Everything is said in the title. Napoleon I returns from the island of Elba to take control of a France orphaned by its father. The Restoration, accompanied by foreign armies, brought back the Bourbons, who clearly understood nothing.
To them, the revolution seems merely an accident, and they resume the affairs of the State as if nothing had happened. The spirit of sacrifice is in this ultimate imperial saga where Emperor Napoleon offers himself to France. He is betrayed from the start by those who owe him everything. Only the common people and the soldiers recognize their emperor.
Politics have spoiled everything, while King Louis XVIII flees before the too prestigious flight of the Eagle, Talleyrand, Fouché, and other opportunists (to put it politely) are already plotting with the enemy, even before any battle has taken place.
Betrayed before, during, and after, Napoleon had no chance of success, and Waterloo is neither an Anglo-Prussian victory nor a defeat of Bonaparte; it is above all a betrayal by those in the emperor’s entourage, dishonorable men who served their personal interests before those of France.
When those in Louis XVIII’s circle celebrate Napoleon’s defeat, they seem to forget that Frenchmen fell under English and Prussian bullets, and this too is a betrayal.
Dominique De Villepin gives us a revealing vision of the state of mind in France in 1815, during the Hundred Days. A little over a century later, similar betrayals would be seen, but that is another story.
Thierry Jan.
