ST. HELENA[27]
[Footnote 27: References: Abell, Mrs. L. E. (late Miss
Balcombe), Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon; Cockburn:
Diary of Buonaparte's voyage to St. Helena in 1815; Lowe,
Memorial relatif a la captivite de Napoleon a Sainte-Helene;
Maitland: Narrative of the surrender of Buonaparte and his
residence on board the _Bellerophon_ between May 24th and
August 8th, 1815; O'Meara, Napoleon in Exile; or, a Voice
from St. Helena: being the opinions and reflections of
Napoleon on the most important events of his life and
government in his own words; Rosebery: Napoleon, the Last
Phase; Silvestre: De Waterloo a Sainte-Helene; Gourgaud:
Sainte-Helene, journal inedit de 1815 a 1818; Masson: Autour
de Sainte-Helene; Las Cases: Memorial de Sainte-Helene;
Antommarchi: Les derniers moments de Napoleon; Henry: Events
of a Military Life; Montholon: Recits de la captivite de
l'empereur Napoleon; Montholon: Souvenirs de la comtesse;
Montholon: Lettres du comte et de la comtesse (ed. P.
Gonnard); Fremaux: Napoleon prisonnier; Planat de la Faye:
Souvenirs; Gonnard: Origines de la legende napoleonienne.]
Embarrassment of the English Ministry -- A Strange Embassy --
Napoleon's Attitude -- The Transportation -- The Prison and its
Governor -- Occupations of the Prisoner -- Napoleon's Historical
Writings -- Failing Health and Preparations for Death -- His Last
Will and Testament -- The End -- Imprisoned Genius -- The St.
Helena Period -- The Insatiate Curiosity of Europe -- First
Communications from the Island -- Napoleon's Appeal -- Gourgaud
in Europe -- His Undeserved Notoriety -- Futile Efforts of Las
Cases -- O'Meara's Activities -- Confusion During the Last Years
-- Documentary Evidence -- The Legend as a Historical Force.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON SLEEPING BY LAS CASES ON BOARD THE BELLEROPHON
In red chalk by Lepicie.]
[Sidenote: 1815-21]
The ministry of Lord Liverpool, though ultra-Tory, was nevertheless
embarrassed by the course of affairs. On June twentieth the premier
wrote to Castlereagh that he wished Napoleon had been captured by
Louis XVIII, and executed as a rebel. This amazing suggestion was the
result of the progress made within a year by the doctrine of
legitimacy. Although Talleyrand had observed the Hundred Days from the
safe seclusion of Carlsbad, and was coldly received by his
"legitimate" sovereign when he returned to Paris under Wellington's
aegis, yet there was no one equally able to restore a "legitimate"
government, and, with the aid of Wellington, who assumed without
question the chief place in reconstructing France, he was soon in full
activity. In strict logic, the allies reasoned that Napoleon was their
common prisoner, and, as the chief malefactor, he should meet the fate
which was to be Ney's, and later that of Murat. By long familiarity
with such notions, the Czar had finally been converted to the once
abhorrent idea of legitimacy, and was hatching the scheme of the Holy
Alliance; even he would have made no objection. But English opinion,
however irritated, would not tolerate the idea of death as a penalty
for political offenses. Whatever ministers felt or said, they dared
consider no alternative in dealing with Napoleon except that of
imprisonment. Accordingly, St. Helena, the spot suggested at Vienna as
being the most remote in the habitable world, was designated and the
island was borrowed from the East India Company. Acts of Parliament
were passed which established a special government for it, and cut it
off from all outside communication, "for the better detaining in
custody Napoleon Bonaparte." The Continental allies, therefore, on
August second, declared the sometime Emperor to be their common
prisoner. To England they yielded the right to determine his place of
detention, but to each of themselves--Austria, Russia, and
Prussia--was reserved the right of sending thither a commissioner who
should determine the fact of actual imprisonment.
It was in Torbay that the newspapers brought on board the
_Bellerophon_ first announced what was under consideration. On July
thirty-first, with inconsistent ceremony, the determination was
formally announced by an embassy consisting of Lord Keith, the
admiral; Sir Henry Bunbury, an under-secretary of state; and Mr.
Meike, secretary to the admiral. To whom did this highest official
authority address itself? To General Bonaparte, a private citizen!
Their message was read in French, and Napoleon displayed perfect
self-control. Asked if he had anything to say, the ex-Emperor, without
temper or bitterness, appealed against the judgment of governments
both to posterity and to the British people. He was, he said, a
voluntary guest; he wished to be received as such under the law of
nations, and to be domiciled as an English citizen (_sic_). During the
interval before naturalization he would dwell under superintendence
anywhere in England, thirty leagues from any seaport. He could not
live in St. Helena; he was accustomed to ride twenty miles a day; what
could he do on that little rock at the end of the world? He could have
gone to his father-in-law, or to the Czar, but while the tricolor was
still flying he had confided in British hospitality. Though defeated,
he was still a sovereign, and deserved to be treated as such. With
emphasis he declared that he preferred death to St. Helena.
The embassy withdrew in silence from the moving scene. Lord Keith had
previously expressed gratitude to Napoleon for personal attentions to
a young relative who had been captured at Waterloo. Him, therefore,
the imperial prisoner now recalled, and asked if there were any
tribunal to which appeal might be made. The answer was a polite
negative, with the assurance that the British government would
mitigate the situation as far as prudence would permit. "How so?" said
Napoleon. "Surely St. Helena is preferable to a smaller space in
England," answered Keith, "or being sent to France, or perhaps to
Russia." "Russia!" exclaimed Napoleon, taken off his guard. "God
preserve me from it!" This was the only moment of excitement; the
witnesses of the long and trying scene have left on record the
profound impression made on them by Napoleon's dignity and admirable
conduct throughout. Subsequently the prisoner composed a written
protest appealing to history. An enemy who for twenty years had waged
war against the English people had come voluntarily to seek an asylum
under English laws; how did England respond to such magnanimity? In
his own mind, at least, he instituted and therefore wrote a comparison
between-himself and Themistocles, who took refuge with the Persians,
and was kindly treated. The parallel broke down in that the great
Greek had never forced his enemy into entangling alliances, as
Napoleon had forced England into successive coalitions for
self-preservation. Moreover, his surrender was not voluntary: his life
would not have been worth a moment's purchase either in France or
elsewhere on the Continent, to have fled by sea would have been to
invite capture. "Wherever," as he himself repeatedly said--"wherever
there was water to float a ship, there was to be found a British
standard." Still there were many in England who took his view; much
sympathy was aroused, and some futile efforts for his release were
made.
For the journey to St. Helena, Napoleon was transferred to Admiral
Cockburn's ship, the _Northumberland_. The suite numbered thirty, and
was chosen by Napoleon himself. Its members were Bertrand, Montholon,
and Las Cases, with their families, together with Gourgaud and,
following in a later ship, a Pole of doubtful duty and dubious
personality, the self-styled Colonel Piontkowski. There were sixteen
servants, of whom twelve were Napoleon's. The voyage was tedious and
uneventful. The admiral adhered to English customs, and discarded the
etiquette observed toward crowned heads; but he remained on the best
of terms with his illustrious prisoner. There were occasional
misunderstandings, and sometimes ill-natured gossip, in which the
admiral was denounced behind his back as a "shark"; but such little
gusts of temper passed without permanent consequences. Napoleon had
secured the excellent library he desired, and every day read or wrote
during most of the morning; the evenings he devoted to games of hazard
for low stakes, or to chess, which he played very badly. He was
careful as to his diet, took abundant regular exercise, and, since his
health was excellent, he appeared in the main cheerful and resigned.
The island of St. Helena is the craggy summit of an ancient volcano,
rising two thousand seven hundred feet above the sea, and contains
forty-five square miles. Its shores are precipitous, but it has an
excellent harbor, that of Jamestown, which was then a port of call on
the voyage from England, by the Cape of Good Hope, to India. It lies
four thousand miles from London, one thousand one hundred and forty
from the coast of Africa, one thousand one hundred and eighty from the
nearest point in South America. There were a few thousand inhabitants
of mixed race, and the tropical climate, though moist and enervating,
is fairly salubrious. Under the act passed by Parliament, England
increased the territorial waters around the island to a ring three
times the usual size, and policed them by "hovering" vessels, which
made the approach of suspicious craft virtually impossible. This,
with numerous other precautionary measures of minor importance, made
St. Helena an impenetrable jail. It was October sixteenth, 1815, when
Napoleon landed on its shores.
The residence provided for the imperial captive was a rather ordinary
farm-house in the center of the island, on a plateau two thousand feet
high. The grounds were level, and bounded by natural limits, so that
they were easy to guard, and could be observed in all their extent by
sentries; eventually a circuit of twelve miles was marked out, and
within this the prisoner might move at will; if he wished to pass the
line, he must be attended by an English officer. Considering the
conceptions of state and chivalry then prevalent, the place was mean;
long after, when enlarged and repaired, the house was thought not
unsuitable for the entertainment of an imprisoned Zulu chieftain.
Longwood, for this is the familiar name, might at a pinch have
sufficed for the lodging of General Bonaparte; it was certainly better
than a dungeon; but its modest comfort was far from the luxurious
elegance which had become a second nature to the Emperor Napoleon.
Such as it was to be, however, it was still uninhabitable in October,
and its destined occupant was, until December ninth, the guest of a
hospitable merchant, Mr. Balcombe, at his villa known as The Briars.
The sentinels and patrols remained six hundred paces from the door
during the day; at night the cordon of guards was drawn close around
the house; twice in twenty-four hours the orderly must assure himself
of the prisoner's actual presence, and human ingenuity could devise no
precaution which was not taken by land and sea to make impossible any
secret communication, inward or outward. Cockburn's serene good-nature
rendered it out of the question for the captive to do more than
declare his policy of protest and exasperation, until April, 1816,
when the admiral departed, and was replaced by Sir Hudson Lowe. The
latter was a vulnerable foe. A creature of routine, and fresh from a
two years' residence as English commissioner in Bluecher's camp, he had
thoroughly absorbed the temper both of the Tory ministry and of the
Continental reactionaries. Neither irascible, severe, nor ill-natured,
he was yet punctilious, and in no sense a match for the brilliant
genius of his antagonist. With the arrival of this unfortunate
official properly begins the St. Helena period of Napoleon's life--a
period considered by many to be instructive; but, as regards the talk
and futile calculations in which he indulged, comparable only to that
of his ineffectual agitations in Corsica.
[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by
S. W. Reynolds.
NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.
Painted by Horace Vernet.]
Napoleon, the prisoner, had a double object--release and
self-justification. The former he hoped to gain by working on the
feelings of the English Liberals; the latter by writing an
autobiography which, in order to win back the lost confidence of
France, should emphasize the democratic, progressive, and beneficent
side of his career, and consign to oblivion his tyrannies and
inordinate personal ambitions. The dreary chronicle of the quarrel
between a disarmed giant and a potent pygmy is uninteresting in
detail, but very illuminating in its large outlines. The routine of a
court was instituted and for a time was rigidly observed at Longwood.
The powerless monarch so successfully simulated the wisdom and
judgment of a chastened soul that the accounts which reached the
distant world awakened a great pity among the disinterested. As on
shipboard and at The Briars, he gave his mornings to literature, clad
in a studied, picturesque dishabille. The afternoon he devoted to
amusement and exercise; but a distaste for more physical exertion than
was actually essential to health grew steadily, until he became
sluggish and corpulent. At table he was always abstemious; his sleep
was irregular and disturbed. The evenings he spent with favorite
authors, Voltaire, Corneille, and Ossian; frequently, also, in reading
the Bible. The opinions he expressed were in the main those of his
pseudoscientific days; among other questions discussed was that of
polygamy, which he upheld as an excellent institution theoretically.
Much time was spent by the household in abusing Longwood, and so
effectually that a wooden house was constructed in England, and
erected near by; but the prisoner made difficulties about every
particular, and never occupied it. There were continuous schemings for
direct intercourse with friends in France, and partial success ended
in the dismissal of Las Cases. Gourgaud, too, departed, ostensibly
because of a quarrel with Montholon, really, as he represented, to
agitate with Alexander, Francis, and Maria Louisa for Napoleon's
release. The exile confessed, in an unguarded moment, that no man
alive could have satisfied him in the relation of governor of St.
Helena, but yet he was adroit and indefatigable in his efforts to
discredit Lowe. The "Letters from the Cape of Good Hope," published in
England anonymously, but now incorporated in the official edition of
Napoleon's works as the thirty-first volume, abuse the climate of St.
Helena, depict the injustice of the imprisonment, and heap scorn on
the governor. The book was widely read, and furnished the Whigs in
Parliament with many shafts of criticism. This success emboldened the
author, and further compositions by his hand were mysteriously
published in Europe.
For three years Napoleon's self-appointed task as a historian was
unremittingly pursued, and the results, while he had the assistance of
Las Cases and Gourgaud, were voluminous; thereafter the output was a
slender rill. Most of the volumes which record his observations and
opinions bear the names of the respective memorialists, Montholon, Las
Cases, Gourgaud, O'Meara, and Antommarchi, the two latter his
attendant physicians. The period he took pains to elucidate most fully
in these writings was that between Toulon and Marengo. Over his own
name appeared monographs on Elba, the Hundred Days, and Waterloo. His
professional ability is shown by short studies on the "Art and History
of War," on "Army Organization," and on "Fortification"; likewise by
his full analyses of the wars waged by Caesar, Turenne, and Frederick
the Great. These are not unworthy of the author's reputation; his
versatility is displayed in a few commonplace notes--some on
Voltaire's "Mahomet," some on suicide, and others on the second book
of the AEneid. A widely circulated treatise, the "Manuscript from St.
Helena," was long attributed to him, but was a clever forgery. As will
be explained, its effect on history was important.
For nearly four years Napoleon's health was fair. O'Meara, the
physician appointed to attend him, was assiduous and skilful, but when
he became his patient's devoted slave he was dismissed by Lowe.
Thereupon certain disquieting symptoms, which had been noted from time
to time, became more pronounced, and the prisoner began to brood and
mope in seclusion. In the autumn of 1819, Dr. Antommarchi, a Corsican
physician chosen by Fesch, was installed at Longwood. For a time, as
he claimed, he had some success in ameliorating the ex-Emperor's
condition, and to what the writer records as their confidential talks
we owe our knowledge of Napoleon's infancy. But from month to month
the patient's strength diminished, and the ravages of his mysterious
disease at length became very apparent. The obstinacy of Lowe in
carrying out the letter of his instructions, by intruding on the
sufferer to secure material for a daily report, seriously aggravated
Napoleon's miseries. Two priests accompanied Antommarchi: one only
remained for some time, and after his arrival mass was celebrated
almost every morning in the chapel adjoining the sick-room. "Not every
man is an atheist who would like to be," was a remark Napoleon dropped
to Montholon. Yet, though preparing for death, he was making ready
simultaneously to speed his Parthian arrow.
His testament displays his qualities in their entirety. The language
sounds simple and sincere; there is a hidden meaning in almost every
line. His religion had been outwardly that of a deist; he now
professed a piety which he always felt but rarely practised. During
his life France had been caressed and used as a skilful artificer
caresses and uses his tools; the last words of his will suggest a
passionate devotion. To his son he recommended the "love of right,
which alone can incite to the performance of great deeds"; for his
faithless wife he expressed the tenderest sentiments, and probably
felt them. It was his hope that the English people would avenge itself
on the English oligarchy, and that France would forgive the traitors
who betrayed her--Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette--as he
forgave them. Louis he pardoned in the same spirit for the "libel
published in 1820; it is full of falsehoods and falsified documents."
The blame for Enghien's murder he took to himself. The second portion
of the document is a series of munificent-sounding bequests to a list
of legatees which includes every one who had done the testator any
important service since his earliest childhood. France under the
Bourbons confiscated the imperial domain of about a hundred and eighty
millions, which Napoleon had estimated at over two hundred and twenty.
When the nation passed again under the Bonapartes it appropriated
eight millions toward the unpaid legacies. In the end his executors
collected three and a half millions of francs wherewith to pay
bequests amounting on their face to over nine and a half. In a codicil
he remembers a certain Cautillon, who had undergone trial for an
alleged attempt to assassinate Wellington. "Cautillon had as much
right to assassinate that oligarch as he [Wellington] to send me to
the rock of St. Helena to perish there." Such was the nature and
substance of an appeal to a generous, forgiving nation, and to
posterity, by one who wrote in the same document that he wished to die
in the bosom of the Christian church, whose central doctrine is love,
and whose ethic is forgiveness of enemies.
"I closed the abyss of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I
cleansed the Revolution, ennobled the people, and made the kings
strong. I have awakened all ambitions, rewarded all merit, and
enlarged the borders of glory." These were the words of Napoleon in
1816; he Lived in this hallucination to the end. In the autumn of 1820
he realized his condition, and throughout the winter he was feeble and
depressed. In February, 1821, he began to fail rapidly, and the
symptoms of his disease, cancer in the stomach, multiplied; but, in
spite of feebleness, he faced death with courage. On May third two
English physicians, recently arrived, came in for consultation; they
could only recommend palliatives, and under the influence of that
treatment the imperial patient kept an uncertain hold on his
faculties. Two days later a violent storm of wind and rain set in. A
spreading willow, under which Napoleon had spent many hours, was
overturned; the trees planted by his hands were uprooted; and a
whirlwind devastated the garden in which he had worked for exercise.
The death of the sufferer was coincident, and scarcely less violent.
The last words uttered were caught by listening ears as the sun rose;
they were "Tete ... armee." Mme. Bertrand and her children were
present; at the sight of their friend's suffering the boy fainted and
the little girls broke into loud lamentation. At eleven in the morning
the supreme agonies began; a little before six in the evening the
heart put forth its last convulsive effort, and ceased to beat. The
mournful band of watchers within bowed their heads. Without the door
another watch was set--that of the orderly. During the first outburst
of grief among those at the bedside two officers entered silently,
felt the cold limbs, marked the absence of life, and left without a
word. England's prisoner had escaped.
* * * * *
It requires a complex environment to develop a man of any sort; for
the exhibition of his personality and identity he must live in family,
church, and state, and beyond all these surroundings even the meanest
of mankind is subject to some cosmopolitan influence. How much more
true is this of a historical and political personage, who is and can
be himself only under the conditions which permit the play of his
powers. Removed from these, his soul and spirit sicken, his character
becomes morbid, his capacities are crippled, his identity is
distorted. Nothing could be more fatuous and simple than the effort to
read the true character of Napoleon Bonaparte from his talk and
behavior when an exile; a prisoner of time and space, as world
communications then were; an exhausted body; a crippled, outraged
spirit, reduced for attack and defense to the weapons of the pen and
the tongue wielded on and over an immensity of apartness. Yet exactly
this has been the self-imposed task of many investigators and writers.
The literature of his prison-house has grown to vast dimensions, and
readers feel cheated when the bald outline of all that may even be
considered history is offered for their consideration. The narrative
of the St. Helena epoch in his life just given is probably accurate,
and there are portions of it that rest on historical evidence both
objective and internal, as trustworthy as most of what passes for
history.
But when this is said the statement must be carefully guarded, for the
reason that substantially all our evidence is virtually such as would
be given about himself by a convict behind the bars, his sympathizing
accomplices, his jailer, and his prosecutors. The simile is not
strained. The surgeon of the _Northumberland_, ignorant of French,
gathered from those of Napoleon's attendants who spoke English such
scraps regarding the prisoner as he could, published them, and lost
his government employment. The book was widely read and proved a very
lucrative enterprise. Outside its pages there was profound silence and
complete ignorance in Europe regarding the now mysterious convict,
buried to the world. Craving for information was universal and
insatiate; if only Napoleon himself would speak! It appeared as if the
longing were satisfied in a published "Manuscript arrived from St.
Helena by unknown means." The volume was difficult to procure,
although edition followed edition in swift succession; many a precious
copy was used in reading circles and there are still in existence a
considerable number of the very numerous reproductions made at the
time with pen and ink. One of these was actually sold not long ago to
an unsuspecting editor in the United States and published in his
magazine as a rarity. It fell flat because so many knew the truth:
that it was apocryphal, the merry jest of a Genevese gentleman, Lullin
de Chateauvieux, who lived to see his sport a dangerous element in
the falsification of history. It was not only Napoleonic in style, but
too Napoleonic; and, considered as an imperialist pamphlet, an
anti-royalist pronunciamento, brought into being the embryo of a
legend such as men crave and which the loyal efforts of many
historians have utterly failed to destroy. Its contents, of course,
are utterly worthless except as a comedy, a mask of literature which
influenced public opinion.
The first known opportunity of the Napoleon court for communication
with the outside world was afforded by the British government. The
guarding and maintenance of Napoleon proved a source of great
expenditure. The garrison and military staff, the hovering vessels of
the navy, the entertainment of the continental commissioners, and
especially the allowance for the establishment of Longwood, miserable
as it was--the total cost appeared to the London authorities
exorbitant. Prices of supplies at St. Helena were enormous because of
its remoteness. So the subordinates of the ministry, with the assent
of their superiors, determined upon reductions, and they began with
the household of the Emperor, issuing orders that four of its members
should be dismissed. These were, first, the Polish adventurer
Piontkowski, part gentleman, part domestic, and wholly emissary and
spy, who had been sent out by the English government in a vessel which
followed the _Northumberland_, for reasons best known to themselves.
He appears to have accepted a charge from Napoleon; that, namely, of
laying before the Czar a formal protest against the treaties which
made Napoleon the joint prisoner of the allies, entrusted to the
charge of Great Britain. The next to leave were Archambaud and
Rousseau, one a huntsman, one a chief butler; they were to visit
Joseph Bonaparte in the United States and give him the fullest
information. The fourth was the chamberlain Santini, a Corsican, and,
though a soldier, utterly illiterate. To him was confided a protest
for use either in London or in Italy, as the event should determine. A
copy was made in Chinese ink on white satin ribbon for concealment
about his person, but the chief reliance was, that "verbally and
literally" he was drilled in its repetition until he could neither
forget nor mistake in its recital. The faithful servants reached
Joseph's home in America, the Pole on arrival in England styled
himself Count and Colonel, became the hero of a social season in
London, and vanished from history as mysteriously as he entered it.
But Santini with Italian adroitness gained not only the presence of
Lord Holland but his attentive ear; his recital was translated into
English and published, the matter was brought before Parliament by
interpellation of the great Whig statesman and caused great excitement
throughout the world.
Napoleon's "Appeal to the English Nation," as printed from Santini's
copy, recited the stupidity of his jailer, the unhealthiness of the
climate, the expense and difficulty of living. His statements were not
merely confirmed, the conditions of life on St. Helena were
monstrously exaggerated by Montchenu, the French commissioner, in a
private letter which was published soon after the arrival of Santini
in London. This, too, was circulated all abroad. Public opinion was
further agitated. The allied dynasties were made to feel ashamed by
their subjects, and in Great Britain there was a fierce surge of
reprobation, the resonance of which has not yet died away. The exile
was chained to a horrid rock, in a climate Europeans could not endure,
his miserable existence in hovels overrun with vermin must be eked out
by loans from friends and the sale of his silver tableware, he was
put to needless shame by the stupid regulations of a stupid
government, stupidly enforced by a stupid governor, he was sick of
body and heart, very sick and might die. Whose was the responsibility
for this disgrace to civilization? Somewhat in this way men talked and
questioned; soon his faults were forgotten in the pitiful recital of
his woes; the legend was further advanced, once more the glory of
Napoleon's epoch became a powerful force in Europe.
On the fourteenth of March, 1818, there arrived in England a member of
the St. Helena court, whose name and fame bid fair to rival if not to
obliterate those of all his companions in exile, though most
undeservedly. This was General Gourgaud, styled Master of Ordinance.
He was thirty-five years old and had been a soldier for sixteen,
winning promotion for intelligence and intrepidity, securing
Napoleon's affection by personal charm and by services which once at
least, and probably twice, directly saved the Emperor's life, until at
last he was a baron, a general at Waterloo, and a companion in St.
Helena. This all seems passing strange because he was a high officer
of Louis XVIII before Napoleon's return from Elba; made obeisance to
established authority as soon as he returned from captivity, and
during the successive governments of France to his death in 1852 found
favor with each in turn. Whatever he was before and after, his life in
St. Helena was that of a sentimental, jealous, sensitive child,
scarcely a male at that. Every word and every act of every one gave
him such pangs of wounded vanity that at last his presence was
intolerable and by the influence of the Montholons it was arranged
that he should leave. No sooner was the dust of Longwood shaken from
his feet than within sight of its doors he accepted the kindly
attentions of his former jailers with eagerness, and no sooner were
those feet ashore in England than he began to woo the ministry, to
make advances to the Bourbons, and to fawn on the Holy Alliance
itself. It was not until he experienced certain chills and got his
groping finger on the pulse of public opinion that he found himself
utterly mistaken and in danger of mortal error. He then wrote, and
gave to the public prints, a curious letter, addressed to Marie
Louise, asserting that Napoleon was dying in the torments of a
frightful agony. This amounted to a recantation. In consequence he was
banished from England under the Alien Bill. At once he hurried away to
Prince Eugene (Napoleon's treasurer) and from him reclaimed and
received, for four years certainly, his arrears of imperial pay and
pension. In 1822 he was permitted to return to France.
The notoriety of his name is due to two sets of circumstances. Sir
Walter Scott told the truth about his conduct, just when the noble
general was beginning to swim in the refulgence of the Napoleonic
legend. There ensued a wordy warfare. The weapons on one side were
official papers; on the other denials, insinuations, and finally the
assertion of some vague commission or another given by the great
captive, impossible of fulfilment in any way other than by the
mysterious course of the plenipotentiary. This mystery is still
unsolved and the commission undiscovered, but in France at least the
conflict still rages. As late as 1908 a caustic critic was challenged
to a duel by the testy and furious family head of the Gourgauds. The
other set of circumstances is equally curious. Gourgaud left behind
him a journal of his St. Helena life. Its contents are certainly
authentic evidence of the writer's character, and as there is no means
of checking the authenticity of what is recorded about Napoleon and
his Longwood household, the record may possibly be and probably is
accurate. The sore spirit of the writer required a confidant, and
since there was no congenial soul to receive his outpourings he
relieved himself as other sentimental egoists have done in the pages
of a journal. From these the most conscientious efforts have been made
to construct a psychology of the Emperor. The result is a morbid
psychology of a caged falcon, the revival of bitter controversy as to
the treatment of the great prisoner by a Tory ministry, and generally
of a rather abstracted but intense interest in the Napoleonic legend.
Hence the prolonged vogue of a celebrity which should have been
ephemeral. The general is in no proper sense a historical factor
except as the influence of his behavior in Europe served to quicken
the existing lively interest in Napoleon. As far as his earliest
testimony went, and many inclined to heed it, the master he had served
was in excellent health, was kindly treated, and in general was better
off than could have been expected. This of course lashed the
imperialists to fury; their information was to the diametrically
opposite effect.
Antecedent to Gourgaud's departure was that of Las Cases, but his
journey was so impeded, his health so shaken, and his devotion so
discounted, that whatever he accomplished in molding public opinion
was logically subsequent to the work of the general. Spanish by
origin, French by six centuries of devotion, his family was of the
higher nobility. He himself had been an emigrant, but had returned to
become a member of the Council of State. As a great civil official he
had learned to love Napoleon and deliberately chose exile with him
rather than honors and service under the restored Bourbons. In 1816 he
wrote, and endeavored to forward secretly, letters containing his
views as to the disgraceful treatment of Napoleon. These were
intercepted and the writer was condemned in Lowe's first fury to
depart. On second thought the governor begged him to remain under
certain restrictions; these Las Cases would not accept, possibly
because he saw himself of greater use in Europe than in St. Helena. He
reached the Cape of Good Hope in January, 1817, was there detained
eight months, was then forwarded to England, where he was forbidden to
land, thence to Belgium, and finally, in December, a physical
derelict, he found shelter in Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he lived
for a time under the strictest surveillance. His faculties were soon
restored to a certain rather impaired activity, and in 1818 he laid a
powerful protest against the treatment of Napoleon before the Congress
of Aix-la-Chapelle. No less a person than the Emperor's mother was his
agent and intermediary. A meeting of reactionary sovereigns and their
ministers, terrified by the throes of a revolutionary spirit more and
more personified in Bonaparte, could in no case be receptive to such a
remonstrance, and was utterly cold and scornful in the face of
Gourgaud's evidence to the well-being and kind treatment of Napoleon,
already published. Even with the most enlightened and liberal public
of Europe, that of Great Britain, Las Cases' controversial
publications fell rather flat. Readers were weary of the theme, since
O'Meara was now and had been for some time past in possession of the
Napoleonic field.
Dr. O'Meara, the Emperor's body-physician, was a warm-hearted
Irishman, faithful, able, and devoted. That he received substantial
gratuities from his patient is no longer questioned, and these
transfers of money have been called by a harsh name; yet it is easy
for a loyal but illogical devotee to confuse salary, gifts, fees,
bribes, each with each, and one with the other; the crime was not
quite so heinous with a man of his character as it would have been in
persons of severer quality and mold. It seems equally certain that
the stern pedant acting as governor would gladly have employed the
same inducements to secure him as a spy. At least he did not qualify
as the channel of a double espionage, and for that reason fell under
the grave suspicion of authority. The diagnosis of Napoleon's malady
as very grave, which he had made, was confirmed in January, 1819, by
Stokoe, the ship's surgeon of the _Conqueror_, the British flag vessel
then in the harbor. But from O'Meara it was not accepted; he was
dismissed from service and on July twenty-fifth, 1818, sailed
homeward. On August seventeenth the London "Morning Post" began to
print communications sent from St. Helena by him, and shortly after he
landed, in October, there appeared a pamphlet by him attacking Sir
Hudson Lowe. His voluminous "Voice from St. Helena" was not published
until after Napoleon's death. Like the rest of the contemporary
memoirs and memorials, the value of his writings lies in their effect
on the liberal sentiment of the world. The Metternich system of
repression and intervention, which worked its will in dynastic
government for a generation after Napoleon, engendered a newer
liberalism which forgot the tyranny of Napoleonic imperialism and
remembered the Consulate as expressing a well-organized form of
government, adapted superbly for crushing systems, dynastic or
aristocratic or plutocratic, which oppressed mankind by denying the
only possible equality, equality of opportunity, the Napoleonic
"carriere ouverte aux talents." By all sympathetic nationalists,
constitutionalists, and radicals these books were literally devoured,
and in France particularly their effect was lasting. There could never
have been a second Napoleon except as he was thought likely to
reproduce the Consulate; when his rule had proved to be imperialistic
the country was disenchanted. Liberty with order is so ardently
desired! but too often the devices to secure it beget license with
chaos. The literal correctness of O'Meara's reporting, like that of
the rest, cannot be controverted by any rebutting testimony, but the
nature portrayed is the same morbid, sensational, notoriety-seeking,
unwholesome, and pathological specimen as that furnished by the
others.
Dr. Stokoe was speedily disgraced because it was now certain that any
bulletin of serious illness was evidence of conspiracy by the Emperor
and his friends for his escape. It is still affirmed that this second
physician yielded to the Emperor's blandishments and disobeyed Lowe's
orders. His successor, Dr. Verling, was Lowe's man, and, finding his
position intolerable, resigned with the insinuation that he could not
accept bribes. The party strife demanded either that Napoleon must be
entirely well and well treated, or else utterly moribund and
abominably used. Neither was the case, but a mortal disease had
declared itself, his grand marshal was seriously alarmed, and the
members of the Bonaparte family in Europe were dreaming of Napoleon's
escape or planning the renewal of his household by fresh blood. The
Bertrands and the Montholons, though faithful and devoted, were simply
worn out. A Corsican physician, Dr. Antommarchi, and an Italian
priest, Buonavita, were added to the household in September, 1819.
Mme. Montholon with her child was already at home seeking substitutes,
having departed from St. Helena in July. Neither event had any special
consequences. Mme. Montholon found a possible successor to the grand
marshal in the person of Planat, an officer of the Hundred Days.
Negotiations for his sailing were protracted; such was Napoleon's
condition before they were concluded that Montholon would not consider
deserting his post, though Bertrand was quite willing to see Planat
supplant himself. Buonavita was ill and returned to Europe.
Antommarchi was detested by his patient, a new priest and a new doctor
were found, and the faithful Pauline desired to join her exiled
brother. By this time the year 1820 had passed and the fateful spring
of 1821 was well advanced. All preparations for relieving the
household and the guard at St. Helena were now, of course, futile.
Three years of suffering had culminated in the death of the exile.
The documentary material for the St. Helena epoch is very scanty. The
"Memorial" of Las Cases and the "Voice" of O'Meara are both valuable
as works but not as transcripts. Of Gourgaud's "Journal" the value is
greater, but the medium of transmission most abnormal. The volumes of
Mrs. Abell and Lady Malcolm furnish very slight material; the papers
of the outsiders like Montchenu, Balmain, and Sturmer, like even Lowe
himself, furnish side-lights only; the souvenirs of Mme. Montholon are
trifling and cannot bear critical examination. The recitals of
Montholon were thought of importance until careful scrutiny showed how
he had drawn on Las Cases and O'Meara, how scanty, scrappy, and
confused his own notes were, and finally, when his letters to his wife
were printed, how completely these unfalsified documents contradicted
the other publications in the few interesting points on which they
touch, both in the English edition of Colburn and the carefully edited
and reedited French edition. The more the slight authentic material is
examined the more certain it appears that it is hopeless to read from
it Napoleon's character, even in the unnatural environment of St.
Helena, least of all for the years of real life. Conduct is the only
test of belief, not the invalid lamentations or cynical banter of
dreary, hopeless imprisonment. And when all this talk of a man in
anguish is dubiously reported, distorted by the medium of a
heart-sick listener, or by the transcription of men bored to
extinction, its value is obviously still further diminished. The story
has been briefly narrated of how the legend was engendered, of how it
was planted and watered on the continent of Europe, and its influence
on subsequent generations has been indicated. This is the sum total of
what history finds as its material during the closing years of
Napoleon's life. The souvenirs of Bertrand and Marchand are as yet
inaccessible, if indeed they exist. Some day their possible
publication may shed a few rays of new light on minor points: they
cannot greatly enlarge or substantively reconstruct the slight
historical material we have been able to discover. For valuable
generalizations we must fall back on the many abundant facts of
Napoleon's long career, on the very few facts of his conduct when
mewed and exasperated at St. Helena, on the effects which these in sum
have produced in history. The world at large marvels at the general,
the statesman, the conqueror, the emperor; it is apt to pass unnoticed
the judge and tamer of two epochs, the mediator between a ruined past,
a chaotic present, and a future, orderly at least, though streaked
with the stains of tyranny.