He had, in fact, scarcely landed before he began to take possession of his new dominions, as a good monarch should do, and had soon visited the places of importance in Elba and its dependant isles. His corpulence rendered climbing and even walking difficult, but his active spirit overcame all difficulties; and the Elbans who met him, his officers and attendants, continually on the roads and mountain paths, felt quite convinced that the Emperor was devoting himself to their welfare.
One of his first expeditions brought vividly before him the extent of his fall. He had visited all the forts and surroundings of Portoferraio, had collected information concerning the salt manufacture (a Government monopoly) and the tunny fishery; and turning to the left from the land gate of Portoferraio, had pushed as far as the iron mines of Rio—then, as now, Government property—and the fort of Longone; but he had not yet climbed the hills that shut in his capital at the back. These are crossed by a few bridle-paths and by a road, sheer up and down, paved now with the native rock, now with loose, rolling stones, and known as the Colle Reciso. About half-way up the Portoferraio side of this road, a breakneck path leads to the right, up the face of a hill called St. Lucia, whence the Etruscans once drew copper for their bronze. The Emperor, Colonel Campbell, General Bertrand, and their attendants, riding to the top of this hill, found themselves among the ruins of a very large ancient castle. The towers lie prone in enormous masses of masonry, the walls have partly fallen in, partly been quarried for surrounding buildings; of roof there is no trace; the place is simply a large grass-grown square surrounded by naked, ruined blocks of masonry. Not quite abandoned, either, for in one corner is a tiny church with a couple of rooms built on to it in which a hermit once lived and died. Here the party halted and looked round. They were dominating the narrowest part of the island. Right and left the hills stretch away in barren, fantastic peaks now crowned with ruins, now sheer with granite cliffs; before and behind the sea is visible in four different places. Napoleon looked around for a little while, taking in the principal points of the landscape, and then, turning to Campbell, said, with a quiet smile:—“Eh, mon île est bien petite.”
Later on he would often follow the Colle Reciso down into the fertile, vine-covered plain of Lacona, which lies at its foot on the southern side. The conditions here, even now, are truly patriarchal. The mountains form a semi-circle about the coast; and in the midst stands the proprietor’s villa surrounded by eucalyptus trees, prickly-pears and aloes—an island among the spreading vineyards. To see the contadini waiting at the well for the master, his arrival with his family, and the respectful familiarity with which they take their orders from their padrone, is to get a glimpse into old world ways and ideas such as does not fall to the lot of everyone.
From this plain springs the headland known as Capo di Stella. It is narrow and low at its base, but rises and swells as it advances into the sea, and becomes a wild rocky hill, with sheer precipices down to the water, covered with lentisks, with aromatic herbs, with great silvery shining thorn-bushes known to the inhabitants as prune caprine. It is the home of hares and innumerable birds. Here Napoleon proposed to make a preserve for game; and actually went the length of arranging matters with the proprietor, Jacopo Foresi, and of making some show of beginning the wall which was to span the isthmus, cutting off the headland from the rest of the estate. Needless to say that the game on Capo di Stella was not in reality profoundly interesting to Napoleon, and that the plan was never carried out. There is an incident recounted of the Emperor in these parts, commemorated by an inscription affixed by the present proprietor, Mario Foresi, to the walls of the house of one of his peasants. A certain Giaconi was ploughing when Napoleon came along, and in his character of one interested in everything, took the ploughshare out of the man’s hands and attempted to guide it himself. But the oxen refused to obey him, overturned the share and spoilt the furrow. Foresi’s inscription runs as follows:
napoleone il grande
quivi passando nel MDCCCXIV.
tolto nel campo adiacente l’aratro d’un contadino
provavasi egli stesso ad arare
ma i bovi rebelli a quelle mani
che pur seppero infrenare l’europa
precipitosamente
fuggirono dal solco.[14]
Farther along the coast, to the west of Lacona, and separated from it by a semi-circle of almost pathless hills, is the beach and village of Campo, where are extensive granite quarries. To this place also Napoleon paid several visits, and caused a road to be made winding round the base of the hills and joining it with Portoferraio. Must he not develop the resources of his island by providing for the carriage of its granite? Or rather, would not such a road be extremely convenient for keeping up communication with the outlying island of Pianosa, where he was collecting troops and training cavalry? The room where Napoleon passed the night on one of his visits to the village is still shown; an old man, too, blear-eyed and tottering, is listened to with a certain respect by the villagers as he relates how he was nursed and caressed by the Emperor. His father had been a sailor in one of Napoleon’s fleets, had been taken prisoner by Nelson, had spent many years in England, had been ultimately accepted as a sailor on an English ship, and had made his escape from Genoa. Napoleon visited the man, made him relate his experiences, and showed himself affable with the children, as was his general way in Elba.
Most thickly do reminiscences of Napoleon cluster round the lovely village of Marciana. The road leading westwards from Portoferraio skirts the seashore. On the left hand rise cliffs densely overgrown with white heather; below, on the right, lies the shore in a succession of bewitching bays and headlands. A ride of between two and three hours brings one to a village lying along a graceful curve, backed by dense chestnut woods, over which hang the frowning precipices of Monte Capanne, the highest mountain in the island. This is Marciana Marina. Behind it a steep, boulder-paved path, running along a ridge above the chestnut woods, where cicale sing all day long to the sound of falling waters, leads to Marciana Alta, a fortified place defended once by a huge castle. The castle is now a mere shell within which fowls are penned; they pick up a living among the heaps of débris, and drink out of the two halves of the large iron crown which once hung proudly above the Medici arms. To the right of Marciana Alta, a long Via Crucis leads to a church known as the Madonna del Monte. The road is absolutely breakneck, formed of blocks of stone, which devout visitors to the shrine have hammered into the soil at their somewhat eccentric pleasure. The church is one of the richest in the island, possessing beautiful massive silver chalices and lamps, rich vestments, vineyards and fields. It stands in a wood of magnificent chestnut trees, and has at the back a charming semi-circular wall of grey stone, divided by pilasters into three sections, each of which contains an ancient stone mask spouting the coldest, lightest of water. Close by the church is a little house in which a lay hermit lives. What wonder that Napoleon should take a liking to so picturesque a place, renowned throughout the island for the excellence of its air and its water? What wonder that he should love to retire thither, and to wander through the woods to the truculent little village of Poggio that stands up so defiantly on its granite prominence? That he should even like to picnic on the road in the fold of the hills where the five springs keep up a continuous splashing? That he should choose this place to receive that mysterious lady (in reality, the Polish Countess Walewsky) whom the unlucky mayor of Marciana wanted to fête as no less a person than the Empress Marie Louise in person? Surely all this was harmless and natural enough. But follow up the path that leads off to the right of the hermitage, pass out of the shade of the trees and across the granite boulders to the promontory that commands the coast of Elba, the mainland, and Corsica. There two huge masses of rock tower above their comrades. Between them is a little stairway, partly natural, partly artificial, which leads to the top of the outer rock. This presents a natural platform shielded along part of its length by a natural parapet. The parapet has been added to with brickwork, and a deep hole big enough to hold a large flagstaff has been driven into the platform. This was a favourite resort of Napoleon’s. What place could be better for taking the air? And what place could be better for signalling to Corsica, the window-panes of whose villages glitter at so short a distance? As a matter of fact it is some thirty-five miles away; but in the limpid atmosphere of this “isle of the blessed,” distance, like time, seems to be annihilated. Here then, like the hero of Balzac’s tale, would the prodigal sit gazing at his peau de chagrin, now so wofully shrunken, and scheming for some way to reverse the spell and restore it to its former amplitude. Vain dream! from which he was finally awakened by the rude shock of Waterloo. After Napoleon left the island, the people of Marciana put up a pompous inscription on the outer wall of the church. It runs as follows:—
napoleone I
vinti gli imperi
i regi resi vassalli
da rutenici geli soprappreso non dalle armi
in questo eremo
per lui trasformato in reggia abitava
dal 23 agosto al 14 settembre 1814
e ritemprato il genio immortale
il 24 febbraio 1815
da qui slanciossi a meravigliare di se
novellamente il mondo.
il municipio di marciana
con animo grato e riverente
a tanto nome
decretava di erigere questa memoria
il 18 febbraio, 1863.[15]