Napoleon Bonaparte, therefore, had now attained his object; he had reestablished the throne in France; he had placed a crown on his head. More fortunate than Caesar, he had met with no Brutus at the steps of his throne, but had ascended it without being hindered, amidst the acclamations of France, which called him her emperor; amidst the acclamations of Italy, which called him her king, and had willingly cast aside her title of Cisalpine Republic in order to become the kingdom of Lombardy, and to adorn Napoleon at Milan with the iron crown of the old Lombard sovereigns.
Napoleon had just returned to France from this coronation at Milan, and repaired to the vast camp at Boulogne, where an army comprising a hundred and fifty thousand infantry and ninety thousand cavalry, eager for the fray, were waiting for the word of Napoleon which was to call them forth to new struggles and new victories.
The immense rows of the soldiers’ tents extended far across the plain and along the sea-shore, and in the centre of this city of tents, on the spot where lately the traces of a camp of Julius Caesar had been discovered, there arose the emperor’s tent, looking out on the ocean, on the shore of which the ships and gunboats of France were moored, while the immense forest of the masts and flags of the British fleet was to be seen in the distance.
But this forest of British masts did not frighten the French army; the soldiers, as well as the sailors, were eager for the fray, and looked with fiery impatience for the moment when the emperor would at length raise his voice and utter the longed-for words: “On to England! Let us vanquish England as we have vanquished the whole of Europe!”
No one doubted that the emperor purposed to utter these words, and that this camp of Boulogne, this fleet manned with soldiers and bristling with guns, were solely intended against England, the hereditary foe of France.
The emperor, however, hesitated to utter those decisive words. He distributed among the soldiers the first crosses of the Legion of Honor; he drilled the troops; he accepted the festivals and balls which the city of Boulogne gave in his honor; he stood for hours on the sea-shore or on the tower of his barrack, and with his spy-glass looked out on the sea and over to the English ships; but his lips did not open to utter the decisive words; the schemes which filled his breast and clouded his brow were a secret, the solution of which was looked for with equal impatience by his generals and by his soldiers.
It was a delightful morning; a cool breeze swept from the sea through the tents of the camp, and, after the preceding spell of debilitating hot weather, exerted a most refreshing and invigorating effect upon the languishing soldiers. The sun which had scorched every thing for the last few days, was to-day gently veiled by small, whitish clouds, which, far on the horizon, seemed to arise, like swans, from the sea toward the sky, and to hasten with outspread wings toward the sun.
The emperor, whom the warm weather of the last few days had prevented from riding out, ordered his horse to be brought to him. He wished to make a trip to the neighboring villages, but no one was to accompany him except Roustan, his colored servant.
In front of the emperor’s barrack there stood, however, all the generals and staff-officers, all the old comrades of Napoleon, the men who had shared his campaigns and his glory, who had joyfully recognized the great chieftain as their emperor and master, and who wished to do him homage to-day, as they were in the habit of doing every morning so soon as he left his barrack. Napoleon, however, saluted them to-day only with a silent wave of his hand and an affable smile. He seemed pensive and absorbed, and no one dared to disturb him by a sound, by a word. Amid the solemn stillness of this brilliant gathering, the emperor walked to his horse, who, less timid and respectful than the men, greeted his master with a loud neigh and a nodding of the head, and commenced impatiently stamping on the ground. [Footnote: Napoleon’s favorite horse, who always manifested in this manner his delight on seeing his illustrious master.—Constant, vol. ii., p. 81.]
The emperor took the bridle which Roustan handed to him and vaulted into the saddle. He raised his sparkling eye toward the sky and then lowered it to the sea with its rocking ships.