Napoleon

by Paul Johnson

  Another motive was boredom. Bonaparte was now fat and sometimes sleepy and lazy, but on form he still had more energy than most men. It must be said that, greatly as he liked battles, he also liked doing constructive things. He began by rebuilding his main palace, which had once been a mill, adding a top story. He worked in his garden. He reformed the small administration from top to bottom. He set about improving the iron mines, the roads and bridges and harbors; he introduced agricultural reforms, public instructions, and scientific surveys. This took time, which he had in plenty, but it also cost money, which was short. Parsimonious to himself, Bonaparte hated being less than lavish to others or to the projects on which he set his heart. If the Bourbon regime had paid up, and added a few more millions for “improvements,” Bonaparte would have been kept busy and happy, and the vast cost in money and lives of his revanche would have been saved. As it was, the impatient Bonaparte found that all the inexpensive reforms were done within a few months and that further progress in turning his island into a model kingdom would require cash he did not possess. He became bitter, fretful, vengeful. His temper was not improved by the fact that the English upper classes, and many middle-class busybodies, too, had resumed the Grand Tour after years of isolation. They swarmed into Florence, among other places, and it did not require much organization to “take in” Elba and its caged monster. About sixty English tourists alone made the trip and duly gawked. If lucky enough to be introduced, they found the fallen emperor gracious and informative, though he also, as always, asked incessant questions. But Bonaparte, behind his civility, felt exposed and humiliated. He loved to be the cynosure of the brave, when tête d’armées—there was no false modesty about him—but he had no relish in the role of fairground wonder.

  The third factor in Bonaparte’s decision to return was the failure of the restored Bourbons to strike any kind of rapport with the French people. As Talleyrand said: “They have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.” To be just to Louis XVIII, he did nothing much wrong. But he was old, fat (Wellington said that pinning the Order of the Garter around his enormous calf was like grasping the waist of a young man), greedy, and obstinate. When he fell down on his first big parade, he refused to be helped to his feet except by the senior officer designated by royal protocol for such a task. Thus he remained supine until the dignitary finally arrived. The contrast between the king and even a defeated emperor was telling. Equally important was the postwar recession, which affected all the belligerents and which brought Britain closer to rebellion than at any time during the previous twenty years. The distress in France, which had only a small industrial sector, was not so great, but it was real and fed the general malaise. Bonaparte was free to receive letters and visitors from France, and both (so he claimed) overwhelmingly urged him to return and save France from its discontents. He certainly exaggerated the desire for yet another overthrow of government. Such quantitative evidence as we possess suggests that, for most Frenchmen, the spell of Bonaparte was broken for good, just as the spell of royalty had been broken in the early 1790s. They left a vacuum of apathy, which could be filled by the vigorous and strongly motivated. The only group that fit this description was the ex-soldiers. Under the emperor they had done well. Now many were without a job and, worse still, without an object in life. But naturally it was to this group Bonaparte listened most. Their entreaties persuaded him that he had no alternative but to become again France’s homme providentiel. So fear and boredom were joined by destiny, as Bonaparte saw it.

  Bonaparte seems to have finally decided to return to France on 15 February 1815, and he then set about preparing his expedition with great speed. If the thing were to be done at all, there was reason for haste. The Bourbons were recreating the French army, but they were steadily replacing Bonapartist commanders with their own and each month made the force more royalist. Then again, Bonaparte had just got news that the British had made peace with the United States on Christmas Eve 1814, and this meant that the bulk of the British navy’s resources, together with Wellington’s peninsular veterans, which had recently burned down Washington, would soon be redeployed in the European theater. A more powerful British naval screen would make his expedition impossible. He embarked from Elba on 26 February 1815, aboard a frigate accompanied by six transports, carrying his 600 guardsmen, 100 Polish lancers, a million francs in gold, considerable quantities of ammunition, four guns, and three generals. He had taken elaborate measures to ensure secrecy and steps to mislead by indicating he was heading for Naples (this at first deceived Metternich when he got the news of Bonaparte’s disappearance from Elba). The little fleet arrived at Antibes three days later and disembarked its force without opposition.

  Bonaparte had achieved total surprise by his plan so far, and he continued to hold the initiative for a time. Indeed all the opening moves of his last campaign showed his military characteristics—surprise, daring, and speed—at their best. From Cannes he took the Alpine route to Grenoble, thus avoiding Marseilles, where the royalist garrison was controlled by Masséna, who had now broken with him for good. Fifteen miles south of Grenoble at Laffrey, he found his route blocked by a regular infantry battalion of the Fifth Regiment. Bonaparte then put on one of his virtuoso performances. He had his military band play the “Marseillaise” and set off alone toward the opposing soldiers. When he was in range of their guns, he got off his horse and walked toward them. Satisfied he was within earshot, he stopped, opened up his greatcoat, and shouted: “It is I, Napoleon. Kill your Emperor if you wish.” There was a great silence. Then he told a monstrous lie. “The forty-five wisest men in the Paris government have summoned me from Elba to put France to rights. My return is backed by the three leading powers of Europe.” There was another pause; then a shout went up: “Vive l’empereur!” The soldiers broke ranks and came to Bonaparte for orders. When the news of this defection reached Paris, it detonated a Jacobin riot, a panic among government ministers, and an upsurge of Bonapartist support in many places. When Bonaparte reached Grenoble, he was greeted as emperor, not indeed by the whole population—far from it—but by a sufficient crowd to speed on the juggernaut. Other regular troops joined him en route to Paris, notably on 14 March at Auxerre, where Marshal Ney, who had been sent with cavalry and orders to arrest Bonaparte, and who had promised “to bring him back in an iron cage,” also joined his master. The nerve of the Bourbons finally broke on 19 March, when they left for Ghent, and Bonaparte entered Paris unopposed the next day.

  So far, what might have been a desperate venture, ending in squalid failure, had gone spectacularly well, much better than even the optimistic Bonaparte himself had expected. But there had been dramatic changes on the other side, too. Bonaparte had been accustomed to dealing with reluctant coalitions, belatedly formed, slow to move, and divided in their aims. Their armies in particular had always assembled slowly, and their different national commanders had always disputed strategy and often quarreled. But a great change had come over his old opponents. They were now at the head of peoples whose own spirit was up, who had become as nationalist as the French had been for two decades, who identified Bonaparte as the source of the wars that had devastated their countries and cost them fathers, brothers, and sons and who had now revealed himself, once again, as an incorrigible enemy of peace. This was not a sophisticated diplomatic fact that needed explaining. It was an obvious truth, almost a truism now, that stared everyone in the face. So Leipzig, the great Battle of the Nations, had not been enough! More was required, another effort to lay the ghost of the tyrant to rest. So be it! The sovereigns of Europe and their advisers, meeting at Vienna, had already redrawn the map of Europe and reached agreement on many knotty problems. For the first time, they formed what might be called a team. When news of Bonaparte’s return reached them—there are conflicting accounts of when and how, and who got it first—the potentates all assembled within hours and their reactions were immediate and unanimous. What had happened was unacceptable and fatal to the tranquillity of Europe
. They declared Bonaparte an outlaw, ordered his arrest, and took immediate military steps to make it possible. The speed with which Europe reacted was, for the first time, akin to Bonaparte’s own, and it must have come as a disconcerting surprise to him. The Seventh (and final) Coalition came into existence within hours.

  There was a second new factor. Wellington, too, was at Vienna, where he had temporarily replaced Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, as head of the British delegation. His military reputation was now the highest in Europe, for he had beaten all Bonaparte’s marshals, if not the master himself. At Vienna he had recently displayed considerable political and diplomatic skills, and won the trust and confidence of the sovereigns and their ministers. They had no doubts about listening to and heeding his military advice, and in effect they put him in charge of their stop-Bonaparte strategy. He was also appointed generalissimo not just of the British forces in Flan ders but of such German, Dutch, and Belgian forces as could be quickly gathered in that theater. For Wellington guessed, rightly, that if Bonaparte made a quick forward move, he would head north.

  But when? Each of the Allies pledged itself to put at least 150,000 men into the field and keep them there until Bonaparte was destroyed. Bonaparte inherited from the Bourbons a standing army of 150,000, one-third of which he could have brought together by the end of March, making possible a northward thrust starting at the beginning of April. He declined this option for political reasons. It would have stamped him again as the aggressor, and he wanted the Allies to signal their intention to invade France first. In fact, his chances were beyond the help of politics, diplomacy, or propaganda. Only the successful use of force could save him. By throwing away the lightning-attack option, he raised the odds in the Allies’ favor. On the other hand, by prodigies of effort from his hastily constituted administration, he had put together a total force of 360,000, of which 180,000 were available for his attack. However, he broke one of his original rules at this point. Instead of committing the whole of his offensive, he limited his own army to about 120,000 and dispersed the rest on the frontiers to resist invasion. He might have added to his force in the coming battle, on which all hinged, another 35,000 men. Who could say what difference this would have made? Bonaparte’s third mistake was to deprive himself of the services of Murat, his best and most experienced cavalry commander. When Bonaparte returned, of twenty marshals still active, four stuck to Louis XVIII, three defected to the British-Allied army, one went to the Prussians, and two went into hiding. So Bonaparte had about half of them and a new one, Emmanuel de Grouchy—that is, ten. Or rather, nine, for Murat, having lost his kingdom of Naples, had returned to France, but Bonaparte decided he could not be forgiven or trusted again. Granted the weakness of his cavalry, this was a self-inflicted wound.

  Nothing is more confusing than a detailed and rationalized description of a complex military campaign that probably left most of the participating generals bewildered, and this is one reason why, in this account of Bonaparte, most of his major battles have been given cursory treatment. But Waterloo was essentially a simple affair, of profound historical importance, and so merits a closer look. Bonaparte had to act fast, as with every day that passed, the Allies were gathering more troops and lengthening the numerical odds against him. By the beginning of June 1815, Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch-German army, headquartered at Brussels, numbered more than 90,000. Blücher’s Prussian army, headquartered at Namur, was about 116,000. They were cantoned over an east-west axis of ninety miles, to a depth of thirty miles. Their geographical concentration point was Charleroi, right in the center of the ninety-mile front.

  That was where Bonaparte aimed to strike. He set out from Paris on 11 June, and three days later he had succeeded in drawing together an army distributed along the frontier in an area of 100 by 175 miles into a tight three-part wedge pointed to go for Charleroi. It was fast action and it testified to the quality of Bonaparte’s orders, for the “indispensable” chief of staff, Berthier, had refused to join him and he had to make do with Soult, who was more a commanding general than a meticulous staff officer. Up to the beginning of the action, indeed, Bonaparte’s writing of orders was fast and skillful and gave no sign of failing powers. Moreover, this rapid concentration took both Wellington and Blücher by surprise, despite all their efforts to keep themselves well informed.

  Bonaparte divided his force into two wings (under Ney and Grouchy) and a reserve center, commanded by himself. By moving to Charleroi, his aim, as usual, was to prevent the British and Prussians from joining together in a single defensive mass that would heavily outnumber him. Ney could turn on Wellington, or Grouchy on Blücher—whichever was more exposed—and Bonaparte would be in the center to turn on whichever target gave battle. He thus hoped, as usual, to destroy the two Allied armies separately, with the numerical advantage on his side.

  The advance began on 15 June, and when it was held up at the Charleroi bridge over the Sambre, Bonaparte was soon on the spot and took charge of the Young Guard, which promptly stormed the bridge, another sign that he was in good form. With his command post in Charleroi, Bonaparte directed Ney and Grouchy to get to work. The Prussians were heavily handled but withdrew in good order. The British, on the other hand, stubbornly held on to the major crossroads at Quatre Bras, which the French needed to take to force the separation of the Allied armies. Bonaparte’s plan, therefore, had not entirely worked, but he still held the strategic initiative and was well placed to carry it out by nightfall, bivouacked in a square of twelve miles each side, right in the center, and in a position to attack either the British or the Prussians.

  The two Allied armies were, however, still in contact, and Wellington actually met and discussed plans with Blücher at Brye, where they could see the French army. The duke was rapidly enforcing his position at Quatre Bras, and fresh troops were reaching his forces all the time. This was of vital importance to him, because he knew he was outnumbered if all Bonaparte’s forces were turned upon him. Moreover, he had comparatively few of his peninsular veterans with him, many of his units were of poor quality, and the authorities at home had not allowed him to choose all his own senior officers of staff—they had foisted on him, for instance, Lord Uxbridge to command the cavalry. It would be hard to decide which Wellington distrusted more—the cavalry or their commander. Reinforcements, therefore, were at the forefront of his mind, and if he was to get them and deploy them, the road to his rear had to be kept clear. That is why, in the days leading up to Waterloo, the duke took great pains to appear unconcerned and to conceal his anxieties, which were considerable. Thus he attended the famous ball that the duchess of Richmond gave, not in marble halls as contemporaries such as Byron imagined, but in a Brussels laundry, converted and dressed up for the occasion. Wellington thus prevented a mad panic in Brussels, which would have blocked all his rearward roads with refugees and their gear. Thanks to Wellington’s sangfroid, his reinforcements continued to arrive up to and even during the Battle of Waterloo itself and were put straight into action.

  It was on 16 June that Bonaparte’s plans began to go wrong, though not as yet disastrously so. He ordered Ney to take Quatre Bras, on the left, and decided to use Grouchy’s wing and his own center to destroy Blücher, who seemed determined to hold his main position at Ligny. The plan went wrong because the comte d’Erlon, who commanded one army corps, got conflicting instructions from Ney and Bonaparte (this would not have happened if Berthier had been there) and remained in the middle, unengaged. Ney, who might well have taken Quatre Bras with d’Erlon’s men, failed, despite heroic personal efforts. Bonaparte’s assault on the Prussians at Ligny began early in the afternoon and was pressed with great determination. The Prussians resisted ferociously, and at one point around eight in the evening, Blücher himself led a series of cavalry charges. His horse was shot, fell, and rolled over on him, and he was carried unconscious from the field. But he recovered and eventually resumed the direction of operations. By 9 P.M. it was clear that the Prussians co
uld no longer hold their positions. Indeed, had Bonaparte had d’Erlon’s corps, their retreat might have been turned into a rout. As it was, they kept formation and moved back in order, ready to fight again. The losses on both sides were dreadful, more than 20,000 men. At Ligny itself 4,000 men of both sides lay dead in an area of only 400 square yards, and the whole battle had taken place over little more than two square miles. This concentration of the fighting, and so the high number of casualties, was to be a feature of the entire campaign—there had been nearly 10,000 casualties just around the Quatre Bras crossroads.

  In view of the Prussians’ withdrawal, Wellington early on 17 June decided that remaining in contact with them must override any other consideration, so he withdrew from Quatre Bras and took up a new position on what was to become the field of Waterloo. The failure of either Ney or Bonaparte himself to attack him in strength during this tricky withdrawal was (in the opinion of some) the worst mistake of the entire campaign. Wellington was now in a reasonably strong defensive position, which allowed his men to lie down on the reverse slope to avoid cannon fire, and he was in communication with Blücher, who promised to send between two and four corps to his assistance if he had to take the brunt of the French attack the next day, 18 June. Bonaparte, meanwhile, had sent Grouchy, with 33,000 men and 96 guns, about one-third of the entire army, to follow Blücher and physically prevent him from aiding Wellington. By an extraordinary series of misfortunes, Grouchy ended up to the east of the four corps Blücher was maneuvering toward Waterloo, instead of to the west of them. And for vital hours neither Grouchy nor his master was aware of this fatal misplacement, which made nonsense of Bonaparte’s entire strategy of “divide and win.”