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

by Thomas E. Watson

It seems that he had continued to hope, almost to the last, that Maria Louisa would come to him at Elba, and bring his boy. A lot of fireworks, we are told, had fallen into his possession, and he had kept them carefully, ready to be used when wife and child should come. He knew, at length, that neither would ever see him again. He had been told of Neipperg, and the true reason why Maria Louisa had ceased to write. “Méva, tell papa I am still very fond of him!” and this message, sent almost by stealth, was all that Méneval could bring to the father from the little son who was held at Vienna. No wonder that Napoleon should be found sitting before a portrait of his son, with tears coursing down his cheeks.

Josephine was dead. The fall of the Emperor, her hero, her Cid, had bewildered and unnerved her. Frightened at the din of war that shook the whole realm, she had lived in terror at Malmaison. The allied kings paid her every attention, and in showing the King of Prussia over her lovely grounds when she was ill, broken out with an eruption, she had, it is said, brought on a fatal relapse. Murmuring the words “Elba”—“Bonaparte”—she died, while her hero was yet in exile. It is a revelation of his true character that before setting out on his last campaign he should claim one day out of the few fate gave him, and devote it to memories, to regrets, to recollections of the frail, but tender-hearted woman who had warmed to him when all the world was growing cold. He went to Malmaison, almost alone, and, with Hortense, walked over the grounds, seeing the old familiar places, and thinking of the “old familiar faces.” He lingered in the garden he himself had made, and in which he used to love to work when he was First Consul, surrounded by trees and flowers, and inhaling the breath of nature. He used to say that he could work better there than anywhere else. He wandered through the park, looking out on the trees he had planted in those brilliant days long ago. Every spot had its silent reminder of glories that were gone, of friends he would see no more.

He had asked to be told everything about Josephine,—her last days, her sickness, her dying hours; no details were too trivial to escape him. And as they told the story he would break in with exclamations of interest, of fondness, of sorrow. On this visit to the château he wanted to see everything that could remind him of her, and of their old life together—the death-chamber at the last. Here he would have no companion. “My daughter, let me go in here alone!” and he put Hortense back, entered, and closed the door. He remained a long while, and when he came out his eyes showed that he had been weeping.

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His personal appearance at this time is thus described by Hobhouse, who saw him at a military review at the Tuileries: “His face was deadly pale; his jaws overhung, but not so much as I had heard; his lips thin, but partially curling, so as to give his mouth an inexpressible sweetness. He had the habit of retracting the lips and apparently chewing. His hair was dusky brown, scattered thinly over his temples; the crown of his head was bald. One of the names of affection given him of late by his soldiers is ‘Our little monk.’ He was not fat in the upper part of his body, but projected considerably in the abdomen, so much so, that his linen appeared beneath his waistcoat. He generally stood with his hands knit behind him, or folded before him, but sometimes unfolded them, played with his nose, took snuff three or four times, and looked at his watch. He seemed to have a laboring in his chest, sighing or swallowing. He very seldom spoke, but when he did, smiled, in some sort, agreeably. He looked about him, not knitting but joining his eyebrows, as if to see more minutely, and went through the whole tedious ceremony with an air of sedate impatience.”

Hobhouse speaks of Napoleon’s reception at the opera where Talma was to play Hector. “The house was choked with spectators, who crowded into the orchestra. The airs of La Victoire and the Marseillaise were called for, and performed amidst thunders of applause, the spectators joining in the burden of the song.... Napoleon entered at the third scene. The whole mass rose with a shout which still thunders in my ears. The vivats continued until the Emperor, bowing right and left, seated himself, and the play recommenced. The audience received every speech which had the least reference to their returned hero with unnumbered plaudits.”

General Thiébault in his Memoirs declares that Napoleon was no longer the same man he had once been; that his face wore a greenish tinge and had lost its expression; that his mouth had lost its witchery; “his very head no longer had the pose which used to characterize the conqueror of the world; and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanor and gestures were undecided. Everything about him seemed to have lost its nature and to be broken up.”

The lady who composed the Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII. saw Napoleon holding a review at the Tuileries, and had a conversation with him afterward.

“Bonaparte was dressed that day in a green uniform. I have been told that it was the same which he afterward wore at Waterloo, and which he wore, almost in tatters, at St. Helena. He had been reviewing some troops that morning at the Champ-de-Mars, and his coat, hat, and boots were still dusty.... I looked in vain for the fire which once beamed in his eyes. He stooped more than usual; his head almost hung upon his breast; his complexion was yellow, his countenance melancholy and thoughtful, and his little hat drawn almost over his eyes, gave him a gloomy expression. His movements were still abrupt, but this seemed merely the effect of habit.... He had altogether a wearied, harassed appearance, which seemed to indicate a great man extinct.”

To the same effect is the testimony of Chancellor Pasquier.