Napoleon Emperor of Elba

None

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter nine of the Story of Napoleon the Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
Patrick Seville. Chapter nine, Napoleon, Emperor of Elba. It should
not be forgotten that of all the Grand army, scarcely

(00:21):
a sixth were French, and of those the best officers
and men returned, so almost at once Napoleon was able
to raise a new army. True, most of the new
recruits were boys under twenty, but the magic of his
name was still so great that they were eager to
fight for him. And as he had need of all

(00:41):
this eagerness for Prussia, following the example of Spain, and
encouraged by the news of Napoleon's awful defeat in Russia,
resolved to fight once more for freedom. Men rich and poor,
old and young, flocked to the standard, ladies their jewels,
and the Tsar of Russia marched to meet his old friend,

(01:04):
whom it is true he had forsaken and almost betrayed.
At Tilsit. Tears came into the eyes of the old
king as he greeted Alexander. Wipe them, said he. They
are the last tears that Napoleon will ever cause you
to shed. The Prussian leader was Blucher, a rough old man,

(01:26):
but brave and loving his country well, and loved by
his men, who called him martial forwards. It was he who,
after Yenna, held out longest against Napoleon, only surrendering when
resistance was useless and hopeless. War lasted from April to October,

(01:46):
but now Napoleon no longer won victory after victory as
he used to do, and at last, at the Battle
of Leipzig he was defeated on the sixteenth of October.
The battle began on the nineteenth. Napoleon and his beaten
army were streaming across the Elba, leaving behind them thousands dead,

(02:07):
thousands more prisoners, besides hundreds of cannon stores and ammunition,
and greatest of all, a mighty empire shattered and crumbling
into dust without an army. Napoleon could not hold his
vast conquests. Without an army, he could only be King
of the French, and of all his great forces, only

(02:29):
about forty thousand men hurried towards the borders of France.
All over Europe, the nations now began to throw off
French yoke. The Dutch and Germans tore the tricolor down,
and once more their own standards floated out on the
breeze everywhere. The German fortresses, which were held by French

(02:51):
soldiers surrendered or were taken. On the nineteenth of November,
Napoleon reached Paris, and here the Allies sent to him
conditions of peace. Much that he had conquered was to
be given back, but not all. The Rhine was still
to be the boundary of France, Belgium, Savoy and Nice

(03:14):
also were left to him. But Napoleon did not yet
believe in his defeat. He would not give up any
of his conquests. So the Allies marched into France, and
another war began. The Allies fought not with France, they said,
but with Napoleon. We thought to find peace before we

(03:35):
touched your borders. Now we come to find it here.
Many of the people of France had been weary of
Napoleon and his wars, but now that the foe had
marched into their beloved land, they rose to defend it.
Napoleon once more prepared to take the field. On Sunday,
twenty third January, he held a last and splendid reception

(03:59):
and the tell us of the tuillery. When the courtiers
were gathered, Napoleon walked into the hall with the Empress
Marie Louise and his little son, now just three years old,
Holding one by either hand. He turned to his court gentlemen.
He said, France is invaded. I go to put myself

(04:20):
at the head of the army. I leave to you
that which I hold dearest, my wife and son. Two
days later Napoleon said good bye to Marie Luis. They
never saw each other again, for when Napoleon returned to Paris,
his power was broken, and Marie Luis refused to share
the fortunes of a fallen king. Never perhaps, and all

(04:44):
his triumphant campaigns had Napoleon shown more his great genius
as a soldier than he did now. Nearly always he
had fought against armies smaller in numbers or less well
drilled than his own. Now he had to fight agains
against far greater numbers, and his soldiers were for the
most part young and untrained. Yet still he wrung victories

(05:08):
and triumphs from the foe. But at last, after the
war had been flung this way and that, after marches
and counter marches. After taking of towns and burning of villages,
until some of the fairest provinces of France had become
a desert, the allies began to march on Paris, round
that fair city, which never since the days of the

(05:30):
Maid of Orleans, had heard the shouts of a foreign foe.
The horrors of war raged for one long day. Prussians,
filled with bitter hate against their conqueror. Half savage Russians, Austrians, Dutch,
people of every country which Napoleon had enslaved, surged in
a red circle of fire and death about the city.

(05:53):
Then it yielded. On the thirty first of March eighteen fourteen,
the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia rode
side by side into the city and passed through streets
filled with people, some sullen and angry, others rejoicing as
at a great deliverance and shouting, long live the Emperor Alexander,

(06:15):
Long live the King of Prussia. Marie Louise had already fled,
taking her little son with her. Napoleon, hurrying from the
battlefields of Champagne, heard that the fight was over. On
to Paris. He cried sire, it is too late, replied
an officer. Paris has yielded. Napoleon had been emperor of

(06:41):
half Europe. He had been made a king of kings,
making and unmaking them at will. And a few years
he had built up his mighty empire, and a few
months he had lost it bit by bit, until now
not even his own capital remained to him. There the

(07:02):
Allies ruled, and on the second April eighteen fourteen, the
Senate declared that Napoleon had ceased to reign. But still
Napoleon did not believe that all was lost. At Fontainebleau,
he reviewed his troops. His old guard men, who had
been with him through every campaign, were still eager to

(07:23):
fight for him. To Paris, To Paris, they shouted. But
the officers were weary of at all. We have had
enough of war, said one. Let us not begin a
civil war. So at length, seeing no help for it,
Napoleon wrote out and signed his abdication, that is the

(07:45):
paper by which he gave up all claim to the
crown of France. The Allied powers having been declared that
the Emperor Napoleon is the only cause which py events.
Peace being brought back to Europe. He faithful to his oaths,
is ready to descend from the throne, to leave France,
and even give up his life for the good of

(08:06):
his country. On the twentieth of April, Napoleon said good
bye to his troops in the courtyard of Fontainbleau. His
men loved and admired him. Still, tears rolled down their
bronze cheeks. Sobs choked them. I cannot embrace you all,
he cried, But I embrace you in your general in

(08:28):
putting his arms around him, he kissed him. He kissed
the standard, too, the splendid Eagle of France, which had
led them so often under the burning suns or cloudy skies,
through parching heat of summer or the snows of winter.
Then the fallen emperor stepped into his carriage and was

(08:49):
whirled away southwards. He was an emperor still, for the
Allies allowed him to keep his title, but his empire
was only the little island of Elba. At first, as
Napoleon drove through France, the people cheered him on his way.
But as he went farther and farther south, where the
people had never loved him and where they now hated him,

(09:12):
he was greeted with curses fierce and loud. The peasants
cared little for glory. They only knew that their sons
and brothers and fathers had been taken from them, never
to return. They knew that the vineyards were unfilled, and
the fields of a barren waste, for the workers lay dead,

(09:33):
and many a distant land. So they cursed the man
whose pride had brought such sorrow and poverty upon them.
At last, the anger and hatred of the people grew
so great that Napoleon was forced to disguise himself as
an Austrian officer to save himself from their fury. And
thus he fled southwards until he reached the shore, and

(09:57):
there set sail for Elba. Although the peasants of France
had cursed Napoleon as he passed, the people of Velba
welcomed him gladly. And here for a little time the
great Emperor played at empire. His empire was not more
than ninety square miles in extent, but here Napoleon had

(10:18):
his little army of a few hundred men. Here he
held court with as great state and ceremony as in
the Tuillery. Even though his palace was little more than
an ordinary country house. End of Chapter nine.