As many writers assert that Napoleon at this time was but the shadow of his former self, we must briefly review the evidence of contemporaries on this subject; for if the assertion be true, the Battle of Waterloo deserves little notice.

It seems that for some time past there had been a slight falling off in his mental and bodily powers; but when it began and how far it progressed is matter of doubt. Some observers, including Chaptal, date it from the hardships of the retreat from Moscow. This is very doubtful. He ended that campaign in a better state of health than he had enjoyed during the advance. Besides, in none of his wars did he show such vitality and fertility of resource as in the desperate struggle of 1814, which Wellington pronounced his masterpiece.

After this there seems to have been a period of something like relapse at Elba. In September, 1814, Sir Neil Campbell reported: "Napoleon seems to have lost all habits of study and sedentary application." He occasionally falls into a state of inactivity never known before, and sometimes reposes in his bedroom of late for several hours in the day; takes exercise in a carriage and not on horseback. His health excellent and his spirits not at all depressed " (F. O., France, No. 114). During his ten months at Elba he became very stout and his cheeks puffy.

On his return to France he displayed his old activity; and the most credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline. Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes: ''I perceive in the intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of enfeebling: I find in his judgement and actions his accustomed qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had lived a hard life and a " fast " life, we should not expect to find the capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Méneval noticed nothing worse in his master's condition than a tendency to "réverie": he detected no disease.

The statement of Pasquier that his genius and his physical powers were in a profound decline is a manifest exaggeration, uttered by a man who did not once see him before Waterloo, who was driven from Paris by him, and strove to discourage his supporters. Still less can we accept the following melodramatic description, by Thiébault, of Napoleon's appearance on Sunday, June 11th: "His look, once so formidable and piercing, had lost its strength and even its steadiness: his face had lost all expression and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its former witchery: and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and gestures were undecided: the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by a strongly pronounced greenish tinge which struck me."

Off to Waterloo

Let us follow this wreck of a man to the war and see what he accomplished. At dawn on June 12th he entered his landau and drove to Laon, ,distance of some seventy miles. On the next day he got through an immense amount of work, and proceeded to Beaumont. On the 15th of June he was up at dawn, mounted his horse, and remained on horseback, directing the operations against the Prussians, far nearly eighteen hours. This time was broken by one spell of rest. near Charleroi, says Baudus, an officer of Soult's staff, he was overcome by sleep and heeded not the cheers of a passing column: at this Baudus was indignant, but most unjustly so. Napoleon needed these snatches of sleep as a relief to prolonged mental tension.

At night he returned to Charleroi, "over come with fatigue." On the next day he was still very weary, says Ségur; he did not exert himself until the battle of Ligny began at 230; but he then rode about till nightfall, through a time of terrible heat. Fatigue showed itself again early on the morrow, when he declined to see Grouchy before 8am. Yet his review of the troops and his long discussions on Parisian politics were clearly due, not to torpor, but to the belief that he had sundered the allies and could occupy Brussels at will; for when he found out his mistake, he: showed all the old energy, riding with the vanguard from Quatre Bras to La Belle Alliance through the violent rain.

Whatever, then, were his ailments, they were not incompatible with great and sustained activity. What were those ailments? He is said to have suffered from intermittent affections of the lower bowel, of the bladder, and of the skin, the two last resulting in ischury (Dorsey Gardner's "Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo," pp. 31-37; O'Connor Morris, pp. 164-166, note), the list is formidable; but it contains its own refutation. A man suffering from these diseases, unless in their earliest and mildest stages, could not have done what Napoleon did. Ischury, if at all pronounced, is a bar to horse exercise.

Doubtless his long rides aggravated any trouble that he had in this respect, for Pétiet, who was attached to the staff, noticed that he often dismounted and sat before a little table that was brought to him for the convenience of examining maps; but Pétiet thought this was due, not to ill health (about which he says nothing), but to his corpulence ("Souvenirs militaires," pp. 196 and 212).

Prince Jerome and a surgeon of the imperial staff assured Thiers that Napoleon was suffering from a disease of the bladder; but this was contradicted by the valet, Marchand; and if he really was suffering from all, or any one, of the maladies named above, it is very strange that the surgeon allowed him to expose himself to the torrential rain of the night of the 17th-18th for a purpose which a few trusty officers could equally well have discharged. Furthermore, Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the army, who saw Napoleon before the campaign began and during its course, says not a word about the Emperor's health (Relation médicale des Campagnes, 1815-1840 pp.5.11).

Habits

Again, the intervals of drowsiness on the 15th and 18th of June, on which the theory of physical collapse is largely based, may be explained far more simply. Napoleon had long formed the habit of working a good deal at night and of seeking repose during a busy day by brief snatches of slumber. The habit grew on him at Elba; and this, together with his activity since daybreak, accounts for his sleeping near Charleroi. The same explanation probably holds good as to his occasional drowsiness at Waterloo. He scarcely closed his eyes before 3·30 am.; and he cannot have been physically fit for the unexpectedly long and severe strain of that Sunday.

That he began the day well we know from a French soldier named Barral (grandfather of the author of L'Epopée de Waterloo"), who looked at him carefully at 9.30 a.m., and wrote: "He seemed to me in very good health, extraordinarily active and preoccupied." Decoster, the peasant guide who was with Napoleon the whole day, afterwards told Sir W. Scott that he was calm and confident up to the crisis. Gourgaud, who clung to him during the flight to Paris and thence to Rochefort, notes nothing more serious than great fatigue; Captain Maitland, when he received him on hoard the "Bellerophon," thought him " a remarkably strong, well-built man." During the voyage to St. Helena he suffered from nothing worse than mal de mer; he ate meat in exceptional quantity, even in the tropics.

Very noteworthy, too, is Lavalette's narrative. When he saw Napoleon before his departure from Paris to the Belgian frontier, he found him suffering from depression and a pain in the chest; but he avers that, on the return from Waterloo, apart from one "frightful epileptic laugh," Napoleon speedily settled down to his ordinary behaviour: not a word is added as to his health. (Sir W. Scott, "Life of Napoleon," vol. viii., p. 496; Gourgaud, "Campagne de 1815," and "Journal de St. Hélène," vol. ii., Appendix 32; "Narrative of Captain Maitland," p. 208; Lavalette, L'Mems, Ch. xxxiii; Houssaye ridicules the stories of his ill-health.)

Upshot?

What is the upshot of it all? The evidence seems to show that, whatever was Napoleon's condition before the campaign, he was in his usual health amidst the stern joys of war. And this is consistent with his previous experience: he throve on events which wore ordinary beings to the bone: the one thing that he could not endure was the worry of parliamentary opposition, which aroused a nervous irritation not to be controlled and concealed without infinite effort.

During the campaign we find very few trustworthy proofs of his decline and much that points to energy of resolve and great rallying power after exertion. If he was suffering from three illnesses, they were assuredly of a highly intermittent nature.

From The Life of Napoleon I. J.H. Rose 1916