THE SPECTRE FROM ELBA.

many of his attendant Old Guard, who went as
emissaries of their master among their com-
rades in arms in France, and inspired them
with earnest desires to once more follow their
great leader and his imperial eagles.

built palaces in town and country, rode over | with the new order of things, and that he was his tiny domain with cheerfulness, and project-yet the idol of his old armies. He furloughed ed and began many and vast improvements. His mother and his sister Pauline joined him. People flocked to Elba from all quarters to see the enthralled hero, as people flock to a menagThe port of Ferrajo erie to see a caged lion. was crowded with vessels bringing people, and food for the people; and very soon that mart had a right to its modified ancient name, which Napoleon had changed from Cosmo to Cosmopoli-the city of all nations.

Inquietude was every where visible in France. The incapacity of the king to profit by the great lessons of the hour; the haughty pretensions and greed of the royalists, who excluded men of the people from offices of trust and profit; The emperor now professed to have no other the efforts of the clergy-whose establishments ambition than to make Elba the seat of a splen- Bonaparte had not violently suppressed but did little empire. "I think," he said to Sir starved-to reinstate the Romish Church in all Neil, "of nothing beyond the verge of my little its vigor, or to establish laws enforcing religious isle. I am now a politically deceased person, observances, and to place under the ban of exoccupied with my family, my house, my cows, communication all theatrical performers, disand my poultry. Here I will pass my days in appointed and disgusted the people, who had peace, engaged in the pleasures of literature been promised political and religious freedom and science, and the world may forget me if it if they would accept the Bourbon as king. likes.' Sir Neil believed; but Baron Kohler, The principles of the old revolution were yet the Austrian envoy, could not be deceived by potential throughout the kingdom, and were Napoleon's duplicity. When he left Elba, in powerfully fostered by Carnot and the infamous May, the emperor embraced him warmly, with Fouché, who for long years had served Napo"What were you think- leon in works of darkness, but who, the emexpressions of love. ing of, baron," an English gentleman after-peror said, was "a miscreant of all colors-a ward asked the envoy, "while locked in the "Of Judas Iscariot!" emperor's embrace ?" was the answer.

priest and terrorist," whom he used, but never
esteemed nor trusted. These principles were
cherished and spread by the friends of Napo-
leon, and the army was made to believe, what
was doubtless true, that the royalists intended
to extinguish it and create a new one, because,
having been a supporter of the empire, it could
not be relied upon as a supporter of the new
dynasty. And the pride of the French nation
was touched with mortification by the reproach
constantly uttered that it had received the re-
stored monarch at the dictation of foreigners.
Finally, the muzzling of the press, and the evi-
dent intention to re-establish Bourbon rule, after
the pattern before 1789, kindled the slumbering
volcano of revolution into active flame.
Jacobins and Imperialists coalesced, and Fou-
ché, who had, by sheer impudence, made his
way into the French cabinet, seems to have
acted as the traitorous high-priest at the nup-
tials. At the same time he pointed out to that
cabinet (what was true) that the tranquillity of
the countries and sovereigns of Europe could
never be secured while Napoleon remained in
his present condition, for his residence on Elba
was to France what Vesuvius was to Naples.

The

The summer and autumn passed away. Europe believed that Napoleon was amusing himself with Euclid and Napier, and writing the story of the deeds of himself and his Old Guard, as he had promised he would at Fontainebleau. The indolent King of France ate his soup and took his siesta sans souci, content to leave the management of his kingdom, at first, to Talleyrand, who, as Pembroke said, was "born of the The French peowillow, and not of the oak." ple, charmed with repose, dreamed sweetly of peace and prosperity, and to the eye of the superficial observer the political atmosphere of Europe was as pure and serene as an evening sky after a terrific thunder-storm, when the representatives of the eight powers-Austria, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden (four from each)-began to assemble in congress at Vienna, at the beginning of 1815, to readjust the boundaries of shattered kingdoms and determine their future policy. But the dreams and the placidity were delusive. Napoleon had been solving in Conspiracy in favor of Napoleon soon took Affiliations and his own mind at Elba other problems than those of Euclid, and had been preparing to definite shape in France. make history rather than to write it. Indeed, points of rendezvous of conspirators were arhe had not been a month in Elba when he be- ranged. The Duchess of St. Leu (ex-Queen gan a secret and active correspondence with his Hortense, mother of Napoleon the Third) was friends in France and Italy concerning his dy-chief of the feminine conspirators, who were nasty. He was satisfied that the terms of his abdication would not be fulfilled by France, for he was well acquainted with Bourbon perfidy and the fickleness of the French people. He learned with satisfaction that the temper of his soldiers who returned from captivity in the north gave evidence of their dissatisfaction

The police of active, skillful, and numerous. Paris were thoroughly indoctrinated with the revolutionary spirit, and under their connivance it assumed a more open and daring aspect. As the plots thickened, and the rumblings of the volcano became more and more audible, desires for the return of Napoleon were intensified and

joy it. He proceeded to do so.
On the even-
ing of the 26th of February his sister Pauline
gave a sumptuous entertainment to the officers
of the little Elban army; and just after mid-
night the emperor and suit, with these and
eight hundred troops, embarked for France.
Sir Neil Campbell had been told at Leghorn
that the exile was surely on the point of de-
parture from Elba. He hastened to Ferrajo
in the Partridge. The sovereign had gone.-
His mother and sister seemed to be in an agony
of anxiety about the fate of the fugitive. They

cepting that he had sailed toward the coast of Barbary. The Partridge made chase, but not in that direction. It was too late. When Sir Neil came in sight of the port of Cannes, near Ferrajo, he saw the Elban flotilla at anchor, but Napoleon and his followers had landed, and were on their way toward Paris.

wide-spread. To express their hopes that the event would occur in the spring, his partisans adopted as their emblem the early vernal flower, and they called Bonaparte "Corporal Violet." The flower and the color were publicly worn as a party distinction before the court took the alarm; and the health of the exile, under the name of Corporal Violet, was pledged by many a royalist, who did not suspect its concealed meaning. So bold did the conspirators become, and so stupid seemed the royal officials, that treasonable correspondence was carried on through the post-office, and the king's seal cov-professed to know nothing of his movements exered letters bearing political explosives that were carried by public messengers wearing his livery! Outside of France there was calmness in courts and passivity among the people. The international Congress assembled at Vienna. Talleyrand was there to act for France, Wellington (now made duke) was there to speak for England, and the Emperors of Russia and Austria were present to speak for themselves. With the map of Europe spread before them, they that the exiled emperor again set his foot deliberated how this and that line of territory, upon the soil of France, from which he had and this and that line of policy, should be ad- been expelled more than ten months before. justed so as to best suit royal families and dy- Instead of insults, the people now offered him nasties, but without for a moment considering homage. After passing Provence into Dauthe wishes of the people whose nationalities phiny, he was received with acclamations of joy they were ready to change. Elba and Na-all along his pathway toward the capital. The poleon seemed too insignificant for consideration. So certainly seemed the peace of Europe to be secured that many of Wellington's veterans had been sent to this country to invade Northern New York, burn Washington, and capture New Orleans, for the United States and Great Britain were at war; and the British Parliament had proceeded to settle the home and foreign policy of the realm as if no more armies would be called to the field in Europe. It was the usual calm before the tempest.

As Napoleon expected, the treaty wrung from him at Fontainebleau had been violated. No part of his stipulated annuity had been paid to him by the French ministry, and he was pressed by poverty under heavy expenses, for he could draw but little money from the Elbans. Sir Neil Campbell warned his government that this violation of the treaty would justify the exile in any attempt to repossess himself of the throne of France. He reported how strangers -suspicious characters—appeared and disappeared without affording any trace of their journey or object; how the emperor had become sullen, and excluded the British envoy and other foreigners from his court; how public works had been discontinued, and all the interest of the emperor in his little domain appeared to have died out. But his warnings were not heeded, for they were taken to be the words of an alarmist, such as had at times frightened England from her propriety.

Napoleon justly felt himself absolved from the bonds of the treaty at Fontainebleau. He was assured that the fruit of conspiracies in his favor in France was fully ripe, and that he had only to stretch forth his hand to pluck and en

It was on the 1st of March-a delightful spring day, when the violets were all in bloom

He

gates of Grenoble were thrown open to him by
the young royalist commander, and the troops
gathered around the emperor with joyous
shouts. There his little army of eight hundred
men had become seven thousand strong.
pressed on down the mountains of Dauphiny
toward Lyons, the capital of Celtic Gaul, "and
birth-place of four Roman emperors, when
the army stationed there joined his standard.
There he resumed the administration of the
empire. "Soldiers!" he said to his old troops,
"take again the eagles you followed at Ulm,
Austerlitz, Jena, and Montmirail. Victory
shall march at every charging step.
The ea-
gles, with the national colors, shall fly from
steeple to steeple, on to the towers of Notre
Dame!" Then he pressed onward, issuing
proclamation after proclamation, that electrified
France, and found his march to be a continued
ovation as he passed through village after vil-
lage. On the night of the 19th he slept at
Fontainebleau, and on the following evening, in
fog and rain, he entered Paris, and was borne
upon the shoulders of Parisians to the magnif-
icent salon of the Tuileries, then filled with a
brilliant assemblage of his friends-the beauti-
ful and the brave-and from which Louis the
Eighteenth had fled only a few hours before.
The acclamations of immense crowds in the
streets filled the air until long after midnight;
and until dawn the cannons that had thunder-
ed in battle at Austerlitz, Marengo, and Dres-
den shook the brilliantly illuminated city.
And so the empire was re-established, and the
tricolored flag was unfurled all over France.
Before the close of May more than three hun-
dred thousand soldiers, most of them veterans,

besides an Imperial Guard of forty thousand, were ready to follow the emperor whithersoever he might choose to lead.

of demagogues. The Democrats plunged the country into war with England in 1812, in spite of the opposition of the Federalists. When Napoleon won, the Democrats rejoiced; when he lost, the Federalists were jubilant. When he was banished to Elba the latter celebrated the event, and at public tables such toasts as these were given: "The Royal Family of FranceOur friends in adversity, we rejoice in their prosperity." "The Democratic Party of America If not satisfied with their own country, they may seek an asylum in the island of Elba."

It was now the turn of the Democrats to rejoice, and they did so heartily, with public demonstrations. Song and satire marked their jubilations. William Charles, a caricaturist of Philadelphia, issued a print entitled "The Congress at Vienna in Consternation." The members-sovereigns and diplomats-have risen to their feet, excepting the Emperor of Russia. Before them is the map of Europe. Napoleon is seen on the sea-shore, fully armed, with Elba in the distance. He carries the fiery thunderbolts of war in one hand, and with the other points to a winged messenger proclaiming his approach, saying, "Tell them I come to settle that part which relates to France.' The mem

Awful to the vision of astonished Europe was that seeming spectre of the Scourge coming from Elba. To the senses bewildered by fear the apparition seemed, at first, more like a phantom than a reality, for was not Napoleon dead? The French court smiled when the story ran through the Tuileries that the exiled emperor had landed at Cannes with a few hundred followers-Frenchmen, Elbans, and Corsicans; and the duped king went to the theatre that night, as usual, with perfect unconcern. When little Talleyrand, one chilly March evening, burst into the chamber of the congress at Vienna, where sovereigns and diplomats were warmly disputing over the map of Europe, and told them the startling news, he was greeted with loud laughter, as if he were a child that had been frightened by a ghost. But when tidings reached Paris that the emperor's march was unimpeded even by a voice -that Marshal Ney, who a few days before had kissed the king's hand in token of his fidelity, and promised to bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage within a week, had joined the invader with all his troops, and that royal reg-bers of the congress gave various utterances iniments were transformed by the magic of Bonaparte's presence into imperial followers-in a word, that the army had deserted the Bourbons-the king, satisfied that conspiracy had undermined his throne, "took French leave," and fled to Belgium. When the same facts were made known to the congress at Vienna, the monarchs and diplomats were filled with consternation. They folded up the map of Europe in haste, for they were now more concerned about thrones than boundaries. Debate changed to consultation. A coalition was quickly formed for driving the common enemy out of France. The congress signed a proclamation which declared that Napoleon Bonaparte was an outlaw, a violator of treaties, and a disturber of the peace of the world; and they gave license to every assassin to kill him, by formally delivering him over to public vengeance. Then the congress, and the generals of all nations in Vienna, called upon Wellington to assist in drawing up a grand plan of military operations; and by a treaty made on the 23d of March the governments that were a party thereto agreed to act in perfect concord until their work should be accomplished.

In all these events toward the close of the empire Americans were deeply interested. The French Revolution had given rise to the violently opposing parties here known as Federalists and Republicans (or Democrats). The latter, mistaking the French Jacobinism for democracy such as the American Revolution had displayed, sympathized with the revolutionists abroad, and were ever bitterly hostile to England. The Federalists were conservative, and preserved a dignified neutrality. English party" and "French party" were the catch-words

dicative of astonishment and alarm; the Emperor of Austria saying, while holding upon his head his disturbed crown, "It is the part of men to fear and tremble when the most mighty gods, by tokens, send such dreadful heralds to astonish us."

The rest of the story may be soon told. Belgium, as of old, became the battle-field. There the giants fought desperately. On Sunday, the 18th of June, after a tempestuous night, one hundred and fifty thousand men under Wellington and Napoleon struggled for the mastery for many hours on the field of Waterloo. Wellington won, Napoleon lost. The empire vanished. The Bourbon was re-enthroned, and the great emperor, fallen to rise no more, was carried by a British ship far below the equator, and chained for life to the volcanic rock of St. Helena, in the wild Atlantic, more than a thousand miles from any continent. So the annals of England were indelibly stained.

The exile of Napoleon gave occasion for much and sharp comment upon the policy of England, saying nothing about the moral aspect of the case; and those persons in France who had been instrumental in accomplishing the final downfall of the emperor, by treachery to his cause, were very severely handled, not only by grave publicists, but by satirists even of England. That exile also gave occasion for one of the best caricatures ever issued by Charles, of Philadelphia, entitled "Louis XVIII. climbing the Mât de Cocagne"-a long pole, well soaped or greased, on the top of which, in public sports, some prize is hung, and he who succeeds in climbing up to it wins it. A copy of Charles's caricature is here given. In it Châteaubriand comes in for a large share of casti

help." A little to the left of Châteaubriand are seen Talleyrand and Fouché. The former is pointing toward Châteaubriand, and says, "My dear Fouché, that charlatan has jockeyed us both." Fouché, who is carrying a bag on one arm marked "Louis," and another on the other arm marked "Boney," says nothing, but looks like the personification of intrigue.

gation.. He is seen standing on one side of the | He says, "I climbed up twice without any picture, with a dagger in one hand and a pen and cross in the other, a rosary hanging from his waist, and his pamphlet, "Bonaparte and the Bourbons," protruding from his pocket. He says, "Call me Châteaubriand, or Shatterbrain, or what you will--charge any thing upon me but truth and soberness, I who am the greatest and most eloquent humbug in Europe, and the first poetical and church militant statesman in France." Behind him, in the distance, is seen Napoleon on St. Helena, calmly surveying the scramble for the crown on the top of the soaped pole. He is surrounded by armed men, with cannon on an eminence pointed at his head.

In front is the ex-Empress Maria Louisa, weeping, and sobbing this parody: "Oh where, and oh where is my dear Napoleon gone? He is gone to St. Helena, and my son has lost his throne."

Her little son is just before her, wearing the