How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) (25 page)

In November 2014, a huge sale of Napoleonic memorabilia was held in Fontainebleau, the self-declared ‘imperial town’ just south of Paris. Admittedly the auction was happening for a less-than-flattering reason – Prince Albert of Monaco was emptying his Musée des Souvenirs Napoléoniens to make way for a museum dedicated to his mother, Princess Grace – but that didn’t bother the Napoleonic collectors because it meant that hundreds of rare items were coming up for grabs. There was such a frenzy of bidding that almost every lot at least doubled its estimate, with some going ten times over the expected price. Pairs of stockings actually worn by Napoleon sold for more than 15,000 euros. Clippings of his hair fetched the same price, and one of the black bicorn hats that Napoleon wore himself, and then gifted to his vet, went for a dizzying 1.8 million euros.

As the hat came up for sale, the auctioneer quoted a few lines of poetry written in its honour by Edmond Rostand in his play
L’Aiglon
(‘the eagle chick’ was the nickname of Napoleon’s son, also called Napoleon), first performed in 1900. The lines describing the Emperor’s trademark headgear can be loosely translated as follows:

Large black seashell that the waves have brought,

And in which one’s ear, when held close, hears

The wave of sound that a great nation makes as it marches.

The warm round of applause the auctioneer received for his poem said a lot more about French nostalgia than his reciting skills. He got the second and third lines completely wrong, but no one cared: in everyone’s minds, just for this day France was on the march again, rather than being bogged down in post-credit-crunch austerity. And all thanks to Napoleon.

The last two bidders in the race for the hat after the price broke the million barrier were a Chinese woman and a Korean man. When the Korean won,
^fn6
there was more applause. No one seemed particularly worried that this important Napoleonic artefact would be leaving France – for a start, there are several of his hats in French museums and private collections; but perhaps most importantly, Bonapartists probably saw the outrageous price as satisfying proof that Napoleon’s star is starting to shine far beyond the borders of France and his European empire.

But perhaps the most notable thing about all these sales was that the auctioneers referred to Napoleon throughout as ‘l’Empereur’. Each time, for a few hours, he was back on his throne.

Several times a year, in France and throughout his former empire, Napoleon really does return. Whenever there is a battle re-enactment, the cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ are almost as loud as the barrages of blank-firing artillery. And Napoleon himself is always there to acknowledge them.

Every period of military history has its re-enactors – at the 2014 commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of D-Day there were even uniformed Nazis (though it is to be hoped that they don’t re-enact all the Nazis’ exploits). Napoleonic battles are probably the most frequently commemorated in Europe, and attract large numbers of enthusiasts from all sides, no doubt because the uniforms are so brightly coloured and the formations of lines and squares so aesthetically pleasing. A Napoleonic battle was a grand, highly choreographed affair, unlike, say, a re-enactment of Passchendaele that would involve little more than waves of men in dirt-coloured uniforms tumbling face-first into mud.

The difference between the re-enactors in Napoleon’s armies and the others seems to be that some of them are not pretending.

In 2014 I witnessed this at first hand at Brienne le Château, the site of the battle – a skirmish, really – that took place in January 1814, when Napoleon was fighting his last-ditch stand against the invading Prussians. Two hundred years later, the town decided to celebrate the Emperor’s victory – in May, so that re-enactment soldiers would not get too cold or wet – and to follow the fighting with a huge public picnic rather than the looting of corpses and the crude amputation of shattered limbs.

At the re-enactment, about 400 or so French cavalry and infantry, all dressed in authentic uniforms and carrying realistic weapons, charged about twenty valiant Prussians who were ‘holding the castle’ (or more accurately, occupying part of the lawn).

The line of French infantry advanced, stopping periodically to fire their muskets, and occasionally getting a bit over-enthusiastic. One volley (of blanks, naturally) was aimed straight at the French spectators, who were turned into accidental Prussians. Another group of footsoldiers fired as their own horsemen were riding past, forcing the announcer to admit that ‘the French infantry shooting at the French cavalry is a bit embarrassing’.

But the mass of Napoleonic troops so outnumbered the enemy that they could afford a few casualties from friendly fire, and after no more than fifteen minutes, the lines of French infantry had walked right up to the Prussians, provoking a brief waving of bayonets, a rapid retreat of the invaders, and a rapturous cry from the announcer that ‘The allies have been routed! Victory has been won!’

The only problem was that the French artillery didn’t seem to agree. The battle had been so short they had only had time to fire one or two salvoes, so even as a very convincing Napoleon imitator was congratulating his victorious troops, his cannons kept up a ceaseless barrage of deafening explosions.

At first, the announcer politely asked for a ceasefire – ‘Arrêtez, s’il vous plaît!’ – but when they carried on regardless, he lost his temper, yelling, ‘L’artillerie, stop!’ Yes, an English word aimed at French artillerymen. No wonder they ignored him, and one cannon, luckily firing nothing more dangerous than shreds of newspaper, almost blew Napoleon’s head off as he was walking towards them to impose some discipline. At which point the announcer, dressed as a nineteenth-century gentleman, strutted over and confiscated the artillerymen’s plungers. A tactic that proved so effective that it’s a wonder Wellington didn’t try it sooner at Waterloo.

Overall, though, morale in the French camp was high. The Napoleon imitator, his safety now assured, toured the battlefield, instantly recognisable in his bicorn hat and grey overcoat, congratulating each unit in turn. His troops saluted him, waving their busbies and helmets in the air, just like the good old days, while the announcer informed the crowd that ‘if we still had the French empire, we could have saved all the lives lost during the First World War. Vive l’Empereur!’

Reassuringly, perhaps, most of the spectators were stunned into silence by this radical rewriting of history, and only the soldiers took up the cry. But it is hard to imagine similar speeches being made at other re-enactments. Would a man in Viking costume bemoan the fact that Scandinavians are no longer allowed to pillage England? Does someone dressed as Wellington tell his modern redcoats: ‘If we still had George III, we could all wear white wigs and talk to trees without anyone laughing at us’? No, and surely only the more fanatical of the Napoleonic re-enactors really wish that the past would return.

After the battle, I talked to some of the troops, and asked a footsoldier why he didn’t get himself an officer’s uniform so that he could wave his sword about, give orders, and maybe even have a drink with the Napoleon impersonator. (Only a select few plumed officers were allowed to sit down with
l’Empereur
himself outside his fenced-off imperial bivouac.) Oh no, I was told, that wouldn’t go down well. You can’t just decide to be an officer in the official Napoleonic re-enactment groups. And besides, it costs a fortune to be an officer – an authentic, hand-made uniform (the only ones permitted) would cost more than 10,000 euros. Even an ordinary infantryman’s shoulder straps cost 100 euros from the official suppliers. This is a cause that requires true devotion.

At the time of writing, fresh epaulettes and shoulder straps are no doubt being stitched and starched for the 200th anniversary re-enactment of Waterloo. And guess who is depicted on the home page of the official ‘Waterloo 2015’ website, and who is the most visible figure on the official poster, about five times bigger than his two rivals. Wellington? Blücher? No, Napoleon – or rather a Napoleon imitator, the reincarnation of the Emperor. Bonaparte is back. The modern-day Bonapartists have taken possession of the battlefield.

Apparently, in June 2015 over 5,000 uniformed enthusiasts will be replaying the Battle of Waterloo, which will be spread over two days instead of trying to cram all the action into one, as the original combatants had to do. And this time, you can bet the French will be going for a victory.

In some ways, of course, they have already won that victory. As we have seen, Napoleon is already the biggest star of the battlefield museum. His is the name, and the silhouette, that everyone recognises from that period of history. His shadow looms over modern French institutions and those he set up all over Europe. He is also the general whose tomb dominates his former capital city’s skyline, and whose naked statue holds pride of place in Wellington’s former home in London. And now he is even conquering Asia.

^fn1
These, by the way, were not named by Napoleon himself, or as part of his nephew Napoléon III’s later campaign to glorify the family’s image – they were created in the 1920s, just after the slaughter in the trenches, when France decided to look to the more distant past to boost its patriotic image. This was also when the French adopted Joan of Arc as their patron saint. Napoleon and Joan – the twin saviours of the nation.

^fn2
The
Mona Lisa
wasn’t one of them because it had been bought legally by King François I soon after Da Vinci’s death in 1519.

^fn3
The statue of the naked Napoleon is still on show at Apsley House, at Hyde Park Corner, alongside an impressive selection of artworks given to Wellington by the Spanish as thanks for chasing out its French invaders. Significantly, the English Heritage website declares that ‘pride of place’ in the whole collection goes to Napoleon.

^fn4
The Middle Ages was apparently the time when French males first decided to divide themselves into two distinct groups: intellectuals and men of action.

^fn5
By the way, crème brûlée isn’t entirely French, either – it’s a seventeenth-century adaptation of the ancient Arabian recipe for crème caramel.

^fn6
He was bidding on behalf of a Korean poultry company that wanted to display the hat, a sword and other items acquired at the sale in its Seoul head office, to prove to its staff and customers that the company was, like Napoleon, a winner. News of Waterloo, it seems, never reached Korea.

‘Napoléon a laissé la France écrasée, envahie, vidée de sang et de courage, plus petite qu’il ne l’avait prise.’

‘Napoleon left France crushed, invaded, drained of blood and courage, smaller than when he took it.’

– Charles de Gaulle in his book
La France et son armée
(1938)

‘Le bonheur de la France dépendait de la perte de la bataille.’

‘France’s happiness depended on losing the battle.’

– nineteenth-century French publisher (and royalist) Jean-Gabriel Dentu

WHEN NAPOLEON WAS
shipped off to Saint Helena, the returning Louis XVIII and his entourage weren’t the only people in France who thought that the South Atlantic wasn’t far enough. The same goes today. There are plenty of French people who despise everything that Napoleon stood for – his despotism, the number of lives he threw away in battle, the way he has inspired every foreigner to giggle at any authoritative Frenchman.

These people willingly accept that Napoleon was beaten in Belgium on 18 June 1815. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that they think France lost the battle. For them, getting rid of Bonaparte simply gave the country the breathing space to become the great nation that it is today. They view Waterloo as a victory for France itself. To them, the British and the Prussians were almost unimportant by-standers in France’s great leap forward.

Before Waterloo, there were already voices complaining about Napoleon’s reign, though they had to tread carefully for fear of reprisals. In December 1813, Joseph Lainé, the MP for the Gironde in south-western France, made a daring speech in parliament complaining that ‘trade has been destroyed, and industry is dying. What are the causes of this unspeakable misery? A vexatious administration, excessive taxation … and crueller still, the way our armies are recruited.’ Lainé represented the Bordeaux region, which was suffering more than most from Napoleon’s
droits réunis
, a VAT-style duty on everyday goods to raise money for his warmongering. Wine was taxed at a staggering 94.1 per cent. Not only that, Napoleon had forbidden the region’s ports from selling wine to their traditional buyers, the thirsty Brits.

This was why, when Wellington chased Napoleon’s army across the Spanish border and invaded southern France in 1814, Bordeaux greeted him as a liberator. At the same time, French royalists began campaigning in the area, promising ‘an end to tyranny, war, conscription and
droits réunis
’. It was a message that many wanted to hear.