So Napoleon's star set fast. With all Europe arrayed against him for his overthrow, the great Corsican suddenly became little, and everything went wrong.
On the 25th of January, 1814, the father saw his son for the last time. Holding by the hand the boy, then nearly three years old, the Emperor presented himself before the eight hundred officers of the National Guard of Paris, assembled in the gorgeous Hall of the Marshals. "Officers of the National Guard," he said, "I go to take my place at the head of the army. To your protection I confide my wife and my son, upon whom rest so many hopes. In your care I leave what is next to France—the dearest thing I have in the world."
But disaster overwhelmed both the Emperor and the nation. The guards were powerless to guard. The armies of Napoleon were defeated; he himself was banished to Elba; and the little Napoleon with his mother escaped to the court of his grandfather, the Emperor of Austria.
With a final burst of courage Napoleon escaped from Elba and roused France once again to war. It was in vain. His power and his luck were gone. Waterloo gave him his death-blow, and the lonely island of St. Helena became his prison and his grave.
Four days after Waterloo, on the 22d of June, 1815, Napoleon issued his last proclamation. "I offer myself in sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies of France," he announced. "My political life is ended, and I proclaim my son, under the title of Napoleon II., Emperor of the French.... Let all unite for the public safety, and in order to remain an independent nation. Napoleon."
But the nation was paralyzed by disaster. Union was impossible. The boy thus proclaimed Emperor was far from France, held by the enemy. He was never to see his native land again, never to see his father, never to reign Emperor of the French.
For seventeen years the boy lived at the Austrian court, practically a prisoner. His mother cared little for him, and for years did not see him; his name of Napoleon was denied him; his titles of Emperor and King were taken from him, and he was known simply as the Duke of Reichstadt.
His grandfather, the Emperor of Austria, was kind to him, and tried to make an Austrian of him, but he grew from a bright, handsome little fellow into a lonely, low-spirited, and brooding boy, who remembered his former grandeur and the high position to which he had been born, and fretted over the knowledge that he, the son of Napoleon, could inherit no portion of his father's glory, and was denied even the empty honor of his name.
At five he was a beautiful boy, who rebelled when his tutors tried to teach him German, and delighted to play jokes on his royal grandfather; it has even been solemnly asserted that he tied the imperial coat tails to a chair, and filled the imperial boots with gravel. At seven he put on the uniform of a private in the Austrian Royal Guard, and displayed a liking for military life. His gayety began to change to reticence and a love for solitude as he grew old enough to appreciate his position. One of the Austrian Generals was discoursing to the boy one day on the three greatest warriors of the world.
"I know a fourth," said the young Napoleon.