by Will Durant
Nevertheless, there were some elements of discord and discontent. The Church repudiated the Concordat, and insisted on the restoration of her pre-Revolution power, especially over education. A decree was obtained from the King requiring strict religious observance of Sundays and holydays; all shops except of chemists and herbalists were then to be closed from morning to evening, and no paid labor or business transport was to be allowed.3 It became dangerous not to profess Catholicism. Most troublesome of all was the Church’s apparently reasonable demand that all ecclesiastical property confiscated during the Revolution should be restored to her. This demand could not be met without a revolt of the hundreds of thousands of peasants, and members of the middle class, who had bought such property from the state. The fear of these purchasers that they might be dispossessed, in whole or in part, led many peasants, and some solid bourgeois, to think they might welcome a Napoleon returning, if cured of war.
A still active minority of the population cherished the principles of the Revolution, and worked, however clandestinely, for its revival. Severely repressed by the new regime, these “Jacobins” played with the hope that a returned Napoleon might be forced, in order to overthrow the Bourbon, to be again the Son of the Revolution. In the Army they made many converts to this hope. The marshals were captivated by the amiability of the King, but the officer class—seeing their visions of advancement fading as the nobility resumed its old monopoly of the higher posts—longed for a revival of the days when a marshal’s baton could be won and awarded on the field and day of battle. Louis XVIII, eager to balance the budget, had demobilized 18,000 officers and 300,000 privates; nearly all of these dismissed men, struggling to find a place in the economy, idealized in memory the Emperor who had dealt out glory as well as death, and had made even death seem glorious.
The discontent of the Army was the strongest of the forces that opened a door for the return of the fascinating prodigal. Add a peasantry fearing dispossession or a restoration of feudal dues; manufacturers suffering from the influx of British goods; the discomfort of all but the orthodox Catholics under the intensifying sway of the clergy; the King’s dismissal of both chambers at the end of 1814—not to return till May; and a secret yearning of the poor for the excitement and splendor of Napoleon’s France: these were frail and uncertain winds of chance, but news of them, brought to Elba, raised the spirit of the imprisoned gladiator, wounded but not dead.
II. THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA: SEPTEMBER, 1814- JUNE, 1815
It was the most distinguished political assemblage in European history. Its dominant members were naturally the major victors in the war of the nations: Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain; but there were also delegates from Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, the Papacy, Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg…; and defeated France had to be reckoned with, if only because she was represented by the wily Talleyrand. The proceedings would illustrate two not quite contrary principles: that guns speak louder than words, and that physical force is seldom victorious unless manipulated by mental power.
Russia was represented primarily by Czar Alexander I, with the largest army and the greatest charm. With the help of Count Andreas Razumovsky (patron of Beethoven) and Count Karl Robert Nesselrode he proposed that Russia receive all Poland as reward for leading the Allies from hesitation on the Niemen and the Spree to victory on the Seine; and Prince Czartoryski, representing Poland by Alexander’s permission, supported the proposal in hope that the reunification of Poland could be a step toward independence.
Prussia was represented formally by King Frederick William III, more actively by Prince von Hardenberg, with Wilhelm von Humboldt as philosopher in attendance. They demanded a fit reward for the martial leadership of “Vorwärts” Blücher and the sacrifice of Prussian lives. Alexander agreed, and—conditional on Prussia’s withdrawal of claim to her former piece of Poland—offered Frederick William all of Saxony, whose King (then imprisoned in Berlin) deserved this denudation for having given the Saxon Army to Napoleon; and Freiherr vom Stein thought this a gentlemanly solution.
Austria claimed that its declaration for the Allies had decided the war, and that it should get a generous helping at the victors’ feast. The exclusion of Austria from Poland was intolerable; and the appropriation of Saxony by Prussia would throw out of all proportion the European balance of power between north and south. Metternich deployed all his patient, devious subtlety to keep Austria from being reduced to a second-class Power. Emperor Francis II aided his Minister for Foreign Affairs by softening his guests with entertainment. His Treasury had emerged from the war with one foot in bankruptcy; he risked the remainder by intoxicating his guests with wine and champagne, and dulling them with Neanderthal meals. The halls of the imperial palaces sparkled almost nightly with lavish festivals. Actors and actresses, singers and virtuosos were engaged to entrance the potentates and their retainers; Beethoven shook the city with “Die Schlacht von Vittoria.” Fair women wore fortunes on their dresses or in their hair, and displayed as much of their software as a decent respect for Cardinal Consalvi would allow. Mistresses were available for titled seekers, and courtesans supplied the needs of minor notables. The town gossips had trouble keeping account of the Czar’s amours.4
Alexander won the women and lost the diplomatic war. Metternich sought allies against him among the delegates of the minor Powers. He argued that the principle of legitimacy forbade such spoliation of a king as Russia and Prussia proposed in Saxony. They agreed, but how could they talk principle to a Russia that had 500,000 troops quartered on her western front? Metternich appealed to Lord Castlereagh, who spoke for England: Would not England be uneasy with Russia reaching through Poland and allied with a Prussia swollen with Saxony? What would this do to the balance of power east and west? Castlereagh excused himself; Britain was at war with the United States, and could not risk a confrontation with Russia.
So Metternich turned as a last resort to Talleyrand. He had angered the Frenchman by excluding France, along with the lesser Powers, from the private conferences of the “Big Four,” and deferring to November 1, 1814, the first united assembly of all the attending states. Talleyrand made common cause with other excluded delegations, and was soon accepted as their spokesman. So fortified, he began to speak of France as still a first-class Power, ready to raise and supply an army of 300,000 men. Metternich, who might have seen this as a threat, saw in it a possible promise. He solicited Talleyrand’s help against Russia; Talleyrand secured Louis XVIII’s consent; the two diplomats won over Castlereagh now that peace had been made with America. On January 3, 1815, France, Austria, and Great Britain formed a Triple Alliance for mutual aid in maintaining the balance of power. Faced with this new consortium, Russia withdrew her claim to all Poland; and Prussia, having regained Thorn and Posen, agreed to take only two fifths of Saxony. Talleyrand received most of the credit, and boasted that his diplomacy had changed France from a beaten beggar to again a major Power.
After almost nine months of bargaining, the assembled dignitaries, by the “Act of the Congress of Vienna” dated June 8, 1815, redistributed the soil of Europe according to the ancient principle that to the victors belong the spoils—if the victors are still strong enough to take them. Britain kept Malta as her sentry post in the central Mediterranean; she established her protectorate over the Ionian Islands as guards over the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean; she returned some, kept some (notably Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope) of the French and Dutch colonies she had taken during the war. She recovered control of Hanover, and arranged a close understanding with the new kingdom of the Netherlands, which now embraced both “Holland” and “Belgium,” and therefore the mouths of the Rhine.
Poland suffered a new partition, with some improvement. Prussia received the regions around Posen and Danzig. Austria received Galicia. Russia received the grand duchy of Warsaw, which was changed into the kingdom of Poland under the czar as its king, and with a liberal constitution.
Prussia came out of t
he war with gains that prepared her for Bismarck: in addition to two fifths of Saxony she received Swedish Pomerania and Rügen, and most of Westphalia; Neuchâtel in Switzerland; and a predominant influence in the German Confederation which now replaced Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. Saxony retained three fifths of its former terrain, and recovered its King. Austria added, to her pre-Congress lands, Salzburg, Illyria, Dalmatia, the Tirol, and the “Lombardo-Venetian kingdom” in northern Italy. The Papal States were returned to the Papacy; Tuscany reverted to the Hapsburg-Bourbon rule. Finally, in a bow to Christianity, the Congress condemned the trade in slaves.
During December and January, 1814–15, the Congress considered proposals for further dealings with Napoleon. Surely (some delegates suggested) that excitable man would not long rest content to be sovereign of tiny Elba. And that island was uncomfortably close to Italy and France. What deviltry might he stir if he should escape? Various proposals were made to the Congress to send a force to Elba, seize Napoleon, and deport him to a farther and safer isolation. Talleyrand and Castlereagh thought so; Czar Alexander objected, and there the matter rested.5
The Congress was nearing its close when, early on the morning of March 7, Metternich was awakened by a message marked “Urgent.” It was from the Austrian consul at Genoa, and informed the Minister that Napoleon had escaped from Elba. The delegates, notified, agreed to defer the ending of the Congress and to remain at Vienna until some united action could be agreed upon. On March 11 further word came that Napoleon had landed near Antibes. On March 13 the Congress, through its “Committee of the Eight,” pronounced against Napoleon a ban declaring him an outlaw whom anyone might kill without fear or hindrance of the law. The Congress had completed its programs, but—though the delegates now dispersed—it remained technically in session until June 19, when it was notified that Napoleon had been overwhelmed at Waterloo the day before. The Congress thereupon declared itself officially at an end.
III. ELBA
Napoleon reached Elba’s Portoferraio on May 3, 1814. He landed the next morning, amid the wild acclaim of the town’s population, which thought that he was bringing millions of francs to spend; eight days earlier they had hanged him in effigy as a man madly in love with war.6 They escorted him to the governor’s palace, which would now take on imperial dignity. For the next nine months he was to be emperor over eighty-six square miles and twelve thousand souls. He surrounded himself (partly, it may be, because he believed that display is half the game of rule) with all the paraphernalia of majesty—uniforms, royal guard, chamberlains, domestics, musicians, a hundred horses, twenty-seven carriages.7 On May 26 four hundred members of his Old Guard came to serve him as the nucleus of a miniature army. Some two hundred volunteers came from France, others from Italy or Corsica; altogether he had soon about sixteen hundred men ready to fight off any attempt to harm the hated and beloved Emperor. For further inviolability he fortified the harbor and organized a fleet—one brig (the Inconstant) and four small vessels, all armed.
How did he finance all this—and the public works and enterprises with which he improved the island? The Treaty of Fontainebleau had promised him an annuity from France, but it was not paid.8 However, Napoleon had brought with him 3,400,000 francs in silver and gold, and he collected 400,000 lire annually in taxes and other revenues. After half a year he began to wonder how he was going to meet his expenses if he stayed there beyond a year.
For a time he was reasonably happy, considering his expansive ways. On May 9 he wrote to Marie Louise: “I arrived here fifteen days ago. I have had a pretty dwelling fixed up…. My health is perfect, the country is agreeable. It lacks news from you, and the assurance that you are well…. Goodbye, my beloved. Give a kiss to my son.”9
Another son, with his mother the faithful Countess Walewska, was among his early visitors. The sailors and citizens mistook her for the Empress, and gave her a royal welcome. Napoleon was disturbed, since he had hoped to have his wife and the “King of Rome” join him on the island. He relaxed for a day or two in Walewska’s arms,10 then lovingly dismissed her for reasons of state. Perhaps Marie Louise received some expanded gossip about those two days.11
In October his mother and his sister Pauline came to stay with him. Pauline offered him her jewels, and asked pardon for Murat’s disloyalty. Madame Mère gave him motherly care and comfort, and offered him all her savings. She and Pauline remained with him though they sorely missed the warm vitality of Italian life.
We can imagine how bored he was, after the first few months, with the small scope and leverage that the little island could give to his character and dreams. He tried to escape ennui by physical activity, but almost daily some news from the mainland added to his restlessness. Méneval, who was serving Marie Louise in Vienna, informed him of the discussions in the Congress about removing him to a safer distance,12 and added that the Congress would probably end by February 20. Other informants told him of the discontent in the Army, the fears of the peasantry, the agitations of the Jacobins, the enforcement of Catholic worship. In February, 1815, Hugues Maret, Duc de Bassano, sent him a message via Fleury de Chaboulon, confirming all these reports.13
Excited by them, and stirred with hopes for a nobler end than death by inanition, he told his mother of his temptation, and asked for her advice. She suspected that if she let him go now she would never see him again. “Let me,” she said, “be a mother for a while, and then I will give you my opinion.” But she knew that he had already decided for the last gamble. “Go, my son,” she told him, “and fulfill your destiny.”14
He felt that he must act soon. A little time more, and he would have no means of his own to pay those thousand Frenchmen who were serving him and must be maintained. The conditions had developed for an attempt to regain his throne, defend it, and transmit it to his son, as beautiful as Adonis, whom he would train to be a king. The Allies were disbanding their Congress, and were going home with their troops; perhaps, separately, they would be open to an appeal for peace. The nights were still long; in the darkness his little fleet might escape detection, and he would be again on the soil of France.
He prepared as inconspicuously as possible, but with his usual foresight and thoroughness. He bade the Imperial Guard and eight hundred grenadiers—eleven hundred men in all—pack their belongings, and be on the dock on the evening of February 26 for a voyage of several days to an unstated destination. Nevertheless they surmised that they were bound for France, and they rejoiced.
On the appointed evening he embraced his mother and sister (who would soon go to friends in Italy), joined his little regiment, boarded, with it, the Inconstant and five other vessels, and sailed off quietly in the dark. The winds did not favor them, sometimes leaving their helpless fleet becalmed, sometimes driving it too near the shore; they feared to be recognized and stopped and ignominiously jailed. For three days they moved northward along the Italian coast, then westward past Genoa and the French Riviera. En route those men who could write made hundreds of copies of a proclamation composed by Napoleon, to be distributed in France:
FRENCHMEN:
I have heard, in my exile, your lamentations and your prayers: you long for the government that you chose, and which alone is lawful. I have crossed the sea, and am coming to reclaim my rights, which are yours. To the Army: your possessions, your rank, your glory, the property, rank, and glory of your children, have no greater enemies than those princes whom foreigners have imposed upon you…. Victory will march at full speed; the eagle, with the national colors, will fly from steeple to steeple, even to the towers of Notre-Dame. You will be the liberators of your country.15
IV. THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY: MARCH 1–20, 1815
The little fleet, carrying “Caesar and his fortune,” sighted Cap d’Antibes at dawn of March 1. Soon after midday, in the Golfe Juan, the eleven hundred men began to debark, some jumping into the shallow water and wading to the shore. Napoleon, last to land, ordered a bivouac in an olive plantation between the sea an
d the road from Antibes to Cannes. He sent a small group to Cannes to buy horses and provisions, and to pay in cash; he had brought 800,000 gold francs from Elba. He bade another group go to Antibes and persuade its garrison to join him; its commander rebuked and imprisoned the messengers. Napoleon refused to go and attempt to free them; he was resolved to gain Paris without firing a shot.
He found no welcome in Antibes. The passersby, on being told that the little man studying maps at an open-air table was the Emperor, voiced no enthusiasm. The region had been hard hit by the wars, the conscriptions, and the double blockade; it had no appetite for more of the same. The mayor of Antibes came to examine the invaders, and told Napoleon, “We were beginning to be happy and tranquil; you will trouble everything.” Napoleon, recalling this at St. Helena, said to Gourgaud, “I shall not tell you how this remark moved me, nor the pain it gave me.”16 A passing courier partly reassured him: the Army and the commonalty, he reported, were for him, from Paris to Cannes, but the people of Provence were against him.
Napoleon knew this well, recalling his bitter experiences at Orgon eleven months before, and these memories now determined his route to Paris. Rather than follow, at the risk of bloody encounters, the well-traveled and mostly level highways from Cannes to Toulon, Marseilles, and Avignon to Paris, he chose the mountainous route from Cannes to Grasse, Digne, Grenoble and Lyons. The region south of Grenoble was lightly populated, the garrisons were small and notoriously anti-Bourbon. The mountain passes were still covered with snow; the Old Guardsmen and the grenadiers would grumble, but they would never desert him.
