household by four domestics; and it seems not improbable that
Napoleon's craft was suddenly awakened to the prospect of establishing
a confidential intercourse with the faction whom he had left behind.
But the four domestics were obviously inadequate to this object, and
some person of higher condition was necessary. Las Cases some time
before had attempted to send a letter to Europe by the mulatto. The
fellow had been detected, and was threatened with a flogging if he
repeated the experiment; yet it was to this same mulatto that Las
Cases committed another letter, which the mulatto immediately carried
to the governor, and Las Cases was arrested in consequence. Napoleon
was instantly indignant, and vented his rage against the cruelty of
the arrest, at the same time expressing his scorn at the clumsiness of
Las Cases in delivering his letter to so awkward a messenger. But,
whatever might be his pretended wonder at the want of dexterity in the
Count, it was exceeded by his indignation at the conduct of the
governor. "Longwood," he writes in a long and formal protest against
his detention, "is wrapped in a veil which he would fain make
impenetrable, in order to hide _criminal_ conduct. This peculiar care
to conceal matters gives room to suspect the most _odious
intentions_." This was obviously a hint that the governor's purpose
was to put him secretly to death: a hint which neither Napoleon nor
any other human being could have believed.
But in alluding to the arrest of the Count, he touches closely on the
acknowledgment of the intrigue.
"I looked through the window," he said, "and saw them taking
you away. A numerous staff pranced about you. I imagined I
saw some South Sea Islanders dancing round the prisoners
whom they were about to devour!" After this Italian
extravaganza, he returns to his object. "Your services were
necessary to me. You alone could read, speak, and understand
English. Nevertheless, I request you, and in case of need,
command you, to require the governor _to send you to the
Continent_. He _cannot refuse_, because he has no power over
you, except through the voluntary document which you signed.
It would be great _consolation to me_ to know that you were
on your way to more happy countries."
This letter was carried by Bertrand to the governor for Las Cases, and
"the wished-for effect was produced on Sir Hudson Lowe, as soon as he
saw the terms in which the Emperor expressed his regret." We are
fairly entitled to doubt the sincerity of the wish; for on Sir
Hudson's offering to let Las Cases remain at Longwood, a new obstacle
instantly arose,--the Count declared that "to remain was utterly
impossible;" his honour was touched; he absolutely must go; or, as
Count Montholon describes this happy punctilio,--"Unfortunately, Las
Cases, influenced by extreme susceptibility of honour, thought himself
_bound to refuse_ the governor's offer. He felt himself too deeply
outraged by the insult; he explained this to the grand-marshal, and we
were obliged to renounce the hope of seeing him again." Then came the
finale of this diplomatic farce. "It was in vain that the Emperor sent
Bertrand and Gourgaud to persuade him to renounce his determination;
_he was resolved to leave the island_; and on the 29th of December
1816, he quitted St Helena."
We have but little doubt that the whole was a mystification. The gross
folly of sending a secret dispatch by the same man of colour who had
been detected by the governor, and threatened with punishment for the
attempt to convey a letter; the bustle made on the subject at
Longwood; the refusal of Las Cases to comply with Napoleon's request
to remain, which, if it had been sincere, would have been equivalent
to a command; and the conduct of Las Cases immediately on his arrival
Europe, his publications and activity, amply show the object of his
return. But a simple arrangement on the governor's part disconcerted
the whole contrivance. Instead of transmitting Las Cases to Europe,
Sir Hudson Lowe sent him to the Cape; where he was further detained,
until permission was sent from England for his voyage to Europe. On
his arrival, Napoleon's days were already numbered, and all dexterity
was in vain. We have adverted to this transaction chiefly for the
credit which it reflects on the governor. It shows his vigilance to
have been constantly necessary; it also shows him to have been willing
to regard Napoleon's convenience when it was possible; and it further
shows that he was not destitute of the sagacity which was so fully
required in dealing with the _coterie_ at Longwood.
Napoleon's habits of dictating his memoirs must have been formidable
toil to his secretaries. He sometimes dictated for twelve or fourteen
hours, with scarcely an intermission. He spoke rapidly, and it was
necessary to follow him as rapidly as he spoke, and never to make him
repeat the last word. His first dictation was a mere revival of his
recollections, without any order. The copy of his first dictation
served as notes to the second, and the copy of this second became the
subject of his personal revision; but he, unfortunately for his
transcribers, made his corrections almost always in pencil, as he thus
avoided staining his fingers--no woman being more careful in
preserving the delicacy of her hands.
Those dictations must be regarded as the studied defences of Napoleon
against the heavy charges laid against his government.
We have now given a general glance at the career of the French
Emperor, as exhibited to us in these Recollections. He strikingly
showed, in all the details of his government, the characteristics of
his own nature. Impetuous, daring, and contemptuous of the feelings of
mankind, from the first hour of his public life, his government was,
like himself, the model of fierceness, violence, and disregard of
human laws. Whatever was to him an object of ambition, was instantly
in his grasp; whatever he seized was made the instrument of a fresh
seizure; and whatever he possessed he mastered in the fullest spirit
of tyranny. He was to be supreme; the world was to be composed of
_his_ soldiery, his serfs, courtiers, and tools. The earth was to be
only an incalculable population of French slaves. There was to be but
one man free upon the globe, and that man Napoleon.
We find, in this romance of power, the romance of his education. It
has been often said, that he was Oriental in all his habits. His plan
of supremacy bore all the stamp of Orientalism--the solitary pomp, the
inflexible will, the unshared power, and the inexorable revenge. The
throne of the empire was as isolated as the seraglio. It was
surrounded by all the strength of terror and craft, more formidable
than battlements and bastions. Its interior was as mysterious as its
exterior was magnificent; no man was suffered to approach it but as
soldier or slave; its will was heard only by the roaring of cannon;
the overthrow of a minister, the proclamation of a war, or the
announcement of a dynasty crushed and a kingdom overrun, were the only
notices to Europe of the doings within that central place of power.
But, with all the genius of Napoleon, he overlooked the true
principles of supremacy. All power must be pyramidal to be secure. The
base must not only be broad, but the gradations of the pile must be
regular to the summit. With Napoleon the pyramid was inverted--it
touched the earth but in one point; and the very magnitude of the mass
resting upon his single fortune, exposed it to overthrow at the first
change of circumstances.
Still, he was an extraordinary being. No man of Europe has played so
memorable a part on the great theatre of national events for the last
thousand years. The French Revolution had been the palpable work of
Providence, for the punishment of a long career of kingly guilt,
consummated by an unparalleled act of perfidy, the partition of
Poland. The passions of men had been made the means of punishing the
vices of government. When the cup was full, Napoleon was sent to force
it upon the startled lips of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The three
conspirators were crushed in bloody encounters--the capitals of the
three were captured--the provinces of the three were plundered--and
the military pride of the three was humiliated by contemptuous and
bitter conditions of peace.
But, when the destined work was done, the means were required no more.
When the victims were broken on the wheel, the wheel and the
executioner were alike hurried from the sight of man. The empire of
France was extinguished by the same sovereign law which had permitted
its existence. The man who had guided the empire in its track of
devastation--the soul of all its strength, of its ambition, and its
evil--was swept away. And as if for the final moral of human
arrogance, France was subjected to a deeper humiliation than had been
known in the annals of national reverses since the fall of Rome; and
the ruler of France was plunged into a depth of defeat, a bitterness
of degradation, an irreparable ruin, of which the civilized world
possesses no example. His army destroyed in Russia by the hand of Him
who rules the storm--the last forces of his empire massacred in
Belgium--his crown struck off by the British sword--his liberty
fettered by British chains--the remnant of his years worn away in a
British dungeon, and his whole dynasty flung along with him into the
political tomb, were only the incidents of the great judicial process
of our age. The world has been suffered to return to peace; while the
sepulchre of this man of boundless but brief grandeur has been
suffered to stand in the midst of that nation which most requires the
great lesson--that ambition always pays for its splendour by its
calamities; that the strength of a nation is in the justice of its
councils; and that he "who uses the sword shall perish by the sword!"
FOOTNOTE:
[62] _History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena._ By GENERAL
COUNT MONTHOLON. 2 vols. London: Colburn.
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._