Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

The marshals were tired of war, there being nothing further in it for them. They had been lifted as high as they could go; they had been enriched to satiety; their fame was established. Why should they continue to fight? Were they never to be left in peace? What was the good of having wealth if they were never to enjoy it?

The marshals were human; their grumblings and growlings most natural. They honestly believed that peace depended upon the Emperor alone, that he only had to stretch forth his hand to get it.

He himself knew better; but it almost maddened him to realize that so few understood this as he did.

“Peace! peace!” he cried impatiently, to Berthier the goose. “You miserable——! Don’t you know that I want peace more than any one? How am I to get it? The more I concede, the more they demand!”

This brings us squarely to the question: Did the Allies, in good faith, offer Napoleon peace, and did he recklessly refuse it?

Then and afterward he contended that he had done everything in his power to secure honorable terms. Almost with his dying breath he repeated this statement at St. Helena. What is the truth about it?

Let any one who wishes to know, study the Memoirs of the period; let him further study the despatches and treaties of the Allies; let him give due weight to the influence upon these Allies of the Bourbons, the ancient nobility, the higher priests of the Catholic Church, the dynastic prejudices of the allied kings, and the intense personal hatreds of such powerful counsellors of kings as Pozzo di Borgo, Stein, Bernadotte, Castlereagh, and Talleyrand. In addition to this, let such a student consider how the Allies violated the armistice of Pleiswitz, the capitulations of Dantzic and Dresden, the treaties they made with Napoleon in 1812, and that which they made with him at his abdication in 1814.

Let such a student furthermore consider that these Allies not only broke the treaty they made with Napoleon in 1814, but likewise violated the pledges which they had made to their own peoples in drawing them into the war.

If, after the study of these evidences of the bad faith of the Allies, there still remains doubt, the Memoirs of Metternich will remove it—if it be removable.

The world knows that the only avowed purpose of the Allies was to liberate Europe by driving Napoleon back beyond the Rhine, and that this end had now been attained. Hence, if the real objects the Allies had in view were those which had been made public, why should not the war have ceased? Europe was free, Napoleon’s empire shattered, nothing remained to him but France—why should the Allies follow him there? It was necessary to hoodwink the world upon this point, and it was Metternich’s task to do it;—for the allied kings were determined to invade France and put an end to Napoleon’s political existence. Metternich avows this himself; yet he persuaded them to make to Napoleon the celebrated Frankfort Proposals. All the world knows that the allied kings, with an apparent excess of magnanimity, offered even then to come to such terms with Napoleon as would have left him in possession of the France of 1792, a larger realm than the greatest of Bourbon kings had ever ruled. What the world did not know was that these Frankfort Proposals were not sincere, and were made for effect only. It was necessary to the Allies to cover their own designs, to justify their departure from the declarations of 1813, to create the impression that they themselves favored peace while Napoleon persisted in war. Succeeding in this, they would cut the ground from under his feet, divide the French, and deprive him of enthusiastic and united national support. With profound policy and duplicity, they sought to create in France itself the impression that Napoleon was the only obstacle to peace, and that their efforts were aimed at him, and not at France, her institutions, her principles, or her glory. Not for a moment was France given cause to suspect that the Bourbons were to be forced upon her, and the great work of the Revolution partially undone. Not for a moment was she allowed to realize that offers of peace to Napoleon were deceptive—intended only to embarrass him and to divide his people. Yet Metternich himself admits that the Frankfort Proposals were made for effect—not only admits it, but takes credit for it. He states that he was compelled to exert all his influence with the allied sovereigns to secure their consent to these proposals, and that he overcame their resistance, as he had overcome Alexander’s in 1813, by assuring them that the offers would come to nothing.