The Mentor: Napoleon Bonaparte, Serial No. 38
Date: 2015-08-29T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Napoleon I; Emperor of the French; 1769-1821

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Title: The Mentor: Napoleon Bonaparte, Serial No. 38

Author: Ida M. Tarbell

Release date: August 29, 2015 [eBook #49810]

Language: English

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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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THE MENTOR
SERIAL NUMBER 38

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

BY
IDA M. TARBELL

Author of “Short Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” “He Knew Lincoln,” etc.

EMPEROR NAPOLEON · BRIDGE AT ARCOLE · FRIEDLAND—1807 · RETREAT FROM MOSCOW · ABOARD THE BELLEROPHON · ST. HELENA

Nobody who has lived in modern times has so stirred up the world as Napoleon Bonaparte. Nobody has upset so many old things, and started so many new ones. No man ever lived who had more faith in his own powers—and less respect for those of other men. Napoleon had, too, an unusual combination of those personal qualities which excite and interest men. It is nearly a hundred years since he dropped out of active life; but his story is more rather than less thrilling as time goes on.

There was nothing in his birth or schooling or his first activities in life to lead one to expect an unusual career. His family was poor and servile; his father trading on his name and his acquaintances to feed, educate, and place his family. The most promising thing about young Bonaparte was his resentment of this servility and his own flat refusal to participate in it to help himself. Throughout his boyhood in the island of Corsica, where he was born in 1769, during the six years he spent at school in France and the eight years of intermittent military service that followed his first appointment at the age of sixteen to a second lieutenancy, he lived a tempestuous inner life. Ambition for himself, devotion to his family, love for Corsica, hatred of France, sympathy for the new ideas of human rights that were stirring Europe,—these sentiments kept the mind and heart of the young officer in tumult and made him waver between allegiance to the land in which he was born and the land that had trained him; between the career of a soldier that was his passion and a career of money making, in order to educate his brothers, settle his sisters, and put his mother into a secure position.

NAPOLEON THE OPPORTUNIST

It is quite fair, I think, to characterize his early career as that of an adventurer. He was watching for a chance, and had determined to take it, regardless of where it offered itself. It was at a moment when he was in disgrace for having refused the orders of his superiors in the army that the chance he wanted came.

LÆTITIA BONAPARTE

The Mother of Napoleon.

The convention in which at that moment the French government centered was attacked by the revolting Parisians. Bonaparte had no particular sympathy with the convention,—in fact, he had more with the rebels,—but when one of his friends in the government who knew his ability as an artillery officer asked him to take charge of the force protecting the Tuilleries, where the convention sat, he accepted—with hesitation; but, having accepted, he did his work with a skill and daring that earned him his first important command, that of general in chief of the French Army of the Interior. Four months later he was made commander in chief of the Army of Italy, the army that was disputing the conquest of northern Italy with Austria.

THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

WHERE AN EMPEROR WAS BORN

In this room Napoleon was born in 1769.

It was a ragged, disgusted, and half-revolting body, this Army of Italy, one that for three years had been conspicuous mainly for inactivity. Without waiting even for shoes, the new commander started it out swiftly on a campaign that for clever strategy, for rapidity of movement, for dash and courage in attack, was unlike anything Europe had ever seen. In less than two months he drove his opponents from Lombardy and had shut up the remnant of their army in Mantua. The Austrians shortly had a new army in the field. It took eight months to defeat it and capture Mantua; but it was accomplished in that period. Austria then called her ablest general, Archduke Charles, and gave him one hundred thousand men with which to avenge her disasters. With half the number Bonaparte advanced to meet the archduke, and drove him step by step to Vienna.

After a year and seven months of campaigning General Bonaparte, now twenty-eight years old, signed his first treaty. By that treaty he formed a new republic in northern Italy and made a new eastern frontier for France. Before the treaty, however, he had filled her empty treasury, had loaded her down with works of art, and had given her a new place in Europe; a place that he had proved he could sustain.

The glory of the Italian campaign thrilled the French people; but it disturbed the politicians in power. Bonaparte saw that if the government could manage it he would have no further opportunities for distinguishing himself. It was this sense that led him to urge that England, the only nation then in arms against France, be attacked by invading Egypt. The government consented promptly. It was a way of disposing of Bonaparte. What the government did not dream, of course, was that Bonaparte with this army hoped to found an oriental kingdom of which he should be the ruler.

But nothing went as he expected. He suffered terrible reverses, which he knew the government at home was using to break his hold on the people; his supplies and information were cut off; his prestige in his own army weakened; his faith in his destiny was shaken. That the effect of this bad fortune was not more than skin deep was clear enough when he accidentally learned that things were in a very bad way in France, that much of what he had gained in Italy had been lost, and that Austria and Russia were preparing an invasion.

BIRTHPLACE OF NAPOLEON

In this house, on the little island of Corsica, the first emperor of France spent his boyhood.

FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE

Promptly and secretly Bonaparte slipped out of Egypt, and before the powers at home knew of his intention he was in France and the people were welcoming him as their deliverer. He was ready to be just that. It was no great trick for a man of his daring and sagacity, adored by the populace, to overturn a discredited and inefficient government and make himself dictator. It was done in a few weeks, and France had a new form of government, a consulate, of which the head was a first consul, and Bonaparte was the first consul.

The most brilliant and fruitful four years of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life followed; for it was then that he set out to bring order and peace to a country demoralized and exhausted by generations of plundering by privileged classes, followed by a decade of revolution against privileges. France needed new machinery of all kinds, and this Bonaparte undertook to supply. There were many people who regarded him as a great general; but to their amazement he now proved himself a remarkable statesman.

NAPOLEON THE STATESMAN

He attacked the question of the national income like a veteran financier. The first matter was reorganizing taxation. He succeeded in distributing the burden more justly than had ever been known in France. The taxes were fixed so that each knew what he had to pay, and the inordinate graft that tax collectors and police had enjoyed was cut off. New financial institutions were devised; among them the Bank of France. The economy he instituted in the government, the army, his own household, everywhere that his power extended, was rigid and minute; as he personally examined all accounts, there was no escape. The waste and parasitism that pervaded the country began to give way for the first time since the Revolution.

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

From a painting by Pierre Paul Prud’hon.

Industries of all kinds had sickened in the long period of war. Bonaparte undertook their revival by one of the most severe applications ever made of the doctrine of protection,—he even attempted to make his women folk wear no goods not made in France! His interest in agriculture was as keen as in manufacturing, and his personal suggestions and interference of the same nature. The prosperity of the country was stimulated greatly by the public works Bonaparte undertook. One can go nowhere in France today without finding them. It was he who set the country at road building. Some of the most magnificent highways in Europe were laid out by him, including those over four Alpine passes. He paid great attention to improving harbors. Those now at Cherbourg, Havre, and Nice, as well as at Flushing and Antwerp, Bonaparte planned and began. As for Paris, his ambition for the city was boundless. He was responsible for some of her finest features and monuments.

His greatest civil achievement was undoubtedly the codification of the laws, and it was the one of which he was proudest. That he contributed much to the Code Napoleon besides the driving power that insisted that it be promptly put through, there is no doubt. His great contribution was the inestimable one of commonsense. He had no patience with meaningless precedents, conventions, and technicalities. He wanted laws that everybody could understand and would recognize as necessary and just.

NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL

Nothing more daring was undertaken in this period by Bonaparte than his reëstablishment of the Catholic Church and his recall of thousands of members of the old régime driven out of the country by the Revolution. It was an attempt to reconcile and restore the two most powerful enemies of the Revolution, the two that the first consul knew Europe would never cease to fight to restore to power. There was of course great opposition in radical and republican circles to both ventures.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

From the painting by Delaroche.

LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY

From a painting of Napoleon by Greuse.

KING OF ROME

From a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence of the unfortunate little son of Napoleon and Marie Louise. His unhappy story is told by the French dramatist Rostand, in the play “L’Aiglon.”

EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH

What Napoleon aimed at was to fit together all the different elements that had made France, under a government that he should direct, and then to impose upon them all peace, industry, and loyalty. Considering the character and history of the elements he was working with, the degree of his success is one of the wonders of statecraft. As time went on, however, he was subjected to more and more jealousy, criticism, and intrigue. And as he saw his power questioned his grasp tightened. He even began to employ the tactics of despots,—espionage, censorships, summary punishments. The upshot of the attacks upon him and of his determination to impose his own will was that in 1804, when he was thirty-five years old, he had himself made emperor of the French. I think there is no doubt that Napoleon believed that this was the only method by which he could make the position of France in Europe impregnable; but that he was willing to play the emperor there is no doubt. The dream of a throne where he should rule—for the welfare and happiness of everybody concerned, no doubt, but rule—brilliantly and absolutely—had never left his mind since boyhood—and now it was a fact accomplished!

The spectacle that followed is almost unbelievable. Napoleon with perfect seriousness set about to train himself, his lovable, but vain and unprincipled empress, Josephine, his selfish and vulgar family, his train of rough intimates of the battlefield, to the etiquette, ceremonies, and dignity of a court. He worked with the same energy, attention to details, and with the same insistence on complete obedience as when directing a campaign. The Napoleonic court achieved real brilliance and dignity; but to those born to the purple it was always an upstart’s court. That it was far and away more moral, economic, and orderly, as well as more serviceable to France, counted for little with those of the old régime.

NAPOLEON THE CONQUEROR

NAPOLEON AND QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AT TILSIT

The year after Napoleon was crowned emperor of the French (1804) he had himself crowned king of Italy. The territory he now governed included not only these two countries, but several Germanic states. It was an enormous power, and the old kingdoms of Europe, England, Austria, and Russia looked on in dismay. It was not only his power, backed as it was by his genius, but it was the ideas he was spreading. Everywhere he went he put his new code of laws into force, and preached, even if he did not always practise, personal liberty, equality before the law, religious tolerance,—ideas that many of his enemies feared more than they did armies.

A coalition against him was inevitable, and in 1805 he took the field again. The campaigns that followed closely in the next four years include some of his most interesting military feats,—the battle of Austerlitz, of which he was proudest himself; the campaign of Jena, by which he humbled Prussia, increased French territory largely, and won the czar of Russia as an ally; the war on Spain, which ended in his own deserved defeat (Napoleon at St. Helena characterized his attack on Spain as “unjust,” “cynical,” “villainous”); the campaign of Wagram, which finally humbled his persistent enemy Austria.

NAPOLEON’S FAREWELL TO JOSEPHINE

For reasons of state Napoleon divorced the Empress Josephine to marry Marie Louise, the daughter of the emperor of Austria. His last words to the woman who loved him were: “My destiny and France demand it!”

At the end of these four years Napoleon was himself the practical master of Europe; the only nation not recognizing his power being England, which was at least temporarily quiet. He had created an empire; but what was he to do with it? He had no heir. To provide for one he carried out a plan long considered,—he divorced Empress Josephine and married again. The new empress was the daughter of the old and now humbled enemy of France, the emperor of Austria. Napoleon apparently believed that on the birth of an heir France would accept him fully, and that Europe would cease to fear and resent his power. He was wrong. He had stripped too many of wealth and position, outraged too many social and religious conventions, set in motion too many ideas hostile to those that Europe as a whole lived by. His demands on subjects and allies were too heavy, and particularly the one that he had most at heart,—that no continental nation should allow a dollar’s worth of England’s goods to cross its borders. His punishment of those who displeased him and disobeyed his orders was too severe. A revolt against his monstrous assumption was inevitable.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

From a portrait of the Emperor painted by Paul Delaroche.

THE SETTING STAR

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

It was with his ally, Russia, that the first break came. That Napoleon was startled by the idea of war with Alexander and sought to prevent it, is certain; but Alexander refused to yield to his demand that the embargo against English goods be enforced. The embargo he had set down as the “fundamental law of the Empire.” There was nothing to do but settle it by arms, and in the summer of 1812, with an army of over half a million men, he began a reluctant and hesitating march against Russia. It was a campaign of terrible disasters. The Russians retreated before him, letting cold and hunger do the work of battles. So effectively did they work that the French army was practically destroyed. The Russian campaign is one of the most appalling in history. It was but the beginning of his overthrow. Alexander raised the cry “Deliver Europe!” Stein and other liberal minds rallied the youth of the German states into a league, pledged to fight for national freedom. His allies and dependences began to demand the return of lost territories as a price of loyalty. France revolted at the prospects of continued bloodshed. The campaigns thrust upon him by all these forces were fought; but frequently without his old genius.

It was June of 1812 when Napoleon began the Russian campaign. Twenty-one months later Paris capitulated to his allied enemies, and a few weeks later he had lost the greatest empire modern Europe had seen gathered under one man, and was an exile in the little island of Elba.

LONGWOOD

Napoleon’s residence during his captivity at St. Helena.

AN EXILE’S GRAVE

The spot where Napoleon was buried in May, 1821. His body was removed to Paris in 1840.

WATERLOO AND ST. HELENA

His dramatic escape from Elba; the scurry out of France at news of his arrival of all who had opposed him, leaving the coast practically clear for him; the rally of the army and people to him; the immediate attack upon him by the allied powers of Europe; his defeat at Waterloo and speedy exile to St. Helena,—these make perhaps the most dramatic succession of events in all history, and it was not he who lost by the record of them, though it ended in his captivity. Napoleon a prisoner on an island six hundred miles from land was Napoleon still. He was there because of his conquerors’ fear of him. No greater tribute to one man’s power was ever paid than that of Europe when under English leadership she consented to confine Napoleon Bonaparte on the island of St. Helena. It was all that was needed to impress him forever on the world as one of heroic mold.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING.—“Short Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” Ida M. Tarbell; “The First Napoleon,” John C. Ropes; “Napoleon Bonaparte, First Campaign,” H. H. Sargent; “Life of Napoleon,” Las Casas; “Napoleon, the Last Phase,” Lord Rosebery; “Letters and Papers of Napoleon”; “Napoleana,” Frédéric Masson.

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NAPOLEON AT ARCOLE—By Antoine Jean Gros

NAPOLEON AT ARCOLE, from the painting by Antoine Jean Gros, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

MONDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
AT THE BRIDGE AT ARCOLE

“Follow your general!” was the cry with which young Bonaparte urged his army to victory at Arcole. He was only twenty-seven years old at the time—and yet was commander in chief of the army of Italy. The years that brought Napoleon into prominence had been troublous ones. He was born in Corsica, and in moderate circumstances. The exact date of his birth is uncertain. At school he said it was 1768. It is stated that he gave this date because that made him a citizen of Genoa, inasmuch as Corsica was at that time a dependency of Genoa. Later on he said that he was born in 1769; for Corsica had then become a French possession, and this made him a Frenchman by birth. After early schooling at Brienne young Napoleon entered the military academy of Paris in 1784. After a year he was commissioned as a sublieutenant in the regular army, and made rapid progress from the start. As lieutenant colonel he distinguished himself in the wars of Spain. He held the mobs boldly and in masterful manner during the turbulent scenes in the early days of the Revolution. Barras, a high official, recognized his military genius and gave Bonaparte command of the army of Italy.

The capture of the bridge at Arcole was essential to the success of the Italian campaign. For three days the Austrian army gallantly opposed the attacks of Napoleon’s forces, and it was only by the personal courage of the young general that victory was finally won. Bonaparte personally led a rush across the bridge at Arcole, and he was the real vital force in the battle. He saw his staff killed or wounded about him during the onslaughts. Once he himself was swept by a counter attack of the Austrian forces into a swamp, where he nearly perished.

Napoleon’s army consisted of 18,000 men, which he had moved over the narrow and rugged roads with heavy baggage at a rate of fourteen miles a day for three consecutive days,—the same rate at which Stonewall Jackson made his marches through the Shenandoah Valley. It was a remarkable achievement under the conditions Napoleon had to face.

And with this force he met an Austrian army of 40,000 and defeated it signally after a bitter engagement.

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

EMPEROR NAPOLEON—By Francois Gérard

EMPEROR NAPOLEON, from the painting by François Gérard, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

TUESDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
EMPEROR NAPOLEON

“I shall now give myself to the administration of France.” That was the statement of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 after he had overthrown the government and had instituted a consulate, to which he was elected first for ten years, and then for life. There were three consuls, and Napoleon was known as the first consul. To one of his sublime ambition, however, the thought of association in government was unbearable. Two years later, despite his attitude expressed in his own words, “I am a friend of the Republic; I am a son of the Revolution; I stand for the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity,” Napoleon determined to make an office for himself that would be absolute and hereditary. The title of king had grown hateful to the people of France; so Napoleon chose “emperor” instead, and in 1804 he assumed the title and the office.

Many were shocked; but none could resist his assumption of imperial power. A popular vote showed that only 2,500 people opposed the new government. Pope Pius VII accepted Napoleon’s request to take part in the coronation ceremony on December 2, 1804. The event occurred at Notre Dame Cathedral. The pope poured the mystic oil on the head of the kneeling sovereign. It was ten centuries since any pope had left Rome for a coronation, and in the minds of the Latin peoples this was a consecration of a monarch that put him on an equal plane with the proudest rulers of Europe, whose power reposed on the basis of Divine Right. When the pope lifted the crown Napoleon performed an act so striking in its originality that the people held their breath. He took the crown from the pope’s hands and placed it on his own head. He then crowned Empress Josephine.

A few months later Napoleon journeyed to Milan, the capital of what was called the Cisalpine Republic, and there proclaimed the kingdom of Italy. He crowned himself then with “the iron crown of the Lombards” and named Prince Eugène, his stepson, heir to the throne.

During the ceremonies the republic of Genoa sent ambassadors to Paris with the request to be incorporated into the French empire. This offended Austria, and led to the third war with that empire since 1792, when the republic of France was proclaimed.

FRIEDLAND—“1807”—By Meissonier

FRIEDLAND—“1807,” from the painting by Meissonier, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

WEDNESDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
FRIEDLAND—“1807”

Emperor Napoleon’s brilliant victory at Friedland was the event that placed him at the topmost height of his military power. In a fierce battle, noted for the strategy characteristic of Bonaparte, he defeated a large Russian army. This was on June 14, 1807.

Czar Alexander of Russia had refused to comply with the demands of Napoleon regarding trade with England. England would not recognize Napoleon as emperor, and he retorted by forcing several of the European nations to sever commercial connections with England. Czar Alexander held out. The forces of both emperors met at a small town called Heilsberg, near Friedland. Napoleon disposed his army in such a way that he led the Russian general, Bennigsen, to believe that he had to conquer only a small number at Friedland. Part of the French army was hidden in the semi-circle of wooded hills that surrounded Friedland.

From one of these hills Napoleon watched the movement of Bennigsen and his army of 30,000. The Russian general believed that a corps of 1,500 men in command at Lannes, stationed at Friedland, was the extent of the forces opposing him. Bennigsen engaged in a skirmish with this corps, and drove it back into the city. The Russian army then followed, and crossed the River Albe. Napoleon waited, feeling assured that Bennigsen would not have time to retreat. Then he brought his army of 60,000 men to the aid of Lannes, and surrounded the Russians, pouring upon them a converging fire which worked disastrous results. The fragments of Bennigsen’s army retreated to the Russian border, whither Napoleon’s forces pursued them.

At the Russian frontier Napoleon received a communication from Czar Alexander requesting peace. It was agreed that the two emperors should meet on a floating raft near the city of Tilsit.

The result of this conference was the foundation of what has been called “Napoleon’s dream to build a vast European empire.”

Whatever may be said of that, it was surely the beginning of his downfall.

NAPOLEON IN THE CAMPAIGN OF FRANCE—By Meissonier

RETREAT FROM MOSCOW, from the painting by Meissonier, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

THURSDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
RETREAT FROM MOSCOW

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was one of the most disastrous military enterprises in the history of the world. It was not the Russians that defeated the emperor. During much of his advance he was left alone. Sometimes he was harrassed by skirmish forces. Several great battles were fought, notably that of Borodino. But for the most part he was allowed to go on his way; for his enemies knew that he had greater than human forces to face and battle with,—the vast Russian solitudes and the cruel, killing Russian winter. The terrible story is summed up in the statement that Napoleon invaded Russia with an armed force numbering more than 500,000 men, and that he returned with less than 30,000.

Bonaparte had once said, “I will never lead an army to destruction as did Charles XII on the steppes of Russia. My soldiers are my children.” However, when Czar Alexander of Russia refused to accept his terms, Napoleon assembled his grand army of Frenchmen, Italians, Austrians, and Germans and invaded Russia as far as Moscow, a distance of 2,000 miles from Paris.

He was victorious at Moscow; but the Russians burned the city, and thus destroyed it for purposes of winter quarters. The czar delayed in his negotiations for peace so long that Napoleon was compelled to order a retreat, which began on October 19, 1812. His army was then harassed from the rear, and many lives were lost in these engagements. After two weeks of marching the soldiers met the first wave of Russian winter. The roads were frozen sheets of ice, and in a week nearly all the horses perished. The cavalry could no longer ward off the attacks of Cossacks. Many of the guns had to be abandoned. The army lacked the artillery necessary to fight a big battle. Food supplies had to be abandoned, as there were no horses to draw them. Thousands stretched out by the fire at night never to awaken in the morning. Cold and starvation killed them.

At Smolensk the army presented an appalling spectacle. Napoleon headed it, clad in furs, his expression set and stern. Behind him came the captains, majors, and lieutenants, then a few harnessed wagons with the emperor’s war chest and papers; after that the straggling forces, many of them unarmed, limping, half frozen, some wandering away with wild looks, others falling by the roadside never to rise again.

At the frontier Napoleon left this pitiful fragment of an army in charge of the king of Naples, took a horse, and rode to Paris.

NAPOLEON ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON—By W. Q. Orchardson

NAPOLEON ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON, from the painting by W. Q. Orchardson, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

FRIDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON

The Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815, was the final blow to Napoleon’s power. On that day hung the fate of Europe. Napoleon faced the allied forces of Prussia, England, Germany, and the Dutch, and had assembled an army of 70,000 to meet them. The allied forces were under command of the Duke of Wellington. They were bound together by one stern purpose,—to annihilate once for all the man whom they called the scourge of Europe. A heavy rainstorm prevented the emperor from carrying out his original plan of attack, which was to meet the enemy in two sections. The night of June 17 was stormy. A heavy rainstorm made the roads so heavy that the emperor could not move his cannon into the place desired until a short time before the enemy’s forces joined. Then, too, General Grouchy had been instructed to intercept the Prussian forces under Blücher, and hold them back while Napoleon fought his fight with Wellington. If he could not do that, he was at least to follow Blücher to Waterloo. The arrival, therefore, of Blücher and his forces in good fighting trim put the French into such confusion that a crushing defeat was inevitable. In the rout men had to save themselves as best they could.

Napoleon left the field, and took the road to Paris, where he found his power gone. He resigned as emperor in favor of his son, and went to Rochefort in hope of finding a ship going to the United States. The English vessel Bellerophon blockaded the harbor, and Napoleon boarded it, throwing himself on the mercy of Great Britain. He reckoned, however, without his host; for England had never forgotten that Napoleon had threatened an invasion of Great Britain. Moreover, within the year Napoleon had been declared an international outlaw, “outside the pale of social and civil relations, and liable to public vengeance.”

So, as Napoleon crossed the English Channel from Rochefort to Portsmouth, with Captain Maitland, on board his Majesty’s ship Bellerophon, he had sought safety in the lion’s mouth. England assumed charge of him on behalf of all Napoleon’s European enemies, and consigned him to exile on the island of St. Helena.

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA—By Paul Delaroche

NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA, from the painting by Paul Belaroche, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Napoleon Bonaparte.”

SATURDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
AT ST. HELENA

On a rock-bound island in the South Atlantic the greatest military genius of all time spent the last six years of his life. There Napoleon dragged out the months in company with a number of his former associates, recalling the glories of the past and complaining of the bitter conditions of the present. There he wrote interesting memorial papers and gave expression to the ripe results of his military training.

Sir Hudson Lowe, a British military officer with little tact or diplomacy, was his jailer. It was not possible for such a man and Napoleon Bonaparte to meet on terms of amity. Writers on the subject differ, as they do on almost all the episodes of Napoleon’s life. Some say that Sir Hudson abused and insulted Napoleon shamefully. However, there are French writers who try to prove that Napoleon continually lied to and intrigued against the governor.

Napoleon’s mind during these days turned frequently toward his son, “the little king of Italy,” and he dictated many instructions as to the boy’s future. It might have been with the hope that at some future time an empire might come to his son that he also dictated those elaborate memoirs in which he gave an account of himself.

During a terrific storm of wind and rain on the night of May 5, 1821, Napoleon died. The dash of the waves and the roar of the storm seemed to stir his fading faculties and to arouse in him a memory of the din of battle; for his last words were “Tête d’armée” (the head of the army), and with that ejaculation in a sharp military tone his lips closed forever.

He was buried near his favorite haunt,—a fountain shaded by weeping willows, at Longwood, the estate on which he had lived at St. Helena. British soldiers accompanied his body to rest with reversed arms and fired a parting salute over his grave.

In his will the following extraordinary statement appeared: “My wish is to be buried on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I so dearly loved.”

In 1840 his body was ceremoniously transferred to Paris and buried in the Hôtel des Invalides with every circumstance of military pomp and national mourning.

Transcriber’s Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected; punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

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Table of Contents

- THE MENTOR SERIAL NUMBER 38

- NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

- NAPOLEON THE OPPORTUNIST
- THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
- FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE
- NAPOLEON THE STATESMAN
- EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH
- NAPOLEON THE CONQUEROR
- THE SETTING STAR
- WATERLOO AND ST. HELENA

- THE MENTOR

- Editorial

- MONDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION AT THE BRIDGE AT ARCOLE

- TUESDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION EMPEROR NAPOLEON

- WEDNESDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION FRIEDLAND—“1807”

- THURSDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION RETREAT FROM MOSCOW

- FRIDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON

- SATURDAY DAILY READING IN THE MENTOR COURSE PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION AT ST. HELENA

- Transcriber’s Notes

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE