It is a curious spectacle—Napoleon amusing himself with Elba, as if it were a big toy. One day he increases his standing army, the next he annexes a neighboring island. His mother and some of his family are with him, but Maria Louisa has returned to her father with the little King of Rome.
But Napoleon and his friends have been making their plans, and we are dazzled, as the world was then, by his rapid march across France, by the demonstrations of his soldiers and the vigor of the short, sharp campaign and the greatness of Wellington's victory. Yet Quatre Bras and Waterloo are soon overshadowed by the rock of St. Helena.
Betsy Balcombe, Napoleon's young neighbor, well knew the story of Napoleon. She could see as plainly as we can to-day the pictures revealed in the panorama of his life. Perhaps she stood too near him, perhaps she was too young to draw the lesson that we of to-day draw from his meteoric career. Perhaps her sympathy for him in all that he had to bear at St. Helena blinded her to the fact that he was himself to a certain extent to blame for his own downfall. He reached too far, his ambition was too great. As First Consul, depending on the votes of the people, he might have been stronger than he was as Emperor. The good that he did France was fairly balanced by the fearful loss of life in his long wars.
Napoleon's one thought was to carry out his own plans without counting the cost in men. Yet putting aside the question of the vast loss of life in his wars and the sorrow that resulted, we may see that his career was not wholly bad for Europe.
Although ambition and selfishness may have prompted much that he did, he really wished to promote the welfare of France. To-day that country is farther ahead than would have been possible but for Napoleon. Many of the institutions that have most advanced her originated with the First Emperor. Other countries besides France benefited by Napoleon's energy. He showed several of them how to realize their ideals of independence.
It is true that the constitutions he gave to various states of Europe—as well as to France—after his downfall were for a time cancelled. Still, in the end, his ideas prevailed, and except for Napoleon not only a French Republic would have been slower in establishing itself, but also a free Italy, and even a United Germany might have arrived less quickly.
The sadness of Napoleon's last years modified the judgments of many who had been his bitter enemies. His personal charm made those who knew him forget the general selfishness of his whole career. Yet in weighing all that can be said for and against him, it would be unfair to have the balance against him. That Napoleon whom Betsy Balcombe knew at The Briars—fun-loving and considerate of those about him—was as truly Napoleon as the man before whom many had trembled—whom his enemies had so criticised—to look at him as his young neighbor looked at him is to understand a little the secret of his influence.