Chapter XLII
Napoleon at St. Helena—The Briars—Longwood—Charges against the English Government respecting his accommodations and treatment at St. Helena—Charges against the Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe—Napoleon’s mode of life at Longwood—His Health falls off—His Death and Funeral—Conclusion.
Napoleon was weary of shipboard, and, therefore, landed immediately. Finding the curiosity of the people troublesome, he took up his quarters at The Briars, a small cottage about half a mile from James’s Town, during the interval which must needs elapse before the admiral could provide suitable accommodation for his permanent residence. For that purpose Longwood, a villa about six miles from James’s Town, was, after an examination of all that the island afforded, determined on; except Plantation House, the country residence of the governor, there was no superior house in St. Helena; and two months having been employed diligently in some additions and repairs, the fallen Emperor took possession of his appointed abode on the 10th of December. The very limited accommodation of the Briars (where, indeed, Napoleon merely occupied a pavilion of two chambers in the garden of a Mr. Balcombe), had hitherto prevented him from having, all his little suite of attendants under the same roof with him. They were now re-assembled at Longwood, with the exception of M. and Mme. Montholon, who occupied a separate house at some little distance from it. While at The Briars, Napoleon made himself eminently agreeable to the family of the Balcombes, particularly the young ladies and children, and submitted on the whole with temper and grace to the inconveniences of narrow accommodation in-doors, and an almost total want of exercise abroad—this last evil occasioned wholly by his own reluctance to ride out in the neighbourhood of the town. He continued also to live on terms of perfect civility with Sir George Cockburn; and, notwithstanding some occasional ebullitions of violence, there seemed to be no reason for doubting that, when fairly established with his suite about him, he would gradually reconcile himself to the situation in which he was likely to remain, and turn his powerful faculties upon some study or pursuit worthy of their energy, and capable of cheating captivity of half its bitterness. These anticipations were not realised.
The accusations brought by the prisoner and his instruments against the government of England, in regard to the accommodations at Longwood, the arrangements concerning the household establishment, and the regulations adopted with a view to the security of his person, have been so often answered in detail, that we may spare ourselves the pain of dwelling on transactions little worthy of filling a large space in the story of Napoleon. It being granted that it was necessary to provide against the evasion of Buonaparte; that the protracted separation from him of his wife and son (not, at any rate, the act of England, but of Austria) was in itself justified by obvious political considerations; and that England would have given good reason of offence to the King of France, had she complied with Napoleon’s repeated demands, to be styled and treated as Emperor—if these things be granted, we do not see how even the shadow of blame can attach to the much-abused ministers, on whom fortune threw one of the most delicate and thankless of all offices. His house was, save one (that of the governor), the best on the island: from the beginning it was signified that any alterations or additions, suggested by Napoleon, would be immediately attended to; and the framework of many apartments was actually prepared in England, to be sent out and distributed according to his pleasure. As it was, Napoleon had for his own immediate personal accommodation, a suite of rooms, consisting of a saloon, an eating-room, a library, a billiard-room, a small study, a bedroom, and a bathroom; and various English gentlemen, accustomed to all the appliances of modern luxury, who visited the exile of Longwood, concur in stating that the accommodations around him appeared to them every way complete and unobjectionable. He had a good collection of books, and the means of adding to these as much as he chose. His suite consisted in all of five gentlemen and two ladies: the superior French and Italian domestics about his own person were never fewer than eleven; and the sum allowed for his domestic expenditure was £12,000 per annum—the governor of St. Helena, moreover, having authority to draw on the treasury for any larger sum, in case he should consider £12,000 as insufficient. When we consider that wines, and most other articles heavily taxed in England, go duty-free to St. Helena, it is really intolerable to be told that this income was not adequate—nay, that it was not munificent—for a person in Napoleon’s situation. It was a larger income than is allotted to the governor of any English colony whatever, except the governor-general of India. It was twice as large as the official income of a British secretary of state has ever been. We decline entering at all into the minor charges connected with this humiliating subject: at least a single example may serve. One of the loudest complaints was about the deficiency and inferior quality of wine: on examination it appeared, that Napoleon’s upper domestics were allowed each day, per man, a bottle of claret, costing £6 per dozen (without duty) and the lowest menial employed at Longwood a bottle of good Teneriffe wine daily.—That the table of the fallen Emperor himself was always served in a style at least answerable to the dignity of a general officer in the British service—this was never even denied. Passing from the interior—we conceive that we cannot do better than quote the language of one of his casual and impartial visitors, Mr. Ellis. “There never, perhaps,” (says this gentleman), “was a prisoner, so much requiring to be watched and guarded, to whom so much liberty and range for exercise was allowed. With an officer he may go over any part of the island: wholly unobserved, his limits extend four miles—partially observed, eight—and overlooked twelve. At night the sentinels certainly close round Longwood itself.” It indeed appears impossible to conceive of a prisoner more liberally treated in all these respects. There remains the constantly repeated vituperation of the climate of St. Helena. It appears, however, by tables kept and published by Dr. Arnott, that the sick list of a regiment, stationed close to Buonaparte’s residence during his stay, rarely contained more than one name out of forty-five—a proportion which must be admitted to be most remarkably small. In effect, the house of Longwood stands 2000 feet above the level of the sea; the ocean breezes purify the air continually; and within the tropics there is probably no healthier situation whatever. If it be said that Napoleon should not have been confined within the tropics at all—it is answered that it was necessary to remove him from the neighbourhood of the countries in which his name was the watchword of rebellion and discord—and that, after all, Napoleon was a native of Corsica, one of the hottest climates in Europe, and was at all times, constitutionally, able to endure the extremes of heat much better than of cold—witness Egypt and Russia.
There was a rule that Napoleon’s correspondence should all pass through the hands of the governor of St. Helena—and this Sir Walter Scott condemns. Had the English government acted on the Buonapartean model, they would have made no such regulation, but taken the liberty of privately examining his letters, and resealing them, after the fashion of the post-office under Lavalette. It diminishes our regret when we learn from Sir Walter Scott’s next page, that, in spite of all laws and severities on this score, Napoleon and the companions of his exile contrived, from the beginning to the end, to communicate with their friends in Europe, without the supervision of any English authorities whatever.
The finishing touch is put to the picture of unworthy duplicity by one of Napoleon’s own followers, and most noisy champions, General Gourgaud. This gentleman himself informed the English government, that at the time when Napoleon, in order to create the notion that his supplies were restricted beyond all endurance, sent some plate to James’s Town to be broken up and sold, he, Napoleon, had in his strong box at Longwood at least £10,000 in gold coin.
There is one name which will descend to posterity laden with a tenfold portion of the abuse which Napoleon and his associates lavished on all persons connected in any degree with the superintendence and control of his captive condition—that of Sir Hudson Lowe, a general officer in the English army, who became governor of St. Helena in May, 1816, and continued to hold that situation down to the period of the ex-emperor’s death in 1821. The vanity of Napoleon appears to have been wounded from the beginning by this appointment. According to him, no person ought in decency to have been entrusted with the permanent care of his detention, but some English nobleman of the highest rank. The answer is very plain, that the situation was not likely to find favour in the eyes of any such person; and when one considers what the birth and manners of by far the greater number of Buonaparte’s own courtiers, peers and princes included, were, it is difficult to repress wonder in listening to this particular subject of complaint. Passing over this original quarrel—it appears that, according to Buonaparte’s own admission, Sir H. Lowe endeavoured, when he took his thankless office upon him, to place the intercourse between himself and his prisoner on a footing as gracious as could well be looked for under all the circumstances of the case; and that he, the ex-emperor, ere the governor had been a week at St. Helena, condescended to insult him to his face by language so extravagantly, intolerably, and vulgarly offensive, as never ought, under any circumstances whatever, to have stained the lips of one who made any pretension to the character of a gentleman. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe was not an officer of the first distinction—it must be admitted that he did no wrong in accepting a duty offered to him by his government; and that Napoleon was guilty, not only of indecorum, but of meanness, in reproaching a man so situated, as he did almost at their first interview, with the circumstances—of which at worst it could but be said that they were not splendid—of his previous life. But this is far too little. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe had been in history and in conduct, both before he came to St. Helena and during his stay there, all that the most ferocious libels of the Buonapartists have ever dared to say or to insinuate—it would still remain a theme of unmixed wonder and regret, that Napoleon Buonaparte should have stooped to visit on his head the wrongs which, if they were wrongs, proceeded not from the governor of St. Helena, but from the English ministry, whose servant he was. “I can only account,” says Mr. Ellis, “for his petulance and unfounded complaints from one of two motives—either he wishes by these means to keep alive an interest in Europe, and more especially in England, where he flatters himself he has a party; or his troubled mind finds an occupation in the tracasseries which his present conduct gives to the governor. If the latter be the case, it is in vain for any governor to unite being on good terms with him to the performance of his duty.”
Napoleon did everything he could to irritate this unfortunate governor. He called him scrivener, thieftaker, liar, hangman; rejected all his civilities as insults; encouraged his attendants to rival in these particulars the audacity of his own language and conduct; refused by degrees to take the exercise which his health required, on pretext that it did him more harm than good when he knew himself to be riding within view of English sentinels (which was not necessary at all within four miles of Longwood), or attended by an English officer—which was not necessary unless at the distance of twelve miles from Longwood: above all, opposed every obstacle to the enforcement of that most proper regulation which made it necessary that his person should, once in every twenty-four hours, be visible to some British officer. In a word, Napoleon Buonaparte bent the whole energies of his mighty intellect to the ignoble task of tormenting Sir Hudson Lowe; and the extremities of degradation to which these efforts occasionally reduced himself, in the eyes of his own attendants, are such as we dare not particularise, and as will be guessed by no one who has not read the memoir of his Italian doctor, Antommarchi.
Meantime, the great object was effectually attained. The wrongs of Napoleon, the cold cruelty of the English government, and the pestilent petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, were the perpetual themes of table-talk all over Europe. There were statesmen of high rank in either house of the British parliament, who periodically descanted on these topics—and the answers as often elicited from the ministers of the crown, only silenced such declamations for the moment, that they might be renewed with increased violence after time had elapsed sufficient to allow the news to come back to England with the comments of Longwood. The utter impossibility of an escape from St. Helena was assumed on all such occasions, with the obvious inference that there could be no use for sentinels and domiciliary visitations at Longwood, except for the gratification of malignant power. But it is now ascertained, that, throughout the whole period of the detention, schemes of evasion were in agitation at St. Helena, and that agents were busy, sometimes in London, more frequently in North America, with preparations which had no other object in view. A steamship, halting just beyond the line of sight, might undoubtedly have received Napoleon at certain seasons of the year without difficulty, could he only contrive to elude the nocturnal vigilance of the sentinels about the house of Longwood: and that this was impossible, or even difficult, General Gourgaud himself does not hesitate to deny. The rumours of these plots reached from time to time Sir Hudson Lowe; and, quickening of course his fears and his circumspection, kept the wounds of jealousy and distrust continually open and angry.
There were moments, however, in which Napoleon appeared, to persons likely to influence public feeling in Europe by their reports, in attitudes of a far different description. When strangers of eminence (generally officers on their way to or from India), halting at St. Helena, requested and obtained permission to pay their respects at Longwood, Napoleon received them, for the most part, with the ease and dignity of a man superior to adversity. It was by these worthier exhibitions that the fallen Emperor earned the lofty eulogy of Byron:
“—Well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide,
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.”
Among the visitors now alluded to was Captain Basil Hall: and he has, perhaps, presented the world with the most graphic sketch of Napoleon as he appeared on such occasions at Longwood. “Buonaparte” (says this traveller) “struck me (Aug. 13, 1817) as differing considerably from all the pictures and busts I had seen of him. His face and figure looked much broader and more square—larger, indeed, in every way, than any representation I had met with. His corpulency, at this time reported to be excessive, was by no means remarkable. His flesh looked, on the contrary, firm and muscular. There was not the least trace of colour in his cheeks; in fact, his skin was more like marble than ordinary flesh. Not the smallest wrinkle was discernible on his brow, nor an approach to a furrow on any part of his countenance. His health and spirits, judging from appearances, were excellent; though, at this period, it was generally believed in England that he was fast sinking under a complication of diseases, and that his spirits were entirely gone. His manner of speaking was rather slow than otherwise, and perfectly distinct: and he waited with great patience and kindness for my answers to his questions. The brilliant and sometimes dazzling expression of his eye could not be overlooked. It was not, however, a permanent lustre, for it was only remarkable when he was excited by some point of particular interest. It is impossible to imagine an expression of more entire mildness, I may almost call it of benignity and kindliness, than that which played over his features during the whole interview. If, therefore, he was at this time out of health and in low spirits, his power of self-command must have been even more extraordinary than is generally supposed; for his whole deportment, his conversation, and the expression of his face, indicated a frame in perfect health, and a mind at ease.”
These favourable reports from seemingly impartial witnesses, lent new wings to the tale of Sir Hudson Lowe’s oppression; and perhaps the exile of St. Helena continued to fill a larger space in the eye of the world at large, than had ever before fallen to the lot of one removed for ever, to all appearance, from the great theatre of human passions. It was then that Lord Byron thus apostrophised him:
“Conqueror and Captive of the Earth art thou!
She trembles at thee still—and thy wild name
Was ne’er more bruited in men’s minds than now
That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who woo’d thee once, thy vassal and became
The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
A god unto thyself—nor less the same
To the astounded kingdoms all inert,
Who deemed thee for a time whate’er thou didst assert.”
And it was then that an English nobleman of high rank, who throughout manifested especial interest in the fortunes of Napoleon, inscribed his statue (in the gardens of Holland House) with the lines of Homer:
Οὐ γαρ πω τεθνηκεν ἐπι χθονι δῐος Ὀδυσσευς,
Αλλ’ ἐτι πω ζωος κατερυκεται εὐρεϊ ποντῳ
Νησῳ ἐν ἀμφιρυτῃ· χαλεποι δε μιν ἀνδρες ἐχουσιν.74
In ordinary times, the course of Napoleon’s life at Longwood appears to have been as follows. He rose early, and, as soon as he was out of bed, either mounted on horseback, or began to dictate some part of the history of his life to Montholon or Gourgaud. He breakfasted à la fourchette, sometimes alone, sometimes with his suite, between 10 and 11 o’clock; read or dictated until between 2 and 3, when he received such visitors as he chose to admit. He then rode out, either on horseback or in his carriage, for a couple of hours, attended generally by all his suite; then read or dictated again until near eight, at which hour dinner was served. He preferred plain food, and ate plentifully. A few glasses of claret, less than an English pint, were taken during dinner; and a cup of coffee concluded the second and last meal of the day, as the first. A single glass of champagne, or any stronger wine, was sufficient to call the blood into his cheek. His constitutional delicacy of stomach, indeed, is said to have been such, that it was at all times actually impossible for him to indulge any of the coarser appetites of our nature to excess. He took, however, great quantities of snuff. A game of chess, a French tragedy read aloud, or conversation, closed the evening. The habits of his life had taught him to need but little sleep, and to take this by starts; and he generally had some one to read to him after he went to bed at night, as is common with those whose pillows are pressed by anxious heads.
Napoleon was elaborately careful of his person. He loved the bath, and took it at least once every day. His dress at St. Helena was generally the same which he had worn at the Tuileries as Emperor—viz. the green uniform, faced with red, of the chasseurs of the guard, with the star and cordon of the Legion of Honour. His suite to the last continued to maintain around him, as far as was possible, the style and circumstance of his court.
As early as the battle of Waterloo, reports were prevalent in France that Napoleon’s health was declining; yet we have already seen that, so late as April, 1817, no symptom of bodily illness could be traced in his external appearance. From this time, however, his attendants continued to urge, with increasing vehemence, the necessity of granting more indulgence, in consequence of the shattered condition of his constitution: and, although such suggestions were, for obvious reasons, listened to at first with considerable suspicion, there can be little doubt now, that in this matter the fame of Longwood spake truth.
Dr. Arnott, an English physician, already referred to, who attended on Napoleon’s death-bed, has informed us that he himself frequently reverted to the fact, that his father died of scirrhus of the pylorus. “We have high authority” (says this writer) “that this affection of the stomach cannot be produced without a considerable predisposition of the parts to disease. If, then, it should be admitted that a previous disposition of the parts to this disease did exist, might not the depressing passions of the mind act as an exciting cause? It is more than probable that Napoleon Buonaparte’s mental sufferings in St. Helena were very poignant. By a man of such unbounded ambition, and who had once aimed at universal dominion, captivity must have been severely felt. I can safely assert, that any one of temperate habits, who is not exposed to much bodily exertion, night air, and atmospherical changes, may have as much immunity from disease in St. Helena as in Europe; and I may, therefore, further assert, that the disease of which Buonaparte died was not the effect of climate.”—It is added, that out of all Napoleon’s family, which, including English and Chinese servants, amounted to fifty persons, only one individual died during the five years of their stay in St. Helena, and this man, an Italian major-domo, had brought the seeds of consumption with him from Europe.
In March, 1817, Lord Holland made a solemn appeal to the British Parliament on the subject of Napoleon’s treatment, and was answered by Lord Bathurst—in such a manner that not one could be found to second him. The intelligence of this appears to have exerted a powerful influence on the spirits of the captive. It was about the 25th of September 1818, that his health began to be affected in a manner sufficient to excite alarm in Dr. O’Meara, who informed him, that unless he took regular exercise out of doors (which of late he had seldom done), the progress of the evil would be rapid. Napoleon declared, in answer, that he would never more take exercise while exposed to the challenge of sentinels. The physician stated, that if he persisted, the end would be fatal. “I shall have this consolation at least,” answered he, “that my death will be an eternal dishonour to the English nation, who sent me to this climate to die under the hands of....” O’Meara again represented the consequences of his obstinacy. “That which is written, is written,” said Napoleon, looking up, “our days are reckoned.”
Shortly after this, O’Meara—being detected in a suspicious correspondence with one Holmes, Napoleon’s pecuniary agent in London—was sent home by Sir Hudson Lowe; and, Napoleon declining to receive any physician of the governor’s nomination instead, an Italian, by name Antommarchi, was sent out by his sister Pauline. With this doctor there came also two Italian priests, whose presence Napoleon himself had solicited, and selected by his uncle, Cardinal Fesch.
His obstinate refusal to take bodily exercise might have sprung in some measure from internal and indescribable sensations. To all Antommarchi’s medical prescriptions, he opposed the like determination. “Doctor,” he said (14th October 1820), “no physicking; we are a machine made to live; we are organised for that purpose, and such is our nature; do not counteract the living principle—let it alone—leave it the liberty of self-defence—it will do better than your drugs. Our body is a watch, intended to go for a given time. The watchmaker cannot open it, and must work at random. For once that he relieves or assists it by his crooked instruments, he injured it ten times, and at last destroys it.”
With the health of Napoleon his mind sank also. Some fishes in a pond in the garden at Longwood had attracted his notice; a deleterious substance happened to mix with the water—they sickened and died. “Everything I love,” said Napoleon, “everything that belongs to me—is stricken. Heaven and mankind unite to afflict me.” Fits of long silence and profound melancholy were now frequent. “In those days,” he once said aloud, in a reverie, “In those days I was Napoleon. Now I am nothing—my strength, my faculties forsake me—I no longer live, I only exist.”
When Sir Hudson Lowe was made aware of the condition of the captive, he informed the government at home; and by his Majesty’s desire, authority was immediately given for removing to St. Helena from the Cape, any medical officer on whom Napoleon’s choice might fall. This despatch did not, however, reach St. Helena, until Napoleon had breathed his last.
About the middle of April, 1821, the disease assumed such an appearance, that Dr. Antommarchi became very anxious to have the advice of some English physician, and the patient at length consented to admit the visits of Dr. Arnott, already referred to. But this gentleman also was heard in vain urging the necessity of medical applications. “Quod scriptum scriptum,” once more answered Napoleon; “our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.”
From the 15th to the 25th of April, Napoleon occupied himself with drawing up his last will—in which he bequeathed his orders, and a specimen of every article in his wardrobe, to his son. On the 18th he gave directions for opening his body after death, expressing a special desire that his stomach should be scrutinised, and its appearances communicated to his son. “The vomitings,” he said, “which succeed one another without interruption, seem to show that of all my organs the stomach is the most diseased. I am inclined to believe it is attacked with the disorder which killed my father—a scirrhus in the pylorus—the physicians of Montpelier prophesied it would be hereditary in our family.” He also gave directions to the priest Vignali as to the manner in which he wished his body to be laid out in a chambre ardente (a state-room lighted with torches). “I am neither an atheist,” said Napoleon, “nor a rationalist; I believe in God, and am of the religion of my father. I was born a Catholic, and will fulfil all the duties of that church, and receive the assistance which she administers.”
On the 3rd of May it became evident that the scene was near its close. The attendants would fain have called in more medical men; but they durst not, knowing his feelings on this head: “Even had he been speechless,” said one of them, “we could not have brooked his eye.” The last sacraments of the church were now administered by Vignali. He lingered on thenceforth in a delirious stupor. On the 4th the island was swept by a tremendous storm, which tore up almost all the trees about Longwood by the roots. The 5th was another day of tempests; and about six in the evening, Napoleon—having pronounced the words “tête d’armée,” passed for ever from the dreams of battle.
On the 6th of May the body being opened by Antommarchi, in the presence of five British medical men, and a number of the military officers of the garrison, as well as Bertrand and Montholon, the cause of death was sufficiently manifest. A cancerous ulcer occupied almost the whole of the stomach.
Napoleon desired in his will, that his body should be buried “on the banks of the Seine; among the French people, whom he had loved so well.” Sir Hudson Lowe could not, of course, expect the King of France to permit this to take place; and a grave was prepared among some weeping willows beside a fountain, in a small valley called Slane’s, very near to Longwood. It was under the shade of these willows that the Exile had had his favourite evening seat; and it was there he had been heard to say, that if he must be interred in St. Helena, he would prefer to lie.
The body of the Emperor, clad in his usual uniform, was now exposed to the public view, and visited accordingly by all the population of the island. The soldiers of the garrison passed the couch slowly, in single file; each officer pausing, in his turn, to press respectfully the frozen hand of the dead. On the 8th, his household, the governor, the admiral, and all the civil and military authorities of the place, attended him to the grave—the pall spread over his coffin being the military cloak which he wore at Marengo. The road not being passable for carriages, a party of English grenadiers bore Napoleon to his tomb. The admiral’s ship fired minute guns, while Vignali read the service of his church. The coffin then descended amidst a discharge of three volleys from fifteen cannon; and a huge stone was lowered over the remains of one who needs no epitaph.
Napoleon confessed more than once at Longwood that he owed his downfall to nothing but the extravagance of his own errors. “It must be owned,” said he, “that fortune spoiled me. Ere I was thirty years of age, I found myself invested with great power, and the mover of great events.” No one, indeed, can hope to judge him fairly, either in the brilliancy of his day or the troubled darkness of his evening, who does not task imagination to conceive the natural effects, on a temperament and genius so fiery and daring, of that almost instantaneous transition from poverty and obscurity to the summit of fame, fortune, and power. The blaze which dazzled other men’s eyes, had fatal influence on his. He began to believe that there was something superhuman in his own faculties, and that he was privileged to deny that any laws were made for him. Obligations by which he expected all besides to be fettered, he considered himself entitled to snap and trample. He became a deity to himself; and expected mankind not merely to submit to, but to admire and reverence, the actions of a demon. Well says the Poet,
“O! more or less than man—in high or low,
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs’ necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,
However deeply in, men’s spirits skilled,
Look through thine own—nor curb the lust of war,
Nor learn that tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.”
His heart was naturally cold. His school-companion, who was afterwards his secretary, confesses that, even in the spring of youth, he was very little disposed to form friendships.75 To say that he was incapable of such feelings, or that he really never had a friend, would be to deny to him any part in the nature and destiny of his species.—No one ever dared to be altogether alone in the world.—But we doubt if any man ever passed through life, sympathising so slightly with mankind; and the most wonderful part of his story is, the intensity of sway which he exerted over the minds of those in whom he so seldom permitted himself to contemplate anything more than the tools of his own ambition. So great a spirit must have had glimpses of whatever adorns and dignifies the character of man. But with him the feelings which bind love played only on the surface—leaving the abyss of selfishness untouched. His one instrument of power was genius; hence his influence was greatest among those who had little access to observe, closely and leisurely, the minutiæ of his personal character and demeanour. The exceptions to this rule were very few.
Pride and vanity were strangely mingled in his composition. Who does not pity the noble chamberlain that confesses his blood to have run cold when he heard Napoleon—seated at dinner at Dresden among a circle of crowned heads—begin a story with, When I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere? Who does not pity Napoleon when he is heard speaking of some decorations in the Tuileries, as having taken place “in the time of the king, my uncle?”76
This last weakness was the main engine of his overthrow. When he condescended to mimic all the established etiquettes of feudal monarchy—when he coined titles and lavished stars, and sought to melt his family into the small circle of hereditary princes—he adopted the surest means which could have been devised for alienating from himself the affections of all the men of the revolution, the army alone excepted, and for re-animating the hopes and exertions of the Bourbonists. It is clear that thenceforth he leaned almost wholly on the soldiery. No civil changes could after this affect his real position. Oaths and vows, charters and concessions, all were alike in vain. When the army was humbled and weakened in 1814, he fell from his throne, without one voice being lifted up in his favour. The army was no sooner strengthened, and re-encouraged, then it recalled him. He re-ascended the giddy height, with the daring step of a hero, and professed his desire to scatter from it nothing but justice and mercy. But no man trusted his words. His army was ruined at Waterloo; and the brief day of the second reign passed, without a twilight, into midnight.
We are not yet far enough from Buonaparte to estimate the effects of his career. He recast the art of war; and was conquered in the end by men who had caught wisdom and inspiration from his own campaigns. He gave both permanency and breadth to the influence of the French Revolution. His reign, short as it was, was sufficient to make it impossible that the offensive privileges of caste should ever be revived in France; and, this iniquity being once removed, there could be little doubt that such a nation would gradually acquire possession of a body of institutions worthy of its intelligence. Napoleon was as essentially, and irreclaimably, a despot, as a warrior; but his successor, whether a Bourbon or a Buonaparte, was likely to be a constitutional sovereign. The tyranny of a meaner hand would not have been endured after that precedent.
On Europe at large he has left traces of his empire, not less marked or important. He broke down the barriers everywhere of custom and prejudice; and revolutionised the spirit of the Continent. His successes and his double downfall taught absolute princes their weakness and injured nations their strength. Such hurricanes of passion as the French Revolution—such sweeping scourges of mankind as Napoleon Buonaparte, are not permitted but as the avengers of great evils, and the harbingers of great good. Of the influence of both, as regards the continent, it may be safely said—that even now we have seen only “the beginning of the end.” The reigning sovereigns of Europe are, with rare exceptions, benevolent and humane men; and their subjects, no less than they, ought to remember the lesson of all history—that violent and sudden changes, in the structure of social and political order, have never yet occurred, without inflicting utter misery upon at least one generation.
It was England that fought the great battle throughout on the same principle, without flinching; and, but for her perseverance, all the rest would have struggled in vain. It is to be hoped that the British nation will continue to see, and to reverence, in the contest and in its result, the immeasurable advantages which the sober strength of a free but fixed constitution possesses over the mad energies of anarchy on the one hand, and, on the other, over all that despotic selfishness can effect, even under the guidance of the most consummate genius.
Footnotes
1 Rodolph of Hapsburg was the founder of the Austrian family.
2 His first battle.
3 Napoleon, with his stockings about his heels, makes love to Giacominetta.
4 Corsica became by law a French department only two months before Napoleon was born.
5 The report, in consequence of which Buonaparte received this distinction, is in these words: “M. de Buonaparte (Napoleon), born the 15th August, 1769, height four feet ten inches ten lines; good constitution; health excellent; character docile, upright, grateful; conduct very regular: has always distinguished himself by his application to the mathematics. He is passably acquainted with history and geography: is weak enough as to his Latin diction and other elegant accomplishments: would make an excellent sea-officer: deserves to be transferred to the Military School at Paris.”
6 De Bourienne.
7 According to some, the last clause ran “die in an hospital,” and this was in the sequel interpreted to mean Malmaison—a palace which (like our own St. James’s) had once been an hospital.
8 Berthier used to keep, as a curiosity, a general order, by which three louis-d’or were granted as a great supply to each general of division, dated on the very day of the victory at Albegna.
9 The same who became afterwards Louis XVIII. of France.
10 Vallette was cashiered. Augereau was afterwards created Duke of Castiglione, in memory of this exploit.
11 Buonaparte, to replace all his losses in the two last campaigns, had received only 7000 recruits.
12 He found among them a wealthy old canon of his own name, who was proud to hail the Corsican as a true descendant of the Tuscan Buonapartes; who entertained him and his whole staff with much splendour; amused the general with his anxiety that some interest should be applied to the Pope, in order to procure the canonisation of a certain long defunct worthy of the common lineage, by name Buonventara Buonaparte; and dying shortly afterwards, bequeathed his whole fortune to his new-found kinsman.
13 Hence, in the sequel, Massena’s title, “Duke of Rivoli.”
14 Such was the prevailing terror, that one body of 6000 under René surrendered to a French officer who had hardly 500 men with him.
15 The priests had an image of the Virgin Mary at this place, which they exhibited to the people in the act of shedding tears, the more to stimulate them against the impious Republicans. On entering the place, the French were amused with discovering the machinery by which this trick had been performed; the Madonna’s tears were a string of glass beads, flowing by clockwork within a shrine which the worshippers were too respectful to approach very nearly. Little ormolu fountains, which stream on the same principle, are now common ornaments for the chimney-piece in Paris.
16 The Santa Casa, or holy house of Loretto, is a little brick building, round which a magnificent church has been reared, and which the Romish calendar states to have been the original dwelling-house of the Virgin Mary in Nazareth, transported through the air to Italy by miracle. This was for ages the chief resort of Romish pilgrims, and the riches of the place were once enormous.
17 The armorial bearing of Venice.
18 Moreau knew it some months sooner, and said so after Napoleon had communicated it to the Directory. This is a suspicious circumstance when considered along with the sequel of Moreau’s history.
19 Mantua, as will appear hereafter, was saved to France under Napoleon’s final treaty with Austria; but the events which rendered this possible were as yet unknown and unexpected.
20 It would be painful to show, as might easily be done, from this correspondence, the original want of delicacy in Napoleon’s mind. Many of his letters are such as no English gentleman would address to a mistress. In others, the language is worthy of a hero’s passion. “Wurmser,” says he, “shall pay dearly for the tears he causes you to shed.”
21 A silversmith, who had given him credit when he set out to Italy for a dressing-case worth £50, was rewarded with all the business which the recommendation of his now illustrious debtor could bring to him; and, being clever in his trade, became ultimately, under the patronage of the imperial household, one of the wealthiest citizens of Paris. A little hatter, and a cobbler, who had served Buonaparte when a subaltern, might have risen in the same manner, had their skill equalled the silversmith’s. Not even Napoleon’s example could persuade the Parisians to wear ill-shaped hats and clumsy boots; but he, in his own person, adhered, to the last, to his original connection with these poor artisans.
22 The Directory broke off the negotiation in a most insolent manner, by ordering Lord Malmesbury to quit France within twenty-four hours: this they did in their exultation after the 18th Fructidor.
23 Before leaving Paris, Buonaparte ordered his secretary to prepare a camp library, of small volumes, arranged under the different heads of Science, Geography and Travels, History, Poetry, Romance, Politics. The “works on Politics” are six in number: viz. Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, a compendium of Mythology, the Vedam, the Koran, and the Old and New Testaments—all in French.
24 At this period Egypt, though nominally governed by a pacha appointed by the Grand Seignior, was in reality in the hands of the Mamelukes; a singular body of men, who paid but little respect to any authority but that of their own chiefs. Of these chiefs or beys there were twenty-four; each one of whom ruled over a separate district; who often warred with each other; and were as often in rebellion against their nominal sovereign. According to the institutions of the Mamelukes their body was recruited solely by boys, chiefly of European birth, taken captive, and brought up from their earliest days in all military exercises. These were promoted according to their merits; it being the custom that when a bey died, the bravest of his band succeeded him. The Mamelukes thus formed a separate caste; and they oppressed most cruelly the population of the country which had fallen into their keeping. The fellahs, or poor Arabs, who cultivate the soil, being compelled to pay exorbitantly for permission to do so, suffered the extreme of misery in the midst of great natural wealth. The Cophts, supposed to be descended from the ancient Egyptian nation, discharged most civil functions under the Mamelukes, and had the trades and professions in their hands, but they also were oppressed intolerably by those haughty and ferocious soldiers.
The Mamelukes were considered by Napoleon to be, individually, the finest cavalry in the world. They rode the noblest horses of Arabia, and were armed with the best weapons which the world could produce: carbines, pistols, etc., from England, and sabres of the steel of Damascus. Their skill in horsemanship was equal to their fiery valour. With that cavalry and the French infantry, Buonaparte said, it would be easy to conquer the world.
25 This manœuvre was first practised on the 12th of August, 1782, by Lord Rodney’s fleet; and, as appears to be now settled, at the suggestion of that admiral’s captain of the fleet, the late Sir Charles Douglas, Bart.
26 See the admirable Life of Nelson, by Southey; which will form one of the volumes of this Library.
27 Djezzar means butcher: he had well earned this title by the mercilessness of his administration.
28 Sir Sydney Smith, having been taken prisoner and most unjustifiably confined by the French government in the dungeons of the Temple, had made his escape through the zeal of certain of the royalist party, and chiefly of Philippeaux.
29 The handsome swordsman—i.e. Murat.
30 De Bourienne, whose curious work has appeared since the first edition of this narrative was published, confirms this statement of Napoleon: but Napoleon, it is obvious, might have received letters which he did not choose to communicate to his secretary.
31 Crabbe.
32 The morning after the constitution was announced, the streets of Paris were placarded with the following pasquil:—
POLITICAL SUBTRACTION.
From 5 Directors
Take 2
——
There remain 3 Consuls
From them take 2
——
And there remains 1 Buonaparte.
This sufficiently expresses what was considered to be the essence of the new constitution.
33 When he wrote from Clagenfurt to the Archduke Charles.
34 Byron’s “Manfred.”
35 The worthy Hospitallers of St. Bernard have stationed themselves on that wild eminence, for the purpose of alleviating the misery of travellers lost or bewildered amidst the neighbouring defiles. They entertain a pack of dogs, of extraordinary sagacity, who roam over the hills night and day, and frequently drag to light and safety pilgrims who have been buried in the snow.
36 The following anecdote is given by Dumas:—“On one of these occasions, when a desperate attack was led on by Soult, there occurred a circumstance as honourable as it was characteristic of the spirit which animated the French. The soldiers of two regiments or demi-brigades, of the army of Italy, namely, the 25th Light, and the 24th of the Line, had sworn eternal enmity against one another, because that, previous to the opening of the campaign, when desertion and all the evils of insubordination prevailed in that army, disorganised by suffering, the former, in which discipline had been maintained, was employed to disarm the latter. The utmost care had been taken to keep them separate; but it so happened that these two corps found themselves one day made rivals as it were in valour, the one before the eyes of the other. The same dangers, the same thirst of glory, the same eagerness to maintain themselves, at once renewed in all hearts generous sentiments; the soldiers became instantly intermingled; they embraced in the midst of the fire, and one half of the one corps passing into the ranks of the other, they renewed the combat, after the exchange, with double ardour.”
37 Sept. 5, 1800.
38 The man took the noise for that of a salute.
39 “Napoleon dropped the u in his surname after his first campaign in Italy.”—Bourienne.
40 The poet Campbell has vividly painted the opening of the great battle which followed.
“On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser rolling rapidly:
But Linden saw another sight
When the drums beat at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery,” &c.
41 For the details of the battle of Copenhagen see Southey’s Life of Nelson. That conflict has been celebrated, in a noble lyric, by Campbell—
“Of Nelson and the North
Sing the glorious day’s renown,
When to the battle fierce came forth
All the might of Denmark’s crown,” &c.
42 See Wordsworth’s verses, “written at Calais the 15th Aug. 1802,” in which the indifference of the people is contrasted with their enthusiasm in the early days of the Revolution.
“Festivals have I seen that were not names:—
This is young Buonaparte’s natal day;
And his is henceforth an established sway,
Consul for life. With worship France proclaims
Her approbation, and with pomps and games
Heaven grant that other cities may be gay!
Calais is not: and I have bent my way
To the sea coast, noting that each man frames
His business as he likes. Another time
That was, when I was here long years ago,
The senselessness of joy was then sublime!” &c.
43 Witness, among other evidences, the noble sonnet of Wordsworth:—
“Toussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!
Whether the all-cheering sun be free to shed
His beams around thee, or thou rest thy head
Pillowed in some dark dungeon’s noisome den
O, miserable chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience! Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen Thyself, never to rise again,
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee—Air, Earth, and Skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common Wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great Allies;
Thy friends are Exultations, Agonies,
And Love, and Man’s unconquerable Mind.”
44 See Wordsworth’s sonnet, “22nd Sept. 1802.”
“We had a fellow-passenger who came
From Calais with us, gaudy in array,—
A Negro Woman like a Lady gay,
Yet silent as a woman fearing blame;
Dejected, meek, yet pitiably tame,
She sate, from notice turning not away,
But on our proffered kindness still did lay
A weight of languid speech, or at the same
Was silent, motionless in eyes and face,
She was a Negro Woman, driven from France—
Rejected, like all others of that race,
Not one of whom may now find footing there;
Thus the poor outcast did to us declare,
Nor murmured at the unfeeling Ordinance.”
45 Afterwards Sir James.
46 It was by this book that the two dark stories of Jaffa were first promulgated through Europe: and it is proper to add, that Sir R. Wilson publicly presented a copy to George III. at his levee.
47 To this period belong Sir W. Scott’s song to the Edinburgh Volunteers:—
“If ever breath of British gale
Shall fan the tricolor,
Or footstep of invader rude,
With rapine foul and red with blood,
Pollute our happy shore—
Then farewell home! and farewell friends!
Adieu each tender tie!
Resolved, we mingle in the tide
Where charging squadron furious ride,
To conquer or to die,” &c.
And various sonnets of Mr. Wordsworth; such as—
“It is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom,” &c.
“Vanguard of liberty! ye men of Kent,
Ye children of a soil that doth advance
Its haughty brow against the coast of France,
Now is the time to prove your hardiment!” &c.
48 This account was published more than twenty years afterwards, in consequence of a pamphlet by Savary (Duke of Rovigo).
49 About a year afterwards Captain Wright was found dead in his dungeon in the Temple, with his throat cut from ear to ear. This mystery has hitherto remained in equal darkness; but Buonaparte was far from Paris at the period of Wright’s death, and, under all the circumstances of the case, there seems to be no reason for supposing that he could have had any concern in that tragedy.
50 i.e. Kill-king.
51 “Lamented hero! when to Britain’s shore
Exulting Fame those awful tidings bore,
Joy’s bursting shout in whelming grief was drowned
And Victory’s self unwilling audience found;
On every brow the cloud of sadness hung;
The sounds of triumph died on every tongue.
Yet not the vows thy weeping country pays;
Not that high meed, thy mourning sovereign’s praise,
Not that the great, the beauteous, and the brave
Bend in mute reverence o’er thy closing grave;
That with such grief as bathes a kindred bier
Collective nations mourn a death so dear;
Not these alone shall soothe thy sainted shade,
And consecrate the spot where thou art laid—
Not these alone!—but bursting thro’ the gloom,
With radiant glory from thy trophied tomb,
The sacred splendour of thy deathless name
Shall grace and guard thy country’s martial fame;
Far seen shall blaze the unextinguished ray,
A mighty beacon lighting glory’s way—
With living lustre this proud land adorn,
And shine, and save, thro’ ages yet unborn.”52
52 “Ulm and Trafalgar,” a poem, by the Rt. Honourable George Canning.
53 Published 27th July, 1806.
54 Afterwards third Marquis of Hertford.
55 Afterwards sixth Earl of Carlisle.
56 Kosciusko himself subsequently disavowed any knowledge of the production.
57 Afterwards first Earl Granville.
58 Colonel Napier, p. 25.
59 Col. Napier, chap. i.
60 The leopards had been changed into lions in the English shield five hundred years before this! To such small matters could Buonaparte’s rancour stoop.
61 This officer had been born and educated in Germany. He was descended from an ancient Scottish family, exiled for adherence to the Stuarts, in 1715.
62 He was rescued in Poland by a party of Cossacks.
63 Hoffman’s Account of his own Life.
64 Blucher was created Prince of Wahlstadt.
65 Now Lord Lynedoch.
66 An English détenu, who was then in Paris, says: “During the battle, the Boulevard des Italiens and the Caffé Tortoni were thronged with fashionable loungers of both sexes, sitting as usual on the chairs placed there, and appearing almost uninterested spectators of the number of wounded French brought in. The officers were carried on mattresses. About two o’clock a general cry of sauve qui peut was heard on the boulevards, from the Porte St. Martin to Les Italiens; this caused a general and confused flight, which spread like the undulations of a wave, even beyond the Pont Neuf.... During the whole of the battle wounded soldiers crawled into the streets, and lay down to die on the pavement.... The Moniteur of this day was a full sheet; but no notice was taken of the war, or the army. Four columns were occupied by an article on the dramatic works of Denis, and three with a dissertation on the existence of Troy.”—Memorable Events in Paris in 1814, p. 93.
67 When the King first came to Paris, there appeared a caricature representing an eagle flying away from the Tuileries, and a brood of porkers entering the gate; and His Majesty was commonly called by the rabble, not Louis dix huit, but Louis Cochon (the pig), or Louis des huîtres (of the oysters).
68 The Emperor Alexander alone preserved perfect self-possession; and, turning to the Duke of Wellington, exclaimed “Eh bien, Wellington, c’est à vous encore une fois sauver le monde.”
69 The allusion is to Marmont’s conduct at Essonne, and Augereau’s hasty abandonment of Lyons when the Austrians approached it in March, 1814.
70 Napoleon took the idea and name of this assembly from the history of the early Gauls.
71 By this contemptuous name his soldiery designated all who had never borne arms. The word dropt once from the lips of one of Napoleon’s marshals in the hearing of Talleyrand, who asked its meaning. “Nous nommons pequin,” answered the rude soldier, “tout ce qui n’est pas militaire.”—“Ah!” said the cool Talleyrand—“comme nous nommons militaire tout ce qui n’est pas civil.”
72 The fiction of the Duke of Wellington having been surprised on this great occasion has maintained its place in almost all narratives of the war for fifteen years. The Duke’s magnanimous silence under such treatment for so long a period will be appreciated by posterity. The facts of the case are now given from the most unquestionable authority.
73 The fact of Wellington and Blucher having met between the battles of Ligny and Waterloo is well known to many of the superior officers then in the Netherlands; but the writer of this compendium has never happened to see it mentioned in print. The horse that carried the Duke of Wellington through this long night journey, so important to the decisive battle of the 18th, remained till lately, it is understood, if he does not still remain, a free pensioner in the best paddock of Strathfieldsaye.
74 “The godlike Ulysses is not yet dead upon the earth;
He still lingers a living captive within the breadth of ocean,
In some unapproachable island, where savage men detain him.”
Odyss. book i. ver. 195.
75 Très peu aimant.
76 Louis XVI.!—married to the aunt of Maria Louisa—See Bourienne.