Chapter XI: Elba--The Return--Waterloo--St. Helena. 1814-1815

Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica

by John Kendrick Bangs

Bonaparte's spirits rose as the party proceeded. There were
remarkable evidences all along the line of march that his greatness,
while dimmed in one sense, had not diminished in others. A series of
attacks upon him had been arranged, much to the fallen Emperor's
delight.

"If you want to make a fellow popular, Bertrand," he remarked
after one of them, "kick him when he's down. I'll wager I am having
a better time now than Louis XVIII., and, after all, I regard this
merely as a vacation. I'll have a good rest at Elba while Louis is
pushing the button of government at Paris. After a while I'll come
back and press the buttons and Louis will do the rest. There's some
honey in the old Bees yet."

At Valence, however, the Emperor had a bitter cup to drain.
Meeting Augereau there, with whom he had fallen out, he addressed him
in his old-time imperial style, asking him what right he had to still
live, and requesting him to stand out of his light. Augereau, taking
advantage of the Emperor's fallen estate, replied in a spirited
manner, calling Napoleon an ex-Emperor and a tin soldier, as well as
applying several other epithets to his dethroned majesty which might
be printed in a French book, but can have no place in this.

"We shall meet again," retorted Bonaparte, with a threatening
gesture.

"Not if I see you first," replied Augereau. "If we do, however,
it will be under a new system of etiquette."

"I'll bet you a crown you'll be singing a new tune inside of a
year," cried the exasperated Bonaparte.

"I'll go you," said Augereau, snapping his fingers. "Put up
your crown."

Napoleon felt keenly the stinging satire of this retort. Bowing
his head with a groan, he had to acknowledge that he had no crown,
but in an instant he recovered.

"But I have a Napoleon left in my clothes!" he cried, with a dry
laugh at his own wit. "I'll bet it against your income for the next
forty centuries, which is giving you large odds, that I shall return,
and when I do, Monsieur Augereau, your name will be Denis."

The appreciation of those about them of this sally so enraged
Augereau that he was discomfited utterly, and he left Bonaparte's
presence muttering words which are fortunately forgotten.

Arrived at Cannes, Bonaparte had his choice of vessels upon
which to make his voyage to Elba, one English and one French. "I'll
take the English. I shall not trust my life to a Bourbon ship if I
know myself. I'd rather go to sea in a bowl," said he.

Hence it was that an English vessel, the Undaunted, had the
honor of transporting the illustrious exile to his island dominion.
On the 4th of May he landed, and immediately made a survey of his new
kingdom.

"It isn't large," he observed, as he made a memorandum of its
dimensions, "but neither is a canvas-back duck. I think we can make
something of it, particularly as the people seem glad to see me."

This was indeed the truth. The Elbese were delighted to have
Bonaparte in their midst. They realized that excursion steamers
which had hitherto passed them by would now come crowded from main-
top to keel with persons desirous of seeing the illustrious captive.
Hotel rates rose 200 per cent., and on the first Sunday of his stay
on the island the receipts of the Island Museum, as it was now
called, were sufficient to pay its taxes to the French government,
which had been in arrears for some time, ten times over.

"I feel like an ossified man or a turtle-boy," said the Emperor
to Bertrand, as the curious visitors gaped awe-stricken at the caged
lion. "If I only had a few pictures of myself to sell these people I
could buy up the national debt, foreclose the mortgage, and go back
to France as its absolute master."

The popularity of Bonaparte as an attraction to outsiders so
endeared him to the hearts of his new subjects that he practically
had greater sway here than he ever had in the palmy days of the
Empire. The citizens made him master of everything, and Bonaparte
filled the role to the full. Provided with guards and servants, he
surrounded himself with all the gaud and glitter of a military
despotism, and, in default of continents to capture, he kept his hand
in trim as a commander by the conquest of such small neighboring
islands as nature had placed within reach, but it could hardly be
expected that he could long remain tranquil. His eyes soon wearied
of the circumscribed limits of Elba.

"It's all very well to be monarch of all you survey, Bertrand,"
said he, mournfully, "but as for me, give me some of the things that
can't be seen. I might as well be that old dried-up fig of a P. T.
Olemy over there in Egypt as Emperor of a vest-pocket Empire like
this. Isn't there any news from France?"

"Yes," returned Bertrand, "Paris is murmuring again. Louis
hasn't stopped eating yet, and the French think it's time his dinner
was over."

"Ha!" cried Bonaparte in ecstasy. "I thought so. He's too much
of a revivalist to suit Paris. Furthermore, I'm told he's brought
out his shop-worn aristocracy to dazzle France again. They're all
wool and a yard wide, but you needn't think my handmade nobility is
going to efface itself just because the Montmorencies and the Rohans
don't ask it out to dine. My dukes and duchesses will have something
to say, I fancy, and if my old laundress, the Duchess of Dantzig,
doesn't take the starch out of the old regime I'll be mightily
mistaken."

And this was the exact situation. As Bonaparte said, the old
regime by their hauteur so enraged the new regime that by the new
year of 1815 it was seen by all except those in authority that the
return of the exile, Corporal Violet, as he was now called, was
inevitable. So it came about that on the 20th of February, his
pockets stuffed with impromptu addresses to the people and the army,
Bonaparte, eluding those whose duty it was to watch him, set sail,
and on the 1st of March he reached Cannes, whence he immediately
marched, gaining recruits at every step, to Paris.

At Lyons he began to issue his impromptu addresses, and they
were in his best style.

"People of France," ran one, "I am refreshed, and have returned
to resume business at the old stand. March 21st will be bargain day,
and I have on hand a select assortment of second-hand goods. One
king, one aristocracy, much worn and slightly dog-eared, and a
monarchy will be disposed of at less than cost. Come early and avoid
the rush. A dukedom will be given away with every purchase. Do not
forget the address--The Tuileries, Paris."

This was signed "Napoleon, Emperor." Its effect was
instantaneous, and the appointment was faithfully kept, for on the
evening of March 20th the Emperor, amid great enthusiasm, entered the
Tuileries, where he was met by all his old friends, including
Fouche.

"Fouche," he said, as he entered the throne-room, "give my card
to Louis the XVIII., and ask him if his luggage is ready. Make out
his bill, and when he has paid it, tell him that I have ordered the
6:10 train to start at 9:48. He can easily catch it."

"He has already departed, Sire," returned Fouche. "He had an
imperative engagement in the Netherlands. In his haste he left his
crown hanging on the hat-rack in the hall."

"Well, send it to him," replied Bonaparte. "I don't want his
crown. I want my own. It shall never be said that I robbed a poor
fellow out of work of his hat."

Settled once more upon his imperial throne, the main question
which had previously agitated the Emperor and his advisers, and
particularly his stage-manager, Fouche, whom he now restored to his
old office, came up once more. "What next?" and it was harder to
answer than ever, for Bonaparte's mind was no longer alert. He was
listless and given to delay, and, worst of all, invariably sleepy. It
was evident that Elba had not proved as restful as had been hoped.

"You should not have returned," said Fouche, firmly. "America
was the field for you. That's where all great actors go sooner or
later, and they make fortunes. A season in New York would have made
you a new man. As it is you are an old man. It seems to me that if
an Irishman can leave Queenstown with nothing but his brogue and the
clothes on his back and become an alderman of New York or Chicago
inside of two years, you with all the advertising you've had ought to
be able to get into Congress anyhow--you've got money enough for the
Senate."

"But they are not my children, those Americans," remonstrated
Napoleon, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Well, France isn't the family affair it once was, either,"
retorted Fouche, "and you'll find it out before long. However, we've
got to do the best we can. Swear off your old ways and come out as a
man of Peace. Flatter the English, and by all means don't ask your
mother- in-law Francis Joseph to send back the only woman you ever
loved. He's got her in Vienna, and he's going to keep her if he has
to put her in a safe-deposit vault."

It would have been well for Napoleon had he heeded this advice,
but as he walked about the Tuileries alone, and listened in vain for
the King of Rome's demands for more candy, and failed to see that
interesting infant sliding down the banisters and loading his toy
cannons with his mother's face-powder, he was oppressed by a sense of
loneliness, and could not resist the temptation to send for them.

"This will be the last chip I'll put on my shoulder, Fouche," he
pleaded.

"Very well," returned Fouche. "Put it there, but I warn you.
This last chip will break the Empire's back."

The demand was made upon Austria, and, as Fouche had said, the
answer was a most decided refusal, and the result was war. Again the
other powers allied against Napoleon. The forces of the enemy were
placed under Wellington. Bonaparte led his own in person, buying a
new uniform for the purpose. "We can handle them easily enough,"
said he, "if I can only keep awake. My situation at present reminds
me so much of the old Bromide days that I fall asleep without knowing
it by a mere association of ideas. Still, we'll whip 'em out of
their boots."

"What boots?" demanded Fouche.

"Their Wellingtons and their Bluchers," retorted the Emperor,
thereby showing that, sleepy as he was, he had not lost his old-time
ability at repartee.

For once he was over-confident. He fought desperately and
triumphantly for three or four days, but the fates held Waterloo in
store. Routing the enemy at Ligny and Quatre Bras, he pushed on to
where Wellington stood in Belgium, where, on the 18th of June, was
fought the greatest of his battles.

"Now for the transformation scene," said Bonaparte on the eve of
the battle. "If the weather is good we'll make these foreigners wish
they had worn running-shoes instead of Wellingtons."

But the weather was not clear. It was excessively wet, and by
nightfall Bonaparte realized that all was over. His troops were in
fine condition, but the rain seemed to have put out the fires of the
Commander's genius. As the Imperial Guard marched before him in
review the Emperor gazed upon them fondly.

"They're like a picture!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Just see
that line."

"Yes," returned Ney. "Very like a picture; they remind me in a
way of a comic paper print, but that is more suitable for framing
than for fighting."

The Emperor making no response, Ney looked up and observed that
his Majesty had fallen asleep. "That settles it," he sighed.
"To-day is the Waterloo of Napoleon Bonaparte. When a man sleeps at
a moment like this his friends would better prepare for a wake."

And Ney was right. Waterloo was the Waterloo of Napoleon
Bonaparte. The opposing armies met in conflict, and, as the world
knows, the star of the great soldier was obscured forever, and France
was conquered. Ruined in his fortunes, Bonaparte at once returned to
Paris.

"Is there a steamer for New York to-night, Fouche?" he asked,
as, completely worn out, he threw himself upon his throne and let his
chin hang dejectedly over his collar.

"No, Sire," returned Fouche, with an ill-concealed chuckle.
"There is not. You've missed your chance by two days. Then isn't
another boat for ten days."

"Then I am lost," sobbed Napoleon.

"Yes, Sire, you are," returned Fouche. "Shall I offer a reward
to anybody who will find you and return you in good order?"

"No," replied the Emperor. "I will give myself up."

"Wise man!" said Fouche, unsympathetically. "You're such a
confounded riddle that I wonder you didn't do it long ago."

"Ah, Fouche!" sighed the Emperor, taking his crown out of his
wardrobe and crushing it in his hands until the diamonds fell out
upon the floor, "this shows the futility of making war without
preparing for it by study. When I was a young man I was a student. I
knew the pages of history by heart, and I learned my lessons well.
While I was the student I was invincible. In mimic as in real war I
was the conqueror. Everything I undertook came about as I had willed
because I was the master of facts--I dealt in facts, and I made no
mistakes. To-day I am a conquered man, and all because I have
neglected to continue the study of the history of my people--of my
adopted native land."

"Humph!" retorted Fouche. "I don't see how that would have
helped matters any. All the history in creation could not have won
the battle of Waterloo for you."

"Fool that you are!" cried Napoleon, desperately, rising.
"Can't you see? Anybody who knows anything about the history of
France knows that the battle of Waterloo resulted fatally for me.
Had I known that, do you suppose I'd have gone there? Not I! I'd
have gone fishing in the South of France instead, and this would not
have happened. Leave me! I wish to be alone."

Left to his own reflections Bonaparte paced his room for hours.
Then, tapping his bell, he summoned one of his faithful adherents.

"Monsieur le B-," he said, as the attendant entered, "you have
heard the news?"

"Yes, Sire," sobbed Le B-.

"Do I not carry myself well in the hour of defeat?"

"You do, Your Majesty."

"Am I pale, Le B-?"

"No--no--oh, no, not at all, Sire."

"Tell me the truth, Le B-. We must not let the enemy find us
broken when they arrive. How do I look? Out with it."

"Out of sight, Sire!" replied Le B-, bending backward as far as
he could, and gazing directly at the ceiling.

"Then bring on your invader, and let us hear the worst," ordered
Napoleon, encouraged by Le B-'s assurances.

A few days later, Bonaparte, having nothing else to do, once
more abdicated, and threw himself upon the generosity of the English
people.

"I was only fooling, anyhow," he said, with a sad smile. "If
you hadn't sent me to Elba I wouldn't have come back. As for the
fighting, you all said I was outside of the pale of civilization, and
I had to fight. I didn't care much about getting back into the pail,
but I really objected to having it said that I was in the tureen."

This jest completely won the hearts of the English who were used
to just such humor, who loved it, and who, many years later, showed
that love by the establishment of a comic journal as an asylum for
bon- mots similarly afflicted. The result was, not death, but a new
Empire, the Island of St. Helena.

"This," said Wellington, "will serve to make his jokes more far-
fetched than ever; so that by sending him there we shall not only be
gracious to a fallen foe, but add to the gayety of our nation."