Road, leading from London to Exeter, sixty-one miles from London, and
three miles from Andover. The Exeter and the Auxiliary Mail, and three
or four other coaches, pass towards London between seven o'clock in the
evening and twelve o'clock at night. Every one of the coachmen pulled
up their horses, and stopped to inquire the occasion of this blaze of
light. The passengers in the first coach also inquired of the coachman
whose house it was, and what was the cause of this splendid display?
Some one said, he supposed it was in consequence of peace with America,
which had just been announced.--"No, no;" said the coachman, "it is
on account of the restoration of Buonaparte." "O, a vile Jacobin!"
exclaimed a nondescript with a whistling, piping voice, "I wish somebody
would break all his windows." The coachman cracked his whip, and can
they passed; but as there was the mail, and four other coaches to pass,
I sent my servant out to stand at the gate, to inform those that might
inquire, that my house was illuminated in consequence of the safe
restoration of Napoleon to the throne of France. The next coach that
came was the mail; it was going very fast, being rather down the hill;
and, as the glare came suddenly upon them, the coachman had some
difficulty in pulling up his horses till they got rather beyond the
front of the cottage. I was just coming out of the garden, and as it
was dark, I heard, unseen, but very distinctly, the following dialogue:
"Aye, aye, coachman, stop, by G-d! tell me whose house this is?"--"It
is Middleton Cottage, Sir, the residence of Mr. Hunt." "I suppose it is
illuminated for the return of Napoleon?"--"Yes, Sir," said my servant,
apparently to save farther trouble of inquiry, "my master illuminates
his house for the first time in his life, because Buonaparte has
ascended the throne, and reconquered the crown of France, without
bloodshed." With some tremendous oath, two of them (who it turned out
were gemmen of the army) swore that they would get out and smash every
one of the windows, and they immediately began to open the door of the
coach, to put their threat into execution. Upon hearing this, I lost
not a moment's time, but darted in doors, and having seized a faithful
cudgel, I sallied out, with the determination of taking prisoner the
first man that threw a stone, and, at all hazards, conducting him into
my parlour, where he should have drank long life and success to Napoleon
upon his knees, before he should have been liberated. This was the
resolution I formed while I was hastening after my cudgel, and having
once formed that resolution, I would have carried it into effect at the
risk of my life. When I got out the coast was clear, and the mail was
got nearly out of hearing. My servant informed me, that as soon as the
guard saw what was going on, he jumped down from his seat, and warmly
expostulated with the military heroes upon their folly and rashness;
but when he saw that they persevered, he swore that the coachman should
drive on and leave them behind if they got out; and he added, that he
had no doubt but Mr. Hunt would blow both their brains out with his
double-barrelled gun, if they offered to touch one pane of his windows.
To this the coachman assented, exclaiming, at the same time, "By G--d
it would serve them right for their pains." This being the case, the
doughty heroes thought proper to sit still, but muttered out, "d----d
jacobin," as the coachman drove off. These worthies, I have no doubt,
communicated this circumstance at head-quarters, and some of my worthy
neighbours, of the rotten-borough of Andover, kindly conveyed the fact
to several editors of the London newspapers. The editors, however, took
good care not to mention a word of it in their papers, but it was very
currently talked of in the coffee-houses of Paris. I know thousands of
Englishmen that rejoiced at the escape of Napoleon from Elba, and at his
return to the French capital, but I know of no one except myself who had
the courage to testify his joy by any open demonstration.
As soon as the news of Buonaparte's landing in France arrived in
England, the Prince Regent sent a message to both Houses of Parliament,
declaring his intention to join the Allies, and corresponding addresses
were voted accordingly. A public meeting was called by the electors of
Westminster, to take into consideration a petition to be presented
to Parliament, against renewing the war for the purpose of forcing a
ruler upon the people of France. I was in London when this meeting was
held in Palace-yard; I attended it, and I spoke there, for the first
time, in support of this petition. What I said was so favourably
received by the people, that they passed an unanimous vote of thanks to
me, and drew me in my carriage to my inn, the British Coffee-house, they
having spontaneously taken off the horses. When I got there I mounted
the roof of the carriage, briefly thanked the multitude, and requested
them to retire peaceably, which they did without delay. The petition was
presented by Sir Francis Burdett, and, I think, on the same evening. It
was a strong remonstrance against plunging once more into a war with the
French, merely to restore the Bourbons to that throne which they had not
the talent or the virtue to fill, either with honour to themselves or
with advantage to the people.
The Parliament now, almost by acclamation, voted that the property
tax should be continued for one year. The treaties made with Holland,
Russia, and Sweden, were laid before both the Houses of Parliament, and
approved of. The Minister likewise proposed new taxes, to the amount of
3,728,000_l_. per annum.
While the British legislators were thus honourably employed, the allied
despots collected their forces in two great bodies, under Marshal
Blucher and Wellington, the latter of whom had been created a Duke.
Napoleon on his side was busily engaged, both in civil and military
affairs. He laid before the Senate of France a new constitution, which
was accepted, and a meeting, called the "_Champ de Mai_," was held at
Paris, on the 1st of May, to swear to that constitution. On the 1st of
June there was a revolution at Martinico, in favour of Napoleon, but it
was soon suppressed by the British troops. On the 8th, a confederation,
or rather a conspiracy of tyrants and their agents, was signed at
Vienna, called the "_Holy Alliance_." On the 12th, Napoleon left Paris,
to join his army on the Belgian frontier. The Prussian army, under
Blucher, was attacked at Ligny, and totally defeated by Napoleon on the
15th, and on the following day he attacked the Dutch and the English
under Wellington, and compelled them to fall back from Quatre Bas, at
which place they were posted. The combined English, Dutch, Belgian, and
Hanoverian forces were concentrated, on the 17th, under Wellington, at
Waterloo. On the _eighteenth_, Napoleon, with sixty-eight thousand men,
attacked the combined army commanded by Wellington, consisting of ninety
thousand troops. A dreadful slaughter ensued, and Wellington was hardly
pressed by his illustrious opponent. This success on the side of
Napoleon continued till four o'clock, at which time he considered the
battle as won, when two Prussian corps, one of thirty thousand and the
other of forty thousand, under Bulow and Blucher, unexpectedly arrived
and turned the right wing of the French. The whole army was thrown into
confusion from this unexpected reinforcement to their enemies, and at
half-past nine they fled in all directions. The arrival of these two
corps was occasioned by some strange misconduct, or something worse, on
the part of Marshal Grouchy, who was dispatched by Napoleon to attack
these corps with a division of the French army, but by some strange
fatality he suffered them to approach the right wing of Napoleon's army
unmolested. This and this alone caused the defeat of Napoleon, as these
corps of themselves were more numerous than the whole of the troops
under his command, harassed and fatigued too as they were at the latter
end of a dreadful battle. "Never did the French army fight better than
it did upon this occasion; it performed prodigies of valour; and the
superiority of the troops, infantry, cavalry, and artillery, over the
enemy opposed to them, was such, that had not Blucher arrived with his
second corps of Prussians, the victory over the Anglo-Belgian army under
Wellington would have been complete, though aided by Bulow's thirty
thousand troops; that is to say, it would have been gained by sixty-nine
thousand men opposed to nearly double their number; for the troops in
the field commanded by Wellington, before Blucher's arrival, amounted to
one hundred and twenty thousand men." The Allies, by their own account,
lost sixty thousand men, viz. eleven thousand three hundred English,
three thousand five hundred Hanoverians, eight thousand Belgians, and
thirty-eight thousand Prussians. This makes a general total of _sixty
thousand eight hundred men_. The losses of the French, including those
sustained during the rout, and till their arrival at the gates of Paris,
was _forty-one thousand men_. Out of twenty-four English Generals,
twelve were killed or badly wounded. The mind quite sickens at the
recital of such a horrid slaughter of human beings, for the sole purpose
of gratifying the malignant passions of a few tyrants, who had sworn to
annihilate the very spirit as well as the substance of liberty. To
destroy NAPOLEON, and to raise up Louis, ONE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND
lives were sacrificed upon this occasion!
Napoleon repaired to Paris, where he found that traitors of the vilest
cast had been at work. The Chambers were in a state of insurrection,
and on the 22d of June, 1815, Napoleon resigned the government to a
provisional Council. On the 3d of July a suspension of hostilities was
signed at St. Cloud, and on the same day Buonaparte arrived at Rochfort,
while Paris was evacuated by the French troops and occupied by the
allied army. By the articles of capitulation, on which Paris was
surrendered, a complete _indemnity_ was secured to _all_ persons. We
shall soon see how they were fulfilled. On the 5th, the troops under
General Oudinot declared for Louis; and on the 8th, Louis the Desired
returned once more to Paris, and resumed the government under the
protection of a foreign army. On the 15th, Napoleon took the fatal
resolution of throwing himself upon the protection of the British
Government. Relying upon the honour of the English character, he
surrendered himself to Captain Maitland, of the Bellerophon; on the 24th
he arrived in that ship at Torbay, and on the twenty-sixth he sailed to
Plymouth, to which port tens of thousands of persons crowded from all
parts of England to obtain a sight of him. He was not allowed to land,
but on the seventh of August he was removed on board the Northumberland,
Captain Cockburn, which sailed on the following day for St. Helena.
Napoleon is now dead and gone, but his name will live for ever. It makes
my heart ache to think that such a man should have been so deceived and
deluded as to the character of the English Government, so much so, as to
flatter himself for a moment that he would ever receive justice or mercy
at their hands! Noble, generous, forgiving, and possessing all the
attributes of a truly brave man himself, he little dreamt of the
fate that awaited him; he had heard of the generosity of the English
character, he knew the English to be brave, he had always found them so,
but he was deceived as to their power and influence over the Government;
he was grossly ignorant of the state and character of the British
Parliament; he had read De Lolme and other popular writers upon the
British Constitution, and he fell into the fatal, the irretrievable
error, of believing that the practice of that constitution was the same
thing as the theory described by these writers; and thus he was betrayed
into a gulf from whence he was never to be extricated. I have before
observed, that at the Congress of Vienna it was proposed and seriously
urged to seize Napoleon at Elba, and to convey him to St. Helena; and
those who proposed this measure had taken care to have all things in
readiness to carry their project into execution, in case it had been
agreed to. No time was, therefore, now lost in acting upon this plan.
The English Ministers knew the sentiments of the Allied Despots upon the
subject, and the brave Napoleon, the fallen Emperor, was shipped off to
linger, pine, and rot upon a barren rock, in a distant and pestilential
climate, in the same way that we would send out a wretch convicted of
the highest crimes, as a transport for life. He who had spared Emperors,
Kings, and Princes--he who had restored them to their thrones after
having bravely conquered them, was now treated like a common convict
transport! Disgraceful, damnable, imperishable blot in the escutcheon of
England's character!!!
The Assembly of France now met, and passed such laws as might naturally
be expected in a country filled with foreign troops. Treaties were
entered into by the restored Monarch, to settle the terms of peace, and
were signed on the twentieth of July. By these treaties France lost all
the conquered territory which she had been allowed to retain in 1814,
and was placed nearly in the same geographical situation as before the
revolution. One hundred and fifty thousand troops of the five Allied
Powers were to remain in France for five years; France was to maintain
them, and pay a large pecuniary indemnity, in which a provision was made
for the claims of British subjects; and all other matters, good, bad,
and indifferent, were to be settled by a convention, to be held at
Vienna. The expenditure of this year, drawn out of the pockets of John
Gull, amounted to no less a sum than EIGHTY ONE MILLIONS, of which
TWENTY-SEVEN MILLIONS were borrowed by loan. The Honourable House of
Commons voted TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS as an additional remuneration
to the Duke of Wellington. In the meantime, the wretchedness of the
people of Ireland had driven them to a state of desperation; the
resistance to the collection of the TITHES became general in many
counties, and a large army of regulars and militia was employed to put
down the poor, starved, distressed, and plundered people. Many lives
were lost, and a special commission was appointed, by which great
numbers were found guilty, and transported to Botany Bay, and all this
arose from the most horrid system of rapine and plunder that ever
disgraced any nation on the face of the earth.
At the latter end of July, 1815, I was one night taken suddenly ill; I
had gone to bed in high robust health, but about three o'clock in the
morning I was awoke by a most violent attack in my head, which caused
a sensation like the ringing of a church bell in my ear. The fact was,
that a sudden pressure of blood upon the brain had taken place. The
effect was such that I was almost blind and speechless. My surgeon, Mr.
Davis, of Andover, was instantly sent for; but, before he could arrive,
I had fainted away four or five times, and he found me in such a state,
without any pulse, that he at first hesitated to bleed me; however, upon
my urging him to do so, he complied, and the horrid noise which was
caused in my head by the blood rushing through my brain with accelerated
velocity, somewhat abated, and in the course of the day it wore off, and
became like the singing of a tea-kettle. This attack was so violent, and
left such a weakness, that I was incapable of rising from my bed, and it
was several days before I could walk across the room without assistance.
As soon as I was able, which was in four or five days, I drove to Bath,
for the advice of Dr. Parry, one of the most eminent physicians of the
day, and under whose care one of my family had recovered from the very
point of death. Dr. Parry and myself had been upon very friendly and
intimate terms, during the time I had lived in Bath, and he had always
attended my family while I was there.
When I had described to him the way in which I was taken, and the
extraordinary sensation and noise which I had in my head, which still
continued like the singing of a teakettle, he said, "You have had a
narrow escape, Sir; and had you not been a very temperate man, you would
have never spoken again; you have had a violent pressure of blood upon
the brain, and you are wholly indebted for your safety to your temperate
manner of living; if, however, you will put yourself under my care, and
strictly follow my advice, I am confident that I can effect a radical
cure, so that you will be no longer liable to a return of your
complaint. The means I propose will be slow and tedious, but they will
be certain. If you return into the country, and follow the course
usually pursued in similar cases, you will, in all probability, be
apparently recovered, and as well as ever in a month; but they take my
word for it, you will be very liable to a repetition of the same sort
of attack, which will very likely prove fatal." I told him that I would
most certainly place myself in his hands, and scrupulously follow his
directions. "Well, then," said he, "I shall have you bled twice before
you leave Bath, and my directions are, that you abstain from all
fermented liquors; eat very sparingly of animal food, take regular
strong exercise, and lose a pound of blood at least once a month, for
a twelvemonth." I certainly looked at him with some degree of
astonishment, but when I saw that he was serious and in earnest, I
replied, "If you say that all this is absolutely necessary for the
recovery of may health, it shall be done; but so excessively weak and
languid am I at present, that I do not think I shall be able to take
what you call strong exercise. I drove my tandem down here yesterday to
see you, and I was so excessively exhausted, that I was obliged to be
carried out of the carriage into the inn where I arrived." "O," said
he, "driving fifty miles in a tandem may be very good exercise for your
horses; but it is not sufficient exercise for you; you must take regular
walking and riding exercise. To keep a man in good health, it is always
necessary that he should take sufficient exercise to make it a labour;
it is indispensible for the health of man that he should labour--and it
will be absolutely necessary to your recovery, that you labour daily. I
assure you, my good friend," added he, "there is not one in a thousand
that ever recover from such an attack as you have had. I never knew a
patient who had the resolution to follow the advice which I have given
you; I rely, however, upon your good sense, to concur with me in the
absolute necessity of reducing your system very low, by abstaining from
fermented liquors and animal food--by laborious exercise--and by
a constant and regular succession of copious bleeding; and I have
confidence in your courage and perseverance in carrying my plan into
execution, by which I mean to effect a permanent and radical cure; that
is to say, I mean that you shall be rendered as perfectly free from any
future attack of the sort, as you were when you were born. I know the
precise nature of your complaint well, and I am confident of the remedy,
although I have no particular precedent, because I never knew any one
act up to the rules I have laid down for you. I know that you have had a
violent pressure of blood upon the brain; I know, also, that this attack
was not produced by excess or intemperance, but that it arose from your
having naturally too great a disposition of blood to the head. I know
that your system has received a violent shock, that the blood-vessels
upon your brain have been distended, and thereby rendered liable to
another and a more fatal attack, unless it can be guarded against by a
total alteration of your whole system, which can alone be accomplished
by the means that I have suggested." Here he made a short pause, and
then earnestly demanded if I was prepared to give him my word that I
would act up to his directions; "because," added he, significantly, "I
know if you once make up your mind to it, and give me your word that you
will do it, that our object will be attained."
Thus it is, that a clever and intelligent physician, by flattering his
patient, prevails upon him to encounter what would otherwise appear to
be insurmountable difficulties; and thus it is, that human nature is
able to bear so much. I promised strictly to abide by his prescription,
both as to regimen, exercise, and bleeding. He then sent for Mr. George
Norman, the surgeon, and I was bled immediately. This being done,
the doctor said that he would call again in the morning, and see the
bleeding repeated, and then I should have nothing to do but to return to
my home in the country, and follow the plan that he laid down for me.
He did so; and, although I was in a state of great weakness, I reached
Middleton Cottage the same evening, having driven my tandem fifty miles
in the afternoon.