feat 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 cou