The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

Napoleon lands at Cannes—his progress to Grenoble—Lyons—Fontainebleau—Treason of Labedoyere and Ney—Louis XVIII. retires to Ghent, and Napoleon arrives in Paris.

The evening before Napoleon sailed (February the 26th), his sister Pauline gave a ball, to which all the officers of the Elbese army were invited. A brig (the Inconstant) and six small craft, had meanwhile been prepared for the voyage, and at dead of night, without apparently any previous intimation, the soldiery were mustered by tuck of drum, and found themselves on board ere they could ask for what purpose. When the day broke, they perceived that all the officers and the Emperor himself were with them, and that they were steering for the coast of France; and it could no longer be doubtful that the scheme which had for months formed the darling object of all their hopes and dreams was about to be realised.

Sir Neil Campbell, who had been absent on an excursion to Leghorn, happened to return to Porto Ferraio almost as soon as the flotilla had quitted it. The mother and sister of Buonaparte in vain endeavoured to persuade the English officer that he had steered toward the coast of Barbary. He pursued instantly towards Provence, in the Partridge, which attended his orders, and came in sight of the fugitive armament exactly when it was too late. Ere then Napoleon had encountered almost an equal hazard. A French ship of war had crossed his path; but the Emperor made all his soldiery lie flat on the decks, and the steersman of the Inconstant, who happened to be well acquainted with the commanding officer, had received and answered the usual challenge without exciting any suspicion. Thus narrowly escaped the flotilla which carried "Cæsar and his fortune."

On the 1st of March he was once more off Cannes—the same spot which had received him from Egypt, and at which he had embarked ten months before for Elba. There was no force whatever to oppose his landing; and his handful of men—500 grenadiers of the guard, 200 dragoons, and 100 Polish lancers, these last without horses, and carrying their saddles on their backs—were immediately put in motion on the road to Paris. Twenty-five grenadiers which he detached to summon Antibes were arrested on the instant by the governor of that place; but he despised this omen, and proceeded without a pause. He bivouacked that night in a plantation of olives, with all his men about him. As soon as the moon rose, the réveille sounded. A labourer going thus early afield, recognised the Emperor's person, and, with a cry of joy, said he had served in the army of Italy, and would join the march. "Here is already a reinforcement," said Napoleon; and the march recommenced. Early in the morning they passed through the town of Grasse, and halted on the height beyond it—where the whole population of the place forthwith surrounded them, some cheering, the great majority looking on in perfect silence, but none offering any show of opposition. The roads were so bad in this neighbourhood, that the pieces of cannon which they had with them were obliged to be abandoned in the course of the day, but they had marched full twenty leagues ere they halted for the night at Cerenon. On the 5th, Napoleon reached Gap. He was now in Dauphiny, called "The cradle of the Revolution," and the sullen silence of the Provençals was succeeded by popular acclamations; but still no troops had joined him—and his anxiety was great.

It was at Gap that he published his first proclamations; one "To the Army," another "To the French people," both no doubt prepared at Elba, though dated "March 1st, Gulf of Juan." The former, and more important of the two, ran in these words—"Soldiers! we have not been beaten. Two men, raised from our ranks,[69] betrayed our laurels, their country, their prince, their benefactor. In my exile I have heard your voice. I have arrived once more among you, despite all obstacles, and all perils. We ought to forget that we have been the masters of the world; but we ought never to suffer foreign interference in our affairs. Who dares pretend to be master over us? Take again the eagles which you followed at Ulm, at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Montmirail. Come and range yourselves under the banners of your old chief. Victory shall march at the charging step. The Eagle, with the national colours, shall fly from steeple to steeple—on to the towers of Notre Dame! In your old age, surrounded and honoured by your fellow-citizens, you shall be heard with respect when you recount your high deeds. You shall then say with pride—I also was one of that great army which entered twice within the walls of Vienna, which took Rome, and Berlin, and Madrid, and Moscow—and which delivered Paris from the stain printed on it by domestic treason, and the occupation of strangers."

It was between Mure and Vizele that Cambronne, who commanded his advanced guard of forty grenadiers, met suddenly a battalion sent forwards from Grenoble to arrest the march. The colonel refused to parley with Cambronne; either party halted until Napoleon himself came up. He did not hesitate for a moment. He dismounted, and advanced alone; some paces behind him came a hundred of his guard, with their arms reversed. There was perfect silence on all sides until he was within a few yards of the men. He then halted, threw open his surtout so as to show the star of the Legion of Honour, and exclaimed, "If there be among you a soldier who desires to kill his general—his Emperor—let him do it now. Here I am."—The old cry of Vive l'Empereur burst instantaneously from every lip. Napoleon threw himself among them, and taking a veteran private, covered with chevrons and medals, by the whisker, said, "Speak honestly, old Moustache, couldst thou have had the heart to kill thy Emperor?" The man dropped his ramrod into his piece to show that it was uncharged, and answered, "Judge if I could have done thee much harm—all the rest are the same." Napoleon gave the word, and the old adherents, and the new, marched together on Grenoble.

Some space ere they reached that town, Colonel Labedoyere, an officer of noble family, and who had been promoted by Louis XVIII., appeared on the road before them, at the head of his regiment, the seventh of the line. These men, and the Emperor's little column, on coming within view of each other, rushed simultaneously from their ranks, and embraced with mutual shouts of Live Napoleon! Live the Guard! Live the Seventh! Labedoyere produced an eagle, which he had kept concealed about his person, and broke open a drum which was found to be filled with tricolor cockades; these ancient ensigns were received with redoubled enthusiasm. This was the first instance of an officer of superior rank voluntarily espousing the side of the invader. The impulse thus afforded was decisive; in spite of all the efforts of General Marchand, Commandant of Grenoble, the whole of that garrison, when he approached the walls, exclaimed Vive l'Empereur! Their conduct, however, exhibited a singular spectacle. Though thus welcoming Napoleon with their voices, they would not so far disobey the governor as to throw open the gates. On the other hand no argument could prevail on them to fire on the advancing party. In the teeth of all the batteries, Buonaparte calmly planted a howitzer or two, and blew the gates open, and then, as if the spell of discipline were at once dissolved, the garrison broke from their lines, and he in an instant found himself dragged from his horse, and borne aloft on these men's shoulders towards the principal inn of the place, amidst the clamours of enthusiastic and delirious joy. Marchand remained faithful to his oath; and was dismissed without injury. Next morning the authorities of Grenoble waited on Napoleon, and tendered their homage. He reviewed his troops, now about 7000 in numbers, and on the 9th recommenced his march.

On the 10th, Buonaparte came within sight of Lyons, and was informed that Monsieur and Marshal Macdonald had arrived to take the command, barricaded the bridge of Guillotierre, and posted themselves at the head of a large force to dispute the entrance of the town. Nothing daunted with this intelligence, the column moved on, and at the bridge of Lyons, as at the gates of Grenoble, all opposition vanished when his person was recognised by the soldiery. The Prince and Macdonald were forced to retire, and Napoleon entered the second city of France in triumph. A guard of mounted gentlemen had been formed among the citizens to attend on the person of Monsieur. These were among the foremost to offer their services to the Emperor, after he reached his hotel. Surrounded by his own soldiery, and by a manufacturing population, whom the comparatively free admission of English goods after the peace of Paris had filled with fear and discontent, and who now welcomed the great enemy of England with rapturous acclamations, Napoleon could afford to reject the assistance of these faithless cavaliers. He dismissed them with contempt; but finding that one of their number had followed Monsieur until his person was out of all danger, immediately sent to that individual the cross of the Legion of Honour.

This revolution had been proceeding during more than a week, ere the gazettes of Paris ventured to make any allusion to its existence. There then appeared a royal ordonnance, proclaiming Napoleon Buonaparte an outlaw, and convoking on the instant the two chambers. Next day the Moniteur announced that, surrounded on all hands by faithful garrisons and a loyal population, this outlaw was already stripped of most of his followers, wandering in despair among the hills, and certain to be a prisoner within two or three days at the utmost. The Moniteur, however, was no very decisive authority in 1815, any more than in 1814; and the public mind continued full of uncertainty, as to the motives and every circumstance of this unparalleled adventure. Monsieur, meanwhile, had departed, we have seen with what success, to Lyons; the Duke of Angouleme was already at Marseilles, organising the loyal Provençals, and preparing to throw himself on Grenoble and cut off the retreat of Buonaparte; and Louis continued to receive addresses full of loyalty and devotion from the public bodies of Paris, from towns, and departments, and, above all, from the marshals, generals, and regiments who happened to be near the capital.

This while, however, the partisans of Napoleon in Paris were far more active than the royalists. They gave out everywhere that, as the proclamation from the Gulf of Juan had stated, Buonaparte was come back thoroughly cured of that ambition which had armed Europe against his throne; that he considered his act of abdication void, because the Bourbons had not accepted the crown on the terms on which it was offered, and had used their authority in a spirit, and for purposes, at variance with the feelings and the interests of the French people; that he was come to be no longer the dictator of a military despotism, but the first citizen of a nation which he had resolved to make the freest of the free; that the royal government wished to extinguish by degrees all memory of the revolution—that he was returning to consecrate once more the principles of liberty and equality, ever hateful in the eyes of the old nobility of France, and to secure the proprietors of forfeited estates against all the machinations of that dominant faction; in a word, that he was fully sensible to the extent of his past errors, both of domestic administration and of military ambition, and desirous of nothing but the opportunity of devoting, to the true welfare of peaceful France, those unrivalled talents and energies which he had been rash enough to abuse in former days. With these suggestions they mingled statements perhaps still more audacious. According to them, Napoleon had landed with the hearty approbation of the Austrian court, and would be instantly rejoined by the Empress and his son. The Czar also was friendly; even England had been sounded ere the adventure began, and showed no disposition to hazard another war for the sake of the Bourbons. The King of Prussia, indeed, remained hostile—but France was not sunk so low as to dread that state single-handed. It was no secret, ere this time, that some disputes of considerable importance had sprung up among the great powers whose representatives were assembled at Vienna; and such was the rash credulity of the Parisians, that the most extravagant exaggerations and inventions which issued from the saloon of the Duchess de St. Leu (under which name Hortense Beauharnois, wife of Louis Buonaparte, had continued to reside in Paris)—and from other circles of the same character, found, to a certain extent, credence. There was one tale which ran louder and louder from the tongue of every Buonapartist, and which royalist and republican found, day after day, new reason to believe; namely, that the army were, high and low, on the side of Napoleon; that every detachment sent to intercept him, would but swell his force; in a word, that—unless the people were to rise en masse—nothing could prevent the outlaw from taking possession of the Tuileries ere a fortnight more had passed over the head of Louis.