THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION--CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE
On May 9, 1821, the mortal remains of the Exile were interred at a
spot called the Valley of Napoleon. He had selected this spot in the
event of the Powers not allowing his remains to be transferred to
France or Ajaccio. Lowe desired to put on the lid of the coffin
"Napoleon Bonaparte," but his followers very properly disdained
committing a breach of faith on the dead Emperor, and insisted on
having "Napoleon" and nothing else. The Governor was stubbornly
opposed to it, so he was buried without any name being put on the
coffin.[12]
Perhaps one of the most terrific passages of unconscious humour is
related by Forsyth (vol. iii. p. 288), where Lowe is made to say to
Major Gorrequer and Mr. Henry, as they walked together before the
door of Plantation House discussing the character of Napoleon, "Well,
gentlemen, he was England's greatest enemy and mine too; but _I_
forgive him everything. On the death of a man like him we should only
feel deep concern and regret." Forsyth thinks this splendid
magnanimity on the part of his hero.
It is not recorded what the gallant Major thought of it, but it may be
taken for granted that if Mr. Henry and Gorrequer had any sense of
humour at all, Lowe's comment must have sounded very comical, knowing
what they did of the relations between the dead monarch and his
custodian, though it must be said that Henry seems to have been the
only person who could work up a sympathetic word for Sir Hudson.
Forsyth, in vol. iii. p. 307, says: "No one can study the character of
Napoleon without being struck by one prevailing feature, his intense
selfishness." This is a remarkable statement for any man who professes
to write accurate history to make, and proves conclusively that
Forsyth had not "studied" Napoleon's "character," or he would have
found, not only his closest friends, but some of his bitterest enemies
doing him the justice of stating the very opposite of what this writer
says of him.
Mr. Henry, who took part in the dissection of the corpse, says that
Napoleon's face had a remarkably placid expression, and indicated
mildness and sweetness of disposition, and those who gazed on the
features as they lay in the still repose of death could not help
exclaiming, "How beautiful!" After this very fine description from Sir
Hudson's friend, Forsyth adds a footnote: "It may interest
phrenologists to know that the organs of combativeness, causativeness,
and philoprogenitiveness were strongly developed in the cranium"! In
order to prove the charge of selfishness he brings in the old familiar
story of the divorce: "A memorable example of this (_i.e._,
selfishness) occurs in his treatment of the nobleminded Josephine."
This outburst is obviously intended for effect, but Forsyth does not
score a success in bringing the amiable Empress to his aid; for,
whatever virtue she may have possessed, authentic history reveals her
as the antithesis of "nobleminded." Those who knew the lady intimately
speak with marked generosity of her graces, but they also record a
shameless habit of faithlessness to her husband at a time when he was
pouring out volumes of love to her from Italy. And she seems to have
let herself go without restraint during his stay in Egypt. The
wayward, weak Josephine had many lovers, who were not too carefully
selected.
From the time of her marriage with Napoleon until she heard of him
being on his way from Egypt to France, her love intrigues were well
known, and her lovers were certainly not men of high public repute. In
short, Josephine was anything but "nobleminded." She was a confirmed
and audacious flirt until the stern realities of the dissolution of
her marriage brought her to her senses, and from that time until the
great political divorce took place, she appears to have kept free from
further love entanglements. Napoleon's attachment to her was very
genuine, and remained steadfast up to the time of her death, and even
at St. Helena he always spoke of her with great reverence. Forsyth
does not enhance Lowe's reputation or damage Napoleon's by the popular
use he makes of the annulment of the little Creole lady's marriage,
the merits of which may be referred to at greater length hereafter, as
it is a subject of itself and this reference to a momentous incident
of her husband's history is only by the way.
Meanwhile the Emperor's remains, in layers of coffins composed of
wood, tin, and lead, were hermetically sealed, and the tomb, having
been securely battened down with cement and slab, was substantially
railed in to prevent the intrusion of a sympathetic and curious
public. His tomb was left in charge of a British garrison, and the
heroes who followed him to his grave, and shared his martyrdom and
exile on that fatal rock for six mortal years, were shipped aboard the
_Camel_ and conveyed to England, there to be received by a set of
mildew-witted bureaucrats smitten with suspicion that the exiles may
have brought with them the spirit of their dead master, with the
object of invoking a sanguinary reaction in his favour by disturbing
the peace of Europe--as though Europe had experienced a single day of
real peace since the downfall of the Empire!
These exemplary men had faced and borne with magnificent fortitude
hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their mission was to carry
out the dying command of the hero whom they adored, and who had
succumbed to the hospitable treatment of Bathurst, Castlereagh,
Liverpool, and Wellington, and their accomplices. These guilty men,
whose names, strange to say, are as undying as that of their victim,
would fain have made it appear that had he not died of cancer of the
stomach, it were not possible that he could have died of anything but
robust health, owing to the salubrity of the climate they had selected
and the unequalled care they had taken of his person through the
immortal Lowe.
It is a remarkable thing that these men had no conception of the
great being they were practising cruelty upon. It is indeed a strange
freak of nature that makes it possible that the human mind can think
of Napoleon and these bureaucrats at the same time, but that is part
of the mystery that cannot at the present stage be understood. Time
may reveal the phenomenon, and in the years to come the spirits of the
just will call aloud for a real vindication of the character of the
man of the French Revolution, and, forsooth, it may be that a terrible
retribution is gathering in the distance. Who knows? Waterloo and St.
Helena may yet be the nemesis of the enemies of the great Emperor.
Obviously, he had visions, as had his compatriot Joan of Arc, who
suffered even a crueller fate than he at the hands of a few
bloodthirsty English noblemen, who disgraced the name of soldier by
not only allowing her to be burnt, but selling her to the parasitical
Bishops with that object in view. It is not strange that the Maid of
Orleans, who suffered martyrdom for the supernatural part she took in
fighting for her King and country, should, on April 18, 1909, become a
saint of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, nor that the
Pope should perform the ceremony. The English sold her. An
ecclesiastical court, headed by the infamous Bishop of Beauvais,
condemned her to be burnt as a witch, and when the flames were
consuming her a cry of "Jesus" was heard. An English soldier standing
by was so overcome by the awful wickedness that was being perpetrated
by the Anglo-French ecclesiastical alliance, that he called out, "We
are lost! We have burnt a saint!"
The soldier saw at once that the child of the Domremy labourer was a
"saint," but it has taken five centuries for the Church to which she
belonged, and whose representatives burnt her as a witch, to
officially beatify her. True, this stage has been gradually worked up
to by the erection of monuments to her honour and glory. Chinon
distinguished itself by this, presumably because it was there that
Joan interviewed the then uncrowned Charles, and startled him into
taking her into his service by the story she told of hearing the
heavenly voices at Domremy farm demanding that she should go forth as
the liberator of France.
The recognition of Napoleon's claim, not to "sanctity," but as a
benefactor of mankind, will also surely come, but in his case the
demand will come from no Church, but with the irresistible voice of
all Humanity.
Joan's country had been at war for one hundred years. Ravaged by
foreign invaders and depopulated by plague, it was foaming with civil
strife and treason to the national cause, many of the most powerful
men and women, both openly and in secret, taking sides with the enemy.
The crisis had reached a point when this modest, uneducated,
clear-witted, fearless maiden was launched by her "voices" to the
scene of battle, there to inspire hope and enthusiasm in the hearts of
her people. In a few weeks she had established confidence, smashed the
invader, and crowned the unworthy Charles VII. as King. Twenty years
after they had burnt her, there was scarcely a foreign foot to be
found on French soil.
There is a further similarity between the peasant girl and Napoleon.
_She_ was brought to the aid of her country by the voices of the
unseen, and four hundred years after, when her country was again in
dire trouble, _he_ was found in obscurity and in an almost
supernatural way flashed into prominent activity to save the
Revolution. It was the voices of the living, seen and unseen, that
called aloud for the little Corporal to lead to battle, conquer, and
ultimately govern. It was some of the self-same voices that intrigued
and then burst forth in declamation and demanded his abdication on the
eve of his first reverse. The Church, which owed its rehabilitation to
him after he had implanted a settled government in France, had no
small share in the conspiracy for his overthrow. He said, "There is
but one means of getting good manners, and that is by establishing
religion." He believed it, and did it in spite of a storm of
opposition that would have hurled a less resolute man from power, but
he knew full well his strength, and was sure then, as he ever was, of
his opinions.
The Church and those of the people who become allied to its material
policy are prone to destroy those who have been of service to their
cause. There is indeed no society of men and women who are so
vindictive, nay, revengeful, once they are seized with the idea that
they are being neglected, or their interests not receiving all the
patronage they think they deserve, and then, after a few generations
of reflection, they become overwhelmed with unctuous sanctity and
remorse, and proceed to make saints of the victims of their
progenitors in order that the perfidy they are historically linked to
shall be whitewashed and atoned for.
Napoleon believed that "No physical force ever dies; it merely changes
its form or direction"--and could we but get a glimpse behind the
veil, we might see his imperishable soul fleeting from sphere to
sphere, struggling with cruel reactionary spirits who forced him into
eternity before the work he was sent to do was completed.
Wieland, the German writer, had an interview with him on the field of
Jena. He says:--"I was presented by the Duchess of Weimar. He paid me
some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at me. Few
men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the art of
reading at the first glance the thought of other men. He saw in an
instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was simple in my manners
and void of pretension, and as he seemed desirous of making a
favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain
his end. I have never beheld anyone more calm, more simple, more mild,
or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the
feeling of power in a great monarch; he spoke to me as an old
acquaintance would speak to an equal, and what was more extraordinary
on his part, he conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half,
to the great surprise of the whole assembly."
Then Wieland goes on to relate what the conversation was. Napoleon
"preferred the Romans to the Greeks. The eternal squabbles of their
petty republics were not calculated to give birth to anything grand,
whereas the Romans were always occupied with great things, and it was
owing to this they raised up the Colossus which bestrode the world....
He was fond only of serious poetry, the pathetic and vigorous
writers, and above all, the tragic poets."
Wieland had been put so much at his ease (so he says) that he ventured
to ask how it was that the public worship Napoleon had restored in
France was not more philosophical and in harmony with the spirit of
the times. "My dear Wieland," was the reply, "religion is not meant
for philosophers! they have no faith either in me or my priests. As to
those who do believe, it would be difficult to give them, or to leave
them, too much of the marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for
philosophers, it would be just the reverse of that of the credulous
part of mankind."[13]
Müller, the Swiss historian's private interview with him at this
period is quite remarkable, and shows what a vast knowledge and
conception of things the Emperor had. Nothing shows more clearly his
own plan of regulating and guiding the affairs of the universe for the
benefit of all. He tells Müller that he should complete his history of
Switzerland, that even the more recent times had their interest. Then
he switched from the Swiss to the old Greek constitutions and history;
to the theory of constitutions; to the complete diversity of those in
Asia, and the causes of this diversity in the climate, polygamy, the
opposite characters of the Arabian and the Tartar races, the peculiar
value of European culture, and the progress of Freedom since the
sixteenth century; how everything was linked together, and in the
inscrutable guidance of an invisible hand; how he himself had become
great through his enemies; the great Confederation of Nations, the
idea of which Henri IV. had; the foundation of all religion and its
necessity; that man could not bear clear truth and required to be kept
in order; admitting the possibility, however, of a more happy
condition, if the numerous feuds ceased which were occasioned by too
complicated Constitutions (such as the German) and the intolerable
burden suffered by States from excessive armies.
These opinions clearly mark the guiding motives of Napoleon's attempts
to enforce upon different nations uniformity of the institutions and
customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says Müller, "and he entered
into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must
say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his
observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit),
his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and
his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his
disinterested goodness, he has also conquered me."[14] The remarkable
testimony of Wieland and Müller, both men of distinction, is of more
than ordinary value, seeing that they were not his countrymen, but on
the side of those who waged war against him. Müller admits that he
conquered him, and the world must admit that he is gradually, but
surely, conquering it in spite of the colossal libels that have been
spoken and written of him for the ostensible purpose of vindicating
the Puritans and making him appear as the Spoliator and Antichrist
whose thirst for blood, so that he might attain glory, was an
inexhaustible craze in him. To them he is the Ogre that staggers the
power of belief, and yet he defies the whole world to prove that he
ever declared war or committed a single crime during the whole
carnival of warfare that drenched Europe in human blood.
Up to the present, the world has lamentably failed to do anything of
the sort. His opponents, libellers, and progeny of his mean
executioners, are all losing ground, and he is gaining everywhere.
There is an unseen hand at work revealing the awful truth. This
dignified, calm, unassuming man, while surrounded by a crowd of Kings
and Princes, who were competing with each other to do him homage and
show their devotion, startles them by telling a story of when he was
"a simple Lieutenant in the 2nd Company of Artillery." Possibly some
of his guests were observed to be putting on airs that were always
distasteful to the Emperor, and this was his scornful way of rebuking
them. Or it might be that he wished to take the opportunity of
informing Europe that he had no desire to conceal his humble
beginning, though at that time he was recognised first man in it.
Historians, when he was at the height of his power, ransacked musty
archives assiduously to find out and prove that he had royal blood in
him. They professed to have discovered that he was connected with the
princely family of Treviso, and the comical way in which he
contemptuously brushed aside this fulsome flattery must have lacerated
the pride of courtiers who sought favours by such methods.
Bearing on the royal blood idea, Gourgaud in his Journal relates that
the Emperor told him the following stories:--
"At one time in my reign there was a disposition to make out that I
was descended from the Man in the Iron Mask. The Governor of Pignerol
was named Bompars. They said he had married his daughter to his
mysterious prisoner, the brother of Louis XIV., and had sent the pair
to Corsica under the name of 'Bonaparte,'" and then with fine humour
he adds:--"I had only to say the word and everybody would have
believed the fable."
He never forgot that he was Napoleon, hence never said the word.
His insincere father-in-law has been industriously searching for royal
blood too, and this is what his son-in-law says of him:--
"When I was about to marry Marie Louise, her father the Emperor sent
me a box of papers intended to prove that I was descended from the
Dukes of Florence. I burst out laughing, and said to Metternich, 'Do
you suppose I am going to waste my time over such foolishness? Suppose
it were true, what good would it do me? The Dukes of Florence were
inferior in rank to the Emperors of Germany. I will not place myself
beneath my father-in-law. I think that as I am, I am as good as he. My
nobility dates from Monte Notte. Return him these papers.' Metternich
was very much amused."
Francis of Austria must have felt confounded at the rebuke of his
unceremonious relative, who was always the man of stern reality--too
big to be dazzled by mouldy records of kingly blood. Neither did pomp
or ceremony attract him, except in so far as it might serve the
purpose of making an impression on others. Bourrienne, a shameless
predatory traitor, has said in his memoirs that when the seat of
government was removed from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries, the First
Consul said to him, "You are very lucky; you are not obliged to make a
spectacle of yourself. I have to go about with a cortège; it bores me,
but it appeals to the eye of the people."
Roederer in _his_ memoirs relates pretty much the same thing, only
that it bears on the question of title, and presumably the researches
for confirmation of his royal descent.
Here again, his strong practical view of things, and his utter
indifference to grandeur or genealogical distinction, are shown. He
says: "How can anyone pretend that empty names, titles given for the
sake of a political system, can change in the smallest degree one's
relations with one's friends and associates? I am called Sire, or
Imperial Majesty, without anyone in my household believing or thinking
that I am a different man in consequence. All those titles form part
of a _system_, and therefore they are necessary." He always ends his
ebullitions of convincing wisdom by making it clear precisely where he
stands.
The writer might quote pages of eulogies of him from the most eminent
men of every nationality. There is no trustworthy evidence that he
ever sought the flattery that was lavished on him; indeed, he seems
to have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of it.
On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never sought the
applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic monarch."[15]
Seguier says:--
"Napoleon is above human history. He belongs to heroic periods and is
beyond admiration."[16]
A notable Englishman, Lord Acton, says (like Müller) that "his
goodness was the most splendid that has appeared on earth." And there
are innumerable instances which prove that his sympathies and goodness
to those who were notoriously undeserving was a fatal passion with
him. But there is no opinion, blunt though it be, that so completely
touches one as that of the plain English sailors who said at Elba that
"Boney was a d----d good fellow after all." "They may talk about this
man as they like," said one of the crew of the _Northumberland_, "but
I won't believe the bad they say of him," and _this_ view seems to
have been generally held by the men who composed the crew of the
vessel that took the Emperor to St. Helena. It is noteworthy that
English man-of-war's-men, and also merchant seamen of these stirring
times, should have formed so favourable an impression of Napoleon,
especially as the Press of England teemed with hostility against him.
Articles attributing every form of indescribable bestiality,
corruption, gross cruelty to his soldiers, subordinate officers, and
even Marshals, appeared with shameful regularity. In these articles
were included the most absurd as well as the most serious charges.
I include the following story as a specimen, and take it in particular
as being quoted quite seriously by certain anti-Napoleonic writers in
the endeavour to bolster up a feeble case. Prejudice and distorted
vision prevented them from seeing the absurdity of such attempts to
blacken the character of Napoleon. Let the reader judge!
It is related that, at the time of the Concordat, Napoleon remarked to
Senator Volney, "France wants a religion." Volney's courageous (!)
reply was, "France wants the Bourbons," and the Emperor is thereupon
supposed to have been attacked by a fit of ungovernable fury, and to
have kicked the Senator in the stomach!
The more serious charges included incest with his sister Pauline and
his stepdaughter Hortense, and the poisoning of his plague-stricken
soldiers at Jaffa.
His palaces were said to be harems, and his libertinism to put
Oriental potentates to the blush. So industrious were these foes to
human fairness that they manufactured a silly story just before the
rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, to the effect that Napoleon had made
a violent attack on Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. So violent
was he in his gestures, the Ambassador feared lest the First Consul
would strike him. Even Oscar Browning is obliged to refute this
unworthy fabrication as being absurd on the face of it, but it has
taken ninety years to produce the authentic document from the British
Archives which disproves the scandal. Napoleon was too much absorbed
in things that mattered to take notice of the stupid though virulent
stories that were constantly being concocted against him. When he was
appealed to by his friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he
merely shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this
rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It pleases
the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to be perturbed,
or to meddle with it."
It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the
side of morality. It is well enough known that the French Court during
the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic arrangements, the
one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that
_his_ Court should have the reputation of being clean. He took
infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private amorous
connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a
staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of libertinism is an
outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never
have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame
Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office
under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most
careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal
friends. As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the
general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so. Not
merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with
Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of
public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]
His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral
code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard
of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation
under which any of his priests were bound in the shade. So shocked
were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and
circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they
advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of
so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat. It was not
exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in
fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so
malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and rugged tars aboard the
_Bellerophon_ and _Northumberland_ were drawn in touching sympathy
towards the man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent
belief that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of
war.
We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to avail
himself of them. He had resolved after his abdication to live the time
that was left to him in retirement, and believing in the generosity of
the British nation, he threw himself on their hospitality. He had made
his way through a network of blockade when he returned from Egypt and
Elba, and looking at the facts as they are now before us, it is
preposterous to adhere to the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed
in that he had no option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as
the guest of England aboard the _Bellerophon_, and it may be taken
for granted that the resourceful sailors knew that he had many
channels of escape. They knew the _Bellerophon_ was a slow old tub,
and that she would be nowhere in a chase.
Besides, it was not necessary for Napoleon to make Rochefort or
Rochelle his starting-point. The troops and seamen at these and the
neighbouring ports were all devoted to him, and would have risked
everything to save him from capture. He knew all this, but he was
possessed of an innate belief in the chivalry of the British
character, and left out of account the class of men that were in
power. He knew them to be his inveterate foes, but was deceived in
believing they had hearts. Their foremost soldier had taken an active
share in his defeat, and he acknowledged it by putting himself under
the protection of our laws. The honest English seamen who were his
shipmates on both ships were not long in forming a strong liking to
him, and a dislike to the treatment he was receiving. They felt there
was something wrong, though all they could say about it was that "he
was a d----d good fellow."
Lord Keith was so afraid of his fascinating personality after his
visit to the _Bellerophon_ that he said, "D----n the fellow! if he
had obtained an interview with His Royal Highness, in half an hour
they would have been the best friends in England." In truth, Lord
Keith lost a fine opportunity of saving British hospitality from the
blight of eternal execration by evading the lawyer who came to
Plymouth to serve a writ of Habeas Corpus to claim the Emperor's
person, and the pity is that an honoured name should have been
associated with a mission so crimeful and an occasion so full of
illimitable consequences to England's boasted generosity. Except that
he too well carried out his imperious instructions, Lord Keith does
not come well out of the beginning of the great tragedy. The only
piece of real delicacy shown by Lord Keith to the Emperor was in
allowing him to retain his arms, and snubbing a secretary who reminded
him that the instructions were that _all_ should be disarmed. This
zealous person was told to mind his own business.
Napoleon asks the Admiral if there is any tribunal to which he can
apply to determine the legality of him being sent to St. Helena, as he
protested that he was the guest and not the prisoner of the British
nation; and Keith, with an air of condescending benevolence, assures
him that he is satisfied there is every disposition on the part of the
Government to render his situation as comfortable as prudence would
permit. No wonder Napoleon's reply was animated, and his soul full of
dignified resentment at the perfidy that was about to be administered
to him under the guise of beneficence.
Scott describes the interview with Keith as "a remarkable scene." He
says: "His (Napoleon's) manner was perfectly calm and collected, his
voice equal and firm, his tones very pleasing, the action of the head
was dignified, and the countenance remarkably soft and placid, without
any marks of severity." That is a good testimony from the author of
the "Waverley Novels," who was anything but an impartial biographer.
Not even the novelist's most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of
them) can give him credit for excessive partiality towards the hero
who was the first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not
only knew the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander)
had ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to
conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled in
the history of man.
I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of the
Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it), it was a
fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a rock when, by
adopting a more humane policy, his incomparable genius might have
been used to carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his
return from Elba. The tumult which surrounded his career had changed;
he saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once
proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his great
scheme of renewing the heart of things. He knew it would take time,
and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was putting forth
supreme efforts to destroy him. They were out for blood, and _he_ was
in too great a hurry.
In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, "Ah! if I could
have governed France for forty years I would have made her the most
splendid empire that ever existed!"
His demand on fortune was too great, and notwithstanding the knowledge
he had of human nature, he could not check the torrent of treason that
had been sedulously nursed against him by his enemies until it ignited
the imagination of those whom he had a right to expect would stand
loyally by him in an hour of tribulation such as no other man had ever
experienced.
It is true that he made history (brilliant history if you like) in
those latter days, but oh! the anguish and the baseness of it all.
Cæsar made history too; neither did _this_ ruler succeed altogether.
Brutus, his friend, forsook and dispatched him, and possibly that was
the most enviable finish to a great career. Did Napoleon fare better
than his prototype, inasmuch as he was not the victim of the
assassin's dagger? Intoxicated with the spirit of charity, his
conquerors decreed that he should be deported to a secluded place of
abode on a barren and unhealthy rock, there to be maintained at a cost
to the nation of £12,000 a year, and succumb as quickly as possible
like a good Christian gentleman.
The presumption of Lord Keith in observing to Napoleon that it was
preferable for him to be sent to St. Helena than to be confined in a
smaller space in England or sent to France or Russia, and the
Emperor's supposed reply--"Russia! God preserve me from it!"--is
almost unbelievable, and in the light of what he constantly asserted
while England's captive, this expression may be regarded as a
fabrication.
Whether it was an innate belief that Alexander of Russia was his
friend, or the fact that Francis of Austria was his father-in-law, he
certainly avowed--according to the St. Helena chroniclers--that if he
had surrendered to either of them he would have been treated, not only
with kindness, but with a proper regard as befitted a monarch who had
governed eighty-three millions of people, or more than the half of
Europe. But even if he were merely soliloquising, or wished to
convince himself and those he expressed this opinion to, it is hard to
think that any of the continental Powers would have risked the certain
consequences of having him either shot or ill-treated, and it is
extremely doubtful whether even in France there could have been found
a soldier that would have obeyed an order to shoot his former Emperor,
who had been requisitioned to return from Elba, and who so recently,
with only six hundred soldiers, made war against Louis with his two
hundred thousand and defeated and dethroned him.
Nothing so magnificent has ever been known. This great man had
complete hold of the imagination and devotion of his common people and
soldiers. Even in the hour of defeat their loyalty was amazing.
Various instances are given of this deep-rooted loyalty and affection.
Some of his Imperial Guards who were wounded at Waterloo killed
themselves on hearing that he had lost the battle, and many, who had
been thought to be dead, when brought to consciousness shouted "Vive
l'Empereur." The hospitals were full of dying men who uttered the same
cry. One was having his leg amputated, and as he looked at the blood
streaming from it, said that he would willingly give it all in the
service of Napoleon. Another, who was having a ball extracted from
his left side near the heart, shouted, "Probe an inch deeper and there
you will find the Emperor."
The story of the old woman whom he and Duroc met during the second
campaign in Italy, and while climbing Mont Tarare, is a striking
illustration of how he was regarded by the poorer classes. She hated
the Bourbons and wanted to see the First Consul. Napoleon answered,
"Bah! tyrant for tyrant--they are just the same thing." "No, no!" she
replied; "Louis XVI. was the king of the nobles, Bonaparte is the king
of the people." This idea of the old woman was the universal feeling
of her class right through his reign. No writer has been able to give
proof that it was withdrawn, even when he was overwhelmed with
disaster which drained his empire of vast masses of its population. No
cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination
multitudes of men and women as he did. It was not his incomparable
genius, nor his matchless military successes in battle. He was loved
because he was lovable, and was trusted because he inspired belief in
his high motives of amelioration of all down-trodden people. He ruled
with a stern but kindly discipline, and put a heavy hand on those who
had despotic tendencies.
The Duchess of Abrantès, who smarted under some severe comments he
had made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrantès, while at St.
Helena, has been generous enough to say many kind things of him in her
memoirs. One of her references to him is to this effect:--"All I know
of him" (and she knew him well from childhood) "proves that he
possessed a great soul which quickly forgets and forgives." She is
very fond of repeating in her memoirs that Napoleon proposed marriage
to her mother, Madame Permon, who was herself a Corsican and knew the
Bonaparte family well.
Madame Junot relates another story which is characteristic of
Bonaparte. Such was the enthusiasm of the people on his march towards
Paris after landing from Elba, that when he was holding a review of
the National Guard at Grenoble, the people shouldered him, and a young
girl with a laurel branch in her hand approached him reciting some
verses. "What can I do for you, my pretty girl?" said the Emperor. The
girl blushed, then lifting her eyes to him replied, "I have nothing to
ask of your Majesty; but you would render me very happy by embracing
me." Napoleon kissed her, and turning his head to either side, said
aloud, with a fascinating smile, "I embrace in you all the ladies of
Grenoble."
That Napoleon made mistakes no one will dispute; indeed, he saw
clearly, and admitted freely, in his solitude, that he had made many.
His minor fault (if it be right to characterise it as such) was in
extending clemency to the many rascals that were plotting his ruin and
carrying on a system of peculation that was an abhorrence to him.
Talleyrand, Fouché, and Bourrienne frequently came under his
displeasure and were removed from his service, but were taken back
after his wrath had passed.
Miot de Melito speaks of them as "Bourrienne and other subordinate
scoundrels," and, indeed, Miot de Melito does not exaggerate in his
estimate of them. Fouché says that Bourrienne kept him advised of all
Napoleon's movements for 25,000 francs per month, besides being both
partner and patron in the house of Coulon Brothers, cavalry equipment
providers, who failed for £120,000.
In 1805, Bourrienne was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at Hamburg,
and during his stay there he made £290,000 by delivering permits and
making what is known as "arbitrary stoppages," and besides betraying
Bonaparte to the Bourbons, this vile traitor wrote to Talleyrand, a
few days after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the
return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family."
But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of
this thievish human jackdaw.
His memoirs are said to have been written by an impecunious and
mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Mémoires de
Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very
extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from
them, authors have quoted from them whenever they desired an authority
to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to
believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings.
Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the
chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor.
Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the
impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms or
historical statements.
Men like Fouché, Talleyrand, and Bourrienne, and political women like
Madame de Remusat and Madame de Staël, all of whom were brought under
the Emperor's displeasure by their zealous aptitude in one way and
another for intrigue, disloyalty, and, so far as the men are
concerned, glaring dishonesty in money matters, have assiduously
chronicled their own virtues and declaimed against Napoleon's
incalculable vices, and this course was no doubt chosen in order to
avert the public gaze from too close a scrutiny into their own
perfidy. Their plan is not an unusual one under such circumstances;
rascals never scruple to multiply offences more wicked than those
already committed in order to prove that they are acting from a pure
sense of public morality and historical truth. If the object of their
attack be a benefactor, and one who has been obliged to rebuke or
dismiss them for misdeeds, great or small, then they assail him with
unqualified hostility.
This unquestionably was the penalty paid by Napoleon for extending
clemency to men who, if they had been in the service of any other
monarch in Europe, would have been shut up in a fortress, or shot, the
moment their perfidies had been discovered. The pity is that so much
of this declamatory stuff has been so willingly believed and made use
of in order to defame the name of a sovereign whose besetting fault
was in relaxing just punishment bestowed on those who, he could never
altogether forget, were his companions in other days.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Montholon wished to have the following simple inscription:
"Napoléon, né à Ajaccio, le 15 Août, 1769, mort à St. Helena, le 5
Mai, 1821."
[13] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
[14] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
[15] "Correspondence of Napoleon I."
[16] Ibid.
[17] Madame Walewska bore him two children. This caused him to develop
the idea of having an heir.