Explore "Waterloo" by Thomas E. Watson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was half-past three on the morning of June 12th when Napoleon entered his carriage and set out for the Belgian frontier. On the 13th he was at Avesnes, on the 14th at Beaumont. One who was near the imperial carriage, on its rapid course from Paris, states that the Emperor was often asleep during the day; and that he declared that he was utterly worn out by his three months' toil. Little wonder. A man who had gone through the tremendous ordeal which Napoleon had passed since his return from Elba -- an ordeal which taxed soul, mind, and body -- was fortunate in being left with any strength at all. His actual hours of labor had been an average of fifteen per day, to say nothing of the anxieties, the discouragements, and the humiliations which made such enormous demands upon his fortitude, his patience, his tact, his powers of self-control.
Asked at St. Helena what had been the happiest period of his life, Napoleon answered, "The progress from Cannes to Paris."