How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) (15 page)

On that same day, by coincidence,
The
Times
printed a classified advertisement placed by ‘a French Gentleman’ who was ‘desirous to BOARD and LODGE in a genteel family whose society would enable him to improve in the English language’. Answers were to be sent to a mysterious ‘XY, c/o Carraway’s Coffee House’. Was this Napoleon, planning his exile?

Almost certainly not, because even a week after the advert was placed, Napoleon still hadn’t made up his mind what to do. As late as the morning of 29 June, he still thought he could fight on. He had formally abdicated, but just before he got into his yellow carriage to Rochefort, a group of soldiers came and begged him to lead them into battle. They told him that the Prussian avant-garde had advanced too far, that it had moved beyond Paris and was exposed. Napoleon studied charts of the Prussian positions and agreed that he could go and beat them. He put on his uniform, and sent a request to parliament for permission to fight – as a mere general, if not as Emperor. Furious, Fouché dismissed the idea: ‘Est-ce qu’il se moque de nous?’ Which could be translated as ‘Is he taking the pee?’

Napoleon was deadly serious, though, and was proved right when, on 1 July, one of his most faithful generals, Rémy Exelmans, attacked and defeated the Prussians at Rocquencourt, 20 kilometres south-west of Paris. Exelmans had been frustrated at Waterloo – he was one of the generals who spent the day pleading with Grouchy to march towards the sound of Napoleon’s cannons, and (it is said) even considered blowing Grouchy’s brains out. Now, with about 5,000 men, Exelmans ambushed a force of a thousand or so Prussian cavalry, killing or capturing 500 of them.

Rocquencourt was in effect the last battle of the Napoleonic Wars – a general armistice was signed on 3 July – which allows the French a certain amount of triumphalism of their own. They might have been defeated at Waterloo and lost the war on points, but who won the final round of this European all-comers championship fight? France.
^fn1

Even the armistice did not dampen Napoleon’s desire to retake charge of his remaining troops. On 7 July, now in Rochefort on the south-west coast, he sent another message to Paris, asking parliament whether they might consider letting him ‘sauver la patrie’ (‘save the nation’). His plan, according to one of his aides, General Charles de Montholon, was to ‘march on Paris at the head of twenty to twenty-five thousand soldiers, with a people’s escort of a hundred thousand fanatical peasants’.

The reply was predictable but ominous. Napoleon was told by his own government to board a French ship and await further orders. He must have known that once in the hands of pro-royalist forces, the danger was that he would be used as a hostage during negotiations with the allies, and who knew where that would leave him? Up against a wall in Paris, probably, facing a line of Blücher’s muskets.

In an uncharacteristic turmoil of indecision, Napoleon was still vacillating between taking exile in Britain or, more adventurously, in America. At one point he invited a seventy-year-old politician and mathematician, Gaspard Monge, to embark on a voyage of scientific discovery as his travelling companion. ‘Without an army or an empire, I see nothing but the sciences to occupy my soul,’ Napoleon wrote to Monge. ‘I want to start a new career, to leave a body of work, of discoveries worthy of my name.’ Having given France a set of laws to obey, Napoleon seems to have wanted to do the same thing for the whole physical universe. He offered Monge the honour of accompanying him ‘from Canada to Cape Horn, and during this immense voyage, we will study all the great phenomena of the globe’s physics’. Monge was all for the idea, and the two men even drew up a shortlist of scientific instruments that they would need; but then Napoleon abruptly backed out, deciding that Monge was too old for such transatlantic exertions.

Finally, after a month during which his mind had been clinging to a stampeding charger that galloped between optimism and resignation, Napoleon now came to a decision. He gave himself up to the British. Some Bonapartists see turning to the hereditary enemy as a sign of weakness, of naivety even – how could he possibly trust
Perfide Albion
? But Dominique de Villepin interprets it as an honourable decision, and a more intellectually respectable one: Napoleon could have run away to America, but ‘there was a certain nobility about turning to this hereditary enemy’, the ‘model of an aristocratic monarchy that this history-lover, imbued with tradition, probably admired more than the young American democracy’. (As we have seen, democracy wasn’t exactly Napoleon’s thing.)

At about six a.m. on 15 July, Napoleon duly left the small offshore island île d’Aix, where he had been hiding, and boarded the British warship HMS
Bellerophon
that was blockading the port of Rochefort. It has been said that the
Bellerophon
was effectively preventing Napoleon from fleeing to America, but Bonapartist historians sneer at this suggestion. Hadn’t Napoleon already evaded a joint Franco-British blockade around Elba? Did they really think he couldn’t have disguised himself as a fisherman and joined a friendly ship offshore? No, the decision to surrender to the British was a conscious choice, albeit a symbolically charged one, as
Bellerophon
had fought at Trafalgar, the sea battle that had scuppered Napoleon’s plans to invade England in 1805.

When he boarded the British ship, in full military regalia, Napoleon announced (in French, of course), ‘I come aboard your ship to place myself under the protection of your prince and your laws.’ To Bonapartists, this was a kind of chivalrous surrender that ought to have bound the British to act honourably, and it makes their later actions all the more treacherous.

At first, Napoleon’s reception seemed to be cordial. There is a wonderful description of his time on the
Bellerophon
written by an officer who saw it all first-hand. It is quoted with relish by Bonapartist historians. Writing in 1838, Midshipman George Home recalled the Emperor’s arrival on the ship: ‘And now came the little great man himself, wrapped up in his grey great coat, buttoned to the chin, three-cocked hat, and Hussar boots, without any sword I suppose as emblematical of his changed condition.’

The young Englishman was shocked to note his own captain’s somewhat aloof behaviour towards his esteemed French visitor: ‘Maitland received him with every mark of respect, as far as look and deportment could indicate; but he was not received with the respect due to a crowned head … The captain, on Napoleon’s addressing him, only moved his hat, as to a general officer, and remained covered while the Emperor spoke to him.’

The effect on the other sailors, on the other hand, was very different. A superstar had arrived. If it had happened in the twenty-first century, the men would all have been taking selfies. Midshipman Home, who seems to have fallen in love with Napoleon at first sight, remembered that ‘As he passed through the officers assembled on the quarter-deck, he repeatedly bowed slightly to us and smiled. What an ineffable beauty there was in that smile. His teeth were finely set, and as white as ivory, and his mouth had a charm about it that I have never seen in any other human countenance. I marked his fine robust figure as he followed Captain Maitland into the cabin.’

Napoleon appears to have bonded instantly with these fighting men, and asked to tour the ship. Now that he was no longer a military threat, his wish was granted, and he did the rounds, complimenting the British sailors on the fine state of their vessel, and winning over even the hard-hearted captain. Napoleon paused in front of one of George Home’s fellow midshipmen: ‘A young middy who, boylike, had got before the Emperor and was gazing up in his face, he honoured with a tap on the head and a pinch of the ear, and, smiling, put him aside, which the youngster declared was the highest honour he had ever received in his life viz. to have his ears pinched by the great Napoleon!’

After this, all British sailors, including some admirals who came to take a look at their star guest, doffed their hats to Napoleon, much to Midshipman Home’s satisfaction: ‘When Admiral Hotham and the officers of the
Bellerophon
uncovered in the presence of Napoleon, they treated him with the respect due to the man himself, to his innate greatness, which did not lie in the crown of France … but the actual superiority of the man to the rest of his species.’

The Bonaparte legend was being born, and Napoleon must have felt that his retirement wasn’t going to be so bad after all. He inspected the contingent of marines on board, and asked them to perform some drill. Flatteringly, he even risked a joke, exclaiming, ‘What I could do with 200,000 men like these!’ Diplomatically ignoring the obvious answer, which was ‘kill as many Englishmen as possible and then invade Britain’, Midshipman Home heartily approved of the remark: ‘And so you well might say, my most redoubtable Emperor, for, give you two hundred thousand such fine fellows as these, and land you once more at Rochefort, and I shall be sworn for it that in three short weeks you have Wellington and the Holy Allies flying before you in every direction, and in ten days more you have the imperial headquarters at Schonbrunn [in Vienna].’

In short, thanks to his charisma and his sincere fascination for all things military, Napoleon had won over the British crew’s hearts. He had also earned their protection. There would be no French or Prussian delegations coming on board to take Napoleon into custody now. Neither would any other British vessel get the honour of transporting the deposed
Empereur
to Britain. The crew of the
Bellerophon
swore that they would resist by force any attempt to take Napoleon off their ship.

However, as Bonapartist historians are all too happy to point out, this sudden outburst of British brotherly love for Napoleon was too good to be true. The
Anglais
were about to betray him …

There is a famous painting of
Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon
by the Scottish portraitist William Quiller Orchardson. It was first exhibited in 1880, and was such a success with Londoners at that year’s Royal Academy summer exhibition that it inspired Orchardson to follow up with a series of French-themed pictures, including one of the writer Voltaire getting beaten up by the servants of an aristocrat whom he had unwisely insulted.

Orchardson depicts Napoleon, in trademark hat and greatcoat, gazing gloomily out to sea. His expression is an archetypal French pout. He is sullenly turning his back on a small group of his aides, their hats held respectfully by their sides, who are observing him with a combination of curiosity, concern, sadness and resignation. They seem to be wondering whether he will jump overboard, start weeping, or suddenly order them to seize control of the ship and invade England.

It’s an atmospheric painting, and is meant to show the moment on 31 July when Napoleon learned that, contrary to his expectation, he would not be settling in England and writing his memoirs between visits from admiring
Anglaises
– he was being sent into exile on Saint Helena, a British rock in the middle of the South Atlantic vividly described by one of Napoleon’s entourage, General Bertrand, as ‘an island shat by the devil’.

There had been rumours about Saint Helena in the British press, and Napoleon had definitely heard them, but confirmation of the news must have come as a hammer blow. Until that moment, the journey from Rochefort back to England had been more like a pleasure cruise. Midshipman Home described the ship’s arrival in Torbay. Some of the officers were given permission to go ashore and ‘I was taken prisoner by some twenty young ladies, marched off to a fine house in the little town, regaled with tea and clouted [
sic
] cream, and bored with five thousand questions about Napoleon, the ridiculousness of which I have often laughed at since: What was he like? Was he really a man? Were his hands and clothes all over blood when he came on board? Was it true that he had killed three horses in riding from Waterloo to the
Bellerophon
? Were we not all frightened of him? Was his voice like thunder?’

Shore leave spent fighting off Napoleon’s groupies (and probably surrendering to at least one) – it was a young sailor’s dream. At Plymouth two days later, Home wrote that things got even more hysterical, as about 1,000 boats swarmed around the
Bellerophon
, hoping to get closer to the world-famous Frenchman: ‘He must have conceived that he was as much admired by the English as by his own beloved French. The Sound was literally covered with boats; the weather was delightful; the ladies looked as gay as butterflies; bands of music in several of the boats played favourite French airs, to attract, if possible, the Emperor’s attention, that they might get a sight of him, which, when effected, they went off, blessing themselves that they had been so fortunate … He showed no disinclination to gratify the eager spectators, by frequently appearing at the gangway, examining the crowd with his pocket-glass; and frequently, as a pretty face gazed at him with bewitching curiosity, he showed his fine white teeth, lifted the little three-cocked hat nearly off his broad and commanding forehead, for he never wholly uncovered, bowed, and smiled with evident satisfaction.’

Then the order arrived from London, condemning Napoleon to distant exile, and everything changed. No longer was he ‘Monsieur the Emperor’. He was a dangerous prisoner of war. Customs men came aboard and even seized a few dozen bottles of French wine that Napoleon had given to the captain’s wife, Mrs Maitland.

Midshipman Home was furious about the mistreatment: ‘I never think of the proceedings which I then witnessed without feeling my blood boil up with indignation, and my face blush crimson for my degraded country.’

Understandably, Napoleon suddenly felt less sociable, and disappeared below deck. When he was transferred to the HMS
Northumberland
– supposedly a newer, more reliable ship than the
Bellerophon
^fn2
– for transport to Saint Helena, the deposed Emperor was a changed man: ‘His clothes were ill put on, his beard unshaved, and his countenance pale and haggard. There was a want of firmness in his gait, his brow was overcast, and his whole visage bespoke the deepest melancholy; and it needed but a glance to convince the most careless observer that Napoleon considered himself a doomed man … The ship’s deck looked like a place of execution, and we only wanted the headsman, his block, and his axe to complete the scene.’