PLATE XXV. NAPOLEON'S TOMB.
Hôtel des Invalides, Paris.
We pass in under the glittering gilded dome, visible all over the city, and find ourselves in a round hall, the centre of which is occupied by a crypt, likewise round and several feet deep and open above. On the floor in mosaic letters are glorious names, Rivoli, Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, and Moscow. Twelve marble statues, representing as many victories, and sixty captured colours keep guard round the great sarcophagus of red porphyry from Finland which contains the remains of Napoleon (Plate XXV.).
No one speaks in here. The deepest silence surrounds the ashes of the man who in his lifetime filled the world with the roar of his cannon and the thunder of his legions, and who within the space of a few years completely changed the map of Europe. Pale and subdued, the light falls over the crypt where the red porphyry speaks of irresistible power, and the white goddesses of victory are illumined as it were with a reflection of the years of glory.
Unconsciously we listen for an echo of the clash of arms and the words of command. We seem to see a blue-eyed boy playing at his mother's knee at Ajaccio in Corsica; we seem to hear a youthful revolutionist, burning with enthusiasm, making fiery speeches at secret clubs in Paris. Pale and solemn, the shade of the twenty-six-year-old general floats before our mind's eye as he returns from a series of victories in northern Italy, where he rushed like a storm over the plains of Lombardy, made a triumphal entry into Milan, and for ever removed the ancient republic of Venice from the list of independent States.
We recall the campaign of the French army against Egypt and the Holy Land. Napoleon takes his fleet out from the harbour of Toulon, escapes Nelson's ships of the line and frigates, seizes Malta, sails to the north of Crete and west of Cyprus, and lands 40,000 men at Alexandria. The soldiers languish in the desert sands on the way to Cairo, they approach the Nile to give battle to the Egyptian army, and at the foot of the pyramids the East is defeated by the West. The march is continued eastwards to Syria. Five centuries have passed since the crusaders attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of unbelievers. Now again the weapons of Western lands clash in the valley of the Jordan and at the foot of Mount Tabor, and now the French General obtains a victory over the Turks outside Nazareth. In the meantime, however, Nelson has annihilated his fleet. The flower of the republican army is doomed to perish, and Napoleon's dream of an oriental dominion has vanished with the smoke of the last camp fire. He leaves Egypt with two frigates, sails along the coasts of Tripoli and Tunis, and passes at night with extinguished lights through the channel between Africa and Sicily.
Again our eyes turn to the dim light under the cupola of the Invalides, and the marble columns and statues look white as snow. Then our thoughts wander off to the Alps, the Great St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard, Mont Cenis, and the Simplon, where the First Consul, like Hannibal before him, with four army corps bids defiance to the loftiest mountains of Europe. We seem to see the soldiers dragging the cannon through the frozen drifts and collecting together again on the Italian side. At Marengo, south of the Po, a new victory is added to the French laurels, and the most powerful man in France has the fate of Europe in his hands.
Then various episodes of his marvellous career pass before us. Our eyes fall on the name Austerlitz down in the mosaic of the crypt. The Emperor of France has marched into Moravia and drawn up his legions under the golden eagles. A distant echo seems to sound round the crypt—it is Napoleon's cavalry riding down the Russian guards, it is the "grand army" annihilating the Austrian and Russian forces, it is the French artillery pounding the ice on the lake and drowning the fugitives, their guns and horses.
A murmur passes through the crypt, an echo from the battle of Jena, where Prussia was crushed, its territory devastated from the Elbe to the Oder, and its fortresses surrendered, Erfurt, Magdeburg, Stettin, Lübeck, while the victor made his entry into Frederick the Great's capital, Berlin. We hear the tread of the columns and the tramp of horses through the mud on the roads in Poland, and we see the bloody battlefields of Pultusk, east of the Vistula, and Eylau in West Prussia, where heaps of bodies lie scattered over the deep snow. We see Napoleon on his white horse after the battle of Friedland in East Prussia, where the Russians were defeated. The guards and hussars rode through them with drawn swords. Their enthusiastic cry of "Long live the Emperor" still vibrates under the standards round the sarcophagus; and above the shouts of victory the beat of horse hoofs is heard on the roads of Europe; it is the courier between the headquarters of the army and Paris.
The conqueror marches to Vienna, and threatens to crush Austria. He gains the bloody battle of Wagram, north-east of Vienna, he wipes out states and makes them dependencies of France and their rulers his obedient vassals, and he gives away royal crowns to his relations and generals. His dominion extends from Danzig to Cadiz, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Tiber; he has risen to a height of power and glory never attained since the golden age of Rome.
Bayonets and sabres, cuirasses and helmets flash in the sunlight as the invincible army camps with band and music and song above the Niemen. Half a million of soldiers are on their way to the old capital of Russia, Moscow. The Russian roads from Vilna to Vitebsk are full of endless lines of troops, squadrons of cavalry in close formation, and enormous baggage trains. The Russians know that their freedom is in danger; they burn their own towns and villages, devastate their own provinces, and retire little by little, as they did a hundred years earlier when Charles XII. invaded Russia. At length there is a battle at Moscow, and the French army enters the town. We see in imagination the September nights lighted up far and wide by a blazing flame. Moscow is on fire. On the terrace of the Kremlin stands a little man in a grey military coat and a black cocked hat, watching the flame. Within a week the old holy city of the Muscovites lies in ashes.