by Mark Braude
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AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, by which time they were a few miles north of Gorgona in open waters, Napoleon comforted the troops aboard the Inconstant with stories of past victories and defeats. While many of the soldiers were shaken by the day’s adventures, Napoleon seemed energized by having so narrowly escaped British as well as French ships. He said to Peyrusse that it had been “a day to match Austerlitz.” He was by then a master at this kind of act. Years earlier, in the worst times of the Egyptian campaign, he’d gone out of his way to lay hands on soldiers who were victims of the plague at Jaffa, showing himself to be immune from fear and evidently disease as well.
On the Inconstant the men gathered around him in a circle, while Bertrand sat by his side. Napoleon told them that the taste for danger was part of “their Gallic heritage”; for French soldiers, he said, “the love of glory and courage is instinctive, a sixth sense. How many times in the heat of battle have I seen our young conscripts jump into the fray: honor and courage came out of their very pores.” It was a variation on a theme he had played in many previous speeches: follow me and count for something bigger than yourself.
Drouot sat silently, alone and outside this circle. “I know that if I had listened to our sage I wouldn’t have left,” Napoleon told the soldiers, motioning over to Drouot. “But there was even greater danger in staying at Portoferraio.”
By nightfall the exhausted troops were bedding down wherever they could. Few of them had slept since the night before leaving Elba. Aboard the Inconstant they were piled on top of each other, many of them crowded into the hold. The valet Marchand slept out on the deck, where “the moon was full; the sea, beautiful.” Napoleon retired to his camp bed, which had been set up in the captain’s cabin. Bertrand lay nearby on a thin mattress on the floor. They played a few games of chess before nodding off.
{ 45 }
CAMPBELL LANDS AT ELBA
BY THE MORNING OF Tuesday, February 28, the Partridge was becalmed about four miles north of Portoferraio, safely out of range of Elban guns. Adye and Campbell had no way of knowing if the Inconstant still lay anchored in the harbor on the other side of the high ridge of Portoferraio that would have blocked its sails from sight. Campbell set off for shore in a rowboat while Adye stayed aboard the sloop with instructions to send off an emergency dispatch to Burghersh in Florence if he wasn’t back in two hours.
He rounded into the sheltered waters and saw that the Inconstant had sailed. Expecting to be captured as soon as he reached the quay, he planned to surrender without a struggle, hoping he would eventually be allowed to talk with Bertrand. But no one came to arrest him. The port was quiet and the few people he did see at the harbor paid him no interest. He walked to the health office, apparently in such a daze that he could think of nothing better to do than repeat the customary first stop of anyone landing at Elba. The Elban who had been left in charge of the lazaretto told him that everyone had left, including Henri Bertrand, and that they had gone to Palmaiola.
Campbell headed toward the town hall to see if Fanny Bertrand was still on the island. He encountered a British gentleman named Henry Grattan, one of the tourists Adye had mentioned ferrying into Portoferraio a few days earlier. Grattan described the events of the previous days and said he had it on good authority that the ships were bound for Naples, though he’d also heard Milan and Antibes mentioned. He told Campbell that he’d hired a boat to take him out to the harbor to watch the flotilla preparing to leave until one of Napoleon’s men discovered that an “Englishman” had come close to their ships (Grattan didn’t explain how the soldier was able to discern his nationality), interrogated him, and then sent him back to shore. He said he was surprised not to have been “fired at or seized.”
Campbell and Grattan reached the Biscotteria, where Campbell found Fanny Bertrand “alternately smiling and expressing her anxiety.” She told him that Napoleon had kept her husband in the dark about the escape until the last possible moment and that he’d only been given fifteen minutes to say his goodbyes and prepare his portmanteau for a sea journey of unknown length. She said she had no idea where they were headed but added that she’d heard people talking about Pianosa.
Campbell thought that “by moving her feelings” he might get her to divulge whatever secrets she was keeping, and so he told her that Napoleon had lured her husband into taking “a most desperate step,” since the British had known about the escape plans well ahead of time and had already captured the flotilla. He wrote that she asked him “with great earnestness, where was her husband, and what was become of him? Were they really taken? If so, she, as an Englishwoman, claimed my protection, as well as that of Lord Burghersh.” Campbell answered that he couldn’t say for certain that they had been captured just yet, “but that they were so situated they could not escape, for there were British as well as French men-of-war all round them.” He said he knew they were heading to Naples and a squadron from Sicily was already waiting for them. “On this she became more relieved and quite collected,” he wrote. “From which I concluded that her opinion of their destination was north, and not south, as I thought at first.”
She explained that Dr. Lapi had been left in charge as governor, so Campbell headed for the fortress complex next to the Mulini. He assumed he would find Lapi there and would finally have to surrender himself to whatever guards he had under his command. But when he walked through some open doors into the fortress he was received cordially by a few men lounging in the main room, Dr. Lapi among them. No one seemed to be doing that much.
Campbell tried to give his entrance some kind of official gravitas, declaring that he came “as one of the Commissioners of the Allied Powers, who had accompanied Napoleon to Elba, in which character I had prolonged my stay there,” which entitled him to know in what position he was to consider Dr. Lapi. The latter answered, as governor of Elba, on behalf of Napoleon. Maintaining his official tone, Campbell asked whether as governor he would relinquish possession of Elba to the British, or to the grand duke of Tuscany, or to the allied sovereigns. Lapi said he had no intention of handing it over to anyone and that he controlled forces sufficient to defend Portoferraio. If pressed he would fight any attacker, he said, until hearing any further orders from his emperor. Campbell answered that they should all now consider themselves under a state of blockade.
Though bluffing, Campbell had by saying this effectively declared war against Elba on behalf of Great Britain, despite not knowing Napoleon’s present location, destination, or intention, a huge overstepping of his rank. He bowed as if to leave, but then walked toward the governor and in a booming voice said that if he wished “to prevent misery to the inhabitants” he should immediately announce that they were under blockade and bar any contact with the mainland. As he wrote in his journal, the grandiose language and loud voice had been for the benefit of the few officers at the fort, who might have been uncertain about who was in charge of what and could be cowed into not arresting him if it looked like he exercised some form of authority. They had, after all, often seen him talking and dining with Napoleon. He also hoped that his warnings would keep the Elbans from colluding any further with agents of Napoleon or Murat, and that some people would be frightened enough to pass along some intelligence or otherwise try to help the British take the island.
He left the fortress without any attempt made to detain him and went to Madame Mère’s house, where Pauline Bonaparte was also staying, and where some members of the Elban Guard stood sentry. Rather than try to get past them, Campbell said, as if in passing, that he was about to sail for Livorno if the Bonaparte women wanted to give him any letters or ask him to perform any task for them on the continent. He kept walking for the docks until one of the guards ran after him to say that Pauline wanted to see him.
He was kept waiting in her antechamber long enough to make him stand up and pretend to leave again, saying that his ship would sail without him. At that
moment Pauline came out and asked him to sit down beside her, “drawing her chair gradually still closer,” wrote Campbell, “as if she waited for me to make some private communication.” He repeated his line about having only stopped in to offer his services as a messenger. As he recalled:
She asked me, with every appearance of anxiety, if I had nothing to say to her, and what I would advise her to do; said she had already written to her husband, Prince Borghese, who was now at Livorno, and requested me to tell him that she wished to go to Rome immediately.
Campbell told her he thought it wisest for her to stay on Elba for now. He wrote that she kept protesting that she knew nothing about Napoleon’s intentions until the last moment, had no idea where he was heading, and “laid hold of my hand and pressed it to her heart, that I might feel how much she was agitated.” But to Campbell she looked remarkably calm, “and there was rather a smile on her countenance.” She asked if he thought her brother had been captured, to which he answered that this was the most likely conclusion. She then hinted that he was heading for France. Campbell thought she did this to throw him off course, which reinforced his original suspicion that Naples was the landing point. He wrote, mysteriously, that he stayed with Pauline for “two or three minutes” more before taking his leave. He went to his boat without meeting any opposition. He made no mention of seeing Madame Mère.
Mr. Grattan met Campbell at the harbor. Ricci was also there, finally able to tell Campbell everything he’d wanted to report to Adye a few days earlier. He said that Napoleon was almost certainly headed for France. Campbell commandeered two local fishing boats, the first of which would speed Grattan to Livorno with dispatches for Castlereagh describing all that they had learned so far, and the second to take Ricci to Piombino, from where he would ride to Florence with duplicates of these messages for any allied and French officials he could find.
He rowed back to the Partridge to decide on next steps. Neither he nor Adye put much stock in Pauline’s or Ricci’s talk of France. No matter how brave or loyal they might be, Napoleon’s troops surely wouldn’t follow on a mission that began with such an obvious tactical error. They didn’t doubt that Paris was the end goal; but Italy was the place to start. An Italian landing would be “more reconcilable to the national feelings of his officers and men,” wrote Campbell in the day’s journal entry, “and they will think it probably less hazardous than raising the standard of rebellion in France, where they would be considered traitors.”
Adye wanted to sail south to what he thought was the likeliest destination of Naples. Campbell wanted to sail north toward the Ligurian coast. He was now convinced that Napoleon would set up a beachhead there to proclaim an independent state and so draw disaffected Italians to his side, while Murat would try something similar in the south. He based this guess on reports that the Inconstant had been loaded with several horses and guns and a significant number of civilians alongside the troops. To slow his sailing speed with so much bulk was an unnecessary encumbrance if he was planning to land in Naples, where he could draw on Murat’s horses and guns. He allowed that Napoleon might have brought this materiel along precisely to throw him off course and then dump the horses and guns, but Campbell thought he was unlikely to want to waste a day on a wild-goose chase while risking being slowed by calm wind, left bobbing under the hot sun while ships circled in from all directions.
Maybe self-interest was what really drove Campbell to push to sail north, rather than to Naples, because if he was right, and both he and his target were heading north, then there remained a chance for the Partridge to overtake the Inconstant despite its head start, and Campbell could have a chance for a glorious standoff at sea. On the other hand, if Napoleon had headed for Naples he was very likely to reach his destination well before the Partridge even got close to him, so a bet on the south, even if correct, offered little chance for distinction. Worse still, it could have led to their capture or sinking by a joint force led by Napoleon and Murat.
In his journal Campbell showed no sense of guilt over the escape:
No part of Napoleon’s plan for quitting Elba could have increased my general suspicions of his possibly taking that step at some time or another, even had I been there from the 16th to the 26th, nor could have authorised me to report to the British Government any fact which could be considered as a certain proof of that intention. There would have been no positive criminality in any act previous to his embarkation of the troops and his actual departure, a period of six hours, during which time the gates of Portoferraio were shut.
He decided that his being away was actually the best thing that could have happened, since if the Partridge had been in harbor it would have been captured and put into service as part of the flotilla, while he and Captain Adye would have been arrested, “and thus made more subservient to the easier execution of his plan.” As though penning his mea culpa, he wrote that while he’d often thought that this “restless and unprincipled person” might one day try to wage war on the continent, especially if his funds ran low or if he was subjected to some special form of humiliation by his enemies, Napoleon had given him no real reason to believe he had the necessary support to try retaking France, a country whose “apparent tranquility” had led Campbell to think he had “no chance of success there, and that he himself has despaired of every hope in that quarter.”
He hashed out his final defense:
With the free sovereignty of Elba, four armed vessels of his own, and seventeen belonging to the mines, which sailed in every direction, I knew well that Napoleon had it in his power to avail himself any day of these means of escape, without any chance of my preventing him, dependent as I was on the occasional calls of a man-of-war, which cruised between Civita Vecchia and Genoa [the Partridge] and the frequency of whose visits was subject entirely to the captain.
{ 46 }
OUR BEAUTIFUL FRANCE
TAILLADE SAW THE FIRST faint signs of land in the distance at eight in the morning of Tuesday, February 28. “We’re either in Spain or Africa!” he shouted. Napoleon heard about Taillade’s assessment, wandered over to the former captain, and asked him to repeat it. Then he laughed, saying, “Not quite,” and revealed that they were headed for France. Peyrusse described how this revelation
revived our spirits and relieved our anxieties. After four days of constant agitation, thrown into an adventure without knowing how it was to end, terrified by the boldness of the enterprise, confronted with danger at each step of the way, it was with the greatest of joy that we raised the veil that had covered His Majesty’s plans.
Suffering from seasickness just as badly as he had on the crossing ten months earlier, Peyrusse tried his best to share in the sense of joy while running to the rail to empty his stomach. Napoleon teased him, saying that only good Seine water could cure him and promising that he would be in Paris to drink it in time to celebrate the birthday of the King of Rome, which fell on March 20. He advised Peyrusse to head down to the cabin to “join the other pen-pushers.”
Napoleon carried with him the proclamations he had printed up at Elba, each one written with the same mix of bombast and self-assuredness. In the first he claimed to have never been defeated by the armies of the allied coalition but rather betrayed by a small number of his marshals. He framed the Bourbon rule as one imposed on France by “foreigners” who had only been “momentarily” victorious. The Bourbons, he said, “had learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” and wanted to return France to the ways of the ancien régime. Only he could bring peace and order to Europe. He sounded a republican tone, saying:
Frenchmen, your complaints and your desires have reached me in my exile. You have asked for the government of your choice, which is the only legitimate government. I have crossed the sea, and I am here to resume my rights, which are also your own.
A second proclamation he directly addressed to veterans of his campaigns:
Soldiers! Rally around the standard of
your chief. He lives only for you, his rights are only those of the people and your own. Our victory advances like a charging line of battle! The eagle shall carry the tricolor from steeple to steeple until it reaches the spires of Notre-Dame!
The third, Napoleon addressed to all who had joined him in exile and were now risking their lives for his cause. He brought out the draft copy of the document, as if he’d composed it spontaneously on board, and instructed the men to make copies from his dictation. “Friends and comrades in arms, return to your duty,” he said. “Trample the white cockade, the badge of shame!”
Napoleon later said he regretted not bringing a portable printing press with him from Elba so that more copies of these proclamations could have been distributed on the landing. Only a hundred copies “were made by hand,” he recalled to Gourgaud, “but such written documents do not produce so much effect upon the public as those that are printed. Printing seems to act as the seal of authority.” Drouot signed his name to all of these proclamations, which would later become a key issue in his trial for treason. Napoleon later claimed that Drouot himself had drafted one of the documents.
Napoleon announced that everyone who had followed him from Fontainebleau would be awarded the Legion of Honor, and he presented a makeshift strip of red ribbon to Captain Chautard for so skillfully navigating them out of Elba. Taillade received one as well. That afternoon, Napoleon told the crew:
There is no precedent in history for what I am about to do, but I’ve counted on the element of surprise, the state of public opinion, the resentment against the allies, and the love of my soldiers, in short all of the attachments to the Empire that still linger in our beautiful France.
Marchand wrote that he’d never seen Napoleon looking more handsome than he did then, speaking of France, while the sun reflecting off the Mediterranean had helped to restore some color to his pallid complexion.
