The frightful combination of forces closed about him steadily, with the deadly precision of the chamber of torture, whose adjustable walls imperceptibly, but surely, draw together, day by day, until the victim is crushed. On the 30th of March Paris capitulated. The day before, the Regent Marie Louise with the King of Rome and her suite had left the city for Blois. The allied sovereigns entered Paris on the 1st of April. As they passed through the streets, they saw multiplying, as they advanced, the white cockades which the grandes dames of the Faubourg St. Germain had been making in anticipation of the entrance of the foreigner, and the only cries which greeted them as they passed up the boulevards were, “Long live the Bourbons! Long live the sovereigns! Long live the Emperor Alexander.”
The allies were in Paris, but Napoleon was not crushed. Encamped at Fontainebleau, his army about him, the soldiers everywhere faithful to him, he had still a large chance of victory, and the allies looked with uneasiness to see what move he would make. It was due largely to the wit of Talleyrand that the standing ground which remained to the emperor was undermined. That wily diplomat, whose place it was to have gone with the empress to Blois, had succeeded in getting himself shut into Paris, and, on the entry of the allies, had joined Alexander, whom he had persuaded to announce that the allied powers would not treat with Napoleon nor with any member of his family. This was eliminating the most difficult factor from the problem. By his fine tact Talleyrand brought over the legislative bodies to this view.
From the populace Alexander and Talleyrand feared nothing; it was too exhausted to ask anything but peace. Their most serious difficulty was the army. All over the country the cry of the common soldiers was, “Let us go to the emperor.” “The army,” declared Alexander, “is always the army; as long as it is not with you, gentlemen, you can boast of nothing. The army represents the French nation; if it is not won over, what can you accomplish that will endure?”
Every influence of persuasion, of bribery, of intimidation, was used with the soldiers and generals. They were told in phrases which could not but flatter them; “You are the most noble of the children of the country, and you cannot belong to the man who has laid it waste.... You are no longer the soldiers of Napoleon; the Senate and all France release you from your oaths.”
The older officers on Napoleon’s staff at Fontainebleau were unsettled by adroit communications sent from Paris. They were made to believe that they were fighting against the will of the nation and of their comrades. When this disaffection had become serious, one of Napoleon’s oldest and most trusted associates, Marmont, suddenly deserted. He led the vanguard of the army. This treachery took away the last hope of the imperial cause, and on April 11, 1814, Napoleon signed the act of abdication at Fontainebleau. The act read:
“The allied powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is the only obstacle to the reëstablishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, even that of his life, which he is not ready to make in the interest of France.”
For only a moment did the gigantic will waver under the shock of defeat, of treachery, and of abandonment. Uncertain of the fate of his wife and child, himself and his family denounced by the allies, his army scattered, he braved everything until Marmont deserted him, and he saw one after another of his trusted officers join his enemies; then for a moment he gave up the fight and tried to end his life. The poison he took had lost its full force, and he recovered from its effects. Even death would have none of him, he groaned.
But this discouragement was brief. No sooner was it decided that his future home should be the island of Elba, and that its affairs should be under his control, than he began to prepare for the journey to his little kingdom with the same energy and zest which had characterized him as emperor. On the 20th of April he left the palace of Fontainebleau.
NAPOLEON AT FONTAINEBLEAU THE EVENING AFTER HIS ABDICATION, APRIL 11, 1814.