When the French had advanced a long distance into Russia, the Russian general named Kutusoff offered them battle in a place called Borodino. It was a stubborn and bloody conflict, and more lives were lost both by the Russians and by the French than in any previous battle Napoleon had engaged in. The Russians then continued to retreat and Napoleon entered Moscow on the Fourteenth of September, 1812.
Here the French believed that they would find respite from the hardships that they had encountered, and sufficient food and grain to feed their army. But their hopes were short lived, and in Moscow a great disaster befell them. Flames broke out in the city on the first night of their occupation, and were extinguished with difficulty. On the next night fires were kindled by hidden Russians in a hundred different places, and at last the city was a sea of flames in which no man could live. Napoleon had gained nothing by his invasion except to conquer a devastated country, and now, with winter coming on, he was compelled to retreat again toward the Russian frontier.
The plight of the French army had become fearful. Without food and with insufficient clothing they were compelled to face the rigors of a Russian winter. As they retreated the Russians followed them and bands of wild Cossacks harassed their rear and their flanks, cutting off and killing any stragglers. Even the Russian peasants took part in the pursuit, and slew the exhausted French with their flails and cudgels. Thousands of soldiers froze to death. In crossing the Beresina River thousands more drowned. When they approached the frontier Napoleon left the pitiful remnant of his shattered army to Marshal Ney, one of the bravest of his generals, while he himself in a swift sleigh hastened to Paris to raise another army before all Europe knew of what had happened—for as soon as they did know they would take up arms against him, thinking that in his weakened condition they could overthrow his power. Of the four hundred thousand that entered Russia only twenty thousand returned. More than a third of a million brave men had left their bones on the chill snows and iron earth of the land they sought to humble.
Uprisings, alliances and campaigns by the hitherto beaten nations followed. Napoleon won the battle of Lutzen, but the English Duke of Wellington defeated the French at Vittoria. At last in the great battle of Leipzig in October, 1813, the French were routed.
In the following year the Allies made ready to crush Napoleon. He was now on the defensive with enemies hemming him in on every side, and although he fought a brilliant campaign it was hopeless. On April 11, 1814, Napoleon was compelled to resign the crown, and obliged to go into exile; and the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea was chosen as the place for him to end his days.
For the last time before his exile, Napoleon addressed his soldiers in farewell, and the tears ran down the rough cheeks of the veterans as they bade good-by to the man who had so often led them to victory. And then Napoleon passed through southern France on his way to Elba amid the hisses and execrations of his people, who had already forgotten the victories he had won for France and thought now only of their misery and the dear ones they had lost on the barren snow fields of Russia.
Instead of Napoleon the brother of the former king, Louis the Sixteenth, was placed on the throne of France—an old, fat, wheezy man of no particular ability. It seemed as if the great conqueror were downed at last.
But Napoleon intended differently. As he stayed at Elba surrounded by a little court and with the title of Emperor which the Allies had allowed him to keep, he kept looking toward the coast of France and plotting how to return. It is more than probable that his life was in danger at Elba. At all events he found the life intolerable, and desired once again to play the leading part in European affairs.
In the meantime the French people grew weary of fat old Louis the Eighteenth, whose name of "Louis Dix Huit" was changed by the French as a joke into "Louis Des Huitres," or Louis of the Oysters, so fond was the old gourmand of his shellfish. They began to sigh for Napoleon and look forward to the spring when they hoped he might be able to escape from his island of confinement and rejoin his soldiers in Paris. And this very thing soon happened.
Napoleon made a successful plan to escape from Elba and was concealed on a ship bound for France. And on the short trip back to the French coast he gave a striking example of his remarkable coolness and the certainty in which he held his future fortune. A passing vessel hailed his ship, asking, among other things, what was the latest news of the Emperor. Napoleon, who was too far off to be recognized, laughingly took the speaking trumpet from the captain's hand and shouted back: "The Emperor is very well." And both vessels passed on their way.