Various
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
THE HUNDRED DAYS
PERSONAL REMINISCENCESThat period of history between the 20th of March and the 28th of June, 1815, being the interregnum in the reign of Louis the Eighteenth, caused by the arrival of Napoleon from Elba and his assumption of the government of France, is known as "The Hundred Days."
It is as interesting as it was eventful, and has been duly chronicled wherever facts have been gathered to gratify a curiosity that is not yet weary of dwelling on the point of time which saw the Star of Destiny once more in the ascendant before it sank forever.
Whatever is connected with this remarkable epoch is worthy of remembrance, and whoever can add the interest of a personal experience, though it be limited and unimportant, should be satisfied, in the recital, to adopt that familiar form which may give to his recollections the strongest impress of reality.
I was at that time a schoolboy in Paris. The institution to which I was attached was connected with one of the National Lyceums, which were colleges where students resided in large numbers, and where classes from private schools also regularly attended, each studying in its respective place and going to the Lyceum at hours of lecture or recitation. All these establishments were, under Napoleon, to a certain degree military. The roll of the drum roused the scholar to his daily work; a uniform with the imperial button was the only dress allowed to be worn; and the physical as well as the intellectual training was such, that very little additional preparation was required to qualify the inmate of the Lyceum for the duties and privations of the soldier's life. The transition was not unnatural; and the boy who breakfasted in the open air, in midwinter, on a piece of dry bread and as much water as he chose to pump for himself,who was turned adrift, without cap or overcoat, from the study-room into the storm or sunshine of an open enclosure, to amuse himself in his recess as he best might,whose continual talk with his comrades was of the bivouac or the battle-field,and who considered the great object of life to be the development of faculties best fitted to excel in the art of destruction, would not be astonished to find himself sleeping on the bare ground with a levy of raw conscripts.
I was in daily intercourse with several hundred young men, and it may not be uninteresting to dwell a moment on the character of my companions, especially as they may be considered a fair type of the youth of France generally at that time. It is, moreover, a topic with which few are familiar. There were not many Americans in that country at that period. I knew of only one at school in Paris beside myself.
If the brilliant glories of the Empire dazzled the mature mind of age, they wrought into delirium the impulsive brain of youth, whose impressions do not wait for any aid from the judgment, but burn into the soul, never to be totally effaced. The early boyhood of those with whom I was associated had been one of continual excitement. Hardly had the hasty but eloquent bulletin told the Parisians that the name of another bloody field was to be inscribed among the victories of France, and the cannon of the Invalides thundered out their notes of triumph, when again the mutilated veterans were on duty at their scarcely cooled pieces and the newswomen in the streets were shrilly proclaiming some new triumph of the imperial arms. Then came the details, thrilling a warlike people, and the trophies which symbolized success,banners torn and stained in desperate conflict, destined to hang over Christian altars until the turning current of fortune should drift them back,parks of artillery rumbling through the streets, to be melted into statue or triumphal column,and, amid the spoils of war, everything most glorious in Art to fill that wondrous gallery, the like of which the eye of man will never look upon again. At last, in some short respite of those fighting days, came back the conquerors themselves, to enjoy a fleeting period of rest and fame ere they should stiffen on Russian snows, or swell the streams which bathe the walls of Leipsic, or blacken, with countless dead, the plains stretching between the Rhine and their own proud capital.
By no portion of the people were these things gathered with such avidity and regarded with such all-absorbing interest as by the schoolboys of Paris. Every step of the "Grand Army" was watched with deep solicitude and commented upon with no doubtful criticism. They made themselves acquainted with the relative merit of each division, and could tell which arm of the service most contributed to the result of any particular battle. They collected information from all sources,from accounts in newspapers, from army letters, from casual conversation with some maimed straggler fresh from the scene of war. Each boy, as he made his periodical visit to his family, brought back something to the general fund of anecdote. The fire that burned in their young bosoms was fed by tales of daring, and there was a halo round deeds of blood which effectually concealed the woe and misery they caused. There was but one side of the medal visible, and the figures on that were so bold and beautiful that no one cared for or thought of the ugly death's-head on the reverse. The fearful consumption of human life which drained the land, sweeping off almost one entire generation of able-bodied men, and leaving the tillage of the fields to the decrepitude of age, feebly aided by female hands, gave ample opportunity to gratify the ardent minds panting to exchange the tame drudgery of school and college for the limited, but to them world-wide, authority of the subaltern's sword and epaulet. There seemed to them but one road to advancement. The profession of arms was the sole pursuit which opened a career bounded only by the wildest dreams of ambition. What had been could be; and the fortunate soldier might find no check in the progressive honors of his course, until his brows should be encircled by the insignia of royalty. It required more than mortal courage for a young man to intimate a preference for some more peaceful occupation. A learned profession might be sneeringly tolerated; but woe to him who spoke of agriculture, or commerce, or the mechanic arts! There was little comfort for the luckless wight who, in some unguarded moment, gave utterance to such ignoble aspirations. Henceforth he was, like the Pariah of India, cut off from human sympathy, and the young gentlemen whose tastes and tendencies led them to prefer the more aristocratic trade of butchery felt that there was a line of demarcation which completely and conclusively separated them from him.
This predilection for military life received no small encouragement from the occasional visit of some young Caesar, whose uniform had been tarnished in the experiences of one campaign, and who returned to his former associates to indulge in an hour of unalloyed glorification.
Napoleon, when he entered the Tuileries after prostrating some hostile kingdom, never felt more importance than did the young lieutenant in his service when he passed the ponderous doors which ushered him into the presence of his old schoolfellows. What a host of admirers crowded around him! What an honor and privilege to be standing in the presence, and even pressing the hand or rushing into the embrace, of an officer who had really seen bayonet-charges and heard the whistling of grapeshot! How the older ones monopolized the distinguished visitor, and how the little boys crowded the outer circle to catch a word from the military oracle, proudly happy if they could get a distant nod of recognition! And then the questions which were showered upon him, too numerous and varied to be answered. And how he described the forced marches, and the manoeuvring, and the great battle!how the cannonade seemed the breaking up of heaven and earth, and the solid ground shook under the charges of cavalry; how, yet louder than all, rang the imperial battle-cry, maddening those who uttered it; how death was everywhere, and yet he escaped unharmed, or with some slight wound which trebled his importance to his admiring auditors. He would then tell how, after hours of desperate fighting, the Emperor, seeing that the decisive moment had arrived, ordered up the Imperial Guard; how the veterans, whose hairs had bleached in the smoke of a hundred battles, advanced to fulfil their mission; how with firm tread and lofty bearing, proud in the recollections of the past and strong in the consciousness of strength, they entered the well-fought field; and how from rank to rank of their exhausted countrymen pealed the shout of exultation, for they knew that the hour of their deliverance had come; and then, with overwhelming might, all branches of the service, comprised in that magnificent reserve, swept like a whirlwind, driving before them horse and foot, artillery, equipage, and standards, all mingled in irremediable confusion.
With what freedom did our young hero comment on the campaign, speaking such names as Lannes and Ney, Murat and Massena, like household words! He did not, perhaps, state that the favorable result of things was entirely owing to his presence, but it might be inferred that it was well he threw in his sword when the fortunes of the Empire trembled in the balance.
Under such influences, and with the excitement produced by the marvellous success of the French armies, it is not singular that young men looked eagerly forward to a participation in the prodigies and splendors of their time,that they should turn disdainfully from the paths of honest industry, and that everything which constitutes the true wealth and greatness of a state should have been despised or forgotten in the lurid and blood-stained glare of military glory, which cowered like an incubus on the breast of Europe. The battle-fields were beyond the frontiers of their own country; the calamities of war were too far distant to obtrude their disheartening features; and no lamentations mingled with the public rejoicings. Many a broken-hearted mother mourned in secret for her son lying in his bloody grave; but individual grief was disregarded in the madness which pervaded all classes, vain-glorious from repeated and uninterrupted success.
But the time had come when the storm was to pour in desolation over the fields of France, and the nations which had trembled at her power were to tender back to her the bitter cup of humiliation. The unaccustomed sound of hostile cannon broke in on the dreams of invincibility which had entranced the people, and deeds of violence and blood, which had been complacently regarded when the theatre of action was on foreign territory, seemed quite another thing when the scene was shifted to their own vineyards and villages.
The genius of Napoleon never exhibited such vast fertility of resources as when he battled for life and empire in his own dominions. Every foot of ground was wrested from him at an expense of life which thinned the innumerable hosts pressing onward to his destruction. He stood at bay against all Europe in arms; and so desperately did he contend against the vast odds opposed to him, and so rapidly did he move from one invading column to another, successively beating back division upon division, that his astonished foes, awed by his superhuman exertions, had wellnigh turned their faces to the Rhine in panic-stricken retreat. But the line of invasion was so widely extended that even his ubiquity could not compass it. His wonderful power of concentration was of little avail to him when the mere skeletons of regiments answered to his call, and, along his weakened line, the neglected gleanings left by the conscription, now hastily garnered in this last extremity, greeted him in the treble notes of childhood. The voices of the bearded men, which once hailed his presence, were hushed in death. They had shouted his name in triumph over Europe, and it had quivered on their lips when parched with the moral agony. Their bones were whitening the sands of Egypt, the harvests of Italy had long waved over them, their unnumbered graves lay thick in the German's Fatherland, and the floods of the Berezina were yet giving up their unburied dead. The remnant of that once invincible army did all that could be done; but there were limits to endurance, and exhaustion anticipated the hour of combat. Men fell dead in their ranks, untouched by shot or steel; and yet the survivors pressed on to take up the positions assigned by their leader, who seemed to be proof against either fatigue or despair. His last bold move, on which he staked his empire, was a splendid effort, but it failed him. It was the daring play of a desperate gamester, and nearly checkmated his opponents. But when, instead of pursuing him, they marched on Paris, he left his army to follow as it could, and hastened to anticipate his enemies. When about fifteen miles from Paris, he received news of the battle of Montmartre and the capitulation of the city. The post-house where he encountered this intelligence was within sight of the place where I passed my vacations. I often looked at it with interest, for it was there that the vision first flashed before him of his broken empire and the utter ruin which bade farewell to hope. He had become familiar with reverses. His veteran legions had perished in unequal strife with the elements, or melted away in the hot flame of conflict; his most devoted adherents had fallen around him; yet his iron soul bore up against his changing fortunes, and from the wrecks of storm and battle there returned
"the conqueror's broken car, The conqueror's yet unbroken heart."
But the spirit which had never quailed before his enemies was crushed by the desertion of his friends. He had now to feel that treason and ingratitude are attendants on adversity, and that the worshippers of power, like the Gheber devotee, turn their faces reverently towards the rising sun.
There are few things in history so touching as the position of Napoleon at Fontainebleau, during the few days which preceded his abdication and departure for the Island of Elba. Nearly all his superior officers forsook him, not even finding time to bid him adieu. Men whom he had covered with wealth and honors, who had most obsequiously courted his smiles, and been most vehement in their protestations of fidelity, were the first to leave him in his misfortune, forgetting, in their anxiety to conciliate his successor, to make the slightest stipulation for the protection of their benefactor. He was left in the vast apartments of that deserted palace, with hardly the footsteps of a domestic servant to break its monastic stillness; and, for the first time in his eventful life, he sat, hour after hour, without movement, brooding over his despair. At last, when all was ready for his departure, he called up something of his old energy, and again stood in the presence of what remained of the Imperial Guard, which was faithful to the end. These brave men had often encircled him, like a wall of granite, in the hour of utmost peril, and they were now before him, to look upon him, as they thought, for the last time. He struggled to retain his firmness, but the effort was beyond human resolution; his pride gave way before his bursting heart, and the stern vanquisher of nations wept with his old comrades.
Napoleon was gone. His empire was in the dust. The streets of his capital were filled with strangers, and the volatile Parisians were almost compensated for the degradation, in their wonder at the novel garb and uncouth figures of their enemies. The Cossacks of the Don had made their threatened "hurra," and bivouacked on the banks of the Seine. Prussian and Austrian cannon pointed down all the great thoroughfares, and by their side, day and night, the burning match suggested the penalty of any popular commotion. The Bourbons were at the Tuileries, and France appeared to have moved back to the place whence she had started on her course of redemption. At length, slowly and prudently, the allied armies commenced their homeward march, and the reigning family were left to their own resources, to reconcile as they could the heterogeneous materials stranded by the receding tide of revolution. But concession formed no part of their character, and reconciliation was an unknown element in their plan of government. They took possession of the throne as though they had only been absent on a pleasure excursion, and, ignoring twenty years of parvenu glory, affected to be merely continuing an uninterrupted sovereignty. The pithy remark of Talleyrand, that "they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing," was abundantly verified. Close following in their wake, came hordes of emigrants famished by long exile and clamorous for the restitution of ancient privileges. There was nothing in common between them and the men of the Republic, or of the Empire. They assumed an air of superiority, which the latter answered with the most undisguised contempt. Ridicule, that fearful political engine, which, especially in France, is sufficient to batter down the hopes of any aspirant who lays himself open to it, and which Napoleon himself, in his greatest power, feared more than foreign armies or intestine conspiracies, was most unsparingly directed against them. The print-shops exposed them in every possible form of caricature, the theatres burlesqued their pretensions, songs and epigrams contributed to their discomfiture, and all the ingenuity of a witty and laughter-loving people was unmercifully poured out upon this resurrection of antediluvian remains. Their royal patrons came in for a full share of the general derision, but they seemed entirely unmindful that there was such a thing as popular opinion, or any other will than their own. There were objects all around them which might have preached to them of the uncertainty of human grandeur and the vanity of kingly pride, reminding them that there is but a step from the palace to the scaffold, which step had been taken by more than one of their family. The walls of their abode were yet marked by musket-balls, mementos of a day of appalling violence, and from the windows they could see the public square where the guillotine had permanently stood and the pavement had been crimsoned with the blood of their race. They had awakened from a long sleep, among a new order of men, who were strangers to them, and who looked upon them as beings long since buried, but now, unnaturally and indecorously, protruded upon living society. They commenced by placing themselves in antagonism to the nation, and erected a barrier which effectually divided them from the people. The history of the Republic and the Empire was to be blotted out; it was a forbidden theme in their presence, and whatever reminded them of it was carefully hidden from their legitimate vision. The remains of the Old Guard were removed to the provinces or drafted into new regiments; leaders, whose very names stirred France like the blast of a trumpet, were almost unknown in the royal circle; and the great Exile was never to be mentioned without the liability to a charge of treason.