It has been, pretended, even by some of his warmest admirers, that at this period the genius and energy of Napoleon had declined; and they sought in his tendency to corpulence, in his attacks of languor, in his long slumbers, the explanation of his ill fortune. I believe the reproach to be unfounded, and the pretext frivolous. I can discover in the mind or actions of Napoleon during the hundred days, no symptoms of infirmity; I find, in both, his accustomed superiority. The causes of his ultimate failure were of a deeper cast: he was not then, as he had long been, upheld and backed by general opinion, and the necessity of security and order felt throughout a great nation; he attempted, on the contrary, a mischievous work, a work inspired only by his own passions and personal wants, rejected by the morality and good sense, as well as by the true interests of France. He engaged in this utterly egotistical enterprise with contradictory means, and in an impossible position. From thence came the reverses he suffered, and the evil he produced.
It presented a strange spectacle to intelligent spectators, and one slightly tinged with the ridiculous, on both sides, to see Napoleon and the heads of the Liberal party arranged against each other, not to quarrel openly, but mutually to persuade, seduce, and control. A superficial glance sufficed to convince that there was little sincerity either in their dispute or reconciliation. Both well knew that the real struggle lay in other quarters, and that the question upon which their fate depended would be settled elsewhere than in these discussions.
If Napoleon had triumphed over Europe, assuredly he would not long have remained the rival of M. de La Fayette and the disciple of Benjamin Constant; but when he lost the day of Waterloo, M. de La Fayette and his friends set themselves to work to complete his overthrow.
From necessity and calculation, the true thoughts and passions of men are sometimes buried in the recesses of their hearts; but they quickly mount to the surface as soon as an opportunity occurs for their reappearing with success. Frequently did Napoleon resign himself, with infinite pliability, shrewdness, and perception, to the farce that he and the Liberals were playing together; at one moment gently, though obstinately, defending his old policy and real convictions; and at another yielding them up with good grace, but without positive renunciation, as if out of complaisance to opinions which he hesitated to acknowledge. But now and then, whether from premeditation or impatience, he violently resumed his natural character; and the despot, who was at once the child and conqueror of the Revolution, reappeared in complete individuality.
When an attempt was made to induce him to insert, in the Additional Act to the Constitutions of the Empire, the abolition of the confiscation proclaimed by the Charter of Louis XVIII., he exclaimed passionately, "They drive me into a path that is not my own; they enfeeble and enchain me. France will seek, and find me no longer. Her opinion of me was once excellent; it is now execrable. France demands what has become of the old arm of the Emperor, the arm which she requires to control Europe. Why talk to me of innate virtue, of abstract justice, of natural laws? The first law is necessity; the first principle of justice is public safety ... Every day has its evil, every circumstance its law, every man his own nature; mine is not that of an angel. When peace is made, we shall see." On another occasion, on this same question of preparing the Additional Act, and with reference to the institution of an hereditary peerage, he yielded to the excursive rapidity of his mind, taking the subject by turns under different aspects, and giving unlimited vent to contradictory observations and opinions. "Hereditary peerage," said he, "is opposed to the present state of public opinion; it will wound the pride of the army, deceive the expectations of the partisans of equality, and raise against myself a thousand individual claims. Where do you wish me to look for the elements of that aristocracy which the peerage demands?... Nevertheless a constitution without an aristocracy resembles a balloon lost in the air. A ship is guided because there are two powers which balance each other; the helm finds a fulcrum. But a balloon is the sport of a single power; it has no fulcrum. The wind carries it where it will, and control is impossible."
When the question of principle was decided, and the nomination of his hereditary house of peers came under consideration, Napoleon was anxious to include many names from amongst the old Royalists; but after mature reflection, he renounced this idea, "not," says Benjamin Constant, "without regret," and exclaimed, "We must have them sooner or later; but memories are too recent. Let us wait until after the battle—they will be with me if I prove the strongest."
He would thus willingly have deferred all questions, and have done nothing until he came back a conqueror; but with the Restoration liberty once more re-entered France, and he himself had again woke up the Revolution. He found himself in conflict with these two forces, constrained to tolerate, and endeavouring to make use of them, until the moment should arrive when he might conquer both.
He had no sooner adopted all the pledges of liberty that the Additional Act borrowed from the Charter, than he found he had still to deal with another ardent desire, another article of faith, of the Liberals, still more repugnant to his nature. They demanded an entirely new constitution, which should confer on him the Imperial crown by the will of the nation, and on the conditions which that will prescribed. This was, in fact, an attempt to remodel, in the name of the sovereign people, the entire form of government, institutional and dynastic; an arrogant and chimerical mania which, a year before, had possessed the Imperial Senate when they recalled Louis XVIII., and which has vitiated in their source nearly all the political theories of our time.
Napoleon, while incessantly proclaiming the supremacy of the people, viewed it in a totally different light. "You want to deprive me of my past," said he, to his physicians; "I desire to preserve it. What becomes then of my reign of eleven years? I think I have some right to call it mine; and Europe knows that I have. The new constitution must be joined to the old one; it will thus acquire the sanction of many years of glory and success."
He was right: the abdication demanded of him was more humiliating than that of Fontainebleau; for, in restoring the throne to him, they at the same time compelled him to deny himself and his immortal history. By refusing this, he performed an act of rational pride; and in the preamble as well as in the name of the Additional Act, he upheld the old Empire, while he consented to modified reforms. When the day of promulgation arrived, on the 1st of June, at the Champ de Mai, his fidelity to the Imperial traditions was less impressive and less dignified. He chose to appear before the people with all the outward pomp of royalty, surrounded by the princes of his family arrayed in garments of white taffeta, by the great dignitaries, in orange-coloured mantles, by his chamberlains and pages:—a childish attachment to palatial splendour, which accorded ill with the state of public affairs, and deeply disgusted public feeling, when, in the midst of this glittering pageant, twenty thousand soldiers were seen to march past and salute the Emperor, on their road to death.