• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Before eight o’clock I was with the emperor. He read the dispatch and said to me calmly and quietly . . . ‘Napoleon seems to wish to play the adventurer: that is his concern; ours is to secure that peace which he has disturbed for years. Go without delay to the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia and tell them that I am ready to order my army to march back to France. I do not doubt that both monarchs will agree with me.’ At a quarter past eight I was with the Emperor Alexander, who dismissed me with the same words the Emperor Francis had used. At half-past eight I received a similar declaration from the mouth of King Frederick William III . . . Thus war was decided on in less than an hour.31

Such was the anger of the Allies, indeed, that Eugène de Beauharnais, who had taken refuge in Vienna in 1814, was only saved from being imprisoned in some distant fortress by the intercession of his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria. As for Napoleon’s envoys, they were in each case sent straight back to Paris.

If Napoleon was spurned in Vienna, things were not much better for him at home. A number of senior dignitaries of the empire had rallied to him, certainly, but otherwise the response was muted. The new constitution was generally scorned by educated people, for example. ‘Nobody saw in this association of an old regime with a new one anything other than a concession extracted by the force of circumstance and a means of restoring absolute power in the future. At the same time the . . . venomous criticisms of a number of empassioned writers whipped up violent opposition,’ remembered Hortense de Beauharnais. 32 ‘It was freely criticized and censured,’ wrote the Parisian surgeon, Poumiès de la Siboutie. As for the great assembly of electors to which it was put on 1 June, it did not prove very enthusiastic. To quote the same observer, ‘I formed the opinion that the assembly was not favourably disposed towards the emperor. He was very late in coming. When at last he appeared the vast throng rose shouting, “Vive la France! Vive la nation!” The few feeble cries of “Vive l’empereur!” could barely be distinguished . . . Everybody remarked the alteration in his appearance. He had grown stouter and his fat face was pale and weary, though still impressive.’33 As even ardent Bonapartists admitted, the old charisma had gone. Seeing him at the same event, Thiébault was deeply shocked, ‘His face . . . had lost all expression and all its forcible character; his mouth, compressed, contained none of its ancient witchery; his very head no longer had the pose which used to characterize the conqueror of the world; and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and gestures were undecided. Everything about him seemed to have lost its nature and to be broken up; the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by a strongly pronounced greenish tinge.’34 Even the response of the army was muted: ‘He had the eagles brought to him to distribute to the army and the national guard. With that stentorian voice of his, he cried to them, “Swear to defend your eagles! Do you swear it?” But the vows were made with little warmth. There was but little enthusiasm: the shouts were not like those of Austerlitz and Wagram and the emperor perceived it.’35 As for the popular militias - the so-called fédérés - that began to appear in the cities and other large towns with the aim of fighting royalism, they failed to reach out beyond the urban poor and petty bourgeoisie and showed signs of considerable ambivalence towards the regime, while they inspired little faith. In the words of one popular song that went the rounds, ‘Cobblers, quit your shoes; coalmen, come and join us. If the enemy should come amongst us, at least they won’t find any white.’36

In short, Napoleon was in desperate trouble. Determined to raise a large army, he could no longer rely on the acquiescence that had permitted the success of the levies of earlier years. On the contrary, in most parts of France the notables who formed the backbone