Nevertheless, the truth seems to be that in his last struggles Napoleon had the masses with him. Had he made a direct appeal to the peasantry and to the workmen of the cities, there is every reason to believe that he could have enrolled a million men. The population in France was not at a standstill then as it is now. It was steadily on the increase; and it was fairly prosperous, and fairly contented. The Emperor had given special attention to agriculture and manufactures. In every possible way he had encouraged both, and his efforts had borne fruit. He had not increased the taxes, he had not burdened the State with loans, he had not issued paper money, he had not even changed the conscription laws. In some of his campaigns he had called for recruits before they were legally due; but, as the Senate had sanctioned the call, the nation had acquiesced. It is true that men and boys had dodged the enrolling officers, and that the numbers of those who defied and resisted the conscriptions had increased to many thousands; but the meaning of this was nothing more than that the people were tired of distant wars.
A pledge from the Emperor that soldiers should not be sent out of France would apparently have rallied to him the full military support of the nation. But Napoleon could not get his own consent to arm the peasants and the artisans. Both in 1814 and in 1815 that one chance of salvation was offered to him; in each year he rejected it.
The awful scenes of the Revolution which he had witnessed had left him the legacy of morbid dread of mobs. The soldier who could gaze stolidly upon the frightful rout at Leipsic, where men were perishing in the wild storm of battle by the tens of thousands, could never free himself from the recollection of the Parisian rabble which had slaughtered a few hundreds. At Moscow he refused to arm the serfs against their masters; in France he as deliberately rejected all proposals to appeal to the lower orders to support his throne.
The secret is revealed by his question, “Who can tell me what spirit will animate these men?” He feared for his dynasty, dreading a republic in which free elections would control the choice of the executive.
But while the mass of the French people remained loyal to Napoleon, the upper classes were divided. There had always been a leaven of royalism in the land, and Napoleon himself had immensely strengthened its influence. Bringing back the émigrés, restoring hereditary estates, creating orders of nobility anew, and establishing royal forms, he had been educating the country up to monarchy as no one else could have done—had been “making up the bed for the Bourbons.” The ancient nobility, as a rule, had secretly scorned him as a Corsican parvenu, even while crowding his antechambers and loading themselves with his favors. Now that reverses had commenced, their eyes began to turn to their old masters, the Bourbons, and the hopes of a restoration and a counter-revolution began to take distinct shape in Paris itself.
To the royalists, also, went the support of a large number of the rich—men who resented the income tax of twenty-five per cent, which Napoleon at this time felt it necessary to impose upon them. Another grudge, they, the rich, had against him: he would not allow them to loot his treasury, as the rich were doing in England. Nor would he grant exemptions from any sort of public burden, special privilege being in his eyes a thing utterly abominable. Hence, such men as the great banker Laffitte were not his friends.
There was another element of opposition which made itself felt at this crisis. There were various contractors, and other public employees, who had taken advantage of the decline of Napoleon’s power to plunder, embezzle, and cheat. The Emperor was on the track of numbers of these men, and in his wrath had sworn to bring them to judgment. “Never will I pardon those who squander public funds!” These men moved in upper circles, and had many social, political, and financial allies. Dreading punishment if Napoleon held his throne, they became active partisans of the Bourbon restoration. Even his old schoolmate, Bourrienne, his private secretary of many years, betrayed him shamelessly. The Emperor had detected the fact that Bourrienne had been using his official position for private gain, and had dismissed him; but on account of old association had softened the fall by appointing him Consul at Hamburg. At this place Bourrienne amassed a fortune by violating the Continental system, and he now hated the man he had betrayed, and from whom he feared punishment. This was but one case among hundreds.
Then, there was the Talleyrand, Fouché, Rémusat, Abbé Louis, Abbé Montesquieu, Duc de Dalberg sort. Talleyrand had been enriched, ennobled, imperially pampered, but never trusted. Napoleon had borne with his venalities and treacheries until men marvelled at his forbearance. This minister of France was in the pay of Austria, of Russia, of England, of any foe of France who could pay the price. It was probably he who sold to England the secret of Tilsit. It was certainly he who conspired with the Czar against Napoleon, and took a bribe from Austria every time she needed mercy from France. It was he who extorted tribute from Napoleon’s allies at the same time that he sold state secrets to Napoleon’s foes. Denounced and dismissed, and then employed again, this man was ripe for a greater betrayal than he had yet made, and he now believed that the opportunity was close at hand.
Fouché, also, had been Napoleon’s minister, Napoleon’s Duke of Otranto. Dabbling in conspiracies of all sorts, and venturing upon a direct intrigue with England, Napoleon had disgraced him, instead of having him shot. Needing him again, the Emperor had reëmployed him, thereby affording another rancorous foe his chance to strike when the time should come.
In the army there was the same grand division of sentiment,—the rank and file being devoted to Napoleon, the officers divided.