persecution which, rolling from afar, had so long harassed my
existence, was at last stopped. The senate allowed me to reside in
Frankfort, and the Prussian officer took his departure. Politeness now
succeeded to churlishness: Prince Hardenberg, to whom I had written to
complain of my arrest in the Rhenish provinces, replied that he had
been very angry about it himself. An answer came from Vienna, most
graciously granting the asylum which I had demanded. I was now free,
and I acquired also the hope of seeing my liberty respected for the
future; for the Duke de Richelieu, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to
whom our Ambassador at Frankfort applied respecting me, answered, I
was told, “that I should be left unmolested.”
The Duke de Richelieu, feeling his independence, had no doubt only
followed the impulse of his natural generosity, whereas it must be
presumed that these sentiments were restrained in the breast of our
Ambassador at Frankfort by the necessity of giving pledges of his
fidelity, having been formerly Napoleon’s minister at the court of
King Jerome. This line of conduct was very proper on his part, no
doubt; but I had a right to think it unfortunate that it had, on this
occasion, been pursued at my expense.
My first care, as soon as I was at liberty to dispose of my actions,
was entirely directed to the grand motive which had caused my
departure from St. Helena, and brought me back to Europe. Though
repulsed from London, on which I had founded my strongest hopes, I
nevertheless embraced with ardour the means that were still left to
me.
I first wrote to Maria Louisa, as in duty bound, and addressed my
letter to her, unsealed and under cover to Prince Metternich,
principal Minister of Austria. I afterwards wrote to the three Allied
Sovereigns. I transcribe here those letters:
LETTER TO MARIA LOUISA, WRITTEN AT THE CAPE OF GOOD
HOPE, AND FORWARDED TO EUROPE.
MADAM,—I have no sooner left St. Helena than I think it my duty to
hasten to lay at the feet of your Majesty some intelligence from your
august consort. I have been suddenly torn from his presence, without
any previous notice, and as it were struck with sudden death at his
side, without the possibility of his having forseen such an event. I
am not therefore fortunate enough to be intrusted with any special
message for your Majesty; and it is from his every-day habits and
conversation that I must collect what details I shall presume to
transmit to your Majesty.
Indifferent to public events, the Emperor Napoleon most frequently
indulged in the contemplation of his family recollections and
affections. He was grieved at not having ever received, although he
had officially demanded it of those who guard him, any news from those
who are most dear to him. Your Majesty will find the lively expression
of that regret traced by the hand of your illustrious consort in the
letter which he did me the honour to write me, after I had been
separated from him, a copy of which I shall take the liberty of laying
before your Majesty.[30]
Footnote 30:
See the Letter from the Emperor Napoleon to Count Las Cases, after
his removal from Longwood.
The health of the Emperor, at my departure, was very much impaired,
and his situation was most painful in every respect, being exposed to
numerous wants, and deprived of every enjoyment. Fortunately, his mind
triumphed over every thing, and remained calm and serene.
I have seen him obliged, every month, to sell part of his plate, to
supply his daily wants, and he has been reduced to the necessity of
accepting a small sum, which a faithful servant was fortunate enough
to have at his disposal in England, when he left him.
Madam, guided by the sentiments which fill my heart, I take the
liberty, as a devoted servant, to lay at the feet of your Majesty, in
the hope of being agreeable to you, a sacrifice which is dear to me,
being some hair of your august consort, which has been a long time in
my possession. I presume also to send at the same time to your Majesty
a plan of Longwood, drawn by my son for his mother. Your Majesty will
no doubt feel interested in examining this remote desert in its
details.
On arriving in Europe, my first step would be to throw myself at the
feet of your Majesty, if a sacred duty did not oblige me to remain in
England, in order to devote every instant of my life to endeavour to
impart, through the means allowed by the British regulations, some
consolation to the inhabitants of that horrible rock, which retains
for ever the object of my most tender cares. The British Ministers
will not refuse to allow me to undertake this pious occupation. I
shall solicit it with ardour, and fulfil it with loyalty. I am, &c.
COUNT DE LAS CASES.
P. S. On my arrival in Europe, Madam, I have been ejected by England,
arrested on the Continent, detained by sickness at Frankfort, and have
just obtained an asylum in the dominions of your august father. I take
advantage of the first moment of my liberty, to address to your
Majesty the above letter, that was written for you at the extremity of
Africa, at a distance of three thousand leagues. I entreat your
Majesty to deign to receive it favourably, and that will be some
consolation for my sufferings.
LETTER TO PRINCE METTERNICH, CONTAINING THE
PRECEDING.
PRINCE,—I hasten to offer to your Highness my sincere thanks for the
favour of an asylum obtained in the dominions of his Majesty the
Emperor.
I take the liberty at the same time to enclose, under cover to you, a
letter for her Majesty Maria Louisa. And here, Prince, I entreat you
to allow me to lay aside the public character with which your highness
is invested, to address you in your private character only. I wish to
ask for advice rather than to accomplish an act. Having been so long
absent from Europe, I might unknowingly and unwillingly transgress the
rules of expediency. I give myself up to the effusion of my heart.
Prince, the result of these different feelings has been to induce me
to confide the letter which I enclose herein, unsealed, to your
discretion and personal judgment. It is again the result of these same
feelings which impels me to represent to you the Emperor Napoleon a
prey on his rock to the persecution of personal enemies, and abandoned
by all the rest of the world. Henceforth I shall live only in the hope
of affording him some sources of consolation. From a daily intercourse
of eighteen months, and, I may say, from some moments of unreserved
confidence, I know those that would be most dear to him. And who can
know Napoleon better than I do? He already feels and converses on the
subjects of the past events of his own history, as if they had
happened three hundred years ago. He remains unchanged only with
respect to family feelings. Whatever political events may have
occurred, he entertains no doubts on the score of domestic sentiments.
How, through what channels, by what means, could I, without
transgressing the rules of expediency, or any regulations and
intentions, obtain direct intelligence concerning his wife and his
son? Prince, I again repeat that this communication is from man to
man: it is one heart questioning another.
During my residence at St. Helena, we have not had any intercourse,
nor been able to have any with the Commissioner from Austria. Your
Highness must have read in a public document,[31] written in answer to
the Governor, that, _if the Austrian and Russian Commissioners had
been sent to see that Napoleon was treated in a proper manner, and
with the respect due to him, this measure was in harmony with the
character of their Sovereigns; but that the Governor, having declared
that they had no right or authority to interfere on the subject, had
by that declaration rendered them inadmissible_. At the same time,
Napoleon publicly said that he would willingly receive them as private
individuals, yet we have not seen them; be it that such was the tenor
of their instructions, or, as I have more reason to suppose, that the
Governor wished to subject them, as private individuals, to
restrictions which would have degraded their character.
Your Highness will see by the copy of a letter, transcribed for her
Majesty Maria Louisa, the severity used towards an Austrian botanist,
and how much the Emperor Napoleon was hurt by that circumstance. I
again repeat to your Highness the expression of the nature of my
sentiments, and the assurance of the high respect with which I am, &c.
COUNT DE LAS CASES.
P. S. In case my Letter for her Majesty Maria Louisa should not be
delivered to her, I request your Highness will do me the particular
favour to cause the hair which is enclosed in it to be returned to me.
Footnote 31:
Letter from Count Montholon in answer to Sir Hudson Lowe.
LETTER TO HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.
SIRE,—A sentiment, a sacred duty, brings me to the feet of your
Majesty.
The zealous and faithful servant of a royal victim of adversity
presumes to lift up his voice to your throne, surrounded by every
prosperity which fortune can bestow; will you refuse to hear him?
Unexpectedly torn from Napoleon, and, as it were, struck with sudden
death at his side, I have since wandered as in another universe,
pursued every where by the recollection of sufferings which I have
witnessed and can no longer share.
It is at your feet, Sire, that my heart prompts me to seek for an
alleviation of my affliction, for encouragement to my hope.
Your treaty of the 2nd August, 1815, with your illustrious Allies,
stipulates that Napoleon is your prisoner, and abandons to England the
possession of his person, and the care and necessary measures of his
detention.
I shall not say any thing against that treaty, Sire; I shall not even
complain of the manner in which the British Ministers execute that
part of the treaty which you have intrusted to their care.
The high interests of politics, the great grievances, however they may
weigh upon my heart, are at this moment far from my thoughts; domestic
cares alone occupy my breast.
I therefore implore your Majesty, as I have implored your high
Allies,[32] to deign to protect the request which I address to the
English Government, to be allowed to devote myself in London to the
care of procuring for the illustrious captive, through the means
allowed by the laws and regulations, some moral enjoyments, and some
physical comforts, which will not be a burden to any body.
Footnote 32:
Similar letters had been addressed to the Emperor of Austria and to
the King of Prussia, varied only in some particulars, as the
individual circumstances of these Princes respectively required.
My request, Sire, is an innocent favour, natural and simple, and
against which no reasonable objection can be raised; indeed, I am not
without strong claims on your Majesty’s attention. You are far from
being a stranger to them.
In abandoning to others the custody and detention of the captive, your
Majesty has certainly not renounced your right of superintendence over
the marks of attention and respect due to his sacred person. In
renouncing all political interposition, your Majesty has not intended
to preclude yourself from contributing to the consolations approved by
your individual sentiments, and to those alleviations which do not
interfere with the principal object, in view.
Every day, Sire, at St. Helena, chains are imposed, and their weight
is aggravated in your name. Can you, Sire, have allowed your name to
reach that spot, only to authorize odious and intolerable acts of
severity?
He upon whom these acts are inflicted, Sire, is the same to whom you
long gave the name of _brother_. Your royal heart cannot forget it, it
cannot remain insensible. I therefore appeal, in order to obtain a
small favour, to your sympathy, to your recollections, and even to
your dignity. Your magnanimous mind, Sire, has shewn itself too much
the friend of public morality, it has displayed too much private
delicacy and generosity in its various bearings, to allow me to doubt
for an instant of success.
And what is, Sire, once more, the object for which I require your
protection? Merely to be allowed to be near the place of communication
and conveyance, that is, on the spot the most favourable, and in the
situation the most proper, to be able, according to the prescribed
forms and regulations, to continue from afar those domestic cares
which I am no longer allowed to exercise in the prison itself: that is
all.
Nevertheless, Sire, I implore and expect this favour from your
Majesty. And how happy should I be if your Majesty should deign to add
to it that of confiding to my care that part of the private and moral
interest which your great engagements cannot have compelled you to
renounce. And who better than myself, Sire, could fulfil that duty?
Who could devote himself to it with more ardour? I have banished
myself from my native country, in order to be able to give up to that
purpose the rest of my life without interruption or restraint. Deign,
Sire, to listen to me, and comply with my request, I beseech you. And
on whom are these cares to be bestowed? In whose favour do I solicit
to be allowed to sacrifice myself? Sire, it is in favour of the man
whom you once called your friend.
The reign of your Majesty is sufficiently distinguished by prodigies
and monuments of glory; with these, history is already provided; let
it also record acts of more exalted virtue; do something for
friendship!—Let history say of you: In the midst of the most violent
political contest that ever existed, he set the example of something
still greater than victory—he remembered, he respected, the feelings
of ancient friendship!
How many times, on our rock, have I heard the Emperor Napoleon
conversing on the past events of his life, as if they had occurred
several centuries ago, and, already speaking the language of history,
say: _I never had any war with the Emperor Alexander but a political
one; that war had nothing to do with our individual feelings: I cannot
suppose him to feel any personal animosity against me_. A circumstance
which would be worthy of you, Sire, tended to confirm him in this
opinion. A report reached us on our rock that the Commissioner of your
Majesty at St. Helena had, at the end of his instructions, a
recommendation, written by your Majesty’s own hand, enjoining him most
positively to shew the same marks of respect to the Emperor Napoleon
as are shewn to yourself. We took pleasure in repeating this report to
him; we were aware that he was pleased by it. Such a proceeding was in
harmony with the character of your Majesty, and we believed in it
without, however, having had it in our power to convince ourselves of
its truth; for (during my stay, at least) we never could hold any
communication with the Commissioner of your Majesty. You will
doubtless have heard that Napoleon being required by the Governor of
St. Helena to receive the Commissioner of your Majesty, and that of
your illustrious ally, the Emperor of Austria, ordered the following
answer to be given: _That if those Commissioners were ordered by their
Masters to take care that, in an island in the midst of the ocean,
remote from the rest of the world, he should be treated with the
respect due to him, he recognised in that measure the character of
these two Princes; that the Governor having declared that they had no
right to interfere in any thing that happened on that rock, they from
that moment were without an official character in his eyes_. He,
however, added that he should be happy to see them as private
individuals; but this message remained without effect, either from
their having never been apprized of it, or from their instructions not
allowing them to take advantage of it; or lastly, perhaps (and I do
not think it at all improbable), because the English Governor wished
in that case to subject them to certain conditions which were
inconsistent with their character.
If I have thus presumed, Sire, to raise my humble voice to your
Majesty, my temerity was inspired by the entire, ardent, and
unalterable devotion which I cherish for him who once reigned over me,
who was my master ... and that sentiment will plead in my favour in
the eyes of your Majesty.
I am, &c.
COUNT DE LAS CASES.
With a heart still oppressed by all the ill usage I had experienced,
proceeding from the British Government, I deemed it incumbent upon me,
and a public duty as it were, to complain to Lord Bathurst in the
following letter, which, by the way, was kept secret for upwards of
ten months, and might have remained so for ever, had not Mr. Goulburn,
Under Secretary of State, by certain misplaced and incorrect
assertions which he made in the House of Commons concerning me, as
will hereafter be seen, compelled me in some degree to publish it.
This circumstance, however, is an additional pledge to the reader of
the authenticity and correctness of all the facts which I have stated.
LETTER OF COUNT DE LAS CASES TO LORD BATHURST.
MY LORD,—Were I to bear in silence the arbitrary and tyrannical acts,
the infraction of the laws, the contempt of all forms, the violation
of principles, of which I have been a victim, for upwards of a year
that I have been in the hands of your agents, my silence might be
construed into a tacit acquiescence, which would render me guilty
towards myself, towards you, and towards society at large. Towards
myself, because I have ample cause to seek for redress; towards you,
who are ignorant of my grounds of complaint, and might perhaps hasten
to grant me that redress; and towards society, on whose behalf every
upright man ought sternly to resist the encroachments of power, for
the honour of the laws, and for the protection of those who come after
him.
My Lord, if I have so long delayed stating my grievances to you, the
blame attaches to yourself, to the persecution that has assailed me
upon your shores, and to that to which you have given the impulse in
neighbouring countries. It would appear, in fact, as if a species of
torment had been invented for me; a deportation along the high roads.
I have been carried from town to town like a malefactor, though I was
in a dying state, without any motive having been assigned for such
conduct, and without being allowed to take any rest. How then was it
possible for me to write to you?
If I now address your Lordship personally respecting what concerns me,
it is because all the acts of which I have to complain have
originated, and have been continued, in your department, and under
your name; and if other hands have since oppressed me, I am indebted
to your Lordship for being placed within their reach, and to your
suggestions for the treatment which they have inflicted upon me.
My Lord, I am one of the four to which your orders at Plymouth had
reduced the number of those who eagerly sought the happiness and glory
of following the illustrious victim of the _dreadful hospitality of
the Bellerophon_; I followed my sacred occupation at Longwood to the
best of my power; all the faculties of my heart and soul were engaged
in soothing the bitterest captivity ever known, when the Governor of
St. Helena suddenly tore me away from that island. Perhaps he was
right: I had infringed his regulations. But, after all, I was guilty
of no other crime than that of using the right, which every prisoner
possesses, of endeavouring without any scruple to deceive the
vigilance of his gaoler; for between us nothing had been left to
delicacy, confidence, or honour. I have not complained of the
proceedings enforced against me. I was only grieved at the
uncalled-for insult inflicted upon him from whom I was separated. It
was almost by his side, almost under his eye, that I was arrested; on
which occasion he wrote, what you no doubt will have read, that,
seeing me from his windows hurried off on the plain, in the midst of
waving plumes and horses prancing around me, he had fancied he saw the
savages of the South Sea, who, in their ferocious joy, dance round the
victim whom they are about to devour.
My Lord, it was natural for me to believe that the cause of what has
happened to me, the confiding of secret documents to my servant at his
own request, was but the result of a snare laid for me. The Governor
himself agreed with me that appearances might justify my suspicion;
but he gave me his word of honour that he had nothing to do in the
business, and I believed him. It had originally been intended,
however, that those secret documents should pass through the
Governor’s hands; they would have been addressed to him, if he had not
informed me, a short time before, that if I continued to write in the
same style he would separate me from him to whom I devoted my
existence. So true is this assertion, and so unimportant in themselves
were the documents, that they have never since been mentioned; they
have remained entirely unconnected with the event to which they gave
rise.[33]
Footnote 33:
Unless this should be what a Minister intended to allude to in the
British Parliament, on the 14th May, 1818. Endeavouring to justify
the persecutions exercised against Count de Las Cases, he said that
he had been found out in an attempt to establish a correspondence in
Europe through the medium of England. But the noble Lord only made
the assertion orally, and refused to exhibit the official documents
that would have afforded a proof of it. An opinion may be formed on
this subject from this latter circumstance.
My Lord, my captivity in St. Helena was only voluntary. According to
your own regulation, it was to cease at my pleasure. As soon,
therefore, as I found myself separated from Longwood, I signified to
Sir Hudson Lowe, that I, from that moment, withdrew from his personal
control, and placed myself again under the protection of the civil and
general laws; that if I had committed any offence, I required to be
sent into the presence of my judges; that if he thought it necessary
to submit to the inspection of Ministers my papers, which I had given
him sufficient time to examine and to understand, I desired they might
be sent to you, my Lord, and that I might be sent with them. And in
order that he should have the less difficulty in taking this
determination, I represented to him the dreadful state of my health,
and the imminent danger of my son, which required our being sent to
where we might procure the first medical advice; and I further added
that I submitted willingly and unreservedly to every restriction,
however illegal, that your Lordship might deem it necessary to impose
upon me when I should have arrived in England. Sir Hudson Lowe did not
think himself at liberty to take this step; and, after he had long
hesitated, and had kept me a close prisoner in the Island for five or
six weeks, he at last sent me off to the Cape of Good Hope, according
to the letter of his instructions; a measure which he might and
certainly ought to have adopted within a few days after my arrest.
This Governor, at the same time, kept back such of my papers as he
thought proper, without allowing me to affix my seal to them, or he
would only allow me to do so under the derisive condition of my
express consent to his breaking the seal in my absence if he thought
proper, which was equivalent to a prohibition of sealing them at all.
By the aid of such subterfuges, Sir Hudson Lowe might likewise assert
that it was in my power to return to Longwood; it is true, that, being
urged by my arguments and by the delicacy of his position with respect
to me, he offered to let me go back thither, because that would have
released him from his embarrassment. But at the same time that he made
the offer, he rendered it impossible for me to accept it: ‘You have
disgraced me and dishonoured me,’ said I to him, ‘in arresting me in
Napoleon’s presence; I could no longer be an object of consolation to
him, but one rather that would bring painful and injurious
recollections to his mind. I could not appear again at Longwood except
at his express desire.’ I asked leave to write; I did even write to
inquire whether there existed such a wish; but Sir Hudson Lowe
insisted upon dictating or controlling the expressions of my letter,
and I was bound to refuse. His advantages were by far too great
already, placed as he was amongst close prisoners, whose actions he
separately directed at his will. Besides, if I even went back, he did
not consent to return me my papers. The very next day he might renew
upon me, or upon my unfortunate companions, the example of such
degrading acts of authority; I had the grief of having opened the door
to such an abuse of power, and my return would give to it the sanction
of precedent for the future: no alternative, was, therefore, left to
me, but to quit the Island with an aching heart.