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38 - 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 thirty eight of a short History of France by
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Speaker 1: Mary Duclaux. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: Read by Pamel and Agami, Part four, Chapter three Napoleon,
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Speaker 1: Part four, Taraleran had time to indoctrinate an apt pupil
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Speaker 1: before he met with a richly earned disgrace. In eighteen
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Speaker 1: o nine. Napoleon's mother, shrewd and suspicious, as are the
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Speaker 1: unlearned women of the South, surprised the secret intrigue of
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Speaker 1: Tolerant and Fouchet there carefully hidden colloquies in a friend's
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Speaker 1: country house at Surines, and she herself heard Fouchet say
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Speaker 1: that phrase we have quoted set tona sansei il fautonfenil.
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Speaker 1: She warned her son. In six days Napoleon came posting
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Speaker 1: back from Spain, dashed across France to Paris, sent Taleran
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Speaker 1: to the right about depriving him of his charge of
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Speaker 1: Grand Chamberlain. He kept Fouchet indispensable as head of the police,
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Speaker 1: but he kept him under watch and ward. This was
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Speaker 1: in eighteen ten. The times were troubled. Napoleon seemed possessed
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Speaker 1: by a feverish, reckless desire to strain his fortunes to
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Speaker 1: the utmost. The sovereigns of Europe found him an impossible neighbor.
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Speaker 1: We have seen how in eighteen o four he carried
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Speaker 1: off the Duke of Ongia shot him, violating the territory
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Speaker 1: of the Duke of Baden, with whom he was on
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Speaker 1: terms of peace. In eighteen o five he abducted the
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Speaker 1: English minister at Hamburg and carried him off to Paris,
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Speaker 1: him and his papers. This was no matter of a
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Speaker 1: mere Rhenisch margrov and of French emigres. It concerned the
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Speaker 1: plenipotentiary of a great power living under the protection of
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Speaker 1: the German Emperor. In eighteen o nine he seized upon
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Speaker 1: the Pope, swooped down upon the Holy Father in his
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Speaker 1: quiet quirinal drove him away under military escort to a prison,
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Speaker 1: first at Grenobe, then at Savona, finally in eighteen eleven
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Speaker 1: at Fontainebleau. But of all his abductions his sea questrations,
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Speaker 1: none was so extraordinary as his retention in eighteen o
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Speaker 1: eight of the whole royal family of Spain. Here Napoleon
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Speaker 1: shows himself completely the brigand chief. His prisoners were not interesting.
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Speaker 1: Never had the peninsula, sunk so low in point of prosperity,
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Speaker 1: power or influence as under the rule of Charles the fourth.
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Speaker 1: The Bourbon king and Queen were like an odious caricature
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Speaker 1: of Louis the sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. He kind and loyal,
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Speaker 1: but almost imbecile, incapable of any activity of body or mind,
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Speaker 1: and hypnotized by his blind devotion to his wife. She arrogant, energetic, dissolute,
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Speaker 1: with only one thought in her head, the advancement and
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Speaker 1: good pleasure of her minister and favorite, the handsome Parvenu Goodoy,
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Speaker 1: whom she had created Prince of Peace. Goadoy was the
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Speaker 1: tyrant of Spain, hated by the nation. The king's eldest son, Ferdinand,
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Speaker 1: Prince of the Astudias, rose in arms against the monstrous
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Speaker 1: regimen of his mother and Godoy. The old king, bewildered,
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Speaker 1: abdicated one day, recalled his abdication the next, and watched
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Speaker 1: his kingdom drift into civil war. Then Napoleon invited the King,
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Speaker 1: the Queen, the Prince of the Estudias, and the Prince
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Speaker 1: of Peace, who had all appealed to his decision, to
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Speaker 1: meet him on the frontiers of France and Spain. His
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Speaker 1: master mind would cut the Gordian knot of a family
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Speaker 1: quarrel too angry with each other to suspect this benevolent foreigner.
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Speaker 1: The king, king, the Queen, the two princes, all talking
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Speaker 1: at once and very excited, arrived at the rendezvous. Napoleon
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Speaker 1: gave them the wisest, the kindest advice, pacified the two
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Speaker 1: rival kings, induced Prince Ferdinand to abdicate in favor of
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Speaker 1: his father, persuaded King Charles in his turn, to abdicate
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Speaker 1: in favor of Napoleon, and finally himself passed on the
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Speaker 1: crown to his elder brother, Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples,
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Speaker 1: whose throne, which this preferment left empty, would come in
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Speaker 1: handy for Murrah, who had married Caroline Bonaparte. When the despoiled,
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Speaker 1: bewildered Boubon would fain have turned their faces home, they
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Speaker 1: found the frontiers closed, princely pleasure houses. Ample incomes had
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Speaker 1: been provided for them all in France, but there they
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Speaker 1: must remain. While in their stead Joseph Bonaparte should cross
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Speaker 1: the Pyrenees. Fontainebleau, Chambours Valencil Compienne were set at their disposal,
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Speaker 1: but they were captives, Prince of peace, and all in
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Speaker 1: Vain they protested. Spain rose in victorious insurrection. All her
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Speaker 1: factions at once fused to an indignant unity at this
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Speaker 1: insult to her national honor in Vain. Europe lifted hands
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Speaker 1: of horror, and England sent an expeditionary force to Portugal
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Speaker 1: and Spain under a new, young general, Wellington. Napoleon was
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Speaker 1: not disturbed. For some time. He had been anxious about
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Speaker 1: his western frontier. The Empire appeared lopsided in its immense development.
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Speaker 1: Its eastern extent was now prodigious. Hamburg was the chelieu
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Speaker 1: of the French department of the Elbe Rome the capital
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Speaker 1: of the Department of the Tiber. But in the southwest
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Speaker 1: the Pyrenean boundary was but a few days march from Paris.
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Speaker 1: It was a relief to behold Spain at last, practically
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Speaker 1: absorbed into the Empire, Napoleon wrote to his brother, Spain
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Speaker 1: is quite another thing, much better than Naples. It is
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Speaker 1: a kingdom of eleven million inhabitants and a hundred and
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Speaker 1: fifty millions of revenue, which places you at three days
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Speaker 1: journey from Paris and covers entirely one of our frontiers.
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Speaker 1: Napoleon was satisfied, and yet that long that harassing Peninsular
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Speaker 1: War of Independence was really the beginning of the end.
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Speaker 1: But he was much occupied in the north. The alliance
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Speaker 1: with Russia had not proved durable. The blockade, which was
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Speaker 1: intended to starve and ruin England, had incidentally stifled Russian trade.
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Speaker 1: That choice of an Austrian princess had humiliated the enthusiastic Alexander,
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Speaker 1: who had intended one of his own sisters to wear
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Speaker 1: the French imperial crown. And also Napoleon would not listen
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Speaker 1: to the Muscovite dream of Constantinople and the Dardanelles. He
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Speaker 1: meant himself to be Emperor of the East. War broke
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Speaker 1: out between the two allies in eighteen twelve. Here, too,
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Speaker 1: as in Spain, Napoleon made the mistake of underrating his adversary.
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Speaker 1: The constancy and courage of the Spaniards in repelling a
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Speaker 1: usurper had surprised the great Man, who esteemed them according
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Speaker 1: to the supine indifference and shiftless idleness with which they
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Speaker 1: had supported the yoke of the Spanish Bourbon. Neither could
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Speaker 1: he guess that these inconsistent Russians, the children of Europe,
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Speaker 1: lovable and puerile, would show themselves capable of burning their
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Speaker 1: capital and devastating their provinces in defense of their country. Napoleon,
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Speaker 1: like all the great men born of the Revolution, could
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Speaker 1: understand no patriotism but his own. With the result that
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Speaker 1: this air of the ideas of eighty nine, Wilson succumb
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Speaker 1: to a series of popular and national movements subversive of
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Speaker 1: that Roman peace, that implacable empire, which he sought to
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Speaker 1: impose on all the races of Europe. The French public
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Speaker 1: was not informed of these new Russian hostilities until some
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Speaker 1: ten days after they had commenced. The nation received the
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Speaker 1: tidings with a calm that masked something of the sullenness
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Speaker 1: of despair. The wars had gone on for eleven years,
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Speaker 1: and there was still no end in sight. My men
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Speaker 1: would fight forever, said the Emperor, if they were not
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Speaker 1: so fond of their families. Frenchmen are very fond of
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Speaker 1: their families, of their fields and farms, their towns. They
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Speaker 1: liked to to turn an honest penny, to lay it by,
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Speaker 1: to spend it wisely in some solid acquisition, to work
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Speaker 1: like artists at their trades, and to live sociably in
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Speaker 1: a friendly society. This ancient life of France was impossible
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Speaker 1: during the long duration of the First Empire. In March
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Speaker 1: eighteen twelve, Napoleon held his court in Dresden. It was
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Speaker 1: perhaps the proudest moment of his life. He stayed there
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Speaker 1: all the spring and early summer. The Emperor of Austria,
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Speaker 1: the King of Prussia, all the princes of the Confederation
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Speaker 1: of the Rhine formed his following. Saxony, Westphalia came and
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Speaker 1: bowed down before him. Bavaria was his washpot, and over
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Speaker 1: Wurttemberg he cast his shoe. Every sovereign in Europe except
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Speaker 1: the Sultan, the Russian Emperor, and the King of England
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Speaker 1: was at his feet. It was the greatest moment of
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Speaker 1: my life, he said on Saint Helena. On the twenty
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Speaker 1: second of June, he declared war on Russia. He was
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Speaker 1: in too great a hurry. He had learned at Dresden
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Speaker 1: that he would have the support neither of Sweden nor
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Speaker 1: of Turkey. He would have no allies in the north
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Speaker 1: or on the East. I was too hasty, he owned,
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Speaker 1: I should have stayed a year on the Niemen, and
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Speaker 1: first of all have made a meal of Prussia. Instead
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Speaker 1: of that, he pursued his old victorious plan. A dash,
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Speaker 1: a pounce, a knockdown blow, and he seats himself in
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Speaker 1: the capital of the conquered enemy, slashes with his sword
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Speaker 1: a slice or two from the fattest part of their territory,
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Speaker 1: imposes himself as suzerin inclined to a pax romana. All
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Speaker 1: went at first according to promise. Napoleon crossed the Niemen,
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Speaker 1: gained a victory at Smolensk, another on the Moskova, and
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Speaker 1: entered Moscow in September. But there, instead of dictating terms
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Speaker 1: and imposing conditions, he found a novel state of things.
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Speaker 1: The Russians, as we know, burned their ancient capital. He
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Speaker 1: encountered emptiness, voidation. He was there like a man boxing
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Speaker 1: with a moving shadow. The very strength that he put
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Speaker 1: out insured his fall. It is difficult to understand why
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Speaker 1: Napoleon should have lingered among the charred and blackened ruins
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Speaker 1: of Moscow until after the middle of October. Probably he
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Speaker 1: hoped that Alexander would capitulate. Our emperor thought the war
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Speaker 1: was over, wrote Seguir. Day by day he expected an
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Speaker 1: answer from Petersburg. He nourished his hopes on his recollections
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Speaker 1: of Tilsit and Erferut. Was it likely he should have
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Speaker 1: less influence over Alexander at Moscow? And like all men
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Speaker 1: who have long been lucky, he expected his desires to
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Speaker 1: come true. But the master of the empty house still
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Speaker 1: gave no sign of life, and the climate surprised the
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Speaker 1: conqueror by its mildness. In his bulletin of the fourteenth
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Speaker 1: of October, he writes Le ton etin corpo, and even
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Speaker 1: on the twenty seventh, Le tent estuperbes le chemen saint
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Speaker 1: beau se la rest de l'au tomme. The Corsican could
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Speaker 1: not dream how sudden, how fatal might be the change
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Speaker 1: of the equinox, while the old Russian Kulizov smiled and said,
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Speaker 1: we have an ally worth all of Buonaparte's His name
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Speaker 1: is General Winter, and Napoleon continues his letter Seile su
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Speaker 1: les le beljournee de fontainebeau l'Armee d'nzan peillis extreme mariche
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Speaker 1: quipuse de compereon mejor de la France. On the seventh
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Speaker 1: of November, there came a sudden frost, and on the
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Speaker 1: sixteenth the thermometer marked eighteen degrees centigrade below freezing point.
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Speaker 1: The roads were covered with a slippery glaze of ice.
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Speaker 1: The French and German horses of the cavalry, the artillery,
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Speaker 1: the transport perished by thousands every night, thirty thousand of
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Speaker 1: them in a few days. I am quoting Napoleon's bulletin,
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Speaker 1: with the terrible result that the cannons, the wagons of munitions,
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Speaker 1: all the commissariat stocks and stores, the provisions that accompany
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Speaker 1: an army of six hundred thousand men could no longer
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Speaker 1: take the road, and had to be destroyed for the
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Speaker 1: most part in the midst of the wintry plains of Russia.
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Speaker 1: That army so fortunate and prosperous on the sixth of November,
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Speaker 1: was ten days later shorn of its cavalry, its artillery,
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Speaker 1: its transport service alike, in capable of giving battle or
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Speaker 1: of getting food. Between it and that frontier of the
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Speaker 1: Niemen which they had passed so joyously in June stretched
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Speaker 1: fifty days of dreary marching in unimaginable snow and slippery ice,
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Speaker 1: while the Cossacks viciously harried them on all sides. When
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Speaker 1: the pursuit ended on the western frontier, more than three
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Speaker 1: hundred thousand men of the Grand Army had disappeared. The
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Speaker 1: despatch which brought this terrible news to Paris on the
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Speaker 1: eighteenth of December eighteen twelve, concluded with these words intended
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Speaker 1: to reassure and to console His Majesty's health has never
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Speaker 1: been better. It seemed heartless, but Napoleon knew his Paris
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Speaker 1: he must be alive and present. The Parisians, only two
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Speaker 1: days later learned that the Emperor was in their midst.
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Speaker 1: He knew that the magic of his presence alone could
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Speaker 1: comfort and inspire his people in this calamity. He had
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Speaker 1: heard in Russia of the unpopularity of the war, even
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Speaker 1: when that war presented no reverses, And recently he had
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Speaker 1: learned how toward the close of October, General de Malay
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Speaker 1: had spread a false report of the Emperor's death and
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Speaker 1: had attempted to accomplish a royalist coupd'etas. The thing had failed,
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Speaker 1: Malay had been shot, and here was the Emperor bringing
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Speaker 1: bad news. It is true, but full of prestige and
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Speaker 1: resource universal, as was the desire for peace, Napoleon had
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Speaker 1: but to appear in order to carry the day. In
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Speaker 1: the course of four months, he raised an army of
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Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty six thousand men and four hundred
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Speaker 1: and fifty seven guns, and hurried at their head to Germany,
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Speaker 1: to Germany, where Prussia had already joined his enemies, where
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Speaker 1: a new disaster might lose him the support of the
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Speaker 1: Confederation of the Rhine, where Austria herself seemed but a
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Speaker 1: dubious friend. Toute le'rrop marchee vecneux elias ornant toute le
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Speaker 1: rop marche augerstui contrenus, wrote Napoleon in a dispatch of
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Speaker 1: this campaign, and he added that Europe always follows the
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Speaker 1: lead of either France or England. But he did not
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Speaker 1: despair of defeating his arch enemy. Though still the seat
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Speaker 1: of war continued to contract, though the immense limits of
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Speaker 1: the Empire began to shrink shrivel. The battle was at
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Speaker 1: Moscow in eighteen twelve, at Dresden, at Leipzig in eighteen thirteen.
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Speaker 1: In eighteen fourteen, the enemy was ravaging the fields of France.
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Speaker 1: All the world was now in truth against Napoleon. At Leipzig,
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Speaker 1: the Saxons and the Wuttenbergers had ratted and joined the enemy.
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Speaker 1: In the middle of the fight, the Bavarians, who yesterday
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Speaker 1: had fought in Napoleon's cohorts, attempted to stop his retreat
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Speaker 1: and to bar the passage of the Rhine. France was
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Speaker 1: invaded north, south and east by more than seven hundred
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Speaker 1: thousand men, eager to avenge the defeats and disasters which
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Speaker 1: all the nations of Europe save England, had suffered at
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Speaker 1: her hands from Frankfort. In November eighteen thirteen, the Allies
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Speaker 1: sent an envoy to Paris, offering to treat if Napoleon
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Speaker 1: would accept as a basis the natural frontiers of France,
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Speaker 1: the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. This
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Speaker 1: was all the revolution had ever claimed. This was all
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Speaker 1: that in his youth he had gone out to win.
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Speaker 1: The rest was over and above. But Napoleon could not
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Speaker 1: dispense with that magnificent superfluity. He refused, and the nations
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Speaker 1: pressed round him again in battle. Again, his empire dwindled
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Speaker 1: and tottered. Again, they offered terms. This time the limits
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Speaker 1: were narrower. He must renounce Belgium and Savoy. But even so,
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Speaker 1: the France he could have kept was the old, glorious
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Speaker 1: France of the monarchy. Napoleon must have lost the balance
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Speaker 1: of his reason when he refused to make peace. At
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Speaker 1: last began that campaign of France, which was as brilliant,
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Speaker 1: as marvelous, as heroic, but not as successful as his
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Speaker 1: first campaign in Italy. Wherever he fought he triumphed, but
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Speaker 1: wherever he was not, his generals were beaten. The army,
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Speaker 1: in truth, was exhausted, worn out, and moreover, Napoleon, in
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Speaker 1: the fifteen years of his fighting them, had taught his
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Speaker 1: art to his enemies. The Emperor himself was no longer
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Speaker 1: what he had been. The very thin man had become
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Speaker 1: a very fat one. His mental energy, still capable of
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Speaker 1: lightning flashes and surprising darts, would sink sometimes into a
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Speaker 1: sort of lethargy, a morbid and feverish activity, alternating with
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Speaker 1: a strange listlessness. He had become garrulous and discursive. In fact,
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Speaker 1: his youth was past. He had said at Austerlitz to
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Speaker 1: one of his generals, one has but a short time
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Speaker 1: for war. I am good for another six years, and
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Speaker 1: then I shall have to stop. He had spun the
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Speaker 1: six years out to eight, but now he had to stop.
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Speaker 1: As the armies of Europe marched on Paris, Napoleon decided
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Speaker 1: to fight his last battle under the walls of the capital,
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Speaker 1: but before he could bring up his forces, Paris had
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Speaker 1: capitulated to the Czar. In Paris, Alexander met his old
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Speaker 1: friend Taleran. While Napoleon at Fontainbleau was sending a message
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Speaker 1: of surrender to the allies, the minister he had disgraced
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Speaker 1: was negotiating the future of France with the sovereigns of
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Speaker 1: Europe in his hotel of the Rue Saint Florenta. He
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Speaker 1: treated with the enemy as great power with great power,
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Speaker 1: recommending the return of the Bourbon to the exclusion of
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Speaker 1: Napoleon and all the persons of his family. The ex
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Speaker 1: emperor had hoped for a regency in the eventual succession
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Speaker 1: of his infant son, but as Marshal after Marshall forsook
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Speaker 1: the hopeless cause, that last hope had to be abandoned.
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Speaker 1: The little King of Rome, dethroned, proclaimed merely Prince of
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Speaker 1: Parma and Duke of Reichstadt, was to receive his education
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Speaker 1: at the court of his grandfather as became an Austrian prince.
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Speaker 1: Maria Louisa was to return with her little boy to Vienna.
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Speaker 1: Napoleon himself was to receive the Empire of Elba, a
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Speaker 1: small island off the coast of Tuscany between Legourn and Corsica.
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Speaker 1: One after another, the Buonapartes vanished from the scenes of affairs,
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Speaker 1: richly pensioned off in their golden obscurity. On the fourth
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Speaker 1: of April, Napoleon's marshals ne Udo le Fevre MacDonald forced
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Speaker 1: him to accept these terms of peace. On the sixth
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Speaker 1: he signed the Act of Abdication, and the Senate proclaimed
20:35
Speaker 1: the reign of Louis the eighteenth. In his despair, Napoleon
20:39
Speaker 1: attempted to poison himself. At least that old legend, once discredited,
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Speaker 1: is again accepted by recent historians, and surely some warrant
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Speaker 1: is given to it by a phrase in the Adieu
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Speaker 1: of Fontainebleau, and also in that line of the Act
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Speaker 1: of Abdication, where the ex emperor declares himself pretta quitte
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Speaker 1: la frond as meme la ville poule bien de la patri.
21:04
Speaker 1: But Napoleon had not yet run his course, A wonderful,
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Speaker 1: a miraculous adventure was still in front of him. Life
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Speaker 1: seemed over, but the future had its secret to impart. Meanwhile,
21:17
Speaker 1: after a long spell of dreary waiting in his dull,
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Speaker 1: deserted palace, on the twentieth of April, at Fontainebleau, he
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Speaker 1: bade farewell to his soldiers of the Old Guard. All
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Speaker 1: was not lost while you fought by my side. But
21:31
Speaker 1: the war would have gone on forever, would have degenerated
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Speaker 1: into a civil war, and France would have lost her prosperity.
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Speaker 1: I have sacrificed my interests to those of the country.
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Speaker 1: I am going away, and you, my friends, will go
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Speaker 1: on serving France. The happiness of France is all I
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Speaker 1: think of, the one desire of my heart. Do not
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Speaker 1: pity me. If I have consented to survive, it is
21:57
Speaker 1: to serve your fame. I mean to chronicle the great
22:01
Speaker 1: exploits we have achieved. Together. Adieu, farewell, my children, my comrades, farewell.
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Speaker 1: Forget me not. And so Napoleon set out for Elba,
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Speaker 1: an island, some two hundred kilometers square, containing two little
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Speaker 1: towns and seven villages. The modern Charlemagne was Emperor of
22:21
Speaker 1: this principality Antutsoverinette, and the Treaty of Fontainebleau guaranteed him
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Speaker 1: an income of two millions of francs eighty thousand pounds
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Speaker 1: never paid. He has wished us adieu, We may wish
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Speaker 1: him au revoir. End of Section thirty eight