XI
M. de Talleyrand, then, was more or less in disgrace with the politicians, who were already disputing about the redistribution of the places that their mistakes had just lost; and, bearing this disgrace with his usual supercilious negligence, declared that his health required the waters of Carlsbad, observing that a diplomatist’s first duty after a congress was to take care of his liver.
In the meantime the hundred days which concentrated so much of the past, present, and future, were rushing rapidly on. I know no example that teaches us more clearly that our intellect is governed by our character, than that which is to be found in the conduct of Napoleon during these hundred days. None saw more clearly than himself that prudence and policy advised that he should either appear before the French as the great captain who came to free them from a yoke imposed by the foreigner; and refuse any other title than that of their general until a peace was established or a victory gained: or that he should seize the full powers of dictator, and sustain them by his prestige over the military and the masses, arming and revolutionizing France, and being himself the representative of that armed revolution. But he loved the title and decorations of sovereignty, and could not induce himself to descend from the emperor to the soldier. Neither could he persuade himself to call to life those elements of force in which he saw the elements of disorder, nor condescend to be the chief of the mob even with the title of majesty. He temporised, therefore, for the moment with those with whom he had the least sympathy, and from whom he could get the least assistance; I mean the Constitutionalists, who, representing the middle order and the thinking portion of the French people, formed a party, that with a regular government, and at an ordinary time, and under a sovereign they could have trusted, might have possessed considerable influence, but such a party, with a government created by the sword, at the moment of a crisis, under a ruler of whom they were suspicious, could only embarrass Napoleon’s action, and could not add to his authority.
The conditions, then, under which this marvellous being fought for the last time for empire were impossible. He had not in his character the elements of a revolutionary leader; and he was not allowed to use the qualities, with which nature had endowed him, of a great captain and despotic chief.
His cool head, his incomparable energy, gave something like character and system to his own military proceedings, but all beyond them was confusion. A great battle was to be safety or ruin. He fought it, and was vanquished; but he had fought it with skill and courage against foreign invaders; and I confess that my heart, though an English one, beats in sympathy for him, as he quitted the field where he left so many of his devoted followers, and, prescient of the fate which awaited him, sought a city which never tolerates the unfortunate. Would for England’s honour that his destiny had closed on that memorable field, and that we had not to inscribe on the same page of our history the captivity of St. Helena and the victory of Waterloo!