For several days after abdicating, Napoleon remained in Fontainebleau practically deserted by his old comrades in arms, who were anxious to make peace with the new government, now that Louis XVIII had been proclaimed king. On the night of the 12th of April he tried to poison himself, but the attempt failed, for the toxic drug, which he had always carried on his person since the retreat from Moscow, had lost its power. He soon recovered, however, from his depression, and on the 20th of April, 1814, signed the treaty of Fontainebleau, by which he was given the sovereignty of the island of Elba, and retained the title of Emperor.
The story of the Spanish campaign, which had a potent influence in causing Napoleon’s ruin, is marked by many brilliant feats of arms on the part of the French, but the country could no longer be held. Finally, by the successful advance of Wellington, the Spanish war became merged in the general defense of French territory, when France was invaded by the coalition in 1814. On Spanish soil the final disaster came at the battle of Vitoria, June 21, 1813, where the French lost 7000 men, 180 pieces of artillery, and nearly all their baggage trains. One of the great mistakes of the Peninsular War was Soult’s refusal to give battle to Wellington in 1812, when all the advantages in numbers were on his side. Later on, though he was in a far inferior position, he proved a most obstinate opponent, contesting Wellington’s march north at every step with an army inferior to that under his opponent. He gave way slowly, and while Napoleon was fighting the allies in his last campaign before his abdication, Soult had been forced to withdraw from Bayonne, and then from Toulouse, which Wellington entered on the 12th of April, 1814.
It is generally held by critics that the war in Spain was a most serious mistake from start to finish, and was the chief cause of Napoleon’s ruin. Whatever share in the failure of the imperial policy in the Peninsula may be assigned to the mediocre capacity of Joseph and to the confused strategy of the French armies due to the jealousies of the marshals, a large part of the responsibility falls to the account of Napoleon himself. He left his work half done in the Peninsula, where he underrated the difficulties of conquest. He reckoned that it would cost him but 12,000 men! As a matter of fact, it kept a large number of his best troops occupied at a time when they were most needed. It was sheer folly to undertake the Russian campaign while Spain was still far from being pacified. It was also culpably bad tactics to allow Wellington to destroy the prestige of French soldiers and generals, and it was close to madness, in 1813, not to withdraw altogether from Spain, when every man was needed in France to defend its frontiers from the coalition. On the other hand, while Spain’s resistance to French arms was a glorious record of patriotism, modern Spain has paid very dear for its glory. All the elements of reaction were interested in the downfall of the Napoleonic régime, and in no other country, not even Italy, did the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty produce such deplorable maladministration and civil disorder.
The dramatic farewell of the Emperor to his troops at Fontainebleau makes a picturesque “mise-en-scène” for the close of a tragedy; it is unfortunate that the spectacular instincts of his genius induced him to accept the ridiculous rôle of sovereign of the island of Elba. It would have been more dignified for him to have refused the offer of the allies, and to have exchanged the rôle of a “roi fainéant” for that of a private individual. Nothing illustrates the parvenu traits of his character more than his desire to preserve the shadow of the royal dignity, even if he had to accept bounty from the hands of a Bourbon king to maintain it.
The allies fully realized the danger of his proximity in Elba, and unofficially there were various plans discussed with a view to rid themselves of their dangerous neighbor. Talleyrand was plotting to have him imprisoned, while the English urged deportation to an inaccessible island. Napoleon, who was an admirable actor, accommodated himself to his Lilliputian kingdom and to his mimic court, and adopted the pose of a modern Timoleon. “I wish to live henceforth,” he said, “like a justice of the peace. The Emperor is dead, I am no longer anything. I think of nothing outside of my small island. I exist no longer for the world. Nothing now interests me but my family, my cottage, my cows, and my mules.” His demands were not so modest as his words appear, for he spent nearly 2,000,000 francs at Elba in eight months.
He complained bitterly at being separated from his son and his wife, both of whom Francis kept in Vienna. There was no intention that they should be allowed to rejoin the Emperor; indeed, Marie Louise, who was of a very passive disposition, was content not to see her husband again, especially after Metternich had supplied her with an admirer, General Neippberg. It might have been wiser, certainly it would have been more humane, if the allies had adopted a less stringent policy of isolation. Whatever one may think of the sincerity of Napoleon’s sentiments, he struck a true note, when he wrote the words “my son has been taken from me, as were formerly the children of the vanquished, to adorn the triumph of their conqueror. One cannot find in modern times an example of such barbarity.” He was not entirely dejected, for he was visited by his mother and his youngest sister, and though the king of Rome was withheld from him, an irregular heir was brought to Elba by the Countess Walinska, whom Napoleon had met some years before in Poland.
There were financial embarrassments, which made impossible the idyllic life the exiled monarch had mapped out for himself; the income stipulated by the treaty of Fontainebleau was not paid. But there were more weighty reasons for the flight from Elba, which occurred early in 1815 (February 26). For some time Napoleon had been in secret communication with Murat, probably with a view to restoring the kingdom of Italy, through coöperation from Naples. This scheme promised more difficulties than a return to France, where the Bourbon restoration was not popular, and where the army and its generals were far from being satisfied with their new situation, under a king who favored the lifelong supporters of his cause. Plans had been concocted during the winter to dethrone Louis XVIII, in which both the Bonapartist sympathizers and some of the old revolutionary leaders had acted together. On hearing of this, Napoleon considered that the moment was opportune for his reappearance on French soil. With 1100 of his veterans who had acted as his guard at Elba, he reached southern France in safety. As the prevailing sentiment in this region was royalist, he made his way with his small band through the Alps to Grenoble, marching sometimes as much as thirty miles a day. By the peasants of the country he was welcomed everywhere with enthusiasm. From Paris orders were sent to treat him as an outlaw.
The critical time came at Grenoble, when Napoleon’s dramatic qualities helped him to secure the allegiance of his old troops. He marched impressively at the head of his veterans to within gunshot distance of a regiment drawn up in his way. “Soldiers,” he said, “look well at me. If there is among you one soldier who wishes to kill his Emperor he can do it. I come to offer myself for you to shoot.” The effect was instantaneous, and the answer to his appeal was the old familiar cry, “Long live the Emperor.”
The enthusiasm increased as he proceeded farther north. Nothing could arrest it or prevent the defection of the troops, not even the appeals for loyalty to the Bourbon king, addressed to their men by the marshals, who strove to outdo one another in their official abuse of the enterprise. Soult spoke of Napoleon as an adventurer; others called him a public enemy or a mad brigand, while Ney undertook to bring him to Paris in an iron cage. The army cared nothing for these criticisms or warnings; even Ney himself joined the movement and turned over his troops to the “man from Elba.” By the 20th of March Napoleon was in Paris at the Tuileries; his marvelous progress was a restoration, not based on diplomacy, but made possible by the enthusiastic loyalty of the population, and the rank and file of the army. Not a gun had been fired. At Grenoble it had been the soldiers who had refused to obey their officers’ command, when told to shoot. Afterwards there was no officer found willing to repeat the command.
The question of establishing a new government was solved by inaugurating a liberal constitutional rule. Napoleon seemed once again to remember that he was the creation of the Revolution. As an evidence of his sincerity to the tradition of the Republic, he selected as his chief adviser, Benjamin Constant, the old Jacobin leader, whose independence a few years before Napoleon had so much resented when Constant had led the opposition in the Tribunate. All these things were now forgotten. “Public discussions, free elections, responsible ministers, liberty of the press; I want all this. I am a man of the people! If the people want liberty, I am bound to give it.” Under the new government, which was accepted by a small vote, owing to the number of those who stayed away from the polls, the elections returned a majority of liberals and republicans, who were not in sympathy with the restored empire. Many preferred to have a regency with Napoleon’s son or the Duke of Orléans. But the real hopelessness of the situation came from the implacable attitude of the allies. At the Congress of Vienna, where the great powers were rearranging the map of Europe amidst much jealousy and intrigue, they at least agreed on one subject: the refusal to allow Napoleon to rule France. That devoted country was put under an interdict. The four powers agreed to fight the French Emperor with a coalition army of more than 1,000,000 men. To oppose this immense force Davout, acting under Napoleon’s directions, had in a few weeks got together for the purpose of national defense 500,000 men to be ready by the end of June. Elaborate plans were made to protect the frontiers, and Napoleon proposed to take the offensive without waiting for the allies to invade the country.