despot. By the time it was published on 11 March in the Journal de Paris,^47 it was clear
that Paris would soon be in the hands of the Bonapartists and his life was at risk. The
royalists were frightened and ironically it was the former republican Constant who was
standing up for the Bourbon King—admittedly with some prompting from the royalist
Juliette Récamier. Madame de Staël fled Paris for Switzerland the same day, but Constant
stayed on, hoping that some resistance could be mustered against the return of a tyrant.
On 18 March, the day after news had come that Napoleon was in Auxerre, he wrote
another courageous and hostile article for the Journal des Débats which appeared the
next day^48 likening the ex-Emperor to Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, and defending
constitutional monarchy under Louis XVIII. Then a strange thing happened. Constant
went into hiding in Paris (21–2 March), then fled to Angers and the Vendée, before
immediately returning (23–7 March); after two days of hesitation he went to see Joseph
Bonaparte, the ex-Emperor’s brother but nevertheless an old friend of Madame de Staël,
and wrote in his diary on 30 March: ‘Hopes. Might there really be a chance of
freedom?’^49 From that moment he began to swing towards the person he had recently so
vehemently denounced. A reformed Napoleon—who had, after all, been a man of the
Revolution and who had abolished so many feudal institutions across Europe—might just
be preferable to the Bourbons who had clearly learnt nothing in the past twenty-five years
and manifestly believed that they had a God-given right to carry on exactly where they
had left off in 1789.
Constant now put his pen at the service of Napoleon, writing mémoires on the
Congress of Vienna and on Germany. The former, which appeared in the Journal de
Paris anonymously on 4 April 1815^50 saying that, given the public support Napoleon
enjoyed, the Emperor now represented the will of the French nation. It was an astonishing
volte-face, written just days before new decrees were issued against the Bourbons and
forbidding armed assemblies. But Constant had chosen his new course and was ready to
meet accusations of opportunistically seeking office—accusations which were not long in
coming. Madame de Staël wrote to him expressing her scepticism and disapproval when
on 5 April it was made public that Constant was working on a new constitution for a
France ruled by the restored Emperor.^51 On 14 April 1815 he was granted an interview
with the man he had so recently denounced and wrote in his diary: ‘Long conversation.
He’s an astonishing man. Tomorrow I’ll bring him a draft constitution. Shall I finally be a
success? Should I wish to be? The future is black. God’s will be done.’^52 Constant was
not the first person to succumb to the unique mixture of confidence, energy, magnetic
charm and bullying in Napoleon’s character. But there was more to it than that, for
Constant still had the unshakeable conviction that he was destined for high office if only
circumstances would allow it: once there he could use all his talent in the cause of
building a free and just society whoever the ruler might be. Once again what looks like
self-serving had a less ignoble side to it.
The Emperor rejected Constant’s first proposals—Constant observed drily, ‘It’s not
exactly freedom he wants’^53 —but after amendments were made the ‘Additional Act to
the Constitution of the Empire’ was ready by the end of April 1815. It came to be known
familiarly as ‘la benjamine’, a nickname that was to haunt Constant’s later political career
as a reminder of his apostasy. He was made a member of the Emperor’s Council of State
and became in effect a courtier. Yet despite criticism—his article of 19 March
denouncing Napoleon was reprinted and circulated as a flysheet to embarrass him—he
The end of an empire 227