Napoleon's Exile (35 page)

‘Could we be serious for five minutes? Cicero lived in the first century of the common era, and I can't imagine him sitting in front of the TV!'

‘He could, though. In
The Pursuit of Unhappiness
, by the excellent Paul Watzlawick of Palo Alto University, I read this short and rather disturbing text from Cicero: ‘If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate of us of all respect for humanity.'"

‘Are you sure your professor hasn't been tinkering with his translation?'

‘That wouldn't be like him.'

‘Fine. But what about now?'

‘Journalism deals with the question. I like Dos Passos's reportage better than his novels.'

‘What if I'm not convinced?'

‘I'm not trying to convince you.'

‘Really?'

‘I couldn't care less, I couldn't give a fig, I couldn't give a tinker's curse. Time travel is a gourmet delight.'

2. W
hat
B
ecame of
T
hem
?

Count Jean-René Pierre de S
ÉMALLÉ
left the court with some haste, and his plot remained a secret. Extracts from his memoirs were published in 1826, and used in notes in a volume on Talleyrand published in 1853 by the printer Michaud. He died in Versailles, in Madame de Pompadour's old home, at the age of ninety-one: he had caught a cold at mass. His grandson finally published his
Souvenirs
in 1898.

In 1815 D
esfieux
-B
eaujeu
, Marquis de la
Grange
, was given the task of whipping up a number of départements in favour of the King, but never received his travel expenses. Neither did he receive his pension as a royal commissioner.

M
orin
became head of the 1st division in the Ministry of Police. He died in poverty.

Marie Armand de G
uéry de
M
aubreuil
settled in England after his release from prison. He denounced the Tsar of Russia, the King of Prussia and the Bourbons to exculpate himself of the planned assassination attempt on Napoleon.

The Chevalier G
uérin de
B
ruslart
was appointed camp marshal in 1816 by Louis XVIII, but given nothing to do. His past as a conspirator was too compromising. He died in Paris on 10 December 1829, in his home at 74 rue Saint-Dominique. He was not considered worthy of a funeral oration.

Hugues-Bernard M
aret
, Duke of B
assano
, was given back his job as Secretary of State during the Hundred Days. After Waterloo he was exiled to Austria, where he stayed until 1820. Louis-Philippe made him a peer of France in 1831. He died in Paris eight years later.

A
ndre
P
ons de L
'H
érault
was appointed Prefect of the Rhône during the Hundred Days. He asked to go with the Emperor into his exile on St Helena, but his request was refused. He himself lived in exile until 1830, when Louis-Philippe granted him the Jura Prefecture. He was soon fired from the post because of his poor character, and he died in 1853 after refusing to recognize Napoleon III.

Marie W
alewska
married the Count of Ornano. She died in childbirth in 1817.

Contrary to legend, C
ambronne
never said
‘Merde!'
at Waterloo. The story was made up in 1830 by the bohemian Genty, in the Café des Variétés, as a trap for Charles Nodier, who duly passed it on.

Antoine D
rouot,
the day after Waterloo, where he was in charge of the Guard, refused to be reintegrated into the royal army. He retired to Lorraine, where he died in 1847 after rejecting all kinds of honours.

Henri Gatien B
ertrand
followed Napoleon to St Helena. In 1830 he was appointed rector of the École Polytechnique. He died in 1844. Four years before that, he organized the return of the Emperor's ashes.

Michel N
ey
had promised Louis XVIII that he would bring Napoleon back in an iron cage. He fell into the Emperor's arms upon his return from Elba, pushed, it is true, by his troops. At Waterloo, he behaved in a hot-headed fashion and contributed to the defeat. He was shot upon the King's return, at the emplacement where his statue stands today, in front of the Closerie des Lilas, near the Paris Observatory.

Louis Alexandre B
erthier
accompanied Louis XVIII when Napoleon returned. He fell from a window in Bamberg Castle in Bavaria, in 1815. He is thought to have been pushed.

Étienne Jacques M
acdonald
led Louis XVIII to the border, and became an ordinary grenadier in the National Guard. On his return, the King appointed him Minister of State. He died in 1840, near the Loire.

Armand Augustin Louis, Marquis de C
aulaincourt,
became Minister of Foreign Affairs once again during the Hundred Days, before retiring to die in Paris in 1827 - after writing memoirs that would only be published long afterwards.

Auguste Daniel B
elliard
died of apoplexy in Brussels, where Louis-Philippe had made him ambassador. That was in 1832.

Charles Pierre François A
ugereau
did not live long enough to enjoy his vast fortune: he died in 1816.

Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de M
armont
because a peer of France under Louis XVIII, then Minister of State and Governor of Paris. As Duke of Ragusa, he was stuck with his reputation of having betrayed the Emperor, and the word
raguser
was invented, to mean
betray.
In 1830 he followed King Charles X into exile and died in Venice in 1852.

And
Pauline?
Dear Pauline brought a legal case against the Prince Borghese, her husband, who was living with a certain Duchess Lanta della Rovere, moved to Rome for a while, made up with the Prince and perished of languor in the Villa Strozzi in Florence, in June 1825, four years after her brother, whose name she uttered with her final breath.

3. U
seful
B
ibliography

Most of the characters in this novel bear their real names, except for the main character, whom I use to articulate the story. I called him Octave Sénécal for two reasons. Octave was the part played by Jean Renoir himself in his film
La régle du jeu.
Sénécal I took from
Sentimental Education
, where Flaubert turns him into a troubled extra in the 1848 Revolution, half cop and half member of the secret societies. Otherwise, as usual, I have sought out the witnesses of the adventure. There are many of them. They allowed me to put in Napoleon's mouth remarks that he is really supposed to have made, or at least those that have been passed down to us. I should also like to thank the Clavreuil Historical Bookshop in the rue Saint-André-des-Arts in Paris, for the treasures that it offers manic devotees of French history. Come on! It's better to lose your fortune in a bookshop than in a casino. So I have reconstructed this episode, this dead period in Napoleon's life, with the help of the following books.

General Works

Henry Houssaye,
1814
, Librairie Académique Perrin, 1925.

Henry Houssaye, 1815, same publisher, 1900. These two volumes seem to be the most complete and the most vivid books on the period.

Fain,
Mémoires
, republished by Arléa in 2000.

Fain,
Manuscrit de 1814,
Paris, Bossange frères, 1825.

Méneval,
Napoleon et Marie-Louise
, Vol. II, Librairie d'Amyot, 1844, and 1845 for Vol. III.

Caulaincourt,
Mémoires,
Vol. Ill, Plon, 1933.

Marcel Dupont,
Napoléon et la trahison des maréchaux
, Hachette, 1939.

Louis Chardigny,
Les Maréchaux de Napoléon
, Flammarion, 1946.

Lamartine,
Histoire de la Restauration
, Vols. 17 and 18 of his complete works, published in Paris by the author, 43 rue de la Ville-l'Evêque, in 1861. It is not sublime, like
L'Histoire des Girondins
, but intelligent and lively despite a number of minor mistakes. Thus the inn of La Calade becomes the inn of l'Accolade, but Lamartine was short of money at the time, and writing at great speed.

Philippe de Ségur,
Du Rhin à Fontainebleau
, Édition Nelson (undated).

Jean Thiry,
La Chute de Napoléon
, Vol. II, Berger-Levrault, 1939.

Henri d'Alméras,
La Vie parisienne sous le Consulat et l'Empire,
another volume about the Restoration, Albin-Michel, undated.

The
Napoléon
presented by Jacques Godechot (Albin-Michel 1969) includes a text about Paris, in March 1814 written by an eye-witness, Julian Antonio Rodriguez.

Amédée Pichot,
Chronique des événements de 1814 et 1815
, Dentu, 1873.

Macdonald,
Souvenirs
, Plon, 1892.

Frédéric Masson,
Napoléon chez lui
, Fayard, 1951.

In the July—August 1922 issue of the
Revue d'études napoléoniennes
(librairie Félix Alcan) one may read a
Napoléon à Fontainebleau en 1814
by G. Lacour-Gayet and
San Martino et le muse napoléonien de l'île d'Elbe
by Ch. Saunier.

I don't wish to forget the volume devoted to
La Campagne de France
in the indispensable collection of Tranié and Carmignani, republished by Pygmalion. Jean Tranié died when I was writing this novel. I would have appreciated his enlightened opinion once again. In his Montmartre house he had a profusion of objects and books devoted to the Empire, but he viewed his collection with both interest and distance, for he had a good sense of humour.

About the Royalists

Counte de Sémallé,
Souvenirs
, Alphonse Picard et fils, Paris, 1898.

Indiscrétions 1798-1830, souvenirs tirés du portefeuille d'un fonctionnaire de l'Empire,
Dufay, Paris, 1835. These two anonymous volumes are thought to be the memoirs of Count Real, former Chief of Police, collected by his son-in-law Musnier-Desclozeau.

Mme de Chastenay,
Mémoires
, Perrin, 1987.

Mémoires
of the Countess de Boigne, Vol. I, Mercure de France, 1971.

Mémoires
of the Duchess d'Abrantès, Vol. 10, Garnier frères (undated).

Chateaubriand,
De Buonaparte et des Bourbons
, collection Libertés, Pauvert, 1966.

Souvenirs du chancelier Pasquier,
Hachette, 1964.

Léonce Peillard,
Vie quotidienne à Londres au temps de Nelson et de Wellington, Hachette, 1968.

Maubreuil,
Extrait de l'examen de l'Adresse au Congrès et à toutes les puissances de l'Europe, envoyée à Aix-la-Chapelle à tous les souverains, à leurs ambassadeurs, à leurs ministres et aux différents cabinets, relative à l'assassinat de Napoléon et de son fils, attentat ordonné par la Russie, la Prusse et les Bourbons...
Düsseldorf, 1820.

G. Lenotre,
Vieilles maisons, vieux papiers,
third series, Perrin, 1911. Long portrait of the
chouan
Bruslart.

G. Lenotre,
La Révolution par ceux qui l'ont vue
, Grasset, 1934, republished in Cahiers rouges. This fifth volume of the ‘Petite Histoire' includes a portrait of Champcenetz based on the
Notes d'un émigré
by Pradel de Lamase.

About the Island of Elba

Pons de l'Hérault,
Souvenirs et anecdotes de l'île d'Elbe
, édition de Léon G. Pélissier, Plon, 1897.

Mémoire de Pons de l'Hérault aux puissances alliées
, Paris, Alphonse Picard et fils, 1899.

Paul Gruyer, Napoléon roi de l'île d'Elbe, Perrin, 1947.

Marchand,
Mémoires
, Vol. I, Plon, 1952.

Baron de Vincent,
Mémorial de l'île d'Elbe,
published in around 1850 in an unidentified journal.

De l'exil au retour de l'île d'Elbe
, contemporary accounts, Teissedre, 2001.

Waldburg-Truchsess,
Nouvelle relation de Napoléon de Fontainebleau a l'île d'Elbe
, Paris, Panckoucke, 1815 (lengthy extract in
Le Consulat et l'Empire
by Alfred Fierro, collection Bouquins, chez Laffont, 1998).

La Déportation de Napoléon à l'île d'Elbe
, issue II of ‘Toute l'histoire de Napoléon', April 1952. Account by Captain Ussher and diary of Vicomte Charrier-Moissard.

La Vérité sur les Cent Jours, par un citoyen de la Corse
, Bruxelles, H. Tarlier, 1825. I took the dialogue in
Chapter 5
with the messenger who has come from Portoferraio to meet the Emperor. He himself would have authenticated the text, if I am to believe this note on page 176 in the same book: ‘The messenger recorded this dialogue, at the very moment when he left Napoleon, and showed it, upon his return, to those who had entrusted their dispatches to him. One of them copied it, and when the Emperor was in Paris, he gave it to him. Napoleon read it, was greatly amused, and often said while reading it:
That's it, that's exactly it.'

A. D. B. Monnier,
Une année dans la vie de I'Empereur Napoléon (1814-1815)
, Paris, Alexis Eymeery, 1815.

Sophie et Anthelme Troussier,
La Chevauchée héroïque du retour de l'île d'Elbe
, Imprimerie Allier, Grenoble, 1965.

Pierre de Gumbert,
Napoléon de l'île d'Elbe à la citadelle de Sisteron
, éditions du Socle, Aix-en-Provence, 1968.

About some of the characters

Comte d'Ornano,
Marie Walewska
, Hachette, 1938.

A. Augustin-Thierry,
Notre Dame des colifichets
, Albin-Michel, 1937.

Fleuriot de Langle,
La Paolina, soeur de Napoléon
, éditions Colbert, Paris, 1946 (terribly like the previous book ...) A. Augustin-Thierry,
Madame Mère
, Albin-Michel, 1931.