The Mentor Napoleon Bonaparte 4

The Mentor Napoleon Bonaparte 4

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.

 

 

 

 

[Illustration: 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.

 

 

 

 

[Illustration: 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.