Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (95 page)

Our approach to this holy spot was known before hand by that worthy sister of Buonaparte, the soi-disante Grand-Duchess of Tuscany, who had the insidious and malignant courtesy to send a message to the Holy Father… to ask whether there was anything he wanted… To so unexpected and artful a message, the Pope only answered with his customary heroism: ‘I do not know this lady of whom you speak, and I have no need of her services for anything.’
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In the morning, since the grand duchess had no intention of taking him in, the captive’s involuntary journey restarted. He was taken over the Alps to Briançon and thence, after a change of orders, to indefinite house arrest at Savona on the Riviera.

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the ex-queen-regent were equally sliding from bad to worse. After her expulsion from Florence, she had travelled to Milan for a meeting with Napoleon. He promised her compensation in the dual form of the Principality of Northern Lusitania in Portugal (which he did not control) and marriage to his brother Luciano (who was already married). Unsurprisingly, she rejected both propositions. From Milan, she travelled to her family home at Aranjuez in Spain, which she reached in the wake of her father’s abdication. She eventually caught up with her parents and brother on their way into exile: ‘I knew nothing of what had been going on, and almost the first words which my father addressed to me on my arrival were: “You must know, my daughter, that our family has for ever ceased to reign.” I thought I should have died at the intelligence… I took leave of my parents and retired to my chamber more dead than alive.’
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Yet her ordeal deepened. She plotted to escape with her children to England, but was trapped by the French police, summarily tried, deported to Rome and incarcerated:

I remained two years and a half in this monastery, and a whole year without seeing a soul, without speaking to a creature, and without being allowed to write or to receive news, even of my son… Exactly a month after my entry into the convent, M. Janet, intendant of the treasury, paid me a visit and took from me the jewels I had brought with me… Once a month only, General Miollis brought my parents and son to see me, but I was not allowed to kiss the dear child more than once.
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*

As the ex-queen-regent languished in detention, the French masters of her son’s former kingdom were losing the will to stamp their mark on a reluctant population. General Menou left in 1809; General Radet did not return; and the drive to build imperial institutions and to enforce the imperial law gradually lost momentum. ‘Quiet reigned in Tuscany,’ writes one historian of the years 1809–13, ‘but it was the quiet of exhaustion and fear.’
⁵⁸
Despair set in when many of the recruits and conscripts failed to come home. Food prices soared, bread riots erupted and hunger stalked the countryside. The news from Russia in 1812 was bad, and from the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 catastrophic. The Empire was crumbling; its servants lost heart, and the bandits grew bold. Faced by a powerful brigand called Bonaccio, the increasingly impotent prefect of the Arno proposed that he and his band of deserters be offered an amnesty if only they would volunteer to be transported to Spain. In Florence, the prefect only had one depleted Croat regiment at his disposal. Yet his superiors in Paris overruled him. ‘All wrongdoers must be captured,’ they wrote indignantly, ‘or driven beyond the borders of the empire.’
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By that time, no one in Florence knew where the borders were.

The final act of Tuscany’s
anni francesi
, the sad ‘French Years’, was delivered in the spring of 1814 by a man who had once been present at their launch. Marshal Murat, as he now was, the ‘king of Naples’, had abandoned Napoleon after Leipzig and changed sides; the Austrians put him in charge of a mixed army of imperial regulars and captured Italians. At their head, he traversed half of Italy, heading for Rome and Naples, and liberating towns and cities from his French compatriots. As his men entered Florence on 23 February, Princess-Grand Duchess Elisa fled, the administration dissolved, the residue of the garrison surrendered and negotiations started almost immediately for the restoration of Grand Duke Ferdinando.

Ex-Queen-Regent Maria-Luisa was already free, liberated on 14 January 1814 when Neapolitan troops drove the French from Rome. Reunited with her royal parents, she took up residence in the Quirinale Palace, where she was among the dignitaries who welcomed Pope Pius VII in May following his release. During the weeks of waiting, she was writing her memoir in the hope that it would help her to reach England. It ends with a defiant declaration:

Such is the calamitous history briefly told, which I could spin out into volumes… I have been the unhappy victim of the blackest treachery, the football of a tyrant who made sport of our lives and properties… I trust that England, the asylum of unfortunate princes, will not refuse to take under her protection an unhappy widow and mother, with two children… all three without any support; although we have undisputable rights as sovereigns to the states of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla as well as Etruria…
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*

At that very time, Napoleon was himself being forced to abdicate. For many months since Leipzig, he had conducted a fighting retreat from Germany. But every victory was pyrrhic; every week his armies dwindled, and every day his supporters grew wearier. Despite dazzling manoeuvres in north-eastern France, he proved incapable of defending Paris. Finally, he bowed to the demand of his generals, and on 11 April 1814 signed an act of unconditional abdication. Though he never revisited Florence as he had promised, he did return to the former Kingdom of Etruria, and in the most unforeseen of circumstances. In return for his agreeing to abdicate, the tsar of Russia insisted that he be given the island of Elba as his private, sovereign domain, and he landed there on 4 May, disembarking from the appropriately named British warship the
Undaunted
. He was allowed to keep 500 officers in his retinue, and 1,100 soldiers for his guard; his house at Portoferraio was dubbed the imperial palace. Prior to his arrival, the populace were said to have burned him in effigy, protesting at the heavy taxes and military conscription still in force; but when they saw him in person, they took him to their hearts, hoping that he could better their lot. They led him in procession to the harbour church, sang a
Te Deum
and presented their petitions.

During the 297 days that Napoleon spent on Elba, he conducted himself with exemplary energy and initiative, setting a shining example for all sovereigns of small states and accomplishing considerably more in those ten months than the Bourbon-Parmas had done in Etruria in six years. He was following in the footsteps of the island’s Renaissance ruler, Cosimo I de’ Medici, who had founded the town of Cosmopolis (now Portoferraio) in 1548. He designed a flag, issued a constitution, built roads, repaired the harbour, organized plantations and irrigation schemes, reviewed his troops, opened a hospital, reorganized the iron mines and the granite quarry, introduced running water and drainage, and grandly restored three of the island’s villas. He was helped, of course, by a generous Allied pension. Despite the close attentions of his mother, ‘Madame Mère’, he even managed to smuggle in his favourite mistress, Maria Walewska, for a two-day tryst. (His wife, daughter of the Austrian emperor, and his son were in Vienna.) Much of the time, though, was passed in playing the game of spies and counter-spies, in duping his British guards wherever possible, and in seeking information about the growing crisis in France. His entourage of generals, Bertrand, Drouot and Cambronne, was probably more anxious than he.
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On arrival on Elba, Napoleon had declared ‘
Ce sera l’île des repos
’ (‘This will be the Isle of Relaxations’). He had been on the move, more or less non-stop, for twenty years. He had fought sixty major battles, criss-crossed the Continent from Madrid to Moscow, and had seen millions of men die. The break was welcome, but his health faltered. He put on weight and suffered from urine retention. He lavished attention on his residences, building an Egyptian room at the Palazzo Mulini and an ornamental garden at the Villa San Martino. In high summer he was particularly fond of the hermitage of La Madonna del Monte, whence he strolled around the hills and looked out over the sea to his native Corsica. His favourite viewpoint lay atop a rocky perch still known as the
Sedia de Napoleone
, ‘Napoleon’s Seat’.

According to the leading nineteenth-century historian of the consulate and Empire, the exiled ex-emperor displayed fine qualities of character:

His life was quiet and fulfilled, for it is in the nature of superior minds to know how to submit to the severities of fate, especially when deserved… His mother, tough and imperious, but very conscientious… enjoyed a place of honour… And Princess Pauline Borghese pushed friendship for her brother to the point of passion… She was the centre of a small company of people on the island, who… treated [Napoleon] as their sovereign. He showed himself to be gentle, well-mannered, serene and attentive. When his monarchical duties were done, he spent his time with Bertrand and Drouot, walking, or riding round the island, or sailing a canoe… He cherished the idea of writing a history of his reign, discussing the more controversial aspects of his career with great frankness. He often returned to the subject of the failed Peace of Prague
*
– the only mistake to which he readily admitted… He read the newspapers with a remarkable intellectual penetration, that helped him to find the truth among the thousand assertions of the journalists… According to him, the march of the French Revolution had only been halted for a moment… Further conflicts between [the supporters of  ] the
ancien régime
and of the Revolution were to be expected; and they would provide the opening for him to reappear on the scene.
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Plans for
L’Envol de L’Aigle
, ‘The Eagle’s Flight’, were veiled in secrecy. The Bonapartists in France had certainly not lost hope; and the return of thousands of French prisoners from Germany, Russia and Spain was feeding a large pool of trained but unemployed veterans. The freshly restored Bourbon king of France, Louis XVIII, was showing no talent, and had broken an undertaking to pay the ex-emperor a subsidy of 2 million francs. The Allied Powers had dropped their guard. Napoleon’s chief jailer, Sir Neil Campbell, instead of watching his charge, was in the habit of sailing over to Livorno for entertainment.

A plot, therefore, could be hatched. Whether Napoleon was the instigator or the willing accomplice is immaterial. His troops trained for a journey. A sloop appeared off the coast during the night of 25/26 February 1815. In the morning, the escape route was open:

Napoleon allowed the soldiers to continue their duties until midday, when they were given some soup. They were then assembled in the harbour with their arms and baggage… Although no one said that they were about to sail for France, they never doubted it, and broke into transports of indescribable joy! They were immensely excited by the prospect of… seeing France again, and of entering once more on the path of power and glory. And they filled the bay of Porto Ferraio with shouts of
Vive l’Empereur!  
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At the last moment, the ‘king of Elba’ stepped into a rowing boat to be ferried to the sloop and to seek his destiny once more. Landing near Antibes on the French Riviera, he set out on the road for Grenoble and Paris. Somewhere before Grasse, he passed the carriage of the prince of Monaco. ‘Where are you going?’ he enquired. ‘
Chez moi
,’ the prince replied. ‘
Moi aussi
,’ said Napoleon.
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The Battle of Waterloo followed in June. The British army under the duke of Wellington was drawn up to the south of Brussels. The Prussians under Field Marshal Blücher were approaching from the east. Napoleon was confident of victory. His fellow exiles from Elba were with him. But finally the fortunes of war turned against them, and Napoleon quitted the field defeated. General Cambronne, gravely wounded, was lying in a pool of his own blood when called on to surrender by a British officer. According to the official version, he replied, ‘
La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas
’ (‘The Guard dies, but doesn’t surrender’). Rumour spread, however, that ‘
le Mot de Cambronne
’ was not
meurt
, but a different five-letter m-word. A hundred years later, French encyclopedias were still refusing to quote him exactly.
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‘A mistake may be admitted after one day,’ it has been said; ‘if delayed, the truth will emerge after one century.’
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Bertrand would survive to accompany his master on the second exile.
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Drouot lived on, and was made famous by his great oration when Napoleon’s remains were interred in Les Invalides in 1840.
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The subsequent fate of the main players in the drama of ‘Etruria’ can be shortly told. The Emperor Napoleon, of course, was shipped off to St Helena, whence he did not escape. By decree of the Congress of Vienna, his empress, Marie-Louise of Austria (1791–1847) – of whom he had said unkindly ‘
Je marie un ventre
’ (‘I am marrying a belly’) – was given the former Bourbon Duchy of Parma for life. Her son, the consumptive
Aiglon
or ‘Eaglet’ (1811–32), was raised and educated in Vienna, where he used the title of duke of Reichstadt; in the view of the Bonapartist purists, he was the Emperor Napoleon II. After his death the Napoleonic succession passed to the
Aiglon’
s uncles, first to Giuseppe and in 1844 to Luigi. Countess Maria Walewska, whom Napoleon last saw briefly on Elba, returned to Poland, divorced her husband and was remarried to one of Napoleon’s marshals, Count Philippe Antoine D’Ornano (1784–1863), another Corsican. Maintained by an estate near Naples, she died in 1817 leaving three sons from three different fathers, and some highly controversial memoirs. The handsome son born from her liaison with Napoleon, Alexander Florian Colonna-Walewski (1810–68), fled from service in the Russian army, emigrated to France, served in the Foreign Legion and rose under Napoleon III to be senator, duke and minister of foreign affairs. He married the daughter of Princess Poniatowski in Florence in 1846, resolutely insisting to the last that he was the son of his mother’s first husband.
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