mous pamphlet "On Bonaparte and the Bourbons," the manuscript of which his wife had carried in her bosom for a month waiting for the catastrophe, and for which the author was rewarded by the restored Bourbon king with office, emoluments, and the honor of being made a peer of France.

faltering voice, "But if the foe should approach | quent Châteaubriand hastened to print his fathe capital, I confide to the National Guard the empress and the King of Rome-my wife and child." The hearts of the officers were touched with deep emotion, and stern men wept, mingling their tears with those of the alarmed and sorrowing empress. Compared with this scene, in which a truly great man was a sincere and chief actor, how ridiculous appears the dispatch of the imperial nephew from the front, after a skirmish, about "Louis and I" having a "baptism of fire," when they had not been within the reach of bullets-a pitiful trick, intended to kindle enthusiasm in the hearts of Frenchmen for a charlatan and a dynasty which all intelligent men secretly despised!

On the following day Napoleon, in falling snow, reviewed his troops in the court-yard of the palace, and early the next morning he left the city for the army, having made the empress Regent of the Empire, and his brother Joseph Chief of the Council of State, or Prime Minister. For many weeks he fought the invading allies with wonderful energy, and disputed their passage toward his capital, inch by inch, with a tenacity that was marvelous. If ever human energy seemed to deserve success, it was there.

Distracted, wearied, exhausted France shouted "Long live the king!" and displayed the white cockade of the Bourbons. Napoleon struggled no longer against fate. With his Imperial Guard, and some marshals and ministers, he retired to Fontainebleau, where he was speedily surrounded and watched by a cordon of the regiments of the allies. He was, in fact, a prisoner, and compelled to hear the unaccustomed words of dictation. The allies had agreed not to treat with him, but to insist upon his unconditional abdication. Several of his marshals who went to Paris returned with the demand that he should abdicate the thrones of France and Italy for himself and family. "Is this the advice of the generals ?" the emperor asked. "Yes, Sire." "Is it the wish of the army?" "Yes, Sire." He immediately retired and signed his abdication, but made a reservation in favor of his son and the empress. It was disallowed. At the suggestion of the Emperor of Russia he was offered the privilege of retaining the title of emperor, with the island of Elba, off the coast of Tuscany, as his empire, where he might keep a navy commensurate with its extent, a body-guard, and all the pageantry of an imperial court; for the maintenance of which he was to receive, in quarterly installments, an annuity of over a million dollars, to be paid by the French gov

To these conditions the powerless emperor was compelled to assent, and he prepared to take possession of his Lilliputian empire, whose area was ninety-seven square miles, and its population twelve thousand!

But the French troops were slowly pushed back toward Paris, and the gardens, vineyards, and grain fields of the country over which the armies moved became such a desolation that, as French writers tell us, wolves roamed over the solitary wastes and howled around the camps. Numbers, as well as moral power, were now against the emperor, and the allies soon reached the outward defenses of the capital-that capital which for so many years had dictated law to all other capitals. Like Gam-ernment, and also the revenues of the island. betta of our day, Joseph Bonaparte encouraged the people with exaggerated accounts of the successes of the imperial troops, and the strength of the defenses of Paris. But when the roving bands of Uhlans and Cossacks were at the gates, and the guns of the allies were trained upon the really weak defenses, the empressregent fled, with her boy, along the guarded road toward Tours, and the civil authorities soon followed. The Emperor of Russia and Lord Wellington entered the city, and the czar took up his abode in the house of Talleyrand, the prince of unscrupulous demagogues, who was ever ready to betray the weaker into the hands of the stronger for personal gain. While yet acting as a member of the Imperial Council, he had urged the wavering allies to hasten on to Paris. But for him, Alexander would have turned back and recrossed the Rhine. The Senate, too, the hitherto ever-willing instrument of Napoleon's ambition, now assuming the functions of a provisional government, under the presidency of Talleyrand, declared that the emperor had forfeited the throne "by arbitrary acts and violations of the Constitution," and that the French people were absolved from their allegiance to him. The elo

How little the allies comprehended the man, this ridiculous farce reveals. Was he worthy of the retained dignities and promised income? If so, he was worthy of the throne of France. Did they expect to imprison an eagle in the cage of a canary-bird? Europe seemed to think so. Men every where breathed freer with a sense of security, and the peace-doves were not afraid of the war-hawks. England was specially jubilant and confident; and George Cruikshank, who, to use his own words, now "lived upon the great usurper, Bonaparte," again expressed the popular belief in a caricature called "Extracting the groan of abdication from the Corsican blood-hound." It was not an expiring groan. There was deep significance in the words of the imperial exile on his voyage to Elba. He appears to have contemplated playing the Roman at Fontainebleau by suicide. On that voyage he said, “If Marius had slain himself in the marshes of Minturnæ he would never have enjoyed his seventh consulate." The sig

many of his attendant Old Guard, who went as emissaries of their master among their comrades in arms in France, and inspired them with earnest desires to once more follow their great leader and his imperial eagles.

built palaces in town and country, rode over | with the new order of things, and that he was his tiny domain with cheerfulness, and project-yet the idol of his old armies. He furloughed ed and began many and vast improvements. His mother and his sister Pauline joined him. People flocked to Elba from all quarters to see the enthralled hero, as people flock to a menagerie to see a caged lion. The port of Ferrajo was crowded with vessels bringing people, and food for the people; and very soon that mart had a right to its modified ancient name, which Napoleon had changed from Cosmo to Cosmopoli-the city of all nations.

Inquietude was every where visible in France. The incapacity of the king to profit by the great lessons of the hour; the haughty pretensions and greed of the royalists, who excluded men of the people from offices of trust and profit; the efforts of the clergy-whose establishments Bonaparte had not violently suppressed but starved-to reinstate the Romish Church in all its vigor, or to establish laws enforcing religious observances, and to place under the ban of excommunication all theatrical performers, disappointed and disgusted the people, who had been promised political and religious freedom if they would accept the Bourbon as king. The principles of the old revolution were yet potential throughout the kingdom, and were powerfully fostered by Carnot and the infamous Fouché, who for long years had served Napoleon in works of darkness, but who, the em

The emperor now professed to have no other ambition than to make Elba the seat of a splendid little empire. "I think," he said to Sir Neil, "of nothing beyond the verge of my little isle. I am now a politically deceased person, occupied with my family, my house, my cows, and my poultry. Here I will pass my days in peace, engaged in the pleasures of literature and science, and the world may forget me if it likes." Sir Neil believed; but Baron Kohler, the Austrian envoy, could not be deceived by Napoleon's duplicity. When he left Elba, in May, the emperor embraced him warmly, with expressions of love. "What were you thinking of, baron," an English gentleman after-peror said, was "a miscreant of all colors-a ward asked the envoy, "while locked in the emperor's embrace?" "Of Judas Iscariot!" was the answer.

priest and terrorist," whom he used, but never esteemed nor trusted. These principles were cherished and spread by the friends of Napo

was doubtless true, that the royalists intended to extinguish it and create a new one, because, having been a supporter of the empire, it could not be relied upon as a supporter of the new dynasty. And the pride of the French nation was touched with mortification by the reproach constantly uttered that it had received the restored monarch at the dictation of foreigners. Finally, the muzzling of the press, and the evident intention to re-establish Bourbon rule, after the pattern before 1789, kindled the slumbering volcano of revolution into active flame. The Jacobins and Imperialists coalesced, and Fouché, who had, by sheer impudence, made his way into the French cabinet, seems to have acted as the traitorous high-priest at the nuptials. At the same time he pointed out to that cabinet (what was true) that the tranquillity of the countries and sovereigns of Europe could never be secured while Napoleon remained in his present condition, for his residence on Elba was to France what Vesuvius was to Naples.

The summer and autumn passed away. Eu-leon, and the army was made to believe, what rope believed that Napoleon was amusing himself with Euclid and Napier, and writing the story of the deeds of himself and his Old Guard, as he had promised he would at Fontainebleau. The indolent King of France ate his soup and took his siesta sans souci, content to leave the management of his kingdom, at first, to Talleyrand, who, as Pembroke said, was "born of the willow, and not of the oak." The French people, charmed with repose, dreamed sweetly of peace and prosperity, and to the eye of the superficial observer the political atmosphere of Europe was as pure and serene as an evening sky after a terrific thunder-storm, when the representatives of the eight powers-Austria, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden (four from each)-began to assemble in congress at Vienna, at the beginning of 1815, to readjust the boundaries of shattered kingdoms and determine their future policy. But the dreams and the placidity were delusive. Napoleon had been solving in his own mind at Elba other problems than those of Euclid, and had been preparing to make history rather than to write it. Indeed, he had not been a month in Elba when he began a secret and active correspondence with his friends in France and Italy concerning his dy-chief of the feminine conspirators, who were nasty. He was satisfied that the terms of his abdication would not be fulfilled by France, for he was well acquainted with Bourbon perfidy and the fickleness of the French people. He learned with satisfaction that the temper of his soldiers who returned from captivity in the north gave evidence of their dissatisfaction

Conspiracy in favor of Napoleon soon took definite shape in France. Affiliations and points of rendezvous of conspirators were arranged. The Duchess of St. Leu (ex-Queen Hortense, mother of Napoleon the Third) was

active, skillful, and numerous. The police of
Paris were thoroughly indoctrinated with the
revolutionary spirit, and under their connivance
it assumed a more open and daring aspect.
the plots thickened, and the rumblings of the
volcano became more and more audible, desires
for the return of Napoleon were intensified and

As

joy it.

He proceeded to do so. On the evening of the 26th of February his sister Pauline gave a sumptuous entertainment to the officers of the little Elban army; and just after midnight the emperor and suit, with these and eight hundred troops, embarked for France. Sir Neil Campbell had been told at Leghorn that the exile was surely on the point of departure from Elba. He hastened to Ferrajo in the Partridge. The sovereign had gone. His mother and sister seemed to be in an agony of anxiety about the fate of the fugitive. They

cepting that he had sailed toward the coast of Barbary. The Partridge made chase, but not in that direction. It was too late. When Sir Neil came in sight of the port of Cannes, near Ferrajo, he saw the Elban flotilla at anchor, but Napoleon and his followers had landed, and were on their way toward Paris.

wide-spread. To express their hopes that the event would occur in the spring, his partisans adopted as their emblem the early vernal flower, and they called Bonaparte "Corporal Violet." The flower and the color were publicly worn as a party distinction before the court took the alarm; and the health of the exile, under the name of Corporal Violet, was pledged by many a royalist, who did not suspect its concealed meaning. So bold did the conspirators become, and so stupid seemed the royal officials, that treasonable correspondence was carried on through the post-office, and the king's seal cov-professed to know nothing of his movements exered letters bearing political explosives that were carried by public messengers wearing his livery! Outside of France there was calmness in courts and passivity among the people. The international Congress assembled at Vienna. Talleyrand was there to act for France, Wellington (now made duke) was there to speak for England, and the Emperors of Russia and Austria were present to speak for themselves. With the map of Europe spread before them, they deliberated how this and that line of territory, and this and that line of policy, should be adjusted so as to best suit royal families and dynasties, but without for a moment considering the wishes of the people whose nationalities they were ready to change. Elba and Napoleon seemed too insignificant for consideration. So certainly seemed the peace of Europe the young royalist commander, and the troops to be secured that many of Wellington's vet-gathered erans had been sent to this country to invade Northern New York, burn Washington, and capture New Orleans, for the United States and Great Britain were at war; and the British Parliament had proceeded to settle the home and foreign policy of the realm as if no more armies would be called to the field in Europe. It was the usual calm before the tempest.

It was on the 1st of March-a delightful spring day, when the violets were all in bloom

that the exiled emperor again set his foot upon the soil of France, from which he had been expelled more than ten months before. Instead of insults, the people now offered him homage. After passing Provence into Dauphiny, he was received with acclamations of joy all along his pathway toward the capital. The gates of Grenoble were thrown open to him by

around the emperor with joyous shouts. There his little army of eight hundred men had become seven thousand strong. He pressed on down the mountains of Dauphiny toward Lyons, the capital of Celtic Gaul, and birth-place of four Roman emperors, when the army stationed there joined his standard. There he resumed the administration of the empire. "Soldiers!" he said to his old troops, "take again the eagles you followed at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, and Montmirail. Victory shall march at every charging step. The eagles, with the national colors, shall fly from steeple to steeple, on to the towers of Notre Dame!" Then he pressed onward, issuing proclamation after proclamation, that electrified France, and found his march to be a continued ovation as he passed through village after village. On the night of the 19th he slept at Fontainebleau, and on the following evening, in fog and rain, he entered Paris, and was borne upon the shoulders of Parisians to the magnificent salon of the Tuileries, then filled with a brilliant assemblage of his friends-the beautiful and the brave-and from which Louis the Eighteenth had fled only a few hours before. The acclamations of immense crowds in the streets filled the air until long after midnight; and until dawn the cannons that had thundered in battle at Austerlitz, Marengo, and DresNapoleon justly felt himself absolved from den shook the brilliantly illuminated city. the bonds of the treaty at Fontainebleau. He And so the empire was re-established, and the was assured that the fruit of conspiracies in his tricolored flag was unfurled all over France. favor in France was fully ripe, and that he had Before the close of May more than three hunonly to stretch forth his hand to pluck and en-dred thousand soldiers, most of them veterans,

As Napoleon expected, the treaty wrung from him at Fontainebleau had been violated. No part of his stipulated annuity had been paid to him by the French ministry, and he was pressed by poverty under heavy expenses, for he could draw but little money from the Elbans. Sir Neil Campbell warned his government that this violation of the treaty would justify the exile in any attempt to repossess himself of the throne of France. He reported how strangers -suspicious characters-appeared and disappeared without affording any trace of their journey or object; how the emperor had become sullen, and excluded the British envoy and other foreigners from his court; how public works had been discontinued, and all the interest of the emperor in his little domain appeared to have died out. But his warnings were not heeded, for they were taken to be the words of an alarmist, such as had at times frightened England from her propriety.