Vienna, 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna (29 page)

All of this made Talleyrand’s life more difficult. He seemed to represent a king who was losing his grip on his country, where, unfortunately, “nothing but conspiracies, secret discontent and murmuring” reigned. No matter how confident Talleyrand appeared, and he was as calm as usual, it was easy for the Prussians to cast doubts on his credibility. As they put it, the French minister either did not know the true state of the crisis back home, or he was covering up. Clearly, Talleyrand would have to step up his own campaign, so he called for his chef.

Chapter 18

T
HE
C
OOK, THE
P
AINTER, THE
B
ALLERINA, AND THE
D
IPLOMAT

I was sleeping beside a volcano, without a thought for the lava that would pour out of it.

—M
ETTERNICH ON THE
F
RENCH
R
EVOLUTION

F
lying from the towers on both sides of the island harbor was Elba’s brand-new flag, a white banner with a diagonal red stripe adorned with three golden bees. Napoleon himself had designed it, back in May 1814, while still on board the
Undaunted.
A tailor on the ship borrowed some sailcloth and sewed the first two flags for the new empire.

The new palace was not exactly the Tuileries. Napoleon would not be surrounded by his familiar bronze gilt chairs with griffins’ heads, or his favorite table, an hourglass-shaped piece of furniture that he had invented to facilitate close collaborative work. Absent, too, was the large oil painting of King Louis XIV, with the head of the Sun King wearing a red, white, and blue republican cockade. The luxurious environment may have changed, but Napoleon was still the same man, only a little older, thinner on top, and rounder in the middle.

The forty-five-year-old emperor would still wear out the floors with his rapid pacing up and down a room, all the while firing off dictation to a secretary who sat there “as silent as another piece of furniture.” The faster Napoleon spoke, the quicker he paced, and his secretary hurried to keep up.

Once he had found his house, orders flew out of his mouth in a spirited and disjointed whirlwind. Masons, carpenters, and architects were hired and ordered to complete the renovation plans, which Napoleon had also designed himself. He was adding a second floor, accessed by new pink marble stairs and consisting of two four-room suites, linked by a grand spacious salon. One of the wings was for his wife, and the other his son, who had not arrived and showed no signs of doing so. The eight windows added light to the house’s most majestic room. Shutters, however, were necessary. Napoleon’s palace had a tendency, in the hot Elban sun, to heat up to a “veritable furnace.”

Restless as ever, Napoleon had moved in, back in late May, amid a flurry of remodeling activity in the largely unfinished construction site. Scaffolding had still covered the front facade, and the inside reeked of fresh paint. White and gold armchairs were lugged up to the salon, the workers sidestepping the cement that had not yet dried. The dark wooden chairs with green silk were going to the study, along with his mahogany desk, glass-encased bookshelves, and a gray wooden couch adorned with gold lions and covered with yellow silk.

The ceiling of the bedroom was being painted to resemble a military tent. As for other furniture, he sent a ship to the mainland and raided his sister Élisa’s abandoned palaces in Tuscany, now occupied by Austrian troops. Napoleon was still angry at her for deserting him for the Allies. Napoleon’s villa was to be decorated with furniture literally stolen from her, including a desk, a clock, and even her famous gilded dark oak bed. It was a superb policy, he joked. He had raided Austria and punished his sister, all at the same time.

To keep up the palace, Napoleon was hiring staff to fill the newly created positions. There was a chief cook and a chief baker to oversee the team of thirteen people preparing meals in the kitchens. There were nineteen other servants in the house, as well as valets, gardeners, coachmen, grooms, harness makers, stablemen, locksmiths, tailors, and many others in their brand-new green coats with gold braids. If the salary was not great, the positions had other benefits. Some of the kitchen boys were so proud of being near the famous man that they strutted about town like “little Napoleons.”

The emperor had hired an international group, including French, Italians, Elbans, and Corsicans. A pianist from Florence was recruited as the new director of music, and a woman from a local village selected as the mistress of the wardrobe. A fellow Corsican was named court hairdresser, and his work was cut out for him. Napoleon’s hair had become so lumpy and shaggy in the humidity that it was compared to candlesticks.

But there was one other important figure on the island: a soldier from Great Britain who was asked to look after Napoleon and keep in close contact with London. This was Neil Campbell, a thirty-eight-year-old officer, a Highlander by birth, who had fought the French in the West Indies, Spain, and elsewhere. By the end of the war, Campbell was serving as military attaché to the Russian tsar. He had won respect with his bravery, and in fact had been severely wounded in battle, taking a saber blow to the head and a lance point in his back. As he set off for Elba, his head was still wrapped in bandages and his right arm cast in a sling.

That such a relatively unknown man was chosen to accompany the former ruler of the Continent may seem surprising, and many have wondered about the appointment, made by no less than Castlereagh. But the truth of the matter is that few were willing to take on this responsibility. More prominent figures had already declined the post, hardly relishing the prospects of being cooped up with Napoleon on some “little island half forgotten in the sea.”

The position would certainly have its difficulties. For one thing, Castlereagh had not explained very clearly what Campbell was supposed to do. It wasn’t that he received secret instructions or contradictory orders, but rather that he had had almost no guidance at all. Campbell had not been officially informed of the terms of Napoleon’s abdication, or even been shown the treaty itself. What he knew came from reading the newspaper and using his own initiative.

The closest Campbell came to having clear instructions was Castlereagh’s general directive to keep Napoleon free from “insult and attack” and not to address him as Your Highness—only “General Bonaparte.” It was a vague task that left an enormous amount to his discretion. One historian well summarized Campbell’s role as part bodyguard, part spy, and part ambassador. Campbell was effectively turned loose to sink or swim, but, above all, to do so in a way that would not reflect poorly on British leadership. For what was Britain doing there, anyway, a country that had not even signed the treaty?

So there they were, an obscure young officer and the former ruler of Europe. And yet this unlikely pair would get along fairly well. Napoleon seemed to enjoy the company, calling him, in his thick Corsican accent, “Combell.” They would talk about everything from Scotland to warfare, and one day, in conversation, Napoleon confessed the greatest mistake of his career: He had not made peace back in 1813, when he had had the chance to save his throne and his empire. All he had to do was to come to Prague and negotiate a settlement in good faith. He refused. “I was wrong,” Napoleon said, “but let any one imagine himself in my place.” After so many victories, he had faith in his army and chose “to throw the dice once more.”

“I lost,” Napoleon concluded, “but those who blame me have never drunk of fortune’s intoxicating cup.”

B
ACK IN
V
IENNA
, several reports from Elba reached the congress. Talleyrand had heard from many Swiss, Italian, and other travelers who all believed that Napoleon was getting restless. “Bonaparte will not remain in banishment at Elba,” one informant bluntly predicted.

With cool, polished finesse honed by years of intrigue, Talleyrand lobbied to have Napoleon moved farther away from Europe. Few, this time, were listening. Napoleon, after all, had been defeated, and banished into exile with an army of only four hundred men. The British Royal Navy was patrolling the waters, as were several French warships. Napoleon might be restless and unhappy, but what exactly could he do? The Vienna Congress hardly seemed distressed by these rumors.

But the king of France knew something that many plenipotentiaries in Vienna did not. Prior to Napoleon’s arrival on Elba, the French government had stripped the island’s warehouses bare, removing everything from guns and ammunition to government treasuries. Captain Thomas Ussher, the commander of the HMS
Undaunted,
which ferried the emperor into exile, already observed Napoleon’s “dismay,” as he put it with characteristic understatement. Other insults and injuries had been inflicted on the emperor. None of the 2 million francs promised in the Treaty of Abdication had been paid; worse still, another 10 million francs of Napoleon’s personal property had been seized by the king of France.

For many royalists, Napoleon’s presence on Elba alone constituted a grave security threat for the restored Bourbon dynasty, whose popularity was plummeting, particularly among soldiers and artisans, many of whom openly mourned the emperor. Leaving Napoleon on Elba was, under the circumstances, risky at best.

While Talleyrand made appeals in Vienna’s salons and drawing rooms, someone at the French embassy was apparently planning to take matters into his own hands. The evidence is sketchy, and there are many unanswered questions. But papers uncovered by chambermaids inside the embassy suggest that someone there was in fact working on a plan to kidnap Napoleon. The trail leads to Talleyrand’s number two, the Duke of Dalberg, if not also to Talleyrand himself.

The plan was being coordinated with the help of the French consulate in Livorno, which Talleyrand, as foreign minister, had reestablished three months before. Talleyrand had personally selected the consul, Chevalier Mariotti, a Corsican who had once provided security for Napoleon’s sister Élisa, and now, for some reason, held a grudge against the Bonaparte family. Mariotti had spent the autumn extending his network of agents and informants, recruiting heavily from nearby seaports. Gradually, he had built up a fairly accurate picture of Napoleon’s life on Elba, including the times when he was most vulnerable. The emperor, for instance, often sailed to the neighboring island of Pianosa, traveling with only a fraction of the guard he used at his palace, and then sleeping on board one of his ships. “It will be easy,” Mariotti had informed the French embassy in late September, “to kidnap him and take him to Ile Sainte Margueritte.”

Apparently, Chevalier Mariotti had hired a young Italian adventurer to pose as an olive oil merchant, travel to Elba, and arrange the abduction. On the last day of November, the “olive oil merchant” arrived at the island capital. According to his passport, he was a thirty-three-year-old Italian patriot from Lucca named Alessandro Forli, though it is by no means certain that this was his real name. He registered with authorities at the Star Fort, and then slipped away amid a crowd of other arrivals, which Britain’s Neil Campbell summed up as “mysterious adventurers and disaffected characters.” The oil merchant had no difficulty extending his contacts in the capital. Soon he was selling oil at Napoleon’s court and waiting to act.

E
ARLY
D
ECEMBER MARKED
the beginning of Advent season, the four weeks of contemplation and reflection that culminate in the celebration of Christmas. During this time, authorities frowned on Catholics who acted frivolously, and some hostesses feared that this might put their salons at a disadvantage, compared with rivals of a different confession. The Duchess of Sagan, a Protestant, and Princess Bagration, who was Russian Orthodox, could continue entertaining as they liked.

Banquets and masked balls would, indeed, take place throughout the season, and there was also a marked increase in intimate dinner parties. One of the favorite sites was Friedrich von Gentz’s flat on the Seilergasse. Guests climbed the steep staircase, entered the small apartment on the fourth floor, and squeezed around the table, elbow room only, in the middle of the dining room. On many occasions, with so many at the table, footmen carrying plates had difficulty maneuvering in the narrow space between the chair and the wall. Metternich, Talleyrand, Humboldt, and Princess Bagration were regulars at his highly sought-after dinners.