Whatever legal right Great Britain had to treat the French Emperor
as prisoner of war, must necessarily have grown out of the manner in
which she got possession of his person. In regard to this, the actual
facts are that Lord Castlereagh in 1814 had suggested that he come to
England, where he would be well received; and Captain Maitland of the
_Bellerophon_, while disclaiming any authority to bind his government,
had certainly not said anything which would warn the Emperor not to
expect such treatment as Castlereagh, an English minister, had seemed
to offer in 1814. Upon the contrary, Napoleon was received on board
Captain Maitland’s ship with formal honors; and when Napoleon said, “I
come to place myself under the protection of the British laws,” Captain
Maitland gave him no hint that those laws had no protection for him. If
Great Britain did not intend to accept him in the spirit in which he
offered himself, should she have received him without giving him notice
that he was acting under a delusion? Was it honorable, was it right? If
she considered him a captive, why not tell him so? Why receive him on
board with formal demonstrations of honor; why invite him to banquets
where British admirals treated him as a sovereign? Why wait till the
fleet was on the English coast before reading to him the cold lines
which consigned him to St. Helena?
The entire episode reeks with dishonor. It will not do to say that he
was certain to have been captured anyhow; for that statement cannot be
true. There were three vessels offered him at Rochefort, in either of
which he might have escaped to America; or he could have placed himself
at the head of some of the French troops, near by, and have recommenced
the war. With Napoleon’s standard once more up, his sword in his hand,
who can doubt that he could have wrung from his enemies some settlement
better than hopeless captivity upon a barren rock? At all events, it
seems a shocking thing to open one’s door to a vanquished foe, after he
has knocked thereon with the plea of a guest; and then, after having
let him enter as a guest, to bar the door upon him as a prisoner. No
amount of argument can hide the shame of such a transaction.
When Napoleon came on board Captain Maitland’s ship, there is no doubt
whatever that he was sincere in his belief that he would be permitted
to live in England as a private citizen. Nor is there any doubt that
Maitland thought so too. When Admiral Hotham, of the British man of
war, _Superb_, visited the _Bellerophon_, Maitland’s ship, on the
evening of Napoleon’s going on board, he asked permission to see, not a
prisoner, but an Emperor. And the breakfast he gave in Napoleon’s honor
next morning on the _Superb_ was given, not to a captive, but to a
sovereign. Not only the admiral, but all the officers of the squadron,
paid to the distinguished visitor every honor; and he was invited to
continue his journey in the more commodious vessel, the _Superb_. He
declined, out of regard for Maitland’s feelings; and it was Napoleon’s
preference, and not Hotham’s, which prevailed.
These things being considered, who can doubt that Napoleon and the
naval squadron which had possession of him were honestly acting in the
belief that he was on his way to England as a guest, as a great man in
misfortune, who was seeking asylum in the magnanimity of a great people?
The time had been when the word “chivalry” counted for something in
Great Britain, though, to be sure, its influence had been fitful. A
king like Edward III. and a prince like Edward’s son, who were knights,
might exhaust generosity in their dealings with a captive king of
France, who was likewise a knight; but the severed limbs and gory
head of Scottish Wallace were quite enough to have caused Napoleon to
doubt whether John of France received the benefit of a rule or of an
exception.
Between the Black Prince, to whom John trusted, and the Prince Regent,
to whom Napoleon wrote his manly and touching appeal, the difference
in character was considerably wider than the chasm of the years which
separated them. To this Prince Regent, known to history as King George
IV., the fallen Emperor of the French wrote: “My political career is
ended, and I come to sit down at the fireside of the British people.
I place myself under the protection of their laws, and I claim this
protection from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, most
constant, most generous of my foes!”
Surely a manly appeal! Surely a noble confidence! The soldier who had
wielded what an Englishman has recently called “the most splendid of
human swords,” turned to the chief of his foes and said, “The battle
has gone against me; my public life is at an end; I offer you my
sword; let me sit down under your protection and spend the evening of
my life in peace!”
He was a broken man; he had refused to make any further strife in
France when thousands of the people implored him, to the moment of
his departure, to stay and fight again. “No. I am tired out--tired of
myself and of the world.” He was ill, could no longer ride horseback in
comfort, could no longer concentrate his mind for prolonged effort. And
he who had been so restless now lay abed, or lolled with a novel in his
hand, and gossiped or dozed by the hour.
Never in Napoleon’s career had the prayer of a vanquished foe fallen
upon ears which heard not. The battle ended; he was ready for peace.
He bore no malice, took no revenge. Splendid acts of generosity lit
his progress from first to last. During the Hundred Days when he was
so much occupied and in such straits for money, he had sought out the
Dowager-Duchess of Orleans, and renewed her large pension; she had
delivered him a prize when he was a schoolboy. In the dreadful strain
of the hours between Ligny and Waterloo, he had remarked the critical
condition of a captive English officer, Colonel Elphinstone, and had
sent his own surgeon to give immediate attention to the wounded man,
thus saving his life. To the Belgian peasants he had threatened the
terrors of hell if they neglected to succor the Prussian wounded.
It is folly to say that noble deeds like these spring from hearts
that are base. Natural kindness, inborn nobility, must be the source
from which such conduct flows. Generous himself to the vanquished,
magnanimous to those who threw themselves upon his generosity, it is
easy to understand how it was that Napoleon trusted confidently to the
liberality of Great Britain. Just as the pallid face of the dead is the
flag of truce which hushes the angry voice of feud, just as the lowered
point of lance or sword threw around the weaker man the invisible armor
which no gallant knight would ever pierce, so this greatest captain of
modern times believed that he had only to say to England: “Enough! I
am beaten! I throw myself on your clemency!” in order to win the same
immunity from insult, harsh treatment, and continued warfare.
So, when British officials at length came on board the ship and read
to him the decision of the English ministry, that he was to be taken
to St. Helena as prisoner of war; when British officials searched his
trunks, took charge of his cash, and demanded his sword, his amazement,
grief, horror, and indignation were profound. He had made for himself a
Fool’s Paradise; he had seen himself living in England, at one of her
quiet, lovely homes; had surrounded himself with books and friends, and
was to spend the remainder of life as a private gentleman whose passion
was literature. When the horrible reality came upon him, he seemed
desperate, and contemplated suicide.
Lord Liverpool, English Prime Minister, had, in official despatches,
expressed the opinion that the very best way to deal with Napoleon
was to treat him as a rebel and have him hanged or shot. Lord
Wellington’s opinion ran along on parallel lines to this, he being one
of those warriors to whom generosity was a myth. In this spirit the
British government conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena; in this spirit
he was treated as long as he lived; and in this spirit his dead body
was pursued to the grave. In the same spirit men who never met him
personally, and who studied him from the point of view of Toryism
only, have blackened his memory from that day to this, seeing his
faults, and nothing but his faults; trumpeting his sins, and nothing
but his sins, just as though Napoleon Bonaparte were not a son of Adam,
like any other, and wonderfully made out of the mixed elements of good
and bad.
Even yet, royalism, absolutism, fetichism in Church and State, have a
horror of Napoleon Bonaparte, so rudely did he smash their idols, so
truly did he clear the way for modern liberalism. One can hardly escape
the conclusion that even yet books of a certain type, written against
Napoleon, are little more than briefs for the defendants in the case
which the modern world makes against the kings, the nobles, and the
priests for the manner in which they crushed democracy for a time on
the false plea of crushing Napoleon.
Passing from the custody of Captain Maitland to that of Sir George
Cockburn, Napoleon was made to feel the change of status as well as the
change of ship. Sir George was a typical commander of a battle-ship,--a
small monarch, a despot on a limited scale. His own _Diary_ exhibits
him as no other writing could. It shows him to have felt that he must
make “Bonaparte” know his real position; make “Bonaparte” come down
from his lofty perch and look up to the eminence of Sir George. If
“Bonaparte” presumed to put on airs around Sir George, Sir George would
soon teach him better. If “Bonaparte” showed the slightest inclination
to act the Emperor, Sir George would promptly convince him that “I
cannot allow it.” If “Bonaparte” grew tired of sitting at the dinner
table an hour and a half, having never been accustomed to spend more
than twenty minutes in that manner, Sir George would resent his
leaving the table while the others guzzled wine; and would, as Napoleon
left the room, make sneering remarks to “Bonaparte’s” friends about
“Bonaparte’s” manners.
One of the things of which Sir George said “I cannot allow it,” was the
proposed gift of a handsome gratuity from “Bonaparte” to the sailors
of the ship. Sir George evidently feared that such a gift, adding to
“Bonaparte’s” already great popularity with the crew, might bear fruit
unpleasant to the taste of Sir George.
Indeed, the manner in which all those who came in contact with
Napoleon found their prejudice melt away, is very remarkable. Fouché
had selected General Becker as Napoleon’s custodian in France for the
reason that Becker bore the Emperor a grudge; yet by the time Napoleon
went on board Maitland’s ship, Becker had become an ardent friend, and
the parting between them left Becker in tears.
Captain Maitland liked him, Lord Keith liked him, the crews of the
English ships liked him. Even Sir George Cockburn ceased to hate him.
“Damn the fellow!” exclaimed Lord Keith; “I believe that if he and the
Prince Regent should meet, the two would be the best of friends in half
an hour.”
One incident of the voyage to St. Helena could not be told in words
more vivid than those of Lord Rosebery:--
“Once only in that voyage did his apathy forsake him. At dawn
one morning when the ship was making Ushant, the watch, to their
unspeakable surprise, saw the Emperor issue from his cabin and make
his way, with some difficulty, to the poop. Arrived there, he asked
the officer on duty if the coast were indeed Ushant, and then taking
a telescope, he gazed fixedly at the land. From seven till near noon
he thus remained motionless. Neither the officers of the ship nor his
staff as they watched him, durst disturb that agony. At last, as the
outlines faded from his sight, he turned his ghastly face, concealing
it as best he could, and clutched at the arm of Bertrand, who supported
him back to his cabin. It was his last sight of France.”
Landed at St. Helena, he was given shabby quarters in a renovated,
repaired, and amplified cow-house. The walls of it were thin, the rooms
small; the rain and the wind pierced it, the heat made an oven of it,
the rats infested it; no shade trees cast grateful shade about it; no
fruits or flowers relieved its dismal repulsiveness.
To make sure that Napoleon should not escape from the isolated,
precipitous rock of St. Helena, a considerable fleet of cruisers
girdled the island, and nearly three thousand troops watched the
prisoner. The eye could not range in any direction without resting upon
a sentinel. During the daytime the Emperor had continual reminders
of his fallen condition; and when night came on the line of sentries
closed in, and no one could pass.
The prisoner and his friends were allowed to have books to read; and if
Sir Hudson Lowe in browsing among the European newspapers and magazines
happened upon some peculiarly bitter weed of abuse of Napoleon, that
particular paper or magazine was sure to be sent up to Longwood,
Napoleon’s residence. If books, papers, or magazines arrived in which
the captive was tenderly handled, such articles became contraband,
upon one plea or another, and rarely reached the lonely man they would
have cheered. The prisoner and his companions were given enough to
eat, generally, and a sufficiency of fuel and water. It was only
occasionally that Napoleon had to feed the fire in his damp room by
breaking up his furniture; nor was it often that the quality of the
food was such that appetites were lost because of grave suspicions as
to the manner in which the cow or sheep which supplied the beef or
mutton had come to its death.
Excepting the bare necessities of life, the prisoner was given nothing
to make captivity reasonably comfortable. Ditches and trenches were
dug all about him, guns planted, soldiers posted, and absurdly minute,
vexatious regulations made. If Napoleon rode, a British soldier must
attend him; if he stayed in the house, a British soldier must have
sight of him every day. No letter could come or go without having
been opened and read by his jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe. Books sent him,
pictures, and everything else had to come through the same channel.
If any article sent him were addressed to him as Emperor, it was
impounded relentlessly. A Mr. Barber who had come to live in the island
had brought with him two portraits of Napoleon’s son, intending, as a
kindness which would certainly be appreciated, to present them to the
bereaved father. Sir Hudson Lowe forbade the gift, and the Emperor
never laid eyes upon the treasures. It was only through Eugène that
Napoleon finally received a portrait of his son: it came packed in a
box of books. A marble bust of the King of Rome came also, and this was
long held by Lowe, who threatened to break it in pieces. A letter from
Napoleon’s mother, in which she offered to share his lot though blind
and bending with age, was torn open and read by the governor before its
delivery. The captive refused to consent that either his mother or his
sister Pauline should come: he was unwilling to see them subjected to
the insolence of his jailers.
The question of title gave more trouble at St. Helena than almost
any other. It was vexatious, it was met at every turn, and it could
never be settled. It angered Napoleon excessively when Sir Hudson Lowe
persistently continued to shut off from him all letters, books, or
other articles which came addressed to “The Emperor.” Great Britain was
resolved that he should not be known by the title he had worn so long,
which a vote of the French people had confirmed, which the Pope had
consecrated so far as a pope can consecrate, which every king on the
Continent had recognized, and which England herself had recognized at
the Congress of Châtillon, if not under the ministry of Charles Fox.
“General Bonaparte” was the highest title that Great Britain could
now allow; and her prisoner resisted her as stubbornly on this point
as General George Washington resisted her right to send him letters
addressed “Mr. George Washington.”
A small thing in itself, the refusal of his title became important to
him because of the spirit which actuated those who refused it. They
meant to degrade him in the eyes of the world, to wound his pride by an
exertion of authority; and he resented it as all self-respecting men
must resent the smallest of affronts when inflicted with the meanest of
motives.
“Let us compromise,” urged Napoleon; “call me General Duroc or Colonel
Muiron.” “No!” said Great Britain; “we will call you General Bonaparte,
for _that_ hurts you.” In simple words, such was England’s attitude
throughout his captivity to this lonely, broken, most wretched man.
A book which an Englishman, Byron’s friend Hobhouse, wrote on the
Hundred Days, and which would have given the exile immense pleasure,
was not delivered because in sending it the author had written on the
fly-leaf “To the Emperor Napoleon.” And when the prisoner died, and
his friends wished to inscribe on his coffin-lid the word, “Napoleon,”
Great Britain, speaking through Sir Hudson Lowe, refused the
privilege,--Napoleon was the imperial name; it could not be permitted.
The white face of the dead man, the folded hands, the frozen sleep of
Death, made no appeal to his captor which could soften this inexorable
enmity. Hounding him to his very grave they demanded that “Bonaparte”
be added to “Napoleon,” to prove to all the world that England,
ungenerous to the living captive who had come to her for generosity,
had been implacable even unto death, and after death. So it was that
the coffin of this greatest of men went unmarked to the tomb. Save in
anonymous burial there was no escape from the malignancy which had made
his last years one long period of torture.
* * * * *
Napoleon’s household at St. Helena consisted of General Bertrand
and wife and children, Count Montholon and wife, Las Casas and son,
General Gourgaud, and Doctor O’Meara, the Irish surgeon of the
English battleship _Bellerophon_, who had asked and been granted by
his government permission to attach himself to the Emperor as his
physician. Besides these, there was a staff of domestics, and, toward
the end, a Corsican doctor Antommarchi and a couple of priests.
Organizing his little establishment with the same love of system which
he had shown throughout his career, Napoleon preserved at St. Helena
the etiquette of the Tuileries. He had his great household officers,
as at Elba; his servants wore the imperial livery; intercourse between
himself and the friends who attended him was as ceremonious as it had
ever been. Nobody was admitted to his presence save after audience
asked and granted. In his shabby little room this fallen monarch
imposed his will upon those about him to such an extent that none of
his friends entered until summoned, or left until dismissed. Not till
general conversation was in full current did any of his companions
address him unless first spoken to by him. No matter how long he
might feel inclined to talk, they stood throughout, never daring to
sit unless he graciously invited them to do so. He would read to the
company, and they were expected to listen attentively. A yawn was an
offence, and was rebuked on the spot. A nod was an aggravation, and it
would be broken into by such prompt admonitions as, “Madame Montholon,
you sleep!”
Those were dreary days at St. Helena, and the nights were drearier
still. He ceased to ride, so hateful was the sight of his jailers. He
tried to get some amusement out of planting trees, making a garden, and
digging a fish pond. Sometimes he romped with the children; often he
played chess, and cards, and billiards. In the pathetic attempt to get
the benefit of horseback exercise without having to ride out in custody
of an English officer, he rigged up a wooden contrivance in the house
and worked away on this make-believe horse for a while.
But books and composition were his great resources. He read much,
dictated a great deal; and when these tired him, he called in his
companions and tried conversation.
As was natural, his talk touched every epoch of his past,--his home and
family in Corsica, his childhood, his school days, his early struggles,
his first triumphs, his campaigns and battles, his numberless plans
and undertakings, his mistakes and failures. He spoke of himself,
generally, in the third person, as of one long since dead; and spoke of
the events of his career as some one, seated upon a mountain top, might
calmly describe the panorama below.
In alluding to those who had served him, in any capacity, his was the
tone of a chemist reporting the result of some analysis.
He rarely showed much temper either way, for or against, but spoke
with a curious indifference, as of remote historical characters. Even
when stating his bad opinion of Fouché, Talleyrand, Augereau, Emperor
Francis, or Czar Alexander, he manifested no rancor.
Without any trace of bitterness, he referred to the harm his brothers
and sisters had done him; of Marmont, Berthier, Murat, Ney, he spoke
with as much absence of malice as was possible under the circumstances.
He took to himself all the blame for his great errors,--his Russian
campaign and the attempt on Spain.
More inclined to be severe on those who had failed him during the
Hundred Days, he put the burden where history must say it belongs,--on
Bourmont, on Ney, on the false movement of D’Erlon’s column, on
Grouchy, and on Fouché and Lafayette.
The anniversary of Waterloo was a yearly affliction. It was a day that
oppressed him, a day which wrung from him anguished regrets.
“Ah, if it were to be done over again!”
How did it happen? why was it that his left failed him at Ligny, and
his right at Waterloo? Was there treachery, or merely misfortune?
Over this problem he would ponder, with a face which revealed deep
emotion; a feeling akin to that which had caused him to raise his hand
and strike his forehead on the day when he heard the guns of Blücher’s
army where he had expected to hear Grouchy’s.
Wellington he frankly hated: partly because Wellington had commanded
at Waterloo, and partly because Wellington had sent him to St. Helena.
In his Will, the dying Emperor left an unworthy trace of this bitter
feeling by devising a sum of money to a man who was charged with having
attempted to assassinate the English duke. True, the Emperor states
that the man had been acquitted, but the Will asserts that Cantillon
had as much right to kill Wellington as the latter had “to send me to
die on this rock.” Here is vindictiveness and a departure from good
morals; but if ever circumstances justified such an offence, it was in
the case of Napoleon.
But the time, hard as he tried to kill it, hung heavy on his hands.
He would lie in bed till late in the day, spend hours in the bath,
lounge in undress on the sofa. If he could by any means keep himself
pleasantly occupied till midnight, he was overjoyed: “We have got
through one more day!” “When I wake at night, do you think my thoughts
are pleasant, remembering what I have been, and what I am?” “How long
the nights are!” was an exclamation which reveals an ocean of misery.
With more to grieve over than all of his companions put together,
he made it a point to set an example of cheerfulness, of amiable
comradeship, of intelligent consideration for others. “We are a little
group, a little family, condemned to pass dreary years of exile here
on this bleak rock; let us try make the time pass as agreeably as
possible.” When there were jealousies and bickerings between members
of his little court, it was the Emperor who soothed them away. When a
fretful Gourgaud would take offence at something Napoleon had said or
done, he was coaxed out of his ill-humor, or paternally sent to bed to
sleep it off.
NOTE.--Lord Rosebery in his “Napoleon,” says, “As to his
habitation, Longwood was a collection of huts which had been
constructed as a cattle-shed. It was swept by an eternal wind; it
was shadeless, and it was damp. Lowe himself can say no good of
it, and may have felt the strange play of fortune by which he was
allotted the one delightful residence on the island with twelve
thousand a year [about $60,000], while Napoleon was living in an
old cow-house on eight.”