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40 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson · A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo

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  Speaker 1: Section forty of a short History of France by Mary Duclo.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
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  Speaker 1: Pamela and Nagami, Part four, Chapter five, the hundred Days,
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  Speaker 1: One day at the Congress of Vienna, so the story goes,
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  Speaker 1: the statesmen there assembled were discussing anxiously the unrest in Italy.
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  Speaker 1: When Lord Wellington, seated beside a great round table, on
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  Speaker 1: which was spread a map of Europe, cast his eyes
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  Speaker 1: negligently over the chart of Italy. Good God, he exclaimed,
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  Speaker 1: how close Bonaparte is to the Italian coast. There will
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  Speaker 1: be no peace in Lombardy so long as he is
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  Speaker 1: at Elba. Was it, as Savory, Duke of Rovigo declares
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  Speaker 1: in his memoirs, a foreign officer and admirer of Napoleon,
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  Speaker 1: who left Vienna for Elba in order to tell the
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  Speaker 1: Emperor that the Allies contemplated moving him further afield. Was
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  Speaker 1: it the Prince Eugene, betraying the confidence of Alexander, who
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  Speaker 1: informed his stepfather of a project in the air. The
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  Speaker 1: transportation of Napoleon was a theme so openly debated at
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  Speaker 1: Vienna that the news of it may have reached him
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  Speaker 1: from more sources than one. At any rate, it is
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  Speaker 1: certain that he believed in a plot either to assassinate
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  Speaker 1: him or to kidnap him on the part of the Allies.
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  Speaker 1: He had abducted so many persons himself that he knew
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  Speaker 1: the scheme might enter the sphere of practical politics. Was
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  Speaker 1: he to suffer the fate of the Duke don Quien.
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  Speaker 1: Napoleon had occupied the first months of his exile in
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  Speaker 1: organizing Elba. He was there like Prospero in his aisle,
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  Speaker 1: like the prophet in his chamber, on the wall, just
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  Speaker 1: on the marge of a world which he did not
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  Speaker 1: cease to survey. But funds soon ran short. The yearly
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  Speaker 1: two million of Frank's guaranteed by the Allies were never
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  Speaker 1: paid for. The canny King Louis the eighteenth took him
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  Speaker 1: malign pleasure in letting the ex usurper taste the pleasures
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  Speaker 1: of poverty and exile. Chacon Saint Tour Napoleon had to
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  Speaker 1: borrow from a banker in Genoa the sum which permitted
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  Speaker 1: him to fortify his isle, place batteries along the coast,
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  Speaker 1: improved its artillery, and lay in a store of provisions
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  Speaker 1: and ammunition. The Allies and their press gang should have
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  Speaker 1: no easy task. This occupied a week or two. Then
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  Speaker 1: time again began to drag My island is very small side.
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  Speaker 1: The Emperor of Elba no news of wife or son,
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  Speaker 1: But his mother and the lovely, silly sister he preferred
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  Speaker 1: came to keep him company. They brought news, news indeed
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  Speaker 1: percolated through from every quarter. How unpopular the Bourbon were,
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  Speaker 1: how the Allies meant to drive Mura from Naples, How
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  Speaker 1: Austria was regaining all the old ground in Italy, How
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  Speaker 1: France was as priest ridden, the nobles as powerful, the
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  Speaker 1: people as dissatisfied, as if the Revolution had never taken place.
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  Speaker 1: One sided inaccurate news enough, but it served to occupy
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  Speaker 1: and to infuriate the exile. Meanwhile, in Milan, the mild
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  Speaker 1: contents cried vive l'Empereur and did not mean the Emperor
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  Speaker 1: of Austria. And in France they cried vive le rois
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  Speaker 1: and added low di Rome. On the twenty second of
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  Speaker 1: February eighteen fifteen, a certain Monsieur Fleurie de Chaboulon arrived
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  Speaker 1: in the island of Elba and had a long interview
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  Speaker 1: with Napoleon the Emperor saw him again on the morrow.
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  Speaker 1: This talk with Fleuri was doubtless only the last drop
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  Speaker 1: that causes the vase to overflow. Napoleon was already at
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  Speaker 1: an end of his patients. The same impulsive temperament which
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  Speaker 1: had made him hurry on so many an event rush
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  Speaker 1: into the hall at Saint Cloud during the deliberation of
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  Speaker 1: the Sante, soon risk his life by his return from
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  Speaker 1: Egypt when he ran the blockade. Gallop home so often
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  Speaker 1: from Spain or Russia on receipt of bad news, now
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  Speaker 1: sent him on a more tremendous quest before the times
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  Speaker 1: were ripe. How mad an enterprise to dare with the
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  Speaker 1: nine hundred men of his guard, the United Armies of Europe,
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  Speaker 1: all still maintaining on a footing of war and mobilized
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  Speaker 1: when the nations assembled at Vienna, had so many causes
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  Speaker 1: of quarrel among themselves as would supply half a dozen
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  Speaker 1: international conflicts. Had Napoleon known how to possess his soul
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  Speaker 1: in patience until his enemies were safely by the ears,
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  Speaker 1: he might yet have died a reniant monarch. Had I
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  Speaker 1: waited twelve hours longer, he said on Saint Helena to Montolon,
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  Speaker 1: I should have been in possession of news which would
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  Speaker 1: have caused me to delay. But his genius was of
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  Speaker 1: a sort which is not a long patience. Beaufon's definition
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  Speaker 1: was not true of him. Had I waited fifteen days
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  Speaker 1: the news of my arrival, would no longer have found
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  Speaker 1: the sovereigns all assembled in Vienna. But his nature was
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  Speaker 1: such that on the very morrow of that conversation with Fleuri,
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  Speaker 1: in which he had fixed his departure for the first
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  Speaker 1: of April, he set sail for France, with nine hundred
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  Speaker 1: soldiers at his disposal in the solitary gun boat which
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  Speaker 1: composed his navy, and three small trading vessels at anchor
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  Speaker 1: in the port. It was the twenty sixth of February.
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  Speaker 1: On the way, they passed a French cruiser that remarked
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  Speaker 1: nothing extraordinary in their trim. How's the Emperor, shouted the captain,
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  Speaker 1: seeing they hailed from his island, where there is a
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  Speaker 1: considerable trade in iron. Napoleon seized the speaking tube. Always
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  Speaker 1: all right, he replied, il vais a merveis. His spirits
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  Speaker 1: and his hopes were high. The sequel sounds like a
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  Speaker 1: page from the Lejon de Siek, the landing near Counn,
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  Speaker 1: the bivouac, and a garden of olives. The startled peasants
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  Speaker 1: hurrying to the scene in the village mayor, who says,
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  Speaker 1: reproachfully to Napoleon. We were just beginning to enjoy our
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  Speaker 1: peace and quietness, and here you come to disturb and
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  Speaker 1: unsettle us again, words added the Emperor, which pierced me
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  Speaker 1: to the heart. And then the apparition of the courier
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  Speaker 1: of the Prince of Monaco, who comes riding by in
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  Speaker 1: his gold laced vest. Napoleon recognizes him as an old
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  Speaker 1: equerry of Josephine's and inquires of him as to his
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  Speaker 1: probable chances. The workmen and the soldiers are for you,
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  Speaker 1: says the horseman, but not the others, and don't count
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  Speaker 1: on Provence. In order to see how the land lies,
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  Speaker 1: the Emperor dispatches to Antibe five and twenty grenadiers under
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  Speaker 1: an officer to announce his return and bid the garrison
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  Speaker 1: open their gates. But the time drags on the grenadiers
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  Speaker 1: are seen no more of being detained in prison at Antibe.
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  Speaker 1: Then comes the Prince of Monaco in person, astonished to
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  Speaker 1: find himself of so much importance. Viz a vie to Napoleon.
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  Speaker 1: Where are you going homes, said the little Prince, so
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  Speaker 1: am I said Napoleon his opinion, asked the prince prophesies
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  Speaker 1: no easy triumph, but civil war, the people being for Napoleon,
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  Speaker 1: the governing and intellectual classes for the King. Then the
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  Speaker 1: Emperor leaves the plains the rich disaffected country, and takes
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  Speaker 1: to the mountains, making for greenob the cradle of the revolution.
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  Speaker 1: There he is received with enthusiasm. Next at Leon And
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  Speaker 1: on the twentieth of March, at four o'clock in the morning,
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  Speaker 1: just eleven months after his sad farewell to the Old Guard,
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  Speaker 1: he arrives at Fontembleau. His nine hundred soldiers had not
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  Speaker 1: yet discharged a single rifle until the middle of the month.
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  Speaker 1: The King in Paris was treating b P's escapade with
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  Speaker 1: sovereign indifference. When the aerial telegraph brought to Paris the
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  Speaker 1: news of Napoleon's arrival in Provence, the King tossed aside
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  Speaker 1: the dispatch. Take this paper to the Minister of War
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  Speaker 1: and tell him to do what's necessary. The necessary being evidently,
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  Speaker 1: to set the madman against the nearest wall in order
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  Speaker 1: a platoon to shoot. It's a plot, said the king.
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  Speaker 1: It's a conspiracy, said the court. It would have been folly,
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  Speaker 1: they said, to feel the least uneasiness. Next thing they heard,
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  Speaker 1: Napoleon was at Leon. On the fifteenth of March, the
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  Speaker 1: king announced to the two chambers that on the morrow
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  Speaker 1: he would communicate his intentions. A throne was prepared in
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  Speaker 1: the Palais Bourbon. The King, the royal family, the marshals,
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  Speaker 1: the ministers, and the two chambers were united. Louis the
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  Speaker 1: eighteenth the rose, and in an affecting speech, declared that
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  Speaker 1: he would gladly give his life to defend the Charter
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  Speaker 1: and the Constitution, which at last had brought liberty to France.
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  Speaker 1: Gerrevue matpatri gitravaio bonor de mont peup poor reigier as
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  Speaker 1: sois Saint n mu Tirmine marcrier commourent pour sa de France.
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  Speaker 1: These words were received with a storm of enthusiasm. The
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  Speaker 1: king and his brother embraced the princes, and the legislators
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  Speaker 1: cried as with one voice, we will live and die
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  Speaker 1: for the King and the Constitution. And no doubt Louis
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  Speaker 1: instinct would have led him to stay in Paris, but
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  Speaker 1: his lymphatic indifferent nature made him often the tool of
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  Speaker 1: his ministers. If he had stayed in Paris, it is
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  Speaker 1: if Napoleon would have gained an entrance there. But those
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  Speaker 1: about the king thought too much of his safety and
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  Speaker 1: too little of his honor. After all, it was natural
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  Speaker 1: Louis the eighteenth was the brother of the unhappy Louis
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  Speaker 1: says so. At midnight on the nineteenth of March, the
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  Speaker 1: royal traveling coach drew up before the Pavillon de floor,
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  Speaker 1: and the old king left the Tuileries, infirm and suffering
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  Speaker 1: sorely from his gout, leaning heavily on the arms of
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  Speaker 1: his ministers. The night was wild and wet. The rain
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  Speaker 1: fell in torrents, the wind extinguished the flaring light of
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  Speaker 1: the torches. Louis would have no escort. Alone, he set
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  Speaker 1: out in the darkness at the full speed of his equipage,
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  Speaker 1: for Flanders, where he made a halt at Lille, and
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  Speaker 1: finally for the town of Ghent. Twenty four hours after
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  Speaker 1: this midnight flitting, Napoleon slept in the King's bed in Paris. Thus,
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  Speaker 1: in twenty days journey, without a shot fired the Emperor
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  Speaker 1: exchanged his villa in Elba for the Tuileriy. It is
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  Speaker 1: perhaps the most wonderful expedition in all history. But from
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  Speaker 1: the moment of his entry into Paris, Napoleon felt a
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  Speaker 1: certain chill fall across the quality of his greeting. Throughout
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  Speaker 1: the hundred days, he was never completely sure of Paris.
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  Speaker 1: Under the Charter, Paris had tasted of liberty, the stifling despotism,
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  Speaker 1: the forced ascent, the mailed fist of the imperial administration
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  Speaker 1: had been removed, and Paris quick witted, critical, sensitive, artistic
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  Speaker 1: Paris had breathed again and had soon accepted the bourbon.
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  Speaker 1: What did it matter if they were a little ridiculous,
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  Speaker 1: the fat king in his red velvet gaiters, the awkward
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  Speaker 1: Mannish Dauphine in her straight up and down white English frocks,
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  Speaker 1: and unbecoming close bonnet. They were good, honest folk. Who
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  Speaker 1: let a petulance? Did he say it? Say? Paris had
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  Speaker 1: no great wish to go to school again. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: the France of eighteen fourteen had two faces, like Janus,
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  Speaker 1: the one looking toward the past, the other eagerly envisaging
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  Speaker 1: the future. There was a popular heroic France the child
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  Speaker 1: of the Revolution, the heir of the Empire, patriotic to
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  Speaker 1: the innermost fiber of the soul, martial and simple, which
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  Speaker 1: was mortified to the quick by the invasion of the Allies.
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  Speaker 1: To this France, Louis the eighteenth was odious, but there
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  Speaker 1: was a new France whose eager appetites were not all
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  Speaker 1: for glory of France, which, after the huge interruption of
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  Speaker 1: the Revolution in the Empire, longed to resume the tasks
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  Speaker 1: and experiments in letters, in science, in industrial organization, which
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  Speaker 1: had occupied the middle years of Louis the sixteenth. In
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  Speaker 1: eighteen fourteen, the steamboat existed already in America. In eighteen fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: George Stephenson was constructing his iron horse. In eighteen fourteen
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  Speaker 1: James Watt was elected a member of the Academie des
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  Speaker 1: Sience in Paris. There was a France intensely occupied with
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  Speaker 1: spinning jennies and chemical experiments, that dreamed of vast factories
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  Speaker 1: and the renewal of the world by organized industry. There
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  Speaker 1: was a France voiced by Chateaubrion, Madame de Stahl, who
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  Speaker 1: knew itself capable of a magnificent revival in art and literature,
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  Speaker 1: a France that felt itself the equal of the Classic Age,
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  Speaker 1: though so long curved and stifled and silenced by the Empire.
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  Speaker 1: And this France dreaded and hated Napoleon because its ideal
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  Speaker 1: was beauty, culture, wealth, prosperity and peace. If sometimes this
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  Speaker 1: France had dreamed of a change of dynasty, it was
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  Speaker 1: not in favor of the Emperor. At most the infant
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  Speaker 1: king of Rome under a complacence regency. Better still, the
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  Speaker 1: Duke of Orleon, young Louis Philippe, whom everyone declared so charming,
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  Speaker 1: so wise, so liberal. The sovereigns and statesmen assembled that
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  Speaker 1: Vienna were much of the same way of thinking. Louis
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  Speaker 1: the eighteenth was held to have disqualified himself by abandoning
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  Speaker 1: his kingdom in the hour of need. Besides, he had
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  Speaker 1: grievously offended the Czar in eighteen fourteen by what Alexander
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  Speaker 1: deemed his Bourbon insolence. The Autocrat of Russia had offered
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  Speaker 1: his sister as a bride for the heir of the
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  Speaker 1: French throne, and Louis had let him understand that the
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  Speaker 1: Romanovs were people of no birth, that the princess was
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  Speaker 1: a heretic, or at least a schismatic, and that there
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  Speaker 1: was madness in her family. Alexander was already considerably disenchanted
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  Speaker 1: when in the spring of eighteen fifteen he learned at
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  Speaker 1: Vienna that planned of Talleyrand and King Louis to found
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  Speaker 1: an alliance between England, France, and na Austria, an alliance
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  Speaker 1: evidently intended to keep Russia in her proper place. Small
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  Speaker 1: wonder then, if the CSAR envisaged a new arrangement of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the monarchy in France, he inclined to the candidature of
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Louis Philippe. Other powers supported the King of Rome. As
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  Speaker 1: for Napoleon, all agreed that he was impossible. Meanwhile, the
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  Speaker 1: Emperor was making his last desperate bid for success. His eagles,
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  Speaker 1: which had flown from village spire to village steeple, all
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  Speaker 1: the way from Khan to the capital, had, as Chateaubrion puts, it, fallen,
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  Speaker 1: exhausted among the chimney stacks of the Tuileries. Napoleon in
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  Speaker 1: Paris perceived that he was no longer the idol of
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  Speaker 1: the nation. His one chance was to conciliate the malcontents
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  Speaker 1: of every party, until by some Brusque act of power,
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  Speaker 1: he could bind them or fuse them in a party
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  Speaker 1: of his own. He went warily at first, much as
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  Speaker 1: he had pensively picked his path in politics on his
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  Speaker 1: return from Egypt, striving to accommodate the imperialists of the army,
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  Speaker 1: the republicans of the working class, and even those anarchists
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  Speaker 1: of every shade, whom in his heart he held in horror. Soon,
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  Speaker 1: too soon, no doubt, he showed his hand. On the
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  Speaker 1: twenty third of April he published an additional act to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the Constitution of the Empire, an act which was in
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  Speaker 1: fact under another name, the Charter of Louis the eighteenth.
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  Speaker 1: Here he seemed to say, am I a constitutional monarch,
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  Speaker 1: quite reconciled with liberty and peace. Behold me at the
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  Speaker 1: head of a parliamentary government, perfectly ready to march with
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the times. It was but a means of gaining time.
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  Speaker 1: The Emperor confessed in later years that had Waterloo been
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  Speaker 1: a glorious victory for the French, he would soon have
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  Speaker 1: sent his chambers to the rightabout. And even as an
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  Speaker 1: expedient it proved a poor toothe. The patriots were disgusted.
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  Speaker 1: They had hoped for a republic. The army was alarmed
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  Speaker 1: at this extension of the civil power. The Bonapartists deplored
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  Speaker 1: all these liberal concessions, and said Napoleon was growing old,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and the monarchists and the liberals were neither convinced nor conciliated.
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  Speaker 1: The Emperor felt, with a sense of bewildered insecurity, that
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  Speaker 1: his magic worked no more. His old prestige had vanished. Still,
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  Speaker 1: a great victory which would avenge France and redeem the
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  Speaker 1: long humiliation of the past year, might renew the charm
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  Speaker 1: and re establish the power. Napoleon was not without hope
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: that he might yet detach Austria and England from the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: circle of his enemies. He too had heard of that
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: projected league, the last word of confidential diplomacy, and like
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: most such mysteries, the secret of policew punched his secret
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: that everybody knows to Austria. Therefore, into England he wrote,
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  Speaker 1: protesting his desire to keep the peace and his acceptance
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  Speaker 1: of the restricted frontiers of France. But neither Emperor nor
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  Speaker 1: king would take his word. So then he must fight
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: them all, And where was his army. Louis the eighteenth
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: had left the treasury full not in vain had he
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: practiced a policy of peace and retrenchment. France is naturally
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  Speaker 1: so rich and so economical a country that, if her
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: sovereigns will but leave her alone, she recovers incredibly soon
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: from the most savage bleedings of her army surgeons. So
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: after one brief year of Louis's humdrum calm, there was
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  Speaker 1: no lack of money, and neither would there be any
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: lack of men. For every Frenchman is born a soldier.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: If time were granted to equip and train the troops,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Napoleon reckoned that by the first of October he could
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: place in the field an army of eight or nine
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand men. Unhappily for him, Europe was armed to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: the teeth. What a specially bad time he had chosen
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: to come back. By the middle of May, Blucher was
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: on the Mouse and Wellington on the Shelt. The Russians
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: were expected on the Rhine in June, and Lord Castlereagh
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: was telling the Commons that first and last the coalition
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: could count on twelve hundred thousand soldiers. Already more than
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: half of this number were ready to strike. Napoleon had
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: in hand between five and six hundred thousand, of which
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: not half were fully armed, instructed and equipped. Many were
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: absent in foreign garrisons. Not two hundred thousand were in
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  Speaker 1: France ready to take the field, and of these he
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: had to detach thirty thousand men to quell a new
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: rising in Vundi. But could he wait? Could he let
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the enemy cross the frontier and begin over again the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: campaign in France? It was clearly his best chance to
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: beat the Prussians and the English before Austria and Russia
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  Speaker 1: were ready to take the field. Napoleon was a master
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  Speaker 1: of speed, secrecy, surprise. Notwithstanding the overwhelming numbers of the allies,
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  Speaker 1: it was just possible that he might succeed pouncing suddenly
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  Speaker 1: on the two adversaries, crashing right through their point of junction,
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  Speaker 1: falling on them, so to speak, with both fists and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: hammering hard till one fell stunned to the right and
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: t'other to the left. This bold and brilliant plan was
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  Speaker 1: probably the best that a small, highly trained force could
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  Speaker 1: execute against two large but less coherent armies. But it
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: needed the Napoleon of yesterday, and Napoleon was no longer
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that he had no longer the same force, the same passion,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the same power of work. He had come back from Elba,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: immensely fat, discursive, somnolent, oddly acquiescent in the slackness, the baseness,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: the faint hearted treacheries of mediocre men. Me things that
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: would have driven him to fury in eighteen ten now
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: scarcely awoke a smile. He knew that Fouchet was betraying
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: him to his enemies, yet he found it convenient to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: retain Fouchet as Minister of Police. He trusted very few
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of any of his marshals, had they not all abandoned him,
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  Speaker 1: But he worked with them without reproach. His indulgence was infinite.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: In fact, Napoleon was growing old. He was in his
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: forty sixth year. Nevertheless, in flashes, the old genius illuminated
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: him still, the old unmatched decision mastery and brilliance. The sudden,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: silent swoop with which he brought his armies across the frontier,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: the manner with which he arrayed this vast ambush masked
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: by low hills and the frontier fortresses within a few
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: leagues of an unsuspecting enemy, are worthy of his inspired
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: campaigns on the fourteenth of June eighteen fifteen, one hundred
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: and fifteen thousand men, three hundred and fifty cannon were
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: drawn up unrevealed between Philippeville and Moubouge. And if on
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the morrow the treason of General Beaumont revealed their presence
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to the Prussians, the English were still unprepared. End of
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Section forty