded Napoleon’s arrival and almost always took the same form – the occupation of a central building like the town hall, the prefecture or the church, the suppression of monarchical symbols, the raising of the tricolour flag and often a procession that involved placing Napoleon’s bust in a prominent public position. Agricol Perdiguier noted that the first thing that happened in his village after news of Napoleon’s return was the hoisting of the tricolour flag on the church steeple.97

  The demi-soldes were often behind these movements,98 but Napoleon’s acolytes were also sent ahead to prepare the way. It is impossible to know of course what motivated people to turn out to see Napoleon, curiosity or fervour. No doubt a core of people in those crowds could be described as Bonapartists, people who desired the return of their hero. It is quite possible that many turned out realizing this was an historic moment they should be a witness to. It does not mean to say they hated the Bourbons, or that they wanted to see Napoleon back in power. It is, however, an indication of the extent of his fame. While some may have welcomed his return, the majority of the French treated the event with either indifference or hostility. Certain regions eventually rose in revolt against Napoleon – the Vendée, the south-west and Provence – while the elite were circumspect to say the least.

  Interestingly, few prefects, mayors or municipal councillors came out to support or greet Napoleon when he arrived in towns along the way. The only time he appears to have been officially welcomed was at Auxerre, where republican sentiment in the city was stronger
than in other parts of France.99 Auxerre was the last important city before the dash to Paris so Napoleon spent the day of 16 March, a Saturday, putting some order into his affairs, and writing to Marie-Louise asking her to join him. ‘I shall be in Paris by the time you receive this letter. Come and join me with my son,’ he pleaded. ‘I hope to embrace you before the month is out.’100

  All the next day, a Sunday, Napoleon was on the road, anxious to get to Paris as quickly as he could. He lunched at Joigny, and was at Sens by five in the afternoon. He left Pont-sur-Yonne at midnight, just as Louis was leaving the Tuileries. He pushed on to Fontainebleau, riding throughout the night, so that he arrived there at ten in the morning. He went straight to his apartments, where a fire had already been lit, and lay half dressed on his bed, exhausted after twenty hours on the road. He awoke after a few hours’ sleep to find a number of letters and dispatches, the most important of which was from Lavalette, who had taken over the Post Office in Paris, and who wrote to inform him that Louis had fled and he should make for the Tuileries as soon as possible. That letter decided him to push on to Paris.