26 February 1815: Napoleon escaped from exile on Elba and headed back to France. The embarkation began at 5 pm. At 7 pm, Napoleon embraced his mother and his sister Pauline at the Mulini Palace. He drove to the quay in Pauline’s small carriage (his was on the ship), with his generals and household following on foot. The crowd gave some faint-hearted cheers as he boarded the felucca Caroline and was taken to the brig Inconstant. At 8 pm, the firing of a cannon signalled departure.
Napoleon’s flotilla consisted of the Inconstant, which normally carried 18 guns and now had 26; the French merchant brig Saint Esprit, hired for the occasion; the bombard Étoile, with 6 guns; the Caroline, and three smaller vessels. On these boats were some 1,150 people: 600 Old Guard (grenadiers, chasseurs, sailors, gunners); 100 Polish Lancers (with their saddles but not their horses); 300 members of the Corsican Battalion; 50 gendarmes (mostly Italians and Corsicans); and 100 civilians, including servants. (18) Each ship carried Napoleon’s Elban flag.
Barely out of Portoferraio, the flotilla was becalmed. By dawn it had travelled only 10 km (6 miles). Light winds continued to be a problem. Passing north of the island of Capraia on February 27, the Inconstant spotted the Melpomène, one of two French frigates whose job was to patrol the waters between Corsica and Elba. The Melpomène did not approach the flotilla, however, and the French frigate Fleur-de-Lys, cruising northwest of Capraia, did not even see Napoleon’s little navy.
That afternoon, the French brig Zéphir spotted the flotilla and came close enough for its Captain Andrieux to have a brief conversation with Captain Taillade of the Inconstant.
“[Andrieux] hailed and Taillade, according to Napoleon’s instructions, gave the name of the ship. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Leghorn [Livorno],’ came the answer; ‘and you?’ Still prompted by Napoleon, Taillade replied: ‘To Genoa. Have you any commissions for me there?’ ‘No thank you. And how is the great man?’ Napoleon told him to shout back: ‘He is wonderfully well.’ So they separated.”
At dawn on March 1, 1815, the flotilla was off the cape of Antibes. The French tricolour was hoisted. At 1 pm the vessels were at anchor at Golfe-Juan, between Cannes and Antibes. The disembarkation commenced.
Napoleon made it all the way to Paris without a shot being fired against him. On March 20, he entered the capital and began his second term on the French throne. In June 1815, he lost the Battle of Waterloo and had to abdicate again. He was sent into exile on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, from which there was no escape, except in Napoleon in America.
Image: Napoleon leaving Elba by Joseph Beaume, 1836
