Chapter One. The Return of the Emperor.
Taken from "When the Dead Walked among the Living", by Douglas Child (London, 1973).
“Although there is no record of how Napoleon rose from his grave, there is a clear memory and data about its consecuences. All the attempt to bring back to France the body of the deceased emperor had failed. First it had been rejected in 1840 by the Viscount Melbourne, who still felt in a bit shaky position after the Bedchamber Crisis (1839) and wanted to give a show of strenght. The next attempt, in 1849, was refused by John Russell, as the Prime Minister was too busy dealing with the the Great Irish Famine and coping with his headstrong Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston.
“Two years later, the imposible took place.
“On 2 October 1851, the once cold corpse of the former Emperor of France rose from his grave and still cold, but, by some strange phenomenon, very alive, departed St. Helene on board of an old merchant ship. Napoleon had a fast travel and he landed near Antibes, as he had done more than thirty years back, on 2 November. Nothing dautened, he addresed to those he found in the docks, and told him ‘I will arrive in Paris without firing a shot’. As sailor declared later on, ‘it was terrifying, to see him back, alive, or something like that, with an eerie halo around his pale face and his glittering eyes’.
“He moved, through snow and ice, along the rout he had used thirty years ago, through the Basses-Alpes to Grenoble. He had managed to gather a guard of barely twenty men from the garrison at Antibes, five policemen and some civilians. Leaving Grasse on 13 November, the diminute army proceeded to Paris, gathering more and more supporteres on the way, so that, on 16 November, he had nearly two hundred men with him when he entered in Gap. That very day, Jacques Leroy de Saint Arnaud, a Marshal of France and Minister of War, declared Bonaparte an outlaw. Two days later came the moment of truth, when, near Grenoble, a major Merchand, with a small detachment, tried to intercept him. Ever the gambler, Napoleon adressed to Merchand's infantry, at gunshot, using his super histrionic talents. It is said that he just opened his coat, to expose the uniform of the Chasseurs de la Garde, and repeated the inmortal words he had said in 1815 but with a twist. ‘Here I am, kill your Emperor... if you can’. Then came the mighty roar ‘Vive l'Empereur!’, and the soldiers crowded around him in high emotion, while a smile appeared in Bonaparte 's cold lips.
“The whole detachment joined him, who swept into Grenoble four days later, on 20 November, with the garrison and the peasants at Grenoble joining him yelling ‘Long live the Emperor!’. Soon he had almost 5,000 men under his command, with 20 guns, and moved to Lyon, where he was received rapturously by the population. All the forces sent against him changed sides, as in his first return, and joined him. He was dead, indeed, but who cared? Napoleon finally arrived to Paris as the darkness gathered at 9pm, on 2 December 1851, the 47th anniversary of Napoleon I's crowning as Emperor, and also the 46th anniversary of the famous Battle of Austerlitz. Incredibly, the Emperor was back at the Tuileries, without shedding a drop of blood. Again, he had gained an Empire simply by showing his old hat.
“When the news of his return (to life –or something like that- and to France) reached the European chancilleries, all of Europe's ministers and sovereigns were stunned. Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg , the Austrian Prime minister, and John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, the Whig Prime Minister, were stunned and appaled, as the Kaiser and the Czar were, too. The first idea was to declare war... but... how to declare war against a zombie?
“Of course, they couldn’t.”