How the French Won Waterloo - or Think They Did Page 4

  As his soldiers wept – even the British officer present was seen to loosen his stiff upper lip – Napoleon kissed a tricolour flag embroidered with the names of his victories and climbed into a carriage that immediately sped away.

  In fact he was going to enjoy what Marshal Lefebvre had recently prescribed for him – a rest down on the Med, with the title of King of the island of Elba and a pension of two million francs a year, payable by the French government. Napoleon’s wife and son had been more or less kidnapped by his Austrian father-in-law, Franz I, but he hoped that they would be able to meet up once he had proved to Europe that he was content to live as a simple retired soldier and, as he told his troops, ‘write about the great things we did together’.

  Early retirement on an island off the Tuscan coast at only forty-four, with a fat pension and plenty of time to write a book. What normal person wouldn’t be content with that? The problem was that Napoleon wasn’t a normal person.

  Neither, one might say, are his fans, because they seem to regard even this humiliating exit – rejected by his own generals, with his wife and son snatched away by his in-laws – as a kind of victory. The grand adieu (the French consider it so important that it gets elevated to the plural, adieux) is re-enacted every year in Fontainebleau, which, like every other town with a connection to Napoleon, dubs itself a ville impériale. For the 200th anniversary in 2014 there was a week of commemoration culminating in a declamation of the sombre speech in the chateau courtyard. But most people, especially the Napoleon fans, found it difficult to be sombre, as is the case every year, for the simple reason that they know he came back …

  IX

  Elba ought to have been a very pleasant retirement home. The locals were delighted with their new resident, who had suddenly put their unknown island on the map. According to a certain Captain Jobit, on 4 May 1814, when Napoleon disembarked from the British frigate HMS Undaunted, he was met with cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and ‘Vive Napoléon le Grand!’ and given a banquet, fireworks and a display of the local ladies’ grande toilette (which, as anyone who speaks French will know, is not a large lavatory but an outfit of smart clothing).

  Napoleon’s new subjects didn’t mind that he had been unilaterally appointed their souverain (sovereign),fn9 especially when he began to help them improve their economy. No doubt recalling his days at the military academy, he got the Elbans to plant Corsican chestnut trees on sloping land to prevent soil erosion, and to grow a variety of vegetables. He also encouraged the islanders to bottle and sell the naturally sparkling water from a spring. And, ever the organiser, he had the roads paved and set up a rubbish-collection system so that people would stop filling the streets with rotting refuse. The new sovereign even expanded Elba’s borders by annexing a neighbouring unpopulated island and leaving a garrison of troops there. Not that Napoleon had begun to conscript the local men – rather unwisely, the allies had allowed him to take a thousand of his Guards along, so that it felt almost like being out on campaign again. Napoleon even slept on his old camp bed.

  It would all have been fun except that he quickly realised his wife and son would never be joining him. In addition, he heard the sad news that his first wife Josephine had died, in tragically ironic circumstances. Apparently she had been giving Czar Alexander a guided tour of her rose garden – which was probably not a euphemism because she was a skilled creator of hybrid roses – when she contracted a chill that developed into pneumonia and what one French historian gruesomely describes as a ‘gangrenous throat infection’.

  Worse still for Napoleon was the news that France itself was also suffering from a gangrenous infection – its royal family, in the gout-ridden shape of King Louis XVIII, who had been imposed ‘by foreign bayonets’ and was now in the process of reducing the French army by 100,000 men, and retiring 12,000 officers on half pay.

  Some of Napoleon’s treacherous generals had been rewarded by Louis with new lands and titles, but they were all suffering the indignity of occupation. The hated Cossacks were camping on the Champs-Elysées, and the new British ambassador, Wellington, the man who had kicked the French army out of Spain, was becoming famous for his anti-French jibes. At one dinner he was snubbed by a group of Frenchmen and, suspecting that there were ex-soldiers among them, quipped, ‘’Tis of no matter, I have seen their backs before.’ Nothing hurts a French snob like a well-aimed insult. Especially an English insult.

  The British and the other occupying forces were enjoying themselves too much. They paraded through Paris with Louis XVIII, their over-inflated puppet, whom even the Russian Czar secretly (or not so secretly) scorned – after a first state banquet with Louis in 1814, Alexander had announced that he had ‘just met the most uselessfn10 man in Europe’. And much of this chaos was being fomented – organised, even – by the traitor Talleyrand, who, so Napoleon heard via his faithful informers, was now lobbying that the exiled Emperor of France be sent even further away – to the Azores.

  By the end of 1814, Napoleon was already thinking that he had been away for long enough. France clearly needed him. He later told one of his marshals, ‘I knew that the homeland was unhappy. I came back to free it from the émigrés and the Bourbons’ (that is, the returning aristocrats and the exiled royal family).

  Patriotism aside, it should also be pointed out that Napoleon was furious with Louis and Talleyrand because they had never paid him a cent of his huge pension. He was having to finance his lavish lifestyle (he had a hundred servants on the island, as well as his Guards) out of his own money, which was now running low. Soon he would not have enough to pay his soldiers, and without them he would be defenceless against Talleyrand’s attempts to kidnap him.

  As any Frenchman knows, if you want to claim your pension rights, it is best to go straight to the central office in Paris. He had no choice but to leave Elba.

  X

  Like everything else in his life, Napoleon planned his escape with military precision. He ordered his grenadiers to start digging new flowerbeds, as if preparing for a long spring on the island. He had a ship, the Inconstant (‘Unfaithful’), painted in British naval colours. Knowing that the island was infested with Talleyrand’s spies disguised as monks, tourists and merchants, he started a rumour that he might be leaving for Naples. He even told his own men to put enough food and wine on the Inconstant for a trip to America.

  On 26 February 1815, while the British military governor of the island, Colonel Neil Campbell, was away in Italy supposedly seeing a doctor but more probably visiting his mistress, Napoleon boarded the Inconstant and set sail for the French mainland with a flotilla of six smaller ships carrying his 1,000 soldiers. He told his men that he would ‘retake [his] crown without spilling a single drop of blood’. He must have known that if it did come to a fight, his thousand-strong bodyguard wouldn’t be much use against a million allied invaders.

  He had already written the speech he intended to give to the nation:

  ‘People of France, a prince imposed by a temporarily victorious enemy is relying upon a few enemies of the people who have been condemned by all French governments for the last 25 years. During my exile, I have heard your complaints and your wishes. You have been demanding the government of your choice. I have crossed the sea and am here to reclaim my rights, which are also yours.’

  And he didn’t only mean his pension.

  Napoleon’s triumphant march north to Paris is the favourite story among pro-Bonaparte historians. They savour every detail. Reading their accounts, you get to know everything Napoleon ate en route (half a roast chicken in the village of Roccavignon near Grasse, for example, and roast duck and olives in Sisteron, in the foothills of the Alps), how little he slept (he would set off every morning at four a.m.), and the flattering speeches he gave in every town he crossed (‘my dearest wish was to arrive with the speed of an eagle in this good town of Gap/Grenoble/what’s its name again?’).

  The descriptions of how French soldiers, supposedly in the service of Louis XVIII,
defied their officers and joined Napoleon are the stuff of a propaganda film. These are the Bonapartists’ fondest memories.

  Just outside Grenoble, for example, the returning Emperor was faced by 700 soldiers sent to stop his advance. Obeying orders, they raised their muskets and pointed them at Napoleon. Telling his musicians to play ‘La Marseillaise’, the revolutionary song that had been the exit music for Louis XVIII’s predecessor in 1789, Napoleon walked alone towards the line of 700 rifles. When he was within easy shooting range, he opened his famous grey overcoat and called out, ‘If there is among you one soldier who wants to kill his Emperor, here I am.’

  In reply came a volley of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ The order to fire was ignored and the men rushed to greet Napoleon. Boney was back.

  In Lyon, there was a similar scene of defiance. Louis XVIII’s brother Charles came to lead the defence of the city. He inspected the 1,500-strong garrison, who were treated to a patriotic speech by their commanding officer and then ordered to shout ‘Vive le Roi!’ None obeyed. Charles went out into the ranks and politely asked a dragoon to give the shout. The man bravely stayed mute, and the King’s brother leapt straight into his carriage and left for Paris. The monarchy, he realised, was finished (again).

  Back in Paris, Napoleon’s old friend Marshal Ney was less supportive than the lower ranks. He declared that the fallen Emperor ‘deserved to be brought back [to Paris] in an iron cage’.fn11 He told Louis that ‘every Frenchman should repel him’, and suggested to the King that his troops would be more loyal if Louis himself was seen going into battle. Not on a horse, of course (it would have needed an elephant to carry him), but perhaps carried on a litter? No doubt aware that his bulk would make a large target for Napoleon’s guns, Louis decided that it was wiser for him to escape back into exile.

  This all sounds like a hero’s return for Napoleon, but it would be a mistake to ignore the voices of dissent, even among his supporters. One officer, a certain Colonel Le Bédoyère, a veteran of the Russian campaign, brought his soldiers over to Napoleon but warned him, ‘No more ambition, Sire, no more despotism. Your Majesty must abandon the system of conquests and extreme power that brought misfortune to France and yourself.’

  The newspapers of the time were also largely against Napoleon. Louis XVIII had only recently granted freedom of the press, and the editors didn’t want to lose it again to their deposed dictator. The papers embarked on a campaign of disinformation, claiming for example that Napoleon had been stopped at Digne in the French Alps and chased off by local peasants. The problem was that by the time a report was published in the papers, rumours had outrun it. On the day Napoleon was supposedly turned back at Digne, he was already 200 kilometres north of there, in Grenoble.

  What is not always pointed out in French history books is that Napoleon chose a Hannibal-like route through the French Alps because he was afraid of meeting hostile crowds in large towns along the south coast, like Toulon, where he had suppressed the pro-royalist revolt in 1793.

  In a recent study of private letters written at the time, a French historian called Aurélien Lignereux revealed that Napoleon was right to be afraid of opposition. Ordinary middle-class French people were reacting to the news of his return with trepidation. They saw it as yet another upheaval, and suspected that war would be around the corner yet again.

  But for the moment at least, Napoleon didn’t need to bother about the opinion of the common bourgeois – he knew that they weren’t going to put together an army of umbrella-waving ladies and pen-wielding solicitors to oppose his return. And he knew this because he had stopped a carriage carrying mail from Paris, and had the letters read by his aides. Even 200 years ago, the war of information was a vital part of a politician’s life.

  XI

  When Napoleon arrived in Paris on 20 March 1815, schoolchildren greeted the news by cheering and beating out a celebration drumroll on their desktops. Perhaps they knew that they were safe from conscription, though it probably wasn’t a good idea to be too proficient at drumming – Napoleon’s armies sent young drummer boys into the front lines, to be shot at just like the adults.

  The politicians weren’t quite as welcoming as the schoolchildren, and Napoleon discovered that the perfidious English had made their mark during the brief occupation of Paris. France’s parliament was now dominated by English-style liberals who told Napoleon that the population would back him only if he agreed to a new constitution. They demanded that he maintain the British-style two-house parliamentary system set up by Louis XVIII, with a Chambre des Pairs (a house of hereditary peers) and a Chambre des Députés (consisting of MPs elected for five years). He also had to confirm the freedom of the press, and accept criticism of his regime. The old-style emperor-god was a thing of the past.

  Unwillingly, Napoleon accepted the concessions demanded of him, though he refused to call this a new constitution, and dubbed the changes the Acte Additionnel, as though it were merely an afterthought to his former regime.

  He also had to shrug off the humiliation of disastrous elections, which saw huge abstention rates (especially among the silent bourgeois majority), and a wave of liberal, anti-Bonapartist MPs and mayors elected or re-elected (80 per cent of the local officials put in place by Louis XVIII’s regime were confirmed in office). Napoleon might have started to wonder why he hadn’t remained on Elba as the island’s uncontested sovereign. As it was, he contented himself with dismissing parliamentary debates as ‘vain chatter’.

  There was one consolation, though – he did get his way with his re-investiture. On 1 June, on the Champ de Mars in front of his old Ecole Militaire, Napoleon held a stupendously self-congratulatory ceremony before 400,000 spectators, including 50,000 soldiers. For the occasion he designed himself a new imperial costume – a red tunic, a cape lined with ermine, white trousers and stockings, and a Roman emperor’s crown. His soldiers, though, weren’t happy: they wanted to be reunited with their beloved general, not a dandy in fancy dress.

  Not that Napoleon was over-keen to get back into military uniform. He knew that the most he could hope for now was to reign unopposed over France. Rekindling the war against the allies would be suicidal. He made a speech admitting as much: ‘I have given up my idea of a great Empire that I had only just begun to build. My aim was to organise a federal European system that matched the spirit of the century and favoured the advancement of our civilisation.fn12 My goal now is simply to increase France’s prosperity by strengthening public freedom.’ Sadly for Napoleon, his old nemesis Talleyrand was not willing to let this happen. Ever the tireless anti-Bonaparte campaigner, when news came through that Napoleon had landed in France, Talleyrand was in Vienna meeting with Metternich, Czar Alexander and Wellington. He immediately began to whip up outrage among the allies, declaring that Napoleon was ‘the disturber of world peace’. In no time at all, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain had promised to launch their armies against Napoleon, guaranteeing at least 150,000 soldiers each.

  Napoleon sent a peace envoy to Metternich, and a placatory letter to England’s Prince Regent, but both were ignored. On 7 June he made a speech in Paris, informing his people that ‘It is possible that the first duty of a prince will soon call me to lead the children of the nation in a fight for our homeland. The army and I will do our duty.’

  Dominique de Villepin, France’s Prime Minister from 2005 to 2007, supports Napoleon in this resolve to fight. ‘Governing,’ he writes in his book Les Cent Jours (referring to Napoleon’s 100-day return to power in 1815),fn13 ‘does not mean endlessly negotiating in the hope of finding a compromise. It means deciding. Governing implies cool-headedness, initiative and responsibility.’ It is the usual Bonapartist refrain: Napoleon, they say, desired only peace, but when he recognised the inevitability of war, like the hero he was, he could not shy away from it.

  The facts are more banal. Surrounded by enemies both at home and abroad, Napoleon had no choice but to accept the impossible odds if he wanted to hang on to power. The long
journey from his first victory against the British fleet in Toulon in 1793 had come to its climax. Almost twenty years of glory, followed by two and a half in which he had lost two whole armies and his throne. He had known total power, self-inflicted disaster, exile, a glorious return, and now he had to fight one last great battle to decide his ultimate fate.

  Napoleon, and Europe itself, was ready for Waterloo.

  The improbable thing is that Napoleon thought he could win – although even that is less improbable than the way his admirers still allege that he actually did.

  * * *

  fn1 All quotations from French sources are my own. Though I have tried to be scrupulously objective when translating, naturellement.

  fn2 That is no joke – the snowball story really is told in French biographies, as is the tale about young Napoleon ‘annexing’ other pupils’ vegetable patches in the school gardens. His whole life is treated by his French admirers as the stuff of heroic legend.

  fn3 Napoleon called his embargo the Blocus Continental, which probably goes some way to explaining the traditional feeling among Brits of being separate from ‘the continent’. British ‘splendid isolation’ comes in part from Napoleon’s desire to isolate it.

  fn4 ‘Marlborough goes off to war’. Ironically, Napoleon is depicted humming an old French song, sung to the tune of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, about the Duke of Marlborough’s campaigns against Louis XIV. Or perhaps it was not ironic – it might have been a way of implying that Napoleon was a greater general than the famous Englishman.

  fn5 The French won at Borodino, and prefer the battle to be called Moskowa – Napoleon gave his Marshal Ney the title ‘Prince de la Moskowa’ for his gallantry there. But for once, the rule that the victor names the battle doesn’t apply, and everyone outside France refers to the Battle of Borodino. Proof, perhaps, of the extent of Napoleon’s overall defeat in Russia.