The Invisible Emperor

by Mark Braude

  On the Strand: Bew, Castlereagh, 361; Dallas, The Final Act, 4, 32; Uglow, In These Times, 603; Zamoyski, Rites, 215.

  The allied sovereigns: The idea of a congress in Vienna had already been raised by Tsar Alexander at the battle of Leipzig in 1813 but was originally only meant to include sovereigns and representatives from the victorious nations. Dallas, The Final Act, 48; King, Vienna, 7.

  That the conference: King, Vienna, 30; Mansel, Paris, 38.

  “This quarter century”: Bell, Total War, 17.

  Though some royalists: “Like a biblical scapegoat,” writes Isser Woloch, “Napoleon alone would bear the official royalist animus against twenty-five years of revolution and usurpation. While the pariah was banished to the toy principality of Elba, his close collaborators would be left in peace to enjoy pensions, titles, and memories at home.” Woloch, Collaborators, 221.

  The Lycée Napoléon: Mansel, Paris, 18–19. More specifically, the newspaper had been titled Journal des débats et des décrets before Napoleon changed the name and became Journal des débats politiques et littéraires during the restoration.

  14: A RIDICULOUS NOISE

  Townspeople gathered at: A detailed description of the San Cristino mass and festival can be found in Charrier-Moissard, “Journal,” Savant, Toute l’histoire, 37–67, as cited in Hicks, “Napoleon on Elba,” FN 28–30. See also Pons, Souvenirs, 228–35; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 112.

  There is no record: On another occasion, Pons left a copy of Fenélon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, a popular pedagogic text about the travels and education of Ulysses’s son (widely interpreted, if not necessarily intended, as a critique of autocratic rule), open in his study for Napoleon to see, having underlined a few passages, such as “The King ought to be more free from ostentation and pride than any other man” and “Minos loved his people more than his own family.” Pons, Souvenirs, 122; Gruyer, Napoleon, 118.

  Conducting a postmortem: Pons, Souvenirs, 228.

  “walking in the streets”: Englund, Napoleon, 300.

  “big noise”: Herold, The Mind of Napoleon, 39.

  Pons worried that: Pons, Souvenirs, 230–31; Dallas, The Final Act, 264.

  “Ah! Madame”: Pons, Souvenirs, 136.

  She gave him: Branda, La guerre secrète, 180; Fraser, Pauline Bonaparte, 208–9; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 112.

  When Napoleon hid: Hibbert, Napoleon, 173; Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 89.

  “He seems to want”: Masson, Napoleon et sa famille, 328.

  The Bonapartes had: Treaty of Fontainebleau, Article XIV. Englund writes of the Bonaparte brothers that during the period of exile, “all but Louis might have visited their brother in the fullness of time.” Englund, Napoleon, 420.

  She complained of: Masson, Napoleon et sa famille, 328.

  But Campbell recognized: I infer Campbell’s doubt from his diary entry, which gives a sense that he thinks the lady doth protest too much. He wrote, “They were at pains to state that the Neapolitan frigate had been sent by the Queen of Naples of her own accord for her sister.” Campbell, Napoleon, 245.

  He chatted with: Pons, Souvenirs, 233–38.

  Pons wrote that: Pons, Souvenirs, 235–38.

  “be killed a”: Pons, Souvenirs, 134. Dalesme was named a Chevalier of Saint Louis on his return to France, and put on nonactivity.

  He told Pons: Pons, Souvenirs, 134.

  “suffering through his smile”: Pons, Souvenirs, 135.

  15: THE MORE UNFAVORABLY DOES HE APPEAR

  Campbell failed to: Campbell, Napoleon, 246.

  But there’s no evidence: Concerning the “lazaretto war,” see Campbell, Napoleon, 246–47, as well as Branda, La guerre secrète, 98, 141, and MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 113. MacKenzie suggests that Campbell wondered if Napoleon had orchestrated the lazaretto dispute as a possible test run, but I’ve found nothing in Campbell’s journal to back MacKenzie’s claim, which leads me to think that MacKenzie inferred this suspicion on Campbell’s behalf.

  Morale was already: Branda, La guerre secrète, 129.

  Napoleon liked the idea: Pons, Souvenirs, 95–98; Campbell, Napoleon, 250.

  The island’s contributions: Branda, La guerre secrète, 94. Branda calculates Elba’s typical annual tax yield at roughly 120,000 francs.

  “occasioned unusual outcry”: Campbell, Napoleon, 248.

  “all the devotion”: Pons, Souvenirs, 202–3.

  Napoleon had quietly: Pons, Souvenirs, 203.

  “the dregs of”: Pons, Souvenirs, 201.

  Pons thought that: Pons, Souvenirs, 201. For the tax standoff see also Branda, La guerre secrète, 167; Marchand, Mémoires, IV.

  “Napoleon appears . . . among them”: Campbell, Napoleon, 248–49.

  “to give . . . he appear”: Campbell, Napoleon, 248–51.

  “Even the attachment”: Campbell, Napoleon, 249.

  He’d heard a soldier: Campbell, Napoleon, 249.

  And some of his men: Branda, La guerre secrète, 141, 161. From Elba, Cambronne wrote to a friend who had managed to switch allegiances from Napoleon to the Bourbons without losing his high rank that he, too, would be pleased to serve the king “should the death of Napoleon leave me free to return to France and reestablish my standing and rights as a French citizen.”

  “Those he made”: Roberts, Napoleon, 714.

  16: UBICUMQUE FELIX NAPOLEON

  Many summer nights: Marchand, Mémoires, III; Chateaubriand, Memoirs, 276; Wolff, The Island Empire, 8. To Chateaubriand, the Napoleonic persona was perfectly encapsulated by this time among “his bricklayers” on Elba: “His strength was derived from the masses, his rank from his genius; this is why he passed effortlessly from the market-place to the throne, from the kings and queens who crowded round him at Erfurt to the bakers and grocers who danced in his barn at Portoferraio. He had something of the people among princes, and of a prince among the people.” Chateaubriand, Memoirs, 276.

  He grew a large garden: Gopnik has the following to say about Voltaire, exile, and gardening: “[Voltaire] quickly turned his exile into a desirable condition—a version of the ancient Horatian ideal of escape from the corrupting city into a small enclosed country house. Pope had done the same thing when he built his grotto at his little house in Twickenham, and wrote about it as enthusiastically. Yet Pope’s grotto is playful, an obvious mock hermitage. Voltaire’s ideas were far more bourgeois; he wanted to play host to as many people as he could, and to build the sweetest garden he could, and, after renting the villa, he started shopping like Martha Stewart newly freed from prison.” Gopnik, “Voltaire’s Garden.”

  Bada di sotto!: Branda, La guerre secrète, 96–97.

  He instructed his officers: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXVII, 370; Gruyer, Napoleon, 88–89.

  “in the family”: Pons, Souvenirs, 140.

  “so little stuffing”: “Ali,” Napoleon, 74. My key source for describing the Mulini as it looked at the time is Chevallier et al., Le Mobilier, which includes a reprint of the original inventory for the Mulini and other residences on Elba produced in October 1814. My descriptions of the environment and sight lines are also based on visits to the current site of the Palazzo dei Mulini, which is now a museum. For other descriptions of the Mulini in 1814–15, see Gruyer, Napoleon, 103; Pons, Souvenirs, 140; Vivian, Minutes, 6–7.

  Aside from the: “Ali,” Napoleon, 75.

  The approved books: Concerning the Mulini library and its contents, see “Bibliothèque de l’Empereur: inventaire, undated,” Archives nationales, Fonds Betrand, 390 AP 22; “Orders to Drouot, October 3, 1815,” Napoleon, Le registre, 113.

  Napoleon’s way of: Englund, Napoleon, 13, 307.

  He fed on books: He had brought a custom-built traveling library with him on the Egyptian campaign, which included Captain Cook’s Voyages, Goethe’s Sorrows of Young We
rther, Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, and works by Julius Caesar, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus, Homer, Virgil, Racine, and Molière. So too in his heyday did people far from France follow the reports of his dazzling campaigns as though they were reading installments in some sweeping serial. Roberts, Napoleon, 163.

  Among his collection: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 87.

  There were books: Wolff, The Island Empire, 9. One wonders if in his Elban reading nook, Napoleon, with his passion for Roman lives, read any Seneca. He might have found wisdom in the Stoic’s Consolation to Helvia, written during his eight-year exile on Corsica and addressed to his mother, as though Seneca were comforting the grieving woman on his own death. He wrote that an exile had no reason to “regret his former dress and house” because “it is the mind which makes men rich: this it is that accompanies them into exile, and in the most savage wildernesses, after having found sufficient sustenance for the body, enjoys its own overflowing resources.” If a banished man “sighs for a purple robe steeped in floods of dye, interwoven with threads of gold and with many coloured artistic embroideries, then his poverty is his own fault, not that of Fortune: even though you restored to him all that he has lost, you would do him no good; for he would have more unsatisfied ambitions, if restored, than he had unsatisfied wants when he was an exile.” In another work, quoting and then commenting on the banished Publius Rutilius Rufus, Seneca wrote, “My wish is that my country should blush at my being banished, rather than that she should mourn at my having returned. An exile, of which every one is more ashamed than the sufferer, is not exile at all.” Seneca, Of Consolation: To Helvia, XI, and On Benefits, VI, XXXVII. I have also consulted Wilson’s insightful analysis of Seneca’s life and works, Wilson, The Greatest Empire, especially 84–85.

  He amused himself: Las Cases, Memorial, 230.

  “He has not made”: Campbell, Napoleon, 244.

  The laborers stopped: Pons, Souvenirs, 117; Branda, La guerre secrète, 84.

  He’d been charmed: Gruyer, Napoleon, 108. I wrote some of this book in a small room overlooking this hillside estate.

  But he dropped: Pons, Souvenirs, 138.

  “I’m not rich”: Pons, Souvenirs, 139; Gruyer, Napoleon, 107.

  It was the finest: Pons, Souvenirs, 139–40.

  Pons thought he overpaid: Pons, Souvenirs, 138–39. Pons thought Napoleon overpaid not because the seller was dishonorable, but because Napoleon failed to realize how costly it would be to bring the property up to his standards. I have deduced that Pauline helped to pay for the residence based on Napoleon’s letter to Drouot about being undecided as to whether he would have the deed put in his name or hers and later correspondence from Betrand to Peyrusse concerning Pauline’s claim to the property. Napoleon, Correspondance, XXVII, 368; Marchand, Mémoires, IV; Peyrusse, Mémorial, 251–52.

  “paved with marble”: Gruyer, Napoleon, 113–14. See also MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 124.

  The Egyptian campaign: Napoleon may also have enjoyed recalling his time in Egypt while on Elba because it had been there, on the ascendant, that he had felt the very opposite of the weakened, circumscribed man he was in exile. Each day in Egypt saw him confronting danger. And while warding off his own death, Napoleon brought it to so many others in brutal fashion. “Citizen general,” he had told his chief of staff in response to a rebellion in Cairo, “give the order to the commander in the square to cut the throats of all prisoners who were taken bearing arms. They will be brought tonight to the banks of the Nile . . . and their headless corpses thrown in the river.” Bell, Total War, 212–13.

  Ever since that campaign: Bell, Total War, 212–13; Reiss, The Black Count, 218–27. Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt, and Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, were also helpful.

  “I found myself”: Bell, Total War, 212.

  To the veterans: Pons, Souvenirs, 139.

  As a valet: “Ali,” Napoleon, 83.

  The work resumed: Branda, La guerre secrète, 145–46; Napoleon, Le registre, 77–78.

  He showed the same: Branda, La guerre secrète, 100. Branda posits that Napoleon traveled between residences so frequently as a security measure.

  “I’ve seen no chateau”: Englund, Napoleon, 203.

  Ubicumque felix Napoleon: Campbell, Napoleon, 310; Gruyer, Napoleon, 113; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 125.

  17: SIROCCO

  “keeping my journal . . . their tone”: Campbell, Napoleon, 257.

  That summer was the hottest: Nollet-Fabert, Drouot, 120.

  “Bertrand showed . . . that effect”: Campbell, Napoleon, 252–53.

  There was no mention: London Gazette, June 7, 1814. Campbell was also mentioned in the London Gazette the following week, when it was announced that the prince regent had officially granted him “license and permission” to accept and wear the decorations he had already received from Russia for his services in the field. Again there was no mention of his Elban assignment.

  “I have reason”: Campbell, Napoleon, 234.

  Campbell dealt mostly: Gruyer, Napoleon, 102.

  “Napoleon continues”: Campbell, Napoleon, 248.

  He didn’t seem: Concerning various pet projects, see Branda, La guerre secrète, 97, 167; Campbell, Napoleon, 248.

  The goal was to: Branda, La guerre secrète, 124; MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 123.

  “cleaned out . . . my approval”: Gruyer, Napoleon, 110.

  Napoleon declared that: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXVII, 368.

  He subjected the: Gruyer, Napoleon, 109; Napoleon, Le registre, 81–82.

  Fists were raised: Pons, Souvenirs, 338.

  When the weather: Napoleon, Le registre, 61–62.

  “what all the complaints”: Napoleon, Correspondance, XXVII, 387.

  Another storm: Napoleon, Le registre, 3; Schuermans, Souverain, 419–20.

  Pons thought that: Gruyer, Napoleon, 117; Pons, Souvenirs, 114.

  On Elba, denied: Zadie Smith’s “Two Paths for the Novel” was helpful in thinking about “filling” space with time. See also Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity.

  18: SULTRY CONFINEMENT

  He made no other: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 114.

  “relieve my mind”: Campbell, Napoleon, 256–57.

  After docking at Livorno: Campbell, Napoleon, 257.

  “convinced they were sent”: Campbell, Napoleon, 259.

  “the suppression of”: Hyde de Neuville, Mémoires, 18.

  “Don’t you think”: Hyde de Neuville, Mémoires, 14.

  “Each time he”: Hyde de Neuville, Mémoires, 35.

  She could have been: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 167.

  “schemes begin to”: Campbell, Napoleon, 266.

  “some questions of”: Campbell, Napoleon, 306.

  “mixed up in”: Hyde de Neuville, Mémoires, 35.

  They had even stopped: Campbell, Napoleon, 261–62; O’Dwyer, Papacy, 135; Zamoyski, Rites, 237.

  “the public spirit”: Campbell, Napoleon, 260, 268–69.

  “until sufficient proofs”: Campbell, Napoleon, 274.

  “very pleasant and”: Campbell, Napoleon, 272.

  “must have been”: “Ali,” Napoleon, 80.

  She hadn’t helped: Branda, La guerre secrète, 177; Campbell, Napoleon, 277.

  “continue to consider”: Campbell, Napoleon, 273.

  “Louis [the fifth oldest]”: Campbell, Napoleon, 278.

  “many sighs and”: Campbell, Napoleon, 272.

  19: THE ONE-EYED COUNT

  At one point: Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 176–79.

  “What a heartrending fate”: Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, editorial note, 204.

  “I only wish”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, June 5, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 208–9.

  “If I were”: Hou
ssaye, Retour, 14.

  Francis secured permission: Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 181.

  “Do please . . . to me”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, June 22, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 209–11.

  “It’s papa’s necktie”: “Image 11.58, 1814,” Broadley, Napoleon in Caricature, II, 57.

  On the first: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1074.

  “Receptions weary me”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, June 22, 1814,” Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 209–11.

  And at the Château: See Caulaincourt’s unpublished notes regarding Rambouillet, Mémoires. This was the same castle where Voltaire passed some of his exile from France.

  When she reached: Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 183.

  “With all necessary”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 131.

  “rather suited the”: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1075.

  Before leaving for: Marchand, Mémoires, FN 176; Palmer, Napoleon and Marie Louise, 183.

  “I just can’t”: MacKenzie, The Escape from Elba, 132.

  “capable of . . . of you”: “Marie Louise to Napoleon, July 21, 1814,” in Palmstierna, My Dearest Louise, 213–14.

  20: A PERFECTLY BOURGEOIS SIMPLICITY

  “She seemed greatly”: Campbell, Napoleon, 278–79.

  Meanwhile, a messenger: Marchand, Mémoires, IV; Masson, Napoleon et sa famille, 360.

  “a handsome house”: Méneval, Memoirs of Napoleon, 1072. For details on the Vantini house, see Marchand, Memoirs, IV.