Napoleon (2000) s01e04 Episode Script
The End
In 1808, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent 118,000 soldiers across the Pyrenees into Spain he imagined they would be welcomed.
"With my banner bearing the words 'Liberty and Emancipation from Superstition' ", he said "I shall be regarded as the liberator of Spain".
Napoleon was convinced that the Spanish people would rise up in a revolution and that he would be acclaimed.
He was completely mistaken about the Spanish mentality.
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their countries as much as he loved his own.
It was a failing, compounded by arrogance and pride that would bring about his downfall.
Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
PART FOUR: THE END Napoleon's economic blockade of Great Britain wasn't working.
Defying his command, Spain had been trading with his enemy.
Determined to bend the Spanish people to his will he decided to make Spain a part of his empire.
Spain at that time was far behind all the other countries in Europe.
Napoleon considered the Iberian Peninsula another world with people from the Dark Ages dominated by clergy, according to Napoleon "who were illiterate, ignorant and fanatical.
" He thought that there would be no resistance whatsoever.
On May 2, the Spanish people rose up against the French army in Madrid.
By nightfall, 150 French soldiers were dead.
The French retaliated killing thousands of Spaniards.
It was the start of a brutal, no hold barred war marked by savagery on both sides.
The French tortured and mutilated their prisoners.
The Spanish did the same.
It's war of atrocities.
It's guerrilla war; the word comes from this time.
The French army has never fought this kind of war-- not at all the glorious war that they fought elsewhere.
At this point you begin to see a failure of Napoleon's judgment.
He had somehow lost sense of proportion.
He gets into Spain and he won't give up.
Thousands died, but there was no decisive victory.
Napoleon would keep his armies in Spain for five years unable to break the will of the Spanish people.
Napoleon no longer accepts advice.
Napoleon only believes in himself.
He only has confidence in his star.
So he is going to be blinded.
As his empire grew Napoleon increasingly assumed the part of a Roman Caesar godlike and infallible.
Now he wanted a son to succeed him.
But Josephine had never been able to give him one.
46 years old, she knew she never would.
"I know I will be shamefully dismissed from the bed of the man who crowned me," she told a friend.
For months, Napoleon hesitated.
They were a couple very well suited to each other.
Up to the end, he believed that Josephine was his lucky star.
That's why it was so difficult to divorce her.
At last, he decided to tell Josephine they must sacrifice their marriage for the greater glory of France.
At Fontainebleau on November 30, 1809 shortly after dinner, the emperor asked to be left alone with his wife and closed the drawing room door.
From the next room, Napoleon's secretary heard screams.
When Josephine learns that it is really over she totally collapses.
She cries, she faints.
She uses all her feminine wiles to make him change his mind.
But nothing could change his mind.
Two weeks later, the divorce became official.
"I understood my Bonaparte," Josephine said.
"I knew very well that in the end, he would get his way.
" Josephine went at once to Malmaison.
The next day, Napoleon came to see her in the driving rain.
Hand in hand, they walked through the downpour.
Then he was gone.
For her it's over.
She will no longer be Empress Josephine.
But Napoleon doesn't want this break either.
He's attached to Josephine, he loves her and it's difficult for him, too.
Napoleon gave Josephine Malmaison and an allowance of three million francs a year.
Now he was free to find a new wife and father an heir to his throne.
"I want," he said, "to marry a womb.
" He cast his eye on the archduchess Marie Louise the 19 year old daughter of his old enemy the emperor Francis I of Austria.
Marriage to Marie Louise would ally him with the Habsburgs-- one of the great reigning families of Europe.
But the young woman despised Napoleon.
"Just to see the man," she wrote in her diary "would be the worst form of torture.
" Her father overruled her objections.
"Marriage with Napoleon," he told her "would bring Austria peace and an alliance with the most powerful country in Europe.
" Brought up to obey the 19 year old girl said good-bye to her family and headed toward France.
Marie Louise arrived at the emperor's palace at Compiegne in the spring of 1810.
Unable to restrain his impatience Napoleon moved as quickly to conquer her as he had to vanquish her father.
A week before the official wedding ceremony he hurried her upstairs to the bedroom.
He wanted her at once, along with everything she stood for.
This is what was called at the time: "making love like a soldier".
That is, to have plans to conquer a woman as though she were a fortress.
Later, Napoleon claimed that his new empress had just one thing to say: "Do it again.
" Napoleon was charming.
He knew how to behave with women.
He knew how to seduce them.
But you know, she had a temperament that was made for love.
On April 2, 1810, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte married the archduchess Marie Louise with all the extravagant display befitting the joining of two empires.
"He loves me very much", Marie Louise wrote her father and I respond to his love sincerely.
"There is something very catching and very eager about him that is impossible to resist.
" Napoleon must have wondered if he was dreaming.
He was marrying a Habsburg.
He was becoming allied with one of the oldest and most venerable monarchies in Europe.
Just one year after their marriage the thunder of cannon brought all of Paris to attention.
Marie Louise had given birth to a baby boy.
Napoleon called him the King of Rome.
With a son and a devoted wife, Napoleon seemed transformed.
He became a doting father and a loving husband.
His marriage to Marie Louise turned him into a kind of bourgeois.
She had a paralising an effect on him.
He no longer works.
He doesn't take initiatives.
He says to the people around him "You know I have to go to Spain to take care of things.
" But each time, Marie Louise starts crying and he doesn't want to leave her.
Marie Louise, his child-bride, the mother of his son seemed to calm his restless energies.
42, his stomach swelling into a paunch Napoleon was growing soft.
"Late hours, hardship, war are not for me at my age", he told an aide.
"I love my bed, my repose more than anything, but I must finish my work.
" In 1811, there was still plenty to do.
The bloody war in Spain continued Britain remained a stubborn enemy and now a new war threatened.
Czar Alexander refused to be part of the continental blockade of British goods any longer.
Napoleon's edict banning trade with Great Britain was ruining the Russian economy.
Tensions quickly escalated.
Every attempt to negotiate failed.
In the spring of 1812 ignoring the advice of his closest advisers Napoleon invaded Russia.
Never in living memory had so large an army been assembled Italians, Poles, Germans, French more than 600,000 men from every corner of his empire.
Napoleon prophesied that the war would be over in 20 days.
An army of 600,000, it would seem to be absolutely irresistible, no matter what happened.
And he'll simply pour in enough men to overwhelm the Russians force them into to engage in battle defeat them.
Napoleon's army trudged slowly across Russia's immense spaces.
He hoped to annihilate his enemy at once but the Russians would not give battle.
Napoleon had an army twice the size of the Russians'.
There were so many that the Russians didn't dare fight.
They started to retreat, because they didn't have a choice.
They had to retreat.
But while they were retreating they were, in fact, weakening Napoleon's army.
As the days passed the blazing heat of the Russian summer begin take its toll.
Soldiers fell out from exhaustion, sickness and desertion thousands every day.
After two months before Napoleon had fought a single battle 150,000 soldiers were out of action.
A lot of these foreign troops just took off and left.
One-fourth of the army deserted.
They weren't Frenchmen, they weren't loyal to him specifically.
They were fighting because their king was allied to Napoleon.
At last, with summer ending the Russians turned and faced their enemy at the crossroads village of Borodino.
Moscow, the holy city of Russia, was at stake.
As the soldiers of the czar prepared themselves for battle they chanted, "'Tis the will of God, 'tis the will of God.
" They were prepared to die, to die for Russia.
Everyone saw this as a holy day; that they were going to die for a great purpose.
There was a tradition to put on clean underwear before dying.
They all put on clean white underwear and went into battle.
The battle of Borodino was a brutal slugfest.
Napoleon threw his enormous army at the Russians in a frontal assault.
Showing little have his old strategic settle subtlety.
This was a wild attack.
They were killing each other.
There were deaths without stop.
It was horrific.
The battle began at 6:30 in the morning and lasted until 3:00 in the afternoon.
At that point, both armies were exhausted.
The Russians fought the emperor's armies to a standstill.
The next day, they withdrew leaving Napoleon proclaiming victory.
Moscow was at his mercy but the Russians refused to make peace.
As Napoleon's army entered the city he found it almost deserted.
That night, Moscow began to burn.
"Mountains of red, rolling flames" Napoleon recalled later, "like immense waves of the sea.
"Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime and the most terrifying sight the world ever beheld.
" The Russians burned Moscow themselves.
And when Moscow went up in flames this was the worst blow to Napoleon's army.
Napoleon couldn't stay in Moscow.
Fearing the approach of winter but reluctant to abandon his conquest Napoleon wrote the czar proposing negotiations.
The czar responded with icy silence.
After five weeks of waiting Napoleon bitterly ordered his soldiers home.
On October 19, he led his men, laden with spoils, out of Moscow through the Gate of Kaluga.
It was a warm fall day.
Three weeks later it began to snow.
The Russian winter had arrived early.
Temperatures fell to 22 degrees below zero.
Napoleon's soldiers froze in the open countryside.
"Our lips stuck together," one soldier wrote.
"Our nostrils froze.
We seemed to be marching in a world of ice.
" You can't imagine the suffering of the Russian retreat.
When they spoke, their breath froze with a little dry sound they words were freezing in the air.
Food ran out.
Horses died by the thousands.
Hungry soldiers quarreled over the horseflesh.
They were fighting starvation, cold, fatigue, disease and the Cossacks.
The Cossacks harried Napoleon's flanks tearing at his army as if it were a wounded animal.
The army is being eaten away because it is being attacked on all sides.
So the army fell apart, little by little.
The French army no longer existed as a fighting force.
Napoleon watched as his army died.
Fearing capture, he carried in a little black leather bag tied around his neck a vial of poison.
Six months before, he had crossed into Russia with more than half a million soldiers, confident of victory.
Now, on December 5 rumors of a coup in Paris forced him to abandon his troops and head back to the french capital.
As his sled made its way across Europe, he told a companion: "It's just one step between the sublime and the ridiculous.
" He'd lost half a million men, a staggering sum.
Out of the 600,000 men who went in, 93,000 came back.
"It was the beginning of the end" his former foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand, said.
Smelling blood Britain, Prussia, Russia and Sweden united against him.
Only Austria, ruled by his wife's father, wavered.
Clinging to the hope that one decisive battle could turn his luck around Napoleon rallied France for yet another campaign in central Europe.
He was just fighting here, fighting there fighting the next place, hopelessly outnumbered.
Could never win, but still fighting like mad.
In the fall of 1813, the Allies caught Napoleon at Leipzig but they outnumber him two to one.
And punished his armies in a bruising battle that lasted three days.
The legend of Napoleon's invincibility was over.
His armies were now in retreat everywhere in Europe.
"A year ago," he said "the whole of Europe was marching alongside of us.
Today the whole of Europe is marching against us.
" In two months, he lost 400,000 men.
Still, he fought on.
"There was nothing left to do but fight," he said.
"Yet every day our chances grew smaller and smaller.
" By the beginning of 1814, Napoleon was again in Paris when he learned that the Allies had invaded France itself.
Fearing the worst, he began burning his private papers.
Even Austria, led by Marie Louise's father, Francis I had come in for the kill.
"Don't worry," Napoleon told his wife and son.
"We shall beat Papa Francis, trust me.
" On the morning of january 25 they said good-bye.
He would never see his wife or his son again.
In a last, desperate campaign fought across France Napoleon displayed all of his old brilliance.
But 85,000 Frenchmen stood no chance against 350,000 Allies.
On March 31, 1814, the Allies marched down the Champs Elysées.
The war was all be over.
Now even his own marshals turned against him.
When he prepared to summon what remained of his army to march on Paris, they refused to fight any longer.
On April 12, 1814 Napoleon picked up a pen and renounced his throne.
"His Majesty appeared to be entirely crush", his secretary wrote.
"His agitation was often so great "that, without being aware of it he tore at his leg with his nails until the blood flowed.
" That evening, he emptied the contents of a leather pouch into a glass of wine and drank it.
The poison failed to kill him.
He would live to see everything he had won taken from him.
"My father arrived hours ago" Marie Louise wrote him two days later.
"He will not let me come to you or see you.
"I am so sad I don't know what to tell you.
I kiss you, and I love you with all my heart.
" On April 20, Napoleon strode down the stairs at Fontainebleau to address his soldiers one last time.
"Good-bye, my children.
"I am leaving.
"Do not grieve over my fate.
"I would like to press all of you close to my heart.
Let me at least embrace your banner.
" Then he took a regimental flag in his hands and pressed it to his lips.
"Let this kiss," he said "resonate in the hearts of all my soldiers.
"Farewell once again.
Let this last kiss enter into all your hearts.
" A British warship carried Napoleon into exile.
Just 45 years old, he had won, then lost, an empire.
As he sailed across the Mediterranean he came within sight of Corsica, a bitter reminder of how far he had come and how great was his fall.
He was given a villa perched on a hillside a hundred feet above the sea.
Still a sovereign, this would be his new palace where he spected to spend the rest of his life.
Stripped of his old rank and title, he was granted a new one: Emperor of the Isle of Elba.
When Napoleon arrives on the island of Elba his fition is one of despair, depression, sadness.
But he gets over it quickly and he's able to regain the two aspects of his personality-- work and action.
He starts taking care of the island of Elba as though it were a great country.
He set up a miniature court, complete with a grand marshal ministers of the treasury and war and even a flag of his own devising.
He planted olive and mulberry trees, paved the streets organized a regular collection of garbage and let it be known that his subjects the island's 13,000 peasants should sleep no more than five in a bed.
He still had a lot of genius and ability left in him but it must have been boredom personified.
Napoleon spent his days on horseback exploring Elba's meager resources.
Often, he climbed to his favorite spot on the island a mountain looking out across the Mediterranean.
There, he would spends hours gazing toward Corsica.
His connections to the past had been severed.
When he learn the Josephine had died at Malmaison he did not leave his room for two days.
As the weeks passed Napoleon grew bored playing at "Emperor of Elba.
" He never took his eye off France where the allies had made the mistake of restoring an eager but weak Bourbon king to the throne.
King Louis XVIII had neither Napoleon's charm or charisma.
France had a constitutional monarchy now but with royalists threatening to abolish the gains of the Revolution and the economy floundering, the king soon became unpopular.
The Bourbons basically blow it.
If the Bourbons had performed more effectively and shrewdly I think Napoleon would have stayed on Elba.
For ten months, Napoleon watched and waited.
Then on February 26, 1815 he slipped off of Elba with a handful of soldiers and eluded British and French warships.
"After making a mistake or suffering a misfortune," he said "the man of genius always gets back on his feet.
" Once ashore, only the king's army would stand between Napoleon and Paris.
Six days after landing in France he confronted a regiment of infantry ordered to bar his way.
Napoleon advanced alone to meet them.
Soldiers, he craid "if there is one among you who wants to kill his general, his emperor, here I am.
" Suddenly, the soldiers began cheering wildly: "Long live the emperor Long live the emperor.
" Two weeks later, Napoleon was in the French capital and Louis XVIII had fled.
The news hit Europe like a bombshell.
"The devil," his enemies said, "has been unchained.
" And again, the mystique of Napoleon, here's the emperor.
"Vive l'Empereur,"they shouted all the way to Paris.
But it was really sort of crazy, he hadn't got a hope.
For months after Napoleon's abdication the Allies had been at odds with one another as they met in Vienna to hammer out an agreement to determine the shape of postwar Europe.
Now Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia united once again.
They declared Napoleon an outlaw "an enemy and a disturber of the tranquillity of the world" and readied their armies for war.
All of Europe was against him.
There wasn't a chance of France beating this coalition arrayed against it.
By the end of May the British and Prussians had two armies in Belgium.
Austrian and Russian soldiers were on the way.
Napoleon's only hope for survival was one last, desperate gamble.
He planned to drive a wedge between the British and the Prussians and defeat them before the Austrians and the Russians could arrive.
Napoleon raised an army and marched toward Waterloo.
Napoleon's fate would be decided on a field of rye and clover one mile long and three miles wide.
Waiting for him was Great Britain's most formidable soldier: the Duke of Wellington.
Tall, aristocratic, arrogant, disdainful.
Not an enormous amount of imagination but totally unflinching, nerves of steel.
He knew his army and he knew what they would take and he knew how to deploy them and he was superlative on the defensive.
Wellington commanded 68,000 men but he was counting on 72,000 more: the Prussians, led by Marshal Blucher von Wahlstatt.
Blucher's greatest wish was to capture Napoleon and have him shot.
The Prussian troops idolize him.
He's old, getting a little feeble especially above the eyebrows.
He likes his bottle.
But he loved to fight and he hated the French.
With Blucher and the prussians by his side, Wellington would outnumber Napoleon two to one.
The duke impatiently waited for the Prussians to arrive.
Wellington said to Blucher "For the love of God, come as fast as you can, we'll fight to the last moment, to the last man.
" But Blucher was still many miles from the battlefield and Napoleon had sent a sizable force of his own to intercept him.
It was not clear whether Blucher would get there on time, or at all.
The night before the battle soldiers on both sides caught what sleep they could under a heavy downpour.
The next morning, Sunday, June 18, they were sopping wet.
So was the field on which they were to fight now dotted with puddles and caked in mud.
As the Sun rose higher in the sky, the duke and his soldiers braced themselves.
But Waterloo remained silent.
Nearly five hours had passed since daybreak yet Napoleon had not given the order to attack.
He said he was waiting for the ground to dry so he can maneuver his cannons.
Certainly, the ground was so drenched that he wasn't able to move his artillery but this kind of thing never stopped him before.
He attacked when he decided to attack.
He lost the certainty that he still had his guiding star.
"I felt that fortune was abandoning me," Napoleon said.
"I no longer had the feeling that I was sure to succeed.
" Finally, at 11:30, Napoleon's artillery open fire.
His battle plan was simple.
Wellington's men occupied the outlying farm buildings on both flanks and the crest of a ridge in the center.
To break them, Napoleon ordered no elaborate maneuvers.
He would stake everything on a massive frontal attack.
He meant to attack Wellington first and the quicker the better.
He thought Wellington would run for his ships.
Then he would turn around and blast Blucher.
Shortly after midday Napoleon ordered a barrage of his most powerful cannon.
74 guns steadily lobbing cannon balls at Wellington's center.
But Wellington had ordered his soldiers to take cover behind the crest of the ridge on which they stood beyond the reach of the French guns.
Napoleon's motto was "Never attack a man in a prepared position.
" But here, he has no choice.
He's got to get Wellington out.
Napoleon's soldiers charged.
The British counterattacked driving the French back in confusion.
The English were in a good position on the ridge and in spite of that, Napoleon launched a frontal assault.
This was perhaps not suicide but it led to the loss of a lot of soldiers.
You have the impression that he issues orders hoping for a miracle.
He was living in a dream.
While his infantry regrouped, more bad news reached Napoleon.
Advance elements of the Prussian army were beginning to reach the battlefield.
Napoleon would have to break Wellington's center at once.
The French cavalry charged, on the order of Marshal Michel Ney.
Ney was called "the bravest of the braves.
" Convinced that the British line was weakening he led his cavalry forward.
The British formed squares and waited.
With reckless abandon, Ney led charge after charge.
Napoleon was losing control of the battlefield.
They were just mowing them down.
Sergeants went down and ranks went down.
Ney really thought if he could charge just one more time he would break through.
"Just one more time will do it," you know, and they followed him.
They nearly broke through the British squares very, very close, indeed.
But Ney charged without the infantry behind him.
It was like a tank attack unsupported by infantry.
The French cavalry was destroyed but the English center appeared on the verge of collapse.
The sun hung low in the sky glowing blood red through the trees and smoke.
It was then that Napoleon saw them: Prussian soldiers emerging from the smoke still in the far distance.
One of Napoleon's aides notice the hills to the right seem to have gone dark and that the dark was the black-uniformed Prussians.
He sees dust over here on his right flank and he knows the Prussians are coming.
Now, what he can do is he can disengage, he can pull back.
Or or he can gamble and try and defeat the British before the Prussians arrive.
He decides: "I can beat them.
" He called for the Imperial Guard themost feared of all his soldiers.
Throughout the fighting he had held them in reserve.
Now he sent them forward.
The dreaded Guard.
Very fearsome body, they never, never retreated.
This was sort of the last the last chance.
It was total confusion.
Fog and the smoke of cannon fire and these terrifying looking automatons coming straight at you 50 yards away.
They were just 40 paces away when the duke gave the order to fire.
In less than a minute, 400 Frenchmen fell.
Still the Guard came on.
They were absolutely magnificent and came very close he nearly broke through the British line.
But it was too late.
For the first time in the whole history of the Napoleonic wars the Guard was seen to falter and then eventually fall back shouting"Sauve qui peut," "Every man for himself.
" And then the word ran through the army "La guarde recule," "The Guard is retreating.
" Wellington snapped shut his telescope took off his hat, and waved it.
"No cheering, my lads," he said.
"Forward and complete your victory".
As the Guard fell back panic spread through the ranks of Napoleon's army.
And then disaster was upon them.
The Prussians were in the field.
The Prussians really were the last drop of water that tipped the bucket over.
Napoleon had to draw forces from his center to deal with Blucher.
Blucher won the battle.
If Blucher hadn't been there I don't think Wellington would have made it.
"A damned nice thing," Wellington said later "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.
" The battle had lasted less than 12 hours a single Sunday afternoon.
The field bloody with the wounded and the dead Napoleon tried in vain to rally his men then turned his back on the catastrophe and escaped.
He began the battle too late; he gave orders that weren't clear.
But in reality, he lost the battle of Waterloo because he didn't believe he could win it because he didn't believe he could win the campaign.
Waterloo could have been won, but the war would have lost anyway.
With all of Europe against him Napoleon saw the futility of going on.
As Allied armies closed in around him he let events run their course.
On June 22, 1815, four days after the Battle of Waterloo he abdicated his throne for the second time.
With no hope of escape he put himself at the mercy of Great Britain.
He wished, he said, "to reside in a country house near London.
" The British turned him down.
Instead, they sent him back into exile.
This time, they took no chances that he would return.
Allowing him a small group of loyal followers they chose a far-flung outpost of their empire a slab of volcanic rock in the South Atlantic Ocean one of the most remote places on earth-- St.
Helena.
When a member of his entourage found out where she was going she tried to jump overboard.
No one escapes from St.
Helena, this faraway island, this isolated piece of rock beaten by the winds, sinister.
When Napoleon sees this fortress for the first time he understands everything.
He knows at this moment this is going to be his grave.
Once the ruler of nearly all of Europe Napoleon found himself confined to an island ten miles long, six miles wide.
"It would be nice," he told an aide "to fall asleep and not wake up for a year or two.
" On Elba, he had at least been an emperor.
On St.
Helena he was a prisioner, guarded by 2,000 soldiers and two ships that circled the island 24 hours a day.
His final palace would be a wooden bungalow that had once been a row of cattle stalls.
It's a little miserable farm.
You have the incessant pounding of the winds, clouds of fog humidity that soaks the clothes and the walls.
When you play cards, you have to put them into an oven because they are so wet.
He was 46 years old with nothing to do for the rest of his life but eat, sleep, and search for a way to occupy his mind.
"To die is nothing," he said, "but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day.
" Stripped of every vestige of power on this windswept island lost in the Atlantic Napoleon fought the endless boredom of his days.
He gardened read any book or newspaper he could get his hands on tried rewriting a tragedy of Voltaire's imposed an exacting imperial etiquette on his retinue and sparred with the island's English governor who insisted on calling Napoleon "General Bonaparte.
" When he was unable to sleep he would summon one of his retainers in the middle of the night and rant about the world or explain why he lost the battle of Waterloo.
Only one weapon remained him words.
With words, he would launch his last campaign.
Day after day, he dictated his memoirs forging the story of his life into the stuff of legend.
"I shall survive," he said "and whenever they want to strike a lofty attitude they will praise me.
" He had decided during this time that his real life had ended but that now his legendary life would begin and that he had to take care of it.
He re-argued his decisions and refought his battles recalling his greatest triumphs for all the world to admire.
"Rivoli, the Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz "these are granite," he said.
"The tooth of envy is powerless there.
" The Civil Code, the Bank of France, the bridges over the Seine, schools, roads, canals, libraries he made them all bear witness to his enduring legacy.
He reconstructs his actions to justify his choices to say that he was the savior of the Revolution to say that he wanted peace, to say that he wanted a new world and that the kings of Europe were opposed to a modern man a man of action who was working for the good of the people.
He had little else to do but fight the battle of his image, of his reputation; and it was an extremely successful campaign.
What is conveyed in this is an individual who can accomplish so much, so very much through determination and energy and intelligence.
This is his sense of himself.
As time wore on, his health failing Napoleon at last gave way to boredom and then despair.
He lost hope.
He was all alone in his little room dreaming, meditating, staring at the rain.
He ate in his bathtub, he read in his bathtub.
He really felt this sadness, falling little by little like a drop of acid which finally corrodes your soul.
I believe it was this that killed Napoleon.
Napoleon lasted five and a half years on St.
Helena.
On May 5, 1821, he died, deliriously whispering "France army chief of army Josephine" He was 51 years old.
As he had willed it his life entered into the world's imagination.
Even his exile became a glorious martyrdom St.
Helena his crown of thorns, the last station of his cross.
"My downfall," he said, "raises me to infinite heights.
" Napoleon considered it necessary to present himself as a martyr.
He said, "If Christ't bee n crucified he would never have been God.
" As the years passed, his story told and retold the love of power, the tyrannical nature of his rule and the three million soldiers who had died in wars that had brought him glory did nothing to tarnish the brilliance of the legend he had created.
Napoleon through his writing was able to create loyal, fervent followers.
It's extraordinary.
With the wave of a magic wand, from a defeated prisoner he becomes a hero again.
He becomes the one who writes history.
He doesn't die.
He will never die.
"Everything on earth is soon forgotten," Napoleon said except the opinion we leave imprinted on history.
" "There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men.
" Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
"With my banner bearing the words 'Liberty and Emancipation from Superstition' ", he said "I shall be regarded as the liberator of Spain".
Napoleon was convinced that the Spanish people would rise up in a revolution and that he would be acclaimed.
He was completely mistaken about the Spanish mentality.
Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their countries as much as he loved his own.
It was a failing, compounded by arrogance and pride that would bring about his downfall.
Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.
PART FOUR: THE END Napoleon's economic blockade of Great Britain wasn't working.
Defying his command, Spain had been trading with his enemy.
Determined to bend the Spanish people to his will he decided to make Spain a part of his empire.
Spain at that time was far behind all the other countries in Europe.
Napoleon considered the Iberian Peninsula another world with people from the Dark Ages dominated by clergy, according to Napoleon "who were illiterate, ignorant and fanatical.
" He thought that there would be no resistance whatsoever.
On May 2, the Spanish people rose up against the French army in Madrid.
By nightfall, 150 French soldiers were dead.
The French retaliated killing thousands of Spaniards.
It was the start of a brutal, no hold barred war marked by savagery on both sides.
The French tortured and mutilated their prisoners.
The Spanish did the same.
It's war of atrocities.
It's guerrilla war; the word comes from this time.
The French army has never fought this kind of war-- not at all the glorious war that they fought elsewhere.
At this point you begin to see a failure of Napoleon's judgment.
He had somehow lost sense of proportion.
He gets into Spain and he won't give up.
Thousands died, but there was no decisive victory.
Napoleon would keep his armies in Spain for five years unable to break the will of the Spanish people.
Napoleon no longer accepts advice.
Napoleon only believes in himself.
He only has confidence in his star.
So he is going to be blinded.
As his empire grew Napoleon increasingly assumed the part of a Roman Caesar godlike and infallible.
Now he wanted a son to succeed him.
But Josephine had never been able to give him one.
46 years old, she knew she never would.
"I know I will be shamefully dismissed from the bed of the man who crowned me," she told a friend.
For months, Napoleon hesitated.
They were a couple very well suited to each other.
Up to the end, he believed that Josephine was his lucky star.
That's why it was so difficult to divorce her.
At last, he decided to tell Josephine they must sacrifice their marriage for the greater glory of France.
At Fontainebleau on November 30, 1809 shortly after dinner, the emperor asked to be left alone with his wife and closed the drawing room door.
From the next room, Napoleon's secretary heard screams.
When Josephine learns that it is really over she totally collapses.
She cries, she faints.
She uses all her feminine wiles to make him change his mind.
But nothing could change his mind.
Two weeks later, the divorce became official.
"I understood my Bonaparte," Josephine said.
"I knew very well that in the end, he would get his way.
" Josephine went at once to Malmaison.
The next day, Napoleon came to see her in the driving rain.
Hand in hand, they walked through the downpour.
Then he was gone.
For her it's over.
She will no longer be Empress Josephine.
But Napoleon doesn't want this break either.
He's attached to Josephine, he loves her and it's difficult for him, too.
Napoleon gave Josephine Malmaison and an allowance of three million francs a year.
Now he was free to find a new wife and father an heir to his throne.
"I want," he said, "to marry a womb.
" He cast his eye on the archduchess Marie Louise the 19 year old daughter of his old enemy the emperor Francis I of Austria.
Marriage to Marie Louise would ally him with the Habsburgs-- one of the great reigning families of Europe.
But the young woman despised Napoleon.
"Just to see the man," she wrote in her diary "would be the worst form of torture.
" Her father overruled her objections.
"Marriage with Napoleon," he told her "would bring Austria peace and an alliance with the most powerful country in Europe.
" Brought up to obey the 19 year old girl said good-bye to her family and headed toward France.
Marie Louise arrived at the emperor's palace at Compiegne in the spring of 1810.
Unable to restrain his impatience Napoleon moved as quickly to conquer her as he had to vanquish her father.
A week before the official wedding ceremony he hurried her upstairs to the bedroom.
He wanted her at once, along with everything she stood for.
This is what was called at the time: "making love like a soldier".
That is, to have plans to conquer a woman as though she were a fortress.
Later, Napoleon claimed that his new empress had just one thing to say: "Do it again.
" Napoleon was charming.
He knew how to behave with women.
He knew how to seduce them.
But you know, she had a temperament that was made for love.
On April 2, 1810, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte married the archduchess Marie Louise with all the extravagant display befitting the joining of two empires.
"He loves me very much", Marie Louise wrote her father and I respond to his love sincerely.
"There is something very catching and very eager about him that is impossible to resist.
" Napoleon must have wondered if he was dreaming.
He was marrying a Habsburg.
He was becoming allied with one of the oldest and most venerable monarchies in Europe.
Just one year after their marriage the thunder of cannon brought all of Paris to attention.
Marie Louise had given birth to a baby boy.
Napoleon called him the King of Rome.
With a son and a devoted wife, Napoleon seemed transformed.
He became a doting father and a loving husband.
His marriage to Marie Louise turned him into a kind of bourgeois.
She had a paralising an effect on him.
He no longer works.
He doesn't take initiatives.
He says to the people around him "You know I have to go to Spain to take care of things.
" But each time, Marie Louise starts crying and he doesn't want to leave her.
Marie Louise, his child-bride, the mother of his son seemed to calm his restless energies.
42, his stomach swelling into a paunch Napoleon was growing soft.
"Late hours, hardship, war are not for me at my age", he told an aide.
"I love my bed, my repose more than anything, but I must finish my work.
" In 1811, there was still plenty to do.
The bloody war in Spain continued Britain remained a stubborn enemy and now a new war threatened.
Czar Alexander refused to be part of the continental blockade of British goods any longer.
Napoleon's edict banning trade with Great Britain was ruining the Russian economy.
Tensions quickly escalated.
Every attempt to negotiate failed.
In the spring of 1812 ignoring the advice of his closest advisers Napoleon invaded Russia.
Never in living memory had so large an army been assembled Italians, Poles, Germans, French more than 600,000 men from every corner of his empire.
Napoleon prophesied that the war would be over in 20 days.
An army of 600,000, it would seem to be absolutely irresistible, no matter what happened.
And he'll simply pour in enough men to overwhelm the Russians force them into to engage in battle defeat them.
Napoleon's army trudged slowly across Russia's immense spaces.
He hoped to annihilate his enemy at once but the Russians would not give battle.
Napoleon had an army twice the size of the Russians'.
There were so many that the Russians didn't dare fight.
They started to retreat, because they didn't have a choice.
They had to retreat.
But while they were retreating they were, in fact, weakening Napoleon's army.
As the days passed the blazing heat of the Russian summer begin take its toll.
Soldiers fell out from exhaustion, sickness and desertion thousands every day.
After two months before Napoleon had fought a single battle 150,000 soldiers were out of action.
A lot of these foreign troops just took off and left.
One-fourth of the army deserted.
They weren't Frenchmen, they weren't loyal to him specifically.
They were fighting because their king was allied to Napoleon.
At last, with summer ending the Russians turned and faced their enemy at the crossroads village of Borodino.
Moscow, the holy city of Russia, was at stake.
As the soldiers of the czar prepared themselves for battle they chanted, "'Tis the will of God, 'tis the will of God.
" They were prepared to die, to die for Russia.
Everyone saw this as a holy day; that they were going to die for a great purpose.
There was a tradition to put on clean underwear before dying.
They all put on clean white underwear and went into battle.
The battle of Borodino was a brutal slugfest.
Napoleon threw his enormous army at the Russians in a frontal assault.
Showing little have his old strategic settle subtlety.
This was a wild attack.
They were killing each other.
There were deaths without stop.
It was horrific.
The battle began at 6:30 in the morning and lasted until 3:00 in the afternoon.
At that point, both armies were exhausted.
The Russians fought the emperor's armies to a standstill.
The next day, they withdrew leaving Napoleon proclaiming victory.
Moscow was at his mercy but the Russians refused to make peace.
As Napoleon's army entered the city he found it almost deserted.
That night, Moscow began to burn.
"Mountains of red, rolling flames" Napoleon recalled later, "like immense waves of the sea.
"Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime and the most terrifying sight the world ever beheld.
" The Russians burned Moscow themselves.
And when Moscow went up in flames this was the worst blow to Napoleon's army.
Napoleon couldn't stay in Moscow.
Fearing the approach of winter but reluctant to abandon his conquest Napoleon wrote the czar proposing negotiations.
The czar responded with icy silence.
After five weeks of waiting Napoleon bitterly ordered his soldiers home.
On October 19, he led his men, laden with spoils, out of Moscow through the Gate of Kaluga.
It was a warm fall day.
Three weeks later it began to snow.
The Russian winter had arrived early.
Temperatures fell to 22 degrees below zero.
Napoleon's soldiers froze in the open countryside.
"Our lips stuck together," one soldier wrote.
"Our nostrils froze.
We seemed to be marching in a world of ice.
" You can't imagine the suffering of the Russian retreat.
When they spoke, their breath froze with a little dry sound they words were freezing in the air.
Food ran out.
Horses died by the thousands.
Hungry soldiers quarreled over the horseflesh.
They were fighting starvation, cold, fatigue, disease and the Cossacks.
The Cossacks harried Napoleon's flanks tearing at his army as if it were a wounded animal.
The army is being eaten away because it is being attacked on all sides.
So the army fell apart, little by little.
The French army no longer existed as a fighting force.
Napoleon watched as his army died.
Fearing capture, he carried in a little black leather bag tied around his neck a vial of poison.
Six months before, he had crossed into Russia with more than half a million soldiers, confident of victory.
Now, on December 5 rumors of a coup in Paris forced him to abandon his troops and head back to the french capital.
As his sled made its way across Europe, he told a companion: "It's just one step between the sublime and the ridiculous.
" He'd lost half a million men, a staggering sum.
Out of the 600,000 men who went in, 93,000 came back.
"It was the beginning of the end" his former foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand, said.
Smelling blood Britain, Prussia, Russia and Sweden united against him.
Only Austria, ruled by his wife's father, wavered.
Clinging to the hope that one decisive battle could turn his luck around Napoleon rallied France for yet another campaign in central Europe.
He was just fighting here, fighting there fighting the next place, hopelessly outnumbered.
Could never win, but still fighting like mad.
In the fall of 1813, the Allies caught Napoleon at Leipzig but they outnumber him two to one.
And punished his armies in a bruising battle that lasted three days.
The legend of Napoleon's invincibility was over.
His armies were now in retreat everywhere in Europe.
"A year ago," he said "the whole of Europe was marching alongside of us.
Today the whole of Europe is marching against us.
" In two months, he lost 400,000 men.
Still, he fought on.
"There was nothing left to do but fight," he said.
"Yet every day our chances grew smaller and smaller.
" By the beginning of 1814, Napoleon was again in Paris when he learned that the Allies had invaded France itself.
Fearing the worst, he began burning his private papers.
Even Austria, led by Marie Louise's father, Francis I had come in for the kill.
"Don't worry," Napoleon told his wife and son.
"We shall beat Papa Francis, trust me.
" On the morning of january 25 they said good-bye.
He would never see his wife or his son again.
In a last, desperate campaign fought across France Napoleon displayed all of his old brilliance.
But 85,000 Frenchmen stood no chance against 350,000 Allies.
On March 31, 1814, the Allies marched down the Champs Elysées.
The war was all be over.
Now even his own marshals turned against him.
When he prepared to summon what remained of his army to march on Paris, they refused to fight any longer.
On April 12, 1814 Napoleon picked up a pen and renounced his throne.
"His Majesty appeared to be entirely crush", his secretary wrote.
"His agitation was often so great "that, without being aware of it he tore at his leg with his nails until the blood flowed.
" That evening, he emptied the contents of a leather pouch into a glass of wine and drank it.
The poison failed to kill him.
He would live to see everything he had won taken from him.
"My father arrived hours ago" Marie Louise wrote him two days later.
"He will not let me come to you or see you.
"I am so sad I don't know what to tell you.
I kiss you, and I love you with all my heart.
" On April 20, Napoleon strode down the stairs at Fontainebleau to address his soldiers one last time.
"Good-bye, my children.
"I am leaving.
"Do not grieve over my fate.
"I would like to press all of you close to my heart.
Let me at least embrace your banner.
" Then he took a regimental flag in his hands and pressed it to his lips.
"Let this kiss," he said "resonate in the hearts of all my soldiers.
"Farewell once again.
Let this last kiss enter into all your hearts.
" A British warship carried Napoleon into exile.
Just 45 years old, he had won, then lost, an empire.
As he sailed across the Mediterranean he came within sight of Corsica, a bitter reminder of how far he had come and how great was his fall.
He was given a villa perched on a hillside a hundred feet above the sea.
Still a sovereign, this would be his new palace where he spected to spend the rest of his life.
Stripped of his old rank and title, he was granted a new one: Emperor of the Isle of Elba.
When Napoleon arrives on the island of Elba his fition is one of despair, depression, sadness.
But he gets over it quickly and he's able to regain the two aspects of his personality-- work and action.
He starts taking care of the island of Elba as though it were a great country.
He set up a miniature court, complete with a grand marshal ministers of the treasury and war and even a flag of his own devising.
He planted olive and mulberry trees, paved the streets organized a regular collection of garbage and let it be known that his subjects the island's 13,000 peasants should sleep no more than five in a bed.
He still had a lot of genius and ability left in him but it must have been boredom personified.
Napoleon spent his days on horseback exploring Elba's meager resources.
Often, he climbed to his favorite spot on the island a mountain looking out across the Mediterranean.
There, he would spends hours gazing toward Corsica.
His connections to the past had been severed.
When he learn the Josephine had died at Malmaison he did not leave his room for two days.
As the weeks passed Napoleon grew bored playing at "Emperor of Elba.
" He never took his eye off France where the allies had made the mistake of restoring an eager but weak Bourbon king to the throne.
King Louis XVIII had neither Napoleon's charm or charisma.
France had a constitutional monarchy now but with royalists threatening to abolish the gains of the Revolution and the economy floundering, the king soon became unpopular.
The Bourbons basically blow it.
If the Bourbons had performed more effectively and shrewdly I think Napoleon would have stayed on Elba.
For ten months, Napoleon watched and waited.
Then on February 26, 1815 he slipped off of Elba with a handful of soldiers and eluded British and French warships.
"After making a mistake or suffering a misfortune," he said "the man of genius always gets back on his feet.
" Once ashore, only the king's army would stand between Napoleon and Paris.
Six days after landing in France he confronted a regiment of infantry ordered to bar his way.
Napoleon advanced alone to meet them.
Soldiers, he craid "if there is one among you who wants to kill his general, his emperor, here I am.
" Suddenly, the soldiers began cheering wildly: "Long live the emperor Long live the emperor.
" Two weeks later, Napoleon was in the French capital and Louis XVIII had fled.
The news hit Europe like a bombshell.
"The devil," his enemies said, "has been unchained.
" And again, the mystique of Napoleon, here's the emperor.
"Vive l'Empereur,"they shouted all the way to Paris.
But it was really sort of crazy, he hadn't got a hope.
For months after Napoleon's abdication the Allies had been at odds with one another as they met in Vienna to hammer out an agreement to determine the shape of postwar Europe.
Now Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia united once again.
They declared Napoleon an outlaw "an enemy and a disturber of the tranquillity of the world" and readied their armies for war.
All of Europe was against him.
There wasn't a chance of France beating this coalition arrayed against it.
By the end of May the British and Prussians had two armies in Belgium.
Austrian and Russian soldiers were on the way.
Napoleon's only hope for survival was one last, desperate gamble.
He planned to drive a wedge between the British and the Prussians and defeat them before the Austrians and the Russians could arrive.
Napoleon raised an army and marched toward Waterloo.
Napoleon's fate would be decided on a field of rye and clover one mile long and three miles wide.
Waiting for him was Great Britain's most formidable soldier: the Duke of Wellington.
Tall, aristocratic, arrogant, disdainful.
Not an enormous amount of imagination but totally unflinching, nerves of steel.
He knew his army and he knew what they would take and he knew how to deploy them and he was superlative on the defensive.
Wellington commanded 68,000 men but he was counting on 72,000 more: the Prussians, led by Marshal Blucher von Wahlstatt.
Blucher's greatest wish was to capture Napoleon and have him shot.
The Prussian troops idolize him.
He's old, getting a little feeble especially above the eyebrows.
He likes his bottle.
But he loved to fight and he hated the French.
With Blucher and the prussians by his side, Wellington would outnumber Napoleon two to one.
The duke impatiently waited for the Prussians to arrive.
Wellington said to Blucher "For the love of God, come as fast as you can, we'll fight to the last moment, to the last man.
" But Blucher was still many miles from the battlefield and Napoleon had sent a sizable force of his own to intercept him.
It was not clear whether Blucher would get there on time, or at all.
The night before the battle soldiers on both sides caught what sleep they could under a heavy downpour.
The next morning, Sunday, June 18, they were sopping wet.
So was the field on which they were to fight now dotted with puddles and caked in mud.
As the Sun rose higher in the sky, the duke and his soldiers braced themselves.
But Waterloo remained silent.
Nearly five hours had passed since daybreak yet Napoleon had not given the order to attack.
He said he was waiting for the ground to dry so he can maneuver his cannons.
Certainly, the ground was so drenched that he wasn't able to move his artillery but this kind of thing never stopped him before.
He attacked when he decided to attack.
He lost the certainty that he still had his guiding star.
"I felt that fortune was abandoning me," Napoleon said.
"I no longer had the feeling that I was sure to succeed.
" Finally, at 11:30, Napoleon's artillery open fire.
His battle plan was simple.
Wellington's men occupied the outlying farm buildings on both flanks and the crest of a ridge in the center.
To break them, Napoleon ordered no elaborate maneuvers.
He would stake everything on a massive frontal attack.
He meant to attack Wellington first and the quicker the better.
He thought Wellington would run for his ships.
Then he would turn around and blast Blucher.
Shortly after midday Napoleon ordered a barrage of his most powerful cannon.
74 guns steadily lobbing cannon balls at Wellington's center.
But Wellington had ordered his soldiers to take cover behind the crest of the ridge on which they stood beyond the reach of the French guns.
Napoleon's motto was "Never attack a man in a prepared position.
" But here, he has no choice.
He's got to get Wellington out.
Napoleon's soldiers charged.
The British counterattacked driving the French back in confusion.
The English were in a good position on the ridge and in spite of that, Napoleon launched a frontal assault.
This was perhaps not suicide but it led to the loss of a lot of soldiers.
You have the impression that he issues orders hoping for a miracle.
He was living in a dream.
While his infantry regrouped, more bad news reached Napoleon.
Advance elements of the Prussian army were beginning to reach the battlefield.
Napoleon would have to break Wellington's center at once.
The French cavalry charged, on the order of Marshal Michel Ney.
Ney was called "the bravest of the braves.
" Convinced that the British line was weakening he led his cavalry forward.
The British formed squares and waited.
With reckless abandon, Ney led charge after charge.
Napoleon was losing control of the battlefield.
They were just mowing them down.
Sergeants went down and ranks went down.
Ney really thought if he could charge just one more time he would break through.
"Just one more time will do it," you know, and they followed him.
They nearly broke through the British squares very, very close, indeed.
But Ney charged without the infantry behind him.
It was like a tank attack unsupported by infantry.
The French cavalry was destroyed but the English center appeared on the verge of collapse.
The sun hung low in the sky glowing blood red through the trees and smoke.
It was then that Napoleon saw them: Prussian soldiers emerging from the smoke still in the far distance.
One of Napoleon's aides notice the hills to the right seem to have gone dark and that the dark was the black-uniformed Prussians.
He sees dust over here on his right flank and he knows the Prussians are coming.
Now, what he can do is he can disengage, he can pull back.
Or or he can gamble and try and defeat the British before the Prussians arrive.
He decides: "I can beat them.
" He called for the Imperial Guard themost feared of all his soldiers.
Throughout the fighting he had held them in reserve.
Now he sent them forward.
The dreaded Guard.
Very fearsome body, they never, never retreated.
This was sort of the last the last chance.
It was total confusion.
Fog and the smoke of cannon fire and these terrifying looking automatons coming straight at you 50 yards away.
They were just 40 paces away when the duke gave the order to fire.
In less than a minute, 400 Frenchmen fell.
Still the Guard came on.
They were absolutely magnificent and came very close he nearly broke through the British line.
But it was too late.
For the first time in the whole history of the Napoleonic wars the Guard was seen to falter and then eventually fall back shouting"Sauve qui peut," "Every man for himself.
" And then the word ran through the army "La guarde recule," "The Guard is retreating.
" Wellington snapped shut his telescope took off his hat, and waved it.
"No cheering, my lads," he said.
"Forward and complete your victory".
As the Guard fell back panic spread through the ranks of Napoleon's army.
And then disaster was upon them.
The Prussians were in the field.
The Prussians really were the last drop of water that tipped the bucket over.
Napoleon had to draw forces from his center to deal with Blucher.
Blucher won the battle.
If Blucher hadn't been there I don't think Wellington would have made it.
"A damned nice thing," Wellington said later "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life.
" The battle had lasted less than 12 hours a single Sunday afternoon.
The field bloody with the wounded and the dead Napoleon tried in vain to rally his men then turned his back on the catastrophe and escaped.
He began the battle too late; he gave orders that weren't clear.
But in reality, he lost the battle of Waterloo because he didn't believe he could win it because he didn't believe he could win the campaign.
Waterloo could have been won, but the war would have lost anyway.
With all of Europe against him Napoleon saw the futility of going on.
As Allied armies closed in around him he let events run their course.
On June 22, 1815, four days after the Battle of Waterloo he abdicated his throne for the second time.
With no hope of escape he put himself at the mercy of Great Britain.
He wished, he said, "to reside in a country house near London.
" The British turned him down.
Instead, they sent him back into exile.
This time, they took no chances that he would return.
Allowing him a small group of loyal followers they chose a far-flung outpost of their empire a slab of volcanic rock in the South Atlantic Ocean one of the most remote places on earth-- St.
Helena.
When a member of his entourage found out where she was going she tried to jump overboard.
No one escapes from St.
Helena, this faraway island, this isolated piece of rock beaten by the winds, sinister.
When Napoleon sees this fortress for the first time he understands everything.
He knows at this moment this is going to be his grave.
Once the ruler of nearly all of Europe Napoleon found himself confined to an island ten miles long, six miles wide.
"It would be nice," he told an aide "to fall asleep and not wake up for a year or two.
" On Elba, he had at least been an emperor.
On St.
Helena he was a prisioner, guarded by 2,000 soldiers and two ships that circled the island 24 hours a day.
His final palace would be a wooden bungalow that had once been a row of cattle stalls.
It's a little miserable farm.
You have the incessant pounding of the winds, clouds of fog humidity that soaks the clothes and the walls.
When you play cards, you have to put them into an oven because they are so wet.
He was 46 years old with nothing to do for the rest of his life but eat, sleep, and search for a way to occupy his mind.
"To die is nothing," he said, "but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day.
" Stripped of every vestige of power on this windswept island lost in the Atlantic Napoleon fought the endless boredom of his days.
He gardened read any book or newspaper he could get his hands on tried rewriting a tragedy of Voltaire's imposed an exacting imperial etiquette on his retinue and sparred with the island's English governor who insisted on calling Napoleon "General Bonaparte.
" When he was unable to sleep he would summon one of his retainers in the middle of the night and rant about the world or explain why he lost the battle of Waterloo.
Only one weapon remained him words.
With words, he would launch his last campaign.
Day after day, he dictated his memoirs forging the story of his life into the stuff of legend.
"I shall survive," he said "and whenever they want to strike a lofty attitude they will praise me.
" He had decided during this time that his real life had ended but that now his legendary life would begin and that he had to take care of it.
He re-argued his decisions and refought his battles recalling his greatest triumphs for all the world to admire.
"Rivoli, the Pyramids, Marengo, Austerlitz "these are granite," he said.
"The tooth of envy is powerless there.
" The Civil Code, the Bank of France, the bridges over the Seine, schools, roads, canals, libraries he made them all bear witness to his enduring legacy.
He reconstructs his actions to justify his choices to say that he was the savior of the Revolution to say that he wanted peace, to say that he wanted a new world and that the kings of Europe were opposed to a modern man a man of action who was working for the good of the people.
He had little else to do but fight the battle of his image, of his reputation; and it was an extremely successful campaign.
What is conveyed in this is an individual who can accomplish so much, so very much through determination and energy and intelligence.
This is his sense of himself.
As time wore on, his health failing Napoleon at last gave way to boredom and then despair.
He lost hope.
He was all alone in his little room dreaming, meditating, staring at the rain.
He ate in his bathtub, he read in his bathtub.
He really felt this sadness, falling little by little like a drop of acid which finally corrodes your soul.
I believe it was this that killed Napoleon.
Napoleon lasted five and a half years on St.
Helena.
On May 5, 1821, he died, deliriously whispering "France army chief of army Josephine" He was 51 years old.
As he had willed it his life entered into the world's imagination.
Even his exile became a glorious martyrdom St.
Helena his crown of thorns, the last station of his cross.
"My downfall," he said, "raises me to infinite heights.
" Napoleon considered it necessary to present himself as a martyr.
He said, "If Christ't bee n crucified he would never have been God.
" As the years passed, his story told and retold the love of power, the tyrannical nature of his rule and the three million soldiers who had died in wars that had brought him glory did nothing to tarnish the brilliance of the legend he had created.
Napoleon through his writing was able to create loyal, fervent followers.
It's extraordinary.
With the wave of a magic wand, from a defeated prisoner he becomes a hero again.
He becomes the one who writes history.
He doesn't die.
He will never die.
"Everything on earth is soon forgotten," Napoleon said except the opinion we leave imprinted on history.
" "There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men.
" Created, Adapted and syncronyzed by @Goanzaloo.