interview with the Emperor, of whom he says: "Bonaparte struck me as
differing considerably from the pictures and busts' I had seen of him.
His face and figure looked much broader and more square--larger, indeed,
in every way than any representation I had met with. His corpulency, at
this time universally reported to be excessive, was by no means
remarkable. His flesh looked, on the contrary, firm and muscular. There
was not the least trace of colour in his cheeks; in fact his skin was
more like marble than ordinary flesh. Not the smallest trace of a
wrinkle was discernible on his brow, nor an approach to a furrow on any
part of his countenance. His health and spirits, judging from
appearances, were excellent, though at this period it was generally
believed in England that he was fast sinking under a complication of
diseases, and that his spirits were entirely gone. His manner of
speaking was rather slow than otherwise, and perfectly distinct; he
waited with great patience and kindness for my answers to his questions,
and a reference to Count Bertrand was necessary only once during the
whole conversation. The brilliant and sometimes dazzling expression of
his eye could not be overlooked. It was not, however, a permanent
lustre, for it was only remarkable when he was excited by some point of
particular interest. It is impossible to imagine an expression of more
entire mildness, I may almost call it of benignity and kindness, than
that which played over his features during the whole interview. If,
therefore he were at this time out of health and in low spirits, his
power of self-command must have been even more extraordinary than is
generally supposed, for his whole deportment, his conversation, and the
expression of his countenance indicated a frame in perfect health and a
mind at ease."
The manner assumed by Napoleon in the occasional interviews he had with
such visitors was so very opposite to that which he constantly maintained
towards the authorities in whose custody he was placed, that we can
scarcely doubt he was acting a part in one of those situations. It was
suggested by Mr. Ellis that he either wished, by means of his continual
complaints, to keep alive his interest in England, where he flattered
himself there was a party favourable to him, or that his troubled mind
found an occupation in the annoyance which he caused to the Governor.
Every attempt at conciliation on the part of Sir Hudson Lowe furnished
fresh causes for irritation. He sent fowling-pieces to Longwood, and the
thanks returned were a reply from Napoleon that it was an insult to send
fowling-pieces where there was no game. An invitation to a ball was
resented vehemently, and descanted upon by the French party as a great
offence. Sir Hudson Lowe at one time sent a variety of clothes and other
articles received from England which he imagined might be useful at
Longwood. Great offence was taken at this; they were treated, they said,
like paupers; the articles, ought to have been left at the Governor's
house, and a list sent respectfully to the household, stating that such
things were at their command if they wanted them.
An opinion has already been expressed that much of this annoyance was due
to the offended pride of Napoleon's attendants, who were at first
certainly far more captious than himself. He admitted as much himself on
one occasion in a conversation with O'Meara. He said, "Las Cases
certainly was greatly irritated against Sir Hudson, and contributed
materially towards forming the impressions existing in my mind." He
attributed this to the sensitive mind of Las Cases, which he said was
peculiarly alive to the ill-treatment Napoleon and himself had been
subjected to. Sir Hudson Lowe also felt this, and remarked, like Sir
George Cockburn, on more than one occasion, that he always found Napoleon
himself more reasonable than the persons about him.
A fertile source of annoyance was the resolution of Napoleon not upon any
terms to acknowledge himself a prisoner, and his refusal to submit to
such regulations as would render his captivity less burdensome. More
than once the attendance of an officer was offered to be discontinued if
he would allow himself to be seen once every day, and promise to take no
means of escaping. "If he were to give me the whole of the island," said
Napoleon, "on condition that I would pledge my word not to attempt an
escape, I would not accept it; because it would be equivalent to
acknowledging myself a prisoner, although at the same time I would not
make the attempt. I am here by force, and not by right. If I had been
taken at Waterloo perhaps I might have had no hesitation in accepting it,
although even in that case it would be contrary to the law of nations,
as now there is no war. If they were to offer me permission to reside in
England on similar conditions I would refuse it." The very idea of
exhibiting himself to an officer every day, though but for a moment, was
repelled with indignation. He even kept loaded pistols to shoot any
person who should attempt an intrusion on his privacy. It is stated in a
note in O'Meara's journal that "the Emperor was so firmly impressed with
the idea that an attempt would be made forcibly to intrude on his
privacy, that from a short time after the departure of Sir George
Cockburn he always kept four or five pairs of loaded pistols and some
swords in his apartment, with which he was determined to despatch the
first who entered against his will." It seems this practice was
continued to his death.
Napoleon continued to pass the mornings in dictating his Memoirs and the
evenings in reading or conversation. He grew fonder of Racine, but his
favourite was Corneille. He repeated that, had he lived in his time, he
would have made him a prince. He had a distaste to Voltaire, and found
considerable fault with his dramas, perhaps justly, as conveying opinions
rather than sentiments. He criticised his Mahomet, and said he had made
him merely an impostor and a tyrant, without representing him as a great
man. This was owing to Voltaire's religious and political antipathies;
for those who are free from common prejudices acquire others of their own
in their stead, to which they are equally bigoted, and which they bring
forward on all occasions. When the evening passed off in conversation
without having recourse to books he considered it a point gained.
Some one having asked the Emperor which was the greatest battle that he
had fought, he replied it was difficult to answer that question without
inquiring what was implied by the greatest battle. "Mine," continued he,
"cannot be judged of separately: they formed a portion of extensive
plans. They must therefore be estimated by their consequences. The
battle of Marengo, which was so long undecided, procured for us the
command of all Italy. Ulm annihilated a whole army; Jena laid the whole
Prussian monarchy at our feet; Friedland opened the Russian empire to us;
and Eckmuhl decided the fate of a war. The battle of the Moskwa was that
in which the greatest talent was displayed, and by which we obtained the
fewest advantages. Waterloo, where everything failed, would, had victory
crowned our efforts, have saved France and given peace to Europe."
Madame Montholon having inquired what troops he considered the best,
"Those which are victorious, madam," replied the Emperor. "But," added
he, soldiers are capricious and inconstant, like you ladies. The best
troops were the Carthaginians under Hannibal, the Romans under the
Scipios, the Macedonians under Alexander, and the Prussians under
Frederick." He thought, however, that the French soldiers were of all
others those which could most easily be rendered the best, and preserved
so. With my complete guard of 40,000 or 50,000 men I would have
undertaken to march through Europe. It is perhaps possible to produce
troops as good as those that composed my army of Italy and Austerlitz,
but certainly none can ever surpass them."
The anniversary of the battle of Waterloo produced a visible impression
on the Emperor. "Incomprehensible day!" said he, dejectedly;
"concurrence of unheard-of fatalities! Grouchy, Ney, D'Erlon--was there
treachery or was it merely misfortune? Alas! poor France!" Here he
covered his eyes with his hands. "And yet," said he, "all that human
skill could do was accomplished! All was not lost until the moment when
all had succeeded." A short time afterwards, resuming the subject, he
exclaimed, "In that extraordinary campaign, thrice, in less than a week,
I saw the certain triumph of France slip through my fingers. Had it not
been for a traitor I should have annihilated the enemy at the outset of
the campaign. I should have destroyed him at Ligny if my left wing had
only done its duty. I should have destroyed him again at Waterloo if my
right had seconded me. Singular defeat, by which, notwithstanding the
most fatal catastrophe, the glory of the conquered has not suffered."
We shall here give Napoleon's own opinion of the battle of Waterloo.
"The plan of the battle," said he, "will not in the eyes of the
historian reflect any credit on Lord Wellington as a general. In the
first place, he ought not to have given battle with the armies divided.
They ought to have been united and encamped before the 15th. In the
next, the choice of ground was bad; because if he had been beaten he
could not have retreated, as there was only one road leading through the
forest in his rear. He also committed a fault which might have proved
the destruction of all his army, without its ever having commenced the
campaign, or being drawn out in battle; he allowed himself to be
surprised. On the 15th I was at Charleroi, and had beaten the Prussians
without his knowing anything about it. I had gained forty-eight hours of
manoeuvres upon him, which was a great object; and if some of my generals
had shown that vigour and genius which they had displayed on other
occasions, I should have taken his army in cantonments without ever
fighting a battle. But they were discouraged, and fancied that they saw
an army of 100,000 men everywhere opposed to them. I had not time enough
myself to attend to the minutiae of the army. I counted upon surprising
and cutting Wellington up in detail. I knew of Bulow's arrival at eleven
o'clock, but I did not regard it. I had still eighty chances out of a
hundred in my favour. Notwithstanding the great superiority of force
against me I was convinced that I should obtain the victory, I had about
70,000 men, of whom 15,000 were cavalry. I had also 260 pieces of
cannon; but my troops were so good that I esteemed them sufficient to
beat 120,000. Of all those troops, however, I only reckoned the English
as being able to cope with my own. The others I thought little of.
I believe that of English there were from 35,000 to 40,000. These I
esteemed to be as brave and as good as my own troops; the English army
was well known latterly on the Continent, and besides, your nation
possesses courage and energy. As to the Prussians, Belgians, and others,
half the number of my troops, were sufficient to beat them. I only left
34,000 men to take care of the Prussians. The chief causes of the loss
of that battle were, first of all, Grouchy's great tardiness and neglect
in executing his orders; next, the 'grenadiers a cheval' and the cavalry
under General Guyot, which I had in reserve, and which were never to
leave me, engaged without orders and without my knowledge; so that after
the last charge, when the troops were beaten and the English cavalry
advanced, I had not a single corps of cavalry in reserve to resist them,
instead of one which I esteemed to be equal to double their own number.
In consequence of this the English attacked, succeeded, and all was lost.
There was no means of rallying. The youngest general would not have
committed the fault of leaving an army entirely without reserve, which,
however, occurred here, whether in consequence of treason or not I cannot
say. These were the two principal causes of the loss of the battle of
Waterloo."
"If Lord Wellington had intrenched himself," continued Napoleon, "I would
not have attacked him. As a general, his plan did not show talent.
He certainly displayed great courage and obstinacy; but a little must
be taken away even from that when you consider that he had no means of
retreat, and that had he made the attempt not a man of his army would
have escaped. First, to the firmness and bravery of his troops, for the
English fought with the greatest courage and obstinacy, he is principally
indebted for the victory, and not to his own conduct as a general; and
next, to the arrival of Blucher, to whom the victory is more to be
attributed than to Wellington, and more credit is due as a general;
because he, although beaten the day before, assembled his troops, and
brought them into action in the evening. I believe, however," continued
Napoleon, "that Wellington is a man of great firmness. The glory of such
a victory is a great thing; but in the eye of the historian his military
reputation will gain nothing by it."
"I always had a high opinion of your seamen," said Napoleon one day to
O'Meara, in a conversation arising out of the expedition to Algiers.
"When I was returning from Holland along with the Empress Maria Louisa we
stopped to rest at Givet. During the night a violent storm of wind and
rain came on, which swelled the Meuse so much that the bridge of boats
over it was carried away. I was very anxious to depart, and ordered all
the boatmen in the place to be assembled that I might be enabled to cross
the river. They said that the waters were so high that it would be
impossible to pass before two or three days. I questioned some of them,
and soon discovered that they were fresh-water seamen. I then
recollected that there were English prisoners in the barracks, and
ordered that some of the oldest and best seamen among them should be
brought before me to the banks of the river. The waters were very high,
and the current rapid and dangerous. I asked them if they could join a
number of boats together so that I might pass over. They answered that
it was possible, but hazardous. I desired them to set about it
instantly. In the course of a few hours they succeeded in effecting what
the others had pronounced to be impossible, and I crossed before the
evening was over. I ordered those who had worked at it to receive a sum
of money each, a suit of clothes, and their liberty. Marchand was with
me at the time."
In December 1816 Las Cases was compelled to leave St. Helena. He had
written a letter to Lucien Bonaparte, and entrusted it to a mulatto
servant to be forwarded to Europe. He was detected; and as he was thus
endeavouring to carry on (contrary to the regulations of the island) a
clandestine correspondence with Europe, Las Cases and his son were sent
off, first to the Cape and then to England, where they were only allowed
to land to be sent to Dover and shipped off to Ostend.
Not long after their arrival at St. Helena, Madame Bertrand gave birth to
a son, and when Napoleon went to visit her she said, "I have the honour
of presenting to your Majesty the first French subject who has entered
Longwood without the permission of Lord Bathurst."
It has been generally supposed that Napoleon was a believer in the
doctrine of predestination. The following conversation with Las Cases
clearly decides that point. "Pray," said he, "am I not thought to be
given to a belief in predestination?"--"Yes, Sire; at least by many
people."--"Well, well! let them say what they please, one may sometimes
be tempted to set a part, and it may occasionally be useful. But what
are men? How much easier is it to occupy their attention and to strike
their imaginations by absurdities than by rational ideas! But can a man
of sound sense listen for one moment to such a doctrine? Either
predestination admits the existence of free-will, or it rejects it.
If it admits it, what kind of predetermined result can that be which a
simple resolution, a step, a word, may alter or modify ad infinitum?
If predestination, on the contrary, rejects the existence of free-will it
is quite another question; in that case a child need only be thrown into
its cradle as soon as it is born, there is no necessity for bestowing the
least care upon it, for if it be irrevocably decreed that it is to live,
it will grow though no food should be given to it. You see that such a
doctrine cannot be maintained; predestination is but a word without
meaning. The Turks themselves, the professors of predestination, are not
convinced of the doctrine, for in that case medicine would not exist in
Turkey, and a man residing in a third floor would not take the trouble of
going down stairs, but would immediately throw himself out of the window.
You see to what a string of absurdities that will lead?"
The following traits are characteristic of the man. In the common
intercourse of life, and his familiar conversation, Napoleon mutilated
the names most familiar to him, even French names; yet this would not
have occurred on any public occasion. He has been heard many times
during his walks to repeat the celebrated speech of Augustus in
Corneille's tragedy, and he has never missed saying, "Take a seat,
Sylla," instead of Cinna. He would frequently create names according to
his fancy, and when he had once adopted them they remained fixed in his
mind, although they were pronounced properly a hundred times a day in his
hearing; but he would have been struck if others had used them as he had
altered them. It was the same thing with respect to orthography; in
general he did not attend to it, yet if the copies which were made
contained any faults of spelling he would have complained of it. One day
Napoleon said to Las Cases, "Your orthography is not correct, is it?"
This question gave occasion to a sarcastic smile from a person who stood
near, who thought it was meant to convey a reproach. The Emperor, who
saw this, continued, "At least I suppose it is not, for a man occupied
with important public business, a minister, for instance, cannot and need
not attend to orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can
trace them, he has only time to dwell upon essentials; he must put words
in letters, and phrases in words, and let the scribes make it out
afterwards." Napoleon indeed left a great deal for the copyists to do;
he was their torment; his handwriting actually resembled hieroglyphics--
he often could not decipher it himself. Las Cases' son was one day
reading to him a chapter of The Campaign of Italy; on a sudden he stopped
short, unable to make out the writing. "The little blockhead," said
Napoleon, "cannot read his own handwriting."--" It is not mine, Sire."--
"And whose, then?"--"Your Majesty's."--"How so, you little rogue; do you
mean to insult me?" The Emperor took the manuscript, tried a long while
to read it, and at last threw it down, saying, "He is right; I cannot
tell myself what is written." He has often sent the copyists to Las
Cases to read what he had himself been unable to decipher.
We are now approaching the last melancholy epoch of Napoleon's life, when
he first felt the ravages of that malady which finally put a period to
his existence. Occasional manifestations of its presence had been
exhibited for some years, but his usual health always returned after
every attack, and its fatal nature was not suspected, although Napoleon
himself had several times said that he should die of a scirrhus in the
pylorus, the disease which killed his father, and which the physicians of
Montpelier declared would be hereditary in his family. About the middle
of the year 1818 it was observed that his health grew gradually worse,
and it was thought proper by O'Meara to report to the Governor the state
in which he was. Even on these occasions Napoleon seized the opportunity
for renewing his claim to the title of Emperor. He insisted that the
physician should not send any bulletin whatever unless he named him in it
by his Imperial designation. O'Meara explained that the instructions of
his Government and the orders of Sir Hudson Lowe prohibited him from
using the term; but it was in vain. After some difficulty it was agreed
upon that the word "patient" should be used instead of the title of
General, which caused so much offence, and this substitution got rid of
the difficulty.
O'Meara afterwards proposed to call in the assistance of Dr. Baxter, the
principal medical officer of the island, but this offer Napoleon refused
at once, alleging that, although "it was true he looked like an honest
man, he was too much attached to that hangman" (Lows), he also persisted
in rejecting the aid of medicine, and determined to take no exercise out-
of-doors as long as he should be subjected to the challenge of sentinels.
To a representation that his determination might convert a curable to a
fatal malady, he replied, "I shall at least have the consolation that my
death will be an eternal dishonour to the English nation who sent me to
this climate to die under the hands of . . ."
An important incident in Napoleon's monotonous life was the removal of
O'Meara, who had attended him as his physician from the time of his
arrival on the island. The removal of this gentleman, was occasioned by
the suspicion of similar conduct to that which brought about the
dismissal of Las Cases twenty months previously, namely, the carrying on
secret correspondence with persons out of the island. Napoleon
complained bitterly of the loss of his medical attendant, though he had
most assuredly very seldom attended to his advice, and repelled as an
insult the proffered assistance of Dr. Baxter, insinuating that the
Governor wished to have his life in his power. Some time after Dr.
Stokes, a naval surgeon, was called in, but withdrawn and eventually
tried by court-martial for furnishing information to the French at
Longwood. After this Napoleon expressed his determination to admit no
more visits from any English physician whatever, and Cardinal Fesch was
requested by the British Ministry to select some physician of reputation
in Italy who should be sent to St. Helena to attend on Napoleon. The
choice fell on Dr. Antommarchi, a young surgeon, who was accordingly sent
to St. Helena in company with two Catholic priests, the Abbes Buonavita
and Vignale, and two domestics, in compliance with the wish of Napoleon
to that effect. The party reached the island on 10th September 1819.
On his first visit the Emperor overwhelmed Antommarchi with questions
concerning his mother and family, the Princess Julie (wife of Joseph),
and Las Cases, whom Antommarchi had seen in passing through Frankfort,
expatiated with satisfaction on the retreat which he had at one time
meditated in Corsica, entered into some discussions with the doctor on
his profession, and then directed his attention to the details of his
disorder. While he examined the symptoms the Emperor continued his
remarks. They were sometimes serious, sometimes lively; kindness,
indignation, gaiety, were expressed by turns in his words and in his
countenance. "Well, doctor!" he exclaimed, "what is your opinion? Am I
to trouble much longer the digestion of Kings?"--"You will survive them,
Sire."--" Aye, I believe you; they will not be able to subject to the ban
of Europe the fame of our victories, it will traverse ages, it will.
proclaim the conquerors and the conquered, those who were generous and
those who were not so; posterity will judge, I do not dread its
decision."--"This after-life belongs to you of right. Your name will
never be repeated with admiration without recalling those inglorious
warriors so basely leagued against a single man. But you are not near
your end, you have yet a long career to run."--"No, Doctor! I cannot
hold out long under this frightful climate."--"Your excellent
constitution is proof against its pernicious effects."--"It once did not
yield to the strength of mind with which nature has endowed me, but the
transition from a life of action to a complete seclusion has ruined all.
I have grown fat, my energy is gone, the bow is unstrung." Antommarchi
did not try to combat an opinion but too well-founded, but diverted the
conversation to another subject. "I resign myself," said Napoleon, "to
your direction. Let medicine give the order, I submit to its decisions.
I entrust my health to your care. I owe you the detail of the habits I
have acquired, of the affections to which I am subject.