the chambers. That was true. The career of Napoleon, which had lured France far away from the principles of 1789, now brought her back to that starting-point; just as, in the physical sphere, his campaigns from 1796–1814 had at first enormously swollen her bulk and then subjected her to a shrinkage still more portentous. Clearly it was time to safeguard what remained; and that could best be done under Talleyrand’s shield of legitimacy. Napoleon himself at last divined that truth. When Lucien pressed him to “dare,” he replied “Alas, I have dared only too much already.” On the 22nd of June he abdicated in favour of his son, well knowing that that was a mere form, as his son was in Austria. On the 25th of June he received from Fouché, the president of the newly appointed provisional government, an intimation that he must leave Paris. He retired to Malmaison, the home of Josephine, where she had died shortly after his first abdication. On the 29th of June the near approach of the Prussians (who had orders to seize him, dead or alive), caused him to retire westwards towards Rochefort, whence he hoped to reach the United States. But the passports which the provisional government asked from Wellington were refused, and as the country was declaring for the Bourbons, his position soon became precarious. On his arrival at Rochefort (3rd of July) he found that British cruisers cut off his hope of escape. On the 9th of July he received an order from the provisional government at Paris to leave France within twenty-four hours. After wavering between various plans, he decided on the 13th of July to cast himself on the generosity of the British government, and dictated a letter to the prince regent in which he compared himself to Themistocles seating himself at the hearth of his enemy. His counsellor, Las Cases, strongly urged that step and made overtures to Captain Maitland of H.M.S. “Bellerophon.” That officer, however, was on his guard, and, while offering to convey the emperor to England declined to pledge himself in any way as to his reception. It was on this understanding (which Las Cases afterwards misrepresented) that Napoleon on the 15th of July mounted the deck of the “Bellerophon.” No other course remained. Further delay after the 15th of July would have led to his capture by the royalists, who, were now everywhere in the ascendant. In all but name he was a prisoner of Great Britain, and he knew it.
The rest of the story must be told very briefly. The British government, on hearing of his arrival at Plymouth, decided to send him to St Helena, the formation of that island being such as to admit of a certain freedom of movement for the august captive, with none of the perils for the World at large which the tsar’s choice, Elba, had involved. To St Helena, then, he proceeded on board of H.M.S. “Northumberland.” The title of emperor, which he enjoyed at Elba, had been forfeited by the adventure of 1815, and he was now treated officially as a general. Nevertheless, during his last voyage he enjoyed excellent health even in the tropics, and seemed less depressed than his associates, Bertrand, Gourgaud, Las Cases and Montholon. He landed at St Helena on the 17th of October. He resided first at “The Briars” with the Balcombes, and thereafter at Longwood, when that residence was ready for him. The first governor of the island, General Wilks, was soon superseded, it being judged that he was too amenable to influence from Napoleon; his successor was Sir Hudson Lowe.
Napoleon’s chief relaxations at St Helena were found in the dictation of his memoirs to Montholon, and the compilation of monographs on military and political topics. The memoirs (which may be accepted as mainly Napoleon’s, though Montholon undoubtedly touched them up) range over most of the events of his life from Toulon to Marengo. The military and historical. works comprise précis of the wars of Julius Caesar, Turenne and Frederick the Great. He began other accounts of the campaigns of his own age; but they are marred by his having had few trustworthy documents and statistics at hand. On a lower level as regards credibility stands the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, compiled by Las Cases from Napoleon’s conversations with the obvious aim of creating a Napoleonic legend. Nevertheless the Mémorial is of great interest—e.g. the passage (iv. 451-454) in which Napoleon reflects on the ruin wrought to his cause by the war, in Spain, or that (iii. 130) dealing with his fatal mistake in not dismembering Austria after Wagram, and in marrying an Austrian princess—“There I stepped on to an abyss covered with flowers”; or that again (iii. 79) Where he represented himself as the natural arbiter in the immense struggle of the present against the past, and asserted that in ten years’ time Europe would be either Cossack or republican. It is noteworthy that in Gourgaud’s Journal de Ste. Hélène there are very few reflections of this kind and the emperor appears in a guise far more life-like. But in the works edited by Montholon and Las Cases, where the political aim constantly obtrudes itself, the emperor is made again and again to embroider on the theme that he had always been the true champion of ordered freedom. This was the mot d’ordre at Longwood to his companions, who set themselves deliberately to propagate it. The folly of the monarchs of the Holy Alliance in Europe gained for the writings of Montholon and Las Cases (that of Gourgaud was not published till 1899) a ready reception, with the result that Napoleon reappeared in the literature of the ensuing decades wielding an influence scarcely less potent than that of the grey-coated figure into whose arms France flung herself on his return from Elba. All that he had done for her in the days of the Consulate was remembered; his subsequent proceedings—his tyranny, his shocking waste of human life, his deliberate persistence in war when France and Europe called for a reasonable and lasting peace—all this was forgotten; and the great warrior, who died of cancer on the 5th of May 1821, was thereafter enshrouded in mists of legend through which his form loomed as that of a Prometheus condemned to a lingering agony for his devotion to the cause of humanity. It was this perversion of fact which rendered possible the career of Napoleon III.
Bibliography.—In the following list only the most helpful and accessible works can be enumerated. Asterisks are placed against those works which have been translated into English.
A. General: Histories and Biographies. *A. Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française, du Consulat et de l’Empire (many editions in French and English); *P. Lanfrey, Histoire de Napoléon I. (5 vols., Paris, 1867–1875) (incomplete); Sir A. Alison, History of Europe, 1789–1815 (14 vols., London, 1833–1842); J. Holland Rose, The Life of Napoleon I. (2 vols., London; 3rd ed., 1905); A. Fournier, Napoleon der erste (3 vols., Prague and Vienna, 1889); W. M. Sloane, Napoleon: a History (4 vols., London, 1896–1897); O’Connor Morris, Napoleon (New York, 1893); E. Lavisse and A. N. Rambaud, “La Révolution française, 1789–1799” and “Napoléon,” vols. viii. and ix. of the Histoire générale; The Cambridge Modern History, vol. viii. (“The French Revolution”) and vol. ix. (“Napoleon”) (Cambridge, 1904 and 1906); W. Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution, des Kaiserreichs, und der Befreiungskriege (2 vols., Berlin, 1880); A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire (2 vols., London, 1892); A. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française (parts v.-viii. refer to Napoleon) (Paris, 1903–1904); F. Masson, Napoléon et sa famille (4 vols., Paris, 1897–1900).
The great source for Napoleon’s life is the Correspondance de Napoléon I. (32 vols., Paris, 1858–1869). Though garbled in several places by the imperial commission appointed by Napoleon III. to edit the letters and despatches, it is invaluable. It has been supplemented by the *Lettres inédites de Napoléon Iᵉʳ, edited by L. Lecestre (2 vols., Paris, 1897; Eng. ed. 1 vol., London, 1898), and Lettres inédites de Napoléon Iᵉʳ, edited by L. de Brotonne (Paris, 1898) (with supplement, 1903).
B. Works dealing mainly with particular periods.
I. Early years (1769–1795). Napoléon inconnu (1786–1793), edited by F. Masson (2 vols., Paris, 1895); A. Chuquet, La Jeunesse de Napoléon I. (3 vols., Paris, 1897–1899); T. Nasica, Mémoires sur l’enfance et la jeunesse de Napoléon I. (Paris, 1852); B. Gadobert, La Jeunesse de Napoléon I. (Paris, 1897); J. Colin, L’Education militaire de Napoleon (Paris, 1900); P. Cottin, Toulon et les Anglais en 1793 (Paris, 1898); H. F. T. Jung, Bonaparte et son temps, 1769–1799 (3 vols., Paris, 1880–1881); O. Browning, Napoleon: the First Phase (London, 1905); H. F. Hall, Napoleon’s Notes on English History (London, 1905); C. J. Fox, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Siege of Toulon (Washington, 1902); H. Zivy, Le Treize Vendémiaire (Paris, 1898).
II. The Period 1796–1799. (For the campaigns of 1796–1800, 1805–7, 1808, 1812–15, see French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Campaigns.) The chief works on civil, diplomatic and personal affairs in the life of Napoleon for the period 1796–1799 are: P. Gaffarel, Bonaparte et les républiques italiennes, 1796–1799 (Paris, 1895); C. Tivaroni, Storia critica del risorgimento italiano (3 vols.,
Turin, 1899—(in progress)); E. Bonnal de Ganges, La Chute d’une république (Venise) (Paris, 1885); E. Quinet, Les Révolutions d’Italie