The Invisible Emperor

by Mark Braude

  By sunset they could just make out some of the peaks of the range to the north of Antibes now known as the Préalpes d’Azur, their first sight of French territory. Napoleon, who had been at his desk, came out to the deck and said, “Look at our beautiful France, our beloved country!” The final evening on board felt like a wedding feast, recalled Pons, full of wine, sausages, pâtés, songs, laughter, and dances in the moonlight. No one slept. Napoleon spent most of the night in his cabin, writing.

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  THE PARTRIDGE IN PURSUIT

  THE PARTRIDGE HAD PUSHED off from Portoferraio at two in the afternoon on February 28, which put Campbell and Adye about forty hours behind Napoleon. But they had the help of strong wind behind them and passed the northern tip of Corsica at a decent eight-knot clip by two the next morning. A light in the distance turned out to be the French frigate Fleur de Lys, whose crew didn’t yet know about Napoleon’s escape.

  The captain, de Garat, told Campbell that they had already been at sea in horrible weather for more than a month and that only a wild stroke of luck would have allowed him to stop, let alone sight, Napoleon’s flotilla. Adye, Campbell, and de Garat agreed that the two ships should head in tandem toward the Ligurian coast, and for a time they were—unknown to them—gaining steadily on Napoleon’s fleet, which at that point would have been near Monaco, about ninety miles to the north.

  This was when Adye and Campbell made a fateful error. They couldn’t shake the feeling that Napoleon was heading for southern Italy. Seeing little point in having two ships heading toward the same hypothetical target, they decided that while the Fleur de Lys continued its course, the Partridge should turn back to investigate Capraia and Gorgona. Napoleon might have left a false trail pointing north before doubling back to one of these islands to wait until his pursuers had gone far enough down the wrong path to let him slip away to Livorno or Naples.

  So the Partridge turned around and sailed into the wind. It would only reach Capraia two days later, where the local commander told Campbell he knew nothing about Napoleon’s escape, though he’d seen some brigs passing by in tandem a few days earlier, bound northwest, which was enough to change Campbell’s mind about where the landing would take place. Again, the Partridge reversed course and sailed north.

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  GOLFE-JUAN

  AT SUNRISE ON MARCH 1, Napoleon gave the order for all Elban flags to be lowered and replaced by the tricolor. His soldiers followed by taking ribbons of red, white, and blue from their travel kits and pinning them to their hats. Marchand handed Napoleon his hat through the hatchway and when he donned it the troops cheered and stamped their feet, a noise that sounded to Marchand as loud as all the batteries being fired in unison.

  By noon, with the peninsula of Antibes tantalizingly near, Napoleon delivered one last speech:

  I have long weighed and most maturely considered the project; the glory, the advantages we shall gain if we succeed I need not enlarge upon. If we fail—to military men, who have from their infancy faced death in so many shapes, the fate which awaits us is not terrific: we know, and we despise, for we have a thousand times faced the worst which a reverse can bring.

  The ships anchored off the beachside of Golfe-Juan roughly between Antibes and Cannes. Napoleon ordered the senior captain of the Guard, Lamouret, to row to the beach with two dozen men to scout the coast and if possible take the Gabelle fort across the harbor. There was a bit of miscommunication when Lamouret began rowing straight for the citadel until Napoleon had a gun fired to recall him, saying, “Where are you off to Captain?” and pointing him west toward Golfe-Juan.

  People in those parts would have been accustomed to seeing men sailing to and from Elba, and Lamouret and his troops were to tell anyone they encountered that they were a section of the Elban Guard on leave. They landed a bit farther west than intended, at a little stony beach near Cannes. A while later while securing the coastal road they happened to pass the commander of the Cannes National Guard, who was returning home along with his wife after having purchased some olive groves nearby. They were arrested and their donkey, borrowed from a neighbor and loaded down with olives, was requisitioned. The commander and his wife were freed a few hours later; the donkey was not.

  At four o’clock, after a hundred grenadiers led by Cambronne landed to form an advance guard at the beachhead, Napoleon was rowed to shore alongside Bertrand, Drouot, and Pons. He walked into an olive grove where Cambronne and the soldiers had bivouacked. They set up Napoleon’s campaign chair, lit a fire, and tied his horse nearby.

  There were only four fishermen’s huts by the beach and a small settlement at Vallauris, in the hills a few miles north. At first the local fishing families stayed in their homes, terrified that pirates had landed. Then they recognized the members of the Old Guard by their uniforms and thought that these men had deserted and were returning home. By evening the soldiers dropped all attempts at secrecy and the locals soon learned that Napoleon was among them. The scene took on the feel of a carnival. Villagers came to join in the fireside meal of a hearty soup, the trees bedecked with tricolor flags.

  Napoleon would describe to Gourgaud on Saint Helena how on that night in the olive grove

  a great crowd of people came around us, surprised by our appearance and astonished by our small force. Among them was a mayor, who, seeing how few we were, said to me: “We were just beginning to be quiet and happy; now you are going to stir us all up again.”

  Gourgaud, who had apparently tired of this old battle tale, made a note at the bottom of the section of his memoir that records the landing at Golfe-Juan: “Napoleon several times related this narrative.”

  That evening the squadron commander Jerzmanowski took some grenadiers to secure the eastern road to Antibes. Peyrusse, who for some reason was brought along on this mission, wrote that he lagged behind the troops and wore a large coat to disguise his decorations. Cambronne was off securing the western road to Cannes. Napoleon had told him he wouldn’t have to fire a single shot, since he would “find only friends,” and reminded him that he wanted to retake his crown without bloodshed. He was to spread a false report that Murat was at that same moment entering France with troops landed at Toulon.

  It would take until the following morning to ferry all the troops, horses, cannon, and supplies to shore, along with Pauline’s carriage and Peyrusse’s treasure boxes. The military band entertained the sappers as they unloaded the heavy gear, playing the same melodramatic tune, “Où peut-on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille?,” that had heralded Pauline’s arrival on Elba four months earlier.

  Captain Lamouret and his men had by then captured the Gabelle fort without difficulty. Whether by luck or by some prior arrangement, the French soldiers of the 106th Regiment that normally guarded the area were off on maneuvers in the hills. But when Lamouret’s soldiers pressed deeper into Antibes to demand the surrender of the garrison, they discovered they were badly outnumbered and were soon caught and arrested.

  A rider sent to investigate the delay returned with news of the capture. Napoleon decided against trying to rescue Lamouret’s men. “I heard murmurs in my very presence because I was not marching on Antibes,” he said later on Saint Helena. “A few bombs, they declared, would have been enough.” But he calculated “that it would have been the loss of half a day. If I succeeded it would be a matter of small importance; if I failed, which was very possible, such a check at the outset would give confidence to my enemies, and afford them time to organize themselves.” He wanted to quickly reach Grenoble, the center of the province, where there was an arsenal with multiple cannons and a substantial garrison of troops to be turned to his cause.

  The imprisoned men at Antibes would be well treated by the French soldiers who held them. Prisoners and guards played together at pétanque. A few nights after their capture they would attempt a daring but unsuccessful escape, which left one officer with a broken back after he lea
pt from the ramparts. The prisoners were transferred to Toulon, where they were kept only a short while longer.

  * * *

  • • •

  NAPOLEON AND HIS TROOPS left at moonrise, marching in silence. Cambronne led an advanced guard of a hundred men. Not even Bertrand knew which route they would take until the point where the road led either to Avignon or Grasse and Napoleon shouted, “To the right!” There were so few horses that some troops had to drag the wagon carts carrying hundreds of muskets by hand along the poorly paved road. They reached a hillside near Grasse by midnight.

  The seven ships had by then sailed back out to sea. Filidoro, the Elban portmaster, had been named as the senior officer and put in command of the Inconstant, which would sail for Naples to be put into Murat’s service while the other ships in the flotilla would head for Portoferraio so they could ferry relatives to the mainland. Napoleon was uninterested in leaving his landing party any form of ocean escape.

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  MOST RELUCTANTLY I HAVE FELT CALLED UPON TO MENTION IT

  THE OIL MERCHANT FINALLY left Portoferraio on March 1 after regaining his passport. He arrived at Livorno the following day, and though unable to circumvent the standard three-day quarantine, he sent reports on the escape to Mariotti, mentioning that he’d heard Napoleon was heading for Fréjus and that thousands of soldiers were waiting to join his cause. He highlighted Campbell’s absence from Elba.

  In Florence, Mariotti debriefed Burghersh and then fled to Genoa, asking for protection from the English and Austrians, as Murat was set to go on the offensive in the south. Burghersh then wrote to Castlereagh:

  It is with feelings of very great regret I think myself called upon to mention the subject of Colonel Sir N. Campbell. From an unwillingness to act unkindly towards an officer of Sir Neil Campbell’s merit, I have abstained from bringing under your lordship’s consideration the improper manner in which, I felt, he did the duties of the situation in which he was placed. His absences from the Elba were constant, and at times of considerable duration. I represented my feelings to him at various times, and begged—at least till the Congress was over and the world placed at rest—he would remain steadily at his post.

  Sir Neil felt that his situation about Bonaparte was unpleasant, and that the duty was better done by occasional visits. This opinion was at variance with mine. I begged Mr. Cooke, of the Foreign Office, who happed to be here, to speak in recommendation of a more continued residence. Mr. Cooke spoke to him in that sense, but Bonaparte was gone before Sir Neil Campbell had returned. I do not mean that any residence of a British officer could have prevented the event which has taken place; information, however, with regard to the intention might have been obtained. Sir Neil Campbell is one of the most zealous officers I know in the service; I differed with him on the subject I have stated. Most reluctantly I have felt called upon to mention it.

  Years later, Burghersh added a more damning note to his copy of this letter, claiming that if only Campbell had listened to his previous advice to stay more regularly on Elba, or if he’d only returned from Florence as soon as Burghersh had told him to, he could have single-handedly prevented Napoleon’s escape, since the well-armed Partridge would have overpowered his flotilla, and “the misfortune of the war of 1815, for that time at least, would certainly have been avoided.”

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  IN AN IRON CAGE

  WORD OF NAPOLEON’S LANDING reached Paris on the afternoon of Sunday, March 5. A line of aerial telegraphs connected the capital to as far south as Lyons, but beyond that news traveled mainly by courier, giving Napoleon and his soldiers four days on French soil before the Bourbon government could properly begin to mobilize. No one was sure how many men he’d landed with, although some thought the number to be as low as fifty.

  At the Tuileries, Louis XVIII and his ministers joked about the “rogue” Bonaparte and his delusions of grandeur. “It is just as well that the man from Elba has attempted his crazy undertaking,” wrote Marshal Ney on March 10, “for this will be the last act of his tragedy, the final curtain of the Napoléonade.” French troops were dispatched from the main southern garrison in Marseille, trailing behind their quarry as he marched north. Ney promised his king that he would bring Napoleon back to Paris “in an iron cage.” Marshal Macdonald headed to Lyons to take command of the troops there.

  The first French engravings that imagined the scene at Golfe-Juan began to circulate. In one, The Imperial Stride, a dashing Napoleon in full regalia steps easily across the waters separating France and Elba with Paris already in his sights. Frightened members of the Bourbon family watch his crossing through telescopes, two of them wearing candle snuffers as hats, a reference to the so-called Order of Extinguishers, said to comprise ultraroyalists who wanted to snuff out all the lights of progress and modernity. “Let’s pack it up!” says one of them, while Napoleon waves a tricolor capped by a golden eagle and emblazoned with “Honneur et Patrie,” his aquiline nose pointing him like Don Quixote to tilt at the windmills of Montmartre.

  As French soldiers went to hunt their former emperor, his former subjects remained remarkably calm. In opera boxes and corridors and cafés, all it took was to say that he was back and people understood. The novelist Fanny Burney, who was then in Paris, recalled that while the general feeling in the city was wonder at Napoleon’s “temerity,” it was “wonder unmixed with apprehension.” In her memoir she described how

  a torpor indescribable, a species of stupor utterly indefinable, seemed to have enveloped the capital with a mist that was impervious. Everybody went about their affairs, made or received visits, met and parted, without speaking, or, I suppose, thinking of this event as a matter of any importance.

  Burney admitted that she’d been as guilty as anyone else of such magical thinking. She’d lived for a decade under Napoleon and knew his intimates, who spoke freely around her because of “her spotless husband,” who served in the king’s guard. She knew his character, which meant, as she wrote in hindsight, that she should have known what he was capable of achieving.

  When Mary Berry, another English writer, learned that Napoleon had landed on French soil, she wrote to a friend that it wasn’t worth worrying about because no nation could be “so degraded and so stupid as to wish again for a military despotism, after having gone through so dreadful an experience of it.”

  Louis XVIII would flee Paris less than two weeks later.

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  URGENT

  A COURIER DASHED UP the marble stairs of the Austrian chancellery early in the morning of March 7, carrying a message marked URGENT. He entered Metternich’s chambers, despite strict orders not to bother the foreign minister, who had only gotten to bed two hours earlier after another long committee meeting. Metternich glanced at the letter, assumed it was just more congress work, and left it unopened on his nightstand. But he couldn’t get back to sleep. He reached for the letter and saw that it had been sent from the royal consulate general in Livorno:

  The English Commissary, Campbell, has just appeared in the harbor to inquire whether Napoleon has been seen at [Livorno], as he has disappeared from the island of Elba. This question being answered in the negative, the English ship has again put out to sea.

  He dressed quickly and went to tell Emperor Francis, who, as Metternich remembered, “said to me quietly and calmly, as he always did on great occasions: ‘Napoleon seems to wish to play the adventurer. That is his concern; ours is to secure to the world that peace which he has disturbed for years.’” Francis told him to inform Tsar Alexander and the king of Prussia, and to say that he was ready “to order my army to march back to France. I do not doubt but that both monarchs will agree with me.”

  Metternich went to the Hofburg palace next to the chancellery, going first to the Amalienburg residence to tell Alexander, then rushing back across the inner courtyard to find the king of Prussia, and finally returning to the chancellery to discuss stra
tegy with the Austrian field marshal Prince Schwarzenberg. By ten o’clock the ministers of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain had sent couriers to order their respective armies to halt where they were. “The war,” wrote Metternich, “was decided on in less than an hour.” He was speaking figuratively, but having representatives of the major powers gathered within a few hundred feet of one another in Vienna allowed them to organize a response to the landing far more quickly than would otherwise be possible, as Napoleon must have anticipated when calculating the risks of his escape.

  When Metternich told Talleyrand the news, the latter feigned nonchalance and said he was certain Napoleon would land somewhere on the coast of Italy and then go into Switzerland. This aligned with the prevailing logic in Vienna, where, for instance, Napoleon’s Corsican rival Pozzo di Borgo, who was serving as adviser to Tsar Alexander, said that if Napoleon dared to set foot in France he would “be seized the moment he lands, and hanged from the nearest tree.”

  Talleyrand wrote to Louis XVIII, repeating his prediction that Napoleon would land somewhere in the north of Italy, and adding that Metternich and Schwarzenberg had told him they would be “greatly embarrassed” if Napoleon had indeed landed in Tuscany, since they didn’t yet have soldiers in place to properly counter him if he managed to rally the people in the region to his cause. While Talleyrand refused to “believe that he would dare to make any attempt upon our southern provinces,” because he couldn’t “venture to do this unless he had confederates there, which we can hardly suppose possible,” he advised that they should send some carefully selected troops into Provence, just as a precaution. As evenhanded as ever, he added that while “the consequences of this event cannot yet be foreseen . . . they may be fortunate if we know how to turn them to account,” implying that they might now have the chance to lawfully kill Napoleon and his assumed confederate Murat.