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

by Thomas E. Watson

Talleyrand and his clique had invited the Allies to march upon the capital, and the same party of traitors had paralyzed the spirit of the defence as far as they were able. They had found unconscious but powerful accomplices in Napoleon’s brothers.

That night the French troops marching away from Paris, according to the terms of the capitulation, were met, only a few miles from the city, by Napoleon. After having sent Dejean, he had hurried his troops on to Doulaincourt, where more bad news was picked up; and, by double marches, he reached Troyes (March 29), where he rested. At daybreak he left his army to continue its march, while he, with a small escort, flew on to Villeneuve. There he threw himself into a coach and, followed by a handful of officers, dashed forward—to Sens, where he learned that the Allies were before Paris,—to Fontainebleau, where he was told of the flight of the Empress,—to Essonnes, where they said that the fight of Paris was raging,—and to La Cour de France, only ten miles from his capital, where at midnight (March 30), as he waited for a fresh team to be put to his carriage, he heard the tramp of horses and the clank of arms. It was a squadron of cavalry on the highroad from Paris. He shouted to them from the dark, and to his challenge came the terrible response, “Paris has fallen.”

The scene which followed is one of those which haunt the memory. The chilly gloom of the night, the little wayside inn, the halted cavalry, the horseless carriage, the rage of the maddened Emperor, his hoarse call for fresh horses, his furious denunciation of those who had betrayed him, his desperate efforts to hurry the post-boys at the stables, the passion which carried him forward on foot a mile along the road to Paris, and the remonstrances of his few friends who urged him to go back—make a weird and tragic picture one does not forget.

It was not until he met a body of French infantry, also leaving Paris, that the frenzied Emperor would stop, and even then he would not retrace his steps. He sent Caulaincourt to make a last appeal to Alexander of Russia, he who had risen in the theatre at Erfurth to take Napoleon’s hand when the actor recited, “The friendship of a great man is a gift of the gods.”

A messenger was sent also to Marmont, and the Emperor waited in the road to receive his answer; nine miles, and not much more than an hour, being the tantalizing margin upon which, again, fate had traced the words, “Too late.” Only the river separated him from the outposts of the enemy; their campfires could be seen by reflection in the distance, and yonder to the west was the dull glare hanging over Paris—Paris where a hundred thousand men were ready to fight, if only a leader would show them how!

Leaden must have been the feet of those hours, infinite the woe of that most impatient of men, that haughtiest of men, that self-consciously ablest of men, as he tramped restlessly back and forth on the bleak hill in the dark, awaiting the answers from his messengers.

At last he was almost forced into his carriage and driven back to Fontainebleau. Making his way to one of the humblest rooms, he fell upon the bed, exhausted, heart-broken.

You go to France to-day, and you see around you everywhere, Napoleon. You hear, on all sides, Napoleon. Ask a Frenchman about other historic names, and he will reply with extravagant politeness. Leave him to speak for himself, and his raptures run to Napoleon. He is the Man; he is the ideal soldier, statesman, financier, developer, the creator of institutions, organizer of society, the inspiration of patriotism.

What Frenchman speaks of the little men who pulled Napoleon down? Who remembers them but to curse their infamous names? Who does not know that the very soul of French memory and veneration for the past centres at the Invalides, where the dead warrior lies in state?

We see this now. Time works its reversals of judgment. The pamphlet gives way to the book; the caricature to the portrait; the discordant cry of passion to the calm voice of reason. Angels roll away sepulchral stones; and posterity sees the resurrected Cromwells, the Dantons, the Napoleons, just as they were. Great is the power of lies—lies boldly told and stubbornly maintained, but great, also, is the reaction of truth. The cause, and the man of the cause, may have been slain by the falsehood, and Truth may serve merely to show posterity where the grave is; but sometimes—not always—she does more; sometimes the cause, and the man of the cause, are called back into the battle-field of the living; sometimes the great issues are joined again; sometimes the martyr remains triumphant, the victim holds the victory.