394 



NAPOLEON II. 



NAPOLEON III. 



F.urope had declared war against him, and a new 

 coalition had lieeu formed, Tmt only two armies 

 wen- iinmcdi.iiely ready to Uke the field ; a mixed 

 force under the Duke cif Wellington in Belgium, 

 and a Prussian army under Itlucher in the Kliine 

 provinces. Tin* F.nglNi nnny had iU base on the 

 sea, and the Prussian on the Uhine, go that they 

 hnil diverging lines of operation. Napoleon's idea 

 was to strike suddenly at their jMiiut of junction 

 liefore they could concentrate, push in Iwtween 

 tin-in, drive them apart, and tlu-n defeat each 

 separately. The plan was unexceptionable, re- 

 sembling that of his first campaign in I79(i, and 

 the opening moves were successfully carried out. 

 Napoleon left Paris on the 12th June, his army 

 In-ill;; then echeloned letween Paris ami the Belgian 

 frontier, so that the jx>int where the hlow would 

 fall was still doubtful. On the 15th he occupied 

 Charleroi, and was between the two allied armies, 

 and on the 16th he defeated Bliicher at Ligny 

 Ijefore Wellington could come to his assistance. 

 So far all had gone well with him ; but now appar- 

 ent ly his energy was not sufficient to cope rapidly 

 with the difficulties that no doubt In-set him througu 

 the shortcomings of his staff, and the spirit of 

 mutual distrust that reigned among his officers. 

 He did nothing till the morning of the 17th, and 

 it was not till '1 P.M. that he sent Grouchy with 

 33,000 men to follow the Prussians in the supposed 

 direction of their retreat towards Liege, and keep 

 them at a distance whilst he turned against 

 Wellington. But he had lost his opportunity ; the 

 w:usted hours had enabled the Prussians to dis- 

 appear, and he did not know the fact that Bliicher 

 had taken the resolution to move on Wavre, giving 

 up his own communications in order to reunite 

 itli Wellington. The latter had retired to a pre- 

 viously-chosen position at Mont St Jean, and re- 

 ceived Bliicher's promise to lead his army to his 

 assistance. Soon the ISth, when Napoleon attacked 

 the Duke, unknown to him the bulk of the Prussian 

 army was hastening up on his right tlank while 

 Grouchy was fruitlessly engaged with the Prussian 

 rear -guard only. This led to the crowning defeat 

 of Waterloo, where Napoleon's fortunes were finally 

 wrecked. He fled to Paris, and abdicated for the 

 last time on 22d June; and, finding it impossible to 

 esca|>e from France, he surrendered to Captain 

 Maitlainl of the Bel'rrtiiilinii at Kochefort on the 

 15th July. He was banished by the British govern- 

 ment to St Helena, where he arrived on the 15th 

 October 1815, and died there of cancer of the 

 stomach on the 5th May 1821. 



The literature referring to Napoleon may be divided 

 into three categories: First, books dealing with his 

 military and jmlitical career by writers contemporary 

 with him or nearly so, such as Tliiers' Hatoire <lu Con- 

 inlnl rt ilf F Umpire; Jomini's Vie /tuliti'/ue et militaire 

 de Napolfon ( ting, traim 1885) ; Montholon and Oour- 

 guil' M'moiret pour terrir in rHintoire de France tout 

 Nn/ialfon ; and the memoirs of his generals, such as Mar- 

 moiit, Mas-eim, and Sachet Secondly, books touching 

 his private life by contemporaries, such as Bourrienne's 

 Afcmoirt of Jfapolem JHona/iarte ; Las Cases' Journal of 

 I'rinile Life and Conttriatiiint of Napoleon at St Helena; 

 Fonyth's Hittory of the Captivity of Napoleon at St 

 Helena, from Letter! and Journali of Sir Hiuimn Loire ; 

 O'Mcara's Napnleon at St Helena. In contrast to these 

 twoolaues, both inevitably one-Killed, are works written in 

 a more critical spirit, such as those by Lanfrey, Jung, and 

 <iuilloi i IKX'.I I in France, with the relevant part of Taine, 

 and in England and America theme by Seeley, O'Connor 

 Morris (18U3), Lord Wolneler (1895), and W. M. Sloane 

 ( 1H!0 U7 ). Mont valuable also is the Corretpondanee de 

 IfapnUon I. (32 vol*.). See also articles BONAPAKTK, 

 CODE NAPOLEON, FRANCE, JOSPHINK, WATKRUJO, 

 WELUXQTON.and for his last resting place, PARIS (p. 765). 



\:i|ol-oii II.. King of Kome and Duke of 

 Reichstadt (1811-32), was the son of Napoleon I. 

 and Maria Louisa (q.v.). 



\apoloOII III., by name ('HAlllES LOUIS 



NAI-HI.KMN BUXAI-AIMT. the second em|M-ror of the 

 French, was IMHII at 1'aiis mi the '.Mill of April 

 1S08. His father was Louis Bonaparte, king of 

 Holland, In-other of the first em)H>ror, and his 

 mother lloiti-nse Beauharmiis. Napoleon l.'s step 

 daughter (see HONAI-AKTK ). Louis Najioleon ami 

 his elder brothers were heirs -presumptive to the 

 imperial throne till the birth of a son to the 

 emperor cast them into a secondary position, 



whence Louis NajKil i, the only survivor, was 



drawn in 183-2, at the death of HapolMB'b only 

 son, to l>ccome head of the House of Na]Mileon. 

 That house, astounding!) risen from the nursery of a 

 Coreican lawyer's w ife to ini|ierial and royal throne*, 

 thrust back into private life after a complete 

 mastery in Europe, was again raised to imperial 

 dignity in the person of Na|Mileon III., only to 

 retina to obscurity in the midst of appalling dis- 

 asters ; and it failed to present one of tin- most 

 truly tragic dramas of all time through the want 

 of real grandeur in lioth Napoleons and in almost 

 all their blood. Had the nephew been horn a scion 

 of the Bourbon house, the part of Louis-Philippe 

 might have l>een his. But brought up by his 

 mother from the year 1815, preclinleil by exile 

 and imprisonment till he was far advanced in 

 the years of manhood from learning practical 

 politics, he became a theorist in statecraft and 

 a brooder on the Napoleonic legend which was his 

 only claim to the attention of the nation. He 

 received his early education at his mother's resi- 

 dence, the castle of A renenberg, in Switzerland, 

 on the borders of Lake Constance. Sent to the 

 gymnasium at Augsburg, he not only acquired 

 there, as well as from the prolonged Cerinan sur- 

 roundings of his private life, a marked (Herman 

 accent, but also developed those features in his 

 individual character which were most akin to the 

 sluggishness of his temperament uncertainty and 

 imlcliniteness of thought, philosophic dreaminess 

 laming every conviction, ambition touched with 

 fatalism firing a morally iinlilterent soul. 



Switzerland was the real foster-mother of the 

 brighter and healthier side of his nature. Had he 

 been practical and a man of rectitude, he could 

 have extracted from his political and social experi- 

 ence of that country principles sutliciently clear 

 and wise to prove themselves the palladium of his 

 later reign. There he developed his aptitude for 

 military science : he followed the courses of inst ruc- 

 tion given to the Swiss militia officers. Fairly 

 competent in artillery, in engineering, in the exact 

 sciences, in history, and in athletic exercises, he 

 wrote and published at Xtnich (1836) a Mitniicl 

 (FArtiltcrie. He hastened with his elder brother 

 Louis into Italy in 1830 to assist the province of 

 Komagim in its revolt against pontifical rule, an 

 expedition in which Louis |>crished of fever, and 

 he was himself severely stricken, but was nursed 

 out of danger by his tender mother. This expedi- 

 tion, though proving that he could act with energy 

 in the discharge of lionapart isi responsibility, was 

 a mere episode in that s\\i-- period of his life, 

 extending from 1824 to 1830, in which he was ex- 

 clusively a student and a writer. When at the 

 death of the Duke of Keichstadt he Wamc the 

 head of that rootless growth, the Napoleonic 

 dynasty, he sought as a pretender to lean less 

 on any concrete historical claim to the throne of 

 France than on the iiartiality of the French to a 

 vainglorious rule, and on the intellectual inten >t 

 with which he, as a man of letters, could iim-i 

 the so-called Napoleonic ideas. For sixteen years 

 he sued for the hand of France and the attention 

 of the world, interrupting twice the method of 

 literary courtship to make personal raids upon 

 the kingdom of Louis- Phili)>pe. He had indeed a 



