The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

Napoleon's Journey to Frejus—Voyage to Elba—his conduct and occupations there—Discontents in France—Return of Prisoners of War—Jealousy of the Army—Union of the Jacobins and Buonapartists—Their intrigues—Napoleon escapes from Elba.

Four commissioners, one from each of the great Allied Powers, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England, accompanied Buonaparte on his journey. He was attended by Bertrand, Grand Master of the Palace, and some other attached friends and servants; and while fourteen carriages were conveying him and his immediate suite towards Elba, 700 infantry and about 150 cavalry of the Imperial Guard (all picked men, and all volunteers), marched in the same direction, to take on them the military duties of the exiled court.

During the earlier part of his progress Napoleon continued to be received respectfully by the civil functionaries of the different towns and departments, and with many tokens of sympathy on the part of the people; and his personal demeanour was such as it had been wont to appear in his better days. At Valence he met Augereau, whose conduct during the campaign had moved his bitterest displeasure; the interview was short—the recriminations mutual, and, for the first time perhaps, the fallen Emperor heard himself addressed in that tone of equality and indifference to which, for so many years, he had been a stranger. Thenceforth the course of his journey carried him more and more deeply into the provinces wherein his name had never been popular, and contemptuous hootings began by degrees to be succeeded by clamours of fierce resentment. On more than one occasion the crowd had threatened personal violence when the horses were changing, and he appears to have exhibited alarm such as could hardly have been expected in one so familiar with all the dangers of warfare. But civil commotions, as we have seen in the case of the revolution of Brumaire, were not contemplated by Napoleon so calmly as the tumults of the field. At this time besides he was suffering under a bodily illness, the fruit of debauchery, which acts severely on the stoutest nerves. It is admitted on all hands that he showed more of uneasiness and anxiety than accords with the notion of a heroic character. At length he disguised himself, and sometimes appearing in an Austrian uniform, at others riding on before the carriages in the garb of a courier, reached in safety the place of embarkation.

A French vessel had been sent round from Toulon to Cannes, for the purpose of conveying him to Elba; but there happened to be an English frigate also in the roads, and he preferred sailing under any flag rather than the Bourbon. His equanimity seemed perfectly re-established from the moment when he set his foot on the British deck. He conversed affably with Captain Usher and the officers; and by the ease and plainness of his manners, his intelligent curiosity as to the arrangements of the ship, and the warm eulogies which he continued to pronounce on them, and on the character of the English nation at large, he succeeded in making a very favourable impression on all the crew—with the exception of Hinton, a shrewd old boatswain, who, unmoved by all the imperial blandishments, growled, at the close of every fine speech, the same homely comment, "humbug." Saving this hard veteran, the usual language of the forecastle was, that "Buonaparte was a very good fellow after all"; and when, on finally leaving the Undaunted, he caused some 200 Napoleons to be distributed among the sailors, they "wished his honour long life, and better luck the next time."

He came within view of his new dominions on the afternoon of the 4th of May, and went ashore in disguise the same evening, in order to ascertain for himself whether the feelings of the Elbese at all resembled those of the Provençals. Finding that, on the contrary, the people considered his residence as likely to increase in every way the consequence and prosperity of their island, he returned on board the ship, and at noon, the day after, made his public entrance into the town of Porto Ferraio, amidst all possible demonstrations of welcome and respect.

The Russian and Prussian commissioners did not accompany him beyond the coast of Provence: the Austrian Baron Kholer, and the English Sir Neil Campbell, landed with Napoleon, and took up their residence at Ferraio. He continued for some time to treat both of these gentlemen with every mark of distinction, and even cordiality: made them the companions of his table and excursions; and conversed with apparent openness and candour on the past, the present, and the future. "There is but one people in the world," said he to Colonel Campbell—"the English—the rest are only so many populaces. I tried to raise the French to your level of sentiment, and failing to do so, fell of course. I am now politically dead to Europe. Let me do what I can for Elba.... It must be confessed," said he, having climbed the hill above Ferraio, from whence he could look down on the whole of his territory as on a map—"it must be confessed," said the Emperor, smiling, "that my island is very small."

The island, however, was his; and, as on the eye itself a very small object near at hand fills a much greater space than the largest which is distant, so, in the mind of Napoleon, that was always of most importance in which his personal interests happened for the time to be most concerned. The island—mountainous and rocky, for the most part barren, and of a circumference not beyond sixty miles—was his; and the Emperor forthwith devoted to Elba the same anxious care and industry which had sufficed for the whole affairs of France, and the superintendence and control of half Europe besides. He, in less than three weeks, had explored every corner of the island, and projected more improvements of all sorts than would have occupied a long lifetime to complete. He even extended his empire by sending some dozen or two of his soldiers to take possession of a small adjacent islet, hitherto left unoccupied for fear of corsairs. He established four different residences at different corners of Elba, and was continually in motion from one to another of them. Wherever he was, in houses neither so large nor so well furnished as many English gentlemen are used to inhabit, all the etiquettes of the Tuileries were, as far as possible, adhered to; and Napoleon's eight or nine hundred veterans were reviewed as frequently and formally as if they had been the army of Austerlitz or of Moscow. His presence gave a new stimulus to the trade and industry of the islanders; the small port of Ferraio was crowded with vessels from the opposite coasts of Italy; and, such was still the power of his name, that the new flag of Elba (covered with Napoleon's bees), traversed with impunity the seas most infested with the Moorish pirates.

Buonaparte's eagerness as to architectural and other improvements was, ere long, however, checked in a manner sufficiently new to him—namely, by the want of money. The taxes of the island were summarily increased; but this gave rise to discontent among the Elbese, without replenishing at all adequately the Emperor's exchequer. Had the French government paid his pension in advance, or at least quarterly, as it fell due, even that would have borne a slender proportion to the demands of his magnificent imagination. But Napoleon received no money whatever from the Bourbon court; and his complaints on this head were unjustly and unwisely neglected. These new troubles embittered the spirit of the fallen Chief; and the first excitement of novelty being over he sank into a state of comparative indolence, and apparently of listless dejection; from which, however, he was, ere long, to be roused effectually, by the course of events in that great kingdom, almost in sight of whose shores he had been most injudiciously permitted to preserve the shadow of sovereign state.

Louis XVIII., advanced in years, gross and infirm in person, and devoted to the luxuries of the table, was, in spite of considerable talents and accomplishments, and a sincere desire to conciliate the affections, by promoting the interests, of all orders of his people, but ill-adapted for occupying, in such trying times, the throne which, even amidst all the blaze of genius and victory, Napoleon had at best found uneasy and insecure.[67] The King himself was, perhaps, less unpopular than almost any other member of his family; but it was his fatal misfortune, that while, on the whole, every day increased the bitterness of those who had never been sincerely his friends, it tended to chill the affections of the royalists who had partaken his exile, or laboured, ere success was probable, for his return.

Louis had been called to the throne by the French senate, in a decree which at the same time declared the legislative constitution, as composed of a hereditary sovereign and two houses of assembly, to be fixed and unchangeable; which confirmed the rights of all who had obtained property in consequence of the events of the Revolution, and the titles and orders conferred by Buonaparte: in a word, which summoned the Bourbon to ascend the throne of Napoleon—on condition that he should preserve that political system which Napoleon had violated. Louis, however, though he proceeded to France on this invitation, did not hesitate to date his first act in the twentieth year of his reign; and though he issued a charter, conferring, as from his own free will, every privilege which the senate claimed for themselves and the nation, this mode of commencement could not fail to give deep offence to those, not originally of his party, who had consented to his recall. These men saw, in such assumptions, the traces of those old doctrines of divine right, which they had through life abhorred and combated; and asked why, if all their privileges were but the gifts of the King, they might not, on any tempting opportunity, be withdrawn by the same authority? They, whose possessions and titles had all been won since the death of Louis XVI., were startled when they found, that, according to the royal doctrine, there had been no legitimate government all that time in France. The exiled nobles, meanwhile, were naturally the personal friends and companions of the restored princes: their illustrious names, and, we must add, their superior manners, could not fail to excite unpleasant feelings among the new-made dukes and counts of Buonaparte. Among themselves it was no wonder that expectations were cherished, and even avowed, of recovering gradually, if not rapidly, the estates of which the Revolution had deprived them. The churchmen, who had never gone heartily into Napoleon's ecclesiastical arrangements, sided of course with these impoverished and haughty lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the revolution of 1792.