afternoon of the 17th of October, the massed reserves of Russian



infantry broke through the French lines and Napoleon

fled.



Back to Paris he went. He abdicated in favour of his small

son, but the allied powers insisted that Louis XVIII, the



brother of the late king Louis XVI, should occupy the French

throne, and surrounded by Cossacks and Uhlans, the dull-eyed



Bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into Paris.

As for Napoleon he was made the sovereign ruler of the



little island of Elba in the Mediterranean where he organised

his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a



chess board.

But no sooner had he left France than the people began



to realise what they had lost. The last twenty years, however

costly, had been a period of great glory. Paris had been the



capital of the world. The fat Bourbon king who had learned

nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his



exile disgusted everybody by his indolence.

On the first of March of the year 1815, when the representatives



of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscrambling

the map of Europe, Napoleon suddenly landed near



Cannes. In less than a week the French army had deserted

the Bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords



and bayonets to the ``little Corporal.'' Napoleon marched

straight to Paris where he arrived on the twentieth of March.



This time he was more cautious. He offered peace, but the

allies insisted upon war. The whole of Europe arose against



the ``perfidious Corsican.'' Rapidly the Emperor marched

northward that he might crush his enemies before they should



be able to unite their forces. But Napoleon was no longer his

old self. He felt sick. He got tired easily. He slept when he



ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance-

guard. Besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals.



They were dead.

Early in June his armies entered Belgium. On the 16th



of that month he defeated the Prussians under Blucher. But

a subordinatecommander failed to destroy the retreating army



as he had been ordered to do.

Two days later, Napoleon met Wellington near Waterloo.



It was the 18th of June, a Sunday. At two o'clock of the

afternoon, the battle seemed won for the French. At three a



speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. Napoleon

believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who



would now turn the English defeat into a rout. At four o'clock

he knew better. Cursing and swearing, old Blucher drove



his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. The shock

broke the ranks of the guards. Napoleon had no further reserves.



He told his men to save themselves as best they could,

and he fled.



For a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. Just

one hundred days after his escape from Elba, he was making



for the coast. He intended to go to America. In the year

1803, for a mere song, he had sold the French colony of



Louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by

the English) to the young American Republic. ``The Americans,''



so he said, ``will be grateful and will give me a little bit

of land and a house where I may spend the last days of my life



in peace and quiet.'' But the English fleet was watching all

French harbours. Caught between the armies of the Allies



and the ships of the British, Napoleon had no choice. The

Prussians intended to shoot him. The English might be more



generous. At Rochefort he waited in the hope that something

might turn up. One month after Waterloo, he received orders



from the new French government to leave French soil inside

of twenty-four hours. Always the tragedian, he wrote a letter



to the Prince Regent of England (George IV, the king, was

in an insane asylum) informing His Royal Highness of his



intention to ``throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and

like Themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his



foes . . .

On the 15th of July he went on board the ``Bellerophon,''



and surrendered his sword to Admiral Hotham. At Plymouth

he was transferred to the ``Northumberland'' which carried him



to St. Helena. There he spent the last seven years of his

life. He tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his



keepers and he dreamed of past times. Curiously enough he

returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of



departure. He remembered the days when he had fought the

battles of the Revolution. He tried to convince himself that



he had always been the true friend of those great principles of

``Liberty, Fraternity and Equality'' which the ragged soldiers



of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. He

liked to dwell upon his career as Commander-in-Chief and



Consul. He rarely spoke of the Empire. Sometimes he

thought of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, the little eagle,



who lived in Vienna, where he was treated as a ``poor relation''

by his young Habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at



the very mention of the name of Him. When the end came,

he was leading his troops to victory. He ordered Ney to attack



with the guards. Then he died.

But if you want an explanation of this strange career, if



you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so

many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will,



do not read the books that have been written about him. Their

authors either hated the Emperor or loved him. You will



learn many facts, but it is more important to ``feel history''

than to know it. Don't read, but wait until you have a chance



to hear a good artist sing the song called ``The Two Grenadiers.''

The words were written by Heine, the great German



poet who lived through the Napoleonic era. The music was

composed by Schumann, a German who saw the Emperor,



the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his imperial

father-in-law. The song therefore is the work of two



men who had every reason to hate the tyrant.

Go and hear it. Then you will understand what a thousand



volumes could not possibly tell you.

THE HOLY ALLIANCE



AS SOON AS NAPOLEON HAD BEEN SENT TO

ST. HELENA THE RULERS WHO SO OFTEN



HAD BEEN DEFEATED BY THE HATED

``CORSICAN'' MET AT VIENNA AND TRIED



TO UNDO THE MANY CHANGES THAT HAD

BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE FRENCH



REVOLUTION

THE Imperial Highnesses, the Royal Highnesses, their



Graces the Dukes, the Ministers Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,

together with the plain Excellencies and their army



of secretaries, servants and hangers-on, whose labours had

been so rudely interrupted by the sudden return of the terrible



Corsican (now sweltering under the hot sun of St. Helena)

went back to their jobs. The victory was duly celebrated with



dinners, garden parties and balls at which the new and very

shocking ``waltz'' was danced to the great scandal of the ladies



and gentlemen who remembered the minuet of the old Regime.

For almost a generation they had lived in retirement. At



last the danger was over. They were very eloquent upon the

subject of the terrible hardships which they had suffered.



And they expected to be recompensed for every penny they

had lost at the hands of the unspeakable Jacobins who had



dared to kill their anointed king, who had abolished wigs and

who had discarded the short trousers of the court of Versailles



for the ragged pantaloons of the Parisian slums.

You may think it absurd that I should mention such a



detail. But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one

long succession of such absurdities and for many months the



question of ``short trousers vs. long trousers'' interested the

delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or



Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so

far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public



evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary.

Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble



hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects

had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second



time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar

while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on.



From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims

``but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people



object?'' Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly

exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how



or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was

peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and



reform.

In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced



around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks

and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys



in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and

Fraternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world. Instead of



the Millennium they had been visited by the Revolutionary

commissary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their parlor



and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to

report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the



``liberated country'' had received the Constitution, which the

French people had presented to their good neighbours.



When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary

disorder in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called



Bonaparte, or Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the

mob, they gave a sigh of relief. A little less liberty, fraternity



and equality seemed a very desirable thing. But ere long, the

young officer called Buonaparte or Bonaparte became one of