the last four years; and two Corsicans who, in the hurry of departure,
Napoleon had pressed into his service, thereby linking up the island of
his birth with the island of his latter days. These servants never have
any dealings with the English foe, who would gladly draw their secrets
from them. Cipriani has a special reason for his reticence: as sergeant
he had seized Capri from the governor of Capri who to-day is governor
of St. Helena. Santini occasionally asks for a day off in order to go
shooting. But his sport is soon stopped when the fact gets known that he
intends to shoot “that monster, the governor,” and then to put a bullet
through his own head.
The Emperor sternly forbids his man to contemplate any such deed, for who
in Europe would not immediately cast suspicion on himself? But when the
servant has withdrawn, the master thinks indulgently: “We Corsicans are
all like that!”
XI
A lean, middle-aged man with restless movements, red-haired, freckled,
with a large brown patch on the cheek; his throat is stringy; he has pale
golden eyebrows shading eyes which can look no one in the face; he is
clad in a British uniform—such is the governor of the prison.
He lives in a fine country house, in the most sheltered part of the
island, with a garden which is the oldest and most luxuriant in St.
Helena. When he pays his first visit to Longwood, the Emperor says:
“Execrable! A real hang-dog face, like that of a Venetian sbirro. He
glared at me with the eye of a hyena caught in a trap. Perhaps he is my
executioner.”
It was not Sir Hudson Lowe’s position which made him seem so obnoxious to
the prisoner, who was on excellent terms with two or three army officers
and with the admiral. But Lowe had been an English Fouché on the small
scale, had been chief of the spy service in Italy, and had taken over his
present delicate task in Fouché’s spirit. It was true that the peace of
Europe depended on his watchfulness; and since, in Europe, people loved
sleep more than greatness, one section of the public was hounding Lowe on
to be brutal.
The English press was describing the prisoner in atrocious terms. One of
the most noted of English journals pilloried him as the murderer of the
Jaffa prisoners, described his sisters as whores, and spoke of Murat as
a waiter; a special law was passed to make any attempt at freeing him
a capital offence, with the proviso that the offender would be denied
spiritual consolation on the way to execution; the prince regent was
said to have “besmirched his name” by presenting some fowling-pieces to
Napoleon. The honour of England is saved only by the Whigs; and by the
formal protest of two members of the House of Peers, the duke of Sussex
and Lord Holland. Lady Holland ventures to send the Emperor books and
fruit; another noblewoman, who in earlier days had wanted to raise a
corps of amazons against him, now boldly espouses his cause in London; a
great English lawyer writes twenty-one theses to prove that Napoleon’s
detention after peace has been signed is illegal; Thomas Moore and Lord
Byron save England’s credit before the tribunal of history. Germany’s
good fame is rescued by the fierce attacks upon Lowe in the German press,
attacks that go on for years.
The governor is attacked because he has turned the whole island into a
prison. He has issued regulations arranged in twenty-four paragraphs,
informing the captains and crews of vessels that touch at St. Helena
about all the things that are forbidden, under penalty; posters in
the streets of Jamestown prohibit contact with the French; no one may
approach Longwood without a written permit. Every movement of the
prisoners is watched through a telescope; for six long years British
officers keep their eyes riveted on the place of detention, but can
rarely see anything more noteworthy than the lizards on the roof.
Semaphores keep the governor informed as to all that is going on. They
report: “General Bonaparte is out of bounds.”—“He is accompanied.”—“He
is alone.”—One flag was kept in reserve for a terrible emergency, to
announce the news that General Bonaparte had vanished. This blue signal
was never hoisted.
The “bounds” are a twelve-mile ring round Longwood, subsequently
restricted to an eight-mile ring; at 9 p.m. (or, when the restrictions
are increased, at sunset), a cordon of sentries at fifty paces’ interval
is posted. If Bertrand, who lives at Hutt’s Gate (a small villa about a
mile away), is summoned by the Emperor after nightfall, he is escorted to
Longwood by two soldiers with fixed bayonets—these bayonets, so runs the
order, “must point at the Frenchman’s heart.”
The Emperor, who has for thirty years been accustomed to horseback
exercise, may not go out of bounds unless accompanied by a British
officer. He protests, “Not because I object to the red uniform more
than another; after their baptism of fire, all soldiers are alike. But
I refuse to do anything which involves the acknowledgement that I am
a prisoner.” When in high spirits, as he was sometimes in the early
days of his captivity, he would defy the regulations. Once he gave the
English officer the slip, rode across country with Gourgaud, burst into
a private plantation, saying to the owner: “Don’t let any one know that
we have been here!” But during the latter part of his stay at St. Helena
he kept within bounds, and, indeed, rarely left the grounds of Longwood.
Sometimes he would order his horse for a ride; and then, when all was
ready for the start, overwhelmed with bitterness at sight of the officer
who was to accompany him, he would countermand the order and re-enter the
house.
The result of this lack of outdoor exercise is that his health suffers
more and more. The climate alone would have brought premature death, but
confinement to the house quickens the pace of his maladies. For lack of
movement, his legs swell. Furthermore, while Sir Hudson Lowe is giving
dinner parties, for weeks at a time Napoleon cannot get even fresh water
or milk. His stomach trouble grows much worse. The sick man would like
a wider bed, but there is no room for one; he must content himself with
rigging up a sofa beside his camp bed.
He and his companions have been deprived of their money. The letters he
writes to France asking for funds are intercepted. Being positively in
want, he has some of his silver plate put up to auction. When this is
reported to the governor by semaphore, the inhabitants are forbidden to
buy; Lowe himself purchases the articles at knock-down prices through
an agent. Six months later, when the governor reads in the newspapers
what Europe thinks of his conduct, he is greatly incensed, makes the
regulations stricter than ever, supplies Longwood with uneatable meat and
sour wine.
Like the villain in the folk-tale, Lowe is continually on the lookout for
new ways of mortifying his prisoner. On the anniversary of Waterloo, he
holds a great review close to Longwood. He invites “General Bonaparte”
to Plantation House on the prince regent’s birthday. Another invitation
is “to meet the countess” (Lady Loudoun, wife of the governor general
of India). When the mail brings him a new lampoon against Napoleon, the
governor sends it to one of the Emperor’s companions; but when a bust of
the king of Rome, modelled by an admirer, arrives, he proposes to impound
it, for documents may be hidden in its interior. He intercepts a letter
from Napoleon to the prince regent, in which the prisoner begs for news
of his wife and child; refuses to allow a Viennese traveller who has seen
the little boy to visit Longwood; and when, through the kindly thought of
a nurse and the loyalty of a valet, a lock of the boy’s hair at length
reaches the Emperor by devious channels, Lowe sends home a detailed
report concerning the obvious dangers of a conspiracy to liberate the
caged eagle.
To begin with, the gaoler sees the prisoner a few times. “Throw away that
cup of coffee,” says the Emperor after one of these interviews; “the man
was near it.” From the first, Lowe does his utmost to shorten Napoleon’s
life. When the Emperor’s vital energies begin to flag, the governor
deprives him of the services of the English surgeon in whom Napoleon
has confidence because this man, O’Meara, has refused any information
beyond medical bulletins. O’Meara is one of those on whom Lowe has to
keep a wary eye. It is not enough to surround Longwood with spies; the
whole island is beset with them; they watch all the officers; and when
they have nothing better to do, they watch one another. Soon a network
of intrigue envelops the little house, whose interior is hung with yet
another network—that of the jealousies which of old had been so rife in
the Tuileries.
In the third year of the captivity, O’Meara reports to London that the
Emperor’s liver trouble has been greatly aggravated by the climate, the
dampness of his dwelling, the lack of exercise, and the vexations to
which the prisoner is subjected. It is amazing that the illness does not
advance with more rapid strides. This would happen, were it not for the
energy with which the patient bears up, and were it not that his body
has not been weakened by any excesses.—Since this report is shown to the
British Minister for Foreign Affairs, and presumably to the prince regent
as well, and since in spite of it the Emperor is kept for three years
more at St. Helena instead of being sent to the Azores or some other
suitable place, the bad faith of Napoleon’s custodians may be taken as
proved—and Lowe was a worthy interpreter of his instructions.
The man’s animus, and the craftiness of his designs, are well shown by a
passage in one of his reports. Lowe says he will arrange matters so that
Napoleon will be able to resume horse exercise. Otherwise the prisoner
might die of apoplexy, and that would be extremely inconvenient. Death
from some lingering disorder would be better, for then the British
doctors would have no difficulty in certifying that death was due to
natural causes.
In the early days at St. Helena, the Emperor compiles a long official
protest (it occupies twelve pages of print); it contains all his grounds
of objection, and he has a private copy made upon silk, hoping that he
will be able to smuggle it away to Europe. In this document he reiterates
his refusal to allow himself to be addressed as “General Bonaparte,” for
that implies a disavowal of his position as popularly elected Consul and
Emperor. He remarks that he had proposed, as a reasonable compromise, to
name himself Duroc or Muiron, after one of his two dead adjutants; but
that England had refused to concede to him this “privilege accorded to
persons of sovereign rank.” The governor had even attempted to address
him as General “Buonaparte.”
In this tragi-comical fashion, after bearing seven names, he returns
with the eighth, to the first name by which he had been known.
Soon there are actual hostilities. The lust of battle glows once more
in the prisoner. He displays a vigour of hatred which in former days he
had hardly ever shown in words, for then he had simply annihilated the
objects of his wrath. Longwood, too, inaugurates a system of signals,
though a less conspicuous one than that of the British, who use flags
and semaphores. When the governor approaches, the Emperor, warned by his
vedettes, hastens indoors, and tells his servants to say he is “not at
home.” Once, however, he is taken by surprise in the garden; Lowe bluntly
tells him that his establishment is too costly, and asks him to cut down
expenses. The soldier flames in the Emperor.
“How dare you talk to me of such matters? You are nothing but a gaoler.
You have only commanded brigands and deserters. I know the name of every
English general who has won distinction. All I have ever heard of you
is that you were one of Blücher’s quilldrivers, and a robber captain
who never had the honour of commanding real soldiers.—Don’t send me any
more food! I will take meals with those brave fellows of your 35th, over
there; not one of them will refuse to share his rations with an old
fellow-soldier. You can dispose of my life as you please, but not of my
heart. That is still as proud on this rock as it was when all Europe was
awaiting my orders.—You would stick at nothing. You would poison me if
you had the courage, or were sent orders to do so!”
Without a word, the governor turns on his heel, mounts his horse, and
gallops away. The Emperor compares past and present. “In the Tuileries, I
should have blushed at such a scene.”
For ever, the governor remains on the watch, negotiates about details
with the Emperor’s companions, but does not see the living Napoleon
again. One day, however, Lowe makes another attempt, persists in spite
of a refusal to admit him, wants to see with his own eyes that “General
Bonaparte” is still there. The servant announces this importunacy. Then
the governor hears the Emperor shout through the door:
“Tell him he can bring his executioner’s axe if he likes. But if he wants
to enter my room, he must do so over my dead body. Give me my pistols!”
Lowe was able to satisfy himself as to the general’s presence when
Napoleon lay dead.
XII
The Emperor rises as late as possible, so that the day may seem shorter.
He rings; Marchand enters; Napoleon asks about the weather, slips on
his white morning gown, and retains his headgear—a red chequered Madras
kerchief he has been wearing all night. The red kerchief seems to be a
whimsical parody of the turban he once dreamed of donning! Cold douche
and rub—but of eau-de-Cologne, alas, there is none! Then Dr. O’Meara
pays a visit. He speaks Italian with the Emperor, and gossips over the
ludicrous happenings on the island. Sometimes there is no sugar to
sweeten the coffee. Has the mailship come to port with fresh newspapers?
Nothing as yet. Gourgaud arrives and writes from dictation. Where were
we? The pyramids? The Emperor paces to and fro in the narrow room; a map
of Egypt lies spread on the table.
He breakfasts with Gourgaud since the young man chances to be there.
The talk is of artillery fire, and means of defence against it. In the
afternoon, lounging on the sofa in the bedroom, he reads. The old home
on the other island was certainly more comfortable. A couple of bound
volumes of the “Moniteur” pass the hours. If he wearies of reading, his
book will sink on to his knees, and his gaze will wander to Isabey’s
portrait of wife and child. Nearby, on the white lacquered shelf, are
two eagles, candlesticks, from Saint-Cloud. Between them is the marble
bust of his son; and, hanging to the faded gilt frame of the mirror, four
miniatures of the boy. There is also a picture of Josephine; and the gold
watch of Rivoli, suspended by a chain made from the fair plaited hair of
Marie Louise, hangs to the wall. There hangs also the silver alarum clock
of Frederick the Great. Jetsam from the past, adorning his last, tiny
bedroom!
He dressed for dinner in the old green coat; sported the decoration of
the Legion of Honour; wore white silk stockings, and shoes with golden
buckles. He was waited on at table by his Parisian servants in their rich
liveries of green and gold. The table in his fusty dining-room was set
with a dinner service of Sèvres depicting Napoleon’s battles, branched
candlesticks, glass globes crowned with eagles. Cipriani carved for His
Majesty and served his master with great ceremony. Conversation was
usually carried on in monosyllables; it concerned the cost of various
things in Paris; the price of the throne and the sceptre. After dinner,
the company would pass into the drawing-room for a reading of Corneille;
the same plays over and over again; the Emperor read with too much
feeling to read well. Sometimes his hearers would nod: “Madame, you are
asleep!” or, “Gourgaud, wake up!”
“At your orders, Sire.”
Occasionally he plays chess with Bertrand or reversi with Montholon. Then
it is time to withdraw.
“What o’clock is it?”
“Eleven, Sire.”
“Another victory over time. One day the less!”
Thus passed more than two thousand days and nights. His campaigns in
Italy and Egypt and his coup d’état had taken half the time!
The best way of getting through the weary hours is by reading and
dictating. For five-and-twenty years he had had no time for reading; in
earlier days he had devoured and annotated a whole library of books. What
is he reading to-day?
The things which the young man had not had an opportunity of reading. In
those days, standing outside the closed portals of the world, he gathered
materials from all sides, went to first-hand sources: a practically
minded student. Now, standing on the further side of the portals of
the world, which have now closed behind him, he surveys the material:
a sceptical philosopher. In those days, he searched history; now, he
searches the poets, and especially relishes those passages from the poets
which apply to his own case. An epic lies behind him; in the epics of
others, he tries to find his prototype.
First of all, the _Iliad_. He sometimes browses over this till midnight.
“Now, at length, I understand Homer. He is, like Moses, a child of his
epoch: poet, orator, historian, lawgiver, geographer, theologian.... I
am specially struck by the rough manners of the heroes as compared with
their lofty thoughts.” Napoleon finds ease of heart in Homer. He cares
less for the _Odyssey_. This seems to him no more than the story of an
adventurer: he himself is more than that. Next in order of preference
come Sophocles’ _Œdipus_, a tragedy of banishment; Æschylus’ _Agamemnon_;
Milton’s _Paradise Lost_; the Bible. Corneille and Racine depict, in
the French style, the heroes of antiquity, who for thirty years have
been his models: unending are his readings of _Cinna_ and _Philoctète_.
Ossian rises out of the roar of the Atlantic: this he reads in an Italian
translation. In addition, the satirists of the social life of Europe:
Molière, whom in the ardent years of conquest and success the Emperor
had scorned; and Beaumarchais’ _Figaro_ and the _Barbier de Séville_.
Finally, all the latest publications, whether memoirs or pamphlets, and,
preferably, anything against himself.
The golden day for him was when the ship arrived with cases of books. In
the course of his stay, he collected three thousand volumes; they were
ranged on the bare damp shelves. Unfortunately, he reads so fast that a
book hardly lasts him an hour, and the servant is kept busy carrying away
armfuls of finished books which only a day before had been brought from
the shelves. As soon as a book is read (or rejected) the Emperor flings
it on to the floor.
In the early days on St. Helena, Napoleon’s actions were performed at his
erstwhile speed, a speed which was many times faster than that of any of
his associates. He forgot that now it was expedient to go slower. The
consequence was that the few duties the prisoner imposed upon himself
came to an end too quickly.
When, on taking leave of the imperial guard, he had promised that, during
his reign in Elba, he would record their deeds, this had only been
thought of as a way out of the threatened idleness. In the days of his
first exile, he had begun no such record. Now, during the first year of
his second exile, he dictates the whole of his memoirs. This work too,
like all else in his life, is begun on the inspiration of the moment.
Some pamphlets have arrived. In one of them, his landing at Cannes in
the year ’15 is falsely described. He tells his doctor the true sequence
of affairs; paces up and down, declaiming; motions to Montholon while
continuing his tirade, and dictates, without a pause, the whole chapter
dealing with his return from Elba. Separated from his archives by five
thousand miles and more, lacking documents, from his unerring memory, and
with an inspiration unsurpassed in the days of his greatest activity, he
dictates the story of the Hundred Days. Then, suddenly, he breaks off.
What’s the use of it all?
Another day, the report of an incident in the Lower House excites him:
he thereupon dictates for fourteen hours without a rest. Those who take
down his words, collapse, and replace one another at the task. Napoleon
laughs them to scorn, and continues his dictation. Or, again, he sends
for Montholon in the middle of the night to pen his recollections of more
recent times.
Since he loves above all to dwell on his early victories, his friends at
first advise him: “Perhaps Your Majesty might set about describing the
Italian and Egyptian campaigns, and the days of the Consulate?” Set about
describing! No one seems to notice, and least of all the Emperor, that
these events are being spoken of as one might speak of the Thirty Years’
War. And just as, in those days, the man in whose heart and brain these
things first took birth had projected his thoughts to the ends of the
earth and had commanded his legions, so now, to the last instruments in
his service, he communicates the details of his early campaigns, and in a
few weeks describes how he conducted the wars from 1796 to 1799. Up and
down, up and down, the Emperor paces, noticing nothing, wholly absorbed.
Without, doors bang, people talk; the amanuensis is disturbed by these
noises; not so Napoleon.
Las Cases, after taking down the description of the battle of Arcola,
exclaims: “That’s finer than the _Iliad_!” The Emperor makes a wry face,
and laughingly rejoins: “Bah! You still fancy yourself at court! I
shall rewrite that chapter twenty times ere I shall be satisfied.” This
expostulation is only a defence against flattery, for he has no intention
of writing the chapter again; all he does is to make certain emendations
when it is read over to him.
On the other hand, he dictates the events of Waterloo over and over
again. Since, in spite of his historical objectivity, he cannot
understand the result of this battle which undid him, he is always
searching for new formulations. When, through the good offices of some
sympathetic Englishmen, an opportunity occurs for smuggling documents to
Europe, he works laboriously at the battle of Waterloo in order to dim
England’s glory in the eyes of the European continent. But, he avers:
“this task always makes me sad.”
In these memoirs, there are errors here and there. They are not due to
lapses of memory, but to the author’s desire to emphasise his own place
in history. Such errors are not more serious than those to be found
in Cæsar’s works, are not serious errors at all. When he erroneously
records that in his lieutenant days he received the gold medal from
the academy of Lyons for his solution of a problem, and states that
the money prize was of great use to his mother; when telling the story
of his battles he ascribes to himself certain deeds which, in reality,
had been performed by his generals (at Marengo, for instance); when he
invents a treaty in which the tsar, before the Russian campaign, is
made to propose the division of Europe we have inaccurate statements
regarding the individuals concerned, but the broad facts are correct. It
is true that, in accordance with his conception of the hero, he formally
idealises the hero’s deeds; but he seems to us to lose more than he
gains thereby. Since he is describing the period of his rise to power,
he cannot materially falsify the facts: the immeasurable consequences of
his first victory were bound to give rise, on the one hand, to a certain
boastfulness, and, on the other, to detraction. But these volumes, which
deal for the most part with the exploits of the commander, furnish but
little real knowledge of Napoleon. Where we have to seek for the true
Napoleon is in the memoirs of those who had the privilege of recording
his conversations in exile.
Soon, indeed, his pleasure in dictation evaporates. Though he had
intended to dictate in a few weeks the campaign of 1800 which had lasted
but that amount of time, he postpones this labour, and tells Gourgaud
to collect material bearing upon the Russian campaign. Then the young
general, who had himself participated in the campaign of 1812, sets to
work to read—not a Russian work dealing with the campaign, but an English
work dealing with the life of the Emperor who is there, three rooms away,
and could probably furnish full particulars!