Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Later that evening, back at the Elysée, the Bonaparte family, or at least those who were in Paris, started to come together to consult about Napoleon’s future. Hortense was the first to arrive, followed by Letizia; Joseph and Lucien joined them in the garden, along with Caulaincourt and Maret. Hortense had already urged Napoleon to write to Alexander or Francis to demand they offer him asylum.100 He refused; he still felt resentful towards Francis for keeping him from his wife and child, and Alexander, he argued, was but a man. He would rather appeal to a people, like the English. Once more, Lucien tried to persuade Napoleon to dissolve the Chamber of Representatives, and insisted that within twenty-four hours its authority must be ended.101 Maret and Caulaincourt argued, on the contrary, that he should accede to its demands or risk being deposed; he would lose any chance of his son succeeding him.

  Lucien and Joseph left the Elysée around eleven o’clock to attend a meeting of the commission appointed by the Chamber of Representatives at the Tuileries, presided over by Cambacérès.102 They did not return until the first light of day; the commission decided that it would negotiate with the enemy, and that the ministers would attempt to obtain Napoleon’s abdication. Later, on St Helena, Napoleon portrayed himself as standing alone that night against the world.103 Two courses were left open to him: to try to save the country (never mind that he was the cause of the dilemma it now faced); or to abdicate, what he referred to as surrendering to the ‘general pressure’. All were against him; he was alone; he had to give in. Napoleon thus depicted himself as a tragic figure, betrayed by all those around him, and nobly sacrificing himself after Waterloo for the good of the nation. That kind of self-serving rhetoric is to be expected of a man who had risked all on the throw of a dice. He could have had the most hostile members of the Chamber arrested that night, but he did not, arguing that he had no troops he could rely on. For his enemies and supporters alike, it simply demonstrated his irresolution, a defeatist attitude born of the realization that the powers pitted against France were overwhelming.

  What one historian sympathetic to his plight has called the ‘decisive battle’ between Napoleon and his parliament began on 22 June.104 He awoke after a night of ‘incertitude and anxiety’ in which he may have contemplated suicide.105 At his lever, he grumbled something along the lines of ‘They think they will save themselves by ruining me, but they will discover how mistaken they are.’106 He was faced with a dilemma and was not able to come to a decision, whether to reject the Chamber’s demands or continue to fight. Perhaps a part of him could not believe that the men he had placed in positions of power dared demand his abdication. Most of them were mediocrities for whom he had little or no respect. He should have known better. Many of these same men had turned on him in 1814. For this to come as a surprise shows the extent to which his hubris had become an impediment to sound politics.

  We can spare the reader the painful details of what happened next. Suffice to say that after putting up a show of resistance and indignation, and sulking for a bit, Napoleon, for a second time, abdicated in favour of his son. He had little choice. Nor will we go into the complicated procedures that saw the Chamber proclaim Napoleon II and then shove him aside as a provisional government was named to negotiate with the allies.107 Rumour had it that the Chamber made the proclamation only in order to placate the army momentarily.108 Before that, Napoleon dictated an affected ‘Declaration to the French People’ in which he referred to the recent ‘war of national independence’. He stated that his political life was over (for the second time in less than a year) and proclaimed his son emperor of the French under the title ‘Napoleon II’. The declaration of abdication is a self-portrait in victimhood. It is the beginning of the progression of Napoleon towards a Christ-like figure who sacrifices himself for the good of the people. He had begun a war to protect the nation’s independence (not, in other words, for personal gain), and now that he had failed, he was offering himself as a ‘sacrifice to the hatred of France’s enemies’.109 By giving up the throne, even if he had little choice in the matter, he appeared to have committed the ultimate sacrifice for France.110 ‘May they be sincere in their declarations and really only be angry at me.’

  The people of France had seen this once before. Napoleon may have convinced himself that he was acting for the greater good. He did not dissolve the assemblies and govern as a military dictator, even though there were crowds of people outside his window in Paris chanting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ He did not, Napoleon told Constant, want to see Paris ‘drenched in blood’.111 And this from a man whose wars had cost France and Europe millions of lives.

  Epilogue

  On 25 June 1815, around midday, Napoleon left the Elysée Palace for Malmaison where he was received by his stepdaughter, Hortense.1 If he lingered there for five days it was possibly because, in his inimitable style, he was hoping to turn the situation around. In that eventuality, he drew up a proclamation to the army designed to restore confidence in his troops, in the expectation that his word would somehow spur them into action. The proclamation went something along the lines of ‘Soldiers! A few more efforts and the coalition will be dissolved.’2 The fact that he believed it was enough to issue a proclamation in order to have an impact on the course of events is an indication of how far removed from reality he was.

  Napoleon did not do much over the next day or two except await a decision on his fate about whether he was to be allowed to travel with or without safe-conducts. When he was not overcome with torpor, he was fantasizing about possible options, none of them realistic. An anxiety-ridden entourage was forced to wait and watch.3 The psychological impact of the defeat appears to have been too great for him to overcome the lethargy that now pervaded his mind and body. He plunged into a novel, he reminisced about Josephine with Hortense – ‘I cannot get used to this place without her! Every moment I expect to see her come out of the avenues to gather the flowers she loved so much!’4 – he saw his illegitimate son, Léon, who was now eight years old, taken to Malmaison by the father-in-law of Méneval, who had brought up the child. Léon was the spitting image of Napoleon, who told him that when he got to America, he would send for him.5 That Napoleon was thinking of America there can be no doubt; he ordered his librarian, Barbier, to bring him some books on America, and started reading Alexander von Humboldt’s Voyages aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent.6 But when his entourage insisted that if he wanted to go to America he had to leave immediately, Napoleon procrastinated.

  Reports of the Prussians drawing closer to Malmaison were coming in. A regiment of hussars and two regiments of infantry had supposedly received orders not to take Napoleon alive. Blücher had told Wellington that if he captured Napoleon he had every intention of having him shot on the very spot where the Duc d’Enghien had been executed.7 It was, however, only once Admiral Decrès arrived at Malmaison early in the morning of 29 June to announce that the provisional government would allow two French frigates, the Saale and the Méduse, waiting off Rochefort, to sail that Napoleon had a change of heart.

  After tearful farewells, after Hortense had generously handed him a diamond necklace worth millions, Napoleon left Malmaison on 29 June at around five in the evening, not through the main gates, where officers and civilians were waiting to acclaim him, but through a small gate at the back of the estate, so that his departure would not be noticed. It is said that before leaving, he spent time alone in the room in which Josephine had died.8 It was a moment of nostalgia for what had once been, before he set off for a future that remained unclear.

  Anonymous, Le César de 1815 (The Caesar of 1815), July 1815. Napoleon, with winged shoes, is fleeing the battlefield of Waterloo, carrying in one hand a parchment marked ‘Swiftly to Paris’, and in the other a standard with an upside-down eagle. In a mockery of Caesar’s famous dictum, he is made to say, ‘Je suis venu, J’ai vu, J’ai fui’ (I came, I saw, I fled). The inscription on the placard held by Victory reads, ‘He ran from Egypt, Madrid, Moscow, Leipzig, Mont St Je
an’.

  In a calash with four horses, Napoleon was accompanied by Bertrand, Savary and General Nicolas Becker, all in civilian clothes; the valet de chambre, Saint-Denis, rode shotgun.9 The group was divided into two small convoys. Napoleon was fleeing in style. He was incapable of travelling without a retinue, insisting that etiquette be maintained. It was all that existed between Napoleon as great man and Napoleon as commoner. It is worth noting that, as with the flight to Elba, there were no high-ranking figures among the party joining Napoleon, nor indeed any of his family. Of those who did follow him into exile, their motives varied enormously. Some were self-serving. General Charles Tristan, Marquis de Montholon, a former imperial chamberlain, for example, may very well have been motivated by the fact that creditors were knocking on his door. Others again were entirely selfless, wanting simply to serve him as best they could. Loyalty demanded they follow him.

  Napoleon reached Rambouillet, the summer residence where he had spent an idyllic time with Marie-Louise in 1810, later on the evening of 29 June. He lingered there a little, delaying his departure until nearly noon the following day. He was hoping, some say, that a courier would arrive recalling him to Paris. He and his party entered Niort on 1 July, stopping at an inn called the Boule d’Or. However, news of his presence spread so quickly, the next day attracting a considerable crowd of people singing patriotic songs to the Emperor, that the prefect insisted on Napoleon transferring his lodgings to the local prefecture.10 The town was illuminated, and a reception hosted by the prefect was held in Napoleon’s honour drawing, once again, a large number of people into the streets. It was at Niort, only about sixty kilometres from Rochefort on the Atlantic coast, that Napoleon received a note from Casimir de Bonnefoux, the prefect of that town, saying that the English blockade of the channels would make it ‘extremely dangerous’ for anybody trying to break out.

  Bonnefoux, a royalist at heart and a man who had had a run-in with Bonaparte in 1800 when he was refused the rank of captain in the navy (largely, it has to be noted, because Bonnefoux refused to put to sea), was deliberately exaggerating. Between 3 and 5 July, although possibly unbeknown to the French, the Bellerophon (dubbed ‘Billy Ruffian’ by its crew because they were unable to pronounce it) was the only British frigate on blockade duty,11 which made it highly unlikely that the commander could have prevented a determined attempt to break through. It is also highly unlikely that the Bellerophon’s commander, the thirty-eight-year-old Frederick Maitland, even knew of Napoleon’s presence in Rochefort before 9 July. He was certainly aware that the Emperor had been defeated at Waterloo and that he was heading for the Atlantic coast, but that seems to have been the extent of his information until he received a letter from Rear-Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, in command of the British squadron off Brittany, informing him that Napoleon was indeed making for Rochefort.12 By that time, Maitland had been joined by two other frigates, the Myrmidon and the Slaney, increasing his chances of capturing any vessel that attempted to run the blockade.

  Napoleon arrived at Rochefort the next day (3 July), at eight in the morning, in front of the maritime prefecture. As he descended from the carriage he appeared, according to the prefect Bonnefoux, ‘tired and dejected’.13 All the witness reports from this period agree. He appears to have lapsed into a deep apathy. Montholon later recalled Napoleon’s fits of hesitation, and could not understand why, in retrospect, he dithered so long at Rochefort – five days in all – when he could have made his escape at any time.14 The procrastination, one can speculate, was probably due to his hope that the provisional government would still call on him to fight,15 an illusion possibly nurtured by the few hundred demonstrators that had gathered in front of the gates of the prefecture demanding, as they had done in Paris and Niort, that he put himself at their head and continue the struggle. It was all that much more unrealistic since he had no way of knowing what was going on; he could only rely on out-of-date news about the military situation.16 Later in the day, a crowd of people pushed their way through the garden of the prefecture to get a glimpse of him. They made their voices heard so insistently that Napoleon eventually gave in and appeared before them.17

  There were a number of options open to Napoleon at this stage, if he truly was determined to try to reach America. Bonnefoux called a meeting on 4 July which involved the maritime authorities and Napoleon’s party. The man in charge of the port, Admiral Martin, took control of the discussion. Two options were discussed. The two frigates waiting off Rochefort were the Saale and the Méduse (later made famous for its shipwreck, in part through the painting by Géricault).18 At thirty-eight and forty-two guns respectively, with experienced captains, and with the Saale being one of the newest and fastest in the French navy, they were probably a match for the British vessels; one could have kept the Bellerophon busy while the other made its escape with its valuable cargo. However, Captain Philibert of the Saale insisted that they receive safe-conducts from the admiralty before attempting anything. The second, more realistic plan, proposed by Captain Charles Baudin, commander of the corvette Bayadère, was to travel further down the coast to Royan, and there board one of the two American vessels, either the Pike or the Ludlow, at anchor there, both very fast and capable of outrunning the British warships. The two French frigates would create a diversion and allow them to put to sea and escape the British patrols.

  And still Napoleon remained undecided.19 The excuses he gave ranged from not wanting to board a foreign vessel to not wanting to follow Baudin’s insistent demands that he escape in great secrecy accompanied by two or three followers at most. That would leave those he left behind – sixty-four people had accompanied him to Rochefort – exposed to the vengeance of the Bourbons. This is possible but unlikely, given Napoleon’s past record of caring little about those in his entourage. It is more likely that he was worried about how he would appear to others. What was he without his entourage, his gaggle of courtiers?

  Ever since 1812, Napoleon, once resolute and decisive, had appeared invariably to be racked by indecision and inertia. This has something to do with the fact that he was no longer invincible, with the fact that the self-image shaped in his youth no longer coincided with the reality. The end result was depression. We are talking about a still youngish man – he was not yet forty-six – but he was in poor health, overweight and burnt out. Writing some years after the event, Baron Charles Lallemand blamed the delay on members of Napoleon’s entourage who wanted him to surrender to the British; but, he also argued, the Emperor had lost any interest in his own personal safety and therefore left everything to others, ‘loyal advisers’, who were not particularly clear-sighted about what should happen.20 Napoleon’s hesitation may very well be explained by his fear of the consequences if he failed to elude the British blockade. If he had been captured, dressed incognito to boot, it would have been a blot on his reputation, a farce which he would not have been able to live down.

  On 7 July, General Becker received a dispatch from the provisional government stating that Napoleon had to embark immediately, ‘for the safety and tranquillity of the State are imperilled’ by his delays.21 It was only on 8 July, after repeated representations from Becker and Bonnefoux, that Napoleon agreed to embark for the Île d’Aix at the mouth of the Charente, with his entourage, from the little town of Fouras. There is a tendency on the part of some historians to portray Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon as having misled Napoleon or at least having deliberately lulled him into believing that England would welcome him as an exile.22 It is quite possible that this did indeed happen, that a certain amount of trickery was used to lure him on board the Bellerophon. He was, after all, the biggest prize any naval captain could hope to capture. We know that, by Maitland’s own admission, at one point in the conversations between the captain and Savary, he asked, rhetorically, ‘why not ask asylum in Britain?’23 The sloop Falmouth appeared with new orders from Admiral Hotham emphasizing that, if captured, Napoleon was to be kept in custody and returned to the nearest English p
ort.24 Maitland, it should be stressed, was never told what would be Napoleon’s fate once he had reached port, in part because the British government was still unsure what to do with him. He made it clear on a number of occasions that he could not guarantee what his government’s attitude would be once they reached England.25

  Two days were spent on the island of Aix, 12 and 13 July, during which Napoleon again considered his options: the possibility of escaping with Baudin (General Lallemand was sent to confirm that Baudin was still prepared to risk the blockade); or leaving with Joseph, who arrived on the island on 13 July and who offered, generously under the circumstances, to stay on at Aix and play the part of Napoleon while his brother escaped to America. There appear to have been two cliques at work trying to influence Napoleon’s decision: those who were prepared to accept any risk rather than fall into the hands of the English; and those like Bertrand, Savary and Las Cases who, on the contrary, believed that surrender to the English was the best possible course of action.26 In fact, it would seem that Napoleon had already made up his mind. England appeared to offer him a helping hand, a choice that would enable him to leave France with the dignity by which he held so much store.

  At dawn, Napoleon sent Las Cases, this time with Lallemand, back to the Bellerophon to negotiate his surrender. The two went away from a discussion with Maitland under the mistaken impression that the Emperor would be free to pursue his voyage to the United States. Even then Lallemand made a last-ditch attempt to persuade Napoleon to escape using Baudin’s offer of the Bayadère. Had Napoleon been thinking all this time of Paoli, his one-time idol who had found asylum in England when he fled Corsica and French oppression? Napoleon may very well have been under the mistaken impression that because he was seeking asylum he would be granted it automatically, and that he would enjoy the same rights as any Englishman under the law.27