XXXVIII. ELBA AND PARIS…

XXXVIII. ELBA AND PARIS

If it be an advantage to pause in the midst of the rush of life and take one's bearings afresh, then Napoleon was fortunate in being drifted to the quiet eddy of Elba. He there had leisure to review his career, to note where he had served his generation and succeeded, where also he had dashed himself fruitlessly against the fundamental instincts of mankind. Undoubtedly he did essay this mental stock-taking. He remarked to the conscientious Drouot that he was wrong in not making peace at the Congress of Prague; that trust in his own genius and in his soldiery led him astray; "but those who blame me have never drunk of Fortune's intoxicating cup." When a turn of her wheel brought him uppermost again, he confessed that at Elba he had heard, as in a tomb, the verdict of posterity; and there are signs that his maturer convictions thenceforth strove to curb the old domineering instincts that had wrecked his life.

Introspection, however, was alien to his being; he was made for the camp rather than the study; his critical powers, if turned in for a time on himself, quickly swung back to work upon men and affairs; and they found the needed exercise in organizing his Liliputian Empire and surveying the course of European politics. In the first weeks he was up at dawn, walking or riding about Porto Ferrajo and its environs, planning better defences, or tracing out new roads and avenues of mulberry trees. "I have never seen a man," wrote Campbell, "with so much activity and restless perseverance: he appears to take pleasure in perpetual movement, and in seeing those who accompany him sink under fatigue." About seven hundred of his Guards were brought over on British transports; and these, along with Corsicans and Tuscans, guarded him against royalist plotters, real or supposed. In a short time he purchased a few small vessels, and annexed the islet of Pianosa. These affairs and the formation of an Imperial Court for the delectation of his mother and his sister Pauline, who now joined him, served to drive away ennui; but he bitterly resented the Emperor Francis's refusal to let his wife and son come to him. Whether Marie Louise would have come is more than doubtful, for her relations to Count Neipperg were already notorious; but the detention of his son was a heartless action that aroused general sympathy for the lonely man. The Countess Walewska paid him a visit for some days, bringing the son whom she had borne him.[458]

Meanwhile Europe was settling down uneasily on its new political foundations. Considering that France had been at the mercy of the allies, she had few just grounds of complaint against them. The Treaties of Paris (May 30th, 1814) left her with rather wider bounds than those of 1791; and she kept the art treasures reft by Napoleon. Perfidious Albion yielded up all her French colonial conquests, except Mauritius, Tobago, and St. Lucia. Britons grumbled at the paltry gains brought by a war that had cost more than £600,000,000: but Castlereagh justified the policy of conciliation. "It is better," said he, "for France to be commercial and pacific than a warlike and conquering State." We insisted on her ceding Belgium to the House of Orange, while we retained the Dutch colonies conquered by us, the Cape, Demerara, and Curaçoa--paying £6,000,000 for them.

The loss of the Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Italy galled French pride. Loud were the murmurs of the throngs of soldiers that came from the fortresses of Germany, or the prisons of Spain, Russia, and England--70,000 crossed over from our shores alone--at the harshness of the allies and the pusillanimity of the Bourbons. The return from war to peace is always hard; and now these gaunt warriors came back to a little France that perforce discharged them or placed them on half-pay. Perhaps they might have been won over by a tactful Court: but the Bourbons, especially that typical émigré, the Comte d'Artois, were nothing if not tactless, witness their shelving of the Old Guard and formation of the Maison du Roi, a privileged and highly paid corps of 6,000 nobles and royalist gentlemen. The peasants, too, were uneasy, especially those who held the lands of nobles confiscated in the Revolution. To indemnify the former owners was impossible in face of the torrent of exorbitant claims that flowed in. And the year 1814, which began as a soul-stirring epic, ended with sordid squabbles worthy of a third-rate farce.

Moreover, at this very time, the former allies seemed on the brink of war. The limits of our space admit only of the briefest glance at the disputes of the Powers at the Congress of Vienna. The storm centre of Europe was the figure of the Czar. To our ambassador at Vienna, Sir Charles Stewart, he declared his resolve to keep western Poland and never to give up 7,000,000 of his "Polish subjects."[459] Strange to say, he ultimately gained the assent of Prussia to this objectionable scheme, provided that she acquired the whole of Saxony, while Frederick Augustus was to be transplanted to the Rhineland with Bonn as capital. To these proposals Austria, England, and France offered stern opposition, and framed a secret compact (January 3rd, 1815) to resist them, if need be, with armies amounting to 450,000 men. But, though swords were rattled in their scabbards, they were not drawn. When news reached Vienna of the activity of Bonapartists in France and of Murat in Italy, the Powers agreed (February 8th) to the Saxon-Polish compromise which took shape in the map of Eastern Europe. The territorial arrangements in the west were evidently inspired by the wish to build up bulwarks against France. Belgium was tacked on to Holland; Germany was huddled into a Confederation, in which the princes had complete sovereign powers; and the Kingdom of Sardinia grew to more than its former bulk by recovering Savoy and Nice and gaining Genoa.

This piling up of artificial barriers against some future Napoleon was to serve the designs of the illustrious exile himself. The instinct of nationality, which his blows had aroused to full vigour, was now outraged by the sovereigns whom it carried along to victory. Belgians strongly objected to Dutch rule, and German "Unitarians," as Metternich dubbed them, spurned a form of union which subjected the Fatherland to Austria and her henchmen. Hardest of all was the fate of Italy. After learning the secret of her essential unity under Napoleon, she was now parcelled out among her former rulers; and thrills of rage shot through the peninsula when the Hapsburgs settled down at Venice and Milan, while their scions took up the reins at Modena, Parma, and Florence.

It was on this popular indignation that Murat now built his hopes. After throwing over Napoleon, he had looked to find favour with the allies; but his movements in 1814 had been so suspicious that the fate of his kingdom remained hanging in the balance. The Bourbons of Paris and Madrid strove hard to effect his overthrow; but Austria and England, having tied their hands early in 1814 by treaties with him, could only wait and watch in the hope that the impetuous soldier would take a false step. He did so in February, 1815, when he levied forces, summoned Louis XVIII. to declare whether he was at war with him, and prepared to march into Northern Italy.

The disturbed state of the peninsula caused the Powers much uneasiness as to the presence of Napoleon at Elba. Louis XVIII. in his despatches, and Talleyrand in private conversations, two or three times urged his removal to the Azores; but, with the exception of Castlereagh, who gave a doubtful assent, the plenipotentiaries scouted the thought of it. Metternich entirely opposed it, and the Czar would certainly have objected to the reversal of his Elba plan, had Talleyrand made a formal proposal to that effect. But he did not do so. The official records of the Congress contain not a word on the subject. Equally unfounded were the newspaper rumours that the Congress was considering the advisability of removing Napoleon to St. Helena. On this topic the official records are also silent; and we have the explicit denial of the Duke of Wellington (who reached Vienna on the 1st of February to relieve Castlereagh) that "the Congress ever had any intention of removing Bonaparte from Elba to St. Helena."[460]

Napoleon's position was certainly one of unstable equilibrium, that tended towards some daring enterprise or inglorious bankruptcy. The maintenance of his troops cost him more than 1,000,000 francs a year, while his revenue was less than half of that sum. He ought to have received 2,000,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII.; but that monarch, while confiscating the property of the Bonapartes in France, paid not a centime of the sums which the allies had pledged him to pay to the fallen House. Both the Czar and our envoy, Castlereagh, warmly reproached Talleyrand with his master's shabby conduct; to which the plenipotentiary replied that it was dangerous to furnish Napoleon with money as long as Italy was in so disturbed a state. Castlereagh, on his return to England by way of Paris, again pressed the matter on Louis XVIII., who promised to take the matter in hand. But he was soon quit of it: for, as he wrote to Talleyrand on March 7th, Bonaparte's landing in France spared him the trouble.[461]

To assert, however, that Napoleon's escape from Elba was prompted by a desire to avoid bankruptcy, is to credit him with respectable bourgeois scruples by which he was never troubled. Though "Madame Mère" and Pauline complained bitterly to Campbell of the lack of funds at Elba, the Emperor himself was far from depressed. "His spirits seem of late," wrote Campbell on December 28th, "rather to rise, and not to yield in the smallest degree to the pressure of pecuniary difficulties." Both Campbell and Lord John Russell, who then paid the Emperor a flying visit, thought that he was planning some great move, and warned our Ministers.[462] But they shared the view of other wiseacres, that Italy would be his goal, and that too, when Campbell's despatches teemed with remarks made to him by Napoleon as to the certainty of an outbreak in France. Here are two of them:

He said that there would be a violent outbreak, similar to the Revolution, in consequence of their present humiliation: every man in France considers the Rhine to be the natural frontier of France, and nothing can alter this opinion. If the spirit of the nation is roused into action nothing can oppose it. It is like a torrent.... The present Government of France is too feeble: the Bourbons should make war as soon as possible so as to establish themselves upon the throne. It would not be difficult to recover Belgium. It is only for the British troops there that the French army has the smallest awe" (sic).

His final resolve to put everything to the hazard was formed about February 13th, when, shortly after receiving tidings as to the unrest in Italy, the discords of the Powers, and the resolve of the allied sovereigns to leave Vienna on the 20th, he heard news of the highest importance from France. On that day one of his former officials, Fleury de Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and informed him of the hatching of a plot by military malcontents, under the lead of Fouché, for the overthrow of Louis XVIII.[463] Napoleon at once despatched his informant to Naples, and ordered his brig, "L'Inconstant," to be painted like an English vessel. Most fortunately for him, Campbell on the 16th set sail for Tuscany--"for his health and on private affairs"--on the small war-vessel, "Partridge," to which the British Government had intrusted the supervision of Napoleon. Captain Adye, of that vessel, promised, after taking Campbell to Leghorn, to return and cruise off Elba. He called at Porto Ferrajo on the 24th, and to Bertrand's question, when he was to bring Campbell back, returned the undiplomatic answer that it was fixed for the 26th. The news seems to have decided Napoleon to escape on that day, when the "Partridge" would be absent at Leghorn. Meanwhile Campbell, alarmed by the news of the preparations at Elba, was sending off a request to Genoa that another British warship should be sent to frustrate the designs of the "restless villain."

But it was now too late. On that Sunday night at 9 p.m., the Emperor, with 1,050 officers and men, embarked at Porto Ferrajo on the "Inconstant" and six smaller craft. Favoured by the light airs that detained the British vessel, his flotilla glided away northwards; and not before the 28th did Adye and Campbell find that the imperial eagle had flown. Meanwhile Napoleon had eluded the French guard-ship, "Fleur-de-Lys," and ordered his vessels to scatter. On doubling the north of Corsica, he fell in with another French cruiser, the "Zephyr," which hailed his brig and inquired how the great man was. "Marvellously well," came the reply, suggested by Napoleon himself to his captain. The royalist cruiser passed on contented. And thus, thanks to the imbecility of the old Governments and of their servants, Napoleon was able to land his little force safely in the Golfe de Jouan on the afternoon of March 1st.[464] Is it surprising that foreigners, who had not yet fathomed the eccentricities of British officialdom, should have believed that we connived at Napoleon's escape? It needed the blood shed at Waterloo to wipe out the misconception.

"I shall reach Paris without firing a shot." Such was the prophecy of Napoleon to his rather questioning followers as they neared the coast of Provence. It seemed the wildest of dreams. Could the man, who had been wellnigh murdered by the rabble of Avignon and Orgon, hope to march in peace through that royalist province? And, if he ever reached the central districts where men loved him better, would the soldiery dare to disobey the commands of Soult, the new Minister of War, of Ney, Berthier, Macdonald, St. Cyr, Suchet, Augereau, and of many more who were now honestly serving the Bourbons? The King and his brothers had no fears. They laughed at the folly of this rash intruder.

At first their confidence seemed justified. Napoleon's overtures to the officer and garrison of Antibes were repulsed, and the small detachment which he sent there was captured. Undaunted by this check, he decided to hurry on by way of Grasse towards Grenoble, thus forestalling the news of his first failure, and avoiding the royalist districts of the lower Rhone.

Napoleon was visibly perturbed as he drew near to Grenoble. There the officer in command, General Marchand, had threatened to exterminate this "band of brigands"; and his soldiers as yet showed no signs of defection. But, by some bad management, only one battalion held the defile of Laffray on the south. As the bear-skins of the Guard came in sight, the royalist ranks swerved and drew back. Then the Emperor came forward, and ordered his men to lower their arms. "There he is: fire on him," cried a royalist officer. Not a shot rang out.--"Soldiers," said the well-known voice, "if there is one among you who wishes to kill his Emperor, he can do so. Here I am." At once a great shout of "Vive l'Empereur" burst forth: and the battalion broke into an enthusiastic rush towards the idol of the soldiery.

That scene decided the whole course of events. A little later, a young noble, Labédoyère, leads over his regiment; at Grenoble the garrison stands looking on and cheering while the Bonapartists batter in the gates; and the hero is borne in amidst a whirlwind of cheers. At Lyons, the Comte d'Artois and Macdonald seek safety in flight; and soldiers and workmen welcome their chief with wild acclaim; but amidst the wonted cries are heard threats of "The Bourbons to the guillotine," "Down with the priests!"

The shouts were ominous: they showed that the Jacobins meant to use Napoleon merely as a tool for the overthrow of the Bourbons. The "have-nots" cheered him, but the "haves" shivered at his coming, for every thinking man knew that it implied war with Europe.[465] Napoleon saw the danger of relying merely on malcontents and sought to arouse a truly national feeling. He therefore on March 13th issued a series of popular decrees, that declared the rule of the Bourbons at an end, dissolved the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and summoned the "electoral colleges" of the Empire to a great assembly, or Champ de Mai, at Paris. He further proscribed the white flag, ordered the wearing of the tri-colour cockade, disbanded the hated "Maison du Roi," abolished feudal titles, and sequestered the domains of the Bourbon princes. In brief, he acted as the Bonaparte of 1799. He then set forth for Paris, at the head of 14,000 men.

Ney was at the same time marching with 6,000 men from Besançon. He had lately assured Louis XVIII. that Napoleon deserved to be brought to Paris in an iron cage. But now his soldiers kept a sullen silence. At Bourg the leading regiment deserted; and while beset by difficulties, the Marshal received from Napoleon the assurance that he would be received as he was on the day after the Moskwa (Borodino). This was enough. He drew his troops around him, and, to their lively joy, declared for the Emperor (March 14th). Napoleon was as good as his word. Never prone to petty malice, he now received with equal graciousness those officers who flung themselves at his feet, and those who staunchly served the King to the very last. Before this sunny magnanimity the last hopes of the Bourbons melted away. Greeted on all sides by soldiers and peasants, the enchanter advances on Paris, whence the King and Court beat a hasty retreat towards Lille.

Crowds of peasants line and almost block the road from Fontainebleau to catch a glimpse of the gray coat; and, to expedite matters, he drives on in a cabriolet with his faithful Caulaincourt. Escorted by a cavalcade of officers he enters Paris after nightfall; but there the tone of the public is cool and questioning, until the front of the Tuileries facing the river is reached.[466] Then a mighty shout arises from the throng of jubilant half-pay officers as the well-known figure alights: he passes in, and is half carried up the grand staircase, "his eyes half closed," says Lavalette, "his hands extended before him like a blind man, and expressing his joy only by a smile." Ladies are there also, who have spent the weary hours of waiting in stripping off fleurs-de-lys, and gleefully exposing the N's and golden bees concealed by cheap Bourbon upholstery. Anon they fly back to this task; the palace wears its wonted look; and the brief spell of Bourbon rule seems gone for ever.

To his contemporaries this triumph of Napoleon appeared a miracle before which the voice of criticism must be dumb. And yet, if we remember the hollowness of the Bourbon restoration, the tactlessness of the princes and the greed of their partisans, it seems strange that the house of cards reared by the Czar and Talleyrand remained standing even for eleven months. Napoleon correctly described the condition of France when he said to his comrades on the "Inconstant": "There is no historic example that induces me to venture on this bold enterprise: but I have taken into account the surprise that will seize on men, the state of public feeling, the resentment against the allies, the love of my soldiers, in fine, all the Napoleonic elements that still germinate in our beautiful France."[467]

Still less was he deceived by the seemingly overwhelming impulse in his favour. He looked beyond the hysteria of welcome to the cold and critical fit which follows; and he saw danger ahead. When Mollien complimented him on his return, he replied, alluding to the general indifference at the departure of the Bourbons: "My dear fellow! People have let me come, just as they let the others go." The remark reveals keen insight into the workings of French public opinion. The whole course of the Revolution had shown how easy it was to destroy a Government, how difficult to rebuild. In truth, the events of March, 1815, may be called the epilogue of the revolutionary drama. The royal House had offended the two most powerful of French interests, the military and the agrarian, so that soldiers and peasants clutched eagerly at Napoleon as a mighty lever for its overthrow.

The Emperor wisely formed his Ministry before the first enthusiasm cooled down. Maret again became Secretary of State; Decrès took the Navy; Gaudin the finances; Mollien was coaxed back to the Treasury, and Davoust reluctantly accepted the Ministry of War. Savary declined to be burdened with the Police, and Napoleon did not press him: for that clever intriguer, Fouché, was pointed out as the only man who could rally the Jacobins around the imperial throne: to him, then, Napoleon assigned this important post, though fully aware that in his hands it was a two-edged tool. Carnot was finally persuaded to become Minister for Home Affairs.

Napoleon's fate, however, was to be decided, not at Paris, but by the statesmen assembled at Vienna. There time was hanging somewhat heavily, and the news of Napoleon's escape was welcomed at first as a grateful diversion. Talleyrand asserted that Napoleon would aim at Italy, but Metternich at once remarked: "He will make straight for Paris." When this prophecy proved to be alarmingly true, a drastic method was adopted to save the Bourbons. The plenipotentiaries drew up a declaration that Bonaparte, having broken the compact which established him at Elba--the only legal title attaching to his existence--had placed himself outside the bounds of civil and social relations, and, as an enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, was consigned to "public prosecution" (March 13th).[468] The rigour of this decree has been generally condemned. But, after all, it did not exceed in harshness Napoleon's own act of proscription against Stein; it was a desperate attempt to stop the flight of the imperial eagle to Paris and to save France from war with Europe.

Public considerations were doubtless commingled with the promptings of personal hatred. We are assured that Talleyrand was the author of this declaration, which had the complete approval of the Czar. But Napoleon had one enemy more powerful than Alexander, more insidious than Talleyrand, and that was--his own past. Everywhere the spectre of war rose up before the imagination of men. The merchant pictured his ships swept off by privateers: the peasant saw his homestead desolate: the housewife dreamt of her larder emptied by taxes, and sons carried off for the war. At Berlin, wrote Jackson, all was agitation, and everybody said that the work of last year would have to be done over again.

In England the current of public feeling was somewhat weakened by the drifts and eddies of party politics. Many of the Whigs made a popular hero of Napoleon, some from a desire to overthrow the Liverpool Ministry that proscribed him; others because they believed, or tried to believe, that the return of Napoleon concerned only France, and that he would leave Europe alone if Europe left him alone. Others there were again, as Hazlitt, who could not ignore the patent fact that Napoleon was an international personage and had violated a European compact, yet nevertheless longed for his triumph over the bad old Governments and did not trouble much as to what would come next. But, on the whole, the judgment of well-informed people may be summed up in the conclusion of that keen lawyer, Crabb Robinson: "The question is, peace with Bonaparte now, or war with him in Germany two years hence."[469] The matter came to a test on April 28th, when Whitbread's motion against war was rejected by 273 to 72.[470]

If that was the general opinion in days when Ministers and diplomatists alone knew the secrets of the game, it was certain that the initiated, who remembered his wrongheaded refusals to make peace even in the depressing days of 1814, would strive to crush him before he could gather all his strength. In vain did he protest that he had learnt by sad experience and was a changed man. They interpreted his pacific speeches by their experience of his actions; and thus his overweening conduct in the past blotted out all hope of his crowning a romantic career by a peaceful and benignant close. The declaration of outlawry was followed, on March 25th, by the conclusion of treaties between the Powers, which virtually renewed those framed at Chaumont. In quick succession the smaller States gave in their adhesion; and thus the coalition which tact and diplomacy had dissolved was revivified by the fears which the mighty warrior aroused. Napoleon made several efforts to sow distrust among the Powers; and chance placed in his hands a veritable apple of discord.

The Bourbons in their hasty flight from Paris had left behind several State papers, among them being the recent secret compact against Russia and Prussia. Napoleon promptly sent this document to the Czar at Vienna; but his hopes of sundering the allies were soon blighted. Though Alexander and Metternich had for months refused to exchange a word or a look, yet the news of Napoleon's adventure brought about a speedy reconciliation; and when the compromising paper from Paris was placed in the Czar's hands, he took the noble revenge of sending for Metternich, casting it into the fire, and adjuring the Minister to forget recent disputes in the presence of their common enemy. Napoleon strove to detach Austria from the Coalition, as did also Fouché on his own account; but the overtures led to no noteworthy result, except that Napoleon, on finding out Fouché's intrigue, threatened to have him shot--a threat which that necessary tool treated with quiet derision.

A few acts of war occurred at once; but Austria and Russia pressed for delay, the latter with the view of overthrowing Murat. That potentate now drew the sword on behalf of Napoleon, and summoned the Italians to struggle for their independence. But he was quickly overpowered at Tolentino (May 3rd), and fled from his kingdom, disguised as a sailor, to Toulon. There he offered his sword to Napoleon; but the Emperor refused his offer and blamed him severely, alleging that he had compromised the fortunes of France by rendering peace impossible. The charge must be pronounced not proven. The allies had taken their resolve to destroy Napoleon on March 13th, and Murat's adventure merely postponed the final struggle for a month or so.

Napoleon used this time of respite to form his army and stamp out opposition in France. The French royalist bands gave him little trouble. In the south-west the fleur-de-lys was speedily beaten down; but in La Vendée royalism had its roots deep-seated. Headed by the two Larochejacqueleins, the peasants made a brave fight; and 20,000 regulars failed to break them up until the month of June was wearing on. What might not those 20,000 men, detained in La Vendée, have effected on the crest of Waterloo?

Napoleon's preoccupation, however, was the conduct of the Jacobins in France, who had been quickened to immense energy by the absurdities of the royalist reaction and felt that they had the new ruler in their power. A game of skill ensued, which took up the greater part of the "Hundred Days" of Napoleon's second reign. His conduct proved that he was not sure of success. He felt out of touch with this new liberty-loving France, so different from the passively devoted people whom he had left in 1814; he bridled his impetuous nature, reasoning with men, inviting criticism, and suggesting doubts as to his own proposals, in a way that contrasted curiously with the old sledge-hammer methods.

"He seemed," writes Mollien, "habitually calm, pensive, and preserved without affectation a serious dignity, with little of that old audacity and self-confidence which had never met with insuperable obstacles.... As his thoughts were cramped in a narrow space girt with precipices instead of soaring freely over a vast horizon of power, they became laborious and

This Pegasus in harness chafed at the unwonted yoke; and at times the old instincts showed themselves. On one occasion, when the subject turned on the new passion for liberty, he said to Lavalette with a question in his voice: "All this will last two or three years?" "Your Majesty," replied the Minister, "must not believe that. It will last for ever."

The first grave difficulty was to frame a constitution, especially as his Lyons decrees led men to believe that it would emanate from the people, and be sanctioned by them in a great Champ de Mai. Perhaps this was impossible. A great part of France was a prey to civil strifes; and it was a skilful device to intrust the drafting of a constitution to Benjamin Constant.

This brilliant writer and talker had now run through the whole gamut of political professions. A pronounced Jacobin and free-thinker during the Consulate, he subsequently retired to Germany, where he unlearnt his politics, his religion, and his philosophy. The sight of Napoleon's devastations made him a supporter of the throne and altar, compelled him to recast his treatises, and drove him to consort with the quaint circle of pietists who prayed and grovelled with Madame de Krudener. Returning to France at the Restoration, he wielded his facile pen in the cause of the monarchy, and fluttered after the fading charms of Madame Récamier, confiding to his friend, De Broglie, that he knew not whether to trust most to divine or satanic agencies for success in this lawless chase. In March, 1815, he thundered in the Press against the brigand of Elba--until the latter won him over in the space of a brief interview, and persuaded him to draft, with a few colleagues, the final constitution of the age.

Not that Constant had a free hand: he worked under imperial inspiration. The present effort was named the Additional Act--additional, that is, to the Constitutions of the Empire (April 22nd, 1815). It established a Chamber of Peers nominated by Napoleon, with hereditary rights, and a Chamber of Representatives elected on the plan devised in August, 1802. The Emperor was to nominate all the judges, including the juges de paix; the jury system was maintained, and liberty of the Press was granted. The Chambers also gained somewhat wider control over the Ministers.[471]

This Act called forth a hail of criticisms. When the Council of State pointed out that there was no guarantee against confiscations, Napoleon's eyes flashed fire, and he burst forth:

"You are pushing me in a way that is not mine. You are weakening and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. Public opinion was excellent: now it is execrable. France is asking what has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to master Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and of natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first justice is the public safety."

The councillors quailed under this tirade and conceded the point--though we may here remark that Napoleon showed a wise clemency towards his foes, and confiscated the estates of only thirteen of them.

Public opinion became more and more "execrable." Some historians have asserted that the decline of Napoleon's popularity was due, not to the Additional Act, but to the menaces of war from a united Europe: this may be doubted. Miot de Melito, who was working for the Emperor in the West, states that "never had a political error more immediate effects" than that Act; and Lavalette, always a devoted adherent, asserts That Frenchmen thenceforth "saw only a despot in the Emperor and forgot about the enemy."

As a display of military enthusiasm, the Champ de Mai, of June 1st, recalled the palmy days gone by. Veterans and conscripts hailed their chief with jubilant acclaim, as with a few burning words he handed them their eagles. But the people on the outskirts cheered only when the troops cheered. Why should they, or the "electors" of France, cheer? They had hoped to give her a constitution; and they were now merely witnesses to Napoleon's oath that he would obey the constitution of his own making. As a civic festival, it was a mockery in the eyes of men who remembered the "Feast of Pikes," and were not to be dazzled by the waving of banners and the gorgeous costumes of Napoleon and his brothers. The opening of the Chambers six days later gave an outlet to the general discontent. The report that Napoleon designed his brother Lucien for the Presidency of the Lower House is incorrect. That honest democrat Lanjuinais was elected. Everything portended a constitutional crisis, when the summons to arms rang forth; and the chief, warning the deputies not to imitate the Greeks of the late Empire by discussing abstract propositions while the battering-ram thundered at their gates, cut short these barren debates by that appeal to the sword which had rarely belied his hopes.

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XXXIX. LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS

A less determined optimist than Napoleon might well have hoped for success over the forces of the new coalition. True, they seemed overwhelmingly great. But many a coalition had crumbled away under the alchemy of his statecraft; and the jealousies that had raged at the Congress of Vienna inspired the hope that Austria, and perhaps England, might speedily be detached from their present allies. Strange as it seems to us, the French people opined that Napoleon's escape from Elba was due to the connivance of the British Government; and Captain Mercer states that, even at Waterloo, many of the French clung to the belief that the British resistance would be a matter of form. Napoleon cherished no such illusion: but he certainly hoped to surprise the British and Prussian forces in Belgium, and to sever at one blow an alliance which he judged to be ill cemented. Thereafter he would separate Austria from Russia, a task that was certainly possible if victory crowned the French eagles.[472]

His military position was far stronger than it had been since the Moscow campaign. The loss of Germany and Spain had really added to his power. No longer were his veterans shut up in the fortresses of Europe from Danzig to Antwerp, from Hamburg to Ragusa; and the Peninsular War no longer engulfed great armies of his choicest troops. In the eyes of Frenchmen he was not beaten in 1814; he was only tripped up by a traitor when on the point of crushing his foes. And, now that peace had brought back garrisons and prisoners of war, as many as 180,000 well-trained troops were ranged under the imperial eagles. He hoped by the end of June to have half a million of devoted soldiers ready for the field.

The difficulties that beset him were enough to daunt any mind but his. Some of the most experienced Marshals were no longer at his side. St. Cyr, Macdonald, Oudinot, Victor, Marmont, and Augereau remained true to Louis XVIII. Berthier, on hearing of Napoleon's return from Elba, forthwith retired into Germany, and, in a fit of frenzy, threw himself from the window of a house in Bamberg while a Russian corps was passing through that town. Junot had lost his reason. Masséna and Moncey were too old for campaigning; Mortier fell ill before the first shots were fired. Worst of all, the unending task of army organization detained Davoust at Paris. Certainly he worked wonders there; but, as in 1813 and 1814, Napoleon had cause to regret the absence of a lieutenant equally remarkable for his acuteness of perception and doggedness of purpose, for a good fortune that rarely failed, and a devotion that never faltered. Doubtless it was this last priceless quality, as well as his organizing gifts, that marked him out as the ideal Minister of War and Governor of Paris. Besides him he left a Council charged with the government during his absence, composed of Princes Joseph and Lucien and the Ministers.

But, though the French army of 1815 lacked some of the names far famed in story, numbers of zealous and able officers were ready to take their place. The first and second corps were respectively assigned to Drouet, Count d'Erlon, and Reille, the former of whom was the son of the postmaster of Varennes, who stopped Louis XVI.'s flight. Vandamme commanded the third corps; Gérard, the fourth; Rapp, the fifth; while the sixth fell to Mouton, better known as Count Lobau. Rapp's corps was charged with the defence of Alsace; other forces, led by Brune, Decaen, and Clausel, protected the southern borders, while Suchet guarded the Alps; but the rest of these corps were gradually drawn together towards the north of France, and the addition of the Guard, 20,800 strong, brought the total of this army to 125,000 men.

There was one post which the Emperor found it most difficult to fill, that of Chief of the Staff. There the loss of Berthier was irreparable. While lacking powers of initiative, he had the faculty of lucidly and quickly drafting Napoleon's orders, which insures the smooth working of the military machine. Who should succeed this skilful and methodical officer? After long hesitation Napoleon chose Soult. In a military sense the choice was excellent. The Duke of Dalmatia had a glorious military record; in his nature activity was blended with caution, ardour with method; but he had little experience of the special duties now required of him; and his orders were neither drafted so clearly nor transmitted so promptly as those of Berthier.

The concentration of this great force proceeded with surprising swiftness; and, in order to lull his foes into confidence, the Emperor delayed his departure from Paris to the last moment possible. As dawn was flushing the eastern sky, on June 12th, he left his couch, after four hours' sleep, entered his landau, and speedily left his slumbering capital behind. In twelve hours he was at Laon. There he found that Grouchy's four cavalry brigades were not sharing in the general advance owing to Soult's neglect to send the necessary orders. The horsemen were at once hurried on, several regiments covering twenty leagues at a stretch and exhausting their steeds. On the 14th the army was well in hand around Beaumont, within striking distance of the Prussian vanguard, from which it was separated by a screen of dense woods. There the Emperor mounted his charger and rode along the ranks, raising such a storm of cheers that he vainly called out: "Not so loud, my children, the enemy will hear you." There, too, on this anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, he inspired his men by a stirring appeal on behalf of the independence of Poles, Italians, the smaller German States, and, above all, of France herself. "For every Frenchman of spirit the time has come to conquer or die."

What, meanwhile, was the position of the allies? An Austro-Sardinian force threatened the south-east of France. Mighty armies of 170,000 Russians and 250,000 Austrians were rolling slowly on towards Lorraine and Alsace respectively; 120,000 Prussians, under Blücher, were cantoned between Liège and Charleroi; while Wellington's composite array of British, German, and Dutch-Belgian troops, about 100,000 strong, lay between Brussels and Mons.[473] The original plan of these two famous leaders was to push on rapidly into France; but the cautious influences of the Military Council sitting at Vienna prevailed, and it was finally decided not to open the campaign until the Austrians and Russians should approach the frontiers of France. Even as late as June 15th we find Wellington writing to the Czar in terms that assume a co-operation of all the allies in simultaneous moves towards Paris--movements which Schwarzenberg had led him to expect would begin about the 20th of June.[474]

From this prolonged and methodical warfare Europe was saved by Napoleon's vigorous offensive. His political instincts impelled him to strike at Brussels, where he hoped that the populace would declare for union with France and severance from the detested Dutch. In this war he must not only conquer armies, he must win over public opinion; and how could he gain it so well as in the guise of a popular liberator?

But there were other advantages to be gained in Belgium. By flinging himself on Wellington and the Prussians, and driving them asunder, he would compel Louis XVIII. to another undignified flight; and he would disorganize the best prepared armies of his foes, and gain the material resources of the Low Countries. He seems even to have cherished the hope that a victory over Wellington would dispirit the British Government, unseat the Ministry, and install in power the peace-loving Whigs.

And this victory was almost within his grasp. While his host drew near to the Prussian outposts south of Charleroi and Thuin, the allies were still spread out in cantonments that extended over one hundred miles, namely, from Liège on Blücher's left to Audenarde on Wellington's right. This wide dispersion of troops, when an enterprising foe was known to be almost within striking distance, has been generally condemned. Thus General Kennedy, in his admirable description of Waterloo, admits that there was an "absurd extension" of the cantonments. Wellington, however, was bound to wait and to watch the three good high-roads, by any one of which Napoleon might advance, namely, those of Tournay, Mons, and Charleroi. The Duke had other causes for extending his lines far to the west: he desired to cover the roads from Ostend, whence he was expecting reinforcements, and to stretch a protecting wing over the King of France at Ghent.

There are many proofs, however, that Wellington was surprised by Napoleon. The narratives of Sir Hussey Vivian and Captain Mercer show that the final orders for our advance were carried out with a haste and flurry that would not have happened if the army had been well in hand, or if Wellington had been fully informed of Napoleon's latest moves.[475] There is a wild story that the Duke was duped by Fouché, on whom he was relying for news from Paris. But it seems far more likely that he was misled by the tidings sent to Louis XVIII. at Ghent by zealous royalists in France, the general purport of which was that Napoleon would wage a defensive campaign.[476] On the 13th June, Wellington wrote: "I have accounts from Paris of the 10th, on which day he [Bonaparte] was still there; and I judge from his speech to the Legislature that his departure was not likely to be immediate. I think we are now too strong for him here." And, in later years, he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon "was certainly wrong in attacking at all"; for the allied armies must soon have been in great straits for want of food if they had advanced into France, exhausted as she was by the campaign of 1814. "But," he added, "the fact is, Bonaparte never in his life had patience for a defensive war."

The Duke's forces would, at the outset of the campaign, have been in less danger, if the leaders at the Prussian outposts, Pirch II. and Dörnberg of the King's German Legion, had warned him of the enemy's massing near the Sambre early on the 15th. By some mischance this was not done; and our leader only heard from Hardinge, at the Prussian headquarters, that the enemy seemed about to begin the offensive. He therefore waited for more definite news before concentrating upon any one line.

About 6 p.m. on the 15th he ordered his divisions and brigades to concentrate at Vilvorde, Brussels, Ninove, Grammont, Ath, Braine-le-Comte, Hal, and Nivelles--the first four of which were somewhat remote, while the others were chosen with a view to defending the roads leading northwards from Mons. Not a single British brigade was posted on the Waterloo-Charleroi road, which was at that time guarded only by a Dutch-Belgian division, a fact which supports Mr. Ropes's contention that no definite plan of co-operation had been formed by the allied leaders. Or, if there was one, the Duke certainly refused to act upon it until he had satisfied himself that the chief attack was not by way of Mons or Ath. More definite news reached Brussels near midnight of the 15th, whereupon he gave a general left turn to his advance, namely, towards Nivelles.

Clausewitz maintains that he should already have removed his headquarters to Nivelles; had he done so and hurried up all available troops towards the Soignies-Quatre Bras line, his Waterloo fame would certainly have gained in solidity. A dash of romance was added by his attending the Duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels on the night of the 15th-16th; lovers of the picturesque will always linger over the scene that followed with its "hurrying to and fro and tremblings of distress"; but the more prosaic inquirer may doubt whether Wellington should not then have been more to the front, feeling every throb of Bellona's pulse.[477]

Blücher's army, comprising 90,000 men, also covered a great stretch of country. The first corps, that of Ziethen, held the bridges of the Sambre at and near Charleroi; but the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann were at Namur and Ciney; while, owing to a lack of stringency in the orders sent by Gneisenau, chief of the staff, to Bülow, his corps of 32,000 men was still at Liège. Early on the 15th, Pirch I. and Thielmann began hastily to advance towards Sombref; and Ziethen, with 32,000 men, prepared to hold the line of the Sambre as long as possible. His chief of staff, General Reiche, states that one-third of the Prussians were new troops, drafted in from the Landwehr; but all the corps gloried in their veteran Field-Marshal, and were eager to fight.

Such, then, was the general position. Wellington was unaware of his danger; Blücher was straining every nerve to get his army together; while 32,000 Prussians were exposed to the attack of nearly four times their number. It is clear that, had all gone well with the French advance, the fortunes of Wellington and Blücher must have been desperate. But, though the concentration of 125,000 French troops near Beaumont and Maubeuge had been effected with masterly skill (except that Gérard's and D'Erlon's corps were late), the final moves did not work quite smoothly. An accident to the officer who was to order Vandamme's corps to march at 2 a.m. on the 15th caused a long delay to that eager fighter.[478] The 4th corps, that of Gérard, was also disturbed and delayed by an untoward event. General Bourmont, whose old Vendéan opinions seemed to have melted away completely before the sun of Napoleon's glory, rewarded his master by deserting with several officers to the Prussians, very early on that morning. The incident was really of far less importance than is assigned to it in the St. Helena Memoirs, which falsely ascribe it to the 14th: the Prussians were already on the qui vive before Bourmont's desertion; but it clogged the advance of Gérard's corps and fostered distrust among the rank and file. When, on the morrow, Gérard rejoined his chief at the mill of Fleurus, the latter reminded him that he had answered for Bourmont's fidelity with his own head; and, on the general protesting that he had seen Bourmont fight with the utmost devotion, Napoleon replied: "Bah! A man who has been a white will never become a blue: and a blue will never be a white." Significant words, that show the Emperor's belief in the ineradicable strength of instinct and early training.[479]

Despite these two mishaps, the French on the morning of the 15th succeeded in driving Ziethen's men from the banks of the Sambre about Thuin, while Napoleon in person broke through their line at Charleroi. After suffering rather severely, the defenders fell back on Gilly, whither Napoleon and his main force followed them; while the left wing of the French advance, now intrusted to Ney, was swung forward against the all-important position of Quatre Bras.

We here approach one of the knotty questions of the campaign. Why did not Ney occupy the cross-roads in force on the evening of the 15th? We may note first that not till the 11th had Napoleon thought fit to summon Ney to the army, so that the Marshal did not come up till the afternoon of this very day. He at once had an interview with the Emperor, who, according to General Gourgaud, gave the Marshal verbal orders to take command of the corps of Reille and D'Erlon, to push on northwards, take up a position at Quatre Bras, and throw out advanced posts beyond on the Brussels and Namur roads; but it seems unlikely that the Emperor would have given one of the most venturesome of his Marshals an absolute order to push on so far in advance, unless the French right wing had driven the Prussians back beyond the Sombref position. Otherwise, Ney would have been dangerously far in advance of the main body and exposed to blows either from the Prussians or the British.

However this may be, Ney certainly felt insecure, and did not push on with his wonted dash; while, fortunately for the allies, an officer was at hand Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who saw the need of holding Quatre Bras at all costs.[480] The young leader imposed on the foe by making the most of his men--they were but 4,500 all told, and had only ten bullets apiece--and he succeeded. For once, Ney was prudent to a fault, and did not push home the attack. In his excuse it may be said that the men of Reille's corps, on whom he had to rely--for D'Erlon's corps was still far to the rear--had been marching and fighting ever since dawn, and were too weary for another battle. Moreover, the roar of cannon on the south-east warned him that the right wing of the French advance was hotly engaged between Gilly and Fleurus; until it beat back the Prussians, his own position was dangerously "in the air"; and, as but two hours of daylight remained, he drew back on Frasnes. He is also said to have sent word to the Emperor that "he was occupying Quatre Bras by an advanced guard, and that his main body was close behind." If he deceived his chief by any such report, he deserves the severest censure; but the words quoted above were written later at St. Helena by General Gourgaud, when Ney had come to figure as the scapegoat of the campaign.[481] Ney sent in a report on that evening; but it has been lost.[482] Judging from the orders issued by Napoleon and Soult early on the 16th, there was much uncertainty as to Ney's position. The Emperor's letter bids him post his first division "two leagues in front of les Quatres Chemins"; but Soult's letter to Grouchy states that Ney is ordered to advance to the cross-roads. Confusion was to be expected from the circumstances of the case. Ney did not know his staff-officers, and he hastily took command of the left wing when in the midst of operations whose success, as Janin points out, largely depended on that of the right. He therefore played a cautious game, when, as we now know, caution meant failure and daring spelt safety.

Meanwhile the French right wing, of which Grouchy had received the command, though Napoleon in person was its moving force, had been pressing the Prussians hard near Gilly. Yet here, too, the assailants were weakened by the absence of the corps of Vandamme and Gérard. Irritated by Ziethen's skilful withdrawal, the Emperor at last launched his cavalry at the Prussian rear battalions, four of which were severely handled before they reached the covert of a wood. With the loss, on the whole, of nearly 2,000 men, the Prussians fell back towards Ligny, while Grouchy's vanguard bivouacked near the village of Fleurus.

Napoleon might well be satisfied with the work done on June 15th: he rode back to his headquarters at Charleroi, "exhausted with fatigue," after spending wellnigh eighteen hours in the saddle, but confident that he had sundered the allies. This was certainly his aim now, as it had been in the campaign of 1796. After two decisive blows at their points of connection, he purposed driving them on divergent lines of retreat, just as he had driven the Austrians and Sardinians down the roads that bifurcate near Montenotte. True, there were in Belgium no mountain spurs to prevent their reunion; but the roads on which they were operating were far more widely divergent.[483] He also thought lightly of Wellington and Blücher. The former he had pronounced "incapable and unwise"; as for Blücher, he told Campbell at Elba that he was "no general"; but that he admired the pluck with which "the old devil" came on again after a thrashing.

Unclouded confidence is seen in every phrase of the letters that he penned at Charleroi early on the 16th. He informs Ney that he intends soon to attack the Prussians at Sombref, if he finds them there, to clear the road as far as Gembloux, and then to decide on his further actions as the case demands. Meanwhile Ney is to sweep the road in front of Quatre Bras, placing his first division two leagues beyond that position, if it seemed desirable, with a view to marching on Brussels during the night with his whole force of about 50,000 men. The Guard is to be kept in reserve as much as possible, so as to support either Napoleon on the Gembloux road, or Ney on the Brussels road; and "if any skirmish takes place with the English, it is preferable that the work should fall on the Line rather than on the Guard." As for the Prussian resistance, Napoleon rated it almost as lightly as that of the English; for he regards it as probable that he will in the evening march on Brussels with his Guard.

While he pictured his enemies hopelessly scattered or in retreat, they were beginning to muster at the very points which he believed to be within his grasp. At 11 a.m. only Ziethen's corps, now but 28,000 strong, was in position at Sombref, but the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann came up shortly after midday. Had Napoleon pushed on early on the 16th, he must easily have gained the Ligny-Sombref position. What, then, caused the delay in the French attack? It can be traced to the slowness of Gérard's advance, to the Emperor's misconception of the situation, and to his despatch to Grouchy.

In this he reckoned the Prussians at 40,000 men, and ordered Grouchy to repair with the French right wing to Sombref.

" ... I shall be at Fleurus between 10 and 11 a.m.: I shall proceed to Sombref, leaving my Guard, both infantry and cavalry, at Fleurus: I would not take it to Sombref, unless it should be necessary. If the enemy is at Sombref, I mean to attack him: I mean to attack him even at Gembloux, and to gain this position also, my aim being, after having known about these two positions, to set out to-night, and to operate with my left wing, under the command of Marshal Ney, against the English."

The Emperor did not reach Fleurus until close on 11 a.m., and was undoubtedly taken aback to find Grouchy still there, held in check by the enemy strongly posted around Ligny. Grouchy has been blamed for not having already attacked them; but surely his orders bound him to wait for the Emperor before giving battle: besides, the corps of Gérard, which had been assigned to him was still far away in the rear towards Châtelet.[484] The absence of Gérard, and the uncertainty as to the enemy's aims, annoyed the Emperor. He mounted the windmill situated on the outskirts of Fleurus to survey the enemy's position.

It was a fair scene that lay before him. Straight in front ran the high-road which joined the Namur-Nivelles chaussée, some six miles away to the north-east. On either side stretched cornfields, whose richness bore witness alike to the toils and the warlike passions of mankind. Further ahead might be seen the dark lines of the enemy ranged along slopes that formed an irregular amphitheatre, dotted with the villages of Bry and Sombref. In the middle distance, from out a hollow that lay concealed, rose the steeples and a few of the higher roofs of Ligny. Further to the left and on higher ground lay St. Amand, with its outlying hamlets. All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself. He saw the Prussians on the slope behind the village, and was at first puzzled by their exposed position. "The old fox keeps to earth," he was heard to mutter. And so he waited until matters should clear up, and Gérard's arrival should give him strength to compass Blücher's utter overthrow while in the act of stretching a feeler towards Wellington. From the time when the Emperor came on the scene to the first swell of the battle's roar, there was a space of more than four hours.

This delay was doubly precious to the allies. It gave Blücher time to bring up the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann under cover of the high ground near Sombref, thereby raising his total force to about 87,000 men; and it enabled the two allied commanders to meet and hastily confer on the situation. Wellington had left Brussels that morning at 8 o'clock, and thanks to Ney's inaction, was able to reach the crest south of Quatre Bras a little after 10, long before the enemy showed any signs of life. There he penned a note to Blücher, asking for news from him before deciding on his operations for the day.[485] He then galloped over to the windmill of Bussy to meet Blücher.

It was an anxious meeting; the heads of the advancing French columns were already in sight; and the Duke saw with dismay the position of the Prussians on a slope that must expose them to the full force of Napoleon's cannon--or, as he whispered to Hardinge, "they will be damnably mauled if they fight here."[486] In more decorous terms, but to the same effect, he warned Gneisenau, and said nothing to encourage him to hold fast to his position. Neither did he lead him to expect aid from Quatre Bras. The utmost that Gneisenau could get from him was the promise, "Well! I will come provided I am not attacked myself." Did these words induce the Prussians to accept battle at Ligny? It is impossible to think so. Everything tends to show that Blücher had determined to fight there. The risk was great; for, as we learn from General Reiche, the position was seen to admit of no vigorous offensive blows against the French. But fortune smiled on the veteran Field-Marshal, and averted what might have been an irretrievable disaster.[487]

It would seem that the inequalities of the ground hid the strength of Pirch I. and Thielmann; for Napoleon still believed that he had ranged against him at Ligny only a single corps. At 2 p.m. Soult informed Ney that the enemy had united a corps between Sombref and Bry, and that in half an hour Grouchy would attack it. Ney was therefore to beat back the foes at Quatre-Bras, and then turn to envelop the Prussians. But if these were driven in first, the Emperor would move towards Ney to hasten his operations.[488] Not until the battle was about to begin does the Emperor seem to have realized that he was in presence of superior forces.[489] But after 2 p.m. their masses drew down over the slopes of Bry and Sombref, their foremost troops held the villages of Ligny and St. Amand, while their left crowned the ridge of Tongrines. Napoleon reformed his lines, which had hitherto been at right angles to the main road through Fleurus. Vandamme's corps moved off towards St. Amand; and Gérard, after ranging his corps parallel to that road, began to descend towards Ligny, Grouchy meanwhile marshalling the cavalry to protect their flank and rear. Behind all stood the imposing mass of the Imperial Guard on the rising ground near Fleurus.

The fiercest shock of battle fell upon the corps of Vandamme and Gérard. Three times were Gérard's men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over its banks; lane, garden, and attic once more become the scene of struggles where no man thinks of giving or taking quarter.

Higher up the stream, at St. Amand, Vandamme's troops fared no better; for Blücher steadily fed that part of his array. In so doing, however, he weakened his reserves behind Ligny, thereby unwittingly favouring Napoleon's design of breaking the Prussian centre, and placing its wreckage and the whole of their right wing between two fires. The Emperor expected that, by 6 o'clock, Ney would have driven back the Anglo-Dutch forces, and would be ready to envelop the Prussian right. That was the purport of Soult's despatch of 3.15 p.m. to Ney: "This army [the Prussian] is lost, if you act with vigour. The fate of France is in your hands."

But at 5.30, when part of the Imperial Guard was about to strengthen Gérard for the decisive blow at the Prussian centre, Vandamme sent word that a hostile force of some twenty or thirty thousand men was marching towards Fleurus. This strange apparition not only unsteadied the French left: it greatly perplexed the Emperor. As he had ordered first Ney and then D'Erlon to march, not on Fleurus, but against the rear of the Prussian right wing, he seems to have concluded that this new force must be that of Wellington about to deal the like deadly blow against the French rear.[490] Accordingly he checked the advance of the Guard until the riddle could be solved. After the loss of nearly two hours it was solved by an aide-de-camp, who found that the force was D'Erlon's, and that it had retired.

Meanwhile the battle had raged with scarcely a pause, the French guns working frightful havoc among the dense masses on the opposite slope. And yet, by withdrawing troops to his right, Blücher had for a time overborne Vandamme's corps and part of the Young Guard, unconscious that his insistence on this side jeopardized the whole Prussian army. His great adversary had long marked the immense extension of its concave front, the massing of its troops against St. Amand, and the remoteness of its left wing, which Grouchy's horsemen still held in check; and he now planned that, while Blücher assailed St. Amand and its hamlets, the Imperial Guard should crush the Prussian centre at Ligny, thrust its fragments back towards St. Amand, and finally shiver the greater part of the Prussian army on the anvil which D'Erlon's corps would provide further to the west. He now felt assured of victory; for the corps of Lobau was nearing Fleurus to take the place of the Imperial Guard; and the Prussians had no supports. "They have no reserve," he remarked, as he swept the hostile position with his glass. This was true: their centre consisted of troops that for four hours had been either torn by artillery or exhausted by the fiendish strife in Ligny.

And now, as if the pent-up powers of Nature sought to cow rebellious man into awe and penitence, the artillery of the sky pealed forth. Crash after crash shook the ground; flash upon flash rent the sulphur-laden rack; darkness as of night stole over the scene; and a deluge of rain washed the blood-stained earth. The storm served but to aid the assailants in their last and fiercest efforts. Amidst the gloom the columns of the Imperial Guard crept swiftly down the slope towards Ligny, gave new strength to Gérard's men, and together with them broke through the defence. A little higher up the stream, Milhaud's cuirassiers struggled across, and, animated by the Emperor's presence, poured upon the shattered Prussian centre. No timely help could it now receive either from Blücher or Thielmann; for the darkness of the storm had shrouded from view the beginnings of the onset, and Thielmann had just suffered from a heedless assault on Grouchy's wing.

As the thunder-clouds rolled by, the gleams of the setting sun lit up the field and revealed to Blücher the full extent of his error.[491] His army was cut in twain. In vain did he call in his troops from St. Amand: in vain did he gallop back to his squadrons between Bry and Sombref and lead them forward. Their dashing charge was suddenly checked at the brink of a hollow way; steady volleys tore away their front; and the cuirassiers completed their discomfiture. Blücher's charger was struck by a bullet, and in his fall badly bruised the Field-Marshal; but his trusty adjutant, Nostitz, managed to hide him in the twilight, while the cuirassiers swept onwards up the hill. Other Prussian squadrons, struggling to save the day, now charged home and drove back the steel-clad ranks. Some Uhlans and mounted Landwehr reached the place where the hero lay; and Nostitz was able to save that precious life. Sorely battered, but still defiant like their chief, the Prussian cavalry covered the retreat at the centre; the wings fell back in good order, the right holding on to the village of Bry till past midnight; but several battalions of disaffected troops broke up and did not rejoin their comrades. About 14,000 Prussians and 11,000 French lay dead or wounded on that fatal field.[492]

Napoleon, as he rode back to Fleurus after nightfall, could claim that he had won a great victory. Yet he had not achieved the results portrayed in Soult's despatch of 3.15 to Ney. This was due partly to Ney's failure to fulfil his part of the programme, and partly to the apparition of D'Erlon's corps, which led to the postponement of Napoleon's grand attack on Ligny.

The mystery as to the movements of D'Erlon and his 20,000 men has never been fully cleared up. The evidence collected by Houssaye leaves little doubt that, as soon as the Emperor realized the serious nature of the conflict at Ligny, he sent orders to D'Erlon, whose vanguard was then near Frasnes, to diverge and attack Blücher's exposed flank. That is to say, D'Erlon was now called on to deal the decisive blow which had before been assigned to Ney, who was now warned, though very tardily, not to rely on the help of D'Erlon's corps. Misunderstanding his order, D'Erlon made for Fleurus, and thus alarmed Napoleon and delayed his final blow for wellnigh two hours. Moreover, at 6 p.m., when D'Erlon might have assailed Blücher's right with crushing effect, he received an urgent command from Ney to return. Assuredly he should not have hesitated now that St. Amand was almost within cannon-shot, while Quatre Bras could scarcely be reached before nightfall; but he was under Ney's command; and, taking a rather pedantic view of the situation, he obeyed his immediate superior. Lastly, no one has explained why the Emperor, as soon as he knew the errant corps to be that of D'Erlon, did not recall him at once, bidding him fall on the exposed wing of the Prussians. Doubtless he assumed that D'Erlon would now fulfil his instructions and march against Bry; but he gave no order to this effect, and the unlucky corps vanished.

At that time a desperate conflict was drawing to a close at Quatre Bras. Ney had delayed his attack until 2 p.m.; for, firstly, Reille's corps alone was at hand--D'Erlon's rearguard early on that morning being still near Thuin--and, secondly, the Marshal heard at 10 a.m. that Prussian columns were marching westwards from Sombref, a move that would endanger his rear behind Frasnes. Furthermore, the approach to Quatre Bras was flanked by the extensive Bossu Wood, and by a spinney to the right of the highway. Reille therefore counselled caution, lest the affair should prove to be "a Spanish battle where the English show themselves only when it is time." When, however, Reille's corps pushed home the attack, the weakness of the defence was speedily revealed. After a stout stand, the 7,000 Dutch-Belgians under the Prince of Orange were driven from the farm of Gémioncourt, which formed the key of the position, and many of them fled from the field.

But at this crisis the Iron Duke himself rode up; and the arrival of a Dutch-Belgian brigade and of Picton's division of British infantry, about 3 p.m., sufficed to snatch victory from the Marshal's grasp.[493] He now opened a destructive artillery fire on our front, to which the weak Dutch-Belgian batteries could but feebly reply. Nothing, however, could daunt the hardihood of Picton's men. Shaking off the fatigue of a twelve hours' march from Brussels under a burning sun, they steadily moved down through the tall crops of rye towards the farm and beat off a fierce attack of Piré's horsemen. On the allied left, the 95th Rifles (now the Rifle Brigade) and Brunswickers kept a clutch on the Namur road which nothing could loosen. But our danger was mainly at the centre. Under cover of the farmhouse, French columns began to drive in our infantry, whose ammunition was already running low. Wellington determined to crush this onset by a counter-attack in line of Picton's division, the "fighting division" of the Peninsula. With threatening shouts they advanced to the charge; and before that moving wall the foe fell back in confusion beyond the rivulet.

Still, the French drove back the Dutch in the wood, and the Brunswickers on its eastern fringe, killing the brave young Duke of Brunswick as he attempted to rally his raw recruits. Into the gap thus left the French horsemen pushed forward, making little impression upon our footmen, but compelling them to keep in a close formation, which exposed them in the intervals between the charges to heavy losses from the French cannon.

So the afternoon wore on. Between 5 and 6 o'clock our weary troops were reinforced by Alten's division. A little later, a brigade of Kellermann's heavy cavalry came up from the rear and renewed Ney's striking power--but again too late. Already he was maddened by the tidings that D'Erlon's corps had been ordered off towards Ligny, and next by Napoleon's urgent despatch of 3.15 p.m. bidding him envelop Blücher's right. Blind with indignation at this seeming injustice, he at once sent an imperative summons to D'Erlon to return towards Quatre Bras, and launched a brigade of Kellermann's cuirassiers at those stubborn squares.

The attack nearly succeeded. The horsemen rushed upon our 69th Regiment just when the Prince of Orange had foolishly ordered it back into line, caught it in confusion, and cut it up badly. Another regiment, the 33rd, fled into the wood, but afterwards re-formed; the other squares beat off the onset. The torrent, however, only swerved aside: on it rushed almost to the cross-roads, there to be stopped by a flanking fire from the wood and from the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders lining the roadway in front.--"Ninety-second, don't fire till I tell you," exclaimed the Duke. The volley rang out when the horsemen were but thirty paces off. The effect was magical. Their front was torn asunder, and the survivors made off in a panic that spread to Foy's battalions of foot and disordered the whole array.[494]

Ney still persisted in his isolated assaults; but reinforcements were now at hand that brought up Wellington's total to 31,000 men, while the French were less than 21,000. At nightfall the Marshal drew back to Frasnes; and there D'Erlon's errant corps at last appeared. Thanks to conflicting orders, it had oscillated between two battles and taken part in neither of them.

Such was the bloody fight of Quatre Bras. It cost Wellington 4,600 killed and wounded, mainly from the flower of the British infantry, three Highland regiments losing as many as 878 men. The French losses were somewhat lighter. Few conflicts better deserve the name of soldiers' battles. On neither side was the generalship brilliant. Twilight set in before an adequate force of British cavalry and artillery approached the field where their comrades on foot had for five hours held up in unequal contest against cannon, sabre, and lance. The victory was due to the strange power of the British soldier to save the situation when it seems past hope.

Still less did it redound to the glory of Ney. Once more he had merited the name of bravest of the brave. At the crisis of the fight, when the red squares in front defied his utmost efforts, he brandished his sword in helpless wrath, praying that the bullets that flew by might strike him down. The rage of battle had, in fact, partly obscured his reason. He was now a fighter, scarcely a commander; and to this cause we may attribute his neglect adequately to support Kellermann's charge. Had this been done, Quatre Bras might have ended like Marengo. Far more serious, however, was his action in countermanding the Emperor's orders' by recalling D'Erlon to Quatre Bras; for, as we have seen, it robbed his master of the decisive victory that he had the right to expect at Ligny. Yet this error must not be unduly magnified. It is true that Napoleon at 3.15 sent a despatch to Ney bidding him envelop Blücher's flank; but the order did not reach him until some time after 5, when the allies were pressing him hard, and when he had just heard of D'Erlon's deflection towards the Emperor's battle.[495] He must have seen that his master misjudged the situation at Quatre Bras; and in such circumstances a Marshal of France was not without excuse when he corrected an order which he saw to be based on a misunderstanding. Some part of the blame must surely attach to the slow-paced D'Erlon and to the Emperor himself, who first underrated the difficulties both at Ligny and Quatre Bras, and then changed his plans when Ney was in the midst of a furious fight.

Nevertheless, the general results obtained on June the 16th were enormously in favour of Napoleon. He had inflicted losses on the Prussians comparable with those of Jena-Auerstädt; and he retired to rest at Fleurus with the conviction that they must hastily fall back on their immediate bases of supply, Namur and Liège, leaving Wellington at his mercy. The rules of war and the dictates of humdrum prudence certainly prescribed this course for a beaten army, especially as Bülow's corps was known to be on the Liège road.

Scarcely had the Prussian retreat begun in the darkness, when officers pressed up to Gneisenau, on whom now devolved all responsibility, for instructions as to the line of march. At once he gave the order to push northwards to Tilly. General Reiche thereupon pointed out that this village was not marked upon the smaller maps with which colonels were provided; whereupon the command was given to march towards the town of Wavre, farther distant on the same road. An officer was posted at the junction of roads to prevent regiments straying towards Namur; but some had already gone too far on this side to be recalled--a fact which was to confuse the French pursuers on the morrow. The greater part of Thielmann's corps had fallen back on Gembloux; but, with these exceptions, the mass of the Prussians made for Tilly, near which place they bivouacked. Early on the next morning their rearguard drew off from Sombref; and, thanks to the inertness of their foes, the line of retreat remained unknown. During the march to Wavre, their columns were cheered by the sight of the dauntless old Field-Marshal, who was able to sit a horse once more. Thielmann's corps did not leave Gembloux till 2 p.m., but reached Wavre in safety. Meanwhile Bülow's powerful corps was marching unmolested from the Roman road near Hannut to a position two miles east of Wavre, where it arrived at nightfall. Equally fortunate was the reserve ammunition train, which, unnoticed by the French cavalry, wound northwards by cross-roads through Gembloux, and reached the army by 5 p.m.[496]

In his "Commentaries," written at St. Helena, Napoleon sharply criticised the action of Gneisenau in retreating northwards to Wavre, because that town is farther distant from Wellington's line of retreat than Sombref is from Quatre Bras, and is connected with it only by difficult cross-roads. He even asserted that the Prussians ought to have made for Quatre Bras, a statement which presumes that Gneisenau could have rallied his army sufficiently after Ligny to file away on the Quatre Bras chaussée in front of Napoleon's victorious legions. But the Prussian army was virtually cut in half, and could not have reunited so as to attempt the perilous flank march across Napoleon's front. We shall, therefore, probably not be far wrong if we say of this criticism that the wish was father to the thought. A march on Quatre Bras would have been a safe means of throwing away the Prussian army.[497]

To the present writer it seems probable that Gneisenau's action, in the first instance, was undertaken as the readiest means of reuniting the Prussian wings. But Gneisenau cannot have been blind to the advantages of a reunion with Wellington, which a northerly march would open out. The report which he sent to his Sovereign from Wavre shows that by that time he believed the Prussian position to be "not disadvantageous"; while in a private letter written at noon on the 17th he expressly states that the Duke will accept battle at Waterloo if the Prussians help him with two army corps. Gneisenau's only doubts seem to have been whether Wellington would fight and whether his own ammunition would be to hand in time. Until he was sure on these two points caution was certainly necessary.

The results of this prompt rally of the Prussians were infinitely enhanced by the fact that Wellington soon found it out, while Napoleon did not grasp its full import until he was in the thick of the battle of Waterloo. To the final steps that led up to this dramatic finale we must now briefly refer.

It is strange that Gneisenau, on the night of the 16th, took no steps to warn his allies of the Prussian retreat, and merely left them to infer it from his last message, that he must do so if he were not succoured. Müffling, indeed, says that a Prussian officer was sent, but was shot by the French on the British left wing. Seeing, however, that Wellington had beaten back Ney's forces before the Prussian retreat began, the story may be dismissed as a lame excuse of Gneisenau's neglect.[498]

From the risk of being crushed by Napoleon, the Anglo-Dutch forces were saved by the vigilance of their leader and the supineness of the enemy. After a brief rest at Genappe, the Duke was back at the front at dawn, and despatched two cavalry patrols towards Sombref to find out the results of the battle. The patrol, which was accompanied by the Duke's aide-de-camp, Colonel Gordon, came into touch with the Prussian rear. On his return soon after 10, the staff-officer, Basil Jackson, was at once sent to bid Picton immediately prepare to fall back on Waterloo, an order which that veteran received very sulkily.[499] Shortly after Gordon's return, a Prussian orderly galloped up and confirmed the news of their retreat, which drew from the Duke the remark: "Blücher has had a d---- d good licking and gone back to Wavre.... As he has gone back, we must go too." The infantry now began to file off by degrees behind hedges or under cover of a screen of cavalry and skirmishers, these keeping Ney's men busy in front, until the bulk of the army was well through the narrow and crowded street of Genappe.

And how came it that Napoleon and Ney missed this golden opportunity? In the first case, it was due to their chiefs of staff, who had not sent overnight any tidings as to the results of their respective battles. Until Count Flahaut returned to the Imperial headquarters about 8 a.m., Napoleon knew nothing as to the position of affairs at Quatre Bras; while a similar carelessness on Soult's part left Ney powerless to attempt anything against Wellington until somewhat later in the morning.

But Napoleon's inaction lasted nearly up to 11.30. How is this to be accounted for? In reply, some attribute his conduct to illness of body and torpor of mind--a topic that will engage our attention presently; others assert that the army urgently needed rest; but the effective cause was his belief that the Prussians were retreating eastwards away from Wellington. This was the universal belief at headquarters. He had ordered Grouchy to follow them at dawn; Grouchy's lieutenant, Pajol, struck to the south-east, and by 4 a.m. reported that Blücher was heading for Namur. Such was the news that the Emperor heard from Grouchy about 8 a.m.--he refused to grant him an audience earlier. Forthwith he dictated a letter to Ney to the following effect: that the Prussians had been routed and were being pursued towards Namur; that the British could not attack him (Ney) at Quatre Bras, for the Emperor would in that case march on their flank and destroy them in an instant; that he heard with pain how isolated Ney's troops had been on the 16th, and ordered him to close up his divisions and occupy Quatre Bras. If he could not effect that task, he must warn the Emperor, who would then come. Finally, he warned him that "the present day is needed to finish this operation, to complete the munitions of war, to rally stragglers and call in detachments."

A singular day's programme this for the man who had trebled the results of the victory of Jena by the remorseless energy of the pursuit. After dictating this despatch, he ordered Lobau to take a division of infantry for the support of Pajol on the Namur road. He then set out for St. Amand in his carriage. On arriving at the place of carnage he mounted his horse and rode slowly over the battle-field, seeing to the needs of the wounded of both nations with kindly care, and everywhere receiving the enthusiastic acclaim of his soldiery. This done, he dismounted and talked long and earnestly with Grouchy, Gérard, and others on the state of political parties at Paris. They listened with ill-concealed restlessness. At Fleurus Grouchy asked for definite orders, and received the brusque reply that he must wait. But now, towards 11 o'clock, the Emperor hears that Wellington is still at Quatre Bras, that Pajol has captured eight Prussian guns on the Namur road, and that Excelmans has seen masses of the enemy at Gembloux. At once he turns from politics to war.

His plan is formed. While he himself falls on the British, Grouchy is to pursue the Prussians with the corps of Gérard and Vandamme, the division of Teste (from Lobau's command), and the cavalry corps of Pajol, Excelmans, and Milhaud. The Marshal begged to be relieved of the task, setting forth the danger of pursuing foes that were now reunited and far away. It was in vain. About 11.30 the Emperor developed his verbal instructions in a written order penned by Bertrand. It bade Grouchy proceed to Gembloux with the forces stated above (except Milhaud's corps and a division of Vandamme's corps, which were to follow Napoleon) to reconnoitre on the roads leading to Namur and Maestricht, to pursue the enemy, and inform the Emperor as to their intentions. If they have evacuated Namur, it is to be occupied by the National Guards. "It is important to know what Blücher and Wellington mean to do, and whether they propose reuniting their armies in order to cover Brussels and Liège, by trying their fortune in another battle...."[500]

As Napoleon's fate was to depend largely on an intelligent carrying out of this order, we may point out that it consisted of two chief parts, the general aim and the means of carrying out that aim. The aim was to find out the direction of the Prussians' retreat, and to prevent them joining Wellington, whether for the defence of Brussels or of Liège. The means were an advance to Gembloux and scouting along the Namur and Maestricht roads. The chance that the allies might reunite for the defence of Brussels was alluded to, but no measures were prescribed as to scouting in that direction: these were left to Grouchy's discretion. It must be confessed that the order was not wholly clear. To name the towns of Brussels and Liège (which are sixty miles apart) was sufficiently distracting; and to suggest that only the eastern and south-eastern roads should be explored was certain to limit Grouchy's immediate attention to those roads alone. For he distrusted alike his own abilities and the power of the force placed at his disposal; and an officer thus situated is sure to inclose himself in the strict letter of his instructions. This was what he did, with disastrous results.

Grouchy had hitherto held no important command. As a cavalry general he had done brilliant service; but now he was launched on a duty that called for strategic insight. His force was scarcely equal to the work. True, it was strong for scouting, having nearly 6,000 light horse; but the 27,000 footmen of Vandamme's and Gérard's corps had been exhausted by the deadly strife in the villages and were expecting a day's rest. Their commanders also resented being placed under Grouchy. In fact, leaders and men disliked the task, and set about it in a questioning, grumbling way. The infantry did not start till about 3 o'clock and only reached Gembloux late that evening--nine miles in six hours! The cavalry, too, was so badly handled by Excelmans around Gembloux that Thielmann's corps slipped away northward. The rain fell in torrents, obscuring the view; but it seems strange that the direction of the Prussian retreat was not surmised until about nightfall.

Meanwhile, on the French left wing, Ney had been equally lax. He must have received Napoleon's order to occupy Quatre Bras, "if there was only a rearguard there," a little before 10 a.m.; but he took no steps beyond futile skirmishing, and apparently knew not that the British were slipping away.

About 2 p.m., when the British cavalry was ready to turn rein, the Duke and Sir H. Vivian saw the glint of cuirasses along the Sombref road. It was the vanguard of the Emperor's advance. Furious that his foes were escaping from his clutches, Napoleon had left his carriage and was pressing on with the foremost horsemen. To Ney he sent an imperative summons to advance, and when that Marshal came up, greeted him with the words "You have ruined France." But it was time for deeds, not words; and he now put forth all his strength. At once he flung his powerful cavalry at the British rear; and even now it might have gone hard with Wellington had not the lowering clouds burst in a deluge of rain. Quickly the road was ploughed up; and the cornfields became impassable for the French horsemen.

While the pursuers struggled in the mire and aimed wildly through the pelting haze, the British rearguard raced for safety. Says Captain Mercer of the artillery: "We galloped for our lives through the storm, striving to gain the hamlets, Lord Uxbridge urging us on, crying 'Make haste; for God's sake gallop, or you will be taken.'"[501] Gaining on the pursuit, they reached Genappe, and, filing over its bridge and up the narrow street, prepared to check the French. At this time the Emperor galloped up, drenched to the skin, his gray overcoat streaming with rain, his hat bent out of all shape by the storm.[502] He was once more the artillery officer of Toulon. "Fire on them," he shouted to his gunners, "they are English." A sharp skirmish ensued, in which our 7th Hussars, charging down into the village, were worsted by the French lancers, "an arm," says Cotton, "with which we were quite unacquainted." In their retreat they were saved by the Life Guards, whose weight and strength carried all before them.

At last, on the ridge of Waterloo, Wellington's force turned at bay. Napoleon, coming up at 6.30 to the brow of the opposite slope, ordered a strong force to advance into the sodden clay of the valley. It was promptly torn by a heavy cannonade; and the truth was borne in on him that the British had escaped him for that day.

NAPOLEON'S HEALTH IN THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

As many writers assert that Napoleon at this time was but the shadow of his former self, we must briefly review the evidence of contemporaries on this subject; for if the assertion be true, the Battle of Waterloo deserves little notice.

It seems that for some time past there had been a slight falling off in his mental and bodily powers; but when it began and how far it progressed is matter of doubt. Some observers, including Chaptal, date it from the hardships of the retreat from Moscow. This is very doubtful. He ended that campaign in a better state of health than he had enjoyed during the advance. Besides, in none of his wars did he show such vitality and fertility of resource as in the desperate struggle of 1814, which Wellington pronounced his masterpiece. After this there seems to have been a period of something like relapse at Elba. In September, 1814, Sir Neil Campbell reported: "Napoleon seems to have lost all habits of study and sedentary application. He occasionally falls into a state of inactivity never known before, and sometimes reposes in his bedroom of late for several hours in the day; takes exercise in a carriage and not on horseback. His health excellent and his spirits not at all depressed" ("F.O.," France, No. 114). During his ten months at Elba he became very stout and his cheeks puffy.

On his return to France he displayed his old activity; and the most credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline. Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes: "I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Méneval noticed nothing worse in his master's condition than a tendency to "réverie": he detected no disease. The statement of Pasquier that his genius and his physical powers were in a profound decline is a manifest exaggeration, uttered by a man who did not once see him before Waterloo, who was driven from Paris by him, and strove to discourage his supporters. Still less can we accept the following melodramatic description, by Thiébault, of Napoleon's appearance on Sunday, June 11th: "His look, once so formidable and piercing, had lost its strength and even its steadiness: his face had lost all expression and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its former witchery: and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and gestures were undecided: the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by a strongly pronounced greenish tinge which struck me."

Let us follow this wreck of a man to the war and see what he accomplished. At dawn on June 12th he entered his landau and drove to Laon, a distance of some seventy miles. On the next day he got through an immense amount of work, and proceeded to Beaumont. On the 15th of June he was up at dawn, mounted his horse, and remained on horseback, directing the operations against the Prussians, for nearly eighteen hours. This time was broken by one spell of rest. Near Charleroi, says Baudus, an officer of Soult's staff, he was overcome by sleep and heeded not the cheers of a passing column: at this Baudus was indignant, but most unjustly so. Napoleon needed these snatches of sleep as a relief to prolonged mental tension. At night he returned to Charleroi, "overcome with fatigue." On the next day he was still very weary, says Ségur; he did not exert himself until the battle of Ligny began at 2.30; but he then rode about till nightfall, through a time of terrible heat. Fatigue showed itself again early on the morrow, when he declined to see Grouchy before 8 a.m. Yet his review of the troops and his long discussions on Parisian politics were clearly due, not to torpor, but to the belief that he had sundered the allies, and could occupy Brussels at will; for when he found out his mistake, he showed all the old energy, riding with the vanguard from Quatre Bras to La Belle Alliance through the violent rain.

Whatever, then, were his ailments, they were not incompatible with great and sustained activity. What were those ailments? He is said to have suffered from intermittent affections of the lower bowel, of the bladder, and of the skin, the two last resulting in ischury (Dorsey Gardner's "Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo," pp. 31-37; O'Connor Morris, pp. 164-166, note). The list is formidable; but it contains its own refutation. A man suffering from these diseases, unless in their earliest and mildest stages, could not have done what Napoleon did. Ischury, if at all pronounced, is a bar to horse exercise. Doubtless his long rides aggravated any trouble that he had in this respect, for Pétiet, who was attached to the staff, noticed that he often dismounted and sat before a little table that was brought to him for the convenience of examining maps; but Pétiet thought this was due, not to ill health (about which he says nothing), but to his corpulence ("Souvenirs militaires," pp. 196 and 212). Prince Jerome and a surgeon of the imperial staff assured Thiers that Napoleon was suffering from a disease of the bladder; but this was contradicted by the valet, Marchand; and if he really was suffering from all, or any one, of the maladies named above, it is very strange that the surgeon allowed him to expose himself to the torrential rain of the night of the 17th-18th for a purpose which a few trusty officers could equally well have discharged (see next chapter). Furthermore, Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the army, who saw Napoleon before the campaign began and during its course, says not a word about the Emperor's health ("Relation médicale des Campagnes, 1815-1840," pp. 5-11).

Again, the intervals of drowsiness on the 15th and 18th of June, on which the theory of physical collapse is largely based, may be explained far more simply. Napoleon had long formed the habit of working a good deal at night and of seeking repose during a busy day by brief snatches of slumber. The habit grew on him at Elba; and this, together with his activity since daybreak, accounts for his sleeping near Charleroi. The same explanation probably holds good as to his occasional drowsiness at Waterloo. He scarcely closed his eyes before 3.30 a.m.; and he cannot have been physically fit for the unexpectedly long and severe strain of that Sunday. That he began the day well we know from a French soldier named Barral (grandfather of the author of "L'Epopée de Waterloo"), who looked at him carefully at 9.30 a.m., and wrote: "He seemed to me in very good health, extraordinarily active and preoccupied." Decoster, the peasant guide who was with Napoleon the whole day, afterwards told Sir W. Scott that he was calm and confident up to the crisis. Gourgaud, who clung to him during the flight to Paris and thence to Rochefort, notes nothing more serious than great fatigue; Captain Maitland, when he received him on board the "Bellerophon," thought him "a remarkably strong, well-built man." During the voyage to St. Helena he suffered from nothing worse than mal de mer; he ate meat in exceptional quantity, even in the tropics.

Very noteworthy, too, is Lavalette's narrative. When he saw Napoleon before his departure from Paris to the Belgian frontier, he found him suffering from depression and a pain in the chest; but he avers that, on the return from Waterloo, apart from one "frightful epileptic laugh," Napoleon speedily settled down to his ordinary behaviour: not a word is added as to his health. (Sir W. Scott, "Life of Napoleon," vol. viii., p. 496; Gourgaud, "Campagne de 1815," and "Journal de St. Hélène," vol. ii., Appendix 32; "Narrative of Captain Maitland," p. 208; Lavalette, "Mems.," ch. xxxiii.; Houssaye ridicules the stories of his ill-health.)

What is the upshot of it all? The evidence seems to show that, whatever was Napoleon's condition before the campaign, he was in his usual health amidst the stern joys of war. And this is consonant with his previous experience: he throve on events which wore ordinary beings to the bone: the one thing that he could not endure was the worry of parliamentary opposition, which aroused a nervous irritation not to be controlled and concealed without infinite effort. During the campaign we find very few trustworthy proofs of his decline and much that points to energy of resolve and great rallying power after exertion. If he was suffering from three illnesses, they were assuredly of a highly intermittent nature.

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XL. WATERLOO

Would Wellington hold on to his position? This was the thought that troubled the Emperor on the night after the wild chase from Quatre Bras. Before retiring to rest at the Caillou farm, he went to the front with Bertrand and a young officer, Gudin by name, and peered at the enemy's fires dimly seen through the driving sheets of rain. Satisfied that the allies were there, he returned to the farm, dictated a few letters on odious parliamentary topics, and then sought a brief repose. But the same question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to catch through the hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of the wood of Hougoumont: all else was still. At last, over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lambert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray; little by little the murky void bodied forth dim shapes, and the watch-fires burnt pale against the orient gleams. It was enough. He turned back to the farm. Wellington could scarcely escape him now.

While the Emperor was making the round of his outposts, a somewhat cryptic despatch from Grouchy reached headquarters. The Marshal reported from Gembloux, at 10 p.m. of the 17th, that part of the Prussians had retired towards Wavre, seemingly with a view to joining Wellington; that their centre, led by Blücher, had fallen back on Perwez in the direction of Liège; while a column with artillery had made for Namur; if he found the enemy's chief force to be on the Liège chaussée, he would pursue them along that road; if towards Wavre, he would follow them thither "in order that they may not gain Brussels, and so as to separate them from Wellington." This last phrase ought surely to have convinced Napoleon that Grouchy had not fully understood his instructions; for to march on Wavre would not stop the Prussians joining Wellington, if they were in force.[503]

Moreover, Napoleon now knew, what Grouchy did not know, that the Prussians were in force at Wavre. It seems strange that the Emperor did not send this important news to his Marshal; but perhaps we may explain this by his absence at the outposts. As it was, no clear statement of the facts of the case was sent off to Grouchy until 10 a.m. of the 18th. He then informed his Marshal that, according to all the reports, three bodies of Prussians had made for Wavre. Grouchy "must therefore move thither--in order to approach us, to put yourself within the sphere of our operations, and to keep up your communications with us, pushing before you those bodies of Prussians which have taken this direction and which may have stopped at Wavre, where you ought to arrive as soon as possible." Grouchy, however, was not to neglect Blücher's troops that were on his right, but must pick up their stragglers and keep up his communications with Napoleon.

Such was the letter; and again we must pronounce it far from clear. Grouchy was not bidden to throw all his efforts on the side of Wavre; and he was not told whether he must attack the enemy at that town, or interpose a wedge between them and Wellington, or support Napoleon's right. Now Napoleon would certainly have prescribed an immediate concentration of Grouchy's force towards the north-west for one of the last two objects, had he believed Blücher about to attempt a flank march against the chief French army. Obviously it had not yet entered his thoughts that so daring a step would be taken by a foe whom he pictured as scattered and demoralized by defeat.[504]

As we have seen, the Prussians were not demoralized; they had not gone off in three directions; and Blücher was not making for Liège. He was at Wavre and was planning a master-stroke. At midnight, he had sent to Wellington, through Müffling, a written promise that at dawn he would set the corps of Bülow in motion against Napoleon's right; that of Pirch I. was to follow; while the other two corps would also be ready to set out. Wellington received this despatch about 3 a.m. of the 18th, and thereupon definitely resolved to offer battle. A similar message was sent off from Wavre at 9.30 a.m., but with a postscript, in which we may discern Gneisenau's distrust of Wellington, begging Müffling to find out accurately whether the Duke really had determined to fight at Waterloo. Meanwhile Bülow's corps had begun its march from the south-east of Wavre, but with extreme slowness, which was due to a fire at Wavre, to the crowded state of the narrow road, and also to the misgivings of Gneisenau. It certainly was not owing to fear of Grouchy; for at that time the Prussian leaders believed that only 15,000 French were on their track. Not until midday, when the cannonade on the west grew to a roar, did Gneisenau decide to send forward Ziethen's corps towards Ohain, on Wellington's left; but thereafter the defence of the Dyle against Grouchy was left solely to Thielmann's corps.[505]

While this storm was brewing in the east, everything in front of the Emperor seemed to portend a prosperous day. High as he rated Wellington's numbers, he had no doubt as to the result. "The enemy's army," he remarked just after breakfast, "outnumbers ours by more than a fourth; nevertheless we have ninety chances out of a hundred in our favour." Ney, who then chanced to come in, quickly remarked: "No doubt, sire, if Wellington were simple enough to wait for you; but I come to inform you that he is retreating." "You have seen wrong," was the retort, "the time is gone for that." Soult did not share his master's assurance of victory, and once more begged him to recall some of Grouchy's force; to which there came the brutal reply: "Because you have been beaten by Wellington you think him a great general. And I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad troops, and that this will be the affair of a déjeuner." "I hope it may," said Soult. Reille afterwards came in, and, finding how confident the Emperor was, mentioned the matter to D'Erlon, who advised his colleague to return and caution him. "What is the use," rejoined Reille; "he would not listen to us."

In truth, Napoleon was in no mood to receive advice. He admitted on the voyage to St. Helena that "he had not exactly reconnoitred Wellington's position."[506] And, indeed, there seemed to be nothing much to reconnoitre. The Mont St. Jean, or Waterloo, position does not impress the beholder with any sense of strength. The so-called valley, separating the two arrays, is a very shallow depression, nowhere more than fifty feet below the top of the northern slope. It is divided about halfway across by an undulation that affords good cover to assailants about to attack La Haye Sainte. Another slight rise crosses the vale halfway between this farm and Hougoumont, and facilitates the approach to that part of the ridge. In fact, only on their extreme left could the defenders feel much security; for there the slope is steeper, besides being protected in front by marshy ground, copses, and the hamlets of Papelotte, La Haye, and Smohain.

Napoleon paid little attention to the left wing of the allies. The centre and right centre were evidently Wellington's weak points, and there, especially near the transverse rise, our leader chiefly massed his troops. Yet there, too, the defence had some advantages. The front of the centre was protected by La Haye Sainte, "a strong stone and brick building," says Cotton, "with a narrow orchard in front and a small garden in the rear, both of which were hedged around, except on the east side of the garden, where there was a strong wall running along the high-road." It is generally admitted that Wellington gave too little attention to this farm, which Napoleon saw to be the key of the allied position. Loopholes were made in its south and east walls, but none in the western wall, and half of the barn-door opening on the fields had been torn off for firewood by soldiers overnight. The place was held at first by 376 men of the King's German Legion, who threw up a barricade at the barn-door, as also on the high-road outside the orchard; but, as the sappers and carpenters were removed to Hougoumont, little could be done.

Far stronger was the château of Hougoumont, which had been built with a view to defence. The outbuildings were now loopholed, and scaffolds were erected to enable our men to fire over the garden walls which commanded the orchard. The defence was intrusted to the light companies of the second battalions of Coldstreams and Foot Guards (now the Grenadier Guards); while the wood in front was held by Nassauers and Hanoverians. Chassé's Dutch-Belgians were posted at the village of Braine la Leud to give further security to Wellington's right.[507] Napoleon's intention was to pierce the allied centre behind La Haye Sainte, where their lines were thin. But he did not know that behind the crest ran a sunken cross-road, which afforded excellent cover, and that the ground, sloping away towards Wellington's rear, screened his second line and reserves.

It was this peculiarity of the ground, so different from that of the exposed slope behind Ligny, that helped the great master of defensive tactics secretly to meet and promptly to foil every onset of his mighty antagonist.

While under-estimating the strength of Wellington's position Napoleon over-rated his numbers. As we have seen, he remarked that the allies exceeded the French by more than a fourth. Now, as his own numbers were fully 74,000, he credited the allies with upwards of 92,000. In reality, they were not more than 67,000, as Wellington had left 17,000 at Hal; but if this powerful detachment had been included, Napoleon's estimate would not have been far wrong. At St. Helena he gave out that his despatch of cavalry towards Hal had induced Wellington to weaken his army to this extent; but Houssaye has shown that the statement is an entire fabrication. The Emperor certainly believed that all Wellington's troops were close at hand.[508]

The Duke, on his side, would doubtless have retreated had he known that the Prussian advance would be as slow as it was. His composite forces, in which five languages were spoken, were unfit for a long contest with Napoleon's army. The Dutch-Belgian troops, numbering 17,000, were known to be half-hearted; the 2,800 Nassauers, who had served under Soult in 1813, were not above suspicion; the 11,000 Hanoverians and 5,900 Brunswickers were certain to do their best, but they were mostly raw troops. In fact, Wellington could thoroughly rely only on his 23,990 British troops and the 5,800 men of the King's German Legion; and among our men there was a large proportion of recruits or drafts from militia battalions. Events were to prove that this motley gathering could hold its own while at rest; but during the subsequent march to Paris Wellington passed the scathing judgment that, with the exception of his Peninsular men, it was "the worst equipped army, with the worst staff, ever brought together."[509] This was after he had lost De Lancey, Picton, Ponsonby, and many other able officers; but on the morning of the 18th there was no lack of skill in the placing of the troops, witness General Kennedy's arrangement of Alten's division so that it might readily fall into the "chequer" pattern, which proved so effective against the French horsemen.

Napoleon's confidence seemed to be well founded: he had 246 cannon against the allies' 156, and his preponderance in cavalry of the line was equally great. Above all, there were the 13,000 footmen of the Imperial Guard, flanked by 3,000 cavaliers. The effective strength of the two armies has been reckoned by Kennedy as in the proportion of four to seven. Why, then, did he not attack at once? There were two good reasons: first that his men had scattered widely overnight in search of food and shelter, and now assembled very slowly on the plateau; second, that the rain did not abate until 8 a.m., and even then slight drizzles came on, leaving the ground totally unfit for the movements of horse and artillery. Leaving the troops time to form and the ground to improve, the Emperor consulted his charts and took a brief snatch of sleep. He then rode to the front; and, as the gray-coated figure passed along those imposing lines, the enthusiasm found vent in one rolling roar of "Vive l'Empereur," which was wafted threateningly to the thinner array of the allies. There the leader received no whole-hearted acclaim save from the men who knew him; but among these there was no misgiving. "If," wrote Major Simmons of the 95th, "you could have seen the proud and fierce appearance of the British at that tremendous moment, there was not one eye but gleamed with joy."[510]

The first shots were fired at 11.50 to cover the assault on the wood of Hougoumont by Prince Jerome Bonaparte's division of Reille's corps. The Nassauers and Hanoverians briskly replied, and Cleeve's German battery opened fire with such effect that the leading column fell back. Again the assailants came on in greater force under shelter of a tremendous cannonade: this time they gained a lodgment, and step by step drove the defenders back through the copse. Though checked for a time by the Guards, they mastered the wood south of the house by about one o'clock. There they should have stopped. Napoleon's orders were for them to gain a hold only on the wood and throw out a good line of skirmishers: all that he wanted on this side was to prevent any turning movement from Wellington's advanced outposts. Reille also sent orders not to attack the château; but the Prince and his men rushed on at those massive walls, only to meet with a bloody repulse. A second attack fared no better; and though some 12,000 of Reille's men Finally attacked the mansion on three sides, yet our Guards, when reinforced, beat off every onset of wellnigh ten times their numbers.

For some time the Emperor paid little heed to this waste of energy; at 2 p.m. he recalled Jerome to his side. He now saw the need of husbanding his resources; for a disaster had overtaken the French right centre. He had fixed one o'clock for a great attack on La Haye Sainte by D'Erlon's corps of nearly 20,000 men. But a delay occurred owing to a cause that we must now describe.

Before his great battery of eighty guns belched forth at the centre and blotted out the view, he swept the horizon with his glass, and discerned on the skirts of the St. Lambert wood, six miles away, a dark object. Was it a spinney, or a body of troops? His staff officers could not agree; but his experienced eye detected a military formation. Thereupon some of the staff asserted that they must be Blücher's men, others that they were Grouchy's. Here he could scarcely be in a doubt. Not long after 10 a.m. he received from Grouchy a despatch, dated from Gembloux at 3 a.m., reporting that the Prussians were retiring in force on Brussels to concentrate or to join Wellington, and that he (Grouchy) was on the point of starting for Sart-à-Walhain and Wavre. He said nothing as to preventing any flank march that the enemy might make from Wavre with a view to joining their allies straightway. Therefore he was not to be looked for on this side of Wavre, and those troops must consequently be Prussians.[511]

All doubts were removed when a Prussian hussar officer, captured by Marbot's vedettes near Lasne, was brought to Napoleon. He bore a letter from Bülow to Müffling, stating that the former was on the march to attack the French right wing. In reply to Napoleon's questions the captain stated that Bülow's whole corps was in motion, but wisely said nothing about the other two corps that were following. Such as it was, the news in no way alarmed the Emperor. As Bülow was about to march against the French flank, Grouchy must march on his flank and take his corps en flagrant délit. That is the purport of the postscript added to a rather belated reply that was about to be sent off to Grouchy at 1 p.m. It did not reach him till 5 p.m., too late to influence the result, even had he desisted from his attack on Wavre, which he did not.[512]

We return to the Emperor's actions at half-past one. Dumont's and Subervie's light horsemen were sent out towards Frischermont to observe the Prussians; the great battery of eighty guns, placed on the intermediate rise, now opened fire; and under cover of its deadly blasts D'Erlon's four divisions dipped down into the valley. They were ranged in closely packed battalions spread out in a front of some two hundred men, a formation that Napoleon had not suggested, but did not countermand. The left column, that of Alix, was supported by cavalry on its flank. Part of this division gained the orchard of La Haye Sainte, and attacked the farm buildings on all sides. From his position hard by a great elm above the farm, Wellington had marked this onset, and now sent down a Hanoverian battalion to succour their compatriots; but in the cutting of the main road it was charged and routed by Milhaud's cuirassiers, who pursued them up the slope until the rally sounded. Farther to the east, the French seemed still surer of victory. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgians, some 3,000 strong, after suffering heavily in their cruelly exposed position, wavered at the approach of Donzelot's column, and finally broke into utter rout, pelted in their flight with undeserved gibes from the British in their rear. These consisted of Picton's division, the heroes of Quatre Bras. Here they had as yet sustained little loss, thanks to the shelter of the hollow cross-road and a hedge.

The French columns now topped the ridge, uttering shouts of triumph, and began to deploy into line for the final charge. This was the time, as Picton well knew, to pour in a volley and dash on with the cold steel; but as he cheered on his men, a bullet struck him in the temple and cut short his brilliant career. His tactics were successful at some points while at others our thin lines barely held up against the masses. Certainly no decisive result could have been gained but for the timely onset of Ponsonby's Union Brigade--the 1st Royal Dragoons, the Scots Greys, and the Inniskillings.

At the time when Lord Uxbridge gave the order, "Royals and Inniskillings charge, the Greys support," Alix's division was passing the cross-road. But as the Royals dashed in, "the head of the column was seized with a panic, gave us a fire which brought down about twenty men, then went instantly about and endeavoured to regain the opposite side of the hedges; but we were upon and amongst them, and had nothing to do but press them down the slope." So wrote Captain Clark Kennedy, who sabred the French colour-bearer and captured the eagle. Equally brilliant was the charge of the Inniskillings, in the centre of the brigade. They rode down Donzelot's division, jostled its ranks into a helpless mass, and captured a great number of prisoners. The Scots Greys, too, succouring the hard-pressed Gordons, fell fiercely on Marcognet's division. "Both regiments," wrote Major Winchester of the 92nd, "charged together, calling out 'Scotland for ever'; the Scots Greys actually walked over this column, and in less than three minutes it was totally destroyed. The grass field, which was only an instant before as green and smooth as Phoenix Park, was covered with killed and wounded, knapsacks, arms, and accoutrements."[513]

Meanwhile, on the left of the brigade, Vandeleur's horse and some Dutch-Belgian dragoons drove back Durutte's men past Papelotte. On its right, the 2nd Life Guards cut up the cuirassiers while disordered by the sudden dip of the hollow cross-road; and further to the west, the 1st Dragoon Guards and 1st Life Guards met them at the edge of the plateau, clashed furiously, burst through them, and joined in the wild charge of Ponsonby's brigade up the opposite slope, cutting the traces of forty French cannon and sabring the gunners.

But Napoleon was awaiting the moment for revenge, and now sent forward a solid force of lancers and dragoons, who fell on our disordered bands with resistless force, stabbing the men and overthrowing their wearied steeds. Here fell the gallant Ponsonby with hundreds of his men, and, had not Vandeleur's horse checked the pursuit, very few could have escaped. Still, this brigade had saved the day. Two of D'Erlon's columns had gained a hold on the ridge, until the sudden charge of our horsemen turned victory into a disastrous rout that cost the French upwards of 5,000 men.

As if exhausted by this eager strife, both armies relaxed their efforts for a space and re-formed their lines. Wellington ordered Lambert's brigade of 2,200 Peninsular veterans, who had only arrived that morning, to fill the gaps on his left. The Emperor, too, was uneasy, as he showed by taking copious pinches of snuff. He mounted his horse and rode to the front, receiving there the cheers of his blood-stained lancers and battered infantry. Having received another despatch from Grouchy which gave no hope of his speedy arrival, he ordered his cannon once more to waste the British lines and bombard Hougoumont, while Ney led two of D'Erlon's brigades that were the least shaken to resume the attack on La Haye Sainte. Once more they were foiled at the farm buildings by the hardy Germans, to whom Wellington had sent a timely reinforcement.[514] At Hougoumont also the Guards held firm, despite the fierce conflagration in the barn and part of the chapel. But while his best troops everywhere stood their ground, the Duke saw with concern the gaps in his fighting line. Many of the Dutch-Belgians had made off to the rear; and Jackson, when carrying an order to a reserve Dutch battery to advance--an order that was disobeyed--saw what had become of these malingerers. "I peeped into the skirts of the forest and truly felt astonished: entire companies seemed there with regularly piled arms, fires blazing under cooking kettles, while the men lay about smoking!"[515]

Far different was the scene at the front. There the third act of the drama was beginning. After half an hour of the heaviest cannonade ever known, Wellington's faithful troops were threatened by an avalanche of cavalry, and promptly fell into the "chequer" disposition previously arranged for the most exposed division, that of Alten. Napoleon certainly hoped either to crush Wellington outright by a mighty onset of horse, or to strip him bare for the coup de grâce. At the Caillou farm in the morning he said: "I will use my powerful artillery; my cavalry shall charge; and I will advance with my Old Guard." The use of cavalry on a grand scale was no new thing in his wars. By it he had won notable advantages, above all at Dresden; and he believed that footmen, when badly shaken by artillery, could not stand before his squadrons. The French cavalry, 15,000 strong at the outset, had as yet suffered little, and the way had been partly cleared by the last assaults on Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, where the defenders were wholly occupied in self-defence.

But Ney certainly pressed the first charge too soon. Doubtless he was misled by the retirement of our first line a little way behind the crest to gain some slight shelter from the iron storm. Looking on this prudent move as a sign of retreat he led forward the cuirassiers of Milhaud; and as these splendid brigades trotted forward, the chasseurs à cheval of the Guard and "red" lancers joined them. More than 5,000 strong, these horsemen rode into the valley, formed at the foot of the slope, and then, under cover of their artillery, began to breast the slope. At its crest the guns of the allies opened on them point-blank; but, despite their horrible losses, they swept on, charged through the guns and down the reverse slope towards the squares. Volley after volley now tore through with fearful effect, and the survivors swerved to the intervals. Their second and third lines fared little better; astonished at so stout a stand, where they looked to find only a few last despairing efforts, they fell into faltering groups.

"As to the so-called charges," says Basil Jackson, "I do not think that on a single occasion actual collision occurred. I many times saw the cuirassiers come on with boldness to within some twenty or thirty yards of a square, when, seeing the steady firmness of our men, they invariably edged away and retired. Sometimes they would halt and gaze at the triple row of bayonets, when two or three brave officers would advance and strive to urge the attack, raising their helmets aloft on their sabres--but all in vain, as no efforts could make the men close with the terrible bayonets, and meet certain destruction."[516]

After the fire of the rear squares had done its work, our cavalry fell on the wavering masses; and, as they rode off, the gunners ran forth from the squares and plied them with shot. In a few minutes the mounted host that seemed to have swallowed up the footmen was gone, the red and blue chequers stood forth triumphant, and the guns that should have been spiked dealt forth death. Down below, the confused mass shaped itself for a new charge while its supports routed our horsemen.

In this second attack Ney received a powerful reinforcement. The Emperor ordered the advance of Kellermann and of Guyot with the heavy cavalry of the Guard, thus raising the number of horsemen to about 10,000. At the head of these imposing masses Ney again mounted the slope. But Wellington had strengthened his line by fresh troops, ordering up also Mercer's battery of six 9-pounders, to support two Brunswick regiments that wavered ominously as the French cannon-balls tore through them. Would these bewildered lads stand before the wave of horsemen already topping the crest? It seemed impossible. But just then Mercer's men thundered up between them with the guns, took post behind the raised cross-road, and opened on the galloping horsemen with case-shot. At once the front was strewn with steeds and men; and gunners and infantry riddled the successive ranks, that rushed on only to pile up writhing heaps and bar retreat to the survivors in front. Some of these sought safety by a dash through the guns, while the greater number struggled and even laid about with their sabres to hew their way out of this battue.

Elsewhere the British artillery was too exposed to be defended, and the gunners again fled back to the squares. Once more the cavalry surrounded our footmen, like "heavy surf breaking on a coast beset with isolated rocks, against which the mountainous wave dashes with furious uproar, breaks, divides, and runs hissing and boiling far beyond." Yet, as before, it failed to break those stubborn blocks, and a perplexing pause occurred, varied by partial and spasmodic rushes. "Will those English never show us their backs"--exclaimed the Emperor, as he strained his eyes to catch the first sign of rout "I fear," replied Soult, "they will be cut to pieces first." For the present, it was the cavalry that gave way. Foiled by that indomitable infantry, they were again charged by British and German hussars and driven into the valley.

Once more Ney led on his riders, gathering up all his reserves. But the Duke had now brought up Adam's brigade and Duplat's King's Germans to the space behind Hougoumont; their fire took the horsemen in flank: the blasts of grape and canister were as deadly as before: one and all, the squares held firm, beating back onset after onset: and by 6 o'clock the French cavalry fell away utterly exhausted.[517]

Who is to be held responsible for these wasteful attacks, and why was not French infantry at hand to hold the ground which the cavaliers seemed to have won? Undoubtedly, Ney began the first attack somewhat too early; but Napoleon himself strengthened the second great charge by the addition of Kellermann's and Guyot's brigades, doubtless in the belief that the British, of whose tenacity he had never had direct personal proof, must give way before so mighty a mass. Moreover, time after time it seemed that the attacks were triumphant; the allied guns on the right centre, except Mercer's, were nine or ten times taken, their front squares as often enveloped; and more than once the cry of victory was raised by the Emperor's staff.

Why, then, was not the attack clinched by infantry? To understand this we must review the general situation. Hougoumont still defied the attacks of nearly the whole of Reille's corps, and the effective part of D'Erlon's corps was hotly engaged at and near La Haye Sainte. Above all, the advent of the Prussians on the French right now made itself felt. After ceaseless toil, in which the soldiers were cheered on by Blücher in person, their artillery was got across the valley of the Lasne; and at 4.30 Bülow's vanguard debouched from the wood behind Frischermont. Lobau's corps of 7,800 men, which, according to Janin, was about to support Ney, now swung round to the right to check this advance.[518] Towards 5 o'clock the Prussian cannon opened fire on the horsemen of Domont and Subervie, who soon fell back on Lobau.

Bülow pressed on with his 30,000 men, and, swinging forward his left wing, gained a footing in the village of Planchenoit, while Lobau fell back towards La Belle Alliance. This took place between 5.30 and 6 o'clock, and accounts for Napoleon's lack of attention to the great cavalry charges. To break the British squares was highly desirable; but to ward off the Prussians from his rear was an imperative necessity. He therefore ordered Duhesme with the 4,000 footmen of the Young Guard to regain Planchenoit. Gallantly they advanced at the charge, and drove their weary and half-famished opponents out into the open.

Satisfied with this advantage, the Emperor turned his thoughts to the British and bade Ney capture La Haye Sainte at all costs. Never was duty more welcome. Mistakes and failures could now be atoned by triumph or a soldier's death. Both had as yet eluded his search. Three horses had been struck to the ground under him, but, dauntless as ever, he led Donzelot's men, with engineers, against the farm. Begrimed with smoke, hoarse with shouting, he breathed the lust of battle into those half-despondent ranks; and this time he succeeded. For five hours the brave Germans had held out, beating off rush after rush, until now they had but three or four bullets apiece left. The ordinary British ammunition did not fit their rifles; and their own reserve supply could not be found at the rear. Still, even when firing ceased, bayonet-thrusts and missiles kept off the assailants for a space, even from the half-destroyed barn-door, until Frenchmen mounted the roof of the stables and burst through the chief gateway: then Baring and his brave fellows fled through the house to the garden. "No pardon to these green devils" was now the cry, and those who could not make off to the ridge were bayoneted to a man.[519]

This was a grave misfortune for the allies. French sharpshooters now lined the walls of the farm and pushed up the ridge, pressing our front very hard, so that, for a time, the space behind La Haye Sainte was practically bare of defenders. This was the news that Kennedy took to Wellington. He received it with the calm that bespoke a mighty soul; for, as Sir A. Frazer observed, however indifferent or apparently careless he might appear at the beginning of battles, as the crisis came he rose superior to all that could be imagined. Such was his demeanour now. Riding to the Brunswickers posted in reserve, he led them to the post of danger; Kennedy rallied the wrecks of Alten's division and brought up Germans from the left wing; the cavalry of Vandeleur and Vivian, moving in from the extreme left, also helped to steady the centre; and the approach of Chassé's Dutch-Belgian brigade, lately called in from Braine-la-Leud, strengthened our supports.

Had Napoleon promptly launched his Old and Middle Guard at Wellington's centre, victory might still have crowned the French eagles. But to Ney's request for more troops he returned the petulant answer: "Troops? where do you want me to get them from? Am I to make them?" At this time the Prussians were again masters of Planchenoit. Once more, then, he turned on them, and sent in two battalions, one of the Old, the other of the Middle Guard. In a single rush with the bayonet these veterans mastered the place and drove Bülow's men a quarter of a mile beyond, while Lobau regained ground further north. But the head of Pirch's corps was near at hand to strengthen Bülow; while, after long delays caused by miry lanes and an order from Blücher to make for Planchenoit, Ziethen's corps began to menace the French right at Smohain. Reiche soon opened fire with sixteen cannon, somewhat relieving the pressure on Wellington's left.[520]

Still the Emperor was full of hope. He did not know of the approach of Pirch and Ziethen. Now and again the muttering of Grouchy's guns was heard on the east, and despite that Marshal's last despatch, Napoleon still believed that he would come up and catch the Prussians. Satisfied, then, with holding off Bülow for a while, he staked all on a last effort with the Old and Middle Guard. Leaving two battalions of these in Planchenoit, and three near Rossomme as a last reserve, he led forward nine battalions formed in hollow squares. A thrill ran through the line regiments, some of whom were falling back, as they saw the bearskins move forward; and, to revive their spirits, the Emperor sent on Labédoyère with the news that Grouchy was at hand.

Thus the tension of hope long deferred, which renders Waterloo unique among battles, rose to its climax. Each side had striven furiously for eight hours in the belief that the Prussians, or Grouchy, must come; and now, at the last agony, came the assurance that final triumph was at hand. The troops of D'Erlon and Reille once more clutched at victory on the crest behind La Haye Sainte or beneath the walls of Hougoumont, while the squares of the Guard struck obliquely across the vale in the track of the great cavalry charges. On the rise south-west of La Haye Sainte, Napoleon halted one battalion and handed over to Ney the command of the remaining eight, that hailed him as they passed with enthusiastic shouts. Two aides-de-camp just then galloped up from the right to tell him of the Prussian advance, but he refused to listen to them and bent his eyes on the Guards.[521]

Under cover of a whirlwind of shot the veterans pressed on. Having suffered very little at Ligny, they numbered fully 4,000, and formed at first one column, some seventy men in width. The front battalions headed for a point a little to the west of the present Belgian monument, while for some unexplained reason the rear portion diverged to the left, and breasted the slope later than the others and nearer Hougoumont. Flanked by light guns that opened a brisk fire, and most gallantly supported by Donzelot's division close on their right, the leading column struggled on, despite the grape and canister which poured from the batteries of Bolton and Bean, making it wave "like corn blown by the wind." Friant, the Commander of the Old Guard, was severely wounded; Ney's horse fell under him, but the gallant fighter rose undaunted, and waved on his men anew. And now they streamed over the ridge and through the British guns in full assurance of triumph. Few troops seemed to be before them; for Maitland's men (2nd and 3rd battalions of the 1st Foot Guards) had lain down behind the bank of the cross-road to get some shelter from the awful cannonade. "Stand up, Guards, and make ready," exclaimed the Duke when the French were but sixty paces away. The volley that flashed from their lengthy front staggered the column, and seemed to force it bodily back. In vain did the French officers wave their swords and attempt to deploy into line. Mangled in front by Maitland's brigade, on its flank by our 33rd and 69th Regiments drawn up in square, and by the deadly salvos of Chassé's Dutch-Belgians,[522] that stately array shrank and shrivelled up. "Now's the time, my boys," shouted Lord Saltoun; and the thin red line, closing with the mass, drove it pell-mell down the slope.

Near the foot the victors fell under the fire of the rear portion of the Imperial Guards, who, undaunted by their comrades' repulse, rolled majestically upwards. Colborne now wheeled the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regiment on the crest in a line nearly parallel to their advance, and opened a deadly fire on their flank, which was hotly returned; Maitland's men, re-forming on the crest, gave them a volley in front; and some Hanoverians at the rear of Hougoumont also galled their rear. Seizing the favourable moment when the column writhed in anguish, Colborne cheered his men to the charge, and, aided by the second 95th Rifles, utterly overthrew the last hope of France. Continuing his advance, and now supported by the 71st Regiment, he swept our front clear as far as the orchard of La Haye Sainte.[523]

The Emperor had at first watched the charge with feelings of buoyant hope; for Friant, who came back wounded, reported that success was certain. As the truth forced itself on him, he turned pale as a corpse. "Why! they are in confusion," he exclaimed; "all is lost for the present." A thrill of agony also shot through the French lines. Donzelot's onset had at one time staggered Halkett's brigade; but the hopes aroused by the charge of the Guard and the rumour of Grouchy's approach gave place to dismay when the veterans fell back and Ziethen's Prussians debouched from Papelotte. To the cry of "The Guard gives way," there succeeded shouts of "treason." The Duke, noting the confusion, waved on his whole line to the longed-for advance. Menaced in front by the thin red line, and in rear by Colborne's glorious charge, D'Erlon's divisions broke up in general rout. For a time, three rocks stood boldly forth above this disastrous ebb. They were the battalions of the Guard previously repulsed, and that had rallied around the Emperor on the rise south of La Haye Sainte. In front of them the three regiments of Adam's brigade stopped to re-form; but at the Duke's command--"Go on, go on: they will not stand"--Colborne charged them, and they gave way.

And now, as the sun shot its last gleams over the field, the swords of the British horsemen were seen to flash and fall with relentless vigour. The brigades of Vandeleur and Vivian, well husbanded during the day, had been slipped upon the foe. The effect was electrical. The retreat became a rout that surged wildly around the last squares of the Guard. In one of them Napoleon took refuge for a space, still hoping to effect a rally, while outside Ney rushed from band to band, brandishing a broken sword, foaming with fury, and launching at the runaways the taunt, "Cowards! have you forgotten how to die?"[524]

But panic now reigned supreme. Adam's brigade was at hand to support our horsemen; and shortly after nine there knelled from Planchenoit the last stroke of doom, the shouts of Prussians at last victorious over the stubborn defence. "The Guard dies and does not surrender"--such are the words attributed by some to Michel, by others to Cambronne before he was stretched senseless on the ground.[525] Whether spoken or not, some such thought prompted whole companies to die for the honour of their flag. And their chief, why did he not share their glorious fate? Gourgaud says that Soult forced him from the field. If so (and Houssaye discredits the story) Soult never served his master worse. The only dignified course was to act up to his recent proclamation that the time had come for every Frenchman of spirit to conquer or die. To belie those words by an ignominious flight was to court the worst of sins in French political life, ridicule.

And the flight was ignominious. Wellington's weary troops, after several times mistaking friends for foes in the dusk, halted south of Rossomme and handed over the pursuit to the Prussians, many of whom had fought but little and now drank deep the draught of revenge. By the light of the rising moon Gneisenau led on his horsemen in a pursuit compared with which that of Jena was tame. At Genappe Napoleon hoped to make a stand: but the place was packed with wagons and thronged with men struggling to get at the narrow bridge. At the blare of the Prussian trumpets, the panic became frightful; the Emperor left his carriage and took to horse as the hurrahs drew near. Seven times did the French form bivouacs, and seven times were they driven out and away. At Quatre Bras he once more sought to gather a few troops; but ere he could do so the Uhlans came on. With tears trickling down his pallid cheeks, he resumed his flight over another field of carnage, where ghastly forms glinted on all sides under the pale light of dawn. After further futile efforts at Charleroi, he hurried on towards Paris, followed at some distance by groups amounting to about 10,000 men, the sorry remnant still under arms of the host that fought at Waterloo: 25,000 lay dead or wounded there: some thousands were taken prisoners: the rest were scattering to their homes. Wellington lost 10,360 killed and wounded, of whom 6,344 were British: the Prussian loss was about 6,000 men.

The causes of Napoleon's overthrow are not hard to find. The lack of timely pursuit of Blücher and Wellington on the 17th enabled those leaders to secure posts of vantage and to form an incisive plan which he did not fully fathom even at the crisis of the battle. Full of overweening contempt of Wellington, he began the fight heedlessly and wastefully. When the Prussians came on, he underrated their strength and believed to the very end that Grouchy would come up and take them between two fires. But, in the absence of prompt, clear, and detailed instructions, that Marshal was left a prey to his fatal notion that Wavre was the one point to be aimed at and attacked. Despite the heavy cannonade on the west he persisted in this strange course; while Napoleon staked everything on a supreme effort against Wellington. This last was an act of appalling hardihood; but he explained to Cockburn on the voyage to St. Helena that, still confiding in Grouchy's approach, he felt no uneasiness at the Prussian movements, "which were, in fact, already checked, and that he considered the battle to have been, on the whole, rather in his favour than otherwise." The explanation has every appearance of sincerity. But would any other great commander have staked his last reserve and laid bare his rear solely in reliance on the ability of an almost untried leader who had sent not a single word that justified the hopes now placed in him?

We here touch the weak points in Napoleon's intellectual armour. Gifted with almost superhuman insight and energy himself, he too often credited his paladins with possessing the same divine afflatus. Furthermore, he had a supreme contempt for his enemies. Victorious in a hundred fights over second-rate opponents in his youth, he could not now school his hardened faculties to the caution needed in a contest with Wellington, Gneisenau, and Blücher. Only after he had ruined himself and France did he realize his own errors and the worth of the allied leaders. During the voyage to England he confessed to Bertrand: "The Duke of Wellington is fully equal to myself in the management of an army, with the advantage of possessing more prudence."[526]

NOTE ADDED TO THE FOURTH EDITION.--I have discussed several of the vexed questions of the Waterloo Campaign in an Essay, "The Prussian Co-operation at Waterloo," in my volume entitled "Napoleonic Studies" (George Bell and Sons, 1904). In that Essay I have pointed out the inaccuracy or exaggeration of the claims put forward by some German writers to the effect that (1) Wellington played Blücher false at Ligny, (2) that he did not expect Prussian help until late in the day at Waterloo, (3) that the share of credit for the victory rested in overwhelming measure with Blücher and Gneisenau.

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XLI. FROM THE ELYSÉE TO ST. HELENA

Napoleon was far from accepting Waterloo as a final blow. At Philippeville on the day after the battle, he wrote to his brother Joseph that he would speedily have 300,000 men ready to defend France: he would harness his guns with carriage-horses, raise 100,000 conscripts, and arm them with muskets taken from the royalists and malcontent National Guards: he would arouse Dauphiné, Lyonnais, and Burgundy, and overwhelm the enemy. "But the people must help me and not bewilder me.... Write to me what effect this horrible piece of bad luck has had on the Chamber. I believe the deputies will feel convinced that their duty in this crowning moment is to rally round me and save France."[527]

The tenacious will, then, is only bent, not broken. Waterloo is merely a greater La Rothière, calling for a mightier defensive effort than that of 1814. Such are his intentions, even when he knows not that Grouchy is escaping from the Prussians. The letter breathes a firm resolve. He has no scruples as to the wickedness of spurring on a wearied people to a conflict with Europe. As yet he forms no magnanimous resolve to take leave of a nation whom his genius may once more excite to a fatal frenzy. He still seems unable to conceive of France happy and prosperous apart from himself. In indissoluble union they will struggle on and defy the world.

Such was the frame of mind in which he reached the Elysée Palace early on the 21st of June. For a time he was much agitated. "Oh, my God!" he exclaimed to Lavalette, raising his eyes to heaven and walking up and down the room. But after taking a warm bath--his unfailing remedy for fatigue--he became calm and discussed with the Ministers plans of a national defence. The more daring advised the prorogation of the Chambers and the declaration of a state of siege in Paris; but others demurred to a step that would lead to civil war. The Council dragged on at great length, the Emperor only once rousing himself from his weariness to declare that all was not lost; that he, and not the Chambers, could save France. If so, he should have gone to the deputies, thrilled them with that commanding voice, or dissolved them at once. Montholon states that this course was recommended by Cambacérès, Carnot, and Maret, but that most of the Ministers urged him not to expose his wearied frame to the storms of an excited assembly. At St. Helena he told Gourgaud that, despite his fatigue, he would have made the effort had he thought success possible, but he did not.[528]

The Chamber of Deputies meanwhile was acting with vigour. Agonized by the tales of disaster already spread abroad by wounded soldiers, it eagerly assented to Lafayette's proposal to sit in permanence and declare any attempt at dissolution an act of high treason. So unblenching a defiance, which recalled the Tennis Court Oath of twenty-six years before, struck the Emperor almost dumb with astonishment. Lucien bade him prepare for a coup d'état: but Napoleon saw that the days for such an act were passed. He had squandered the physical and moral resources bequeathed by the Revolution. Its armies were mouldering under the soil of Spain, Russia, Germany, and Belgium; and a decade of reckless ambition had worn to tatters Rousseau's serviceable theory of a military dictatorship. Exhausted France was turning away from him to the prime source of liberty, her representatives.

These were doubtless the thoughts that coursed through his brain as he paced with Lucien up and down the garden of the Elysée. A crowd of fédérés and workmen outside cheered him frantically. He saluted them with a smile; but, says Pasquier, "the expression of his eyes showed the sadness that filled his soul." True, he might have led that unthinking rabble against the Chambers; but that would mean civil war, and from this he shrank. Still Lucien bade him strike. "Dare," he whispered with Dantonesque terseness. "Alas," replied his brother, "I have dared only too much already." Davoust also opined that it was too late now that the deputies had firmly seized the reins and were protected by the National Guards of Paris.

And so Napoleon let matters drift. In truth, he was "bewildered" by the disunion of France. It was a France that he knew not, a land given over to idéalogues and traitors. His own Minister, Fouché, was working to sap his power, and yet he dared not have him shot! What wonder that the helpless autocrat paced restlessly to and fro, or sat as in a dream! In the evening Carnot went to the Peers, Lucien to the Deputies, to appeal for a united national effort against the Coalition, but the simple earnestness of the one and the fraternal fervour of the other alike failed. When Lucien finally exclaimed against any desertion of Napoleon, Lafayette fiercely shot at him the long tale of costly sacrifices which France had offered up at the shrine of Napoleon's glory, and concluded: "We have done enough for him: our duty is to save la patrie."

On the morrow came the news that Grouchy had escaped from the Prussians; and that the relics of Napoleon's host were rallying at Laon. But would not this encouragement embolden the Emperor to crush the contumacious Chambers? Evidently the case was urgent. He must abdicate, or they would dethrone him--such was the purport of their message to the Elysée; but, as an act of grace, they allowed him an hour in which to forestall their action. Shortly after midday, on the advice of his Ministers, he took the final step of his official career. Lucien and Carnot begged him for some time to abdicate only in favour of his son;[529] and he did so, but with the bitter remark: "My son! What a chimera! No, it is for the Bourbons that I abdicate! They at least are not prisoners at Vienna."

The deputies were of his opinion. Despite frantic efforts of the Bonapartists, they passed over Napoleon II. without any effective recognition, and at once appointed an executive Commission of five--Carnot, Caulaincourt, Fouché, Grenier, and Quinette. Three of them were regicides, and Fouché was chosen their President. We can gauge Napoleon's wrath at seeing matters thus promptly rolled back to where they were before Brumaire by his biting comment that he had made way for the King of Rome, not for a Directory which included one traitor and two babies. His indignation was just. An abdication forced on by idéalogues was hateful; to be succeeded by Fouché seemed an unforgivable insult; but he touched the lowest depth of humiliation on the 25th, when he received from that despicable schemer an order to leave Paris.

He obeyed on that first Sunday after Waterloo, driving off quietly to Malmaison, there to be joined by Hortense Beauharnais and a few faithful friends. At that ill-omened abode, where Josephine had breathed her last shortly after his first abdication, he spent four uneasy days. At times he was full of fight. He sent to the "Moniteur" a proclamation urging the army to make "some efforts more, and the Coalition will be dissolved." The manifesto was suppressed by Fouché's orders.

Meanwhile the invaders pressed on rapidly towards Compiègne. They met with no attempts at a national rising, a fact which proves the welcome accorded to Napoleon in March to have been mainly the outcome of military devotion and of the dislike generally felt for the Bourbons. It is a libel on the French people to suppose that a truly national impulse in his favour would have vanished with a single defeat. In vain did the Provisional Government sue for an armistice that would stay the advance. Wellington refused outright; but Blücher declared that he would consider the matter if Napoleon were handed over to him, dead or alive. On hearing of this, Wellington at once wrote his ally a private remonstrance, which drew from Gneisenau a declaration that, as the Duke was held back by parliamentary considerations and by the wish to prolong the life of the villain whose career had extended England's power, the Prussians would see to it that Napoleon was handed over to them for execution conformably to the declaration of the Congress of Vienna.[530]

But the Provisional Government acted honestly towards Napoleon. On the 26th Fouché sent General Becker to watch over him and advise him to set out for Rochefort, en route to the United States, for which purpose passports were being asked from Wellington. Becker found the ex-Emperor a prey to quickly varying moods. At one time he seemed "sunk into a kind of mollesse, and very careful about his ease and comfort": he ate hugely at meals: or again he affected a rather coarse joviality, showing his regard for Becker by pulling his ear. His plans varied with his moods. He declared he would throw himself into the middle of France and fight to the end, or that he would take ship at Rochefort with Bertrand and Savary alone, and steal past the English squadron; but when Mme. Bertrand exclaimed that this would be cruel to her, he readily gave up the scheme.[531]

It is not easy to gauge his feelings at this time. Apart from one outburst to Lavalette of pity for France, he seems not to have realized how unspeakably disastrous his influence had been on the land which he found in a victoriously expansive phase, and now left prostrate at the feet of the allies and the Bourbons. Hatred and contempt of the upper classes for their "fickle" desertion of him, these, if we may judge from his frequent allusions to the topic during the voyage, were the feelings uppermost in his mind; and this may explain why he wavered between the thought of staking all on a last effort against the allies and the plan of renewing in America the career now closed to him in Europe.

He certainly was not a prey to torpor and dumb despair. His brain still clutched eagerly at public affairs, as if unable to realize that they had slipped beyond his control; and his behaviour showed that he was still un être politique, with whom power was all in all. He evinced few signs of deep emotion on bidding farewell to his devoted followers: but whether this resulted from inner hardness, or resentment at his fall, or a sense of dignified prudence, it is impossible to say. When Denon, the designer of his medals, sobbed on bidding him adieu, he remarked: Mon cher, ne nous attendrissons pas: il faut dans les crises comme celle-ci se conduire avec froid. This surely was one source of his power over an emotional people: his feelings were the servant, not the master, of his reason.

Meanwhile the Prussians were drawing near to Paris. Early on the 29th they were at Argenteuil, and Blücher detached a flying column to seize the bridge of Chatou over the Seine near Malmaison and carry off Napoleon on the following night. But Davoust and Fouché warded off the danger. While the Marshal had the nearest bridges of the Seine barricaded or burnt, Fouché on the night of the 28th-29th sent an order to Napoleon to leave at once for Rochefort and set sail with two frigates, even though the English passports had not arrived.

He received the news calmly, and then with unusual animation requested Becker to submit to the Government a scheme for rapidly rallying the troops around Paris, whereupon he, as General Bonaparte, would surprise first Blücher and then Wellington--they were two days' marches apart: then, after routing the foe, he would resume his journey to the coast. The Commission would have none of it. The reports showed that the French troops were so demoralized that success was not to be hoped for.[532] And if a second Montmirail were snatched from Blücher, would it bring more of glory to Napoleon or of useless bloodshed to France? Those who look on the world as an arena for the exploits of heroes at the cost of ordinary mortals may applaud the scheme. But could men who were responsible to France regard it as anything but a final proof of Napoleon's perverse optimism, or a flash of his unquenchable ambition, or a last mad bid for power? He showed signs of anger on hearing of their refusal, but set out for Rochefort at 6 p.m.; and thus the Prussians were cheated of their prey by a few hours. Bertrand, Savary, Gourgaud, and Becker accompanied him.

The cheers of troops and people at Niort, and again at Rochefort, where he arrived on July 3rd, re-awakened his fighting instincts; and as the westerly winds precluded all hope of the two frigates slipping quickly down either of the practicable outlets so as to elude the British cruisers, he again sought permission to take command of the French forces, now beginning to fall back from Paris behind the line of the Loire. Again his offer was refused; and messages came thick and fast bidding Becker get him away from the mainland. Such was the desire of his best friends. Paris capitulated to the allies on July 4th, and both French royalists and Prussians were eager to get hold of him. Thus, while he sat weaving plans of a campaign on the Loire, the tottering Government at Paris pressed on his embarkation, hinting that force would be used should further delays ensue. Sadly, then, on July 8th, he went on board the "Saale," moored near L'Ile d'Aix, opposite the mouth of the Charente.

He was now in sore straits. The orders from Paris expressly forbade his setting foot again on the mainland, and most of the great towns had already hoisted the white flag. In front of him was the Bay of Biscay, swept by British cruisers, which the French naval officers had scant hopes of escaping. There was talk among Napoleon's suite, which now included Montholon, Las Cases, and Lallemand, of attempting flight from the Gironde, or in the hold of a small Danish sloop then at Rochefort, or on two fishing boats moored to the north of L'Ile de Ré; but these plans were given up in consequence of the close watch kept by our cruisers at all points. The next day brought with it a despatch from Paris ordering the ex-Emperor to set sail within twenty-four hours.

On the morrow Napoleon sent Savary and Las Cases with a letter to H.M.S. "Bellerophon," then cruising off the main channel--that between the islands of Oléron and Ré--asking whether the permits for Napoleon's voyage to America had arrived, or his departure would be prevented. Savary also inquired whether his passage on a merchant-ship would be stopped. The commander, Captain Maitland, had received strict orders to intercept Napoleon; but, seeking to gain time and to bring Admiral Hotham up with other ships, he replied that he would oppose the frigates by force: neither could he permit Napoleon to set sail on a merchant-ship until he had the warrant of his admiral for so doing. The "Bellerophon," "Myrmidon," and "Slaney" now drew closer in to guard the middle channel, while a corvette watched each of the difficult outlets on the north and south.[533]

Three days of sorrow and suspense now ensued. On the 12th came the news of the entry of Louis XVIII. into Paris, the collapse of the Provisional Government, and the general hoisting of the fleur-de-lys throughout France. On the 13th Joseph Bonaparte came for a last interview with his brother on the Ile d'Aix. Montholon states that the ex-King offered to change places with the ex-Emperor and thus allow him the chance of escaping on a neutral ship from the Gironde. Gourgaud does not refer to any such offer, nor does Bertrand in his letter of July 14th to Joseph. In any case, it was not put to the test; for royalism was rampant on the mainland, and two of our cruisers hovered about the Gironde. Sadly the two brothers parted, and for ever. Then the other schemes were again mooted only to be given up once more; and late on the 13th Napoleon dictated the following letter, to be taken by Gourgaud to the Prince Regent:

"Exposed to the factions which distract my country and to the enmity of the greatest Powers of Europe, I have closed my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies."[534]

On the 14th Gourgaud and Las Cases took this letter to the "Bellerophon," whereupon Maitland assured them that he would convey Napoleon to England, Gourgaud preceding them on the "Slaney"; but that the ex-Emperor would be entirely at the disposal of our Government. This last was made perfectly clear to Las Cases, who understood English, though at first he feigned not to do so; but, unfortunately, Maitland did not exact from him a written acknowledgment of this understanding. Gourgaud was transferred to the "Slaney," which soon set sail for Torbay, while Las Cases reported to Napoleon on L'Ile d'Aix what had happened. Thereupon Bertrand wrote to Maitland that Napoleon would come on board on the morrow:

" ... If the Admiral, in consequence of the demand that you have addressed to him, sends you the permits for the United States, His Majesty will go there with pleasure; but in default of them, he will go voluntarily to England as a private individual to enjoy the protection of the laws of your country."

Now, either Las Cases misinterpreted Maitland's words and acts, or Napoleon hoped to impose on the captain by the statements just quoted. Maitland had not sent to Hotham for permits; he held out no hopes of Napoleon's going to America; he only promised to take him to England to be at the disposal of the Prince Regent. Napoleon, taking no notice of the last stipulation, now promised to go to England, not as Emperor, but as a private individual. He took this step soon after dawn on the 15th, when any lingering hopes of his escape were ended by the sight of Admiral Hotham's ship, "Superb," in the offing. On leaving the French brig, "Epervier," he was greeted with the last cheers of Vive l'Empereur, cheers that died away almost in a wail as his boat drew near to the "Bellerophon." There he was greeted respectfully, but without a salute. He wore the green uniform, with gold and scarlet facings, of a colonel of the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Guard, with white waistcoat and military boots; and Maitland thought him "a remarkably strong, well-built man." Keeping up a cheerful demeanour, he asked a number of questions about the ship, and requested to be shown round even thus early, while the men were washing the decks. He inquired whether the "Bellerophon" would have worsted the two French frigates and acquiesced in Maitland's affirmative reply. He expressed admiration of all that he saw, including the portrait of Maitland's wife hanging in the cabin; and the captain felt the full force of that seductive gift of pleasing, which was not the least important of the great man's powers.

He was accompanied by General and Mme. Bertrand, the former a tall, slim, good-looking man, of refined manners and domestic habits, though of a sensitive and hasty temper; his wife, a lady of slight figure, but stately carriage, the daughter of a Irishman named Dillon, who lost his life in the Revolution. Her vivacious manners bespoke a warm impulsive nature, that had revelled in the splendour of her high ceremonial station and now seemed strained beyond endurance by the trials threatening her and her three children. The Bertrands had been with Napoleon at Elba, and enjoyed his complete confidence. Younger than they were General (Count) Montholon and his wife--he, a short but handsome man, his consort, a sweet unassuming woman--who showed their devotion to the ex-Emperor by exchanging a life of luxury for exile in his service. Count Las Cases, a small man, whose thin eager face and furtive glances revealed his bent for intrigue, was the eldest of the party. He had been a naval officer, had then lived in England as an émigré, but after the Peace of Amiens took civil service under Napoleon; he now brought with him his son, a lad of fifteen, fresh from the Lycée. We need not notice the figures of Savary and Lallemand, as they were soon to part company. Maingaud the surgeon, Marchand the head valet, several servants, and the bright little boy of the Montholons completed the list.

The voyage passed without incident. Napoleon's health and appetite were on the whole excellent, and he suffered less than the rest from sea-sickness. The delicate Las Cases, who had donned his naval uniform, was in such distress as to move the mirth of the crew, whereupon Napoleon sharply bade him appear in plain clothes so as not to disgrace the French navy. For the great man himself the crew soon felt a very real regard, witness the final confession of one of them to Maitland: "Well, they may abuse that man as much as they like, but if the people of England knew him as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of his head."--What a tribute this to the mysterious power of genius!

On passing Ushant, he remained long upon deck, silent and abstracted, casting melancholy looks at the land he was never more to see. As they neared Torbay, the exile was loud in praise of the beauty of the scene, which he compared with that of Porto Ferrajo. Whatever misgivings he felt before embarking on the "Bellerophon" had apparently disappeared. He had been treated with every courtesy and had met with only one rebuff. He prompted Mme. Bertrand, who spoke English well, to sound Maitland as to the acceptance of a box containing his (Napoleon's) portrait set in diamonds. This the captain very properly refused.[535]

In Torbay troubles began to thicken upon the party. Gourgaud rejoined them on the 24th: he had not been allowed to land. Orders came on the 26th for the "Bellerophon" to proceed to Plymouth; and the rumour gained ground that St. Helena would be their destination. It was true. On July 31st, Sir Henry Bunbury, Secretary to the Admiralty, and Lord Keith, Admiral in command at Plymouth, laid before him in writing the decision of our Government, that, in order to prevent any further disturbance to the peace of Europe, it had been decided to restrain his liberty--"to whatever extent may be necessary for securing that first and paramount object"--and that St. Helena would be his place of residence, as it was healthy, and would admit of a smaller degree of restraint than might be necessary elsewhere.

Against this he made a lengthy protest, declaring that he was not a prisoner of war, that he came as a passenger on the "Bellerophon" "after a previous negotiation with the commander," that he demanded the rights of a British citizen, and wished to settle in a country house far from the sea, where he would submit to the surveillance of a commissioner over his actions and correspondence. St. Helena would kill him in three months, for he was wont to ride twenty leagues a day; he preferred death to St. Helena. Maitland's conduct had been a deliberate snare. To deprive him (Napoleon) of his liberty would be an eternal disgrace to England; for in coming to our shores he had offered the Prince Regent the finest page of his history.--Our officials then bowed and withdrew. He recalled Keith, and when the latter remarked that to go to St. Helena was better than being sent to Louis XVIII. or to Russia, the captive exclaimed "Russia! God keep me from that."[536]

It is unnecessary to traverse his statements at length. The foregoing recital of facts will have shown that he was completely at the end of his resources, and that Maitland had not made a single stipulation as to his reception in England. Indeed, Napoleon never reproached Maitland; he left that to Las Cases to do; and the captain easily refuted these insinuations, with the approval of Montholon. If there was any misunderstanding, it was certainly due to Las Cases.[537]

Indeed, the thought of Napoleon settling dully down in the Midlands is ludicrous. How could a man who revelled in vast schemes, whose mind preyed on itself if there were no facts and figures to grind, or difficulties to overcome, ever sink to the level of a Justice Shallow? And if he longed for repose, would the Opposition in England and the malcontents in France have let him rest? Inevitably he would become a rallying point for all the malcontents of Europe. Besides, our engagements to the allies bound us to guard him securely; and we were under few personal obligations to a man who, during the Peace of Amiens, persistently urged us to drive forth the Bourbons from our land, who at its close forcibly detained 10,000 Britons in defiance of the law of nations, and whose ambition added £600,000,000 to our National Debt.

Ministers had decided on St. Helena by July 28th. Their decision was clinched by a Memorandum of General Beatson, late Governor of the island, dated July 29th, recommending St. Helena, because all the landing places were protected by batteries, and the semaphores recently placed on the lofty cliffs would enable the approach of a rescue squadron to be descried sixty miles off, and the news to be speedily signalled to the Governor's House. Napoleon's appeal and protests were accordingly passed over; and, in pursuance of advice just to hand from Castlereagh at Paris, Ministers decided to treat him, not as our prisoner, but as the prisoner of all the Powers. A Convention was set in hand as to his detention; it was signed on August 2nd at Paris, and bound the other Powers to send Commissioners as witnesses to the safety of the custody.[538]

His departure from Plymouth was hastened by curious incidents. Crowds of people assembled there to see the great man, and shoals of boats--Maitland says more than a thousand on fine days--struggled and jostled to get as near the "Bellerophon" as the guard-boats would allow. Two or three persons were drowned; but still the swarm pressed on. Many of the men wore carnations--a hopeful sign this seemed to Las Cases--and the women waved their handkerchiefs when he appeared on the poop or at the open gangway. Maitland was warned that a rescue would be attempted on the night of the 3rd-4th; and certainly the Frenchmen were very restless at that time. They believed that if Napoleon could only set foot on shore he must gain the rights of Habeas Corpus.[539] And there seemed some chance of his gaining them. Very early on August 4th a man came down from London bringing a subpoena from the Court of King's Bench to compel Lord Keith and Captain Maitland to produce the person of Napoleon Bonaparte for attendance in London as witness in a trial for libel then pending. It appears that some one was to be sued for a libel on a naval officer, censuring his conduct in the West Indies; and it was suggested that if he (the defendant) could get Napoleon's evidence to prove that the French ships were at that time unserviceable, his case would be strengthened. An attorney therefore came down to Plymouth armed with a subpoena, with which he chased Keith on land and chased him by sea, until his panting rowers were foiled by the stout crew of the Admiral's barge. Keith also found means to let Maitland know how matters stood early on the 4th, whereupon the "Bellerophon" stood out to sea, her guard-boat keeping at a distance the importunate man with the writ.

The whole affair looks very suspicious. What defendant in a plain straightforward case would ever have thought of so far-fetched a device as that of getting the ex-Emperor to declare on oath that his warships in the West Indies had been unseaworthy? The tempting thought that it was a trick of some enterprising journalist in search of "copy "must also be given up as a glaring anachronism. On the other hand, it is certain that Napoleon's well-wishers in London and Plymouth were moving heaven and earth to get him ashore, or delay his departure.[540] In common with Sieyès, Lavalette, and Las Cases, he had hoped much from the peculiarities of English law; and on July 28th he dictated to Las Cases a paper, "suited to serve as a basis to jurists," which the latter says he managed to send ashore.[541] If this be true, Napoleon himself may have spurred on his friends to the effort just described. Or else the plan may have occurred to some of his English admirers who wished to embarrass the Ministry. If so, their attempt met with the fate that usually befalls the efforts of our anti-national cliques on behalf of their foreign heroes: it did them harm: the authorities acted more promptly than they would otherwise have done: the "Bellerophon" put to sea a few days before the Frenchmen expected, with the result that they were exposed to a disagreeable cruise until the "Northumberland" (the ship destined for the voyage in place of the glorious old "Bellerophon") was ready to receive them on board.[542]

Dropping down from Portsmouth, the newer ship met the "Bellerophon" and "Tonnant," Lord Keith's ship, off the Start. The transhipment took place on the 7th, under the lee of Berry Head, Torbay. After dictating a solemn protest against the compulsion put upon him, the ex-Emperor thanked Maitland for his honourable conduct, spoke of his having hoped to buy a small estate in England where he might end his days in peace, and declaimed bitterly against the Government.

Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, of the "Northumberland," then came by official order to search his baggage and that of his suite, so as to withdraw any large sums of money that might be thereafter used for effecting an escape. Savary and Marchand were present while this was done by Cockburn's secretary with as much delicacy as possible: 4,000 gold Napoleons (80,000 francs) were detained to provide a fund for part maintenance of the illustrious exile. The diamond necklace which Hortense had handed to him at Malmaison was at that time concealed on Las Cases, who continued to keep it as a sacred trust. The ex-Emperor's attendants were required to give up their swords during the voyage. Montholon states that when the same request was made by Keith to Napoleon, the only reply was a flash of anger from his eyes, under which the Admiral's tall figure shrank away, and his head, white with years, fell on his breast. Alas, for the attempt at melodrama! Maitland was expressly told by Lord Keith not to proffer any such request to the fallen chief.

Apart from one or two exclamations that he would commit suicide rather than go to St. Helena, Napoleon had behaved with a calm and serenity that contrasted with the peevish gloom of his officers and the spasms of Mme. Bertrand. This unhappy lady, on learning their fate, raved in turn against Maitland, Gourgaud, Napoleon, and against her husband for accompanying him, and ended by trying to throw herself from a window. From this she was pulled back, whereupon she calmed down and secretly urged Maitland to write to Lord Keith to prevent Bertrand accompanying his master. The captain did so, but of course the Admiral declined to interfere. Her shrill complaints against Napoleon had, however, been heard on the other side of the thin partition, and fanned the dislike which Montholon and Gourgaud had conceived for her, and in part for her husband. These were the officers whom he selected as companions of exile. Las Cases was to go as secretary, and his son as page.

Savary, Lallemand, and Planat having been proscribed by Louis XVIII., were detained by our Government, and subsequently interned at Malta. On taking leave of Napoleon they showed deep emotion, while he bestowed the farewell embrace with remarkable composure. The surgeon, Maingaud, now declined to proceed to St. Helena, alleging that he had wanted to go to America only because his uncle there was to leave him a legacy! At the same time Bertrand asked that O'Meara, the surgeon of the "Bellerophon," might accompany Napoleon to St. Helena. As Maingaud's excuse was very lame, and O'Meara had had one or two talks with Napoleon in Italian, Keith and Maitland should have seen that there was some understanding between them; but the Admiral consented to the proposed change. As to O'Meara's duplicity, we may quote from Basil Jackson's "Waterloo and St. Helena": "I know that he [O'Meara] was fully enlisted for Napoleon's service during the voyage from Rochefort to England." The sequel will show how disastrous it was to allow this man to go with the ex-Emperor.

In the Admiral's barge that took him to the "Northumberland" the ex-Emperor "appeared to be in perfect good humour," says Keith, "talking of Egypt, St. Helena, of my former name being Elphinstone, and many other subjects, and joking with the ladies about being seasick."[543] In this firm matter-of-fact way did Napoleon accept the extraordinary change in his fortunes. At no time of his life, perhaps, was he so great as when, forgetting his own headlong fall, he sought to dispel the smaller griefs of Mmes. Bertrand and Montholon. A hush came over the crew as Napoleon mounted the side and set foot on the deck of the ship that was to bear him away to a life of exile. It was a sight that none could behold unmoved, as the great man uncovered, received the salute, and said with a firm voice: "Here I am, General, at your orders."

The scene was rich, not only in personal interest and pathos, but also in historic import. It marks the end of a cataclysmic epoch and the dawn of a dreary and confused age. We may picture the Muse of History, drawn distractedly from her abodes on the banks of the Seine, gazing in wonder on that event taking place under the lee of Berry Head, her thoughts flashing back, perchance, to the days when William of Orange brought his fleet to shore at that same spot and baffled the designs of the other great ruler of France. The glory of that land is now once more to be shrouded in gloom. For a time, like an uneasy ghost, Clio will hover above the scenes of Napoleon's exploits and will find little to record but promises broken and development arrested by his unteachable successors.

But the march of Humanity is only clogged: it is not stayed. Ere long it breaks away into untrodden paths amidst the busy hives of industry or in the track of the colonizing peoples. The Muse follows in perplexity: her course at first seems dull and purposeless: her story, when it bids farewell to Napoleon, suffers a bewildering fall in dramatic interest: but at length new and varied fields open out to view. Democracy, embattled for seven sad years by Napoleon against her sister, Nationality, little by little awakens to a consciousness of the mistake that has blighted his fortune and hers, and begins to ally herself with the ill-used champion of the Kings. Industry, starved by War, regains her strength and goes forth on a career of conquest more enduring than that of the great warrior. And the peoples that come to the front are not those of the Latin race, whom his wars have stunted, but those of the untamable Teutonic stock, the lords of the sea and the leaders of Central Europe.

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The treatment of the ex-Emperor henceforth differed widely from that which had been hastily arranged by the Czar for his sojourn at Elba. In that case he retained the title of Emperor; he reigned over the island, and was free to undertake coasting trips. As these generous arrangements had entailed on Europe the loss of more than 80,000 men in killed and wounded, it is not surprising that the British Ministers should now have insisted on far stricter rules, especially as they and their Commissioner had been branded as accomplices in the former escape. His comfort and dignity were now subordinated to security. As the title of Emperor would enable him to claim privileges incompatible with any measure of surveillance, it was firmly and consistently denied to him; while he as persistently claimed it, and doubtless for the same reason. He was now to rank as a General not on active service; and Cockburn received orders, while treating him with deference and assigning to him the place of honour at table, to abstain from any acknowledgment of the imperial dignity. Napoleon soon put this question to the test by rising from dinner before the others had finished; but, with the exception of his suite, the others did not accompany him on deck. At this he was much piqued, as also at seeing that the officers did not uncover in his presence on the quarter-deck; but when Cockburn's behaviour in this respect was found to be quietly consistent, the anger of the exiles began to wear off--or rather it was thrust down.

One could wish that the conduct of our Government in this matter had been more chivalrous. It is true that we had only on two occasions acknowledged the imperial title, namely during the negotiations of 1806 and 1814; and to recognize it after his public outlawry would have been rather illogical, besides feeding the Bonapartists with hopes which, in the interests of France, it was well absolutely to close. Ministers might also urge that he himself had offered to live in England as a private individual, and that his transference to St. Helena, which allowed of greater personal liberty than could be accorded in England, did not alter the essential character of his detention. Nevertheless, their decision is to be regretted. The zeal of his partisans, far from being quenched, was inflamed by what they conceived to be a gratuitous insult; and these feelings, artfully worked upon by tales, medals, and pictures of the modern Prometheus chained to the rock, had no small share in promoting unrest in France.

Apart from this initial friction, Napoleon's relations to the Admiral and officers were fairly cordial. He chatted with him at the dinner-table and during the hour's walk that they afterwards usually took on the quarter-deck. His conversations showed no signs of despair or mental lethargy. They ranged over a great variety of topics, general and personal. He discussed details of navigation and shipbuilding with a minuteness of knowledge that surprised the men of the sea.

From his political conversations with Cockburn we may cull the following remarks. He said that he really meant to invade England in 1803-5, and to dictate terms of peace at London. He stoutly defended his execution of the Duc d'Enghien, and named none of the paltry excuses that his admirers were later on to discover for that crime. Referring to recent events, he inveighed against the French Liberals, declared that he had humoured the Chambers far too much, and dilated on the danger of representative institutions on the Continent. However much a Parliament might suit England, it was, he declared, highly perilous in Continental States. With respect to the future of France, he expressed the conviction that, as soon as the armies of occupation were withdrawn, there would be a general insurrection owing to the strong military bias of the people and their hatred of the Bourbons, now again brought back by devastating hordes of foreigners.[544]

This last observation probably explains the general buoyancy of his bearing. He did not consider the present settlement as final; and doubtless it was his boundless fund of hope that enabled him to triumph over the discomforts of the present, which left his companions morose and snappish. "His spirits are even," wrote Glover, the Admiral's secretary, at the equator, "and he appears perfectly unconcerned about his fate."[545] His recreations were chess, which he played with more vehemence than skill, and games of hazard, especially vingt-et-un: he began to learn "le wisth" from our officers. Sometimes he and Gourgaud amused themselves by extracting the square and cube roots of numbers; he also began to learn English from Las Cases. On some occasions he diverted his male companions with tales of his adventures, both military and amorous. His interest in the ship and in the events of the voyage did not flag. When a shark was caught and hauled up, "Bonaparte with the eagerness of a schoolboy scrambled on the poop to see it."

His health continued excellent. Despite his avoidance of vegetables and an excessive consumption of meat, he suffered little from indigestion, except during a few days of fierce sirocco wind off Madeira. He breakfasted about 10 on meat and wine, and remained in his cabin reading, dictating, or learning English, until about 3 p.m., when he played games and took exercise preparatory to dinner at 5. After a full meal, in which he partook by preference of the most highly dressed dishes of meat, he walked the deck for an hour or more. On one evening, the Admiral begged to be excused owing to a heavy equatorial rain-storm; but the ex-Emperor went up as usual, saying that the rain would not hurt him any more than the sailors; and it did not. The incident claims some notice: for it proves that, whatever later writers may say as to his decline of vitality in 1815, he himself was unaware of it, and braved with impunity a risk that a vigorous naval officer preferred to avoid. Moreover, the mere fact that he was able to keep up a heavy meat diet all through the tropics bespeaks a constitution of exceptional strength, unimpaired as yet by the internal malady which was to be his doom.

That one element of conviviality was not wanting at meals will appear from the official return of the consumption of wine at the Admiral's table by his seven French guests and six British officers: Port, 20 dozen; Claret, 45 dozen; Madeira, 22 dozen; Champagne, 13 dozen; Sherry, 7 dozen; Malmsey, 5 dozen.[546] The "Peruvian" had been detached from the squadron to Guernsey to lay in a stock of French wines specially for the exiles; and 15 dozen of claret--Napoleon's favourite beverage--were afterwards sent on shore at St. Helena for his use.

Doubtless the evenness of his health, which surprised Cockburn, Warden, and O'Meara alike, was largely due to his iron will. He knew that his exile must be disagreeable, but he had that useful faculty of encasing himself in the present, which dulls the edge of care. Besides, his tastes were not so exacting, or his temperament so volatile, as to shroud him in the gloom that besets weaker natures in time of trouble. Alas for him, it was far otherwise with his companions. The impressionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, the gloomy Grand Marshal, Bertrand, and his mercurial consort, over whose face there often passed "a gleam of distraction"--these were not fashioned for a life of adversity. Thence came the long spells of ennui, broken by flashes of temper, that marked the voyage and the sojourn at St. Helena.

The storm-centre was generally Mme. Bertrand; her varying moods, that proclaimed her Irish-Creole parentage, early brought on her the hostility of the others, including Napoleon; and as the discovery of her little plot to prevent Bertrand going to St. Helena gave them a convenient weapon, the voyage was for her one long struggle against covert intrigues, thinly veiled sarcasms, sea-sickness, and despair. At last she has to keep to her cabin, owing to some nervous disorder. On hearing of this Napoleon remarks that it is better she should die--such is Gourgaud's report of his words. Unfortunately, she recovers: after ten days she reappears, receives the congratulations of the officers in the large cabin where Napoleon is playing chess with Montholon. He receives her with a stolid stare and goes on with the game. After a time the Admiral hands her to her seat at the dinner-table, on the ex-Emperor's left. Still no recognition from her chief! But the claret bottle that should be in front of him is not there: she reaches over and hands it to him. Then come the looked-for words: "Ah! comment se porte madame?"--That is all.[547]

For Bertrand, even in his less amiable moods, Bonaparte ever had the friendly word that feeds the well-spring of devotion. On the "Bellerophon," when they hotly differed on a trivial subject, Bertrand testily replied to his dogmatic statements: "Oh! if you reply in that manner, there is an end of all argument." Far from taking offence at this retort, Napoleon soothed him and speedily restored him to good temper--a good instance of his forbearance to those whom he really admired.

Certainly the exiles were not happy among themselves. Even the amiable Mme. Montholon was the cause of one quarrel at table. After leaving Funchal, Cockburn states that a Roman Catholic priest there has offered to accompany the ex-Emperor. Napoleon replies in a way that proves his utter indifference; but the ladies launch out on the subject of religion. The discussion waxes hot, until the impetuous Gourgaud shoots out the remark that Montholon is wanting in respect for his wife. Whereupon the Admiral ends the scene by rising from table. Sir George Bingham, Colonel of the 53rd Regiment sailing in the squadron, passes the comment in his diary: "It is not difficult to see that envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness are firmly rooted in Napoleon's family, and that their residence in St. Helena will be rendered very uncomfortable by it."[548]

Intrigues there are of kaleidoscopic complexity, either against the superior Bertrands or the rising influence of Las Cases. This official has but yesterday edged his way into the Emperor's inner circle, and Gourgaud frankly reminds him of the fact: "'If I have come [with the Emperor] it is because I have followed him for four years, except at Elba. I have saved his life; and one loves those whom one has obliged.... But you, sir, he did not know you even by sight: then, why this great devotion of yours?'--I see around me," he continues, "many intrigues and deceptions. Poor Gourgaud, qu'allais-tu faire dans cette galère?"[549]

The young aide-de-camp's influence is not allowed to wane for lack of self-advertisement. Thus, when the battle of Waterloo is mentioned at table, he at once gives his version of it, and stoutly maintains that, whatever Napoleon may say to the contrary, he (Napoleon) did mistake the Prussian army for Grouchy's force: and, waxing eloquent on this theme, he exclaims to his neighbour, Glover, "that at one time he [Gourgaud] might have taken the Duke of Wellington prisoner, but he desisted from it, knowing the effusion of blood it would have occasioned."[550]--It is charitable to assume that this utterance was inspired by some liquid stronger than the alleged "stale water that had been to India and back."

On the whole, was there ever an odder company of shipmates since the days of Noah? A cheery solid Admiral, a shadowy Captain Ross who can navigate but does not open his lips, a talkative creature of the secretary type, the soldierly Bingham, the graceful courtly Montholons, the young General who out-gascons the Gascons, the wire-drawn subtle Las Cases, the melancholy Grand Marshal and his spasmodic consort--all of them there to guard or cheer that pathetic central figure, the world's conqueror and world's exile.

Meanwhile France was feeling the results of his recent enterprise. Enormous armies began to hold her down until the Bourbons, whose nullity was a pledge for peace, should be firmly re-established. Blücher, baulked of his wish to shoot Bonaparte, was with difficulty dissuaded by the protests of Wellington and Louis XVIII. from blowing up the Pont de Jéna at Paris; and the fierce veteran voiced the general opinion of Germans, including Metternich, that France must be partitioned, or at least give back Alsace and Lorraine to the Fatherland. Even Lord Liverpool, our cautious Premier, wrote on July 15th that, if Bonaparte remained at large, the allies ought to retain all the northern fortresses as a security.[551] But the knowledge that the warrior was in our power led our statesmen to bear less hardly on France. From the outset Wellington sought to bring the allies to reason, and on August 11th he wrote a despatch that deserves to rank among his highest titles to fame. While granting that France was still left "in too great strength for the rest of Europe," he pointed out that "revolutionary France is more likely to distress the world, than France, however strong in her frontier, under a regular Government; and that is the situation in which we ought to endeavour to place her."

This generous and statesmanlike judgment, consorting with that of the Czar, prevailed over the German policy of partition; and it was finally arranged by the Treaty of Paris of November 20th, 1815, that France should surrender only the frontier strips around Marienburg, Saarbrücken, Landau, and Chambéry, also paying war indemnities and restoring to their lawful owners all the works of art of which Napoleon had rifled the chief cities of the continent. In one respect these terms were extraordinarily lenient. Great Britain, after bearing the chief financial strain of the war, might have claimed some of the French colonies which she restored in 1814, or at least have required the surrender of the French claims on part of the Newfoundland coast. Even this last was not done, and alone of the States that had suffered loss of valuable lives, we exacted no territorial indemnity for the war of 1815.[552] In truth, our Ministers were content with placing France and her ancient dynasty in an honourable position, in the hope that Europe would thus at last find peace; and the forty years of almost unbroken rest that followed justified their magnanimity.

But there was one condition fundamental to the Treaty of Paris and essential to the peace of Europe, namely, that Napoleon should be securely guarded at St. Helena.

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