Jean Robiquet - Daily Life In France Under Napoleon

And you had the means of making conquests, And you had what you no longer have.*

The military miracles of the French campaigns had shown the scoffers to be wrong; but faced with the invasion of our soil and the risks of an unequal struggle, confidence weakened more and more. During that dismal month, of February 1814, when the guns of the Invalides announced Champaubert and Montmirail, many people had sighed 'Alas, these are merely victories!' For what was wanted was peace, peace at any price.

And now that it was appearing hand in hand with defeat, they were both welcomed with a feeling of deliverance. Paris, finding itself spared, no longer panicked, no longer thought about anything, it merely breathed. While Europe in arms marched in procession before its eyes with white sleeve bands, it looked on as if at the theatre, listening to the strange music, admiring the fine uniforms — uniforms that the French, to borrow a quip of Albert SoreFs, 'had for the last twenty years hardly considered except from behind'.

Next to the reactions of the capital, what were those of the countryside? Three very different pieces of evidence will give us some idea. Let us first take a look at the royalist Midi. Let us return to the Chateau of Hauterive near Castres, where we saw the Villeneuve family leading a quite patriarchal life, collecting a little circle of dyed-in-grain gentlemen and bringing up their daughters like young heroines of Bouilly's tales.

The one we know best, Leontine, was now getting on for twelve. She was no longer the little wild creature amusing herself by roasting chestnuts in the kitchen stove. The conversations she overheard of an evening, round the fire, had given her to understand that not only was fighting going on near Champagne, but the English army had crossed the Pyrenees and was threatening her dear Languedoc.

To the peasants of the region war meant nothing but ruins and tears. As a rule they bothered their heads very little about the Empire, hardly more no doubt about the provinces higher up, but they agreed with these in cursing the severity of conscription. 'They will take all our children from us! 7 moaned the women. 'And I/ replied a man, 'sold my field to pay for a substitute for my son, and now they say they must go back and draw lots again/

At the Chateau they heard little news, for the authorities of Castres were doing their best to conceal the situation. 'One is reduced to looking for the truth in the gazettes, through the darkness of lies or the light of a semi-confession/ Letters, although censored, sometimes allowed themselves a few words with double meanings. 'People met then to try and understand, and turned every sentence over and over/

Soon it was no longer possible to ignore the Battle of Orthez, Soult's retreat and Wellington's march on Toulouse. A great battle might be going to start a few leagues away from Hauterive. A fine subject to stir the children's imagination! In the courtyard of the chateau, Leontine, her brother and sisters played only one game now: War. They built a redoubt, made pretence guns out of old gutter-pipes and spent their nights dreaming of charges and volleys of musket fire.

Meanwhile, between Castres and Toulouse, messages were becoming more frequent; life seemed to hang on the arrival of the post. On Easter Day, 1814, M. de Villeneuve, who appeared to be listening to a distant sound, said to a peasant, 'One can hear it louder now, can't one?' 'What can one hear? 3 asked the little girl. "The guns: they've been fighting before Toulouse ever since this morning.'

When the bell rang for High Mass all the family went to church. At the moment of the benediction the cure pronounced these words, *Let us pray for the living and the dead', and a few sobs answered him. There were mothers in mourning there, and others who had their sons in the armies. The day went by without news. From time to time the inhabitants of Hauterive pressed their ears to the ground to listen to the sound of the detonations. In the evening the artillery fire died down at last; and without knowing which side had won they said to one another, 'The game is finished/

It was not until Easter Tuesday that an event occurred which was to leave a deep mark on the child's memory. Sitting near a window, she was busy reading when the noise of a horse galloping over the paved courtyard made her prick up her ears. A man had just arrived, shouting, 'We've got peace! We've got peace!' A few seconds later she saw her father, her mother and all the family pressing round the rider, exclaiming and gesticulating. He was an emissary sent from Toulouse to announce the end of the war, the return of the Bourbons and the accession of Louis XVIII.

The news was received with acclamation; it spread from neighbour to neighbour, and soon, like a train of gunpowder, an immense shout of 'Vive le RoiF ran from one end of the province to the other.

The enthusiasm of the damsels of Castres would have been most displeasing to the schoolboys of Limoges, whose sentiments we can gather from a correspondence published by M. Edmond Pottier.

All, or nearly all, of them found it difficult to believe that Napoleon had fallen. The Army, with the exception of a few Field-Marshals, still worshipped its Head, and the schoolboys of that day were very like soldiers. In the twenty-six lycees of the Empire education was on military lines. The pupils were awakened by the sound of the drum; they wore uniforms and were grouped by companies, with adjutants, sergeants and corporals, and the Latin classes prided themselves on their drill and firing practice. When they went for a walk they were headed by a band composed of three flutes, two piccolos, a big drum, cymbals and a Chinese pavilion or 'Jingling Johnnie',

Was it the effect of the uniform, or of the Jingling Johnnie? At any rate all these young men were fervent Bonapartists. The letters that one of them, Henri Philippon, 1 wrote to his father, a Paris official, show the emotion aroused in this small community by the events of 1814. First, the account of an abortive conspiracy.

'March 19,1814. Last night, my dear Papa, we were in the greatest danger you can imagine. The Spanish prisoners in Limoges nearly set fire to the town. They were to run to the four principal magistrates and force them, at the pistol's mouth, to sign an order for the Cohort and the National Guard to lay down their arms. They were then to pillage everything in Limoges, burn it down like a conquered country and go on to join the English, who, as you know, have taken and passed through Bordeaux. But they were discovered, and every one of them shut up in the church of Saint-Pierre. You would think they were trying to force the doors, they are kicking it so hard. We can hear them talking from our guardroom. The enemy is still advancing; there is talk of evacuating.. .*

a An assumed name, the family possessing these letters wishing to remain anonymous.

The Emperor's abdication was soon to make this measure unnecessary, but the excitement among the college boys did not die down - far from it. They went marching through the streets, shouting, 'Down with Louis XVIII!' And their fencing master, after slapping the face of a young royalist of the town and challenging him to a duel, went off to have c a little binge with the officers*.

The mathematics professor, less bellicose, tried on the contrary to ingratiate himself with the new regime by dedicating to it some verses of his own composition:

*Live for ever, August Prince! Live for ever, Long live Louis! *

But this homage brought no luck to the august prince, the sudden return of whose rival would soon force him to pack up again. Young Philippon's missives would then be filled with fresh enthusiasm;

'The shadow of the news of Napoleon's entry into Paris had scarcely reached the school before all the pupils, by common consent, had sold their lilies, and those that had none gave money instead, to buy a tricolour flag. We wanted to hoist it at once over the school, but the headmaster, M. Payen, expressly forbade it until the post had confirmed the news. In less than an hour we had made more than two hundred lovely transparencies The finest of all was done by one of the pupils, the best at drawing; he did a portrait of Napoleon and Marie-Louise, and above thero^ in the middle, an eagle spreading its wings, with the motto We never deserted it. Now everything is nearly over in the school... there's only one party, onJy one shout, only one voice: 'Vive L'Empereur!*