Word: caulaincourt
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...four o'clock in the afternoon of April 4, 1814, Armand de Caulaincourt, Napoleon's dour, devoted Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived at Essonnes, on the road to Paris. He carried the Emperor's abdication in favor of his son, and instructions for a project so audacious it had a good chance of succeeding. The Allied Armies had taken Paris four days prior. Headed by Talleyrand, a movement for the restoration of the Bourbons was gaining strength. Only Napoleon could visualize a plan of action in this "hour of his vast reverses." The situation...
...When Caulaincourt arrived at Essonnes, he found Ragusa acting queerly. An emissary from the Allied field headquarters nearby had arrived at the same moment. Puzzled Caulaincourt ran down to the courtyard to see about getting through the Allied lines, found when he returned that Ragusa was involved in mysterious negotiations with the enemy. But Ragusa was one of Napoleon's most trusted officers. "No one," the Emperor said, "inspires me with more confidence." Worried, Caulaincourt hustled Ragusa into a carriage and carried him on to Paris. The emissaries stopped at Allied field headquarters on the way. There Ragusa raced...
...long-lost memoirs,* Caulaincourt cleared up a major Napoleonic mystery with his account of Ragusa's treachery, clarified another with his account of Napoleon's attempted suicide a week later. Last year the first volume of this extraordinary document was offered U. S. readers under the title With Napoleon in Russia. Last week the second and concluding volume retraced the stages of the Emperor's decline to the time of his departure for Elba. Together the two books constitute an amazing picture of the smashing of a world power, the first volume more readable as a connected...
...outspoken he often exasperated Napoleon, Caulaincourt had opposed the war with Russia, refused to flatter his Emperor, so that, although the Corsican tormented his General, Napoleon also had a nervous desire for his praise and a respect for his honesty. This feeling deepened as Napoleon went down, until on the night of his attempted suicide he poured out his story to Caulaincourt alone while the sweat broke out on his sunken features and he waited for the poison to take effect. The poison was opium, belladonna and white hellebore. Napoleon's stomach rejected it and in place...
According to Caulaincourt, the Empire ended with Ragusa's treachery; what followed were the convulsions of its death-agony. Another addition to the 40,000 books about Napoleon, Author Aubry's St. Helena, also published last week, carries the story of Napoleon's personal decline to its miserable conclusion. An exhaustive record of the Emperor's last six years, St. Helena is a superb piece of composition that remains interesting through its 500 pages. Beginning with Waterloo, it clips along like a good melodrama through Napoleon's flight, his success in winning the friendship...