This is a shortened version of an essay the English historian G.M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) submitted to the Westminster Gazette in July 1907. He won the prize offered by the magazine.
The day of the Convention of Brussels, June 25, 1815, one week after the battle of Waterloo, divides into two the strangely contrasted halves of the greatest career of modern times and ushers in the reign of the Napoleon of Peace. In that little room in the Hôtel de Ville, now filled every morning with crowds of tourists, Wellington listened in proud and stoical humiliation to the torrent of words poured forth from Napoleon’s lips in dispraise of war.
During that terrible week between the battle and the Convention, Wellington had not uttered one word of complaint against Blücher for breaking his word, nor shown his staff officers any sign of his agony.
A new Napoleon had evolved, the Napoleon of Peace, a mere shadow, in spiritual and intellectual force, of his former self. With unexpected clemency, one week after his triumphal entry into Brussels, he offered conditions to secure a permanent and lasting peace, to what he considered “the inveterate instigator of war and paymaster of the continental monarchs” as well as facilities to remove themselves from the scene as quickly as possible and so to clear the stage for himself and the time-serving Austrian diplomat Metternich. Secret agents of Metternich had been in Brussels as early as June 14 with orders, in case Wellington was defeated, to offer Napoleon instantly the Rhine frontier and the bulk of the Italian peninsula, and to convey to him that it would be utterly impossible to hold down Germany after the national movements of 1813.
Such a message would have had little effect on him had he been sure of the support of the French people. But, so far from being dazzled by the news of Waterloo, the people of Paris formed a solid alliance of all classes and of all parties to insist upon peace. Representatives were sent to Brussels. Their petition was supported by all the imperial marshals and almost all senior officers.
The decisive event was the Great Review outside Brussels on June 24, which the emperor held for the purpose of testing the attitude of the soldiers. The long shouts of “Peace” that ran down the lines had thrown him utterly off balance. They had joined him to liberate France, the men conveyed to him, not to subjugate Europe. He rode slowly back as though in a trance and immediately began dictating messages of peace to Wellington and the allied sovereigns.
Napoleon’s physical condition contributed no less than the attitude of the French people and the French army to his reversal. He was suffering from a peculiar malady that made him doze off frequently. But he was not yet sufficiently aware of his growing feebleness to be able to delegate his duties to subordinates.
Thus began the last twenty years of his life. Europe changed little. Monarchs and people were too exhausted to engage in war for the alteration of frontiers. Internal reform or revolution were rendered impossible by the great standing armies.
The condition of England was most unhappy. The distress grew more intolerable every year, in spite of the restoration of trade with the continent. But fear of Napoleon remained on a high pitch. Extravagantly high tariffs had to be maintained, in spite of our continued supremacy at sea. The taxation necessary for the maintenance of both fleet and army on a war footing allowed no hope of amelioration, yet while Napoleon lived and paraded his own army and fleet as the expensive toys of his old age, the Tory ministers could see no possibility of reduction on their part. Probably they were glad of the excuse since the continued existence of the strong army enabled them to defy the reformers.
In 1825 there occurred the ill-advised but romantic rebellion of Lord Byron in whose army the rank and file consisted almost entirely of working men. The savage reprisal by the Government sharpened the blood-feud between one half of England and the other. The execution of Byron made more noise in the world than any event since the downfall of the Bastille.
On the continent, outside the limits of the Napoleonic Empire, the ancien régime was not only triumphant but to some extent popular. The former persecutor of the German and Spanish peoples remained as their dangerous neighbour and was still by far the most powerful prince in Europe. In Germany the reforms previously enacted were allowed to remain wherever they were in harmony with the monarchic principle. Student movements in Germany and Austria were effectively suppressed. Prussia had obtained her share of Poland whose cries were smothered by Russia as easily as those of the Greek people who were put down by the Turks.
The Germans on the left bank of the Rhine were contented but the French were less easy to satisfy. They had forced their lord to make peace, but could they also compel him to grant them that measure of liberty they had demanded? That question was solved provisionally from year to year as the energy of the autocrat decreased in almost the same proportion as the increased demand of freedom by his subjects. Under these conditions French literature and thought were stimulated into a life almost as stimulating as in the days of the Encyclopaedists.
In the evening of June 4, 1836, at a meeting of the Council of State, Napoleon listened to various reports, silent and distracted, his head sunk on his chest, when suddenly the word “Italy” penetrated to his consciousness. He looked up with fire in his eyes. “Italy,” he said with a raised voice. “We march tomorrow. The Army of the Alps will once more fight for the honour and glory of the Republic. Hélas, I must leave Josephine behind.”
In recent days he had often spoken of her. He seemed to imagine she was somewhere in the Tuileries palace. His doctors had demanded the Council adjourn as soon as he mentioned her name.
In the middle of that same warm June night he went to the balcony. In the words of a witness – “he intoned, with lifted hands in a voice of the most penetrating discord, the Marseillaise!”
It had been strictly forbidden, under harsh penalties of the law.
He collapsed when he went back to the room. A few minutes later he was found lying on the floor, dead.
Eric Koch’s new book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
I have always thought of Trevelyan as one of the most readable English historians but had no idea that he had dabbled, just as readably, in historical fiction.
Wellington would never have become prime minister and thus the great Reform Bill of 1832 would have become the Reform Bill of 1828 or even earlier. It hard to believe that even a peacefully-minded Napoleon would have sanctioned a treaty allowing the British navy to sing Rule Britannia across the seven seas as it did after Trafalgar. That Trevelyan’s homeland speculations were confined to the imagined execution of Byron (and whatever his hijinks he would have been exiled at the most) and a resulting entrenchment of Tory rule, suggests that he would have preferred such an outcome to the gradual democratization of British politics which actually occured during the 19th century.
Trevelyan’s homeland speculations are much more detailed in the complete article, which you can find in the Queen’s Library in a book called If It had Happened Otherwise, by J.C. Squire.
Several years ago I saw a lovely piece of speculation about what Shakespeare would have sounded like if Harold had won in 1066. The idea was that the Normans had conquered Jersey and Guernsey – which thus spoke something like modern English – but the main islands, not so much. I’d be happy to find that again.
And Amazon offers this: How We’d Talk if the English had Won: http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Wed-Talk-English-1066/dp/0755211677
Thanks. I may pursue this. It may yield a blog in Anglais.
I see from the final comment on the Amazon.com page that what I saw must have been Paul Jennings’ articles from 1966 – the 900th anniversary. Wikipedia (of course) has a sample of the ‘original’ and ‘Anglish’ Shakespeare here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglish.
Interesting how much this entry generated. I have read several books on Hitler winning. One opens on his 75th birthday. I just finished a rather bad one written in 1975 by a man called Mullaly. It was alight until he had Hitler rediscovering Catholicism, arresting Pius XII and getting himself named Pope.
One may also wonder what would have happened if neither Napoleon or Hitler had made the foolish mistake of invading Russia.