Napoleon's Exile

by Patrick Rambaud

  ‘I’m not going!’

  ‘Sire ...’

  ‘Sire! Sire! Sire! Oh, fine, you treat me with such concern, as though I were already in my grave, Master Campbell!’

  In front of the other foreign commissioners Sir Neil Campbell, a colonel of Scottish origin sent by London, stood impassively in his blood-red uniform. He had the milky complexion of the British and a pattern of broken veins on his nose and cheeks; the lobes of his large ears protruded from beneath his rolled wig, which was fixed at his collar by a velvet band. The Emperor knew nothing of the Russian, hated the Prussian and despised the Austrian, speaking only to Campbell.

  ‘Your King George is mad, he climbs the curtains, he babbles baby-talk, he crawls on his belly along the carpets of Buckingham Palace like a grass-snake; his son, who is going to replace him on a vacant throne, is no better, he’s a hedonist, a whoremonger, a softy at the mercy of his entourage of shopkeepers! And as for me, Campbell, who do you take me for?’

  ‘You have signed the treaty...’

  ‘A dischcloth that I can denounce if the terms are not respected!’

  ‘How are the allies failing to respect the treaty?’

  ‘They are stopping the Empress from joining me!’

  ‘It was her decision ...’

  ‘No!’

  ‘The provisional government...’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about the provisional government! It breaks its promises!’

  Campbell had come to the palace four days earlier, to present the document that required his current commander to hand the island of Elba over to Napoleon. Those orders stipulated that the forts were to be disarmed and gunpowder supplies were to be repatriated. The Emperor irritably returned to that clause.

  ‘And those cannon that they want to take from me! Without artillery, how could I defend myself against Algerine corsairs? Do they want me to be captured? Who would pay the ransom? Do they want me to be disembowelled? Why don’t I just go along nicely and retire to England, Campbell? All I need is a bed and a corporal’s wages!’

  Mingling with the impatient onlookers, Octave listened to His Majesty’s recriminations as he passed lightly from one theme to another, listing his grievances, until his fury subsided and he lowered his voice to augment its effect.

  ‘The people are unhappy, I’m told. I can hear it from here and I know it. I have thirty thousand men, I can get a hundred thousand more. Without foreign troops, what are your Bourbons? How long will they hold out?’

  ‘The provisional government is French, sire.’

  ‘Come now! Talleyrand sold me the Directory, now he’s selling me to the Bourbons, but are you sure that tomorrow he won’t sell me Louis XVIII and his whole family? What’s next?’

  Napoleon had just noticed Octave, and repeated, staring him evilly in the eyes: ‘What’s next, Monsieur Sénécal?’

  ‘Count Bertrand . . .’

  ‘... wants to tell me everything is ready?’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘I will leave when I want, and if I want.’

  Octave mounted his horse again near the gates leading out of the grand courtyard - beside some young couriers whose task it was to run ahead before each staging-post to ensure the Emperor would be given the best possible welcome. He saw the officers of the Guard pacing up and down in front of a silent regiment. He saw General Drouot, the commander-in-chief of the artillery, climb aboard the berlin at the head of the procession and draw the curtains to block everything out. The foreign commissioners did the same, skirting; the troops at the foot of the buildings to avoid, by their conspicuous presence, turning sad faces into furious ones. The morning was interminable.

  At last!

  At noon the Emperor came out: on to the steps. Bassano and Belliard surrounded him amid a cluster of aides-decamp and barons. A clamour rose up like sea-swell. Napoleon took off his hat to salute the soldiers, who raised their heads towards him, then he quickly descended the horseshoe steps and advanced towards the troops who stood to attention even though no order had been given. Some grognards had tears in their eyes, others sniffed. The Emperor raised his arm, but the usual delirious acclamation in response was not forthcoming; a terrible silence fell. He began to speak; only the officers massed in front of him could really hear his words. They repeated them, as they came, to the ranks behind, and the phrases ran in scraps from mouth to mouth, strengthened by their simplicity: ‘I ... am leaving ... You, my friends, continue to serve France ... I will write about the great things we have done together ... Goodbye, my children!’

  The drums began to beat a ruffle, a steady, raging roll that drowned the sound of sobbing. Fists pressed to the pommel of his saddle, Octave raised himself up for a better glimpse of the Emperor among the rows of caps and shakos and plumed cocked hats: Napoleon was delivering an accolade to a white-haired general. Hiding his face behind a hand, a grenadier lowered his flag towards him; the Emperor kissed the fabric - on which tremendous victories were inscribed in letters of gold - before swiftly turning on his heels to be swallowed up by the carriage where Bertrand had been waiting for him for several hours. At that signal the procession immediately set off, trumpets playing a military march.

  Octave trotted at the front, among the chasseurs who were led by the lieutenant he had mistaken for Maubreuil the other night. Octave had told him of his concern about Maubreuil and, now riding at a full trot, they both kept a close eye on the verges of the road. When they advanced into the forest, having sent some scouts ahead, they knew that beyond the chaotic rocks, the sandy ravines, the dense curtains of oaks and pines, lay the Seine; the Cossacks occupied the right bank, and it would be easy for Maubreuil to recruit from among their number; but no murderous mob burst suddenly from the undergrowth.

  The procession sped up as it passed through Nemours and Montargis, stopping only at the obligatory relays; they spent a long time at each, because they had to change sixty horses every time. In the main square of Briare, General Cambronne and his battalion of grognards presented arms. They had left the palace two days previously, and were preparing to travel through the whole of France before setting sail for Elba. This was the whole of the Emperor’s army: the allies had allowed 300, but there were twice as many as that. The Emperor reviewed them with visible emotion, wishing them a pleasant journey. Cambronne had drawn his sabre from its scabbard to salute him, and his master thanked him for his extreme loyalty before going to dine at the Hôtel de la Poste. It was eight o’clock in the evening.

  *

  In the sovereign’s service, Octave learned how to waste time. It all hung on a word, a whim. He was not as used to this as other members of the reduced staff that was following the Emperor into his exile, for whom lazing around had become a full-time occupation. So Octave sat in a chair all morning, bored, distracted only for a moment by a plump serving-girl whom he wouldn’t be inviting up to his garret, wink as she might. Octave felt as though he was bound hand and foot. Previously, he had been in charge of his own timetable and his own movements, he had led a life both secret and active in his pursuit of information, a life that took him to slums and housing offices, always tailing someone, his eyes as multi-faceted as a fly’s. He had acquired the instinct of danger, a special flair that he could scarcely exercise on a morning such as this. When he got up, the Emperor appeared as though he were still in the Tuileries, resolute and authoritarian. He refused to wolf down his lunch, inspected his convoy, and talked to the coachmen and cavalrymen who were escorting him. At midday he gave the order to leave. Even the foreign commissioners complied with his wishes: for one last time they let him have the illusion that he was governing men.

  But in Cosne, in La Charité-sur-Loire, the villagers lining the main road hailed Napoleon, identifying him by his famous hat as he passed, while he held his hand open through the carriage window. It was as though he were visiting his provinces, accepting the normal submission of his subjects and giving them his blessing.

  In the evening, Octave was r
iding with the lieutenant of the chasseurs when he spotted the spire of the Cathedral of Saint-Cyr on the horizon, with the old town of Nevers rising up the hill to meet it. The day had been tiring and monotonous, but this staging-post promised to be a little more active: the closer he came to it the more clearly he saw the people crowding into the middle of the road, barring the gates of the town.

  ‘What do you think, Lieutenant?’

  ‘I think we might finally have some work to do ...’

  ‘What are they shouting?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue, but they’re certainly shouting!’

  ‘I’d like to go on ahead ...’

  ‘As you wish. Hugonnet! Fournier! Ride on with Monsieur Sénécal!’

  Octave and the two chasseurs of the Guard galloped off towards the town. Half-way, they stopped abruptly. A horseman was coming out of Nevers, one of the convoy’s messengers who had been dispatched as a scout two hours before. He was breathless, red-faced and sweating. With a smile on his lips he told them: ‘They’re like devils.’

  ‘What are these excitable characters yelling?’

  ‘Vive l’Empereur!’

  ‘Go and tell the Lieutenant, we’ll go to Nevers.’

  The people of the town had come down into the streets, and processions were coming to the gates to welcome the convoy. When the two chasseurs arrived in front of that tightly packed crowd, the sight of their uniforms prompted a further eruption of cheers. Their horses waded through the dense tide of men and women, children sitting on their parents’ shoulders, who raised their hats, their umbrellas and their canes. Trooper Hugonnet noticed a bourgeois who had come out of curiosity and was now looking rather alarmed; he reached down and tore the white cockade from the man’s top hat to cheering and applause.

  ‘Clear the way! Clear the way!’ yelled Octave, although no one paid any attention. It took the arrival of the whole of the escort to contain the enthusiasts and force the thirteen carriages through the crowd. They slowly climbed the sloping streets, rattling their way up the hill to the old palace of the Dukes of Cleves. At the risk of being trampled, some excited townspeople slipped under the horses’ bellies, and managed to touch the emblazoned door of the Imperial carriage, the palms of their hands flattened against the glass. They had to be pushed away, not too harshly, but firmly nonetheless, and shoes were crushed beneath hoofs, dresses were crumpled, people were jostled and shoved at random. Fortunately, a battalion of the line had emerged from their barracks, and forced their way through to the cavalrymen by swinging the butts of their guns.

  The Emperor, protected from these people who missed him so, left his carriage behind a stout cordon of soldiers. He climbed the steps that led beneath a Renaissance tower and into the palace, ordering the officer of the local detachment to ‘Call the Chief of Police and the Mayor, bring me the newspapers, and let’s get a fire going!’

  ‘Sire, you were to be lodged in a hostelry very close by..;

  ‘I want some fire in this damned fireplace!’

  Octave and the lieutenant joined the Emperor and his retinue in a vast, unfurnished — and cold — room. As the evening light passed faintly through grilled, ogival windows, the garrison soldiers quickly set to work with the Emperor’s valets, lighting torches, organizing lamps, getting a flame going and bringing in various bits of furniture from elsewhere in the building to form a sort of drawing-room. They were going to camp that night, and Napoleon was growing impatient: where on earth was the Mayor? And the Police Chief? They’d had to part the crowd, and arrived now looking very dishevelled, their ties crooked, their faces deferential, as they withstood the Emperor’s rapid flow of questions.

  ‘Public opinion?’

  ‘You must be aware of it, sire, listen to the street. . .’

  ‘To calm them down,’ added the Police Chief, ‘if you would appear at a window ...’

  ‘And what about the former aristocracy?’

  ‘They aren’t much in evidence, sire, but they have insisted that the fleur-de-lys flag be flown from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville ...’

  ‘Do the people here obey them?’

  ‘As one might obey a directive from Paris, sire.’

  ‘The garrison?’

  ‘They refused to give the oath to the King...’

  There was more about this in the newspaper, which made Colonel Campbell and his commissioner colleagues turn pale. In Clermont-Ferrand, the soldiers had burned the white flag which was being carried in procession by the council. The royal insignia had been destroyed in Rouen, Orléans, Poitiers and Mouiins. In Lyons the troops were on the brink of mutiny, and were beating up allied patrols. In Paris, workers were helping the soldiers to run Cossacks through with their swords in broad daylight. There were attempted uprisings in Antwerp, in Mayence, in all the Eastern garrisons. The Emperor stood by the fireplace rubbing his hands, growing more animated as the foreign commissioners grew more alarmed. Once the worthies had departed, Napoleon sat in an armchair and called for his pharmacist. The man came running with a case marked with an eagle, took out a syringe which he gave to the Emperor, uncorking a flask so that Napoleon could fill his syringe himself with a mixture of zinc and copper sulphate, lead acetate and mercury, weighed out and dissolved in distilled water and laudanum. The Emperor had to undergo this daily injection because he suffered from a venereal disease, a gift from an actress during his first stay in Paris. Unconcerned about the foreign commissioners, who were unaccustomed to such intimacy, he pulled his breeches below his knees and, punctuating his phrases with the full syringe held between his fingers, he launched into a lesson in strategy a posteriori.

  ‘Luck abandoned me on the twenty-first of March, gentlemen, and it was my fault! Around Saint-Dizier I thought I held all your armies before me, but all I was hunting down was a Russian corps ... If I had withdrawn to Paris, you wouldn’t be with me this evening ... Oof!’ (He had just given himself an injection in the penis.) ‘On the way I would have rejoined Oudinot’s and Macdonald’s corps, Compans’ infantry in Sézanne, Ledru-Dessarts’ men in Meaux!’ (He waved his empty syringe around like a sword.) Marmont’s and Mortier’s regiments would not have been slaughtered in Fère-Champenoise.’ (He held out the syringe to the pharmacist.) ‘What a disaster! That infernal storm that blinded the men and drenched the powder!’ (He reflectively pulled up his breeches.) ‘In Paris, I would have found the garrison and the National Guard, I would have had almost a hundred thousand men under my command, pressing down on the capital - and you would have been crushed, gentlemen!’

  Napoleon rose to his feet to dismiss the commissioners. ‘Go and sleep wherever you can, tomorrow morning we will leave at six o’clock.’

  They disappeared in search of somewhere to stay in the chilly palace. The Emperor put on his hat and his green jacket, cocking his ear to the continuing hubbub outside.

  ‘Is there a balcony from which the citizens might see me?’

  ‘Just above this room, sire,’ said Octave, who had reconnoitred the building.

  ‘Take a torch. You too, Bertrand.’

  On the first floor, the Emperor himself opened a double window and commanded: ‘Each of you take up position on one side of this guard-rail, and light me.’

  He emerged from the window between the two lanterns, held out his arm in an Imperial salute and intoxicated himself on the endless ovation unleashed by his appearance.

  *

  Octave had resolved to take notes. At each stop he pencilled down a few lines in his notebook so he would not forget the details that he would later assemble into a story: ‘Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, Villeneuve-sur-Allier, Moulins, Roanne, Tarare, Salvaguny, wherever we went the population gave His Majesty a warm reception, wherever we went he stopped and chatted with the priest, the doctor, the Mayor, a shopkeeper. In Lyons, honour was paid to him as though he was still on the throne. On Sunday we reached Vienne at dawn, and we breakfasted in Péage-de-Roussillon. Slates made way for Roman tiles.’

  In Valence every
thing changed. The town was silent, no one came to meet the convoy, no one tried to hamper their progress. The Emperor would have liked to visit the furnished room where he had lived with his young brother Louis when he was a lieutenant in the 4th Artillery Regiment; he had been pleased to see the rue Perollerie again, and the Three Pigeons inn where he had taken his meals in those days - but the Bourbon flag flapped from every monument, on every statue, and he chose not to stop.

  They passed beyond the town. Napoleon was stretching his legs by walking up a hill when a carriage overtook him; it parked on the verge not far away. A man wearing a travelling cap got out and stood in the middle of the road, with his hands behind his back. The Emperor walked straight towards him. It was Augereau, the Duke of Castiglione, in civilian clothes. A marshal and adventurer, this fruiterer’s son from the rue Mouffetard had been a fencing master in Naples, had sold watches in Constantinople, given dancing lessons, served in the Russian army and abducted a young Greek girl to live with him in Lisbon. The Directory had crowned him with laurels and Napoleon had showered him with gold. He was the champion of Areola, having taken the place of Bonaparte (who had fallen into a ditch before he reached the bridge) and the undisputed hero of Millesimo, Ceva, Lodi, the head of the Army of the Rhine and then the Army of Catalonia; before the Austrian advance he had abandoned Lyons without a fight, exhausted by the war.

  Count Bertrand told Octave the identity of this famous marshal, whom he knew by his name alone. Octave dreamed of having the power of Gyges, the King of Lydia, whose ring granted him invisibility. So many significant scenes went unwitnessed, like this random encounter which he was unable to observe at close quarters; he could merely guess its progress at a distance, from the attitudes of the two old comrades at arms. The Emperor had taken off his hat, and the other man insolently kept his on. Had he been invisible, Octave would have slipped between them and heard a brief and brutal conversation.

  ‘Good day to you, Lord Castiglione,’ said Napoleon.