and was contemporary with Archimedes. The face is one expressive of
refinement, and the coin of a very fine style of art, as indeed are
all those that ever issued from the old and original mint of Sicily;
but alas! there are now many small and illicit mints to which the
travelling public that buys coins, is, without always knowing it,
vastly more indebted. "Roba Siciliana"--Sicilian trash, exclaims the
indignant Neapolitan, when you show him a modern forgery by which you
have been duped. "Sciochezza di Napoli" retorts the dealer at Messina
or Palermo, vindicating at once his own honour, which seems aspersed,
and that of his Trinacrian associates. To reconcile these two
statements, which are both true, the reader has only to be informed
that there are mints every where, and coiners as cunning at Pozzuoli
as at Palermo.
[58] By the word _anima_, or _soul_ of a coin, numismatists designate
the interior of the metal, as opposed to its superficies or _field_.
[59] The _restitution_ of the coinage of one Emperor by his successor,
consisting of a smaller issue of pieces than the original from which
it is taken, has become comparatively scarce; hence such
_restitutions_ fetch a much _higher price_ than those of the earlier
currency, and Dedomenicis's remark was not without its meaning.
[60] Moneta, one of the many epithets or _aliases_ of Juno, borrowed
by the Emperor Caligula for his three sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla,
and Livilla, who are represented standing in a row, each with her
cornucopia and scales, and her name behind her back.
[61] "_La petite verole_" is the name employed by French numismatists
to designate this _disease_. They could not have hit upon a happier. A
finely characteristic specimen of it is to be seen at present in the
bronze impersonation of George IV. which stands on the Steym at
Brighton, where the whole face looking seaward has become _balafré_
and pock-marked. It is strange that under the epithet of _pustular_,
as applied to _silver_, the ancients appear to have meant the purest
and most refined quality of that metal, when it is the alloy mixed
with the bronze that makes it pustular.
THE LAST RECOLLECTIONS OF NAPOLEON.[62]
There are few things more striking than the analogy in civil and
physical changes of the world. There have been in the history of man
periods as distinctive as in the history of nations. From these
periods society and nations have alike assumed new aspects, and the
world has commenced a new career. The fall of the Roman Empire was the
demarcation between the old world and the new. It was the moral
deluge, out of which a new condition of man, new laws, new forms of
religion, new styles of thought, almost a totally new configuration of
human society, were to arise. A new settlement of the civil world took
place: power absorbed by one race of mankind was to be divided among
various races; and the development of principles of government and
society, hitherto unknown, was to be scarcely less memorable, less
unexpected, or less productive, than that voyage by which Columbus
doubled the space of the habitable globe.
The Reformation was another mighty change. It introduced civil liberty
into the empire of tyranny, religion into the realm of superstition,
and science into the depths of national ignorance. The French
Revolution was the last, and not the least powerful change within
human experience. Its purpose is, like its operation, still dubious.
Whether it came simply for wrath, or simply for restoration--whether,
like the earthquake of Lisbon, it came only to destroy, and leave its
ruins visible for a century to come; to clear the ground of
incumbrances too massive for the hand of man, and open the soil for
exertions nobler than the old, must be left to time to interpret. But
there can be no question, that the most prominent agency, the most
powerful influence, and the most dazzling lustre, of a period in which
all the stronger impulses of our being were in the wildest activity,
centred in the character of one man, and that man--Napoleon.
It is evidently a law of Providence, that all the great changes of
society shall be the work of individual minds. Yet when we recollect
the difficulty of effecting any general change, embracing the infinite
varieties of human interests, caprices, passions, and purposes,
nothing could seem more improbable. But it has always been the course
of things. Without Charlemagne, the little principalities of Gothic
Europe would never have been systematised into an empire;--without
Luther, what could have been the progress of the Reformation?--without
Napoleon, the French Revolution would have burnt itself out, vanished
into air, or sunk into ashes. He alone collected its materials,
combined them into a new and powerful shape, crowned this being of his
own formation with the imperial robe, erected it in the centre of
Europe, and called the nations to bow down before a new idol, like the
gods of the Indian known only by its mysterious frown, the startling
splendour of its diadem, and the swords and serpents grasped in its
hands.
That the character of Napoleon was a singular compound of the highest
intellectual powers with the lowest moral qualities, is evidently the
true description of this extraordinary being. This combination alone
accounts for the rapidity, the splendour of his career, and the sudden
and terrible completeness of his fall. Nothing less than pre-eminent
capacity could have shot him up through the clouds and tempests of the
Revolution into the highest place of power. A mixture of this force of
mind and desperate selfishness of heart could alone have suggested and
sustained the system of the Imperial wars, policy, and ambition; and
the discovery of his utter faithlessness could alone have rendered all
thrones hopeless of binding him by the common bonds of sovereign to
sovereign, and compelled them to find their only security for the
peace of Europe in consigning him to a dungeon. He was the only
instance in modern history of a monarch dethroned by a universal
conviction; warred against by mankind, as the sole object of the war;
delivered over into captivity by the unanimous judgment of nations;
and held in the same unrelaxing and judicial fetters until he died.
It is another striking feature of this catastrophe, that the whole
family of Napoleon sank along with him. They neither possessed his
faculties, nor were guilty of his offences. But as they had risen
solely by him, they perished entirely with him. Future history will
continually hover over this period of our annals, as the one which
most resembles some of those fabrications of the Oriental genius, in
which human events are continually under the guidance of spirits of
the air; in which fantastic palaces are erected by a spell, and the
treasures of the earth developed by the wave of a wand--in which the
mendicant of this hour is exalted into the prince of the next; and
while the wonder still glitters before the eye, another sign of the
necromancer dissolves the whole pageant into air again. Human
recollection has no record of so much power, so widely distributed,
and apparently so fixed above all the ordinary casualties of the
world, so instantly and so irretrievably overthrown. The kings of
earth are not undone at a blow; kingdoms do not change their rulers
without a struggle. Great passions and great havoc have always
preceded and followed the fall of monarchies. But the four diadems of
the Napoleon race fell from their wearers' brows with scarcely a touch
from the hand of man. The surrender of the crown by Napoleon
extinguished the crowns actually ruling over millions, and virtually
influencing the whole Continent. They were extinguished, too, at the
moment when the Imperial crown disappeared. It had no sooner been
crushed at Waterloo, than they all fell into fragments, of
themselves;--the whole dynasty went down with Napoleon into the
dungeon, and not one of them has since returned to the world.
The name of General Count Montholon is well known to this country, as
that of a brave officer, who, after acquiring distinguished rank in
the French army by his sword, followed Napoleon to St Helena; remained
with him during his captivity; and upon his death was made the
depositary of his papers, and his executor. But his own language, in a
letter dated from the Castle of Ham in June 1844, gives the best
account of his authority and his proceedings.
"A soldier of the Republic, a brigadier-general at twenty years of
age, and minister-plenipotentiary in Germany in 1812 and 1813, I
could, like others, have left memoirs concerning the things which I
saw; but the whole is effaced from my mind in presence of a single
thing, a single event, and a single man. The thing is Waterloo; the
event, the fall of the Empire; and the man, Napoleon."
He then proceeds to tell us, that he shared the St Helena captivity
for six years; that for forty-two nights he watched the dying bed of
the ex-monarch; and that, by Napoleon's express desire, he closed his
eyes. But to those duties of private friendship were affixed official
services, which looked much more like tyranny than the tribute of
personal regard, and which we should think must have worn out the
patience, and tried the constitution, of the most devoted follower of
this extraordinary captive.
Napoleon, though apparently contemptuous of the opinions of mankind,
evidently felt the strongest anxiety to make out a favourable
statement for himself. And all his hours, except the few devoted to
exercise on horseback and to sleep, and to his meals, were employed in
completing the narrative which was to clear up his character to
mankind.
During the last years passed in St Helena, Napoleon sent for the Count
every night at eleven o'clock, and continued dictating to him until
six in the morning, when he went into the bath, dismissing the count
with--"Come, my son, go and repose, and come to me again at nine
o'clock. We shall have breakfast, and resume the labours of the
night." At nine, he returned, and remained with him till one, when
Napoleon went to bed. Between four and five, he sent for the count
again, who dined with him every day, and at nine o'clock left him, to
return at eleven.
The world little knew the drudgery to which these unfortunate
followers of the Ex-Emperor were thus exposed, and they must all have
rejoiced at any termination of a toil so remorseless and so
uncheering.
Napoleon was fond of the Turkish doctrine of fatality. Whether so
acute a mind was capable of believing a doctrine so palpably
contradicted by the common circumstances of life, and so utterly
repugnant to reason, can scarcely be a question; but with him, as with
the Turks, it was a capital doctrine for the mighty machine which he
called an army. But the count seems to have been a true believer. He,
too, pronounces, that "destiny is written," and regards himself as
being under the peculiar influence of a malignant star, or, in his own
words: "In fact, without having sought it, my destiny brought me into
contact with the Emperor in the Elysée Bourbon, conducted me, without
my knowing it, to the shores of Boulogne, where honour imposed upon me
the necessity of not abandoning the nephew of the Emperor in presence
of the dangers by which he was surrounded. Irrevocably bound to the
misfortunes of a family, I am now perishing in Ham; the captivity
commenced in St Helena."
Of Count Montholon, it must be acknowledged, that he was unstained by
either the vices or the violences which scandalized Europe so
frequently in the leaders of the French armies. He appears to have
been at all times a man of honourable habits, as he certainly is of
striking intelligence. But we have no faith in his doctrine of the
star, and think that he would have acted much more wisely if he had
left the stars to take care of themselves, avoided the blunder of
mistaking the nephew of Napoleon for a hero and a genius, and stayed
quietly in London, instead of risking himself with an invasion of
valets to take the diadem off the most sagacious head in Europe.
The narrative commences with the return of Napoleon to Paris after his
renown, his throne, and his dynasty were alike crushed by the British
charge at Waterloo. He reached Paris at six in the morning of the
21st. It is now clear that the greatest blunder of this extraordinary
man was his flight from the army. If he had remained at its head, let
its shattered condition be what it might, he would have been powerful,
have awed the growing hostility of the capital, and have probably been
able to make peace alike for himself and his nation. But by hurrying
to Paris, all was lost: he stripped himself of his strength; he threw
himself on the mercy of his enemies; and palpably capitulated to the
men who, but the day before, were trembling under the fear of his
vengeance.
Nobleness of heart is essential to all true renown; and perhaps it is
not less essential to all real security. Napoleon, with talents which
it is perfectly childish to question, though the attempt has been made
since the close of his brilliant career, wanted this nobleness of
heart, and through its want ultimately perished. Of the bravery of him
who fought the splendid campaigns of Italy, and of the political
sagacity of him who raised himself from being a subaltern of artillery
to a sovereign of sovereigns, there can be no doubt. But his
selfishness was so excessive that it occasionally made both
contemptible, and gave his conduct alike the appearance of cowardice,
and the appearance of infatuation. His flight from Egypt, leaving his
army to be massacred or captured, disgraced him in the face of Europe.
His flight from Russia, leaving the remnant of his legions to be
destroyed, was a new scandal; but hitherto no evil had been produced
by this gross regard of self. The penalty, however, must be paid. His
flight from the army in Belgian, leaving it without counsel or
direction, to be crushed by a victorious enemy, was the third instance
of that ignoble preference of his own objects which had characterised
and stained his Egyptian and Russian career. But retribution was now
come, and he was to be undone. The slaughter of Waterloo had been
tremendous, but it was not final. The loss of the French army had been
computed at forty thousand men, killed, wounded, and dispersed. He had
come into the field with seventy-two thousand men, independent of
Grouchy. He had thus thirty thousand remaining. Grouchy's force of
thirty thousand was still untouched, and was able to make its way to
Paris. In addition to these sixty thousand, strong garrisons had been
left in all the fortresses, which he might without difficulty have
gathered upon his retreat. The Parisian national guard would have
augmented this force, probably, on the whole, to one hundred thousand
men. It is true that the allied Russian and Austrian forces were on
the frontier. But they had not yet moved, and could not prevent the
march of those reinforcements. Thus, without reckoning the provincial
militia of France, or calculating on a _levée en masse_, Napoleon
within a fortnight might have been at the head of one hundred and
fifty thousand men, while the pursuing army could not have mustered
half the number. He would thus have had time for negotiation; and time
with him was every thing. Or let the event be what it might, the
common sense of the Allies would have led them to avoid a direct
collision with so powerful a force fighting on its own ground under
the walls of the capital, and knowing that the only alternatives were
complete triumph or total ruin.
Count Montholon makes a remark on the facility with which courtiers
make their escape from a falling throne, which has been so often
exemplified in history. But it was never more strikingly exemplified
than in the double overthrow of Napoleon. "At Fontainbleau, in 1814,"
says the Count, "when I hastened to offer to carry him off with the
troops under my command, I found no one in those vast corridors,
formerly too small for the crowd of courtiers, except the Duke of
Bassano and two aides-de-camp." His whole court, down to his Mameluke
and valet, had run off to Paris, to look for pay and place under the
Bourbons. In a similar case in the next year, at the Elysée Bourbon,
he found but two counts and an equerry. It was perfectly plain to all
the world but Napoleon himself that his fate was decided.
There certainly seems to have been something in his conduct at this
period that can scarcely be accounted for but by infatuation. His
first act, the desertion of his army, was degrading to his honour, but
his conduct on his arrival was not less degrading to his sagacity.
Even his brother Lucien said that he was blinded with the smoke of
Waterloo. He seems to have utterly lost that distinct view and fierce
decision which formerly characterised all his conduct. It was no more
the cannon-shot or the thunder-clap, it was the wavering of a mind
suddenly perplexed by the difficulties which he would once have solved
by a sentence and overwhelmed by resistance--which he would have once
swept away like a swarm of flies. The leader of armies was crushed by
a conspiracy of clerks, and the sovereign of the Continent was sent to
the dungeon by cabal of his own slaves.
While Napoleon was thus lingering in the Elysée Bourbon, the two
chambers of the Legislature were busily employed between terror and
intrigue. The time was delicate, for the Bourbons and the Allies were
approaching. But, on the other hand, the fortunes of Napoleon might
change; tardiness in recognising the Bourbons might be fatal to their
hopes of place, but the precipitancy of abandoning Napoleon might
bring their heads under the knife of the guillotine. All public life
is experimental, and there never was a time when the experiment was of
a more tremulous description.
At length they began to act; and the first precaution of the Chamber
of Deputies was to secure their own existence. Old Lafayette moved a
resolution, that the man should be regarded as a traitor to the
country who made any attempt to dissolve the Chamber. This was an
obvious declaration against the authority of the Empire. The next
motion was, that General Beker should be appointed commandant of the
guard ordered to protect the Legislature. This was a provision against
the mob of Paris. The Legislature was now safe on its two prominent
perils. In the mean time, Napoleon had made another capital blunder.
He had held a council of the ministers, to which he proposed the
question, whether he should proceed in person to the Chamber of
Deputies, and demand supplies, or send his brothers and ministers to
make the communication. Three of the ministers approved of his going
in person, but the majority disapproved of it--on the plea of its
being a dangerous experiment, in the excited state of the public
passions. If Napoleon had declined this counsel, which arose from
either pusillanimity or perfidy, it is perfectly possible that he
might have silenced all opposition. The known attachment of the
troops, the superstition connected with his fortunes, the presence of
the man whom they all so lately worshipped, as the Indians worship the
serpent for the poison of its fang, might have produced a complete
revulsion. Napoleon, too, was singularly eloquent--his language had a
romantic splendour which captivates the artificial taste of the
nation; and with an imperial figure before them, surrounded with more
powerful incidents than the drama could ever offer, and threatening a
fifth act which might involve the fate of France and Europe, the day
might have finished by a new burst of national enthusiasm, and the
restoration of Napoleon to the throne, with all his enemies in the
Legislature chained to its footstool.
But he sent his brother Joseph to the Chamber of Peers, and received
the answer to his mission next morning, in a proposal which was
equivalent to a demand for his abdication.
A council of ministers was again held on this proposal. The same three
who had voted for his presence in the Chamber, now voted for his
rejection of the proposal. The majority, however, were against them.
Napoleon yielded to the majority. He had lost his opportunity--and in
politics opportunity is every thing. He had now nothing more to lose.
He drew up an acknowledgment of his abdication; but appended to it the
condition of proclaiming his son, Napoleon Second, emperor of the
French. This was an artifice, but it was unworthy even of the art of
Napoleon. He must have been conscious that the Allies would have
regarded this appointment as a trick to ensure his own restoration.
His son was yet a child; a regent must have been appointed; Napoleon
would have naturally been that regent; and in six months, or on the
first retreat of the Allies, he would as naturally have reappointed
himself emperor. The trick was too shallow for his sagacity, and it
was impossible to hope that it could have been suffered by the Allies.
Yet it passed the Chamber, and Napoleon Second was acknowledged within
the walls. But the acknowledgment was laughed at without them; the
Allies did not condescend to notice it; and the Allies proceeded to
their work of restoration as if he had never existed. In fact, the
dynasty was at an end; a provisional government was appointed, with
Fouché at its head, and the name of Napoleon was pronounced no more.
Count Montholon gives a brief but striking description of the
confusion, dismay, and despair, into which Waterloo had thrown the
Bonapartists. He had hurried to the Elysée a few hours after the
arrival of Bonaparte from the field. He met the Duke of Vicenza coming
out, with a countenance of dejection, and asked him what was going on.
"All is lost," was the answer. "You arrived to-day, as you did at
Fontainbleau, only to see the emperor resign his crown. The leaders of
the Chambers desire his abdication. They will have it; and in a week
Louis XVIII. will be in Paris. At night on the 19th, a short note in
pencil was left with my Swiss, announcing the destruction of the army.
The same notice was given to Carnot. The last telegraphic dispatch had
brought news of victory; we both hastened to the Duke of Otranto; he
assured us with all his cadaverous coldness that he knew nothing. He
knew all, however, I am well assured. Events succeeded each other with
the rapidity of lightning; there is no longer any possible illusion.
All is lost, and the Bourbons will be here in a week."
The Count remained forty-eight hours at the palace. The fallen Emperor
had now made up his mind to go to America, and the Count promised to
accompany him. A couple of regiments, formed of the workmen of the
Faubourg St Germain, marching by the palace, now demanded that
Napoleon should put himself at their head, and take vengeance on his
enemies. But he well knew the figure which the volunteers of the mob
would make in front of the bayonets which had crushed his guard at
Waterloo, and he declined the honour of this new command. A few
courtiers, who adhered to him still, continued to talk of his putting
himself at the head of the national force. But Waterloo had
effectually cured him of the passion for soldiership, and he
constantly appealed to his unwillingness to shed the blood of
Frenchmen. It was at least evident that he intended to tempt the field
no more, but after being the cause of shedding the blood of two
millions of the people, his reserve was romantic.
The Count was sent to dismiss the volunteers, and they having
performed their act of heroism, and offered to challenge the whole
British army, were content with the glory of the threat, and
heroically marched home to their shops.