Courtney McGrailThe World of Books
The Books Editor
The battle seems indeed to give rise to various emotions. For Britain it saw the final defeat of a tyrant, but in France it ushered in an era of political reaction and corruption that eventually gave rise to revolution in 1830 and in 1848: the restored Bourbons had learnt nothing in exile.
In all of this, an odd episode is overlooked. The Emperor’s defeat at the battle of Leipzig in April 1813 saw the allied invasion of France which led to the abdication of Napoleon and the Battle of Toulouse in April 1814.
However, in keeping with those times he was still treated with respect. The detested Bourbons might have been restored to the throne of France, but he was granted the island of Elba off the coast of Italy as his own personal fief. He retired there with his entourage, his officers, and some 600 of his old Grande Armée who remain loyal to him.
He landed on the island from the British ship Undaunted on May 3, 1814. He was joined by his mother, sister and mistress, and set about putting some order on the little realm he was reduced to ruling.
For the next six months or so he took his rule of the island very seriously. He built the roads, improved the sanitation and designed a flag. He presented the City Council of Elba with a budget for 1814 which showed revenues of 65,000 francs and an expenditure on his improvements of 62,000 francs; there are local authorities in Europe today who do not manage to have such a surplus budget.
The brief reign of Napoleon on Elba is an extraordinary affair, like something out of a romantic opera in fact. It is still recalled today on the island, as a means of attracting tourists. But in 1841, the grand dukes to whose rule it had been returned allowed the island to add the bees of Napoleon’s own arms to their own flag, a permanent memorial of the emperor’s stay.
He was to have received a pension from the French state, but the Bourbons reneged on this (as on many others things). Their autocratic and arbitrary rule led to rising resentment. A movement to depose them and restore Napoleon in defiance of the European Union was hatched.
However, on February 23, 1815 his loyal supporter Fleury de Chaboulon arrived in secret at Elba, bringing news of the growing hostility to the Bourbons. The next day Napoleon decided he would answer the call and return to France. He left on February 26, and landed in Antibes on March 1. Louis XVIII was deposed and fled, thus beginning “the hundred days” that ended with defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s European enemies at Waterloo.
Return voyage
Readers of Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) will be recall that the troubles of the hero begin when he is asked to stop off on a return voyage and leave a letter in Elba. Returning to Marseilles, he is seized and imprisoned by his enemies. He disappeared into the dungeons of the Chateau d’If, only for the Count of Monte Cristo to emerge in due course, set on a career of vengeance against his enemies.
To Dumas, as to Stendhal, Beethoven, even to Arthur Conan Doyle, Napoleon remained not just a hero, but one of the great men of history. But assessing his career has occupied critics and historians for two centuries.
Though his relations with the Pope and the Church were troubled, after his fall members of his family found refuge in Rome. Whatever may be said about him, he was at least an emancipator, and it was as an emancipator that he was seen by many in Ireland. Alas, to the chagrin of Irish nationalists, in 1798 rather than liberating Ireland as so many hoped, Napoleon turned instead to Egypt and the Levant, on an adventure which still influences the course of current affairs in the Middle East.