The number of visitors to Elba was sometimes as high as three hundred in a single day. Among these were a few English, fewer French, but many Italians. As time passed the heaviness of the Austrian yoke had begun to gall the people of Napoleon's former kingdom, and considerable numbers from among them, remembering the mild Eugène with longing, joined in an extensive though feeble conspiracy to restore Napoleon to the throne of Italy. Lucien returned to Rome in order to foster the movement, and Murat, observing with unease the general faithlessness of the great powers in small matters, began to tremble for the security of his own seat. With them and others Napoleon appears to have corresponded regularly. He felt himself entirely freed from the obligations he had taken at Fontainebleau, for he was sure the people of southern France had been instigated to take his life by royalist agents, and while one term after another passed, not a cent was paid of the promised pension; his own fortune, therefore, was steadily melting away. For months he behaved as if really determined to make Elba his "isle of repose," as he designated it just before landing; but under such provocations his temper changed. The corner-stone of his treaty was his complete sovereignty; otherwise the paper was merely a promise without any sanction, not even that of international law. This perfect sovereignty had been recognized by the withdrawal of all the commissioners as such, Campbell insisting that he remained merely as an ambassador.
In a treaty concluded on May thirtieth between Louis XVIII and the powers of the coalition, the boundaries of France were fixed substantially as they had been in 1792, and the destiny of the lands brought under her sway by the Revolution and by Napoleon was to be determined by a European congress. This body met on November first, 1814, at Vienna. It was soon evident that the four powers of the coalition were to outdo Napoleon's extreme endeavors in their reckless disposition of European territories. Before the close of the month, however, Talleyrand, by his adroit manipulations and his conjurings with the sacrosanct word "legitimacy," had made himself the moving spirit of the congress, and had so inflamed the temper of both Metternich and Castlereagh against the dictatorial attitude of Russia and Prussia as to induce Austria and Great Britain to sign, on January third, 1815, a secret treaty with France whereby the parties of the first part bound themselves to resist the aggressiveness of the Northern powers, and that by force if necessary. This restored France to the position of a great power. By the middle of February the Northern allies were brought to terms, and in return for their concessions it was agreed that Murat was to be deposed. This spirit of compromise menaced, or rather finally destroyed, the sovereignty of Napoleon, petty as it was. On the charge of conspiring with Murat, he could easily be removed from Elba, and deported to some more remote spot from which he could exert no influence on European politics.
From the opening sessions of the congress there had been a general consensus of opinion as to this course. As to the place opinions varied. Castlereagh favored the Azores, but others the Cape Verde islands; St. Helena, then well known as a place of call on the long voyage to the Cape, had been suggested much earlier, even before Elba was chosen, but when or by whom is not known. It is quite possible that Wellington, who succeeded Castlereagh as English plenipotentiary in February, may have mentioned the name; he had been there, and knew it as almost the remotest spot of land in the world. The formal proposition to that effect appears to have been made by the Prussian cabinet. The congress took no definite action in the matter, but the understanding was so clear and general that a proclamation to the national guard was printed in the "Moniteur" of March eighth, 1815, stating that measures had been taken at the Congress of Vienna to remove Napoleon farther away. It was easy for everybody, including the captive himself, to believe that, all the other articles of the agreement at Fontainebleau having been violated, that which guaranteed the sovereignty of Elba was equally worthless.
It cannot be doubted that Napoleon was fully aware of whatever was proposed at Vienna, and it is absolutely certain that he was thoroughly informed as to the changed state of public opinion in France. Having promised a fairly liberal constitution as the price of his throne, Louis XVIII, with colossal stupidity, undertook to ignore the past and promulgated the charter as his own gracious act, done in the nineteenth year of his reign! The upper chamber, or House of Peers, was his creature, since he could create members at will. Feeble in mind and body, he was unable to check the reactionary assumptions of his family, who, having deserted their country, had returned to it by the aid of invaders despised and feared by the nation. These and the returning emigrants were provided with rich sinecures, and began to talk of restoring estates to their rightful owners; in some cases the possessors, on their death-beds, were intimidated into making such restitution. The extreme clerical party began even to hamper the ministry in its efforts to grant the freedom of worship guaranteed by the constitution. Secular business was forbidden on certain holy days, and funeral masses were celebrated for Pichegru, Moreau, and Cadoudal, that for the latter at the King's expense. When, finally, Christian burial was refused to an actress, there were riots in Paris.
But the government continued its suicidal course; even the Vendée grew disaffected, and, the suffrage having been greatly restricted, there were murmurings about oligarchies and tyrants. At Nîmes the Protestants feared another St. Bartholomew, and said so. Even moderate royalists grew troubled, and could not retort when they heard the new order stigmatized by the fitting name of "paternal anarchy." Both veterans and conscripts deserted in great numbers from the army as they saw their officers discharged by the score to make places for the young aristocracy, or their comrades retired, nominally on half-pay, in reality to eke out a subsistence as best they could. It was not long before men showed each other pocket-pieces bearing Napoleon's effigy, whispering as watchwords, "Courage and hope," or "He has been and will be," or "Frenchmen, awake; the Emperor is waking." As early as July, 1814, rumors of his return were rife in country districts, and by autumn the longing for it was outspoken and general. In Paris there was greater caution, but as Marmont was called "Judas" for having betrayed his master, so Berthier was known as "Peter" in that he had denied him, and it was a common joke to tie a white cockade to the tail of a dog. Before the Chamber met the various factions openly avowed themselves as either royalists, Bonapartists, liberals, or Jacobins. The money estimates presented made it clear that a king was more expensive than an emperor, and when the peers not only voted to indemnify the emigrants for the lands held by their families, but likewise passed a bill establishing the censorship of the press, it was common talk that the present state of things could not last.
The number of French prisoners of war and of soldiers released from the besieged fortresses in central Europe was about three hundred thousand, of whom a third were veterans of the Empire. To these must be added the army which Soult, ignorant of Napoleon's abdication, had led to defeat at Toulouse, and the soldiers who had served in Italy. These men, long accustomed to much consideration, found themselves on their return to be persons of no consequence. They learned that the great officers of the Empire were everywhere treated with scant courtesy, and that the great ladies of the imperial court were now virtually driven from the Tuileries by the significant questions and loud asides of the royal personages who had supplanted them. It was told in all public resorts how Ney had resented the rude affronts put on his wife by the Duchess of Angoulême. The well-trained subordinate officers of these contingents were turned adrift by thousands on the same terms as those of Napoleon's own army, half-pay if they showed themselves good Catholics, otherwise nothing. For the most part, again, this promise was empty; young royalists were put in their places, the pay of the old guard was reduced, a new noble guard was organized, promotion was refused to those who had received commissions during the operations of war, and the asylums established for the orphans of those who had belonged to the Legion of Honor were abolished. So bitter was the outcry that the King felt compelled to dismiss his minister of war, and, not daring to substitute Marmont, who demanded the place, appointed Soult. He too was speedily discredited for harshness to Exelmans, a subordinate who was discovered to have been in correspondence with Napoleon; and by the middle of February, 1815, nearly all the soldiers were at heart Bonapartists, their friends for the most part abetting them.
Napoleon Exposition, 1895
The King of Rome
Painted by Marie Louise under direction of Isabey
belonging to Messrs. Marquis and Comte de Las Cases.