The retreat of Napoleon, after the battle of Leipsic, was as disastrous to him as his retreat from Moscow. On the 9th of November, 1813, he reached Paris, and on the 21st of the following month the allied armies crossed the Rhine, and carried the war into France. Soon after, the English, under Wellington, defeated the French, under Soult—“the bravest of the brave,” in several engagements in the South of France, until the knell of Napoleon’s arms was sounded in the bloody battle of Toulouse, fought on Easter Sunday, the 11th of April, 1814. Six days before the battle, Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau. If the electric telegraph had been known in those days, all the lives lost in that fearful fight might have been saved. But
that would have been a small matter to Napoleon.
The war was ended. That long, weary war—so wanton, so unnecessary, save for Europe’s liberty, and England’s existence—that had left its trail of blood almost everywhere, and desolated so many thousands of homes, was ended.
To many and many a poor prisoner, the year 1814 must have been like the blessed year of jubilee. Two hundred thousand Frenchmen were set free in Russia alone: but they had not been in confinement for very long. In continental countries there must have been many more. Some fifty thousand were located in various parts of England and Scotland, of whom a large number had been imprisoned for several years, and they were no doubt the most joyous of all.
But it must have been anything but an easy matter even to get rid of such numbers of men, all in a state of more or less excitement, intoxicated
with a sense of newly gained liberty. Without proper precautions an emancipation on so large a scale would have led to much disorder, at least in the neighbourhood where prisoners had been confined. To avoid this they were marched off in detachments to the sea-coast, where ships were ordered to attend and embark them for conveyance to their own dear France.
Such necessary arrangements of course took time, and it was not until August that the last batch of prisoners left Norman Cross.
Of course, the poor fellows were aware of the great change in their condition that was coming by what they gathered from the current news of the day; yet, whenever the actual proclamation of liberty reached them, we can but faintly imagine the delirium of excitement that followed. Then, in the place where for so many years the sighing of the prisoners had been heard, mingled, it might be, with the sound of revelry, in which the wretched tried to drown their misery, pealed
forth the shouts of those who sang for very joy and gladness of heart.
Poivre was still among them. That man of the revolution, like many others of the older prisoners, had learned something by his captivity. He used to think, and with too much reason, that the rich and high-born were the vultures that preyed on the poor; but now he had discovered that one risen from the ranks might be as heartless and oppressive as “Monsieur” of old, and be utterly indifferent how many lives were lost, and how many imprisoned for years, to gain his own selfish ends.