510 Ch. 13 • Napoleon and Europe

The Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815.

Napoleon abdicated a second time. He surrendered to British forces
near the western coast of France, while hoping to find a way to sail to
America. This time the exile would be final. The allies packed Napoleon
off to the small island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, 1,000 miles
away from any mainland. The closest island of any size was Ascension, a
British naval base, some 600 miles distant. Louis XVIII returned to take up
the throne of France a second time, 100 days after fleeing Paris.
On Saint Helena, Napoleon’s health gradually declined. He died on
May 5, 1821, his last words being ‘Trance, army, head of the army,
Josephine.” He died of an ulcer, probably a cancerous one, despite stories
to this day that he was poisoned by arsenic.

Napoleon’s Legacy

Napoleon’s testament, a masterpiece of political propaganda, tried to create

a myth that he saved the Revolution in France. “Every Frenchman could say

during my reign,—‘I shall be minister, grand officer, duke, count, baron, if

I earn it—even king!”’ And in some ways, Napoleon was indeed the heir to

the French Revolution. He guaranteed the survival of some of its most sig­

nificant triumphs. Napoleon considered his greatest achievement “that of

establishing and consecrating the rule of reason.” His Napoleonic Code pro­

claimed the equality of all people before the law (favoring, however, men