The nearest allied army was in Belgium, composed of 100,000 English and Dutch under Wellington, and 150,000 Prussians under Blücher. Napoleon set out to oppose these forces with 180,000 men, intending to get between the English and the Prussians and beat them separately, trusting to the well-known rapidity of his movements to keep them from joining. Strategically the plan was a brilliant one, but it was not capably executed. Ney, at Quatre Bras, did not win a complete victory over the English because the engagement was begun too late. At Ligny, Napoleon attacked Blücher, who fought obstinately, though he lost 20,000 men, and was not completely crushed as had been planned. Instead of withdrawing in confusion, as had been expected, Blücher set out to join Wellington’s troops. Grouchy, who was sent in pursuit of the Prussians, did not know of this operation and was under the impression that he was carrying out properly his instructions to pursue the Prussians alone, whereas the greater part of the Prussian army had already come in touch with Wellington, and Grouchy failed, therefore, to bring his men back in time to Waterloo where they were needed. Wellington was strongly intrenched and all attempts to take his position failed. The battle, begun at 11 A.M. on June 18, 1815, was not decided until five o’clock, when Blücher effected his junction with the English forces. It was a most desperate engagement, for Napoleon realized what depended on it. The losses were 32,000 French and 22,000 of the allies.

A second act of abdication was now imposed upon Napoleon, who accepted it, resigning in favor of his son. He even offered to serve as a simple general to prevent the allies from capturing Paris. This was not an absolutely chimerical proposal, for there was an enormous mass of men gathered by Davout, ready to fight even after the defeat of Waterloo. But the elected representatives would not hear of continuing the struggle. Napoleon lingered for several days near Paris, at Malmaison, and it was only when he was advised by the temporary government that they could not be responsible for his personal safety, that he traveled towards the west, where his friends were arranging that he should be taken on an American vessel to the United States. The sea coast was watched by British cruisers, so the defeated conqueror decided to surrender himself to the British, intending to claim their hospitality and protection as a guest, not as a prisoner. Apparently, Napoleon rejected the plan to cross the Atlantic “incognito,” for the more spectacular one of throwing himself on the mercy of his most bitter antagonists, because he counted on finding a protection under the constitutional régime of Great Britain, and especially on the ability of the liberal opposition to prevent him from being treated with exceptional harshness. He realized, too, that it would be most dangerous for him to fall into the hands of any of the allied Continental Powers, who might have had him condemned to death by a court-martial or immured in close confinement. It is known that the British premier, Castlereagh, hoped that Napoleon would fall into the hands of Louis XVIII and be treated as a rebel. Therefore, when the vessel which carried him reached the English coast, there was some hesitation as to the treatment he would receive.

Finally, at the end of July, the problem was solved by arranging to send the prisoner to the Island of St. Helena, because, on account of its isolation, there would be little chance of escape. The climate was healthy, close confinement would not be necessary, and Napoleon was permitted to take a suite of servants and friends with him. During his residence at Elba, the plan of a removal of the Emperor to St. Helena had been discussed by the Powers at the Congress of Vienna; perhaps the knowledge of this fact may have contributed largely to induce the flight from Elba and the short-lived attempt to restore the empire.

Acting under international agreement, England became responsible for the guardianship of Napoleon, who was called the prisoner of the Powers. In October, 1815, began the captivity at St. Helena. It was naturally a trying experience to a man who had lately played so great a rôle in the world, and Napoleon did not have the temperament to endure so conspicuous a change in fortune. He instantly began a campaign to secure his release from captivity. Reckoning on the action of public opinion in England working in his behalf, he left nothing undone to exaggerate the onerous conditions under which he lived as an exile. On its side, the British government, which was being administered by men who represented a selfish oligarchy, and who had to their credit a long record of inefficiency, corruption, and attacks on popular rights, was not likely to show especial consideration to a fallen antagonist at St. Helena. A regular system of persecution, inane and petty, was invented, and in applying it the governor of the island, Sir Hudson Lowe, a man of morose temper, whose character is admirably indicated by his name, showed himself a master.

There were various plans for aiding an escape, many of them originating in the United States. Even an attack on St. Helena was discussed by Napoleon’s followers, some of whom were on the American continent as participants in the Brazilian war of independence against Portugal. But Napoleon refused to consider any such methods of relief. “I could not be in America six months,” he said, “without being attacked by the murderers, whom the royalist committees, that returned to France in the train of the Count d’Artois, have hired against me. In America I see nothing but murder and oblivion, so I prefer to stay on at St. Helena.” He saw truly that, in a life of freedom on the other side of the Atlantic, there would be little chance of posing as the victim of misfortune and maltreatment, and it was on the maintenance of this pose that he built his hope of relief from captivity, perhaps even of a return to his old place as ruler of France, for he counted on the expulsion of the Bourbons and a reaction of popular feeling in his behalf. A change of ministry in England also he looked forward to as the opening of an avenue of escape to Europe. He refused to take exercise because, in his walks, according to regulations, he had to be accompanied by an English officer; therefore, he blamed his bad health on the British government. Care was taken by publications in London to detail at length the sufferings of the captive. Incessant complaints were made of the trying climate of the island, the aim being to represent the banishment to St. Helena as nothing but a plan to get rid of Napoleon by the toxic effects of a tropical atmosphere. Indeed, the bad climate of St. Helena has become an inseparable part of the Napoleonic legend, yet we know that Napoleon said to members of his own suite, that if he had to live an exile, St. Helena was, after all, the best spot.

As the years passed, nothing was changed, for the Whigs in England were not strong enough to get any measures though Parliament favorable to Napoleon, and in 1818 the five Great Powers issued a signed statement that they approved of the strict treatment of the prisoner by the British government, and resolved that all correspondence with Napoleon, such as sending money or other communications, which was not submitted to the inspection of the governor, must be regarded as an attack on the public safety and punished accordingly.

Under the régime of no exercise imposed upon himself by Napoleon, his health became impaired; his manner of life accentuated the symptoms of a disease, cancer of the stomach, which had appeared long before the period of his exile. It was an inherited malady, for his father had died of it, also his eldest sister. Some relief was secured by his adopting a more active life in 1819; but with the beginning of the year 1821, the progress of the disease was rapid; exercise was no longer possible, and even occasional dictation was found to be an exhausting task. In April the condition of the prisoner was evidently hopeless, and after he was assured on this point by a surgeon of the British army, Napoleon dictated his testament to Montholon, one of his faithful companions. After his death, which took place on May 5, 1821, the body of the great captain was buried not far from Longwood, his residence. Nearly a generation elapsed before it was carried to its present resting place beneath the dome of the Invalides at Paris.

IX
THE NAPOLEONIC REGIME

During the captivity at St. Helena much attention was given by Napoleon to the dictation of his memoirs. These, however, cover only a short portion of his career and are confessedly apologetic in character. They are shrewdly constructed, often with a gross disregard of accuracy, in order to influence public opinion in his favor. In his conversations also he made good use of his interlocutors, to build up that legend of Napoleonic infallibility and good faith that soon found a receptive atmosphere in the prevalent romanticism of European society. He was convinced to the end of his life that Bourbon rule in France could not last, and he looked forward to a time when his son would be restored. In summing up his own career, he claimed that his dictatorship was a necessity. “Should I be accused of having loved war too much, the historian will demonstrate that I was never the aggressor. Should I be censured for desiring universal empire for myself, he will show that that was the product of circumstances, and how my enemies drove me to it, step by step.”

In many passages in the same strain Napoleon curiously manifests his adhesion to the principles and phrases of the idealogues, on whom as a ruler he heaped so much scorn. It may be doubted whether the base metal of his rhetoric would have become current, if the Powers who participated in the Congress of Vienna had not introduced as their maxims of political morality the inflated and transparently insincere professions of the Holy Alliance. Indeed, from the beginning to the end of the Napoleonic period, the point of view that the coalitions against him were fighting in behalf of nationalism and liberty is little short of absurd. At almost any time France under Napoleon might have arranged an alliance with England by offering her the bait of commercial concessions; and even more unsubstantial than the Napoleonic legend is its antithesis, that the Tory oligarchy of England were spending hundreds of millions of pounds of their good money for the benefit of the peoples and states on the Continent.