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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of St. Helena, by Walter Runciman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Tragedy of St. Helena
+
+Author: Walter Runciman
+
+Release Date: March 3, 2005 [EBook #15246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA
+
+BY
+
+SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, BART.
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS,"
+"THE SHELLBACK'S PROGRESS,"
+"LOOKING SEAWARD AGAIN," ETC.
+
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN
+LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
+LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
+1911
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In my early sea-life, I used to listen to the eccentric and
+complicated views expressed by a race of seamen long since passed
+away. Occasionally there were amongst the crew one or two who had the
+true British hypothetical belief in the demoniacal character of
+Napoleon, but this was not the general view of the men with whom I
+sailed; and after the lapse of many years, I often wonder how it came
+about that such definite partiality in regard to this wonderful being
+could have been formed, and the conclusion that impresses me most is,
+that his many acts of kindness to his own men, the absence of flogging
+and other debasing treatment in his own service, his generosity and
+consideration for the comfort of British prisoners during the wars,
+his ultimate defeat by the combined forces of Europe, the despicable
+advantage they took of the man who was their superior in everything,
+and to whom in other days the allied Kings had bent in homage, had
+become known to the English sailors.
+
+How these rugged men came to their knowledge of Napoleon and formed
+their opinions about him may be explained in this way. Hundreds of
+seamen and civilians were pressed into the King's service, many of
+whom were taken ruthlessly from vessels they partly owned and
+commanded. Indeed, there was no distinction. The pressgangs captured
+everybody, irrespective of whether they were officers, common able
+seamen, or boys, to say nothing of those who had no sea experience.
+Both my own grandfathers and two of my great uncles were kidnapped
+from their vessels and their families into the navy, and after many
+years of execrable treatment, hard fighting, and wounds, they landed
+back into their homes broken men, with no better prospect than to
+begin life anew. It was natural that the numerous pressed men should
+detest the ruffianly man-catchers and their employers, if not the
+service they were forced into, and that they would nurse the wrong
+which had been done to them.
+
+They would have opportunities of comparing their own lot with that of
+other nationalities engaged in combat against them, and though both
+might be bad, it comes quite natural to the sailor to imagine his
+treatment is worse than that of others; and there is copious evidence
+that the British naval service was not at that period popular.
+Besides, they knew, as everybody else should have known, that Napoleon
+was beloved by his navy and army alike. Then, after the Emperor had
+asked for the hospitality of the British nation, and became its guest
+aboard the _Bellerophon_, the sailors saw what manner of man he was.
+And later, his voyage to St. Helena in the _Northumberland_ gave them
+a better chance of being impressed by his fascinating personality. It
+is well known how popular he became aboard both ships; the men of the
+squadron that was kept at St. Helena were also drawn to him in
+sympathy, and many of the accounts show how, in their rough ardent
+way, they repudiated the falsehoods of his traducers. The exiled
+Emperor had become _their_ hero and _their_ martyr, just as
+impressively as he was and remained that of the French; and from them
+and other sources were handed down to the generation of merchant
+seamen those tales which were told with the usual love of hyperbole
+characteristic of the sailor, and wiled away many dreary hours while
+traversing trackless oceans. They would talk about the sea fights of
+Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the battles of Arcola, Marengo, Jena,
+Austerlitz, the Russian campaign, the retreat from Moscow, his
+deportation to Elba, his escape therefrom, and his matchless march
+into Paris, and then the great encounter of Waterloo, combined with
+the divorce of Josephine and the marriage with Marie Louise; all of
+which, as I remember it now, was set forth in the most voluble and
+comical manner. Some of their most engaging chanties were composed
+about him, and the airs given to them, always pathetic and touching,
+were sung by the sailors in a way which showed that they wanted it to
+be known that they had no hand in, and disavowed, the crime that was
+committed. As an example, I give four verses of the chanty "Boney was
+a Warrior," as it was sung in the days I speak of. It is jargon, but
+none the less interesting.
+
+    "They sent him to St. Helena!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    They sent him to St. Helena,
+    John France Wa! (François.)
+
+    Oh! Boney was ill-treated!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    Oh! Boney was ill-treated,
+    John France Wa!
+
+    Oh! Boney's heart was broken!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    Oh! Boney's heart was broken!
+    John France Wa!
+
+    But Boney was an Emperor!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    But Boney was an Emperor!
+    John France Wa!"
+
+    --and so on.
+
+Although at that time I had, in common with others, anti-Napoleonic
+ideas, I was impressed by the views of the sailors. Later in life,
+when on the eve of a long voyage, nearly forty years ago, I happened
+to see Scott's "Life of Napoleon" on a bookstall, and being desirous
+of having my opinion confirmed, I bought it. A careful reading of this
+book was the means of convincing me of the fact that "Boney _was_
+ill-treated," and this in face of the so-called evidence which Sir
+Walter Scott had so obviously collected for the purpose of exonerating
+the then English Government.
+
+The new idea presented to my mind led me to take up a course of
+serious reading, which comprised all the "Lives" of Napoleon on which
+I could lay my hands, all the St. Helena Journals, and the
+commentaries which have been written since their publication. As my
+knowledge of the great drama increased, I found my pro-Napoleonic
+ideas increasing in fervour. Like the Psalmist when musing on the
+wickedness of man, "my heart was hot within me, and at the last I
+spake with my tongue."
+
+I may here state in passing that there is no public figure who lived
+before or since his time who is surrounded with anything approaching
+the colossal amount of literature which is centred on this man whose
+dazzling achievements amazed the world. Paradoxical though it may
+appear now, in the years to come, when the impartial student has
+familiarised himself with the most adverse criticisms, he will see in
+this literature much of the hand of enmity, cowardice, and delusion
+and, as conviction forces itself upon him, there evolve therefrom the
+revelation of a senseless travesty of justice.
+
+I offer no apology for the opinions contained in this book, which have
+been arrived at as the result of many years of study and exhaustive
+reading. I give the volume to the public as it is, in the hope that it
+may attract in other ways to a fair examination of Napoleon's complex
+and fascinating character.
+
+
+WALTER RUNCIMAN.
+
+_December 3, 1910._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE ABODE OF DARKNESS
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION--CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE
+
+CHAPTER III
+THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MÈRE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME
+
+CHAPTER IV
+THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS
+
+CHAPTER V
+MESDAMES DE STAËL AND DE REMUSAT
+
+CHAPTER VI
+JOSEPHINE
+
+CHAPTER VII
+RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ABODE OF DARKNESS
+
+
+In Clause 2 of his last will, dated Longwood, April 15, 1821, the
+Emperor Napoleon states: "It is my wish that my ashes may repose on
+the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have
+loved so well."
+
+At London, September 21, 1821, Count Bertrand and Count Montholon
+addressed the following letter to the King of England:--
+
+    "SIRE,--We now fulfil a sacred duty imposed on us by the Emperor
+    Napoleon's last wishes--we claim his ashes. Your Ministers,
+    Sire, are aware of his desire to repose in the midst of the
+    people whom he loved so well. His wishes were communicated to
+    the Governor of St. Helena, but that officer, without paying any
+    regard to our protestations, caused him to be interred in that
+    land of exile. His mother, listening to nothing but her grief,
+    implores from you, Sire, demands from you, the ashes of her son;
+    she demands from you the feeble consolation of watering his tomb
+    with her tears. If on his barren rock as when on his throne, he
+    was a terror of the world, when dead, his glory alone should
+    survive him. We are, with respect, &c, &c,
+
+    (Signed) COUNT BERTRAND.
+
+    COUNT MONTHOLON."
+
+In reply to this touching act of devotion to their dead chief the
+English Ambassador at Paris wrote in December, 1821, that the English
+Government only considered itself the depository of the Emperor's
+ashes, and that it would deliver them up to France as soon as the
+latter Government should express a desire to that effect. The two
+Counts immediately applied to the French Ministry, but without result.
+On May 1, 1822, a further letter was sent to Louis XVIII., by the
+grace of God King of France and Navarre, concerning the redepositing
+of the ashes of Napoleon, Emperor, thrice proclaimed by the grace of
+the people.
+
+On the accession of Louis Philippe to the throne the rival parties
+were each struggling for ascendancy. The glory of the days of the
+Empire had been stifled by the action of the European Powers and their
+French allies, but the smouldering embers began to show signs of
+renewed activity, and a wave of Napoleonic popularity swept over the
+land. Philippe and his Ministry were not indifferent to what was going
+on, and in order to distract attention from the chaos which the new
+condition of things was creating, the plan of having the "ashes" of
+the illustrious chief brought to the country and the people whom he
+"loved so well" was suggested as a means of bringing tranquillity to
+France and security to the throne.
+
+M. Thiers, the head of a new Ministry, entered into negotiations with
+the English Government, and M. Guizot addressed an official note to
+Lord Palmerston, who was then Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
+
+This precious communication is embodied in the following
+document:--"The undersigned, Ambassador Extraordinary and
+Plenipotentiary of His Majesty the King of the French, has the honour,
+conformably to instructions received from His Government, to inform
+His Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Her Majesty the
+Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, that the King ardently
+desires that the mortal remains of Napoleon may be deposited in a tomb
+in France, in the country which he defended and rendered illustrious,
+and which proudly preserves the ashes of thousands of his companions
+in arms, officers and soldiers, devoted with him to the service of
+their country. The undersigned is convinced that Her Britannic
+Majesty's Government will only see in this desire of His Majesty the
+King of the French a just and pious feeling, and will give the orders
+necessary to the removal of any obstacle to the transfer of Napoleon's
+remains from St. Helena to France."
+
+This document was sent to the British Embassy in Paris, and the wishes
+of M. Thiers and his Government were conveyed in orthodox fashion to
+the British Foreign Secretary by the Ambassador, in the following
+letter, dated Paris, May 4, 1840:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--The French Government have been requested, in several
+    petitions addressed to the Chambers, to take the necessary steps
+    with regard to the Government of Her Majesty the Queen of Great
+    Britain, in order to obtain an authorisation for removing the
+    ashes of the Emperor Napoleon to Paris. These petitions were
+    favourably received by the Chambers, who transmitted them to the
+    President of the Council, and to the other Ministers, his
+    colleagues. The Ministers having deliberated on this point, and
+    the King having given his consent to the measures necessary to
+    meet the object of the petitioners, M. Thiers yesterday
+    announced to me officially the desire of the French Government
+    that Her Majesty's Government would grant the necessary
+    authority to enable them to remove the remains of the Emperor
+    Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. M. Thiers also calls my
+    attention to the fact that the consent of the British Government
+    to the projected measure would be one of the most efficacious
+    means of cementing the union of the two countries, and of
+    producing a friendly feeling between France and
+    England.--(Signed) GRANVILLE."
+
+    So that this King of the French and M. Thiers realise, after a
+    quarter of a century, that the hero who was driven to abdicate,
+    and then banished from France, _did_ defend his country and make
+    it illustrious, and that the removal of his ashes to France was
+    the "_most_ efficacious means" of cementing the union of the
+    country that forsook him in his misfortune with the country that
+    sent him to perish on a rock. His ashes, indeed, were to produce
+    a friendly feeling between these two countries. What a
+    burlesque!
+
+    Napoleon's motto was "Everything for the French people." He
+    seems to have predicted that after his death they would require
+    his "ashes" to tranquillise an enraged people. Of the other
+    contracting party he says in the fifth paragraph of his
+    will:--"I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy
+    and its deputy; the English nation will not be slow in avenging
+    me."
+
+Well, it is requested that his ashes shall be given up to France so
+that peace may prevail. And now follows the great act of
+condescension:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--Her Majesty's Government having taken into
+    consideration the request made by the French Government for an
+    authorisation to remove the remains of the Emperor Napoleon from
+    St. Helena to France, you are instructed to inform M. Thiers
+    that Her Majesty's Government will with pleasure accede to the
+    request. Her Majesty's Government entertains hopes that its
+    readiness to comply with the wish expressed will be regarded in
+    France as a proof of Her Majesty's desire to efface every trace
+    of those national animosities which, during the life of the
+    Emperor, engaged the two nations in war. Her Majesty's
+    Government feels pleasure in believing that such sentiments, if
+    they still exist, will be buried for ever in the tomb destined
+    to receive the mortal remains of Napoleon. Her Majesty's
+    Government, in concert with that of France, will arrange the
+    measures necessary for effecting the removal.
+
+   --(Signed) PALMERSTON."
+
+One of the chief features of this State document is its veiled
+condition that in consideration of H.B.M. Government giving up the
+remains of Napoleon, it is to be understood that every _trace_ of
+national animosity is to be effaced. Another is, now that his mortal
+remains are in question, he is styled "the Emperor Napoleon."
+Twenty-five years before, when the atrocious crime of captivity was
+planned, Lord Keith, in the name of the British Government, addressed
+a communication to "General Bonaparte." The title of Emperor which his
+countrymen had given to him was, until his death, officially ignored,
+and he was only allowed to be styled "General" Bonaparte--the rank
+which the British Government in that hour of his misfortune thought
+best suited to their illustrious captive. He was, in fact, so far as
+rank was concerned, to be put on a level with some and beneath others
+who followed him into captivity. Well might he "protest in the face of
+Heaven and mankind against the violence that was being enacted"
+towards him. Well might he appeal to history to avenge him. There is
+nothing in history to equal the malignancy of the conquerors'
+treatment of their fallen foe. We shall see now and hereafter
+prejudices making way, reluctantly it may be, but surely, for the
+justice that should be done him.
+
+Three days after the gracious reply of the British Government, May 20,
+1840, the French King signified his desire to carry out the wishes of
+the Chambers by putting the following document before them:--
+
+    "GENTLEMEN,--The King has commanded Prince Joinville [his son]
+    to repair with his frigate to the island of St. Helena, there to
+    receive the mortal remains of the Emperor Napoleon. The frigate
+    containing the remains of Napoleon will present itself, on its
+    return, at the mouth of the Seine; another vessel will convey
+    them to Paris; they will be deposited in the Hospital of the
+    Invalides. Solemn ceremonies, both religious and military, will
+    inaugurate the tomb which is to retain them for ever. It is of
+    importance, gentlemen, that this august sepulture should not be
+    exposed on a public place, amidst a noisy and unheeding crowd.
+    The remains must be placed in a silent and sacred spot, where
+    all those who respect glory and genius, greatness and
+    misfortune, may visit them in reverential tranquillity.
+
+    "He was an Emperor and a King, he was the legitimate sovereign
+    of our country, and, under this title, might be interred at St.
+    Denis; but the ordinary sepulture of kings must not be accorded
+    to Napoleon; he must still reign and command on the spot where
+    the soldiers of France find a resting-place, and where those who
+    are called upon to defend her will always seek for inspiration.
+    His sword will be deposited in his tomb.
+
+    "Beneath the dome of the temple consecrated by religion to the
+    God of Armies, a tomb worthy, _if possible_, of the name
+    destined to be graven on it will be erected. The study of the
+    artist should be to give to this monument a simple beauty, a
+    noble form, and that aspect of solidity which shall appear to
+    brave all the efforts of time. Napoleon must have a monument
+    durable as his memory. The grant for which we have applied to
+    the Chambers is to be employed in the removal of the remains to
+    the Invalides, the funeral obsequies, and the construction of
+    the tomb. We doubt not, gentlemen, that the Chamber will concur
+    with patriotic emotion in the royal project which we have laid
+    before them. Henceforth, France, and France alone, will possess
+    all that remains of Napoleon; his tomb, like his fame, will
+    belong solely to his country.
+
+    "The monarchy of 1830 is in fact the sole and legitimate heir of
+    all the recollections in which France prides itself. It has
+    remained for this monarchy, which was the first to rally all the
+    strength and conciliate all the wishes of the French Revolution,
+    to erect and to honour without fear the statue and the tomb of a
+    popular hero; for there is one thing, and one thing alone, which
+    does not dread a comparison with glory, and that is Liberty."[1]
+
+The appeal is generous and just in its conception and beautifully
+phrased. It was received with enthusiasm throughout the whole of
+France. Louis Philippe and his Government had accurately gauged what
+would, more than anything, for the time being, subdue the rumbling
+indications of discord and revolt. The King had by this popular act
+caught the imagination of the people. He had made his seat on the
+throne secure for a time, and his name was immortal. The great mass of
+the people and his Government were behind him, and he made use of this
+to his own advantage. Napoleon's dying wish is to be consummated. "The
+blind hatred of kings" is relaxed; they are no longer afraid of his
+mortal remains; they see, and see correctly, that if they continue to
+"pursue his blood" he will be "avenged, nay, but, perchance, cruelly
+avenged." The old and the new generation of Frenchmen clamour that as
+much as may be of the stigma that rests upon them shall be removed,
+threatening reprisals if it be not quickly done. The British
+Government diplomatically, and with almost comic celerity, gravely
+drop "the General Bonaparte" and style their dead captive "the Emperor
+Napoleon."
+
+Louis Philippe, overwhelmed with the greatness of the dead monarch,
+bursts forth in eloquent praise of this so-called "usurper" of other
+days. He was not only an Emperor and a King, but the _legitimate
+sovereign_ of his country. No ordinary sepulture is to be his--it is
+to be an august sepulture, a silent sacred spot which those who
+respect glory, genius, and greatness may visit in "reverential
+tranquillity." Henceforth, by Royal Proclamation, history is to know
+him as an Emperor and a King. He is to have a tomb as durable as his
+memory, and his tomb and fame are to belong to his country for
+evermore. The legitimate heir of Napoleon's glory is the author of one
+of the finest panegyrics that has ever been written; a political move,
+if you will, but none the less the document is glowing with the
+artistic phrasing that appeals to the perceptions of an emotional
+race.
+
+But the real sincerity was obviously not so much in the author of the
+document as in the great masses, who were intoxicated with the desire
+to have the remains of their great hero brought home to the people he
+had loved so well. It may easily be imagined how superfluously the
+French King and his Government patted each other on the back in
+self-adoration for the act of funereal restoration which they took
+credit for having instituted. If they took too much credit it was only
+natural. But not an item of what is their due should be taken from
+them. The world must be grateful to whoever took a part in so noble a
+deed. At the same time the world will not exonerate the two official
+contracting parties from being exactly free from interested motives.
+The one desired to maintain domestic harmony, and this could only be
+assured by recalling the days of their nation's glory; and the other,
+_i.e._, the British Government, had their eye on some Eastern business
+which Palmerston desired to go smoothly, and so the dead Emperor was
+made the medium of tranquillity, and, it may be, expediency, in both
+cases.
+
+In short, Prince Joinville was despatched from Toulon in feverish
+haste with the frigate _Bellespoule_ and the corvette _Favorite_.
+These vessels were piously fitted out to suit the august occasion.
+Whatever the motives or influences, seen or unseen, that prompted the
+two Governments to carry out this unquestionable act of justice to the
+nation, to Napoleon's family, his comrades in arms who were still
+living, yea, and to all the peoples of the earth who were possessed of
+humane instincts, yet it is pretty certain that fear of a popular
+rising suggested the idea, and the genius who thought of the
+restoration of the Emperor's ashes as a means of subduing the
+gathering storm may be regarded as a public benefactor.
+
+But be all this as it may, it is doubtful if anything so ludicrously
+farcical is known to history as the mortal terror of this man's
+influence, living or dead. The very name of him, animate or inanimate,
+made thrones rock and Ministers shiver. Such was their terror, that
+the Allies, as they were called (inspired, as Napoleon believed, by
+the British Government--and nothing has transpired to disprove his
+theory) banished him to a rock in mid-ocean, caged him up in a house
+overrun with rats, put him on strict allowance of rations, and guarded
+him with warships, a regiment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and the
+uneasy spirit of Sir Hudson Lowe.
+
+After six years of unspeakable treatment he is said to have died of
+cancer in the stomach. Doubtless he did, but it is quite reasonable to
+suppose that the conditions under which he was placed in an unhealthy
+climate, together with perpetual petty irritations, brought about
+premature death, and it is highly probable that the malady might have
+been prevented altogether under different circumstances. At any rate,
+he was without disease when Captain Cockburn handed him over, and for
+some time after. But he knew his own mental and physical make-up; he
+knew that in many ways he was differently constituted from other men.
+His habits of life were different, and therefore his gaolers should
+have been especially careful not to subject this singularly organised
+man to a poisonous climate and to an unheard-of system of cruelty.
+Yes, and they would have been well advised had they guarded with
+greater humanity the fair fame of a great people, and not wantonly
+committed acts that have left a stigma on the British name.
+
+Sir Walter Scott, who cannot be regarded as an impartial historian of
+the Napoleonic regime, does not, in his unfortunate "Life of
+Napoleon," produce one single fact or argument that will exculpate the
+British Government of that time from having violated every humane law.
+The State papers so generously put at his disposal by the English
+Ministry do not aid him in proving that they could not have found a
+more suitable place or climate for their distinguished prisoner, or
+that he would have died of cancer anyhow. The object of the good Sir
+Walter is obvious, and the distressing thing is that this excellent
+man should have been used for the purpose of whitewashing the British
+Administration.
+
+The great novelist is assured that the "ex-Emperor" was pre-disposed
+to the "cruel complaint of which his father died." "The progress of
+the disease is slow and insidious," says he, which may be true enough,
+but predisposition can be either checked or accelerated, and the
+course adopted towards Napoleon was not calculated to retard, but
+encourage it. But in order to palliate the actions of the British
+Government and their blindly devoted adherents at St. Helena,
+Gourgaud, who was not always strictly loyal to his imperial
+benefactor, is quoted as having stated that he disbelieved in the
+Emperor's illness, and that the English were much imposed upon.
+
+Why does Scott quote Gourgaud if, as he says, it is probable that the
+malady was in slow progress even before 1817? The reason is quite
+clear. He wishes to convey the impression that St. Helena has a
+salubrious climate, that the Emperor was treated with indulgent
+courtesy, and had abundance to eat and drink. It will be seen,
+however, by the records of other chroniclers who were in constant
+attendance on His Majesty, that Sir Walter Scott's version cannot be
+relied upon.
+
+If the statements in the annexed letter are true--and there is no
+substantial reason for doubting them, supported as they are by
+facts--then it is a complete refutation of what Scott has written as
+to the health-giving qualities of the island.
+
+Here is the statement of the Emperor's medical adviser (see p. 517,
+Appendix, vol. ii., "Napoleon in Exile"):--
+
+    "The following extract of an official letter transmitted by me
+    to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October, 1818,
+    containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon Napoleon,
+    will show that the fatal event which has since taken place at
+    St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to His
+    Majesty's Ministers.
+
+    "I think it my duty to state, as his late medical attendant,
+    that considering the disease of the liver with which he is
+    afflicted, the progress it has made in him, and reflecting upon
+    the great mortality produced by that complaint in the island of
+    St. Helena (so strongly exemplified in the number of deaths in
+    the 66th Regiment, the St. Helena regiment, the squadron, and
+    Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship
+    _Conqueror_, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her
+    complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last
+    eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon
+    Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a
+    climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be
+    aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and
+    irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of
+    which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly
+    susceptible.--(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John
+    Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."
+
+It is a terrible reflection to think that this note of warning should
+have gone unheeded. A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would
+have thrown political exigencies to the winds and defied all the
+powers of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their
+prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to
+fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up
+to the captain of the _Bellerophon_, and whose health was now
+shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this
+nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of
+Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt
+against it, and were such treatment to be meted out to a political
+prisoner of our day, the wrath of the nation might break forth in a
+way that would teach tyrants a salutary lesson.
+
+But this great man was at the mercy of a lot of little men. They were
+too cowardly to shoot him, so they determined on a cunning dastardly
+process of slow assassination. The pious bard who sings the praises of
+Napoleon's executioners--Wellington and his coadjutors--and whose
+"History" was unworthy of the reputations of himself and his
+publishers, will have sunk into oblivion when the fiery soul of the
+"Sultan Kebir"[2] will seize on the imagination of generations yet
+unborn, and intoxicate them with the memory of the deeds that he had
+done.
+
+Napoleon has said, "In the course of time, nothing will be thought so
+fine nor seize the attention so much as the doing of justice to me. I
+shall gain ground every day on the minds of the people. My name will
+become the star of their rights, it will be the expression of their
+regrets."[3] This statement is as prophetic as many others, more or
+less important, made by Napoleon to one or other of his suite. It is
+remarkable how accurately he foretold events and the impressions that
+would be formed of himself.
+
+Had the warning given so frequently to Sir Hudson Lowe been conveyed
+to his Government, and had they acted upon it, there is little doubt
+that a change of climate would have prolonged the Emperor's life. But
+in going over those dreary nauseous documents which relate the tale,
+one becomes permeated with the belief that the intention was to
+torture, if not to kill. Dr. Antommarchi, who succeeded Dr. O'Meara as
+medical attendant to the Emperor, confirms all that O'Meara had
+conveyed so frequently to the Governor and to the Admiralty. The
+Council sent for him to give them information as to the climate of
+St. Helena. They express the opinion that at Longwood it is "good."
+Antommarchi replies, "Horrible," "Cold," "Hot," "Dry," "Damp,"
+"Variation of atmosphere twenty times in a day." "But," said they,
+"this had no influence on General Bonaparte's health," and the blunt
+reply of Antommarchi is flung at them, "It sent him to his grave."
+"But," came the question, "what would have been the consequences of a
+change of residence?" "That he would still be living," said
+Antommarchi. The dialogue continues, the doctor scoring heavily all
+the way through. At length one of the Council becomes offended at his
+daring frankness, and blurts forth in "statesmanlike" anger: "What
+signifies, after all, the death of General Bonaparte? It rids us of an
+implacable enemy."
+
+This noble expression of opinion was given three days after George IV.
+had deplored the death of Napoleon. It is not of much consequence,
+except to confirm the belief of the French that the death-warrant had
+been issued. The popular opinion at the time when the Emperor gave
+himself up to the British was that had he come in contact with George
+IV. the great tragedy would not have happened.
+
+We are not, however, solely dependent on what the two doctors have
+said concerning the cause of his untimely demise. All those who knew
+anything about Longwood, from the common sailor or soldier upwards,
+were aware of the baneful nature of its climate. Counts Las Cases,
+Montholon, and Bertrand had each represented it to the righteous Sir
+Hudson Lowe as being deadly to the health of their Emperor. Discount
+their statements as you will, the conviction forces itself upon you
+that their contentions are in the main, if not wholly, reliable.
+
+But the climate, trying and severe as it was, cannot be entirely
+blamed for killing him, though it did the best part of it. Admiral Sir
+George Cockburn, while he acted as Governor, seems to have caused
+occasional trouble to the French by the unnecessary restrictions put
+upon them, but by the accounts given he was not unkindly disposed. He
+showed real anxiety to make the position as agreeable to them as he
+could, and no doubt used his judgment instead of carrying out to the
+letter the cast-iron instructions given to him by Bathurst. The
+Emperor spoke of him as having the heart of a soldier, and regretted
+his removal to give place to Sir Hudson Lowe, who arrived in the
+_Phaeton_ on April 14, 1816.
+
+The new Governor's rude, senseless conduct on the occasion of his
+first visit to Longwood indicated forebodings of trouble. He does not
+appear to have had the slightest notion of how to behave, or that he
+was about to be introduced to a man who had completely governed the
+destinies of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye and
+penetrating vision measured the man's character and capabilities at a
+glance. He said to his friends, "That man is malevolent; his eye is
+that of a hyena." Subsequent events only intensified this belief.
+
+Perhaps the best that can be said of Lowe is that he possessed
+distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good
+business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has
+never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say
+that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to
+fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an
+atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had
+a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications
+that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just
+the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of
+such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly
+ignorant or wicked the Government, or Bathurst, were in their
+selection of him.
+
+He was a monomaniac pure and simple. If they thought him best suited
+to pursue a policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect,
+though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand,
+they were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either
+carelessness or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity,
+and by their act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet
+there is a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the
+cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with fear,
+smitten with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to Montholon,
+"His death is my ruin."[4]
+
+Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but
+no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was
+conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the
+instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government, and
+the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his
+household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have
+acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy to twist words
+used either in conversations or letters into meanings which they were
+never intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of
+cold-blooded outbursts of tyrannical intent to be set aside, and
+these make it impossible to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light
+than that of a petty little despot.
+
+He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently suited to
+"command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that memorable verbal
+conversation which arose through Lowe requesting that 200,000 francs
+per annum should be found as a contribution towards the expenses at
+Longwood: "I have never heard your name mentioned except as a brigand
+chief. You never suffer a day to pass without torturing me with your
+insults." This undoubtedly was a bitter attack, and the plainspoken
+words used must have wounded Lowe intensely. Probably Napoleon
+himself, on reflection, thought them too severe, even though they may
+be presumed to be literally true, and it may be taken for granted that
+they would never have been uttered but for the spiteful provocation.
+
+A more discerning man would have foreseen that he could not treat a
+great being like the late Emperor of the French as though _he_ were a
+Corsican brigand without having to pay a severe penalty. An ordinary
+prisoner might have submitted with amiable resignation to the
+disciplinary methods which, to the oblique vision of Sir Hudson Lowe,
+seemed to be necessary, but to treat the Emperor as though he were in
+that category was a perversion of all decency, and no one but a Hudson
+Lowe would have attempted it. It is quite certain that the dethroned
+arbiter of Europe never, in his most exalted period, treated any of
+his subordinates with such airs of majesty as St. Helena's Governor
+adopted towards him.
+
+Lowe seems to have had an inherent notion that the position in which
+he was placed entitled him to pursue a policy of unrelenting severity,
+and that homage should be paid as his reward. He thirsted for respect
+to be shown himself, and was amazed at the inordinate ingratitude of
+the French in not recognising his amiable qualities. It was his habit
+to remind them that but for his clemency in carrying out the
+instructions of Bathurst and those who acted with him, their condition
+could be made unendurable. He was incapable of grasping the lofty
+personality of the persecuted guest of England.
+
+The popular, though erroneous, idea that Napoleon was, and ever had
+been, a beast of prey, fascinated him; his days were occupied in
+planning out schemes of closer supervision, and his nights were
+haunted with the vision of his charge smashing down every barrier he
+had racked his intellect to construct, and then vanishing from the
+benevolent custody of his saintly Government to again wage sanguinary
+war and spill rivers of blood. The awful presentiment of escape and
+the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit, and
+thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions impishly
+vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity. Napoleon aptly
+described Lowe as "being afflicted with an inveterate itch."
+
+Montholon, in vol. i. p. 184, relates how Lowe would often leap out of
+bed in the middle of the night, after dreaming of the Emperor's
+flight, mount his horse and ride, like a man demented, to Longwood,
+only to be assured by the officer on duty that all was well and that
+the smitten hero was still his prisoner. When Napoleon was told of
+these nocturnal visitations, he was overcome with mirth, but at the
+same time filled with contempt, not alone for this amazing specimen,
+but for the creatures who had created him a dignitary.
+
+The tragic farce of sending the Emperor to the poisonous plateau of
+Longwood, and giving Lowe Plantation House with its much more healthy
+climate to reside at, is a phenomenon which few people who have made
+themselves conversant with all the facts and circumstances will be
+able to understand. But the policy of this Government, of whom the
+Scottish bard sings so rapturously, is a problem that can never be
+solved.
+
+To a wise body of men, and in view of the fact that the eyes of the
+world were fixed upon them and on the vanquished man, their prisoner,
+the primary thought would have been compassion, even to indulgence;
+instead of which they and their agents behaved as though they were
+devoid of humane feelings.
+
+Lowe's ambition seems to have been to ignore propriety, and to force
+his way to the Emperor's privacy in order that he might assure himself
+that his charge had not escaped, but his ambition and his heroics were
+calmly and contemptuously ignored. "Tell my gaoler," said Napoleon to
+his valet Noverras, "that it is in his power to change his keys for
+the hatchet of the executioner, and that if he enters, it shall be
+over a corpse. Give me my pistols," and it is said by Montholon, to
+whom the Emperor was dictating at the time of the intrusion, that Sir
+Hudson heard this answer and retired confounded. The ultimatum dazed
+him, but he was forced to understand that beyond a certain limit,
+heroics, fooleries, and impertinences would not be tolerated by this
+terrible scavenger of European bureaucracy.[5] Lowe, in very truth,
+discerned the stern reality of the Emperor's piercing words, and he
+felt the need of greater caution bearing down on him. He pondered over
+these grave developments as he journeyed back to Plantation House,
+there to concoct and dispatch with all speed a tale that would chill
+his confederates at St. Stephen's with horror, and give them a further
+opportunity of showing how wise _they_ were in their plan of
+banishment and rigid precautions, and in their selection of so
+distinguished and dauntless a person as Sir Hudson Lowe, on whom they
+implicitly relied to carry out their Christlike benefactions.
+
+Cartoonists, pamphleteers, Bourbonites, treasonites, meteoric females,
+all were supplied with the requisite material for declamatory speeches
+to be hurled at the Emperor in the hope of being reaped to the glory
+of God and the British ministry. The story of the attempted invasion
+of Longwood and its sequel shocks the fine susceptibilities of the
+satellites by whom Lowe is surrounded. They bellow out frothy words of
+vengeance. Sir Thomas Reade, the noisiest filibuster of them all,
+indicates his method of settling matters at Longwood. This incident
+arose through Napoleon refusing to see Sir Thomas Strange, an Indian
+Judge. Las Cases had just been forcibly removed. The Emperor was
+feeling the cruelty of this act very keenly, so he sent the following
+reply to Lowe's request that he should see Sir Thomas: "Tell the
+Governor that those who have gone down to the tomb receive no visits,
+and take care that the Judge be made acquainted with my answer." This
+cutting reply caused Sir Hudson to give way to unrestrained anger, and
+now Sir Thomas Reade gets his chance of vapouring. Here is his plan:
+"If I were Governor, I would bring that dog of a Frenchman to his
+senses; I would isolate him from all his friends, who are no better
+than himself; then I would deprive him of his books. He is, in fact,
+nothing but a miserable outlaw, and I would treat him as such.
+By G--! it would be a great mercy to the King of France to rid him of
+such a fellow altogether. It was a piece of great cowardice not to
+have sent him at once to a court martial instead of sending him
+here."[6]
+
+This ebullition of spasmodic courage entitles the
+Deputy-Adjutant-General to special mention in the dispatches of his
+chief. O'Meara relates another of many episodes with which the
+valiant Sir Thomas is associated. Further attempts were made to
+violate the privacy of the Emperor on the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 16th
+August, 1819, but these were defeated by the fastening of doors. Count
+Montholon was indisposed, and the Governor, refusing to correspond
+with Count Bertrand, insisted upon having communication with the
+Emperor by letter or by one of his officers twice a day. So the
+immortal Sir Thomas Reade and another staff officer were selected to
+effect a communication. But "the dog of a Frenchman" that the deputy
+boasted of "bringing to his senses" refuses admittance, and Sir
+Thomas, who has now got his opportunity, evidently has some misgivings
+about the loaded pistols that are kept handy in case of an emergency.
+The Emperor, in one of his slashing dictated declarations which hit
+home with every biting sentence, reminds the Governor again what the
+inevitable result will be should indecorous liberty be taken. Sir
+Thomas would be made aware of this danger, so contents himself by
+knocking at the door and shouting at the top of his voice: "Come out,
+Napoleon Bonaparte. We want Napoleon Bonaparte."
+
+This grotesque incident, which is only one of many and worse outrages
+that were hatched at Plantation House, reflects a lurid light on the
+delirium of antagonism that pervaded the dispositions of some of
+England's representatives. The hysterical delight of manufacturing
+annoyances was notorious on the island, and Sir Hudson and his
+myrmidons shrieked with resentment when dignified defiance was the
+only response.
+
+Lowe failed to recognise the important ethical fact that a person who
+acts a villainous part can never realise his villainy. So oblivious
+was he of this fundamental law that he never ceased to assure the
+exiles that he was not only good, but kind. Here is a note that bears
+out this self-consciousness: "General Bonaparte cannot be allowed to
+traverse the island freely. Had the only question been that of his
+safety, a mere commission of the East India Company would have been
+sufficient to guard him at St. Helena. He may consider himself
+fortunate that my Government has sent a man so kind as myself to guard
+him, otherwise he would be put in chains, to teach him how to conduct
+himself better."
+
+To this the Emperor answered: "In this case it is obvious that, if the
+instructions given to Sir Hudson Lowe by Lords Bathurst and
+Castlereagh do not contain an order to kill me, a verbal order must
+have been given; for whenever people wish mysteriously to destroy a
+man, the first thing they do is to cut him off from all communication
+with society, and surround him with the shades of mystery, till,
+having accustomed the world to hear nothing said of him, and to forget
+him, they can easily torture him or make him disappear."
+
+What a dreadful indictment this is against Bathurst, Castlereagh, and
+Lowe, and how difficult to think of these men at the same time as of
+Napoleon, whose name had kept the world in awe! Surely their dwarfed
+names and those of all the allied traitors and conspirators will pass
+on down the ages subjects for mockery and derision, while his shall
+still tower above everything unto all time. His faults will be
+obscured by the magnificence of his powerful and beneficent reign, and
+overshadowed by pity for his unspeakable martyrdom.
+
+But what of the Commissioners representing Russia, Austria, Prussia,
+and the Most Christian King of France? How shall they fare at the
+hands of posterity? Their crime will not be that they acquiesced in
+being sent to St. Helena by their respective Governments, but that
+they allowed themselves to be completely cajoled and influenced by the
+crafty allurements of Lowe. The representative of Austria is said to
+have been a mere cipher in his hands, while the attention of Count
+Balmin was wholly taken up in making love to Miss Johnson, the eldest
+daughter of Lady Lowe by a former marriage. He eventually married her
+and became one of the family. This young lady's charm of character and
+goodness had captured the affections of the Longwood colony, and her
+tender solicitude for the sorrows of the Emperor caused him to form an
+attachment for her which was evidenced by his gracious attentions
+whenever she came to Longwood.
+
+The Marquis de Montchenu (who on landing at St. Helena found himself
+in the midst of a group of officers attending on Sir Hudson, and
+called out, "For the love of God, tell me if any of you speak French")
+is not much heard of in his official capacity. Afterwards he appears
+to have been enamoured of the Governor's good dinners, but though he
+was always hospitable, kind, and glad to see his compatriots at his
+breakfast table, the Emperor never would receive him, though he always
+showed appreciation of his promptitude in forwarding to him French
+papers or books. The Marquis would naturally find it difficult to
+assert himself when he heard of the wrongs committed by his host.
+
+The restrictions imposed on the Emperor were by this time having an
+ominous effect. O'Meara reported that this was so, and the
+Commissioners, whose instructions from their Governments were merely
+formal, thought it their duty to bestir themselves, and requested the
+Governor to remove the causes in so far as it was "compatible with the
+security of his person," lest the result from want of exercise should
+be of serious consequences to his health. Sir Hudson was angry at the
+turn affairs were taking, as the Commissioners had always accommodated
+themselves to his plans. He found, however, that in this instance
+humanity had been aroused, and as it would not suit his purpose to run
+against his hitherto complacent friends, he thinks to appease their
+anxiety in the following extraordinary manner:--
+
+"I am about to arrange in such a way as to allow him to take horse
+exercise. I have no wish that he should die of an attack of
+apoplexy--that would be very embarrassing both to me and to my
+Government. I would much rather he should die of a tedious disease
+which our physicians could properly declare to be natural. Apoplexy
+furnishes too many grounds for comment."[7]
+
+This insensate mockery of a man is always asserting himself in some
+detestable fashion or other.[8]
+
+At one time his benighted mind would swagger him into droll ideas of
+attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his
+childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic,
+and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself
+with manifestations of aggrieved virtue.
+
+The Emperor received Lord Amherst, who was a man of some human
+feeling, and the noble lord offered to convey to the precious Prince
+Regent certain messages. Then Napoleon, aroused by the recollection of
+the perfidy which was causing him such infinite suffering, declared
+that neither his King nor his nation had any right over him. "Your
+country," he exclaims, "sets an example of twenty millions of men
+oppressing one individual." With prophetic utterance he foreshadows "a
+terrible war hatched under the ashes of the Empire." Nations are to
+avenge the ingratitude of the Kings whom he "crowned and pardoned."
+And then, as though his big soul had sickened at the thought of it
+all, he exclaims, "Inform your Prince Regent that I await as a favour
+the axe of the executioner." Lord Amherst was deeply affected, and
+promised to tell of all his sufferings and indignities to the Regent,
+and also to speak to the saintly Lowe thereon. "Useless," interjects
+the Emperor; "crime, hatred, is his nature. It is necessary to his
+enjoyment to torture me. He is like the tiger, who tears with his
+claws the prey whose agonies he takes pleasure in prolonging." The
+audience then closes and the sordid tragedy continues.
+
+The Commissioners are to have bulletins, but no communication with the
+Imperial abode. O'Meara is asked to prepare inspired bulletins, and to
+report what he hears and learns from the Emperor, and in a general way
+act the spy. He refused, and as Lowe required willing tools, not
+honest men, he was ultimately banished from the island. The Emperor
+embraces him, bestows his benediction, and gives him credentials of
+the highest order, together with messages of affection to members of
+his family and to the accommodating Marie Louise, who is now mistress
+to the Austrian Count Neipperg. He is charged to convey kindly
+thoughts of esteem and gratitude to the good Lady Holland for all her
+kindness to him. The King of Rome is tenderly remembered, and O'Meara
+is asked to send intelligence as to the manner of his education. A
+message is entrusted to him for Prince Joseph, who is to give to
+O'Meara the private and confidential letters of the Emperors Alexander
+and Francis, the King of Prussia, and the other sovereigns of Europe.
+He then thanks O'Meara for his care of him and bids him "quit the
+abode of darkness and crime."[9]
+
+Before O'Meara left the island, news of the diabolical treatment of
+the Emperor had filtered through to Europe in spite of Lowe's
+precautions. The _Edinburgh Review_ had published several articles
+exposing the Governor's conduct, and when these were delivered at St.
+Helena (addressed to Longwood) a great commotion arose at Plantation
+House. Reade had orders to buy every one of the obnoxious
+publications, but determined men of talent are not easily thwarted in
+their object, especially if it is a good one, so the Governor had the
+mortification of seeing himself outwitted. O'Meara was confronted and
+charged with securing for Montholon the objectionable _Edinburgh
+Review_. The articles gave the Emperor great pleasure, and when this
+was made known to Lowe it was intolerable to him. O'Meara gets
+official notice to quit on July 25, 1818.
+
+Napoleon thought it a bold stroke on the part of the British Ministers
+(whom he regarded, and spoke quite openly of, as assassins) to force
+his physician from him. The doctor took the precaution to reveal the
+place of concealment of his journal to Montholon, who found a way of
+having it sent to him in England. This document was read to the
+Emperor, who had several errors corrected, which do not appear to have
+been of great importance, except one that had reference to the
+shooting of the Duc d'Enghien.[10]
+
+On the day following his exit from Longwood O'Meara sent a report on
+the exile's illness and his treatment thereof. The report is an
+alarming account of the health of the Emperor, who, notwithstanding,
+is deprived of medical aid for months. He justly adhered to the
+determination of having none other than his own medical attendant.
+Lowe sees in this very reasonable request a subtle attempt at planning
+escape, and will not concede it. An acrimonious correspondence then
+takes place. Letters sent to him by Montholon or Bertrand are returned
+because Napoleon is styled Emperor. Montholon in turn imitates Lowe,
+and returns his on the ground of incivility, and it must be admitted
+the French score off him each time.
+
+Lowe whines to Montholon that Bertrand calls him a fool to the
+Commissioners, and accuses him of collecting all the complaints he can
+gather together, so that he may have them published. The newspapers,
+particularly the _Edinburgh Review_, have slashing articles holding
+him up to ridicule and denouncing him as an "assassin." He whimpers
+that it is very hard that he, who pays every attention and regard for
+the Emperor's feelings, should be pursued and made the victim of
+calumnies. These expressions of unctuous pharisaism are coldly
+received by the French, who ask no favours but claim justice. Their
+thoughts are full of the wrongs perpetrated on the great man who is
+the object of their attachment and pity. They will listen to none of
+Lowe's canting humbug. They see incontestable evidences of the
+Destroyer enfolding his arms around the hero who had thrilled the
+nations of the world with his deeds. Their souls throb with fierce
+emotion at the agony caused by the venomously malignant tyranny. The
+meanest privileges of humanity are denied him, and if they plotted in
+order that the world might learn of the hideous oppression, who, with
+a vestige of holy pity in him, will deny that their motive was
+laudable? Let critics say what they will, these devoted followers of a
+fallen and sorely stricken chief are an example of imperishable
+loyalty. They had their differences, their petty jealousies, and at
+times bemoaned their hard fate, and this oft-times caused the Emperor
+to quickly rebuke them.
+
+Gourgaud was the Peter of the family, and a great source of trouble.
+He may justly be accused at times of lapsing into disloyalty. He was
+guilty both on the island and after his arrival in England of
+committing the same fault, but in this latter instance he may have had
+a purpose, as he was asking favours from men who were bitterly hostile
+to his benefactor. He knew they would be glad to hear anything from so
+important an authority as would in any degree justify their action.
+Gourgaud, in fact, was more knave than fool, as his subsequent
+beseeching appeals on behalf of Napoleon to Marie Louise and other
+personages in France very clearly prove.
+
+But take these men and women as a whole, view the circumstances and
+conditions of life on this rock of vile memory, inquire as minutely as
+you may into their conduct, and you see, towering above all, that
+their supreme interest is centred on him whom they voluntarily
+followed into exile. He is their ideal of human greatness, their
+friend, and their Emperor.
+
+They view Sir Hudson Lowe as they would a distracted phenomenon. The
+introduction of new and frivolous vexations is occasionally ignored or
+looked upon with despairing amusement. At other times, when their
+master's rights, dignity, and matchless personality are assailed, they
+resent it with fierce impulse, and this gives Lowe further
+opportunities of reminding them of his goodness. But during the long,
+weary years of incessant provocation, criminal retaliation was never
+thought of except on one occasion, when some new arbitrary rules were
+put in force.
+
+Santini, a Corsican, and one of the domestics, brooded over his
+master's wrongs. He was generally of a cheerful temperament, but since
+the new regulations were enforced it had been noticed that his whole
+disposition had changed. He became thoughtful and dejected, and one
+day made known to Cipriani his deliberate intention to shoot the
+Governor the first time he came to Longwood. Cipriani used all his
+influence to dissuade him from committing so rash an act, and finding
+that Santini was immovable, he reported the matter to Napoleon, who
+had the devoted keeper of his portfolio brought to him, and commanded
+him as his Emperor to cease thinking of injuring Sir Hudson. It took
+the Emperor some time to persuade Santini, and when he did give his
+promise it was with marked reluctance. Santini is spoken of as being
+as brave as a lion, an expert with the small sword, and a deadly shot.
+He was subsequently sent off the island, the Emperor granting him a
+pension of £50 per annum.
+
+Santini was the only one who refused to sign a document put forward
+by Lowe in which all the officers and domestics pledged themselves to
+conform to the new regulations, which were, as usual, senseless and
+severe. They insisted on the words "Emperor Napoleon" being inserted,
+but Lowe, with inherent stupid pleasure, would have none other than
+the words "Napoleon Bonaparte," and the penalty for refusing to sign
+was banishment from the island. Sir Hudson got it into his malevolent
+brain that he had pinned them at last. He affirmed that their reason
+for not signing what they pretended was their Emperor's and their own
+degradation was to give an excuse for being "sent off." Whereupon, as
+soon as the Governor's crafty insinuations became known, they all
+signed except Santini, who refused to have Napoleon described by any
+other term than that of Emperor.
+
+Santini's loyalty to his illustrious master cost him the anguish of
+being torn from his service and sent to the Cape of Good Hope in the
+English frigate _Orontes_. He stayed there a few days, but returned
+almost immediately to St. Helena. He was not, however, allowed to
+land; and, having spent some days at the anchorage, sailed on February
+25, 1817, for England.
+
+These refractory captives of the British authorities seem to have
+been a source of great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost
+to the nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing
+with them. The business grows so farcical that the English guardians
+become the laughing-stock of the most menial creatures on the island.
+
+Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching appeal
+to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena atrocities, the
+main facts of which have never been contradicted. Any exaggerations
+which may appear in the pamphlet, coming as they do from a soldier
+whose adoration for his Emperor amounted to fanaticism, may be
+excused; but, whatever his faults, the ugly facts remain unshaken.
+
+There is no evidence in all the voluminous publications concerning
+Napoleon at St. Helena that there would have been a shred of mourning
+put on by the best men and women of any nationality residing on this
+inhospitable rock had Santini or any one else despatched the petty
+tyrant who was carrying on a nefarious assassination by the consent,
+if not the instructions, of an equally nefarious Ministry. Perhaps his
+Imperial victim would have been the only person outside his family and
+official circle who would have deplored the act. It is pretty
+generally admitted that Lowe was detested by all classes who knew of
+the villainous methods adopted by him to give pain to Napoleon and to
+any one who showed the slightest sympathy towards him.
+
+Letters from and to his wife, "the amiable Austrian Archduchess," his
+mother, and other members of his family, were not allowed to pass
+unless scrutinised and commented upon by this insatiable gaoler.
+Letters written to the Ministry and to well-disposed public men
+outside it were not forwarded, on the pretext that the title of
+Emperor was used. A marble bust of the Emperor's son was brought to
+St. Helena by T.M. Radowich, master gunner aboard the ship _Baring_.
+It was taken possession of by the authorities, and had been in Lowe's
+hands for some days when he intimated to Count Bertrand that, though
+it was against the regulations, he would take upon himself to hand
+over some presents sent out by Lady Holland and some left by Mr.
+Manning. A more embarrassing matter was the handing over of the bust.
+The mystery and comic absurdity of some Government officials of that
+time, or even of this, is amazing.
+
+Lowe's dull perceptions had been awakened. He realised that he might
+be accused of having committed an exceedingly dirty trick. He thinks
+it in keeping with the dignity of his high office to become uneasy
+about the retention of these articles, especially the statue of the
+King of Rome. So with unconscious humour he asks the Count if he
+thinks Napoleon would really like to have his son's bust. The Count
+replies, "You had better send it this very evening, and not detain it
+until to-morrow." Lowe is aggrieved at the coldness of the reply. He
+presumably expected Bertrand to gush out torrents of gratitude. But
+the French code of real good taste and humane bearing put Sir Hudson
+Lowe beneath their contempt. To them he had become indescribable.
+
+To all those who had access to Napoleon, the burning love he had for
+his son was well known, and in one of those outbursts of passionate
+anguish he declares to the Countess of Montholon that it was for him
+alone that he returned from Elba, and if he still formed some
+expectations in exile, they were for him also. He declares that he is
+the source of his greatest anguish, and that every day he costs him
+tears of blood. He imagines to himself the most horrid events, which
+he cannot remove from his mind. He sees either the potion or the
+empoisoned fruit which is about to terminate the days of the young
+innocent by the most cruel sufferings, and then, after this pouring
+out of the innermost soul, he pleads with Madame to compassionate his
+weakness, and asks her to console him.
+
+This learned warrior-statesman was also a poet, and but for the
+solitude of exile we should probably never have seen that side of this
+versatile nature. The lines which he writes to the portrait of his son
+are painfully touching. For some reason they were kept concealed, and
+found some time afterwards. Here they are, but the English translation
+does not do them justice:--
+
+    Delightful image of my much-loved boy!
+    Behold his eyes, his looks, his smile!
+    No more, alas! will he enkindle joy,
+    Nor on some kindlier shore my woes beguile.
+
+    My son! my darling son! wert thou but here,
+    My bosom should receive thy lovely form;
+    Thou'dst soothe my gloomy hours with converse dear,
+    Serenely we'd behold the lowering storm.
+
+    I'd be the partner of thine infant cares,
+    And pour instruction o'er thy expanding mind,
+    Whilst in thy heart, in my declining years,
+    My wearied soul should an asylum find.
+
+    My wrongs, my cares, should be forgot with thee,
+    My power Imperial, dignities, renown--
+    This rock itself would be a heaven to me,
+    Thine arms more cherished than the victor's crown.
+
+    O! in thine arms, my son! I could forget that fame
+    Shall give me, through all time, a never-dying name.
+
+Here is another version of the same thoughts:--
+
+    TO THE PORTRAIT OF MY SON.
+
+    O! cherished image of my infant heir!
+    Thy surface does his lineaments impart:
+    But ah! thou liv'st not--on this rock so bare
+    His living form shall never glad my heart.
+
+    My second self! how would thy presence cheer
+    The settled sadness of thy hapless sire!
+    Thine infancy with tenderness I'd rear,
+    And thou shouldst warm my age with youthful fire.
+
+    In thee a truly glorious crown I'd find,
+    With thee, upon this rock, a heaven should own,
+    Thy kiss would chase past conquests from my mind
+    Which raised me, demi-god, on Gallia's throne.
+
+Perhaps the Emperor did not wish to show all the anguish by which he
+was being hourly devoured, but who can read these lines now without a
+pang of emotion? The overpowering conviction that his much-loved boy
+would be destroyed haunted him. Many people to this day believe that
+he was right, and that his son's health was sedulously undermined. But
+if that be so, the Imperial House of Austria will have to answer for
+it through all eternity. Napoleon knew that this much-treasured bust
+was at Plantation House, and said to O'Meara, if it had not been given
+up he would have told a tale which would have made the mothers of
+England execrate Lowe as a monster in human shape.
+
+But the Governments of Europe, as well as individuals, were spending
+vast sums of money on pamphleteering, and probably those who wrote the
+worst libels were the most highly paid. Therefore the women of England
+and of other countries were continuously having their minds saturated
+with poisonous statements. Many of them firmly believed Napoleon to be
+the anti-Christ, and it is only now that the world is beginning to see
+through the gigantic plot.
+
+It was stated that the bust had been executed at Leghorn by order of
+the faithless Marie Louise. In Hooper's "Life of Wellington," the
+statement that "she was grateful to the Duke for winning Waterloo,
+because in 1815 she had a lover who afterwards became her husband, and
+she was not in a condition to return with safety to her Imperial
+spouse," is hard to believe. This mother of the son the poet-Emperor
+sings about was deriving pleasure in playing cards for napoleons with
+the Duke who was regarded by her husband as one of his most determined
+executioners. Her supposed connection with the statue naturally gave
+it a larger interest, so the Emperor expressed a desire to see the
+gunner, and ordered Bertrand to get permission for him to visit
+Longwood.
+
+The Governor, after examining the gunner on oath, and having had him
+carefully searched, gave him leave to see Napoleon, but Captain
+Poppleton was ordered not to allow him to speak to the French unless
+in his presence. This arbitrary condition was resented with quiet,
+scornful dignity, and the gunner was asked to withdraw. It is hard to
+believe that a man could be so perversely crooked as Sir Hudson Lowe.
+How human it was for the exile to long to hear a message from the lips
+of one who was credited with having seen and spoken to the mother of
+his son, and how inhuman of Lowe to put any obstacles in the way of
+his desire being gratified!
+
+The incident became common talk, and in proportion to its circulation,
+so did Lowe's reputation suffer. It is questionable whether he could
+have found any one unfeeling enough on the island to justify so
+despicable an act, except perhaps Sir Thomas Reade, whose baseness in
+this and other transactions cannot be adequately described, and whose
+nature seems to have been ingrained with the daily thought of
+achieving distinction by excelling his master in some form of cruelty.
+
+It is a piteous reflection to think of these two plants of grace, the
+one at all times imbued with the idea of some sanguinary plan of
+punishment, while the other varied the plan of his doubtful
+transactions, at the same time telling the exiles that he was actuated
+by the sweetest and purest of motives.
+
+In contrast to Lowe and Reade, the chroniclers speak in the highest
+praise of Major Gorriquer. The officers and soldiers of the garrison,
+as well as the men of the navy, extended their touching sympathy to
+the hero who described his imprisonment as being worse than
+"Tamerlane's iron cage." Captain Maitland, in his narrative, relates a
+story which indicates the magnetic power of this great soldier.
+Maitland was anxious to know what his men thought of Napoleon, so he
+asked his servant, who told him that he had heard several of them
+talking about him, and one of them had observed, "Well, they may abuse
+that man as much as they please; but if the people of England knew him
+as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of his head." To which
+the others agreed.
+
+There are many instances recorded where sailors ran the risk of being
+shot in order that they might get a glimpse of him, and there is
+little doubt the poor gunner-messenger was subjected to inimitable
+moral lectures on the sin and pains and penalties of having any
+communication whatsoever with the ungentle inhabitants of Longwood.
+This good-hearted fellow was as carefully shadowed as though he had
+been commissioned to carry the Emperor off. Lowe was infected with the
+belief that he had some secret designs, and if he were not kept under
+close supervision he might take to sauntering on his own account and
+really have some talk with the French, and then what might happen?
+This episode was brought to a close by the Emperor directing that a
+kind letter should be written to the enterprising sailor, and that a
+draft for _£_300 should be enclosed. O'Meara says, "By means of some
+unworthy trick he did not receive it for nearly two years."
+
+The reason so much is made of the bust affair is accounted for as
+follows:--
+
+Lowe, on first hearing of it being landed, intended to have it seized
+and thrown into the sea. He afterwards took possession of the article,
+with the idea of making Napoleon a present of it himself. This idea
+did not pan out as he expected, and in consequence of public
+indignation running so high, he had the bust sent to Longwood
+immediately after his conversation with Bertrand. While Las Cases was
+waiting at Mannheim in the hope that the pathetic appeals he had made
+to the sovereigns on behalf of Napoleon would bring to him a
+favourable decision, the Dalmatian gunner heard of him. He was passing
+through Germany to his home after a fruitless attempt in London to get
+the money Napoleon had enclosed in his letter. The reason given was
+that the persons on whom it was drawn were not then in possession of
+the necessary funds. Las Cases paid him, and received his appropriate
+blessings for his goodness. Imprecations against Lowe were lavishly
+bestowed by the gunner. He had been prevented from landing at St.
+Helena on his way back from India, and but for this spiteful act of
+Lowe's the money would have been paid at once.
+
+Meanwhile the touching appeals of Las Cases to the sovereigns were
+unheeded. Even Napoleon's father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, who
+had given his daughter in marriage to the arbiter of Europe, did not
+deign to reply, though only a brief time before he had received many
+tokens of magnanimity from the French Emperor. So, indeed, had other
+kings and queens of that time, not excluding Alexander of Russia; but
+more hereafter about these monarchs who had once clamoured for the
+honour of alliances with Napoleon and with his family, but who now
+were conspirators in the act of a great assassination.
+
+Some three years before, Lord Keith was horrified when Captain
+Maitland informed him on board the _Bellerophon_, in Torbay, that the
+Duke of Rovigo, Lallemand, Montholon, and Gourgaud had said that their
+Emperor would not go to St. Helena, and if he were to consent, they
+would prevent it, meaning that they would end his existence rather
+than witness any further degradation of him. Lord Keith is indignant,
+and replies to Sir Frederick Maitland, "You may tell those gentlemen
+who have threatened to be Bonaparte's executioners that the law of
+England awards death to murderers, and that the certain consequence of
+such an act will be finishing their career on a gallows." Precisely!
+
+The noble lord's fascinating little speech is quite in accord with
+justice, but did _he_ ever raise a finger to prevent his colleagues
+and their renowned deputy from committing the same crime at St.
+Helena, and after this same Bonaparte's demise, were any steps taken
+to call to account those whom the great soldier had consistently
+declared were causing his premature death? Lord Keith, with his eyes
+uplifted to heaven, had said, "England awards death to murderers," and
+in this we are agreed, but there must be no fine distinction drawn as
+to who the perpetrators are or their reason for doing it. Whether a
+person for humanity's sake is despatched by a friendly pistol-shot or
+the process of six years of refined cruelty, the crime is the same,
+the only difference being (if life has to be taken) that it is more
+merciful it should be done expeditiously.
+
+The French revered their Emperor, and could not bear to witness his
+dire humiliation at the hands of men so infinitely his inferiors,
+hence the thought of unlawfully ending his existence. On the other
+hand, members of the British Government were swollen out with haughty
+righteousness; they regarded themselves as deputies of the Omnipotent.
+They determined in solemn conclave that the man against whom they had
+waged war for twenty years, and who was only now beaten by a
+combination of circumstances, should be put through the ordeal of an
+inquisition. If he held out long, well and good, but should he succumb
+to their benign treatment, their faith would be steadfast in their own
+blamelessness. They were quite unconscious of being an unspeakable
+brood of hollow, heartless mediocrities. Why did Lord Keith not give
+_them_, as he did the devoted Frenchmen, a little sermon on the
+orthodoxy of the gallows? They were far more in need of his guiding
+influence.
+
+The British public were deceived by the most malevolent publications.
+The great captive was made to appear so dangerous an animal that
+neither soldiers nor sailors could keep him in subjection, and the
+stories of his misdeeds when at the height of his ravishing glory were
+spread broadcast everywhere. Nothing, indeed, was base enough for the
+oligarchy of England and the French Royalists to stoop to.
+
+For a time the flow of wickedness went on unchecked. At last a few
+good men and women began to speak out the truth, and as though Nature
+revolted against the scoundrelism that had been and was now being
+perpetrated, a sharp and swelling reaction came over the public. Men
+and women began to express the same views as Captain Maitland's
+sailors had expressed, viz.: "This man cannot be so bad as they make
+him out to be."
+
+Las Cases had been sent to the Cape, but his journal, containing
+conversations, dictations, and the general daily life of the exiles
+since they embarked aboard the _Bellerophon_, was seized by Lowe, so
+that he might pry into it with the hope of finding seditious entries.
+(It may be taken for granted that no eulogy of himself appeared
+therein.) The poor Count and his son on arrival at the Cape were
+confined in an unhealthy hovel, and treated more like galley-slaves
+than human beings. After some weeks of this truly British hospitality
+under the Liverpool-Bathurst regime he determines to make a last
+appeal to Lord Charles Somerset, then Governor at the Cape, to be more
+compassionate. He had been told that nothing but a dog or a horse
+attracted either his sympathy or his attention, and frankly admits
+that he found himself in error in thinking so harshly of his
+lordship, as his appeal met with a prompt and generous response.
+
+The Governor, in fact, expressed his sorrow on learning for the first
+time of the Count's illness and the conditions under which he was
+living. He immediately put at his disposal his country residence,
+servants, and all else that would add to his comfort, and thus earned
+the eternal gratitude of a much persecuted father and son. Lord
+Charles Somerset, for this gracious act alone, will rank amongst the
+good-hearted Englishmen of that troublesome time. It would appear that
+the Cape Governor's subordinates were entirely responsible for the
+ill-treatment complained of.
+
+It is a puzzle to know for what purpose this gentleman and his son
+were detained at the Cape. The Count had frequently pointed out the
+folly of his detention, and begged Lord Charles to allow them to take
+their passage in a small brig of 200 tons that was bound to Europe.
+This request was agreed to, a passport granted, and the captain of the
+craft that was to be carried "in the sailors' arms" three thousand
+leagues was given stern instructions that should he touch anywhere,
+his passengers were to have no communication with the shore, and on
+reaching England they were not to be allowed to land without receiving
+orders from the Government.
+
+Whatever other charge may be brought against Las Cases, the lack of
+courage can never be cited. The act of taking so long a passage in
+this cockleshell of a vessel is a sure testimony of his devotion and
+bravery. The food and the accommodation were of the very worst, and
+though the account given of the low thunder of the waves lashing on
+the decks is not very sailorly, there can be little doubt that so long
+a passage could not be made without some startling vicissitudes.
+
+At length, after nearly one hundred days from the Cape, they are
+safely landed at Dover, and make their way to London to apprise the
+immortal Bathurst of their arrival and of their desire to see him, so
+that he might listen to some observations about St. Helena matters.
+This man of mighty mystery and dignity does not deign to reply, but
+sends a Ministerial messenger to inform the Count that it is the
+Prince Regent's pleasure that he quits Great Britain instantly. Las
+Cases tells the messenger that it is a "very sorry, silly pleasure"
+for His Royal Highness to have, but he has to quit all the same, as
+England is now governed by "sorry, silly pleasure." Another batch of
+papers is taken from him, and he is bundled away to Ostend and from
+thence to other inhospitable countries, and ultimately lands at
+Frankfort.
+
+The Count writes many clever, rather long, but disturbing letters to
+noble lords in England, to members of Governments in other countries,
+and to every crowned head interested in the little community they have
+in safe and despotic keeping at St. Helena. He sends a petition to the
+British Parliament stating in clear, clinching terms another
+indictment against the British Ministry and their agent. This document
+was sent from the deserts of Tygerberg, but like much more of a
+similar kind, not a word was said about it. The author, however, was
+not to be fooled or driven from the path which he conceived to be his
+duty to his much wronged Emperor, so the petition was published, and
+created a great sensation.
+
+This had to be subdued or counteracted, and as the Government were
+unaccustomed to manly, straightforward dealing, they fell back on
+their natural method of intrigue and the spreading of reports that
+were likely to encourage and create prejudice against their captive.
+It was imputed to them that while the Congress was sitting at
+Aix-la-Chapelle they got up a scare of a daring plot of escape. This
+was done at a time when the monarchs were touched with a kind of
+sympathy for the man who had so often spared them, and whom their
+cruelty was now putting to death.
+
+No wonder that this Ministry of little men were suspected of tricks
+degrading and treacherous. The recitals of their distorted versions
+of their woes affected the public imagination like a dreary litany.
+Vast communities of men were beginning to realise that a tragedy was
+being engineered in the name of sanctity and humanity.
+
+Every agency composed of cunning, unscrupulous rascals was enlisted to
+picture the Emperor as a hideous monster who should not be allowed to
+enjoy the liberty so charitably given him, and who, if he got his
+proper deserts, should be put in chains. He was depicted as having a
+mania for roaming about the island with a gun, shooting wild cats and
+anything else that came within range. Madame Bertrand's pet kids, a
+bullock, and some goats were reported to have fallen victims to this
+vicious maniac. Old Montchenu and Lowe became alarmed lest he should
+kill some human being by mistake; they perplexed their little minds as
+to the form of indictment should such an event happen. Should it be
+manslaughter or murder? This knotty question was submitted with
+touching solemnity to the law officers of the Crown for decision, and
+it may be assumed that even their sense of humour must have been
+excited when they learned of the quandary of the Governor and the
+French Commissioner. The shooting propensity set the ingenious Lowe
+a-thinking, and in order to satisfy it he evolved the idea of having
+rabbits let adrift, but, as usual, another of his little comforting
+considerations is abortive, and the plan has a tragic finish. Shooting
+is off. The Emperor's hobby has changed to gardening. The rabbits
+become an easy prey to the swarms of rats that prowl about Longwood,
+and soon disappear.
+
+It is quite probable that Napoleon did have a fancy for shooting, but
+it is well known he was never at any time a sportsman in the sense of
+being a good shot--indeed, everything points to his having no taste
+for what is ordinarily known as sport, and that he ever shot kids,
+goats, or bullocks is highly improbable. That he occasionally went
+shooting and got good sport in killing the rats and other vermin which
+made Longwood an insufferable habitation to live in is quite true. It
+is also quite true that Lowe became demented with fear in case the
+shooting should have sanguinary and far-reaching effects. Hence the
+foregoing communication to the law officers.
+
+There is little doubt as to the use that was made of the ludicrous
+inquiry by Lowe. It must have been handed over to the army of
+loathsome libellers--men and women who were willing to do the dirtiest
+of all work, that of writing and speaking lies (some abominable in
+their character) of a defenceless man, in order that their
+vindictiveness should be completely satisfied. Vast sums were
+annually expended for no other purpose than to put their afflicted
+prisoner through the torture of a living purgatory.
+
+Napoleon did not heed their silly stories of shooting exploits, though
+he knew the underlying purpose of them. It was the darker, sordid
+wickedness that was daily practised on him that ate like a canker into
+mind and body until he was a shattered wreck. It was the foul
+treatment of this great man that caused Dr. Barry O'Meara to revolt
+and openly proclaim that the captive of St. Helena was being put to
+death. As an honourable man he declared he could behold it no longer
+without making a spirited protest. He knew that this meant banishment,
+ostracism, and persecution by the Government. He foresaw that powerful
+agencies would be at work against him, and that no expense would be
+spared in order that his statements should be refuted, but he hazarded
+everything and defied the world. He came through the ordeal, as all
+impartial judges will admit, with cleaner hands and a cleaner tongue
+than those who challenged his accuracy.
+
+Make what deductions you may, distort and twist as you like the
+unimportant trivialities, the main facts related by O'Meara have never
+been really shaken. What is more, he is backed up by Napoleon himself
+in Lowe's personal interviews with him, and more particularly by his
+letters to the Governor--to say nothing of the substantial backing he
+gets from Las Cases, Montholon, Marchand, and Gourgaud--that
+shameless, jealous, lachrymose traitor to his great benefactor.
+
+And then there is Santini, whose wish to kill the Governor was not
+altogether without good reason, and who was deported from the island
+for this and other infringements of the regulations. The publication
+of his pamphlet, previously mentioned, created a great sensation, and
+it sold like wildfire. It was said to be fabrications, but it was not
+_all_ fabrications. Montholon reports that Napoleon criticised the
+work, and remarked that some one must have assisted him. Well, so it
+was. The story was related to Colonel Maceroni, an Italian, by
+Santini, and put into readable form by him, but this does not detract
+from that which is really true in it, and a good deal of what O'Meara
+contends is confirmed therein.
+
+Then O'Meara's successor, Antommarchi, has even a worse story to
+relate. These chronicles vary only in phrase and detail, and even in
+these there is wonderful similarity. But when we come down to the
+bedrock foundation of their complaints, _i.e._, the policy and
+treatment by Lowe and his myrmidons, incited by the Home Government
+and their followers, each record bears the stamp of truth--the
+indictment is the same though it may be related differently.
+
+Some writers have cast doubt on the authenticity of the St. Helena
+chroniclers without having a peg to hang their contentions on. The
+answer to all this is, that if never a line had been written by these
+men, the State papers, cunningly devised and crafty though most of
+them are, would have been ample evidence from which to draw
+unfavourable conclusions. Indeed, without State papers being brought
+into it at all, there is facing you always the glaring fact of a
+determined assassination perpetrated in the name of humanity, and if I
+felt any desire to be assured of this, I would take as an authority
+William Forsyth's three volumes written in defence of Sir Hudson Lowe.
+No author has so completely failed to prove his case. Moreover, no
+valid reason has ever been given, or ever can be, for doubting the
+veracity of O'Meara and other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite who have
+written their experiences of the St. Helena period.
+
+In the first place, those sceptical writers who deal with the
+different books that have been published relative to this part of
+Napoleon's history were not only not there to witness all that went
+on, but some of them were not born for many years after Napoleon and
+his contemporaries had passed on. So that it really narrows itself
+down to this: the knowledge the sceptics have attained is taken from
+documents or books written for the most part by the very men who they
+say are not to be relied on as giving a true version of all that took
+place during their stay at St. Helena. It cannot be disputed that
+these gentlemen were in daily and hourly contact with England's
+prisoner, and, as they aver, jotted down everything that passed in
+conversation or that transpired in other ways between themselves and
+the Emperor, or anybody else.
+
+The history of the St. Helena period, as written by authors who were
+on the spot, is, in the present writer's opinion, singularly free from
+exaggeration, let alone untruths. Besides, what had any of them to
+gain by sending forth distorted statements and untruthful history? No
+one knew better than they that every line they wrote would be
+contested by those who had relied on the rigid regulations suppressing
+all communications except those which passed through the hands of Sir
+Hudson Lowe. Certainly O'Meara cannot be accused of having ulterior
+motives, nor can any of the others--not even Gourgaud, who acted
+alternately traitor and devoted friend. Gourgaud alone seems to have
+had a mania for sinning and repenting, writing down during his
+childish fits of temper about his supposed wrongs on his shirtcuffs,
+and not infrequently his finger-nails, some nasty remark or some
+slanderous thoughts about the man whose amiable consideration for him
+was notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation
+House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his diary,
+and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this precious book,
+down they went in rancorous haste.
+
+Yet this hot-headed, jealous chronicler, guided by blind passion and
+never by reason while these moods were on him, has been held up as an
+authority that may be relied upon as to the doings and sayings of
+Napoleon and his immediate followers at the "Abode of Darkness." It is
+a well-known axiom that persons who speak or write anything while
+jealousy or temper holds them in its grip may not be counted as
+reliable people to follow, and that is exactly what happened in
+Gourgaud's case. He was the Peter of the band of disciples at St.
+Helena, and it may be considered fairly reasonable to assume that
+those who have written up the General as a sound historian have done
+so with a view to backing up prejudices, big or small, against the
+Emperor.
+
+But surely they have committed a very grave error in singling out as
+their hero of veracity a man who, in his more normal and charitable
+moods, pours out praise and pity for his Imperial chief in astonishing
+profusion.
+
+O'Meara's position was very different from any of the other diarists
+or writers. He was well aware that if he wrote an honest history it
+meant his complete ruin, yet he faced it, and defied the world to
+controvert his statements. "In face of the world," he says, "I
+challenge investigation," and "investigation" was made with a
+vengeance worthy of the Inquisition. If a word or a sentence could by
+any possible means be made to appear faulty, a scream of denunciation
+was sent forth from one end of Europe to the other, but the crime had
+sunk too deeply into the hearts of an outraged public for these
+ebullitions to have any real effect. There might be flaws in diction
+and even matters of fact, but the sordid reality of the documentary
+and verbal story that came to them was never doubted. The big heart of
+the British nation was beginning to be moved in sympathy towards the
+martyr long before his death, and of course long before O'Meara's book
+appeared, though the doctor's advent in Europe was made the occasion
+of a vigorous exposure of the progress of the great assassination.
+
+A wave of public opinion was gathering force; the Government, stupid
+and treacherous as they were, saw it rising, and renewed their silly
+efforts to stem it by causing atrocious duplicity to be instituted at
+home and on the martyr rock. Indeed, nothing was beneath their
+dignity so long as they succeeded in deceiving an agitated populace
+and accomplishing their own evil ends.
+
+But notwithstanding the tactics and the deplorable use made of the
+traitor Gourgaud, sympathetic feeling increases. Questions are
+frequently asked in the House of Commons, to which evasive answers are
+given, but reaction is so obviously gaining ground that Lords
+Liverpool, Castlereagh, and the immortal Bathurst become perturbed.
+They saw in the accession to power of Lord Holland's party a complete
+exposure of their maladministration, and a reversing of their policy
+(if it be not a libel to distinguish it as a "policy"). They knew,
+too, that once the public is fairly seized with the idea of a great
+wrong being perpetrated, no Government, however strong numerically or
+in personality, can withstand its opposition. Had the Emperor lived
+but a little longer, the vindictive men who tormented him to death
+would have been compelled to give way before not only British, but
+European, indignation. Public opinion would have enforced the
+Administration to deal out better treatment to their captive, have
+demanded his removal from the island of sorrow, and probably his
+freedom. The public may be capricious, but once it makes up its mind
+to do anything no power on earth can stop it, because it has a greater
+power behind it. Luckily, or unluckily, for Bathurst & Co., the
+spirit of the great captive had passed beyond the portal before
+serious public action could be taken.
+
+Three years previous to this the Colonial Secretary in writing to Lowe
+says:--"We must expect that the removal of Mr. O'Meara will occasion a
+great sensation, and an attempt will be made to give a bad impression
+on the subject. You had better let the substance of my instructions be
+generally known as soon as you have executed it, that it may not be
+represented that Mr. O'Meara has been removed in consequence of any
+quarrel with you, but in consequence of the information furnished by
+General Gourgaud in England respecting his conduct."[11]
+
+In reading through these State letters, one is struck with the
+diplomatically(?) cunning composition of them. There does not seem to
+be a manly phrase from beginning to end. Trickery, suspicion, cruelty,
+veiled or apparent, and an occasional dash of pious consideration and
+bombast sums up these perfidious documents. A few extracts will convey
+precisely the character of the men who were carrying on negotiations
+which should have been regarded as essentially delicate.
+
+In February, 1821, Bathurst writes to Lowe:--
+
+    "Sufficient time will have elapsed since the date of your last
+    communications to enable you to form a more accurate judgment
+    with respect to the extent and reality of General Bonaparte's
+    indisposition. Should your observations convince you that the
+    illness has been _assumed_, you will of course consider yourself
+    at liberty to withhold from him the communication which you are
+    otherwise authorised to make in my despatch No. 21," &c.
+
+On April 11, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst:--"The enclosed extract of
+a letter from Count Montholon may merit, as usual, your lordship's
+perusal." (This, of course, is intended as wit.) "It may be regarded
+as a bulletin of General Bonaparte's health, meant for circulation at
+Paris."
+
+Dr. Antommarchi, in writing to Signor Simeon Colonna on March 17,
+1821, after dilating on his master's health, the climate, &c., bursts
+out in a paragraph: "Dear friend, the medical art can do nothing
+against the influence of climate, and if the English Government does
+not hasten to remove him from this destructive atmosphere, His Majesty
+soon, with anguish I say it, will pay the last tribute to the earth";
+and in a postscript he adds: "I offer the _undoubted facts_ stated
+above, in opposition to the gratuitous assertions in the English
+newspapers relative to the good health which His Majesty is stated to
+enjoy here."
+
+On March 17, 1821, Montholon writes to Princess Pauline Borghesi:
+"The Emperor reckons upon your Highness to make his real situation
+known to some English of influence. He dies without succour upon this
+frightful rock; his agonies are frightful." At the time Napoleon was
+suffering thus, letters were published in some of the Ministerial
+newspapers purporting to have come from St. Helena and representing
+him to be in perfect health.
+
+On May 6, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst announcing the death of the
+Emperor. It is a long rigmarole not worth quoting, except that he
+condescends to allow the body to be interred with the honours due to a
+general officer of the highest rank. Then follows the majestic reply
+of Bathurst. He says, "I am happy to assure you that your conduct, as
+detailed in those despatches, has received His Majesty's approbation";
+which indicates that Lowe did not feel quite happy himself as to how
+the effusions would be regarded by his employers, now that the Emperor
+had succumbed to their and his own wicked treatment. In his despatches
+of February and April, 1821, he had mockingly referred to Napoleon's
+indisposition as being faked, and in May he is obliged to write
+himself as an unscrupulous liar, but notwithstanding this, his action
+meets with the approval of the chief of the executioners, which is
+very natural, seeing that this person was regarded as one of the most
+prominent scoundrels in Europe. But Sir Hudson Lowe craved for
+approbation, and was so mentally constituted that he believed he
+deserved it by committing offences against God and man.
+
+"Every good servant does not all commands, no bond but to do just
+ones," but Lowe, in his anxiety to please his employers, went to the
+furthest limits of injustice. How void of human understanding and what
+Mrs. Carlyle called "that damned thing, human kindness" this wretched
+man was!
+
+As will be hereafter shown, he had not long to wait after Napoleon's
+death and the receipt of tokens of friendliness that had been sent to
+him through the Colonial Secretary, before he was made to feel that
+the Government was not disposed to carry any part of his public
+unpopularity on its shoulders. He had done his best or worst to make
+that portion of the earth on which he lived miserable to those he
+might have made tolerably happy, without infringing the loutish
+instructions of a notoriously stupid Government. Instead of this he
+made himself so despised that the Emperor, almost with his last
+breath, called all good spirits to bear witness against him and his
+murderous confederates.
+
+The great soldier had slipped his moorings on May 6, 1821, and on the
+7th or 8th, after much ado with the Governor, a post-mortem
+examination was held by Dr. François Antommarchi in the presence of
+Drs. Short, Arnott, Burton, and Livingstone. Lowe was represented by
+the Chief of Staff. The examination disclosed an ulcerous growth and
+an unnaturally enlarged liver, which may be assumed as the ultimate
+cause of death, though Antommarchi's report assuredly points to the
+fatal nature of the climatic conditions.
+
+The French were anxious to have the body of their Emperor embalmed,
+but Hudson Lowe insisted that his instructions forbade this. Napoleon
+had commanded that his heart should be put in a silver vase filled
+with spirits of wine and sent to Marie Louise. When Sir Hudson Lowe
+heard that this was being done, he sent a peremptory order forbidding
+it, stating that no part should be preserved but the stomach, which
+would be sent to England. Naturally such wanton disregard of the
+Emperor's wish was violently resented by the French, and by the best
+of the English who were there. A long and heated discussion seems to
+have ensued on this question, which ended in the Governor having to
+give way--not altogether--but he was compelled to a compromise, viz.,
+that the heart and stomach should be preserved and put into the
+coffin.
+
+The Governor was then confronted with what to him was another knotty
+point. The Emperor had desired that a few gold coins struck during his
+reign should be buried with him. After serious consideration this was
+graciously allowed, but not without forebodings of trouble arising
+therefrom! What the British Government or their idiotic Governor
+wanted with Napoleon's stomach, or why they refused to allow his body
+to be embalmed, or his heart preserved and sent to his wife, Heaven
+only knows. They had monstrously violated all human feeling by
+ignoring appeals made to them from all parts of the world to be
+merciful to a much afflicted man. They were well informed by the best
+medical authorities on the island that the climate was deadly to a
+constitution such as his. They ignored reports of his declining health
+even up to a few weeks of his death, and then when the Arch-enemy
+claimed him, they flooded Europe with the intelligence that he had
+succumbed to the malady from which his father died, and that their
+tender and benevolent care for him was unavailing. The progress of his
+inherited disease could not be checked.
+
+The world is fast beginning to realise the infamy of it all. Not a
+thought ever entered their heads but that of torture, veiled or open,
+and the appalling clumsiness of their endeavours to conceal their
+Satanic designs, so that they might appear in the light of beneficent
+hosts, shows that they cowered at the possibility of public vengeance.
+Happily for them, Napoleon's death came too near to the terrific
+commotion caused by the French Revolution.
+
+Tumult raged round the Emperor during the whole of his public career,
+and powerful agencies were constantly proclaiming against him and his
+methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of democracy, which
+cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere. His system destroyed
+and affected too many interests not to leave behind it feelings of
+revenge, but this revenge did not exist among the common people. Those
+who persecuted the common people felt his heavy hand upon them. The
+populace entered into his service in shoals, only to betray him when
+the time of trial came. He knew the risk he ran, but did not shrink
+from it. He hoped that he might bring them to adopt the great
+principles he held and the plan he had in view.
+
+His ambition was to seek out all those who had talent and character
+and give them the opportunity of developing their gifts for the
+benefit of the race. Humble origin had no deterrent effect on him. His
+most brilliant officers and men of position sprang from the middle and
+lower middle class, and taking them as a whole, their devotion never
+gave way, even during the most terrible adversity that ever befell
+mortal man. One small instance of admiration and sympathy is evidenced
+by the beautiful reverence shown by the officers and men of the
+English army and navy, who defiled before the dead hero's remains and
+bent their knees to the ground.
+
+Montholon says that "some of the officers entreated to be allowed the
+honour of pressing to their lips the cloak of Marengo which covered
+the Emperor's feet." Lowe must have felt a pang of remorse when he saw
+these simple men pouring out in their sailorly and soldierly way
+tokens of profound sorrow. Everything that could had been done to
+cause their captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to
+be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while
+the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not by
+barbarity!
+
+The report of Napoleon's death did not relieve the anxieties of the
+European Cabinets. They knew the danger of being overwhelmed by a
+revulsion of feeling, and the difficulty of stopping the masses once
+they are set in motion, and there were strong manifestations of the
+popular indignation breaking loose, with all the terrible consequences
+of a reign of terror. The feeling of grief was universal and intense.
+A spark might have caused a great conflagration. Lord Holland declared
+in Parliament that the very persons who detested this great man had
+acknowledged that for ten centuries there had not appeared upon earth
+a more extraordinary character.... "All Europe," he added, "has worn
+mourning for the hero"; and those who contributed to that great
+sacrifice are destined to be the objects of the execrations of the
+present generation as well as to those of posterity.
+
+Just at the time the great spirit of the hero was passing on to the
+Elysian Fields, there, as he used to fancifully foreshadow, to meet
+his brave comrades in arms who had preceded him, a tempest of unusual
+severity broke over "the abode of darkness and of crimes." Houses were
+shaken to their foundation; the favourite willow-tree, where he had
+often sat and enjoyed the fresh breezes, was torn up by the hurricane,
+as indeed were the other trees round about Longwood. This terrible
+disturbance of the elements was characteristically interpreted as
+being the voice of the living God proclaiming to the world that the
+Emperor was being thundered into eternity to meet his Creator, and to
+be judged by Him for the wrongs his political and other opponents said
+he was guilty of towards themselves and the human race generally. In
+true British orthodoxy, the Great Judge is always claimed as a
+fellow-countryman, and Sir Walter Scott is not singular in attributing
+this phenomenal disturbance as an indication of coming vengeance
+against England's prisoner. The Scottish bard is not altogether
+impartial in the send-off of the exile. He associates another colossal
+personage with the great Corsican. The Lord Protector, we are
+reminded, was similarly borne from time into eternity on the wings of
+a devasting tornado. Poor Oliver! whose war-cry was "The Lord of
+Hosts," and who never doubted that he was the high commissioner sent
+by the Almighty to clean the earth of mischievous Royalists, traitors,
+Papists, and other ungovernable creatures in Ireland and elsewhere.
+
+It does not appear to have struck these gentlemen, with their thoughts
+centred on Holy Writ and finding comfort in the support it gave to
+their contention, that the Great God, instead of making nature break
+out with such terrible violence to indicate His displeasure against
+this wonderful man, made in His own image and sent by Him to serve
+both a divine and a human purpose, was using accumulated natural
+forces to show His wrath at the culmination of the most atrocious
+tragedy that had ever been perpetrated.
+
+The good Sir Walter and the unctuously pious biographer of Sir Hudson
+are obviously overcome by the coincidence of the storm and Napoleon's
+death coming simultaneously. To them it is the voice of God shouting
+forth gladness that the enemy of the British race is being made to pay
+the penalty of all the evil he has wrought. This is a very comforting
+conclusion to arrive at after having kept your victim on the rack for
+six years and made war on him for twenty, but did it never occur to
+them that the greatest sacrifice ever offered culminated in just such
+natural disturbances and that at the same time "the veil of the temple
+was rent in twain"?
+
+Happily for the fair fame of human rights, many writers of Napoleonic
+history have got over national prejudices and timidity, and are
+chronicling very different views from those of Sir Walter and the
+uninteresting defender of Lowe; and the more impartial the minds who
+inquire into the first as well as the last phase of this extraordinary
+career, the more will it appear that he was not an enemy, but a
+powerful reforming agency of mankind. He vowed over and over again
+that he "never conquered unless in his own defence, and that Europe
+never ceased to make war upon France and her principles." And again he
+asserted: "One of my grand objects was to render education accessible
+to everybody. I caused every institution to be formed upon a plan
+which offered instruction to the public, either gratis or at a rate so
+moderate, as not to be beyond the means of the peasant. The museums
+were thrown open to the _canaille_. My _canaille_ would have become
+the best educated in the world. All my exertions were directed to
+illuminate the mass of the nation instead of brutifying them by
+ignorance and superstition." These ideals are in striking contrast to
+the policy of the oligarchy of Europe, who were fighting to suppress
+knowledge and to re-establish the worst form of superstition and
+despotism.
+
+It is a deplorable thought that the nations (and especially Great
+Britain) who allied themselves against this man of the people and sent
+him to an inhuman death might have saved themselves the eternal
+condemnation of future ages had they made their peace with him, as the
+sagacious Charles James Fox would have done had he lived. Had they
+been wise, they would have made use of his matchless gifts and
+well-balanced mind to help forward the regeneration of the human chaos
+which was both the cause and the result of the Revolution. Above all,
+had the "Liberty loving" British nation been true to her declared
+principles, she would either have kept aloof from the conflict that
+was raging or found some honourable means of co-operating with him,
+and thereby earned a share of the glory that will be eternally
+attached to his name in the great effort of extinguishing thraldom and
+ameliorating the condition of the masses.
+
+Instead of this, she basely linked her destiny with the traitors of
+France and the allies of Europe to dethrone the monarch elected by the
+French people, and to place in his stead a king who was forced upon
+them by the Allies, and not the people of France. This is a strange
+travesty of "Liberty loving" government. Had the great Quaker been
+kept in power, instead of Pitt, who was always in a chronic state of
+scare and whining that he could never survive the downfall of his
+country, the rivers of British blood that were shed and the eight
+hundred million pounds sterling of debt need not have been squandered.
+All this was done at the bidding of a few men who were entrusted with
+the government of a great nation, and either by odious deception, or
+sheer incapacity to judge of the fitness of things, caused it to be
+believed that they were bound to maintain the balance of power or
+_status quo_ which was endangered, and that the one man who had upset
+their nerves and incurred their hatred should be removed at all costs.
+
+It is pretty certain that England could easily have kept out of the
+continental embroil had the Government been composed of men of talent
+and free from oligarchal prejudices, whereas all we got out of it,
+plus the loss of life and treasure, was a share in the questionable
+glory of Waterloo, the custody of the great figure who was betrayed by
+some of his own subjects, "the odium of having his death bequeathed to
+the reigning family of England," and the fact that Louis XVIII., by
+his own admission to the French nation, was put on the throne by our
+own precious Prince Regent.
+
+These are only a few of the results that should not make us proud of
+that part of our history. But we have travelled far since those days
+of vicious actions. Nothing approaching the perfidy of it could happen
+in the present age. It is unthinkable that either the sagacious,
+peaceloving, peacemaking monarch on the throne or his Ministers and
+people would lend themselves to committing the senseless blunders that
+disgraced our name at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even
+allowing that it was inevitable we should wage war against the head of
+the French nation, nothing can ever blot out the stain of having
+refused him the asylum he asked for, after we had taken so large a
+share in bringing about his downfall. He asked in the following letter
+to the Prince Regent to be the guest of England, and England made him
+its prisoner. Here is the document:--
+
+"The sport of those factions which divide my country and an object of
+hostility to the greatest Powers of Europe, I have finished my
+political career, and come, like Themistocles, to sit down by the
+hearth of the English people. I place myself under the protection of
+their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most
+powerful, the most constant, and most generous of my enemies." Had it
+been left to the English people instead of to the Government and His
+Royal Highness, I do not think this dignified appeal would have been
+altogether ignored, as Napoleon's quarrel was not with the people.
+
+They knew that it was the oligarchy that feared and detested him. It
+has been said that even His Royal Highness would have granted
+hospitality, and it would have saved the nation over which he ruled
+the blight of eternal execrations had he been strong enough to stand
+against the blundering decision of a revengeful Ministry.
+
+No impartial student of the part played by Napoleon during twenty
+years of warfare will deny that the institutions he founded, the laws
+that he made, and his mode of government wherever established, were
+beneficent, and entirely aimed at the adjustment of inequalities that
+had culminated in a great national uprising. His dictatorship was
+wielded with a wholesome discipline without unnecessarily using the
+lash. He had no cut-and-dried maxim of dealing with unruly people, but
+his awful power made them feel that he distinguished between eternal
+justice and tyranny. He knew, and he made everybody else know, that
+under the circumstances too much liberty would be like poison to some
+people. When he said, "No more of this," the aggressors realised that
+the doctrine of fraternity as they understood it must not be stretched
+further.
+
+Notwithstanding his methods of reproof and restraint, he was idolised
+by the masses, even by those he led his armies against and so often
+conquered. Even in our own country, where enmity against him was
+assiduously nursed by the press and other agencies, there was an
+important section who believed we were putting our money on the wrong
+horse. This idea was not confined to the poorer classes. Many of our
+best and wisest statesmen were strongly opposed to this policy of
+hostility against him.
+
+He had starved in the streets of Paris, sold his precious books and
+other belongings to provide the means of buying bread to sustain
+himself and his much beloved brother Louis, who in after years behaved
+to him with base ingratitude. He suffered dreadful privations during
+the keen frosty nights, owing to the want of fire, light, and
+sometimes sufficient clothing. No wonder that he thought of ending
+his woes by plunging into the Seine.
+
+But a glimmering of light came and lifted him out of a numbing
+despair. He was made to see in his hour of trial that lassitude must
+cease, and that he was meant for other things, and in order to
+accomplish them he must be strong and audacious. Fate, fortune, and a
+mysterious Providence found in him an indomitable chief whose genius
+was intended to change the face of Europe. Like all big men who spring
+from obscurity and the deadliness of poverty, and are launched on the
+scene to create order out of tumult and chaos, his enemies, in the
+nature of things, were both numerous and prolific. At the outset he
+adopted the method he so often thundered into his soldiers when on the
+eve of battle, viz.: "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and
+you drive him into the enemy's ranks."
+
+One of the charges made against him by serene critics who have been
+desirous of showing his weak points is that he was too careless and
+forgiving towards the squabbling nest of paid and unpaid murderers who
+prowled about in disguise, thirsting after his blood. It is certain
+that he carried clemency to a fault in many instances, and this no
+doubt contributed to his undoing; but at the same time there is ample
+proof that he knew well enough where his foes were to be found, and
+whenever the dignity and safety of the State were imperilled, he was
+not slow to punish. His habit was not weakness, but only a too
+careless regard for his own personal safety.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Montholon, "History of the Captivity of Napoleon," p. 326. The
+editor says he is indebted for these details to the official accounts
+published at the time by the French Government.
+
+[2] This was the name given to Napoleon by the Arabs. "Kebir" means
+"great" (Montholon, vol. iv. p. 245).
+
+[3] These words were dictated to Las Cases by Napoleon at St. Helena
+in 1819 (p. 315, vol. iv., of his Journal).
+
+[4] See p. 183, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."
+
+[5] O'Meara, in his second volume, p. 134, states: "The Emperor was so
+firmly impressed with the idea that an attempt would be made to
+forcibly intrude upon his privacy, that, from a short time after the
+departure of Sir George Cockburn, he always kept four or five loaded
+pistols and some swords in his apartments, with which he was
+determined to despatch the first who entered against his will."
+
+[6] See p. 299, Montholon's "Captivity of Napoleon," vol. i.
+
+[7] See p. 301, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."
+
+[8] See pp. 57-62, bust incident.
+
+[9] The easygoing Joseph had been careless of the letters, which would
+have further proved the infamy of the oligarchy. These letters were in
+many cases applications for territory. He had intrusted them to a base
+friend, by whom they were offered to the various Governments for
+£30,000. The Russian Ambassador is reported to have paid £10,000 to
+get hold of those concerning his master. His Majesty of Prussia
+appears to have had a covetous eye on Hanover. He always entertained a
+paternal regard for that country. The sovereigns in general seem to
+have compromised themselves deeply in their efforts to secure
+territory.
+
+[10] See "Montholon," vol. iii p. 37.
+
+[11] This is an impudent lie. The quarrel was with Lowe because the
+doctor refused to be his accomplice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION--CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE
+
+
+On May 9, 1821, the mortal remains of the Exile were interred at a
+spot called the Valley of Napoleon. He had selected this spot in the
+event of the Powers not allowing his remains to be transferred to
+France or Ajaccio. Lowe desired to put on the lid of the coffin
+"Napoleon Bonaparte," but his followers very properly disdained
+committing a breach of faith on the dead Emperor, and insisted on
+having "Napoleon" and nothing else. The Governor was stubbornly
+opposed to it, so he was buried without any name being put on the
+coffin.[12]
+
+Perhaps one of the most terrific passages of unconscious humour is
+related by Forsyth (vol. iii. p. 288), where Lowe is made to say to
+Major Gorrequer and Mr. Henry, as they walked together before the
+door of Plantation House discussing the character of Napoleon, "Well,
+gentlemen, he was England's greatest enemy and mine too; but _I_
+forgive him everything. On the death of a man like him we should only
+feel deep concern and regret." Forsyth thinks this splendid
+magnanimity on the part of his hero.
+
+It is not recorded what the gallant Major thought of it, but it may be
+taken for granted that if Mr. Henry and Gorrequer had any sense of
+humour at all, Lowe's comment must have sounded very comical, knowing
+what they did of the relations between the dead monarch and his
+custodian, though it must be said that Henry seems to have been the
+only person who could work up a sympathetic word for Sir Hudson.
+Forsyth, in vol. iii. p. 307, says: "No one can study the character of
+Napoleon without being struck by one prevailing feature, his intense
+selfishness." This is a remarkable statement for any man who professes
+to write accurate history to make, and proves conclusively that
+Forsyth had not "studied" Napoleon's "character," or he would have
+found, not only his closest friends, but some of his bitterest enemies
+doing him the justice of stating the very opposite of what this writer
+says of him.
+
+Mr. Henry, who took part in the dissection of the corpse, says that
+Napoleon's face had a remarkably placid expression, and indicated
+mildness and sweetness of disposition, and those who gazed on the
+features as they lay in the still repose of death could not help
+exclaiming, "How beautiful!" After this very fine description from Sir
+Hudson's friend, Forsyth adds a footnote: "It may interest
+phrenologists to know that the organs of combativeness, causativeness,
+and philoprogenitiveness were strongly developed in the cranium"! In
+order to prove the charge of selfishness he brings in the old familiar
+story of the divorce: "A memorable example of this (_i.e._,
+selfishness) occurs in his treatment of the nobleminded Josephine."
+
+This outburst is obviously intended for effect, but Forsyth does not
+score a success in bringing the amiable Empress to his aid; for,
+whatever virtue she may have possessed, authentic history reveals her
+as the antithesis of "nobleminded." Those who knew the lady intimately
+speak with marked generosity of her graces, but they also record a
+shameless habit of faithlessness to her husband at a time when he was
+pouring out volumes of love to her from Italy. And she seems to have
+let herself go without restraint during his stay in Egypt. The
+wayward, weak Josephine had many lovers, who were not too carefully
+selected.
+
+From the time of her marriage with Napoleon until she heard of him
+being on his way from Egypt to France, her love intrigues were well
+known, and her lovers were certainly not men of high public repute. In
+short, Josephine was anything but "nobleminded." She was a confirmed
+and audacious flirt until the stern realities of the dissolution of
+her marriage brought her to her senses, and from that time until the
+great political divorce took place, she appears to have kept free from
+further love entanglements. Napoleon's attachment to her was very
+genuine, and remained steadfast up to the time of her death, and even
+at St. Helena he always spoke of her with great reverence. Forsyth
+does not enhance Lowe's reputation or damage Napoleon's by the popular
+use he makes of the annulment of the little Creole lady's marriage,
+the merits of which may be referred to at greater length hereafter, as
+it is a subject of itself and this reference to a momentous incident
+of her husband's history is only by the way.
+
+Meanwhile the Emperor's remains, in layers of coffins composed of
+wood, tin, and lead, were hermetically sealed, and the tomb, having
+been securely battened down with cement and slab, was substantially
+railed in to prevent the intrusion of a sympathetic and curious
+public. His tomb was left in charge of a British garrison, and the
+heroes who followed him to his grave, and shared his martyrdom and
+exile on that fatal rock for six mortal years, were shipped aboard the
+_Camel_ and conveyed to England, there to be received by a set of
+mildew-witted bureaucrats smitten with suspicion that the exiles may
+have brought with them the spirit of their dead master, with the
+object of invoking a sanguinary reaction in his favour by disturbing
+the peace of Europe--as though Europe had experienced a single day of
+real peace since the downfall of the Empire!
+
+These exemplary men had faced and borne with magnificent fortitude
+hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their mission was to carry
+out the dying command of the hero whom they adored, and who had
+succumbed to the hospitable treatment of Bathurst, Castlereagh,
+Liverpool, and Wellington, and their accomplices. These guilty men,
+whose names, strange to say, are as undying as that of their victim,
+would fain have made it appear that had he not died of cancer of the
+stomach, it were not possible that he could have died of anything but
+robust health, owing to the salubrity of the climate they had selected
+and the unequalled care they had taken of his person through the
+immortal Lowe.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that these men had no conception of the
+great being they were practising cruelty upon. It is indeed a strange
+freak of nature that makes it possible that the human mind can think
+of Napoleon and these bureaucrats at the same time, but that is part
+of the mystery that cannot at the present stage be understood. Time
+may reveal the phenomenon, and in the years to come the spirits of the
+just will call aloud for a real vindication of the character of the
+man of the French Revolution, and, forsooth, it may be that a terrible
+retribution is gathering in the distance. Who knows? Waterloo and St.
+Helena may yet be the nemesis of the enemies of the great Emperor.
+Obviously, he had visions, as had his compatriot Joan of Arc, who
+suffered even a crueller fate than he at the hands of a few
+bloodthirsty English noblemen, who disgraced the name of soldier by
+not only allowing her to be burnt, but selling her to the parasitical
+Bishops with that object in view. It is not strange that the Maid of
+Orleans, who suffered martyrdom for the supernatural part she took in
+fighting for her King and country, should, on April 18, 1909, become a
+saint of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, nor that the
+Pope should perform the ceremony. The English sold her. An
+ecclesiastical court, headed by the infamous Bishop of Beauvais,
+condemned her to be burnt as a witch, and when the flames were
+consuming her a cry of "Jesus" was heard. An English soldier standing
+by was so overcome by the awful wickedness that was being perpetrated
+by the Anglo-French ecclesiastical alliance, that he called out, "We
+are lost! We have burnt a saint!"
+
+The soldier saw at once that the child of the Domremy labourer was a
+"saint," but it has taken five centuries for the Church to which she
+belonged, and whose representatives burnt her as a witch, to
+officially beatify her. True, this stage has been gradually worked up
+to by the erection of monuments to her honour and glory. Chinon
+distinguished itself by this, presumably because it was there that
+Joan interviewed the then uncrowned Charles, and startled him into
+taking her into his service by the story she told of hearing the
+heavenly voices at Domremy farm demanding that she should go forth as
+the liberator of France.
+
+The recognition of Napoleon's claim, not to "sanctity," but as a
+benefactor of mankind, will also surely come, but in his case the
+demand will come from no Church, but with the irresistible voice of
+all Humanity.
+
+Joan's country had been at war for one hundred years. Ravaged by
+foreign invaders and depopulated by plague, it was foaming with civil
+strife and treason to the national cause, many of the most powerful
+men and women, both openly and in secret, taking sides with the enemy.
+The crisis had reached a point when this modest, uneducated,
+clear-witted, fearless maiden was launched by her "voices" to the
+scene of battle, there to inspire hope and enthusiasm in the hearts of
+her people. In a few weeks she had established confidence, smashed the
+invader, and crowned the unworthy Charles VII. as King. Twenty years
+after they had burnt her, there was scarcely a foreign foot to be
+found on French soil.
+
+There is a further similarity between the peasant girl and Napoleon.
+_She_ was brought to the aid of her country by the voices of the
+unseen, and four hundred years after, when her country was again in
+dire trouble, _he_ was found in obscurity and in an almost
+supernatural way flashed into prominent activity to save the
+Revolution. It was the voices of the living, seen and unseen, that
+called aloud for the little Corporal to lead to battle, conquer, and
+ultimately govern. It was some of the self-same voices that intrigued
+and then burst forth in declamation and demanded his abdication on the
+eve of his first reverse. The Church, which owed its rehabilitation to
+him after he had implanted a settled government in France, had no
+small share in the conspiracy for his overthrow. He said, "There is
+but one means of getting good manners, and that is by establishing
+religion." He believed it, and did it in spite of a storm of
+opposition that would have hurled a less resolute man from power, but
+he knew full well his strength, and was sure then, as he ever was, of
+his opinions.
+
+The Church and those of the people who become allied to its material
+policy are prone to destroy those who have been of service to their
+cause. There is indeed no society of men and women who are so
+vindictive, nay, revengeful, once they are seized with the idea that
+they are being neglected, or their interests not receiving all the
+patronage they think they deserve, and then, after a few generations
+of reflection, they become overwhelmed with unctuous sanctity and
+remorse, and proceed to make saints of the victims of their
+progenitors in order that the perfidy they are historically linked to
+shall be whitewashed and atoned for.
+
+Napoleon believed that "No physical force ever dies; it merely changes
+its form or direction"--and could we but get a glimpse behind the
+veil, we might see his imperishable soul fleeting from sphere to
+sphere, struggling with cruel reactionary spirits who forced him into
+eternity before the work he was sent to do was completed.
+
+Wieland, the German writer, had an interview with him on the field of
+Jena. He says:--"I was presented by the Duchess of Weimar. He paid me
+some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at me. Few
+men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the art of
+reading at the first glance the thought of other men. He saw in an
+instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was simple in my manners
+and void of pretension, and as he seemed desirous of making a
+favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain
+his end. I have never beheld anyone more calm, more simple, more mild,
+or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the
+feeling of power in a great monarch; he spoke to me as an old
+acquaintance would speak to an equal, and what was more extraordinary
+on his part, he conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half,
+to the great surprise of the whole assembly."
+
+Then Wieland goes on to relate what the conversation was. Napoleon
+"preferred the Romans to the Greeks. The eternal squabbles of their
+petty republics were not calculated to give birth to anything grand,
+whereas the Romans were always occupied with great things, and it was
+owing to this they raised up the Colossus which bestrode the world....
+He was fond only of serious poetry, the pathetic and vigorous
+writers, and above all, the tragic poets."
+
+Wieland had been put so much at his ease (so he says) that he ventured
+to ask how it was that the public worship Napoleon had restored in
+France was not more philosophical and in harmony with the spirit of
+the times. "My dear Wieland," was the reply, "religion is not meant
+for philosophers! they have no faith either in me or my priests. As to
+those who do believe, it would be difficult to give them, or to leave
+them, too much of the marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for
+philosophers, it would be just the reverse of that of the credulous
+part of mankind."[13]
+
+Müller, the Swiss historian's private interview with him at this
+period is quite remarkable, and shows what a vast knowledge and
+conception of things the Emperor had. Nothing shows more clearly his
+own plan of regulating and guiding the affairs of the universe for the
+benefit of all. He tells Müller that he should complete his history of
+Switzerland, that even the more recent times had their interest. Then
+he switched from the Swiss to the old Greek constitutions and history;
+to the theory of constitutions; to the complete diversity of those in
+Asia, and the causes of this diversity in the climate, polygamy, the
+opposite characters of the Arabian and the Tartar races, the peculiar
+value of European culture, and the progress of Freedom since the
+sixteenth century; how everything was linked together, and in the
+inscrutable guidance of an invisible hand; how he himself had become
+great through his enemies; the great Confederation of Nations, the
+idea of which Henri IV. had; the foundation of all religion and its
+necessity; that man could not bear clear truth and required to be kept
+in order; admitting the possibility, however, of a more happy
+condition, if the numerous feuds ceased which were occasioned by too
+complicated Constitutions (such as the German) and the intolerable
+burden suffered by States from excessive armies.
+
+These opinions clearly mark the guiding motives of Napoleon's attempts
+to enforce upon different nations uniformity of the institutions and
+customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says Müller, "and he entered
+into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must
+say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his
+observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit),
+his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and
+his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his
+disinterested goodness, he has also conquered me."[14] The remarkable
+testimony of Wieland and Müller, both men of distinction, is of more
+than ordinary value, seeing that they were not his countrymen, but on
+the side of those who waged war against him. Müller admits that he
+conquered him, and the world must admit that he is gradually, but
+surely, conquering it in spite of the colossal libels that have been
+spoken and written of him for the ostensible purpose of vindicating
+the Puritans and making him appear as the Spoliator and Antichrist
+whose thirst for blood, so that he might attain glory, was an
+inexhaustible craze in him. To them he is the Ogre that staggers the
+power of belief, and yet he defies the whole world to prove that he
+ever declared war or committed a single crime during the whole
+carnival of warfare that drenched Europe in human blood.
+
+Up to the present, the world has lamentably failed to do anything of
+the sort. His opponents, libellers, and progeny of his mean
+executioners, are all losing ground, and he is gaining everywhere.
+There is an unseen hand at work revealing the awful truth. This
+dignified, calm, unassuming man, while surrounded by a crowd of Kings
+and Princes, who were competing with each other to do him homage and
+show their devotion, startles them by telling a story of when he was
+"a simple Lieutenant in the 2nd Company of Artillery." Possibly some
+of his guests were observed to be putting on airs that were always
+distasteful to the Emperor, and this was his scornful way of rebuking
+them. Or it might be that he wished to take the opportunity of
+informing Europe that he had no desire to conceal his humble
+beginning, though at that time he was recognised first man in it.
+Historians, when he was at the height of his power, ransacked musty
+archives assiduously to find out and prove that he had royal blood in
+him. They professed to have discovered that he was connected with the
+princely family of Treviso, and the comical way in which he
+contemptuously brushed aside this fulsome flattery must have lacerated
+the pride of courtiers who sought favours by such methods.
+
+Bearing on the royal blood idea, Gourgaud in his Journal relates that
+the Emperor told him the following stories:--
+
+"At one time in my reign there was a disposition to make out that I
+was descended from the Man in the Iron Mask. The Governor of Pignerol
+was named Bompars. They said he had married his daughter to his
+mysterious prisoner, the brother of Louis XIV., and had sent the pair
+to Corsica under the name of 'Bonaparte,'" and then with fine humour
+he adds:--"I had only to say the word and everybody would have
+believed the fable."
+
+He never forgot that he was Napoleon, hence never said the word.
+
+His insincere father-in-law has been industriously searching for royal
+blood too, and this is what his son-in-law says of him:--
+
+"When I was about to marry Marie Louise, her father the Emperor sent
+me a box of papers intended to prove that I was descended from the
+Dukes of Florence. I burst out laughing, and said to Metternich, 'Do
+you suppose I am going to waste my time over such foolishness? Suppose
+it were true, what good would it do me? The Dukes of Florence were
+inferior in rank to the Emperors of Germany. I will not place myself
+beneath my father-in-law. I think that as I am, I am as good as he. My
+nobility dates from Monte Notte. Return him these papers.' Metternich
+was very much amused."
+
+Francis of Austria must have felt confounded at the rebuke of his
+unceremonious relative, who was always the man of stern reality--too
+big to be dazzled by mouldy records of kingly blood. Neither did pomp
+or ceremony attract him, except in so far as it might serve the
+purpose of making an impression on others. Bourrienne, a shameless
+predatory traitor, has said in his memoirs that when the seat of
+government was removed from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries, the First
+Consul said to him, "You are very lucky; you are not obliged to make a
+spectacle of yourself. I have to go about with a cortège; it bores me,
+but it appeals to the eye of the people."
+
+Roederer in _his_ memoirs relates pretty much the same thing, only
+that it bears on the question of title, and presumably the researches
+for confirmation of his royal descent.
+
+Here again, his strong practical view of things, and his utter
+indifference to grandeur or genealogical distinction, are shown. He
+says: "How can anyone pretend that empty names, titles given for the
+sake of a political system, can change in the smallest degree one's
+relations with one's friends and associates? I am called Sire, or
+Imperial Majesty, without anyone in my household believing or thinking
+that I am a different man in consequence. All those titles form part
+of a _system_, and therefore they are necessary." He always ends his
+ebullitions of convincing wisdom by making it clear precisely where he
+stands.
+
+The writer might quote pages of eulogies of him from the most eminent
+men of every nationality. There is no trustworthy evidence that he
+ever sought the flattery that was lavished on him; indeed, he seems
+to have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of it.
+On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never sought the
+applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic monarch."[15]
+
+Seguier says:--
+
+"Napoleon is above human history. He belongs to heroic periods and is
+beyond admiration."[16]
+
+A notable Englishman, Lord Acton, says (like Müller) that "his
+goodness was the most splendid that has appeared on earth." And there
+are innumerable instances which prove that his sympathies and goodness
+to those who were notoriously undeserving was a fatal passion with
+him. But there is no opinion, blunt though it be, that so completely
+touches one as that of the plain English sailors who said at Elba that
+"Boney was a d----d good fellow after all." "They may talk about this
+man as they like," said one of the crew of the _Northumberland_, "but
+I won't believe the bad they say of him," and _this_ view seems to
+have been generally held by the men who composed the crew of the
+vessel that took the Emperor to St. Helena. It is noteworthy that
+English man-of-war's-men, and also merchant seamen of these stirring
+times, should have formed so favourable an impression of Napoleon,
+especially as the Press of England teemed with hostility against him.
+Articles attributing every form of indescribable bestiality,
+corruption, gross cruelty to his soldiers, subordinate officers, and
+even Marshals, appeared with shameful regularity. In these articles
+were included the most absurd as well as the most serious charges.
+
+I include the following story as a specimen, and take it in particular
+as being quoted quite seriously by certain anti-Napoleonic writers in
+the endeavour to bolster up a feeble case. Prejudice and distorted
+vision prevented them from seeing the absurdity of such attempts to
+blacken the character of Napoleon. Let the reader judge!
+
+It is related that, at the time of the Concordat, Napoleon remarked to
+Senator Volney, "France wants a religion." Volney's courageous (!)
+reply was, "France wants the Bourbons," and the Emperor is thereupon
+supposed to have been attacked by a fit of ungovernable fury, and to
+have kicked the Senator in the stomach!
+
+The more serious charges included incest with his sister Pauline and
+his stepdaughter Hortense, and the poisoning of his plague-stricken
+soldiers at Jaffa.
+
+His palaces were said to be harems, and his libertinism to put
+Oriental potentates to the blush. So industrious were these foes to
+human fairness that they manufactured a silly story just before the
+rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, to the effect that Napoleon had made
+a violent attack on Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. So violent
+was he in his gestures, the Ambassador feared lest the First Consul
+would strike him. Even Oscar Browning is obliged to refute this
+unworthy fabrication as being absurd on the face of it, but it has
+taken ninety years to produce the authentic document from the British
+Archives which disproves the scandal. Napoleon was too much absorbed
+in things that mattered to take notice of the stupid though virulent
+stories that were constantly being concocted against him. When he was
+appealed to by his friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he
+merely shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this
+rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It pleases
+the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to be perturbed,
+or to meddle with it."
+
+It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the
+side of morality. It is well enough known that the French Court during
+the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic arrangements, the
+one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that
+_his_ Court should have the reputation of being clean. He took
+infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private amorous
+connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a
+staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of libertinism is an
+outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never
+have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame
+Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office
+under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most
+careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal
+friends. As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the
+general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so. Not
+merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with
+Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of
+public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]
+
+His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral
+code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard
+of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation
+under which any of his priests were bound in the shade. So shocked
+were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and
+circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they
+advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of
+so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat. It was not
+exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in
+fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so
+malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and rugged tars aboard the
+_Bellerophon_ and _Northumberland_ were drawn in touching sympathy
+towards the man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent
+belief that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of
+war.
+
+We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to avail
+himself of them. He had resolved after his abdication to live the time
+that was left to him in retirement, and believing in the generosity of
+the British nation, he threw himself on their hospitality. He had made
+his way through a network of blockade when he returned from Egypt and
+Elba, and looking at the facts as they are now before us, it is
+preposterous to adhere to the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed
+in that he had no option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as
+the guest of England aboard the _Bellerophon_, and it may be taken
+for granted that the resourceful sailors knew that he had many
+channels of escape. They knew the _Bellerophon_ was a slow old tub,
+and that she would be nowhere in a chase.
+
+Besides, it was not necessary for Napoleon to make Rochefort or
+Rochelle his starting-point. The troops and seamen at these and the
+neighbouring ports were all devoted to him, and would have risked
+everything to save him from capture. He knew all this, but he was
+possessed of an innate belief in the chivalry of the British
+character, and left out of account the class of men that were in
+power. He knew them to be his inveterate foes, but was deceived in
+believing they had hearts. Their foremost soldier had taken an active
+share in his defeat, and he acknowledged it by putting himself under
+the protection of our laws. The honest English seamen who were his
+shipmates on both ships were not long in forming a strong liking to
+him, and a dislike to the treatment he was receiving. They felt there
+was something wrong, though all they could say about it was that "he
+was a d----d good fellow."
+
+Lord Keith was so afraid of his fascinating personality after his
+visit to the _Bellerophon_ that he said, "D----n the fellow! if he
+had obtained an interview with His Royal Highness, in half an hour
+they would have been the best friends in England." In truth, Lord
+Keith lost a fine opportunity of saving British hospitality from the
+blight of eternal execration by evading the lawyer who came to
+Plymouth to serve a writ of Habeas Corpus to claim the Emperor's
+person, and the pity is that an honoured name should have been
+associated with a mission so crimeful and an occasion so full of
+illimitable consequences to England's boasted generosity. Except that
+he too well carried out his imperious instructions, Lord Keith does
+not come well out of the beginning of the great tragedy. The only
+piece of real delicacy shown by Lord Keith to the Emperor was in
+allowing him to retain his arms, and snubbing a secretary who reminded
+him that the instructions were that _all_ should be disarmed. This
+zealous person was told to mind his own business.
+
+Napoleon asks the Admiral if there is any tribunal to which he can
+apply to determine the legality of him being sent to St. Helena, as he
+protested that he was the guest and not the prisoner of the British
+nation; and Keith, with an air of condescending benevolence, assures
+him that he is satisfied there is every disposition on the part of the
+Government to render his situation as comfortable as prudence would
+permit. No wonder Napoleon's reply was animated, and his soul full of
+dignified resentment at the perfidy that was about to be administered
+to him under the guise of beneficence.
+
+Scott describes the interview with Keith as "a remarkable scene." He
+says: "His (Napoleon's) manner was perfectly calm and collected, his
+voice equal and firm, his tones very pleasing, the action of the head
+was dignified, and the countenance remarkably soft and placid, without
+any marks of severity." That is a good testimony from the author of
+the "Waverley Novels," who was anything but an impartial biographer.
+Not even the novelist's most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of
+them) can give him credit for excessive partiality towards the hero
+who was the first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not
+only knew the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander)
+had ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to
+conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled in
+the history of man.
+
+I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of the
+Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it), it was a
+fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a rock when, by
+adopting a more humane policy, his incomparable genius might have
+been used to carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his
+return from Elba. The tumult which surrounded his career had changed;
+he saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once
+proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his great
+scheme of renewing the heart of things. He knew it would take time,
+and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was putting forth
+supreme efforts to destroy him. They were out for blood, and _he_ was
+in too great a hurry.
+
+In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, "Ah! if I could
+have governed France for forty years I would have made her the most
+splendid empire that ever existed!"
+
+His demand on fortune was too great, and notwithstanding the knowledge
+he had of human nature, he could not check the torrent of treason that
+had been sedulously nursed against him by his enemies until it ignited
+the imagination of those whom he had a right to expect would stand
+loyally by him in an hour of tribulation such as no other man had ever
+experienced.
+
+It is true that he made history (brilliant history if you like) in
+those latter days, but oh! the anguish and the baseness of it all.
+
+Cæsar made history too; neither did _this_ ruler succeed altogether.
+Brutus, his friend, forsook and dispatched him, and possibly that was
+the most enviable finish to a great career. Did Napoleon fare better
+than his prototype, inasmuch as he was not the victim of the
+assassin's dagger? Intoxicated with the spirit of charity, his
+conquerors decreed that he should be deported to a secluded place of
+abode on a barren and unhealthy rock, there to be maintained at a cost
+to the nation of £12,000 a year, and succumb as quickly as possible
+like a good Christian gentleman.
+
+The presumption of Lord Keith in observing to Napoleon that it was
+preferable for him to be sent to St. Helena than to be confined in a
+smaller space in England or sent to France or Russia, and the
+Emperor's supposed reply--"Russia! God preserve me from it!"--is
+almost unbelievable, and in the light of what he constantly asserted
+while England's captive, this expression may be regarded as a
+fabrication.
+
+Whether it was an innate belief that Alexander of Russia was his
+friend, or the fact that Francis of Austria was his father-in-law, he
+certainly avowed--according to the St. Helena chroniclers--that if he
+had surrendered to either of them he would have been treated, not only
+with kindness, but with a proper regard as befitted a monarch who had
+governed eighty-three millions of people, or more than the half of
+Europe. But even if he were merely soliloquising, or wished to
+convince himself and those he expressed this opinion to, it is hard to
+think that any of the continental Powers would have risked the certain
+consequences of having him either shot or ill-treated, and it is
+extremely doubtful whether even in France there could have been found
+a soldier that would have obeyed an order to shoot his former Emperor,
+who had been requisitioned to return from Elba, and who so recently,
+with only six hundred soldiers, made war against Louis with his two
+hundred thousand and defeated and dethroned him.
+
+Nothing so magnificent has ever been known. This great man had
+complete hold of the imagination and devotion of his common people and
+soldiers. Even in the hour of defeat their loyalty was amazing.
+
+Various instances are given of this deep-rooted loyalty and affection.
+Some of his Imperial Guards who were wounded at Waterloo killed
+themselves on hearing that he had lost the battle, and many, who had
+been thought to be dead, when brought to consciousness shouted "Vive
+l'Empereur." The hospitals were full of dying men who uttered the same
+cry. One was having his leg amputated, and as he looked at the blood
+streaming from it, said that he would willingly give it all in the
+service of Napoleon. Another, who was having a ball extracted from
+his left side near the heart, shouted, "Probe an inch deeper and there
+you will find the Emperor."
+
+The story of the old woman whom he and Duroc met during the second
+campaign in Italy, and while climbing Mont Tarare, is a striking
+illustration of how he was regarded by the poorer classes. She hated
+the Bourbons and wanted to see the First Consul. Napoleon answered,
+"Bah! tyrant for tyrant--they are just the same thing." "No, no!" she
+replied; "Louis XVI. was the king of the nobles, Bonaparte is the king
+of the people." This idea of the old woman was the universal feeling
+of her class right through his reign. No writer has been able to give
+proof that it was withdrawn, even when he was overwhelmed with
+disaster which drained his empire of vast masses of its population. No
+cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination
+multitudes of men and women as he did. It was not his incomparable
+genius, nor his matchless military successes in battle. He was loved
+because he was lovable, and was trusted because he inspired belief in
+his high motives of amelioration of all down-trodden people. He ruled
+with a stern but kindly discipline, and put a heavy hand on those who
+had despotic tendencies.
+
+The Duchess of Abrantès, who smarted under some severe comments he
+had made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrantès, while at St.
+Helena, has been generous enough to say many kind things of him in her
+memoirs. One of her references to him is to this effect:--"All I know
+of him" (and she knew him well from childhood) "proves that he
+possessed a great soul which quickly forgets and forgives." She is
+very fond of repeating in her memoirs that Napoleon proposed marriage
+to her mother, Madame Permon, who was herself a Corsican and knew the
+Bonaparte family well.
+
+Madame Junot relates another story which is characteristic of
+Bonaparte. Such was the enthusiasm of the people on his march towards
+Paris after landing from Elba, that when he was holding a review of
+the National Guard at Grenoble, the people shouldered him, and a young
+girl with a laurel branch in her hand approached him reciting some
+verses. "What can I do for you, my pretty girl?" said the Emperor. The
+girl blushed, then lifting her eyes to him replied, "I have nothing to
+ask of your Majesty; but you would render me very happy by embracing
+me." Napoleon kissed her, and turning his head to either side, said
+aloud, with a fascinating smile, "I embrace in you all the ladies of
+Grenoble."
+
+That Napoleon made mistakes no one will dispute; indeed, he saw
+clearly, and admitted freely, in his solitude, that he had made many.
+His minor fault (if it be right to characterise it as such) was in
+extending clemency to the many rascals that were plotting his ruin and
+carrying on a system of peculation that was an abhorrence to him.
+Talleyrand, Fouché, and Bourrienne frequently came under his
+displeasure and were removed from his service, but were taken back
+after his wrath had passed.
+
+Miot de Melito speaks of them as "Bourrienne and other subordinate
+scoundrels," and, indeed, Miot de Melito does not exaggerate in his
+estimate of them. Fouché says that Bourrienne kept him advised of all
+Napoleon's movements for 25,000 francs per month, besides being both
+partner and patron in the house of Coulon Brothers, cavalry equipment
+providers, who failed for £120,000.
+
+In 1805, Bourrienne was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at Hamburg,
+and during his stay there he made £290,000 by delivering permits and
+making what is known as "arbitrary stoppages," and besides betraying
+Bonaparte to the Bourbons, this vile traitor wrote to Talleyrand, a
+few days after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the
+return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family."
+But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of
+this thievish human jackdaw.
+
+His memoirs are said to have been written by an impecunious and
+mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Mémoires de
+Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very
+extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from
+them, authors have quoted from them whenever they desired an authority
+to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to
+believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings.
+Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the
+chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor.
+Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the
+impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms or
+historical statements.
+
+Men like Fouché, Talleyrand, and Bourrienne, and political women like
+Madame de Remusat and Madame de Staël, all of whom were brought under
+the Emperor's displeasure by their zealous aptitude in one way and
+another for intrigue, disloyalty, and, so far as the men are
+concerned, glaring dishonesty in money matters, have assiduously
+chronicled their own virtues and declaimed against Napoleon's
+incalculable vices, and this course was no doubt chosen in order to
+avert the public gaze from too close a scrutiny into their own
+perfidy. Their plan is not an unusual one under such circumstances;
+rascals never scruple to multiply offences more wicked than those
+already committed in order to prove that they are acting from a pure
+sense of public morality and historical truth. If the object of their
+attack be a benefactor, and one who has been obliged to rebuke or
+dismiss them for misdeeds, great or small, then they assail him with
+unqualified hostility.
+
+This unquestionably was the penalty paid by Napoleon for extending
+clemency to men who, if they had been in the service of any other
+monarch in Europe, would have been shut up in a fortress, or shot, the
+moment their perfidies had been discovered. The pity is that so much
+of this declamatory stuff has been so willingly believed and made use
+of in order to defame the name of a sovereign whose besetting fault
+was in relaxing just punishment bestowed on those who, he could never
+altogether forget, were his companions in other days.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Montholon wished to have the following simple inscription:
+"Napoléon, né à Ajaccio, le 15 Août, 1769, mort à St. Helena, le 5
+Mai, 1821."
+
+[13] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
+
+[14] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
+
+[15] "Correspondence of Napoleon I."
+
+[16] Ibid.
+
+[17] Madame Walewska bore him two children. This caused him to develop
+the idea of having an heir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MÈRE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME
+
+
+It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his
+family. The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at
+nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete. They dare not
+run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by
+means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious
+character. They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a
+faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble
+wife and callous mother. She took with her into Austria the King of
+Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.
+He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the
+hollow of his hand. His father's name was not allowed to fall on his
+youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he
+secretly told him something of his father's fame. Treated as a
+prisoner, spied upon by Metternich's satellites, not allowed to have
+any visitors without this immortal Chancellor's permission, not
+allowed to communicate with his father's family or with Frenchmen,
+this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a
+growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a
+letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son
+strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.[18]
+
+Prince Napoleon in his excellent book--"Napoleon and His
+Detractors"--refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards
+with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his
+father's most important generals. He it was who betrayed him, and now
+he is become the Duke's confidant and instructor. The Prince says that
+his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done,
+his fall, and exile. There does not appear to be any record in
+existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of
+Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man
+was not only an eager student of his father's career, but fully
+realised his own importance and influence on European politics.
+
+It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing
+events in the land of his birth. Obenaus, his tutor, states in his
+diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political
+relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the
+world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French
+language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an
+unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me
+with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties
+of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential
+part of my studies. It is the language in which my father gave the
+word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with
+glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of
+war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never
+repudiate the nation into which I was born."[19] He further adds, "The
+_chief_ aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father's
+fame."
+
+His grandfather, the Emperor Francis--who was reputed to be quite
+devoted to him--said, "I wish that the Duke should revere the memory
+of his father." "Do not suppress the truth," says he to Metternich
+(the disloyal friend of Napoleon). "Teach him above all to honour his
+father's memory." The Chancellor replies, "I will speak to the Duke
+about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of to my own
+son." What irony! Whatever attempts were made at any time to
+depreciate the Emperor, his son's loyalty to him never flinched. He
+regarded his father in the light of a hero whose glorious traditions
+were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of men. He drank in every
+particle of information he could discover about his father's life, and
+was by no means ignorant of what would be his own great destiny should
+he be permitted to live.
+
+A strong party in France longed to have the son of their Emperor on
+the throne of France. A section of the Poles clamoured to have him
+proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish revolution, and the Greeks
+claimed him as their future King. All existing records dealing with
+the Prince's view concerning his position indicate quite clearly that
+he never under-estimated his importance. He was fully alive to and
+appreciated the growing devotion to himself, his cause, and to the
+great name he bore. We learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince
+received him with marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him
+permission to relate to him his father's history. Marmont, like all
+traitors, never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor
+Napoleon. This is a habit with people who do great injury to their
+friends. They always make it appear that the injured person is
+afflicted with growing love for them--they never realise how much they
+are loathed and mistrusted.
+
+The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he tolerated him
+coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him with stories of
+the genius and unparalleled greatness of his father's history that the
+young man subdued his prejudices and encouraged the Marshal in his
+visits to his apartments, in order that he might learn all that
+Marmont could tell him of his father's qualities and accomplishments.
+The young Napoleon caused the General to marvel at the quick
+intelligence he displayed in the pointed comments made on his father's
+career. In recognition of his services Marmont was presented with a
+portrait of the Prince.[20]
+
+His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book "Napoleon
+and His Detractors," obviously desires to convey the impression that
+all questions, important or unimportant, relating to the Emperor, were
+studiously kept from his son, and until he arrived at a certain age
+there can be little doubt that undue and unnatural precautions were
+taken to prevent the Emperor's name being spoken, but the means used
+for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to
+him having been well informed. He appears to have had an instinctive
+knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and
+especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and
+heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.
+Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince
+Napoleon complains of. Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the
+Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the
+events of his own and of his father's life, long before the advent of
+Marmont as his tutor. For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count
+Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince
+was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing
+with this distinguished man. The young Duke knew that Prokesch had
+broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly
+availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things
+to the Count. He informs him that he has "known him a long while, and
+loved him because he defended his father's honour at a time when all
+the world vied with each other to slander his name"; and then he
+continues: "I have read your 'Battle of Waterloo,' and in order to
+impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French
+and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor
+indolent when his father's fame and his own interests were in
+question.
+
+One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the
+intense interest his mother's husband began to take in him, and he
+probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him
+to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father's
+deeds. Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and
+the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in
+the most intimate way. If he perceived the immoral relations between
+Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it;
+but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for
+his father's memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the
+amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count
+and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it,
+not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch,
+Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his
+grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him
+cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was
+generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly
+likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out
+of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong
+being done to his Imperial father.
+
+The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the
+object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in
+Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a
+few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have
+been put on the throne of the land of his birth.
+
+Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have had any
+serious thought of encouraging the project of making the Duke Emperor
+of the French. His subtle game was to use him as a terror to Louis
+Philippe when that monarch became refractory or showed signs of
+covetousness.
+
+The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods. He was
+proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made immortal and
+he was determined not to soil it. If it was to be reclaimed, all
+obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his countenance to it.
+There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage. Thirty-four million
+souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his restoration to France.
+Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father's old
+companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more
+enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon, Bertrand, the
+petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of Rovigo. These were
+joined to thousands of other brave men who would have considered it an
+honour to shed their last drop of blood for the cause, and in memory
+of him whom they had loved so well. The two first-named were executors
+to his father's will, in which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt
+to avenge his death but to profit by it. He reminds him that things
+have changed. He was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the
+way is to convince her. His son is urged not to mount the throne by
+the aid of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the
+approbation of posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be pardoned,
+but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all uncivilised and
+barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.
+Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded
+philosophers are willing to believe. They are capable of rendering
+great services to humanity."
+
+These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to the
+young man from the tragic rock whose memories will ever defame the
+name of those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political
+history.
+
+It is none the less a phenomenon that this "abode of darkness," so
+monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be illumined by the
+great figure that stamped its fame for evermore with his personality.
+
+One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to draw up
+a constitution for his son. It is doubtful whether Montholon ever
+succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who passed on before the
+legitimate call to put it into practice came.
+
+The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great soldier
+with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right to outlaw and
+brand him as the disturber of public peace. I have already said this
+was their ostensible plea, but the real reason was his determination
+to exterminate feudalism and establish democratic institutions as soon
+as he could bring the different factions into harmony. He failed, but
+the colossal cost of his failure in men and money is unthinkable. His
+subjugation left Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated,
+of eight hundred millions, and then there was no peace.
+
+The constitution intended for his son could have been very
+beneficially applied to some of the nations represented at the
+Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him
+an outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other people's
+territory to each other. The only nation that came badly out of the
+Congress was Great Britain.
+
+This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated
+by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be
+adopted by the most democratic countries.
+
+The first article--composed of six words: "The sovereignty dwells in
+the nation"--stamps the purpose of it with real democracy. It might do
+no harm to embody some of its clauses into our own constitution at the
+present time. We very tardily adopted some of its laws long after his
+death, and we might go on copying to our advantage. He was a real
+progressor, but his team was difficult to guide. Had he been
+conciliated and allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised
+the whole of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was
+undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble. The
+mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the son, who
+was practically a State prisoner.
+
+During childhood the Prince was strong and healthy, and his robust
+physique caused favourable comment. It was not until 1819 that his
+health became affected by an attack of spotted fever. This passed away
+in a few weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to
+his rapid growth, dates from that period. He died prematurely on July
+22, 1832, at Schönbrunn, and the accounts which may be relied upon
+indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent medical treatment. It
+is even asserted that this heir to the throne of France, ushered in
+twenty-one years before as the herald of Peace, was to be regarded as
+a source of infinite danger, and for that barbaric reason his health
+was allowed to be slowly and surely undermined until death took him
+from the restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of
+Europe. Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical public
+that his early death was the result of youthful indiscretions, but
+this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who declares that he was a
+strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus, in his diary, justifies this
+opinion, if there was nothing else to support it. Moreover the same
+Anton, Count Prokesch was asked by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth
+as to the alleged love affairs, and he averred that the rumours were
+without foundation.
+
+The King of Rome died at Schönbrunn in the same room that his father
+had occupied in 1809. In Paris a report was put about that he had been
+poisoned by the Court of Vienna. This opinion has been handed down,
+and there are many persons to-day who have a firm belief in its
+possibility.
+
+Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich sent a
+poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and even this
+highly improbable story is not without reason believed, because
+Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning Judas in
+politics at that time. He had betrayed the father of the Prince while
+he was declaring the most loyal friendship. He admits this, nay, even
+boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his shameful conduct has its reward
+by having won for him the stigma of wishing for, and hastening on, the
+death of an unfortunate young man for whom ordinary manliness should
+have claimed compassion. This moral assassin of father and son
+declared that he had "used all the means in his power to second the
+hand of God" by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined
+moralists of Europe. The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace
+proclaimed for evermore. That was their pretence, though it could not
+have been their conviction. If it was, they were soon disillusioned.
+
+I made a long journey in company with a Danish statesman a few years
+ago, and amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign
+and fall of Napoleon. This gentleman held up his hands and said to me,
+"Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was. Had the Powers beheld the
+mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would have been to the
+world!"--and there is not much difficulty in supporting the view of
+this Danish gentleman. The more one probes into the history of the
+period, the more vivid the blunder appears.
+
+Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine, who was
+neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in being
+championed by a man whose book is made up of libels. Metternich may
+here be dismissed as being only one of many whose highest ambition was
+to destroy the man whom the French nation had made their monarch.
+Their aim was accomplished, but the spirit that evolved from the wreck
+of the Revolution still lives on, and may rise again to be avenged for
+the great crime that was committed.
+
+Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was
+despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his
+premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional causes,
+is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the actions of the
+high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause lingering doubts to
+prevail as to their innocence. It is certain that several determined
+attempts were made to take the Prince's life, and large sums were
+offered to desperadoes to carry out this murderous deed. Then the
+Court of Vienna were in constant fear of his abduction. His
+invitations to come to France were perpetual.
+
+A lady cousin--the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter of Elisa
+Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a passport from
+the Pope's Secretary of State, and coquetted so successfully with the
+Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a double guarantee of good faith
+by signing it. This impetuous and eccentric female made her way
+uninterruptedly to Vienna, found her cousin on the doorstep, made a
+rush for him and seized his hand, then shouted, "Who can prevent my
+kissing my sovereign's hand?" She also found means to convey letters
+to him. There is not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from
+the records that are available the incident set the heroes--comprising
+the allied Courts (including France)--into a flutter of excitement.
+The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty little Countess gives
+a lurid insight into the wave of comic derangement which must have
+taken possession of men's minds.
+
+This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen
+years it mounted to over six million francs. She died in Brittany,
+1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.
+
+That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke
+off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more
+ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the
+glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis,
+disagreed with the idea of his family. He looked upon the Emperor's
+son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and
+policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France. This
+Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis
+Philippe. He died in 1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin
+passed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists'
+cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mère, who had centred
+all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his
+grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion the
+assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her
+affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing
+reply from Madame Mère. It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6,
+1832:--
+
+    "Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which
+    has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose
+    death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have
+    never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.
+    In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my
+    great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has
+    seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I
+    firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for
+    the glory of this world.
+
+    "Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this
+    trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the
+    bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all
+    my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this
+    letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate
+    the task to my brother."
+
+Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to herself.
+Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens
+grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing
+to had wronged. There is not a syllable of _open_ reproach, though
+there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must
+assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious
+Austrian Archduchess who had played her son so falsely.
+
+This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the
+least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists. She
+was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads
+were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character, but
+the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got
+it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite
+rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her. Pius
+VII., who knew Madame Mère, sent his secretary to see her about this
+supposed intrigue. She listened to what the representative of the Pope
+had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:--
+
+"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me,
+but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I
+should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain
+adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should
+use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the
+most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."
+
+Then she bowed reverently and left the room.
+
+This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the "Most
+Christian King."
+
+Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H.
+Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire
+in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.
+
+"Why should I discontinue this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to
+the dust before my son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have
+not forgotten it."
+
+On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two
+Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the
+carriage. Madame Mère, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she
+had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the
+window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your pleasure? If
+it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!" The
+officers were naturally crestfallen. They respectfully saluted and
+rode off. These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they
+always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son's
+persecutors.
+
+Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one
+of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its
+logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and
+magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which
+characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing. The last
+paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come,
+and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the
+crime.
+
+"Reasons of State," she says, "have their limits, and _posterity_,
+which _forgets nothing_, admires above everything the generosity of
+conquerors."
+
+The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better for
+their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.
+The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a God-fearing woman who
+deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom."
+
+A great joy came to Madame Mère in 1830, when they told her that the
+Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the
+Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her
+lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness,
+which would forever prevent her beholding the statue. She turned away
+from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words
+of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in
+former days, God would have given her strength to climb to the top of
+the column to assure herself that it was there. She refused to
+separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the
+proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it
+included all her family. This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836,
+aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother
+and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the
+remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to
+receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first
+interment at Ajaccio.
+
+Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second wife should
+be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even of those
+historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to
+say of her. She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and
+the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six. Had
+this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies
+against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed
+the humiliating spectacle of her father's successor being forced to
+abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband,
+whose memory all noble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic
+and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed
+herself to be the base accomplice of a great assassination. The most
+fitting reference to her death appeared in the _Times_ newspaper,
+which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it."
+On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with
+consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive,
+icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be
+pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last
+moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order
+to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy."
+What irony!
+
+It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must
+have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is even hard
+to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual association
+with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that while his reference to
+her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking,
+as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something
+like the following:--"I cannot make this historical document without
+alluding to you for my son's sake, though I know full well you have
+wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all
+this, but I am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of
+compassion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and
+grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I
+must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct
+towards me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have
+done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me
+suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by
+passing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix,
+Bessières, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Masséna, and Berthier, and we shall talk
+of the deeds we have done together. Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under
+the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied
+satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable
+warriors of Europe in a state of alarm. I wish you joy of your allies,
+who have behaved so nobly to your husband in captivity. I have often
+thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular
+national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second
+wife a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated
+by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my
+downfall. Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me in my
+adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to France and to
+your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the
+coalition against me and saving rivers of blood. Waterloo might never
+have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law,
+Catherine of Westphalia, in her attitude of supreme womanhood, and
+your fame might have surpassed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed
+down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion,
+and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a
+saint by the people to which you belong. You shared with me the
+unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth. I was
+devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your father insisted that you
+should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice
+in the outrage committed against me. You had shared my throne, and I
+had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my
+side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in
+the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its
+eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you
+to forsake me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her
+father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the
+succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire
+misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of
+nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to
+bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament
+some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you,
+Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless
+the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that
+letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from
+Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.
+I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You
+ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which
+I am assured you received. I make no public accusation against you.
+_That_ would be undignified and unkingly."
+
+In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon
+reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated
+that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of
+his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability. The
+remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to
+this erotic woman in his will. It puzzled his companions in exile, who
+knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.
+It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew
+pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would
+have been Josephine's under similar circumstances. It is an
+astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those
+who had injured him most.
+
+In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers
+to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In the sixth
+paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate results of the
+invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be
+attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La
+Fayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I
+do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for
+the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, "It is replete
+with false assertions and falsified documents." He heaps coals of fire
+on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair
+and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp. It
+is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not
+have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by
+these little attentions.
+
+Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose
+baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years
+from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged
+fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had
+made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be
+the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so
+Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the
+ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband's
+inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to
+his credit. He had indeed run away with another man's wife, and had
+issue by her. Probably his amorous reputation influenced the
+oligarchy in their choice.
+
+In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised
+falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part
+of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and
+exactly suited for the purpose he had in view. His instructions were
+to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with
+revolting success.
+
+God's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of
+carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of
+delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband,
+sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her
+marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be more completely
+assured. As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be
+excelled.
+
+At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became
+"inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put up
+so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a letter
+of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in
+which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations,
+she says "that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is
+impossible to fight against the _Divine Will_. You are very right in
+saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of
+such a loss. Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me,
+only daily increases my grief." This "amiable," grief-stricken royal
+sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succumbs
+again to her natural instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console,"
+but only increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."
+
+Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we
+know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it. But
+the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in
+1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her
+native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins. In
+spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession
+through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression
+that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or
+pity.
+
+A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter
+of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette--Queen Marie
+Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of
+the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and
+he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her
+prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause
+to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in
+trouble she forgot the past. She declared that if it was still the
+determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity
+between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of
+consolation, it was her granddaughter's duty to assume disguise, tie
+sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.
+
+There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise
+sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name
+would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact,
+against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate. It is
+moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that
+the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was
+ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the
+divine law of marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an
+indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever
+his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in
+his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she urges a
+reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it
+impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal
+companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely
+that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the
+penalty of the errors she had committed.
+
+"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the death of
+my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature--not
+the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.
+But when alone in my chamber, _then_ I suffer. Then the feelings of
+the man burst forth."
+
+We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being
+overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the
+personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over
+men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.
+Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son,
+whom he called "Mon pauvre petit chou." "I do not blush to admit,"
+said he on a memorable occasion, "that I have a good deal of a
+mother's tenderness. I could never count on the faithfulness of a
+father who did not love his children."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] "Correspondance de Napoléon," vol. 128, p. 133.
+
+[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.
+
+[20] See "Memoirs."
+
+[21] See "Memoirs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS
+
+
+It would be an easy task to enlarge on the excellent qualities of this
+wonderful man. Volumes could be written about this phase of his
+dazzling career alone, and yet we have miscreants such as Talleyrand
+proclaiming to the Conference of "Christian Kings" and traitors that
+the greatest, most powerful, and most humane prince of the age "must
+be exterminated like a mad dog." The news of his flight from Elba and
+arrival in Paris, vociferously acclaimed by the French people as their
+lawful sovereign, threw this band of parasites into apoplectic terror;
+Talleyrand, of all creatures, dictating to the Conference as to the
+wording of the proclamation that should be issued outlawing his
+Emperor, whom he and they styled "Usurper." If it were not so
+outrageous a violation of decency, we would look upon it as the most
+comical incident notified in history. Talleyrand, the most
+accomplished traitor and barefaced thief in Europe, except perhaps
+Bourrienne, he who could not prevent himself from fumbling in his
+sovereign's and everybody else's pockets whenever the opportunity
+occurred, to be allowed to sit in conference with the anointed rulers
+of Europe is really too comic.
+
+Napoleon was styled "Usurper" by these saintly Legitimists, not one of
+whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately as the man whom
+they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole of Europe were to be
+drenched in blood by the process of it. They set themselves to
+disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French people, who had only
+just again ratified by millions of votes his claim to the throne, and
+the gallant and heroic response to their requisition that he should
+leave Elba and become their ruler again. Surely it will never be
+contended that Napoleon's claims were less legitimate than those of
+the Prince of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, or Frederic William
+the great Elector, whose sole qualification for kingship consisted in
+having the instincts of a tiger. Of the latter Lord Macaulay says,
+"His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends." His sole
+ambition seemed to be to pay fabulous sums for giant soldiers, and he
+showed an inhuman aversion to his son, afterwards known as Frederic
+the Great, and his daughter Wilhelmina. He was as ignorant and
+ill-conditioned a creature as could be found in the whole world, a
+cowardly rascal who found pleasure in kicking ladies whom he might
+meet in the street and ordering them "home to mind their brats." No
+more need be said of the father of the great Frederic, whose "Life"
+took Thomas Carlyle thirteen years in searching musty German histories
+to produce. Carlyle says, "One of the reasons that led me to write
+'Frederic' was that he managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his
+century was"; and indeed his adoration for Frederic is quite
+pardonable. He had spent thirteen years of his life in the supreme
+effort of making him a hero, and his great work, contained in eight
+volumes, is a matchless piece of literature; but there is nothing in
+it to justify anyone believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a
+charlatan. It is true Frederic finished better than he began, but
+truthfulness and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied,
+broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his
+purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no
+doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic
+Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The powers
+of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark,
+the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it. Had he been an
+honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits him
+with, he would have stood by his oath. Instead of defending his ally,
+he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe into a
+devastating, bloody war, with the sole object of robbery; and all he
+could say for himself in extenuation of such base conduct was:
+"Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me,
+carried the day; and I decided for war."
+
+Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great
+was mainly acquired because the Powers and circumstances allowed him
+to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.
+
+Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's career
+that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic. He really
+usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his
+hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral
+laws. There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point
+out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of
+the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an
+industrious mediocrity.
+
+These legitimate monarchs, through their Ministers, used barefacedly
+to inspire journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as
+being a natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation.
+History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an
+impudent hypocrisy. They might have had it at any time, but this did
+not suit their policy of legitimacy. Countless thousands of human
+beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings and nobles to
+the plan of one man who towered above them, and insisted on breaking
+up the nefarious system of feudalism and kingship by divine right.
+They loathed both him and his system. They plotted for his
+assassination, and intrigued with all the ferocity of wild animals
+against his humane and enlightened government. He trampled over all
+their satanic dodges to overthrow the power that had been so often
+enthusiastically placed in his hands by the sovereign people. He
+constructed roads and canals, and introduced new methods of creating
+commerce. He introduced a great scheme of expanding education,
+science, art, literature. Every phase of enlightenment was not only
+initiated, but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its
+application. He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of
+laws that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and
+eminently just.
+
+He not only re-established religion, but he upheld the authority of
+the Pope as the recognised head of the Roman Church. He built his
+"pyramids in the sea," established a free press, and declared himself
+in favour of manhood suffrage. He included in his system a unification
+of all the small continental States, and was declaimed against as a
+brigand for doing it. Wherever his plans were carried out the people
+were prosperous and happy, so long as they were allowed to toil in
+their own way in their fields and in other industrial pursuits.
+
+It was the perpetual spirit of war that overshadowed the whole of
+Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem. He, in
+this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had carried into
+practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in less than a
+century after the great reformer had been removed from the sphere of
+enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into
+unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the
+very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty.
+What satire, what malignity of fate, that Bismarck, a positive
+refutation of genius in comparison with the French Emperor, should
+succeed in resurrecting the fabric that the latter had so proudly
+built up for France, only to be in a few short years the prize of
+Germany, recognised by the very Powers who fought with such embittered
+aggressiveness against the great captain and statesman who made not
+only modern France, but modern Europe; and who at any time during his
+reign could, by making a sign, as he has said, have had the nobles of
+France massacred. These bloodsucking creatures were always in the road
+of reform, always steeped overhead in political intrigue, always
+concerned in plots against the life of Napoleon, and always shrieking
+with resentment when they and their accomplices were caught. Some
+writers are so completely imbued with the righteousness of murdering
+Napoleon, they convey the impression that when any attempt failed, the
+perpetrators, instead of being punished, should have had the
+decoration of the Legion of Honour placed upon them by himself. They
+are also quite unconscious that they are backing a mean revenge and an
+awful mockery of freedom when they eloquently shout "Hosanna!"
+
+According to them St. Helena was the only solution of the problem, if
+it may be so called, and the Powers who sent him there must have had
+an inspiration from above. They have no conception that the Allies
+perpetrated another crucifixion on the greatest and (if we are to
+judge him by _reliable_ records) the best man of the nineteenth
+century. Ah! fickle France! you are blighted with eternal shame for
+having allowed these cowardly vindictive conspirators, popularly
+called the Allies, to besmear _you_, as well as themselves, with the
+blood of a hero.
+
+France had resources at her command which could and should have been
+used to drive the invaders beyond her boundaries. Frenchmen can never
+live down the great blunder of abandoning their Emperor, forsaking
+themselves and the duty they owed to their native land. They forsook
+in the hour of need all that was noble and honourable, and cast
+themselves into a cauldron of treason, such as has never been heard of
+in the world's history. They were soon disillusioned, but it was then
+too late. The poison had done its work, and France was placed under
+the subjection of traitors, place-hunters and foreign Powers for many
+years to come.
+
+I have already said that Louis XVIII. was put on the throne, not by
+the French people, but by their conquerors and their myrmidons. He did
+not long survive his ignoble accession. Then came Charles X., who had
+to fly to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh because he governed so ill. His
+qualification to rule was in putting down all reform and liberty;
+after him came Louis Philippe, but even he only governed on
+sufferance, though on the whole he occupied an onerous position with
+creditable success. A monarch who rules under the tender mercies of a
+capricious people, and worse still, a capricious and not too
+scrupulous monarchy of monarchs, is not to be envied, and this was
+exactly the position of Louis Philippe. He was beset by the noisy
+clamour of many factions, besides having to keep a shrewd eye on those
+lofty men to whom he had to look with perpetual nervous tension for
+the stability and endurance of his throne. He knew the heart of the
+nation was centred on St. Helena, and that a wave of repentance was
+passing over the land. The people wished to atone for the crime they
+allowed to be committed in 1815.
+
+Louis Philippe showed great wisdom and foresight. Nothing could have
+been done with more suitable delicacy than the negotiations which
+caused the British Government to consent to give the remains of the
+Emperor up to the French. The air of importance and swagger put into
+it by Lord Palmerston is supremely farcical, but then the whole
+senseless blunder from beginning to end was a farce, which does not
+redound to our credit. It is incredible that a nation so thickly
+stocked with men of ability in every important department should have
+had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and
+officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive.
+Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or
+anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and
+stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing
+during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we
+are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man
+of genius in Europe but himself. The population of France who were
+contemporary with him during his meteoric leadership remembered him as
+a matchless reformer and an unconquerable warrior. Their devotion and
+belief in his great gifts had sunk deeply into their being. A couple
+of generations had come into existence from 1815 to 1840, but even to
+those who knew him only as a captive, he was as much their Emperor and
+their hero and martyr as he was to his contemporaries. The pride of
+race, the glory of the Empire and of its great founder, was suckled
+into them from the time of birth, and as they grew into manhood and
+womanhood they became permeated with a passionate devotion to his
+cause. They claimed that his deliverance to the people "he loved so
+well" was a right that should not be withheld. The spirit of sullen
+determination that he should be given up had taken deep root. They had
+arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark would have created
+a conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant
+business, and were resolved that they would stand no more red-tape
+fussy nonsense from either their Government or the Government who kept
+a regiment of British soldiers to guard his tomb, lest he should again
+disturb the peace of Europe. They let it be known that no more of that
+kind of humbug would be tolerated without reprisals, and the hint was
+taken. Louis Philippe grasped the situation, and formed an expedition
+with his son Prince Joinville as chief, who was accompanied by Baron
+Las Cases, member of the Chamber of Deputies; General Count Bertrand;
+M. l'Abbé Conquereau, almoner to the expedition; four former servants
+of Napoleon--viz., Saint Denis and Noverraz, valets-de-chambre;
+Pierron, officer of the kitchen; and Archambaud, butler--Marchand, one
+of the executors, and the quarrelsome and disloyal General Gourgaud,
+of whom we may have something more to say further on. This same
+Gourgaud, who lied so infamously about his Imperial benefactor when he
+landed in London, has said that "he could not express what he felt
+when he again found himself near that extraordinary being, that giant
+of the human race, to whom he had sacrificed all and to whom he owed
+all he was." These thoughts, and many more not uttered, would come to
+him when he stood beside the sepulchre of the master whom he had so
+grievously wronged and who was now and henceforth to be recognised as
+having been the "legitimate ruler of his country."
+
+Count Montholon, the most devoted and most constant follower of
+Napoleon and his family, was not of the expedition. He was engaged in
+helping the nephew of his hero to ascend the throne of his illustrious
+uncle, and the effort landed them both in the fortress of Ham. Louis
+Philippe and his Ministers were very jealous of anyone sharing in any
+part of the glory of having Napoleon brought to the banks of the
+Seine. Hence, when King Joseph and Prince Louis Napoleon offered the
+arms of the Emperor to the nation, the King refused them, but
+prevailed upon General Bertrand to give them to him, that he might
+give them to the nation. Napoleon had given the sword he wore at
+Austerlitz and his arms to Bertrand when on his deathbed. Prince Louis
+could not stand the great captain's name being trumpeted about for
+other people's glory. He claimed that it belonged to him. He was the
+legitimate heir to all its glory, and this too previous assumption got
+him imprisoned in Ham for asserting what he protested was his right.
+
+Meanwhile the _Bellepoule_ goes lumbering along, impeded by calms and
+gales, but anchored safely off Jamestown on October 8, 1840. Of course
+many formalities had to be carried out, so that the exhumation did not
+commence until the 15th at midnight. They came upon the coffin at ten
+in the forenoon, opened it, and found the body well preserved. Thereon
+everyone was overcome with emotion. After the coffin was deposited
+with profound solemnity and the national flag placed over it, the
+honours which would have been paid to the Emperor had he been living
+were paid to his remains on October 18, 1840.
+
+The expedition set sail, and had only been a few days out when the
+captain of a passing vessel called the _Hamburg_ informed Prince
+Joinville that war between France and Great Britain was imminent, and
+two or three days later this was confirmed by circumstantial
+information to him by a Dutch vessel called the _Egmont_. Officers of
+the two other vessels of the expedition were ordered aboard the
+_Bellepoule_, a council of war held, and a determined resistance
+resolved upon. The decks were cleared for action, guns were mounted,
+and every form of princely comfort dispensed with. The son of Louis
+Philippe added lustre to the name of Bourbon by the heroic decision
+that, whatever the fortune of battle might be, he would sink his ship
+rather than allow the remains of the Emperor to fall into the hands
+of the British again. The resolve was worthy of Napoleon himself.
+
+Every precaution was taken to evade capture, but as the information
+proved to be unfounded, the expedition was not interrupted by hostile
+cruisers, nor even by contrary winds, and long before it was expected
+the historic frigate sailed quietly into the harbour of Cherbourg at
+5.0 a.m. on November 30, 1840. She had made the passage from St.
+Helena in forty-two days. Then the great and unexampled triumph
+commenced.
+
+Europe was a second time in mourning, bowing its head in reverence and
+shame. Never have there been such universal tokens of condemnation of
+the captivity and the creatures who engineered it, and never such
+unequalled joy and homage as were paid to the memory of the great
+dead. During the eight days the lying-in-state lasted, more than two
+hundred thousand people came to the Invalides daily. Thousands never
+got within the coveted grounds, yet they came in increasing numbers
+each successive day, notwithstanding the rigour of the biting weather.
+
+It may be said that the whole world was moved with the desire to show
+sympathy with this unsurpassed national devotion and worldwide
+repentance. His remains are now in the church of the Invalides, where
+the daily pilgrimage still goes on. The interest in the victim of the
+stupidity of the British Administration never flags. Each day the dead
+Emperor is canonised, and his prophetic words that posterity would do
+him justice are being amply fulfilled.
+
+The Christian Kings that made saintly war on Napoleon, and combined to
+commit an atrocious crime in the name of the founder of our faith,
+were dead. God in His mercy had dispensed with their sagacious
+guidance in human affairs, and it may be they were paying a lingering
+penalty for the diabolical act at the very time their prisoner's ashes
+reached the shores of his beloved country and convulsed it with
+irrepressible joy. They and many of their accomplices were gone. Four
+Popes had reigned and passed on to their last long sleep. The Spanish
+nation, which contributed to his downfall, had been smitten with the
+plague of chronic revolution. They had been deprived of the great
+guiding spirit who alone could administer that wholesome discipline
+which was so necessary to keep the turbulent spirits in restraint.
+Only Bernadotte, whom Napoleon had put in the way of becoming King of
+Norway and Sweden, remained to represent the galaxy of Kings. A few of
+the traitor Marshals were left, but Augereau had died soon after the
+banishment and Berthier had committed suicide a few day before the
+Battle of Waterloo by jumping out a window. Soult, Oudinot, and the
+guilty Marmont were in evidence in these days of great national
+rejoicing. Davoust, Jourdan, Macdonald, and Masséna had passed behind
+the veil. It was the defection of Berthier and Marmont, whom he
+regarded as his most trusted and loyal comrades-in-arms, that crushed
+the Emperor at the time of the first abdication. It was a cruel stab,
+which sunk deep into his soul, and never really healed, but the most
+heartless incident in connection with this betrayal was the
+appointment of Marmont, the betrayer, by the Emperor Francis to be the
+military instructor of Napoleon's son while he was held in captivity
+and ignorance at Vienna.
+
+Fouché, whose treason and predatory misdeeds should have had him shot
+long before the dawn of disaster to the Empire came, joined the
+Ministry of Louis XVIII., whom he had arduously assisted to the
+throne, but in 1816 he was included in the decree against the
+murderers of Louis XVI., and had to make himself scarce. He went to
+Prague, then to Trieste, and died there in 1820.
+
+Talleyrand died at Paris in 1838.
+
+Both men were unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of moral sense
+or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps,
+which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can
+never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national
+cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only
+when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns,
+they knew he was kept in close touch with what was going on. It was
+not until treason became entangled within treason that their evil
+designs had fuller scope and more disastrous results. Bourrienne,
+another rascal already referred to in this book, lost his fortune and
+his reason in 1830, and died in a lunatic asylum at Caen of apoplexy
+in February, 1834. It is a notable fact that nearly the whole of the
+prominent figures in the drama of the Empire and its fall had passed
+beyond the portal before the great captain's remains were brought back
+to France. These individuals are only remembered now as uninspired
+small men, benighted in mind, who had wrought ignobly to bring about
+the fall of a powerful leader, and to the end of their days were
+associated with and encouraged a fiendish persecution of the Emperor
+while he lived, and of his family before and after his death.
+
+But the pious care of his tomb by a regiment of British soldiers, paid
+for by British taxpayers, from 1821 until the patriotic exhumation in
+1840; by stately and solemn permission of the British Government,
+excels the comic genius of a gang of plethoric parochial innkeepers.
+If it were not so degrading to the national pride of race, we might
+regard it as taking rank amongst the drollest incidents of human life.
+What a gang of puffy, mildewed creatures were at the head British
+affairs in those days! Indeed, they expose the human soul at its
+worst, and a curious feature is their ingrained belief in the
+integrity of all their doings, which beggars the English vocabulary
+describe. How the people tolerated the drain on human life and the
+material resources of country is also phenomenal.
+
+Thousands of lives were sacrificed and millions of money squandered,
+with the sole object of destroying and humiliating one man, who, had
+he been handled discreetly, would have proved greater public asset
+than he was. Sir Hudson Lowe would not be known to posterity but for
+the guilty part he played in the tragedy. He left St. Helena on July
+25, 1821, and was presented on the eve of his departure with an
+address from the inhabitants. It has been said that document was
+inspired from Plantation House, but that is scarcely credible.
+Besides, we are not inclined to discount any credit Lowe and his
+friends and accomplices can derive from it. It does not glow with
+devotion nor regret at his resigning his command. Indeed, it is
+nothing more nor less than a cold, polite way of bidding him farewell.
+Forsyth makes much of this, with the object of proving his popularity
+with the islanders and the itinerant persons in the service of the
+Crown. He only makes his case worse by embarking on so hopeless a
+task. As a matter of fact, this extraordinary representative of the
+British Government had roused the whole population of St. Helena at
+one time and another to a pitch of passion and scorn that puts it
+beyond doubt that no genuine regret could have been consistently
+expressed by a single soul, except those few composing his staff, who
+were as guilty as himself and were always ready to lick his boots for
+a grain of favour; and yet it is quite certain, notwithstanding the
+heroic fooleries and the care to make Plantation House a sanctuary of
+guilty secrecy, there was nothing that transpired, either important or
+unimportant, concerning the inhabitants of Longwood, that was not
+promptly passed along. Needless to say, these communications relieved
+the dull monotony of the exiles, and even Gourgaud was driven to
+cynical mockery by the ridiculous character of some of the piteous
+stories that filtered through. There never was any difficulty in
+verifying the truth of them when it was thought necessary or useful to
+do so. On the authority of Lowe's biographer, we are told that this
+immortal High Commissioner was presented to his precious sovereign on
+November 14, 1821, and was on the point of kissing his hand, but His
+Majesty, overwhelmed with the preeminence of the great man who stood
+before him, indicated that there was to be no kissing of hands. His
+services to his King and country demanded a good shake of the hand and
+hearty congratulations from His Christian Majesty. Lowe's arduous and
+exemplary task was admitted with tears in the kingly eyes, and so
+overcome was His Majesty that he took Lowe's hand again, and shook it
+a second time, combining with the handshake a further flow of grateful
+thanks and the appointment to a colonelcy of the 93rd Regiment These
+compliments were well deserved, coming, as they did from a monarch
+whose will he had discharged with such brutal fidelity. But what of
+the afterthought, the reaction which began to hum round his ears
+almost immediately after this fulsome display of enthusiastic
+approbation? A vast public, never in favour of the Government's
+vaunted policy of heroism over an unfortunate foe, swung round with a
+vengeance. The indignation against the perpetrators of this cruel
+assassination had no bounds. It was not confined to Britain. The
+civilised world was shocked. The willing tool of the Government got
+the worst of it, and the perfidy will cling to his name throughout
+eternity.
+
+O'Meara's book, "A Voice from St. Helena; or, Napoleon in Exile,"
+published in 1822, sold like wildfire. In vain Bathurst, Castlereagh,
+and Liverpool tried to check the flood of public censure that poured
+in upon them from everywhere. Sir Hudson Lowe, beside himself with
+apprehension, appealed to them for protection, but none was
+forthcoming. Indeed, they were too busy searching out some means by
+which the blow could be eased off themselves, and with studious
+politeness left their accomplice to plan out his defence as best he
+could; and the world knows what a sorry job he made of it. His
+coadjutors in the great tragedy were not the kind of people to share
+any part of the public censure that could be reflected on to their
+gaoler. Pretty compliments had been paid to him by the King and some
+of his Ministers previous to the realisation of the full force of
+public indignation. Bathurst sent him a letter in 1823 reminding him
+that his treatment had been beyond that of ordinary governors, that he
+was working out an idea of having him recommended to a West Indian
+governorship, and that he was not to suppose that this gracious
+interest in him was in order to silence the clamour that was being
+raised against him. This communication was made in November, and in
+December Lowe was told that he was to go to Antigua as Governor. For
+special reasons this favour was refused, and two years afterwards he
+accepted command of the forces at Ceylon, and was still there when Sir
+Walter Scott's exculpation of the British Government appeared in 1828.
+Scott was employed for that special purpose.
+
+The ex-Governor searched the pages of this extraordinary work for a
+vindication of himself, but never a word that could be construed into
+real approval was there. He obtained leave of absence from the
+Governor of Ceylon and made his way to England, ostensibly to
+vindicate his character. He landed at St. Helena, paid a visit to
+Longwood, otherwise known as the "Abode of Darkness" since the
+Imperial tenant named it so when he gave O'Meara his benediction on
+the occasion of his last parting from him, when he was banished from
+the island. Sir Hudson was shocked at seeing the place reverted back
+to a worse state than it was previous to the exiles being forced into
+it. Then it was a dirty, unwholesome barn, overrun with vermin; now it
+was worse than a piggery. The aspect touched a tender chord in this
+man who had been the cause of making the Emperor's compulsory sojourn
+a sorrowful agony.
+
+Reflections of all that happened during those five memorable years
+must have crowded in upon him and racked him with feelings of bitter
+remorse for his avoidable part in the cruel drama; and as he stood
+upon the spot that had been made famous by England's voluntary
+captive, it was not unnatural that he should have been overcome by a
+strange and possibly a purifying sadness. All of that which he had
+regarded in other days, under different conditions, as unjustifiable
+splendour had vanished. The Imperial bedroom and study were now made
+use of to accommodate and give shelter to cows, horses, and pigs.
+Other agricultural commodities were strewn about everywhere. Nothing
+was left that would indicate that it was consecrated to fame and
+everlasting pity. The triumph of death came to it only some six years
+before. And now Sir Hudson Lowe, we doubt not, filled with pensive
+regret, looked down on the nameless tomb of the great captain, guarded
+by sentinels with fixed bayonets, ready to thrust them into any
+unauthorised intruder into the sacred precincts of the Valley of
+Napoleon, or the Geranium Valley, which is also known by the name of
+Punch Bowl.
+
+Ah! what thickly gathering memories must have come to him in that
+solemn hour on that smitten rock of bitter and brutal vengeance! All
+we shall ever know of that melancholy visit as it really affected Lowe
+has been told by his biographer. We are left to imagine a good deal,
+and therefore must conclude that he would be less than human if he did
+not realise that the shadow of retribution was pursuing him. If his
+thoughts of himself were otherwise, he was soon to be disillusioned.
+
+He spent three days on the Rock, and had a good reception and
+send-off, and ere long made his appearance in London and presented
+himself to his quasi-friend, Bathurst, who, with an eye to his own and
+his colleagues' interests, discouraged the idea of publishing an
+answer to Sir Walter Scott's book. Bathurst, in fact (with unconscious
+drollery), advised Lowe to hurry back to Ceylon without delay, lest
+meanwhile a vacancy of the governorship should occur and he might lose
+his opportunity. He was assured of the Government's appreciation of
+him as their most trusted and loyal public servant, while as a matter
+of fact it was ludicrously obvious that his presence was quite as
+objectionable to them in England as it was to the exiles in St.
+Helena. He was fully alive to, and did not underestimate, the amount
+of dirty work he had done for them, and very properly expected to be
+amply rewarded. It never occurred to him that retribution was
+over-shadowing them as well as himself, and that they could not openly
+avow their displeasure at the odium he was the cause of bringing on
+the Government and on the British name by reason of his having so
+rigidly carried out their perfidious regulations. Had public opinion
+supported them, their action would have been claimed as a sagacious
+policy, but it didn't, so this poor, wretched, tactless, incompetent
+tool became almost as much their aversion as the great prisoner
+himself. In fact, things went so ill with them that they would have
+preferred it had Lowe indulged every whim of his prisoner, granted him
+full liberty to roam wherever he liked, recognised him as Emperor, and
+even been not too zealous in preventing his escape; and they must have
+wished that, in the first instance, they had not thought of St.
+Helena, but wisely and generously granted him hospitality in our own
+land. This last would have been the best thing that could have
+happened for everybody concerned.
+
+Ill-treatment of the most humble prisoner or assassination of the most
+exalted can never be popular with the British people. Sir Hudson got a
+cold douche when he obtained an interview with the Duke of
+Wellington. His Grace in so many words told him that they wished to
+have nothing to do with him. He could not recommend him for a post in
+the Russian army. He could not hold out hopes of him getting the
+governorship of Ceylon should a vacancy occur. He had been hardly
+used, but there was no help for it. Parliament would not grant him the
+pension he asked for. Lowe replied that he would stand or fall by its
+decision, but the Duke snapped him off by stating that Mr. Peel would
+never make such a proposal to the House of Commons. No other course
+was open to him now but to return to Ceylon. He did not get the
+vacancy which occurred in 1830, and returned to England, but never got
+a public appointment again.
+
+He presented a wordy memorial in 1843, complaining of having been kept
+out of employment for twelve years. The governorship of Ceylon had
+been vacant three times, the Ionian Islands four times; he had been
+Governor there in 1812. In other parts of the Empire appointments that
+he supposed he could have filled were given to others. Poor creature!
+He died in 1844, a broken and ruined man.
+
+He lacked every quality that is essential in an administrator, and was
+utterly void of humour, imagination, or the capacity to manage men.
+His suspicious disposition and lack of judgment made it eminently
+impossible for him to fulfil any delicate position, and it was a
+monstrous libel on the knowledge of the fitness of things to entrust
+him with the governorship of St. Helena.
+
+Lord Teynham made a violent attack on Lowe in the House of Lords in
+1833. The Duke of Wellington was bound to defend his satellite, and
+did so with some vigour, as the attack was really on him and certain
+members of his Government. Lord Teynham replies with equal vigour: "He
+had no intention of aspersing the private character of Sir Hudson, but
+as regards his conduct while Governor of St. Helena, he maintained,
+and always would, that Lowe was cried out upon by all the people of
+Europe as a person unfit to be trusted with power." Lord Teynham a few
+days afterwards made a sort of apology, no doubt inspired by
+interested persons, for personal plus international reasons. They were
+high of heart, these dauntless confederates, in the early and middle
+stages of the captivity, and, indeed, they bore themselves with
+braggart defiance of public opinion, until many strong manifestations
+of inevitable trouble encompassed them, and, like all despots, who are
+invariably cowards, they lived in mortal terror lest this creature of
+theirs should break out into St. Helena leprosy again and impose
+further humiliation upon them. Lowe had talked of actions for libel
+against Barry O'Meara, and in a whimsical, half-hearted way worried
+his employers to give battle, and the law officers of the Crown stated
+a case but advised against taking action, and so it was never brought,
+though O'Meara kept telling them in so many words to come on. "I am
+anxious that you should have the opportunity of defending the charges
+I have brought against you. I am anxious too that the public should
+know more than I have written." That in effect was the attitude of the
+gallant doctor, who was the first to call serious attention to the
+goings on in the "Abode of Darkness." Needless to say, no action was
+ever taken, and, in face of all the incriminating facts, it was never
+intended that any should be taken. Even High Toryism became alarmed at
+the consequences. The Duke of Wellington, brave and gallant soldier
+though he was, shrank from so impossible an ordeal. The best he could
+say of him was, "He was a stupid man," "A bad choice," "and totally
+unfit to take charge of Bonaparte."
+
+Wellington may have been a brave and skilful general, but he did not
+know how to be generous to an unfortunate enemy who was himself always
+kind and considerate in the hour of victory. Wellington's expressions
+about Lowe are more than significant, though his conduct towards the
+poor cat's-paw is characteristic of a mean, flinty soul. But his
+behaviour towards Napoleon would have put any French Jacobin to the
+blush, and has belittled him for all time in the eyes of everybody who
+has a spark of human feeling in him.
+
+Meneval[22] says that Waterloo was won by the French in the middle of
+the day of that fateful battle, but a caprice of fortune--the arrival
+of Bulow's corps and Blucher's army, and the absence of Grouchy's
+corps--snatched from Napoleon's hands the triumph which was within his
+grasp. Wellington had even said to General Hill, who came to take his
+orders at the most critical moment of the battle: "I have no orders to
+give you. There is nothing left for us but to die here. Our retreat is
+even cut off behind us."
+
+Wellington's despairing words have been handed down in various forms.
+Notably he is reported to have said, "Oh! for night or Blücher." When
+he heard the firing, "That is old Blücher at last!" &c. That he was in
+a tight place there is little doubt, and many authorities have stated
+that had Grouchy come up according to orders, the allied forces would
+have been cut to pieces.
+
+Whether it was "caprice of fortune" or not, Wellington claimed to have
+won the battle. "Caprice of fortune" had nothing to do with it. It
+was a hard-fought battle. Treachery and desertion at an important
+juncture undoubtedly weakened the chances of French success. Meneval
+adds that "in no encounter of such importance did the French army
+display more heroism and more resolution than at the Battle of
+Waterloo." Napoleon at St. Helena attributed his defeat to a variety
+of circumstances: to treachery, and to his orders not being carried
+out as they should have been by some of his generals, and often
+concludes: "It must have been Fate, for I ought to have succeeded." He
+was accustomed to say that "One must never ask of Fortune more than
+she can grant," and possibly he erred in this.
+
+Though nearly a century has passed since the catastrophe to France,
+the cause of it is still controversial. It is certain that the conduct
+of Marshal Soult, who was second in command, gave reason for
+suspicion. An old corporal told the Emperor that he was to "be assured
+that Soult was betraying him." General Vandamme was reported to have
+gone over to the enemy. It was also reported to the Emperor by a
+dragoon that General Henin was exhorting the soldiers of his corps to
+go over to the Allies, and while this was going on the General had
+both legs blown away by a cannon shot. Lieutenants, colonels, staff
+officers, and, it is said, officers who were bearing despatches
+deserted, but it is significant that there is not a single instance
+given of the common soldier forsaking his great chief's cause. Lord
+Wolseley declares that if Napoleon had been the man he was at
+Austerlitz, he would have won the Battle of Waterloo. Wolseley is
+supported in this view by many writers.
+
+After Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, Byron said that "bar epilepsy and
+the elements, he would back Napoleon against the field." It is well
+known the odds he had to battle with, including the vilest treachery
+within his own circle.
+
+Marshal Grouchy's conduct will always remain doubtful, even to the
+most friendly critics. High treason bubbling up everywhere must have
+had a dulling effect on the mind of the great genius, though he
+battled with the increasing vigour of it with amazing courage. He saw
+the current was running too strong for him to stem unless he
+determined to again risk the flow of rivers of blood. This he shrank
+from, and abdicated the throne a second time. And then the barbarous,
+crimeful story began.
+
+Sir Hudson Lowe's appointment was a national calamity, but he was the
+nominee of Wellington's coadjutors, and carried out their wishes with
+a criminal exactitude, and they should have stood by him in his dire
+distress, instead of which they allowed him to die in poverty, broken
+in spirit, and a victim to calumny which they ought to have been manly
+enough to share.
+
+Whatever may be said in exculpation of them and him, _they_ were
+undoubtedly too seriously involved to enter upon a fight that would
+have ended disastrously for all of them, and so, with unusual wisdom,
+they never got further than threats.
+
+Sir Hudson was dead something like nine years before Forsyth burst
+upon the public with his eccentric vindication of the unamiable and
+unfortunate ex-Governor. The zealous biographer's research for
+material favourable to his deified hero caused him to ransack prints
+that were written by unfriendly authors and vindictive critics of the
+great captive. Even the State Papers, the most unreliable of all
+documents on this particular subject, were used to prove the goodness
+of Sir Hudson, and when quotations were unavailing, the author
+proceeded to concoct the most amazing ideas in support of the task he
+had set himself to prove.
+
+Writers of anti-Napoleonic history who take in the St. Helena period
+are filled with wonder and contempt of the Emperor, who, according to
+their refined and accurate judgment of the fitness of things, should
+have been eternally grateful to the British Government that they did
+not have him shot. Why should he complain in the fretful way he does
+of his treatment and his condition? A great man would have shown his
+appreciation of all the money that was being spent on the needs for
+his existence and for the better security of his person. It ill
+becomes him to complain of improper treatment after all the trouble
+and commotion he has caused at one time and another. Indeed, a great
+man would bear the burden of captivity with equanimity and praise the
+men who gave him the opportunity of showing how a great soldier could
+carry himself in such unequalled adversity.
+
+This in effect is what these high-minded men of letters say should
+have been the attitude of England's guest. He should have received his
+treatment, harsh and arbitrary though it was, with Christian
+fortitude, and ought to have borne in mind that he was in the custody
+of a Christian King and a Christian people. Dr. Max Lenz, who has
+written a most interesting and on the whole moderate account of
+Napoleon, considering his nationality, drifts into the same
+stereotyped closing phraseology of how Napoleon worried and almost
+wore out the good Sir Hudson Lowe, who only did his duty, and gave in
+to Napoleon whenever he could see his way to do so.
+
+But on the authority of Gourgaud, whom Lord Rosebery would appear to
+regard as the most truthful of all the St. Helena chroniclers, this
+eulogy is totally unwarranted, for truly there is no reliable
+contemporary writer who would have risked his reputation by making so
+reckless a statement that could so easily be proved to be a deliberate
+fabrication. This is not to say that fabrication was an uncommon
+trick, but the Governor's reputation in relation to Napoleon was so
+well and widely known, that no person who claimed to have a clear,
+balanced judgment could defend his silly, vicious conduct.
+
+Napoleon never altered his opinion of Lowe's perfidy towards him. On
+one occasion, in conversation with the truthful Gourgaud, he exclaims,
+"Ah! I know the English. You may be sure that the sentinels stationed
+round this house have orders from the Governor to kill me. They will
+pretend to give me a thrust with a bayonet by mistake some day."
+Gourgaud reports him as saying on another occasion, "Hudson Lowe is a
+Sicilian grafted on a Prussian; they must have chosen him to make me
+die under his charge by inches. It would have been more generous to
+have shot me at once."
+
+It would be absurd to affirm that Napoleon said these things without
+sound foundation, and although, when his personal vanity and abnormal
+jealousy was aroused by some fancied injury to himself, Gourgaud
+would resort to the most remarkable fibbing, what he relates as to his
+master's opinion of the Governor may be relied on, being, as it is,
+confirmed in a more complete form by O'Meara, Las Cases, Montholon,
+Bertrand, Antommarchi, and each of the Commissioners. The former
+sacrificed everything rather than be a party to what he termed
+treatment that was an "outrage on decency."
+
+These are only a few of the men who bear witness against Sir Hudson
+being termed "good"; and I may add one other to the galaxy, poor Dr.
+Stokoe, who shrank from having the abominable indignity of inquisitor
+and spy tacked on to his high office and distinguished profession. He
+refused, as O'Meara had done, to sacrifice his manhood or his sense of
+honour. Tricked into a false position by Lowe and the virtuous (?) Sir
+Robert Plampin, Dr. Stokoe, who had only paid five professional visits
+to Longwood, was deprived of his position and all its advantages,
+after twenty-five years' service in the Navy, because he refused to
+become a sneak and a rascal at the bidding of these two unspeakable
+Government officials, the one disgracing the service of his country in
+the capacity of Governor and the other the name of a sailor and an
+Admiral.
+
+In 1819 Stokoe resigned his position on the _Conqueror_, and sailed
+for England. Lowe sent a report addressed to the Lords of the
+Admiralty by the same vessel, and Stokoe had scarcely landed when he
+was bundled back to St. Helena. He rejoined the _Conqueror_ under the
+impression that his conduct had been approved, but was disillusioned
+by being forthwith put under arrest. A bogus court-martial was
+instituted in the interests of Lowe, and Plampin and these packed
+scallywags sentenced him to dismissal from the Navy. The charges
+against Stokoe were that he failed to report himself to Plampin at the
+Briars after a visit to Longwood, and that in his report he had
+designated the patient as the Emperor instead of General Bonaparte.
+This is a sample of the "good old times" that a certain species of
+creature delights to show forth his wisdom in talking about. I believe
+the immortal John Ruskin indulged occasionally in reminding a
+twentieth-century world of these days that were so blissful.
+
+Forsyth, the self-reputed impartial historian, neglects to insert in
+his work in defence of Lowe's conduct the following amazing charges,
+which shall be fully given. They have been published before, but they
+are so unique, so unmanly, and so perfidious, I think they ought to be
+given to the public again, so that the amiable reader may know the
+depth of infamy to which England had sunk in the early part of the
+nineteenth century. Here is the whole story on which Dr. Stokoe was
+condemned. His bulletin about Napoleon's health asserted that "The
+more alarming symptom is that which was experienced in the night of
+the 16th instant, a recurrence of which may soon prove fatal,
+particularly if medical attendance is not at hand." The Governor and
+the worthy Admiral were incensed at such unheard-of arrogance in
+making a report not in accordance with their wishes and that of the
+Government and the oligarchy, so the indictment of Stokoe, based on
+this bulletin, proceeds: "Intending thereby, contrary to the character
+and duty of a British officer, to create a false impression or belief
+that General Bonaparte was in imminent or considerable danger, and
+that no medical assistance was at hand, he, the said Mr. John Stokoe,
+not having witnessed any such symptom, and knowing that the state of
+the patient was so little urgent that he was at Longwood four hours
+before he was admitted to see him, and further, knowing that Dr.
+Verling was at hand, ready to attend if required in any such emergency
+or considerable danger. He had knowingly and willingly designated
+General Bonaparte in the said bulletin in a manner different from that
+in which he was designated in the Act of Parliament for the better
+custody of his person, and contrary to the practice of His Majesty's
+Government, of the Lieutenant-General Governor of the island, and of
+the said Rear Admiral, and he had done so at the especial instance and
+request of the said General Bonaparte or his attendants, though he,
+Mr. John Stokoe, well knew that the mode of designation was a point in
+dispute between the said General Bonaparte and Lieutenant-General Sir
+Hudson Lowe and the British Government, and that by acceding to the
+wish of the said General Bonaparte he, the said Mr. John Stokoe, was
+acting in opposition to the wish and practice of his own superior
+officers, and to the respect which he owed them under the general
+printed instructions." The very idea of any grown man being expected
+to have "respect" for superior officers who had no more sense of
+justice, dignity, or self-respect than to produce such a blatant
+document for the supreme purpose of covering up a sample of mingled
+folly and rascality, and ruining a poor man who was at their
+ill-conditioned mercy!
+
+Indeed, we need no further justification for Napoleon's statements as
+to what the official intention was towards him. Without a doubt Dr.
+Max Lenz is too reckless in his generosity towards Lowe, for his
+actions from beginning to end of his career prove that he was a
+dreadful creature. The thought of him and of those incarnate spiders
+who kept spinning their web, and for six mortal years disgracing
+humanity, is in truth enough to unsettle one's reason. Vainly they had
+ransacked creation in search of persons in authority to support them
+in the plea of justification, but never a soul came forth to share
+what is now regarded as ingrained criminality.
+
+Perhaps the virulent treatment of Byron ranks with the meanest and
+most impotent actions of the militant oligarchists because of his
+shocking (?) sympathy with England's enemy. The fierce though
+exquisite weaver of rhymes, who had been the idol of the nation and
+the drawing-room, was sought after by the highest and most cultured in
+the land. Byron had fallen a victim to public displeasure partly
+because he gave way to excesses that shocked the orthodoxy of a
+capricious public. He had reached a pinnacle of fame such as no man of
+his years had ever attained, and suddenly without warning he fell, a
+victim to unparalleled vituperation. His faults, if the meagre
+accounts that have been handed down are true, were great, but many of
+them were merely human. His marriage was not compatible, and his love
+entanglements embarrassing. His temper and habits were very similar to
+those of other geniuses, and great allowances should be made for
+personalities whose mental arrangements may be such as to nullify
+normal control.
+
+It is all very well to say that these men should be compelled to
+adhere to a conventional law because ordinary mortals are expected to
+do so, but a man like Byron was not ordinary. In his particular line
+he was a great force with a brain that took spasmodic twists. It is
+absurd to expect that a being whose genius produced "Childe Harold"
+and "Manfred" could be fashioned into living a quite commonplace
+domestic life. Miss Milbanke, who married him, and the public who
+first blessed and then cursed and made him an outcast, were not
+faultless. Had they been possessed of the superiority they piously
+assumed, they would have seen how impossible it was for this eccentric
+man of stormy passions to be controlled and overridden by
+conventionality.
+
+It is possible the serene critic may take exception to this form of
+reasoning and produce examples of genius, such as Wordsworth, who
+lived a strictly pious life, never offending any moral law by a
+hairbreadth; but Wordsworth was not made like Byron; he had not the
+personality of the poor wayward cripple who at one time had brought
+the world to his feet, neither had Wordsworth to fight against such
+wild hereditary complications as Byron. Wordsworth never caught the
+public imagination, while Byron had the power of inflaming it. But,
+alas! neither his magnetic force nor his haughty spirit could stem the
+whirlwind of hatred, rage, and calumny that took possession of the
+virtuous and capricious public. The story of cruelty to his wife grew
+in its enormity, his reported liaisons multiplied beyond all human
+reason. The bleached, white hearts of the oligarchal party had been
+lashed into fury by his withering ridicule and charge of hypocrisy,
+but the climax came like a tornado when the poet's sense of fair play
+caused him to satirise the Prince Regent and eulogise the Emperor
+Napoleon with unique pathos and passion.
+
+This was high treason! He had at last put himself beyond the mercy of
+the chosen people. They had twaddled and stormed about his immorality,
+but his praise of Napoleon sent them into diabolic frenzy. He was
+proclaimed an outlaw and hounded out of the country. The beautiful and
+rich Lady Jersey, a leader of society, convinced that he was
+misunderstood and was being treated with unreasonable severity,
+defended him with all the strength of her resolute character, but
+malignity had sunk too deep even for her power and influence to avert
+the disaster. So intense was the feeling engendered against him that
+it became dangerous for him to drive out without risking an exhibition
+of virulent hostility. Had he merely abused the Prince Regent, it is
+improbable that any exception would have been taken to it; but to
+praise and show compassion for the Man of the French Revolution, who
+had fought for a new condition of things which threatened the fabric
+on which their order held its dominating and despotic sway, was an
+enormity they were persuaded even God in heaven could not tolerate;
+why then, should _they_ be expected to do so?--they were only human.
+Both public and private resentment ran amok, and thus it was that the
+immortal poet's belauding of the immortal Emperor became linked to the
+ignominy of being accused of gross immorality. The reaction against
+this eccentric being was a fanaticism. There was neither sense nor
+reason in it, and as he said, "If what they say of me be true, then I
+am not fit for England; but if it be false, then England is not fit
+for me"; and with this thought thrilling in his mind he left his
+native land, never more to see it.
+
+Caught without a doubt by the spirit of the great man whose eulogy had
+given such offence in certain quarters, he embarked on the crusade of
+emancipating the Greeks, was stricken with fever, and died at
+Missolonghi.
+
+Adhering to human tradition, the nation which had so recently cast
+him out became afflicted with grief. Men and women cast reflection on
+themselves for their misguided judgment of him, and he became a god in
+memory again, his wife being a singular exception in the great
+demonstration of national penitence. The incomparable poet had sinned
+grievously, if rumour may be relied upon, but he was made to suffer
+out of all proportion to his sinning. His faults were only different
+from other men's. It may be said quite truly that one of his defects
+was in having been born a genius, and allowing himself to be idolised
+by a public whose opinions and friendships were shifty. Second, he
+erred in disregarding and satirising puritanical conventionalisms.
+Thirdly, and probably the most provocative of all, was his defiance of
+the fiery patriotism of some of the ruling classes in lauding him whom
+they stigmatised as the enemy of the human race and lampooning the
+precious Prince Regent. His extraordinary talents did not shield him,
+any more than they did the hero of fifty pitched battles whose
+greatness he had extolled.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] Vol. iii. pp. 451-2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MESDAMES DE STAËL AND DE REMUSAT
+
+
+It is a strange human frailty that cannot stand for long the purgatory
+of seeing the elevation of a great public benefactor. The less
+competent the critics, the more merciless they are in their
+declamation and intrigue. They hint at faults, and if this is too
+ineffective, they invent them. Men in prominent public positions
+rarely escape the vituperation of the professional scandalmonger.
+These creatures exist everywhere. Their vanity is only equal to their
+incompetency in all matters that count. Their capacity consists in
+knowing the kind of diversion a certain class of people relish, and
+the more exalted their prey is, and the larger the reputation he may
+have for living a blameless life, the more persistent their
+whisperings, significant nods, and winkings become. They know, and
+they could tell, a thing or two which would paralyse belief. They
+could show how correct they have been in consistently proclaiming
+that so and so was a very much overestimated man, and never ought to
+have been put into such a high position; "and besides, I don't want to
+say all I know, but his depravity! Well, there, I could, if I would,
+open some people's eyes, but I don't want to do anybody any harm," and
+so on. These condescending ulcerous-minded defamers congratulate
+themselves on their goodness of heart in withholding from the public
+gaze their nasty imaginary accusations, which are merely the thoughts
+of a conceited and putrid mind.
+
+Many and many a poor man, without knowing it, is the innocent victim
+of unfounded accusations, hatched and circulated in that subtle,
+insinuating way so familiar to the sexless calumniator. The genuine
+female traducer is an awful scourge, especially if she be political.
+No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning. She can circulate
+a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will
+appear to trip her into responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile
+is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more
+than a mere oration. It emits the impression of a bite.
+
+Madame de Staël showed an aptitude for this ignoble aggressiveness
+towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every form of strategy to
+allure him into a flirtation with her. She was frequently a sort of
+magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of
+prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who had
+been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline in her
+methods. Talleyrand and Fouché made use of this latter phase of her
+character to serve their own ends. She had a talent which was used for
+mischief, but her vulgarity and egotism were quite deplorable. She
+would have risked the torments of Hades if she could but have embarked
+upon a liaison with Napoleon. She plied him with letters well seasoned
+with passion, but all to no purpose. She came to see him at the Rue
+Chantereine, and was sent away. She invited him to balls to which he
+never went. But she had opportunities given her which were used in
+forcing herself upon his attention. At one of these she held him for
+two hours, and imagining she had made a great impression, she asked
+him abruptly, "Who was the most superior woman in antiquity, and who
+is so at the present day?" Napoleon had had enough of her love-making
+chatter, so snapped out in his quick practical way, "She who has borne
+the most children." The lady's discomfiture may be imagined. It was a
+deadly thrust.
+
+This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France without
+success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of
+Napoleon's at the time. Her letters to him were passionate, and
+Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill
+her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to. This fussy female
+intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million
+francs she would write anything he wished. She was immediately packed
+about her business.
+
+Madame de Staël was not an important personage at all, but she had the
+power of attracting people to her who, like herself, had grievances to
+be discussed, and we may without doubt conclude that these gatherings
+were composed of well-selected intriguers whom she had fixed in her
+feline eye. Her great grievance was the First Consul's, and
+subsequently the Emperor's, coldness towards her. He estimated her at
+her true value. He treated her with the courtesy due to a French
+citizen, but nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he
+rebuked her with due consideration for her sex. When she caused people
+to talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his
+habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not
+resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions. But this
+human curiosity had power for mischief.
+
+She was not only an intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in
+love-making, she developed a literary tyrannicide. She condescended to
+patronise the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him
+that her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions.
+When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop to
+religious persecution, and put the churches into use. He
+re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his influence
+one hundred million Catholics. This wise policy created strong
+opposition from a section of the clergy. Madame de Staël and the
+friends whom she had whipped up, many of them being the principal
+generals, were mischievously opposed to it, and brought pressure to
+bear so that he might be induced to establish the Protestant religion.
+Napoleon ignored them all. He knew he was on the right ground, and
+that the nation as a whole was with him. France was essentially a
+Roman Catholic country, and the head of it gave back to her people
+what was regarded as the true faith. The exile frequently referred to
+these matters in conversation with one or other of his followers.
+Napoleon's disdain for Madame de Staël was well merited, and he never
+saw or heard of her that it did not set his nerves on edge. She was
+the "death on man" sort of female who persisted in being, either
+directly or indirectly, his political adviser. Dr. Max Lenz accuses
+the Emperor of developing a despotism that caused him to drive a woman
+like Madame de Staël from land to land, "and trampled under foot every
+manifestation of independence."
+
+Really, the good doctor lays himself open to the charge of not making
+himself better informed of the doings of this sinister person, who was
+steeped in treason, and who refused to accept the laws of life with
+proper submission. It is merely farcical to assume that Madame de
+Staël was kept well under discipline because of a whimsical despotism
+on the part of the man who had fixed a settled government on France,
+and who was kept well informed of the attempts of the Baroness and her
+anarchist associates to undermine and destroy the Constitution it had
+cost France and its ruler so much to reconstruct and consolidate. "Let
+her be judged as a man," said Napoleon, and in truth he was right in
+deciding in this way, as her whole attitude aped the masculine. He was
+right, too, in showing how wholly objectionable she had made herself
+to him. He had been led to adopt a sort of "For God's sake, what does
+she want?" idea of her during the early years of his rule, though he
+never at any time showed weakness in his actual dealings with her. He
+disliked women who asserted themselves as men, and he disliked the
+amorous offspring of Necker more because he loathed women who threw
+themselves into the arms of men; she had surfeited him with her
+persistent attempts at making love to him. In one of her letters to
+him she says it was evidently an egregious error, an entire
+misunderstanding of human nature, that the quiet and timid Josephine
+had bound up her fate with that of a tempestuous temper like his. She
+and Napoleon seemed born for each other, and it appeared as if nature
+had only gifted her with so enthusiastic a disposition in order to
+enable her to admire such a hero as he was. Napoleon in his fury tore
+this precious letter up and exclaimed, "This manufacturer of
+sentiments dares to compare herself with Josephine!"
+
+The letters were not answered, though this had no deterrent effect on
+Madame de Staël. She continued to pour out in profusion adoration. He
+was "a god who had descended on earth." She addressed him as such, and
+his callous reception of her madness drove her into despair and
+vindictiveness which brought salutary punishment to herself. Her
+weapons of wit and sarcasm availed nothing. He looked upon her as a
+sort of gifted lunatic that had got the idea of seducing him into her
+head. She became so mischievous that he bundled her out of France.
+"As long as I live," said he, "she shall not return." He advised that
+she should live in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for
+preference. There she would have full scope for her genius in
+producing pamphlets. "Oh yes," says the "god who had descended on
+earth"; "she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is
+offensive and revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave
+things and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one
+of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed to
+come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of
+retirement, but the great man's faith in his own sound judgment was
+not to be shaken.
+
+"Her promises are all very fine," he said, "but I know what they mean.
+Why should she be so anxious to be in the immediate reach of tyranny?"
+
+Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made
+her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire.
+This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste
+of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish
+appearance and whirling words.
+
+This man of method and order, who had a keen eye for grace or beauty
+in its varied phases, was always pronounced in his opinion that women
+should dress simply but with faultless taste. It improves good looks,
+and, if need be, it covers up defects; but in any case it is the
+bounden duty of women to dress with some regard to conventional
+custom. It gives them much greater influence than they would otherwise
+have. Most women know the importance of this trick, and do it, and
+they are amply rewarded for their good sense.
+
+Madame de Staël did quite the opposite. She appeared before the Man of
+Destiny in a shocking garb, and he regarded it as a piece of
+impertinence. It stirred up his prejudice openly against her, in spite
+of his indifferent attempts to conceal it, but her egotism was so
+gigantic, she actually believed she was making great strides towards
+curing his callousness towards her. This woman has been used
+elaborately by anti-Napoleonic writers to prove that he was an inhuman
+despot and she a high-minded, virtuous Frenchwoman, and a genius in
+the art of government. They quote her as a great authority. Her
+knowledge of his evil deeds and mistakes of administration is set
+forth as being flawless. They bemoan his treatment of this amiable
+female, and in the midst of their ecstasy of compassion and wrath they
+hand down to posterity a record of unheard-of woes. There is little
+doubt Napoleon's remark that "the Neckers were an odd lot, always
+comforting themselves in mutual admiration," is well merited. The
+daughter utilised the name of the father with lavish persistence. Her
+ambition and impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon
+bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true
+heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of
+relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put
+the most militant suffragette in our time to the blush.
+
+But suddenly her hysteria subsided, and after a brief repose she
+switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the man whose
+life she had set herself to make one long ache if he did not yield to
+her arrogant pretensions. She had written in a perpetual scream of his
+iniquities, and was thrown over by her former associates, who saw
+clearly enough that no real good could be accomplished by whining
+about cruelty when stern flawless justice only existed. They
+recognised that she was a personality, but her antics puzzled them,
+and well they might. She bewailed her isolation with a throbbing
+heart, and after committing indiscretions that Robespierre would have
+sent her head flying for, she was suddenly bereaved of her neglected
+husband. This event gave Benjamin Constant a better chance, but the
+Baroness aimed at higher game. She was held in the grip of a delusion
+that she had it in her power to hypnotise the First Consul and cause
+him to become her lover. She had an uncontrollable idolatry for this
+august person, whom she hoped to win over by writing for the
+consumption of his enemies the many reasons for her aversion to him.
+Without a doubt the woman was madly in love with the object of her
+supposed aversion, and was driven to frenzy by his obvious distaste
+for her.
+
+In 1811 she secretly married a young officer called M. de Rocca, who
+had fallen desperately in love with her. He was amiable and brilliant;
+became an officer of Hussars in the French Army; did valiant deeds
+amongst the hills in Andalusia in 1809; and was awarded the Cross of
+the Legion of Honour. Subsequently he was shot down by guerillas,
+badly wounded in the thigh, foot, and chest; had a romantic
+deliverance; was hidden in a chapel by a young lady, and nursed into
+consciousness and convalescence by loving care, which enabled him to
+reach Madrid, and ultimately Geneva, where, in the radiance of
+youthful infatuation, he rode with reckless energy down a risky steep
+part of the city, so that he might pass the window of the lady, who
+was more than old enough to be his mother, and in a few months was to
+be made his wife. A child was born to them in 1812, and in order to
+save its legitimacy, she acknowledged the marriage to a few, but it
+was not generally known until after her death that Rocca was her
+lawful husband. Conscious, and sensitive no doubt, that it was not
+quite natural for old women to marry young men, she prudently had the
+event kept secret. The young husband did not only possess tender
+affection for her, but he combined chivalrous ambitions which made the
+romance additionally attractive.
+
+Be it remembered that Benjamin Constant was a former lover of Madame
+de Staël. The young bridegroom, following a natural instinct, had a
+great dislike to Benjamin, and took an opportunity of really small
+provocation to challenge him to a duel, which, owing to wiser
+counsels, was never fought. There does not seem to have been very much
+to fight a duel about. Constant had a quarrel with his father in which
+he involved Madame de Staël, and Rocca resented it like a gallant
+youthful husband, who was at that stage when it is thought desirable
+to shoot or otherwise kill somebody, in order to show the extent of
+his devotion to his enchantress. Rocca had hoped to die (so he said)
+before her, but fate willed that he should linger on and suffer for
+six months more. Madame de Staël slept peacefully into her last long
+sleep on July 14, 1817.
+
+Her career was chequered and restless. She had influence, which she
+used oft-times recklessly, and led less gifted people than herself
+into committing needless errors. She wrote and spoke with a wit and
+sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was directed. Her
+bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her own making. For
+the most part she wrote with superficial feeling and without real
+soul. During the Napoleonic regime, time was a creeping horror to her,
+but she found pleasure in the thought that it was a torture to her
+suffering heart. George Eliot knew and used her extraordinary power;
+Madame de Staël wasted hers. Nevertheless she had many friends who
+loved her society. Wellington was brought under her influence. Byron,
+who shrank from her at first, says, "She was the best creature in the
+world." She had been at some pains to try to bring Lord and Lady Byron
+together. She was capable of impressing people with her charm, but
+magnetic influence she had none when living, and has left none behind.
+
+Rocca exclaimed, when he heard that she had passed to the shadows,
+"What crown could replace that which I have lost!" And the distracted
+Benjamin Constant, filled with remorse, reproached himself for some
+undefined suffering he had caused her, and did penance all night
+through in the death-chamber of his divine Juliet.
+
+This crazy woman seems to have been capricious in everything. She made
+and broke liaisons with amazing rapidity while undergoing a compulsory
+sojourn at Coppet. She formed there an attachment for the son of a
+person named M. Baranti, which very nearly cheated Rocca from becoming
+her husband, and the faithless Benjamin Constant from being,
+erroneously perhaps, associated with her name as the author of the
+manuscript of St. Helen, and she the notoriety of writing "Ten Years
+of Exile," which was published after her death.
+
+The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet, and
+being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that he might
+have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned the famous
+authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with the impulse to
+immortalise his severance by attempting suicide, and thereby ending
+her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame. The attempt, presumably
+feeble, left her long years of mischievous mania for attack on the
+supposed author of all her woes. She readily found amongst his enemies
+(and thus the enemies of France) those who yearned with her in the
+hope she freely and openly expressed that her native land should
+suffer defeats, and in this her desire was fully acquiesced in by the
+combination of hysterical and purblind Kings, aided by a coterie of
+irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in
+order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world
+should be driven from it. Many of these creatures were members of the
+same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent
+address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the
+hold his personality had on the national life. The following is what
+they say, and what they ask him to do:--"You have brought us out of
+the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the
+present. Great man, complete your work, and make it as immortal as
+your glory!"
+
+The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated with
+the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance to
+Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who sought her guilty and
+inflammatory aid.
+
+Then we come to another female celebrity, though less notable than
+Madame de Staël, who is regarded by the traducers of Napoleon as a
+historian because she wrote in her memoirs that which they wished the
+world to think of him, and because they flattered themselves that it
+exculpated them from the charge of injustice and mere hatred. Madame
+de Staël's book, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," made
+its appearance. Its violent characteristics inflamed Charles de
+Remusat to urge his mother to enter into competition with this work,
+the result being the production of Madame de Remusat's memoirs, edited
+by her grandson, M. Paul de Remusat. Charles (her son) had reproached
+her for having destroyed memoirs she had written previously,[23] but
+lurking in her mind was the thought of all the favours she and her
+family had received, and her correspondence, teeming with adulation
+for the man whom she was now induced to declaim against. The knowledge
+that she was about to expose her perfidy "worried" her, and she wrote
+to Charles thus:--"If it should happen that some day my son were to
+publish all this, what would people think of me?" and the son,
+obviously influenced by the mother's fears, delayed until the fall of
+the Second Empire the publication of one of the most unreliable and
+barefaced calumnies ever produced against a great benefactor.
+
+In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited general envy
+by the high position the First Consul had given them. She was first
+Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the Household, her husband
+being "attached to Napoleon's household." She says that she was witty
+and of a refined mind, and though she was less "good-looking" than her
+companions, she had the advantage of being able to "charm his mind,"
+and she was almost the only woman with whom he condescended to
+converse. She relates residing in the camp at Boulogne "and having
+breakfast and dinner daily with Bonaparte." In the evenings they used
+to "discuss philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First
+Consul relating about the years of his youth and early achievements."
+
+No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the same way as
+Madame de Staël that she would one day be raised to heights of glory
+unequalled in history, and the disappointment embittered her. She
+admits that she "suffered on account of blighted hopes and deceived
+affections and the failure of her calculations." Moreover, Josephine
+had an eye on the lady whose husband in evil times sought her
+influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping hand and save them
+from the poverty by which they were beset. Napoleon's big heart
+spontaneously responded to the appeal of his fascinating spouse, the
+result being that favours were heaped upon M. de Remusat and his wife
+from time to time, and Josephine's goodness was repaid by seeing
+Madame in feline fashion purring at her Imperial master's affections,
+and on the authority of Madame de Remusat she "becomes cold and
+jealous." Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making,
+she, like Madame de Staël under similar circumstances, took to
+intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace. She is anxious to
+make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so relates that
+he told her that "his desire was to make her a great lady, but he
+could not be expected to do this unless she showed devotion." But in
+spite of the wife's defection, as is always Napoleon's way, he does
+not visit her sins on the husband, but raises him to the important
+posts of Grand Master of the Robes, High Chamberlain, and then
+Superintendent of Theatres, and in addition gave him large sums to
+keep up his status, and notwithstanding Josephine's cause for "cold
+jealousy," Madame de Remusat was generously kept in her service after
+Marie Louise had become Empress. M. de Remusat remained in the
+Emperor's service until the fall of the Empire, and then went over to
+Louis XVIII. Both of these sycophants were content to accept the
+favours of the Imperial couple and eat their bread and cringe at their
+feet while they plotted with the plotters for the Emperor's downfall.
+
+Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a history
+writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by day as they
+occurred have been published, and the memoirs put side by side with
+these throbbings of the heart reveal an incomparable baseness that
+makes one wonder at the reckless, blind partisanship which induced her
+descendants to give the memoirs to an intelligent public.
+
+In the memoirs she says:--"Nothing is so base as his soul; it is
+closed against all generous impulses, and possesses no true grandeur.
+I noticed that he always failed to understand and to admire a noble
+action;" and again she goes on to say that "In war he foresaw the
+means of calling away our attention from the reflections which, sooner
+or later, his government could not fail to suggest to us, and he
+reserved it in order to dazzle, or at least to enforce silence on us.
+Bonaparte felt that he would be infallibly lost the day when his
+enforced inactivity enabled us to think both of him and of ourselves."
+"What a relief whenever the Emperor went away! His absence always
+seemed to bring solace. People breathed more freely."
+
+Now this would have been all very well. It was the stereotyped
+phraseology of Napoleon's avowed enemies. He knew it, and viewed it
+with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and her
+snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with over-indulgence and
+smitten with wounded pride, they regarded language such as now appears
+in her memoirs as mere froth. She practically says that she held the
+same views in 1818 as she did from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote
+this she no doubt relied on her correspondence being kept snugly
+private or destroyed; but it has been published, and here are some
+amazing extracts from it:--
+
+"I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of which
+extends to Antwerp! Consider what a man he must be who can rule it
+single-handed, and what few instances history offers like him!"[24]
+"Whilst he creates, so to speak, new nations in his progress, people
+must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably
+prosperous state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a
+ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so
+long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy."
+
+"When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and _moderate
+liberty_, which is quite sufficient for me, the glory my country is
+covered with, the pomp and even the magnificence surrounding us, and
+in which I delight, because it is proof that success has crowned our
+efforts; when, in short, I consider that all this prosperity is the
+work of _one man_, I am filled with admiration and gratitude."[25]
+
+"What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between
+ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these
+feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them;
+besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the praises
+that come from the heart than those that proceed from the mind."[26]
+
+"Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!! What a pleasure it
+is to see the Emperor again, and how much that pleasure will be felt
+here! This splendid campaign, this glorious peace, this prompt return,
+all is really marvellous."[27]
+
+"Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it is true
+that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed, no lover was
+ever more anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His
+Majesty to meet our desires. You demand a prompt march? Very well, the
+army that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in
+Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender of
+Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more victories? Here
+they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle,
+in order that no kind of success may be wanting. Add to these a whole
+series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and
+kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share
+also that glory, and can join it to all the national pride it arouses
+in us."[28]
+
+"I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected that, had
+I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe, have thrown my
+arms round his neck, although I should, afterwards, have been
+compelled to fall on my knees and ask pardon for my conduct."[29]
+
+So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul yearns for
+the gift of being able to do him full justice by writing a history, a
+panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show him to be immeasurably
+above all men living or dead. She fears that people cannot see his
+nobility and greatness as she does. She is bewildered and acclaims him
+a god. Here is another outburst of passionate devotion:--
+
+"That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which was
+always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst of
+danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution, arouse
+always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never be
+surpassed."[30]
+
+It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of the great
+ambition of her life, _i.e._, to picture him as he was. The writing is
+good, the description picturesque, and I believe the impartial mind
+will also regard it as accurate. She believes "that even persons who
+are hardest to please must be compelled to admit that he is a most
+amiable sovereign." She is smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and
+says it is so sweet that she really regards it as another favour. She
+wishes her husband could "often secure some of those comforting smiles
+from the master," and tells him he is "no fool to be fond of those
+smiles," and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.
+
+She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her prayer) when
+he is fighting and conquering. Her heart is grieved when he is at a
+great distance from them. She eulogises his great qualities to her
+son, and advises him "to study all that she was able to tell him of
+the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up," and the boy
+exclaimed, "Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of
+Plutarch's lives!"
+
+But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay
+for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame
+de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head.
+She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of
+emoluments, seeking for attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw
+in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook
+wholesome justice for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only
+connived at treason, but prayed for the extinction of him against whom
+it was directed. Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium
+of malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what
+are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former eulogies and
+opinions so vividly told in the "Letters of Madame de Remusat." Now
+that adversity so terrible overshadows the matchless hero of the
+letters, she throws every scruple aside, and warms to her task in
+writing unstinted, gross, and manifest libels. Contrast with the
+"letters" these quotations from the memoirs. She avows that "nothing
+is so base as his soul. It is closed against all generous impulses; he
+never could admire a noble action." "He possesses an innate depravity
+of nature, and has a special taste for evil." "His absence brought
+solace, and made people breathe freely." "He is devoid of every kind
+of personal courage, and generous impulses are foreign to him." "He
+put a feeling of restraint into everybody that approached him." "He
+was feared everywhere." "He delighted to excite fear." "He did not
+like to make people comfortable." "He was afraid of the least
+familiarity." This latter grievance, combined of course with the rest,
+is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady
+in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed
+by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps necessary to pause here and
+remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently
+of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely "without malice,"
+and the sole object of writing them at all was that "the truth should
+be told."
+
+Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because
+in the former she over and over again declares that "his comely
+manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with audacious
+bitterness she affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."
+
+Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible to
+depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King's
+return," and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer
+of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the
+demands of "truth" and "grows quite disheartened."
+
+It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding
+motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs. She avows it
+is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the editor in his
+preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two
+years." That is, it took her more than two years to write the "truths"
+contained in the memoirs disavowing the "truths" so vehemently given
+in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a
+writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal
+motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter,
+radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive
+justice.
+
+The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he
+advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former
+statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by
+favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but
+none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband
+were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of
+all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares
+she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and
+forbidden the writing of such unworthy vituperations against him.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] Madame de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred
+Days, doubtless because she had in her mind the probability that
+Napoleon might firmly establish himself on the throne, and the
+discovery of anti-Napoleon MSS. might have acted seriously against
+herself and family being appointed to important positions. Moreover,
+the greater danger of getting herself into trouble was constantly in
+her mind.
+
+[24] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 195.
+
+[25] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p, 196.
+
+[26] Ibid., vol. i. p. 160.
+
+[27] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 2.
+
+[28] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 190.
+
+[29] Ibid., vol. i. p. 393.
+
+[30] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 45.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOSEPHINE
+
+
+One of the phenomena of human affairs is the part destined for
+Josephine, daughter of M. Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie,
+sugar-planter at Martinique, and friend of the Marquis de Beauharnais,
+whose son Alexandre was fated to marry her when she was but sixteen
+years of age. The marriage took place on December 13, 1779, at
+Noisy-le-Grand. The pompous young bridegroom speaks of his young bride
+in appreciative terms in a letter to his father, and in order that his
+parent may not be disappointed as to her beauty, he explains that in
+this respect she may not be up to his expectations. He regards the
+pleasure of being with her as very sweet, and forms the resolution of
+putting her through a course of education, as this had been grievously
+neglected.
+
+The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the
+sweetness of Josephine's character, but then he was not her husband,
+and it soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it
+came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off after the
+birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker's apprentice, Queen of
+Holland, and mother of Napoleon III. Alexandre had gone to Martinique,
+and it was there the news of his daughter's birth came to him. He knew
+before leaving France that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his
+pleasure to her. The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend,
+Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, that his "son was worthy of being his
+son-in-law, and that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble
+qualities." These virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable
+rapidity after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure
+on the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful to
+the poor "uneducated" little Creole girl who really thought she loved
+him. From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre Beauharnais
+was an ill-conditioned cruel prig. This excellent son with "fine and
+noble qualities" had not been long at Martinique before he associated
+himself with a lady of questionable virtue, who was much older than
+he. This person's dislike to Josephine caused her to pour into his
+willing ears and receptive mind scandalous stories of his childwife's
+love intrigues before she left her native island. This gave Alexandre
+a fine opportunity of writing a letter to her, disclaiming the
+paternity of Hortense, and accusing her of intrigues with "an officer
+in the Martinique regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship
+called the _Cæsar_." He declares he knows the contents of her letters
+to her lovers, and "swears by the Heaven which enlightens him that the
+child is another's, and that strange blood flows in its veins," and
+"it shall never know his shame"; and so the virtuous Alexandre goes
+rambling on, until he comes to the slashing finish in the good old
+style that persons similarly situated adopt to those whom they have
+grievously injured. He soars between elegant politeness and old-time
+aristocratic ferocity: "Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you
+will receive from your desperate and unhappy husband." Then comes the
+inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit of
+murder. He is to be in France soon if his health does not break down
+under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to be out of the
+house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she will find in him a
+tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp,
+a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of
+ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover
+to his own unfaithfulness.
+
+But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his coming
+back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were not renewed.
+His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at
+the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of "the
+two, she is not the one to be most pitied."
+
+M. Masson declares that there was never a reconciliation, and that
+they lived apart, but met in society, and spoke to one another, mainly
+about their children's education. Josephine caused him to withdraw
+before her lawyer the gross and unfounded charges he had made against
+her and to agree to a satisfactory allowance.
+
+Alexandre, finding soldiering distasteful, embarked upon a political
+career as an aristocrat Liberal. His rise to position was swift, and
+after the death of Mirabeau he followed him as President of the
+Assembly. Before his fall came, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of
+the Army of the Rhine, and at the head of sixty thousand men failed to
+relieve Mayence and resigned his command.
+
+His Liberal pretensions did not prevent him being included amongst the
+proscribed. He was made captive, accused of attempting to escape,
+condemned to death and guillotined. Josephine's device of reassuring
+the Revolutionists of her conversion to Republicanism by apprenticing
+Hortense to a dressmaker and Eugene to a carpenter did not avail. She
+was suspected and sent to Les Carmes, where frequent conversations
+took place between her philosophic and abandoned husband and herself,
+mainly concerning their children's education, and had not the reaction
+against the regime of blood brought about the fall of Robespierre, she
+would assuredly have shared the fate of Alexandre; and had the cry of
+"A bas le tyrant" been heard a few days earlier, Beauharnais would
+have escaped too, and cheated Josephine of becoming Empress of the
+French and Queen of Italy. As it was, some of the very same people who
+but a short time before had harangued the mob to "Behold the friend of
+the people, the great defender of liberty," switched their murderous
+vengeance on to their late idol, and ere many hours the widow
+Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the appalling end and the
+brevity of time that seemed left to her impressed Josephine with all
+its ghastly horror. She had shrieked and wept herself into a deathlike
+illness. The doctor predicted that she could not survive more than a
+week, and for this reason she escaped being brought before the
+Tribunal.
+
+A wondrous Providence this, which, with frantic speed, broke the
+power of a hideous monster, and thereby saved the woman who was to
+enter upon a new era, and to be borne swiftly on to share the glory of
+an unequalled Empire.
+
+M. Masson's theory is that Josephine's womanly grief had much to do
+with awakening the sentiment of Paris, and breaking the Reign of
+Terror; and, indeed, there is some reason in this view, for tears are
+not only useful as an indication of sorrow, suffering, or conquest,
+but an effective means of gaining sympathy. Josephine was an adept at
+trying the efficacy of weeping, and if M. Masson has gauged the
+influence of melting the heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then
+Josephine was gifted with, and made the instrument of, a divine
+instinct that should claim attention and reverence for all time, even
+though her subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the
+eye.
+
+But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful
+Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the
+shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led
+to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with
+calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the
+strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not
+granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with
+fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!" and
+these throbbing magical words reverberated through France with
+wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with superstitious
+awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name of Liberty,
+Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on the scaffold of
+the stainless victim, then on the loathsome prisons that were filled
+with suspects, rich and poor, all over France. Then, in time, the
+dooming to death of some of the prominent polecats who committed
+murder in the name of liberty and fraternity brought Robespierreism to
+an end. Robespierre himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who
+sent him to "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and
+Samson did the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting
+words of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated
+the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being committed
+in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly being said in
+its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's inspired phrase
+rather than Josephine's tears as being in some degree responsible for
+the end of the Reign of Terror.
+
+After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of
+anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put her
+emotions aside and plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes
+one wonder whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful
+doom that had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter
+behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her, bids her
+"goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom she knows he
+loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in their hearts."
+"Goodbye," says he; "for the last time in my life I press you and my
+children to my breast."
+
+These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the
+widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of their tragic
+married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the great essentials
+which assure happiness.
+
+Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round
+rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes
+they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too
+familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young
+lady suspect. The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable,
+and they may well be regarded as malicious slander. It is not unlikely
+that Josephine was on friendly terms with the General before they met
+in Les Carmes, but that it was more than friendship is a mere
+hypothesis. Her relation with that unspeakable libertine Barras was
+especially unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after
+her release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She
+was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her family,
+and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the chosen friend
+of a creature who took advantage of her and then betrayed her to the
+world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the sad and sickening story
+of his connection with Josephine, and gloats over the opportunity it
+gives him of repeating conversations he had with General Hoche as to
+her love entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress
+of Hoche in the sight of the whole world."
+
+The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal
+statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the relations
+he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself to him may not
+be readily believed when he deliberately involves his own friends in
+the liaisons. There is no question of what his part was in the
+degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of dragging other names into
+the moral quagmire, in order, it may be, to justify his own dealings
+and to further debase her, could only be undertaken by a person soaked
+with the venom of indecency, and, in this case, had no other object
+than that of gratifying his malice against her husband. His
+assumption of moral superiority is quite entertaining when he, the
+seducer and corrupter, speaks of the unfortunate woman's
+"libertinism," and calls her in his bitterness "a licentious Creole."
+
+This representative of the Republic one and indivisible, embodying
+Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth
+century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the
+France which knew Charlemagne.
+
+"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the
+Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims that
+Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly improbable that
+Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his career having his veracity
+doubted. In itself, the incident is a small matter. The only real
+interest attached to it is the touching pathos of the small boy asking
+for and receiving the sword, which, of course, gave his mother the
+opportunity of calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in
+this way it has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were
+married four months after, _i.e._, March 9, 1796, her age being
+thirty-two and his twenty-five.
+
+The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for mud to
+throw at his master's memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry
+O'Meara at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St.
+Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not come
+about in this way, it would have been brought about in some other.
+But, whether the story has any interest further than the writer has
+stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than Barras, who
+boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that it was he who had
+perceived in him a genius and urged the Directory to appoint him
+Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant at this impudent falsehood,
+and declares that it was he and not Barras who nominated and urged the
+appointment of Bonaparte. Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted
+one. It matters little who the selected spokesman of the inspiration
+was. France needed a man, and he was found.
+
+On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to
+spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was
+commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with
+Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love
+and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife and
+strenuous responsibility, this young missionary, representing the
+solacing new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor
+forgets the responsibilities of his instructions to lay Italy at his
+feet.
+
+Nor does he for a moment forget his wedded obligations. He is in love,
+nay, desperately in love. The image of Josephine is constantly soaring
+around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of frantic devotion at the
+cannon's mouth, in the Canton, anywhere, and everywhere. He is as rich
+in phrase as he is in courage and resource. He finds time to scrawl a
+few burning words of passion which indicate that his soul is at once
+aflame with thoughts of her and the grim military task he has
+undertaken.
+
+He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory and
+inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen
+force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities. Order out of
+chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any
+one's religious belief; stern discipline--these were some of the
+behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns
+were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension
+in the minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process
+of ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the
+command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to commence
+raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and Naples.
+
+To this he promptly sends a vigorous though respectful reply, which
+is intended to convey that they are to have done with such impractical
+foolery. It is a world-shaking fight he has on hand. The honour and
+military glory of France are at stake. It is not for mere theoretic
+upholders of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to meddle with such
+things. He says to them, "Kellerman is an excellent General, and could
+lead an army as well as I," but then he goes on to plead the
+superiority of his army, always modestly leaving himself outside the
+praise he takes care to bestow on others, and adds with fervour, "The
+command must remain in the hands of one man." "I believe," says he,
+"that one bad General is better than two good ones." "The art of war,
+like the art of government, is a matter of careful handling." Then
+with delicious frankness he flashes out: "I cannot allow myself to
+have my feet entangled." "A free hand or resignation." That is his
+ultimatum. This thunderbolt of bewildering audacity sent a flutter
+through the sanctuary of Fraternity, and in hot haste a message of
+confidence, coupled with an order that he shall be left in supreme
+control, was dispatched by a vigilant energetic courier. The Directory
+were made to see that a great power had arisen which would hold
+dominion over them.
+
+And yet this young and terrible conqueror, who judiciously dominated
+every will in the process of his achievements, he who defiantly told
+his masters that he would not suffer his "feet to be entangled" by
+their amateurish absurdities, was entangled for a time by a rapturous
+infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive habits and a
+silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and ignore him. His
+imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to him are piteously
+pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are without example in
+neat concise phrase, and portray a man possessed of great human
+virtues. It is when the love-storm attacks him that he flies into
+extravagances, such as when he writes that "she has more than robbed
+him of his soul," and that "she is devouring his blood." He writes to
+his brother Joseph that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he
+does the same thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is
+when he begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be
+less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my reason
+and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He complains of
+her letters being "cold as friendship," and adds, "But oh! how I am
+infatuated."
+
+Josephine has never been addressed in such consuming language before.
+She is flattered, and her little head becomes swollen with the idea
+of greatness. The ridiculous endearments amuse her. She must not
+allow such opportunities of creating envy to pass, so she shows the
+letters as they come along to her most intimate friends, amongst whom
+Barras still continues high on the list, and with an air of dizzy
+pride she playfully says Bonaparte is "very droll." And really,
+Josephine was right. Some of his letters are "droll," but they are
+genuine, and this highly honoured woman, launched into prominence and
+position, and reaping the laurels of his work disgraced her womanhood
+by showing his letters, and doubly disgraced herself by ridiculing
+them.
+
+It was not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent by
+Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important dispatches, and
+also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her that she had carried
+her unwillingness to join her husband far enough. Doubtless the
+gallant commissioners had given her a hint that further refusal meant
+inevitable reprisals. It is quite feasible that the rollicking Junot,
+who was always prepared to give his soul for Bonaparte, was frank
+enough to intimate that there was a risk of driving her husband into
+the arms of some covetous female, many of whom were angling in the
+hope of capturing the brilliant and rising General, and that already
+he was showing signs of jealousy and suspicion of her good faith.
+
+News of fresh victories was coming in, fêtes were held in honour of
+them, crowds of people congregated, and at the sight of her leaning on
+the arm of Junot after leaving the Luxembourg they shout, "Long live
+General Bonaparte! Long live Citizeness Bonaparte!" She is enthralled
+by the adulation which reflected glory showers upon her. Her spirit
+rebels against leaving all its pleasures and pomps. But she has
+exhausted every canon of truth in excuses, even that of being
+pregnant, and finds herself inevitably driven to abandon the seat of
+joy and easy morals and set off for Milan with her dog "Fortune" and
+Eugene, her son. Tears flow copiously at the thought of her wrongs,
+but these are dried up with the compensating opportunity of commencing
+a flirtation with Murat, who is soon to become the husband of Caroline
+Bonaparte.
+
+The popular opinion was that it was Junot who was the object of her
+designs, but the future Duchess d'Abrantès scornfully repudiates this,
+and declares that Junot's devotion to his beloved General forbade him
+reciprocating his wife's indiscretion, so he made love to Louise
+Compoint, Josephine's waiting-maid, instead, the result being that
+Louise was requested to leave the service of the offended Josephine.
+
+On arrival at Milan, Napoleon was absent, so the honour of receiving
+her was deputed to the Milanese Due de Serbelloni, who took her in
+regal style to stay at his palace. On Napoleon meeting his wife for
+the first time since their marriage his joy was unbounded. Marmont,
+who betrayed him and France in later days, says that "at that time he
+lived only for his wife, and never had purer, truer, or more exclusive
+love taken possession of the heart of a man, and that a man of so
+superior an order."
+
+Napoleon had still much work to do, and many hard battles to fight, so
+that they were frequently separated during the remaining months before
+he had freed Italy and beaten the Austrians. On no occasion when he
+was absent from her did he neglect sending letters on fire with the
+assurance of unabated love, but they frequently indicate not only a
+conviction of her indifference, but a suspicion that it is more, which
+is promptly nullified by further explosions such as "kisses as burning
+as my heart and as pure as you." Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be
+disillusioned. She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was in
+Paris. He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must "know how
+dear they are to him." "I do not live," he tells her, "when I am far
+from you." "My life's happiness is in the society of my sweet
+Josephine." Again he writes, "A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul,
+as chaste as yourself! I have just summoned the courier; he tells me
+that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had no
+commands. Fie! Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly little
+monster. You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah! you well know
+that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put you in prison
+there!" This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not
+emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick
+soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious
+helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life
+were a cruel humiliation to him.
+
+She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied,
+and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found
+happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue.
+She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than
+immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the
+Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts
+that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted
+wife during the early years of her second marriage.
+
+On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her many army
+officers, amongst whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant
+General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy
+little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon. Josephine, at this period of her
+history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that it is not
+altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the distinction of
+making Hippolyte Charles her lover. He was fascinating, witty, dressed
+with splendour, and was quite up to her standard of moral quality. The
+friendship grew into intimacy, so that he became a frequent visitor to
+Josephine during Napoleon's absence.
+
+It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was assuming
+dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of
+Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists
+amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of
+the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief's wife
+was precipitately acquiring. Wherever she is or goes, so long as
+Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts.
+Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to
+attend the fêtes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is
+most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of Josephine
+brought about the climax. Unquestionably her movements were being
+watched by members of the Bonaparte family. They not unnaturally felt
+that the scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to
+ridicule.
+
+But, as frequently happens, great events are brought about in the most
+unexpected way. The vivacious Paulette had fallen in love with Freron,
+a man of forty, holding a high position in the Government service.
+Napoleon was strongly averse to the match, so decided that she should
+become the wife of General Leclerc, aged twenty-five, who was said to
+be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of
+Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary
+punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her
+brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc
+concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was
+banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we
+learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen
+had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there were other powerful
+agencies that had no small part in bringing light to the aching and
+devout heart.
+
+From this dates the fall of Josephine's complete magical divinity over
+him, and a new era begins. We hear no more of "shutting her up in his
+heart," or of sending her "kisses as fiery as his soul and as chaste
+as herself"; though to the end his letters are studiously kind and
+even reverential.
+
+Meanwhile, the intrepid General, having brought the campaign of Italy
+and Austria to a successful end, came back to Paris, received the
+plaudits of a grateful and adoring nation, and the doubtful favour of
+a jealous Directory. They banqueted him at the Luxembourg with every
+outward sign of satisfaction. Talleyrand and Barras made eloquent and
+flattering speeches of his accomplishments and talents, and the latter
+folded him in his arms as a concluding token of affection. Josephine
+revelled in the gaiety and honours that encompassed them, while her
+husband sought the consolation of privacy.
+
+After a short though not inactive stay in Paris, he was given command
+of the Army of the East, and sailed from Toulon on May 19, 1798, in
+the _Orient_ (which came to a tragic end at Aboukir), and Josephine
+waved her handkerchief, soaked in tears, as the fleet passed from
+view.
+
+Her doings do not interest us until she again came across the young
+ex-officer Charles in Paris, some time in 1799, and, at his request no
+doubt, she introduced him to a firm of army contractors, and for the
+ostensible purpose of showing his gratitude, he called at Malmaison to
+thank her. This act of grace could have been done with greater
+propriety by letter, though there may have been reasons for not
+putting in writing anything that might associate the wife of the
+Commander-in-Chief with having dealings with army contractors, even to
+the extent of interesting herself on behalf of a man who was dismissed
+the service for carrying on an intrigue with his General's wife, who
+happened to be Josephine herself.
+
+But putting aside the unpardonable breach of faith in allowing a
+renewal of the intimacy with such a man, the fact of a lady in her
+position being mixed up with a firm of this character might have
+seriously compromised Napoleon, and for this reason alone her act was
+highly reprehensible. Charles was not slow to avail himself of
+Josephine's hospitality, and became a regular visitor. This further
+lapse of loyalty to the absent husband was transmitted to Egypt, and
+very naturally determined him on the necessity of taking proceedings
+to get a divorce, but although Napoleon had ceased, so far as he
+could, to be the dreadful simpleton lover of other days, he failed to
+gauge the grip the old fascination had of him.
+
+He believed the avenging spirit that guided him to definite
+conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public and
+sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with another of
+State policy lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and
+created wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by
+unexpectedly landing at Fréjus.
+
+He then made his way, as quickly as the enthusiasm of the cheering
+populace allowed him, towards his house in the Rue de la Victoire; but
+the penitent (?) Josephine was not there. She had gone to meet him,
+taken the wrong road, and missed throwing herself into his arms as was
+her intention. He asks excitedly, "Is she ill?" and the significant
+wink of her enemies threw him into paroxysms of grief. His friend
+Collot calls and reminds him that the hope of the nation is centred on
+him. His wrath is proof that he is still in love, and Collot fears
+that the magical effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness.
+"Never," shouts the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot.
+Rather than abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on
+the fire."
+
+But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew himself, and
+we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the fire," but given
+again to the erring Josephine, who was travelling back post-haste from
+Lyons. She arrived broken in spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon,
+obviously not quite sure of his determination to refuse her
+admittance, had bolted the door, and was stamping about the room with
+a glare in his piercing eye as though he were planning an onslaught
+that was to be furiously contested. Josephine arrives, knocks at the
+door, implores him to open it, and addresses him as "Mon ami, _mon bon
+ami_." There is no response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps
+and beats her head against the door, and piteously pleads for the
+opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then
+her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he
+loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their
+distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their
+stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and
+appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever
+been, and to receive their mother back to his affections.
+
+It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so
+sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is
+tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when
+Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions
+for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared
+from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped in a
+drowsy joy.
+
+Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and skilful in the art
+and use of hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was
+never more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a
+different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that given him
+by Lucien and other members of his family. It is not an undue stretch
+of imagination to conclude that she assured him that her heart was
+shared with none other, though the assertion may be regarded as a
+daring fabrication. She did not gauge calmly, but she gauged well, the
+supreme power she had over the man who had so abjectly shown her such
+inflammable love. She knew, too, of his vanity, and hit him
+caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he and none other," combined with
+a beseeching wail that he should open his heart to an affectionate and
+faithful love, was more likely to conquer than any admission of wrong.
+Could she forget the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling
+principle was that he would have no divided affection? It must be all
+or none. The hypothesis is therefore that she played on his vanity,
+and not on his confidence or judgment, the sequel being the complete
+surrender of Napoleon.
+
+Josephine, whether from fear of the penalty or the purity of her
+motives, never again allowed herself to be placed in the same
+hazardous position. She had been cured of unfaithfulness, and promised
+that Hippolyte Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such
+a scrape again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard
+of. He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil
+face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse.
+
+Josephine's matrimonial transgressions, whatever they may have been,
+were condoned with exuberant suddenness, and Napoleon rushed into
+domestic tranquillity. The zealot of freedom forthwith concentrated
+his wondrous talents with aggressive righteousness on the task of
+destroying a decadence that was bearing France to her doom. Josephine
+was enrolled as patron of deliverance from anarchy, and having all the
+essential attributes which make for success in such an enterprise, she
+daily filled her salon with men and women who had influence to aid her
+husband and his friends in upsetting the Government. She had developed
+into an attractive, graceful hostess, and was endowed with the knack
+of cajoling which disarmed opposition and enthused supporters, and
+unquestionably she played the part given to her with unmeasured
+success, and Napoleon did the rest.
+
+The _coup d'état_ had been dexterously planned, which enabled him to
+bring about a bloodless overthrow. Josephine was deployed to win over
+her friend Gohier, the President of the Directory. She invited him
+and his wife to breakfast on the 17th Brumaire. Gohier wonders why
+they should be asked so early as six in the morning. He thinks he
+smells a rat, excuses himself, but sends his wife, who is ushered into
+the presence of a houseful of officers of the National Guard, and the
+hostess does not lose time in conveying to Gohier's former cook the
+meaning of their being there. Bonaparte, be it known, is determined to
+form a Government, and it grieves her that so good a friend as the
+President of Directors should have been so thoughtless of his own
+interests as not to accompany his wife on such an auspicious occasion.
+
+"The inevitable is at hand, Madame Gohier," says Josephine in effect,
+"and at this very moment Barras is being pressed to resign, and if he
+disobeys his fate is sealed." Madame Gohier is aghast, stiffens her
+back, and with as much dignity as her nature will allow, she bows,
+withdraws, and hastens to the side of her husband, to convey all she
+has seen and heard.
+
+Meanwhile, events travel swiftly under the direction of the intrepid
+General. He walks into the Council of Ancients and jerks out with
+vivid flashes of oratory the object of his visit. The members see at a
+glance its meaning. They become inarticulate with rage begotten of
+fear. He thunders out, "I am here to demand a Republic founded on
+true liberty," and swears that he will have it. In the Hall of the
+Five Hundred he is met with cries of "Down with the Cromwell!" "No
+Dictator!" "Outlaw him!" and so forth.
+
+But these are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on whom he
+darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means trouble if
+they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His guards are close at
+hand, and he is daring enough to make use of them if there is any
+resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through
+their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do
+not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent
+conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this
+France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and
+find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left you the
+millions of Italy; I find despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But
+ere this terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become
+conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end, and
+that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left
+prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return from Egypt.
+
+Josephine had played her part in the drama with surprising shrewdness
+and marked devotion to her husband's cause. He was rewarded by being
+made First Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic
+and the leader of society. They quickly availed themselves of the
+distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to the
+Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she occupied the
+bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the apartments formerly
+inhabited by Louis, which were immediately above. They gathered round
+them men of merit representing science, art, literature, law,
+politics, military notables, and fashion. They set up, in fact, a
+little Court, but lived a quiet, unostentatious life, so far as it was
+diplomatic and permissive.
+
+It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and grandeur
+began, excelling and putting into the shade every other Court in
+Europe. Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted and encouraged
+it more from policy than taste. In fact, when in a whimsical mood, he
+often said it bored him. That is not to say that he did not adapt
+himself to what he believed was a necessity. An Oriental potentate
+could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than
+he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance,
+fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that
+he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of
+Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to
+sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his
+brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends he
+was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with
+a vividness and pathos that brought tears to the eyes of every one who
+heard it.
+
+The wilful and false conception of Napoleon's character that existed
+amongst thousands of those who were contemporary with him, and the
+persistent efforts to defame him, even now, by a section of the
+world's community, are extraordinary, when so many convincing proofs
+are available which show him to have been the reverse of what they say
+he was. As brother, son, husband, father, or friend, his love,
+devotion, and loyalty were matchless. He was never once known to
+upbraid Josephine after the condonement of her infidelities. He paid
+her colossal debts, not without protest, but rather than make her
+unhappy he excused her extravagance and overlooked the capricious,
+peevish way in which she gave her domestic confidences concerning
+himself to her friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so
+forgiving was he of faults which were so glaring to others, that he
+frequently caressed when he should have chastised.
+
+Josephine played upon his purblindness where she was concerned in
+most scandalous ways. She had no money sense, and combined with this
+defect she had no moral sense in money matters. Her debts were
+chronic, and periodically so enlarged that she adopted the most
+monstrous methods to reduce them before the balances were put before
+Napoleon by herself, or an inkling conveyed to him by a wily creditor;
+but these subterfuges only added to her spending resources. It is said
+that she actually did not shrink from receiving a thousand francs per
+day from Fouché as the price of information given him of what was
+going on in the Tuileries, and also that she received half a million
+francs from Flachats, the predatory army contractors.
+
+It is unthinkable that Napoleon, whose rigid uprightness in matters of
+money has never been disputed, could have known that his wife was
+involved in such shocking financial dealings, or he would have taken
+salutary measures to put a definite end to them. He knew that he was
+surrounded by men who were inveterate thieves, and when their
+defalcations were brought to his knowledge, they were either cashiered
+or made to disgorge. Bourrienne, Talleyrand, and Fouché, for instance.
+But there is no evidence to show that he ever suspected Josephine at
+any time, and let us hope that the Fouché-Flachats transactions were
+either exaggerated or mere invention, though it is hard to believe
+that there was no truth in the accusation.
+
+Napoleon was no sooner made Consul than there began to be hints and
+innuendoes of an heir, and as Josephine knew that she could not bear
+him one, she was thrown into fits of despondency lest he should be
+driven by designing persons in and outside his family to listen to a
+scheme of divorce and remarriage. The alternative was to nominate one
+of his brothers as his heir. Joseph and Lucien were impossible, so he
+fixed his mind on Louis. But the plot to assassinate him on the way to
+the opera, together with the Duc d'Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and
+Pichegru affair, brought the change from Life Consul to Emperor more
+quickly. The marriage of Louis to Hortense eased Josephine's mind. She
+had in view the fact that an heir might be born to them, and the
+possibility of the inheritance going to him. In due course Napoleon
+Charles was born, and an attempt made by Napoleon to carry his idea
+out. Louis was at first in favour of it, but Joseph and Lucien had
+envious conceptions of what the brothers' rights were. Louis became
+impressed with their views, and ultimately decided against Napoleon's
+wishes. The Senate passed a resolution in favour of "direct natural,
+legitimate, and adoptive descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the
+direct, natural, legitimate descendants of Joseph and Louis." The
+plebiscite supported the resolution of the Senate, and Joseph and
+Louis had the mortification of seeing that to them the succession was
+barred.
+
+This decision was regarded by Josephine as highly satisfactory to
+herself. She made no fuss about it, but was greatly overjoyed at the
+prospect of the effect it would have on Napoleon, and for a time no
+more was openly heard of divorce; but the venom was insidiously eating
+its way to that end all the same, and as he grew in power, so did the
+conspiracy develop. His own family were eager that she should be put
+away, but there were influences more powerful than that of Madame Mère
+and her sons and daughters. Talleyrand and Fouché being the High
+Commissioners who founded the direct hereditary idea, they
+persistently worried him with the plea that the State claimed that he
+should make the sacrifice. They knew that this was the strongest and
+most effective reason they could put forward to a man who would have
+given his soul in the service of his country.
+
+The birth of Madame Eleonore Denuelle's son Leon on December 29, 1806,
+made a great impression on the Emperor's mind. It was well known that
+he was the father of the child, and now that there was no doubt as to
+the possibility of him having an heir, it was only to be expected
+that the advocates of divorce would press their claim that an
+alliance should be made with one of the powerful ruling families. The
+advantages to France would be inestimable, and would it not establish
+himself and his dynasty more firmly on the throne? It is not unlikely
+that Napoleon pondered over the great possibilities of such a
+marriage, but he could not bring himself to the thought of divorcing
+the woman he still loved. He went so far as to seek Josephine's
+support in the plan of making his natural son his heir, and Masson
+says that in support of his desire he vigorously used "precedents and
+invented justifications." Happily he did not stretch the law of
+hereditary succession further than this.
+
+Leon, when he grew up, became a great source of trouble to all those
+with whom he was connected. His features and physical make up had a
+marked resemblance to his father's, but his mind was erratic. He had
+inherited none of the steady, sane genius of the Emperor, though but
+for a freak of nature which gave him a mental twist, he would have
+been as near his prototype as may be. He was always full of great
+schemes, which in the hands of a normally constituted person would
+have been fashioned into public usefulness.
+
+Masson gives a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his
+predilections, which were "gambling, duels, politics, writing
+pamphlets, the conception of colossal canal, railway, and commercial
+undertakings that never got far beyond the initial and rocky mental
+stage." He was one of the chief mourners when his father's remains
+were brought to Paris from St. Helena in 1840, and in 1848 aspired to
+the Presidency of the Republic, which fell to the lot of his cousin
+Louis Napoleon, whose life he desired to take, but who, with great
+generosity, gave him a pension and paid the legacy left him by
+Napoleon. He died in 1881.
+
+The birth of Leon gives him a prominent place in the history of the
+political divorce, though so far as Napoleon was concerned or affected
+by it, there is strong evidence to show that he really thought it was
+a way out, and had he been left to his own inclinations, the
+probability is that there would have been no second marriage so long
+as Josephine lived. From 1807 to 1809 his brain was racked to pieces
+with the inevitable shadow he struggled to evade. He could not bring
+himself to sever the tie that bound them together in strong attachment
+for nearly fifteen years. He invented every conceivable device to try
+and find a more congenial solution than divorce.
+
+For two years the Emperor lived in an atmosphere of intolerable
+anguish which distracted him. The nearer he approached the dreaded
+theme, the more fascinating his wife appeared to him, and the more
+tenaciously he clung to the deep impressions that had been made by
+that youthful passion that swayed his very being in other days. She
+had frequently recaptured him from the subtle blandishments of an
+agency that was ever on his track, and then his devotion became more
+rapturous than ever. Fouché was frequently rebuked with stern severity
+for his pertinacious advocacy of the separation. At another time we
+hear of him falling into Josephine's arms, shedding copious tears,
+and, choking with grief, he sobs out, "My poor Josephine! I can never
+leave you," "I still love you," and so forth.
+
+Those who pretend to see in these outbursts of devotion nothing but
+artifice, cannot have informed themselves of the true character of
+this extraordinary man. In truth, his was a sacrifice of affection
+forced upon him for the benefit of the State. That is the conclusion
+the writer has come to after much research. Even after he was
+persuaded that he would have to submit, the recollections of the glory
+they had shared together, and of their happy days, and the grief and
+suffering the parting would cause, filled him with remorse and pity,
+and then would come a period of wavering which exasperated his family
+and the upholders of the stability of the Empire. At last he saw
+clearly that it was an imperative duty that must be fulfilled.
+
+The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the amiable
+Marie Walewska, who was living close to Schönbrunn, was about to give
+birth to a child which he knew to be his, and it is not improbable
+that this double assurance that he might reasonably expect to have an
+heir if he married again brought him to the definite decision to go on
+with the divorce; and the Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to
+form an alliance by offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.
+
+At the end of December, 1809, the great political divorce was ratified
+amid sombre signs of sympathy. Even the Bonapartes were compelled to
+yield to emotion, and Napoleon himself was profoundly affected. The
+subdued distress of Josephine pierced through the chilly hearts of
+those who had looked on with composure while men and women were being
+led to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. But even Josephine's
+tears and grief were graceful and fascinating, so that it was not
+surprising that the spectators extended sympathy to her in her sorrow.
+Almost immediately after the ceremony Napoleon became overcome with
+grief. He allowed a little time to elapse before asking Meneval to
+accompany him to Josephine's apartments. They found her in a condition
+of inexorable despair. She flung herself into the Emperor's arms; he
+embraced and fervently kissed her, but the ordeal was too great. She
+collapsed and fainted. He remained with her until she showed signs of
+consciousness, then left her in charge of Meneval and women
+attendants. The sight of her grief was too much for him to bear.
+
+Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had
+taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate
+attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown.
+Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was
+overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others. An annual
+income of three million francs was settled on her for life, which,
+should he pre-decease her, was to be paid by his successors. She
+retained the title of Empress and every other appearance of
+sovereignty.
+
+The negotiations for the second marriage were conducted from Trianon.
+The Russian alliance fell through, ostensibly on religious grounds.
+Napoleon did not like the thought of having Russian priests about him,
+and besides, the Princess Anne was too young to marry, and even if
+there had been no other difficulty, the Emperor Napoleon could not
+wait. The Saxon alliance did not appeal to him, so he gave preference
+to the House of Austria, and on March 11, 1810, His Majesty was
+married by proxy at Vienna to the Austrian Archduchess, and on the 1st
+of April the civil marriage took place at St. Cloud, and the following
+day they were ecclesiastically united.[31]
+
+Better for him and for France had he defied the advocates of royal
+alliance and stuck to Josephine, or even married Marie Walewska. If it
+was merely the policy of succession that was aimed at, he could have
+adopted his natural son, the brilliant Alexander Walewska, whose
+subsequent career in the service of France would have justified this
+course.
+
+The desire to unite the French Emperor with one of the powerful
+reigning families in order to give stability to the Empire and put an
+end to incessant warfare was a theory which proved to be a delusion,
+and perhaps Napoleon, with his clear vision, foresaw the jealousies
+and international complications that would arise through a political
+marriage of this character. This, and his unwillingness to part with
+Josephine, is a conclusion that may reasonably account for the
+vacillation that was so pronounced from time to time.
+
+The flippant attitude (which indicates the scope and summit of an
+ill-informed mind) that he was the victim of abnormal ambition to be
+connected with one or other of the royal families is ludicrous. If he
+had been eager to have such distinction, it was within his reach at
+any time after he became First Consul. He had only to impart a hint
+and there would have been a competition of available princesses, the
+choice of which would have bewildered him. Assuredly he showed no
+youthful impetuosity in this respect, and it may not be an overdrawn
+hypothesis to conclude that his marriage with Marie Louise was neither
+popular with the French people as a whole nor with other
+nationalities. It excited jealousy and mistrust amongst the larger
+Powers, and in France itself the memory of the last ill-fated union of
+France with Austria--that of Marie Antoinette and Louis--had left
+rankling effects in the minds of the people of the Revolution.[32]
+
+
+Murat had urged on his brother-in-law and the grand dignitaries the
+fact that a marriage with a relative of Marie Antoinette, who was an
+abhorrence to the adherents of the Revolution, would alienate a large
+public, but Murat's objections were suspected of having personal
+colour and overruled. It is, however, beyond conjecture that the King
+of Naples had diagnosed aright; whether from self-interest or not, the
+warning proved accurate. The most loyal and devoted of his subjects
+felt that their invincible hero was drifting into a vortex of trouble.
+They had learned by bitter experience the duplicity of Austrian
+diplomacy. The remembrance of the cruel wars they had been cunningly
+trapped into, the bleached bones of Frenchmen that lay on Austrian
+soil, and the denuded homes that resulted from Austria's odious policy
+of greed, worked on them like a subtle poison. And the glory of their
+conquests over her was nullified by the eternal suspicion that she was
+ever hatching new grounds of quarrel. They thought, indeed, their
+premonition of Austria's perpetual treachery was clear and definite,
+and that the new Empress would be a useful medium of their enemies'
+machinations.
+
+We can never fully estimate to what extent these impressions
+influenced their minds and actions and the part they played in
+hastening the great national humiliation. It is a pretty certain
+conclusion that it was only the colossal successes and magical
+personality of the Emperor that kept subdued the spirit of resentment
+which the marriage had caused.
+
+And we have historic evidence before us which clearly shows that the
+well-balanced mind of Napoleon was torn and tattered between doubt and
+conviction, and he fell into the fatal error of allowing his judgment
+to be overruled either by circumstances or pride. Had he relied on his
+superstition even, the chances are that St. Helena would never have
+had the stigma of his captivity stamped upon it.
+
+French and Austrian alliances have never, so far as they affected
+political history, been very successful. The stability of earthly
+things is governed, not by sentiment or theoretic doctrines, but by
+facts as hard as granite, and no one knew this more thoroughly than
+the man who fell a victim to the devices of the Austrians and their
+French allies.
+
+He was usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but
+when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human
+destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke
+the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic
+periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it was his "having
+married a princess of Austria that ruined him, and that his marriage
+with Marie Louise was the cause of the expedition into Russia," and
+that "he might not have been at St. Helena had he married a
+Frenchwoman." It is said that he seriously thought of doing this, and
+had some available ladies put before him with that object. These
+dreamy utterances reveal that his mind was centred on the causes of
+his misfortunes, and that he held definite views on the marriage
+tragedy, and perhaps his sense of pride, the interests of his son (the
+King of Rome), and the reluctance to admit that he knew he was going
+wrong at the time, constrained him to withhold much that he thought
+and knew. The impression we get is that he could not bring himself to
+utter the whole of the unutterable canker which haunted him.
+
+It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded up his
+own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less capable judges.
+Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted
+at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following
+terms:--"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult;
+they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better
+chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory they did not
+understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest and most
+perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you because it
+cannot." "Peace with Austria is only a truce." His diagnoses were
+confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed in after years. The
+marvel is that he did not allow himself to benefit by his shrewd
+observations at a moment when so much depended on strength, not
+vacillation and weakness.
+
+A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian princess
+sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty ideals (?) of
+the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at Schönbrunn after
+she had deserted Napoleon. He said to her:--"As my daughter, all that
+I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not
+know you."
+
+The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is
+promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being that so
+long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all that he had
+was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she
+must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was
+the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been
+so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to be at all wifely and
+cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the
+sovereign, and as readily gore her as he would Napoleon if, in his
+patriarchal wisdom, he judged national interests were at stake. His
+spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real ultra-monarchical ring about it.
+But it was meant for other ears and a purpose other than that of
+making his daughter shudder. So far as she was concerned, he might
+have saved himself any anxiety on that score. She bowed her head in
+conformity, and swiftly cast her amorous eyes on Neipperg, a man after
+his and her own heart. This was the culminating event that brought her
+destiny with Napoleon to an end, though _he_ tried to avert it, and
+the causes are summarised in his own pathetic language, clearly
+expressed from time to time.
+
+His nephew, Napoleon III., taking a lesson from his folly, refused to
+be buffeted into political matrimony by any of the matchmaking
+factions. When his turn came he acted with independence and wisdom by
+ignoring the blandishments of meddling advisers and royal
+conventionalism, and elected to marry the lady on whom he had set his
+affections.
+
+Incidentally, it may be stated that Napoleon III.'s merits have been
+overshadowed by the greater genius of his uncle, but as time separates
+the reigns of the two men it will be realised that, though he was not
+looked upon as a great military general, he had genius of a different
+kind, and was unquestionably a great ruler, acting under somewhat
+changed conditions, but subject to the same human caprices, and a time
+will come when the benefits he bestowed upon the French nation will be
+appreciated more than they are this day.
+
+In 1812, Europe was in a state of dammed convulsion. The wars, though
+always successful for France, had brought about no definite settlement
+of international affairs. Peace was transitory, and the dread of
+Napoleon's power and genius was the only check on rapacious designs on
+his dominion.
+
+What direct or indirect share Marie Louise had in bringing about the
+war with Russia and then the great European struggle will never be
+wholly known, but as the wife of Napoleon she would have opportunities
+of hearing from himself and those who were in his confidence remarks
+and even discussions on the complexities of the political situation.
+She was in daily communication with Metternich, and constantly
+corresponding with her father; and even allowing that her intentions
+were loyal at that time to her husband and to the country of her
+adoption, she may have unconsciously conveyed something that in the
+hands of adroit diplomats would reveal the pivot on which great issues
+might depend. Then, placing the Regency in her hands was an unchecked
+temptation, and must be counted as one of Napoleon's great mistakes.
+Imbued with an abundant share of Austrian predilection, and occupying
+a mechanical or fictitious position towards France and its ruler, and
+in view of her subsequent conduct, it is a reasonable assumption that
+during the Regency she conveyed important information of military
+movements and intentions to the Austrian Court, which it was not slow
+to take advantage of; and if truth were told, it would be found that
+the Allies owed much of their success to the Austrian Archduchess. May
+it not have been part of the subtle policy of Austria in arranging the
+marriage? Everything certainly points to it.
+
+Instead of making Metternich a present at the Prague Congress of a
+snuff-box which cost 30,000 francs, as a token of friendship, Fouché,
+who always had his mind well stored with ideas of corruption,
+suggested to the Emperor that, if it was intended to buy Austria off,
+he ought to make it millions. If Napoleon had been a man after his own
+heart, this might have been a successful solution for a time, but
+only for a time. Meneval says that the Emperor, who had a horror of
+corruption, replied to him with a gesture of disgust.
+
+In the early part of 1812, when war with Russia had become imminent,
+Napoleon carried out a promise that Josephine should see the King of
+Rome. The meeting took place at Bagatelle. She hugged and kissed the
+child with motherly affection, and her tears flowed with profusion.
+The scene was touching, and proved to be the everlasting farewell.
+Strange as it may appear, Josephine formed an enduring affection for
+Napoleon's natural son, afterwards Count Colonna (Alexander Walewska),
+and for his mother, Marie Walewska. She loved the child and treated
+him with the same indulgence as she did her own grandchildren. The
+mother was a regular visitor, and no one was more welcome at Malmaison
+than she. These incidents of magnanimity, characteristic of Josephine,
+would make her not only attractive but lovable, were it not there are
+also left on record flaws which show that she was seriously lacking in
+probity and fidelity to him to whom she owed everything. Her maternal
+affection and loving care of her children are without reproach, and
+her generosity to worthy and unworthy people was extraordinary. She
+loved Napoleon with peculiar eccentricity. His honour and interests
+were never a consideration. She allowed herself to be surrounded at
+Malmaison during the Russian campaign with Royalist plotters and
+treachery of the most implacable character. She poured out her woes to
+them with acceptable results, and nothing that would damage him and
+draw sympathy to herself was left uncommunicated. Her whole thought
+was of herself. She did not intend to be false or cruel to him, and
+yet she was both cruel and false.
+
+As soon as the Allied Armies had taken possession of Paris, the
+irrepressible Madame de Staël made a call on Josephine to ascertain
+how she stood now towards her former husband. She promptly asked her
+whether she still loved him. Josephine resented the impertinence, so
+the Duchesse de Reggio relates, and told some of her visitors that she
+had never ceased to love the Emperor in the days of his prosperity,
+and it was unthinkable that she should cease to do so in his
+adversity. Unhappily for Josephine, she adopted a most astounding
+course of showing her devotion by agreeing to the visits, first, of
+the Emperor of Russia, and then the other sovereigns and foreign
+dignitaries. She gave balls and treated the enemies of France, and
+especially the Tsar, as though they were the real descendants of the
+builders of the Temple to Jehovah. She and Hortense walked about the
+grounds linked to Alexander's arms during frequent visits, which was
+indicative of strongly formed affection.
+
+Had Josephine been possessed of a grain of discernment or a proper
+estimate of her dignity, she would have seen that this was part of a
+well-defined policy of striking a blow through her at the man she
+professed to love still, even with a greater passion now that he was
+the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility. Hortense, it would
+appear, refused at first to have any dealings with Alexander, but this
+sovereign's personal charms, winning manners, and homely ways soon
+fascinated and captured her. She may be excused, but her mother did
+not act the part of a nobleminded woman, and her memory must bear the
+reproach of it.
+
+Apart from the respect she owed to herself, she should have remembered
+the duty and loyalty she owed to a vast French public, and to the
+victim of her guests, who had been to her the most forgiving,
+indulgent friend that ever a human soul was blessed with. He had been
+a father to her children, and even when he was overwhelmed with the
+consequences of great disaster, his tenderest and most generous
+thoughts were sent to her.
+
+A woman who had a high sense of duty and honour would not have
+accepted a single favour from either one or the other of the inimical
+sovereigns, even if it had been offered to her; much less would she
+have cringed and whined indelicately in order that she might receive
+either their smiles or their favours at so abhorrent a price.
+
+Some writers have endeavoured to give Josephine credit for having
+influenced Alexander in a way that secured for Napoleon better terms
+than he would have otherwise got at the first abdication. The
+suggestion is ludicrous. Presumably the alternative was that he should
+be shot or confined in a fortress for the balance of his life. Either
+of these ideas of disposing of his person would have created reaction
+and public vengeance. The Allies shied at this, though some of the
+most ferocious, but by no means the bravest, of the set clamoured for
+shooting, which is always the way with spurious heroes.
+
+The diplomats amongst them devised the more subtle plan of exiling him
+first to Elba with the title of Emperor, and a pension of £200,000 per
+annum, never a penny of which was paid, or, in the light of history,
+was ever intended to be paid.
+
+They had preconceived the notion of masking the St. Helena plan until
+they thought they had cheated the public into believing that they were
+inspired by humane motives and the necessity for the peace of Europe.
+They laboriously studied out the most ingenious plots so that they
+might be glorified for ridding Europe of a "monster."
+
+Napoleon was kept advised, during his stay at Elba, of their designs
+on the liberty they had graciously (?) given him (with a pension that
+was designedly withheld), and, acting on certain specific information,
+he promptly developed one of his most brilliant achievements--the
+sudden landing in France, his triumphal march to Paris, and the
+resultant flight of the Bourbons at his unexpected approach at the
+head of an enthusiastic army.
+
+The campaign which followed--ending with the Battle of
+Waterloo--enabled the Allies, after his defeat, to satisfy the
+cravings of their savage instincts by carrying out their plan as
+mentioned above and sending him to martyrdom.
+
+But one of their most brutal acts was in refusing the request that his
+wife and child should accompany him to Elba. These are the ultimate
+"better terms" that Josephine is said to have secured by coquetting
+with Alexander of Russia!
+
+She revelled in grasping at every fragment of wreckage that would be
+of advantage to herself and her family, and Alexander's crafty
+friendship unquestionably gave her opportunities to indulge unchecked
+in complaints of her grievances against the man who had been so foully
+betrayed. Her mania for the distribution of confidences of the most
+sacred character was only equalled by her capacity for intriguing and
+piling up debts, and these attributes never forsook her at any time.
+
+Josephine's moral qualities cannot be accurately judged by her
+frequent outpourings of admiration and affection for Napoleon to
+Eugene and Hortense. In the letters to each which are extant, she
+declares it would be impossible for anyone to be kinder, more amiable,
+or considerate than he has always been, and even after the divorce she
+writes that if she loved him less sincerely, he could not show more
+anxiety to mitigate anything that might be painful to her.
+
+But notwithstanding these declarations, she never failed to gratify
+her insatiable love of pouring forth to his most inveterate enemies
+faults and failings that her constitutional moral obliquity indicated
+he had. It is not an unfair assumption, therefore, that their
+Majesties and others had conveyed to them in handfuls (unwittingly
+perhaps) much that was valuable to their pernicious purpose while they
+were being entertained at Malmaison. It has been said that it was her
+intention to be presented to the Bourbon King, and though we would
+fain believe her to be incapable of such perfidy, it is quite in
+keeping with the by-ways of her complex character, more especially as
+Eugene had paid him a visit. The promises of the sovereigns that the
+interests of herself and children would be protected became less
+reassuring as the few days that were left to her went on. At last she
+realised they were mere silken verbiage, and gave way to despair.
+This, and the anxiety of entertaining her royal guests, accentuated
+the illness she had contracted. Alexander paid his first visit on May
+14th, and she died of quinsy or diphtheria on May 29, 1814.
+
+The allied monarchs were all represented at her funeral, and the
+Prince of Mecklenburg (the Queen of Prussia's brother) was amongst the
+mourners. It was of him the Court gossipers assiduously circulated
+reports that he was paying suspicious attention to Josephine after the
+divorce. Napoleon, on hearing of the flirtation through Fouché,
+rebuked her with justifiable vigour on the ground of it being a gross
+violation of dignity to go about with the Prince and others of lower
+ranks to second-rate theatres, even under the cover of incognito. He
+does not appear to have thought there was anything more than
+Josephine's habitual lack of respect for herself and the high position
+he had preserved for her, though according to the unreliable Madame de
+Remusat Napoleon suggested to his divorced wife that she should take
+Prince Mecklenburg as her husband. The same authority (?) asserts that
+the Prince had written to Napoleon asking his permission, and,
+further, says that Josephine told her this curious story. It is
+entirely unsupported by either the words or actions of the Emperor
+himself, and may be put aside as another of the fabrications of the
+memoir writer.
+
+That there was a flirtation there can be little doubt, but the
+Prince's object may have been part of the political intrigue, rather
+than carnal intercourse with a woman of nearly fifty years of age.
+Josephine, always sorry for herself, a sieve of the first water,
+susceptible to flattery, blind to device, yearning for admiration and
+pity, was rejoiced to find attention extended to her from any quarter,
+but coming from the Royal House of Prussia or any other royal
+personage it was a dazzling compliment to the high esteem in which she
+believed she was held, and enhanced the luxury of feeling that she was
+the centre of international sympathy.
+
+It was not that she had any malicious intent to do deliberate wrong to
+Napoleon, or any thought of degrading herself. Her mind did not work
+in these grooves. She was merely carried off her feet by vain love of
+self-approbation, which led her far beyond the bounds of honourable
+prudence. She was interred at Rueil amidst quiet solemnity, and in
+1825 Eugene and Hortense erected a monument in her memory.
+
+The legend is that her last articulate utterance was the enchanted
+name of "Napoleon"--"Elba." Corvisat, the Imperial physician, was
+piteously asked by the Emperor on his return why he allowed her to
+die, and the nature of the malady that took her spirit away. He
+replied that she "Died of grief and sorrow." Her own doctor, Horeau,
+told him pretty much the same thing, which brought forth the sad
+reply, she was a "good woman" and "loved me well." The intimation that
+she had spoken often and kindly of him brought back all the old
+passion for her and filled him with emotion. He had heard of her death
+while at Elba, and told Corvisat that it was a most acute grief to
+him, and although she had her failings _she_ at least would "never
+have abandoned him"; and possibly this latter expressed opinion, so
+often repeated, might have been fulfilled had he at once thrown Marie
+Louise over after her desertion of him.
+
+The popular charges against Napoleon, by those who are either
+prejudiced or have failed to inform themselves of his history, are
+that he must have been a cruel and barbarous husband or he would not
+have divorced his wife, and that, as a ruler, he thirsted for blood.
+Each of these, as well as many other silly things that are said and
+believed of him, is palpably false. As a husband, so far as kindness
+and indulgence goes, he was exemplary. As a soldier, First Consul, and
+Emperor, his desire at all times was for peace. History has revealed
+the real man, and in recent years it has been convincingly proved that
+he was the very antithesis of the monster he has been given out and
+supposed to be. Now, in the light of more accurate knowledge and
+calmer judgment, the world is showing a desire to do him the justice
+he never ceased to believe that it would do him.
+
+His unexampled personality and fame is spreading and inspiring
+everywhere. His faults are being put in the limelight of public
+opinion, and the growing desire to treat even these with proper
+generosity is an indication that reason and knowledge are taking the
+place of stereotyped international prejudice, political and personal.
+We are beginning to see more clearly through the fog of enmity that he
+had rare virtues, besides having unparalleled genius. The divorce of
+Josephine was unquestionably political, though had he been the
+ferocious creature he has been made to appear, the opportunities she
+gave him so frequently would have justified the divorce at a much
+earlier stage on other than political grounds.
+
+It ill becomes a nation which knew George I., George IV., and Henry
+VIII. to take such unctuous exception to the gentle and benevolent
+attitude of Napoleon before and after the annulment of the marriage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] It has been asserted that when Josephine found the divorce to be
+inevitable she herself suggested the alliance with Marie Louise. One
+reason for believing that this might be the case lies in the fact that
+the affection of Josephine's children for Napoleon suffered no
+diminution on account of the divorce--indeed, Eugene took a leading
+part in the negotiations for the marriage.
+
+[32] In the notorious "Letters from the Cape," addressed to Lady
+Clavering and variously attributed to an Englishman, Las Cases, and
+even Napoleon himself, there is noted a curious coincidence with
+regard to the two Franco-Austrian alliances. Both marriage contracts
+were signed under somewhat similar circumstances, and in both cases
+fêtes were held in honour of the event. At the marriage fête of Louis
+XVI. and Marie Antoinette a calamity occurred which resulted in the
+loss of about two thousand lives. To celebrate the union of Napoleon
+and Marie Louise, Prince Schwartzenberg gave a fête, at which a fire
+occurred, the Prince's wife and some twenty other people being burnt
+to death. The superstitious drew attention to the coincidence, and it
+is said that Napoleon looked upon it as an evil omen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON
+
+
+In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral
+restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any
+grounds--administrative, strategical, religious, domestic--he was
+preeminent above his contemporaries. On religious grounds alone, those
+thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight
+of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply
+religious being. His conversations with Gourgaud on religious
+subjects, some of which are quoted in Lord Rosebery's admirable book,
+"The Last Phase," are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as
+authentic beliefs. It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to
+the line he took.
+
+It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with and
+contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual exercise. At
+one time he declares to his refractory companion, "If I had to choose
+a religion, I would worship the sun, because the sun gives to all
+things life and fertility." At another time he torments the Count,
+after tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by
+saying that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all." But when
+his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares "that religion
+lends sanctity to everything." "The remission of sins is a beautiful
+idea." "It makes the Christian religion so attractive that it will
+never perish. No one can say 'I do not believe and I never shall
+believe.'"
+
+Montholon is more to the writer's liking than Gourgaud, even though
+Gourgaud's authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we shall see
+later what _he_ says about his Emperor's religious beliefs. It was he
+who endeavoured to mitigate his master's mental and physical
+sufferings, and it was he whom he desired should close his eyes in
+death when the nefarious assassination had been completed. It was he,
+too, who got himself locked up in the fortress of Ham for seven years
+by adhering steadfastly to the cause of the great exile's nephew.
+Gourgaud was loyal and devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led
+him to do great injustice to the stricken hero. Montholon's devotion
+was consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud's
+fluctuated with his moods.
+
+None of Napoleon's companions in exile were admitted to such close
+intimacy with the illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count
+Montholon, not even Bertrand or Marchand. It was he who had won
+confidence by the most amazing attachment that one human being could
+give to another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon
+should respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity. He was the
+beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the last
+forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the death-chamber, and
+at his request he kept vigil and witnessed, his spirit pass away.
+
+It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the smitten
+rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts, domestic,
+civil, and religious. He made him one of his executors, bequeathed to
+him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of precious documents,
+and to his dying day the recipient of such flattering confidences
+never betrayed by word or act the faith that was reposed in him, nor
+did he ever falter in his devotion to the martyr's cause. It is from
+him we have handed down the famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon
+for his son, which is pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with
+the genius of statesmanship. We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the
+religious side of Napoleon's versatile character. His talks and
+dictations on this controversial subject are unorthodox if you like,
+but nevertheless religious; copious in thought and trenchant in
+vocabulary, they disclose the magic of a well-stored inspired mind. He
+indulges in neither puerilities nor conventionalities. He is a
+vigorous student of the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and
+speaks his reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the
+vision of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.
+
+In the first clause of his will he declares: "I die in the Apostolic
+Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years
+since." If any other proof were needed that he believed in the
+divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration on the eve of the
+great transformation may be confirmed by the fact that the cardinal
+doctrine of the Roman religion centres in the divinity of Christ.
+Again, in the course of his public and private duties, you frequently
+come across passages in his letters and official documents such as
+"May God have you in His holy keeping." It may be said that this is a
+mere form or figure of speech but then unbelievers do not use such
+phrases.
+
+We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and be
+generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of political,
+historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's message to the
+world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct
+conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a
+perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist
+Napoleon's discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever
+was seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the sun,
+or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he ever
+showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of his race.
+
+He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as
+honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with
+scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct
+towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan. But this in no
+way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ. He
+says that "religious ideas have more influence than certain
+narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; they are capable of
+rendering great services to humanity." Again, he says that "the
+Christian religion is the religion of a civilised people; it is
+entirely spiritual, and the reward which Jesus Christ promises to the
+elect is that they shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency
+is to subdue the passions; it offers nothing to excite them."
+
+There were frequently heated arguments on religion between Napoleon
+and members of his suite during the dreary hours at Longwood, and on
+one of these occasions he, Montholon, and Antommarchi are the
+debaters. To the former he suddenly flashed out: "I know men well, and
+I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man"; then he curtly attacks
+the pretentious doctor by informing him that "aspiring to be an
+atheist does not make a man one."
+
+Dr. Alexander Mair published in the _Expositor_, some twenty years
+ago, a critical study of the authenticity of the declarations imputed
+to Napoleon when at St. Helena on the subject of the Christian
+religion, from which I make the following extract:--
+
+"One evening at St. Helena," says M. Beauterne, "the conversation was
+animated. The subject treated of was an exalted one; it was the
+divinity of Jesus Christ. Napoleon defended the truth of this doctrine
+with the arguments and eloquence of a man of genius, with something
+also of the native faith of the Corsican and the Italian. To the
+objections of one of the interlocutors, who seemed to see in the
+Saviour but a sage, an illustrious philosopher, a great man, the
+Emperor replied:--
+
+"'I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.
+
+"'Superficial minds may see some resemblance between Christ and the
+founders of empires, the conquerors, and the gods of other religions.
+That resemblance does not exist.
+
+"'I see in Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet merely legislators;
+but nothing which reveals the Deity. On the contrary, I see numerous
+relations between them and myself. I make out resemblances,
+weaknesses, and common errors which assimilate them to myself and
+humanity. Their faculties are those which I possess. But it is
+different with Christ. Everything about Him astonishes me; His spirit
+surprises me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and anything of
+this world there is no possible comparison. He is really a Being
+apart.
+
+"'The nearer I approach Him and the more clearly I examine Him, the
+more everything seems above me; everything continues great with a
+greatness that crushes me.
+
+"'His religion is a secret belonging to Himself alone, and proceeds
+from an intelligence which assuredly is not the intelligence of man.
+There is in Him a profound originality which creates a series of
+sayings and maxims hitherto unknown.
+
+"'Christ expects everything from His death. Is that the invention of a
+man? On the contrary, it is a strange course of procedure, a
+superhuman confidence, an inexplicable reality. In every other
+existence than that of Christ, what imperfections, what changes! I
+defy you to cite any existence, other than that of Christ, exempt from
+the least vacillation, free from all such blemishes and changes. From
+the first day to the last He is the same, always the same, majestic
+and simple, infinitely severe, and infinitely gentle.
+
+"'How the horizon of His empire extends, and prolongs itself into
+infinitude! Christ reigns beyond life and beyond death. The past and
+the future are alike to Him; the kingdom of the truth has, and in
+effect can have, no other limit than the false. Jesus has taken
+possession of the human race; He has made of it a single nationality,
+the nationality of upright men, whom He calls to a perfect life.
+
+"'The existence of Christ from beginning to end is a tissue entirely
+mysterious, I admit; but that mystery meets difficulties which are in
+all existences. Reject it, the world is an enigma; accept it, and we
+have an admirable solution of the history of man.
+
+"'Christ speaks, and henceforth generations belong to Him by bonds
+more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union more sacred,
+more imperious than any other union beside. He kindles the flame of a
+love which kills out the love of self and prevails over every other
+love. Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ is the
+reign of love. All who believe in Him sincerely feel this love,
+wonderful, supernatural, supreme. It is a phenomenon inexplicable,
+impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred fire given to the
+earth by this new Prometheus, of which Time, the great destroyer, can
+neither exhaust the force nor terminate the duration. That is what I
+wonder at most of all, for I often think about it; and it is that
+which absolutely proves to me the divinity of Christ!'
+
+"Here the Emperor's voice assumed a peculiar accent of ironical
+melancholy and of profound sadness: 'Yes, our existence has shone with
+all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty; and yours, Montholon,
+Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the dome of the Invalides,
+gilded by us, reflects the rays of the sun. But reverses have come;
+the gold is effaced little by little. The rain of misfortunes and
+outrages with which we are deluged every day carries away the last
+particles; we are only lead, gentlemen, and soon we shall be but dust.
+Such is the destiny of great men; such is the near destiny of the
+great Napoleon.
+
+"'What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal reign of
+Christ, proclaimed, worshipped, beloved, adored, living throughout the
+whole universe! Is that to die? Is it not rather to live?'"
+
+A more beautiful panegyric on the divinity of Christ has never been
+pronounced. The thrilling and convincing conclusions evolved from the
+mind of a great reader, a great thinker--a man, in fact, who had
+studied and knew the human side of life, and could describe it with
+flawless accuracy--are a complete refutation of the opinions expressed
+either from prejudice or personal and political motives. Napoleon
+conversed about religion with other men in a critical way, not always
+with orthodox reverence, but certainly with the conviction that he had
+a thorough knowledge of every phase of the subject. Perhaps he derived
+pleasure from showing that he did not accept the popular doctrine
+unreservedly.
+
+His unorthodox view of the Catholic religion is shown by the fact that
+in 1797 he endeavoured to get Pius VI. to suppress the Inquisition
+throughout Europe. The Pope, in his reply, addressing the General as
+his "very dear son," urges him to abandon the idea and assures him
+that the charges made against the Holy Office are false. He further
+says that the Inquisition is not tyrannical, and that sooner than
+remove the Holy Office he would part with a province. Napoleon for a
+time gave way, and it was not until 1808 that he issued a decree
+suppressing the institution in France and confiscating its property.
+This incident is another proof of Napoleon's humane attitude towards
+his people and his abhorrence of religious intolerance.
+
+The basis for such an attitude towards an accepted institution of the
+Roman Catholic Church was Napoleon's belief that "Faith is beyond the
+reach of the law and the most sacred property of man, for which he has
+no right to account to any mortal if there is nothing in it contrary
+to social order."
+
+Unquestionably he had pride in impressing his auditors with the
+vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study. He had,
+moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel that he was
+not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior, even when they got
+him to talk on their own subjects. This habit was especially
+pronounced at St. Helena.
+
+But this in no way impairs the evidences of his spiritual character.
+One of his first acts when his authority was established in France was
+to face the most hostile declamation against the Concordat, but
+believing that no good government could be assured without religion,
+he carried his convictions through in spite of it being a reversion of
+one of the cardinal doctrines of the Revolution, and there is
+abundance of proof that when he was faced with the last great problem,
+he accepted it without a sign of superstitious dread, believing in the
+immortality of the soul which should reveal all things.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+LIST OF SOME OF THE BOOKS REFERRED TO OR CONSULTED BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+Correspondence of Napoleon.
+Last Letters of Napoleon.
+Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, by Bingham.
+Napoleon's Miscellanies.
+Napoleon's Own Memoirs.
+Napoleon Anecdotes, Ireland.
+Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Count Gourgaud.
+Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph.
+Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, by H.F. Hall.
+Letters from the Island of St. Helena.
+History of Napoleon, by Lanfrey.
+Life of Napoleon, by Sir Walter Scott.
+Life of Napoleon, by J.H. Rose.
+Napoleon, by Phyfe.
+Private Life of Napoleon, by Levy.
+Life of Napoleon, by Bourrienne.
+Short Life of Napoleon, by J.R. Seeley.
+Life of Napoleon the Third, by Blanchard.
+Life of Napoleon, by W. Hazlitt.
+History of Napoleon, edited by R.H. Horne.
+Life of Napoleon, by MacFarlane.
+History of Napoleon, by George Moir Bussey.
+Life of Napoleon, by W.M. Sloane.
+Napoleon, by J.T. Bailey.
+Napoleon, by Dr. Max Lenz.
+Baron de Meneval, Memoirs.
+Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito.
+Memoirs of General Count Rapp, written by himself.
+Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo.
+Memoirs of Madame Junot, Duchess of Abrantès.
+Secret Memoirs of Napoleon, by Charles Doris.
+Mallet Du Pan, by B. Mallet.
+Madame de Staël.
+Recollections of Marshal MacDonald.
+Memoirs of the Empress Josephine.
+Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
+Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud.
+Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise, by De St. Amand.
+Memoirs of Joseph.
+Memoirs of Madame de Remusat.
+Life of Nelson, by Southey.
+Life of Wellington, by George Hooper.
+Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart.
+Dumourier Memoirs.
+Life of Byron.
+William Pitt, by Lord Rosebery.
+William Pitt, by Charles Whibley.
+Memoirs of the Court of the Empress Josephine, by Ducrest.
+The Sailor King, by Fitzgerald Molloy.
+Marmont Memoirs.
+General Marbot Memoirs.
+Marshal Berthier, by General Derrecagaix.
+Constant, Memoirs of the Life of Napoleon.
+Napoleon and Marie Louise, by Madame Durand.
+The Women Napoleon Loved, by Tighe Hopkins.
+The Marriages of the Bonapartes, by Bingham.
+Napoleon at Home, by F. Masson.
+Napoleon et les Femmes, by F. Masson.
+Josephine, Imperatrice et Reine, by F. Masson.
+Love of an Uncrowned Queen, by Wilkins.
+The Love Affairs of Napoleon, by Joseph Turquan.
+The Women Bonapartes, by Noel Williams.
+Las Cases' Journal.
+Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe, by Forsyth.
+Napoleon's Captivity in Relation to Sir Hudson Lowe, by R.C. Seaton.
+The Exile of St. Helena, by Philippe Gonnard.
+Napoleon, Last Voyages, by J.H. Rose.
+The Last Days of Napoleon, by Dr. F. Antommarchi.
+Duke of Reichstadt, by De Wertheimer.
+Napoleon, the First Phase, by Oscar Browning.
+Napoleon, The Last Phase, by Lord Rosebery.
+Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Latimer.
+The Surrender of Napoleon, by Rear-Admiral Sir Frederick Maitland.
+Napoleon in Exile, by Barry O'Meara.
+The Drama of St. Helena, by Paul Frembeaux.
+History of a Crime, by Victor Hugo.
+History of the Captivity of Napoleon, by Count Montholon.
+Warden's Letters from St. Helena.
+With Napoleon at St. Helena, by Dr. John Stokoe.
+Napoleon's Last Voyages, by Sir Thomas Usher.
+Napoleon and His Fellow Travellers, by Clement Shorter.
+An Exposition of Some of the Transactions that have taken
+  place at St. Helena since the Appointment of Sir Hudson
+  Lowe as Governor of that Island, by B.E. O'Meara.
+Facts Illustrative of the Treatment of Napoleon Bonaparte
+  in St. Helena, by Theodore Hook (?).
+History of the Consulate and the Empire, by Thiers.
+Napoleon's Expedition to Russia, by Count Philippe de Segur.
+Napoleon in Russia, by Verestchagen.
+Napoleon, King of Elba, by Paul Gruyer.
+Cambridge Modern History, Volume IX., Sections by--
+  Georges Pariset.
+  T.A. Walker.
+  H.W. Wilson.
+  Anton Guilland.
+  H.A.L. Fisher.
+  L.G. Wickham-Legg.
+  E.M. Lloyd.
+  J. Holland Rose.
+  August Keim.
+  C.W. Oman.
+  Eugen Stschepkin.
+  Julius von Pflugk-Harttung.
+  A.W. Ward.
+  G.P. Gooch.
+Napoleon and His Detractors, by Prince Napoleon.
+Heinrich Heine's Essays.
+France, by J.E.C. Bodley.
+Talleyrand, by Lady Blennerhassett.
+Napoleon's Marshals, by R.P. Dunn Pattison.
+French Revolution, by Thomas Carlyle.
+French Revolution, by Lord Acton.
+Bonaparte and the Consulate, by Thibeaudeau.
+Napoleonic Studies, by J. Holland Rose.
+Biographical Sketches, by Harriet Martineau.
+From Howard to Nelson, by Mahan.
+The Life of Nelson, by Mahan.
+A Mariner of England, 1780-1817, edited by Colonel Spencer
+    Childers.
+Bonapartism, by H.A.L. Fisher.
+Bernadotte's Correspondence with Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+1769. Aug.  15. Napoleon the First born.
+
+1789. July  14. French Revolution breaks out with the
+                  destruction of the Bastille.
+
+1790. July  14. France declared a Limited Monarchy.
+
+      July  14. Louis XVI. swears to maintain the Constitution.
+
+1791. June  21. The King, Queen, and Royal family arrested
+                  at Varennes.
+
+      Sept. 15. Louis (a prisoner) signs the National Constitution.
+
+1792. July  17. First coalition against France.
+
+      Nov.  19. French people declare their fraternity
+                  with all nations who desire to be free
+                  and offer help.
+
+1796. Mar.   9. Bonaparte's marriage with Josephine.
+                Bonaparte's successful campaign in Italy.
+
+1798.           Expedition to Syria and Egypt.
+
+1799. April.    European coalition against France.
+
+      Nov.  10. Council of 500 deposed by Bonaparte; he
+                  is declared First Consul.
+1800. June  14. Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Marengo.
+      Dec.  24. Bonaparte's life attempted by an infernal
+                  machine.
+
+                Bank of France founded by Napoleon.
+
+1802. Mar.  28. Peace of Amiens (with England, Spain,
+                  and Holland) signed.
+
+1802. May   19. Legion of Honour instituted by Napoleon.
+
+      Aug.   2. Napoleon made First Consul for life.
+
+1803. April 14. Bank of France established.
+
+      May   22. Declaration of war against England.
+
+1804. Feb.  15. Conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru against
+                Napoleon.
+
+      Mar.  21. Duc d'Enghien executed.
+
+      May   18. Napoleon proclaimed Emperor of France.
+
+      Dec.   2. Napoleon crowned by the Pope.
+
+1805. May   26. Napoleon crowned King of Italy.
+
+      Aug.      Third coalition against France.
+
+      Dec.   2. Napoleon defeats the Allies at Austerlitz.
+
+1806. Oct.  14. Napoleon defeats the Prussians at Jena.
+
+1807. Feb.   8. Napoleon defeats the Russians at Eylau.
+
+      July   7. Peace of Tilsit signed.
+
+      Dec.  17. Napoleon issues his Milan Decree against
+                  British commerce.
+
+1808. Mar.   1. New Nobility of France created.
+
+      May    5. Abdication of Charles IV. of Spain and his
+                  son in favour of Napoleon.
+
+      July      Commencement of the Peninsular War.
+
+1809. April     Alliance of England and Austria against
+                  France.
+
+      May       Napoleon defeats the Austrians and enters
+                  Vienna.
+
+      Oct.  14. Peace of Vienna signed.
+
+      Dec.  16. Divorce of the Emperor and the Empress
+                  Josephine decreed by the Senate.
+
+1810. April  1. Marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise of
+                  Austria.
+
+      July   9. Holland united to France.
+
+1811. Mar.  20. Birth of the King of Rome (Napoleon II.).
+
+1812. June  22. War with Russia declared.
+
+      Oct.      The retreat from Moscow.
+
+1813. Mar.      Alliance of Austria, Russia, and Prussia
+                  against France.
+
+      Oct.   7. British enter France.
+
+1814. Mar.  31. Surrender of Paris to the Allies.
+
+1814. April  5. Abdication of Napoleon negotiated.
+
+      May    3. Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty.
+                  Louis XVIII. arrives at Paris.
+
+      May    4. Napoleon arrives at Elba.
+
+      May   29. Death of Josephine.
+
+1815. Mar.   1. Napoleon  escapes  from   Elba   and lands
+                  at Cannes.
+
+      Mar.  20. Napoleon arrives at Fontainebleau.
+
+      Mar.  22. Napoleon is joined by all the Army.
+
+      Mar.      The Allies sign a treaty against him.
+
+      Mar.  29. Napoleon abolishes the slave trade.
+
+      June  12. Napoleon leaves Paris for the Army.
+
+      June  18. Battle of Waterloo.
+
+      June  20. Napoleon returns to Paris.
+
+      June  22. Abdicates in favour of his son.
+
+      July   3. He arrives at Rochefort, intending to
+                  embark for America.
+
+      July   3. Louis XVIII. re-enters Paris.
+
+      July  15. Napoleon surrenders to Captain Maitland,
+                  of the _Bellerophon_, at Rochefort.
+
+      Aug.   8. Is transferred at Torbay to the _Northumberland_,
+                  and, with Admiral Sir George Cockburn,
+                  sails for St. Helena.
+
+      Oct.  15. Arrives at St. Helena, to remain for life.
+
+      Dec.   7. Execution of Marshal Ney.
+
+1816. Jan.  12. Family of Bonaparte excluded _for ever_
+                  from France by the Law of Amnesty.
+
+1821. May    5. Death of Napoleon.
+
+1836. Oct.  29. Attempted insurrection by Louis Napoleon
+                  (afterwards Emperor).
+
+1837. May    8. Amnesty proclaimed for political offences.
+
+1838.           "Idees Napoleoniennes" published by
+                  Prince Louis Napoleon.
+
+1840. May   12. The Chambers decree the removal of
+                  Napoleon's remains from St. Helena.
+
+      Oct.  15. Exhumation of Napoleon's remains.
+
+      Nov.  30. Arrival of _Belle Poule_ frigate at Cherbourg
+                  with remains on board.
+
+1840. Dec.  15. Remains deposited in the Hôtel des Invalides.[33]
+
+      Aug.   6. Descent of Louis Napoleon, General Montholon,
+                  and fifty followers at Vimeraux, near Boulogne.
+
+      Oct.   6. The Prince captured and sentenced to
+                  imprisonment for life.
+
+1841. Aug.  15. Bronze statue of Napoleon placed on the
+                  column of the Grande Armée, Boulogne.
+
+1846. May   25. Louis Napoleon escapes from Ham.
+
+1847. Oct.  10. Jerome Bonaparte returns to France, after
+                  an exile of thirty-two years.
+
+1848. June  13. Election of Louis Napoleon to the National
+                  Assembly.
+
+      Sept. 26. Louis Napoleon takes his seat in the
+                  National Assembly.
+
+1857.           Longwood, the residence of Napoleon
+                  Bonaparte at St. Helena, bought for
+                  180,000 francs.
+
+1860. June  24. Jerome Bonaparte (the  Emperor's uncle)
+                  dies, aged 76.
+
+1861. Mar.  31.  Napoleon's body finally placed in the crypt
+                   of the Hôtel des Invalides.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The ceremony was witnessed by about 1,000,000 persons and 150,000
+soldiers assisted at the obsequies. No relatives of the Emperor were
+present, as at this time the various members of the Bonaparte family
+were either proscribed and in exile or in prison.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abrantès, Duke and Duchess of, _see_ Junot
+Acton, Lord, 115
+Aglietti, Dr., 157
+Alexander, _see_ Russia, Emperor of
+Amherst, Lord, 48
+Anne of Russia, Princess, 268
+Antommarchi, Dr., 32, 75, 82, 85, 195, 293
+Archambaud, 171
+Arnott, Dr., 85
+Augereau, General, 156, 176
+Austria, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Austria, Emperor of, 49, 55, 113, 124, 133, 267, 274
+
+
+Baranti, M., 217
+Barras, "Citizen," 240, 241, 251
+Bathurst, Lord, 34, 35, 45, 70, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 103, 181, 184
+Beauharnais, Alexandre, 231, 232, 234, 235
+Beauharnais, Eugene, 235, 240, 254, 283, 285
+Beauharnais, Hortense, 116, 232, 235, 254, 262, 279, 280, 283, 285
+Beauharnais, Marquis de, 231, 232
+Beauterne, M., 293
+Beauvais, Bishop of, 104
+Bernadotte, Marshal, 175, 273
+Berthier, General, 153, 176
+Bertrand, Count, 15, 34, 51, 57, 139, 171, 172, 195, 290
+Bertrand, Madame, 72
+Bessières, General, 153
+Bismarck, Prince von, 166
+Blücher, Marshal, 189
+Bombelles, M. de, 158
+Bonaparte, Caroline, 246
+Bonaparte, Joseph, 49, 115, 172, 244, 245, 262
+Bonaparte, Leon, 263, 264
+Bonaparte, Louis, 262
+Bonaparte, Lucien, 254, 262
+Bonaparte, Madame Mère, 146 _et seq._
+Bonaparte, Napoleon, 15, 19, 32, 35, 37, 40, 44, 48, 50, 58, 73, 75, 83,
+                     84, 85, 105, 106, 108, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124,
+                     126, 127, 128, 139, 155, 160, 162, 172, 194, 201,
+                     206, 207, 210, 213, 221, 240, 241, 243, 247, 250,
+                     252, 253, 254, 257, 259, 261, 265, 267, 271, 277,
+                     281, 284, 286, 288 _et seq._;
+  on the Christian religion, 293 _et seq._
+Bonaparte, Pauline, 116, 249, 250
+Borghesi, Countess Pauline, 83
+Bourrienne, M., 113, 128, 129, 162, 177
+Browning, Oscar, 117
+Brutus, Marcus, 124
+Bülow, von, 189
+Burton, Dr., 85
+Byron, Lord, 191, 199 _et seq._, 216
+
+Cadoudal, 262
+Cæsar, Julius, 123
+Camerata, Countess Napoleone, 145
+Carlyle, Jane, 84
+Carlyle, Thomas, 163
+Carnot, 241, 244
+Cases, Count Las, 34, 64, 65, 68, 70, 75, 171, 195
+Castlereagh, Lord, 45, 80, 103, 181
+Catherine of Westphalia, 153, 154
+Charles, Hippolyte, 249, 250, 251, 252
+Charles VII., 105, 106
+Charles X., 168
+Cipriani, 54
+Cockburn, Captain, 27, 34
+Collot, 253
+Colonna, Count, _see_ Walewska, Alexander
+Colonna, Signor Simeon, 82
+Commissioners of the Powers, 45, 49
+Compoint, Louise, 246
+Conquereau, l'Abbé, 171
+Constant, Benjamin, 123, 207, 213, 215, 216
+Corvisat, Dr., 286
+Coulon Brothers, 128
+Cromwell, Oliver, 90
+
+Davoust, Marshal, 176
+Denuelle, Madame Eleanore, 263
+Desaix, General, 153
+Dietrichstein, Count, 137
+Documents, _see_ Official Documents
+Dottot, M., 258
+Duroc, Marshal, 126, 153
+
+Editor of _Edinburgh Review_, 50
+Eliot, George, 216
+d'Enghien, Due, 51, 262
+
+Fesch, Cardinal, 150
+Flachats, MM., 261
+Forsyth, William, 36, 76, 91, 99, 100, 101, 179, 192, 196
+Fouché, M., 128, 129, 176, 206, 261, 263, 277, 284
+Fox, Charles James, 92, 93
+France, Commissioner for, 45, 49, 72
+Francis, _see_ Austria, Emperor of
+Frederick of Prussia, 49, 162
+Frederick the Great, 163
+Freron, M., 250
+
+George I., 162, 287
+George IV., 33, 70, 94, 95, 117, 180, 201, 287
+Gohier, M., 256
+Gorrequer, Major, 99, 100
+Gourgaud, General, 29, 53, 65, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 112, 139, 171, 179,
+                   193, 194, 195, 207, 288, 289
+Granville, Earl, 19
+Grouchy, Marshal, 189, 191
+Guizot, M., 17
+
+Hanover, Elector of, 162
+Henin, General, 190
+Henry, Mr., 99, 100
+Henry VIII., 287
+Hill, General Lord, 189
+Hoche, General, 240
+Holland, Lady, 49, 57
+Holland, Lord, 80, 89
+Hooper, 61
+Horeau, Dr., 286
+
+Jersey, Lady, 201
+Joan of Arc, 104, 106, 153
+Joinville, Prince, 26, 171, 173
+Josephine, 101, 118, 155, 210, 220, 231 _et seq._
+Jourdan, General, 176
+Junot, Marshal, 127, 245, 246
+
+Keith, Lord, 21, 65, 66, 120, 121, 122, 124
+Kellerman, General, 242, 243
+Kleber, General, 153
+
+La Fayette, 156
+Lallemand, 65
+Las Cases, _see_ Cases, Las
+Leclerc, General, 249, 250
+Lenz, Dr. Max, 193, 198, 209
+Liverpool, Lord, 80, 103, 181
+Livingstone, Dr., 85
+Louis Philippe, 16, 21 _et seq._, 138, 168, 169, 171, 172
+Louis XVI., 126, 270
+Louis XVIII., 94, 168
+Lowe, Sir Hudson, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51,
+                  57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 72, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 99,
+                  103, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 191, 194, 195,
+                  196
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 162
+Macdonald, Marshal, 176
+Maceroni, Colonel, 75
+Manning, Mr., 57
+Mair, Dr. Alexander, 293
+Maitland, Captain, 63, 65, 66, 118
+Marchand, M., 75, 156, 171, 290
+Marie Antoinette, 270
+Marie Caroline, Queen, 158
+Marie Louise, 49, 85, 131, 137, 146, 151 _et seq._, 267, 270, 274, 276, 286
+Marmont, General, 132, 134, 135, 156, 176, 247
+Masséna, General, 153, 176
+Masson, F., 118, 234, 235, 264
+Mecklenburg, Prince of, 284
+Melito, Miot de, 128
+Meneval, 156, 159, 189, 190, 267, 278
+Metternich, Count, 133, 136, 138, 143, 144, 276, 277
+Miguel, Dom, 132
+Montchenu, Marquis de, 45, 49, 72
+Montholon, Count, 15, 34, 39, 40, 43, 50, 51, 65, 75, 82, 83, 88, 139,
+                  172, 195, 289, 290, 293
+Montholon, Countess, 58
+Moreau, M., 262
+Müller, 109, 110, 111
+Murat, Marshal, 153, 245, 246, 271
+
+Napoleon, Charles, Prince, 262
+Napoleon I., _see_ Bonaparte, Napoleon
+Napoleon II., _see_ Rome, King of
+Napoleon III., 118, 142, 275, 276
+Napoleon, Prince Louis, 132, 135, 146, 172, 265
+Neipperg, Count, 49, 133, 137, 152, 156 _et seq._, 274
+Ney, Marshal, 153
+Noverraz, 171
+
+Obenaus, Baron, 133, 137, 142
+Official Documents, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21 _et seq._, 81, 82, 83, 95, 197
+O'Meara, Dr. Barry E., 30, 43, 46, 49, 50, 64, 73, 77, 79, 81, 181, 188,
+                       195, 241
+Orange, Prince of, 162
+Oudinot, Marshal, 176
+
+Pagerie, Joseph Tascher de la, 232
+Palmerston, Lord, 17, 20, 169
+Peel, Sir Robert, 186
+Permon, Madame, 127
+Philipon, Jeanne Marie, 236, 237
+Pichegru, 267
+Pieron, 171
+Pitt, William, 93
+Pius VII., 148, 150
+Plampin, Sir Robert, 195, 196
+Poppleton, Captain, 61
+Prokesch, Count, 136, 137, 142, 143
+Prussia, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Prussia, King of, _see_ Frederick
+
+Radowich, Gunner, 57
+Reade, Sir Thomas, 41, 42, 43, 50, 62, 63
+Reggio, Duchess of, 279
+Remusat, Charles de, 219
+Remusat, Madame de, 129, 219 _et seq._, 284
+Remusat, M. de, 220, 221
+Remusat, Paul de, 219
+Robespierre, 213, 235, 237
+Rocca, M., 214 _et seq._
+Roderer, M., 114
+Rome, King of, 49, 57 _et seq._, 131 _et seq._, 278
+Rosebery, Lord, 193, 288, 289
+Rovigo, Duke of, 65, 139
+Ruskin, John, 196
+Russia, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Russia, Emperor of, 49, 65, 124, 279, 280, 282
+
+Saint-Denis, 171
+Samson (M. de Paris), 237
+Santini, 54, 55, 56, 75
+Scott, Sir Walter, 28, 90, 91, 122, 182, 184
+Seguier, M., 115
+Serbelloni, Duke of, 247
+Short, Dr., 85
+Somerset, Lord Charles, 68, 69
+Soult, Marshal, 176, 190
+Staël, Madame de, 129, 204 _et seq._, 279
+Stokoe, Dr. John, 195, 196
+Strange, Sir Thomas, 42
+
+Taine, M., 144
+Talleyrand, M., 128, 129, 156, 161, 176, 206, 251, 261, 263
+Teynham, Lord, 187
+Thiers, M., 17
+
+Vandamme, General, 190
+Villemarest, 129
+Volney, Senator, 116
+
+Walewska, Alexander (Count Colonna), 269, 278
+Walewska, Madame, 118, 267, 269, 278
+Wellington, Duke of, 31, 103, 186, 187, 188, 189, 216
+Wieland, 108, 111
+Whitworth, Lord, 117
+Wilhelmina of Prussia, 163
+Williams, H. Noel, 148
+Wolseley, Lord, 191
+Wordsworth, William, 200
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of St. Helena, by Walter Runciman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+Title: The Tragedy of St. Helena
+
+Author: Walter Runciman
+
+Release Date: March 3, 2005 [EBook #15246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA ***
+
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+Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+</pre>
+
+  <h1><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA</h1>
+
+  <h3>BY</h3>
+
+  <h2>SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, BART.</h2>
+
+  <h4>AUTHOR OF<br />
+  "WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS,"<br />
+  "THE SHELLBACK'S PROGRESS,"<br />
+  "LOOKING SEAWARD AGAIN," ETC.</h4>
+
+  <h4>T. FISHER UNWIN<br />
+  LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE<br />
+  LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20<br />
+  1911</h4>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <div class="center">
+    <img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="392" height="495" alt="Napoleon I., Emperor of the French." title=
+    "Napoleon I., Emperor of the French." />
+  </div>
+
+    <h5>Napoleon I., Emperor of the French.</h5>
+    <div class="center"><span style="font-size: smaller">(From a miniature by Mrs. K.
+    R. Sellers.)</span></div>
+
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a><a name="Page_6" id=
+  "Page_6"></a><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+  <p>In my early sea-life, I used to listen to the eccentric and
+  complicated views expressed by a race of seamen long since passed
+  away. Occasionally there were amongst the crew one or two who had
+  the true British hypothetical belief in the demoniacal character
+  of Napoleon, but this was not the general view of the men with
+  whom I sailed; and after the lapse of many years, I often wonder
+  how it came about that such definite partiality in regard to this
+  wonderful being could have been formed, and the conclusion that
+  impresses me most is, that his many acts of kindness to his own
+  men, the absence of flogging and other debasing treatment in his
+  own service, his generosity and consideration for the comfort of
+  British prisoners during the wars, his ultimate defeat by the
+  combined forces of Europe, the despicable advantage they took of
+  the man who was their superior in everything, and to whom in
+  other days the allied Kings had bent in homage, had become known
+  to the English sailors.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>How these rugged men came to
+  their knowledge of Napoleon and formed their opinions about him
+  may be explained in this way. Hundreds of seamen and civilians
+  were pressed into the King's service, many of whom were taken
+  ruthlessly from vessels they partly owned and commanded. Indeed,
+  there was no distinction. The pressgangs captured everybody,
+  irrespective of whether they were officers, common able seamen,
+  or boys, to say nothing of those who had no sea experience. Both
+  my own grandfathers and two of my great uncles were kidnapped
+  from their vessels and their families into the navy, and after
+  many years of execrable treatment, hard fighting, and wounds,
+  they landed back into their homes broken men, with no better
+  prospect than to begin life anew. It was natural that the
+  numerous pressed men should detest the ruffianly man-catchers and
+  their employers, if not the service they were forced into, and
+  that they would nurse the wrong which had been done to them.</p>
+
+  <p>They would have opportunities of comparing their own lot with
+  that of other nationalities engaged in combat against them, and
+  though both might be bad, it comes quite natural to the sailor to
+  imagine his treatment is worse than that of others; and there is
+  copious evidence that the British naval service was not at that
+  period <a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>popular. Besides, they
+  knew, as everybody else should have known, that Napoleon was
+  beloved by his navy and army alike. Then, after the Emperor had
+  asked for the hospitality of the British nation, and became its
+  guest aboard the <i>Bellerophon</i>, the sailors saw what manner
+  of man he was. And later, his voyage to St. Helena in the
+  <i>Northumberland</i> gave them a better chance of being
+  impressed by his fascinating personality. It is well known how
+  popular he became aboard both ships; the men of the squadron that
+  was kept at St. Helena were also drawn to him in sympathy, and
+  many of the accounts show how, in their rough ardent way, they
+  repudiated the falsehoods of his traducers. The exiled Emperor
+  had become <i>their</i> hero and <i>their</i> martyr, just as
+  impressively as he was and remained that of the French; and from
+  them and other sources were handed down to the generation of
+  merchant seamen those tales which were told with the usual love
+  of hyperbole characteristic of the sailor, and wiled away many
+  dreary hours while traversing trackless oceans. They would talk
+  about the sea fights of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the battles of
+  Arcola, Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, the Russian campaign, the
+  retreat from Moscow, his deportation to Elba, his escape
+  therefrom, and his matchless march into Paris, and then the great
+  <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>encounter of Waterloo,
+  combined with the divorce of Josephine and the marriage with
+  Marie Louise; all of which, as I remember it now, was set forth
+  in the most voluble and comical manner. Some of their most
+  engaging chanties were composed about him, and the airs given to
+  them, always pathetic and touching, were sung by the sailors in a
+  way which showed that they wanted it to be known that they had no
+  hand in, and disavowed, the crime that was committed. As an
+  example, I give four verses of the chanty "Boney was a Warrior,"
+  as it was sung in the days I speak of. It is jargon, but none the
+  less interesting.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>"They sent him to St. Helena!<br /></span> <span>Oh!
+      aye, Oh!<br /></span> <span>They sent him to St.
+      Helena,<br /></span> <span>John France Wa!
+      (Fran&ccedil;ois.)<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>Oh! Boney was ill-treated!<br /></span> <span>Oh! aye,
+      Oh!<br /></span> <span>Oh! Boney was
+      ill-treated,<br /></span> <span>John France Wa!<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>Oh! Boney's heart was broken!<br /></span> <span>Oh!
+      aye, Oh!<br /></span> <span>Oh! Boney's heart was
+      broken!<br /></span> <span>John France Wa!<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>But Boney was an Emperor!<br /></span> <span>Oh! aye,
+      Oh!<br /></span> <span>But Boney was an Emperor!<br /></span>
+      <span>John France Wa!"<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>&mdash;and so on.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>Although at that time I
+  had, in common with others, anti-Napoleonic ideas, I was
+  impressed by the views of the sailors. Later in life, when on the
+  eve of a long voyage, nearly forty years ago, I happened to see
+  Scott's "Life of Napoleon" on a bookstall, and being desirous of
+  having my opinion confirmed, I bought it. A careful reading of
+  this book was the means of convincing me of the fact that "Boney
+  <i>was</i> ill-treated," and this in face of the so-called
+  evidence which Sir Walter Scott had so obviously collected for
+  the purpose of exonerating the then English Government.</p>
+
+  <p>The new idea presented to my mind led me to take up a course
+  of serious reading, which comprised all the "Lives" of Napoleon
+  on which I could lay my hands, all the St. Helena Journals, and
+  the commentaries which have been written since their publication.
+  As my knowledge of the great drama increased, I found my
+  pro-Napoleonic ideas increasing in fervour. Like the Psalmist
+  when musing on the wickedness of man, "my heart was hot within
+  me, and at the last I spake with my tongue."</p>
+
+  <p>I may here state in passing that there is no public figure who
+  lived before or since his time who is surrounded with anything
+  approaching the colossal amount of literature which is centred on
+  <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>this man whose dazzling
+  achievements amazed the world. Paradoxical though it may appear
+  now, in the years to come, when the impartial student has
+  familiarised himself with the most adverse criticisms, he will
+  see in this literature much of the hand of enmity, cowardice, and
+  delusion and, as conviction forces itself upon him, there evolve
+  therefrom the revelation of a senseless travesty of justice.</p>
+
+  <p>I offer no apology for the opinions contained in this book,
+  which have been arrived at as the result of many years of study
+  and exhaustive reading. I give the volume to the public as it is,
+  in the hope that it may attract in other ways to a fair
+  examination of Napoleon's complex and fascinating character.</p>
+
+  <p>WALTER RUNCIMAN.</p>
+
+  <p><i>December 3, 1910.</i></p>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+  <div class="centered">
+  <table border="0" summary="toc">
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE</a></td><td><br /></td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td><td>THE ABODE OF DARKNESS</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td><td>THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION&mdash;CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></td><td>THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA M&Egrave;RE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></td><td>THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></td><td>MESDAMES DE STA&Euml;L AND DE REMUSAT</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></td><td>JOSEPHINE</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></td><td>RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#BIBLIOGRAPHY">BIBLIOGRAPHY</a></td><td><br /></td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#LIST_OF_EVENTS_AND_DATES_HAVING_REFERENCE_TO_NAPOLEON_BONAPARTE">
+  LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES</a></td><td>HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE</td></tr>
+  <tr><td align="left"><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td><br /></td></tr>
+  </table></div>
+
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><a name="Page_14" id=
+  "Page_14"></a><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+  <h3>THE ABODE OF DARKNESS</h3>
+
+  <p>In Clause 2 of his last will, dated Longwood, April 15, 1821,
+  the Emperor Napoleon states: "It is my wish that my ashes may
+  repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French
+  people whom I have loved so well."</p>
+
+  <p>At London, September 21, 1821, Count Bertrand and Count
+  Montholon addressed the following letter to the King of
+  England:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"SIRE,&mdash;We now fulfil a sacred duty imposed on us by
+    the Emperor Napoleon's last wishes&mdash;we claim his ashes.
+    Your Ministers, Sire, are aware of his desire to repose in the
+    midst of the people whom he loved so well. His wishes were
+    communicated to the Governor of St. Helena, but that officer,
+    without paying any regard to our protestations, caused him to
+    be interred in that land of exile. His mother, listening to
+    nothing <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>but her grief,
+    implores from you, Sire, demands from you, the ashes of her
+    son; she demands from you the feeble consolation of watering
+    his tomb with her tears. If on his barren rock as when on his
+    throne, he was a terror of the world, when dead, his glory
+    alone should survive him. We are, with respect, &amp;c,
+    &amp;c,</p>
+
+    <p>(Signed) COUNT BERTRAND.</p>
+
+    <p>COUNT MONTHOLON."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In reply to this touching act of devotion to their dead chief
+  the English Ambassador at Paris wrote in December, 1821, that the
+  English Government only considered itself the depository of the
+  Emperor's ashes, and that it would deliver them up to France as
+  soon as the latter Government should express a desire to that
+  effect. The two Counts immediately applied to the French
+  Ministry, but without result. On May 1, 1822, a further letter
+  was sent to Louis XVIII., by the grace of God King of France and
+  Navarre, concerning the redepositing of the ashes of Napoleon,
+  Emperor, thrice proclaimed by the grace of the people.</p>
+
+  <p>On the accession of Louis Philippe to the throne the rival
+  parties were each struggling for ascendancy. The glory of the
+  days of the Empire had been stifled by the action of the European
+  Powers and their French allies, but the smouldering embers began
+  to show signs of re<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>newed
+  activity, and a wave of Napoleonic popularity swept over the
+  land. Philippe and his Ministry were not indifferent to what was
+  going on, and in order to distract attention from the chaos which
+  the new condition of things was creating, the plan of having the
+  "ashes" of the illustrious chief brought to the country and the
+  people whom he "loved so well" was suggested as a means of
+  bringing tranquillity to France and security to the throne.</p>
+
+  <p>M. Thiers, the head of a new Ministry, entered into
+  negotiations with the English Government, and M. Guizot addressed
+  an official note to Lord Palmerston, who was then Secretary for
+  Foreign Affairs.</p>
+
+  <p>This precious communication is embodied in the following
+  document:&mdash;"The undersigned, Ambassador Extraordinary and
+  Plenipotentiary of His Majesty the King of the French, has the
+  honour, conformably to instructions received from His Government,
+  to inform His Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Her
+  Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, that
+  the King ardently desires that the mortal remains of Napoleon may
+  be deposited in a tomb in France, in the country which he
+  defended and rendered illustrious, and which proudly preserves
+  the ashes of thousands of his companions in arms, officers
+  <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>and soldiers, devoted with him
+  to the service of their country. The undersigned is convinced
+  that Her Britannic Majesty's Government will only see in this
+  desire of His Majesty the King of the French a just and pious
+  feeling, and will give the orders necessary to the removal of any
+  obstacle to the transfer of Napoleon's remains from St. Helena to
+  France."</p>
+
+  <p>This document was sent to the British Embassy in Paris, and
+  the wishes of M. Thiers and his Government were conveyed in
+  orthodox fashion to the British Foreign Secretary by the
+  Ambassador, in the following letter, dated Paris, May 4,
+  1840:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"MY LORD,&mdash;The French Government have been requested,
+    in several petitions addressed to the Chambers, to take the
+    necessary steps with regard to the Government of Her Majesty
+    the Queen of Great Britain, in order to obtain an authorisation
+    for removing the ashes of the Emperor Napoleon to Paris. These
+    petitions were favourably received by the Chambers, who
+    transmitted them to the President of the Council, and to the
+    other Ministers, his colleagues. The Ministers having
+    deliberated on this point, and the King having given his
+    consent to the measures necessary to meet the object of the
+    petitioners, M. Thiers yesterday announced to me officially the
+    desire of the French Government that Her Majesty's <a name=
+    "Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>Government would grant the necessary
+    authority to enable them to remove the remains of the Emperor
+    Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. M. Thiers also calls my
+    attention to the fact that the consent of the British
+    Government to the projected measure would be one of the most
+    efficacious means of cementing the union of the two countries,
+    and of producing a friendly feeling between France and
+    England.&mdash;(Signed) GRANVILLE."</p>
+
+    <p>So that this King of the French and M. Thiers realise, after
+    a quarter of a century, that the hero who was driven to
+    abdicate, and then banished from France, <i>did</i> defend his
+    country and make it illustrious, and that the removal of his
+    ashes to France was the "<i>most</i> efficacious means" of
+    cementing the union of the country that forsook him in his
+    misfortune with the country that sent him to perish on a rock.
+    His ashes, indeed, were to produce a friendly feeling between
+    these two countries. What a burlesque!</p>
+
+    <p>Napoleon's motto was "Everything for the French people." He
+    seems to have predicted that after his death they would require
+    his "ashes" to tranquillise an enraged people. Of the other
+    contracting party he says in the fifth paragraph of his
+    will:&mdash;"I die prematurely, assassinated by the English
+    oligarchy and its deputy; the English nation will not be slow
+    in avenging me."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>Well, it is requested that
+  his ashes shall be given up to France so that peace may prevail.
+  And now follows the great act of condescension:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"MY LORD,&mdash;Her Majesty's Government having taken into
+    consideration the request made by the French Government for an
+    authorisation to remove the remains of the Emperor Napoleon
+    from St. Helena to France, you are instructed to inform M.
+    Thiers that Her Majesty's Government will with pleasure accede
+    to the request. Her Majesty's Government entertains hopes that
+    its readiness to comply with the wish expressed will be
+    regarded in France as a proof of Her Majesty's desire to efface
+    every trace of those national animosities which, during the
+    life of the Emperor, engaged the two nations in war. Her
+    Majesty's Government feels pleasure in believing that such
+    sentiments, if they still exist, will be buried for ever in the
+    tomb destined to receive the mortal remains of Napoleon. Her
+    Majesty's Government, in concert with that of France, will
+    arrange the measures necessary for effecting the removal.</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;(Signed) PALMERSTON."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>One of the chief features of this State document is its veiled
+  condition that in consideration of H.B.M. Government giving up
+  the remains of Napoleon, it is to be understood that every
+  <i>trace</i> of national animosity is to be effaced. Another is,
+  <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>now that his mortal remains
+  are in question, he is styled "the Emperor Napoleon." Twenty-five
+  years before, when the atrocious crime of captivity was planned,
+  Lord Keith, in the name of the British Government, addressed a
+  communication to "General Bonaparte." The title of Emperor which
+  his countrymen had given to him was, until his death, officially
+  ignored, and he was only allowed to be styled "General"
+  Bonaparte&mdash;the rank which the British Government in that
+  hour of his misfortune thought best suited to their illustrious
+  captive. He was, in fact, so far as rank was concerned, to be put
+  on a level with some and beneath others who followed him into
+  captivity. Well might he "protest in the face of Heaven and
+  mankind against the violence that was being enacted" towards him.
+  Well might he appeal to history to avenge him. There is nothing
+  in history to equal the malignancy of the conquerors' treatment
+  of their fallen foe. We shall see now and hereafter prejudices
+  making way, reluctantly it may be, but surely, for the justice
+  that should be done him.</p>
+
+  <p>Three days after the gracious reply of the British Government,
+  May 20, 1840, the French King signified his desire to carry out
+  the wishes of the Chambers by putting the following document
+  before them:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"GENTLEMEN,&mdash;The King has commanded Prince Joinville
+    [his son]<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a> to repair with his
+    frigate to the island of St. Helena, there to receive the
+    mortal remains of the Emperor Napoleon. The frigate containing
+    the remains of Napoleon will present itself, on its return, at
+    the mouth of the Seine; another vessel will convey them to
+    Paris; they will be deposited in the Hospital of the Invalides.
+    Solemn ceremonies, both religious and military, will inaugurate
+    the tomb which is to retain them for ever. It is of importance,
+    gentlemen, that this august sepulture should not be exposed on
+    a public place, amidst a noisy and unheeding crowd. The remains
+    must be placed in a silent and sacred spot, where all those who
+    respect glory and genius, greatness and misfortune, may visit
+    them in reverential tranquillity.</p>
+
+    <p>"He was an Emperor and a King, he was the legitimate
+    sovereign of our country, and, under this title, might be
+    interred at St. Denis; but the ordinary sepulture of kings must
+    not be accorded to Napoleon; he must still reign and command on
+    the spot where the soldiers of France find a resting-place, and
+    where those who are called upon to defend her will always seek
+    for inspiration. His sword will be deposited in his tomb.</p>
+
+    <p>"Beneath the dome of the temple consecrated by religion to
+    the God of Armies, a tomb worthy, <i>if possible</i>, of the
+    name destined to be graven on <a name="Page_23" id=
+    "Page_23"></a>it will be erected. The study of the artist
+    should be to give to this monument a simple beauty, a noble
+    form, and that aspect of solidity which shall appear to brave
+    all the efforts of time. Napoleon must have a monument durable
+    as his memory. The grant for which we have applied to the
+    Chambers is to be employed in the removal of the remains to the
+    Invalides, the funeral obsequies, and the construction of the
+    tomb. We doubt not, gentlemen, that the Chamber will concur
+    with patriotic emotion in the royal project which we have laid
+    before them. Henceforth, France, and France alone, will possess
+    all that remains of Napoleon; his tomb, like his fame, will
+    belong solely to his country.</p>
+
+    <p>"The monarchy of 1830 is in fact the sole and legitimate
+    heir of all the recollections in which France prides itself. It
+    has remained for this monarchy, which was the first to rally
+    all the strength and conciliate all the wishes of the French
+    Revolution, to erect and to honour without fear the statue and
+    the tomb of a popular hero; for there is one thing, and one
+    thing alone, which does not dread a comparison with glory, and
+    that is Liberty."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id=
+    "FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class=
+    "fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>The appeal is generous and
+  just in its conception and beautifully phrased. It was received
+  with enthusiasm throughout the whole of France. Louis Philippe
+  and his Government had accurately gauged what would, more than
+  anything, for the time being, subdue the rumbling indications of
+  discord and revolt. The King had by this popular act caught the
+  imagination of the people. He had made his seat on the throne
+  secure for a time, and his name was immortal. The great mass of
+  the people and his Government were behind him, and he made use of
+  this to his own advantage. Napoleon's dying wish is to be
+  consummated. "The blind hatred of kings" is relaxed; they are no
+  longer afraid of his mortal remains; they see, and see correctly,
+  that if they continue to "pursue his blood" he will be "avenged,
+  nay, but, perchance, cruelly avenged." The old and the new
+  generation of Frenchmen clamour that as much as may be of the
+  stigma that rests upon them shall be removed, threatening
+  reprisals if it be not quickly done. The British Government
+  diplomatically, and with almost comic celerity, gravely drop "the
+  General Bonaparte" and style their dead captive "the Emperor
+  Napoleon."</p>
+
+  <p>Louis Philippe, overwhelmed with the greatness of the dead
+  monarch, bursts forth in eloquent praise of this so-called
+  "usurper" of other days. He <a name="Page_25" id=
+  "Page_25"></a>was not only an Emperor and a King, but the
+  <i>legitimate sovereign</i> of his country. No ordinary sepulture
+  is to be his&mdash;it is to be an august sepulture, a silent
+  sacred spot which those who respect glory, genius, and greatness
+  may visit in "reverential tranquillity." Henceforth, by Royal
+  Proclamation, history is to know him as an Emperor and a King. He
+  is to have a tomb as durable as his memory, and his tomb and fame
+  are to belong to his country for evermore. The legitimate heir of
+  Napoleon's glory is the author of one of the finest panegyrics
+  that has ever been written; a political move, if you will, but
+  none the less the document is glowing with the artistic phrasing
+  that appeals to the perceptions of an emotional race.</p>
+
+  <p>But the real sincerity was obviously not so much in the author
+  of the document as in the great masses, who were intoxicated with
+  the desire to have the remains of their great hero brought home
+  to the people he had loved so well. It may easily be imagined how
+  superfluously the French King and his Government patted each
+  other on the back in self-adoration for the act of funereal
+  restoration which they took credit for having instituted. If they
+  took too much credit it was only natural. But not an item of what
+  is their due should be taken from them. The world must be
+  <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>grateful to whoever took a
+  part in so noble a deed. At the same time the world will not
+  exonerate the two official contracting parties from being exactly
+  free from interested motives. The one desired to maintain
+  domestic harmony, and this could only be assured by recalling the
+  days of their nation's glory; and the other, <i>i.e.,</i> the
+  British Government, had their eye on some Eastern business which
+  Palmerston desired to go smoothly, and so the dead Emperor was
+  made the medium of tranquillity, and, it may be, expediency, in
+  both cases.</p>
+
+  <p>In short, Prince Joinville was despatched from Toulon in
+  feverish haste with the frigate <i>Bellespoule</i> and the
+  corvette <i>Favorite</i>. These vessels were piously fitted out
+  to suit the august occasion. Whatever the motives or influences,
+  seen or unseen, that prompted the two Governments to carry out
+  this unquestionable act of justice to the nation, to Napoleon's
+  family, his comrades in arms who were still living, yea, and to
+  all the peoples of the earth who were possessed of humane
+  instincts, yet it is pretty certain that fear of a popular rising
+  suggested the idea, and the genius who thought of the restoration
+  of the Emperor's ashes as a means of subduing the gathering storm
+  may be regarded as a public benefactor.</p>
+
+  <p>But be all this as it may, it is doubtful if anything so
+  ludicrously farcical is known to history <a name="Page_27" id=
+  "Page_27"></a>as the mortal terror of this man's influence,
+  living or dead. The very name of him, animate or inanimate, made
+  thrones rock and Ministers shiver. Such was their terror, that
+  the Allies, as they were called (inspired, as Napoleon believed,
+  by the British Government&mdash;and nothing has transpired to
+  disprove his theory) banished him to a rock in mid-ocean, caged
+  him up in a house overrun with rats, put him on strict allowance
+  of rations, and guarded him with warships, a regiment of soldiers
+  with fixed bayonets, and the uneasy spirit of Sir Hudson
+  Lowe.</p>
+
+  <p>After six years of unspeakable treatment he is said to have
+  died of cancer in the stomach. Doubtless he did, but it is quite
+  reasonable to suppose that the conditions under which he was
+  placed in an unhealthy climate, together with perpetual petty
+  irritations, brought about premature death, and it is highly
+  probable that the malady might have been prevented altogether
+  under different circumstances. At any rate, he was without
+  disease when Captain Cockburn handed him over, and for some time
+  after. But he knew his own mental and physical make-up; he knew
+  that in many ways he was differently constituted from other men.
+  His habits of life were different, and therefore his gaolers
+  should have been especially careful not to subject this <a name=
+  "Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>singularly organised man to a
+  poisonous climate and to an unheard-of system of cruelty. Yes,
+  and they would have been well advised had they guarded with
+  greater humanity the fair fame of a great people, and not
+  wantonly committed acts that have left a stigma on the British
+  name.</p>
+
+  <p>Sir Walter Scott, who cannot be regarded as an impartial
+  historian of the Napoleonic regime, does not, in his unfortunate
+  "Life of Napoleon," produce one single fact or argument that will
+  exculpate the British Government of that time from having
+  violated every humane law. The State papers so generously put at
+  his disposal by the English Ministry do not aid him in proving
+  that they could not have found a more suitable place or climate
+  for their distinguished prisoner, or that he would have died of
+  cancer anyhow. The object of the good Sir Walter is obvious, and
+  the distressing thing is that this excellent man should have been
+  used for the purpose of whitewashing the British
+  Administration.</p>
+
+  <p>The great novelist is assured that the "ex-Emperor" was
+  pre-disposed to the "cruel complaint of which his father died."
+  "The progress of the disease is slow and insidious," says he,
+  which may be true enough, but predisposition can be either
+  checked or accelerated, and the course <a name="Page_29" id=
+  "Page_29"></a>adopted towards Napoleon was not calculated to
+  retard, but encourage it. But in order to palliate the actions of
+  the British Government and their blindly devoted adherents at St.
+  Helena, Gourgaud, who was not always strictly loyal to his
+  imperial benefactor, is quoted as having stated that he
+  disbelieved in the Emperor's illness, and that the English were
+  much imposed upon.</p>
+
+  <p>Why does Scott quote Gourgaud if, as he says, it is probable
+  that the malady was in slow progress even before 1817? The reason
+  is quite clear. He wishes to convey the impression that St.
+  Helena has a salubrious climate, that the Emperor was treated
+  with indulgent courtesy, and had abundance to eat and drink. It
+  will be seen, however, by the records of other chroniclers who
+  were in constant attendance on His Majesty, that Sir Walter
+  Scott's version cannot be relied upon.</p>
+
+  <p>If the statements in the annexed letter are true&mdash;and
+  there is no substantial reason for doubting them, supported as
+  they are by facts&mdash;then it is a complete refutation of what
+  Scott has written as to the health-giving qualities of the
+  island.</p>
+
+  <p>Here is the statement of the Emperor's medical adviser (see p.
+  517, Appendix, vol. ii., "Napoleon in Exile"):&mdash;<a name=
+  "Page_30" id="Page_30"></a></p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"The following extract of an official letter transmitted by
+    me to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October,
+    1818, containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon
+    Napoleon, will show that the fatal event which has since taken
+    place at St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to
+    His Majesty's Ministers.</p>
+
+    <p>"I think it my duty to state, as his late medical attendant,
+    that considering the disease of the liver with which he is
+    afflicted, the progress it has made in him, and reflecting upon
+    the great mortality produced by that complaint in the island of
+    St. Helena (so strongly exemplified in the number of deaths in
+    the 66th Regiment, the St. Helena regiment, the squadron, and
+    Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship
+    <i>Conqueror</i>, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her
+    complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last
+    eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon
+    Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a
+    climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be
+    aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and
+    irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of
+    which it is the nature of his distemper to render him
+    peculiarly susceptible.</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John
+    Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is a terrible reflection to think that this note <a name=
+  "Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>of warning should have gone unheeded.
+  A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would have thrown
+  political exigencies to the winds and defied all the powers of
+  earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their
+  prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they
+  to fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave
+  himself up to the captain of the <i>Bellerophon</i>, and whose
+  health was now shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common
+  people of this nation known all that was being perpetrated in
+  their name, the Duke of Wellington and all his myrmidons could
+  not have withstood the revolt against it, and were such treatment
+  to be meted out to a political prisoner of our day, the wrath of
+  the nation might break forth in a way that would teach tyrants a
+  salutary lesson.</p>
+
+  <p>But this great man was at the mercy of a lot of little men.
+  They were too cowardly to shoot him, so they determined on a
+  cunning dastardly process of slow assassination. The pious bard
+  who sings the praises of Napoleon's executioners&mdash;Wellington
+  and his coadjutors&mdash;and whose "History" was unworthy of the
+  reputations of himself and his publishers, will have sunk into
+  oblivion when the fiery soul of the "Sultan Kebir"<a name=
+  "FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2"
+  class="fnanchor">[2]</a> <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>will
+  seize on the imagination of generations yet unborn, and
+  intoxicate them with the memory of the deeds that he had
+  done.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon has said, "In the course of time, nothing will be
+  thought so fine nor seize the attention so much as the doing of
+  justice to me. I shall gain ground every day on the minds of the
+  people. My name will become the star of their rights, it will be
+  the expression of their regrets."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id=
+  "FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class=
+  "fnanchor">[3]</a> This statement is as prophetic as many others,
+  more or less important, made by Napoleon to one or other of his
+  suite. It is remarkable how accurately he foretold events and the
+  impressions that would be formed of himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Had the warning given so frequently to Sir Hudson Lowe been
+  conveyed to his Government, and had they acted upon it, there is
+  little doubt that a change of climate would have prolonged the
+  Emperor's life. But in going over those dreary nauseous documents
+  which relate the tale, one becomes permeated with the belief that
+  the intention was to torture, if not to kill. Dr. Antommarchi,
+  who succeeded Dr. O'Meara as medical attendant to the Emperor,
+  confirms all that O'Meara had conveyed so frequently to the
+  Governor and to the Admiralty. The Council <a name="Page_33" id=
+  "Page_33"></a>sent for him to give them information as to the
+  climate of St. Helena. They express the opinion that at Longwood
+  it is "good." Antommarchi replies, "Horrible," "Cold," "Hot,"
+  "Dry," "Damp," "Variation of atmosphere twenty times in a day."
+  "But," said they, "this had no influence on General Bonaparte's
+  health," and the blunt reply of Antommarchi is flung at them, "It
+  sent him to his grave." "But," came the question, "what would
+  have been the consequences of a change of residence?" "That he
+  would still be living," said Antommarchi. The dialogue continues,
+  the doctor scoring heavily all the way through. At length one of
+  the Council becomes offended at his daring frankness, and blurts
+  forth in "statesmanlike" anger: "What signifies, after all, the
+  death of General Bonaparte? It rids us of an implacable
+  enemy."</p>
+
+  <p>This noble expression of opinion was given three days after
+  George IV. had deplored the death of Napoleon. It is not of much
+  consequence, except to confirm the belief of the French that the
+  death-warrant had been issued. The popular opinion at the time
+  when the Emperor gave himself up to the British was that had he
+  come in contact with George IV. the great tragedy would not have
+  happened.</p>
+
+  <p>We are not, however, solely dependent on what <a name=
+  "Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>the two doctors have said concerning
+  the cause of his untimely demise. All those who knew anything
+  about Longwood, from the common sailor or soldier upwards, were
+  aware of the baneful nature of its climate. Counts Las Cases,
+  Montholon, and Bertrand had each represented it to the righteous
+  Sir Hudson Lowe as being deadly to the health of their Emperor.
+  Discount their statements as you will, the conviction forces
+  itself upon you that their contentions are in the main, if not
+  wholly, reliable.</p>
+
+  <p>But the climate, trying and severe as it was, cannot be
+  entirely blamed for killing him, though it did the best part of
+  it. Admiral Sir George Cockburn, while he acted as Governor,
+  seems to have caused occasional trouble to the French by the
+  unnecessary restrictions put upon them, but by the accounts given
+  he was not unkindly disposed. He showed real anxiety to make the
+  position as agreeable to them as he could, and no doubt used his
+  judgment instead of carrying out to the letter the cast-iron
+  instructions given to him by Bathurst. The Emperor spoke of him
+  as having the heart of a soldier, and regretted his removal to
+  give place to Sir Hudson Lowe, who arrived in the <i>Phaeton</i>
+  on April 14, 1816.</p>
+
+  <p>The new Governor's rude, senseless conduct on <a name=
+  "Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>the occasion of his first visit to
+  Longwood indicated forebodings of trouble. He does not appear to
+  have had the slightest notion of how to behave, or that he was
+  about to be introduced to a man who had completely governed the
+  destinies of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye
+  and penetrating vision measured the man's character and
+  capabilities at a glance. He said to his friends, "That man is
+  malevolent; his eye is that of a hyena." Subsequent events only
+  intensified this belief.</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps the best that can be said of Lowe is that he possessed
+  distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a
+  good business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his
+  life has never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all
+  decency to say that he was suited to the delicate and responsible
+  post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to
+  have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or administrative
+  quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The
+  fact is, there are indications that his nature was warped from
+  the beginning, and that he was just the very kind of man who
+  ought never to have been sent to a post of such varied
+  responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly ignorant
+  or wicked the Government, or Bathurst, were in their selection of
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>He was a monomaniac pure
+  and simple. If they thought him best suited to pursue a policy of
+  vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect, though it was a
+  violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand, they were not
+  aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either carelessness or
+  incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity, and by their
+  act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet there is
+  a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the
+  cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with
+  fear, smitten with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to
+  Montholon, "His death is my ruin."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id=
+  "FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class=
+  "fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+  <p>Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson
+  Lowe, but no one can read his work without feeling that the
+  historian was conscious all through of an abortive task. He
+  reproduces in vain the instructions and correspondence between
+  Lowe and his Government, and the letters and conversations with
+  Napoleon and members of his household, and deduces from these
+  that the Governor could not have acted otherwise than in the
+  manner he did. It is easy to twist words used either in
+  conversations or letters into meanings which they were never
+  intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of
+  cold-<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>blooded outbursts of
+  tyrannical intent to be set aside, and these make it impossible
+  to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light than that of a petty
+  little despot.</p>
+
+  <p>He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently
+  suited to "command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that
+  memorable verbal conversation which arose through Lowe requesting
+  that 200,000 francs per annum should be found as a contribution
+  towards the expenses at Longwood: "I have never heard your name
+  mentioned except as a brigand chief. You never suffer a day to
+  pass without torturing me with your insults." This undoubtedly
+  was a bitter attack, and the plainspoken words used must have
+  wounded Lowe intensely. Probably Napoleon himself, on reflection,
+  thought them too severe, even though they may be presumed to be
+  literally true, and it may be taken for granted that they would
+  never have been uttered but for the spiteful provocation.</p>
+
+  <p>A more discerning man would have foreseen that he could not
+  treat a great being like the late Emperor of the French as though
+  <i>he</i> were a Corsican brigand without having to pay a severe
+  penalty. An ordinary prisoner might have submitted with amiable
+  resignation to the disciplinary methods which, to the oblique
+  vision of Sir Hudson <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>Lowe,
+  seemed to be necessary, but to treat the Emperor as though he
+  were in that category was a perversion of all decency, and no one
+  but a Hudson Lowe would have attempted it. It is quite certain
+  that the dethroned arbiter of Europe never, in his most exalted
+  period, treated any of his subordinates with such airs of majesty
+  as St. Helena's Governor adopted towards him.</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe seems to have had an inherent notion that the position in
+  which he was placed entitled him to pursue a policy of
+  unrelenting severity, and that homage should be paid as his
+  reward. He thirsted for respect to be shown himself, and was
+  amazed at the inordinate ingratitude of the French in not
+  recognising his amiable qualities. It was his habit to remind
+  them that but for his clemency in carrying out the instructions
+  of Bathurst and those who acted with him, their condition could
+  be made unendurable. He was incapable of grasping the lofty
+  personality of the persecuted guest of England.</p>
+
+  <p>The popular, though erroneous, idea that Napoleon was, and
+  ever had been, a beast of prey, fascinated him; his days were
+  occupied in planning out schemes of closer supervision, and his
+  nights were haunted with the vision of his charge smashing down
+  every barrier he had racked his intellect to construct, and then
+  vanishing from the bene<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>volent
+  custody of his saintly Government to again wage sanguinary war
+  and spill rivers of blood. The awful presentiment of escape and
+  the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit,
+  and thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions
+  impishly vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity.
+  Napoleon aptly described Lowe as "being afflicted with an
+  inveterate itch."</p>
+
+  <p>Montholon, in vol. i. p. 184, relates how Lowe would often
+  leap out of bed in the middle of the night, after dreaming of the
+  Emperor's flight, mount his horse and ride, like a man demented,
+  to Longwood, only to be assured by the officer on duty that all
+  was well and that the smitten hero was still his prisoner. When
+  Napoleon was told of these nocturnal visitations, he was overcome
+  with mirth, but at the same time filled with contempt, not alone
+  for this amazing specimen, but for the creatures who had created
+  him a dignitary.</p>
+
+  <p>The tragic farce of sending the Emperor to the poisonous
+  plateau of Longwood, and giving Lowe Plantation House with its
+  much more healthy climate to reside at, is a phenomenon which few
+  people who have made themselves conversant with all the facts and
+  circumstances will be able to understand. But the policy of this
+  Government, of whom the Scottish bard sings so <a name="Page_40"
+  id="Page_40"></a>rapturously, is a problem that can never be
+  solved.</p>
+
+  <p>To a wise body of men, and in view of the fact that the eyes
+  of the world were fixed upon them and on the vanquished man,
+  their prisoner, the primary thought would have been compassion,
+  even to indulgence; instead of which they and their agents
+  behaved as though they were devoid of humane feelings.</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe's ambition seems to have been to ignore propriety, and to
+  force his way to the Emperor's privacy in order that he might
+  assure himself that his charge had not escaped, but his ambition
+  and his heroics were calmly and contemptuously ignored. "Tell my
+  gaoler," said Napoleon to his valet Noverras, "that it is in his
+  power to change his keys for the hatchet of the executioner, and
+  that if he enters, it shall be over a corpse. Give me my
+  pistols," and it is said by Montholon, to whom the Emperor was
+  dictating at the time of the intrusion, that Sir Hudson heard
+  this answer and retired confounded. The ultimatum dazed him, but
+  he was forced to understand that beyond a certain limit, heroics,
+  fooleries, and impertinences would not be tolerated by this
+  terrible scavenger of European bureaucracy.<a name="FNanchor_5_5"
+  id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class=
+  "fnanchor">[5]</a> <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>Lowe, in
+  very truth, discerned the stern reality of the Emperor's piercing
+  words, and he felt the need of greater caution bearing down on
+  him. He pondered over these grave developments as he journeyed
+  back to Plantation House, there to concoct and dispatch with all
+  speed a tale that would chill his confederates at St. Stephen's
+  with horror, and give them a further opportunity of showing how
+  wise <i>they</i> were in their plan of banishment and rigid
+  precautions, and in their selection of so distinguished and
+  dauntless a person as Sir Hudson Lowe, on whom they implicitly
+  relied to carry out their Christlike benefactions.</p>
+
+  <p>Cartoonists, pamphleteers, Bourbonites, treasonites, meteoric
+  females, all were supplied with the requisite material for
+  declamatory speeches to be hurled at the Emperor in the hope of
+  being reaped to the glory of God and the British ministry. The
+  story of the attempted invasion of Longwood and its sequel shocks
+  the fine susceptibilities of the satellites by whom Lowe is
+  surrounded. They bellow out frothy words of vengeance. Sir Thomas
+  Reade, the noisiest filibuster of them all, indicates his method
+  of settling matters at <a name="Page_42" id=
+  "Page_42"></a>Longwood. This incident arose through Napoleon
+  refusing to see Sir Thomas Strange, an Indian Judge. Las Cases
+  had just been forcibly removed. The Emperor was feeling the
+  cruelty of this act very keenly, so he sent the following reply
+  to Lowe's request that he should see Sir Thomas: "Tell the
+  Governor that those who have gone down to the tomb receive no
+  visits, and take care that the Judge be made acquainted with my
+  answer." This cutting reply caused Sir Hudson to give way to
+  unrestrained anger, and now Sir Thomas Reade gets his chance of
+  vapouring. Here is his plan: "If I were Governor, I would bring
+  that dog of a Frenchman to his senses; I would isolate him from
+  all his friends, who are no better than himself; then I would
+  deprive him of his books. He is, in fact, nothing but a miserable
+  outlaw, and I would treat him as such. By G&mdash;! it would be a
+  great mercy to the King of France to rid him of such a fellow
+  altogether. It was a piece of great cowardice not to have sent
+  him at once to a court martial instead of sending him
+  here."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+  <p>This ebullition of spasmodic courage entitles the
+  Deputy-Adjutant-General to special mention in the dispatches of
+  his chief. O'Meara relates another of <a name="Page_43" id=
+  "Page_43"></a>many episodes with which the valiant Sir Thomas is
+  associated. Further attempts were made to violate the privacy of
+  the Emperor on the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 16th August, 1819, but
+  these were defeated by the fastening of doors. Count Montholon
+  was indisposed, and the Governor, refusing to correspond with
+  Count Bertrand, insisted upon having communication with the
+  Emperor by letter or by one of his officers twice a day. So the
+  immortal Sir Thomas Reade and another staff officer were selected
+  to effect a communication. But "the dog of a Frenchman" that the
+  deputy boasted of "bringing to his senses" refuses admittance,
+  and Sir Thomas, who has now got his opportunity, evidently has
+  some misgivings about the loaded pistols that are kept handy in
+  case of an emergency. The Emperor, in one of his slashing
+  dictated declarations which hit home with every biting sentence,
+  reminds the Governor again what the inevitable result will be
+  should indecorous liberty be taken. Sir Thomas would be made
+  aware of this danger, so contents himself by knocking at the door
+  and shouting at the top of his voice: "Come out, Napoleon
+  Bonaparte. We want Napoleon Bonaparte."</p>
+
+  <p>This grotesque incident, which is only one of many and worse
+  outrages that were hatched at <a name="Page_44" id=
+  "Page_44"></a>Plantation House, reflects a lurid light on the
+  delirium of antagonism that pervaded the dispositions of some of
+  England's representatives. The hysterical delight of
+  manufacturing annoyances was notorious on the island, and Sir
+  Hudson and his myrmidons shrieked with resentment when dignified
+  defiance was the only response.</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe failed to recognise the important ethical fact that a
+  person who acts a villainous part can never realise his villainy.
+  So oblivious was he of this fundamental law that he never ceased
+  to assure the exiles that he was not only good, but kind. Here is
+  a note that bears out this self-consciousness: "General Bonaparte
+  cannot be allowed to traverse the island freely. Had the only
+  question been that of his safety, a mere commission of the East
+  India Company would have been sufficient to guard him at St.
+  Helena. He may consider himself fortunate that my Government has
+  sent a man so kind as myself to guard him, otherwise he would be
+  put in chains, to teach him how to conduct himself better."</p>
+
+  <p>To this the Emperor answered: "In this case it is obvious
+  that, if the instructions given to Sir Hudson Lowe by Lords
+  Bathurst and Castlereagh do not contain an order to kill me, a
+  verbal order must have been given; for whenever people wish
+  <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>mysteriously to destroy a man,
+  the first thing they do is to cut him off from all communication
+  with society, and surround him with the shades of mystery, till,
+  having accustomed the world to hear nothing said of him, and to
+  forget him, they can easily torture him or make him
+  disappear."</p>
+
+  <p>What a dreadful indictment this is against Bathurst,
+  Castlereagh, and Lowe, and how difficult to think of these men at
+  the same time as of Napoleon, whose name had kept the world in
+  awe! Surely their dwarfed names and those of all the allied
+  traitors and conspirators will pass on down the ages subjects for
+  mockery and derision, while his shall still tower above
+  everything unto all time. His faults will be obscured by the
+  magnificence of his powerful and beneficent reign, and
+  overshadowed by pity for his unspeakable martyrdom.</p>
+
+  <p>But what of the Commissioners representing Russia, Austria,
+  Prussia, and the Most Christian King of France? How shall they
+  fare at the hands of posterity? Their crime will not be that they
+  acquiesced in being sent to St. Helena by their respective
+  Governments, but that they allowed themselves to be completely
+  cajoled and influenced by the crafty allurements of Lowe. The
+  representative of Austria is said to have been a mere cipher in
+  his hands, while the attention of Count Balmin was wholly taken
+  up in making love to <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>Miss
+  Johnson, the eldest daughter of Lady Lowe by a former marriage.
+  He eventually married her and became one of the family. This
+  young lady's charm of character and goodness had captured the
+  affections of the Longwood colony, and her tender solicitude for
+  the sorrows of the Emperor caused him to form an attachment for
+  her which was evidenced by his gracious attentions whenever she
+  came to Longwood.</p>
+
+  <p>The Marquis de Montchenu (who on landing at St. Helena found
+  himself in the midst of a group of officers attending on Sir
+  Hudson, and called out, "For the love of God, tell me if any of
+  you speak French") is not much heard of in his official capacity.
+  Afterwards he appears to have been enamoured of the Governor's
+  good dinners, but though he was always hospitable, kind, and glad
+  to see his compatriots at his breakfast table, the Emperor never
+  would receive him, though he always showed appreciation of his
+  promptitude in forwarding to him French papers or books. The
+  Marquis would naturally find it difficult to assert himself when
+  he heard of the wrongs committed by his host.</p>
+
+  <p>The restrictions imposed on the Emperor were by this time
+  having an ominous effect. O'Meara reported that this was so, and
+  the Commissioners, whose instructions from their Governments were
+  <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>merely formal, thought it
+  their duty to bestir themselves, and requested the Governor to
+  remove the causes in so far as it was "compatible with the
+  security of his person," lest the result from want of exercise
+  should be of serious consequences to his health. Sir Hudson was
+  angry at the turn affairs were taking, as the Commissioners had
+  always accommodated themselves to his plans. He found, however,
+  that in this instance humanity had been aroused, and as it would
+  not suit his purpose to run against his hitherto complacent
+  friends, he thinks to appease their anxiety in the following
+  extraordinary manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I am about to arrange in such a way as to allow him to take
+  horse exercise. I have no wish that he should die of an attack of
+  apoplexy&mdash;that would be very embarrassing both to me and to
+  my Government. I would much rather he should die of a tedious
+  disease which our physicians could properly declare to be
+  natural. Apoplexy furnishes too many grounds for
+  comment."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+  <p>This insensate mockery of a man is always asserting himself in
+  some detestable fashion or other.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id=
+  "FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class=
+  "fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+  <p>At one time his benighted mind would swagger him into droll
+  ideas of attempting to chastise his <a name="Page_48" id=
+  "Page_48"></a>Imperial prisoner, at another, his childish fear of
+  the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic, and when one
+  droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself with
+  manifestations of aggrieved virtue.</p>
+
+  <p>The Emperor received Lord Amherst, who was a man of some human
+  feeling, and the noble lord offered to convey to the precious
+  Prince Regent certain messages. Then Napoleon, aroused by the
+  recollection of the perfidy which was causing him such infinite
+  suffering, declared that neither his King nor his nation had any
+  right over him. "Your country," he exclaims, "sets an example of
+  twenty millions of men oppressing one individual." With prophetic
+  utterance he foreshadows "a terrible war hatched under the ashes
+  of the Empire." Nations are to avenge the ingratitude of the
+  Kings whom he "crowned and pardoned." And then, as though his big
+  soul had sickened at the thought of it all, he exclaims, "Inform
+  your Prince Regent that I await as a favour the axe of the
+  executioner." Lord Amherst was deeply affected, and promised to
+  tell of all his sufferings and indignities to the Regent, and
+  also to speak to the saintly Lowe thereon. "Useless," interjects
+  the Emperor; "crime, hatred, is his nature. It is necessary to
+  his enjoyment to torture me. He is like the tiger, who tears with
+  his claws the prey whose agonies he <a name="Page_49" id=
+  "Page_49"></a>takes pleasure in prolonging." The audience then
+  closes and the sordid tragedy continues.</p>
+
+  <p>The Commissioners are to have bulletins, but no communication
+  with the Imperial abode. O'Meara is asked to prepare inspired
+  bulletins, and to report what he hears and learns from the
+  Emperor, and in a general way act the spy. He refused, and as
+  Lowe required willing tools, not honest men, he was ultimately
+  banished from the island. The Emperor embraces him, bestows his
+  benediction, and gives him credentials of the highest order,
+  together with messages of affection to members of his family and
+  to the accommodating Marie Louise, who is now mistress to the
+  Austrian Count Neipperg. He is charged to convey kindly thoughts
+  of esteem and gratitude to the good Lady Holland for all her
+  kindness to him. The King of Rome is tenderly remembered, and
+  O'Meara is asked to send intelligence as to the manner of his
+  education. A message is entrusted to him for Prince Joseph, who
+  is to give to O'Meara the private and confidential letters of the
+  Emperors Alexander and Francis, the King of Prussia, and the
+  other sovereigns of Europe. He then thanks O'Meara for his care
+  of him and bids him "quit the abode of darkness and
+  crime."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>Before O'Meara left the
+  island, news of the diabolical treatment of the Emperor had
+  filtered through to Europe in spite of Lowe's precautions. The
+  <i>Edinburgh Review</i> had published several articles exposing
+  the Governor's conduct, and when these were delivered at St.
+  Helena (addressed to Longwood) a great commotion arose at
+  Plantation House. Reade had orders to buy every one of the
+  obnoxious publications, but determined men of talent are not
+  easily thwarted in their object, especially if it is a good one,
+  so the Governor had the mortification of seeing himself
+  outwitted. O'Meara was confronted and charged with securing for
+  Montholon the objectionable <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. The articles
+  gave the Emperor great pleasure, and when this was made known to
+  Lowe it was intolerable to him. O'Meara gets official notice to
+  quit on July 25, 1818.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon thought it a bold stroke on the part of the British
+  Ministers (whom he regarded, and spoke quite openly of, as
+  assassins) to force his physician <a name="Page_51" id=
+  "Page_51"></a>from him. The doctor took the precaution to reveal
+  the place of concealment of his journal to Montholon, who found a
+  way of having it sent to him in England. This document was read
+  to the Emperor, who had several errors corrected, which do not
+  appear to have been of great importance, except one that had
+  reference to the shooting of the Duc d'Enghien.<a name=
+  "FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+  <p>On the day following his exit from Longwood O'Meara sent a
+  report on the exile's illness and his treatment thereof. The
+  report is an alarming account of the health of the Emperor, who,
+  notwithstanding, is deprived of medical aid for months. He justly
+  adhered to the determination of having none other than his own
+  medical attendant. Lowe sees in this very reasonable request a
+  subtle attempt at planning escape, and will not concede it. An
+  acrimonious correspondence then takes place. Letters sent to him
+  by Montholon or Bertrand are returned because Napoleon is styled
+  Emperor. Montholon in turn imitates Lowe, and returns his on the
+  ground of incivility, and it must be admitted the French score
+  off him each time.</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe whines to Montholon that Bertrand calls him a fool to the
+  Commissioners, and accuses him of collecting all the complaints
+  he can gather together, so that he may have them published.
+  <a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>The newspapers, particularly
+  the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, have slashing articles holding him
+  up to ridicule and denouncing him as an "assassin." He whimpers
+  that it is very hard that he, who pays every attention and regard
+  for the Emperor's feelings, should be pursued and made the victim
+  of calumnies. These expressions of unctuous pharisaism are coldly
+  received by the French, who ask no favours but claim justice.
+  Their thoughts are full of the wrongs perpetrated on the great
+  man who is the object of their attachment and pity. They will
+  listen to none of Lowe's canting humbug. They see incontestable
+  evidences of the Destroyer enfolding his arms around the hero who
+  had thrilled the nations of the world with his deeds. Their souls
+  throb with fierce emotion at the agony caused by the venomously
+  malignant tyranny. The meanest privileges of humanity are denied
+  him, and if they plotted in order that the world might learn of
+  the hideous oppression, who, with a vestige of holy pity in him,
+  will deny that their motive was laudable? Let critics say what
+  they will, these devoted followers of a fallen and sorely
+  stricken chief are an example of imperishable loyalty. They had
+  their differences, their petty jealousies, and at times bemoaned
+  their hard fate, and this oft-times caused the Emperor to quickly
+  rebuke them.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>Gourgaud was the Peter of
+  the family, and a great source of trouble. He may justly be
+  accused at times of lapsing into disloyalty. He was guilty both
+  on the island and after his arrival in England of committing the
+  same fault, but in this latter instance he may have had a
+  purpose, as he was asking favours from men who were bitterly
+  hostile to his benefactor. He knew they would be glad to hear
+  anything from so important an authority as would in any degree
+  justify their action. Gourgaud, in fact, was more knave than
+  fool, as his subsequent beseeching appeals on behalf of Napoleon
+  to Marie Louise and other personages in France very clearly
+  prove.</p>
+
+  <p>But take these men and women as a whole, view the
+  circumstances and conditions of life on this rock of vile memory,
+  inquire as minutely as you may into their conduct, and you see,
+  towering above all, that their supreme interest is centred on him
+  whom they voluntarily followed into exile. He is their ideal of
+  human greatness, their friend, and their Emperor.</p>
+
+  <p>They view Sir Hudson Lowe as they would a distracted
+  phenomenon. The introduction of new and frivolous vexations is
+  occasionally ignored or looked upon with despairing amusement. At
+  other times, when their master's rights, dignity, and matchless
+  personality are assailed, they resent it <a name="Page_54" id=
+  "Page_54"></a>with fierce impulse, and this gives Lowe further
+  opportunities of reminding them of his goodness. But during the
+  long, weary years of incessant provocation, criminal retaliation
+  was never thought of except on one occasion, when some new
+  arbitrary rules were put in force.</p>
+
+  <p>Santini, a Corsican, and one of the domestics, brooded over
+  his master's wrongs. He was generally of a cheerful temperament,
+  but since the new regulations were enforced it had been noticed
+  that his whole disposition had changed. He became thoughtful and
+  dejected, and one day made known to Cipriani his deliberate
+  intention to shoot the Governor the first time he came to
+  Longwood. Cipriani used all his influence to dissuade him from
+  committing so rash an act, and finding that Santini was
+  immovable, he reported the matter to Napoleon, who had the
+  devoted keeper of his portfolio brought to him, and commanded him
+  as his Emperor to cease thinking of injuring Sir Hudson. It took
+  the Emperor some time to persuade Santini, and when he did give
+  his promise it was with marked reluctance. Santini is spoken of
+  as being as brave as a lion, an expert with the small sword, and
+  a deadly shot. He was subsequently sent off the island, the
+  Emperor granting him a pension of &pound;50 per annum.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>Santini was the only one
+  who refused to sign a document put forward by Lowe in which all
+  the officers and domestics pledged themselves to conform to the
+  new regulations, which were, as usual, senseless and severe. They
+  insisted on the words "Emperor Napoleon" being inserted, but
+  Lowe, with inherent stupid pleasure, would have none other than
+  the words "Napoleon Bonaparte," and the penalty for refusing to
+  sign was banishment from the island. Sir Hudson got it into his
+  malevolent brain that he had pinned them at last. He affirmed
+  that their reason for not signing what they pretended was their
+  Emperor's and their own degradation was to give an excuse for
+  being "sent off." Whereupon, as soon as the Governor's crafty
+  insinuations became known, they all signed except Santini, who
+  refused to have Napoleon described by any other term than that of
+  Emperor.</p>
+
+  <p>Santini's loyalty to his illustrious master cost him the
+  anguish of being torn from his service and sent to the Cape of
+  Good Hope in the English frigate <i>Orontes</i>. He stayed there
+  a few days, but returned almost immediately to St. Helena. He was
+  not, however, allowed to land; and, having spent some days at the
+  anchorage, sailed on February 25, 1817, for England.</p>
+
+  <p>These refractory captives of the British authori<a name=
+  "Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>ties seem to have been a source of
+  great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost to the
+  nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing
+  with them. The business grows so farcical that the English
+  guardians become the laughing-stock of the most menial creatures
+  on the island.</p>
+
+  <p>Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching
+  appeal to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena
+  atrocities, the main facts of which have never been contradicted.
+  Any exaggerations which may appear in the pamphlet, coming as
+  they do from a soldier whose adoration for his Emperor amounted
+  to fanaticism, may be excused; but, whatever his faults, the ugly
+  facts remain unshaken.</p>
+
+  <p>There is no evidence in all the voluminous publications
+  concerning Napoleon at St. Helena that there would have been a
+  shred of mourning put on by the best men and women of any
+  nationality residing on this inhospitable rock had Santini or any
+  one else despatched the petty tyrant who was carrying on a
+  nefarious assassination by the consent, if not the instructions,
+  of an equally nefarious Ministry. Perhaps his Imperial victim
+  would have been the only person outside his family and official
+  circle who would have deplored the act. It is pretty generally
+  admitted that Lowe was detested by all classes who knew of the
+  villainous <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>methods adopted by
+  him to give pain to Napoleon and to any one who showed the
+  slightest sympathy towards him.</p>
+
+  <p>Letters from and to his wife, "the amiable Austrian
+  Archduchess," his mother, and other members of his family, were
+  not allowed to pass unless scrutinised and commented upon by this
+  insatiable gaoler. Letters written to the Ministry and to
+  well-disposed public men outside it were not forwarded, on the
+  pretext that the title of Emperor was used. A marble bust of the
+  Emperor's son was brought to St. Helena by T.M. Radowich, master
+  gunner aboard the ship <i>Baring</i>. It was taken possession of
+  by the authorities, and had been in Lowe's hands for some days
+  when he intimated to Count Bertrand that, though it was against
+  the regulations, he would take upon himself to hand over some
+  presents sent out by Lady Holland and some left by Mr. Manning. A
+  more embarrassing matter was the handing over of the bust. The
+  mystery and comic absurdity of some Government officials of that
+  time, or even of this, is amazing.</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe's dull perceptions had been awakened. He realised that he
+  might be accused of having committed an exceedingly dirty trick.
+  He thinks it in keeping with the dignity of his high office to
+  become uneasy about the retention of these <a name="Page_58" id=
+  "Page_58"></a>articles, especially the statue of the King of
+  Rome. So with unconscious humour he asks the Count if he thinks
+  Napoleon would really like to have his son's bust. The Count
+  replies, "You had better send it this very evening, and not
+  detain it until to-morrow." Lowe is aggrieved at the coldness of
+  the reply. He presumably expected Bertrand to gush out torrents
+  of gratitude. But the French code of real good taste and humane
+  bearing put Sir Hudson Lowe beneath their contempt. To them he
+  had become indescribable.</p>
+
+  <p>To all those who had access to Napoleon, the burning love he
+  had for his son was well known, and in one of those outbursts of
+  passionate anguish he declares to the Countess of Montholon that
+  it was for him alone that he returned from Elba, and if he still
+  formed some expectations in exile, they were for him also. He
+  declares that he is the source of his greatest anguish, and that
+  every day he costs him tears of blood. He imagines to himself the
+  most horrid events, which he cannot remove from his mind. He sees
+  either the potion or the empoisoned fruit which is about to
+  terminate the days of the young innocent by the most cruel
+  sufferings, and then, after this pouring out of the innermost
+  soul, he pleads with Madame to compassionate his weakness, and
+  asks her to console him.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>This learned
+  warrior-statesman was also a poet, and but for the solitude of
+  exile we should probably never have seen that side of this
+  versatile nature. The lines which he writes to the portrait of
+  his son are painfully touching. For some reason they were kept
+  concealed, and found some time afterwards. Here they are, but the
+  English translation does not do them justice:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>Delightful image of my much-loved boy!<br /></span>
+      <span>Behold his eyes, his looks, his smile!<br /></span>
+      <span>No more, alas! will he enkindle joy,<br /></span>
+      <span>Nor on some kindlier shore my woes
+      beguile.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>My son! my darling son! wert thou but
+      here,<br /></span> <span>My bosom should receive thy lovely
+      form;<br /></span> <span>Thou'dst soothe my gloomy hours with
+      converse dear,<br /></span> <span>Serenely we'd behold the
+      lowering storm.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>I'd be the partner of thine infant cares,<br /></span>
+      <span>And pour instruction o'er thy expanding
+      mind,<br /></span> <span>Whilst in thy heart, in my declining
+      years,<br /></span> <span>My wearied soul should an asylum
+      find.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>My wrongs, my cares, should be forgot with
+      thee,<br /></span> <span>My power Imperial, dignities,
+      renown&mdash;<br /></span> <span>This rock itself would be a
+      heaven to me,<br /></span> <span>Thine arms more cherished
+      than the victor's crown.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>O! in thine arms, my son! I could forget that
+      fame<br /></span> <span>Shall give me, through all time, a
+      never-dying name.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Here is another version of the same thoughts:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a> <span>TO THE PORTRAIT OF
+      MY SON.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>O! cherished image of my infant heir!<br /></span>
+      <span>Thy surface does his lineaments impart:<br /></span>
+      <span>But ah! thou liv'st not&mdash;on this rock so
+      bare<br /></span> <span>His living form shall never glad my
+      heart.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>My second self! how would thy presence
+      cheer<br /></span> <span>The settled sadness of thy hapless
+      sire!<br /></span> <span>Thine infancy with tenderness I'd
+      rear,<br /></span> <span>And thou shouldst warm my age with
+      youthful fire.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <span>In thee a truly glorious crown I'd find,<br /></span>
+      <span>With thee, upon this rock, a heaven should
+      own,<br /></span> <span>Thy kiss would chase past conquests
+      from my mind<br /></span> <span>Which raised me, demi-god, on
+      Gallia's throne.<br /></span>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Perhaps the Emperor did not wish to show all the anguish by
+  which he was being hourly devoured, but who can read these lines
+  now without a pang of emotion? The overpowering conviction that
+  his much-loved boy would be destroyed haunted him. Many people to
+  this day believe that he was right, and that his son's health was
+  sedulously undermined. But if that be so, the Imperial House of
+  Austria will have to answer for it through all eternity. Napoleon
+  knew that this much-treasured bust was at Plantation House, and
+  said to O'Meara, if it had not been given up he would have told a
+  tale which would have made the mothers of England execrate Lowe
+  as a monster in human shape.</p>
+
+  <p>But the Governments of Europe, as well as <a name="Page_61"
+  id="Page_61"></a>individuals, were spending vast sums of money on
+  pamphleteering, and probably those who wrote the worst libels
+  were the most highly paid. Therefore the women of England and of
+  other countries were continuously having their minds saturated
+  with poisonous statements. Many of them firmly believed Napoleon
+  to be the anti-Christ, and it is only now that the world is
+  beginning to see through the gigantic plot.</p>
+
+  <p>It was stated that the bust had been executed at Leghorn by
+  order of the faithless Marie Louise. In Hooper's "Life of
+  Wellington," the statement that "she was grateful to the Duke for
+  winning Waterloo, because in 1815 she had a lover who afterwards
+  became her husband, and she was not in a condition to return with
+  safety to her Imperial spouse," is hard to believe. This mother
+  of the son the poet-Emperor sings about was deriving pleasure in
+  playing cards for napoleons with the Duke who was regarded by her
+  husband as one of his most determined executioners. Her supposed
+  connection with the statue naturally gave it a larger interest,
+  so the Emperor expressed a desire to see the gunner, and ordered
+  Bertrand to get permission for him to visit Longwood.</p>
+
+  <p>The Governor, after examining the gunner on oath, and having
+  had him carefully searched, gave him leave to see Napoleon, but
+  Captain Poppleton <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>was ordered
+  not to allow him to speak to the French unless in his presence.
+  This arbitrary condition was resented with quiet, scornful
+  dignity, and the gunner was asked to withdraw. It is hard to
+  believe that a man could be so perversely crooked as Sir Hudson
+  Lowe. How human it was for the exile to long to hear a message
+  from the lips of one who was credited with having seen and spoken
+  to the mother of his son, and how inhuman of Lowe to put any
+  obstacles in the way of his desire being gratified!</p>
+
+  <p>The incident became common talk, and in proportion to its
+  circulation, so did Lowe's reputation suffer. It is questionable
+  whether he could have found any one unfeeling enough on the
+  island to justify so despicable an act, except perhaps Sir Thomas
+  Reade, whose baseness in this and other transactions cannot be
+  adequately described, and whose nature seems to have been
+  ingrained with the daily thought of achieving distinction by
+  excelling his master in some form of cruelty.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a piteous reflection to think of these two plants of
+  grace, the one at all times imbued with the idea of some
+  sanguinary plan of punishment, while the other varied the plan of
+  his doubtful transactions, at the same time telling the exiles
+  that he was actuated by the sweetest and purest of motives.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>In contrast to Lowe and
+  Reade, the chroniclers speak in the highest praise of Major
+  Gorriquer. The officers and soldiers of the garrison, as well as
+  the men of the navy, extended their touching sympathy to the hero
+  who described his imprisonment as being worse than "Tamerlane's
+  iron cage." Captain Maitland, in his narrative, relates a story
+  which indicates the magnetic power of this great soldier.
+  Maitland was anxious to know what his men thought of Napoleon, so
+  he asked his servant, who told him that he had heard several of
+  them talking about him, and one of them had observed, "Well, they
+  may abuse that man as much as they please; but if the people of
+  England knew him as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of
+  his head." To which the others agreed.</p>
+
+  <p>There are many instances recorded where sailors ran the risk
+  of being shot in order that they might get a glimpse of him, and
+  there is little doubt the poor gunner-messenger was subjected to
+  inimitable moral lectures on the sin and pains and penalties of
+  having any communication whatsoever with the ungentle inhabitants
+  of Longwood. This good-hearted fellow was as carefully shadowed
+  as though he had been commissioned to carry the Emperor off. Lowe
+  was infected with the belief that he had some secret designs, and
+  if he were not kept under close supervision he might take to
+  sauntering on <a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>his own account
+  and really have some talk with the French, and then what might
+  happen? This episode was brought to a close by the Emperor
+  directing that a kind letter should be written to the
+  enterprising sailor, and that a draft for <i>&pound;</i>300
+  should be enclosed. O'Meara says, "By means of some unworthy
+  trick he did not receive it for nearly two years."</p>
+
+  <p>The reason so much is made of the bust affair is accounted for
+  as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>Lowe, on first hearing of it being landed, intended to have it
+  seized and thrown into the sea. He afterwards took possession of
+  the article, with the idea of making Napoleon a present of it
+  himself. This idea did not pan out as he expected, and in
+  consequence of public indignation running so high, he had the
+  bust sent to Longwood immediately after his conversation with
+  Bertrand. While Las Cases was waiting at Mannheim in the hope
+  that the pathetic appeals he had made to the sovereigns on behalf
+  of Napoleon would bring to him a favourable decision, the
+  Dalmatian gunner heard of him. He was passing through Germany to
+  his home after a fruitless attempt in London to get the money
+  Napoleon had enclosed in his letter. The reason given was that
+  the persons on whom it was drawn were not then in possession of
+  the necessary funds. Las Cases paid <a name="Page_65" id=
+  "Page_65"></a>him, and received his appropriate blessings for his
+  goodness. Imprecations against Lowe were lavishly bestowed by the
+  gunner. He had been prevented from landing at St. Helena on his
+  way back from India, and but for this spiteful act of Lowe's the
+  money would have been paid at once.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile the touching appeals of Las Cases to the sovereigns
+  were unheeded. Even Napoleon's father-in-law, the Emperor of
+  Austria, who had given his daughter in marriage to the arbiter of
+  Europe, did not deign to reply, though only a brief time before
+  he had received many tokens of magnanimity from the French
+  Emperor. So, indeed, had other kings and queens of that time, not
+  excluding Alexander of Russia; but more hereafter about these
+  monarchs who had once clamoured for the honour of alliances with
+  Napoleon and with his family, but who now were conspirators in
+  the act of a great assassination.</p>
+
+  <p>Some three years before, Lord Keith was horrified when Captain
+  Maitland informed him on board the <i>Bellerophon</i>, in Torbay,
+  that the Duke of Rovigo, Lallemand, Montholon, and Gourgaud had
+  said that their Emperor would not go to St. Helena, and if he
+  were to consent, they would prevent it, meaning that they would
+  <a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>end his existence rather than
+  witness any further degradation of him. Lord Keith is indignant,
+  and replies to Sir Frederick Maitland, "You may tell those
+  gentlemen who have threatened to be Bonaparte's executioners that
+  the law of England awards death to murderers, and that the
+  certain consequence of such an act will be finishing their career
+  on a gallows." Precisely!</p>
+
+  <p>The noble lord's fascinating little speech is quite in accord
+  with justice, but did <i>he</i> ever raise a finger to prevent
+  his colleagues and their renowned deputy from committing the same
+  crime at St. Helena, and after this same Bonaparte's demise, were
+  any steps taken to call to account those whom the great soldier
+  had consistently declared were causing his premature death? Lord
+  Keith, with his eyes uplifted to heaven, had said, "England
+  awards death to murderers," and in this we are agreed, but there
+  must be no fine distinction drawn as to who the perpetrators are
+  or their reason for doing it. Whether a person for humanity's
+  sake is despatched by a friendly pistol-shot or the process of
+  six years of refined cruelty, the crime is the same, the only
+  difference being (if life has to be taken) that it is more
+  merciful it should be done expeditiously.</p>
+
+  <p>The French revered their Emperor, and could not bear to
+  witness his dire humiliation at the <a name="Page_67" id=
+  "Page_67"></a>hands of men so infinitely his inferiors, hence the
+  thought of unlawfully ending his existence. On the other hand,
+  members of the British Government were swollen out with haughty
+  righteousness; they regarded themselves as deputies of the
+  Omnipotent. They determined in solemn conclave that the man
+  against whom they had waged war for twenty years, and who was
+  only now beaten by a combination of circumstances, should be put
+  through the ordeal of an inquisition. If he held out long, well
+  and good, but should he succumb to their benign treatment, their
+  faith would be steadfast in their own blamelessness. They were
+  quite unconscious of being an unspeakable brood of hollow,
+  heartless mediocrities. Why did Lord Keith not give <i>them</i>,
+  as he did the devoted Frenchmen, a little sermon on the orthodoxy
+  of the gallows? They were far more in need of his guiding
+  influence.</p>
+
+  <p>The British public were deceived by the most malevolent
+  publications. The great captive was made to appear so dangerous
+  an animal that neither soldiers nor sailors could keep him in
+  subjection, and the stories of his misdeeds when at the height of
+  his ravishing glory were spread broadcast everywhere. Nothing,
+  indeed, was base enough for the oligarchy of England and the
+  French Royalists to stoop to.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>For a time the flow of
+  wickedness went on unchecked. At last a few good men and women
+  began to speak out the truth, and as though Nature revolted
+  against the scoundrelism that had been and was now being
+  perpetrated, a sharp and swelling reaction came over the public.
+  Men and women began to express the same views as Captain
+  Maitland's sailors had expressed, viz.: "This man cannot be so
+  bad as they make him out to be."</p>
+
+  <p>Las Cases had been sent to the Cape, but his journal,
+  containing conversations, dictations, and the general daily life
+  of the exiles since they embarked aboard the <i>Bellerophon</i>,
+  was seized by Lowe, so that he might pry into it with the hope of
+  finding seditious entries. (It may be taken for granted that no
+  eulogy of himself appeared therein.) The poor Count and his son
+  on arrival at the Cape were confined in an unhealthy hovel, and
+  treated more like galley-slaves than human beings. After some
+  weeks of this truly British hospitality under the
+  Liverpool-Bathurst regime he determines to make a last appeal to
+  Lord Charles Somerset, then Governor at the Cape, to be more
+  compassionate. He had been told that nothing but a dog or a horse
+  attracted either his sympathy or his attention, and frankly
+  admits that he found himself in error in thinking so harshly
+  <a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>of his lordship, as his appeal
+  met with a prompt and generous response.</p>
+
+  <p>The Governor, in fact, expressed his sorrow on learning for
+  the first time of the Count's illness and the conditions under
+  which he was living. He immediately put at his disposal his
+  country residence, servants, and all else that would add to his
+  comfort, and thus earned the eternal gratitude of a much
+  persecuted father and son. Lord Charles Somerset, for this
+  gracious act alone, will rank amongst the good-hearted Englishmen
+  of that troublesome time. It would appear that the Cape
+  Governor's subordinates were entirely responsible for the
+  ill-treatment complained of.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a puzzle to know for what purpose this gentleman and his
+  son were detained at the Cape. The Count had frequently pointed
+  out the folly of his detention, and begged Lord Charles to allow
+  them to take their passage in a small brig of 200 tons that was
+  bound to Europe. This request was agreed to, a passport granted,
+  and the captain of the craft that was to be carried "in the
+  sailors' arms" three thousand leagues was given stern
+  instructions that should he touch anywhere, his passengers were
+  to have no communication with the shore, and on reaching England
+  they were not to be allowed to land without receiving orders from
+  the Government.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>Whatever other charge may
+  be brought against Las Cases, the lack of courage can never be
+  cited. The act of taking so long a passage in this cockleshell of
+  a vessel is a sure testimony of his devotion and bravery. The
+  food and the accommodation were of the very worst, and though the
+  account given of the low thunder of the waves lashing on the
+  decks is not very sailorly, there can be little doubt that so
+  long a passage could not be made without some startling
+  vicissitudes.</p>
+
+  <p>At length, after nearly one hundred days from the Cape, they
+  are safely landed at Dover, and make their way to London to
+  apprise the immortal Bathurst of their arrival and of their
+  desire to see him, so that he might listen to some observations
+  about St. Helena matters. This man of mighty mystery and dignity
+  does not deign to reply, but sends a Ministerial messenger to
+  inform the Count that it is the Prince Regent's pleasure that he
+  quits Great Britain instantly. Las Cases tells the messenger that
+  it is a "very sorry, silly pleasure" for His Royal Highness to
+  have, but he has to quit all the same, as England is now governed
+  by "sorry, silly pleasure." Another batch of papers is taken from
+  him, and he is bundled away to Ostend and from thence to other
+  inhospitable countries, and ultimately lands at Frankfort.</p>
+
+  <p>The Count writes many clever, rather long, but <a name=
+  "Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>disturbing letters to noble lords in
+  England, to members of Governments in other countries, and to
+  every crowned head interested in the little community they have
+  in safe and despotic keeping at St. Helena. He sends a petition
+  to the British Parliament stating in clear, clinching terms
+  another indictment against the British Ministry and their agent.
+  This document was sent from the deserts of Tygerberg, but like
+  much more of a similar kind, not a word was said about it. The
+  author, however, was not to be fooled or driven from the path
+  which he conceived to be his duty to his much wronged Emperor, so
+  the petition was published, and created a great sensation.</p>
+
+  <p>This had to be subdued or counteracted, and as the Government
+  were unaccustomed to manly, straightforward dealing, they fell
+  back on their natural method of intrigue and the spreading of
+  reports that were likely to encourage and create prejudice
+  against their captive. It was imputed to them that while the
+  Congress was sitting at Aix-la-Chapelle they got up a scare of a
+  daring plot of escape. This was done at a time when the monarchs
+  were touched with a kind of sympathy for the man who had so often
+  spared them, and whom their cruelty was now putting to death.</p>
+
+  <p>No wonder that this Ministry of little men were suspected of
+  tricks degrading and treacherous. <a name="Page_72" id=
+  "Page_72"></a>The recitals of their distorted versions of their
+  woes affected the public imagination like a dreary litany. Vast
+  communities of men were beginning to realise that a tragedy was
+  being engineered in the name of sanctity and humanity.</p>
+
+  <p>Every agency composed of cunning, unscrupulous rascals was
+  enlisted to picture the Emperor as a hideous monster who should
+  not be allowed to enjoy the liberty so charitably given him, and
+  who, if he got his proper deserts, should be put in chains. He
+  was depicted as having a mania for roaming about the island with
+  a gun, shooting wild cats and anything else that came within
+  range. Madame Bertrand's pet kids, a bullock, and some goats were
+  reported to have fallen victims to this vicious maniac. Old
+  Montchenu and Lowe became alarmed lest he should kill some human
+  being by mistake; they perplexed their little minds as to the
+  form of indictment should such an event happen. Should it be
+  manslaughter or murder? This knotty question was submitted with
+  touching solemnity to the law officers of the Crown for decision,
+  and it may be assumed that even their sense of humour must have
+  been excited when they learned of the quandary of the Governor
+  and the French Commissioner. The shooting propensity set the
+  ingenious Lowe a-thinking, and in order to satisfy it he evolved
+  the idea of having rabbits let adrift, <a name="Page_73" id=
+  "Page_73"></a>but, as usual, another of his little comforting
+  considerations is abortive, and the plan has a tragic finish.
+  Shooting is off. The Emperor's hobby has changed to gardening.
+  The rabbits become an easy prey to the swarms of rats that prowl
+  about Longwood, and soon disappear.</p>
+
+  <p>It is quite probable that Napoleon did have a fancy for
+  shooting, but it is well known he was never at any time a
+  sportsman in the sense of being a good shot&mdash;indeed,
+  everything points to his having no taste for what is ordinarily
+  known as sport, and that he ever shot kids, goats, or bullocks is
+  highly improbable. That he occasionally went shooting and got
+  good sport in killing the rats and other vermin which made
+  Longwood an insufferable habitation to live in is quite true. It
+  is also quite true that Lowe became demented with fear in case
+  the shooting should have sanguinary and far-reaching effects.
+  Hence the foregoing communication to the law officers.</p>
+
+  <p>There is little doubt as to the use that was made of the
+  ludicrous inquiry by Lowe. It must have been handed over to the
+  army of loathsome libellers&mdash;men and women who were willing
+  to do the dirtiest of all work, that of writing and speaking lies
+  (some abominable in their character) of a defenceless man, in
+  order that their vindictiveness should be completely satisfied.
+  Vast sums <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>were annually
+  expended for no other purpose than to put their afflicted
+  prisoner through the torture of a living purgatory.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon did not heed their silly stories of shooting
+  exploits, though he knew the underlying purpose of them. It was
+  the darker, sordid wickedness that was daily practised on him
+  that ate like a canker into mind and body until he was a
+  shattered wreck. It was the foul treatment of this great man that
+  caused Dr. Barry O'Meara to revolt and openly proclaim that the
+  captive of St. Helena was being put to death. As an honourable
+  man he declared he could behold it no longer without making a
+  spirited protest. He knew that this meant banishment, ostracism,
+  and persecution by the Government. He foresaw that powerful
+  agencies would be at work against him, and that no expense would
+  be spared in order that his statements should be refuted, but he
+  hazarded everything and defied the world. He came through the
+  ordeal, as all impartial judges will admit, with cleaner hands
+  and a cleaner tongue than those who challenged his accuracy.</p>
+
+  <p>Make what deductions you may, distort and twist as you like
+  the unimportant trivialities, the main facts related by O'Meara
+  have never been really shaken. What is more, he is backed up by
+  Napoleon himself in Lowe's personal interviews <a name="Page_75"
+  id="Page_75"></a>with him, and more particularly by his letters
+  to the Governor&mdash;to say nothing of the substantial backing
+  he gets from Las Cases, Montholon, Marchand, and
+  Gourgaud&mdash;that shameless, jealous, lachrymose traitor to his
+  great benefactor.</p>
+
+  <p>And then there is Santini, whose wish to kill the Governor was
+  not altogether without good reason, and who was deported from the
+  island for this and other infringements of the regulations. The
+  publication of his pamphlet, previously mentioned, created a
+  great sensation, and it sold like wildfire. It was said to be
+  fabrications, but it was not <i>all</i> fabrications. Montholon
+  reports that Napoleon criticised the work, and remarked that some
+  one must have assisted him. Well, so it was. The story was
+  related to Colonel Maceroni, an Italian, by Santini, and put into
+  readable form by him, but this does not detract from that which
+  is really true in it, and a good deal of what O'Meara contends is
+  confirmed therein.</p>
+
+  <p>Then O'Meara's successor, Antommarchi, has even a worse story
+  to relate. These chronicles vary only in phrase and detail, and
+  even in these there is wonderful similarity. But when we come
+  down to the bedrock foundation of their complaints, <i>i.e.</i>,
+  the policy and treatment by Lowe and his myrmidons, incited by
+  the Home Government and their followers, each record bears the
+  stamp of <a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>truth&mdash;the
+  indictment is the same though it may be related differently.</p>
+
+  <p>Some writers have cast doubt on the authenticity of the St.
+  Helena chroniclers without having a peg to hang their contentions
+  on. The answer to all this is, that if never a line had been
+  written by these men, the State papers, cunningly devised and
+  crafty though most of them are, would have been ample evidence
+  from which to draw unfavourable conclusions. Indeed, without
+  State papers being brought into it at all, there is facing you
+  always the glaring fact of a determined assassination perpetrated
+  in the name of humanity, and if I felt any desire to be assured
+  of this, I would take as an authority William Forsyth's three
+  volumes written in defence of Sir Hudson Lowe. No author has so
+  completely failed to prove his case. Moreover, no valid reason
+  has ever been given, or ever can be, for doubting the veracity of
+  O'Meara and other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite who have written
+  their experiences of the St. Helena period.</p>
+
+  <p>In the first place, those sceptical writers who deal with the
+  different books that have been published relative to this part of
+  Napoleon's history were not only not there to witness all that
+  went on, but some of them were not born for many years after
+  Napoleon and his contemporaries had passed on. So that it really
+  narrows itself down to this: the <a name="Page_77" id=
+  "Page_77"></a>knowledge the sceptics have attained is taken from
+  documents or books written for the most part by the very men who
+  they say are not to be relied on as giving a true version of all
+  that took place during their stay at St. Helena. It cannot be
+  disputed that these gentlemen were in daily and hourly contact
+  with England's prisoner, and, as they aver, jotted down
+  everything that passed in conversation or that transpired in
+  other ways between themselves and the Emperor, or anybody
+  else.</p>
+
+  <p>The history of the St. Helena period, as written by authors
+  who were on the spot, is, in the present writer's opinion,
+  singularly free from exaggeration, let alone untruths. Besides,
+  what had any of them to gain by sending forth distorted
+  statements and untruthful history? No one knew better than they
+  that every line they wrote would be contested by those who had
+  relied on the rigid regulations suppressing all communications
+  except those which passed through the hands of Sir Hudson Lowe.
+  Certainly O'Meara cannot be accused of having ulterior motives,
+  nor can any of the others&mdash;not even Gourgaud, who acted
+  alternately traitor and devoted friend. Gourgaud alone seems to
+  have had a mania for sinning and repenting, writing down during
+  his childish fits of temper about his supposed wrongs on his
+  shirtcuffs, and not infrequently his finger-nails, some nasty
+  remark or some <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>slanderous
+  thoughts about the man whose amiable consideration for him was
+  notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation
+  House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his
+  diary, and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this
+  precious book, down they went in rancorous haste.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet this hot-headed, jealous chronicler, guided by blind
+  passion and never by reason while these moods were on him, has
+  been held up as an authority that may be relied upon as to the
+  doings and sayings of Napoleon and his immediate followers at the
+  "Abode of Darkness." It is a well-known axiom that persons who
+  speak or write anything while jealousy or temper holds them in
+  its grip may not be counted as reliable people to follow, and
+  that is exactly what happened in Gourgaud's case. He was the
+  Peter of the band of disciples at St. Helena, and it may be
+  considered fairly reasonable to assume that those who have
+  written up the General as a sound historian have done so with a
+  view to backing up prejudices, big or small, against the
+  Emperor.</p>
+
+  <p>But surely they have committed a very grave error in singling
+  out as their hero of veracity a man who, in his more normal and
+  charitable moods, pours out praise and pity for his Imperial
+  chief in astonishing profusion.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>O'Meara's position was very
+  different from any of the other diarists or writers. He was well
+  aware that if he wrote an honest history it meant his complete
+  ruin, yet he faced it, and defied the world to controvert his
+  statements. "In face of the world," he says, "I challenge
+  investigation," and "investigation" was made with a vengeance
+  worthy of the Inquisition. If a word or a sentence could by any
+  possible means be made to appear faulty, a scream of denunciation
+  was sent forth from one end of Europe to the other, but the crime
+  had sunk too deeply into the hearts of an outraged public for
+  these ebullitions to have any real effect. There might be flaws
+  in diction and even matters of fact, but the sordid reality of
+  the documentary and verbal story that came to them was never
+  doubted. The big heart of the British nation was beginning to be
+  moved in sympathy towards the martyr long before his death, and
+  of course long before O'Meara's book appeared, though the
+  doctor's advent in Europe was made the occasion of a vigorous
+  exposure of the progress of the great assassination.</p>
+
+  <p>A wave of public opinion was gathering force; the Government,
+  stupid and treacherous as they were, saw it rising, and renewed
+  their silly efforts to stem it by causing atrocious duplicity to
+  be instituted at home and on the martyr rock. Indeed, <a name=
+  "Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>nothing was beneath their dignity so
+  long as they succeeded in deceiving an agitated populace and
+  accomplishing their own evil ends.</p>
+
+  <p>But notwithstanding the tactics and the deplorable use made of
+  the traitor Gourgaud, sympathetic feeling increases. Questions
+  are frequently asked in the House of Commons, to which evasive
+  answers are given, but reaction is so obviously gaining ground
+  that Lords Liverpool, Castlereagh, and the immortal Bathurst
+  become perturbed. They saw in the accession to power of Lord
+  Holland's party a complete exposure of their maladministration,
+  and a reversing of their policy (if it be not a libel to
+  distinguish it as a "policy"). They knew, too, that once the
+  public is fairly seized with the idea of a great wrong being
+  perpetrated, no Government, however strong numerically or in
+  personality, can withstand its opposition. Had the Emperor lived
+  but a little longer, the vindictive men who tormented him to
+  death would have been compelled to give way before not only
+  British, but European, indignation. Public opinion would have
+  enforced the Administration to deal out better treatment to their
+  captive, have demanded his removal from the island of sorrow, and
+  probably his freedom. The public may be capricious, but once it
+  makes up its mind to do anything no power on earth can stop it,
+  because it has a greater power behind it. Luckily, <a name=
+  "Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>or unluckily, for Bathurst &amp; Co.,
+  the spirit of the great captive had passed beyond the portal
+  before serious public action could be taken.</p>
+
+  <p>Three years previous to this the Colonial Secretary in writing
+  to Lowe says:&mdash;"We must expect that the removal of Mr.
+  O'Meara will occasion a great sensation, and an attempt will be
+  made to give a bad impression on the subject. You had better let
+  the substance of my instructions be generally known as soon as
+  you have executed it, that it may not be represented that Mr.
+  O'Meara has been removed in consequence of any quarrel with you,
+  but in consequence of the information furnished by General
+  Gourgaud in England respecting his conduct."<a name=
+  "FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+  <p>In reading through these State letters, one is struck with the
+  diplomatically(?) cunning composition of them. There does not
+  seem to be a manly phrase from beginning to end. Trickery,
+  suspicion, cruelty, veiled or apparent, and an occasional dash of
+  pious consideration and bombast sums up these perfidious
+  documents. A few extracts will convey precisely the character of
+  the men who were carrying on negotiations which should have been
+  regarded as essentially delicate.</p>
+
+  <p>In February, 1821, Bathurst writes to Lowe:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"Sufficient time will have elapsed since the date of your
+    last<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a> communications to
+    enable you to form a more accurate judgment with respect to the
+    extent and reality of General Bonaparte's indisposition. Should
+    your observations convince you that the illness has been
+    <i>assumed</i>, you will of course consider yourself at liberty
+    to withhold from him the communication which you are otherwise
+    authorised to make in my despatch No. 21," &amp;c.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>On April 11, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst:&mdash;"The
+  enclosed extract of a letter from Count Montholon may merit, as
+  usual, your lordship's perusal." (This, of course, is intended as
+  wit.) "It may be regarded as a bulletin of General Bonaparte's
+  health, meant for circulation at Paris."</p>
+
+  <p>Dr. Antommarchi, in writing to Signor Simeon Colonna on March
+  17, 1821, after dilating on his master's health, the climate,
+  &amp;c., bursts out in a paragraph: "Dear friend, the medical art
+  can do nothing against the influence of climate, and if the
+  English Government does not hasten to remove him from this
+  destructive atmosphere, His Majesty soon, with anguish I say it,
+  will pay the last tribute to the earth"; and in a postscript he
+  adds: "I offer the <i>undoubted facts</i> stated above, in
+  opposition to the gratuitous assertions in the English newspapers
+  relative to the good health which His Majesty is stated to enjoy
+  here."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>On March 17, 1821,
+  Montholon writes to Princess Pauline Borghesi: "The Emperor
+  reckons upon your Highness to make his real situation known to
+  some English of influence. He dies without succour upon this
+  frightful rock; his agonies are frightful." At the time Napoleon
+  was suffering thus, letters were published in some of the
+  Ministerial newspapers purporting to have come from St. Helena
+  and representing him to be in perfect health.</p>
+
+  <p>On May 6, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst announcing the death
+  of the Emperor. It is a long rigmarole not worth quoting, except
+  that he condescends to allow the body to be interred with the
+  honours due to a general officer of the highest rank. Then
+  follows the majestic reply of Bathurst. He says, "I am happy to
+  assure you that your conduct, as detailed in those despatches,
+  has received His Majesty's approbation"; which indicates that
+  Lowe did not feel quite happy himself as to how the effusions
+  would be regarded by his employers, now that the Emperor had
+  succumbed to their and his own wicked treatment. In his
+  despatches of February and April, 1821, he had mockingly referred
+  to Napoleon's indisposition as being faked, and in May he is
+  obliged to write himself as an unscrupulous liar, but
+  notwithstanding this, his action meets with the approval of the
+  chief of the <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>executioners,
+  which is very natural, seeing that this person was regarded as
+  one of the most prominent scoundrels in Europe. But Sir Hudson
+  Lowe craved for approbation, and was so mentally constituted that
+  he believed he deserved it by committing offences against God and
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>"Every good servant does not all commands, no bond but to do
+  just ones," but Lowe, in his anxiety to please his employers,
+  went to the furthest limits of injustice. How void of human
+  understanding and what Mrs. Carlyle called "that damned thing,
+  human kindness" this wretched man was!</p>
+
+  <p>As will be hereafter shown, he had not long to wait after
+  Napoleon's death and the receipt of tokens of friendliness that
+  had been sent to him through the Colonial Secretary, before he
+  was made to feel that the Government was not disposed to carry
+  any part of his public unpopularity on its shoulders. He had done
+  his best or worst to make that portion of the earth on which he
+  lived miserable to those he might have made tolerably happy,
+  without infringing the loutish instructions of a notoriously
+  stupid Government. Instead of this he made himself so despised
+  that the Emperor, almost with his last breath, called all good
+  spirits to bear witness against him and his murderous
+  confederates.</p>
+
+  <p>The great soldier had slipped his moorings on <a name=
+  "Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>May 6, 1821, and on the 7th or 8th,
+  after much ado with the Governor, a post-mortem examination was
+  held by Dr. Fran&ccedil;ois Antommarchi in the presence of Drs.
+  Short, Arnott, Burton, and Livingstone. Lowe was represented by
+  the Chief of Staff. The examination disclosed an ulcerous growth
+  and an unnaturally enlarged liver, which may be assumed as the
+  ultimate cause of death, though Antommarchi's report assuredly
+  points to the fatal nature of the climatic conditions.</p>
+
+  <p>The French were anxious to have the body of their Emperor
+  embalmed, but Hudson Lowe insisted that his instructions forbade
+  this. Napoleon had commanded that his heart should be put in a
+  silver vase filled with spirits of wine and sent to Marie Louise.
+  When Sir Hudson Lowe heard that this was being done, he sent a
+  peremptory order forbidding it, stating that no part should be
+  preserved but the stomach, which would be sent to England.
+  Naturally such wanton disregard of the Emperor's wish was
+  violently resented by the French, and by the best of the English
+  who were there. A long and heated discussion seems to have ensued
+  on this question, which ended in the Governor having to give
+  way&mdash;not altogether&mdash;but he was compelled to a
+  compromise, viz., that the heart and stomach should be preserved
+  and put into the coffin.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>The Governor was then
+  confronted with what to him was another knotty point. The Emperor
+  had desired that a few gold coins struck during his reign should
+  be buried with him. After serious consideration this was
+  graciously allowed, but not without forebodings of trouble
+  arising therefrom! What the British Government or their idiotic
+  Governor wanted with Napoleon's stomach, or why they refused to
+  allow his body to be embalmed, or his heart preserved and sent to
+  his wife, Heaven only knows. They had monstrously violated all
+  human feeling by ignoring appeals made to them from all parts of
+  the world to be merciful to a much afflicted man. They were well
+  informed by the best medical authorities on the island that the
+  climate was deadly to a constitution such as his. They ignored
+  reports of his declining health even up to a few weeks of his
+  death, and then when the Arch-enemy claimed him, they flooded
+  Europe with the intelligence that he had succumbed to the malady
+  from which his father died, and that their tender and benevolent
+  care for him was unavailing. The progress of his inherited
+  disease could not be checked.</p>
+
+  <p>The world is fast beginning to realise the infamy of it all.
+  Not a thought ever entered their heads but that of torture,
+  veiled or open, and the appalling clumsiness of their endeavours
+  to conceal their <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>Satanic
+  designs, so that they might appear in the light of beneficent
+  hosts, shows that they cowered at the possibility of public
+  vengeance. Happily for them, Napoleon's death came too near to
+  the terrific commotion caused by the French Revolution.</p>
+
+  <p>Tumult raged round the Emperor during the whole of his public
+  career, and powerful agencies were constantly proclaiming against
+  him and his methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of
+  democracy, which cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere.
+  His system destroyed and affected too many interests not to leave
+  behind it feelings of revenge, but this revenge did not exist
+  among the common people. Those who persecuted the common people
+  felt his heavy hand upon them. The populace entered into his
+  service in shoals, only to betray him when the time of trial
+  came. He knew the risk he ran, but did not shrink from it. He
+  hoped that he might bring them to adopt the great principles he
+  held and the plan he had in view.</p>
+
+  <p>His ambition was to seek out all those who had talent and
+  character and give them the opportunity of developing their gifts
+  for the benefit of the race. Humble origin had no deterrent
+  effect on him. His most brilliant officers and men of position
+  sprang from the middle and lower middle class, <a name="Page_88"
+  id="Page_88"></a>and taking them as a whole, their devotion never
+  gave way, even during the most terrible adversity that ever
+  befell mortal man. One small instance of admiration and sympathy
+  is evidenced by the beautiful reverence shown by the officers and
+  men of the English army and navy, who defiled before the dead
+  hero's remains and bent their knees to the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>Montholon says that "some of the officers entreated to be
+  allowed the honour of pressing to their lips the cloak of Marengo
+  which covered the Emperor's feet." Lowe must have felt a pang of
+  remorse when he saw these simple men pouring out in their
+  sailorly and soldierly way tokens of profound sorrow. Everything
+  that could had been done to cause their captive to be regarded as
+  a menace to human safety, and to be forgotten altogether; but how
+  futile to attempt such a task while the world of civilisation is
+  swayed by human instinct and not by barbarity!</p>
+
+  <p>The report of Napoleon's death did not relieve the anxieties
+  of the European Cabinets. They knew the danger of being
+  overwhelmed by a revulsion of feeling, and the difficulty of
+  stopping the masses once they are set in motion, and there were
+  strong manifestations of the popular indignation breaking loose,
+  with all the terrible consequences of a reign of terror. The
+  feeling of grief was <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>universal
+  and intense. A spark might have caused a great conflagration.
+  Lord Holland declared in Parliament that the very persons who
+  detested this great man had acknowledged that for ten centuries
+  there had not appeared upon earth a more extraordinary
+  character.... "All Europe," he added, "has worn mourning for the
+  hero"; and those who contributed to that great sacrifice are
+  destined to be the objects of the execrations of the present
+  generation as well as to those of posterity.</p>
+
+  <p>Just at the time the great spirit of the hero was passing on
+  to the Elysian Fields, there, as he used to fancifully
+  foreshadow, to meet his brave comrades in arms who had preceded
+  him, a tempest of unusual severity broke over "the abode of
+  darkness and of crimes." Houses were shaken to their foundation;
+  the favourite willow-tree, where he had often sat and enjoyed the
+  fresh breezes, was torn up by the hurricane, as indeed were the
+  other trees round about Longwood. This terrible disturbance of
+  the elements was characteristically interpreted as being the
+  voice of the living God proclaiming to the world that the Emperor
+  was being thundered into eternity to meet his Creator, and to be
+  judged by Him for the wrongs his political and other opponents
+  said he was guilty of towards themselves and the human race
+  generally. In true British <a name="Page_90" id=
+  "Page_90"></a>orthodoxy, the Great Judge is always claimed as a
+  fellow-countryman, and Sir Walter Scott is not singular in
+  attributing this phenomenal disturbance as an indication of
+  coming vengeance against England's prisoner. The Scottish bard is
+  not altogether impartial in the send-off of the exile. He
+  associates another colossal personage with the great Corsican.
+  The Lord Protector, we are reminded, was similarly borne from
+  time into eternity on the wings of a devasting tornado. Poor
+  Oliver! whose war-cry was "The Lord of Hosts," and who never
+  doubted that he was the high commissioner sent by the Almighty to
+  clean the earth of mischievous Royalists, traitors, Papists, and
+  other ungovernable creatures in Ireland and elsewhere.</p>
+
+  <p>It does not appear to have struck these gentlemen, with their
+  thoughts centred on Holy Writ and finding comfort in the support
+  it gave to their contention, that the Great God, instead of
+  making nature break out with such terrible violence to indicate
+  His displeasure against this wonderful man, made in His own image
+  and sent by Him to serve both a divine and a human purpose, was
+  using accumulated natural forces to show His wrath at the
+  culmination of the most atrocious tragedy that had ever been
+  perpetrated.</p>
+
+  <p>The good Sir Walter and the unctuously pious <a name="Page_91"
+  id="Page_91"></a>biographer of Sir Hudson are obviously overcome
+  by the coincidence of the storm and Napoleon's death coming
+  simultaneously. To them it is the voice of God shouting forth
+  gladness that the enemy of the British race is being made to pay
+  the penalty of all the evil he has wrought. This is a very
+  comforting conclusion to arrive at after having kept your victim
+  on the rack for six years and made war on him for twenty, but did
+  it never occur to them that the greatest sacrifice ever offered
+  culminated in just such natural disturbances and that at the same
+  time "the veil of the temple was rent in twain"?</p>
+
+  <p>Happily for the fair fame of human rights, many writers of
+  Napoleonic history have got over national prejudices and
+  timidity, and are chronicling very different views from those of
+  Sir Walter and the uninteresting defender of Lowe; and the more
+  impartial the minds who inquire into the first as well as the
+  last phase of this extraordinary career, the more will it appear
+  that he was not an enemy, but a powerful reforming agency of
+  mankind. He vowed over and over again that he "never conquered
+  unless in his own defence, and that Europe never ceased to make
+  war upon France and her principles." And again he asserted: "One
+  of my grand objects was to render education accessible to
+  everybody. I caused every institution <a name="Page_92" id=
+  "Page_92"></a>to be formed upon a plan which offered instruction
+  to the public, either gratis or at a rate so moderate, as not to
+  be beyond the means of the peasant. The museums were thrown open
+  to the <i>canaille</i>. My <i>canaille</i> would have become the
+  best educated in the world. All my exertions were directed to
+  illuminate the mass of the nation instead of brutifying them by
+  ignorance and superstition." These ideals are in striking
+  contrast to the policy of the oligarchy of Europe, who were
+  fighting to suppress knowledge and to re-establish the worst form
+  of superstition and despotism.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a deplorable thought that the nations (and especially
+  Great Britain) who allied themselves against this man of the
+  people and sent him to an inhuman death might have saved
+  themselves the eternal condemnation of future ages had they made
+  their peace with him, as the sagacious Charles James Fox would
+  have done had he lived. Had they been wise, they would have made
+  use of his matchless gifts and well-balanced mind to help forward
+  the regeneration of the human chaos which was both the cause and
+  the result of the Revolution. Above all, had the "Liberty loving"
+  British nation been true to her declared principles, she would
+  either have kept aloof from the conflict that was raging or found
+  some honourable means of co-operating with him, and thereby
+  earned a <a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>share of the glory
+  that will be eternally attached to his name in the great effort
+  of extinguishing thraldom and ameliorating the condition of the
+  masses.</p>
+
+  <p>Instead of this, she basely linked her destiny with the
+  traitors of France and the allies of Europe to dethrone the
+  monarch elected by the French people, and to place in his stead a
+  king who was forced upon them by the Allies, and not the people
+  of France. This is a strange travesty of "Liberty loving"
+  government. Had the great Quaker been kept in power, instead of
+  Pitt, who was always in a chronic state of scare and whining that
+  he could never survive the downfall of his country, the rivers of
+  British blood that were shed and the eight hundred million pounds
+  sterling of debt need not have been squandered. All this was done
+  at the bidding of a few men who were entrusted with the
+  government of a great nation, and either by odious deception, or
+  sheer incapacity to judge of the fitness of things, caused it to
+  be believed that they were bound to maintain the balance of power
+  or <i>status quo</i> which was endangered, and that the one man
+  who had upset their nerves and incurred their hatred should be
+  removed at all costs.</p>
+
+  <p>It is pretty certain that England could easily have kept out
+  of the continental embroil had the Government been composed of
+  men of talent and <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>free from
+  oligarchal prejudices, whereas all we got out of it, plus the
+  loss of life and treasure, was a share in the questionable glory
+  of Waterloo, the custody of the great figure who was betrayed by
+  some of his own subjects, "the odium of having his death
+  bequeathed to the reigning family of England," and the fact that
+  Louis XVIII., by his own admission to the French nation, was put
+  on the throne by our own precious Prince Regent.</p>
+
+  <p>These are only a few of the results that should not make us
+  proud of that part of our history. But we have travelled far
+  since those days of vicious actions. Nothing approaching the
+  perfidy of it could happen in the present age. It is unthinkable
+  that either the sagacious, peaceloving, peacemaking monarch on
+  the throne or his Ministers and people would lend themselves to
+  committing the senseless blunders that disgraced our name at the
+  beginning of the nineteenth century. Even allowing that it was
+  inevitable we should wage war against the head of the French
+  nation, nothing can ever blot out the stain of having refused him
+  the asylum he asked for, after we had taken so large a share in
+  bringing about his downfall. He asked in the following letter to
+  the Prince Regent to be the guest of England, and England made
+  him its prisoner. Here is the document:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>The sport of those
+  factions which divide my country and an object of hostility to
+  the greatest Powers of Europe, I have finished my political
+  career, and come, like Themistocles, to sit down by the hearth of
+  the English people. I place myself under the protection of their
+  laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most
+  powerful, the most constant, and most generous of my enemies."
+  Had it been left to the English people instead of to the
+  Government and His Royal Highness, I do not think this dignified
+  appeal would have been altogether ignored, as Napoleon's quarrel
+  was not with the people.</p>
+
+  <p>They knew that it was the oligarchy that feared and detested
+  him. It has been said that even His Royal Highness would have
+  granted hospitality, and it would have saved the nation over
+  which he ruled the blight of eternal execrations had he been
+  strong enough to stand against the blundering decision of a
+  revengeful Ministry.</p>
+
+  <p>No impartial student of the part played by Napoleon during
+  twenty years of warfare will deny that the institutions he
+  founded, the laws that he made, and his mode of government
+  wherever established, were beneficent, and entirely aimed at the
+  adjustment of inequalities that had culminated in a great
+  national uprising. His dictatorship was wielded with a wholesome
+  discipline without <a name="Page_96" id=
+  "Page_96"></a>unnecessarily using the lash. He had no
+  cut-and-dried maxim of dealing with unruly people, but his awful
+  power made them feel that he distinguished between eternal
+  justice and tyranny. He knew, and he made everybody else know,
+  that under the circumstances too much liberty would be like
+  poison to some people. When he said, "No more of this," the
+  aggressors realised that the doctrine of fraternity as they
+  understood it must not be stretched further.</p>
+
+  <p>Notwithstanding his methods of reproof and restraint, he was
+  idolised by the masses, even by those he led his armies against
+  and so often conquered. Even in our own country, where enmity
+  against him was assiduously nursed by the press and other
+  agencies, there was an important section who believed we were
+  putting our money on the wrong horse. This idea was not confined
+  to the poorer classes. Many of our best and wisest statesmen were
+  strongly opposed to this policy of hostility against him.</p>
+
+  <p>He had starved in the streets of Paris, sold his precious
+  books and other belongings to provide the means of buying bread
+  to sustain himself and his much beloved brother Louis, who in
+  after years behaved to him with base ingratitude. He suffered
+  dreadful privations during the keen frosty nights, owing to the
+  want of fire, light, and <a name="Page_97" id=
+  "Page_97"></a>sometimes sufficient clothing. No wonder that he
+  thought of ending his woes by plunging into the Seine.</p>
+
+  <p>But a glimmering of light came and lifted him out of a numbing
+  despair. He was made to see in his hour of trial that lassitude
+  must cease, and that he was meant for other things, and in order
+  to accomplish them he must be strong and audacious. Fate,
+  fortune, and a mysterious Providence found in him an indomitable
+  chief whose genius was intended to change the face of Europe.
+  Like all big men who spring from obscurity and the deadliness of
+  poverty, and are launched on the scene to create order out of
+  tumult and chaos, his enemies, in the nature of things, were both
+  numerous and prolific. At the outset he adopted the method he so
+  often thundered into his soldiers when on the eve of battle,
+  viz.: "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and you drive
+  him into the enemy's ranks."</p>
+
+  <p>One of the charges made against him by serene critics who have
+  been desirous of showing his weak points is that he was too
+  careless and forgiving towards the squabbling nest of paid and
+  unpaid murderers who prowled about in disguise, thirsting after
+  his blood. It is certain that he carried clemency to a fault in
+  many instances, and this no doubt contributed to his undoing; but
+  at the same time there <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>is
+  ample proof that he knew well enough where his foes were to be
+  found, and whenever the dignity and safety of the State were
+  imperilled, he was not slow to punish. His habit was not
+  weakness, but only a too careless regard for his own personal
+  safety.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Montholon,
+      "History of the Captivity of Napoleon," p. 326. The editor
+      says he is indebted for these details to the official
+      accounts published at the time by the French Government.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This was
+      the name given to Napoleon by the Arabs. "Kebir" means
+      "great" (Montholon, vol. iv. p. 245).</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> These
+      words were dictated to Las Cases by Napoleon at St. Helena in
+      1819 (p. 315, vol. iv., of his Journal).</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See p.
+      183, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> O'Meara,
+      in his second volume, p. 134, states: "The Emperor was so
+      firmly impressed with the idea that an attempt would be made
+      to forcibly intrude upon his privacy, that, from a short time
+      after the departure of Sir George Cockburn, he always kept
+      four or five loaded pistols and some swords in his
+      apartments, with which he was determined to despatch the
+      first who entered against his will."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See p.
+      299, Montholon's "Captivity of Napoleon," vol. i.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See p.
+      301, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> See pp.
+      57-62, bust incident.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> The
+      easygoing Joseph had been careless of the letters, which
+      would have further proved the infamy of the oligarchy. These
+      letters were in many cases applications for territory. He had
+      intrusted them to a base friend, by whom they were offered to
+      the various Governments for &pound;30,000. The Russian
+      Ambassador is reported to have paid &pound;10,000 to get hold
+      of those concerning his master. His Majesty of Prussia
+      appears to have had a covetous eye on Hanover. He always
+      entertained a paternal regard for that country. The
+      sovereigns in general seem to have compromised themselves
+      deeply in their efforts to secure territory.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> See
+      "Montholon," vol. iii p. 37.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> This is
+      an impudent lie. The quarrel was with Lowe because the doctor
+      refused to be his accomplice.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><a name="Page_99"
+  id="Page_99"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+  <h3>THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION&mdash;CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND
+  OTHERWISE</h3>
+
+  <p>On May 9, 1821, the mortal remains of the Exile were interred
+  at a spot called the Valley of Napoleon. He had selected this
+  spot in the event of the Powers not allowing his remains to be
+  transferred to France or Ajaccio. Lowe desired to put on the lid
+  of the coffin "Napoleon Bonaparte," but his followers very
+  properly disdained committing a breach of faith on the dead
+  Emperor, and insisted on having "Napoleon" and nothing else. The
+  Governor was stubbornly opposed to it, so he was buried without
+  any name being put on the coffin.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id=
+  "FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class=
+  "fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps one of the most terrific passages of unconscious
+  humour is related by Forsyth (vol. iii. p. 288), where Lowe is
+  made to say to Major Gorrequer and Mr. Henry, as they walked
+  together <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>before the door of
+  Plantation House discussing the character of Napoleon, "Well,
+  gentlemen, he was England's greatest enemy and mine too; but
+  <i>I</i> forgive him everything. On the death of a man like him
+  we should only feel deep concern and regret." Forsyth thinks this
+  splendid magnanimity on the part of his hero.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not recorded what the gallant Major thought of it, but
+  it may be taken for granted that if Mr. Henry and Gorrequer had
+  any sense of humour at all, Lowe's comment must have sounded very
+  comical, knowing what they did of the relations between the dead
+  monarch and his custodian, though it must be said that Henry
+  seems to have been the only person who could work up a
+  sympathetic word for Sir Hudson. Forsyth, in vol. iii. p. 307,
+  says: "No one can study the character of Napoleon without being
+  struck by one prevailing feature, his intense selfishness." This
+  is a remarkable statement for any man who professes to write
+  accurate history to make, and proves conclusively that Forsyth
+  had not "studied" Napoleon's "character," or he would have found,
+  not only his closest friends, but some of his bitterest enemies
+  doing him the justice of stating the very opposite of what this
+  writer says of him.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Henry, who took part in the dissection of <a name=
+  "Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>the corpse, says that Napoleon's
+  face had a remarkably placid expression, and indicated mildness
+  and sweetness of disposition, and those who gazed on the features
+  as they lay in the still repose of death could not help
+  exclaiming, "How beautiful!" After this very fine description
+  from Sir Hudson's friend, Forsyth adds a footnote: "It may
+  interest phrenologists to know that the organs of combativeness,
+  causativeness, and philoprogenitiveness were strongly developed
+  in the cranium"! In order to prove the charge of selfishness he
+  brings in the old familiar story of the divorce: "A memorable
+  example of this (<i>i.e.</i>, selfishness) occurs in his
+  treatment of the nobleminded Josephine."</p>
+
+  <p>This outburst is obviously intended for effect, but Forsyth
+  does not score a success in bringing the amiable Empress to his
+  aid; for, whatever virtue she may have possessed, authentic
+  history reveals her as the antithesis of "nobleminded." Those who
+  knew the lady intimately speak with marked generosity of her
+  graces, but they also record a shameless habit of faithlessness
+  to her husband at a time when he was pouring out volumes of love
+  to her from Italy. And she seems to have let herself go without
+  restraint during his stay in Egypt. The wayward, weak Josephine
+  had many lovers, who were not too carefully selected.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>From the time of her
+  marriage with Napoleon until she heard of him being on his way
+  from Egypt to France, her love intrigues were well known, and her
+  lovers were certainly not men of high public repute. In short,
+  Josephine was anything but "nobleminded." She was a confirmed and
+  audacious flirt until the stern realities of the dissolution of
+  her marriage brought her to her senses, and from that time until
+  the great political divorce took place, she appears to have kept
+  free from further love entanglements. Napoleon's attachment to
+  her was very genuine, and remained steadfast up to the time of
+  her death, and even at St. Helena he always spoke of her with
+  great reverence. Forsyth does not enhance Lowe's reputation or
+  damage Napoleon's by the popular use he makes of the annulment of
+  the little Creole lady's marriage, the merits of which may be
+  referred to at greater length hereafter, as it is a subject of
+  itself and this reference to a momentous incident of her
+  husband's history is only by the way.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile the Emperor's remains, in layers of coffins composed
+  of wood, tin, and lead, were hermetically sealed, and the tomb,
+  having been securely battened down with cement and slab, was
+  substantially railed in to prevent the intrusion of a sympathetic
+  and curious public. His tomb was <a name="Page_103" id=
+  "Page_103"></a>left in charge of a British garrison, and the
+  heroes who followed him to his grave, and shared his martyrdom
+  and exile on that fatal rock for six mortal years, were shipped
+  aboard the <i>Camel</i> and conveyed to England, there to be
+  received by a set of mildew-witted bureaucrats smitten with
+  suspicion that the exiles may have brought with them the spirit
+  of their dead master, with the object of invoking a sanguinary
+  reaction in his favour by disturbing the peace of Europe&mdash;as
+  though Europe had experienced a single day of real peace since
+  the downfall of the Empire!</p>
+
+  <p>These exemplary men had faced and borne with magnificent
+  fortitude hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their
+  mission was to carry out the dying command of the hero whom they
+  adored, and who had succumbed to the hospitable treatment of
+  Bathurst, Castlereagh, Liverpool, and Wellington, and their
+  accomplices. These guilty men, whose names, strange to say, are
+  as undying as that of their victim, would fain have made it
+  appear that had he not died of cancer of the stomach, it were not
+  possible that he could have died of anything but robust health,
+  owing to the salubrity of the climate they had selected and the
+  unequalled care they had taken of his person through the immortal
+  Lowe.</p>
+
+  <p>It is a remarkable thing that these men had no <a name=
+  "Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>conception of the great being they
+  were practising cruelty upon. It is indeed a strange freak of
+  nature that makes it possible that the human mind can think of
+  Napoleon and these bureaucrats at the same time, but that is part
+  of the mystery that cannot at the present stage be understood.
+  Time may reveal the phenomenon, and in the years to come the
+  spirits of the just will call aloud for a real vindication of the
+  character of the man of the French Revolution, and, forsooth, it
+  may be that a terrible retribution is gathering in the distance.
+  Who knows? Waterloo and St. Helena may yet be the nemesis of the
+  enemies of the great Emperor. Obviously, he had visions, as had
+  his compatriot Joan of Arc, who suffered even a crueller fate
+  than he at the hands of a few bloodthirsty English noblemen, who
+  disgraced the name of soldier by not only allowing her to be
+  burnt, but selling her to the parasitical Bishops with that
+  object in view. It is not strange that the Maid of Orleans, who
+  suffered martyrdom for the supernatural part she took in fighting
+  for her King and country, should, on April 18, 1909, become a
+  saint of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, nor that
+  the Pope should perform the ceremony. The English sold her. An
+  ecclesiastical court, headed by the infamous Bishop of Beauvais,
+  condemned her to be burnt <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>as
+  a witch, and when the flames were consuming her a cry of "Jesus"
+  was heard. An English soldier standing by was so overcome by the
+  awful wickedness that was being perpetrated by the Anglo-French
+  ecclesiastical alliance, that he called out, "We are lost! We
+  have burnt a saint!"</p>
+
+  <p>The soldier saw at once that the child of the Domremy labourer
+  was a "saint," but it has taken five centuries for the Church to
+  which she belonged, and whose representatives burnt her as a
+  witch, to officially beatify her. True, this stage has been
+  gradually worked up to by the erection of monuments to her honour
+  and glory. Chinon distinguished itself by this, presumably
+  because it was there that Joan interviewed the then uncrowned
+  Charles, and startled him into taking her into his service by the
+  story she told of hearing the heavenly voices at Domremy farm
+  demanding that she should go forth as the liberator of
+  France.</p>
+
+  <p>The recognition of Napoleon's claim, not to "sanctity," but as
+  a benefactor of mankind, will also surely come, but in his case
+  the demand will come from no Church, but with the irresistible
+  voice of all Humanity.</p>
+
+  <p>Joan's country had been at war for one hundred years. Ravaged
+  by foreign invaders and depopulated by plague, it was foaming
+  with civil <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>strife and
+  treason to the national cause, many of the most powerful men and
+  women, both openly and in secret, taking sides with the enemy.
+  The crisis had reached a point when this modest, uneducated,
+  clear-witted, fearless maiden was launched by her "voices" to the
+  scene of battle, there to inspire hope and enthusiasm in the
+  hearts of her people. In a few weeks she had established
+  confidence, smashed the invader, and crowned the unworthy Charles
+  VII. as King. Twenty years after they had burnt her, there was
+  scarcely a foreign foot to be found on French soil.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a further similarity between the peasant girl and
+  Napoleon. <i>She</i> was brought to the aid of her country by the
+  voices of the unseen, and four hundred years after, when her
+  country was again in dire trouble, <i>he</i> was found in
+  obscurity and in an almost supernatural way flashed into
+  prominent activity to save the Revolution. It was the voices of
+  the living, seen and unseen, that called aloud for the little
+  Corporal to lead to battle, conquer, and ultimately govern. It
+  was some of the self-same voices that intrigued and then burst
+  forth in declamation and demanded his abdication on the eve of
+  his first reverse. The Church, which owed its rehabilitation to
+  him after he had implanted a settled government in France, had no
+  small share in the conspiracy for his <a name="Page_107" id=
+  "Page_107"></a>overthrow. He said, "There is but one means of
+  getting good manners, and that is by establishing religion." He
+  believed it, and did it in spite of a storm of opposition that
+  would have hurled a less resolute man from power, but he knew
+  full well his strength, and was sure then, as he ever was, of his
+  opinions.</p>
+
+  <p>The Church and those of the people who become allied to its
+  material policy are prone to destroy those who have been of
+  service to their cause. There is indeed no society of men and
+  women who are so vindictive, nay, revengeful, once they are
+  seized with the idea that they are being neglected, or their
+  interests not receiving all the patronage they think they
+  deserve, and then, after a few generations of reflection, they
+  become overwhelmed with unctuous sanctity and remorse, and
+  proceed to make saints of the victims of their progenitors in
+  order that the perfidy they are historically linked to shall be
+  whitewashed and atoned for.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon believed that "No physical force ever dies; it merely
+  changes its form or direction"&mdash;and could we but get a
+  glimpse behind the veil, we might see his imperishable soul
+  fleeting from sphere to sphere, struggling with cruel reactionary
+  spirits who forced him into eternity before the work he was sent
+  to do was completed.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>Wieland, the German
+  writer, had an interview with him on the field of Jena. He
+  says:&mdash;"I was presented by the Duchess of Weimar. He paid me
+  some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at
+  me. Few men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the
+  art of reading at the first glance the thought of other men. He
+  saw in an instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was
+  simple in my manners and void of pretension, and as he seemed
+  desirous of making a favourable impression on me, he assumed the
+  tone most likely to attain his end. I have never beheld anyone
+  more calm, more simple, more mild, or less ostentatious in
+  appearance; nothing about him indicated the feeling of power in a
+  great monarch; he spoke to me as an old acquaintance would speak
+  to an equal, and what was more extraordinary on his part, he
+  conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half, to the
+  great surprise of the whole assembly."</p>
+
+  <p>Then Wieland goes on to relate what the conversation was.
+  Napoleon "preferred the Romans to the Greeks. The eternal
+  squabbles of their petty republics were not calculated to give
+  birth to anything grand, whereas the Romans were always occupied
+  with great things, and it was owing to this they raised up the
+  Colossus which bestrode the world.... He was fond only of serious
+  poetry, <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>the pathetic and
+  vigorous writers, and above all, the tragic poets."</p>
+
+  <p>Wieland had been put so much at his ease (so he says) that he
+  ventured to ask how it was that the public worship Napoleon had
+  restored in France was not more philosophical and in harmony with
+  the spirit of the times. "My dear Wieland," was the reply,
+  "religion is not meant for philosophers! they have no faith
+  either in me or my priests. As to those who do believe, it would
+  be difficult to give them, or to leave them, too much of the
+  marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for philosophers, it
+  would be just the reverse of that of the credulous part of
+  mankind."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id=
+  "FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class=
+  "fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+  <p>M&uuml;ller, the Swiss historian's private interview with him
+  at this period is quite remarkable, and shows what a vast
+  knowledge and conception of things the Emperor had. Nothing shows
+  more clearly his own plan of regulating and guiding the affairs
+  of the universe for the benefit of all. He tells M&uuml;ller that
+  he should complete his history of Switzerland, that even the more
+  recent times had their interest. Then he switched from the Swiss
+  to the old Greek constitutions and history; to the theory of
+  constitutions; to the complete diversity of those in Asia, and
+  the causes of this diversity in the climate, polygamy, the
+  opposite <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>characters of the
+  Arabian and the Tartar races, the peculiar value of European
+  culture, and the progress of Freedom since the sixteenth century;
+  how everything was linked together, and in the inscrutable
+  guidance of an invisible hand; how he himself had become great
+  through his enemies; the great Confederation of Nations, the idea
+  of which Henri IV. had; the foundation of all religion and its
+  necessity; that man could not bear clear truth and required to be
+  kept in order; admitting the possibility, however, of a more
+  happy condition, if the numerous feuds ceased which were
+  occasioned by too complicated Constitutions (such as the German)
+  and the intolerable burden suffered by States from excessive
+  armies.</p>
+
+  <p>These opinions clearly mark the guiding motives of Napoleon's
+  attempts to enforce upon different nations uniformity of the
+  institutions and customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says
+  M&uuml;ller, "and he entered into discussion. Quite impartially
+  and truly, as before God, I must say that the variety of his
+  knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his
+  understanding (not dazzling wit), his grand and comprehensive
+  views, filled me with astonishment, and his manner of speaking to
+  me with love for him. By his genius and his disinterested
+  goodness, he has also conquered me."<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id=
+  "FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class=
+  "fnanchor">[14]</a> <a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>The
+  remarkable testimony of Wieland and M&uuml;ller, both men of
+  distinction, is of more than ordinary value, seeing that they
+  were not his countrymen, but on the side of those who waged war
+  against him. M&uuml;ller admits that he conquered him, and the
+  world must admit that he is gradually, but surely, conquering it
+  in spite of the colossal libels that have been spoken and written
+  of him for the ostensible purpose of vindicating the Puritans and
+  making him appear as the Spoliator and Antichrist whose thirst
+  for blood, so that he might attain glory, was an inexhaustible
+  craze in him. To them he is the Ogre that staggers the power of
+  belief, and yet he defies the whole world to prove that he ever
+  declared war or committed a single crime during the whole
+  carnival of warfare that drenched Europe in human blood.</p>
+
+  <p>Up to the present, the world has lamentably failed to do
+  anything of the sort. His opponents, libellers, and progeny of
+  his mean executioners, are all losing ground, and he is gaining
+  everywhere. There is an unseen hand at work revealing the awful
+  truth. This dignified, calm, unassuming man, while surrounded by
+  a crowd of Kings and Princes, who were competing with each other
+  to do him homage and show their devotion, startles them by
+  telling a story of when he was "<a name="Page_112" id=
+  "Page_112"></a>a simple Lieutenant in the 2nd Company of
+  Artillery." Possibly some of his guests were observed to be
+  putting on airs that were always distasteful to the Emperor, and
+  this was his scornful way of rebuking them. Or it might be that
+  he wished to take the opportunity of informing Europe that he had
+  no desire to conceal his humble beginning, though at that time he
+  was recognised first man in it. Historians, when he was at the
+  height of his power, ransacked musty archives assiduously to find
+  out and prove that he had royal blood in him. They professed to
+  have discovered that he was connected with the princely family of
+  Treviso, and the comical way in which he contemptuously brushed
+  aside this fulsome flattery must have lacerated the pride of
+  courtiers who sought favours by such methods.</p>
+
+  <p>Bearing on the royal blood idea, Gourgaud in his Journal
+  relates that the Emperor told him the following
+  stories:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"At one time in my reign there was a disposition to make out
+  that I was descended from the Man in the Iron Mask. The Governor
+  of Pignerol was named Bompars. They said he had married his
+  daughter to his mysterious prisoner, the brother of Louis XIV.,
+  and had sent the pair to Corsica under the name of 'Bonaparte,'"
+  and then with fine humour he adds:&mdash;"I had only <a name=
+  "Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>to say the word and everybody would
+  have believed the fable."</p>
+
+  <p>He never forgot that he was Napoleon, hence never said the
+  word.</p>
+
+  <p>His insincere father-in-law has been industriously searching
+  for royal blood too, and this is what his son-in-law says of
+  him:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"When I was about to marry Marie Louise, her father the
+  Emperor sent me a box of papers intended to prove that I was
+  descended from the Dukes of Florence. I burst out laughing, and
+  said to Metternich, 'Do you suppose I am going to waste my time
+  over such foolishness? Suppose it were true, what good would it
+  do me? The Dukes of Florence were inferior in rank to the
+  Emperors of Germany. I will not place myself beneath my
+  father-in-law. I think that as I am, I am as good as he. My
+  nobility dates from Monte Notte. Return him these papers.'
+  Metternich was very much amused."</p>
+
+  <p>Francis of Austria must have felt confounded at the rebuke of
+  his unceremonious relative, who was always the man of stern
+  reality&mdash;too big to be dazzled by mouldy records of kingly
+  blood. Neither did pomp or ceremony attract him, except in so far
+  as it might serve the purpose of making an impression on others.
+  Bourrienne, a shameless predatory traitor, has said in his
+  <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>memoirs that when the seat
+  of government was removed from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries,
+  the First Consul said to him, "You are very lucky; you are not
+  obliged to make a spectacle of yourself. I have to go about with
+  a cort&egrave;ge; it bores me, but it appeals to the eye of the
+  people."</p>
+
+  <p>Roederer in <i>his</i> memoirs relates pretty much the same
+  thing, only that it bears on the question of title, and
+  presumably the researches for confirmation of his royal
+  descent.</p>
+
+  <p>Here again, his strong practical view of things, and his utter
+  indifference to grandeur or genealogical distinction, are shown.
+  He says: "How can anyone pretend that empty names, titles given
+  for the sake of a political system, can change in the smallest
+  degree one's relations with one's friends and associates? I am
+  called Sire, or Imperial Majesty, without anyone in my household
+  believing or thinking that I am a different man in consequence.
+  All those titles form part of a <i>system</i>, and therefore they
+  are necessary." He always ends his ebullitions of convincing
+  wisdom by making it clear precisely where he stands.</p>
+
+  <p>The writer might quote pages of eulogies of him from the most
+  eminent men of every nationality. There is no trustworthy
+  evidence that he ever sought the flattery that was lavished
+  <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>on him; indeed, he seems to
+  have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of
+  it. On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never
+  sought the applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic
+  monarch."<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id=
+  "FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class=
+  "fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+  <p>Seguier says:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Napoleon is above human history. He belongs to heroic periods
+  and is beyond admiration."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id=
+  "FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class=
+  "fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+  <p>A notable Englishman, Lord Acton, says (like M&uuml;ller) that
+  "his goodness was the most splendid that has appeared on earth."
+  And there are innumerable instances which prove that his
+  sympathies and goodness to those who were notoriously undeserving
+  was a fatal passion with him. But there is no opinion, blunt
+  though it be, that so completely touches one as that of the plain
+  English sailors who said at Elba that "Boney was a
+  d&mdash;&mdash;d good fellow after all." "They may talk about
+  this man as they like," said one of the crew of the
+  <i>Northumberland</i>, "but I won't believe the bad they say of
+  him," and <i>this</i> view seems to have been generally held by
+  the men who composed the crew of the vessel that took the Emperor
+  to St. Helena. It is noteworthy that English man-of-war's-men,
+  and also merchant seamen of these stirring times, <a name=
+  "Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>should have formed so favourable an
+  impression of Napoleon, especially as the Press of England teemed
+  with hostility against him. Articles attributing every form of
+  indescribable bestiality, corruption, gross cruelty to his
+  soldiers, subordinate officers, and even Marshals, appeared with
+  shameful regularity. In these articles were included the most
+  absurd as well as the most serious charges.</p>
+
+  <p>I include the following story as a specimen, and take it in
+  particular as being quoted quite seriously by certain
+  anti-Napoleonic writers in the endeavour to bolster up a feeble
+  case. Prejudice and distorted vision prevented them from seeing
+  the absurdity of such attempts to blacken the character of
+  Napoleon. Let the reader judge!</p>
+
+  <p>It is related that, at the time of the Concordat, Napoleon
+  remarked to Senator Volney, "France wants a religion." Volney's
+  courageous (!) reply was, "France wants the Bourbons," and the
+  Emperor is thereupon supposed to have been attacked by a fit of
+  ungovernable fury, and to have kicked the Senator in the
+  stomach!</p>
+
+  <p>The more serious charges included incest with his sister
+  Pauline and his stepdaughter Hortense, and the poisoning of his
+  plague-stricken soldiers at Jaffa.</p>
+
+  <p>His palaces were said to be harems, and his libertinism to put
+  Oriental potentates to the blush. <a name="Page_117" id=
+  "Page_117"></a>So industrious were these foes to human fairness
+  that they manufactured a silly story just before the rupture of
+  the Treaty of Amiens, to the effect that Napoleon had made a
+  violent attack on Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. So
+  violent was he in his gestures, the Ambassador feared lest the
+  First Consul would strike him. Even Oscar Browning is obliged to
+  refute this unworthy fabrication as being absurd on the face of
+  it, but it has taken ninety years to produce the authentic
+  document from the British Archives which disproves the scandal.
+  Napoleon was too much absorbed in things that mattered to take
+  notice of the stupid though virulent stories that were constantly
+  being concocted against him. When he was appealed to by his
+  friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he merely
+  shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this
+  rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It
+  pleases the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to
+  be perturbed, or to meddle with it."</p>
+
+  <p>It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on
+  the side of morality. It is well enough known that the French
+  Court during the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic
+  arrangements, the one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above
+  all others, was <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>that
+  <i>his</i> Court should have the reputation of being clean. He
+  took infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private
+  amorous connections are fully described by F. Masson, a
+  Frenchman, and a staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of
+  libertinism is an outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it
+  is said he would never have agreed to the divorce of Josephine
+  had it not been that Madame Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by
+  him. (This son held high office under Napoleon III.) But even in
+  the matter of mistresses he was most careful that it should not
+  be known outside a very few personal friends. As a matter of high
+  policy it was kept from the eye of the general public, and he
+  gives very good reasons for doing so. Not merely that it would
+  have brought him into serious conflict with Josephine, but he
+  knew that in order to maintain a high standard of public
+  authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.<a name=
+  "FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+  <p>His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although
+  the moral code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped
+  up a standard of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have
+  put the obligation under which any of his priests were bound in
+  the shade. So shocked <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>were
+  they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and
+  circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that
+  they advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid
+  the world of so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat.
+  It was not exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the
+  times, and, in fact, they had carried their other accusations and
+  grievances to so malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and
+  rugged tars aboard the <i>Bellerophon</i> and
+  <i>Northumberland</i> were drawn in touching sympathy towards the
+  man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent belief
+  that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of
+  war.</p>
+
+  <p>We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to
+  avail himself of them. He had resolved after his abdication to
+  live the time that was left to him in retirement, and believing
+  in the generosity of the British nation, he threw himself on
+  their hospitality. He had made his way through a network of
+  blockade when he returned from Egypt and Elba, and looking at the
+  facts as they are now before us, it is preposterous to adhere to
+  the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed in that he had no
+  option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as the guest of
+  England aboard the <i>Bellerophon</i>, <a name="Page_120" id=
+  "Page_120"></a>and it may be taken for granted that the
+  resourceful sailors knew that he had many channels of escape.
+  They knew the <i>Bellerophon</i> was a slow old tub, and that she
+  would be nowhere in a chase.</p>
+
+  <p>Besides, it was not necessary for Napoleon to make Rochefort
+  or Rochelle his starting-point. The troops and seamen at these
+  and the neighbouring ports were all devoted to him, and would
+  have risked everything to save him from capture. He knew all
+  this, but he was possessed of an innate belief in the chivalry of
+  the British character, and left out of account the class of men
+  that were in power. He knew them to be his inveterate foes, but
+  was deceived in believing they had hearts. Their foremost soldier
+  had taken an active share in his defeat, and he acknowledged it
+  by putting himself under the protection of our laws. The honest
+  English seamen who were his shipmates on both ships were not long
+  in forming a strong liking to him, and a dislike to the treatment
+  he was receiving. They felt there was something wrong, though all
+  they could say about it was that "he was a d&mdash;&mdash;d good
+  fellow."</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Keith was so afraid of his fascinating personality after
+  his visit to the <i>Bellerophon</i> that he said,
+  "D&mdash;&mdash;n the fellow! if he had obtained <a name=
+  "Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>an interview with His Royal
+  Highness, in half an hour they would have been the best friends
+  in England." In truth, Lord Keith lost a fine opportunity of
+  saving British hospitality from the blight of eternal execration
+  by evading the lawyer who came to Plymouth to serve a writ of
+  Habeas Corpus to claim the Emperor's person, and the pity is that
+  an honoured name should have been associated with a mission so
+  crimeful and an occasion so full of illimitable consequences to
+  England's boasted generosity. Except that he too well carried out
+  his imperious instructions, Lord Keith does not come well out of
+  the beginning of the great tragedy. The only piece of real
+  delicacy shown by Lord Keith to the Emperor was in allowing him
+  to retain his arms, and snubbing a secretary who reminded him
+  that the instructions were that <i>all</i> should be disarmed.
+  This zealous person was told to mind his own business.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon asks the Admiral if there is any tribunal to which he
+  can apply to determine the legality of him being sent to St.
+  Helena, as he protested that he was the guest and not the
+  prisoner of the British nation; and Keith, with an air of
+  condescending benevolence, assures him that he is satisfied there
+  is every disposition on the part of the Government to render his
+  situation <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>as comfortable as
+  prudence would permit. No wonder Napoleon's reply was animated,
+  and his soul full of dignified resentment at the perfidy that was
+  about to be administered to him under the guise of
+  beneficence.</p>
+
+  <p>Scott describes the interview with Keith as "a remarkable
+  scene." He says: "His (Napoleon's) manner was perfectly calm and
+  collected, his voice equal and firm, his tones very pleasing, the
+  action of the head was dignified, and the countenance remarkably
+  soft and placid, without any marks of severity." That is a good
+  testimony from the author of the "Waverley Novels," who was
+  anything but an impartial biographer. Not even the novelist's
+  most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of them) can give him
+  credit for excessive partiality towards the hero who was the
+  first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not only knew
+  the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander) had
+  ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to
+  conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled
+  in the history of man.</p>
+
+  <p>I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of
+  the Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it),
+  it was a fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a
+  rock when, by adopting a more humane policy, <a name="Page_123"
+  id="Page_123"></a>his incomparable genius might have been used to
+  carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his return
+  from Elba. The tumult which surrounded his career had changed; he
+  saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once
+  proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his
+  great scheme of renewing the heart of things. He knew it would
+  take time, and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was
+  putting forth supreme efforts to destroy him. They were out for
+  blood, and <i>he</i> was in too great a hurry.</p>
+
+  <p>In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, "Ah! if I
+  could have governed France for forty years I would have made her
+  the most splendid empire that ever existed!"</p>
+
+  <p>His demand on fortune was too great, and notwithstanding the
+  knowledge he had of human nature, he could not check the torrent
+  of treason that had been sedulously nursed against him by his
+  enemies until it ignited the imagination of those whom he had a
+  right to expect would stand loyally by him in an hour of
+  tribulation such as no other man had ever experienced.</p>
+
+  <p>It is true that he made history (brilliant history if you
+  like) in those latter days, but oh! the anguish and the baseness
+  of it all.</p>
+
+  <p>C&aelig;sar made history too; neither did <i>this</i> ruler
+  <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>succeed altogether. Brutus,
+  his friend, forsook and dispatched him, and possibly that was the
+  most enviable finish to a great career. Did Napoleon fare better
+  than his prototype, inasmuch as he was not the victim of the
+  assassin's dagger? Intoxicated with the spirit of charity, his
+  conquerors decreed that he should be deported to a secluded place
+  of abode on a barren and unhealthy rock, there to be maintained
+  at a cost to the nation of &pound;12,000 a year, and succumb as
+  quickly as possible like a good Christian gentleman.</p>
+
+  <p>The presumption of Lord Keith in observing to Napoleon that it
+  was preferable for him to be sent to St. Helena than to be
+  confined in a smaller space in England or sent to France or
+  Russia, and the Emperor's supposed reply&mdash;"Russia! God
+  preserve me from it!"&mdash;is almost unbelievable, and in the
+  light of what he constantly asserted while England's captive,
+  this expression may be regarded as a fabrication.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether it was an innate belief that Alexander of Russia was
+  his friend, or the fact that Francis of Austria was his
+  father-in-law, he certainly avowed&mdash;according to the St.
+  Helena chroniclers&mdash;that if he had surrendered to either of
+  them he would have been treated, not only with kindness, but with
+  a proper regard as befitted a monarch who had governed
+  eighty-three millions of people, <a name="Page_125" id=
+  "Page_125"></a>or more than the half of Europe. But even if he
+  were merely soliloquising, or wished to convince himself and
+  those he expressed this opinion to, it is hard to think that any
+  of the continental Powers would have risked the certain
+  consequences of having him either shot or ill-treated, and it is
+  extremely doubtful whether even in France there could have been
+  found a soldier that would have obeyed an order to shoot his
+  former Emperor, who had been requisitioned to return from Elba,
+  and who so recently, with only six hundred soldiers, made war
+  against Louis with his two hundred thousand and defeated and
+  dethroned him.</p>
+
+  <p>Nothing so magnificent has ever been known. This great man had
+  complete hold of the imagination and devotion of his common
+  people and soldiers. Even in the hour of defeat their loyalty was
+  amazing.</p>
+
+  <p>Various instances are given of this deep-rooted loyalty and
+  affection. Some of his Imperial Guards who were wounded at
+  Waterloo killed themselves on hearing that he had lost the
+  battle, and many, who had been thought to be dead, when brought
+  to consciousness shouted "Vive l'Empereur." The hospitals were
+  full of dying men who uttered the same cry. One was having his
+  leg amputated, and as he looked at the blood streaming from it,
+  said that he would willingly give it all in the <a name=
+  "Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>service of Napoleon. Another, who
+  was having a ball extracted from his left side near the heart,
+  shouted, "Probe an inch deeper and there you will find the
+  Emperor."</p>
+
+  <p>The story of the old woman whom he and Duroc met during the
+  second campaign in Italy, and while climbing Mont Tarare, is a
+  striking illustration of how he was regarded by the poorer
+  classes. She hated the Bourbons and wanted to see the First
+  Consul. Napoleon answered, "Bah! tyrant for tyrant&mdash;they are
+  just the same thing." "No, no!" she replied; "Louis XVI. was the
+  king of the nobles, Bonaparte is the king of the people." This
+  idea of the old woman was the universal feeling of her class
+  right through his reign. No writer has been able to give proof
+  that it was withdrawn, even when he was overwhelmed with disaster
+  which drained his empire of vast masses of its population. No
+  cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination
+  multitudes of men and women as he did. It was not his
+  incomparable genius, nor his matchless military successes in
+  battle. He was loved because he was lovable, and was trusted
+  because he inspired belief in his high motives of amelioration of
+  all down-trodden people. He ruled with a stern but kindly
+  discipline, and put a heavy hand on those who had despotic
+  tendencies.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>The Duchess of
+  Abrant&egrave;s, who smarted under some severe comments he had
+  made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrant&egrave;s,
+  while at St. Helena, has been generous enough to say many kind
+  things of him in her memoirs. One of her references to him is to
+  this effect:&mdash;"All I know of him" (and she knew him well
+  from childhood) "proves that he possessed a great soul which
+  quickly forgets and forgives." She is very fond of repeating in
+  her memoirs that Napoleon proposed marriage to her mother, Madame
+  Permon, who was herself a Corsican and knew the Bonaparte family
+  well.</p>
+
+  <p>Madame Junot relates another story which is characteristic of
+  Bonaparte. Such was the enthusiasm of the people on his march
+  towards Paris after landing from Elba, that when he was holding a
+  review of the National Guard at Grenoble, the people shouldered
+  him, and a young girl with a laurel branch in her hand approached
+  him reciting some verses. "What can I do for you, my pretty
+  girl?" said the Emperor. The girl blushed, then lifting her eyes
+  to him replied, "I have nothing to ask of your Majesty; but you
+  would render me very happy by embracing me." Napoleon kissed her,
+  and turning his head to either side, said aloud, with a
+  fascinating smile, "I embrace in you all the ladies of
+  Grenoble."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>That Napoleon made
+  mistakes no one will dispute; indeed, he saw clearly, and
+  admitted freely, in his solitude, that he had made many. His
+  minor fault (if it be right to characterise it as such) was in
+  extending clemency to the many rascals that were plotting his
+  ruin and carrying on a system of peculation that was an
+  abhorrence to him. Talleyrand, Fouch&eacute;, and Bourrienne
+  frequently came under his displeasure and were removed from his
+  service, but were taken back after his wrath had passed.</p>
+
+  <p>Miot de Melito speaks of them as "Bourrienne and other
+  subordinate scoundrels," and, indeed, Miot de Melito does not
+  exaggerate in his estimate of them. Fouch&eacute; says that
+  Bourrienne kept him advised of all Napoleon's movements for
+  25,000 francs per month, besides being both partner and patron in
+  the house of Coulon Brothers, cavalry equipment providers, who
+  failed for &pound;120,000.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1805, Bourrienne was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at
+  Hamburg, and during his stay there he made &pound;290,000 by
+  delivering permits and making what is known as "arbitrary
+  stoppages," and besides betraying Bonaparte to the Bourbons, this
+  vile traitor wrote to Talleyrand, a few days after the abdication
+  at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the return of that excellent
+  Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family." But these things
+  are <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>mere shadows of the
+  incomparable villainy of this thievish human jackdaw.</p>
+
+  <p>His memoirs are said to have been written by an impecunious
+  and mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote
+  "M&eacute;moires de Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both
+  books have been very extensively read and believed. Men have got
+  up terrific lectures from them, authors have quoted from them
+  whenever they desired an authority to prove that which they
+  wished themselves and their readers to believe of trumped-up
+  stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings. Certainly,
+  Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the chroniclers
+  that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor. Neither
+  his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the
+  impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms or
+  historical statements.</p>
+
+  <p>Men like Fouch&eacute;, Talleyrand, and Bourrienne, and
+  political women like Madame de Remusat and Madame de Sta&euml;l,
+  all of whom were brought under the Emperor's displeasure by their
+  zealous aptitude in one way and another for intrigue, disloyalty,
+  and, so far as the men are concerned, glaring dishonesty in money
+  matters, have assiduously chronicled their own virtues and
+  declaimed against Napoleon's incalculable vices, and this course
+  was no doubt chosen in order to avert the public gaze from too
+  close a <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>scrutiny into their
+  own perfidy. Their plan is not an unusual one under such
+  circumstances; rascals never scruple to multiply offences more
+  wicked than those already committed in order to prove that they
+  are acting from a pure sense of public morality and historical
+  truth. If the object of their attack be a benefactor, and one who
+  has been obliged to rebuke or dismiss them for misdeeds, great or
+  small, then they assail him with unqualified hostility.</p>
+
+  <p>This unquestionably was the penalty paid by Napoleon for
+  extending clemency to men who, if they had been in the service of
+  any other monarch in Europe, would have been shut up in a
+  fortress, or shot, the moment their perfidies had been
+  discovered. The pity is that so much of this declamatory stuff
+  has been so willingly believed and made use of in order to defame
+  the name of a sovereign whose besetting fault was in relaxing
+  just punishment bestowed on those who, he could never altogether
+  forget, were his companions in other days.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+      Montholon wished to have the following simple inscription:
+      "Napol&eacute;on, n&eacute; &agrave; Ajaccio, le 15
+      Ao&ucirc;t, 1769, mort &agrave; St. Helena, le 5 Mai,
+      1821."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Horne's
+      "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Horne's
+      "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+      "Correspondence of Napoleon I."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+      Ibid.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Madame
+      Walewska bore him two children. This caused him to develop
+      the idea of having an heir.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><a name="Page_131"
+  id="Page_131"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+  <h3>THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA M&Egrave;RE, MARIE LOUISE, AND
+  THE KING OF ROME</h3>
+
+  <p>It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man
+  and his family. The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats
+  stopped at nothing in order that they might make his ruin
+  complete. They dare not run the risk of putting him to death
+  outright, but they engineered, by means of willing tools, a plan
+  that was unheard-of in its atrocious character. They poured
+  stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a faithless woman
+  whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble wife and
+  callous mother. She took with her into Austria the King of Rome,
+  a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.
+  He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the
+  hollow of his hand. His father's name was not allowed to fall on
+  his youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because
+  he secretly told him something of his father's fame. Treated as a
+  prisoner, spied <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>upon by
+  Metternich's satellites, not allowed to have any visitors without
+  this immortal Chancellor's permission, not allowed to communicate
+  with his father's family or with Frenchmen, this pathetic figure,
+  stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a growing desire to
+  learn the history of his father, who declared in a letter to his
+  brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son strangled
+  than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.<a name=
+  "FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+  <p>Prince Napoleon in his excellent book&mdash;"Napoleon and His
+  Detractors"&mdash;refers to the young Prince playing a game of
+  billiards with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one
+  of his father's most important generals. He it was who betrayed
+  him, and now he is become the Duke's confidant and instructor.
+  The Prince says that his cousin asked to be told about the deeds
+  that his father had done, his fall, and exile. There does not
+  appear to be any record in existence as to what Marmont conveyed
+  or withheld from the son of Marie Louise, but there is much
+  evidence to show that the young man was not only an eager student
+  of his father's career, but fully realised his own importance and
+  influence on European politics.</p>
+
+  <p>It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of
+  passing events in the land <a name="Page_133" id=
+  "Page_133"></a>of his birth. Obenaus, his tutor, states in his
+  diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the
+  political relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to
+  the rest of the world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him
+  to study the French language, and his reply was: "This advice has
+  not fallen on an unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every
+  imaginable motive inspires me with the desire to perfect myself
+  in, and to overcome the difficulties of, a language which at the
+  present moment forms the most essential part of my studies. It is
+  the language in which my father gave the word of command in all
+  his battles, in which his name was covered with glory, and in
+  which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of war;
+  while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never
+  repudiate the nation into which I was born."<a name=
+  "FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> He further adds, "The
+  <i>chief</i> aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my
+  father's fame."</p>
+
+  <p>His grandfather, the Emperor Francis&mdash;who was reputed to
+  be quite devoted to him&mdash;said, "I wish that the Duke should
+  revere the memory of his father." "Do not suppress the truth,"
+  says he to Metternich (the disloyal friend of Napoleon). "Teach
+  him above all to honour his father's <a name="Page_134" id=
+  "Page_134"></a>memory." The Chancellor replies, "I will speak to
+  the Duke about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of
+  to my own son." What irony! Whatever attempts were made at any
+  time to depreciate the Emperor, his son's loyalty to him never
+  flinched. He regarded his father in the light of a hero whose
+  glorious traditions were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of
+  men. He drank in every particle of information he could discover
+  about his father's life, and was by no means ignorant of what
+  would be his own great destiny should he be permitted to
+  live.</p>
+
+  <p>A strong party in France longed to have the son of their
+  Emperor on the throne of France. A section of the Poles clamoured
+  to have him proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish
+  revolution, and the Greeks claimed him as their future King. All
+  existing records dealing with the Prince's view concerning his
+  position indicate quite clearly that he never under-estimated his
+  importance. He was fully alive to and appreciated the growing
+  devotion to himself, his cause, and to the great name he bore. We
+  learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince received him with
+  marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him permission to
+  relate to him his father's history. Marmont, like all traitors,
+  never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor
+  <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>Napoleon. This is a habit
+  with people who do great injury to their friends. They always
+  make it appear that the injured person is afflicted with growing
+  love for them&mdash;they never realise how much they are loathed
+  and mistrusted.</p>
+
+  <p>The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he
+  tolerated him coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him
+  with stories of the genius and unparalleled greatness of his
+  father's history that the young man subdued his prejudices and
+  encouraged the Marshal in his visits to his apartments, in order
+  that he might learn all that Marmont could tell him of his
+  father's qualities and accomplishments. The young Napoleon caused
+  the General to marvel at the quick intelligence he displayed in
+  the pointed comments made on his father's career. In recognition
+  of his services Marmont was presented with a portrait of the
+  Prince.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+  <p>His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book
+  "Napoleon and His Detractors," obviously desires to convey the
+  impression that all questions, important or unimportant, relating
+  to the Emperor, were studiously kept from his son, and until he
+  arrived at a certain age there can be little doubt that undue and
+  unnatural precautions were taken to prevent the Emperor's
+  <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>name being spoken, but the
+  means used for this purpose must have proved abortive, as
+  everything points to him having been well informed. He appears to
+  have had an instinctive knowledge that nullified the precautions
+  of the Court of Vienna, and especially its culpable Chancellor,
+  Metternich, whose clumsy and heartless treatment is so apparent
+  to all students of history. Probably this is the policy that
+  prevailed up to 1830 which Prince Napoleon complains of. Be that
+  as it may, we are persuaded that the Duke was not only well
+  informed, but took a keen interest in the events of his own and
+  of his father's life, long before the advent of Marmont as his
+  tutor. For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count Prokesch,
+  dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince was
+  afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing
+  with this distinguished man. The young Duke knew that Prokesch
+  had broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he
+  eagerly availed himself of the chance of saying some very
+  complimentary things to the Count. He informs him that he has
+  "known him a long while, and loved him because he defended his
+  father's honour at a time when all the world vied with each other
+  to slander his name"; and then he continues: "I have read your
+  'Battle of Water<a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>loo,' and in
+  order to impress every line of it on my memory I translated it
+  twice in French and Italian."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id=
+  "FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class=
+  "fnanchor">[21]</a> Obviously this young man was neither a dunce
+  nor indolent when his father's fame and his own interests were in
+  question.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young
+  life is the intense interest his mother's husband began to take
+  in him, and he probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count
+  Neipperg urged him to make himself familiar with the glory of the
+  Empire and his father's deeds. Strange though it may appear, the
+  son of the Great Napoleon and the morganatic husband of his
+  mother were attached to each other in the most intimate way. If
+  he perceived the immoral relations between Neipperg and Marie
+  Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it; but taking into
+  account the passionate love and devotion he had for his father's
+  memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the amorous
+  connection or marriage having taken place between the Count and
+  his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about
+  it, not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends
+  Prokesch, Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very
+  naturally his grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of
+  his life made him <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>cautious,
+  and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was
+  generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is
+  hardly likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far
+  crushed out of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further
+  monstrous wrong being done to his Imperial father.</p>
+
+  <p>The young Prince was the centre of great political interest,
+  and the object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large
+  public in Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been
+  preserved a few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and
+  prejudices, have been put on the throne of the land of his
+  birth.</p>
+
+  <p>Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have
+  had any serious thought of encouraging the project of making the
+  Duke Emperor of the French. His subtle game was to use him as a
+  terror to Louis Philippe when that monarch became refractory or
+  showed signs of covetousness.</p>
+
+  <p>The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods. He
+  was proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made
+  immortal and he was determined not to soil it. If it was to be
+  reclaimed, all obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his
+  countenance to it. There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage.
+  Thirty-four million souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his
+  <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>restoration to France.
+  Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father's old
+  companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more
+  enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon,
+  Bertrand, the petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of
+  Rovigo. These were joined to thousands of other brave men who
+  would have considered it an honour to shed their last drop of
+  blood for the cause, and in memory of him whom they had loved so
+  well. The two first-named were executors to his father's will, in
+  which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt to avenge his death
+  but to profit by it. He reminds him that things have changed. He
+  was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the way is to
+  convince her. His son is urged not to mount the throne by the aid
+  of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the
+  approbation of posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be
+  pardoned, but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all
+  uncivilised and barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity
+  and civilisation. Religious ideas have more influence than
+  certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe. They
+  are capable of rendering great services to humanity."</p>
+
+  <p>These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to
+  the young man from the tragic <a name="Page_140" id=
+  "Page_140"></a>rock whose memories will ever defame the name of
+  those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political
+  history.</p>
+
+  <p>It is none the less a phenomenon that this "abode of
+  darkness," so monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be
+  illumined by the great figure that stamped its fame for evermore
+  with his personality.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to
+  draw up a constitution for his son. It is doubtful whether
+  Montholon ever succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who
+  passed on before the legitimate call to put it into practice
+  came.</p>
+
+  <p>The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great
+  soldier with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right
+  to outlaw and brand him as the disturber of public peace. I have
+  already said this was their ostensible plea, but the real reason
+  was his determination to exterminate feudalism and establish
+  democratic institutions as soon as he could bring the different
+  factions into harmony. He failed, but the colossal cost of his
+  failure in men and money is unthinkable. His subjugation left
+  Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated, of eight
+  hundred millions, and then there was no peace.</p>
+
+  <p>The constitution intended for his son could have <a name=
+  "Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>been very beneficially applied to
+  some of the nations represented at the Congress of
+  Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him an
+  outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other
+  people's territory to each other. The only nation that came badly
+  out of the Congress was Great Britain.</p>
+
+  <p>This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and
+  hated by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might
+  well be adopted by the most democratic countries.</p>
+
+  <p>The first article&mdash;composed of six words: "The
+  sovereignty dwells in the nation"&mdash;stamps the purpose of it
+  with real democracy. It might do no harm to embody some of its
+  clauses into our own constitution at the present time. We very
+  tardily adopted some of its laws long after his death, and we
+  might go on copying to our advantage. He was a real progressor,
+  but his team was difficult to guide. Had he been conciliated and
+  allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised the whole
+  of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was
+  undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble.
+  The mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the
+  son, who was practically a State prisoner.</p>
+
+  <p>During childhood the Prince was strong and <a name="Page_142"
+  id="Page_142"></a>healthy, and his robust physique caused
+  favourable comment. It was not until 1819 that his health became
+  affected by an attack of spotted fever. This passed away in a few
+  weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to his
+  rapid growth, dates from that period. He died prematurely on July
+  22, 1832, at Sch&ouml;nbrunn, and the accounts which may be
+  relied upon indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent
+  medical treatment. It is even asserted that this heir to the
+  throne of France, ushered in twenty-one years before as the
+  herald of Peace, was to be regarded as a source of infinite
+  danger, and for that barbaric reason his health was allowed to be
+  slowly and surely undermined until death took him from the
+  restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of
+  Europe. Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical
+  public that his early death was the result of youthful
+  indiscretions, but this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who
+  declares that he was a strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus,
+  in his diary, justifies this opinion, if there was nothing else
+  to support it. Moreover the same Anton, Count Prokesch was asked
+  by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth as to the alleged love
+  affairs, and he averred that the rumours were without
+  foundation.</p>
+
+  <p>The King of Rome died at Sch&ouml;nbrunn in the <a name=
+  "Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>same room that his father had
+  occupied in 1809. In Paris a report was put about that he had
+  been poisoned by the Court of Vienna. This opinion has been
+  handed down, and there are many persons to-day who have a firm
+  belief in its possibility.</p>
+
+  <p>Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich
+  sent a poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and
+  even this highly improbable story is not without reason believed,
+  because Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning
+  Judas in politics at that time. He had betrayed the father of the
+  Prince while he was declaring the most loyal friendship. He
+  admits this, nay, even boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his
+  shameful conduct has its reward by having won for him the stigma
+  of wishing for, and hastening on, the death of an unfortunate
+  young man for whom ordinary manliness should have claimed
+  compassion. This moral assassin of father and son declared that
+  he had "used all the means in his power to second the hand of
+  God" by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined
+  moralists of Europe. The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace
+  proclaimed for evermore. That was their pretence, though it could
+  not have been their conviction. If it was, they were soon
+  disillusioned.</p>
+
+  <p>I made a long journey in company with a Danish <a name=
+  "Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>statesman a few years ago, and
+  amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign and
+  fall of Napoleon. This gentleman held up his hands and said to
+  me, "Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was. Had the Powers
+  beheld the mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would
+  have been to the world!"&mdash;and there is not much difficulty
+  in supporting the view of this Danish gentleman. The more one
+  probes into the history of the period, the more vivid the blunder
+  appears.</p>
+
+  <p>Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine,
+  who was neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in
+  being championed by a man whose book is made up of libels.
+  Metternich may here be dismissed as being only one of many whose
+  highest ambition was to destroy the man whom the French nation
+  had made their monarch. Their aim was accomplished, but the
+  spirit that evolved from the wreck of the Revolution still lives
+  on, and may rise again to be avenged for the great crime that was
+  committed.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was
+  despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his
+  premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional
+  causes, is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the
+  actions of the high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause
+  lingering doubts to prevail as <a name="Page_145" id=
+  "Page_145"></a>to their innocence. It is certain that several
+  determined attempts were made to take the Prince's life, and
+  large sums were offered to desperadoes to carry out this
+  murderous deed. Then the Court of Vienna were in constant fear of
+  his abduction. His invitations to come to France were
+  perpetual.</p>
+
+  <p>A lady cousin&mdash;the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter
+  of Elisa Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a
+  passport from the Pope's Secretary of State, and coquetted so
+  successfully with the Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a
+  double guarantee of good faith by signing it. This impetuous and
+  eccentric female made her way uninterruptedly to Vienna, found
+  her cousin on the doorstep, made a rush for him and seized his
+  hand, then shouted, "Who can prevent my kissing my sovereign's
+  hand?" She also found means to convey letters to him. There is
+  not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from the records
+  that are available the incident set the heroes&mdash;comprising
+  the allied Courts (including France)&mdash;into a flutter of
+  excitement. The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty
+  little Countess gives a lurid insight into the wave of comic
+  derangement which must have taken possession of men's minds.</p>
+
+  <p>This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in
+  eighteen years it mounted to over <a name="Page_146" id=
+  "Page_146"></a>six million francs. She died in Brittany, 1869,
+  and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.</p>
+
+  <p>That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry
+  the Duke off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed
+  against the more ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a
+  resurrection of the glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the
+  eldest son of King Louis, disagreed with the idea of his family.
+  He looked upon the Emperor's son as being an Austrian Prince,
+  imbued with Austrian methods and policy, and therefore dangerous
+  to the best interests of France. This Prince went so far as to
+  hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis Philippe. He died in
+  1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin passed on too,
+  and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists' cause, and
+  it well-nigh killed the aged Madame M&egrave;re, who had centred
+  all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his
+  grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion
+  the assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her
+  affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing
+  reply from Madame M&egrave;re. It is dictated, and dated Rome,
+  August 6, 1832:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="blockquot">
+    <p>"Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness
+    which has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child
+    whose death you <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>have been
+    so considerate to announce to me, I have never ceased to
+    entertain towards him the devotion of a mother. In him I still
+    found an object of some consolation, but to my great age, and
+    to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has seen fit to
+    add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I firmly
+    believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for the
+    glory of this world.</p>
+
+    <p>"Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this
+    trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the
+    bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all
+    my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this
+    letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate
+    the task to my brother."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to
+  herself. Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of
+  it betokens grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman
+  she was writing to had wronged. There is not a syllable of
+  <i>open</i> reproach, though there runs through it a polite,
+  withering indictment that must assuredly have cut deeply into the
+  callous nature of this notorious Austrian Archduchess who had
+  played her son so falsely.</p>
+
+  <p>This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been
+  the least suspected of political <a name="Page_148" id=
+  "Page_148"></a>plotting of all the Bonapartists. She was
+  respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads
+  were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character,
+  but the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of
+  France got it into his head that she was harbouring agents in
+  Corsica to excite rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint
+  lodged against her. Pius VII., who knew Madame M&egrave;re, sent
+  his secretary to see her about this supposed intrigue. She
+  listened to what the representative of the Pope had to say, and
+  then with stern dignity began her reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they
+  credit me, but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that
+  if I did, I should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica,
+  or to gain adherents for my son in France, since he already has
+  enough; I should use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from
+  St. Helena, where the most infamous perfidy is holding him
+  captive."</p>
+
+  <p>Then she bowed reverently and left the room.</p>
+
+  <p>This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the
+  "Most Christian King."</p>
+
+  <p>Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady
+  by H. Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of
+  the Empire in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.</p>
+
+  <p>"<a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>Why should I discontinue
+  this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to the dust before my
+  son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have not forgotten
+  it."</p>
+
+  <p>On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two
+  Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the
+  carriage. Madame M&egrave;re, observing the Austrian uniform, to
+  which she had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting
+  down the window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your
+  pleasure? If it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon,
+  here she is!" The officers were naturally crestfallen. They
+  respectfully saluted and rode off. These stinging shots of hers
+  were quite disturbing; they always went home, and reached too far
+  for the comfort of her son's persecutors.</p>
+
+  <p>Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle
+  is one of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been
+  penned. Its logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for
+  justice and magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love
+  which characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing.
+  The last paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations
+  yet to come, and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were
+  committing the crime.</p>
+
+  <p>"<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>Reasons of State," she
+  says, "have their limits, and <i>posterity</i>, which <i>forgets
+  nothing</i>, admires above everything the generosity of
+  conquerors."</p>
+
+  <p>The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better
+  for their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of
+  writing it. The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a
+  God-fearing woman who deserved to be honoured by every prince in
+  Christendom."</p>
+
+  <p>A great joy came to Madame M&egrave;re in 1830, when they told
+  her that the Government had decided to replace the statue of
+  Napoleon on the Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over
+  this, but bewailed her lameness (she had broken her thigh that
+  year) and total blindness, which would forever prevent her
+  beholding the statue. She turned away from these painful
+  reflections and comforted herself with a few words of sad humour,
+  remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in former days,
+  God would have given her strength to climb to the top of the
+  column to assure herself that it was there. She refused to
+  separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept
+  the proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed
+  unless it included all her family. This remarkable woman died
+  February 2, 1836, aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the
+  remains of his grandmother and Cardinal Fesch removed to <a name=
+  "Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the
+  remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed
+  to receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the
+  first interment at Ajaccio.</p>
+
+  <p>Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second
+  wife should be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even
+  of those historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very
+  complimentary to say of her. She survived her son the King of
+  Rome fifteen years, and the earth claimed her in December, 1847,
+  her age being fifty-six. Had this amiable adulteress, who wished
+  success to the allied armies against her husband, lived a little
+  longer, she would have witnessed the humiliating spectacle of her
+  father's successor being forced to abdicate his throne in favour
+  of the nephew of her Imperial husband, whose memory all noble
+  hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic and public, will
+  ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed herself to be the
+  base accomplice of a great assassination. The most fitting
+  reference to her death appeared in the <i>Times</i> newspaper,
+  which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving
+  it." On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will,
+  Napoleon, with consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference
+  to this passive, icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have
+  always had reason to be pleased with <a name="Page_152" id=
+  "Page_152"></a>my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my
+  last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch,
+  in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his
+  infancy." What irony!</p>
+
+  <p>It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon
+  must have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is
+  even hard to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her
+  actual association with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that
+  while his reference to her is dutiful, not to say tender, there
+  is still something lacking, as though he kept something snugly in
+  the back of his head, something like the following:&mdash;"I
+  cannot make this historical document without alluding to you for
+  my son's sake, though I know full well you have wronged me and
+  consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all this, but I
+  am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of compassion and
+  to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and grief with me,
+  and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I must leave
+  you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct towards
+  me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have
+  done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me
+  suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings
+  by passing to the Elysian Fields, <a name="Page_153" id=
+  "Page_153"></a>there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix,
+  Bessi&egrave;res, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Mass&eacute;na, and
+  Berthier, and we shall talk of the deeds we have done together.
+  Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under the terrible yoke your father,
+  his Chancellor, and the allied satellites have made for me, and
+  yet I keep these incomparable warriors of Europe in a state of
+  alarm. I wish you joy of your allies, who have behaved so nobly
+  to your husband in captivity. I have often thought in my
+  solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular national
+  union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second wife
+  a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated
+  by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of
+  my downfall. Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me
+  in my adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to
+  France and to your native land, to say nothing of the possibility
+  of breaking up the coalition against me and saving rivers of
+  blood. Waterloo might never have been fought had you emulated
+  your matchless sister-in-law, Catherine of Westphalia, in her
+  attitude of supreme womanhood, and your fame might have surpassed
+  that of Joan of Arc, and been handed down to distant ages as an
+  example of heroic firmness and devotion, and then you would have
+  been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a saint by the people
+  <a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>to which you belong. You
+  shared with me the unequalled grandeur of the most powerful
+  throne on earth. I was devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your
+  father insisted that you should break your marriage vow and found
+  in you a willing accomplice in the outrage committed against me.
+  You had shared my throne, and I had reason to expect that every
+  human instinct would call you to my side in my exile, and the
+  thought that burns into my soul is that in the infamy of years,
+  posterity will not be reproached for averting its eye from you as
+  well as from that heartless father who requested you to forsake
+  me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her father,
+  and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the
+  succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire
+  misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law
+  of nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am
+  impelled to bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last
+  will and testament some tender remembrance of you. I do this
+  notwithstanding that you, Marie Louise, Empress of the French,
+  prayed to God that He would bless the arms of the enemies of the
+  land of your adoption. And then that letter which I sent you from
+  Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from Elba to Paris to reclaim
+  the throne which treason had deprived me <a name="Page_155" id=
+  "Page_155"></a>of. I requested you to come to me with my son the
+  King of Rome. You ignored that, as you did other communications
+  which I sent, and which I am assured you received. I make no
+  public accusation against you. <i>That</i> would be undignified
+  and unkingly."</p>
+
+  <p>In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife,
+  Napoleon reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile
+  which indicated that her conduct was much in his mind; and the
+  foregoing portrayal of his sentiments towards her may be regarded
+  as a human probability. The remarkable thing is that he should
+  have made any reference at all to this erotic woman in his will.
+  It puzzled his companions in exile, who knew well enough that she
+  was the cause of much mental anguish to him. It afflicted him so
+  keenly on two notable occasions that he drew pathetically a
+  comparison between her conduct and that which would have been
+  Josephine's under similar circumstances. It is an astonishing
+  characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those who had
+  injured him most.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially
+  refers to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In
+  the sixth paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate
+  results of the invasions of France, when she had still so
+  <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>many resources, are to be
+  attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and
+  La Fayette. I forgive them&mdash;may the posterity of France
+  forgive them as I do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons
+  his brother Louis for the libel he published in 1820, although,
+  as he states, "It is replete with false assertions and falsified
+  documents." He heaps coals of fire on Marie Louise by requesting
+  Marchand to preserve some of his hair and to cause a bracelet to
+  be made of it with a little gold clasp. It is highly probable
+  that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not have been
+  reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by
+  these little attentions.</p>
+
+  <p>Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose
+  baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three
+  years from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged
+  fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious
+  fear had made it an important part of their policy that Marie
+  Louise should be the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon
+  should centre, so Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper
+  person to mould the ex-Empress into passive obedience to the
+  wishes of her husband's inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that
+  this man had already amours to his credit. He had indeed run away
+  with another man's wife, and had issue by her. <a name="Page_157"
+  id="Page_157"></a>Probably his amorous reputation influenced the
+  oligarchy in their choice.</p>
+
+  <p>In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly
+  improvised falsehood, poured into her ears stories of
+  faithlessness on the part of her Imperial husband, read books and
+  pamphlets manufactured and exactly suited for the purpose he had
+  in view. His instructions were to carry things as far he could
+  get them to go, and he did this with revolting success.</p>
+
+  <p>God's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that
+  of carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a
+  pitch of delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her
+  husband, sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to
+  break her marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be
+  more completely assured. As a matter of high policy its
+  wickedness will never be excelled.</p>
+
+  <p>At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became
+  "inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put
+  up so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a
+  letter of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr.
+  Aglietti, in which he seems to have made some courteous and
+  consoling observations, she says "that all the efforts of art
+  were powerless, for it is impossible to fight against the
+  <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a><i>Divine Will</i>. You are
+  very right in saying that time and religion can alone diminish
+  the bitterness of such a loss. Alas! the former, far from
+  exercising its power over me, only daily increases my grief."
+  This "amiable," grief-stricken royal sham, overcharged with
+  expressions of religious fervour, succumbs again to her natural
+  instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console," but only
+  increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."</p>
+
+  <p>Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not
+  that we know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least
+  knowing it. But the creeping horror of time is quickly softened
+  by her marriage in 1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who
+  was in the service of her native land, and is said to have had
+  English blood in his veins. In spite of the loyal effort of
+  Meneval to make her ironic procession through life appear as
+  favourable as he can, the only true impression that can be
+  arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or
+  pity.</p>
+
+  <p>A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a
+  daughter of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie
+  Antoinette&mdash;Queen Marie Caroline, grandmother to Marie
+  Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of the French with peculiar
+  aversion, but when his power was broken and he became the victim
+  of persecution, this <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>good
+  woman forgot her prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him
+  that she had had cause to regard Napoleon at one time as an
+  enemy, but now that he was in trouble she forgot the past. She
+  declared that if it was still the determination of the Court of
+  Vienna to sever the bonds of unity between man and wife in order
+  that the Emperor might be deprived of consolation, it was her
+  granddaughter's duty to assume disguise, tie sheets together,
+  lower herself from the window, and bolt.</p>
+
+  <p>There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave
+  Louise sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence,
+  her name would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a
+  lesson, in fact, against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the
+  unfortunate. It is moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline
+  felt, at the time, that the political marriage of her
+  granddaughter to the French Emperor was ill-assorted and tragic,
+  but the deed having been done, she upheld the divine law of
+  marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an indulgent,
+  kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever his
+  faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in
+  his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she
+  urges a reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have
+  <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>made it impossible ere this
+  to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal companionship, and her
+  subsequent conduct makes it more than likely that she was too
+  deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the penalty of
+  the errors she had committed.</p>
+
+  <p>"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the
+  death of my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change
+  of feature&mdash;not the slightest emotion or alteration of
+  countenance would be visible. But when alone in my chamber,
+  <i>then</i> I suffer. Then the feelings of the man burst
+  forth."</p>
+
+  <p>We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as
+  being overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the
+  personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power
+  over men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human
+  tenderness. Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his
+  much beloved son, whom he called "Mon pauvre petit chou." "I do
+  not blush to admit," said he on a memorable occasion, "that I
+  have a good deal of a mother's tenderness. I could never count on
+  the faithfulness of a father who did not love his children."</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+      "Correspondance de Napol&eacute;on," vol. 128, p. 133.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Quoted
+      from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> See
+      "Memoirs."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> See
+      "Memoirs."</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><a name="Page_161"
+  id="Page_161"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+  <h3>THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS</h3>
+
+  <p>It would be an easy task to enlarge on the excellent qualities
+  of this wonderful man. Volumes could be written about this phase
+  of his dazzling career alone, and yet we have miscreants such as
+  Talleyrand proclaiming to the Conference of "Christian Kings" and
+  traitors that the greatest, most powerful, and most humane prince
+  of the age "must be exterminated like a mad dog." The news of his
+  flight from Elba and arrival in Paris, vociferously acclaimed by
+  the French people as their lawful sovereign, threw this band of
+  parasites into apoplectic terror; Talleyrand, of all creatures,
+  dictating to the Conference as to the wording of the proclamation
+  that should be issued outlawing his Emperor, whom he and they
+  styled "Usurper." If it were not so outrageous a violation of
+  decency, we would look upon it as the most comical incident
+  notified in history. Talleyrand, the most accomplished traitor
+  and <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>barefaced thief in
+  Europe, except perhaps Bourrienne, he who could not prevent
+  himself from fumbling in his sovereign's and everybody else's
+  pockets whenever the opportunity occurred, to be allowed to sit
+  in conference with the anointed rulers of Europe is really too
+  comic.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon was styled "Usurper" by these saintly Legitimists,
+  not one of whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately
+  as the man whom they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole
+  of Europe were to be drenched in blood by the process of it. They
+  set themselves to disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French
+  people, who had only just again ratified by millions of votes his
+  claim to the throne, and the gallant and heroic response to their
+  requisition that he should leave Elba and become their ruler
+  again. Surely it will never be contended that Napoleon's claims
+  were less legitimate than those of the Prince of Orange, or the
+  Elector of Hanover, or Frederic William the great Elector, whose
+  sole qualification for kingship consisted in having the instincts
+  of a tiger. Of the latter Lord Macaulay says, "His palace was
+  hell, and he the most execrable of fiends." His sole ambition
+  seemed to be to pay fabulous sums for giant soldiers, and he
+  showed an inhuman aversion to his son, afterwards known as
+  Frederic <a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>the Great, and his
+  daughter Wilhelmina. He was as ignorant and ill-conditioned a
+  creature as could be found in the whole world, a cowardly rascal
+  who found pleasure in kicking ladies whom he might meet in the
+  street and ordering them "home to mind their brats." No more need
+  be said of the father of the great Frederic, whose "Life" took
+  Thomas Carlyle thirteen years in searching musty German histories
+  to produce. Carlyle says, "One of the reasons that led me to
+  write 'Frederic' was that he managed not to be a liar and
+  charlatan as his century was"; and indeed his adoration for
+  Frederic is quite pardonable. He had spent thirteen years of his
+  life in the supreme effort of making him a hero, and his great
+  work, contained in eight volumes, is a matchless piece of
+  literature; but there is nothing in it to justify anyone
+  believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a charlatan. It is
+  true Frederic finished better than he began, but truthfulness and
+  honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied, broke
+  faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his purpose,
+  and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no doubt
+  he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic
+  Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The
+  powers of England, France, Spain, <a name="Page_164" id=
+  "Page_164"></a>Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, the
+  Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it. Had he been
+  an honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits
+  him with, he would have stood by his oath. Instead of defending
+  his ally, he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe
+  into a devastating, bloody war, with the sole object of robbery;
+  and all he could say for himself in extenuation of such base
+  conduct was: "Ambition, interest, the desire of making people
+  talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for war."</p>
+
+  <p>Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for
+  being great was mainly acquired because the Powers and
+  circumstances allowed him to succeed after seven long years of
+  sanguinary conflict.</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's
+  career that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic.
+  He really usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that
+  he could put his hands on, regardless of every moral law; but
+  then he ignored all moral laws. There is no need for comparison,
+  but it is just as well to point out that the plea of legitimacy
+  is very shallow, and the contention of the Allies is an amazing
+  burlesque emanating from the brains of an industrious
+  mediocrity.</p>
+
+  <p>These legitimate monarchs, through their <a name="Page_165"
+  id="Page_165"></a>Ministers, used barefacedly to inspire
+  journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as being a
+  natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation.
+  History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an
+  impudent hypocrisy. They might have had it at any time, but this
+  did not suit their policy of legitimacy. Countless thousands of
+  human beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings
+  and nobles to the plan of one man who towered above them, and
+  insisted on breaking up the nefarious system of feudalism and
+  kingship by divine right. They loathed both him and his system.
+  They plotted for his assassination, and intrigued with all the
+  ferocity of wild animals against his humane and enlightened
+  government. He trampled over all their satanic dodges to
+  overthrow the power that had been so often enthusiastically
+  placed in his hands by the sovereign people. He constructed roads
+  and canals, and introduced new methods of creating commerce. He
+  introduced a great scheme of expanding education, science, art,
+  literature. Every phase of enlightenment was not only initiated,
+  but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its application.
+  He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of laws
+  that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and
+  eminently just.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>He not only
+  re-established religion, but he upheld the authority of the Pope
+  as the recognised head of the Roman Church. He built his
+  "pyramids in the sea," established a free press, and declared
+  himself in favour of manhood suffrage. He included in his system
+  a unification of all the small continental States, and was
+  declaimed against as a brigand for doing it. Wherever his plans
+  were carried out the people were prosperous and happy, so long as
+  they were allowed to toil in their own way in their fields and in
+  other industrial pursuits.</p>
+
+  <p>It was the perpetual spirit of war that overshadowed the whole
+  of Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem.
+  He, in this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had
+  carried into practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in
+  less than a century after the great reformer had been removed
+  from the sphere of enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced
+  these small States into unification with the German Empire,
+  thereby carrying into effect the very system Napoleon was
+  condemned for bringing under his suzerainty. What satire, what
+  malignity of fate, that Bismarck, a positive refutation of genius
+  in comparison with the French Emperor, should succeed in
+  resurrecting the fabric that the latter had so proudly built up
+  for France, only to be in a few <a name="Page_167" id=
+  "Page_167"></a>short years the prize of Germany, recognised by
+  the very Powers who fought with such embittered aggressiveness
+  against the great captain and statesman who made not only modern
+  France, but modern Europe; and who at any time during his reign
+  could, by making a sign, as he has said, have had the nobles of
+  France massacred. These bloodsucking creatures were always in the
+  road of reform, always steeped overhead in political intrigue,
+  always concerned in plots against the life of Napoleon, and
+  always shrieking with resentment when they and their accomplices
+  were caught. Some writers are so completely imbued with the
+  righteousness of murdering Napoleon, they convey the impression
+  that when any attempt failed, the perpetrators, instead of being
+  punished, should have had the decoration of the Legion of Honour
+  placed upon them by himself. They are also quite unconscious that
+  they are backing a mean revenge and an awful mockery of freedom
+  when they eloquently shout "Hosanna!"</p>
+
+  <p>According to them St. Helena was the only solution of the
+  problem, if it may be so called, and the Powers who sent him
+  there must have had an inspiration from above. They have no
+  conception that the Allies perpetrated another crucifixion on the
+  greatest and (if we are to judge him by <i>reliable</i> records)
+  the best man of the nineteenth <a name="Page_168" id=
+  "Page_168"></a>century. Ah! fickle France! you are blighted with
+  eternal shame for having allowed these cowardly vindictive
+  conspirators, popularly called the Allies, to besmear <i>you</i>,
+  as well as themselves, with the blood of a hero.</p>
+
+  <p>France had resources at her command which could and should
+  have been used to drive the invaders beyond her boundaries.
+  Frenchmen can never live down the great blunder of abandoning
+  their Emperor, forsaking themselves and the duty they owed to
+  their native land. They forsook in the hour of need all that was
+  noble and honourable, and cast themselves into a cauldron of
+  treason, such as has never been heard of in the world's history.
+  They were soon disillusioned, but it was then too late. The
+  poison had done its work, and France was placed under the
+  subjection of traitors, place-hunters and foreign Powers for many
+  years to come.</p>
+
+  <p>I have already said that Louis XVIII. was put on the throne,
+  not by the French people, but by their conquerors and their
+  myrmidons. He did not long survive his ignoble accession. Then
+  came Charles X., who had to fly to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh
+  because he governed so ill. His qualification to rule was in
+  putting down all reform and liberty; after him came Louis
+  Philippe, but even he only governed on sufferance, though on the
+  whole he occupied an onerous position with <a name="Page_169" id=
+  "Page_169"></a>creditable success. A monarch who rules under the
+  tender mercies of a capricious people, and worse still, a
+  capricious and not too scrupulous monarchy of monarchs, is not to
+  be envied, and this was exactly the position of Louis Philippe.
+  He was beset by the noisy clamour of many factions, besides
+  having to keep a shrewd eye on those lofty men to whom he had to
+  look with perpetual nervous tension for the stability and
+  endurance of his throne. He knew the heart of the nation was
+  centred on St. Helena, and that a wave of repentance was passing
+  over the land. The people wished to atone for the crime they
+  allowed to be committed in 1815.</p>
+
+  <p>Louis Philippe showed great wisdom and foresight. Nothing
+  could have been done with more suitable delicacy than the
+  negotiations which caused the British Government to consent to
+  give the remains of the Emperor up to the French. The air of
+  importance and swagger put into it by Lord Palmerston is
+  supremely farcical, but then the whole senseless blunder from
+  beginning to end was a farce, which does not redound to our
+  credit. It is incredible that a nation so thickly stocked with
+  men of ability in every important department should have had the
+  misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and
+  officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously
+  vin<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>dictive. Men of meagre
+  mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or anywhere else,
+  are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and stifling with
+  conceit. This condition of things was in full swing during the
+  Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we are
+  concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man
+  of genius in Europe but himself. The population of France who
+  were contemporary with him during his meteoric leadership
+  remembered him as a matchless reformer and an unconquerable
+  warrior. Their devotion and belief in his great gifts had sunk
+  deeply into their being. A couple of generations had come into
+  existence from 1815 to 1840, but even to those who knew him only
+  as a captive, he was as much their Emperor and their hero and
+  martyr as he was to his contemporaries. The pride of race, the
+  glory of the Empire and of its great founder, was suckled into
+  them from the time of birth, and as they grew into manhood and
+  womanhood they became permeated with a passionate devotion to his
+  cause. They claimed that his deliverance to the people "he loved
+  so well" was a right that should not be withheld. The spirit of
+  sullen determination that he should be given up had taken deep
+  root. They had arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark
+  would have created <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>a
+  conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant
+  business, and were resolved that they would stand no more
+  red-tape fussy nonsense from either their Government or the
+  Government who kept a regiment of British soldiers to guard his
+  tomb, lest he should again disturb the peace of Europe. They let
+  it be known that no more of that kind of humbug would be
+  tolerated without reprisals, and the hint was taken. Louis
+  Philippe grasped the situation, and formed an expedition with his
+  son Prince Joinville as chief, who was accompanied by Baron Las
+  Cases, member of the Chamber of Deputies; General Count Bertrand;
+  M. l'Abb&eacute; Conquereau, almoner to the expedition; four
+  former servants of Napoleon&mdash;viz., Saint Denis and Noverraz,
+  valets-de-chambre; Pierron, officer of the kitchen; and
+  Archambaud, butler&mdash;Marchand, one of the executors, and the
+  quarrelsome and disloyal General Gourgaud, of whom we may have
+  something more to say further on. This same Gourgaud, who lied so
+  infamously about his Imperial benefactor when he landed in
+  London, has said that "he could not express what he felt when he
+  again found himself near that extraordinary being, that giant of
+  the human race, to whom he had sacrificed all and to whom he owed
+  all he was." These thoughts, and many more not uttered, would
+  come <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>to him when he stood
+  beside the sepulchre of the master whom he had so grievously
+  wronged and who was now and henceforth to be recognised as having
+  been the "legitimate ruler of his country."</p>
+
+  <p>Count Montholon, the most devoted and most constant follower
+  of Napoleon and his family, was not of the expedition. He was
+  engaged in helping the nephew of his hero to ascend the throne of
+  his illustrious uncle, and the effort landed them both in the
+  fortress of Ham. Louis Philippe and his Ministers were very
+  jealous of anyone sharing in any part of the glory of having
+  Napoleon brought to the banks of the Seine. Hence, when King
+  Joseph and Prince Louis Napoleon offered the arms of the Emperor
+  to the nation, the King refused them, but prevailed upon General
+  Bertrand to give them to him, that he might give them to the
+  nation. Napoleon had given the sword he wore at Austerlitz and
+  his arms to Bertrand when on his deathbed. Prince Louis could not
+  stand the great captain's name being trumpeted about for other
+  people's glory. He claimed that it belonged to him. He was the
+  legitimate heir to all its glory, and this too previous
+  assumption got him imprisoned in Ham for asserting what he
+  protested was his right.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile the <i>Bellepoule</i> goes lumbering along, <a name=
+  "Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>impeded by calms and gales, but
+  anchored safely off Jamestown on October 8, 1840. Of course many
+  formalities had to be carried out, so that the exhumation did not
+  commence until the 15th at midnight. They came upon the coffin at
+  ten in the forenoon, opened it, and found the body well
+  preserved. Thereon everyone was overcome with emotion. After the
+  coffin was deposited with profound solemnity and the national
+  flag placed over it, the honours which would have been paid to
+  the Emperor had he been living were paid to his remains on
+  October 18, 1840.</p>
+
+  <p>The expedition set sail, and had only been a few days out when
+  the captain of a passing vessel called the <i>Hamburg</i>
+  informed Prince Joinville that war between France and Great
+  Britain was imminent, and two or three days later this was
+  confirmed by circumstantial information to him by a Dutch vessel
+  called the <i>Egmont</i>. Officers of the two other vessels of
+  the expedition were ordered aboard the <i>Bellepoule</i>, a
+  council of war held, and a determined resistance resolved upon.
+  The decks were cleared for action, guns were mounted, and every
+  form of princely comfort dispensed with. The son of Louis
+  Philippe added lustre to the name of Bourbon by the heroic
+  decision that, whatever the fortune of battle might be, he would
+  sink his ship rather than allow the <a name="Page_174" id=
+  "Page_174"></a>remains of the Emperor to fall into the hands of
+  the British again. The resolve was worthy of Napoleon
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <p>Every precaution was taken to evade capture, but as the
+  information proved to be unfounded, the expedition was not
+  interrupted by hostile cruisers, nor even by contrary winds, and
+  long before it was expected the historic frigate sailed quietly
+  into the harbour of Cherbourg at 5.0 a.m. on November 30, 1840.
+  She had made the passage from St. Helena in forty-two days. Then
+  the great and unexampled triumph commenced.</p>
+
+  <p>Europe was a second time in mourning, bowing its head in
+  reverence and shame. Never have there been such universal tokens
+  of condemnation of the captivity and the creatures who engineered
+  it, and never such unequalled joy and homage as were paid to the
+  memory of the great dead. During the eight days the
+  lying-in-state lasted, more than two hundred thousand people came
+  to the Invalides daily. Thousands never got within the coveted
+  grounds, yet they came in increasing numbers each successive day,
+  notwithstanding the rigour of the biting weather.</p>
+
+  <p>It may be said that the whole world was moved with the desire
+  to show sympathy with this unsurpassed national devotion and
+  worldwide repent<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>ance. His
+  remains are now in the church of the Invalides, where the daily
+  pilgrimage still goes on. The interest in the victim of the
+  stupidity of the British Administration never flags. Each day the
+  dead Emperor is canonised, and his prophetic words that posterity
+  would do him justice are being amply fulfilled.</p>
+
+  <p>The Christian Kings that made saintly war on Napoleon, and
+  combined to commit an atrocious crime in the name of the founder
+  of our faith, were dead. God in His mercy had dispensed with
+  their sagacious guidance in human affairs, and it may be they
+  were paying a lingering penalty for the diabolical act at the
+  very time their prisoner's ashes reached the shores of his
+  beloved country and convulsed it with irrepressible joy. They and
+  many of their accomplices were gone. Four Popes had reigned and
+  passed on to their last long sleep. The Spanish nation, which
+  contributed to his downfall, had been smitten with the plague of
+  chronic revolution. They had been deprived of the great guiding
+  spirit who alone could administer that wholesome discipline which
+  was so necessary to keep the turbulent spirits in restraint. Only
+  Bernadotte, whom Napoleon had put in the way of becoming King of
+  Norway and Sweden, remained to represent the galaxy of Kings. A
+  few of the traitor Marshals were left, <a name="Page_176" id=
+  "Page_176"></a>but Augereau had died soon after the banishment
+  and Berthier had committed suicide a few day before the Battle of
+  Waterloo by jumping out a window. Soult, Oudinot, and the guilty
+  Marmont were in evidence in these days of great national
+  rejoicing. Davoust, Jourdan, Macdonald, and Mass&eacute;na had
+  passed behind the veil. It was the defection of Berthier and
+  Marmont, whom he regarded as his most trusted and loyal
+  comrades-in-arms, that crushed the Emperor at the time of the
+  first abdication. It was a cruel stab, which sunk deep into his
+  soul, and never really healed, but the most heartless incident in
+  connection with this betrayal was the appointment of Marmont, the
+  betrayer, by the Emperor Francis to be the military instructor of
+  Napoleon's son while he was held in captivity and ignorance at
+  Vienna.</p>
+
+  <p>Fouch&eacute;, whose treason and predatory misdeeds should
+  have had him shot long before the dawn of disaster to the Empire
+  came, joined the Ministry of Louis XVIII., whom he had arduously
+  assisted to the throne, but in 1816 he was included in the decree
+  against the murderers of Louis XVI., and had to make himself
+  scarce. He went to Prague, then to Trieste, and died there in
+  1820.</p>
+
+  <p>Talleyrand died at Paris in 1838.</p>
+
+  <p>Both men were unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of
+  moral sense or loyalty, and both pos<a name="Page_177" id=
+  "Page_177"></a>sessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps, which
+  they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can
+  never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the
+  national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them
+  in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on
+  his campaigns, they knew he was kept in close touch with what was
+  going on. It was not until treason became entangled within
+  treason that their evil designs had fuller scope and more
+  disastrous results. Bourrienne, another rascal already referred
+  to in this book, lost his fortune and his reason in 1830, and
+  died in a lunatic asylum at Caen of apoplexy in February, 1834.
+  It is a notable fact that nearly the whole of the prominent
+  figures in the drama of the Empire and its fall had passed beyond
+  the portal before the great captain's remains were brought back
+  to France. These individuals are only remembered now as
+  uninspired small men, benighted in mind, who had wrought ignobly
+  to bring about the fall of a powerful leader, and to the end of
+  their days were associated with and encouraged a fiendish
+  persecution of the Emperor while he lived, and of his family
+  before and after his death.</p>
+
+  <p>But the pious care of his tomb by a regiment of British
+  soldiers, paid for by British taxpayers, <a name="Page_178" id=
+  "Page_178"></a>from 1821 until the patriotic exhumation in 1840;
+  by stately and solemn permission of the British Government,
+  excels the comic genius of a gang of plethoric parochial
+  innkeepers. If it were not so degrading to the national pride of
+  race, we might regard it as taking rank amongst the drollest
+  incidents of human life. What a gang of puffy, mildewed creatures
+  were at the head British affairs in those days! Indeed, they
+  expose the human soul at its worst, and a curious feature is
+  their ingrained belief in the integrity of all their doings,
+  which beggars the English vocabulary describe. How the people
+  tolerated the drain on human life and the material resources of
+  country is also phenomenal.</p>
+
+  <p>Thousands of lives were sacrificed and millions of money
+  squandered, with the sole object of destroying and humiliating
+  one man, who, had he been handled discreetly, would have proved
+  greater public asset than he was. Sir Hudson Lowe would not be
+  known to posterity but for the guilty part he played in the
+  tragedy. He left St. Helena on July 25, 1821, and was presented
+  on the eve of his departure with an address from the inhabitants.
+  It has been said that document was inspired from Plantation
+  House, but that is scarcely credible. Besides, we are not
+  inclined to discount any credit Lowe and his <a name="Page_179"
+  id="Page_179"></a>friends and accomplices can derive from it. It
+  does not glow with devotion nor regret at his resigning his
+  command. Indeed, it is nothing more nor less than a cold, polite
+  way of bidding him farewell. Forsyth makes much of this, with the
+  object of proving his popularity with the islanders and the
+  itinerant persons in the service of the Crown. He only makes his
+  case worse by embarking on so hopeless a task. As a matter of
+  fact, this extraordinary representative of the British Government
+  had roused the whole population of St. Helena at one time and
+  another to a pitch of passion and scorn that puts it beyond doubt
+  that no genuine regret could have been consistently expressed by
+  a single soul, except those few composing his staff, who were as
+  guilty as himself and were always ready to lick his boots for a
+  grain of favour; and yet it is quite certain, notwithstanding the
+  heroic fooleries and the care to make Plantation House a
+  sanctuary of guilty secrecy, there was nothing that transpired,
+  either important or unimportant, concerning the inhabitants of
+  Longwood, that was not promptly passed along. Needless to say,
+  these communications relieved the dull monotony of the exiles,
+  and even Gourgaud was driven to cynical mockery by the ridiculous
+  character of some of the piteous stories that filtered through.
+  There never was <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>any
+  difficulty in verifying the truth of them when it was thought
+  necessary or useful to do so. On the authority of Lowe's
+  biographer, we are told that this immortal High Commissioner was
+  presented to his precious sovereign on November 14, 1821, and was
+  on the point of kissing his hand, but His Majesty, overwhelmed
+  with the preeminence of the great man who stood before him,
+  indicated that there was to be no kissing of hands. His services
+  to his King and country demanded a good shake of the hand and
+  hearty congratulations from His Christian Majesty. Lowe's arduous
+  and exemplary task was admitted with tears in the kingly eyes,
+  and so overcome was His Majesty that he took Lowe's hand again,
+  and shook it a second time, combining with the handshake a
+  further flow of grateful thanks and the appointment to a
+  colonelcy of the 93rd Regiment These compliments were well
+  deserved, coming, as they did from a monarch whose will he had
+  discharged with such brutal fidelity. But what of the
+  afterthought, the reaction which began to hum round his ears
+  almost immediately after this fulsome display of enthusiastic
+  approbation? A vast public, never in favour of the Government's
+  vaunted policy of heroism over an unfortunate foe, swung round
+  with a vengeance. The indignation against the perpetrators of
+  this cruel assassination <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>had
+  no bounds. It was not confined to Britain. The civilised world
+  was shocked. The willing tool of the Government got the worst of
+  it, and the perfidy will cling to his name throughout
+  eternity.</p>
+
+  <p>O'Meara's book, "A Voice from St. Helena; or, Napoleon in
+  Exile," published in 1822, sold like wildfire. In vain Bathurst,
+  Castlereagh, and Liverpool tried to check the flood of public
+  censure that poured in upon them from everywhere. Sir Hudson
+  Lowe, beside himself with apprehension, appealed to them for
+  protection, but none was forthcoming. Indeed, they were too busy
+  searching out some means by which the blow could be eased off
+  themselves, and with studious politeness left their accomplice to
+  plan out his defence as best he could; and the world knows what a
+  sorry job he made of it. His coadjutors in the great tragedy were
+  not the kind of people to share any part of the public censure
+  that could be reflected on to their gaoler. Pretty compliments
+  had been paid to him by the King and some of his Ministers
+  previous to the realisation of the full force of public
+  indignation. Bathurst sent him a letter in 1823 reminding him
+  that his treatment had been beyond that of ordinary governors,
+  that he was working out an idea of having him recommended to a
+  West Indian governorship, and that he was not to suppose that
+  <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>this gracious interest in
+  him was in order to silence the clamour that was being raised
+  against him. This communication was made in November, and in
+  December Lowe was told that he was to go to Antigua as Governor.
+  For special reasons this favour was refused, and two years
+  afterwards he accepted command of the forces at Ceylon, and was
+  still there when Sir Walter Scott's exculpation of the British
+  Government appeared in 1828. Scott was employed for that special
+  purpose.</p>
+
+  <p>The ex-Governor searched the pages of this extraordinary work
+  for a vindication of himself, but never a word that could be
+  construed into real approval was there. He obtained leave of
+  absence from the Governor of Ceylon and made his way to England,
+  ostensibly to vindicate his character. He landed at St. Helena,
+  paid a visit to Longwood, otherwise known as the "Abode of
+  Darkness" since the Imperial tenant named it so when he gave
+  O'Meara his benediction on the occasion of his last parting from
+  him, when he was banished from the island. Sir Hudson was shocked
+  at seeing the place reverted back to a worse state than it was
+  previous to the exiles being forced into it. Then it was a dirty,
+  unwholesome barn, overrun with vermin; now it was worse than a
+  piggery. The aspect touched a tender <a name="Page_183" id=
+  "Page_183"></a>chord in this man who had been the cause of making
+  the Emperor's compulsory sojourn a sorrowful agony.</p>
+
+  <p>Reflections of all that happened during those five memorable
+  years must have crowded in upon him and racked him with feelings
+  of bitter remorse for his avoidable part in the cruel drama; and
+  as he stood upon the spot that had been made famous by England's
+  voluntary captive, it was not unnatural that he should have been
+  overcome by a strange and possibly a purifying sadness. All of
+  that which he had regarded in other days, under different
+  conditions, as unjustifiable splendour had vanished. The Imperial
+  bedroom and study were now made use of to accommodate and give
+  shelter to cows, horses, and pigs. Other agricultural commodities
+  were strewn about everywhere. Nothing was left that would
+  indicate that it was consecrated to fame and everlasting pity.
+  The triumph of death came to it only some six years before. And
+  now Sir Hudson Lowe, we doubt not, filled with pensive regret,
+  looked down on the nameless tomb of the great captain, guarded by
+  sentinels with fixed bayonets, ready to thrust them into any
+  unauthorised intruder into the sacred precincts of the Valley of
+  Napoleon, or the Geranium Valley, which is also known by the name
+  of Punch Bowl.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>Ah! what thickly
+  gathering memories must have come to him in that solemn hour on
+  that smitten rock of bitter and brutal vengeance! All we shall
+  ever know of that melancholy visit as it really affected Lowe has
+  been told by his biographer. We are left to imagine a good deal,
+  and therefore must conclude that he would be less than human if
+  he did not realise that the shadow of retribution was pursuing
+  him. If his thoughts of himself were otherwise, he was soon to be
+  disillusioned.</p>
+
+  <p>He spent three days on the Rock, and had a good reception and
+  send-off, and ere long made his appearance in London and
+  presented himself to his quasi-friend, Bathurst, who, with an eye
+  to his own and his colleagues' interests, discouraged the idea of
+  publishing an answer to Sir Walter Scott's book. Bathurst, in
+  fact (with unconscious drollery), advised Lowe to hurry back to
+  Ceylon without delay, lest meanwhile a vacancy of the
+  governorship should occur and he might lose his opportunity. He
+  was assured of the Government's appreciation of him as their most
+  trusted and loyal public servant, while as a matter of fact it
+  was ludicrously obvious that his presence was quite as
+  objectionable to them in England as it was to the exiles in St.
+  Helena. He was fully alive to, and did not underestimate, the
+  <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>amount of dirty work he had
+  done for them, and very properly expected to be amply rewarded.
+  It never occurred to him that retribution was over-shadowing them
+  as well as himself, and that they could not openly avow their
+  displeasure at the odium he was the cause of bringing on the
+  Government and on the British name by reason of his having so
+  rigidly carried out their perfidious regulations. Had public
+  opinion supported them, their action would have been claimed as a
+  sagacious policy, but it didn't, so this poor, wretched,
+  tactless, incompetent tool became almost as much their aversion
+  as the great prisoner himself. In fact, things went so ill with
+  them that they would have preferred it had Lowe indulged every
+  whim of his prisoner, granted him full liberty to roam wherever
+  he liked, recognised him as Emperor, and even been not too
+  zealous in preventing his escape; and they must have wished that,
+  in the first instance, they had not thought of St. Helena, but
+  wisely and generously granted him hospitality in our own land.
+  This last would have been the best thing that could have happened
+  for everybody concerned.</p>
+
+  <p>Ill-treatment of the most humble prisoner or assassination of
+  the most exalted can never be popular with the British people.
+  Sir Hudson got a cold douche when he obtained an interview with
+  <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>the Duke of Wellington. His
+  Grace in so many words told him that they wished to have nothing
+  to do with him. He could not recommend him for a post in the
+  Russian army. He could not hold out hopes of him getting the
+  governorship of Ceylon should a vacancy occur. He had been hardly
+  used, but there was no help for it. Parliament would not grant
+  him the pension he asked for. Lowe replied that he would stand or
+  fall by its decision, but the Duke snapped him off by stating
+  that Mr. Peel would never make such a proposal to the House of
+  Commons. No other course was open to him now but to return to
+  Ceylon. He did not get the vacancy which occurred in 1830, and
+  returned to England, but never got a public appointment
+  again.</p>
+
+  <p>He presented a wordy memorial in 1843, complaining of having
+  been kept out of employment for twelve years. The governorship of
+  Ceylon had been vacant three times, the Ionian Islands four
+  times; he had been Governor there in 1812. In other parts of the
+  Empire appointments that he supposed he could have filled were
+  given to others. Poor creature! He died in 1844, a broken and
+  ruined man.</p>
+
+  <p>He lacked every quality that is essential in an administrator,
+  and was utterly void of humour, imagination, or the capacity to
+  manage men. <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>His suspicious
+  disposition and lack of judgment made it eminently impossible for
+  him to fulfil any delicate position, and it was a monstrous libel
+  on the knowledge of the fitness of things to entrust him with the
+  governorship of St. Helena.</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Teynham made a violent attack on Lowe in the House of
+  Lords in 1833. The Duke of Wellington was bound to defend his
+  satellite, and did so with some vigour, as the attack was really
+  on him and certain members of his Government. Lord Teynham
+  replies with equal vigour: "He had no intention of aspersing the
+  private character of Sir Hudson, but as regards his conduct while
+  Governor of St. Helena, he maintained, and always would, that
+  Lowe was cried out upon by all the people of Europe as a person
+  unfit to be trusted with power." Lord Teynham a few days
+  afterwards made a sort of apology, no doubt inspired by
+  interested persons, for personal plus international reasons. They
+  were high of heart, these dauntless confederates, in the early
+  and middle stages of the captivity, and, indeed, they bore
+  themselves with braggart defiance of public opinion, until many
+  strong manifestations of inevitable trouble encompassed them,
+  and, like all despots, who are invariably cowards, they lived in
+  mortal terror lest this creature of theirs should break out into
+  St. Helena leprosy again and impose <a name="Page_188" id=
+  "Page_188"></a>further humiliation upon them. Lowe had talked of
+  actions for libel against Barry O'Meara, and in a whimsical,
+  half-hearted way worried his employers to give battle, and the
+  law officers of the Crown stated a case but advised against
+  taking action, and so it was never brought, though O'Meara kept
+  telling them in so many words to come on. "I am anxious that you
+  should have the opportunity of defending the charges I have
+  brought against you. I am anxious too that the public should know
+  more than I have written." That in effect was the attitude of the
+  gallant doctor, who was the first to call serious attention to
+  the goings on in the "Abode of Darkness." Needless to say, no
+  action was ever taken, and, in face of all the incriminating
+  facts, it was never intended that any should be taken. Even High
+  Toryism became alarmed at the consequences. The Duke of
+  Wellington, brave and gallant soldier though he was, shrank from
+  so impossible an ordeal. The best he could say of him was, "He
+  was a stupid man," "A bad choice," "and totally unfit to take
+  charge of Bonaparte."</p>
+
+  <p>Wellington may have been a brave and skilful general, but he
+  did not know how to be generous to an unfortunate enemy who was
+  himself always kind and considerate in the hour of victory.
+  Wellington's expressions about Lowe are more than significant,
+  though his conduct towards the poor <a name="Page_189" id=
+  "Page_189"></a>cat's-paw is characteristic of a mean, flinty
+  soul. But his behaviour towards Napoleon would have put any
+  French Jacobin to the blush, and has belittled him for all time
+  in the eyes of everybody who has a spark of human feeling in
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>Meneval<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id=
+  "FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class=
+  "fnanchor">[22]</a> says that Waterloo was won by the French in
+  the middle of the day of that fateful battle, but a caprice of
+  fortune&mdash;the arrival of Bulow's corps and Blucher's army,
+  and the absence of Grouchy's corps&mdash;snatched from Napoleon's
+  hands the triumph which was within his grasp. Wellington had even
+  said to General Hill, who came to take his orders at the most
+  critical moment of the battle: "I have no orders to give you.
+  There is nothing left for us but to die here. Our retreat is even
+  cut off behind us."</p>
+
+  <p>Wellington's despairing words have been handed down in various
+  forms. Notably he is reported to have said, "Oh! for night or
+  Bl&uuml;cher." When he heard the firing, "That is old
+  Bl&uuml;cher at last!" &amp;c. That he was in a tight place there
+  is little doubt, and many authorities have stated that had
+  Grouchy come up according to orders, the allied forces would have
+  been cut to pieces.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether it was "caprice of fortune" or not, Wellington claimed
+  to have won the battle. "Caprice of fortune" had nothing to do
+  with it. <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>It was a
+  hard-fought battle. Treachery and desertion at an important
+  juncture undoubtedly weakened the chances of French success.
+  Meneval adds that "in no encounter of such importance did the
+  French army display more heroism and more resolution than at the
+  Battle of Waterloo." Napoleon at St. Helena attributed his defeat
+  to a variety of circumstances: to treachery, and to his orders
+  not being carried out as they should have been by some of his
+  generals, and often concludes: "It must have been Fate, for I
+  ought to have succeeded." He was accustomed to say that "One must
+  never ask of Fortune more than she can grant," and possibly he
+  erred in this.</p>
+
+  <p>Though nearly a century has passed since the catastrophe to
+  France, the cause of it is still controversial. It is certain
+  that the conduct of Marshal Soult, who was second in command,
+  gave reason for suspicion. An old corporal told the Emperor that
+  he was to "be assured that Soult was betraying him." General
+  Vandamme was reported to have gone over to the enemy. It was also
+  reported to the Emperor by a dragoon that General Henin was
+  exhorting the soldiers of his corps to go over to the Allies, and
+  while this was going on the General had both legs blown away by a
+  cannon shot. Lieutenants, colonels, staff officers, and, it is
+  said, officers who were bearing despatches <a name="Page_191" id=
+  "Page_191"></a>deserted, but it is significant that there is not
+  a single instance given of the common soldier forsaking his great
+  chief's cause. Lord Wolseley declares that if Napoleon had been
+  the man he was at Austerlitz, he would have won the Battle of
+  Waterloo. Wolseley is supported in this view by many writers.</p>
+
+  <p>After Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, Byron said that "bar
+  epilepsy and the elements, he would back Napoleon against the
+  field." It is well known the odds he had to battle with,
+  including the vilest treachery within his own circle.</p>
+
+  <p>Marshal Grouchy's conduct will always remain doubtful, even to
+  the most friendly critics. High treason bubbling up everywhere
+  must have had a dulling effect on the mind of the great genius,
+  though he battled with the increasing vigour of it with amazing
+  courage. He saw the current was running too strong for him to
+  stem unless he determined to again risk the flow of rivers of
+  blood. This he shrank from, and abdicated the throne a second
+  time. And then the barbarous, crimeful story began.</p>
+
+  <p>Sir Hudson Lowe's appointment was a national calamity, but he
+  was the nominee of Wellington's coadjutors, and carried out their
+  wishes with a criminal exactitude, and they should have stood by
+  him in his dire distress, instead of which <a name="Page_192" id=
+  "Page_192"></a>they allowed him to die in poverty, broken in
+  spirit, and a victim to calumny which they ought to have been
+  manly enough to share.</p>
+
+  <p>Whatever may be said in exculpation of them and him,
+  <i>they</i> were undoubtedly too seriously involved to enter upon
+  a fight that would have ended disastrously for all of them, and
+  so, with unusual wisdom, they never got further than threats.</p>
+
+  <p>Sir Hudson was dead something like nine years before Forsyth
+  burst upon the public with his eccentric vindication of the
+  unamiable and unfortunate ex-Governor. The zealous biographer's
+  research for material favourable to his deified hero caused him
+  to ransack prints that were written by unfriendly authors and
+  vindictive critics of the great captive. Even the State Papers,
+  the most unreliable of all documents on this particular subject,
+  were used to prove the goodness of Sir Hudson, and when
+  quotations were unavailing, the author proceeded to concoct the
+  most amazing ideas in support of the task he had set himself to
+  prove.</p>
+
+  <p>Writers of anti-Napoleonic history who take in the St. Helena
+  period are filled with wonder and contempt of the Emperor, who,
+  according to their refined and accurate judgment of the fitness
+  of things, should have been eternally grateful to the British
+  Government that they did not have him <a name="Page_193" id=
+  "Page_193"></a>shot. Why should he complain in the fretful way he
+  does of his treatment and his condition? A great man would have
+  shown his appreciation of all the money that was being spent on
+  the needs for his existence and for the better security of his
+  person. It ill becomes him to complain of improper treatment
+  after all the trouble and commotion he has caused at one time and
+  another. Indeed, a great man would bear the burden of captivity
+  with equanimity and praise the men who gave him the opportunity
+  of showing how a great soldier could carry himself in such
+  unequalled adversity.</p>
+
+  <p>This in effect is what these high-minded men of letters say
+  should have been the attitude of England's guest. He should have
+  received his treatment, harsh and arbitrary though it was, with
+  Christian fortitude, and ought to have borne in mind that he was
+  in the custody of a Christian King and a Christian people. Dr.
+  Max Lenz, who has written a most interesting and on the whole
+  moderate account of Napoleon, considering his nationality, drifts
+  into the same stereotyped closing phraseology of how Napoleon
+  worried and almost wore out the good Sir Hudson Lowe, who only
+  did his duty, and gave in to Napoleon whenever he could see his
+  way to do so.</p>
+
+  <p>But on the authority of Gourgaud, whom Lord Rosebery would
+  appear to regard as the most <a name="Page_194" id=
+  "Page_194"></a>truthful of all the St. Helena chroniclers, this
+  eulogy is totally unwarranted, for truly there is no reliable
+  contemporary writer who would have risked his reputation by
+  making so reckless a statement that could so easily be proved to
+  be a deliberate fabrication. This is not to say that fabrication
+  was an uncommon trick, but the Governor's reputation in relation
+  to Napoleon was so well and widely known, that no person who
+  claimed to have a clear, balanced judgment could defend his
+  silly, vicious conduct.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon never altered his opinion of Lowe's perfidy towards
+  him. On one occasion, in conversation with the truthful Gourgaud,
+  he exclaims, "Ah! I know the English. You may be sure that the
+  sentinels stationed round this house have orders from the
+  Governor to kill me. They will pretend to give me a thrust with a
+  bayonet by mistake some day." Gourgaud reports him as saying on
+  another occasion, "Hudson Lowe is a Sicilian grafted on a
+  Prussian; they must have chosen him to make me die under his
+  charge by inches. It would have been more generous to have shot
+  me at once."</p>
+
+  <p>It would be absurd to affirm that Napoleon said these things
+  without sound foundation, and although, when his personal vanity
+  and abnormal jealousy was aroused by some fancied injury to
+  <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>himself, Gourgaud would
+  resort to the most remarkable fibbing, what he relates as to his
+  master's opinion of the Governor may be relied on, being, as it
+  is, confirmed in a more complete form by O'Meara, Las Cases,
+  Montholon, Bertrand, Antommarchi, and each of the Commissioners.
+  The former sacrificed everything rather than be a party to what
+  he termed treatment that was an "outrage on decency."</p>
+
+  <p>These are only a few of the men who bear witness against Sir
+  Hudson being termed "good"; and I may add one other to the
+  galaxy, poor Dr. Stokoe, who shrank from having the abominable
+  indignity of inquisitor and spy tacked on to his high office and
+  distinguished profession. He refused, as O'Meara had done, to
+  sacrifice his manhood or his sense of honour. Tricked into a
+  false position by Lowe and the virtuous (?) Sir Robert Plampin,
+  Dr. Stokoe, who had only paid five professional visits to
+  Longwood, was deprived of his position and all its advantages,
+  after twenty-five years' service in the Navy, because he refused
+  to become a sneak and a rascal at the bidding of these two
+  unspeakable Government officials, the one disgracing the service
+  of his country in the capacity of Governor and the other the name
+  of a sailor and an Admiral.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1819 Stokoe resigned his position on the <a name="Page_196"
+  id="Page_196"></a><i>Conqueror</i>, and sailed for England. Lowe
+  sent a report addressed to the Lords of the Admiralty by the same
+  vessel, and Stokoe had scarcely landed when he was bundled back
+  to St. Helena. He rejoined the <i>Conqueror</i> under the
+  impression that his conduct had been approved, but was
+  disillusioned by being forthwith put under arrest. A bogus
+  court-martial was instituted in the interests of Lowe, and
+  Plampin and these packed scallywags sentenced him to dismissal
+  from the Navy. The charges against Stokoe were that he failed to
+  report himself to Plampin at the Briars after a visit to
+  Longwood, and that in his report he had designated the patient as
+  the Emperor instead of General Bonaparte. This is a sample of the
+  "good old times" that a certain species of creature delights to
+  show forth his wisdom in talking about. I believe the immortal
+  John Ruskin indulged occasionally in reminding a
+  twentieth-century world of these days that were so blissful.</p>
+
+  <p>Forsyth, the self-reputed impartial historian, neglects to
+  insert in his work in defence of Lowe's conduct the following
+  amazing charges, which shall be fully given. They have been
+  published before, but they are so unique, so unmanly, and so
+  perfidious, I think they ought to be given to the public again,
+  so that the amiable reader may <a name="Page_197" id=
+  "Page_197"></a>know the depth of infamy to which England had sunk
+  in the early part of the nineteenth century. Here is the whole
+  story on which Dr. Stokoe was condemned. His bulletin about
+  Napoleon's health asserted that "The more alarming symptom is
+  that which was experienced in the night of the 16th instant, a
+  recurrence of which may soon prove fatal, particularly if medical
+  attendance is not at hand." The Governor and the worthy Admiral
+  were incensed at such unheard-of arrogance in making a report not
+  in accordance with their wishes and that of the Government and
+  the oligarchy, so the indictment of Stokoe, based on this
+  bulletin, proceeds: "Intending thereby, contrary to the character
+  and duty of a British officer, to create a false impression or
+  belief that General Bonaparte was in imminent or considerable
+  danger, and that no medical assistance was at hand, he, the said
+  Mr. John Stokoe, not having witnessed any such symptom, and
+  knowing that the state of the patient was so little urgent that
+  he was at Longwood four hours before he was admitted to see him,
+  and further, knowing that Dr. Verling was at hand, ready to
+  attend if required in any such emergency or considerable danger.
+  He had knowingly and willingly designated General Bonaparte in
+  the said bulletin in a manner different from that in which he was
+  designated in the Act of Parliament <a name="Page_198" id=
+  "Page_198"></a>for the better custody of his person, and contrary
+  to the practice of His Majesty's Government, of the
+  Lieutenant-General Governor of the island, and of the said Rear
+  Admiral, and he had done so at the especial instance and request
+  of the said General Bonaparte or his attendants, though he, Mr.
+  John Stokoe, well knew that the mode of designation was a point
+  in dispute between the said General Bonaparte and
+  Lieutenant-General Sir Hudson Lowe and the British Government,
+  and that by acceding to the wish of the said General Bonaparte
+  he, the said Mr. John Stokoe, was acting in opposition to the
+  wish and practice of his own superior officers, and to the
+  respect which he owed them under the general printed
+  instructions." The very idea of any grown man being expected to
+  have "respect" for superior officers who had no more sense of
+  justice, dignity, or self-respect than to produce such a blatant
+  document for the supreme purpose of covering up a sample of
+  mingled folly and rascality, and ruining a poor man who was at
+  their ill-conditioned mercy!</p>
+
+  <p>Indeed, we need no further justification for Napoleon's
+  statements as to what the official intention was towards him.
+  Without a doubt Dr. Max Lenz is too reckless in his generosity
+  towards Lowe, for his actions from beginning to end of <a name=
+  "Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>his career prove that he was a
+  dreadful creature. The thought of him and of those incarnate
+  spiders who kept spinning their web, and for six mortal years
+  disgracing humanity, is in truth enough to unsettle one's reason.
+  Vainly they had ransacked creation in search of persons in
+  authority to support them in the plea of justification, but never
+  a soul came forth to share what is now regarded as ingrained
+  criminality.</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps the virulent treatment of Byron ranks with the meanest
+  and most impotent actions of the militant oligarchists because of
+  his shocking (?) sympathy with England's enemy. The fierce though
+  exquisite weaver of rhymes, who had been the idol of the nation
+  and the drawing-room, was sought after by the highest and most
+  cultured in the land. Byron had fallen a victim to public
+  displeasure partly because he gave way to excesses that shocked
+  the orthodoxy of a capricious public. He had reached a pinnacle
+  of fame such as no man of his years had ever attained, and
+  suddenly without warning he fell, a victim to unparalleled
+  vituperation. His faults, if the meagre accounts that have been
+  handed down are true, were great, but many of them were merely
+  human. His marriage was not compatible, and his love
+  entanglements embarrassing. His temper and habits were very
+  similar to those of other geniuses, and <a name="Page_200" id=
+  "Page_200"></a>great allowances should be made for personalities
+  whose mental arrangements may be such as to nullify normal
+  control.</p>
+
+  <p>It is all very well to say that these men should be compelled
+  to adhere to a conventional law because ordinary mortals are
+  expected to do so, but a man like Byron was not ordinary. In his
+  particular line he was a great force with a brain that took
+  spasmodic twists. It is absurd to expect that a being whose
+  genius produced "Childe Harold" and "Manfred" could be fashioned
+  into living a quite commonplace domestic life. Miss Milbanke, who
+  married him, and the public who first blessed and then cursed and
+  made him an outcast, were not faultless. Had they been possessed
+  of the superiority they piously assumed, they would have seen how
+  impossible it was for this eccentric man of stormy passions to be
+  controlled and overridden by conventionality.</p>
+
+  <p>It is possible the serene critic may take exception to this
+  form of reasoning and produce examples of genius, such as
+  Wordsworth, who lived a strictly pious life, never offending any
+  moral law by a hairbreadth; but Wordsworth was not made like
+  Byron; he had not the personality of the poor wayward cripple who
+  at one time had brought the world to his feet, neither had
+  Wordsworth to fight against such wild hereditary complications as
+  <a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>Byron. Wordsworth never
+  caught the public imagination, while Byron had the power of
+  inflaming it. But, alas! neither his magnetic force nor his
+  haughty spirit could stem the whirlwind of hatred, rage, and
+  calumny that took possession of the virtuous and capricious
+  public. The story of cruelty to his wife grew in its enormity,
+  his reported liaisons multiplied beyond all human reason. The
+  bleached, white hearts of the oligarchal party had been lashed
+  into fury by his withering ridicule and charge of hypocrisy, but
+  the climax came like a tornado when the poet's sense of fair play
+  caused him to satirise the Prince Regent and eulogise the Emperor
+  Napoleon with unique pathos and passion.</p>
+
+  <p>This was high treason! He had at last put himself beyond the
+  mercy of the chosen people. They had twaddled and stormed about
+  his immorality, but his praise of Napoleon sent them into
+  diabolic frenzy. He was proclaimed an outlaw and hounded out of
+  the country. The beautiful and rich Lady Jersey, a leader of
+  society, convinced that he was misunderstood and was being
+  treated with unreasonable severity, defended him with all the
+  strength of her resolute character, but malignity had sunk too
+  deep even for her power and influence to avert the disaster. So
+  intense was the feeling engendered against him <a name="Page_202"
+  id="Page_202"></a>that it became dangerous for him to drive out
+  without risking an exhibition of virulent hostility. Had he
+  merely abused the Prince Regent, it is improbable that any
+  exception would have been taken to it; but to praise and show
+  compassion for the Man of the French Revolution, who had fought
+  for a new condition of things which threatened the fabric on
+  which their order held its dominating and despotic sway, was an
+  enormity they were persuaded even God in heaven could not
+  tolerate; why then, should <i>they</i> be expected to do
+  so?&mdash;they were only human. Both public and private
+  resentment ran amok, and thus it was that the immortal poet's
+  belauding of the immortal Emperor became linked to the ignominy
+  of being accused of gross immorality. The reaction against this
+  eccentric being was a fanaticism. There was neither sense nor
+  reason in it, and as he said, "If what they say of me be true,
+  then I am not fit for England; but if it be false, then England
+  is not fit for me"; and with this thought thrilling in his mind
+  he left his native land, never more to see it.</p>
+
+  <p>Caught without a doubt by the spirit of the great man whose
+  eulogy had given such offence in certain quarters, he embarked on
+  the crusade of emancipating the Greeks, was stricken with fever,
+  and died at Missolonghi.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>Adhering to human
+  tradition, the nation which had so recently cast him out became
+  afflicted with grief. Men and women cast reflection on themselves
+  for their misguided judgment of him, and he became a god in
+  memory again, his wife being a singular exception in the great
+  demonstration of national penitence. The incomparable poet had
+  sinned grievously, if rumour may be relied upon, but he was made
+  to suffer out of all proportion to his sinning. His faults were
+  only different from other men's. It may be said quite truly that
+  one of his defects was in having been born a genius, and allowing
+  himself to be idolised by a public whose opinions and friendships
+  were shifty. Second, he erred in disregarding and satirising
+  puritanical conventionalisms. Thirdly, and probably the most
+  provocative of all, was his defiance of the fiery patriotism of
+  some of the ruling classes in lauding him whom they stigmatised
+  as the enemy of the human race and lampooning the precious Prince
+  Regent. His extraordinary talents did not shield him, any more
+  than they did the hero of fifty pitched battles whose greatness
+  he had extolled.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Vol.
+      iii. pp. 451-2.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><a name="Page_204" id=
+  "Page_204"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+  <h3>MESDAMES DE STA&Euml;L AND DE REMUSAT</h3>
+
+  <p>It is a strange human frailty that cannot stand for long the
+  purgatory of seeing the elevation of a great public benefactor.
+  The less competent the critics, the more merciless they are in
+  their declamation and intrigue. They hint at faults, and if this
+  is too ineffective, they invent them. Men in prominent public
+  positions rarely escape the vituperation of the professional
+  scandalmonger. These creatures exist everywhere. Their vanity is
+  only equal to their incompetency in all matters that count. Their
+  capacity consists in knowing the kind of diversion a certain
+  class of people relish, and the more exalted their prey is, and
+  the larger the reputation he may have for living a blameless
+  life, the more persistent their whisperings, significant nods,
+  and winkings become. They know, and they could tell, a thing or
+  two which would paralyse belief. They could show how correct they
+  have been in consistently proclaim<a name="Page_205" id=
+  "Page_205"></a>ing that so and so was a very much overestimated
+  man, and never ought to have been put into such a high position;
+  "and besides, I don't want to say all I know, but his depravity!
+  Well, there, I could, if I would, open some people's eyes, but I
+  don't want to do anybody any harm," and so on. These
+  condescending ulcerous-minded defamers congratulate themselves on
+  their goodness of heart in withholding from the public gaze their
+  nasty imaginary accusations, which are merely the thoughts of a
+  conceited and putrid mind.</p>
+
+  <p>Many and many a poor man, without knowing it, is the innocent
+  victim of unfounded accusations, hatched and circulated in that
+  subtle, insinuating way so familiar to the sexless calumniator.
+  The genuine female traducer is an awful scourge, especially if
+  she be political. No male can equal her in refined aggressive
+  cunning. She can circulate a filthy libel by writing a virtuous
+  letter, and never a flaw will appear to trip her into
+  responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile is an inarticulate
+  revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more than a mere
+  oration. It emits the impression of a bite.</p>
+
+  <p>Madame de Sta&euml;l showed an aptitude for this ignoble
+  aggressiveness towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every
+  form of strategy to allure him into a flirtation with her. She
+  was <a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>frequently a sort of
+  magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of
+  prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who
+  had been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline
+  in her methods. Talleyrand and Fouch&eacute; made use of this
+  latter phase of her character to serve their own ends. She had a
+  talent which was used for mischief, but her vulgarity and egotism
+  were quite deplorable. She would have risked the torments of
+  Hades if she could but have embarked upon a liaison with
+  Napoleon. She plied him with letters well seasoned with passion,
+  but all to no purpose. She came to see him at the Rue
+  Chantereine, and was sent away. She invited him to balls to which
+  he never went. But she had opportunities given her which were
+  used in forcing herself upon his attention. At one of these she
+  held him for two hours, and imagining she had made a great
+  impression, she asked him abruptly, "Who was the most superior
+  woman in antiquity, and who is so at the present day?" Napoleon
+  had had enough of her love-making chatter, so snapped out in his
+  quick practical way, "She who has borne the most children." The
+  lady's discomfiture may be imagined. It was a deadly thrust.</p>
+
+  <p>This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France
+  without success, made violent <a name="Page_207" id=
+  "Page_207"></a>love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of
+  Napoleon's at the time. Her letters to him were passionate, and
+  Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to
+  kill her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to. This
+  fussy female intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would
+  give her two million francs she would write anything he wished.
+  She was immediately packed about her business.</p>
+
+  <p>Madame de Sta&euml;l was not an important personage at all,
+  but she had the power of attracting people to her who, like
+  herself, had grievances to be discussed, and we may without doubt
+  conclude that these gatherings were composed of well-selected
+  intriguers whom she had fixed in her feline eye. Her great
+  grievance was the First Consul's, and subsequently the Emperor's,
+  coldness towards her. He estimated her at her true value. He
+  treated her with the courtesy due to a French citizen, but
+  nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he rebuked
+  her with due consideration for her sex. When she caused people to
+  talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his
+  habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not
+  resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions. But
+  this human curiosity had power for mischief.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>She was not only an
+  intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in love-making, she
+  developed a literary tyrannicide. She condescended to patronise
+  the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him that
+  her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions.
+  When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop
+  to religious persecution, and put the churches into use. He
+  re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his
+  influence one hundred million Catholics. This wise policy created
+  strong opposition from a section of the clergy. Madame de
+  Sta&euml;l and the friends whom she had whipped up, many of them
+  being the principal generals, were mischievously opposed to it,
+  and brought pressure to bear so that he might be induced to
+  establish the Protestant religion. Napoleon ignored them all. He
+  knew he was on the right ground, and that the nation as a whole
+  was with him. France was essentially a Roman Catholic country,
+  and the head of it gave back to her people what was regarded as
+  the true faith. The exile frequently referred to these matters in
+  conversation with one or other of his followers. Napoleon's
+  disdain for Madame de Sta&euml;l was well merited, and he never
+  saw or heard of her that it did not set his nerves on edge. She
+  was the "death on man" sort of female who persisted in being,
+  either <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>directly or
+  indirectly, his political adviser. Dr. Max Lenz accuses the
+  Emperor of developing a despotism that caused him to drive a
+  woman like Madame de Sta&euml;l from land to land, "and trampled
+  under foot every manifestation of independence."</p>
+
+  <p>Really, the good doctor lays himself open to the charge of not
+  making himself better informed of the doings of this sinister
+  person, who was steeped in treason, and who refused to accept the
+  laws of life with proper submission. It is merely farcical to
+  assume that Madame de Sta&euml;l was kept well under discipline
+  because of a whimsical despotism on the part of the man who had
+  fixed a settled government on France, and who was kept well
+  informed of the attempts of the Baroness and her anarchist
+  associates to undermine and destroy the Constitution it had cost
+  France and its ruler so much to reconstruct and consolidate. "Let
+  her be judged as a man," said Napoleon, and in truth he was right
+  in deciding in this way, as her whole attitude aped the
+  masculine. He was right, too, in showing how wholly objectionable
+  she had made herself to him. He had been led to adopt a sort of
+  "For God's sake, what does she want?" idea of her during the
+  early years of his rule, though he never at any time showed
+  weakness in his actual dealings with <a name="Page_210" id=
+  "Page_210"></a>her. He disliked women who asserted themselves as
+  men, and he disliked the amorous offspring of Necker more because
+  he loathed women who threw themselves into the arms of men; she
+  had surfeited him with her persistent attempts at making love to
+  him. In one of her letters to him she says it was evidently an
+  egregious error, an entire misunderstanding of human nature, that
+  the quiet and timid Josephine had bound up her fate with that of
+  a tempestuous temper like his. She and Napoleon seemed born for
+  each other, and it appeared as if nature had only gifted her with
+  so enthusiastic a disposition in order to enable her to admire
+  such a hero as he was. Napoleon in his fury tore this precious
+  letter up and exclaimed, "This manufacturer of sentiments dares
+  to compare herself with Josephine!"</p>
+
+  <p>The letters were not answered, though this had no deterrent
+  effect on Madame de Sta&euml;l. She continued to pour out in
+  profusion adoration. He was "a god who had descended on earth."
+  She addressed him as such, and his callous reception of her
+  madness drove her into despair and vindictiveness which brought
+  salutary punishment to herself. Her weapons of wit and sarcasm
+  availed nothing. He looked upon her as a sort of gifted lunatic
+  that had got the idea of seducing him into her head. She became
+  so mischievous <a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>that he
+  bundled her out of France. "As long as I live," said he, "she
+  shall not return." He advised that she should live in Berlin,
+  Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for preference. There she
+  would have full scope for her genius in producing pamphlets. "Oh
+  yes," says the "god who had descended on earth"; "she has talent,
+  much talent, in fact far too much, but it is offensive and
+  revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave things
+  and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one
+  of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed
+  to come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of
+  retirement, but the great man's faith in his own sound judgment
+  was not to be shaken.</p>
+
+  <p>"Her promises are all very fine," he said, "but I know what
+  they mean. Why should she be so anxious to be in the immediate
+  reach of tyranny?"</p>
+
+  <p>Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man,
+  she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd,
+  tasteless attire. This woman of genius and folly lacked the
+  wisdom of gauging the taste of Bonaparte, whom she desired to
+  captivate with her sluttish appearance and whirling words.</p>
+
+  <p>This man of method and order, who had a keen eye for grace or
+  beauty in its varied <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>phases,
+  was always pronounced in his opinion that women should dress
+  simply but with faultless taste. It improves good looks, and, if
+  need be, it covers up defects; but in any case it is the bounden
+  duty of women to dress with some regard to conventional custom.
+  It gives them much greater influence than they would otherwise
+  have. Most women know the importance of this trick, and do it,
+  and they are amply rewarded for their good sense.</p>
+
+  <p>Madame de Sta&euml;l did quite the opposite. She appeared
+  before the Man of Destiny in a shocking garb, and he regarded it
+  as a piece of impertinence. It stirred up his prejudice openly
+  against her, in spite of his indifferent attempts to conceal it,
+  but her egotism was so gigantic, she actually believed she was
+  making great strides towards curing his callousness towards her.
+  This woman has been used elaborately by anti-Napoleonic writers
+  to prove that he was an inhuman despot and she a high-minded,
+  virtuous Frenchwoman, and a genius in the art of government. They
+  quote her as a great authority. Her knowledge of his evil deeds
+  and mistakes of administration is set forth as being flawless.
+  They bemoan his treatment of this amiable female, and in the
+  midst of their ecstasy of compassion and wrath they hand down to
+  posterity a record of unheard-of woes. There is <a name=
+  "Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>little doubt Napoleon's remark that
+  "the Neckers were an odd lot, always comforting themselves in
+  mutual admiration," is well merited. The daughter utilised the
+  name of the father with lavish persistence. Her ambition and
+  impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon
+  bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true
+  heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of
+  relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have
+  put the most militant suffragette in our time to the blush.</p>
+
+  <p>But suddenly her hysteria subsided, and after a brief repose
+  she switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the
+  man whose life she had set herself to make one long ache if he
+  did not yield to her arrogant pretensions. She had written in a
+  perpetual scream of his iniquities, and was thrown over by her
+  former associates, who saw clearly enough that no real good could
+  be accomplished by whining about cruelty when stern flawless
+  justice only existed. They recognised that she was a personality,
+  but her antics puzzled them, and well they might. She bewailed
+  her isolation with a throbbing heart, and after committing
+  indiscretions that Robespierre would have sent her head flying
+  for, she was suddenly bereaved of her neglected husband. This
+  event <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>gave Benjamin Constant
+  a better chance, but the Baroness aimed at higher game. She was
+  held in the grip of a delusion that she had it in her power to
+  hypnotise the First Consul and cause him to become her lover. She
+  had an uncontrollable idolatry for this august person, whom she
+  hoped to win over by writing for the consumption of his enemies
+  the many reasons for her aversion to him. Without a doubt the
+  woman was madly in love with the object of her supposed aversion,
+  and was driven to frenzy by his obvious distaste for her.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1811 she secretly married a young officer called M. de
+  Rocca, who had fallen desperately in love with her. He was
+  amiable and brilliant; became an officer of Hussars in the French
+  Army; did valiant deeds amongst the hills in Andalusia in 1809;
+  and was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Subsequently
+  he was shot down by guerillas, badly wounded in the thigh, foot,
+  and chest; had a romantic deliverance; was hidden in a chapel by
+  a young lady, and nursed into consciousness and convalescence by
+  loving care, which enabled him to reach Madrid, and ultimately
+  Geneva, where, in the radiance of youthful infatuation, he rode
+  with reckless energy down a risky steep part of the city, so that
+  he might pass the window of the lady, who was more than old
+  enough <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>to be his mother, and
+  in a few months was to be made his wife. A child was born to them
+  in 1812, and in order to save its legitimacy, she acknowledged
+  the marriage to a few, but it was not generally known until after
+  her death that Rocca was her lawful husband. Conscious, and
+  sensitive no doubt, that it was not quite natural for old women
+  to marry young men, she prudently had the event kept secret. The
+  young husband did not only possess tender affection for her, but
+  he combined chivalrous ambitions which made the romance
+  additionally attractive.</p>
+
+  <p>Be it remembered that Benjamin Constant was a former lover of
+  Madame de Sta&euml;l. The young bridegroom, following a natural
+  instinct, had a great dislike to Benjamin, and took an
+  opportunity of really small provocation to challenge him to a
+  duel, which, owing to wiser counsels, was never fought. There
+  does not seem to have been very much to fight a duel about.
+  Constant had a quarrel with his father in which he involved
+  Madame de Sta&euml;l, and Rocca resented it like a gallant
+  youthful husband, who was at that stage when it is thought
+  desirable to shoot or otherwise kill somebody, in order to show
+  the extent of his devotion to his enchantress. Rocca had hoped to
+  die (so he said) before her, but fate willed that he should
+  linger on and suffer for six months more. Madame de Sta&euml;l
+  <a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>slept peacefully into her
+  last long sleep on July 14, 1817.</p>
+
+  <p>Her career was chequered and restless. She had influence,
+  which she used oft-times recklessly, and led less gifted people
+  than herself into committing needless errors. She wrote and spoke
+  with a wit and sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was
+  directed. Her bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her
+  own making. For the most part she wrote with superficial feeling
+  and without real soul. During the Napoleonic regime, time was a
+  creeping horror to her, but she found pleasure in the thought
+  that it was a torture to her suffering heart. George Eliot knew
+  and used her extraordinary power; Madame de Sta&euml;l wasted
+  hers. Nevertheless she had many friends who loved her society.
+  Wellington was brought under her influence. Byron, who shrank
+  from her at first, says, "She was the best creature in the
+  world." She had been at some pains to try to bring Lord and Lady
+  Byron together. She was capable of impressing people with her
+  charm, but magnetic influence she had none when living, and has
+  left none behind.</p>
+
+  <p>Rocca exclaimed, when he heard that she had passed to the
+  shadows, "What crown could replace that which I have lost!" And
+  the distracted Benjamin Constant, filled with remorse, reproached
+  <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>himself for some undefined
+  suffering he had caused her, and did penance all night through in
+  the death-chamber of his divine Juliet.</p>
+
+  <p>This crazy woman seems to have been capricious in everything.
+  She made and broke liaisons with amazing rapidity while
+  undergoing a compulsory sojourn at Coppet. She formed there an
+  attachment for the son of a person named M. Baranti, which very
+  nearly cheated Rocca from becoming her husband, and the faithless
+  Benjamin Constant from being, erroneously perhaps, associated
+  with her name as the author of the manuscript of St. Helen, and
+  she the notoriety of writing "Ten Years of Exile," which was
+  published after her death.</p>
+
+  <p>The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet,
+  and being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that
+  he might have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned
+  the famous authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with
+  the impulse to immortalise his severance by attempting suicide,
+  and thereby ending her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame.
+  The attempt, presumably feeble, left her long years of
+  mischievous mania for attack on the supposed author of all her
+  woes. She readily found amongst his enemies (and thus the enemies
+  of France) those who yearned with her in the hope she freely
+  <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>and openly expressed that
+  her native land should suffer defeats, and in this her desire was
+  fully acquiesced in by the combination of hysterical and purblind
+  Kings, aided by a coterie of irreconcilables, who welcomed the
+  destruction of their fatherland in order that the man who had
+  made it the glory and the envy of the world should be driven from
+  it. Many of these creatures were members of the same Senate who,
+  a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent address couched
+  in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the hold his
+  personality had on the national life. The following is what they
+  say, and what they ask him to do:&mdash;"You have brought us out
+  of the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of
+  the present. Great man, complete your work, and make it as
+  immortal as your glory!"</p>
+
+  <p>The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated
+  with the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of
+  Finance to Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who
+  sought her guilty and inflammatory aid.</p>
+
+  <p>Then we come to another female celebrity, though less notable
+  than Madame de Sta&euml;l, who is regarded by the traducers of
+  Napoleon as a historian because she wrote in her memoirs that
+  which they wished the world to think of him, and <a name=
+  "Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>because they flattered themselves
+  that it exculpated them from the charge of injustice and mere
+  hatred. Madame de Sta&euml;l's book, "Consid&eacute;rations sur
+  la R&eacute;volution Fran&ccedil;aise," made its appearance. Its
+  violent characteristics inflamed Charles de Remusat to urge his
+  mother to enter into competition with this work, the result being
+  the production of Madame de Remusat's memoirs, edited by her
+  grandson, M. Paul de Remusat. Charles (her son) had reproached
+  her for having destroyed memoirs she had written
+  previously,<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id=
+  "FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class=
+  "fnanchor">[23]</a> but lurking in her mind was the thought of
+  all the favours she and her family had received, and her
+  correspondence, teeming with adulation for the man whom she was
+  now induced to declaim against. The knowledge that she was about
+  to expose her perfidy "worried" her, and she wrote to Charles
+  thus:&mdash;"If it should happen that some day my son were to
+  publish all this, what would people think of me?" and the son,
+  obviously influenced by the mother's fears, delayed until the
+  fall of the Second Empire the <a name="Page_220" id=
+  "Page_220"></a>publication of one of the most unreliable and
+  barefaced calumnies ever produced against a great benefactor.</p>
+
+  <p>In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited
+  general envy by the high position the First Consul had given
+  them. She was first Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the
+  Household, her husband being "attached to Napoleon's household."
+  She says that she was witty and of a refined mind, and though she
+  was less "good-looking" than her companions, she had the
+  advantage of being able to "charm his mind," and she was almost
+  the only woman with whom he condescended to converse. She relates
+  residing in the camp at Boulogne "and having breakfast and dinner
+  daily with Bonaparte." In the evenings they used to "discuss
+  philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First Consul
+  relating about the years of his youth and early
+  achievements."</p>
+
+  <p>No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the
+  same way as Madame de Sta&euml;l that she would one day be raised
+  to heights of glory unequalled in history, and the disappointment
+  embittered her. She admits that she "suffered on account of
+  blighted hopes and deceived affections and the failure of her
+  calculations." Moreover, Josephine had an eye on the lady whose
+  husband in evil times sought her <a name="Page_221" id=
+  "Page_221"></a>influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping
+  hand and save them from the poverty by which they were beset.
+  Napoleon's big heart spontaneously responded to the appeal of his
+  fascinating spouse, the result being that favours were heaped
+  upon M. de Remusat and his wife from time to time, and
+  Josephine's goodness was repaid by seeing Madame in feline
+  fashion purring at her Imperial master's affections, and on the
+  authority of Madame de Remusat she "becomes cold and jealous."
+  Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making, she,
+  like Madame de Sta&euml;l under similar circumstances, took to
+  intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace. She is anxious
+  to make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so
+  relates that he told her that "his desire was to make her a great
+  lady, but he could not be expected to do this unless she showed
+  devotion." But in spite of the wife's defection, as is always
+  Napoleon's way, he does not visit her sins on the husband, but
+  raises him to the important posts of Grand Master of the Robes,
+  High Chamberlain, and then Superintendent of Theatres, and in
+  addition gave him large sums to keep up his status, and
+  notwithstanding Josephine's cause for "cold jealousy," Madame de
+  Remusat was generously kept in her service after Marie Louise had
+  become Empress. M. de Remusat remained in the Emperor's service
+  <a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>until the fall of the
+  Empire, and then went over to Louis XVIII. Both of these
+  sycophants were content to accept the favours of the Imperial
+  couple and eat their bread and cringe at their feet while they
+  plotted with the plotters for the Emperor's downfall.</p>
+
+  <p>Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a
+  history writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by
+  day as they occurred have been published, and the memoirs put
+  side by side with these throbbings of the heart reveal an
+  incomparable baseness that makes one wonder at the reckless,
+  blind partisanship which induced her descendants to give the
+  memoirs to an intelligent public.</p>
+
+  <p>In the memoirs she says:&mdash;"Nothing is so base as his
+  soul; it is closed against all generous impulses, and possesses
+  no true grandeur. I noticed that he always failed to understand
+  and to admire a noble action;" and again she goes on to say that
+  "In war he foresaw the means of calling away our attention from
+  the reflections which, sooner or later, his government could not
+  fail to suggest to us, and he reserved it in order to dazzle, or
+  at least to enforce silence on us. Bonaparte felt that he would
+  be infallibly lost the day when his enforced inactivity enabled
+  us to think both of him and of ourselves." "What <a name=
+  "Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>a relief whenever the Emperor went
+  away! His absence always seemed to bring solace. People breathed
+  more freely."</p>
+
+  <p>Now this would have been all very well. It was the stereotyped
+  phraseology of Napoleon's avowed enemies. He knew it, and viewed
+  it with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and
+  her snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with
+  over-indulgence and smitten with wounded pride, they regarded
+  language such as now appears in her memoirs as mere froth. She
+  practically says that she held the same views in 1818 as she did
+  from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote this she no doubt relied on
+  her correspondence being kept snugly private or destroyed; but it
+  has been published, and here are some amazing extracts from
+  it:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of
+  which extends to Antwerp! Consider what a man he must be who can
+  rule it single-handed, and what few instances history offers like
+  him!"<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> "Whilst he creates,
+  so to speak, new nations in his progress, people must be struck,
+  from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably prosperous
+  state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a ruinous
+  revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after
+  <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>so long, excited the scoffs
+  of a shortsighted enemy."</p>
+
+  <p>"When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and
+  <i>moderate liberty</i>, which is quite sufficient for me, the
+  glory my country is covered with, the pomp and even the
+  magnificence surrounding us, and in which I delight, because it
+  is proof that success has crowned our efforts; when, in short, I
+  consider that all this prosperity is the work of <i>one man</i>,
+  I am filled with admiration and gratitude."<a name=
+  "FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+  <p>"What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between
+  ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these
+  feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them;
+  besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the
+  praises that come from the heart than those that proceed from the
+  mind."<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+  <p>"Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!! What a
+  pleasure it is to see the Emperor again, and how much that
+  pleasure will be felt here! This splendid campaign, this glorious
+  peace, this prompt return, all is really marvellous."<a name=
+  "FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+  <p>"Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it
+  is true that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed,
+  no lover was <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>ever more
+  anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His Majesty to
+  meet our desires. You demand a prompt march? Very well, the army
+  that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in
+  Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender
+  of Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more
+  victories? Here they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and
+  also a pitched battle, in order that no kind of success may be
+  wanting. Add to these a whole series of noble and generous deeds,
+  of words full of grandeur and kindness, and always to the
+  purpose, so much so that our hearts share also that glory, and
+  can join it to all the national pride it arouses in us."<a name=
+  "FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+  <p>"I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected
+  that, had I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe,
+  have thrown my arms round his neck, although I should,
+  afterwards, have been compelled to fall on my knees and ask
+  pardon for my conduct."<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id=
+  "FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class=
+  "fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+  <p>So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul
+  yearns for the gift of being able to do him full justice by
+  writing a history, a panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show
+  him to be immeasurably above all men living or dead. <a name=
+  "Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>She fears that people cannot see his
+  nobility and greatness as she does. She is bewildered and
+  acclaims him a god. Here is another outburst of passionate
+  devotion:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which
+  was always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst
+  of danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution,
+  arouse always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never
+  be surpassed."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id=
+  "FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class=
+  "fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+  <p>It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of
+  the great ambition of her life, <i>i.e.</i>, to picture him as he
+  was. The writing is good, the description picturesque, and I
+  believe the impartial mind will also regard it as accurate. She
+  believes "that even persons who are hardest to please must be
+  compelled to admit that he is a most amiable sovereign." She is
+  smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and says it is so sweet
+  that she really regards it as another favour. She wishes her
+  husband could "often secure some of those comforting smiles from
+  the master," and tells him he is "no fool to be fond of those
+  smiles," and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.</p>
+
+  <p>She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her
+  prayer) when he is fighting and <a name="Page_227" id=
+  "Page_227"></a>conquering. Her heart is grieved when he is at a
+  great distance from them. She eulogises his great qualities to
+  her son, and advises him "to study all that she was able to tell
+  him of the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up," and the
+  boy exclaimed, "Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of
+  Plutarch's lives!"</p>
+
+  <p>But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he
+  has to pay for adulation is too high, for, like most
+  over-pampered people, Madame de Remusat seems to have got the
+  idea of equality badly into her head. She became waspish,
+  exacting, claiming more than her share of emoluments, seeking for
+  attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw in the fitness of
+  things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook wholesome justice
+  for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only connived at treason,
+  but prayed for the extinction of him against whom it was
+  directed. Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium of
+  malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what
+  are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former
+  eulogies and opinions so vividly told in the "Letters of Madame
+  de Remusat." Now that adversity so terrible overshadows the
+  matchless hero of the letters, she throws every scruple aside,
+  and warms to her task in writing unstinted, gross, and manifest
+  libels. Contrast with the "letters" <a name="Page_228" id=
+  "Page_228"></a>these quotations from the memoirs. She avows that
+  "nothing is so base as his soul. It is closed against all
+  generous impulses; he never could admire a noble action." "He
+  possesses an innate depravity of nature, and has a special taste
+  for evil." "His absence brought solace, and made people breathe
+  freely." "He is devoid of every kind of personal courage, and
+  generous impulses are foreign to him." "He put a feeling of
+  restraint into everybody that approached him." "He was feared
+  everywhere." "He delighted to excite fear." "He did not like to
+  make people comfortable." "He was afraid of the least
+  familiarity." This latter grievance, combined of course with the
+  rest, is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that
+  the Lady in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been
+  deservedly snubbed by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps
+  necessary to pause here and remind the reader that on the
+  authority of her son, and subsequently of her grandson, these
+  memoirs were written entirely "without malice," and the sole
+  object of writing them at all was that "the truth should be
+  told."</p>
+
+  <p>Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs,
+  because in the former she over and over again declares that "his
+  comely manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with
+  au<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>dacious bitterness she
+  affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."</p>
+
+  <p>Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible
+  to depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the
+  King's return," and describes the hero of her letters as a
+  ruthless destroyer of all worth, and being brought so low, she is
+  straitened by the demands of "truth" and "grows quite
+  disheartened."</p>
+
+  <p>It will be observed that it is always truth which is the
+  abiding motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs.
+  She avows it is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the
+  editor in his preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task
+  for more than two years." That is, it took her more than two
+  years to write the "truths" contained in the memoirs disavowing
+  the "truths" so vehemently given in the letters; the former book
+  pregnant with the bitterness of a writer without heart and
+  principle, and with political and personal motives running
+  through its pages like a canker, while the latter, radiant in
+  luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive
+  justice.</p>
+
+  <p>The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill
+  when he advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of
+  her former statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely
+  drawn to you by favours conferred upon <a name="Page_230" id=
+  "Page_230"></a>them." He had many examples of this truth, but
+  none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her
+  husband were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and
+  the memory of all the favours that were showered upon them by the
+  man she declares she loved should have kept them from hate and
+  disloyalty, and forbidden the writing of such unworthy
+  vituperations against him.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Madame
+      de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred
+      Days, doubtless because she had in her mind the probability
+      that Napoleon might firmly establish himself on the throne,
+      and the discovery of anti-Napoleon MSS. might have acted
+      seriously against herself and family being appointed to
+      important positions. Moreover, the greater danger of getting
+      herself into trouble was constantly in her mind.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+      "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 195.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+      "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p, 196.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Ibid.,
+      vol. i. p. 160.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Ibid.,
+      vol. ii. p. 2.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+      "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 190.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Ibid.,
+      vol. i. p. 393.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+      "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 45.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><a name="Page_231"
+  id="Page_231"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+  <h3>JOSEPHINE</h3>
+
+  <p>One of the phenomena of human affairs is the part destined for
+  Josephine, daughter of M. Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie,
+  sugar-planter at Martinique, and friend of the Marquis de
+  Beauharnais, whose son Alexandre was fated to marry her when she
+  was but sixteen years of age. The marriage took place on December
+  13, 1779, at Noisy-le-Grand. The pompous young bridegroom speaks
+  of his young bride in appreciative terms in a letter to his
+  father, and in order that his parent may not be disappointed as
+  to her beauty, he explains that in this respect she may not be up
+  to his expectations. He regards the pleasure of being with her as
+  very sweet, and forms the resolution of putting her through a
+  course of education, as this had been grievously neglected.</p>
+
+  <p>The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the
+  sweetness of Josephine's char<a name="Page_232" id=
+  "Page_232"></a>acter, but then he was not her husband, and it
+  soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it
+  came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off
+  after the birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker's
+  apprentice, Queen of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III.
+  Alexandre had gone to Martinique, and it was there the news of
+  his daughter's birth came to him. He knew before leaving France
+  that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his pleasure to her.
+  The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend, Joseph Tascher de
+  la Pagerie, that his "son was worthy of being his son-in-law, and
+  that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble qualities." These
+  virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable rapidity
+  after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure on
+  the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful
+  to the poor "uneducated" little Creole girl who really thought
+  she loved him. From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre
+  Beauharnais was an ill-conditioned cruel prig. This excellent son
+  with "fine and noble qualities" had not been long at Martinique
+  before he associated himself with a lady of questionable virtue,
+  who was much older than he. This person's dislike to Josephine
+  caused her to pour into his willing ears and receptive mind
+  scandalous stories of his child<a name="Page_233" id=
+  "Page_233"></a>wife's love intrigues before she left her native
+  island. This gave Alexandre a fine opportunity of writing a
+  letter to her, disclaiming the paternity of Hortense, and
+  accusing her of intrigues with "an officer in the Martinique
+  regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship called the
+  <i>C&aelig;sar</i>." He declares he knows the contents of her
+  letters to her lovers, and "swears by the Heaven which enlightens
+  him that the child is another's, and that strange blood flows in
+  its veins," and "it shall never know his shame"; and so the
+  virtuous Alexandre goes rambling on, until he comes to the
+  slashing finish in the good old style that persons similarly
+  situated adopt to those whom they have grievously injured. He
+  soars between elegant politeness and old-time aristocratic
+  ferocity: "Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you will
+  receive from your desperate and unhappy husband." Then comes the
+  inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit
+  of murder. He is to be in France soon if his health does not
+  break down under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to
+  be out of the house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she
+  will find in him a tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a
+  low-down unworthy scamp, a mere collection of transparent
+  verbiage, intended as a means of ridding himself of a woman he
+  had nothing in <a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>common with,
+  and a cover to his own unfaithfulness.</p>
+
+  <p>But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his
+  coming back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were
+  not renewed. His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine
+  was receiving at the hands of this pompous libertine, and he
+  assures her that of "the two, she is not the one to be most
+  pitied."</p>
+
+  <p>M. Masson declares that there was never a reconciliation, and
+  that they lived apart, but met in society, and spoke to one
+  another, mainly about their children's education. Josephine
+  caused him to withdraw before her lawyer the gross and unfounded
+  charges he had made against her and to agree to a satisfactory
+  allowance.</p>
+
+  <p>Alexandre, finding soldiering distasteful, embarked upon a
+  political career as an aristocrat Liberal. His rise to position
+  was swift, and after the death of Mirabeau he followed him as
+  President of the Assembly. Before his fall came, he was appointed
+  Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Rhine, and at the head of
+  sixty thousand men failed to relieve Mayence and resigned his
+  command.</p>
+
+  <p>His Liberal pretensions did not prevent him being included
+  amongst the proscribed. He was made captive, accused of
+  attempting to escape, <a name="Page_235" id=
+  "Page_235"></a>condemned to death and guillotined. Josephine's
+  device of reassuring the Revolutionists of her conversion to
+  Republicanism by apprenticing Hortense to a dressmaker and Eugene
+  to a carpenter did not avail. She was suspected and sent to Les
+  Carmes, where frequent conversations took place between her
+  philosophic and abandoned husband and herself, mainly concerning
+  their children's education, and had not the reaction against the
+  regime of blood brought about the fall of Robespierre, she would
+  assuredly have shared the fate of Alexandre; and had the cry of
+  "A bas le tyrant" been heard a few days earlier, Beauharnais
+  would have escaped too, and cheated Josephine of becoming Empress
+  of the French and Queen of Italy. As it was, some of the very
+  same people who but a short time before had harangued the mob to
+  "Behold the friend of the people, the great defender of liberty,"
+  switched their murderous vengeance on to their late idol, and ere
+  many hours the widow Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the
+  appalling end and the brevity of time that seemed left to her
+  impressed Josephine with all its ghastly horror. She had shrieked
+  and wept herself into a deathlike illness. The doctor predicted
+  that she could not survive more than a week, and for this reason
+  she escaped being brought before the Tribunal.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>A wondrous Providence
+  this, which, with frantic speed, broke the power of a hideous
+  monster, and thereby saved the woman who was to enter upon a new
+  era, and to be borne swiftly on to share the glory of an
+  unequalled Empire.</p>
+
+  <p>M. Masson's theory is that Josephine's womanly grief had much
+  to do with awakening the sentiment of Paris, and breaking the
+  Reign of Terror; and, indeed, there is some reason in this view,
+  for tears are not only useful as an indication of sorrow,
+  suffering, or conquest, but an effective means of gaining
+  sympathy. Josephine was an adept at trying the efficacy of
+  weeping, and if M. Masson has gauged the influence of melting the
+  heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then Josephine was gifted
+  with, and made the instrument of, a divine instinct that should
+  claim attention and reverence for all time, even though her
+  subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the eye.</p>
+
+  <p>But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and
+  beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more
+  than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife
+  of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of
+  death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that
+  she might write the strange thoughts that were rising in her."
+  The request was not granted. Then looking at the statue of
+  <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>Liberty, she exclaimed with
+  fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!"
+  and these throbbing magical words reverberated through France
+  with wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with
+  superstitious awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name
+  of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on
+  the scaffold of the stainless victim, then on the loathsome
+  prisons that were filled with suspects, rich and poor, all over
+  France. Then, in time, the dooming to death of some of the
+  prominent polecats who committed murder in the name of liberty
+  and fraternity brought Robespierreism to an end. Robespierre
+  himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who sent him to
+  "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and Samson did
+  the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting words
+  of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated
+  the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being
+  committed in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly
+  being said in its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's
+  inspired phrase rather than Josephine's tears as being in some
+  degree responsible for the end of the Reign of Terror.</p>
+
+  <p>After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of
+  anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put
+  her emotions <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>aside and
+  plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes one wonder
+  whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful doom that
+  had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter
+  behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her,
+  bids her "goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom
+  she knows he loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in
+  their hearts." "Goodbye," says he; "for the last time in my life
+  I press you and my children to my breast."</p>
+
+  <p>These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress
+  the widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of
+  their tragic married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the
+  great essentials which assure happiness.</p>
+
+  <p>Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering
+  round rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in
+  Les Carmes they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General
+  Hoche, were too familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count
+  with that of a young lady suspect. The truth of such accusations
+  seems highly improbable, and they may well be regarded as
+  malicious slander. It is not unlikely that Josephine was on
+  friendly terms with the General before they met in Les Carmes,
+  but that it was more than friendship is a mere hypothesis. Her
+  relation with that <a name="Page_239" id=
+  "Page_239"></a>unspeakable libertine Barras was especially
+  unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after her
+  release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She
+  was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her
+  family, and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the
+  chosen friend of a creature who took advantage of her and then
+  betrayed her to the world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the
+  sad and sickening story of his connection with Josephine, and
+  gloats over the opportunity it gives him of repeating
+  conversations he had with General Hoche as to her love
+  entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress of
+  Hoche in the sight of the whole world."</p>
+
+  <p>The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal
+  statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the
+  relations he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself
+  to him may not be readily believed when he deliberately involves
+  his own friends in the liaisons. There is no question of what his
+  part was in the degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of
+  dragging other names into the moral quagmire, in order, it may
+  be, to justify his own dealings and to further debase her, could
+  only be undertaken by a person soaked with the venom of
+  indecency, and, in this case, had no other object than <a name=
+  "Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>that of gratifying his malice
+  against her husband. His assumption of moral superiority is quite
+  entertaining when he, the seducer and corrupter, speaks of the
+  unfortunate woman's "libertinism," and calls her in his
+  bitterness "a licentious Creole."</p>
+
+  <p>This representative of the Republic one and indivisible,
+  embodying Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of
+  the eighteenth century, will forever disgrace the judgment and
+  moral condition of the France which knew Charlemagne.</p>
+
+  <p>"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the
+  Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims
+  that Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly
+  improbable that Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his
+  career having his veracity doubted. In itself, the incident is a
+  small matter. The only real interest attached to it is the
+  touching pathos of the small boy asking for and receiving the
+  sword, which, of course, gave his mother the opportunity of
+  calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in this way it
+  has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were married
+  four months after, <i>i.e.</i>, March 9, 1796, her age being
+  thirty-two and his twenty-five.</p>
+
+  <p>The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for
+  mud to throw at his master's <a name="Page_241" id=
+  "Page_241"></a>memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry O'Meara
+  at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St.
+  Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not
+  come about in this way, it would have been brought about in some
+  other. But, whether the story has any interest further than the
+  writer has stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than
+  Barras, who boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that
+  it was he who had perceived in him a genius and urged the
+  Directory to appoint him Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant
+  at this impudent falsehood, and declares that it was he and not
+  Barras who nominated and urged the appointment of Bonaparte.
+  Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted one. It matters little
+  who the selected spokesman of the inspiration was. France needed
+  a man, and he was found.</p>
+
+  <p>On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's
+  departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the
+  voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the
+  Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then
+  began a period of devouring love and war such as the world has
+  never beheld. In the midst of strife and strenuous
+  responsibility, this young missionary, representing the solacing
+  new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor forgets
+  <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>the responsibilities of his
+  instructions to lay Italy at his feet.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor does he for a moment forget his wedded obligations. He is
+  in love, nay, desperately in love. The image of Josephine is
+  constantly soaring around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of
+  frantic devotion at the cannon's mouth, in the Canton, anywhere,
+  and everywhere. He is as rich in phrase as he is in courage and
+  resource. He finds time to scrawl a few burning words of passion
+  which indicate that his soul is at once aflame with thoughts of
+  her and the grim military task he has undertaken.</p>
+
+  <p>He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory
+  and inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is
+  the chosen force which is to regenerate misgoverned
+  nationalities. Order out of chaos; moderation in the hour of
+  victory; no interference with any one's religious belief; stern
+  discipline&mdash;these were some of the behests of this young
+  Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns were amazing an
+  astonished world and causing significant apprehension in the
+  minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process of
+  ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the
+  command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to
+  commence raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and
+  Naples.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>To this he promptly sends
+  a vigorous though respectful reply, which is intended to convey
+  that they are to have done with such impractical foolery. It is a
+  world-shaking fight he has on hand. The honour and military glory
+  of France are at stake. It is not for mere theoretic upholders of
+  Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to meddle with such things. He
+  says to them, "Kellerman is an excellent General, and could lead
+  an army as well as I," but then he goes on to plead the
+  superiority of his army, always modestly leaving himself outside
+  the praise he takes care to bestow on others, and adds with
+  fervour, "The command must remain in the hands of one man." "I
+  believe," says he, "that one bad General is better than two good
+  ones." "The art of war, like the art of government, is a matter
+  of careful handling." Then with delicious frankness he flashes
+  out: "I cannot allow myself to have my feet entangled." "A free
+  hand or resignation." That is his ultimatum. This thunderbolt of
+  bewildering audacity sent a flutter through the sanctuary of
+  Fraternity, and in hot haste a message of confidence, coupled
+  with an order that he shall be left in supreme control, was
+  dispatched by a vigilant energetic courier. The Directory were
+  made to see that a great power had arisen which would hold
+  dominion over them.</p>
+
+  <p>And yet this young and terrible conqueror, who <a name=
+  "Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>judiciously dominated every will in
+  the process of his achievements, he who defiantly told his
+  masters that he would not suffer his "feet to be entangled" by
+  their amateurish absurdities, was entangled for a time by a
+  rapturous infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive
+  habits and a silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and
+  ignore him. His imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to
+  him are piteously pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are
+  without example in neat concise phrase, and portray a man
+  possessed of great human virtues. It is when the love-storm
+  attacks him that he flies into extravagances, such as when he
+  writes that "she has more than robbed him of his soul," and that
+  "she is devouring his blood." He writes to his brother Joseph
+  that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he does the same
+  thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is when he
+  begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be
+  less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my
+  reason and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He
+  complains of her letters being "cold as friendship," and adds,
+  "But oh! how I am infatuated."</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine has never been addressed in such consuming language
+  before. She is flattered, and her little head becomes swollen
+  with the idea <a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>of greatness.
+  The ridiculous endearments amuse her. She must not allow such
+  opportunities of creating envy to pass, so she shows the letters
+  as they come along to her most intimate friends, amongst whom
+  Barras still continues high on the list, and with an air of dizzy
+  pride she playfully says Bonaparte is "very droll." And really,
+  Josephine was right. Some of his letters are "droll," but they
+  are genuine, and this highly honoured woman, launched into
+  prominence and position, and reaping the laurels of his work
+  disgraced her womanhood by showing his letters, and doubly
+  disgraced herself by ridiculing them.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent
+  by Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important
+  dispatches, and also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her
+  that she had carried her unwillingness to join her husband far
+  enough. Doubtless the gallant commissioners had given her a hint
+  that further refusal meant inevitable reprisals. It is quite
+  feasible that the rollicking Junot, who was always prepared to
+  give his soul for Bonaparte, was frank enough to intimate that
+  there was a risk of driving her husband into the arms of some
+  covetous female, many of whom were angling in the hope of
+  capturing the brilliant and rising General, and <a name=
+  "Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>that already he was showing signs of
+  jealousy and suspicion of her good faith.</p>
+
+  <p>News of fresh victories was coming in, f&ecirc;tes were held
+  in honour of them, crowds of people congregated, and at the sight
+  of her leaning on the arm of Junot after leaving the Luxembourg
+  they shout, "Long live General Bonaparte! Long live Citizeness
+  Bonaparte!" She is enthralled by the adulation which reflected
+  glory showers upon her. Her spirit rebels against leaving all its
+  pleasures and pomps. But she has exhausted every canon of truth
+  in excuses, even that of being pregnant, and finds herself
+  inevitably driven to abandon the seat of joy and easy morals and
+  set off for Milan with her dog "Fortune" and Eugene, her son.
+  Tears flow copiously at the thought of her wrongs, but these are
+  dried up with the compensating opportunity of commencing a
+  flirtation with Murat, who is soon to become the husband of
+  Caroline Bonaparte.</p>
+
+  <p>The popular opinion was that it was Junot who was the object
+  of her designs, but the future Duchess d'Abrant&egrave;s
+  scornfully repudiates this, and declares that Junot's devotion to
+  his beloved General forbade him reciprocating his wife's
+  indiscretion, so he made love to Louise Compoint, Josephine's
+  waiting-maid, instead, the result being that Louise was requested
+  to leave the service of the offended Josephine.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>On arrival at Milan,
+  Napoleon was absent, so the honour of receiving her was deputed
+  to the Milanese Due de Serbelloni, who took her in regal style to
+  stay at his palace. On Napoleon meeting his wife for the first
+  time since their marriage his joy was unbounded. Marmont, who
+  betrayed him and France in later days, says that "at that time he
+  lived only for his wife, and never had purer, truer, or more
+  exclusive love taken possession of the heart of a man, and that a
+  man of so superior an order."</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon had still much work to do, and many hard battles to
+  fight, so that they were frequently separated during the
+  remaining months before he had freed Italy and beaten the
+  Austrians. On no occasion when he was absent from her did he
+  neglect sending letters on fire with the assurance of unabated
+  love, but they frequently indicate not only a conviction of her
+  indifference, but a suspicion that it is more, which is promptly
+  nullified by further explosions such as "kisses as burning as my
+  heart and as pure as you." Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be
+  disillusioned. She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was
+  in Paris. He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must
+  "know how dear they are to him." "I do not live," he tells her,
+  "when I am far from you." "My life's happiness is in the society
+  of my sweet <a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>Josephine."
+  Again he writes, "A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul, as
+  chaste as yourself! I have just summoned the courier; he tells me
+  that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had
+  no commands. Fie! Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly
+  little monster. You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah!
+  you well know that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put
+  you in prison there!" This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender
+  quotation does not emanate from the heart of a monster, but from
+  an unequalled lovesick soul confiding the innermost secrets of
+  his mind to an inglorious helpmate, whose follies during the
+  first years of their married life were a cruel humiliation to
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She
+  deceived, lied, and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She
+  sought and found happiness at the cost of not only self-respect,
+  but honour and virtue. She was not a shrew, but a born coquette,
+  without morals rather than immoral, and, withal, a superb
+  enigmatic who would have made the Founder of our faith shed tears
+  of sorrow. It is by distorting facts that her eulogists make it
+  appear that she was a loving and devoted wife during the early
+  years of her second marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her
+  many army officers, amongst <a name="Page_249" id=
+  "Page_249"></a>whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant
+  General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy
+  little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon. Josephine, at this period
+  of her history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that
+  it is not altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the
+  distinction of making Hippolyte Charles her lover. He was
+  fascinating, witty, dressed with splendour, and was quite up to
+  her standard of moral quality. The friendship grew into intimacy,
+  so that he became a frequent visitor to Josephine during
+  Napoleon's absence.</p>
+
+  <p>It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was
+  assuming dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the
+  knowledge of Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the
+  stern moralists amongst the civilians vied with each other in
+  babbling commentary of the growing dilapidated reputation that
+  the Commander-in-Chief's wife was precipitately acquiring.
+  Wherever she is or goes, so long as Bonaparte is at a safe
+  distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts. Some writers have
+  said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to attend the
+  f&ecirc;tes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is
+  most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of
+  Josephine brought about the climax. Unquestionably her movements
+  were being watched by members of the Bonaparte <a name="Page_250"
+  id="Page_250"></a>family. They not unnaturally felt that the
+  scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to
+  ridicule.</p>
+
+  <p>But, as frequently happens, great events are brought about in
+  the most unexpected way. The vivacious Paulette had fallen in
+  love with Freron, a man of forty, holding a high position in the
+  Government service. Napoleon was strongly averse to the match, so
+  decided that she should become the wife of General Leclerc, aged
+  twenty-five, who was said to be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte
+  Charles had been the friend of Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely
+  set her mind on inflicting salutary punishment on her
+  sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her brother. She
+  quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc concerning
+  the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was
+  banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc,
+  we learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging
+  little vixen had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there
+  were other powerful agencies that had no small part in bringing
+  light to the aching and devout heart.</p>
+
+  <p>From this dates the fall of Josephine's complete magical
+  divinity over him, and a new era begins. We hear no more of
+  "shutting her up in his heart," or of sending her "kisses as
+  fiery as his <a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>soul and as
+  chaste as herself"; though to the end his letters are studiously
+  kind and even reverential.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, the intrepid General, having brought the campaign
+  of Italy and Austria to a successful end, came back to Paris,
+  received the plaudits of a grateful and adoring nation, and the
+  doubtful favour of a jealous Directory. They banqueted him at the
+  Luxembourg with every outward sign of satisfaction. Talleyrand
+  and Barras made eloquent and flattering speeches of his
+  accomplishments and talents, and the latter folded him in his
+  arms as a concluding token of affection. Josephine revelled in
+  the gaiety and honours that encompassed them, while her husband
+  sought the consolation of privacy.</p>
+
+  <p>After a short though not inactive stay in Paris, he was given
+  command of the Army of the East, and sailed from Toulon on May
+  19, 1798, in the <i>Orient</i> (which came to a tragic end at
+  Aboukir), and Josephine waved her handkerchief, soaked in tears,
+  as the fleet passed from view.</p>
+
+  <p>Her doings do not interest us until she again came across the
+  young ex-officer Charles in Paris, some time in 1799, and, at his
+  request no doubt, she introduced him to a firm of army
+  contractors, and for the ostensible purpose of showing his
+  gratitude, he called at Malmaison to thank her. <a name=
+  "Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>This act of grace could have been
+  done with greater propriety by letter, though there may have been
+  reasons for not putting in writing anything that might associate
+  the wife of the Commander-in-Chief with having dealings with army
+  contractors, even to the extent of interesting herself on behalf
+  of a man who was dismissed the service for carrying on an
+  intrigue with his General's wife, who happened to be Josephine
+  herself.</p>
+
+  <p>But putting aside the unpardonable breach of faith in allowing
+  a renewal of the intimacy with such a man, the fact of a lady in
+  her position being mixed up with a firm of this character might
+  have seriously compromised Napoleon, and for this reason alone
+  her act was highly reprehensible. Charles was not slow to avail
+  himself of Josephine's hospitality, and became a regular visitor.
+  This further lapse of loyalty to the absent husband was
+  transmitted to Egypt, and very naturally determined him on the
+  necessity of taking proceedings to get a divorce, but although
+  Napoleon had ceased, so far as he could, to be the dreadful
+  simpleton lover of other days, he failed to gauge the grip the
+  old fascination had of him.</p>
+
+  <p>He believed the avenging spirit that guided him to definite
+  conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public
+  and sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with
+  <a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>another of State policy
+  lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and created
+  wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by
+  unexpectedly landing at Fr&eacute;jus.</p>
+
+  <p>He then made his way, as quickly as the enthusiasm of the
+  cheering populace allowed him, towards his house in the Rue de la
+  Victoire; but the penitent (?) Josephine was not there. She had
+  gone to meet him, taken the wrong road, and missed throwing
+  herself into his arms as was her intention. He asks excitedly,
+  "Is she ill?" and the significant wink of her enemies threw him
+  into paroxysms of grief. His friend Collot calls and reminds him
+  that the hope of the nation is centred on him. His wrath is proof
+  that he is still in love, and Collot fears that the magical
+  effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness. "Never," shouts
+  the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot. Rather than
+  abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on the
+  fire."</p>
+
+  <p>But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew
+  himself, and we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the
+  fire," but given again to the erring Josephine, who was
+  travelling back post-haste from Lyons. She arrived broken in
+  spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon, obviously not quite sure
+  of his determination to refuse her admittance, had bolted the
+  door, and was <a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>stamping about
+  the room with a glare in his piercing eye as though he were
+  planning an onslaught that was to be furiously contested.
+  Josephine arrives, knocks at the door, implores him to open it,
+  and addresses him as "Mon ami, <i>mon bon ami</i>." There is no
+  response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps and beats her
+  head against the door, and piteously pleads for the opportunity
+  of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then her
+  unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he
+  loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to
+  their distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn.
+  Their stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his
+  feet and appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he
+  has ever been, and to receive their mother back to his
+  affections.</p>
+
+  <p>It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against
+  tears, so sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and
+  faints. She is tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful
+  fate, and when Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning,
+  to take instructions for the impending divorce proceedings, that
+  horror had disappeared from their outlook, and both Josephine and
+  Napoleon were wrapped in a drowsy joy.</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and <a name=
+  "Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>skilful in the art and use of
+  hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was never
+  more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a
+  different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that given
+  him by Lucien and other members of his family. It is not an undue
+  stretch of imagination to conclude that she assured him that her
+  heart was shared with none other, though the assertion may be
+  regarded as a daring fabrication. She did not gauge calmly, but
+  she gauged well, the supreme power she had over the man who had
+  so abjectly shown her such inflammable love. She knew, too, of
+  his vanity, and hit him caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he
+  and none other," combined with a beseeching wail that he should
+  open his heart to an affectionate and faithful love, was more
+  likely to conquer than any admission of wrong. Could she forget
+  the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling principle was that
+  he would have no divided affection? It must be all or none. The
+  hypothesis is therefore that she played on his vanity, and not on
+  his confidence or judgment, the sequel being the complete
+  surrender of Napoleon.</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine, whether from fear of the penalty or the purity of
+  her motives, never again allowed herself to be placed in the same
+  hazardous position. She had been cured of unfaithfulness, and
+  promised <a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>that Hippolyte
+  Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such a scrape
+  again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard of.
+  He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil
+  face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse.</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine's matrimonial transgressions, whatever they may have
+  been, were condoned with exuberant suddenness, and Napoleon
+  rushed into domestic tranquillity. The zealot of freedom
+  forthwith concentrated his wondrous talents with aggressive
+  righteousness on the task of destroying a decadence that was
+  bearing France to her doom. Josephine was enrolled as patron of
+  deliverance from anarchy, and having all the essential attributes
+  which make for success in such an enterprise, she daily filled
+  her salon with men and women who had influence to aid her husband
+  and his friends in upsetting the Government. She had developed
+  into an attractive, graceful hostess, and was endowed with the
+  knack of cajoling which disarmed opposition and enthused
+  supporters, and unquestionably she played the part given to her
+  with unmeasured success, and Napoleon did the rest.</p>
+
+  <p>The <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> had been dexterously planned,
+  which enabled him to bring about a bloodless overthrow. Josephine
+  was deployed to win over her friend Gohier, the President of the
+  Directory. <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>She invited him
+  and his wife to breakfast on the 17th Brumaire. Gohier wonders
+  why they should be asked so early as six in the morning. He
+  thinks he smells a rat, excuses himself, but sends his wife, who
+  is ushered into the presence of a houseful of officers of the
+  National Guard, and the hostess does not lose time in conveying
+  to Gohier's former cook the meaning of their being there.
+  Bonaparte, be it known, is determined to form a Government, and
+  it grieves her that so good a friend as the President of
+  Directors should have been so thoughtless of his own interests as
+  not to accompany his wife on such an auspicious occasion.</p>
+
+  <p>"The inevitable is at hand, Madame Gohier," says Josephine in
+  effect, "and at this very moment Barras is being pressed to
+  resign, and if he disobeys his fate is sealed." Madame Gohier is
+  aghast, stiffens her back, and with as much dignity as her nature
+  will allow, she bows, withdraws, and hastens to the side of her
+  husband, to convey all she has seen and heard.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, events travel swiftly under the direction of the
+  intrepid General. He walks into the Council of Ancients and jerks
+  out with vivid flashes of oratory the object of his visit. The
+  members see at a glance its meaning. They become inarticulate
+  with rage begotten of fear. He <a name="Page_258" id=
+  "Page_258"></a>thunders out, "I am here to demand a Republic
+  founded on true liberty," and swears that he will have it. In the
+  Hall of the Five Hundred he is met with cries of "Down with the
+  Cromwell!" "No Dictator!" "Outlaw him!" and so forth.</p>
+
+  <p>But these are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on
+  whom he darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means
+  trouble if they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His
+  guards are close at hand, and he is daring enough to make use of
+  them if there is any resistance to that which he has undertaken.
+  To the Directory, through their envoy Dottot, he says in
+  substance, and not without vigour, "Do not sicken me with your
+  imbecile arguments and lame, impotent conclusions. What I want to
+  know is: What have you done with this France which I left you so
+  glorious? I left you peace; I return and find war! I left you
+  victories; I find reverses! I left you the millions of Italy; I
+  find despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But ere this
+  terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become
+  conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end,
+  and that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left
+  prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return from
+  Egypt.</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine had played her part in the drama <a name="Page_259"
+  id="Page_259"></a>with surprising shrewdness and marked devotion
+  to her husband's cause. He was rewarded by being made First
+  Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic and
+  the leader of society. They quickly availed themselves of the
+  distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to
+  the Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she
+  occupied the bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the
+  apartments formerly inhabited by Louis, which were immediately
+  above. They gathered round them men of merit representing
+  science, art, literature, law, politics, military notables, and
+  fashion. They set up, in fact, a little Court, but lived a quiet,
+  unostentatious life, so far as it was diplomatic and
+  permissive.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and
+  grandeur began, excelling and putting into the shade every other
+  Court in Europe. Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted
+  and encouraged it more from policy than taste. In fact, when in a
+  whimsical mood, he often said it bored him. That is not to say
+  that he did not adapt himself to what he believed was a
+  necessity. An Oriental potentate could not have carried the
+  dignity of splendour more naturally than he. Whilst in his secret
+  heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance, fixed in his memory
+  was the impression of poverty and suffering that he had <a name=
+  "Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>passed through in his boyhood days,
+  when, in the streets of Paris, he was on the verge of starvation
+  and at one time obliged to sell his meagre possession of books to
+  find food for the mouth of his brother Louis, and went without
+  himself. To his intimate friends he was accustomed to relate the
+  story, not in a whining manner, but with a vividness and pathos
+  that brought tears to the eyes of every one who heard it.</p>
+
+  <p>The wilful and false conception of Napoleon's character that
+  existed amongst thousands of those who were contemporary with
+  him, and the persistent efforts to defame him, even now, by a
+  section of the world's community, are extraordinary, when so many
+  convincing proofs are available which show him to have been the
+  reverse of what they say he was. As brother, son, husband,
+  father, or friend, his love, devotion, and loyalty were
+  matchless. He was never once known to upbraid Josephine after the
+  condonement of her infidelities. He paid her colossal debts, not
+  without protest, but rather than make her unhappy he excused her
+  extravagance and overlooked the capricious, peevish way in which
+  she gave her domestic confidences concerning himself to her
+  friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so forgiving was he
+  of faults which were so glaring to others, that he frequently
+  caressed when he should have chastised.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>Josephine played upon his
+  purblindness where she was concerned in most scandalous ways. She
+  had no money sense, and combined with this defect she had no
+  moral sense in money matters. Her debts were chronic, and
+  periodically so enlarged that she adopted the most monstrous
+  methods to reduce them before the balances were put before
+  Napoleon by herself, or an inkling conveyed to him by a wily
+  creditor; but these subterfuges only added to her spending
+  resources. It is said that she actually did not shrink from
+  receiving a thousand francs per day from Fouch&eacute; as the
+  price of information given him of what was going on in the
+  Tuileries, and also that she received half a million francs from
+  Flachats, the predatory army contractors.</p>
+
+  <p>It is unthinkable that Napoleon, whose rigid uprightness in
+  matters of money has never been disputed, could have known that
+  his wife was involved in such shocking financial dealings, or he
+  would have taken salutary measures to put a definite end to them.
+  He knew that he was surrounded by men who were inveterate
+  thieves, and when their defalcations were brought to his
+  knowledge, they were either cashiered or made to disgorge.
+  Bourrienne, Talleyrand, and Fouch&eacute;, for instance. But
+  there is no evidence to show that he ever suspected Josephine at
+  any time, and let us hope that the Fouch&eacute;-Flachats
+  transactions were either exag<a name="Page_262" id=
+  "Page_262"></a>gerated or mere invention, though it is hard to
+  believe that there was no truth in the accusation.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon was no sooner made Consul than there began to be
+  hints and innuendoes of an heir, and as Josephine knew that she
+  could not bear him one, she was thrown into fits of despondency
+  lest he should be driven by designing persons in and outside his
+  family to listen to a scheme of divorce and remarriage. The
+  alternative was to nominate one of his brothers as his heir.
+  Joseph and Lucien were impossible, so he fixed his mind on Louis.
+  But the plot to assassinate him on the way to the opera, together
+  with the Duc d'Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru affair,
+  brought the change from Life Consul to Emperor more quickly. The
+  marriage of Louis to Hortense eased Josephine's mind. She had in
+  view the fact that an heir might be born to them, and the
+  possibility of the inheritance going to him. In due course
+  Napoleon Charles was born, and an attempt made by Napoleon to
+  carry his idea out. Louis was at first in favour of it, but
+  Joseph and Lucien had envious conceptions of what the brothers'
+  rights were. Louis became impressed with their views, and
+  ultimately decided against Napoleon's wishes. The Senate passed a
+  resolution in favour of "direct natural, legitimate, and adoptive
+  descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the direct, natural,
+  <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>legitimate descendants of
+  Joseph and Louis." The plebiscite supported the resolution of the
+  Senate, and Joseph and Louis had the mortification of seeing that
+  to them the succession was barred.</p>
+
+  <p>This decision was regarded by Josephine as highly satisfactory
+  to herself. She made no fuss about it, but was greatly overjoyed
+  at the prospect of the effect it would have on Napoleon, and for
+  a time no more was openly heard of divorce; but the venom was
+  insidiously eating its way to that end all the same, and as he
+  grew in power, so did the conspiracy develop. His own family were
+  eager that she should be put away, but there were influences more
+  powerful than that of Madame M&egrave;re and her sons and
+  daughters. Talleyrand and Fouch&eacute; being the High
+  Commissioners who founded the direct hereditary idea, they
+  persistently worried him with the plea that the State claimed
+  that he should make the sacrifice. They knew that this was the
+  strongest and most effective reason they could put forward to a
+  man who would have given his soul in the service of his
+  country.</p>
+
+  <p>The birth of Madame Eleonore Denuelle's son Leon on December
+  29, 1806, made a great impression on the Emperor's mind. It was
+  well known that he was the father of the child, and now that
+  there was no doubt as to the possibility of him having an heir,
+  it was only to be expected <a name="Page_264" id=
+  "Page_264"></a>that the advocates of divorce would press their
+  claim that an alliance should be made with one of the powerful
+  ruling families. The advantages to France would be inestimable,
+  and would it not establish himself and his dynasty more firmly on
+  the throne? It is not unlikely that Napoleon pondered over the
+  great possibilities of such a marriage, but he could not bring
+  himself to the thought of divorcing the woman he still loved. He
+  went so far as to seek Josephine's support in the plan of making
+  his natural son his heir, and Masson says that in support of his
+  desire he vigorously used "precedents and invented
+  justifications." Happily he did not stretch the law of hereditary
+  succession further than this.</p>
+
+  <p>Leon, when he grew up, became a great source of trouble to all
+  those with whom he was connected. His features and physical make
+  up had a marked resemblance to his father's, but his mind was
+  erratic. He had inherited none of the steady, sane genius of the
+  Emperor, though but for a freak of nature which gave him a mental
+  twist, he would have been as near his prototype as may be. He was
+  always full of great schemes, which in the hands of a normally
+  constituted person would have been fashioned into public
+  usefulness.</p>
+
+  <p>Masson gives a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his
+  predilections, which were "gambling, <a name="Page_265" id=
+  "Page_265"></a>duels, politics, writing pamphlets, the conception
+  of colossal canal, railway, and commercial undertakings that
+  never got far beyond the initial and rocky mental stage." He was
+  one of the chief mourners when his father's remains were brought
+  to Paris from St. Helena in 1840, and in 1848 aspired to the
+  Presidency of the Republic, which fell to the lot of his cousin
+  Louis Napoleon, whose life he desired to take, but who, with
+  great generosity, gave him a pension and paid the legacy left him
+  by Napoleon. He died in 1881.</p>
+
+  <p>The birth of Leon gives him a prominent place in the history
+  of the political divorce, though so far as Napoleon was concerned
+  or affected by it, there is strong evidence to show that he
+  really thought it was a way out, and had he been left to his own
+  inclinations, the probability is that there would have been no
+  second marriage so long as Josephine lived. From 1807 to 1809 his
+  brain was racked to pieces with the inevitable shadow he
+  struggled to evade. He could not bring himself to sever the tie
+  that bound them together in strong attachment for nearly fifteen
+  years. He invented every conceivable device to try and find a
+  more congenial solution than divorce.</p>
+
+  <p>For two years the Emperor lived in an atmosphere of
+  intolerable anguish which distracted him. The nearer he
+  approached the dreaded theme, <a name="Page_266" id=
+  "Page_266"></a>the more fascinating his wife appeared to him, and
+  the more tenaciously he clung to the deep impressions that had
+  been made by that youthful passion that swayed his very being in
+  other days. She had frequently recaptured him from the subtle
+  blandishments of an agency that was ever on his track, and then
+  his devotion became more rapturous than ever. Fouch&eacute; was
+  frequently rebuked with stern severity for his pertinacious
+  advocacy of the separation. At another time we hear of him
+  falling into Josephine's arms, shedding copious tears, and,
+  choking with grief, he sobs out, "My poor Josephine! I can never
+  leave you," "I still love you," and so forth.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who pretend to see in these outbursts of devotion
+  nothing but artifice, cannot have informed themselves of the true
+  character of this extraordinary man. In truth, his was a
+  sacrifice of affection forced upon him for the benefit of the
+  State. That is the conclusion the writer has come to after much
+  research. Even after he was persuaded that he would have to
+  submit, the recollections of the glory they had shared together,
+  and of their happy days, and the grief and suffering the parting
+  would cause, filled him with remorse and pity, and then would
+  come a period of wavering which exasperated his family and the
+  upholders of the stability of the Empire. At last he saw <a name=
+  "Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>clearly that it was an imperative
+  duty that must be fulfilled.</p>
+
+  <p>The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the
+  amiable Marie Walewska, who was living close to Sch&ouml;nbrunn,
+  was about to give birth to a child which he knew to be his, and
+  it is not improbable that this double assurance that he might
+  reasonably expect to have an heir if he married again brought him
+  to the definite decision to go on with the divorce; and the
+  Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to form an alliance by
+  offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.</p>
+
+  <p>At the end of December, 1809, the great political divorce was
+  ratified amid sombre signs of sympathy. Even the Bonapartes were
+  compelled to yield to emotion, and Napoleon himself was
+  profoundly affected. The subdued distress of Josephine pierced
+  through the chilly hearts of those who had looked on with
+  composure while men and women were being led to the guillotine
+  during the Reign of Terror. But even Josephine's tears and grief
+  were graceful and fascinating, so that it was not surprising that
+  the spectators extended sympathy to her in her sorrow. Almost
+  immediately after the ceremony Napoleon became overcome with
+  grief. He allowed a little time to elapse before asking Meneval
+  to accompany him to Josephine's apartments. They found her in a
+  condition of <a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>inexorable
+  despair. She flung herself into the Emperor's arms; he embraced
+  and fervently kissed her, but the ordeal was too great. She
+  collapsed and fainted. He remained with her until she showed
+  signs of consciousness, then left her in charge of Meneval and
+  women attendants. The sight of her grief was too much for him to
+  bear.</p>
+
+  <p>Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after
+  Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic
+  and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more
+  earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to
+  her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by
+  others. An annual income of three million francs was settled on
+  her for life, which, should he pre-decease her, was to be paid by
+  his successors. She retained the title of Empress and every other
+  appearance of sovereignty.</p>
+
+  <p>The negotiations for the second marriage were conducted from
+  Trianon. The Russian alliance fell through, ostensibly on
+  religious grounds. Napoleon did not like the thought of having
+  Russian priests about him, and besides, the Princess Anne was too
+  young to marry, and even if there had been no other difficulty,
+  the Emperor Napoleon could not wait. The Saxon alliance did not
+  appeal to him, so he gave preference to <a name="Page_269" id=
+  "Page_269"></a>the House of Austria, and on March 11, 1810, His
+  Majesty was married by proxy at Vienna to the Austrian
+  Archduchess, and on the 1st of April the civil marriage took
+  place at St. Cloud, and the following day they were
+  ecclesiastically united.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id=
+  "FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class=
+  "fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+  <p>Better for him and for France had he defied the advocates of
+  royal alliance and stuck to Josephine, or even married Marie
+  Walewska. If it was merely the policy of succession that was
+  aimed at, he could have adopted his natural son, the brilliant
+  Alexander Walewska, whose subsequent career in the service of
+  France would have justified this course.</p>
+
+  <p>The desire to unite the French Emperor with one of the
+  powerful reigning families in order to give stability to the
+  Empire and put an end to incessant warfare was a theory which
+  proved to be a delusion, and perhaps Napoleon, with his clear
+  vision, foresaw the jealousies and international complications
+  that would arise through a political marriage of this character.
+  This, and his unwillingness to part with Josephine, is a
+  conclusion <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>that may
+  reasonably account for the vacillation that was so pronounced
+  from time to time.</p>
+
+  <p>The flippant attitude (which indicates the scope and summit of
+  an ill-informed mind) that he was the victim of abnormal ambition
+  to be connected with one or other of the royal families is
+  ludicrous. If he had been eager to have such distinction, it was
+  within his reach at any time after he became First Consul. He had
+  only to impart a hint and there would have been a competition of
+  available princesses, the choice of which would have bewildered
+  him. Assuredly he showed no youthful impetuosity in this respect,
+  and it may not be an overdrawn hypothesis to conclude that his
+  marriage with Marie Louise was neither popular with the French
+  people as a whole nor with other nationalities. It excited
+  jealousy and mistrust amongst the larger Powers, and in France
+  itself the memory of the last ill-fated union of France with
+  Austria&mdash;that of Marie Antoinette and Louis&mdash;had left
+  rankling effects in the minds of the people of the
+  Revolution.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id=
+  "FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class=
+  "fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>Murat had urged on his
+  brother-in-law and the grand dignitaries the fact that a marriage
+  with a relative of Marie Antoinette, who was an abhorrence to the
+  adherents of the Revolution, would alienate a large public, but
+  Murat's objections were suspected of having personal colour and
+  overruled. It is, however, beyond conjecture that the King of
+  Naples had diagnosed aright; whether from self-interest or not,
+  the warning proved accurate. The most loyal and devoted of his
+  subjects felt that their invincible hero was drifting into a
+  vortex of trouble. They had learned by bitter experience the
+  duplicity of Austrian diplomacy. The remembrance of the cruel
+  wars they had been cunningly trapped into, the bleached bones of
+  Frenchmen that lay on Austrian soil, and the denuded homes that
+  resulted from Austria's odious policy of greed, worked on them
+  like a subtle poison. And the glory of their conquests over her
+  was nullified by the eternal suspicion that she was ever hatching
+  new grounds of quarrel. They thought, indeed, their premonition
+  of Austria's perpetual treachery was clear <a name="Page_272" id=
+  "Page_272"></a>and definite, and that the new Empress would be a
+  useful medium of their enemies' machinations.</p>
+
+  <p>We can never fully estimate to what extent these impressions
+  influenced their minds and actions and the part they played in
+  hastening the great national humiliation. It is a pretty certain
+  conclusion that it was only the colossal successes and magical
+  personality of the Emperor that kept subdued the spirit of
+  resentment which the marriage had caused.</p>
+
+  <p>And we have historic evidence before us which clearly shows
+  that the well-balanced mind of Napoleon was torn and tattered
+  between doubt and conviction, and he fell into the fatal error of
+  allowing his judgment to be overruled either by circumstances or
+  pride. Had he relied on his superstition even, the chances are
+  that St. Helena would never have had the stigma of his captivity
+  stamped upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>French and Austrian alliances have never, so far as they
+  affected political history, been very successful. The stability
+  of earthly things is governed, not by sentiment or theoretic
+  doctrines, but by facts as hard as granite, and no one knew this
+  more thoroughly than the man who fell a victim to the devices of
+  the Austrians and their French allies.</p>
+
+  <p>He was usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in
+  exile, but when his thoughts <a name="Page_273" id=
+  "Page_273"></a>were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human
+  destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness
+  spoke the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these
+  spasmodic periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it
+  was his "having married a princess of Austria that ruined him,
+  and that his marriage with Marie Louise was the cause of the
+  expedition into Russia," and that "he might not have been at St.
+  Helena had he married a Frenchwoman." It is said that he
+  seriously thought of doing this, and had some available ladies
+  put before him with that object. These dreamy utterances reveal
+  that his mind was centred on the causes of his misfortunes, and
+  that he held definite views on the marriage tragedy, and perhaps
+  his sense of pride, the interests of his son (the King of Rome),
+  and the reluctance to admit that he knew he was going wrong at
+  the time, constrained him to withhold much that he thought and
+  knew. The impression we get is that he could not bring himself to
+  utter the whole of the unutterable canker which haunted him.</p>
+
+  <p>It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded
+  up his own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less
+  capable judges. Even so far back as the Directory days, when
+  Bernadotte was insulted at Vienna, he summed <a name="Page_274"
+  id="Page_274"></a>up the Austrian character in the following
+  terms:&mdash;"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not
+  insult; they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have
+  a better chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory
+  they did not understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest
+  and most perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you
+  because it cannot." "Peace with Austria is only a truce." His
+  diagnoses were confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed
+  in after years. The marvel is that he did not allow himself to
+  benefit by his shrewd observations at a moment when so much
+  depended on strength, not vacillation and weakness.</p>
+
+  <p>A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian
+  princess sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty
+  ideals (?) of the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at
+  Sch&ouml;nbrunn after she had deserted Napoleon. He said to
+  her:&mdash;"As my daughter, all that I have is yours, even my
+  blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not know you."</p>
+
+  <p>The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is
+  promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being
+  that so long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all
+  that he had was hers, including his life and blood, but now that
+  he has fallen she must not <a name="Page_275" id=
+  "Page_275"></a>thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of
+  him who was the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled
+  glory, and been so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to
+  be at all wifely and cling to her husband in his misfortune, then
+  he would assert the sovereign, and as readily gore her as he
+  would Napoleon if, in his patriarchal wisdom, he judged national
+  interests were at stake. His spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real
+  ultra-monarchical ring about it. But it was meant for other ears
+  and a purpose other than that of making his daughter shudder. So
+  far as she was concerned, he might have saved himself any anxiety
+  on that score. She bowed her head in conformity, and swiftly cast
+  her amorous eyes on Neipperg, a man after his and her own heart.
+  This was the culminating event that brought her destiny with
+  Napoleon to an end, though <i>he</i> tried to avert it, and the
+  causes are summarised in his own pathetic language, clearly
+  expressed from time to time.</p>
+
+  <p>His nephew, Napoleon III., taking a lesson from his folly,
+  refused to be buffeted into political matrimony by any of the
+  matchmaking factions. When his turn came he acted with
+  independence and wisdom by ignoring the blandishments of meddling
+  advisers and royal conventionalism, and elected to marry the lady
+  on whom he had set his affections.</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>Incidentally, it may be
+  stated that Napoleon III.'s merits have been overshadowed by the
+  greater genius of his uncle, but as time separates the reigns of
+  the two men it will be realised that, though he was not looked
+  upon as a great military general, he had genius of a different
+  kind, and was unquestionably a great ruler, acting under somewhat
+  changed conditions, but subject to the same human caprices, and a
+  time will come when the benefits he bestowed upon the French
+  nation will be appreciated more than they are this day.</p>
+
+  <p>In 1812, Europe was in a state of dammed convulsion. The wars,
+  though always successful for France, had brought about no
+  definite settlement of international affairs. Peace was
+  transitory, and the dread of Napoleon's power and genius was the
+  only check on rapacious designs on his dominion.</p>
+
+  <p>What direct or indirect share Marie Louise had in bringing
+  about the war with Russia and then the great European struggle
+  will never be wholly known, but as the wife of Napoleon she would
+  have opportunities of hearing from himself and those who were in
+  his confidence remarks and even discussions on the complexities
+  of the political situation. She was in daily communication with
+  Metternich, and constantly corresponding with her father; and
+  even allowing that her intentions were loyal at that time to her
+  <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>husband and to the country
+  of her adoption, she may have unconsciously conveyed something
+  that in the hands of adroit diplomats would reveal the pivot on
+  which great issues might depend. Then, placing the Regency in her
+  hands was an unchecked temptation, and must be counted as one of
+  Napoleon's great mistakes. Imbued with an abundant share of
+  Austrian predilection, and occupying a mechanical or fictitious
+  position towards France and its ruler, and in view of her
+  subsequent conduct, it is a reasonable assumption that during the
+  Regency she conveyed important information of military movements
+  and intentions to the Austrian Court, which it was not slow to
+  take advantage of; and if truth were told, it would be found that
+  the Allies owed much of their success to the Austrian
+  Archduchess. May it not have been part of the subtle policy of
+  Austria in arranging the marriage? Everything certainly points to
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Instead of making Metternich a present at the Prague Congress
+  of a snuff-box which cost 30,000 francs, as a token of
+  friendship, Fouch&eacute;, who always had his mind well stored
+  with ideas of corruption, suggested to the Emperor that, if it
+  was intended to buy Austria off, he ought to make it millions. If
+  Napoleon had been a man after his own heart, this might have been
+  a successful <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>solution for a
+  time, but only for a time. Meneval says that the Emperor, who had
+  a horror of corruption, replied to him with a gesture of
+  disgust.</p>
+
+  <p>In the early part of 1812, when war with Russia had become
+  imminent, Napoleon carried out a promise that Josephine should
+  see the King of Rome. The meeting took place at Bagatelle. She
+  hugged and kissed the child with motherly affection, and her
+  tears flowed with profusion. The scene was touching, and proved
+  to be the everlasting farewell. Strange as it may appear,
+  Josephine formed an enduring affection for Napoleon's natural
+  son, afterwards Count Colonna (Alexander Walewska), and for his
+  mother, Marie Walewska. She loved the child and treated him with
+  the same indulgence as she did her own grandchildren. The mother
+  was a regular visitor, and no one was more welcome at Malmaison
+  than she. These incidents of magnanimity, characteristic of
+  Josephine, would make her not only attractive but lovable, were
+  it not there are also left on record flaws which show that she
+  was seriously lacking in probity and fidelity to him to whom she
+  owed everything. Her maternal affection and loving care of her
+  children are without reproach, and her generosity to worthy and
+  unworthy people was extraordinary. She loved Napoleon with
+  peculiar eccentricity. His honour and interests <a name=
+  "Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>were never a consideration. She
+  allowed herself to be surrounded at Malmaison during the Russian
+  campaign with Royalist plotters and treachery of the most
+  implacable character. She poured out her woes to them with
+  acceptable results, and nothing that would damage him and draw
+  sympathy to herself was left uncommunicated. Her whole thought
+  was of herself. She did not intend to be false or cruel to him,
+  and yet she was both cruel and false.</p>
+
+  <p>As soon as the Allied Armies had taken possession of Paris,
+  the irrepressible Madame de Sta&euml;l made a call on Josephine
+  to ascertain how she stood now towards her former husband. She
+  promptly asked her whether she still loved him. Josephine
+  resented the impertinence, so the Duchesse de Reggio relates, and
+  told some of her visitors that she had never ceased to love the
+  Emperor in the days of his prosperity, and it was unthinkable
+  that she should cease to do so in his adversity. Unhappily for
+  Josephine, she adopted a most astounding course of showing her
+  devotion by agreeing to the visits, first, of the Emperor of
+  Russia, and then the other sovereigns and foreign dignitaries.
+  She gave balls and treated the enemies of France, and especially
+  the Tsar, as though they were the real descendants of the
+  builders of the Temple to Jehovah. She and Hortense walked about
+  the grounds linked to <a name="Page_280" id=
+  "Page_280"></a>Alexander's arms during frequent visits, which was
+  indicative of strongly formed affection.</p>
+
+  <p>Had Josephine been possessed of a grain of discernment or a
+  proper estimate of her dignity, she would have seen that this was
+  part of a well-defined policy of striking a blow through her at
+  the man she professed to love still, even with a greater passion
+  now that he was the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility.
+  Hortense, it would appear, refused at first to have any dealings
+  with Alexander, but this sovereign's personal charms, winning
+  manners, and homely ways soon fascinated and captured her. She
+  may be excused, but her mother did not act the part of a
+  nobleminded woman, and her memory must bear the reproach of
+  it.</p>
+
+  <p>Apart from the respect she owed to herself, she should have
+  remembered the duty and loyalty she owed to a vast French public,
+  and to the victim of her guests, who had been to her the most
+  forgiving, indulgent friend that ever a human soul was blessed
+  with. He had been a father to her children, and even when he was
+  overwhelmed with the consequences of great disaster, his
+  tenderest and most generous thoughts were sent to her.</p>
+
+  <p>A woman who had a high sense of duty and honour would not have
+  accepted a single favour from either one or the other of the
+  inimical sovereigns, even if it had been offered to her; <a name=
+  "Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>much less would she have cringed and
+  whined indelicately in order that she might receive either their
+  smiles or their favours at so abhorrent a price.</p>
+
+  <p>Some writers have endeavoured to give Josephine credit for
+  having influenced Alexander in a way that secured for Napoleon
+  better terms than he would have otherwise got at the first
+  abdication. The suggestion is ludicrous. Presumably the
+  alternative was that he should be shot or confined in a fortress
+  for the balance of his life. Either of these ideas of disposing
+  of his person would have created reaction and public vengeance.
+  The Allies shied at this, though some of the most ferocious, but
+  by no means the bravest, of the set clamoured for shooting, which
+  is always the way with spurious heroes.</p>
+
+  <p>The diplomats amongst them devised the more subtle plan of
+  exiling him first to Elba with the title of Emperor, and a
+  pension of &pound;200,000 per annum, never a penny of which was
+  paid, or, in the light of history, was ever intended to be
+  paid.</p>
+
+  <p>They had preconceived the notion of masking the St. Helena
+  plan until they thought they had cheated the public into
+  believing that they were inspired by humane motives and the
+  necessity for the peace of Europe. They laboriously studied out
+  the most ingenious plots so that they might be glorified for
+  ridding Europe of a "monster."</p>
+
+  <p><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>Napoleon was kept
+  advised, during his stay at Elba, of their designs on the liberty
+  they had graciously (?) given him (with a pension that was
+  designedly withheld), and, acting on certain specific
+  information, he promptly developed one of his most brilliant
+  achievements&mdash;the sudden landing in France, his triumphal
+  march to Paris, and the resultant flight of the Bourbons at his
+  unexpected approach at the head of an enthusiastic army.</p>
+
+  <p>The campaign which followed&mdash;ending with the Battle of
+  Waterloo&mdash;enabled the Allies, after his defeat, to satisfy
+  the cravings of their savage instincts by carrying out their plan
+  as mentioned above and sending him to martyrdom.</p>
+
+  <p>But one of their most brutal acts was in refusing the request
+  that his wife and child should accompany him to Elba. These are
+  the ultimate "better terms" that Josephine is said to have
+  secured by coquetting with Alexander of Russia!</p>
+
+  <p>She revelled in grasping at every fragment of wreckage that
+  would be of advantage to herself and her family, and Alexander's
+  crafty friendship unquestionably gave her opportunities to
+  indulge unchecked in complaints of her grievances against the man
+  who had been so foully betrayed. Her mania for the distribution
+  of confidences of the most sacred character was only equalled by
+  her capacity for intriguing and piling up debts, <a name=
+  "Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>and these attributes never forsook
+  her at any time.</p>
+
+  <p>Josephine's moral qualities cannot be accurately judged by her
+  frequent outpourings of admiration and affection for Napoleon to
+  Eugene and Hortense. In the letters to each which are extant, she
+  declares it would be impossible for anyone to be kinder, more
+  amiable, or considerate than he has always been, and even after
+  the divorce she writes that if she loved him less sincerely, he
+  could not show more anxiety to mitigate anything that might be
+  painful to her.</p>
+
+  <p>But notwithstanding these declarations, she never failed to
+  gratify her insatiable love of pouring forth to his most
+  inveterate enemies faults and failings that her constitutional
+  moral obliquity indicated he had. It is not an unfair assumption,
+  therefore, that their Majesties and others had conveyed to them
+  in handfuls (unwittingly perhaps) much that was valuable to their
+  pernicious purpose while they were being entertained at
+  Malmaison. It has been said that it was her intention to be
+  presented to the Bourbon King, and though we would fain believe
+  her to be incapable of such perfidy, it is quite in keeping with
+  the by-ways of her complex character, more especially as Eugene
+  had paid him a visit. The promises of the sovereigns that the
+  interests of herself and children <a name="Page_284" id=
+  "Page_284"></a>would be protected became less reassuring as the
+  few days that were left to her went on. At last she realised they
+  were mere silken verbiage, and gave way to despair. This, and the
+  anxiety of entertaining her royal guests, accentuated the illness
+  she had contracted. Alexander paid his first visit on May 14th,
+  and she died of quinsy or diphtheria on May 29, 1814.</p>
+
+  <p>The allied monarchs were all represented at her funeral, and
+  the Prince of Mecklenburg (the Queen of Prussia's brother) was
+  amongst the mourners. It was of him the Court gossipers
+  assiduously circulated reports that he was paying suspicious
+  attention to Josephine after the divorce. Napoleon, on hearing of
+  the flirtation through Fouch&eacute;, rebuked her with
+  justifiable vigour on the ground of it being a gross violation of
+  dignity to go about with the Prince and others of lower ranks to
+  second-rate theatres, even under the cover of incognito. He does
+  not appear to have thought there was anything more than
+  Josephine's habitual lack of respect for herself and the high
+  position he had preserved for her, though according to the
+  unreliable Madame de Remusat Napoleon suggested to his divorced
+  wife that she should take Prince Mecklenburg as her husband. The
+  same authority (?) asserts that the Prince had written to
+  Napoleon asking his permission, and, further, says <a name=
+  "Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>that Josephine told her this curious
+  story. It is entirely unsupported by either the words or actions
+  of the Emperor himself, and may be put aside as another of the
+  fabrications of the memoir writer.</p>
+
+  <p>That there was a flirtation there can be little doubt, but the
+  Prince's object may have been part of the political intrigue,
+  rather than carnal intercourse with a woman of nearly fifty years
+  of age. Josephine, always sorry for herself, a sieve of the first
+  water, susceptible to flattery, blind to device, yearning for
+  admiration and pity, was rejoiced to find attention extended to
+  her from any quarter, but coming from the Royal House of Prussia
+  or any other royal personage it was a dazzling compliment to the
+  high esteem in which she believed she was held, and enhanced the
+  luxury of feeling that she was the centre of international
+  sympathy.</p>
+
+  <p>It was not that she had any malicious intent to do deliberate
+  wrong to Napoleon, or any thought of degrading herself. Her mind
+  did not work in these grooves. She was merely carried off her
+  feet by vain love of self-approbation, which led her far beyond
+  the bounds of honourable prudence. She was interred at Rueil
+  amidst quiet solemnity, and in 1825 Eugene and Hortense erected a
+  monument in her memory.</p>
+
+  <p>The legend is that her last articulate utterance <a name=
+  "Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>was the enchanted name of
+  "Napoleon"&mdash;"Elba." Corvisat, the Imperial physician, was
+  piteously asked by the Emperor on his return why he allowed her
+  to die, and the nature of the malady that took her spirit away.
+  He replied that she "Died of grief and sorrow." Her own doctor,
+  Horeau, told him pretty much the same thing, which brought forth
+  the sad reply, she was a "good woman" and "loved me well." The
+  intimation that she had spoken often and kindly of him brought
+  back all the old passion for her and filled him with emotion. He
+  had heard of her death while at Elba, and told Corvisat that it
+  was a most acute grief to him, and although she had her failings
+  <i>she</i> at least would "never have abandoned him"; and
+  possibly this latter expressed opinion, so often repeated, might
+  have been fulfilled had he at once thrown Marie Louise over after
+  her desertion of him.</p>
+
+  <p>The popular charges against Napoleon, by those who are either
+  prejudiced or have failed to inform themselves of his history,
+  are that he must have been a cruel and barbarous husband or he
+  would not have divorced his wife, and that, as a ruler, he
+  thirsted for blood. Each of these, as well as many other silly
+  things that are said and believed of him, is palpably false. As a
+  husband, so far as kindness and indulgence goes, he was
+  exemplary. As a soldier, First Consul, and Emperor, his desire at
+  all <a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>times was for peace.
+  History has revealed the real man, and in recent years it has
+  been convincingly proved that he was the very antithesis of the
+  monster he has been given out and supposed to be. Now, in the
+  light of more accurate knowledge and calmer judgment, the world
+  is showing a desire to do him the justice he never ceased to
+  believe that it would do him.</p>
+
+  <p>His unexampled personality and fame is spreading and inspiring
+  everywhere. His faults are being put in the limelight of public
+  opinion, and the growing desire to treat even these with proper
+  generosity is an indication that reason and knowledge are taking
+  the place of stereotyped international prejudice, political and
+  personal. We are beginning to see more clearly through the fog of
+  enmity that he had rare virtues, besides having unparalleled
+  genius. The divorce of Josephine was unquestionably political,
+  though had he been the ferocious creature he has been made to
+  appear, the opportunities she gave him so frequently would have
+  justified the divorce at a much earlier stage on other than
+  political grounds.</p>
+
+  <p>It ill becomes a nation which knew George I., George IV., and
+  Henry VIII. to take such unctuous exception to the gentle and
+  benevolent attitude of Napoleon before and after the annulment of
+  the marriage.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> It has
+      been asserted that when Josephine found the divorce to be
+      inevitable she herself suggested the alliance with Marie
+      Louise. One reason for believing that this might be the case
+      lies in the fact that the affection of Josephine's children
+      for Napoleon suffered no diminution on account of the
+      divorce&mdash;indeed, Eugene took a leading part in the
+      negotiations for the marriage.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> In the
+      notorious "Letters from the Cape," addressed to Lady
+      Clavering and variously attributed to an Englishman, Las
+      Cases, and even Napoleon himself, there is noted a curious
+      coincidence with regard to the two Franco-Austrian alliances.
+      Both marriage contracts were signed under somewhat similar
+      circumstances, and in both cases f&ecirc;tes were held in
+      honour of the event. At the marriage f&ecirc;te of Louis XVI.
+      and Marie Antoinette a calamity occurred which resulted in
+      the loss of about two thousand lives. To celebrate the union
+      of Napoleon and Marie Louise, Prince Schwartzenberg gave a
+      f&ecirc;te, at which a fire occurred, the Prince's wife and
+      some twenty other people being burnt to death. The
+      superstitious drew attention to the coincidence, and it is
+      said that Napoleon looked upon it as an evil omen.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><a name="Page_288"
+  id="Page_288"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+  <h3>RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON</h3>
+
+  <p>In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral
+  restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any
+  grounds&mdash;administrative, strategical, religious,
+  domestic&mdash;he was preeminent above his contemporaries. On
+  religious grounds alone, those thoughts of his which have been
+  recorded not only disclose the insight of a man of affairs, but
+  reveal the thinking mind of a deeply religious being. His
+  conversations with Gourgaud on religious subjects, some of which
+  are quoted in Lord Rosebery's admirable book, "The Last Phase,"
+  are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as authentic
+  beliefs. It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to the
+  line he took.</p>
+
+  <p>It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with
+  and contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual
+  exercise. At one time he declares to his refractory companion,
+  "If I had to choose a religion, I would worship the sun, because
+  <a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>the sun gives to all things
+  life and fertility." At another time he torments the Count, after
+  tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by
+  saying that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all." But
+  when his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares
+  "that religion lends sanctity to everything." "The remission of
+  sins is a beautiful idea." "It makes the Christian religion so
+  attractive that it will never perish. No one can say 'I do not
+  believe and I never shall believe.'"</p>
+
+  <p>Montholon is more to the writer's liking than Gourgaud, even
+  though Gourgaud's authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we
+  shall see later what <i>he</i> says about his Emperor's religious
+  beliefs. It was he who endeavoured to mitigate his master's
+  mental and physical sufferings, and it was he whom he desired
+  should close his eyes in death when the nefarious assassination
+  had been completed. It was he, too, who got himself locked up in
+  the fortress of Ham for seven years by adhering steadfastly to
+  the cause of the great exile's nephew. Gourgaud was loyal and
+  devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led him to do great
+  injustice to the stricken hero. Montholon's devotion was
+  consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud's
+  fluctuated with his moods.</p>
+
+  <p>None of Napoleon's companions in exile were <a name="Page_290"
+  id="Page_290"></a>admitted to such close intimacy with the
+  illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count Montholon, not even
+  Bertrand or Marchand. It was he who had won confidence by the
+  most amazing attachment that one human being could give to
+  another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon should
+  respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity. He was the
+  beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the
+  last forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the
+  death-chamber, and at his request he kept vigil and witnessed,
+  his spirit pass away.</p>
+
+  <p>It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the
+  smitten rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts,
+  domestic, civil, and religious. He made him one of his executors,
+  bequeathed to him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of
+  precious documents, and to his dying day the recipient of such
+  flattering confidences never betrayed by word or act the faith
+  that was reposed in him, nor did he ever falter in his devotion
+  to the martyr's cause. It is from him we have handed down the
+  famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon for his son, which is
+  pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with the genius of
+  statesmanship. We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the religious
+  side of Napoleon's versatile character. His talks and dictations
+  on <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>this controversial
+  subject are unorthodox if you like, but nevertheless religious;
+  copious in thought and trenchant in vocabulary, they disclose the
+  magic of a well-stored inspired mind. He indulges in neither
+  puerilities nor conventionalities. He is a vigorous student of
+  the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and speaks his
+  reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the vision
+  of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.</p>
+
+  <p>In the first clause of his will he declares: "I die in the
+  Apostolic Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more
+  than fifty years since." If any other proof were needed that he
+  believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration
+  on the eve of the great transformation may be confirmed by the
+  fact that the cardinal doctrine of the Roman religion centres in
+  the divinity of Christ. Again, in the course of his public and
+  private duties, you frequently come across passages in his
+  letters and official documents such as "May God have you in His
+  holy keeping." It may be said that this is a mere form or figure
+  of speech but then unbelievers do not use such phrases.</p>
+
+  <p>We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and
+  be generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of
+  political, historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's
+  message to the <a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>world should
+  absolve him from having his lucid, succinct conversations
+  jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a perversion of
+  understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist Napoleon's
+  discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever was
+  seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the
+  sun, or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he
+  ever showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of
+  his race.</p>
+
+  <p>He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion,
+  such as honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and
+  denounced with scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing
+  Christians whose conduct towards himself was beneath the dignity
+  of the pagan. But this in no way detracts from his admiration of
+  the genuine follower of Christ. He says that "religious ideas
+  have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are
+  willing to believe; they are capable of rendering great services
+  to humanity." Again, he says that "the Christian religion is the
+  religion of a civilised people; it is entirely spiritual, and the
+  reward which Jesus Christ promises to the elect is that they
+  shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency is to subdue
+  the passions; it offers nothing to excite them."</p>
+
+  <p>There were frequently heated arguments on <a name="Page_293"
+  id="Page_293"></a>religion between Napoleon and members of his
+  suite during the dreary hours at Longwood, and on one of these
+  occasions he, Montholon, and Antommarchi are the debaters. To the
+  former he suddenly flashed out: "I know men well, and I tell you
+  that Jesus Christ was not a man"; then he curtly attacks the
+  pretentious doctor by informing him that "aspiring to be an
+  atheist does not make a man one."</p>
+
+  <p>Dr. Alexander Mair published in the <i>Expositor</i>, some
+  twenty years ago, a critical study of the authenticity of the
+  declarations imputed to Napoleon when at St. Helena on the
+  subject of the Christian religion, from which I make the
+  following extract:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"One evening at St. Helena," says M. Beauterne, "the
+  conversation was animated. The subject treated of was an exalted
+  one; it was the divinity of Jesus Christ. Napoleon defended the
+  truth of this doctrine with the arguments and eloquence of a man
+  of genius, with something also of the native faith of the
+  Corsican and the Italian. To the objections of one of the
+  interlocutors, who seemed to see in the Saviour but a sage, an
+  illustrious philosopher, a great man, the Emperor
+  replied:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <p>"'I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>"<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>'Superficial minds may
+  see some resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires,
+  the conquerors, and the gods of other religions. That resemblance
+  does not exist.</p>
+
+  <p>"'I see in Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet merely
+  legislators; but nothing which reveals the Deity. On the
+  contrary, I see numerous relations between them and myself. I
+  make out resemblances, weaknesses, and common errors which
+  assimilate them to myself and humanity. Their faculties are those
+  which I possess. But it is different with Christ. Everything
+  about Him astonishes me; His spirit surprises me, and His will
+  confounds me. Between Him and anything of this world there is no
+  possible comparison. He is really a Being apart.</p>
+
+  <p>"'The nearer I approach Him and the more clearly I examine
+  Him, the more everything seems above me; everything continues
+  great with a greatness that crushes me.</p>
+
+  <p>"'His religion is a secret belonging to Himself alone, and
+  proceeds from an intelligence which assuredly is not the
+  intelligence of man. There is in Him a profound originality which
+  creates a series of sayings and maxims hitherto unknown.</p>
+
+  <p>"'Christ expects everything from His death. Is that the
+  invention of a man? On the contrary, it is a strange course of
+  procedure, a superhuman <a name="Page_295" id=
+  "Page_295"></a>confidence, an inexplicable reality. In every
+  other existence than that of Christ, what imperfections, what
+  changes! I defy you to cite any existence, other than that of
+  Christ, exempt from the least vacillation, free from all such
+  blemishes and changes. From the first day to the last He is the
+  same, always the same, majestic and simple, infinitely severe,
+  and infinitely gentle.</p>
+
+  <p>"'How the horizon of His empire extends, and prolongs itself
+  into infinitude! Christ reigns beyond life and beyond death. The
+  past and the future are alike to Him; the kingdom of the truth
+  has, and in effect can have, no other limit than the false. Jesus
+  has taken possession of the human race; He has made of it a
+  single nationality, the nationality of upright men, whom He calls
+  to a perfect life.</p>
+
+  <p>"'The existence of Christ from beginning to end is a tissue
+  entirely mysterious, I admit; but that mystery meets difficulties
+  which are in all existences. Reject it, the world is an enigma;
+  accept it, and we have an admirable solution of the history of
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>"'Christ speaks, and henceforth generations belong to Him by
+  bonds more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union
+  more sacred, more imperious than any other union beside. He
+  kindles the flame of a love which kills out the love <a name=
+  "Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>of self and prevails over every
+  other love. Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ
+  is the reign of love. All who believe in Him sincerely feel this
+  love, wonderful, supernatural, supreme. It is a phenomenon
+  inexplicable, impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred
+  fire given to the earth by this new Prometheus, of which Time,
+  the great destroyer, can neither exhaust the force nor terminate
+  the duration. That is what I wonder at most of all, for I often
+  think about it; and it is that which absolutely proves to me the
+  divinity of Christ!'</p>
+
+  <p>"Here the Emperor's voice assumed a peculiar accent of
+  ironical melancholy and of profound sadness: 'Yes, our existence
+  has shone with all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty;
+  and yours, Montholon, Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the
+  dome of the Invalides, gilded by us, reflects the rays of the
+  sun. But reverses have come; the gold is effaced little by
+  little. The rain of misfortunes and outrages with which we are
+  deluged every day carries away the last particles; we are only
+  lead, gentlemen, and soon we shall be but dust. Such is the
+  destiny of great men; such is the near destiny of the great
+  Napoleon.</p>
+
+  <p>"'What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal
+  reign of Christ, proclaimed, worshipped, beloved, adored, living
+  throughout the <a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>whole
+  universe! Is that to die? Is it not rather to live?'"</p>
+
+  <p>A more beautiful panegyric on the divinity of Christ has never
+  been pronounced. The thrilling and convincing conclusions evolved
+  from the mind of a great reader, a great thinker&mdash;a man, in
+  fact, who had studied and knew the human side of life, and could
+  describe it with flawless accuracy&mdash;are a complete
+  refutation of the opinions expressed either from prejudice or
+  personal and political motives. Napoleon conversed about religion
+  with other men in a critical way, not always with orthodox
+  reverence, but certainly with the conviction that he had a
+  thorough knowledge of every phase of the subject. Perhaps he
+  derived pleasure from showing that he did not accept the popular
+  doctrine unreservedly.</p>
+
+  <p>His unorthodox view of the Catholic religion is shown by the
+  fact that in 1797 he endeavoured to get Pius VI. to suppress the
+  Inquisition throughout Europe. The Pope, in his reply, addressing
+  the General as his "very dear son," urges him to abandon the idea
+  and assures him that the charges made against the Holy Office are
+  false. He further says that the Inquisition is not tyrannical,
+  and that sooner than remove the Holy Office he would part with a
+  province. Napoleon for a time gave way, and it was not until 1808
+  that he issued a decree suppressing the institution in France and
+  confiscating its property. This incident is another <a name=
+  "Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>proof of Napoleon's humane attitude
+  towards his people and his abhorrence of religious
+  intolerance.</p>
+
+  <p>The basis for such an attitude towards an accepted institution
+  of the Roman Catholic Church was Napoleon's belief that "Faith is
+  beyond the reach of the law and the most sacred property of man,
+  for which he has no right to account to any mortal if there is
+  nothing in it contrary to social order."</p>
+
+  <p>Unquestionably he had pride in impressing his auditors with
+  the vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study.
+  He had, moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel
+  that he was not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior,
+  even when they got him to talk on their own subjects. This habit
+  was especially pronounced at St. Helena.</p>
+
+  <p>But this in no way impairs the evidences of his spiritual
+  character. One of his first acts when his authority was
+  established in France was to face the most hostile declamation
+  against the Concordat, but believing that no good government
+  could be assured without religion, he carried his convictions
+  through in spite of it being a reversion of one of the cardinal
+  doctrines of the Revolution, and there is abundance of proof that
+  when he was faced with the last great problem, he accepted it
+  without a sign of superstitious dread, believing in the
+  immortality of the soul which should reveal all things.</p>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a><a name=
+  "Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
+
+  <p>LIST OF SOME OF THE BOOKS REFERRED TO OR CONSULTED BY THE
+  AUTHOR</p>
+
+  <p>Correspondence of Napoleon.<br />
+  Last Letters of Napoleon.<br />
+  Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, by Bingham.<br />
+  Napoleon's Miscellanies.<br />
+  Napoleon's Own Memoirs.<br />
+  Napoleon Anecdotes, Ireland.<br />
+  Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Count Gourgaud.<br />
+  Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph.<br />
+  Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, by H.F. Hall.<br />
+  Letters from the Island of St. Helena.<br />
+  History of Napoleon, by Lanfrey.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by Sir Walter Scott.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by J.H. Rose.<br />
+  Napoleon, by Phyfe.<br />
+  Private Life of Napoleon, by Levy.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by Bourrienne.<br />
+  Short Life of Napoleon, by J.R. Seeley.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon the Third, by Blanchard.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by W. Hazlitt.<br />
+  History of Napoleon, edited by R.H. Horne.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by MacFarlane.<br />
+  History of Napoleon, by George Moir Bussey.<br />
+  Life of Napoleon, by W.M. Sloane.<br />
+  Napoleon, by J.T. Bailey.<br />
+  Napoleon, by Dr. Max Lenz.<br />
+  Baron de Meneval, Memoirs.<br />
+  <a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a> Memoirs of Count Miot de
+  Melito.<br />
+  Memoirs of General Count Rapp, written by himself.<br />
+  Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo.<br />
+  Memoirs of Madame Junot, Duchess of Abrant&egrave;s.<br />
+  Secret Memoirs of Napoleon, by Charles Doris.<br />
+  Mallet Du Pan, by B. Mallet.<br />
+  Madame de Sta&euml;l.<br />
+  Recollections of Marshal MacDonald.<br />
+  Memoirs of the Empress Josephine.<br />
+  Memoirs of Queen Hortense.<br />
+  Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud.<br />
+  Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise, by De St. Amand.<br />
+  Memoirs of Joseph.<br />
+  Memoirs of Madame de Remusat.<br />
+  Life of Nelson, by Southey.<br />
+  Life of Wellington, by George Hooper.<br />
+  Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart.<br />
+  Dumourier Memoirs.<br />
+  Life of Byron.<br />
+  William Pitt, by Lord Rosebery.<br />
+  William Pitt, by Charles Whibley.<br />
+  Memoirs of the Court of the Empress Josephine, by Ducrest.<br />
+  The Sailor King, by Fitzgerald Molloy.<br />
+  Marmont Memoirs.<br />
+  General Marbot Memoirs.<br />
+  Marshal Berthier, by General Derrecagaix.<br />
+  Constant, Memoirs of the Life of Napoleon.<br />
+  Napoleon and Marie Louise, by Madame Durand.<br />
+  The Women Napoleon Loved, by Tighe Hopkins.<br />
+  The Marriages of the Bonapartes, by Bingham.<br />
+  Napoleon at Home, by F. Masson.<br />
+  Napoleon et les Femmes, by F. Masson.<br />
+  Josephine, Imperatrice et Reine, by F. Masson.<br />
+  Love of an Uncrowned Queen, by Wilkins.<br />
+  The Love Affairs of Napoleon, by Joseph Turquan.<br />
+  The Women Bonapartes, by Noel Williams.<br />
+  Las Cases' Journal.<br />
+  <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a> Napoleon at St. Helena and
+  Sir Hudson Lowe, by Forsyth.<br />
+  Napoleon's Captivity in Relation to Sir Hudson Lowe, by R.C.
+  Seaton.<br />
+  The Exile of St. Helena, by Philippe Gonnard.<br />
+  Napoleon, Last Voyages, by J.H. Rose.<br />
+  The Last Days of Napoleon, by Dr. F. Antommarchi.<br />
+  Duke of Reichstadt, by De Wertheimer.<br />
+  Napoleon, the First Phase, by Oscar Browning.<br />
+  Napoleon, The Last Phase, by Lord Rosebery.<br />
+  Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Latimer.<br />
+  The Surrender of Napoleon, by Rear-Admiral Sir Frederick
+  Maitland.<br />
+  Napoleon in Exile, by Barry O'Meara.<br />
+  The Drama of St. Helena, by Paul Frembeaux.<br />
+  History of a Crime, by Victor Hugo.<br />
+  History of the Captivity of Napoleon, by Count Montholon.<br />
+  Warden's Letters from St. Helena.<br />
+  With Napoleon at St. Helena, by Dr. John Stokoe.<br />
+  Napoleon's Last Voyages, by Sir Thomas Usher.<br />
+  Napoleon and His Fellow Travellers, by Clement Shorter.<br />
+  An Exposition of Some of the Transactions that have taken<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">place at St. Helena since the
+  Appointment of Sir Hudson</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lowe as Governor of that Island,
+  by B.E. O'Meara.</span><br />
+  Facts Illustrative of the Treatment of Napoleon Bonaparte<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">in St. Helena, by Theodore Hook
+  (?).</span><br />
+  History of the Consulate and the Empire, by Thiers.<br />
+  Napoleon's Expedition to Russia, by Count Philippe de
+  Segur.<br />
+  Napoleon in Russia, by Verestchagen.<br />
+  Napoleon, King of Elba, by Paul Gruyer.<br />
+  Cambridge Modern History, Volume IX., Sections by&mdash;<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Georges Pariset.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">T.A. Walker.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">H.W. Wilson.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anton Guilland.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">H.A.L. Fisher.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">L.G. Wickham-Legg.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">E.M. Lloyd.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">J. Holland Rose.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">August Keim.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">C.W. Oman.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eugen Stschepkin.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Julius von
+  Pflugk-Harttung.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">A.W. Ward.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">G.P. Gooch.</span><br />
+  Napoleon and His Detractors, by Prince Napoleon.<br />
+  <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a> Heinrich Heine's
+  Essays.<br />
+  France, by J.E.C. Bodley.<br />
+  Talleyrand, by Lady Blennerhassett.<br />
+  Napoleon's Marshals, by R.P. Dunn Pattison.<br />
+  French Revolution, by Thomas Carlyle.<br />
+  French Revolution, by Lord Acton.<br />
+  Bonaparte and the Consulate, by Thibeaudeau.<br />
+  Napoleonic Studies, by J. Holland Rose.<br />
+  Biographical Sketches, by Harriet Martineau.<br />
+  From Howard to Nelson, by Mahan.<br />
+  The Life of Nelson, by Mahan.<br />
+  A Mariner of England, 1780-1817, edited by Colonel Spencer<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">Childers.</span><br />
+  Bonapartism, by H.A.L. Fisher.<br />
+  Bernadotte's Correspondence with Napoleon.<br /></p>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name=
+  "LIST_OF_EVENTS_AND_DATES_HAVING_REFERENCE_TO_NAPOLEON_BONAPARTE"
+  id=
+  "LIST_OF_EVENTS_AND_DATES_HAVING_REFERENCE_TO_NAPOLEON_BONAPARTE">
+  </a><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES
+  HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE</h2>
+
+  <p>1769. Aug. 15. Napoleon the First born.<br />
+  <br />
+  1789. July 14. French Revolution breaks out with the<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">destruction of the
+  Bastille.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1790. July 14. France declared a Limited Monarchy.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 14. Louis XVI. swears
+  to maintain the Constitution.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1791. June 21. The King, Queen, and Royal family arrested<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">at Varennes.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sept. 15. Louis (a prisoner)
+  signs the National Constitution.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1792. July 17. First coalition against France.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nov.&nbsp; 19. French people
+  declare their fraternity</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">with all nations who desire to be
+  free</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">and offer help.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1796. Mar. 9. Bonaparte's marriage with Josephine.<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 8em;">Bonaparte's successful campaign
+  in Italy.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1798. Expedition to Syria and Egypt.<br />
+  <br />
+  1799. April. European coalition against France.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nov.&nbsp; 10. Council of 500
+  deposed by Bonaparte; he</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">is declared First
+  Consul.</span><br />
+  1800. June 14. Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Marengo.<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 24. Bonaparte's life
+  attempted by an infernal</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">machine.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 8em;">Bank of France founded by
+  Napoleon.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1802. Mar. 28. Peace of Amiens (with England, Spain,<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">and Holland) signed.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1802. May 19. Legion of Honour instituted by Napoleon.<br />
+  <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Aug.&nbsp; 2. Napoleon made First
+  Consul for life.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1803. April 14. Bank of France established.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; 22. Declaration of war
+  against England.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1804. Feb. 15. Conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru against<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 8em;">Napoleon.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mar.&nbsp; 21. Duc d'Enghien
+  executed.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; 18. Napoleon proclaimed
+  Emperor of France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 2. Napoleon crowned by
+  the Pope.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1805. May 26. Napoleon crowned King of Italy.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Aug.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Third
+  coalition against France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 2. Napoleon defeats
+  the Allies at Austerlitz.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1806. Oct. 14. Napoleon defeats the Prussians at Jena.<br />
+  <br />
+  1807. Feb. 8. Napoleon defeats the Russians at Eylau.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 7. Peace of Tilsit
+  signed.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 17. Napoleon issues
+  his Milan Decree against</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">British commerce.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1808. Mar. 1. New Nobility of France created.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; &nbsp; 5. Abdication of
+  Charles IV. of Spain and his</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">son in favour of
+  Napoleon.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+  Commencement of the Peninsular War.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1809. April Alliance of England and Austria against<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Napoleon
+  defeats the Austrians and enters</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Vienna.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; 14. Peace of Vienna
+  signed.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 16. Divorce of the
+  Emperor and the Empress</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Josephine decreed by the
+  Senate.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1810. April 1. Marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise of<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Austria.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 9. Holland united to
+  France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1811. Mar. 20. Birth of the King of Rome (Napoleon II.).<br />
+  <br />
+  1812. June 22. War with Russia declared.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The
+  retreat from Moscow.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1813. Mar. Alliance of Austria, Russia, and Prussia<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">against France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; 7. British enter
+  France.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1814. Mar. 31. Surrender of Paris to the Allies.<br />
+  <br />
+  <a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a> 1814. April 5. Abdication
+  of Napoleon negotiated.<br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; &nbsp; 3. Restoration
+  of the Bourbon dynasty.</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Louis XVIII. arrives at
+  Paris.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; &nbsp; 4. Napoleon
+  arrives at Elba.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">May&nbsp; 29. Death of
+  Josephine.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1815. Mar. 1. Napoleon escapes from Elba and lands<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">at Cannes.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mar.&nbsp; 20. Napoleon arrives
+  at Fontainebleau.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mar.&nbsp; 22. Napoleon is joined
+  by all the Army.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mar.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The
+  Allies sign a treaty against him.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mar.&nbsp; 29. Napoleon abolishes
+  the slave trade.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">June&nbsp; 12. Napoleon leaves
+  Paris for the Army.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">June&nbsp; 18. Battle of
+  Waterloo.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">June&nbsp; 20. Napoleon returns
+  to Paris.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">June&nbsp; 22. Abdicates in
+  favour of his son.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 3. He arrives at
+  Rochefort, intending to</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">embark for America.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 3. Louis XVIII.
+  re-enters Paris.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">July&nbsp; 15. Napoleon
+  surrenders to Captain Maitland,</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">of the <i>Bellerophon</i>, at
+  Rochefort.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Aug.&nbsp; 8. Is transferred at
+  Torbay to the <i>Northumberland</i>,</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">and, with Admiral Sir George
+  Cockburn, sails for St. Helena.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; 15. Arrives at St.
+  Helena, to remain for life.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Dec.&nbsp; 7. Execution of
+  Marshal Ney.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1816. Jan. 12. Family of Bonaparte excluded <i>for ever</i><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">from France by the Law of
+  Amnesty.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1821. May 5. Death of Napoleon.<br />
+  <br />
+  1836. Oct. 29. Attempted insurrection by Louis Napoleon<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">(afterwards
+  Emperor).</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1837. May 8. Amnesty proclaimed for political offences.<br />
+  <br />
+  1838. "Idees Napoleoniennes" published by<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Prince Louis
+  Napoleon.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1840. May 12. The Chambers decree the removal of<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Napoleon's remains from St.
+  Helena.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; 15. Exhumation of
+  Napoleon's remains.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Nov.&nbsp; 30. Arrival of
+  <i>Belle Poule</i> frigate at Cherbourg</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">with remains on
+  board.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a> 1840. Dec. 15. Remains
+  deposited in the H&ocirc;tel des Invalides.<a name=
+  "FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href=
+  "#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Aug.&nbsp; 6. Descent of Louis
+  Napoleon, General Montholon,</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">and fifty followers at Vimeraux,
+  near Boulogne.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Oct.&nbsp; 6. The Prince captured
+  and sentenced to</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">imprisonment for
+  life.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1841. Aug. 15. Bronze statue of Napoleon placed on the<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">column of the Grande
+  Arm&eacute;e, Boulogne.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1846. May 25. Louis Napoleon escapes from Ham.<br />
+  <br />
+  1847. Oct. 10. Jerome Bonaparte returns to France, after<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">an exile of thirty-two
+  years.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1848. June 13. Election of Louis Napoleon to the National<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Assembly.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 3em;">Sept. 26. Louis Napoleon takes
+  his seat in the</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">National Assembly.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1857. Longwood, the residence of Napoleon<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">Bonaparte at St. Helena, bought
+  for</span><br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">180,000 francs.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1860. June 24. Jerome Bonaparte (the Emperor's uncle)<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9em;">dies, aged 76.</span><br />
+  <br />
+  1861. Mar. 31. Napoleon's body finally placed in the crypt<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">of the H&ocirc;tel des
+  Invalides.</span><br /></p>
+
+  <div class="footnotes">
+    <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+    <div class="footnote">
+      <p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href=
+      "#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The
+      ceremony was witnessed by about 1,000,000 persons and 150,000
+      soldiers assisted at the obsequies. No relatives of the
+      Emperor were present, as at this time the various members of
+      the Bonaparte family were either proscribed and in exile or
+      in prison.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+  <hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+  <h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a><a name="Page_307" id=
+  "Page_307"></a>INDEX</h2>
+
+  <p>Abrant&egrave;s, Duke and Duchess of, <i>see</i> Junot<br />
+  Acton, Lord, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+  Aglietti, Dr., <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br />
+  Alexander, <i>see</i> Russia, Emperor of<br />
+  Amherst, Lord, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+  Anne of Russia, Princess, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+  Antommarchi, Dr., <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_84">85</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_293">293</a><br />
+  Archambaud, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+  Arnott, Dr., <a href="#Page_84">85</a><br />
+  Augereau, General, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Austria, Commissioner for, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a><br />
+  Austria, Emperor of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_112">113</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_266">267</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Baranti, M., <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br />
+  Barras, "Citizen," <a href="#Page_239">240</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a><br />
+  Bathurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_33">34</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_33">35</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_79">80</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_79">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_184">184</a><br />
+  Beauharnais, Alexandre, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_235">235</a><br />
+  Beauharnais, Eugene, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_239">240</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_282">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">285</a><br />
+  Beauharnais, Hortense, <a href="#Page_115">116</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_278">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_282">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">285</a><br />
+  Beauharnais, Marquis de, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_232">232</a><br />
+  Beauterne, M., <a href="#Page_293">293</a><br />
+  Beauvais, Bishop of, <a href="#Page_103">104</a><br />
+  Bernadotte, Marshal, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_273">273</a><br />
+  Berthier, General, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Bertrand, Count, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_33">34</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a><br />
+  Bertrand, Madame, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+  Bessi&egrave;res, General, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  Bismarck, Prince von, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+  Bl&uuml;cher, Marshal, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+  Bombelles, M. de, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Caroline, <a href="#Page_245">246</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Joseph, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_243">244</a>, <a href="#Page_247">245</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Leon, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_264">264</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Louis, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Lucien, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  Bonaparte, Madame M&egrave;re, <a href="#Page_146">146</a> <i>et
+  seq.</i><br />
+  Bonaparte, Napoleon, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_18">19</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_33">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_84">85</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_115">116</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_120">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">126</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_212">213</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_239">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">252</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_266">267</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_280">281</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_284">286</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_288">288</a> <i>et seq.</i>;<br />
+  <span style="margin-left: 1em;">on the Christian religion,
+  <a href="#Page_293">293</a> <i>et seq.</i></span><br />
+  Bonaparte, Pauline, <a href="#Page_115">116</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+  Borghesi, Countess Pauline, <a href="#Page_83">83</a><br />
+  Bourrienne, M., <a href="#Page_112">113</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+  Browning, Oscar, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+  Brutus, Marcus, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+  B&uuml;low, von, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+  Burton, Dr., <a href="#Page_84">85</a><br />
+  Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_198">199</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href=
+  "#Page_216">216</a><br />
+  <br />
+  <a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a> Cadoudal, <a href=
+  "#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  C&aelig;sar, Julius, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
+  Camerata, Countess Napoleone, <a href="#Page_123">145</a><br />
+  Carlyle, Jane, <a href="#Page_84">84</a><br />
+  Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+  Carnot, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_243">244</a><br />
+  Cases, Count Las, <a href="#Page_33">34</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_195">195</a><br />
+  Castlereagh, Lord, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_79">80</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_181">181</a><br />
+  Catherine of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_154">154</a><br />
+  Charles, Hippolyte, <a href="#Page_249">249</a> <i>et
+  seq.</i><br />
+  Charles VII., <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+  Charles X., <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+  Cipriani, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br />
+  Cockburn, Captain, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_54">34</a><br />
+  Collot, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+  Colonna, Count, <i>see</i> Walewska, Alexander<br />
+  Colonna, Signor Simeon, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
+  Commissioners of the Powers, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a><br />
+  Compoint, Louise, <a href="#Page_245">246</a><br />
+  Conquereau, l'Abb&eacute;, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+  Constant, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_212">213</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+  Corvisat, Dr., <a href="#Page_284">286</a><br />
+  Coulon Brothers, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+  Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Davoust, Marshal, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Denuelle, Madame Eleanore, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+  Desaix, General, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  Dietrichstein, Count, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
+  Documents, <i>see</i> Official Documents<br />
+  Dottot, M., <a href="#Page_258">258</a><br />
+  Duroc, Marshal, <a href="#Page_125">126</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Editor of <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href=
+  "#Page_50">50</a><br />
+  Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+  d'Enghien, Due, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Fesch, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+  Flachats, MM., <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+  Forsyth, William, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_100">101</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+  Fouch&eacute;, M., <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_284">284</a><br />
+  Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_93">93</a><br />
+  France, Commissioner for, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+  Francis, <i>see</i> Austria, Emperor of<br />
+  Frederick of Prussia, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_162">162</a><br />
+  Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+  Freron, M., <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+  <br />
+  George I., <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_287">287</a><br />
+  George IV., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_117">180</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br />
+  Gohier, M., <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+  Gorrequer, Major, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_100">100</a><br />
+  Gourgaud, General, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">80</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_79">81</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">288</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_289">289</a><br />
+  Granville, Earl, <a href="#Page_18">19</a><br />
+  Grouchy, Marshal, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_191">191</a><br />
+  Guizot, M., <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Hanover, Elector of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+  Henin, General, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+  Henry, Mr., 99, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+  Henry VIII., <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br />
+  Hill, General Lord, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
+  Hoche, General, <a href="#Page_239">240</a><br />
+  Holland, Lady, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_57">57</a><br />
+  Holland, Lord, <a href="#Page_79">80</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_89">89</a><br />
+  Hooper, <a href="#Page_161">61</a><br />
+  Horeau, Dr., <a href="#Page_284">286</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Jersey, Lady, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
+  Joan of Arc, <a href="#Page_103">104</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  Joinville, Prince, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">173</a><br />
+  Josephine, <a href="#Page_100">101</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_231">231</a> <i>et seq.</i><br />
+  Jourdan, General, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Junot, Marshal, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_245">246</a><br />
+  <br />
+  <a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a> Keith, Lord, <a href=
+  "#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_120">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_124">124</a><br />
+  Kellerman, General, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_243">243</a><br />
+  Kleber, General, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  <br />
+  La Fayette, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br />
+  Lallemand, <a href="#Page_165">65</a><br />
+  Las Cases, <i>see</i> Cases, Las<br />
+  Leclerc, General, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_250">250</a><br />
+  Lenz, Dr. Max, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+  Liverpool, Lord, <a href="#Page_79">80</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+  Livingstone, Dr., <a href="#Page_84">85</a><br />
+  Louis Philippe, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_21">21</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>,
+  1<a href="#Page_168">68</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
+  Louis XVI., <a href="#Page_125">126</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_270">270</a><br />
+  Louis XVIII., <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_168">168</a><br />
+  Lowe, Sir Hudson, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">34</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_33">35</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_79">81</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_84">85</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+  Macdonald, Marshal, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Maceroni, Colonel, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
+  Manning, Mr., <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+  Mair, Dr. Alexander, <a href="#Page_293">293</a><br />
+  Maitland, Captain, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_118">118</a><br />
+  Marchand, M., <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_290">290</a><br />
+  Marie Antoinette, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br />
+  Marie Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
+  Marie Louise, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_84">85</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_150">151</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_266">267</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_284">286</a><br />
+  Marmont, General, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_134">135</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_247">247</a><br />
+  Mass&eacute;na, General, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  Masson, F., <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_264">264</a><br />
+  Mecklenburg, Prince of, <a href="#Page_284">284</a><br />
+  Melito, Miot de, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+  Meneval, <a href="#Page_156">156,</a> <a href=
+  "#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_266">267</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_278">278</a><br />
+  Metternich, Count, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a><br />
+  Miguel, Dom, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
+  Montchenu, Marquis de, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+  Montholon, Count, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_33">34</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_45">43</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_293">293</a><br />
+  Montholon, Countess, <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+  Moreau, M., <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  M&uuml;ller, <a href="#Page_189">109</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+  Murat, Marshal, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_245">246</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_271">271</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Napoleon, Charles, Prince, <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+  Napoleon I., <i>see</i> Bonaparte, Napoleon<br />
+  Napoleon II., <i>see</i> Rome, King of<br />
+  Napoleon III., <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_276">276</a><br />
+  Napoleon, Prince Louis, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+  Neipperg, Count, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
+  <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+  Ney, Marshal, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+  Noverraz, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Obenaus, Baron, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+  Official Documents, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
+  <a href="#Page_79">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_197">197</a><br />
+  O'Meara, Dr. Barry E., <a href="#Page_29">30</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_79">81</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_241">241</a><br />
+  Orange, Prince of, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+  Oudinot, Marshal, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Pagerie, Joseph Tascher de la, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+  Palmerston, Lord, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
+  Peel, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
+  Permon, Madame, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
+  Philipon, Jeanne Marie, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_237">237</a><br />
+  Pichegru, <a href="#Page_267">267</a><br />
+  Pieron, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+  Pitt, William, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+  Pius VII., <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_150">150</a><br />
+  Plampin, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_196">196</a><br />
+  <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a> Poppleton, Captain,
+  <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
+  Prokesch, Count, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_143">143</a><br />
+  Prussia, Commissioner for, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a><br />
+  Prussia, King of, <i>see</i> Frederick<br />
+  <br />
+  Radowich, Gunner, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
+  Reade, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_63">63</a><br />
+  Reggio, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+  Remusat, Charles de, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
+  Remusat, Madame de, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_219">219</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href=
+  "#Page_284">284</a><br />
+  Remusat, M. de, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_221">221</a><br />
+  Remusat, Paul de, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
+  Robespierre, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
+  Rocca, M., <a href="#Page_214">214</a> <i>et seq.</i><br />
+  Roderer, M., <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+  Rome, King of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_57">57</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>
+  <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br />
+  Rosebery, Lord, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a><br />
+  Rovigo, Duke of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_139">139</a><br />
+  Ruskin, John, <a href="#Page_196">196</a><br />
+  Russia, Commissioner for, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_49">49</a><br />
+  Russia, Emperor of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_282">282</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Saint-Denis, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
+  Samson (M. de Paris), <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
+  Santini, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
+  Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_184">184</a><br />
+  Seguier, M., <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br />
+  Serbelloni, Duke of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a><br />
+  Short, Dr., <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
+  Somerset, Lord Charles, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_69">69</a><br />
+  Soult, Marshal, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_190">190</a><br />
+  Sta&euml;l, Madame de, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_204">204</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href=
+  "#Page_279">279</a><br />
+  Stokoe, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_196">196</a><br />
+  Strange, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Taine, M., <a href="#Page_144">144</a><br />
+  Talleyrand, M., <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a><br />
+  Teynham, Lord, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+  Thiers, M., <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Vandamme, General, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br />
+  Villemarest, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+  Volney, Senator, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
+  <br />
+  Walewska, Alexander (Count Colonna), <a href="#Page_269">269</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_278">278</a><br />
+  Walewska, Madame, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_278">278</a><br />
+  Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+  Wieland, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href=
+  "#Page_111">111</a><br />
+  Whitworth, Lord, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+  Wilhelmina of Prussia, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+  Williams, H. Noel, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
+  Wolseley, Lord, <a href="#Page_191">191</a><br />
+  Wordsworth, William, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br /></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of St. Helena, by Walter Runciman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Tragedy of St. Helena
+
+Author: Walter Runciman
+
+Release Date: March 3, 2005 [EBook #15246]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Steven Gibbs and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF ST. HELENA
+
+BY
+
+SIR WALTER RUNCIMAN, BART.
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"WINDJAMMERS AND SEA TRAMPS,"
+"THE SHELLBACK'S PROGRESS,"
+"LOOKING SEAWARD AGAIN," ETC.
+
+
+T. FISHER UNWIN
+LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
+LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
+1911
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In my early sea-life, I used to listen to the eccentric and
+complicated views expressed by a race of seamen long since passed
+away. Occasionally there were amongst the crew one or two who had the
+true British hypothetical belief in the demoniacal character of
+Napoleon, but this was not the general view of the men with whom I
+sailed; and after the lapse of many years, I often wonder how it came
+about that such definite partiality in regard to this wonderful being
+could have been formed, and the conclusion that impresses me most is,
+that his many acts of kindness to his own men, the absence of flogging
+and other debasing treatment in his own service, his generosity and
+consideration for the comfort of British prisoners during the wars,
+his ultimate defeat by the combined forces of Europe, the despicable
+advantage they took of the man who was their superior in everything,
+and to whom in other days the allied Kings had bent in homage, had
+become known to the English sailors.
+
+How these rugged men came to their knowledge of Napoleon and formed
+their opinions about him may be explained in this way. Hundreds of
+seamen and civilians were pressed into the King's service, many of
+whom were taken ruthlessly from vessels they partly owned and
+commanded. Indeed, there was no distinction. The pressgangs captured
+everybody, irrespective of whether they were officers, common able
+seamen, or boys, to say nothing of those who had no sea experience.
+Both my own grandfathers and two of my great uncles were kidnapped
+from their vessels and their families into the navy, and after many
+years of execrable treatment, hard fighting, and wounds, they landed
+back into their homes broken men, with no better prospect than to
+begin life anew. It was natural that the numerous pressed men should
+detest the ruffianly man-catchers and their employers, if not the
+service they were forced into, and that they would nurse the wrong
+which had been done to them.
+
+They would have opportunities of comparing their own lot with that of
+other nationalities engaged in combat against them, and though both
+might be bad, it comes quite natural to the sailor to imagine his
+treatment is worse than that of others; and there is copious evidence
+that the British naval service was not at that period popular.
+Besides, they knew, as everybody else should have known, that Napoleon
+was beloved by his navy and army alike. Then, after the Emperor had
+asked for the hospitality of the British nation, and became its guest
+aboard the _Bellerophon_, the sailors saw what manner of man he was.
+And later, his voyage to St. Helena in the _Northumberland_ gave them
+a better chance of being impressed by his fascinating personality. It
+is well known how popular he became aboard both ships; the men of the
+squadron that was kept at St. Helena were also drawn to him in
+sympathy, and many of the accounts show how, in their rough ardent
+way, they repudiated the falsehoods of his traducers. The exiled
+Emperor had become _their_ hero and _their_ martyr, just as
+impressively as he was and remained that of the French; and from them
+and other sources were handed down to the generation of merchant
+seamen those tales which were told with the usual love of hyperbole
+characteristic of the sailor, and wiled away many dreary hours while
+traversing trackless oceans. They would talk about the sea fights of
+Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the battles of Arcola, Marengo, Jena,
+Austerlitz, the Russian campaign, the retreat from Moscow, his
+deportation to Elba, his escape therefrom, and his matchless march
+into Paris, and then the great encounter of Waterloo, combined with
+the divorce of Josephine and the marriage with Marie Louise; all of
+which, as I remember it now, was set forth in the most voluble and
+comical manner. Some of their most engaging chanties were composed
+about him, and the airs given to them, always pathetic and touching,
+were sung by the sailors in a way which showed that they wanted it to
+be known that they had no hand in, and disavowed, the crime that was
+committed. As an example, I give four verses of the chanty "Boney was
+a Warrior," as it was sung in the days I speak of. It is jargon, but
+none the less interesting.
+
+    "They sent him to St. Helena!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    They sent him to St. Helena,
+    John France Wa! (Francois.)
+
+    Oh! Boney was ill-treated!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    Oh! Boney was ill-treated,
+    John France Wa!
+
+    Oh! Boney's heart was broken!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    Oh! Boney's heart was broken!
+    John France Wa!
+
+    But Boney was an Emperor!
+    Oh! aye, Oh!
+    But Boney was an Emperor!
+    John France Wa!"
+
+    --and so on.
+
+Although at that time I had, in common with others, anti-Napoleonic
+ideas, I was impressed by the views of the sailors. Later in life,
+when on the eve of a long voyage, nearly forty years ago, I happened
+to see Scott's "Life of Napoleon" on a bookstall, and being desirous
+of having my opinion confirmed, I bought it. A careful reading of this
+book was the means of convincing me of the fact that "Boney _was_
+ill-treated," and this in face of the so-called evidence which Sir
+Walter Scott had so obviously collected for the purpose of exonerating
+the then English Government.
+
+The new idea presented to my mind led me to take up a course of
+serious reading, which comprised all the "Lives" of Napoleon on which
+I could lay my hands, all the St. Helena Journals, and the
+commentaries which have been written since their publication. As my
+knowledge of the great drama increased, I found my pro-Napoleonic
+ideas increasing in fervour. Like the Psalmist when musing on the
+wickedness of man, "my heart was hot within me, and at the last I
+spake with my tongue."
+
+I may here state in passing that there is no public figure who lived
+before or since his time who is surrounded with anything approaching
+the colossal amount of literature which is centred on this man whose
+dazzling achievements amazed the world. Paradoxical though it may
+appear now, in the years to come, when the impartial student has
+familiarised himself with the most adverse criticisms, he will see in
+this literature much of the hand of enmity, cowardice, and delusion
+and, as conviction forces itself upon him, there evolve therefrom the
+revelation of a senseless travesty of justice.
+
+I offer no apology for the opinions contained in this book, which have
+been arrived at as the result of many years of study and exhaustive
+reading. I give the volume to the public as it is, in the hope that it
+may attract in other ways to a fair examination of Napoleon's complex
+and fascinating character.
+
+
+WALTER RUNCIMAN.
+
+_December 3, 1910._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE ABODE OF DARKNESS
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION--CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE
+
+CHAPTER III
+THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MERE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME
+
+CHAPTER IV
+THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS
+
+CHAPTER V
+MESDAMES DE STAEL AND DE REMUSAT
+
+CHAPTER VI
+JOSEPHINE
+
+CHAPTER VII
+RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+INDEX
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE ABODE OF DARKNESS
+
+
+In Clause 2 of his last will, dated Longwood, April 15, 1821, the
+Emperor Napoleon states: "It is my wish that my ashes may repose on
+the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have
+loved so well."
+
+At London, September 21, 1821, Count Bertrand and Count Montholon
+addressed the following letter to the King of England:--
+
+    "SIRE,--We now fulfil a sacred duty imposed on us by the Emperor
+    Napoleon's last wishes--we claim his ashes. Your Ministers,
+    Sire, are aware of his desire to repose in the midst of the
+    people whom he loved so well. His wishes were communicated to
+    the Governor of St. Helena, but that officer, without paying any
+    regard to our protestations, caused him to be interred in that
+    land of exile. His mother, listening to nothing but her grief,
+    implores from you, Sire, demands from you, the ashes of her son;
+    she demands from you the feeble consolation of watering his tomb
+    with her tears. If on his barren rock as when on his throne, he
+    was a terror of the world, when dead, his glory alone should
+    survive him. We are, with respect, &c, &c,
+
+    (Signed) COUNT BERTRAND.
+
+    COUNT MONTHOLON."
+
+In reply to this touching act of devotion to their dead chief the
+English Ambassador at Paris wrote in December, 1821, that the English
+Government only considered itself the depository of the Emperor's
+ashes, and that it would deliver them up to France as soon as the
+latter Government should express a desire to that effect. The two
+Counts immediately applied to the French Ministry, but without result.
+On May 1, 1822, a further letter was sent to Louis XVIII., by the
+grace of God King of France and Navarre, concerning the redepositing
+of the ashes of Napoleon, Emperor, thrice proclaimed by the grace of
+the people.
+
+On the accession of Louis Philippe to the throne the rival parties
+were each struggling for ascendancy. The glory of the days of the
+Empire had been stifled by the action of the European Powers and their
+French allies, but the smouldering embers began to show signs of
+renewed activity, and a wave of Napoleonic popularity swept over the
+land. Philippe and his Ministry were not indifferent to what was going
+on, and in order to distract attention from the chaos which the new
+condition of things was creating, the plan of having the "ashes" of
+the illustrious chief brought to the country and the people whom he
+"loved so well" was suggested as a means of bringing tranquillity to
+France and security to the throne.
+
+M. Thiers, the head of a new Ministry, entered into negotiations with
+the English Government, and M. Guizot addressed an official note to
+Lord Palmerston, who was then Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
+
+This precious communication is embodied in the following
+document:--"The undersigned, Ambassador Extraordinary and
+Plenipotentiary of His Majesty the King of the French, has the honour,
+conformably to instructions received from His Government, to inform
+His Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Her Majesty the
+Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, that the King ardently
+desires that the mortal remains of Napoleon may be deposited in a tomb
+in France, in the country which he defended and rendered illustrious,
+and which proudly preserves the ashes of thousands of his companions
+in arms, officers and soldiers, devoted with him to the service of
+their country. The undersigned is convinced that Her Britannic
+Majesty's Government will only see in this desire of His Majesty the
+King of the French a just and pious feeling, and will give the orders
+necessary to the removal of any obstacle to the transfer of Napoleon's
+remains from St. Helena to France."
+
+This document was sent to the British Embassy in Paris, and the wishes
+of M. Thiers and his Government were conveyed in orthodox fashion to
+the British Foreign Secretary by the Ambassador, in the following
+letter, dated Paris, May 4, 1840:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--The French Government have been requested, in several
+    petitions addressed to the Chambers, to take the necessary steps
+    with regard to the Government of Her Majesty the Queen of Great
+    Britain, in order to obtain an authorisation for removing the
+    ashes of the Emperor Napoleon to Paris. These petitions were
+    favourably received by the Chambers, who transmitted them to the
+    President of the Council, and to the other Ministers, his
+    colleagues. The Ministers having deliberated on this point, and
+    the King having given his consent to the measures necessary to
+    meet the object of the petitioners, M. Thiers yesterday
+    announced to me officially the desire of the French Government
+    that Her Majesty's Government would grant the necessary
+    authority to enable them to remove the remains of the Emperor
+    Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. M. Thiers also calls my
+    attention to the fact that the consent of the British Government
+    to the projected measure would be one of the most efficacious
+    means of cementing the union of the two countries, and of
+    producing a friendly feeling between France and
+    England.--(Signed) GRANVILLE."
+
+    So that this King of the French and M. Thiers realise, after a
+    quarter of a century, that the hero who was driven to abdicate,
+    and then banished from France, _did_ defend his country and make
+    it illustrious, and that the removal of his ashes to France was
+    the "_most_ efficacious means" of cementing the union of the
+    country that forsook him in his misfortune with the country that
+    sent him to perish on a rock. His ashes, indeed, were to produce
+    a friendly feeling between these two countries. What a
+    burlesque!
+
+    Napoleon's motto was "Everything for the French people." He
+    seems to have predicted that after his death they would require
+    his "ashes" to tranquillise an enraged people. Of the other
+    contracting party he says in the fifth paragraph of his
+    will:--"I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy
+    and its deputy; the English nation will not be slow in avenging
+    me."
+
+Well, it is requested that his ashes shall be given up to France so
+that peace may prevail. And now follows the great act of
+condescension:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--Her Majesty's Government having taken into
+    consideration the request made by the French Government for an
+    authorisation to remove the remains of the Emperor Napoleon from
+    St. Helena to France, you are instructed to inform M. Thiers
+    that Her Majesty's Government will with pleasure accede to the
+    request. Her Majesty's Government entertains hopes that its
+    readiness to comply with the wish expressed will be regarded in
+    France as a proof of Her Majesty's desire to efface every trace
+    of those national animosities which, during the life of the
+    Emperor, engaged the two nations in war. Her Majesty's
+    Government feels pleasure in believing that such sentiments, if
+    they still exist, will be buried for ever in the tomb destined
+    to receive the mortal remains of Napoleon. Her Majesty's
+    Government, in concert with that of France, will arrange the
+    measures necessary for effecting the removal.
+
+   --(Signed) PALMERSTON."
+
+One of the chief features of this State document is its veiled
+condition that in consideration of H.B.M. Government giving up the
+remains of Napoleon, it is to be understood that every _trace_ of
+national animosity is to be effaced. Another is, now that his mortal
+remains are in question, he is styled "the Emperor Napoleon."
+Twenty-five years before, when the atrocious crime of captivity was
+planned, Lord Keith, in the name of the British Government, addressed
+a communication to "General Bonaparte." The title of Emperor which his
+countrymen had given to him was, until his death, officially ignored,
+and he was only allowed to be styled "General" Bonaparte--the rank
+which the British Government in that hour of his misfortune thought
+best suited to their illustrious captive. He was, in fact, so far as
+rank was concerned, to be put on a level with some and beneath others
+who followed him into captivity. Well might he "protest in the face of
+Heaven and mankind against the violence that was being enacted"
+towards him. Well might he appeal to history to avenge him. There is
+nothing in history to equal the malignancy of the conquerors'
+treatment of their fallen foe. We shall see now and hereafter
+prejudices making way, reluctantly it may be, but surely, for the
+justice that should be done him.
+
+Three days after the gracious reply of the British Government, May 20,
+1840, the French King signified his desire to carry out the wishes of
+the Chambers by putting the following document before them:--
+
+    "GENTLEMEN,--The King has commanded Prince Joinville [his son]
+    to repair with his frigate to the island of St. Helena, there to
+    receive the mortal remains of the Emperor Napoleon. The frigate
+    containing the remains of Napoleon will present itself, on its
+    return, at the mouth of the Seine; another vessel will convey
+    them to Paris; they will be deposited in the Hospital of the
+    Invalides. Solemn ceremonies, both religious and military, will
+    inaugurate the tomb which is to retain them for ever. It is of
+    importance, gentlemen, that this august sepulture should not be
+    exposed on a public place, amidst a noisy and unheeding crowd.
+    The remains must be placed in a silent and sacred spot, where
+    all those who respect glory and genius, greatness and
+    misfortune, may visit them in reverential tranquillity.
+
+    "He was an Emperor and a King, he was the legitimate sovereign
+    of our country, and, under this title, might be interred at St.
+    Denis; but the ordinary sepulture of kings must not be accorded
+    to Napoleon; he must still reign and command on the spot where
+    the soldiers of France find a resting-place, and where those who
+    are called upon to defend her will always seek for inspiration.
+    His sword will be deposited in his tomb.
+
+    "Beneath the dome of the temple consecrated by religion to the
+    God of Armies, a tomb worthy, _if possible_, of the name
+    destined to be graven on it will be erected. The study of the
+    artist should be to give to this monument a simple beauty, a
+    noble form, and that aspect of solidity which shall appear to
+    brave all the efforts of time. Napoleon must have a monument
+    durable as his memory. The grant for which we have applied to
+    the Chambers is to be employed in the removal of the remains to
+    the Invalides, the funeral obsequies, and the construction of
+    the tomb. We doubt not, gentlemen, that the Chamber will concur
+    with patriotic emotion in the royal project which we have laid
+    before them. Henceforth, France, and France alone, will possess
+    all that remains of Napoleon; his tomb, like his fame, will
+    belong solely to his country.
+
+    "The monarchy of 1830 is in fact the sole and legitimate heir of
+    all the recollections in which France prides itself. It has
+    remained for this monarchy, which was the first to rally all the
+    strength and conciliate all the wishes of the French Revolution,
+    to erect and to honour without fear the statue and the tomb of a
+    popular hero; for there is one thing, and one thing alone, which
+    does not dread a comparison with glory, and that is Liberty."[1]
+
+The appeal is generous and just in its conception and beautifully
+phrased. It was received with enthusiasm throughout the whole of
+France. Louis Philippe and his Government had accurately gauged what
+would, more than anything, for the time being, subdue the rumbling
+indications of discord and revolt. The King had by this popular act
+caught the imagination of the people. He had made his seat on the
+throne secure for a time, and his name was immortal. The great mass of
+the people and his Government were behind him, and he made use of this
+to his own advantage. Napoleon's dying wish is to be consummated. "The
+blind hatred of kings" is relaxed; they are no longer afraid of his
+mortal remains; they see, and see correctly, that if they continue to
+"pursue his blood" he will be "avenged, nay, but, perchance, cruelly
+avenged." The old and the new generation of Frenchmen clamour that as
+much as may be of the stigma that rests upon them shall be removed,
+threatening reprisals if it be not quickly done. The British
+Government diplomatically, and with almost comic celerity, gravely
+drop "the General Bonaparte" and style their dead captive "the Emperor
+Napoleon."
+
+Louis Philippe, overwhelmed with the greatness of the dead monarch,
+bursts forth in eloquent praise of this so-called "usurper" of other
+days. He was not only an Emperor and a King, but the _legitimate
+sovereign_ of his country. No ordinary sepulture is to be his--it is
+to be an august sepulture, a silent sacred spot which those who
+respect glory, genius, and greatness may visit in "reverential
+tranquillity." Henceforth, by Royal Proclamation, history is to know
+him as an Emperor and a King. He is to have a tomb as durable as his
+memory, and his tomb and fame are to belong to his country for
+evermore. The legitimate heir of Napoleon's glory is the author of one
+of the finest panegyrics that has ever been written; a political move,
+if you will, but none the less the document is glowing with the
+artistic phrasing that appeals to the perceptions of an emotional
+race.
+
+But the real sincerity was obviously not so much in the author of the
+document as in the great masses, who were intoxicated with the desire
+to have the remains of their great hero brought home to the people he
+had loved so well. It may easily be imagined how superfluously the
+French King and his Government patted each other on the back in
+self-adoration for the act of funereal restoration which they took
+credit for having instituted. If they took too much credit it was only
+natural. But not an item of what is their due should be taken from
+them. The world must be grateful to whoever took a part in so noble a
+deed. At the same time the world will not exonerate the two official
+contracting parties from being exactly free from interested motives.
+The one desired to maintain domestic harmony, and this could only be
+assured by recalling the days of their nation's glory; and the other,
+_i.e._, the British Government, had their eye on some Eastern business
+which Palmerston desired to go smoothly, and so the dead Emperor was
+made the medium of tranquillity, and, it may be, expediency, in both
+cases.
+
+In short, Prince Joinville was despatched from Toulon in feverish
+haste with the frigate _Bellespoule_ and the corvette _Favorite_.
+These vessels were piously fitted out to suit the august occasion.
+Whatever the motives or influences, seen or unseen, that prompted the
+two Governments to carry out this unquestionable act of justice to the
+nation, to Napoleon's family, his comrades in arms who were still
+living, yea, and to all the peoples of the earth who were possessed of
+humane instincts, yet it is pretty certain that fear of a popular
+rising suggested the idea, and the genius who thought of the
+restoration of the Emperor's ashes as a means of subduing the
+gathering storm may be regarded as a public benefactor.
+
+But be all this as it may, it is doubtful if anything so ludicrously
+farcical is known to history as the mortal terror of this man's
+influence, living or dead. The very name of him, animate or inanimate,
+made thrones rock and Ministers shiver. Such was their terror, that
+the Allies, as they were called (inspired, as Napoleon believed, by
+the British Government--and nothing has transpired to disprove his
+theory) banished him to a rock in mid-ocean, caged him up in a house
+overrun with rats, put him on strict allowance of rations, and guarded
+him with warships, a regiment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, and the
+uneasy spirit of Sir Hudson Lowe.
+
+After six years of unspeakable treatment he is said to have died of
+cancer in the stomach. Doubtless he did, but it is quite reasonable to
+suppose that the conditions under which he was placed in an unhealthy
+climate, together with perpetual petty irritations, brought about
+premature death, and it is highly probable that the malady might have
+been prevented altogether under different circumstances. At any rate,
+he was without disease when Captain Cockburn handed him over, and for
+some time after. But he knew his own mental and physical make-up; he
+knew that in many ways he was differently constituted from other men.
+His habits of life were different, and therefore his gaolers should
+have been especially careful not to subject this singularly organised
+man to a poisonous climate and to an unheard-of system of cruelty.
+Yes, and they would have been well advised had they guarded with
+greater humanity the fair fame of a great people, and not wantonly
+committed acts that have left a stigma on the British name.
+
+Sir Walter Scott, who cannot be regarded as an impartial historian of
+the Napoleonic regime, does not, in his unfortunate "Life of
+Napoleon," produce one single fact or argument that will exculpate the
+British Government of that time from having violated every humane law.
+The State papers so generously put at his disposal by the English
+Ministry do not aid him in proving that they could not have found a
+more suitable place or climate for their distinguished prisoner, or
+that he would have died of cancer anyhow. The object of the good Sir
+Walter is obvious, and the distressing thing is that this excellent
+man should have been used for the purpose of whitewashing the British
+Administration.
+
+The great novelist is assured that the "ex-Emperor" was pre-disposed
+to the "cruel complaint of which his father died." "The progress of
+the disease is slow and insidious," says he, which may be true enough,
+but predisposition can be either checked or accelerated, and the
+course adopted towards Napoleon was not calculated to retard, but
+encourage it. But in order to palliate the actions of the British
+Government and their blindly devoted adherents at St. Helena,
+Gourgaud, who was not always strictly loyal to his imperial
+benefactor, is quoted as having stated that he disbelieved in the
+Emperor's illness, and that the English were much imposed upon.
+
+Why does Scott quote Gourgaud if, as he says, it is probable that the
+malady was in slow progress even before 1817? The reason is quite
+clear. He wishes to convey the impression that St. Helena has a
+salubrious climate, that the Emperor was treated with indulgent
+courtesy, and had abundance to eat and drink. It will be seen,
+however, by the records of other chroniclers who were in constant
+attendance on His Majesty, that Sir Walter Scott's version cannot be
+relied upon.
+
+If the statements in the annexed letter are true--and there is no
+substantial reason for doubting them, supported as they are by
+facts--then it is a complete refutation of what Scott has written as
+to the health-giving qualities of the island.
+
+Here is the statement of the Emperor's medical adviser (see p. 517,
+Appendix, vol. ii., "Napoleon in Exile"):--
+
+    "The following extract of an official letter transmitted by me
+    to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October, 1818,
+    containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon Napoleon,
+    will show that the fatal event which has since taken place at
+    St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to His
+    Majesty's Ministers.
+
+    "I think it my duty to state, as his late medical attendant,
+    that considering the disease of the liver with which he is
+    afflicted, the progress it has made in him, and reflecting upon
+    the great mortality produced by that complaint in the island of
+    St. Helena (so strongly exemplified in the number of deaths in
+    the 66th Regiment, the St. Helena regiment, the squadron, and
+    Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship
+    _Conqueror_, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her
+    complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last
+    eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon
+    Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a
+    climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be
+    aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and
+    irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of
+    which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly
+    susceptible.--(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John
+    Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."
+
+It is a terrible reflection to think that this note of warning should
+have gone unheeded. A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would
+have thrown political exigencies to the winds and defied all the
+powers of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their
+prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to
+fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up
+to the captain of the _Bellerophon_, and whose health was now
+shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this
+nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of
+Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt
+against it, and were such treatment to be meted out to a political
+prisoner of our day, the wrath of the nation might break forth in a
+way that would teach tyrants a salutary lesson.
+
+But this great man was at the mercy of a lot of little men. They were
+too cowardly to shoot him, so they determined on a cunning dastardly
+process of slow assassination. The pious bard who sings the praises of
+Napoleon's executioners--Wellington and his coadjutors--and whose
+"History" was unworthy of the reputations of himself and his
+publishers, will have sunk into oblivion when the fiery soul of the
+"Sultan Kebir"[2] will seize on the imagination of generations yet
+unborn, and intoxicate them with the memory of the deeds that he had
+done.
+
+Napoleon has said, "In the course of time, nothing will be thought so
+fine nor seize the attention so much as the doing of justice to me. I
+shall gain ground every day on the minds of the people. My name will
+become the star of their rights, it will be the expression of their
+regrets."[3] This statement is as prophetic as many others, more or
+less important, made by Napoleon to one or other of his suite. It is
+remarkable how accurately he foretold events and the impressions that
+would be formed of himself.
+
+Had the warning given so frequently to Sir Hudson Lowe been conveyed
+to his Government, and had they acted upon it, there is little doubt
+that a change of climate would have prolonged the Emperor's life. But
+in going over those dreary nauseous documents which relate the tale,
+one becomes permeated with the belief that the intention was to
+torture, if not to kill. Dr. Antommarchi, who succeeded Dr. O'Meara as
+medical attendant to the Emperor, confirms all that O'Meara had
+conveyed so frequently to the Governor and to the Admiralty. The
+Council sent for him to give them information as to the climate of
+St. Helena. They express the opinion that at Longwood it is "good."
+Antommarchi replies, "Horrible," "Cold," "Hot," "Dry," "Damp,"
+"Variation of atmosphere twenty times in a day." "But," said they,
+"this had no influence on General Bonaparte's health," and the blunt
+reply of Antommarchi is flung at them, "It sent him to his grave."
+"But," came the question, "what would have been the consequences of a
+change of residence?" "That he would still be living," said
+Antommarchi. The dialogue continues, the doctor scoring heavily all
+the way through. At length one of the Council becomes offended at his
+daring frankness, and blurts forth in "statesmanlike" anger: "What
+signifies, after all, the death of General Bonaparte? It rids us of an
+implacable enemy."
+
+This noble expression of opinion was given three days after George IV.
+had deplored the death of Napoleon. It is not of much consequence,
+except to confirm the belief of the French that the death-warrant had
+been issued. The popular opinion at the time when the Emperor gave
+himself up to the British was that had he come in contact with George
+IV. the great tragedy would not have happened.
+
+We are not, however, solely dependent on what the two doctors have
+said concerning the cause of his untimely demise. All those who knew
+anything about Longwood, from the common sailor or soldier upwards,
+were aware of the baneful nature of its climate. Counts Las Cases,
+Montholon, and Bertrand had each represented it to the righteous Sir
+Hudson Lowe as being deadly to the health of their Emperor. Discount
+their statements as you will, the conviction forces itself upon you
+that their contentions are in the main, if not wholly, reliable.
+
+But the climate, trying and severe as it was, cannot be entirely
+blamed for killing him, though it did the best part of it. Admiral Sir
+George Cockburn, while he acted as Governor, seems to have caused
+occasional trouble to the French by the unnecessary restrictions put
+upon them, but by the accounts given he was not unkindly disposed. He
+showed real anxiety to make the position as agreeable to them as he
+could, and no doubt used his judgment instead of carrying out to the
+letter the cast-iron instructions given to him by Bathurst. The
+Emperor spoke of him as having the heart of a soldier, and regretted
+his removal to give place to Sir Hudson Lowe, who arrived in the
+_Phaeton_ on April 14, 1816.
+
+The new Governor's rude, senseless conduct on the occasion of his
+first visit to Longwood indicated forebodings of trouble. He does not
+appear to have had the slightest notion of how to behave, or that he
+was about to be introduced to a man who had completely governed the
+destinies of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye and
+penetrating vision measured the man's character and capabilities at a
+glance. He said to his friends, "That man is malevolent; his eye is
+that of a hyena." Subsequent events only intensified this belief.
+
+Perhaps the best that can be said of Lowe is that he possessed
+distorted human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good
+business man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has
+never been assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say
+that he was suited to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to
+fulfil. In fact, all his actions prove him to have been without an
+atom of tact, judgment, or administrative quality, and his nature had
+a big unsympathetic flaw in it. The fact is, there are indications
+that his nature was warped from the beginning, and that he was just
+the very kind of man who ought never to have been sent to a post of
+such varied responsibilities. His appointment shows how appallingly
+ignorant or wicked the Government, or Bathurst, were in their
+selection of him.
+
+He was a monomaniac pure and simple. If they thought him best suited
+to pursue a policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect,
+though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand,
+they were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either
+carelessness or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity,
+and by their act they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet
+there is a pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the
+cold, inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with fear,
+smitten with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to Montholon,
+"His death is my ruin."[4]
+
+Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but
+no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was
+conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the
+instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government, and
+the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his
+household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have
+acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy to twist words
+used either in conversations or letters into meanings which they were
+never intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of
+cold-blooded outbursts of tyrannical intent to be set aside, and
+these make it impossible to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light
+than that of a petty little despot.
+
+He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently suited to
+"command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that memorable verbal
+conversation which arose through Lowe requesting that 200,000 francs
+per annum should be found as a contribution towards the expenses at
+Longwood: "I have never heard your name mentioned except as a brigand
+chief. You never suffer a day to pass without torturing me with your
+insults." This undoubtedly was a bitter attack, and the plainspoken
+words used must have wounded Lowe intensely. Probably Napoleon
+himself, on reflection, thought them too severe, even though they may
+be presumed to be literally true, and it may be taken for granted that
+they would never have been uttered but for the spiteful provocation.
+
+A more discerning man would have foreseen that he could not treat a
+great being like the late Emperor of the French as though _he_ were a
+Corsican brigand without having to pay a severe penalty. An ordinary
+prisoner might have submitted with amiable resignation to the
+disciplinary methods which, to the oblique vision of Sir Hudson Lowe,
+seemed to be necessary, but to treat the Emperor as though he were in
+that category was a perversion of all decency, and no one but a Hudson
+Lowe would have attempted it. It is quite certain that the dethroned
+arbiter of Europe never, in his most exalted period, treated any of
+his subordinates with such airs of majesty as St. Helena's Governor
+adopted towards him.
+
+Lowe seems to have had an inherent notion that the position in which
+he was placed entitled him to pursue a policy of unrelenting severity,
+and that homage should be paid as his reward. He thirsted for respect
+to be shown himself, and was amazed at the inordinate ingratitude of
+the French in not recognising his amiable qualities. It was his habit
+to remind them that but for his clemency in carrying out the
+instructions of Bathurst and those who acted with him, their condition
+could be made unendurable. He was incapable of grasping the lofty
+personality of the persecuted guest of England.
+
+The popular, though erroneous, idea that Napoleon was, and ever had
+been, a beast of prey, fascinated him; his days were occupied in
+planning out schemes of closer supervision, and his nights were
+haunted with the vision of his charge smashing down every barrier he
+had racked his intellect to construct, and then vanishing from the
+benevolent custody of his saintly Government to again wage sanguinary
+war and spill rivers of blood. The awful presentiment of escape and
+the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit, and
+thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions impishly
+vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity. Napoleon aptly
+described Lowe as "being afflicted with an inveterate itch."
+
+Montholon, in vol. i. p. 184, relates how Lowe would often leap out of
+bed in the middle of the night, after dreaming of the Emperor's
+flight, mount his horse and ride, like a man demented, to Longwood,
+only to be assured by the officer on duty that all was well and that
+the smitten hero was still his prisoner. When Napoleon was told of
+these nocturnal visitations, he was overcome with mirth, but at the
+same time filled with contempt, not alone for this amazing specimen,
+but for the creatures who had created him a dignitary.
+
+The tragic farce of sending the Emperor to the poisonous plateau of
+Longwood, and giving Lowe Plantation House with its much more healthy
+climate to reside at, is a phenomenon which few people who have made
+themselves conversant with all the facts and circumstances will be
+able to understand. But the policy of this Government, of whom the
+Scottish bard sings so rapturously, is a problem that can never be
+solved.
+
+To a wise body of men, and in view of the fact that the eyes of the
+world were fixed upon them and on the vanquished man, their prisoner,
+the primary thought would have been compassion, even to indulgence;
+instead of which they and their agents behaved as though they were
+devoid of humane feelings.
+
+Lowe's ambition seems to have been to ignore propriety, and to force
+his way to the Emperor's privacy in order that he might assure himself
+that his charge had not escaped, but his ambition and his heroics were
+calmly and contemptuously ignored. "Tell my gaoler," said Napoleon to
+his valet Noverras, "that it is in his power to change his keys for
+the hatchet of the executioner, and that if he enters, it shall be
+over a corpse. Give me my pistols," and it is said by Montholon, to
+whom the Emperor was dictating at the time of the intrusion, that Sir
+Hudson heard this answer and retired confounded. The ultimatum dazed
+him, but he was forced to understand that beyond a certain limit,
+heroics, fooleries, and impertinences would not be tolerated by this
+terrible scavenger of European bureaucracy.[5] Lowe, in very truth,
+discerned the stern reality of the Emperor's piercing words, and he
+felt the need of greater caution bearing down on him. He pondered over
+these grave developments as he journeyed back to Plantation House,
+there to concoct and dispatch with all speed a tale that would chill
+his confederates at St. Stephen's with horror, and give them a further
+opportunity of showing how wise _they_ were in their plan of
+banishment and rigid precautions, and in their selection of so
+distinguished and dauntless a person as Sir Hudson Lowe, on whom they
+implicitly relied to carry out their Christlike benefactions.
+
+Cartoonists, pamphleteers, Bourbonites, treasonites, meteoric females,
+all were supplied with the requisite material for declamatory speeches
+to be hurled at the Emperor in the hope of being reaped to the glory
+of God and the British ministry. The story of the attempted invasion
+of Longwood and its sequel shocks the fine susceptibilities of the
+satellites by whom Lowe is surrounded. They bellow out frothy words of
+vengeance. Sir Thomas Reade, the noisiest filibuster of them all,
+indicates his method of settling matters at Longwood. This incident
+arose through Napoleon refusing to see Sir Thomas Strange, an Indian
+Judge. Las Cases had just been forcibly removed. The Emperor was
+feeling the cruelty of this act very keenly, so he sent the following
+reply to Lowe's request that he should see Sir Thomas: "Tell the
+Governor that those who have gone down to the tomb receive no visits,
+and take care that the Judge be made acquainted with my answer." This
+cutting reply caused Sir Hudson to give way to unrestrained anger, and
+now Sir Thomas Reade gets his chance of vapouring. Here is his plan:
+"If I were Governor, I would bring that dog of a Frenchman to his
+senses; I would isolate him from all his friends, who are no better
+than himself; then I would deprive him of his books. He is, in fact,
+nothing but a miserable outlaw, and I would treat him as such.
+By G--! it would be a great mercy to the King of France to rid him of
+such a fellow altogether. It was a piece of great cowardice not to
+have sent him at once to a court martial instead of sending him
+here."[6]
+
+This ebullition of spasmodic courage entitles the
+Deputy-Adjutant-General to special mention in the dispatches of his
+chief. O'Meara relates another of many episodes with which the
+valiant Sir Thomas is associated. Further attempts were made to
+violate the privacy of the Emperor on the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 16th
+August, 1819, but these were defeated by the fastening of doors. Count
+Montholon was indisposed, and the Governor, refusing to correspond
+with Count Bertrand, insisted upon having communication with the
+Emperor by letter or by one of his officers twice a day. So the
+immortal Sir Thomas Reade and another staff officer were selected to
+effect a communication. But "the dog of a Frenchman" that the deputy
+boasted of "bringing to his senses" refuses admittance, and Sir
+Thomas, who has now got his opportunity, evidently has some misgivings
+about the loaded pistols that are kept handy in case of an emergency.
+The Emperor, in one of his slashing dictated declarations which hit
+home with every biting sentence, reminds the Governor again what the
+inevitable result will be should indecorous liberty be taken. Sir
+Thomas would be made aware of this danger, so contents himself by
+knocking at the door and shouting at the top of his voice: "Come out,
+Napoleon Bonaparte. We want Napoleon Bonaparte."
+
+This grotesque incident, which is only one of many and worse outrages
+that were hatched at Plantation House, reflects a lurid light on the
+delirium of antagonism that pervaded the dispositions of some of
+England's representatives. The hysterical delight of manufacturing
+annoyances was notorious on the island, and Sir Hudson and his
+myrmidons shrieked with resentment when dignified defiance was the
+only response.
+
+Lowe failed to recognise the important ethical fact that a person who
+acts a villainous part can never realise his villainy. So oblivious
+was he of this fundamental law that he never ceased to assure the
+exiles that he was not only good, but kind. Here is a note that bears
+out this self-consciousness: "General Bonaparte cannot be allowed to
+traverse the island freely. Had the only question been that of his
+safety, a mere commission of the East India Company would have been
+sufficient to guard him at St. Helena. He may consider himself
+fortunate that my Government has sent a man so kind as myself to guard
+him, otherwise he would be put in chains, to teach him how to conduct
+himself better."
+
+To this the Emperor answered: "In this case it is obvious that, if the
+instructions given to Sir Hudson Lowe by Lords Bathurst and
+Castlereagh do not contain an order to kill me, a verbal order must
+have been given; for whenever people wish mysteriously to destroy a
+man, the first thing they do is to cut him off from all communication
+with society, and surround him with the shades of mystery, till,
+having accustomed the world to hear nothing said of him, and to forget
+him, they can easily torture him or make him disappear."
+
+What a dreadful indictment this is against Bathurst, Castlereagh, and
+Lowe, and how difficult to think of these men at the same time as of
+Napoleon, whose name had kept the world in awe! Surely their dwarfed
+names and those of all the allied traitors and conspirators will pass
+on down the ages subjects for mockery and derision, while his shall
+still tower above everything unto all time. His faults will be
+obscured by the magnificence of his powerful and beneficent reign, and
+overshadowed by pity for his unspeakable martyrdom.
+
+But what of the Commissioners representing Russia, Austria, Prussia,
+and the Most Christian King of France? How shall they fare at the
+hands of posterity? Their crime will not be that they acquiesced in
+being sent to St. Helena by their respective Governments, but that
+they allowed themselves to be completely cajoled and influenced by the
+crafty allurements of Lowe. The representative of Austria is said to
+have been a mere cipher in his hands, while the attention of Count
+Balmin was wholly taken up in making love to Miss Johnson, the eldest
+daughter of Lady Lowe by a former marriage. He eventually married her
+and became one of the family. This young lady's charm of character and
+goodness had captured the affections of the Longwood colony, and her
+tender solicitude for the sorrows of the Emperor caused him to form an
+attachment for her which was evidenced by his gracious attentions
+whenever she came to Longwood.
+
+The Marquis de Montchenu (who on landing at St. Helena found himself
+in the midst of a group of officers attending on Sir Hudson, and
+called out, "For the love of God, tell me if any of you speak French")
+is not much heard of in his official capacity. Afterwards he appears
+to have been enamoured of the Governor's good dinners, but though he
+was always hospitable, kind, and glad to see his compatriots at his
+breakfast table, the Emperor never would receive him, though he always
+showed appreciation of his promptitude in forwarding to him French
+papers or books. The Marquis would naturally find it difficult to
+assert himself when he heard of the wrongs committed by his host.
+
+The restrictions imposed on the Emperor were by this time having an
+ominous effect. O'Meara reported that this was so, and the
+Commissioners, whose instructions from their Governments were merely
+formal, thought it their duty to bestir themselves, and requested the
+Governor to remove the causes in so far as it was "compatible with the
+security of his person," lest the result from want of exercise should
+be of serious consequences to his health. Sir Hudson was angry at the
+turn affairs were taking, as the Commissioners had always accommodated
+themselves to his plans. He found, however, that in this instance
+humanity had been aroused, and as it would not suit his purpose to run
+against his hitherto complacent friends, he thinks to appease their
+anxiety in the following extraordinary manner:--
+
+"I am about to arrange in such a way as to allow him to take horse
+exercise. I have no wish that he should die of an attack of
+apoplexy--that would be very embarrassing both to me and to my
+Government. I would much rather he should die of a tedious disease
+which our physicians could properly declare to be natural. Apoplexy
+furnishes too many grounds for comment."[7]
+
+This insensate mockery of a man is always asserting himself in some
+detestable fashion or other.[8]
+
+At one time his benighted mind would swagger him into droll ideas of
+attempting to chastise his Imperial prisoner, at another, his
+childish fear of the consequences of his chastisement was pathetic,
+and when one droll farce after another broke down, he shielded himself
+with manifestations of aggrieved virtue.
+
+The Emperor received Lord Amherst, who was a man of some human
+feeling, and the noble lord offered to convey to the precious Prince
+Regent certain messages. Then Napoleon, aroused by the recollection of
+the perfidy which was causing him such infinite suffering, declared
+that neither his King nor his nation had any right over him. "Your
+country," he exclaims, "sets an example of twenty millions of men
+oppressing one individual." With prophetic utterance he foreshadows "a
+terrible war hatched under the ashes of the Empire." Nations are to
+avenge the ingratitude of the Kings whom he "crowned and pardoned."
+And then, as though his big soul had sickened at the thought of it
+all, he exclaims, "Inform your Prince Regent that I await as a favour
+the axe of the executioner." Lord Amherst was deeply affected, and
+promised to tell of all his sufferings and indignities to the Regent,
+and also to speak to the saintly Lowe thereon. "Useless," interjects
+the Emperor; "crime, hatred, is his nature. It is necessary to his
+enjoyment to torture me. He is like the tiger, who tears with his
+claws the prey whose agonies he takes pleasure in prolonging." The
+audience then closes and the sordid tragedy continues.
+
+The Commissioners are to have bulletins, but no communication with the
+Imperial abode. O'Meara is asked to prepare inspired bulletins, and to
+report what he hears and learns from the Emperor, and in a general way
+act the spy. He refused, and as Lowe required willing tools, not
+honest men, he was ultimately banished from the island. The Emperor
+embraces him, bestows his benediction, and gives him credentials of
+the highest order, together with messages of affection to members of
+his family and to the accommodating Marie Louise, who is now mistress
+to the Austrian Count Neipperg. He is charged to convey kindly
+thoughts of esteem and gratitude to the good Lady Holland for all her
+kindness to him. The King of Rome is tenderly remembered, and O'Meara
+is asked to send intelligence as to the manner of his education. A
+message is entrusted to him for Prince Joseph, who is to give to
+O'Meara the private and confidential letters of the Emperors Alexander
+and Francis, the King of Prussia, and the other sovereigns of Europe.
+He then thanks O'Meara for his care of him and bids him "quit the
+abode of darkness and crime."[9]
+
+Before O'Meara left the island, news of the diabolical treatment of
+the Emperor had filtered through to Europe in spite of Lowe's
+precautions. The _Edinburgh Review_ had published several articles
+exposing the Governor's conduct, and when these were delivered at St.
+Helena (addressed to Longwood) a great commotion arose at Plantation
+House. Reade had orders to buy every one of the obnoxious
+publications, but determined men of talent are not easily thwarted in
+their object, especially if it is a good one, so the Governor had the
+mortification of seeing himself outwitted. O'Meara was confronted and
+charged with securing for Montholon the objectionable _Edinburgh
+Review_. The articles gave the Emperor great pleasure, and when this
+was made known to Lowe it was intolerable to him. O'Meara gets
+official notice to quit on July 25, 1818.
+
+Napoleon thought it a bold stroke on the part of the British Ministers
+(whom he regarded, and spoke quite openly of, as assassins) to force
+his physician from him. The doctor took the precaution to reveal the
+place of concealment of his journal to Montholon, who found a way of
+having it sent to him in England. This document was read to the
+Emperor, who had several errors corrected, which do not appear to have
+been of great importance, except one that had reference to the
+shooting of the Duc d'Enghien.[10]
+
+On the day following his exit from Longwood O'Meara sent a report on
+the exile's illness and his treatment thereof. The report is an
+alarming account of the health of the Emperor, who, notwithstanding,
+is deprived of medical aid for months. He justly adhered to the
+determination of having none other than his own medical attendant.
+Lowe sees in this very reasonable request a subtle attempt at planning
+escape, and will not concede it. An acrimonious correspondence then
+takes place. Letters sent to him by Montholon or Bertrand are returned
+because Napoleon is styled Emperor. Montholon in turn imitates Lowe,
+and returns his on the ground of incivility, and it must be admitted
+the French score off him each time.
+
+Lowe whines to Montholon that Bertrand calls him a fool to the
+Commissioners, and accuses him of collecting all the complaints he can
+gather together, so that he may have them published. The newspapers,
+particularly the _Edinburgh Review_, have slashing articles holding
+him up to ridicule and denouncing him as an "assassin." He whimpers
+that it is very hard that he, who pays every attention and regard for
+the Emperor's feelings, should be pursued and made the victim of
+calumnies. These expressions of unctuous pharisaism are coldly
+received by the French, who ask no favours but claim justice. Their
+thoughts are full of the wrongs perpetrated on the great man who is
+the object of their attachment and pity. They will listen to none of
+Lowe's canting humbug. They see incontestable evidences of the
+Destroyer enfolding his arms around the hero who had thrilled the
+nations of the world with his deeds. Their souls throb with fierce
+emotion at the agony caused by the venomously malignant tyranny. The
+meanest privileges of humanity are denied him, and if they plotted in
+order that the world might learn of the hideous oppression, who, with
+a vestige of holy pity in him, will deny that their motive was
+laudable? Let critics say what they will, these devoted followers of a
+fallen and sorely stricken chief are an example of imperishable
+loyalty. They had their differences, their petty jealousies, and at
+times bemoaned their hard fate, and this oft-times caused the Emperor
+to quickly rebuke them.
+
+Gourgaud was the Peter of the family, and a great source of trouble.
+He may justly be accused at times of lapsing into disloyalty. He was
+guilty both on the island and after his arrival in England of
+committing the same fault, but in this latter instance he may have had
+a purpose, as he was asking favours from men who were bitterly hostile
+to his benefactor. He knew they would be glad to hear anything from so
+important an authority as would in any degree justify their action.
+Gourgaud, in fact, was more knave than fool, as his subsequent
+beseeching appeals on behalf of Napoleon to Marie Louise and other
+personages in France very clearly prove.
+
+But take these men and women as a whole, view the circumstances and
+conditions of life on this rock of vile memory, inquire as minutely as
+you may into their conduct, and you see, towering above all, that
+their supreme interest is centred on him whom they voluntarily
+followed into exile. He is their ideal of human greatness, their
+friend, and their Emperor.
+
+They view Sir Hudson Lowe as they would a distracted phenomenon. The
+introduction of new and frivolous vexations is occasionally ignored or
+looked upon with despairing amusement. At other times, when their
+master's rights, dignity, and matchless personality are assailed, they
+resent it with fierce impulse, and this gives Lowe further
+opportunities of reminding them of his goodness. But during the long,
+weary years of incessant provocation, criminal retaliation was never
+thought of except on one occasion, when some new arbitrary rules were
+put in force.
+
+Santini, a Corsican, and one of the domestics, brooded over his
+master's wrongs. He was generally of a cheerful temperament, but since
+the new regulations were enforced it had been noticed that his whole
+disposition had changed. He became thoughtful and dejected, and one
+day made known to Cipriani his deliberate intention to shoot the
+Governor the first time he came to Longwood. Cipriani used all his
+influence to dissuade him from committing so rash an act, and finding
+that Santini was immovable, he reported the matter to Napoleon, who
+had the devoted keeper of his portfolio brought to him, and commanded
+him as his Emperor to cease thinking of injuring Sir Hudson. It took
+the Emperor some time to persuade Santini, and when he did give his
+promise it was with marked reluctance. Santini is spoken of as being
+as brave as a lion, an expert with the small sword, and a deadly shot.
+He was subsequently sent off the island, the Emperor granting him a
+pension of L50 per annum.
+
+Santini was the only one who refused to sign a document put forward
+by Lowe in which all the officers and domestics pledged themselves to
+conform to the new regulations, which were, as usual, senseless and
+severe. They insisted on the words "Emperor Napoleon" being inserted,
+but Lowe, with inherent stupid pleasure, would have none other than
+the words "Napoleon Bonaparte," and the penalty for refusing to sign
+was banishment from the island. Sir Hudson got it into his malevolent
+brain that he had pinned them at last. He affirmed that their reason
+for not signing what they pretended was their Emperor's and their own
+degradation was to give an excuse for being "sent off." Whereupon, as
+soon as the Governor's crafty insinuations became known, they all
+signed except Santini, who refused to have Napoleon described by any
+other term than that of Emperor.
+
+Santini's loyalty to his illustrious master cost him the anguish of
+being torn from his service and sent to the Cape of Good Hope in the
+English frigate _Orontes_. He stayed there a few days, but returned
+almost immediately to St. Helena. He was not, however, allowed to
+land; and, having spent some days at the anchorage, sailed on February
+25, 1817, for England.
+
+These refractory captives of the British authorities seem to have
+been a source of great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost
+to the nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing
+with them. The business grows so farcical that the English guardians
+become the laughing-stock of the most menial creatures on the island.
+
+Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching appeal
+to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena atrocities, the
+main facts of which have never been contradicted. Any exaggerations
+which may appear in the pamphlet, coming as they do from a soldier
+whose adoration for his Emperor amounted to fanaticism, may be
+excused; but, whatever his faults, the ugly facts remain unshaken.
+
+There is no evidence in all the voluminous publications concerning
+Napoleon at St. Helena that there would have been a shred of mourning
+put on by the best men and women of any nationality residing on this
+inhospitable rock had Santini or any one else despatched the petty
+tyrant who was carrying on a nefarious assassination by the consent,
+if not the instructions, of an equally nefarious Ministry. Perhaps his
+Imperial victim would have been the only person outside his family and
+official circle who would have deplored the act. It is pretty
+generally admitted that Lowe was detested by all classes who knew of
+the villainous methods adopted by him to give pain to Napoleon and to
+any one who showed the slightest sympathy towards him.
+
+Letters from and to his wife, "the amiable Austrian Archduchess," his
+mother, and other members of his family, were not allowed to pass
+unless scrutinised and commented upon by this insatiable gaoler.
+Letters written to the Ministry and to well-disposed public men
+outside it were not forwarded, on the pretext that the title of
+Emperor was used. A marble bust of the Emperor's son was brought to
+St. Helena by T.M. Radowich, master gunner aboard the ship _Baring_.
+It was taken possession of by the authorities, and had been in Lowe's
+hands for some days when he intimated to Count Bertrand that, though
+it was against the regulations, he would take upon himself to hand
+over some presents sent out by Lady Holland and some left by Mr.
+Manning. A more embarrassing matter was the handing over of the bust.
+The mystery and comic absurdity of some Government officials of that
+time, or even of this, is amazing.
+
+Lowe's dull perceptions had been awakened. He realised that he might
+be accused of having committed an exceedingly dirty trick. He thinks
+it in keeping with the dignity of his high office to become uneasy
+about the retention of these articles, especially the statue of the
+King of Rome. So with unconscious humour he asks the Count if he
+thinks Napoleon would really like to have his son's bust. The Count
+replies, "You had better send it this very evening, and not detain it
+until to-morrow." Lowe is aggrieved at the coldness of the reply. He
+presumably expected Bertrand to gush out torrents of gratitude. But
+the French code of real good taste and humane bearing put Sir Hudson
+Lowe beneath their contempt. To them he had become indescribable.
+
+To all those who had access to Napoleon, the burning love he had for
+his son was well known, and in one of those outbursts of passionate
+anguish he declares to the Countess of Montholon that it was for him
+alone that he returned from Elba, and if he still formed some
+expectations in exile, they were for him also. He declares that he is
+the source of his greatest anguish, and that every day he costs him
+tears of blood. He imagines to himself the most horrid events, which
+he cannot remove from his mind. He sees either the potion or the
+empoisoned fruit which is about to terminate the days of the young
+innocent by the most cruel sufferings, and then, after this pouring
+out of the innermost soul, he pleads with Madame to compassionate his
+weakness, and asks her to console him.
+
+This learned warrior-statesman was also a poet, and but for the
+solitude of exile we should probably never have seen that side of this
+versatile nature. The lines which he writes to the portrait of his son
+are painfully touching. For some reason they were kept concealed, and
+found some time afterwards. Here they are, but the English translation
+does not do them justice:--
+
+    Delightful image of my much-loved boy!
+    Behold his eyes, his looks, his smile!
+    No more, alas! will he enkindle joy,
+    Nor on some kindlier shore my woes beguile.
+
+    My son! my darling son! wert thou but here,
+    My bosom should receive thy lovely form;
+    Thou'dst soothe my gloomy hours with converse dear,
+    Serenely we'd behold the lowering storm.
+
+    I'd be the partner of thine infant cares,
+    And pour instruction o'er thy expanding mind,
+    Whilst in thy heart, in my declining years,
+    My wearied soul should an asylum find.
+
+    My wrongs, my cares, should be forgot with thee,
+    My power Imperial, dignities, renown--
+    This rock itself would be a heaven to me,
+    Thine arms more cherished than the victor's crown.
+
+    O! in thine arms, my son! I could forget that fame
+    Shall give me, through all time, a never-dying name.
+
+Here is another version of the same thoughts:--
+
+    TO THE PORTRAIT OF MY SON.
+
+    O! cherished image of my infant heir!
+    Thy surface does his lineaments impart:
+    But ah! thou liv'st not--on this rock so bare
+    His living form shall never glad my heart.
+
+    My second self! how would thy presence cheer
+    The settled sadness of thy hapless sire!
+    Thine infancy with tenderness I'd rear,
+    And thou shouldst warm my age with youthful fire.
+
+    In thee a truly glorious crown I'd find,
+    With thee, upon this rock, a heaven should own,
+    Thy kiss would chase past conquests from my mind
+    Which raised me, demi-god, on Gallia's throne.
+
+Perhaps the Emperor did not wish to show all the anguish by which he
+was being hourly devoured, but who can read these lines now without a
+pang of emotion? The overpowering conviction that his much-loved boy
+would be destroyed haunted him. Many people to this day believe that
+he was right, and that his son's health was sedulously undermined. But
+if that be so, the Imperial House of Austria will have to answer for
+it through all eternity. Napoleon knew that this much-treasured bust
+was at Plantation House, and said to O'Meara, if it had not been given
+up he would have told a tale which would have made the mothers of
+England execrate Lowe as a monster in human shape.
+
+But the Governments of Europe, as well as individuals, were spending
+vast sums of money on pamphleteering, and probably those who wrote the
+worst libels were the most highly paid. Therefore the women of England
+and of other countries were continuously having their minds saturated
+with poisonous statements. Many of them firmly believed Napoleon to be
+the anti-Christ, and it is only now that the world is beginning to see
+through the gigantic plot.
+
+It was stated that the bust had been executed at Leghorn by order of
+the faithless Marie Louise. In Hooper's "Life of Wellington," the
+statement that "she was grateful to the Duke for winning Waterloo,
+because in 1815 she had a lover who afterwards became her husband, and
+she was not in a condition to return with safety to her Imperial
+spouse," is hard to believe. This mother of the son the poet-Emperor
+sings about was deriving pleasure in playing cards for napoleons with
+the Duke who was regarded by her husband as one of his most determined
+executioners. Her supposed connection with the statue naturally gave
+it a larger interest, so the Emperor expressed a desire to see the
+gunner, and ordered Bertrand to get permission for him to visit
+Longwood.
+
+The Governor, after examining the gunner on oath, and having had him
+carefully searched, gave him leave to see Napoleon, but Captain
+Poppleton was ordered not to allow him to speak to the French unless
+in his presence. This arbitrary condition was resented with quiet,
+scornful dignity, and the gunner was asked to withdraw. It is hard to
+believe that a man could be so perversely crooked as Sir Hudson Lowe.
+How human it was for the exile to long to hear a message from the lips
+of one who was credited with having seen and spoken to the mother of
+his son, and how inhuman of Lowe to put any obstacles in the way of
+his desire being gratified!
+
+The incident became common talk, and in proportion to its circulation,
+so did Lowe's reputation suffer. It is questionable whether he could
+have found any one unfeeling enough on the island to justify so
+despicable an act, except perhaps Sir Thomas Reade, whose baseness in
+this and other transactions cannot be adequately described, and whose
+nature seems to have been ingrained with the daily thought of
+achieving distinction by excelling his master in some form of cruelty.
+
+It is a piteous reflection to think of these two plants of grace, the
+one at all times imbued with the idea of some sanguinary plan of
+punishment, while the other varied the plan of his doubtful
+transactions, at the same time telling the exiles that he was actuated
+by the sweetest and purest of motives.
+
+In contrast to Lowe and Reade, the chroniclers speak in the highest
+praise of Major Gorriquer. The officers and soldiers of the garrison,
+as well as the men of the navy, extended their touching sympathy to
+the hero who described his imprisonment as being worse than
+"Tamerlane's iron cage." Captain Maitland, in his narrative, relates a
+story which indicates the magnetic power of this great soldier.
+Maitland was anxious to know what his men thought of Napoleon, so he
+asked his servant, who told him that he had heard several of them
+talking about him, and one of them had observed, "Well, they may abuse
+that man as much as they please; but if the people of England knew him
+as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of his head." To which
+the others agreed.
+
+There are many instances recorded where sailors ran the risk of being
+shot in order that they might get a glimpse of him, and there is
+little doubt the poor gunner-messenger was subjected to inimitable
+moral lectures on the sin and pains and penalties of having any
+communication whatsoever with the ungentle inhabitants of Longwood.
+This good-hearted fellow was as carefully shadowed as though he had
+been commissioned to carry the Emperor off. Lowe was infected with the
+belief that he had some secret designs, and if he were not kept under
+close supervision he might take to sauntering on his own account and
+really have some talk with the French, and then what might happen?
+This episode was brought to a close by the Emperor directing that a
+kind letter should be written to the enterprising sailor, and that a
+draft for _L_300 should be enclosed. O'Meara says, "By means of some
+unworthy trick he did not receive it for nearly two years."
+
+The reason so much is made of the bust affair is accounted for as
+follows:--
+
+Lowe, on first hearing of it being landed, intended to have it seized
+and thrown into the sea. He afterwards took possession of the article,
+with the idea of making Napoleon a present of it himself. This idea
+did not pan out as he expected, and in consequence of public
+indignation running so high, he had the bust sent to Longwood
+immediately after his conversation with Bertrand. While Las Cases was
+waiting at Mannheim in the hope that the pathetic appeals he had made
+to the sovereigns on behalf of Napoleon would bring to him a
+favourable decision, the Dalmatian gunner heard of him. He was passing
+through Germany to his home after a fruitless attempt in London to get
+the money Napoleon had enclosed in his letter. The reason given was
+that the persons on whom it was drawn were not then in possession of
+the necessary funds. Las Cases paid him, and received his appropriate
+blessings for his goodness. Imprecations against Lowe were lavishly
+bestowed by the gunner. He had been prevented from landing at St.
+Helena on his way back from India, and but for this spiteful act of
+Lowe's the money would have been paid at once.
+
+Meanwhile the touching appeals of Las Cases to the sovereigns were
+unheeded. Even Napoleon's father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, who
+had given his daughter in marriage to the arbiter of Europe, did not
+deign to reply, though only a brief time before he had received many
+tokens of magnanimity from the French Emperor. So, indeed, had other
+kings and queens of that time, not excluding Alexander of Russia; but
+more hereafter about these monarchs who had once clamoured for the
+honour of alliances with Napoleon and with his family, but who now
+were conspirators in the act of a great assassination.
+
+Some three years before, Lord Keith was horrified when Captain
+Maitland informed him on board the _Bellerophon_, in Torbay, that the
+Duke of Rovigo, Lallemand, Montholon, and Gourgaud had said that their
+Emperor would not go to St. Helena, and if he were to consent, they
+would prevent it, meaning that they would end his existence rather
+than witness any further degradation of him. Lord Keith is indignant,
+and replies to Sir Frederick Maitland, "You may tell those gentlemen
+who have threatened to be Bonaparte's executioners that the law of
+England awards death to murderers, and that the certain consequence of
+such an act will be finishing their career on a gallows." Precisely!
+
+The noble lord's fascinating little speech is quite in accord with
+justice, but did _he_ ever raise a finger to prevent his colleagues
+and their renowned deputy from committing the same crime at St.
+Helena, and after this same Bonaparte's demise, were any steps taken
+to call to account those whom the great soldier had consistently
+declared were causing his premature death? Lord Keith, with his eyes
+uplifted to heaven, had said, "England awards death to murderers," and
+in this we are agreed, but there must be no fine distinction drawn as
+to who the perpetrators are or their reason for doing it. Whether a
+person for humanity's sake is despatched by a friendly pistol-shot or
+the process of six years of refined cruelty, the crime is the same,
+the only difference being (if life has to be taken) that it is more
+merciful it should be done expeditiously.
+
+The French revered their Emperor, and could not bear to witness his
+dire humiliation at the hands of men so infinitely his inferiors,
+hence the thought of unlawfully ending his existence. On the other
+hand, members of the British Government were swollen out with haughty
+righteousness; they regarded themselves as deputies of the Omnipotent.
+They determined in solemn conclave that the man against whom they had
+waged war for twenty years, and who was only now beaten by a
+combination of circumstances, should be put through the ordeal of an
+inquisition. If he held out long, well and good, but should he succumb
+to their benign treatment, their faith would be steadfast in their own
+blamelessness. They were quite unconscious of being an unspeakable
+brood of hollow, heartless mediocrities. Why did Lord Keith not give
+_them_, as he did the devoted Frenchmen, a little sermon on the
+orthodoxy of the gallows? They were far more in need of his guiding
+influence.
+
+The British public were deceived by the most malevolent publications.
+The great captive was made to appear so dangerous an animal that
+neither soldiers nor sailors could keep him in subjection, and the
+stories of his misdeeds when at the height of his ravishing glory were
+spread broadcast everywhere. Nothing, indeed, was base enough for the
+oligarchy of England and the French Royalists to stoop to.
+
+For a time the flow of wickedness went on unchecked. At last a few
+good men and women began to speak out the truth, and as though Nature
+revolted against the scoundrelism that had been and was now being
+perpetrated, a sharp and swelling reaction came over the public. Men
+and women began to express the same views as Captain Maitland's
+sailors had expressed, viz.: "This man cannot be so bad as they make
+him out to be."
+
+Las Cases had been sent to the Cape, but his journal, containing
+conversations, dictations, and the general daily life of the exiles
+since they embarked aboard the _Bellerophon_, was seized by Lowe, so
+that he might pry into it with the hope of finding seditious entries.
+(It may be taken for granted that no eulogy of himself appeared
+therein.) The poor Count and his son on arrival at the Cape were
+confined in an unhealthy hovel, and treated more like galley-slaves
+than human beings. After some weeks of this truly British hospitality
+under the Liverpool-Bathurst regime he determines to make a last
+appeal to Lord Charles Somerset, then Governor at the Cape, to be more
+compassionate. He had been told that nothing but a dog or a horse
+attracted either his sympathy or his attention, and frankly admits
+that he found himself in error in thinking so harshly of his
+lordship, as his appeal met with a prompt and generous response.
+
+The Governor, in fact, expressed his sorrow on learning for the first
+time of the Count's illness and the conditions under which he was
+living. He immediately put at his disposal his country residence,
+servants, and all else that would add to his comfort, and thus earned
+the eternal gratitude of a much persecuted father and son. Lord
+Charles Somerset, for this gracious act alone, will rank amongst the
+good-hearted Englishmen of that troublesome time. It would appear that
+the Cape Governor's subordinates were entirely responsible for the
+ill-treatment complained of.
+
+It is a puzzle to know for what purpose this gentleman and his son
+were detained at the Cape. The Count had frequently pointed out the
+folly of his detention, and begged Lord Charles to allow them to take
+their passage in a small brig of 200 tons that was bound to Europe.
+This request was agreed to, a passport granted, and the captain of the
+craft that was to be carried "in the sailors' arms" three thousand
+leagues was given stern instructions that should he touch anywhere,
+his passengers were to have no communication with the shore, and on
+reaching England they were not to be allowed to land without receiving
+orders from the Government.
+
+Whatever other charge may be brought against Las Cases, the lack of
+courage can never be cited. The act of taking so long a passage in
+this cockleshell of a vessel is a sure testimony of his devotion and
+bravery. The food and the accommodation were of the very worst, and
+though the account given of the low thunder of the waves lashing on
+the decks is not very sailorly, there can be little doubt that so long
+a passage could not be made without some startling vicissitudes.
+
+At length, after nearly one hundred days from the Cape, they are
+safely landed at Dover, and make their way to London to apprise the
+immortal Bathurst of their arrival and of their desire to see him, so
+that he might listen to some observations about St. Helena matters.
+This man of mighty mystery and dignity does not deign to reply, but
+sends a Ministerial messenger to inform the Count that it is the
+Prince Regent's pleasure that he quits Great Britain instantly. Las
+Cases tells the messenger that it is a "very sorry, silly pleasure"
+for His Royal Highness to have, but he has to quit all the same, as
+England is now governed by "sorry, silly pleasure." Another batch of
+papers is taken from him, and he is bundled away to Ostend and from
+thence to other inhospitable countries, and ultimately lands at
+Frankfort.
+
+The Count writes many clever, rather long, but disturbing letters to
+noble lords in England, to members of Governments in other countries,
+and to every crowned head interested in the little community they have
+in safe and despotic keeping at St. Helena. He sends a petition to the
+British Parliament stating in clear, clinching terms another
+indictment against the British Ministry and their agent. This document
+was sent from the deserts of Tygerberg, but like much more of a
+similar kind, not a word was said about it. The author, however, was
+not to be fooled or driven from the path which he conceived to be his
+duty to his much wronged Emperor, so the petition was published, and
+created a great sensation.
+
+This had to be subdued or counteracted, and as the Government were
+unaccustomed to manly, straightforward dealing, they fell back on
+their natural method of intrigue and the spreading of reports that
+were likely to encourage and create prejudice against their captive.
+It was imputed to them that while the Congress was sitting at
+Aix-la-Chapelle they got up a scare of a daring plot of escape. This
+was done at a time when the monarchs were touched with a kind of
+sympathy for the man who had so often spared them, and whom their
+cruelty was now putting to death.
+
+No wonder that this Ministry of little men were suspected of tricks
+degrading and treacherous. The recitals of their distorted versions
+of their woes affected the public imagination like a dreary litany.
+Vast communities of men were beginning to realise that a tragedy was
+being engineered in the name of sanctity and humanity.
+
+Every agency composed of cunning, unscrupulous rascals was enlisted to
+picture the Emperor as a hideous monster who should not be allowed to
+enjoy the liberty so charitably given him, and who, if he got his
+proper deserts, should be put in chains. He was depicted as having a
+mania for roaming about the island with a gun, shooting wild cats and
+anything else that came within range. Madame Bertrand's pet kids, a
+bullock, and some goats were reported to have fallen victims to this
+vicious maniac. Old Montchenu and Lowe became alarmed lest he should
+kill some human being by mistake; they perplexed their little minds as
+to the form of indictment should such an event happen. Should it be
+manslaughter or murder? This knotty question was submitted with
+touching solemnity to the law officers of the Crown for decision, and
+it may be assumed that even their sense of humour must have been
+excited when they learned of the quandary of the Governor and the
+French Commissioner. The shooting propensity set the ingenious Lowe
+a-thinking, and in order to satisfy it he evolved the idea of having
+rabbits let adrift, but, as usual, another of his little comforting
+considerations is abortive, and the plan has a tragic finish. Shooting
+is off. The Emperor's hobby has changed to gardening. The rabbits
+become an easy prey to the swarms of rats that prowl about Longwood,
+and soon disappear.
+
+It is quite probable that Napoleon did have a fancy for shooting, but
+it is well known he was never at any time a sportsman in the sense of
+being a good shot--indeed, everything points to his having no taste
+for what is ordinarily known as sport, and that he ever shot kids,
+goats, or bullocks is highly improbable. That he occasionally went
+shooting and got good sport in killing the rats and other vermin which
+made Longwood an insufferable habitation to live in is quite true. It
+is also quite true that Lowe became demented with fear in case the
+shooting should have sanguinary and far-reaching effects. Hence the
+foregoing communication to the law officers.
+
+There is little doubt as to the use that was made of the ludicrous
+inquiry by Lowe. It must have been handed over to the army of
+loathsome libellers--men and women who were willing to do the dirtiest
+of all work, that of writing and speaking lies (some abominable in
+their character) of a defenceless man, in order that their
+vindictiveness should be completely satisfied. Vast sums were
+annually expended for no other purpose than to put their afflicted
+prisoner through the torture of a living purgatory.
+
+Napoleon did not heed their silly stories of shooting exploits, though
+he knew the underlying purpose of them. It was the darker, sordid
+wickedness that was daily practised on him that ate like a canker into
+mind and body until he was a shattered wreck. It was the foul
+treatment of this great man that caused Dr. Barry O'Meara to revolt
+and openly proclaim that the captive of St. Helena was being put to
+death. As an honourable man he declared he could behold it no longer
+without making a spirited protest. He knew that this meant banishment,
+ostracism, and persecution by the Government. He foresaw that powerful
+agencies would be at work against him, and that no expense would be
+spared in order that his statements should be refuted, but he hazarded
+everything and defied the world. He came through the ordeal, as all
+impartial judges will admit, with cleaner hands and a cleaner tongue
+than those who challenged his accuracy.
+
+Make what deductions you may, distort and twist as you like the
+unimportant trivialities, the main facts related by O'Meara have never
+been really shaken. What is more, he is backed up by Napoleon himself
+in Lowe's personal interviews with him, and more particularly by his
+letters to the Governor--to say nothing of the substantial backing he
+gets from Las Cases, Montholon, Marchand, and Gourgaud--that
+shameless, jealous, lachrymose traitor to his great benefactor.
+
+And then there is Santini, whose wish to kill the Governor was not
+altogether without good reason, and who was deported from the island
+for this and other infringements of the regulations. The publication
+of his pamphlet, previously mentioned, created a great sensation, and
+it sold like wildfire. It was said to be fabrications, but it was not
+_all_ fabrications. Montholon reports that Napoleon criticised the
+work, and remarked that some one must have assisted him. Well, so it
+was. The story was related to Colonel Maceroni, an Italian, by
+Santini, and put into readable form by him, but this does not detract
+from that which is really true in it, and a good deal of what O'Meara
+contends is confirmed therein.
+
+Then O'Meara's successor, Antommarchi, has even a worse story to
+relate. These chronicles vary only in phrase and detail, and even in
+these there is wonderful similarity. But when we come down to the
+bedrock foundation of their complaints, _i.e._, the policy and
+treatment by Lowe and his myrmidons, incited by the Home Government
+and their followers, each record bears the stamp of truth--the
+indictment is the same though it may be related differently.
+
+Some writers have cast doubt on the authenticity of the St. Helena
+chroniclers without having a peg to hang their contentions on. The
+answer to all this is, that if never a line had been written by these
+men, the State papers, cunningly devised and crafty though most of
+them are, would have been ample evidence from which to draw
+unfavourable conclusions. Indeed, without State papers being brought
+into it at all, there is facing you always the glaring fact of a
+determined assassination perpetrated in the name of humanity, and if I
+felt any desire to be assured of this, I would take as an authority
+William Forsyth's three volumes written in defence of Sir Hudson Lowe.
+No author has so completely failed to prove his case. Moreover, no
+valid reason has ever been given, or ever can be, for doubting the
+veracity of O'Meara and other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite who have
+written their experiences of the St. Helena period.
+
+In the first place, those sceptical writers who deal with the
+different books that have been published relative to this part of
+Napoleon's history were not only not there to witness all that went
+on, but some of them were not born for many years after Napoleon and
+his contemporaries had passed on. So that it really narrows itself
+down to this: the knowledge the sceptics have attained is taken from
+documents or books written for the most part by the very men who they
+say are not to be relied on as giving a true version of all that took
+place during their stay at St. Helena. It cannot be disputed that
+these gentlemen were in daily and hourly contact with England's
+prisoner, and, as they aver, jotted down everything that passed in
+conversation or that transpired in other ways between themselves and
+the Emperor, or anybody else.
+
+The history of the St. Helena period, as written by authors who were
+on the spot, is, in the present writer's opinion, singularly free from
+exaggeration, let alone untruths. Besides, what had any of them to
+gain by sending forth distorted statements and untruthful history? No
+one knew better than they that every line they wrote would be
+contested by those who had relied on the rigid regulations suppressing
+all communications except those which passed through the hands of Sir
+Hudson Lowe. Certainly O'Meara cannot be accused of having ulterior
+motives, nor can any of the others--not even Gourgaud, who acted
+alternately traitor and devoted friend. Gourgaud alone seems to have
+had a mania for sinning and repenting, writing down during his
+childish fits of temper about his supposed wrongs on his shirtcuffs,
+and not infrequently his finger-nails, some nasty remark or some
+slanderous thoughts about the man whose amiable consideration for him
+was notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation
+House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his diary,
+and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this precious book,
+down they went in rancorous haste.
+
+Yet this hot-headed, jealous chronicler, guided by blind passion and
+never by reason while these moods were on him, has been held up as an
+authority that may be relied upon as to the doings and sayings of
+Napoleon and his immediate followers at the "Abode of Darkness." It is
+a well-known axiom that persons who speak or write anything while
+jealousy or temper holds them in its grip may not be counted as
+reliable people to follow, and that is exactly what happened in
+Gourgaud's case. He was the Peter of the band of disciples at St.
+Helena, and it may be considered fairly reasonable to assume that
+those who have written up the General as a sound historian have done
+so with a view to backing up prejudices, big or small, against the
+Emperor.
+
+But surely they have committed a very grave error in singling out as
+their hero of veracity a man who, in his more normal and charitable
+moods, pours out praise and pity for his Imperial chief in astonishing
+profusion.
+
+O'Meara's position was very different from any of the other diarists
+or writers. He was well aware that if he wrote an honest history it
+meant his complete ruin, yet he faced it, and defied the world to
+controvert his statements. "In face of the world," he says, "I
+challenge investigation," and "investigation" was made with a
+vengeance worthy of the Inquisition. If a word or a sentence could by
+any possible means be made to appear faulty, a scream of denunciation
+was sent forth from one end of Europe to the other, but the crime had
+sunk too deeply into the hearts of an outraged public for these
+ebullitions to have any real effect. There might be flaws in diction
+and even matters of fact, but the sordid reality of the documentary
+and verbal story that came to them was never doubted. The big heart of
+the British nation was beginning to be moved in sympathy towards the
+martyr long before his death, and of course long before O'Meara's book
+appeared, though the doctor's advent in Europe was made the occasion
+of a vigorous exposure of the progress of the great assassination.
+
+A wave of public opinion was gathering force; the Government, stupid
+and treacherous as they were, saw it rising, and renewed their silly
+efforts to stem it by causing atrocious duplicity to be instituted at
+home and on the martyr rock. Indeed, nothing was beneath their
+dignity so long as they succeeded in deceiving an agitated populace
+and accomplishing their own evil ends.
+
+But notwithstanding the tactics and the deplorable use made of the
+traitor Gourgaud, sympathetic feeling increases. Questions are
+frequently asked in the House of Commons, to which evasive answers are
+given, but reaction is so obviously gaining ground that Lords
+Liverpool, Castlereagh, and the immortal Bathurst become perturbed.
+They saw in the accession to power of Lord Holland's party a complete
+exposure of their maladministration, and a reversing of their policy
+(if it be not a libel to distinguish it as a "policy"). They knew,
+too, that once the public is fairly seized with the idea of a great
+wrong being perpetrated, no Government, however strong numerically or
+in personality, can withstand its opposition. Had the Emperor lived
+but a little longer, the vindictive men who tormented him to death
+would have been compelled to give way before not only British, but
+European, indignation. Public opinion would have enforced the
+Administration to deal out better treatment to their captive, have
+demanded his removal from the island of sorrow, and probably his
+freedom. The public may be capricious, but once it makes up its mind
+to do anything no power on earth can stop it, because it has a greater
+power behind it. Luckily, or unluckily, for Bathurst & Co., the
+spirit of the great captive had passed beyond the portal before
+serious public action could be taken.
+
+Three years previous to this the Colonial Secretary in writing to Lowe
+says:--"We must expect that the removal of Mr. O'Meara will occasion a
+great sensation, and an attempt will be made to give a bad impression
+on the subject. You had better let the substance of my instructions be
+generally known as soon as you have executed it, that it may not be
+represented that Mr. O'Meara has been removed in consequence of any
+quarrel with you, but in consequence of the information furnished by
+General Gourgaud in England respecting his conduct."[11]
+
+In reading through these State letters, one is struck with the
+diplomatically(?) cunning composition of them. There does not seem to
+be a manly phrase from beginning to end. Trickery, suspicion, cruelty,
+veiled or apparent, and an occasional dash of pious consideration and
+bombast sums up these perfidious documents. A few extracts will convey
+precisely the character of the men who were carrying on negotiations
+which should have been regarded as essentially delicate.
+
+In February, 1821, Bathurst writes to Lowe:--
+
+    "Sufficient time will have elapsed since the date of your last
+    communications to enable you to form a more accurate judgment
+    with respect to the extent and reality of General Bonaparte's
+    indisposition. Should your observations convince you that the
+    illness has been _assumed_, you will of course consider yourself
+    at liberty to withhold from him the communication which you are
+    otherwise authorised to make in my despatch No. 21," &c.
+
+On April 11, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst:--"The enclosed extract of
+a letter from Count Montholon may merit, as usual, your lordship's
+perusal." (This, of course, is intended as wit.) "It may be regarded
+as a bulletin of General Bonaparte's health, meant for circulation at
+Paris."
+
+Dr. Antommarchi, in writing to Signor Simeon Colonna on March 17,
+1821, after dilating on his master's health, the climate, &c., bursts
+out in a paragraph: "Dear friend, the medical art can do nothing
+against the influence of climate, and if the English Government does
+not hasten to remove him from this destructive atmosphere, His Majesty
+soon, with anguish I say it, will pay the last tribute to the earth";
+and in a postscript he adds: "I offer the _undoubted facts_ stated
+above, in opposition to the gratuitous assertions in the English
+newspapers relative to the good health which His Majesty is stated to
+enjoy here."
+
+On March 17, 1821, Montholon writes to Princess Pauline Borghesi:
+"The Emperor reckons upon your Highness to make his real situation
+known to some English of influence. He dies without succour upon this
+frightful rock; his agonies are frightful." At the time Napoleon was
+suffering thus, letters were published in some of the Ministerial
+newspapers purporting to have come from St. Helena and representing
+him to be in perfect health.
+
+On May 6, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst announcing the death of the
+Emperor. It is a long rigmarole not worth quoting, except that he
+condescends to allow the body to be interred with the honours due to a
+general officer of the highest rank. Then follows the majestic reply
+of Bathurst. He says, "I am happy to assure you that your conduct, as
+detailed in those despatches, has received His Majesty's approbation";
+which indicates that Lowe did not feel quite happy himself as to how
+the effusions would be regarded by his employers, now that the Emperor
+had succumbed to their and his own wicked treatment. In his despatches
+of February and April, 1821, he had mockingly referred to Napoleon's
+indisposition as being faked, and in May he is obliged to write
+himself as an unscrupulous liar, but notwithstanding this, his action
+meets with the approval of the chief of the executioners, which is
+very natural, seeing that this person was regarded as one of the most
+prominent scoundrels in Europe. But Sir Hudson Lowe craved for
+approbation, and was so mentally constituted that he believed he
+deserved it by committing offences against God and man.
+
+"Every good servant does not all commands, no bond but to do just
+ones," but Lowe, in his anxiety to please his employers, went to the
+furthest limits of injustice. How void of human understanding and what
+Mrs. Carlyle called "that damned thing, human kindness" this wretched
+man was!
+
+As will be hereafter shown, he had not long to wait after Napoleon's
+death and the receipt of tokens of friendliness that had been sent to
+him through the Colonial Secretary, before he was made to feel that
+the Government was not disposed to carry any part of his public
+unpopularity on its shoulders. He had done his best or worst to make
+that portion of the earth on which he lived miserable to those he
+might have made tolerably happy, without infringing the loutish
+instructions of a notoriously stupid Government. Instead of this he
+made himself so despised that the Emperor, almost with his last
+breath, called all good spirits to bear witness against him and his
+murderous confederates.
+
+The great soldier had slipped his moorings on May 6, 1821, and on the
+7th or 8th, after much ado with the Governor, a post-mortem
+examination was held by Dr. Francois Antommarchi in the presence of
+Drs. Short, Arnott, Burton, and Livingstone. Lowe was represented by
+the Chief of Staff. The examination disclosed an ulcerous growth and
+an unnaturally enlarged liver, which may be assumed as the ultimate
+cause of death, though Antommarchi's report assuredly points to the
+fatal nature of the climatic conditions.
+
+The French were anxious to have the body of their Emperor embalmed,
+but Hudson Lowe insisted that his instructions forbade this. Napoleon
+had commanded that his heart should be put in a silver vase filled
+with spirits of wine and sent to Marie Louise. When Sir Hudson Lowe
+heard that this was being done, he sent a peremptory order forbidding
+it, stating that no part should be preserved but the stomach, which
+would be sent to England. Naturally such wanton disregard of the
+Emperor's wish was violently resented by the French, and by the best
+of the English who were there. A long and heated discussion seems to
+have ensued on this question, which ended in the Governor having to
+give way--not altogether--but he was compelled to a compromise, viz.,
+that the heart and stomach should be preserved and put into the
+coffin.
+
+The Governor was then confronted with what to him was another knotty
+point. The Emperor had desired that a few gold coins struck during his
+reign should be buried with him. After serious consideration this was
+graciously allowed, but not without forebodings of trouble arising
+therefrom! What the British Government or their idiotic Governor
+wanted with Napoleon's stomach, or why they refused to allow his body
+to be embalmed, or his heart preserved and sent to his wife, Heaven
+only knows. They had monstrously violated all human feeling by
+ignoring appeals made to them from all parts of the world to be
+merciful to a much afflicted man. They were well informed by the best
+medical authorities on the island that the climate was deadly to a
+constitution such as his. They ignored reports of his declining health
+even up to a few weeks of his death, and then when the Arch-enemy
+claimed him, they flooded Europe with the intelligence that he had
+succumbed to the malady from which his father died, and that their
+tender and benevolent care for him was unavailing. The progress of his
+inherited disease could not be checked.
+
+The world is fast beginning to realise the infamy of it all. Not a
+thought ever entered their heads but that of torture, veiled or open,
+and the appalling clumsiness of their endeavours to conceal their
+Satanic designs, so that they might appear in the light of beneficent
+hosts, shows that they cowered at the possibility of public vengeance.
+Happily for them, Napoleon's death came too near to the terrific
+commotion caused by the French Revolution.
+
+Tumult raged round the Emperor during the whole of his public career,
+and powerful agencies were constantly proclaiming against him and his
+methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of democracy, which
+cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere. His system destroyed
+and affected too many interests not to leave behind it feelings of
+revenge, but this revenge did not exist among the common people. Those
+who persecuted the common people felt his heavy hand upon them. The
+populace entered into his service in shoals, only to betray him when
+the time of trial came. He knew the risk he ran, but did not shrink
+from it. He hoped that he might bring them to adopt the great
+principles he held and the plan he had in view.
+
+His ambition was to seek out all those who had talent and character
+and give them the opportunity of developing their gifts for the
+benefit of the race. Humble origin had no deterrent effect on him. His
+most brilliant officers and men of position sprang from the middle and
+lower middle class, and taking them as a whole, their devotion never
+gave way, even during the most terrible adversity that ever befell
+mortal man. One small instance of admiration and sympathy is evidenced
+by the beautiful reverence shown by the officers and men of the
+English army and navy, who defiled before the dead hero's remains and
+bent their knees to the ground.
+
+Montholon says that "some of the officers entreated to be allowed the
+honour of pressing to their lips the cloak of Marengo which covered
+the Emperor's feet." Lowe must have felt a pang of remorse when he saw
+these simple men pouring out in their sailorly and soldierly way
+tokens of profound sorrow. Everything that could had been done to
+cause their captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to
+be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while
+the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not by
+barbarity!
+
+The report of Napoleon's death did not relieve the anxieties of the
+European Cabinets. They knew the danger of being overwhelmed by a
+revulsion of feeling, and the difficulty of stopping the masses once
+they are set in motion, and there were strong manifestations of the
+popular indignation breaking loose, with all the terrible consequences
+of a reign of terror. The feeling of grief was universal and intense.
+A spark might have caused a great conflagration. Lord Holland declared
+in Parliament that the very persons who detested this great man had
+acknowledged that for ten centuries there had not appeared upon earth
+a more extraordinary character.... "All Europe," he added, "has worn
+mourning for the hero"; and those who contributed to that great
+sacrifice are destined to be the objects of the execrations of the
+present generation as well as to those of posterity.
+
+Just at the time the great spirit of the hero was passing on to the
+Elysian Fields, there, as he used to fancifully foreshadow, to meet
+his brave comrades in arms who had preceded him, a tempest of unusual
+severity broke over "the abode of darkness and of crimes." Houses were
+shaken to their foundation; the favourite willow-tree, where he had
+often sat and enjoyed the fresh breezes, was torn up by the hurricane,
+as indeed were the other trees round about Longwood. This terrible
+disturbance of the elements was characteristically interpreted as
+being the voice of the living God proclaiming to the world that the
+Emperor was being thundered into eternity to meet his Creator, and to
+be judged by Him for the wrongs his political and other opponents said
+he was guilty of towards themselves and the human race generally. In
+true British orthodoxy, the Great Judge is always claimed as a
+fellow-countryman, and Sir Walter Scott is not singular in attributing
+this phenomenal disturbance as an indication of coming vengeance
+against England's prisoner. The Scottish bard is not altogether
+impartial in the send-off of the exile. He associates another colossal
+personage with the great Corsican. The Lord Protector, we are
+reminded, was similarly borne from time into eternity on the wings of
+a devasting tornado. Poor Oliver! whose war-cry was "The Lord of
+Hosts," and who never doubted that he was the high commissioner sent
+by the Almighty to clean the earth of mischievous Royalists, traitors,
+Papists, and other ungovernable creatures in Ireland and elsewhere.
+
+It does not appear to have struck these gentlemen, with their thoughts
+centred on Holy Writ and finding comfort in the support it gave to
+their contention, that the Great God, instead of making nature break
+out with such terrible violence to indicate His displeasure against
+this wonderful man, made in His own image and sent by Him to serve
+both a divine and a human purpose, was using accumulated natural
+forces to show His wrath at the culmination of the most atrocious
+tragedy that had ever been perpetrated.
+
+The good Sir Walter and the unctuously pious biographer of Sir Hudson
+are obviously overcome by the coincidence of the storm and Napoleon's
+death coming simultaneously. To them it is the voice of God shouting
+forth gladness that the enemy of the British race is being made to pay
+the penalty of all the evil he has wrought. This is a very comforting
+conclusion to arrive at after having kept your victim on the rack for
+six years and made war on him for twenty, but did it never occur to
+them that the greatest sacrifice ever offered culminated in just such
+natural disturbances and that at the same time "the veil of the temple
+was rent in twain"?
+
+Happily for the fair fame of human rights, many writers of Napoleonic
+history have got over national prejudices and timidity, and are
+chronicling very different views from those of Sir Walter and the
+uninteresting defender of Lowe; and the more impartial the minds who
+inquire into the first as well as the last phase of this extraordinary
+career, the more will it appear that he was not an enemy, but a
+powerful reforming agency of mankind. He vowed over and over again
+that he "never conquered unless in his own defence, and that Europe
+never ceased to make war upon France and her principles." And again he
+asserted: "One of my grand objects was to render education accessible
+to everybody. I caused every institution to be formed upon a plan
+which offered instruction to the public, either gratis or at a rate so
+moderate, as not to be beyond the means of the peasant. The museums
+were thrown open to the _canaille_. My _canaille_ would have become
+the best educated in the world. All my exertions were directed to
+illuminate the mass of the nation instead of brutifying them by
+ignorance and superstition." These ideals are in striking contrast to
+the policy of the oligarchy of Europe, who were fighting to suppress
+knowledge and to re-establish the worst form of superstition and
+despotism.
+
+It is a deplorable thought that the nations (and especially Great
+Britain) who allied themselves against this man of the people and sent
+him to an inhuman death might have saved themselves the eternal
+condemnation of future ages had they made their peace with him, as the
+sagacious Charles James Fox would have done had he lived. Had they
+been wise, they would have made use of his matchless gifts and
+well-balanced mind to help forward the regeneration of the human chaos
+which was both the cause and the result of the Revolution. Above all,
+had the "Liberty loving" British nation been true to her declared
+principles, she would either have kept aloof from the conflict that
+was raging or found some honourable means of co-operating with him,
+and thereby earned a share of the glory that will be eternally
+attached to his name in the great effort of extinguishing thraldom and
+ameliorating the condition of the masses.
+
+Instead of this, she basely linked her destiny with the traitors of
+France and the allies of Europe to dethrone the monarch elected by the
+French people, and to place in his stead a king who was forced upon
+them by the Allies, and not the people of France. This is a strange
+travesty of "Liberty loving" government. Had the great Quaker been
+kept in power, instead of Pitt, who was always in a chronic state of
+scare and whining that he could never survive the downfall of his
+country, the rivers of British blood that were shed and the eight
+hundred million pounds sterling of debt need not have been squandered.
+All this was done at the bidding of a few men who were entrusted with
+the government of a great nation, and either by odious deception, or
+sheer incapacity to judge of the fitness of things, caused it to be
+believed that they were bound to maintain the balance of power or
+_status quo_ which was endangered, and that the one man who had upset
+their nerves and incurred their hatred should be removed at all costs.
+
+It is pretty certain that England could easily have kept out of the
+continental embroil had the Government been composed of men of talent
+and free from oligarchal prejudices, whereas all we got out of it,
+plus the loss of life and treasure, was a share in the questionable
+glory of Waterloo, the custody of the great figure who was betrayed by
+some of his own subjects, "the odium of having his death bequeathed to
+the reigning family of England," and the fact that Louis XVIII., by
+his own admission to the French nation, was put on the throne by our
+own precious Prince Regent.
+
+These are only a few of the results that should not make us proud of
+that part of our history. But we have travelled far since those days
+of vicious actions. Nothing approaching the perfidy of it could happen
+in the present age. It is unthinkable that either the sagacious,
+peaceloving, peacemaking monarch on the throne or his Ministers and
+people would lend themselves to committing the senseless blunders that
+disgraced our name at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even
+allowing that it was inevitable we should wage war against the head of
+the French nation, nothing can ever blot out the stain of having
+refused him the asylum he asked for, after we had taken so large a
+share in bringing about his downfall. He asked in the following letter
+to the Prince Regent to be the guest of England, and England made him
+its prisoner. Here is the document:--
+
+"The sport of those factions which divide my country and an object of
+hostility to the greatest Powers of Europe, I have finished my
+political career, and come, like Themistocles, to sit down by the
+hearth of the English people. I place myself under the protection of
+their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most
+powerful, the most constant, and most generous of my enemies." Had it
+been left to the English people instead of to the Government and His
+Royal Highness, I do not think this dignified appeal would have been
+altogether ignored, as Napoleon's quarrel was not with the people.
+
+They knew that it was the oligarchy that feared and detested him. It
+has been said that even His Royal Highness would have granted
+hospitality, and it would have saved the nation over which he ruled
+the blight of eternal execrations had he been strong enough to stand
+against the blundering decision of a revengeful Ministry.
+
+No impartial student of the part played by Napoleon during twenty
+years of warfare will deny that the institutions he founded, the laws
+that he made, and his mode of government wherever established, were
+beneficent, and entirely aimed at the adjustment of inequalities that
+had culminated in a great national uprising. His dictatorship was
+wielded with a wholesome discipline without unnecessarily using the
+lash. He had no cut-and-dried maxim of dealing with unruly people, but
+his awful power made them feel that he distinguished between eternal
+justice and tyranny. He knew, and he made everybody else know, that
+under the circumstances too much liberty would be like poison to some
+people. When he said, "No more of this," the aggressors realised that
+the doctrine of fraternity as they understood it must not be stretched
+further.
+
+Notwithstanding his methods of reproof and restraint, he was idolised
+by the masses, even by those he led his armies against and so often
+conquered. Even in our own country, where enmity against him was
+assiduously nursed by the press and other agencies, there was an
+important section who believed we were putting our money on the wrong
+horse. This idea was not confined to the poorer classes. Many of our
+best and wisest statesmen were strongly opposed to this policy of
+hostility against him.
+
+He had starved in the streets of Paris, sold his precious books and
+other belongings to provide the means of buying bread to sustain
+himself and his much beloved brother Louis, who in after years behaved
+to him with base ingratitude. He suffered dreadful privations during
+the keen frosty nights, owing to the want of fire, light, and
+sometimes sufficient clothing. No wonder that he thought of ending
+his woes by plunging into the Seine.
+
+But a glimmering of light came and lifted him out of a numbing
+despair. He was made to see in his hour of trial that lassitude must
+cease, and that he was meant for other things, and in order to
+accomplish them he must be strong and audacious. Fate, fortune, and a
+mysterious Providence found in him an indomitable chief whose genius
+was intended to change the face of Europe. Like all big men who spring
+from obscurity and the deadliness of poverty, and are launched on the
+scene to create order out of tumult and chaos, his enemies, in the
+nature of things, were both numerous and prolific. At the outset he
+adopted the method he so often thundered into his soldiers when on the
+eve of battle, viz.: "You must not fear Death, my lads. Defy him, and
+you drive him into the enemy's ranks."
+
+One of the charges made against him by serene critics who have been
+desirous of showing his weak points is that he was too careless and
+forgiving towards the squabbling nest of paid and unpaid murderers who
+prowled about in disguise, thirsting after his blood. It is certain
+that he carried clemency to a fault in many instances, and this no
+doubt contributed to his undoing; but at the same time there is ample
+proof that he knew well enough where his foes were to be found, and
+whenever the dignity and safety of the State were imperilled, he was
+not slow to punish. His habit was not weakness, but only a too
+careless regard for his own personal safety.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Montholon, "History of the Captivity of Napoleon," p. 326. The
+editor says he is indebted for these details to the official accounts
+published at the time by the French Government.
+
+[2] This was the name given to Napoleon by the Arabs. "Kebir" means
+"great" (Montholon, vol. iv. p. 245).
+
+[3] These words were dictated to Las Cases by Napoleon at St. Helena
+in 1819 (p. 315, vol. iv., of his Journal).
+
+[4] See p. 183, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."
+
+[5] O'Meara, in his second volume, p. 134, states: "The Emperor was so
+firmly impressed with the idea that an attempt would be made to
+forcibly intrude upon his privacy, that, from a short time after the
+departure of Sir George Cockburn, he always kept four or five loaded
+pistols and some swords in his apartments, with which he was
+determined to despatch the first who entered against his will."
+
+[6] See p. 299, Montholon's "Captivity of Napoleon," vol. i.
+
+[7] See p. 301, vol. i., "Captivity of Napoleon."
+
+[8] See pp. 57-62, bust incident.
+
+[9] The easygoing Joseph had been careless of the letters, which would
+have further proved the infamy of the oligarchy. These letters were in
+many cases applications for territory. He had intrusted them to a base
+friend, by whom they were offered to the various Governments for
+L30,000. The Russian Ambassador is reported to have paid L10,000 to
+get hold of those concerning his master. His Majesty of Prussia
+appears to have had a covetous eye on Hanover. He always entertained a
+paternal regard for that country. The sovereigns in general seem to
+have compromised themselves deeply in their efforts to secure
+territory.
+
+[10] See "Montholon," vol. iii p. 37.
+
+[11] This is an impudent lie. The quarrel was with Lowe because the
+doctor refused to be his accomplice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE MAN OF THE REVOLUTION--CRITICISM, CONTEMPORARY AND OTHERWISE
+
+
+On May 9, 1821, the mortal remains of the Exile were interred at a
+spot called the Valley of Napoleon. He had selected this spot in the
+event of the Powers not allowing his remains to be transferred to
+France or Ajaccio. Lowe desired to put on the lid of the coffin
+"Napoleon Bonaparte," but his followers very properly disdained
+committing a breach of faith on the dead Emperor, and insisted on
+having "Napoleon" and nothing else. The Governor was stubbornly
+opposed to it, so he was buried without any name being put on the
+coffin.[12]
+
+Perhaps one of the most terrific passages of unconscious humour is
+related by Forsyth (vol. iii. p. 288), where Lowe is made to say to
+Major Gorrequer and Mr. Henry, as they walked together before the
+door of Plantation House discussing the character of Napoleon, "Well,
+gentlemen, he was England's greatest enemy and mine too; but _I_
+forgive him everything. On the death of a man like him we should only
+feel deep concern and regret." Forsyth thinks this splendid
+magnanimity on the part of his hero.
+
+It is not recorded what the gallant Major thought of it, but it may be
+taken for granted that if Mr. Henry and Gorrequer had any sense of
+humour at all, Lowe's comment must have sounded very comical, knowing
+what they did of the relations between the dead monarch and his
+custodian, though it must be said that Henry seems to have been the
+only person who could work up a sympathetic word for Sir Hudson.
+Forsyth, in vol. iii. p. 307, says: "No one can study the character of
+Napoleon without being struck by one prevailing feature, his intense
+selfishness." This is a remarkable statement for any man who professes
+to write accurate history to make, and proves conclusively that
+Forsyth had not "studied" Napoleon's "character," or he would have
+found, not only his closest friends, but some of his bitterest enemies
+doing him the justice of stating the very opposite of what this writer
+says of him.
+
+Mr. Henry, who took part in the dissection of the corpse, says that
+Napoleon's face had a remarkably placid expression, and indicated
+mildness and sweetness of disposition, and those who gazed on the
+features as they lay in the still repose of death could not help
+exclaiming, "How beautiful!" After this very fine description from Sir
+Hudson's friend, Forsyth adds a footnote: "It may interest
+phrenologists to know that the organs of combativeness, causativeness,
+and philoprogenitiveness were strongly developed in the cranium"! In
+order to prove the charge of selfishness he brings in the old familiar
+story of the divorce: "A memorable example of this (_i.e._,
+selfishness) occurs in his treatment of the nobleminded Josephine."
+
+This outburst is obviously intended for effect, but Forsyth does not
+score a success in bringing the amiable Empress to his aid; for,
+whatever virtue she may have possessed, authentic history reveals her
+as the antithesis of "nobleminded." Those who knew the lady intimately
+speak with marked generosity of her graces, but they also record a
+shameless habit of faithlessness to her husband at a time when he was
+pouring out volumes of love to her from Italy. And she seems to have
+let herself go without restraint during his stay in Egypt. The
+wayward, weak Josephine had many lovers, who were not too carefully
+selected.
+
+From the time of her marriage with Napoleon until she heard of him
+being on his way from Egypt to France, her love intrigues were well
+known, and her lovers were certainly not men of high public repute. In
+short, Josephine was anything but "nobleminded." She was a confirmed
+and audacious flirt until the stern realities of the dissolution of
+her marriage brought her to her senses, and from that time until the
+great political divorce took place, she appears to have kept free from
+further love entanglements. Napoleon's attachment to her was very
+genuine, and remained steadfast up to the time of her death, and even
+at St. Helena he always spoke of her with great reverence. Forsyth
+does not enhance Lowe's reputation or damage Napoleon's by the popular
+use he makes of the annulment of the little Creole lady's marriage,
+the merits of which may be referred to at greater length hereafter, as
+it is a subject of itself and this reference to a momentous incident
+of her husband's history is only by the way.
+
+Meanwhile the Emperor's remains, in layers of coffins composed of
+wood, tin, and lead, were hermetically sealed, and the tomb, having
+been securely battened down with cement and slab, was substantially
+railed in to prevent the intrusion of a sympathetic and curious
+public. His tomb was left in charge of a British garrison, and the
+heroes who followed him to his grave, and shared his martyrdom and
+exile on that fatal rock for six mortal years, were shipped aboard the
+_Camel_ and conveyed to England, there to be received by a set of
+mildew-witted bureaucrats smitten with suspicion that the exiles may
+have brought with them the spirit of their dead master, with the
+object of invoking a sanguinary reaction in his favour by disturbing
+the peace of Europe--as though Europe had experienced a single day of
+real peace since the downfall of the Empire!
+
+These exemplary men had faced and borne with magnificent fortitude
+hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their mission was to carry
+out the dying command of the hero whom they adored, and who had
+succumbed to the hospitable treatment of Bathurst, Castlereagh,
+Liverpool, and Wellington, and their accomplices. These guilty men,
+whose names, strange to say, are as undying as that of their victim,
+would fain have made it appear that had he not died of cancer of the
+stomach, it were not possible that he could have died of anything but
+robust health, owing to the salubrity of the climate they had selected
+and the unequalled care they had taken of his person through the
+immortal Lowe.
+
+It is a remarkable thing that these men had no conception of the
+great being they were practising cruelty upon. It is indeed a strange
+freak of nature that makes it possible that the human mind can think
+of Napoleon and these bureaucrats at the same time, but that is part
+of the mystery that cannot at the present stage be understood. Time
+may reveal the phenomenon, and in the years to come the spirits of the
+just will call aloud for a real vindication of the character of the
+man of the French Revolution, and, forsooth, it may be that a terrible
+retribution is gathering in the distance. Who knows? Waterloo and St.
+Helena may yet be the nemesis of the enemies of the great Emperor.
+Obviously, he had visions, as had his compatriot Joan of Arc, who
+suffered even a crueller fate than he at the hands of a few
+bloodthirsty English noblemen, who disgraced the name of soldier by
+not only allowing her to be burnt, but selling her to the parasitical
+Bishops with that object in view. It is not strange that the Maid of
+Orleans, who suffered martyrdom for the supernatural part she took in
+fighting for her King and country, should, on April 18, 1909, become a
+saint of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world, nor that the
+Pope should perform the ceremony. The English sold her. An
+ecclesiastical court, headed by the infamous Bishop of Beauvais,
+condemned her to be burnt as a witch, and when the flames were
+consuming her a cry of "Jesus" was heard. An English soldier standing
+by was so overcome by the awful wickedness that was being perpetrated
+by the Anglo-French ecclesiastical alliance, that he called out, "We
+are lost! We have burnt a saint!"
+
+The soldier saw at once that the child of the Domremy labourer was a
+"saint," but it has taken five centuries for the Church to which she
+belonged, and whose representatives burnt her as a witch, to
+officially beatify her. True, this stage has been gradually worked up
+to by the erection of monuments to her honour and glory. Chinon
+distinguished itself by this, presumably because it was there that
+Joan interviewed the then uncrowned Charles, and startled him into
+taking her into his service by the story she told of hearing the
+heavenly voices at Domremy farm demanding that she should go forth as
+the liberator of France.
+
+The recognition of Napoleon's claim, not to "sanctity," but as a
+benefactor of mankind, will also surely come, but in his case the
+demand will come from no Church, but with the irresistible voice of
+all Humanity.
+
+Joan's country had been at war for one hundred years. Ravaged by
+foreign invaders and depopulated by plague, it was foaming with civil
+strife and treason to the national cause, many of the most powerful
+men and women, both openly and in secret, taking sides with the enemy.
+The crisis had reached a point when this modest, uneducated,
+clear-witted, fearless maiden was launched by her "voices" to the
+scene of battle, there to inspire hope and enthusiasm in the hearts of
+her people. In a few weeks she had established confidence, smashed the
+invader, and crowned the unworthy Charles VII. as King. Twenty years
+after they had burnt her, there was scarcely a foreign foot to be
+found on French soil.
+
+There is a further similarity between the peasant girl and Napoleon.
+_She_ was brought to the aid of her country by the voices of the
+unseen, and four hundred years after, when her country was again in
+dire trouble, _he_ was found in obscurity and in an almost
+supernatural way flashed into prominent activity to save the
+Revolution. It was the voices of the living, seen and unseen, that
+called aloud for the little Corporal to lead to battle, conquer, and
+ultimately govern. It was some of the self-same voices that intrigued
+and then burst forth in declamation and demanded his abdication on the
+eve of his first reverse. The Church, which owed its rehabilitation to
+him after he had implanted a settled government in France, had no
+small share in the conspiracy for his overthrow. He said, "There is
+but one means of getting good manners, and that is by establishing
+religion." He believed it, and did it in spite of a storm of
+opposition that would have hurled a less resolute man from power, but
+he knew full well his strength, and was sure then, as he ever was, of
+his opinions.
+
+The Church and those of the people who become allied to its material
+policy are prone to destroy those who have been of service to their
+cause. There is indeed no society of men and women who are so
+vindictive, nay, revengeful, once they are seized with the idea that
+they are being neglected, or their interests not receiving all the
+patronage they think they deserve, and then, after a few generations
+of reflection, they become overwhelmed with unctuous sanctity and
+remorse, and proceed to make saints of the victims of their
+progenitors in order that the perfidy they are historically linked to
+shall be whitewashed and atoned for.
+
+Napoleon believed that "No physical force ever dies; it merely changes
+its form or direction"--and could we but get a glimpse behind the
+veil, we might see his imperishable soul fleeting from sphere to
+sphere, struggling with cruel reactionary spirits who forced him into
+eternity before the work he was sent to do was completed.
+
+Wieland, the German writer, had an interview with him on the field of
+Jena. He says:--"I was presented by the Duchess of Weimar. He paid me
+some compliments in an affable tone, and looked steadfastly at me. Few
+men have appeared to me to possess in the same degree the art of
+reading at the first glance the thought of other men. He saw in an
+instant that, notwithstanding my celebrity, I was simple in my manners
+and void of pretension, and as he seemed desirous of making a
+favourable impression on me, he assumed the tone most likely to attain
+his end. I have never beheld anyone more calm, more simple, more mild,
+or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the
+feeling of power in a great monarch; he spoke to me as an old
+acquaintance would speak to an equal, and what was more extraordinary
+on his part, he conversed with me exclusively for an hour and a half,
+to the great surprise of the whole assembly."
+
+Then Wieland goes on to relate what the conversation was. Napoleon
+"preferred the Romans to the Greeks. The eternal squabbles of their
+petty republics were not calculated to give birth to anything grand,
+whereas the Romans were always occupied with great things, and it was
+owing to this they raised up the Colossus which bestrode the world....
+He was fond only of serious poetry, the pathetic and vigorous
+writers, and above all, the tragic poets."
+
+Wieland had been put so much at his ease (so he says) that he ventured
+to ask how it was that the public worship Napoleon had restored in
+France was not more philosophical and in harmony with the spirit of
+the times. "My dear Wieland," was the reply, "religion is not meant
+for philosophers! they have no faith either in me or my priests. As to
+those who do believe, it would be difficult to give them, or to leave
+them, too much of the marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for
+philosophers, it would be just the reverse of that of the credulous
+part of mankind."[13]
+
+Mueller, the Swiss historian's private interview with him at this
+period is quite remarkable, and shows what a vast knowledge and
+conception of things the Emperor had. Nothing shows more clearly his
+own plan of regulating and guiding the affairs of the universe for the
+benefit of all. He tells Mueller that he should complete his history of
+Switzerland, that even the more recent times had their interest. Then
+he switched from the Swiss to the old Greek constitutions and history;
+to the theory of constitutions; to the complete diversity of those in
+Asia, and the causes of this diversity in the climate, polygamy, the
+opposite characters of the Arabian and the Tartar races, the peculiar
+value of European culture, and the progress of Freedom since the
+sixteenth century; how everything was linked together, and in the
+inscrutable guidance of an invisible hand; how he himself had become
+great through his enemies; the great Confederation of Nations, the
+idea of which Henri IV. had; the foundation of all religion and its
+necessity; that man could not bear clear truth and required to be kept
+in order; admitting the possibility, however, of a more happy
+condition, if the numerous feuds ceased which were occasioned by too
+complicated Constitutions (such as the German) and the intolerable
+burden suffered by States from excessive armies.
+
+These opinions clearly mark the guiding motives of Napoleon's attempts
+to enforce upon different nations uniformity of the institutions and
+customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says Mueller, "and he entered
+into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must
+say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his
+observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit),
+his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and
+his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his
+disinterested goodness, he has also conquered me."[14] The remarkable
+testimony of Wieland and Mueller, both men of distinction, is of more
+than ordinary value, seeing that they were not his countrymen, but on
+the side of those who waged war against him. Mueller admits that he
+conquered him, and the world must admit that he is gradually, but
+surely, conquering it in spite of the colossal libels that have been
+spoken and written of him for the ostensible purpose of vindicating
+the Puritans and making him appear as the Spoliator and Antichrist
+whose thirst for blood, so that he might attain glory, was an
+inexhaustible craze in him. To them he is the Ogre that staggers the
+power of belief, and yet he defies the whole world to prove that he
+ever declared war or committed a single crime during the whole
+carnival of warfare that drenched Europe in human blood.
+
+Up to the present, the world has lamentably failed to do anything of
+the sort. His opponents, libellers, and progeny of his mean
+executioners, are all losing ground, and he is gaining everywhere.
+There is an unseen hand at work revealing the awful truth. This
+dignified, calm, unassuming man, while surrounded by a crowd of Kings
+and Princes, who were competing with each other to do him homage and
+show their devotion, startles them by telling a story of when he was
+"a simple Lieutenant in the 2nd Company of Artillery." Possibly some
+of his guests were observed to be putting on airs that were always
+distasteful to the Emperor, and this was his scornful way of rebuking
+them. Or it might be that he wished to take the opportunity of
+informing Europe that he had no desire to conceal his humble
+beginning, though at that time he was recognised first man in it.
+Historians, when he was at the height of his power, ransacked musty
+archives assiduously to find out and prove that he had royal blood in
+him. They professed to have discovered that he was connected with the
+princely family of Treviso, and the comical way in which he
+contemptuously brushed aside this fulsome flattery must have lacerated
+the pride of courtiers who sought favours by such methods.
+
+Bearing on the royal blood idea, Gourgaud in his Journal relates that
+the Emperor told him the following stories:--
+
+"At one time in my reign there was a disposition to make out that I
+was descended from the Man in the Iron Mask. The Governor of Pignerol
+was named Bompars. They said he had married his daughter to his
+mysterious prisoner, the brother of Louis XIV., and had sent the pair
+to Corsica under the name of 'Bonaparte,'" and then with fine humour
+he adds:--"I had only to say the word and everybody would have
+believed the fable."
+
+He never forgot that he was Napoleon, hence never said the word.
+
+His insincere father-in-law has been industriously searching for royal
+blood too, and this is what his son-in-law says of him:--
+
+"When I was about to marry Marie Louise, her father the Emperor sent
+me a box of papers intended to prove that I was descended from the
+Dukes of Florence. I burst out laughing, and said to Metternich, 'Do
+you suppose I am going to waste my time over such foolishness? Suppose
+it were true, what good would it do me? The Dukes of Florence were
+inferior in rank to the Emperors of Germany. I will not place myself
+beneath my father-in-law. I think that as I am, I am as good as he. My
+nobility dates from Monte Notte. Return him these papers.' Metternich
+was very much amused."
+
+Francis of Austria must have felt confounded at the rebuke of his
+unceremonious relative, who was always the man of stern reality--too
+big to be dazzled by mouldy records of kingly blood. Neither did pomp
+or ceremony attract him, except in so far as it might serve the
+purpose of making an impression on others. Bourrienne, a shameless
+predatory traitor, has said in his memoirs that when the seat of
+government was removed from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries, the First
+Consul said to him, "You are very lucky; you are not obliged to make a
+spectacle of yourself. I have to go about with a cortege; it bores me,
+but it appeals to the eye of the people."
+
+Roederer in _his_ memoirs relates pretty much the same thing, only
+that it bears on the question of title, and presumably the researches
+for confirmation of his royal descent.
+
+Here again, his strong practical view of things, and his utter
+indifference to grandeur or genealogical distinction, are shown. He
+says: "How can anyone pretend that empty names, titles given for the
+sake of a political system, can change in the smallest degree one's
+relations with one's friends and associates? I am called Sire, or
+Imperial Majesty, without anyone in my household believing or thinking
+that I am a different man in consequence. All those titles form part
+of a _system_, and therefore they are necessary." He always ends his
+ebullitions of convincing wisdom by making it clear precisely where he
+stands.
+
+The writer might quote pages of eulogies of him from the most eminent
+men of every nationality. There is no trustworthy evidence that he
+ever sought the flattery that was lavished on him; indeed, he seems
+to have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of it.
+On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never sought the
+applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic monarch."[15]
+
+Seguier says:--
+
+"Napoleon is above human history. He belongs to heroic periods and is
+beyond admiration."[16]
+
+A notable Englishman, Lord Acton, says (like Mueller) that "his
+goodness was the most splendid that has appeared on earth." And there
+are innumerable instances which prove that his sympathies and goodness
+to those who were notoriously undeserving was a fatal passion with
+him. But there is no opinion, blunt though it be, that so completely
+touches one as that of the plain English sailors who said at Elba that
+"Boney was a d----d good fellow after all." "They may talk about this
+man as they like," said one of the crew of the _Northumberland_, "but
+I won't believe the bad they say of him," and _this_ view seems to
+have been generally held by the men who composed the crew of the
+vessel that took the Emperor to St. Helena. It is noteworthy that
+English man-of-war's-men, and also merchant seamen of these stirring
+times, should have formed so favourable an impression of Napoleon,
+especially as the Press of England teemed with hostility against him.
+Articles attributing every form of indescribable bestiality,
+corruption, gross cruelty to his soldiers, subordinate officers, and
+even Marshals, appeared with shameful regularity. In these articles
+were included the most absurd as well as the most serious charges.
+
+I include the following story as a specimen, and take it in particular
+as being quoted quite seriously by certain anti-Napoleonic writers in
+the endeavour to bolster up a feeble case. Prejudice and distorted
+vision prevented them from seeing the absurdity of such attempts to
+blacken the character of Napoleon. Let the reader judge!
+
+It is related that, at the time of the Concordat, Napoleon remarked to
+Senator Volney, "France wants a religion." Volney's courageous (!)
+reply was, "France wants the Bourbons," and the Emperor is thereupon
+supposed to have been attacked by a fit of ungovernable fury, and to
+have kicked the Senator in the stomach!
+
+The more serious charges included incest with his sister Pauline and
+his stepdaughter Hortense, and the poisoning of his plague-stricken
+soldiers at Jaffa.
+
+His palaces were said to be harems, and his libertinism to put
+Oriental potentates to the blush. So industrious were these foes to
+human fairness that they manufactured a silly story just before the
+rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, to the effect that Napoleon had made
+a violent attack on Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. So violent
+was he in his gestures, the Ambassador feared lest the First Consul
+would strike him. Even Oscar Browning is obliged to refute this
+unworthy fabrication as being absurd on the face of it, but it has
+taken ninety years to produce the authentic document from the British
+Archives which disproves the scandal. Napoleon was too much absorbed
+in things that mattered to take notice of the stupid though virulent
+stories that were constantly being concocted against him. When he was
+appealed to by his friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he
+merely shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this
+rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It pleases
+the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to be perturbed,
+or to meddle with it."
+
+It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the
+side of morality. It is well enough known that the French Court during
+the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic arrangements, the
+one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that
+_his_ Court should have the reputation of being clean. He took
+infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private amorous
+connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a
+staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of libertinism is an
+outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never
+have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame
+Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office
+under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most
+careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal
+friends. As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the
+general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so. Not
+merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with
+Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of
+public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]
+
+His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral
+code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard
+of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation
+under which any of his priests were bound in the shade. So shocked
+were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and
+circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they
+advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of
+so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat. It was not
+exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in
+fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so
+malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and rugged tars aboard the
+_Bellerophon_ and _Northumberland_ were drawn in touching sympathy
+towards the man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent
+belief that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of
+war.
+
+We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to avail
+himself of them. He had resolved after his abdication to live the time
+that was left to him in retirement, and believing in the generosity of
+the British nation, he threw himself on their hospitality. He had made
+his way through a network of blockade when he returned from Egypt and
+Elba, and looking at the facts as they are now before us, it is
+preposterous to adhere to the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed
+in that he had no option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as
+the guest of England aboard the _Bellerophon_, and it may be taken
+for granted that the resourceful sailors knew that he had many
+channels of escape. They knew the _Bellerophon_ was a slow old tub,
+and that she would be nowhere in a chase.
+
+Besides, it was not necessary for Napoleon to make Rochefort or
+Rochelle his starting-point. The troops and seamen at these and the
+neighbouring ports were all devoted to him, and would have risked
+everything to save him from capture. He knew all this, but he was
+possessed of an innate belief in the chivalry of the British
+character, and left out of account the class of men that were in
+power. He knew them to be his inveterate foes, but was deceived in
+believing they had hearts. Their foremost soldier had taken an active
+share in his defeat, and he acknowledged it by putting himself under
+the protection of our laws. The honest English seamen who were his
+shipmates on both ships were not long in forming a strong liking to
+him, and a dislike to the treatment he was receiving. They felt there
+was something wrong, though all they could say about it was that "he
+was a d----d good fellow."
+
+Lord Keith was so afraid of his fascinating personality after his
+visit to the _Bellerophon_ that he said, "D----n the fellow! if he
+had obtained an interview with His Royal Highness, in half an hour
+they would have been the best friends in England." In truth, Lord
+Keith lost a fine opportunity of saving British hospitality from the
+blight of eternal execration by evading the lawyer who came to
+Plymouth to serve a writ of Habeas Corpus to claim the Emperor's
+person, and the pity is that an honoured name should have been
+associated with a mission so crimeful and an occasion so full of
+illimitable consequences to England's boasted generosity. Except that
+he too well carried out his imperious instructions, Lord Keith does
+not come well out of the beginning of the great tragedy. The only
+piece of real delicacy shown by Lord Keith to the Emperor was in
+allowing him to retain his arms, and snubbing a secretary who reminded
+him that the instructions were that _all_ should be disarmed. This
+zealous person was told to mind his own business.
+
+Napoleon asks the Admiral if there is any tribunal to which he can
+apply to determine the legality of him being sent to St. Helena, as he
+protested that he was the guest and not the prisoner of the British
+nation; and Keith, with an air of condescending benevolence, assures
+him that he is satisfied there is every disposition on the part of the
+Government to render his situation as comfortable as prudence would
+permit. No wonder Napoleon's reply was animated, and his soul full of
+dignified resentment at the perfidy that was about to be administered
+to him under the guise of beneficence.
+
+Scott describes the interview with Keith as "a remarkable scene." He
+says: "His (Napoleon's) manner was perfectly calm and collected, his
+voice equal and firm, his tones very pleasing, the action of the head
+was dignified, and the countenance remarkably soft and placid, without
+any marks of severity." That is a good testimony from the author of
+the "Waverley Novels," who was anything but an impartial biographer.
+Not even the novelist's most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of
+them) can give him credit for excessive partiality towards the hero
+who was the first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not
+only knew the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander)
+had ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to
+conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled in
+the history of man.
+
+I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of the
+Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it), it was a
+fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a rock when, by
+adopting a more humane policy, his incomparable genius might have
+been used to carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his
+return from Elba. The tumult which surrounded his career had changed;
+he saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once
+proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his great
+scheme of renewing the heart of things. He knew it would take time,
+and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was putting forth
+supreme efforts to destroy him. They were out for blood, and _he_ was
+in too great a hurry.
+
+In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, "Ah! if I could
+have governed France for forty years I would have made her the most
+splendid empire that ever existed!"
+
+His demand on fortune was too great, and notwithstanding the knowledge
+he had of human nature, he could not check the torrent of treason that
+had been sedulously nursed against him by his enemies until it ignited
+the imagination of those whom he had a right to expect would stand
+loyally by him in an hour of tribulation such as no other man had ever
+experienced.
+
+It is true that he made history (brilliant history if you like) in
+those latter days, but oh! the anguish and the baseness of it all.
+
+Caesar made history too; neither did _this_ ruler succeed altogether.
+Brutus, his friend, forsook and dispatched him, and possibly that was
+the most enviable finish to a great career. Did Napoleon fare better
+than his prototype, inasmuch as he was not the victim of the
+assassin's dagger? Intoxicated with the spirit of charity, his
+conquerors decreed that he should be deported to a secluded place of
+abode on a barren and unhealthy rock, there to be maintained at a cost
+to the nation of L12,000 a year, and succumb as quickly as possible
+like a good Christian gentleman.
+
+The presumption of Lord Keith in observing to Napoleon that it was
+preferable for him to be sent to St. Helena than to be confined in a
+smaller space in England or sent to France or Russia, and the
+Emperor's supposed reply--"Russia! God preserve me from it!"--is
+almost unbelievable, and in the light of what he constantly asserted
+while England's captive, this expression may be regarded as a
+fabrication.
+
+Whether it was an innate belief that Alexander of Russia was his
+friend, or the fact that Francis of Austria was his father-in-law, he
+certainly avowed--according to the St. Helena chroniclers--that if he
+had surrendered to either of them he would have been treated, not only
+with kindness, but with a proper regard as befitted a monarch who had
+governed eighty-three millions of people, or more than the half of
+Europe. But even if he were merely soliloquising, or wished to
+convince himself and those he expressed this opinion to, it is hard to
+think that any of the continental Powers would have risked the certain
+consequences of having him either shot or ill-treated, and it is
+extremely doubtful whether even in France there could have been found
+a soldier that would have obeyed an order to shoot his former Emperor,
+who had been requisitioned to return from Elba, and who so recently,
+with only six hundred soldiers, made war against Louis with his two
+hundred thousand and defeated and dethroned him.
+
+Nothing so magnificent has ever been known. This great man had
+complete hold of the imagination and devotion of his common people and
+soldiers. Even in the hour of defeat their loyalty was amazing.
+
+Various instances are given of this deep-rooted loyalty and affection.
+Some of his Imperial Guards who were wounded at Waterloo killed
+themselves on hearing that he had lost the battle, and many, who had
+been thought to be dead, when brought to consciousness shouted "Vive
+l'Empereur." The hospitals were full of dying men who uttered the same
+cry. One was having his leg amputated, and as he looked at the blood
+streaming from it, said that he would willingly give it all in the
+service of Napoleon. Another, who was having a ball extracted from
+his left side near the heart, shouted, "Probe an inch deeper and there
+you will find the Emperor."
+
+The story of the old woman whom he and Duroc met during the second
+campaign in Italy, and while climbing Mont Tarare, is a striking
+illustration of how he was regarded by the poorer classes. She hated
+the Bourbons and wanted to see the First Consul. Napoleon answered,
+"Bah! tyrant for tyrant--they are just the same thing." "No, no!" she
+replied; "Louis XVI. was the king of the nobles, Bonaparte is the king
+of the people." This idea of the old woman was the universal feeling
+of her class right through his reign. No writer has been able to give
+proof that it was withdrawn, even when he was overwhelmed with
+disaster which drained his empire of vast masses of its population. No
+cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination
+multitudes of men and women as he did. It was not his incomparable
+genius, nor his matchless military successes in battle. He was loved
+because he was lovable, and was trusted because he inspired belief in
+his high motives of amelioration of all down-trodden people. He ruled
+with a stern but kindly discipline, and put a heavy hand on those who
+had despotic tendencies.
+
+The Duchess of Abrantes, who smarted under some severe comments he
+had made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrantes, while at St.
+Helena, has been generous enough to say many kind things of him in her
+memoirs. One of her references to him is to this effect:--"All I know
+of him" (and she knew him well from childhood) "proves that he
+possessed a great soul which quickly forgets and forgives." She is
+very fond of repeating in her memoirs that Napoleon proposed marriage
+to her mother, Madame Permon, who was herself a Corsican and knew the
+Bonaparte family well.
+
+Madame Junot relates another story which is characteristic of
+Bonaparte. Such was the enthusiasm of the people on his march towards
+Paris after landing from Elba, that when he was holding a review of
+the National Guard at Grenoble, the people shouldered him, and a young
+girl with a laurel branch in her hand approached him reciting some
+verses. "What can I do for you, my pretty girl?" said the Emperor. The
+girl blushed, then lifting her eyes to him replied, "I have nothing to
+ask of your Majesty; but you would render me very happy by embracing
+me." Napoleon kissed her, and turning his head to either side, said
+aloud, with a fascinating smile, "I embrace in you all the ladies of
+Grenoble."
+
+That Napoleon made mistakes no one will dispute; indeed, he saw
+clearly, and admitted freely, in his solitude, that he had made many.
+His minor fault (if it be right to characterise it as such) was in
+extending clemency to the many rascals that were plotting his ruin and
+carrying on a system of peculation that was an abhorrence to him.
+Talleyrand, Fouche, and Bourrienne frequently came under his
+displeasure and were removed from his service, but were taken back
+after his wrath had passed.
+
+Miot de Melito speaks of them as "Bourrienne and other subordinate
+scoundrels," and, indeed, Miot de Melito does not exaggerate in his
+estimate of them. Fouche says that Bourrienne kept him advised of all
+Napoleon's movements for 25,000 francs per month, besides being both
+partner and patron in the house of Coulon Brothers, cavalry equipment
+providers, who failed for L120,000.
+
+In 1805, Bourrienne was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at Hamburg,
+and during his stay there he made L290,000 by delivering permits and
+making what is known as "arbitrary stoppages," and besides betraying
+Bonaparte to the Bourbons, this vile traitor wrote to Talleyrand, a
+few days after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the
+return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family."
+But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of
+this thievish human jackdaw.
+
+His memoirs are said to have been written by an impecunious and
+mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Memoires de
+Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very
+extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from
+them, authors have quoted from them whenever they desired an authority
+to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to
+believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings.
+Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the
+chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor.
+Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the
+impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms or
+historical statements.
+
+Men like Fouche, Talleyrand, and Bourrienne, and political women like
+Madame de Remusat and Madame de Stael, all of whom were brought under
+the Emperor's displeasure by their zealous aptitude in one way and
+another for intrigue, disloyalty, and, so far as the men are
+concerned, glaring dishonesty in money matters, have assiduously
+chronicled their own virtues and declaimed against Napoleon's
+incalculable vices, and this course was no doubt chosen in order to
+avert the public gaze from too close a scrutiny into their own
+perfidy. Their plan is not an unusual one under such circumstances;
+rascals never scruple to multiply offences more wicked than those
+already committed in order to prove that they are acting from a pure
+sense of public morality and historical truth. If the object of their
+attack be a benefactor, and one who has been obliged to rebuke or
+dismiss them for misdeeds, great or small, then they assail him with
+unqualified hostility.
+
+This unquestionably was the penalty paid by Napoleon for extending
+clemency to men who, if they had been in the service of any other
+monarch in Europe, would have been shut up in a fortress, or shot, the
+moment their perfidies had been discovered. The pity is that so much
+of this declamatory stuff has been so willingly believed and made use
+of in order to defame the name of a sovereign whose besetting fault
+was in relaxing just punishment bestowed on those who, he could never
+altogether forget, were his companions in other days.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] Montholon wished to have the following simple inscription:
+"Napoleon, ne a Ajaccio, le 15 Aout, 1769, mort a St. Helena, le 5
+Mai, 1821."
+
+[13] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
+
+[14] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.
+
+[15] "Correspondence of Napoleon I."
+
+[16] Ibid.
+
+[17] Madame Walewska bore him two children. This caused him to develop
+the idea of having an heir.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MERE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME
+
+
+It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his
+family. The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at
+nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete. They dare not
+run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by
+means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious
+character. They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a
+faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble
+wife and callous mother. She took with her into Austria the King of
+Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.
+He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the
+hollow of his hand. His father's name was not allowed to fall on his
+youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he
+secretly told him something of his father's fame. Treated as a
+prisoner, spied upon by Metternich's satellites, not allowed to have
+any visitors without this immortal Chancellor's permission, not
+allowed to communicate with his father's family or with Frenchmen,
+this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a
+growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a
+letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son
+strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.[18]
+
+Prince Napoleon in his excellent book--"Napoleon and His
+Detractors"--refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards
+with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his
+father's most important generals. He it was who betrayed him, and now
+he is become the Duke's confidant and instructor. The Prince says that
+his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done,
+his fall, and exile. There does not appear to be any record in
+existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of
+Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man
+was not only an eager student of his father's career, but fully
+realised his own importance and influence on European politics.
+
+It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing
+events in the land of his birth. Obenaus, his tutor, states in his
+diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political
+relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the
+world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French
+language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an
+unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me
+with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties
+of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential
+part of my studies. It is the language in which my father gave the
+word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with
+glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of
+war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never
+repudiate the nation into which I was born."[19] He further adds, "The
+_chief_ aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father's
+fame."
+
+His grandfather, the Emperor Francis--who was reputed to be quite
+devoted to him--said, "I wish that the Duke should revere the memory
+of his father." "Do not suppress the truth," says he to Metternich
+(the disloyal friend of Napoleon). "Teach him above all to honour his
+father's memory." The Chancellor replies, "I will speak to the Duke
+about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of to my own
+son." What irony! Whatever attempts were made at any time to
+depreciate the Emperor, his son's loyalty to him never flinched. He
+regarded his father in the light of a hero whose glorious traditions
+were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of men. He drank in every
+particle of information he could discover about his father's life, and
+was by no means ignorant of what would be his own great destiny should
+he be permitted to live.
+
+A strong party in France longed to have the son of their Emperor on
+the throne of France. A section of the Poles clamoured to have him
+proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish revolution, and the Greeks
+claimed him as their future King. All existing records dealing with
+the Prince's view concerning his position indicate quite clearly that
+he never under-estimated his importance. He was fully alive to and
+appreciated the growing devotion to himself, his cause, and to the
+great name he bore. We learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince
+received him with marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him
+permission to relate to him his father's history. Marmont, like all
+traitors, never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor
+Napoleon. This is a habit with people who do great injury to their
+friends. They always make it appear that the injured person is
+afflicted with growing love for them--they never realise how much they
+are loathed and mistrusted.
+
+The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he tolerated him
+coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him with stories of
+the genius and unparalleled greatness of his father's history that the
+young man subdued his prejudices and encouraged the Marshal in his
+visits to his apartments, in order that he might learn all that
+Marmont could tell him of his father's qualities and accomplishments.
+The young Napoleon caused the General to marvel at the quick
+intelligence he displayed in the pointed comments made on his father's
+career. In recognition of his services Marmont was presented with a
+portrait of the Prince.[20]
+
+His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book "Napoleon
+and His Detractors," obviously desires to convey the impression that
+all questions, important or unimportant, relating to the Emperor, were
+studiously kept from his son, and until he arrived at a certain age
+there can be little doubt that undue and unnatural precautions were
+taken to prevent the Emperor's name being spoken, but the means used
+for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to
+him having been well informed. He appears to have had an instinctive
+knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and
+especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and
+heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.
+Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince
+Napoleon complains of. Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the
+Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the
+events of his own and of his father's life, long before the advent of
+Marmont as his tutor. For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count
+Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince
+was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing
+with this distinguished man. The young Duke knew that Prokesch had
+broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly
+availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things
+to the Count. He informs him that he has "known him a long while, and
+loved him because he defended his father's honour at a time when all
+the world vied with each other to slander his name"; and then he
+continues: "I have read your 'Battle of Waterloo,' and in order to
+impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French
+and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor
+indolent when his father's fame and his own interests were in
+question.
+
+One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the
+intense interest his mother's husband began to take in him, and he
+probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him
+to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father's
+deeds. Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and
+the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in
+the most intimate way. If he perceived the immoral relations between
+Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it;
+but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for
+his father's memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the
+amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count
+and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it,
+not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch,
+Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his
+grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him
+cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was
+generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly
+likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out
+of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong
+being done to his Imperial father.
+
+The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the
+object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in
+Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a
+few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have
+been put on the throne of the land of his birth.
+
+Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have had any
+serious thought of encouraging the project of making the Duke Emperor
+of the French. His subtle game was to use him as a terror to Louis
+Philippe when that monarch became refractory or showed signs of
+covetousness.
+
+The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods. He was
+proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made immortal and
+he was determined not to soil it. If it was to be reclaimed, all
+obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his countenance to it.
+There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage. Thirty-four million
+souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his restoration to France.
+Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father's old
+companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more
+enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon, Bertrand, the
+petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of Rovigo. These were
+joined to thousands of other brave men who would have considered it an
+honour to shed their last drop of blood for the cause, and in memory
+of him whom they had loved so well. The two first-named were executors
+to his father's will, in which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt
+to avenge his death but to profit by it. He reminds him that things
+have changed. He was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the
+way is to convince her. His son is urged not to mount the throne by
+the aid of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the
+approbation of posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be pardoned,
+but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all uncivilised and
+barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.
+Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded
+philosophers are willing to believe. They are capable of rendering
+great services to humanity."
+
+These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to the
+young man from the tragic rock whose memories will ever defame the
+name of those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political
+history.
+
+It is none the less a phenomenon that this "abode of darkness," so
+monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be illumined by the
+great figure that stamped its fame for evermore with his personality.
+
+One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to draw up
+a constitution for his son. It is doubtful whether Montholon ever
+succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who passed on before the
+legitimate call to put it into practice came.
+
+The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great soldier
+with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right to outlaw and
+brand him as the disturber of public peace. I have already said this
+was their ostensible plea, but the real reason was his determination
+to exterminate feudalism and establish democratic institutions as soon
+as he could bring the different factions into harmony. He failed, but
+the colossal cost of his failure in men and money is unthinkable. His
+subjugation left Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated,
+of eight hundred millions, and then there was no peace.
+
+The constitution intended for his son could have been very
+beneficially applied to some of the nations represented at the
+Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him
+an outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other people's
+territory to each other. The only nation that came badly out of the
+Congress was Great Britain.
+
+This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated
+by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be
+adopted by the most democratic countries.
+
+The first article--composed of six words: "The sovereignty dwells in
+the nation"--stamps the purpose of it with real democracy. It might do
+no harm to embody some of its clauses into our own constitution at the
+present time. We very tardily adopted some of its laws long after his
+death, and we might go on copying to our advantage. He was a real
+progressor, but his team was difficult to guide. Had he been
+conciliated and allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised
+the whole of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was
+undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble. The
+mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the son, who
+was practically a State prisoner.
+
+During childhood the Prince was strong and healthy, and his robust
+physique caused favourable comment. It was not until 1819 that his
+health became affected by an attack of spotted fever. This passed away
+in a few weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to
+his rapid growth, dates from that period. He died prematurely on July
+22, 1832, at Schoenbrunn, and the accounts which may be relied upon
+indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent medical treatment. It
+is even asserted that this heir to the throne of France, ushered in
+twenty-one years before as the herald of Peace, was to be regarded as
+a source of infinite danger, and for that barbaric reason his health
+was allowed to be slowly and surely undermined until death took him
+from the restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of
+Europe. Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical public
+that his early death was the result of youthful indiscretions, but
+this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who declares that he was a
+strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus, in his diary, justifies this
+opinion, if there was nothing else to support it. Moreover the same
+Anton, Count Prokesch was asked by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth
+as to the alleged love affairs, and he averred that the rumours were
+without foundation.
+
+The King of Rome died at Schoenbrunn in the same room that his father
+had occupied in 1809. In Paris a report was put about that he had been
+poisoned by the Court of Vienna. This opinion has been handed down,
+and there are many persons to-day who have a firm belief in its
+possibility.
+
+Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich sent a
+poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and even this
+highly improbable story is not without reason believed, because
+Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning Judas in
+politics at that time. He had betrayed the father of the Prince while
+he was declaring the most loyal friendship. He admits this, nay, even
+boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his shameful conduct has its reward
+by having won for him the stigma of wishing for, and hastening on, the
+death of an unfortunate young man for whom ordinary manliness should
+have claimed compassion. This moral assassin of father and son
+declared that he had "used all the means in his power to second the
+hand of God" by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined
+moralists of Europe. The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace
+proclaimed for evermore. That was their pretence, though it could not
+have been their conviction. If it was, they were soon disillusioned.
+
+I made a long journey in company with a Danish statesman a few years
+ago, and amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign
+and fall of Napoleon. This gentleman held up his hands and said to me,
+"Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was. Had the Powers beheld the
+mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would have been to the
+world!"--and there is not much difficulty in supporting the view of
+this Danish gentleman. The more one probes into the history of the
+period, the more vivid the blunder appears.
+
+Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine, who was
+neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in being
+championed by a man whose book is made up of libels. Metternich may
+here be dismissed as being only one of many whose highest ambition was
+to destroy the man whom the French nation had made their monarch.
+Their aim was accomplished, but the spirit that evolved from the wreck
+of the Revolution still lives on, and may rise again to be avenged for
+the great crime that was committed.
+
+Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was
+despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his
+premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional causes,
+is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the actions of the
+high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause lingering doubts to
+prevail as to their innocence. It is certain that several determined
+attempts were made to take the Prince's life, and large sums were
+offered to desperadoes to carry out this murderous deed. Then the
+Court of Vienna were in constant fear of his abduction. His
+invitations to come to France were perpetual.
+
+A lady cousin--the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter of Elisa
+Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a passport from
+the Pope's Secretary of State, and coquetted so successfully with the
+Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a double guarantee of good faith
+by signing it. This impetuous and eccentric female made her way
+uninterruptedly to Vienna, found her cousin on the doorstep, made a
+rush for him and seized his hand, then shouted, "Who can prevent my
+kissing my sovereign's hand?" She also found means to convey letters
+to him. There is not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from
+the records that are available the incident set the heroes--comprising
+the allied Courts (including France)--into a flutter of excitement.
+The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty little Countess gives
+a lurid insight into the wave of comic derangement which must have
+taken possession of men's minds.
+
+This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen
+years it mounted to over six million francs. She died in Brittany,
+1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.
+
+That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke
+off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more
+ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the
+glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis,
+disagreed with the idea of his family. He looked upon the Emperor's
+son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and
+policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France. This
+Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis
+Philippe. He died in 1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin
+passed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists'
+cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mere, who had centred
+all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his
+grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion the
+assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her
+affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing
+reply from Madame Mere. It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6,
+1832:--
+
+    "Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which
+    has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose
+    death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have
+    never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.
+    In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my
+    great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has
+    seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I
+    firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for
+    the glory of this world.
+
+    "Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this
+    trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the
+    bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all
+    my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this
+    letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate
+    the task to my brother."
+
+Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to herself.
+Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens
+grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing
+to had wronged. There is not a syllable of _open_ reproach, though
+there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must
+assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious
+Austrian Archduchess who had played her son so falsely.
+
+This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the
+least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists. She
+was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads
+were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character, but
+the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got
+it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite
+rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her. Pius
+VII., who knew Madame Mere, sent his secretary to see her about this
+supposed intrigue. She listened to what the representative of the Pope
+had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:--
+
+"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me,
+but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I
+should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain
+adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should
+use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the
+most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."
+
+Then she bowed reverently and left the room.
+
+This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the "Most
+Christian King."
+
+Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H.
+Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire
+in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.
+
+"Why should I discontinue this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to
+the dust before my son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have
+not forgotten it."
+
+On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two
+Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the
+carriage. Madame Mere, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she
+had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the
+window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your pleasure? If
+it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!" The
+officers were naturally crestfallen. They respectfully saluted and
+rode off. These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they
+always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son's
+persecutors.
+
+Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one
+of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its
+logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and
+magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which
+characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing. The last
+paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come,
+and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the
+crime.
+
+"Reasons of State," she says, "have their limits, and _posterity_,
+which _forgets nothing_, admires above everything the generosity of
+conquerors."
+
+The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better for
+their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.
+The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a God-fearing woman who
+deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom."
+
+A great joy came to Madame Mere in 1830, when they told her that the
+Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the
+Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her
+lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness,
+which would forever prevent her beholding the statue. She turned away
+from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words
+of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in
+former days, God would have given her strength to climb to the top of
+the column to assure herself that it was there. She refused to
+separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the
+proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it
+included all her family. This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836,
+aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother
+and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the
+remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to
+receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first
+interment at Ajaccio.
+
+Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second wife should
+be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even of those
+historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to
+say of her. She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and
+the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six. Had
+this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies
+against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed
+the humiliating spectacle of her father's successor being forced to
+abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband,
+whose memory all noble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic
+and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed
+herself to be the base accomplice of a great assassination. The most
+fitting reference to her death appeared in the _Times_ newspaper,
+which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it."
+On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with
+consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive,
+icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be
+pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last
+moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order
+to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy."
+What irony!
+
+It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must
+have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is even hard
+to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual association
+with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that while his reference to
+her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking,
+as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something
+like the following:--"I cannot make this historical document without
+alluding to you for my son's sake, though I know full well you have
+wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all
+this, but I am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of
+compassion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and
+grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I
+must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct
+towards me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have
+done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me
+suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by
+passing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix,
+Bessieres, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, and Berthier, and we shall talk
+of the deeds we have done together. Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under
+the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied
+satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable
+warriors of Europe in a state of alarm. I wish you joy of your allies,
+who have behaved so nobly to your husband in captivity. I have often
+thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular
+national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second
+wife a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated
+by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my
+downfall. Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me in my
+adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to France and to
+your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the
+coalition against me and saving rivers of blood. Waterloo might never
+have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law,
+Catherine of Westphalia, in her attitude of supreme womanhood, and
+your fame might have surpassed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed
+down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion,
+and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a
+saint by the people to which you belong. You shared with me the
+unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth. I was
+devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your father insisted that you
+should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice
+in the outrage committed against me. You had shared my throne, and I
+had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my
+side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in
+the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its
+eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you
+to forsake me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her
+father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the
+succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire
+misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of
+nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to
+bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament
+some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you,
+Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless
+the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that
+letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from
+Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.
+I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You
+ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which
+I am assured you received. I make no public accusation against you.
+_That_ would be undignified and unkingly."
+
+In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon
+reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated
+that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of
+his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability. The
+remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to
+this erotic woman in his will. It puzzled his companions in exile, who
+knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.
+It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew
+pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would
+have been Josephine's under similar circumstances. It is an
+astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those
+who had injured him most.
+
+In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers
+to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In the sixth
+paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate results of the
+invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be
+attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La
+Fayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I
+do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for
+the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, "It is replete
+with false assertions and falsified documents." He heaps coals of fire
+on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair
+and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp. It
+is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not
+have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by
+these little attentions.
+
+Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose
+baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years
+from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged
+fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had
+made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be
+the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so
+Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the
+ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband's
+inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to
+his credit. He had indeed run away with another man's wife, and had
+issue by her. Probably his amorous reputation influenced the
+oligarchy in their choice.
+
+In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised
+falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part
+of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and
+exactly suited for the purpose he had in view. His instructions were
+to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with
+revolting success.
+
+God's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of
+carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of
+delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband,
+sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her
+marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be more completely
+assured. As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be
+excelled.
+
+At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became
+"inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put up
+so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a letter
+of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in
+which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations,
+she says "that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is
+impossible to fight against the _Divine Will_. You are very right in
+saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of
+such a loss. Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me,
+only daily increases my grief." This "amiable," grief-stricken royal
+sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succumbs
+again to her natural instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console,"
+but only increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."
+
+Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we
+know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it. But
+the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in
+1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her
+native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins. In
+spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession
+through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression
+that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or
+pity.
+
+A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter
+of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette--Queen Marie
+Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of
+the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and
+he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her
+prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause
+to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in
+trouble she forgot the past. She declared that if it was still the
+determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity
+between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of
+consolation, it was her granddaughter's duty to assume disguise, tie
+sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.
+
+There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise
+sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name
+would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact,
+against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate. It is
+moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that
+the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was
+ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the
+divine law of marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an
+indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever
+his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in
+his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she urges a
+reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it
+impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal
+companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely
+that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the
+penalty of the errors she had committed.
+
+"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the death of
+my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature--not
+the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.
+But when alone in my chamber, _then_ I suffer. Then the feelings of
+the man burst forth."
+
+We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being
+overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the
+personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over
+men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.
+Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son,
+whom he called "Mon pauvre petit chou." "I do not blush to admit,"
+said he on a memorable occasion, "that I have a good deal of a
+mother's tenderness. I could never count on the faithfulness of a
+father who did not love his children."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] "Correspondance de Napoleon," vol. 128, p. 133.
+
+[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.
+
+[20] See "Memoirs."
+
+[21] See "Memoirs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS
+
+
+It would be an easy task to enlarge on the excellent qualities of this
+wonderful man. Volumes could be written about this phase of his
+dazzling career alone, and yet we have miscreants such as Talleyrand
+proclaiming to the Conference of "Christian Kings" and traitors that
+the greatest, most powerful, and most humane prince of the age "must
+be exterminated like a mad dog." The news of his flight from Elba and
+arrival in Paris, vociferously acclaimed by the French people as their
+lawful sovereign, threw this band of parasites into apoplectic terror;
+Talleyrand, of all creatures, dictating to the Conference as to the
+wording of the proclamation that should be issued outlawing his
+Emperor, whom he and they styled "Usurper." If it were not so
+outrageous a violation of decency, we would look upon it as the most
+comical incident notified in history. Talleyrand, the most
+accomplished traitor and barefaced thief in Europe, except perhaps
+Bourrienne, he who could not prevent himself from fumbling in his
+sovereign's and everybody else's pockets whenever the opportunity
+occurred, to be allowed to sit in conference with the anointed rulers
+of Europe is really too comic.
+
+Napoleon was styled "Usurper" by these saintly Legitimists, not one of
+whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately as the man whom
+they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole of Europe were to be
+drenched in blood by the process of it. They set themselves to
+disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French people, who had only
+just again ratified by millions of votes his claim to the throne, and
+the gallant and heroic response to their requisition that he should
+leave Elba and become their ruler again. Surely it will never be
+contended that Napoleon's claims were less legitimate than those of
+the Prince of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, or Frederic William
+the great Elector, whose sole qualification for kingship consisted in
+having the instincts of a tiger. Of the latter Lord Macaulay says,
+"His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends." His sole
+ambition seemed to be to pay fabulous sums for giant soldiers, and he
+showed an inhuman aversion to his son, afterwards known as Frederic
+the Great, and his daughter Wilhelmina. He was as ignorant and
+ill-conditioned a creature as could be found in the whole world, a
+cowardly rascal who found pleasure in kicking ladies whom he might
+meet in the street and ordering them "home to mind their brats." No
+more need be said of the father of the great Frederic, whose "Life"
+took Thomas Carlyle thirteen years in searching musty German histories
+to produce. Carlyle says, "One of the reasons that led me to write
+'Frederic' was that he managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his
+century was"; and indeed his adoration for Frederic is quite
+pardonable. He had spent thirteen years of his life in the supreme
+effort of making him a hero, and his great work, contained in eight
+volumes, is a matchless piece of literature; but there is nothing in
+it to justify anyone believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a
+charlatan. It is true Frederic finished better than he began, but
+truthfulness and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied,
+broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his
+purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no
+doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic
+Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The powers
+of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark,
+the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it. Had he been an
+honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits him
+with, he would have stood by his oath. Instead of defending his ally,
+he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe into a
+devastating, bloody war, with the sole object of robbery; and all he
+could say for himself in extenuation of such base conduct was:
+"Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me,
+carried the day; and I decided for war."
+
+Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great
+was mainly acquired because the Powers and circumstances allowed him
+to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.
+
+Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's career
+that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic. He really
+usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his
+hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral
+laws. There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point
+out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of
+the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an
+industrious mediocrity.
+
+These legitimate monarchs, through their Ministers, used barefacedly
+to inspire journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as
+being a natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation.
+History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an
+impudent hypocrisy. They might have had it at any time, but this did
+not suit their policy of legitimacy. Countless thousands of human
+beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings and nobles to
+the plan of one man who towered above them, and insisted on breaking
+up the nefarious system of feudalism and kingship by divine right.
+They loathed both him and his system. They plotted for his
+assassination, and intrigued with all the ferocity of wild animals
+against his humane and enlightened government. He trampled over all
+their satanic dodges to overthrow the power that had been so often
+enthusiastically placed in his hands by the sovereign people. He
+constructed roads and canals, and introduced new methods of creating
+commerce. He introduced a great scheme of expanding education,
+science, art, literature. Every phase of enlightenment was not only
+initiated, but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its
+application. He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of
+laws that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and
+eminently just.
+
+He not only re-established religion, but he upheld the authority of
+the Pope as the recognised head of the Roman Church. He built his
+"pyramids in the sea," established a free press, and declared himself
+in favour of manhood suffrage. He included in his system a unification
+of all the small continental States, and was declaimed against as a
+brigand for doing it. Wherever his plans were carried out the people
+were prosperous and happy, so long as they were allowed to toil in
+their own way in their fields and in other industrial pursuits.
+
+It was the perpetual spirit of war that overshadowed the whole of
+Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem. He, in
+this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had carried into
+practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in less than a
+century after the great reformer had been removed from the sphere of
+enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into
+unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the
+very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty.
+What satire, what malignity of fate, that Bismarck, a positive
+refutation of genius in comparison with the French Emperor, should
+succeed in resurrecting the fabric that the latter had so proudly
+built up for France, only to be in a few short years the prize of
+Germany, recognised by the very Powers who fought with such embittered
+aggressiveness against the great captain and statesman who made not
+only modern France, but modern Europe; and who at any time during his
+reign could, by making a sign, as he has said, have had the nobles of
+France massacred. These bloodsucking creatures were always in the road
+of reform, always steeped overhead in political intrigue, always
+concerned in plots against the life of Napoleon, and always shrieking
+with resentment when they and their accomplices were caught. Some
+writers are so completely imbued with the righteousness of murdering
+Napoleon, they convey the impression that when any attempt failed, the
+perpetrators, instead of being punished, should have had the
+decoration of the Legion of Honour placed upon them by himself. They
+are also quite unconscious that they are backing a mean revenge and an
+awful mockery of freedom when they eloquently shout "Hosanna!"
+
+According to them St. Helena was the only solution of the problem, if
+it may be so called, and the Powers who sent him there must have had
+an inspiration from above. They have no conception that the Allies
+perpetrated another crucifixion on the greatest and (if we are to
+judge him by _reliable_ records) the best man of the nineteenth
+century. Ah! fickle France! you are blighted with eternal shame for
+having allowed these cowardly vindictive conspirators, popularly
+called the Allies, to besmear _you_, as well as themselves, with the
+blood of a hero.
+
+France had resources at her command which could and should have been
+used to drive the invaders beyond her boundaries. Frenchmen can never
+live down the great blunder of abandoning their Emperor, forsaking
+themselves and the duty they owed to their native land. They forsook
+in the hour of need all that was noble and honourable, and cast
+themselves into a cauldron of treason, such as has never been heard of
+in the world's history. They were soon disillusioned, but it was then
+too late. The poison had done its work, and France was placed under
+the subjection of traitors, place-hunters and foreign Powers for many
+years to come.
+
+I have already said that Louis XVIII. was put on the throne, not by
+the French people, but by their conquerors and their myrmidons. He did
+not long survive his ignoble accession. Then came Charles X., who had
+to fly to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh because he governed so ill. His
+qualification to rule was in putting down all reform and liberty;
+after him came Louis Philippe, but even he only governed on
+sufferance, though on the whole he occupied an onerous position with
+creditable success. A monarch who rules under the tender mercies of a
+capricious people, and worse still, a capricious and not too
+scrupulous monarchy of monarchs, is not to be envied, and this was
+exactly the position of Louis Philippe. He was beset by the noisy
+clamour of many factions, besides having to keep a shrewd eye on those
+lofty men to whom he had to look with perpetual nervous tension for
+the stability and endurance of his throne. He knew the heart of the
+nation was centred on St. Helena, and that a wave of repentance was
+passing over the land. The people wished to atone for the crime they
+allowed to be committed in 1815.
+
+Louis Philippe showed great wisdom and foresight. Nothing could have
+been done with more suitable delicacy than the negotiations which
+caused the British Government to consent to give the remains of the
+Emperor up to the French. The air of importance and swagger put into
+it by Lord Palmerston is supremely farcical, but then the whole
+senseless blunder from beginning to end was a farce, which does not
+redound to our credit. It is incredible that a nation so thickly
+stocked with men of ability in every important department should have
+had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and
+officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive.
+Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or
+anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and
+stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing
+during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we
+are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man
+of genius in Europe but himself. The population of France who were
+contemporary with him during his meteoric leadership remembered him as
+a matchless reformer and an unconquerable warrior. Their devotion and
+belief in his great gifts had sunk deeply into their being. A couple
+of generations had come into existence from 1815 to 1840, but even to
+those who knew him only as a captive, he was as much their Emperor and
+their hero and martyr as he was to his contemporaries. The pride of
+race, the glory of the Empire and of its great founder, was suckled
+into them from the time of birth, and as they grew into manhood and
+womanhood they became permeated with a passionate devotion to his
+cause. They claimed that his deliverance to the people "he loved so
+well" was a right that should not be withheld. The spirit of sullen
+determination that he should be given up had taken deep root. They had
+arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark would have created
+a conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant
+business, and were resolved that they would stand no more red-tape
+fussy nonsense from either their Government or the Government who kept
+a regiment of British soldiers to guard his tomb, lest he should again
+disturb the peace of Europe. They let it be known that no more of that
+kind of humbug would be tolerated without reprisals, and the hint was
+taken. Louis Philippe grasped the situation, and formed an expedition
+with his son Prince Joinville as chief, who was accompanied by Baron
+Las Cases, member of the Chamber of Deputies; General Count Bertrand;
+M. l'Abbe Conquereau, almoner to the expedition; four former servants
+of Napoleon--viz., Saint Denis and Noverraz, valets-de-chambre;
+Pierron, officer of the kitchen; and Archambaud, butler--Marchand, one
+of the executors, and the quarrelsome and disloyal General Gourgaud,
+of whom we may have something more to say further on. This same
+Gourgaud, who lied so infamously about his Imperial benefactor when he
+landed in London, has said that "he could not express what he felt
+when he again found himself near that extraordinary being, that giant
+of the human race, to whom he had sacrificed all and to whom he owed
+all he was." These thoughts, and many more not uttered, would come to
+him when he stood beside the sepulchre of the master whom he had so
+grievously wronged and who was now and henceforth to be recognised as
+having been the "legitimate ruler of his country."
+
+Count Montholon, the most devoted and most constant follower of
+Napoleon and his family, was not of the expedition. He was engaged in
+helping the nephew of his hero to ascend the throne of his illustrious
+uncle, and the effort landed them both in the fortress of Ham. Louis
+Philippe and his Ministers were very jealous of anyone sharing in any
+part of the glory of having Napoleon brought to the banks of the
+Seine. Hence, when King Joseph and Prince Louis Napoleon offered the
+arms of the Emperor to the nation, the King refused them, but
+prevailed upon General Bertrand to give them to him, that he might
+give them to the nation. Napoleon had given the sword he wore at
+Austerlitz and his arms to Bertrand when on his deathbed. Prince Louis
+could not stand the great captain's name being trumpeted about for
+other people's glory. He claimed that it belonged to him. He was the
+legitimate heir to all its glory, and this too previous assumption got
+him imprisoned in Ham for asserting what he protested was his right.
+
+Meanwhile the _Bellepoule_ goes lumbering along, impeded by calms and
+gales, but anchored safely off Jamestown on October 8, 1840. Of course
+many formalities had to be carried out, so that the exhumation did not
+commence until the 15th at midnight. They came upon the coffin at ten
+in the forenoon, opened it, and found the body well preserved. Thereon
+everyone was overcome with emotion. After the coffin was deposited
+with profound solemnity and the national flag placed over it, the
+honours which would have been paid to the Emperor had he been living
+were paid to his remains on October 18, 1840.
+
+The expedition set sail, and had only been a few days out when the
+captain of a passing vessel called the _Hamburg_ informed Prince
+Joinville that war between France and Great Britain was imminent, and
+two or three days later this was confirmed by circumstantial
+information to him by a Dutch vessel called the _Egmont_. Officers of
+the two other vessels of the expedition were ordered aboard the
+_Bellepoule_, a council of war held, and a determined resistance
+resolved upon. The decks were cleared for action, guns were mounted,
+and every form of princely comfort dispensed with. The son of Louis
+Philippe added lustre to the name of Bourbon by the heroic decision
+that, whatever the fortune of battle might be, he would sink his ship
+rather than allow the remains of the Emperor to fall into the hands
+of the British again. The resolve was worthy of Napoleon himself.
+
+Every precaution was taken to evade capture, but as the information
+proved to be unfounded, the expedition was not interrupted by hostile
+cruisers, nor even by contrary winds, and long before it was expected
+the historic frigate sailed quietly into the harbour of Cherbourg at
+5.0 a.m. on November 30, 1840. She had made the passage from St.
+Helena in forty-two days. Then the great and unexampled triumph
+commenced.
+
+Europe was a second time in mourning, bowing its head in reverence and
+shame. Never have there been such universal tokens of condemnation of
+the captivity and the creatures who engineered it, and never such
+unequalled joy and homage as were paid to the memory of the great
+dead. During the eight days the lying-in-state lasted, more than two
+hundred thousand people came to the Invalides daily. Thousands never
+got within the coveted grounds, yet they came in increasing numbers
+each successive day, notwithstanding the rigour of the biting weather.
+
+It may be said that the whole world was moved with the desire to show
+sympathy with this unsurpassed national devotion and worldwide
+repentance. His remains are now in the church of the Invalides, where
+the daily pilgrimage still goes on. The interest in the victim of the
+stupidity of the British Administration never flags. Each day the dead
+Emperor is canonised, and his prophetic words that posterity would do
+him justice are being amply fulfilled.
+
+The Christian Kings that made saintly war on Napoleon, and combined to
+commit an atrocious crime in the name of the founder of our faith,
+were dead. God in His mercy had dispensed with their sagacious
+guidance in human affairs, and it may be they were paying a lingering
+penalty for the diabolical act at the very time their prisoner's ashes
+reached the shores of his beloved country and convulsed it with
+irrepressible joy. They and many of their accomplices were gone. Four
+Popes had reigned and passed on to their last long sleep. The Spanish
+nation, which contributed to his downfall, had been smitten with the
+plague of chronic revolution. They had been deprived of the great
+guiding spirit who alone could administer that wholesome discipline
+which was so necessary to keep the turbulent spirits in restraint.
+Only Bernadotte, whom Napoleon had put in the way of becoming King of
+Norway and Sweden, remained to represent the galaxy of Kings. A few of
+the traitor Marshals were left, but Augereau had died soon after the
+banishment and Berthier had committed suicide a few day before the
+Battle of Waterloo by jumping out a window. Soult, Oudinot, and the
+guilty Marmont were in evidence in these days of great national
+rejoicing. Davoust, Jourdan, Macdonald, and Massena had passed behind
+the veil. It was the defection of Berthier and Marmont, whom he
+regarded as his most trusted and loyal comrades-in-arms, that crushed
+the Emperor at the time of the first abdication. It was a cruel stab,
+which sunk deep into his soul, and never really healed, but the most
+heartless incident in connection with this betrayal was the
+appointment of Marmont, the betrayer, by the Emperor Francis to be the
+military instructor of Napoleon's son while he was held in captivity
+and ignorance at Vienna.
+
+Fouche, whose treason and predatory misdeeds should have had him shot
+long before the dawn of disaster to the Empire came, joined the
+Ministry of Louis XVIII., whom he had arduously assisted to the
+throne, but in 1816 he was included in the decree against the
+murderers of Louis XVI., and had to make himself scarce. He went to
+Prague, then to Trieste, and died there in 1820.
+
+Talleyrand died at Paris in 1838.
+
+Both men were unscrupulous intriguers, without an atom of moral sense
+or loyalty, and both possessed ability, differing in kind, perhaps,
+which they used in the accomplishment of their own ends. France can
+never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national
+cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only
+when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns,
+they knew he was kept in close touch with what was going on. It was
+not until treason became entangled within treason that their evil
+designs had fuller scope and more disastrous results. Bourrienne,
+another rascal already referred to in this book, lost his fortune and
+his reason in 1830, and died in a lunatic asylum at Caen of apoplexy
+in February, 1834. It is a notable fact that nearly the whole of the
+prominent figures in the drama of the Empire and its fall had passed
+beyond the portal before the great captain's remains were brought back
+to France. These individuals are only remembered now as uninspired
+small men, benighted in mind, who had wrought ignobly to bring about
+the fall of a powerful leader, and to the end of their days were
+associated with and encouraged a fiendish persecution of the Emperor
+while he lived, and of his family before and after his death.
+
+But the pious care of his tomb by a regiment of British soldiers, paid
+for by British taxpayers, from 1821 until the patriotic exhumation in
+1840; by stately and solemn permission of the British Government,
+excels the comic genius of a gang of plethoric parochial innkeepers.
+If it were not so degrading to the national pride of race, we might
+regard it as taking rank amongst the drollest incidents of human life.
+What a gang of puffy, mildewed creatures were at the head British
+affairs in those days! Indeed, they expose the human soul at its
+worst, and a curious feature is their ingrained belief in the
+integrity of all their doings, which beggars the English vocabulary
+describe. How the people tolerated the drain on human life and the
+material resources of country is also phenomenal.
+
+Thousands of lives were sacrificed and millions of money squandered,
+with the sole object of destroying and humiliating one man, who, had
+he been handled discreetly, would have proved greater public asset
+than he was. Sir Hudson Lowe would not be known to posterity but for
+the guilty part he played in the tragedy. He left St. Helena on July
+25, 1821, and was presented on the eve of his departure with an
+address from the inhabitants. It has been said that document was
+inspired from Plantation House, but that is scarcely credible.
+Besides, we are not inclined to discount any credit Lowe and his
+friends and accomplices can derive from it. It does not glow with
+devotion nor regret at his resigning his command. Indeed, it is
+nothing more nor less than a cold, polite way of bidding him farewell.
+Forsyth makes much of this, with the object of proving his popularity
+with the islanders and the itinerant persons in the service of the
+Crown. He only makes his case worse by embarking on so hopeless a
+task. As a matter of fact, this extraordinary representative of the
+British Government had roused the whole population of St. Helena at
+one time and another to a pitch of passion and scorn that puts it
+beyond doubt that no genuine regret could have been consistently
+expressed by a single soul, except those few composing his staff, who
+were as guilty as himself and were always ready to lick his boots for
+a grain of favour; and yet it is quite certain, notwithstanding the
+heroic fooleries and the care to make Plantation House a sanctuary of
+guilty secrecy, there was nothing that transpired, either important or
+unimportant, concerning the inhabitants of Longwood, that was not
+promptly passed along. Needless to say, these communications relieved
+the dull monotony of the exiles, and even Gourgaud was driven to
+cynical mockery by the ridiculous character of some of the piteous
+stories that filtered through. There never was any difficulty in
+verifying the truth of them when it was thought necessary or useful to
+do so. On the authority of Lowe's biographer, we are told that this
+immortal High Commissioner was presented to his precious sovereign on
+November 14, 1821, and was on the point of kissing his hand, but His
+Majesty, overwhelmed with the preeminence of the great man who stood
+before him, indicated that there was to be no kissing of hands. His
+services to his King and country demanded a good shake of the hand and
+hearty congratulations from His Christian Majesty. Lowe's arduous and
+exemplary task was admitted with tears in the kingly eyes, and so
+overcome was His Majesty that he took Lowe's hand again, and shook it
+a second time, combining with the handshake a further flow of grateful
+thanks and the appointment to a colonelcy of the 93rd Regiment These
+compliments were well deserved, coming, as they did from a monarch
+whose will he had discharged with such brutal fidelity. But what of
+the afterthought, the reaction which began to hum round his ears
+almost immediately after this fulsome display of enthusiastic
+approbation? A vast public, never in favour of the Government's
+vaunted policy of heroism over an unfortunate foe, swung round with a
+vengeance. The indignation against the perpetrators of this cruel
+assassination had no bounds. It was not confined to Britain. The
+civilised world was shocked. The willing tool of the Government got
+the worst of it, and the perfidy will cling to his name throughout
+eternity.
+
+O'Meara's book, "A Voice from St. Helena; or, Napoleon in Exile,"
+published in 1822, sold like wildfire. In vain Bathurst, Castlereagh,
+and Liverpool tried to check the flood of public censure that poured
+in upon them from everywhere. Sir Hudson Lowe, beside himself with
+apprehension, appealed to them for protection, but none was
+forthcoming. Indeed, they were too busy searching out some means by
+which the blow could be eased off themselves, and with studious
+politeness left their accomplice to plan out his defence as best he
+could; and the world knows what a sorry job he made of it. His
+coadjutors in the great tragedy were not the kind of people to share
+any part of the public censure that could be reflected on to their
+gaoler. Pretty compliments had been paid to him by the King and some
+of his Ministers previous to the realisation of the full force of
+public indignation. Bathurst sent him a letter in 1823 reminding him
+that his treatment had been beyond that of ordinary governors, that he
+was working out an idea of having him recommended to a West Indian
+governorship, and that he was not to suppose that this gracious
+interest in him was in order to silence the clamour that was being
+raised against him. This communication was made in November, and in
+December Lowe was told that he was to go to Antigua as Governor. For
+special reasons this favour was refused, and two years afterwards he
+accepted command of the forces at Ceylon, and was still there when Sir
+Walter Scott's exculpation of the British Government appeared in 1828.
+Scott was employed for that special purpose.
+
+The ex-Governor searched the pages of this extraordinary work for a
+vindication of himself, but never a word that could be construed into
+real approval was there. He obtained leave of absence from the
+Governor of Ceylon and made his way to England, ostensibly to
+vindicate his character. He landed at St. Helena, paid a visit to
+Longwood, otherwise known as the "Abode of Darkness" since the
+Imperial tenant named it so when he gave O'Meara his benediction on
+the occasion of his last parting from him, when he was banished from
+the island. Sir Hudson was shocked at seeing the place reverted back
+to a worse state than it was previous to the exiles being forced into
+it. Then it was a dirty, unwholesome barn, overrun with vermin; now it
+was worse than a piggery. The aspect touched a tender chord in this
+man who had been the cause of making the Emperor's compulsory sojourn
+a sorrowful agony.
+
+Reflections of all that happened during those five memorable years
+must have crowded in upon him and racked him with feelings of bitter
+remorse for his avoidable part in the cruel drama; and as he stood
+upon the spot that had been made famous by England's voluntary
+captive, it was not unnatural that he should have been overcome by a
+strange and possibly a purifying sadness. All of that which he had
+regarded in other days, under different conditions, as unjustifiable
+splendour had vanished. The Imperial bedroom and study were now made
+use of to accommodate and give shelter to cows, horses, and pigs.
+Other agricultural commodities were strewn about everywhere. Nothing
+was left that would indicate that it was consecrated to fame and
+everlasting pity. The triumph of death came to it only some six years
+before. And now Sir Hudson Lowe, we doubt not, filled with pensive
+regret, looked down on the nameless tomb of the great captain, guarded
+by sentinels with fixed bayonets, ready to thrust them into any
+unauthorised intruder into the sacred precincts of the Valley of
+Napoleon, or the Geranium Valley, which is also known by the name of
+Punch Bowl.
+
+Ah! what thickly gathering memories must have come to him in that
+solemn hour on that smitten rock of bitter and brutal vengeance! All
+we shall ever know of that melancholy visit as it really affected Lowe
+has been told by his biographer. We are left to imagine a good deal,
+and therefore must conclude that he would be less than human if he did
+not realise that the shadow of retribution was pursuing him. If his
+thoughts of himself were otherwise, he was soon to be disillusioned.
+
+He spent three days on the Rock, and had a good reception and
+send-off, and ere long made his appearance in London and presented
+himself to his quasi-friend, Bathurst, who, with an eye to his own and
+his colleagues' interests, discouraged the idea of publishing an
+answer to Sir Walter Scott's book. Bathurst, in fact (with unconscious
+drollery), advised Lowe to hurry back to Ceylon without delay, lest
+meanwhile a vacancy of the governorship should occur and he might lose
+his opportunity. He was assured of the Government's appreciation of
+him as their most trusted and loyal public servant, while as a matter
+of fact it was ludicrously obvious that his presence was quite as
+objectionable to them in England as it was to the exiles in St.
+Helena. He was fully alive to, and did not underestimate, the amount
+of dirty work he had done for them, and very properly expected to be
+amply rewarded. It never occurred to him that retribution was
+over-shadowing them as well as himself, and that they could not openly
+avow their displeasure at the odium he was the cause of bringing on
+the Government and on the British name by reason of his having so
+rigidly carried out their perfidious regulations. Had public opinion
+supported them, their action would have been claimed as a sagacious
+policy, but it didn't, so this poor, wretched, tactless, incompetent
+tool became almost as much their aversion as the great prisoner
+himself. In fact, things went so ill with them that they would have
+preferred it had Lowe indulged every whim of his prisoner, granted him
+full liberty to roam wherever he liked, recognised him as Emperor, and
+even been not too zealous in preventing his escape; and they must have
+wished that, in the first instance, they had not thought of St.
+Helena, but wisely and generously granted him hospitality in our own
+land. This last would have been the best thing that could have
+happened for everybody concerned.
+
+Ill-treatment of the most humble prisoner or assassination of the most
+exalted can never be popular with the British people. Sir Hudson got a
+cold douche when he obtained an interview with the Duke of
+Wellington. His Grace in so many words told him that they wished to
+have nothing to do with him. He could not recommend him for a post in
+the Russian army. He could not hold out hopes of him getting the
+governorship of Ceylon should a vacancy occur. He had been hardly
+used, but there was no help for it. Parliament would not grant him the
+pension he asked for. Lowe replied that he would stand or fall by its
+decision, but the Duke snapped him off by stating that Mr. Peel would
+never make such a proposal to the House of Commons. No other course
+was open to him now but to return to Ceylon. He did not get the
+vacancy which occurred in 1830, and returned to England, but never got
+a public appointment again.
+
+He presented a wordy memorial in 1843, complaining of having been kept
+out of employment for twelve years. The governorship of Ceylon had
+been vacant three times, the Ionian Islands four times; he had been
+Governor there in 1812. In other parts of the Empire appointments that
+he supposed he could have filled were given to others. Poor creature!
+He died in 1844, a broken and ruined man.
+
+He lacked every quality that is essential in an administrator, and was
+utterly void of humour, imagination, or the capacity to manage men.
+His suspicious disposition and lack of judgment made it eminently
+impossible for him to fulfil any delicate position, and it was a
+monstrous libel on the knowledge of the fitness of things to entrust
+him with the governorship of St. Helena.
+
+Lord Teynham made a violent attack on Lowe in the House of Lords in
+1833. The Duke of Wellington was bound to defend his satellite, and
+did so with some vigour, as the attack was really on him and certain
+members of his Government. Lord Teynham replies with equal vigour: "He
+had no intention of aspersing the private character of Sir Hudson, but
+as regards his conduct while Governor of St. Helena, he maintained,
+and always would, that Lowe was cried out upon by all the people of
+Europe as a person unfit to be trusted with power." Lord Teynham a few
+days afterwards made a sort of apology, no doubt inspired by
+interested persons, for personal plus international reasons. They were
+high of heart, these dauntless confederates, in the early and middle
+stages of the captivity, and, indeed, they bore themselves with
+braggart defiance of public opinion, until many strong manifestations
+of inevitable trouble encompassed them, and, like all despots, who are
+invariably cowards, they lived in mortal terror lest this creature of
+theirs should break out into St. Helena leprosy again and impose
+further humiliation upon them. Lowe had talked of actions for libel
+against Barry O'Meara, and in a whimsical, half-hearted way worried
+his employers to give battle, and the law officers of the Crown stated
+a case but advised against taking action, and so it was never brought,
+though O'Meara kept telling them in so many words to come on. "I am
+anxious that you should have the opportunity of defending the charges
+I have brought against you. I am anxious too that the public should
+know more than I have written." That in effect was the attitude of the
+gallant doctor, who was the first to call serious attention to the
+goings on in the "Abode of Darkness." Needless to say, no action was
+ever taken, and, in face of all the incriminating facts, it was never
+intended that any should be taken. Even High Toryism became alarmed at
+the consequences. The Duke of Wellington, brave and gallant soldier
+though he was, shrank from so impossible an ordeal. The best he could
+say of him was, "He was a stupid man," "A bad choice," "and totally
+unfit to take charge of Bonaparte."
+
+Wellington may have been a brave and skilful general, but he did not
+know how to be generous to an unfortunate enemy who was himself always
+kind and considerate in the hour of victory. Wellington's expressions
+about Lowe are more than significant, though his conduct towards the
+poor cat's-paw is characteristic of a mean, flinty soul. But his
+behaviour towards Napoleon would have put any French Jacobin to the
+blush, and has belittled him for all time in the eyes of everybody who
+has a spark of human feeling in him.
+
+Meneval[22] says that Waterloo was won by the French in the middle of
+the day of that fateful battle, but a caprice of fortune--the arrival
+of Bulow's corps and Blucher's army, and the absence of Grouchy's
+corps--snatched from Napoleon's hands the triumph which was within his
+grasp. Wellington had even said to General Hill, who came to take his
+orders at the most critical moment of the battle: "I have no orders to
+give you. There is nothing left for us but to die here. Our retreat is
+even cut off behind us."
+
+Wellington's despairing words have been handed down in various forms.
+Notably he is reported to have said, "Oh! for night or Bluecher." When
+he heard the firing, "That is old Bluecher at last!" &c. That he was in
+a tight place there is little doubt, and many authorities have stated
+that had Grouchy come up according to orders, the allied forces would
+have been cut to pieces.
+
+Whether it was "caprice of fortune" or not, Wellington claimed to have
+won the battle. "Caprice of fortune" had nothing to do with it. It
+was a hard-fought battle. Treachery and desertion at an important
+juncture undoubtedly weakened the chances of French success. Meneval
+adds that "in no encounter of such importance did the French army
+display more heroism and more resolution than at the Battle of
+Waterloo." Napoleon at St. Helena attributed his defeat to a variety
+of circumstances: to treachery, and to his orders not being carried
+out as they should have been by some of his generals, and often
+concludes: "It must have been Fate, for I ought to have succeeded." He
+was accustomed to say that "One must never ask of Fortune more than
+she can grant," and possibly he erred in this.
+
+Though nearly a century has passed since the catastrophe to France,
+the cause of it is still controversial. It is certain that the conduct
+of Marshal Soult, who was second in command, gave reason for
+suspicion. An old corporal told the Emperor that he was to "be assured
+that Soult was betraying him." General Vandamme was reported to have
+gone over to the enemy. It was also reported to the Emperor by a
+dragoon that General Henin was exhorting the soldiers of his corps to
+go over to the Allies, and while this was going on the General had
+both legs blown away by a cannon shot. Lieutenants, colonels, staff
+officers, and, it is said, officers who were bearing despatches
+deserted, but it is significant that there is not a single instance
+given of the common soldier forsaking his great chief's cause. Lord
+Wolseley declares that if Napoleon had been the man he was at
+Austerlitz, he would have won the Battle of Waterloo. Wolseley is
+supported in this view by many writers.
+
+After Lutzen, Bautzen, and Dresden, Byron said that "bar epilepsy and
+the elements, he would back Napoleon against the field." It is well
+known the odds he had to battle with, including the vilest treachery
+within his own circle.
+
+Marshal Grouchy's conduct will always remain doubtful, even to the
+most friendly critics. High treason bubbling up everywhere must have
+had a dulling effect on the mind of the great genius, though he
+battled with the increasing vigour of it with amazing courage. He saw
+the current was running too strong for him to stem unless he
+determined to again risk the flow of rivers of blood. This he shrank
+from, and abdicated the throne a second time. And then the barbarous,
+crimeful story began.
+
+Sir Hudson Lowe's appointment was a national calamity, but he was the
+nominee of Wellington's coadjutors, and carried out their wishes with
+a criminal exactitude, and they should have stood by him in his dire
+distress, instead of which they allowed him to die in poverty, broken
+in spirit, and a victim to calumny which they ought to have been manly
+enough to share.
+
+Whatever may be said in exculpation of them and him, _they_ were
+undoubtedly too seriously involved to enter upon a fight that would
+have ended disastrously for all of them, and so, with unusual wisdom,
+they never got further than threats.
+
+Sir Hudson was dead something like nine years before Forsyth burst
+upon the public with his eccentric vindication of the unamiable and
+unfortunate ex-Governor. The zealous biographer's research for
+material favourable to his deified hero caused him to ransack prints
+that were written by unfriendly authors and vindictive critics of the
+great captive. Even the State Papers, the most unreliable of all
+documents on this particular subject, were used to prove the goodness
+of Sir Hudson, and when quotations were unavailing, the author
+proceeded to concoct the most amazing ideas in support of the task he
+had set himself to prove.
+
+Writers of anti-Napoleonic history who take in the St. Helena period
+are filled with wonder and contempt of the Emperor, who, according to
+their refined and accurate judgment of the fitness of things, should
+have been eternally grateful to the British Government that they did
+not have him shot. Why should he complain in the fretful way he does
+of his treatment and his condition? A great man would have shown his
+appreciation of all the money that was being spent on the needs for
+his existence and for the better security of his person. It ill
+becomes him to complain of improper treatment after all the trouble
+and commotion he has caused at one time and another. Indeed, a great
+man would bear the burden of captivity with equanimity and praise the
+men who gave him the opportunity of showing how a great soldier could
+carry himself in such unequalled adversity.
+
+This in effect is what these high-minded men of letters say should
+have been the attitude of England's guest. He should have received his
+treatment, harsh and arbitrary though it was, with Christian
+fortitude, and ought to have borne in mind that he was in the custody
+of a Christian King and a Christian people. Dr. Max Lenz, who has
+written a most interesting and on the whole moderate account of
+Napoleon, considering his nationality, drifts into the same
+stereotyped closing phraseology of how Napoleon worried and almost
+wore out the good Sir Hudson Lowe, who only did his duty, and gave in
+to Napoleon whenever he could see his way to do so.
+
+But on the authority of Gourgaud, whom Lord Rosebery would appear to
+regard as the most truthful of all the St. Helena chroniclers, this
+eulogy is totally unwarranted, for truly there is no reliable
+contemporary writer who would have risked his reputation by making so
+reckless a statement that could so easily be proved to be a deliberate
+fabrication. This is not to say that fabrication was an uncommon
+trick, but the Governor's reputation in relation to Napoleon was so
+well and widely known, that no person who claimed to have a clear,
+balanced judgment could defend his silly, vicious conduct.
+
+Napoleon never altered his opinion of Lowe's perfidy towards him. On
+one occasion, in conversation with the truthful Gourgaud, he exclaims,
+"Ah! I know the English. You may be sure that the sentinels stationed
+round this house have orders from the Governor to kill me. They will
+pretend to give me a thrust with a bayonet by mistake some day."
+Gourgaud reports him as saying on another occasion, "Hudson Lowe is a
+Sicilian grafted on a Prussian; they must have chosen him to make me
+die under his charge by inches. It would have been more generous to
+have shot me at once."
+
+It would be absurd to affirm that Napoleon said these things without
+sound foundation, and although, when his personal vanity and abnormal
+jealousy was aroused by some fancied injury to himself, Gourgaud
+would resort to the most remarkable fibbing, what he relates as to his
+master's opinion of the Governor may be relied on, being, as it is,
+confirmed in a more complete form by O'Meara, Las Cases, Montholon,
+Bertrand, Antommarchi, and each of the Commissioners. The former
+sacrificed everything rather than be a party to what he termed
+treatment that was an "outrage on decency."
+
+These are only a few of the men who bear witness against Sir Hudson
+being termed "good"; and I may add one other to the galaxy, poor Dr.
+Stokoe, who shrank from having the abominable indignity of inquisitor
+and spy tacked on to his high office and distinguished profession. He
+refused, as O'Meara had done, to sacrifice his manhood or his sense of
+honour. Tricked into a false position by Lowe and the virtuous (?) Sir
+Robert Plampin, Dr. Stokoe, who had only paid five professional visits
+to Longwood, was deprived of his position and all its advantages,
+after twenty-five years' service in the Navy, because he refused to
+become a sneak and a rascal at the bidding of these two unspeakable
+Government officials, the one disgracing the service of his country in
+the capacity of Governor and the other the name of a sailor and an
+Admiral.
+
+In 1819 Stokoe resigned his position on the _Conqueror_, and sailed
+for England. Lowe sent a report addressed to the Lords of the
+Admiralty by the same vessel, and Stokoe had scarcely landed when he
+was bundled back to St. Helena. He rejoined the _Conqueror_ under the
+impression that his conduct had been approved, but was disillusioned
+by being forthwith put under arrest. A bogus court-martial was
+instituted in the interests of Lowe, and Plampin and these packed
+scallywags sentenced him to dismissal from the Navy. The charges
+against Stokoe were that he failed to report himself to Plampin at the
+Briars after a visit to Longwood, and that in his report he had
+designated the patient as the Emperor instead of General Bonaparte.
+This is a sample of the "good old times" that a certain species of
+creature delights to show forth his wisdom in talking about. I believe
+the immortal John Ruskin indulged occasionally in reminding a
+twentieth-century world of these days that were so blissful.
+
+Forsyth, the self-reputed impartial historian, neglects to insert in
+his work in defence of Lowe's conduct the following amazing charges,
+which shall be fully given. They have been published before, but they
+are so unique, so unmanly, and so perfidious, I think they ought to be
+given to the public again, so that the amiable reader may know the
+depth of infamy to which England had sunk in the early part of the
+nineteenth century. Here is the whole story on which Dr. Stokoe was
+condemned. His bulletin about Napoleon's health asserted that "The
+more alarming symptom is that which was experienced in the night of
+the 16th instant, a recurrence of which may soon prove fatal,
+particularly if medical attendance is not at hand." The Governor and
+the worthy Admiral were incensed at such unheard-of arrogance in
+making a report not in accordance with their wishes and that of the
+Government and the oligarchy, so the indictment of Stokoe, based on
+this bulletin, proceeds: "Intending thereby, contrary to the character
+and duty of a British officer, to create a false impression or belief
+that General Bonaparte was in imminent or considerable danger, and
+that no medical assistance was at hand, he, the said Mr. John Stokoe,
+not having witnessed any such symptom, and knowing that the state of
+the patient was so little urgent that he was at Longwood four hours
+before he was admitted to see him, and further, knowing that Dr.
+Verling was at hand, ready to attend if required in any such emergency
+or considerable danger. He had knowingly and willingly designated
+General Bonaparte in the said bulletin in a manner different from that
+in which he was designated in the Act of Parliament for the better
+custody of his person, and contrary to the practice of His Majesty's
+Government, of the Lieutenant-General Governor of the island, and of
+the said Rear Admiral, and he had done so at the especial instance and
+request of the said General Bonaparte or his attendants, though he,
+Mr. John Stokoe, well knew that the mode of designation was a point in
+dispute between the said General Bonaparte and Lieutenant-General Sir
+Hudson Lowe and the British Government, and that by acceding to the
+wish of the said General Bonaparte he, the said Mr. John Stokoe, was
+acting in opposition to the wish and practice of his own superior
+officers, and to the respect which he owed them under the general
+printed instructions." The very idea of any grown man being expected
+to have "respect" for superior officers who had no more sense of
+justice, dignity, or self-respect than to produce such a blatant
+document for the supreme purpose of covering up a sample of mingled
+folly and rascality, and ruining a poor man who was at their
+ill-conditioned mercy!
+
+Indeed, we need no further justification for Napoleon's statements as
+to what the official intention was towards him. Without a doubt Dr.
+Max Lenz is too reckless in his generosity towards Lowe, for his
+actions from beginning to end of his career prove that he was a
+dreadful creature. The thought of him and of those incarnate spiders
+who kept spinning their web, and for six mortal years disgracing
+humanity, is in truth enough to unsettle one's reason. Vainly they had
+ransacked creation in search of persons in authority to support them
+in the plea of justification, but never a soul came forth to share
+what is now regarded as ingrained criminality.
+
+Perhaps the virulent treatment of Byron ranks with the meanest and
+most impotent actions of the militant oligarchists because of his
+shocking (?) sympathy with England's enemy. The fierce though
+exquisite weaver of rhymes, who had been the idol of the nation and
+the drawing-room, was sought after by the highest and most cultured in
+the land. Byron had fallen a victim to public displeasure partly
+because he gave way to excesses that shocked the orthodoxy of a
+capricious public. He had reached a pinnacle of fame such as no man of
+his years had ever attained, and suddenly without warning he fell, a
+victim to unparalleled vituperation. His faults, if the meagre
+accounts that have been handed down are true, were great, but many of
+them were merely human. His marriage was not compatible, and his love
+entanglements embarrassing. His temper and habits were very similar to
+those of other geniuses, and great allowances should be made for
+personalities whose mental arrangements may be such as to nullify
+normal control.
+
+It is all very well to say that these men should be compelled to
+adhere to a conventional law because ordinary mortals are expected to
+do so, but a man like Byron was not ordinary. In his particular line
+he was a great force with a brain that took spasmodic twists. It is
+absurd to expect that a being whose genius produced "Childe Harold"
+and "Manfred" could be fashioned into living a quite commonplace
+domestic life. Miss Milbanke, who married him, and the public who
+first blessed and then cursed and made him an outcast, were not
+faultless. Had they been possessed of the superiority they piously
+assumed, they would have seen how impossible it was for this eccentric
+man of stormy passions to be controlled and overridden by
+conventionality.
+
+It is possible the serene critic may take exception to this form of
+reasoning and produce examples of genius, such as Wordsworth, who
+lived a strictly pious life, never offending any moral law by a
+hairbreadth; but Wordsworth was not made like Byron; he had not the
+personality of the poor wayward cripple who at one time had brought
+the world to his feet, neither had Wordsworth to fight against such
+wild hereditary complications as Byron. Wordsworth never caught the
+public imagination, while Byron had the power of inflaming it. But,
+alas! neither his magnetic force nor his haughty spirit could stem the
+whirlwind of hatred, rage, and calumny that took possession of the
+virtuous and capricious public. The story of cruelty to his wife grew
+in its enormity, his reported liaisons multiplied beyond all human
+reason. The bleached, white hearts of the oligarchal party had been
+lashed into fury by his withering ridicule and charge of hypocrisy,
+but the climax came like a tornado when the poet's sense of fair play
+caused him to satirise the Prince Regent and eulogise the Emperor
+Napoleon with unique pathos and passion.
+
+This was high treason! He had at last put himself beyond the mercy of
+the chosen people. They had twaddled and stormed about his immorality,
+but his praise of Napoleon sent them into diabolic frenzy. He was
+proclaimed an outlaw and hounded out of the country. The beautiful and
+rich Lady Jersey, a leader of society, convinced that he was
+misunderstood and was being treated with unreasonable severity,
+defended him with all the strength of her resolute character, but
+malignity had sunk too deep even for her power and influence to avert
+the disaster. So intense was the feeling engendered against him that
+it became dangerous for him to drive out without risking an exhibition
+of virulent hostility. Had he merely abused the Prince Regent, it is
+improbable that any exception would have been taken to it; but to
+praise and show compassion for the Man of the French Revolution, who
+had fought for a new condition of things which threatened the fabric
+on which their order held its dominating and despotic sway, was an
+enormity they were persuaded even God in heaven could not tolerate;
+why then, should _they_ be expected to do so?--they were only human.
+Both public and private resentment ran amok, and thus it was that the
+immortal poet's belauding of the immortal Emperor became linked to the
+ignominy of being accused of gross immorality. The reaction against
+this eccentric being was a fanaticism. There was neither sense nor
+reason in it, and as he said, "If what they say of me be true, then I
+am not fit for England; but if it be false, then England is not fit
+for me"; and with this thought thrilling in his mind he left his
+native land, never more to see it.
+
+Caught without a doubt by the spirit of the great man whose eulogy had
+given such offence in certain quarters, he embarked on the crusade of
+emancipating the Greeks, was stricken with fever, and died at
+Missolonghi.
+
+Adhering to human tradition, the nation which had so recently cast
+him out became afflicted with grief. Men and women cast reflection on
+themselves for their misguided judgment of him, and he became a god in
+memory again, his wife being a singular exception in the great
+demonstration of national penitence. The incomparable poet had sinned
+grievously, if rumour may be relied upon, but he was made to suffer
+out of all proportion to his sinning. His faults were only different
+from other men's. It may be said quite truly that one of his defects
+was in having been born a genius, and allowing himself to be idolised
+by a public whose opinions and friendships were shifty. Second, he
+erred in disregarding and satirising puritanical conventionalisms.
+Thirdly, and probably the most provocative of all, was his defiance of
+the fiery patriotism of some of the ruling classes in lauding him whom
+they stigmatised as the enemy of the human race and lampooning the
+precious Prince Regent. His extraordinary talents did not shield him,
+any more than they did the hero of fifty pitched battles whose
+greatness he had extolled.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] Vol. iii. pp. 451-2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MESDAMES DE STAEL AND DE REMUSAT
+
+
+It is a strange human frailty that cannot stand for long the purgatory
+of seeing the elevation of a great public benefactor. The less
+competent the critics, the more merciless they are in their
+declamation and intrigue. They hint at faults, and if this is too
+ineffective, they invent them. Men in prominent public positions
+rarely escape the vituperation of the professional scandalmonger.
+These creatures exist everywhere. Their vanity is only equal to their
+incompetency in all matters that count. Their capacity consists in
+knowing the kind of diversion a certain class of people relish, and
+the more exalted their prey is, and the larger the reputation he may
+have for living a blameless life, the more persistent their
+whisperings, significant nods, and winkings become. They know, and
+they could tell, a thing or two which would paralyse belief. They
+could show how correct they have been in consistently proclaiming
+that so and so was a very much overestimated man, and never ought to
+have been put into such a high position; "and besides, I don't want to
+say all I know, but his depravity! Well, there, I could, if I would,
+open some people's eyes, but I don't want to do anybody any harm," and
+so on. These condescending ulcerous-minded defamers congratulate
+themselves on their goodness of heart in withholding from the public
+gaze their nasty imaginary accusations, which are merely the thoughts
+of a conceited and putrid mind.
+
+Many and many a poor man, without knowing it, is the innocent victim
+of unfounded accusations, hatched and circulated in that subtle,
+insinuating way so familiar to the sexless calumniator. The genuine
+female traducer is an awful scourge, especially if she be political.
+No male can equal her in refined aggressive cunning. She can circulate
+a filthy libel by writing a virtuous letter, and never a flaw will
+appear to trip her into responsibility for it. And her sardonic smile
+is an inarticulate revelation of all she wishes to convey. It is more
+than a mere oration. It emits the impression of a bite.
+
+Madame de Stael showed an aptitude for this ignoble aggressiveness
+towards Napoleon after she had exhausted every form of strategy to
+allure him into a flirtation with her. She was frequently a sort of
+magnificent horse-marine who bounced herself into the presence of
+prominent individuals, thrusting her venomed points on those who had
+been flattered into listening; at other times she was feline in her
+methods. Talleyrand and Fouche made use of this latter phase of her
+character to serve their own ends. She had a talent which was used for
+mischief, but her vulgarity and egotism were quite deplorable. She
+would have risked the torments of Hades if she could but have embarked
+upon a liaison with Napoleon. She plied him with letters well seasoned
+with passion, but all to no purpose. She came to see him at the Rue
+Chantereine, and was sent away. She invited him to balls to which he
+never went. But she had opportunities given her which were used in
+forcing herself upon his attention. At one of these she held him for
+two hours, and imagining she had made a great impression, she asked
+him abruptly, "Who was the most superior woman in antiquity, and who
+is so at the present day?" Napoleon had had enough of her love-making
+chatter, so snapped out in his quick practical way, "She who has borne
+the most children." The lady's discomfiture may be imagined. It was a
+deadly thrust.
+
+This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France without
+success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of
+Napoleon's at the time. Her letters to him were passionate, and
+Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill
+her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to. This fussy female
+intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million
+francs she would write anything he wished. She was immediately packed
+about her business.
+
+Madame de Stael was not an important personage at all, but she had the
+power of attracting people to her who, like herself, had grievances to
+be discussed, and we may without doubt conclude that these gatherings
+were composed of well-selected intriguers whom she had fixed in her
+feline eye. Her great grievance was the First Consul's, and
+subsequently the Emperor's, coldness towards her. He estimated her at
+her true value. He treated her with the courtesy due to a French
+citizen, but nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he
+rebuked her with due consideration for her sex. When she caused people
+to talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his
+habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not
+resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions. But this
+human curiosity had power for mischief.
+
+She was not only an intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in
+love-making, she developed a literary tyrannicide. She condescended to
+patronise the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him
+that her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions.
+When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop to
+religious persecution, and put the churches into use. He
+re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his influence
+one hundred million Catholics. This wise policy created strong
+opposition from a section of the clergy. Madame de Stael and the
+friends whom she had whipped up, many of them being the principal
+generals, were mischievously opposed to it, and brought pressure to
+bear so that he might be induced to establish the Protestant religion.
+Napoleon ignored them all. He knew he was on the right ground, and
+that the nation as a whole was with him. France was essentially a
+Roman Catholic country, and the head of it gave back to her people
+what was regarded as the true faith. The exile frequently referred to
+these matters in conversation with one or other of his followers.
+Napoleon's disdain for Madame de Stael was well merited, and he never
+saw or heard of her that it did not set his nerves on edge. She was
+the "death on man" sort of female who persisted in being, either
+directly or indirectly, his political adviser. Dr. Max Lenz accuses
+the Emperor of developing a despotism that caused him to drive a woman
+like Madame de Stael from land to land, "and trampled under foot every
+manifestation of independence."
+
+Really, the good doctor lays himself open to the charge of not making
+himself better informed of the doings of this sinister person, who was
+steeped in treason, and who refused to accept the laws of life with
+proper submission. It is merely farcical to assume that Madame de
+Stael was kept well under discipline because of a whimsical despotism
+on the part of the man who had fixed a settled government on France,
+and who was kept well informed of the attempts of the Baroness and her
+anarchist associates to undermine and destroy the Constitution it had
+cost France and its ruler so much to reconstruct and consolidate. "Let
+her be judged as a man," said Napoleon, and in truth he was right in
+deciding in this way, as her whole attitude aped the masculine. He was
+right, too, in showing how wholly objectionable she had made herself
+to him. He had been led to adopt a sort of "For God's sake, what does
+she want?" idea of her during the early years of his rule, though he
+never at any time showed weakness in his actual dealings with her. He
+disliked women who asserted themselves as men, and he disliked the
+amorous offspring of Necker more because he loathed women who threw
+themselves into the arms of men; she had surfeited him with her
+persistent attempts at making love to him. In one of her letters to
+him she says it was evidently an egregious error, an entire
+misunderstanding of human nature, that the quiet and timid Josephine
+had bound up her fate with that of a tempestuous temper like his. She
+and Napoleon seemed born for each other, and it appeared as if nature
+had only gifted her with so enthusiastic a disposition in order to
+enable her to admire such a hero as he was. Napoleon in his fury tore
+this precious letter up and exclaimed, "This manufacturer of
+sentiments dares to compare herself with Josephine!"
+
+The letters were not answered, though this had no deterrent effect on
+Madame de Stael. She continued to pour out in profusion adoration. He
+was "a god who had descended on earth." She addressed him as such, and
+his callous reception of her madness drove her into despair and
+vindictiveness which brought salutary punishment to herself. Her
+weapons of wit and sarcasm availed nothing. He looked upon her as a
+sort of gifted lunatic that had got the idea of seducing him into her
+head. She became so mischievous that he bundled her out of France.
+"As long as I live," said he, "she shall not return." He advised that
+she should live in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for
+preference. There she would have full scope for her genius in
+producing pamphlets. "Oh yes," says the "god who had descended on
+earth"; "she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is
+offensive and revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave
+things and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one
+of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed to
+come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of
+retirement, but the great man's faith in his own sound judgment was
+not to be shaken.
+
+"Her promises are all very fine," he said, "but I know what they mean.
+Why should she be so anxious to be in the immediate reach of tyranny?"
+
+Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made
+her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire.
+This woman of genius and folly lacked the wisdom of gauging the taste
+of Bonaparte, whom she desired to captivate with her sluttish
+appearance and whirling words.
+
+This man of method and order, who had a keen eye for grace or beauty
+in its varied phases, was always pronounced in his opinion that women
+should dress simply but with faultless taste. It improves good looks,
+and, if need be, it covers up defects; but in any case it is the
+bounden duty of women to dress with some regard to conventional
+custom. It gives them much greater influence than they would otherwise
+have. Most women know the importance of this trick, and do it, and
+they are amply rewarded for their good sense.
+
+Madame de Stael did quite the opposite. She appeared before the Man of
+Destiny in a shocking garb, and he regarded it as a piece of
+impertinence. It stirred up his prejudice openly against her, in spite
+of his indifferent attempts to conceal it, but her egotism was so
+gigantic, she actually believed she was making great strides towards
+curing his callousness towards her. This woman has been used
+elaborately by anti-Napoleonic writers to prove that he was an inhuman
+despot and she a high-minded, virtuous Frenchwoman, and a genius in
+the art of government. They quote her as a great authority. Her
+knowledge of his evil deeds and mistakes of administration is set
+forth as being flawless. They bemoan his treatment of this amiable
+female, and in the midst of their ecstasy of compassion and wrath they
+hand down to posterity a record of unheard-of woes. There is little
+doubt Napoleon's remark that "the Neckers were an odd lot, always
+comforting themselves in mutual admiration," is well merited. The
+daughter utilised the name of the father with lavish persistence. Her
+ambition and impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon
+bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true
+heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of
+relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put
+the most militant suffragette in our time to the blush.
+
+But suddenly her hysteria subsided, and after a brief repose she
+switched off the truculent side and sought the pity of the man whose
+life she had set herself to make one long ache if he did not yield to
+her arrogant pretensions. She had written in a perpetual scream of his
+iniquities, and was thrown over by her former associates, who saw
+clearly enough that no real good could be accomplished by whining
+about cruelty when stern flawless justice only existed. They
+recognised that she was a personality, but her antics puzzled them,
+and well they might. She bewailed her isolation with a throbbing
+heart, and after committing indiscretions that Robespierre would have
+sent her head flying for, she was suddenly bereaved of her neglected
+husband. This event gave Benjamin Constant a better chance, but the
+Baroness aimed at higher game. She was held in the grip of a delusion
+that she had it in her power to hypnotise the First Consul and cause
+him to become her lover. She had an uncontrollable idolatry for this
+august person, whom she hoped to win over by writing for the
+consumption of his enemies the many reasons for her aversion to him.
+Without a doubt the woman was madly in love with the object of her
+supposed aversion, and was driven to frenzy by his obvious distaste
+for her.
+
+In 1811 she secretly married a young officer called M. de Rocca, who
+had fallen desperately in love with her. He was amiable and brilliant;
+became an officer of Hussars in the French Army; did valiant deeds
+amongst the hills in Andalusia in 1809; and was awarded the Cross of
+the Legion of Honour. Subsequently he was shot down by guerillas,
+badly wounded in the thigh, foot, and chest; had a romantic
+deliverance; was hidden in a chapel by a young lady, and nursed into
+consciousness and convalescence by loving care, which enabled him to
+reach Madrid, and ultimately Geneva, where, in the radiance of
+youthful infatuation, he rode with reckless energy down a risky steep
+part of the city, so that he might pass the window of the lady, who
+was more than old enough to be his mother, and in a few months was to
+be made his wife. A child was born to them in 1812, and in order to
+save its legitimacy, she acknowledged the marriage to a few, but it
+was not generally known until after her death that Rocca was her
+lawful husband. Conscious, and sensitive no doubt, that it was not
+quite natural for old women to marry young men, she prudently had the
+event kept secret. The young husband did not only possess tender
+affection for her, but he combined chivalrous ambitions which made the
+romance additionally attractive.
+
+Be it remembered that Benjamin Constant was a former lover of Madame
+de Stael. The young bridegroom, following a natural instinct, had a
+great dislike to Benjamin, and took an opportunity of really small
+provocation to challenge him to a duel, which, owing to wiser
+counsels, was never fought. There does not seem to have been very much
+to fight a duel about. Constant had a quarrel with his father in which
+he involved Madame de Stael, and Rocca resented it like a gallant
+youthful husband, who was at that stage when it is thought desirable
+to shoot or otherwise kill somebody, in order to show the extent of
+his devotion to his enchantress. Rocca had hoped to die (so he said)
+before her, but fate willed that he should linger on and suffer for
+six months more. Madame de Stael slept peacefully into her last long
+sleep on July 14, 1817.
+
+Her career was chequered and restless. She had influence, which she
+used oft-times recklessly, and led less gifted people than herself
+into committing needless errors. She wrote and spoke with a wit and
+sarcasm which charmed all but those at whom it was directed. Her
+bitter rebuffs and severe trials were mainly of her own making. For
+the most part she wrote with superficial feeling and without real
+soul. During the Napoleonic regime, time was a creeping horror to her,
+but she found pleasure in the thought that it was a torture to her
+suffering heart. George Eliot knew and used her extraordinary power;
+Madame de Stael wasted hers. Nevertheless she had many friends who
+loved her society. Wellington was brought under her influence. Byron,
+who shrank from her at first, says, "She was the best creature in the
+world." She had been at some pains to try to bring Lord and Lady Byron
+together. She was capable of impressing people with her charm, but
+magnetic influence she had none when living, and has left none behind.
+
+Rocca exclaimed, when he heard that she had passed to the shadows,
+"What crown could replace that which I have lost!" And the distracted
+Benjamin Constant, filled with remorse, reproached himself for some
+undefined suffering he had caused her, and did penance all night
+through in the death-chamber of his divine Juliet.
+
+This crazy woman seems to have been capricious in everything. She made
+and broke liaisons with amazing rapidity while undergoing a compulsory
+sojourn at Coppet. She formed there an attachment for the son of a
+person named M. Baranti, which very nearly cheated Rocca from becoming
+her husband, and the faithless Benjamin Constant from being,
+erroneously perhaps, associated with her name as the author of the
+manuscript of St. Helen, and she the notoriety of writing "Ten Years
+of Exile," which was published after her death.
+
+The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet, and
+being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that he might
+have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned the famous
+authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with the impulse to
+immortalise his severance by attempting suicide, and thereby ending
+her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame. The attempt, presumably
+feeble, left her long years of mischievous mania for attack on the
+supposed author of all her woes. She readily found amongst his enemies
+(and thus the enemies of France) those who yearned with her in the
+hope she freely and openly expressed that her native land should
+suffer defeats, and in this her desire was fully acquiesced in by the
+combination of hysterical and purblind Kings, aided by a coterie of
+irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in
+order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world
+should be driven from it. Many of these creatures were members of the
+same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent
+address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the
+hold his personality had on the national life. The following is what
+they say, and what they ask him to do:--"You have brought us out of
+the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the
+present. Great man, complete your work, and make it as immortal as
+your glory!"
+
+The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated with
+the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance to
+Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who sought her guilty and
+inflammatory aid.
+
+Then we come to another female celebrity, though less notable than
+Madame de Stael, who is regarded by the traducers of Napoleon as a
+historian because she wrote in her memoirs that which they wished the
+world to think of him, and because they flattered themselves that it
+exculpated them from the charge of injustice and mere hatred. Madame
+de Stael's book, "Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise," made
+its appearance. Its violent characteristics inflamed Charles de
+Remusat to urge his mother to enter into competition with this work,
+the result being the production of Madame de Remusat's memoirs, edited
+by her grandson, M. Paul de Remusat. Charles (her son) had reproached
+her for having destroyed memoirs she had written previously,[23] but
+lurking in her mind was the thought of all the favours she and her
+family had received, and her correspondence, teeming with adulation
+for the man whom she was now induced to declaim against. The knowledge
+that she was about to expose her perfidy "worried" her, and she wrote
+to Charles thus:--"If it should happen that some day my son were to
+publish all this, what would people think of me?" and the son,
+obviously influenced by the mother's fears, delayed until the fall of
+the Second Empire the publication of one of the most unreliable and
+barefaced calumnies ever produced against a great benefactor.
+
+In her memoirs she says that she and her husband excited general envy
+by the high position the First Consul had given them. She was first
+Lady in Waiting, and subsequently Lady of the Household, her husband
+being "attached to Napoleon's household." She says that she was witty
+and of a refined mind, and though she was less "good-looking" than her
+companions, she had the advantage of being able to "charm his mind,"
+and she was almost the only woman with whom he condescended to
+converse. She relates residing in the camp at Boulogne "and having
+breakfast and dinner daily with Bonaparte." In the evenings they used
+to "discuss philosophy, literature, and art, or listen to the First
+Consul relating about the years of his youth and early achievements."
+
+No doubt the young Madame de Remusat became assured in the same way as
+Madame de Stael that she would one day be raised to heights of glory
+unequalled in history, and the disappointment embittered her. She
+admits that she "suffered on account of blighted hopes and deceived
+affections and the failure of her calculations." Moreover, Josephine
+had an eye on the lady whose husband in evil times sought her
+influence with Napoleon to stretch out a helping hand and save them
+from the poverty by which they were beset. Napoleon's big heart
+spontaneously responded to the appeal of his fascinating spouse, the
+result being that favours were heaped upon M. de Remusat and his wife
+from time to time, and Josephine's goodness was repaid by seeing
+Madame in feline fashion purring at her Imperial master's affections,
+and on the authority of Madame de Remusat she "becomes cold and
+jealous." Finding that Napoleon did not appreciate her love-making,
+she, like Madame de Stael under similar circumstances, took to
+intriguing, which got her quickly into disgrace. She is anxious to
+make her fall as light as possible in the public eye, so relates that
+he told her that "his desire was to make her a great lady, but he
+could not be expected to do this unless she showed devotion." But in
+spite of the wife's defection, as is always Napoleon's way, he does
+not visit her sins on the husband, but raises him to the important
+posts of Grand Master of the Robes, High Chamberlain, and then
+Superintendent of Theatres, and in addition gave him large sums to
+keep up his status, and notwithstanding Josephine's cause for "cold
+jealousy," Madame de Remusat was generously kept in her service after
+Marie Louise had become Empress. M. de Remusat remained in the
+Emperor's service until the fall of the Empire, and then went over to
+Louis XVIII. Both of these sycophants were content to accept the
+favours of the Imperial couple and eat their bread and cringe at their
+feet while they plotted with the plotters for the Emperor's downfall.
+
+Unhappily for the veracity and probity of Madame Remusat as a history
+writer, her letters containing notes jotted down day by day as they
+occurred have been published, and the memoirs put side by side with
+these throbbings of the heart reveal an incomparable baseness that
+makes one wonder at the reckless, blind partisanship which induced her
+descendants to give the memoirs to an intelligent public.
+
+In the memoirs she says:--"Nothing is so base as his soul; it is
+closed against all generous impulses, and possesses no true grandeur.
+I noticed that he always failed to understand and to admire a noble
+action;" and again she goes on to say that "In war he foresaw the
+means of calling away our attention from the reflections which, sooner
+or later, his government could not fail to suggest to us, and he
+reserved it in order to dazzle, or at least to enforce silence on us.
+Bonaparte felt that he would be infallibly lost the day when his
+enforced inactivity enabled us to think both of him and of ourselves."
+"What a relief whenever the Emperor went away! His absence always
+seemed to bring solace. People breathed more freely."
+
+Now this would have been all very well. It was the stereotyped
+phraseology of Napoleon's avowed enemies. He knew it, and viewed it
+with contempt and derision, and until Madame de Remusat and her
+snuffling, cringing husband became swollen with over-indulgence and
+smitten with wounded pride, they regarded language such as now appears
+in her memoirs as mere froth. She practically says that she held the
+same views in 1818 as she did from 1802 to 1808, but when she wrote
+this she no doubt relied on her correspondence being kept snugly
+private or destroyed; but it has been published, and here are some
+amazing extracts from it:--
+
+"I often think, my dear, of that Empire, the territory of which
+extends to Antwerp! Consider what a man he must be who can rule it
+single-handed, and what few instances history offers like him!"[24]
+"Whilst he creates, so to speak, new nations in his progress, people
+must be struck, from one end of Europe to the other, by the remarkably
+prosperous state of France. Her Navy, formed in two years, after a
+ruinous revolution, and assuming at last a menacing attitude after so
+long, excited the scoffs of a shortsighted enemy."
+
+"When again I reflect on the peace we enjoy, our wise and _moderate
+liberty_, which is quite sufficient for me, the glory my country is
+covered with, the pomp and even the magnificence surrounding us, and
+in which I delight, because it is proof that success has crowned our
+efforts; when, in short, I consider that all this prosperity is the
+work of _one man_, I am filled with admiration and gratitude."[25]
+
+"What I write here, my dear, is, of course, strictly between
+ourselves, for many people would be anxious to ascribe to these
+feelings some other cause than that which really inspires them;
+besides, it seems to me that we are less eager to express the praises
+that come from the heart than those that proceed from the mind."[26]
+
+"Thank goodness, I am at last happy and contented!! What a pleasure it
+is to see the Emperor again, and how much that pleasure will be felt
+here! This splendid campaign, this glorious peace, this prompt return,
+all is really marvellous."[27]
+
+"Like woman, the French are rather impatient and exacting; it is true
+that the Emperor has spoilt us in the campaign; indeed, no lover was
+ever more anxious to gratify the wishes of his mistress than His
+Majesty to meet our desires. You demand a prompt march? Very well, the
+army that was at Boulogne will find itself, three weeks later, in
+Germany. You ask for the capture of a town? Here is the surrender of
+Ulm. You are not satisfied!! You are craving for more victories? Here
+they are: Here is Vienna which you wanted, and also a pitched battle,
+in order that no kind of success may be wanting. Add to these a whole
+series of noble and generous deeds, of words full of grandeur and
+kindness, and always to the purpose, so much so that our hearts share
+also that glory, and can join it to all the national pride it arouses
+in us."[28]
+
+"I used to cry bitterly at that time, for I felt so affected that, had
+I met the Emperor at the moment, I should, I believe, have thrown my
+arms round his neck, although I should, afterwards, have been
+compelled to fall on my knees and ask pardon for my conduct."[29]
+
+So overcome with boundless admiration is she that her soul yearns for
+the gift of being able to do him full justice by writing a history, a
+panegyric, a book, in fact, that would show him to be immeasurably
+above all men living or dead. She fears that people cannot see his
+nobility and greatness as she does. She is bewildered and acclaims him
+a god. Here is another outburst of passionate devotion:--
+
+"That undaunted courage, carried even to rashness, and which was
+always crowned with success, that calm assurance in the midst of
+danger, with that wise foresight and that prompt resolution, arouse
+always new feelings of admiration which it seems can never be
+surpassed."[30]
+
+It will be seen her letters shape well for the fulfilment of the great
+ambition of her life, _i.e._, to picture him as he was. The writing is
+good, the description picturesque, and I believe the impartial mind
+will also regard it as accurate. She believes "that even persons who
+are hardest to please must be compelled to admit that he is a most
+amiable sovereign." She is smitten with the feeling of gratitude, and
+says it is so sweet that she really regards it as another favour. She
+wishes her husband could "often secure some of those comforting smiles
+from the master," and tells him he is "no fool to be fond of those
+smiles," and promises to congratulate him if he secures some.
+
+She asks God to watch over him (such will always be her prayer) when
+he is fighting and conquering. Her heart is grieved when he is at a
+great distance from them. She eulogises his great qualities to her
+son, and advises him "to study all that she was able to tell him of
+the Emperor, and write about it when he grew up," and the boy
+exclaimed, "Mother, what you have told me sounds like one of
+Plutarch's lives!"
+
+But there comes a time when Napoleon sees that the price he has to pay
+for adulation is too high, for, like most over-pampered people, Madame
+de Remusat seems to have got the idea of equality badly into her head.
+She became waspish, exacting, claiming more than her share of
+emoluments, seeking for attentions which her "amiable sovereign" saw
+in the fitness of things it would be folly to bestow. She mistook
+wholesome justice for tyranny, defied discipline, and not only
+connived at treason, but prayed for the extinction of him against whom
+it was directed. Disaster overtook him, he fell, and in her delirium
+of malice and joy she bethought it an opportune moment to write what
+are known as her memoirs, refuting therein all her former eulogies and
+opinions so vividly told in the "Letters of Madame de Remusat." Now
+that adversity so terrible overshadows the matchless hero of the
+letters, she throws every scruple aside, and warms to her task in
+writing unstinted, gross, and manifest libels. Contrast with the
+"letters" these quotations from the memoirs. She avows that "nothing
+is so base as his soul. It is closed against all generous impulses; he
+never could admire a noble action." "He possesses an innate depravity
+of nature, and has a special taste for evil." "His absence brought
+solace, and made people breathe freely." "He is devoid of every kind
+of personal courage, and generous impulses are foreign to him." "He
+put a feeling of restraint into everybody that approached him." "He
+was feared everywhere." "He delighted to excite fear." "He did not
+like to make people comfortable." "He was afraid of the least
+familiarity." This latter grievance, combined of course with the rest,
+is quite significant, and we are justified in assuming that the Lady
+in Waiting has been taking liberties, and has been deservedly snubbed
+by His Imperial Majesty. It is perhaps necessary to pause here and
+remind the reader that on the authority of her son, and subsequently
+of her grandson, these memoirs were written entirely "without malice,"
+and the sole object of writing them at all was that "the truth should
+be told."
+
+Very well then. Are we to believe the letters or the memoirs, because
+in the former she over and over again declares that "his comely
+manners were irresistible"; but in the memoirs with audacious
+bitterness she affirms "not only is he ill-mannered but brutal."
+
+Such effrontery is beyond criticism. She finds it "impossible to
+depict the disinterested loyalty with which she longed for the King's
+return," and describes the hero of her letters as a ruthless destroyer
+of all worth, and being brought so low, she is straitened by the
+demands of "truth" and "grows quite disheartened."
+
+It will be observed that it is always truth which is the abiding
+motive, it matters not whether it is letters or memoirs. She avows it
+is "truth" she writes. "The love of truth," says the editor in his
+preface, "gave her courage to persevere in her task for more than two
+years." That is, it took her more than two years to write the "truths"
+contained in the memoirs disavowing the "truths" so vehemently given
+in the letters; the former book pregnant with the bitterness of a
+writer without heart and principle, and with political and personal
+motives running through its pages like a canker, while the latter,
+radiant in luxuriant adulation, gapes at her memory with retributive
+justice.
+
+The renegade son served the renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he
+advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former
+statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by
+favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but
+none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband
+were raised from poverty to affluence by Napoleon, and the memory of
+all the favours that were showered upon them by the man she declares
+she loved should have kept them from hate and disloyalty, and
+forbidden the writing of such unworthy vituperations against him.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[23] Madame de Remusat burnt her original memoirs during the Hundred
+Days, doubtless because she had in her mind the probability that
+Napoleon might firmly establish himself on the throne, and the
+discovery of anti-Napoleon MSS. might have acted seriously against
+herself and family being appointed to important positions. Moreover,
+the greater danger of getting herself into trouble was constantly in
+her mind.
+
+[24] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 195.
+
+[25] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p, 196.
+
+[26] Ibid., vol. i. p. 160.
+
+[27] Ibid., vol. ii. p. 2.
+
+[28] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. i. p. 190.
+
+[29] Ibid., vol. i. p. 393.
+
+[30] "Letters of Madame de Remusat," vol. ii. p. 45.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+JOSEPHINE
+
+
+One of the phenomena of human affairs is the part destined for
+Josephine, daughter of M. Joseph Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie,
+sugar-planter at Martinique, and friend of the Marquis de Beauharnais,
+whose son Alexandre was fated to marry her when she was but sixteen
+years of age. The marriage took place on December 13, 1779, at
+Noisy-le-Grand. The pompous young bridegroom speaks of his young bride
+in appreciative terms in a letter to his father, and in order that his
+parent may not be disappointed as to her beauty, he explains that in
+this respect she may not be up to his expectations. He regards the
+pleasure of being with her as very sweet, and forms the resolution of
+putting her through a course of education, as this had been grievously
+neglected.
+
+The father of Alexandre is said to have been charmed with the
+sweetness of Josephine's character, but then he was not her husband,
+and it soon became apparent that the union was ill-assorted, and so it
+came to pass that marital relations were entirely broken off after the
+birth of Hortense, subsequently dressmaker's apprentice, Queen of
+Holland, and mother of Napoleon III. Alexandre had gone to Martinique,
+and it was there the news of his daughter's birth came to him. He knew
+before leaving France that his wife was enceinte, and expressed his
+pleasure to her. The Marquis Beauharnais had assured his friend,
+Joseph Tascher de la Pagerie, that his "son was worthy of being his
+son-in-law, and that Nature had endowed him with fine and noble
+qualities." These virtues seem to have been dissolved with remarkable
+rapidity after his marriage, as it was well known before his departure
+on the voyage to Martinique that he had been diligently unfaithful to
+the poor "uneducated" little Creole girl who really thought she loved
+him. From all accounts, and I have read many, Alexandre Beauharnais
+was an ill-conditioned cruel prig. This excellent son with "fine and
+noble qualities" had not been long at Martinique before he associated
+himself with a lady of questionable virtue, who was much older than
+he. This person's dislike to Josephine caused her to pour into his
+willing ears and receptive mind scandalous stories of his childwife's
+love intrigues before she left her native island. This gave Alexandre
+a fine opportunity of writing a letter to her, disclaiming the
+paternity of Hortense, and accusing her of intrigues with "an officer
+in the Martinique regiment, and another man who sailed in a ship
+called the _Caesar_." He declares he knows the contents of her letters
+to her lovers, and "swears by the Heaven which enlightens him that the
+child is another's, and that strange blood flows in its veins," and
+"it shall never know his shame"; and so the virtuous Alexandre goes
+rambling on, until he comes to the slashing finish in the good old
+style that persons similarly situated adopt to those whom they have
+grievously injured. He soars between elegant politeness and old-time
+aristocratic ferocity: "Goodbye, madam, this is the last letter you
+will receive from your desperate and unhappy husband." Then comes the
+inevitable postscript, with an avenging bite embodying the spirit of
+murder. He is to be in France soon if his health does not break down
+under the load she has cast upon him. He warns her to be out of the
+house on his arrival, because, if she is not, "she will find in him a
+tyrant." The whole letter is indicative of a low-down unworthy scamp,
+a mere collection of transparent verbiage, intended as a means of
+ridding himself of a woman he had nothing in common with, and a cover
+to his own unfaithfulness.
+
+But whatever may be the interpretation of his motives, on his coming
+back to Paris he kept his word. Conjugal relations were not renewed.
+His family were indignant at the treatment Josephine was receiving at
+the hands of this pompous libertine, and he assures her that of "the
+two, she is not the one to be most pitied."
+
+M. Masson declares that there was never a reconciliation, and that
+they lived apart, but met in society, and spoke to one another, mainly
+about their children's education. Josephine caused him to withdraw
+before her lawyer the gross and unfounded charges he had made against
+her and to agree to a satisfactory allowance.
+
+Alexandre, finding soldiering distasteful, embarked upon a political
+career as an aristocrat Liberal. His rise to position was swift, and
+after the death of Mirabeau he followed him as President of the
+Assembly. Before his fall came, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of
+the Army of the Rhine, and at the head of sixty thousand men failed to
+relieve Mayence and resigned his command.
+
+His Liberal pretensions did not prevent him being included amongst the
+proscribed. He was made captive, accused of attempting to escape,
+condemned to death and guillotined. Josephine's device of reassuring
+the Revolutionists of her conversion to Republicanism by apprenticing
+Hortense to a dressmaker and Eugene to a carpenter did not avail. She
+was suspected and sent to Les Carmes, where frequent conversations
+took place between her philosophic and abandoned husband and herself,
+mainly concerning their children's education, and had not the reaction
+against the regime of blood brought about the fall of Robespierre, she
+would assuredly have shared the fate of Alexandre; and had the cry of
+"A bas le tyrant" been heard a few days earlier, Beauharnais would
+have escaped too, and cheated Josephine of becoming Empress of the
+French and Queen of Italy. As it was, some of the very same people who
+but a short time before had harangued the mob to "Behold the friend of
+the people, the great defender of liberty," switched their murderous
+vengeance on to their late idol, and ere many hours the widow
+Beauharnais was set free. The thought of the appalling end and the
+brevity of time that seemed left to her impressed Josephine with all
+its ghastly horror. She had shrieked and wept herself into a deathlike
+illness. The doctor predicted that she could not survive more than a
+week, and for this reason she escaped being brought before the
+Tribunal.
+
+A wondrous Providence this, which, with frantic speed, broke the
+power of a hideous monster, and thereby saved the woman who was to
+enter upon a new era, and to be borne swiftly on to share the glory of
+an unequalled Empire.
+
+M. Masson's theory is that Josephine's womanly grief had much to do
+with awakening the sentiment of Paris, and breaking the Reign of
+Terror; and, indeed, there is some reason in this view, for tears are
+not only useful as an indication of sorrow, suffering, or conquest,
+but an effective means of gaining sympathy. Josephine was an adept at
+trying the efficacy of weeping, and if M. Masson has gauged the
+influence of melting the heart of the spirit of massacre aright, then
+Josephine was gifted with, and made the instrument of, a divine
+instinct that should claim attention and reverence for all time, even
+though her subsequent misdeeds occasionally incline us to avert the
+eye.
+
+But it is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful
+Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the
+shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led
+to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with
+calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the
+strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not
+granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with
+fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What things are done in thy name!" and
+these throbbing magical words reverberated through France with
+wonderful effect. The guilty populace, shuddering with superstitious
+awe at the revolting horrors committed in the name of Liberty,
+Equality, Fraternity, or Death, flashed a thought on the scaffold of
+the stainless victim, then on the loathsome prisons that were filled
+with suspects, rich and poor, all over France. Then, in time, the
+dooming to death of some of the prominent polecats who committed
+murder in the name of liberty and fraternity brought Robespierreism to
+an end. Robespierre himself was cursed on the scaffold by a woman who
+sent him to "hell with the curses of all wives and mothers," and
+Samson did the rest. And it may be logically assumed that the parting
+words of Jeanne-Marie Philipon at the foot of the scaffold inoculated
+the public mind, not only with the horrors that were being committed
+in the name of Liberty, but what things were cantishly being said in
+its name. I like to think of the stainless lady's inspired phrase
+rather than Josephine's tears as being in some degree responsible for
+the end of the Reign of Terror.
+
+After her release, Josephine's shattered health was a cause of
+anxiety, but this was soon re-established, and she quickly put her
+emotions aside and plunged into gaiety with an alacrity that makes
+one wonder whether she had more than spasmodic regret at the awful
+doom that had come to her husband, who left a somewhat penitent letter
+behind, wherein he speaks of his brotherly affection for her, bids her
+"goodbye," exhorts her "to be the consoler of those whom she knows he
+loves," and "by her care to prolong his life in their hearts."
+"Goodbye," says he; "for the last time in my life I press you and my
+children to my breast."
+
+These posthumous reflections and instructions did not impress the
+widow with any apparent interest. The picture recorded of their tragic
+married life is not sweet. Neither lived up to the great essentials
+which assure happiness.
+
+Before her imprisonment the gossip-mongers were whispering round
+rumours of violent flirtations, and even when she was in Les Carmes
+they said that she and her fellow-prisoner, General Hoche, were too
+familiar, and coupled the name of the ex-Count with that of a young
+lady suspect. The truth of such accusations seems highly improbable,
+and they may well be regarded as malicious slander. It is not unlikely
+that Josephine was on friendly terms with the General before they met
+in Les Carmes, but that it was more than friendship is a mere
+hypothesis. Her relation with that unspeakable libertine Barras was
+especially unfortunate. No doubt she was driven to extremities after
+her release. Her fate was as hard as it is possible to conceive. She
+was without the proper means of sustenance for herself and her family,
+and appears to have lost no time in really becoming the chosen friend
+of a creature who took advantage of her and then betrayed her to the
+world. It is he who tells in his memoirs the sad and sickening story
+of his connection with Josephine, and gloats over the opportunity it
+gives him of repeating conversations he had with General Hoche as to
+her love entanglements. He declares that she was "the patient mistress
+of Hoche in the sight of the whole world."
+
+The editor of the memoirs to some extent tones down the brutal
+statements of the author. But a man who publicly exposes the relations
+he has had with a fascinating woman who gives herself to him may not
+be readily believed when he deliberately involves his own friends in
+the liaisons. There is no question of what his part was in the
+degradation of Josephine, but the luxury of dragging other names into
+the moral quagmire, in order, it may be, to justify his own dealings
+and to further debase her, could only be undertaken by a person soaked
+with the venom of indecency, and, in this case, had no other object
+than that of gratifying his malice against her husband. His
+assumption of moral superiority is quite entertaining when he, the
+seducer and corrupter, speaks of the unfortunate woman's
+"libertinism," and calls her in his bitterness "a licentious Creole."
+
+This representative of the Republic one and indivisible, embodying
+Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth
+century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the
+France which knew Charlemagne.
+
+"Citizen" Barras repudiates the story of Eugene asking the
+Commander-in-Chief for his beheaded father's sword. He claims that
+Napoleon himself invented the story. But it is highly improbable that
+Napoleon would risk at the beginning of his career having his veracity
+doubted. In itself, the incident is a small matter. The only real
+interest attached to it is the touching pathos of the small boy asking
+for and receiving the sword, which, of course, gave his mother the
+opportunity of calling to thank the General for his goodness, and in
+this way it has historic importance, as Napoleon and Josephine were
+married four months after, _i.e._, March 9, 1796, her age being
+thirty-two and his twenty-five.
+
+The quibble is that of a small man searching in every pond for mud to
+throw at his master's memory. Napoleon gave the facts to Barry
+O'Meara at St. Helena, and they also appear in the "Memorial de St.
+Helena." Had the introduction of these two remarkable people not come
+about in this way, it would have been brought about in some other.
+But, whether the story has any interest further than the writer has
+stated or not, it is safer to believe Napoleon than Barras, who
+boasted after the success of Napoleon in Italy that it was he who had
+perceived in him a genius and urged the Directory to appoint him
+Commander-in-Chief. Carnot is indignant at this impudent falsehood,
+and declares that it was he and not Barras who nominated and urged the
+appointment of Bonaparte. Certainly Carnot's story is the accepted
+one. It matters little who the selected spokesman of the inspiration
+was. France needed a man, and he was found.
+
+On the eve of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to
+spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was
+commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with
+Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love
+and war such as the world has never beheld. In the midst of strife and
+strenuous responsibility, this young missionary, representing the
+solacing new doctrine of symbolic brotherhood, neither shirks nor
+forgets the responsibilities of his instructions to lay Italy at his
+feet.
+
+Nor does he for a moment forget his wedded obligations. He is in love,
+nay, desperately in love. The image of Josephine is constantly soaring
+around him, and he pours forth ebullitions of frantic devotion at the
+cannon's mouth, in the Canton, anywhere, and everywhere. He is as rich
+in phrase as he is in courage and resource. He finds time to scrawl a
+few burning words of passion which indicate that his soul is at once
+aflame with thoughts of her and the grim military task he has
+undertaken.
+
+He leads to battle flashing with the spirit of assured victory and
+inspired by the belief that it has been written that he is the chosen
+force which is to regenerate misgoverned nationalities. Order out of
+chaos; moderation in the hour of victory; no interference with any
+one's religious belief; stern discipline--these were some of the
+behests of this young Titan, whose startling and victorious campaigns
+were amazing an astonished world and causing significant apprehension
+in the minds of the Directory, who decided to check the swift process
+of ascendancy by giving instructions that he was to give over the
+command of Lombardy to General Kellerman, and go south to commence
+raiding other parts of Italy, including Rome and Naples.
+
+To this he promptly sends a vigorous though respectful reply, which
+is intended to convey that they are to have done with such impractical
+foolery. It is a world-shaking fight he has on hand. The honour and
+military glory of France are at stake. It is not for mere theoretic
+upholders of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity to meddle with such
+things. He says to them, "Kellerman is an excellent General, and could
+lead an army as well as I," but then he goes on to plead the
+superiority of his army, always modestly leaving himself outside the
+praise he takes care to bestow on others, and adds with fervour, "The
+command must remain in the hands of one man." "I believe," says he,
+"that one bad General is better than two good ones." "The art of war,
+like the art of government, is a matter of careful handling." Then
+with delicious frankness he flashes out: "I cannot allow myself to
+have my feet entangled." "A free hand or resignation." That is his
+ultimatum. This thunderbolt of bewildering audacity sent a flutter
+through the sanctuary of Fraternity, and in hot haste a message of
+confidence, coupled with an order that he shall be left in supreme
+control, was dispatched by a vigilant energetic courier. The Directory
+were made to see that a great power had arisen which would hold
+dominion over them.
+
+And yet this young and terrible conqueror, who judiciously dominated
+every will in the process of his achievements, he who defiantly told
+his masters that he would not suffer his "feet to be entangled" by
+their amateurish absurdities, was entangled for a time by a rapturous
+infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive habits and a
+silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and ignore him. His
+imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to him are piteously
+pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are without example in
+neat concise phrase, and portray a man possessed of great human
+virtues. It is when the love-storm attacks him that he flies into
+extravagances, such as when he writes that "she has more than robbed
+him of his soul," and that "she is devouring his blood." He writes to
+his brother Joseph that he loves her to madness, and to Carnot even he
+does the same thing. Perhaps the most extravagant outburst of all is
+when he begs that she is to let him see some of her faults, and to be
+less kind, gracious, and beautiful. "Your tears drive away my reason
+and scorch my blood." "You set my poor heart ablaze." He complains of
+her letters being "cold as friendship," and adds, "But oh! how I am
+infatuated."
+
+Josephine has never been addressed in such consuming language before.
+She is flattered, and her little head becomes swollen with the idea
+of greatness. The ridiculous endearments amuse her. She must not
+allow such opportunities of creating envy to pass, so she shows the
+letters as they come along to her most intimate friends, amongst whom
+Barras still continues high on the list, and with an air of dizzy
+pride she playfully says Bonaparte is "very droll." And really,
+Josephine was right. Some of his letters are "droll," but they are
+genuine, and this highly honoured woman, launched into prominence and
+position, and reaping the laurels of his work disgraced her womanhood
+by showing his letters, and doubly disgraced herself by ridiculing
+them.
+
+It was not until Murat, Junot, and Joseph Bonaparte were sent by
+Napoleon to Paris from the seat of war with important dispatches, and
+also with letters to her, that it dawned upon her that she had carried
+her unwillingness to join her husband far enough. Doubtless the
+gallant commissioners had given her a hint that further refusal meant
+inevitable reprisals. It is quite feasible that the rollicking Junot,
+who was always prepared to give his soul for Bonaparte, was frank
+enough to intimate that there was a risk of driving her husband into
+the arms of some covetous female, many of whom were angling in the
+hope of capturing the brilliant and rising General, and that already
+he was showing signs of jealousy and suspicion of her good faith.
+
+News of fresh victories was coming in, fetes were held in honour of
+them, crowds of people congregated, and at the sight of her leaning on
+the arm of Junot after leaving the Luxembourg they shout, "Long live
+General Bonaparte! Long live Citizeness Bonaparte!" She is enthralled
+by the adulation which reflected glory showers upon her. Her spirit
+rebels against leaving all its pleasures and pomps. But she has
+exhausted every canon of truth in excuses, even that of being
+pregnant, and finds herself inevitably driven to abandon the seat of
+joy and easy morals and set off for Milan with her dog "Fortune" and
+Eugene, her son. Tears flow copiously at the thought of her wrongs,
+but these are dried up with the compensating opportunity of commencing
+a flirtation with Murat, who is soon to become the husband of Caroline
+Bonaparte.
+
+The popular opinion was that it was Junot who was the object of her
+designs, but the future Duchess d'Abrantes scornfully repudiates this,
+and declares that Junot's devotion to his beloved General forbade him
+reciprocating his wife's indiscretion, so he made love to Louise
+Compoint, Josephine's waiting-maid, instead, the result being that
+Louise was requested to leave the service of the offended Josephine.
+
+On arrival at Milan, Napoleon was absent, so the honour of receiving
+her was deputed to the Milanese Due de Serbelloni, who took her in
+regal style to stay at his palace. On Napoleon meeting his wife for
+the first time since their marriage his joy was unbounded. Marmont,
+who betrayed him and France in later days, says that "at that time he
+lived only for his wife, and never had purer, truer, or more exclusive
+love taken possession of the heart of a man, and that a man of so
+superior an order."
+
+Napoleon had still much work to do, and many hard battles to fight, so
+that they were frequently separated during the remaining months before
+he had freed Italy and beaten the Austrians. On no occasion when he
+was absent from her did he neglect sending letters on fire with the
+assurance of unabated love, but they frequently indicate not only a
+conviction of her indifference, but a suspicion that it is more, which
+is promptly nullified by further explosions such as "kisses as burning
+as my heart and as pure as you." Poor Napoleon! he is soon to be
+disillusioned. She is the same old Josephine in Italy as she was in
+Paris. He pleads with her to send him letters, for she must "know how
+dear they are to him." "I do not live," he tells her, "when I am far
+from you." "My life's happiness is in the society of my sweet
+Josephine." Again he writes, "A thousand kisses as fiery as my soul,
+as chaste as yourself! I have just summoned the courier; he tells me
+that he crossed over to your house, and that you told him you had no
+commands. Fie! Naughty, undutiful, cruel, tyrannous, jolly little
+monster. You laugh at my threats, at my infatuation; ah! you well know
+that if I could shut you up in my heart I would put you in prison
+there!" This playful, gloomy, humorous, and tender quotation does not
+emanate from the heart of a monster, but from an unequalled lovesick
+soul confiding the innermost secrets of his mind to an inglorious
+helpmate, whose follies during the first years of their married life
+were a cruel humiliation to him.
+
+She courted ruin with cool dissolute persistency. She deceived, lied,
+and wept with the felicity of a fanatic. She sought and found
+happiness at the cost of not only self-respect, but honour and virtue.
+She was not a shrew, but a born coquette, without morals rather than
+immoral, and, withal, a superb enigmatic who would have made the
+Founder of our faith shed tears of sorrow. It is by distorting facts
+that her eulogists make it appear that she was a loving and devoted
+wife during the early years of her second marriage.
+
+On her arrival at Milan from Paris she had presented to her many army
+officers, amongst whom was a young Hussar, the friend and assistant
+General of Leclerc, who became the husband of Paulette, the giddy
+little schoolgirl sister of Napoleon. Josephine, at this period of her
+history was famous for her aversion to chastity, so that it is not
+altogether inexplicable that she should have sought the distinction of
+making Hippolyte Charles her lover. He was fascinating, witty, dressed
+with splendour, and was quite up to her standard of moral quality. The
+friendship grew into intimacy, so that he became a frequent visitor to
+Josephine during Napoleon's absence.
+
+It was scarcely likely that this love affair, which was assuming
+dramatic proportions, could be long kept from the knowledge of
+Napoleon. The mocking critics of the camp and the stern moralists
+amongst the civilians vied with each other in babbling commentary of
+the growing dilapidated reputation that the Commander-in-Chief's wife
+was precipitately acquiring. Wherever she is or goes, so long as
+Bonaparte is at a safe distance, Charles is hanging on to her skirts.
+Some writers have said that on the occasion of her visit to Genoa to
+attend the fetes given by the Republic he was in attendance, and it is
+most likely that this clumsy act of strategy on the part of Josephine
+brought about the climax. Unquestionably her movements were being
+watched by members of the Bonaparte family. They not unnaturally felt
+that the scandal was exposing them as well as their brother to
+ridicule.
+
+But, as frequently happens, great events are brought about in the most
+unexpected way. The vivacious Paulette had fallen in love with Freron,
+a man of forty, holding a high position in the Government service.
+Napoleon was strongly averse to the match, so decided that she should
+become the wife of General Leclerc, aged twenty-five, who was said to
+be Napoleon's double. Hippolyte Charles had been the friend of
+Leclerc, and Paulette resolutely set her mind on inflicting salutary
+punishment on her sister-in-law for the wrong she was doing her
+brother. She quickly managed to wriggle confidences out of Leclerc
+concerning the Josephine-Charles connection, then peached. Charles was
+banished from the army, and, on the authority of Madame Leclerc, we
+learn that Josephine "nearly died of grief." The avenging little vixen
+had put a big spoke in the wheel, although there were other powerful
+agencies that had no small part in bringing light to the aching and
+devout heart.
+
+From this dates the fall of Josephine's complete magical divinity over
+him, and a new era begins. We hear no more of "shutting her up in his
+heart," or of sending her "kisses as fiery as his soul and as chaste
+as herself"; though to the end his letters are studiously kind and
+even reverential.
+
+Meanwhile, the intrepid General, having brought the campaign of Italy
+and Austria to a successful end, came back to Paris, received the
+plaudits of a grateful and adoring nation, and the doubtful favour of
+a jealous Directory. They banqueted him at the Luxembourg with every
+outward sign of satisfaction. Talleyrand and Barras made eloquent and
+flattering speeches of his accomplishments and talents, and the latter
+folded him in his arms as a concluding token of affection. Josephine
+revelled in the gaiety and honours that encompassed them, while her
+husband sought the consolation of privacy.
+
+After a short though not inactive stay in Paris, he was given command
+of the Army of the East, and sailed from Toulon on May 19, 1798, in
+the _Orient_ (which came to a tragic end at Aboukir), and Josephine
+waved her handkerchief, soaked in tears, as the fleet passed from
+view.
+
+Her doings do not interest us until she again came across the young
+ex-officer Charles in Paris, some time in 1799, and, at his request no
+doubt, she introduced him to a firm of army contractors, and for the
+ostensible purpose of showing his gratitude, he called at Malmaison to
+thank her. This act of grace could have been done with greater
+propriety by letter, though there may have been reasons for not
+putting in writing anything that might associate the wife of the
+Commander-in-Chief with having dealings with army contractors, even to
+the extent of interesting herself on behalf of a man who was dismissed
+the service for carrying on an intrigue with his General's wife, who
+happened to be Josephine herself.
+
+But putting aside the unpardonable breach of faith in allowing a
+renewal of the intimacy with such a man, the fact of a lady in her
+position being mixed up with a firm of this character might have
+seriously compromised Napoleon, and for this reason alone her act was
+highly reprehensible. Charles was not slow to avail himself of
+Josephine's hospitality, and became a regular visitor. This further
+lapse of loyalty to the absent husband was transmitted to Egypt, and
+very naturally determined him on the necessity of taking proceedings
+to get a divorce, but although Napoleon had ceased, so far as he
+could, to be the dreadful simpleton lover of other days, he failed to
+gauge the grip the old fascination had of him.
+
+He believed the avenging spirit that guided him to definite
+conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public and
+sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with another of
+State policy lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and
+created wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by
+unexpectedly landing at Frejus.
+
+He then made his way, as quickly as the enthusiasm of the cheering
+populace allowed him, towards his house in the Rue de la Victoire; but
+the penitent (?) Josephine was not there. She had gone to meet him,
+taken the wrong road, and missed throwing herself into his arms as was
+her intention. He asks excitedly, "Is she ill?" and the significant
+wink of her enemies threw him into paroxysms of grief. His friend
+Collot calls and reminds him that the hope of the nation is centred on
+him. His wrath is proof that he is still in love, and Collot fears
+that the magical effect of her appearance will bring forgiveness.
+"Never," shouts the irate husband. "How little you know me, Collot.
+Rather than abase myself, I would tear my heart out and throw it on
+the fire."
+
+But Collot knew him better than he chose to admit he knew himself, and
+we shall see that his heart was not thrown "on the fire," but given
+again to the erring Josephine, who was travelling back post-haste from
+Lyons. She arrived broken in spirit and wearied unto death. Napoleon,
+obviously not quite sure of his determination to refuse her
+admittance, had bolted the door, and was stamping about the room with
+a glare in his piercing eye as though he were planning an onslaught
+that was to be furiously contested. Josephine arrives, knocks at the
+door, implores him to open it, and addresses him as "Mon ami, _mon bon
+ami_." There is no response, and in her frenzy of despair she weeps
+and beats her head against the door, and piteously pleads for the
+opportunity of justifying herself. But still he holds out. And then
+her unfailing resource suggests that Hortense and Eugene, whom he
+loves so well, shall be brought as the medium of compassion to their
+distracted mother. They come, and the bolts are drawn. Their
+stepfather admits them to his presence. They kneel at his feet and
+appeal to him to continue to be the good, kind father he has ever
+been, and to receive their mother back to his affections.
+
+It is all over now with Napoleon. He is never proof against tears, so
+sends for their mother, who falls into his arms and faints. She is
+tenderly laid into his bed, saved from her woeful fate, and when
+Lucien Bonaparte arrived by command next morning, to take instructions
+for the impending divorce proceedings, that horror had disappeared
+from their outlook, and both Josephine and Napoleon were wrapped in a
+drowsy joy.
+
+Josephine, gifted with irresistible subtlety and skilful in the art
+and use of hysteria, had rekindled the embers of infatuation that was
+never more to be totally quenched. In all likelihood she would give a
+different explanation of her conduct to Napoleon than that given him
+by Lucien and other members of his family. It is not an undue stretch
+of imagination to conclude that she assured him that her heart was
+shared with none other, though the assertion may be regarded as a
+daring fabrication. She did not gauge calmly, but she gauged well, the
+supreme power she had over the man who had so abjectly shown her such
+inflammable love. She knew, too, of his vanity, and hit him
+caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he and none other," combined with
+a beseeching wail that he should open his heart to an affectionate and
+faithful love, was more likely to conquer than any admission of wrong.
+Could she forget the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling
+principle was that he would have no divided affection? It must be all
+or none. The hypothesis is therefore that she played on his vanity,
+and not on his confidence or judgment, the sequel being the complete
+surrender of Napoleon.
+
+Josephine, whether from fear of the penalty or the purity of her
+motives, never again allowed herself to be placed in the same
+hazardous position. She had been cured of unfaithfulness, and promised
+that Hippolyte Charles should never be allowed to lead her into such
+a scrape again. He was put out of her life, and was never more heard
+of. He was seen but once more by Napoleon, and the sight of his evil
+face nearly caused the Emperor the humiliation of a collapse.
+
+Josephine's matrimonial transgressions, whatever they may have been,
+were condoned with exuberant suddenness, and Napoleon rushed into
+domestic tranquillity. The zealot of freedom forthwith concentrated
+his wondrous talents with aggressive righteousness on the task of
+destroying a decadence that was bearing France to her doom. Josephine
+was enrolled as patron of deliverance from anarchy, and having all the
+essential attributes which make for success in such an enterprise, she
+daily filled her salon with men and women who had influence to aid her
+husband and his friends in upsetting the Government. She had developed
+into an attractive, graceful hostess, and was endowed with the knack
+of cajoling which disarmed opposition and enthused supporters, and
+unquestionably she played the part given to her with unmeasured
+success, and Napoleon did the rest.
+
+The _coup d'etat_ had been dexterously planned, which enabled him to
+bring about a bloodless overthrow. Josephine was deployed to win over
+her friend Gohier, the President of the Directory. She invited him
+and his wife to breakfast on the 17th Brumaire. Gohier wonders why
+they should be asked so early as six in the morning. He thinks he
+smells a rat, excuses himself, but sends his wife, who is ushered into
+the presence of a houseful of officers of the National Guard, and the
+hostess does not lose time in conveying to Gohier's former cook the
+meaning of their being there. Bonaparte, be it known, is determined to
+form a Government, and it grieves her that so good a friend as the
+President of Directors should have been so thoughtless of his own
+interests as not to accompany his wife on such an auspicious occasion.
+
+"The inevitable is at hand, Madame Gohier," says Josephine in effect,
+"and at this very moment Barras is being pressed to resign, and if he
+disobeys his fate is sealed." Madame Gohier is aghast, stiffens her
+back, and with as much dignity as her nature will allow, she bows,
+withdraws, and hastens to the side of her husband, to convey all she
+has seen and heard.
+
+Meanwhile, events travel swiftly under the direction of the intrepid
+General. He walks into the Council of Ancients and jerks out with
+vivid flashes of oratory the object of his visit. The members see at a
+glance its meaning. They become inarticulate with rage begotten of
+fear. He thunders out, "I am here to demand a Republic founded on
+true liberty," and swears that he will have it. In the Hall of the
+Five Hundred he is met with cries of "Down with the Cromwell!" "No
+Dictator!" "Outlaw him!" and so forth.
+
+But these are mere futile belchings of exasperated gasbags, on whom he
+darts a look of withering scorn, which they discern means trouble if
+they do not conduct themselves with decorum. His guards are close at
+hand, and he is daring enough to make use of them if there is any
+resistance to that which he has undertaken. To the Directory, through
+their envoy Dottot, he says in substance, and not without vigour, "Do
+not sicken me with your imbecile arguments and lame, impotent
+conclusions. What I want to know is: What have you done with this
+France which I left you so glorious? I left you peace; I return and
+find war! I left you victories; I find reverses! I left you the
+millions of Italy; I find despoiling laws and misery throughout!" But
+ere this terrific indictment had been thrust at them, they had become
+conscious that their dissolute and chaotic regime was at an end, and
+that Napoleon had become the ruler of the France he had left
+prosperous and found tottering to pieces on his return from Egypt.
+
+Josephine had played her part in the drama with surprising shrewdness
+and marked devotion to her husband's cause. He was rewarded by being
+made First Consul, and she by becoming the first lady of the Republic
+and the leader of society. They quickly availed themselves of the
+distinction by removing from their humble habitation, first to the
+Petit Luxembourg and then to the Tuileries, where she occupied the
+bedroom of the famous Marie Antoinette and the apartments formerly
+inhabited by Louis, which were immediately above. They gathered round
+them men of merit representing science, art, literature, law,
+politics, military notables, and fashion. They set up, in fact, a
+little Court, but lived a quiet, unostentatious life, so far as it was
+diplomatic and permissive.
+
+It was not until the advent of the Empire that gaiety and grandeur
+began, excelling and putting into the shade every other Court in
+Europe. Josephine wallowed in it, but Napoleon adopted and encouraged
+it more from policy than taste. In fact, when in a whimsical mood, he
+often said it bored him. That is not to say that he did not adapt
+himself to what he believed was a necessity. An Oriental potentate
+could not have carried the dignity of splendour more naturally than
+he. Whilst in his secret heart he loathed its pomp and extravagance,
+fixed in his memory was the impression of poverty and suffering that
+he had passed through in his boyhood days, when, in the streets of
+Paris, he was on the verge of starvation and at one time obliged to
+sell his meagre possession of books to find food for the mouth of his
+brother Louis, and went without himself. To his intimate friends he
+was accustomed to relate the story, not in a whining manner, but with
+a vividness and pathos that brought tears to the eyes of every one who
+heard it.
+
+The wilful and false conception of Napoleon's character that existed
+amongst thousands of those who were contemporary with him, and the
+persistent efforts to defame him, even now, by a section of the
+world's community, are extraordinary, when so many convincing proofs
+are available which show him to have been the reverse of what they say
+he was. As brother, son, husband, father, or friend, his love,
+devotion, and loyalty were matchless. He was never once known to
+upbraid Josephine after the condonement of her infidelities. He paid
+her colossal debts, not without protest, but rather than make her
+unhappy he excused her extravagance and overlooked the capricious,
+peevish way in which she gave her domestic confidences concerning
+himself to her friends, who were oft-times his enemies, and so
+forgiving was he of faults which were so glaring to others, that he
+frequently caressed when he should have chastised.
+
+Josephine played upon his purblindness where she was concerned in
+most scandalous ways. She had no money sense, and combined with this
+defect she had no moral sense in money matters. Her debts were
+chronic, and periodically so enlarged that she adopted the most
+monstrous methods to reduce them before the balances were put before
+Napoleon by herself, or an inkling conveyed to him by a wily creditor;
+but these subterfuges only added to her spending resources. It is said
+that she actually did not shrink from receiving a thousand francs per
+day from Fouche as the price of information given him of what was
+going on in the Tuileries, and also that she received half a million
+francs from Flachats, the predatory army contractors.
+
+It is unthinkable that Napoleon, whose rigid uprightness in matters of
+money has never been disputed, could have known that his wife was
+involved in such shocking financial dealings, or he would have taken
+salutary measures to put a definite end to them. He knew that he was
+surrounded by men who were inveterate thieves, and when their
+defalcations were brought to his knowledge, they were either cashiered
+or made to disgorge. Bourrienne, Talleyrand, and Fouche, for instance.
+But there is no evidence to show that he ever suspected Josephine at
+any time, and let us hope that the Fouche-Flachats transactions were
+either exaggerated or mere invention, though it is hard to believe
+that there was no truth in the accusation.
+
+Napoleon was no sooner made Consul than there began to be hints and
+innuendoes of an heir, and as Josephine knew that she could not bear
+him one, she was thrown into fits of despondency lest he should be
+driven by designing persons in and outside his family to listen to a
+scheme of divorce and remarriage. The alternative was to nominate one
+of his brothers as his heir. Joseph and Lucien were impossible, so he
+fixed his mind on Louis. But the plot to assassinate him on the way to
+the opera, together with the Duc d'Enghien, Cadoudal, Moreau, and
+Pichegru affair, brought the change from Life Consul to Emperor more
+quickly. The marriage of Louis to Hortense eased Josephine's mind. She
+had in view the fact that an heir might be born to them, and the
+possibility of the inheritance going to him. In due course Napoleon
+Charles was born, and an attempt made by Napoleon to carry his idea
+out. Louis was at first in favour of it, but Joseph and Lucien had
+envious conceptions of what the brothers' rights were. Louis became
+impressed with their views, and ultimately decided against Napoleon's
+wishes. The Senate passed a resolution in favour of "direct natural,
+legitimate, and adoptive descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, and on the
+direct, natural, legitimate descendants of Joseph and Louis." The
+plebiscite supported the resolution of the Senate, and Joseph and
+Louis had the mortification of seeing that to them the succession was
+barred.
+
+This decision was regarded by Josephine as highly satisfactory to
+herself. She made no fuss about it, but was greatly overjoyed at the
+prospect of the effect it would have on Napoleon, and for a time no
+more was openly heard of divorce; but the venom was insidiously eating
+its way to that end all the same, and as he grew in power, so did the
+conspiracy develop. His own family were eager that she should be put
+away, but there were influences more powerful than that of Madame Mere
+and her sons and daughters. Talleyrand and Fouche being the High
+Commissioners who founded the direct hereditary idea, they
+persistently worried him with the plea that the State claimed that he
+should make the sacrifice. They knew that this was the strongest and
+most effective reason they could put forward to a man who would have
+given his soul in the service of his country.
+
+The birth of Madame Eleonore Denuelle's son Leon on December 29, 1806,
+made a great impression on the Emperor's mind. It was well known that
+he was the father of the child, and now that there was no doubt as to
+the possibility of him having an heir, it was only to be expected
+that the advocates of divorce would press their claim that an
+alliance should be made with one of the powerful ruling families. The
+advantages to France would be inestimable, and would it not establish
+himself and his dynasty more firmly on the throne? It is not unlikely
+that Napoleon pondered over the great possibilities of such a
+marriage, but he could not bring himself to the thought of divorcing
+the woman he still loved. He went so far as to seek Josephine's
+support in the plan of making his natural son his heir, and Masson
+says that in support of his desire he vigorously used "precedents and
+invented justifications." Happily he did not stretch the law of
+hereditary succession further than this.
+
+Leon, when he grew up, became a great source of trouble to all those
+with whom he was connected. His features and physical make up had a
+marked resemblance to his father's, but his mind was erratic. He had
+inherited none of the steady, sane genius of the Emperor, though but
+for a freak of nature which gave him a mental twist, he would have
+been as near his prototype as may be. He was always full of great
+schemes, which in the hands of a normally constituted person would
+have been fashioned into public usefulness.
+
+Masson gives a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his
+predilections, which were "gambling, duels, politics, writing
+pamphlets, the conception of colossal canal, railway, and commercial
+undertakings that never got far beyond the initial and rocky mental
+stage." He was one of the chief mourners when his father's remains
+were brought to Paris from St. Helena in 1840, and in 1848 aspired to
+the Presidency of the Republic, which fell to the lot of his cousin
+Louis Napoleon, whose life he desired to take, but who, with great
+generosity, gave him a pension and paid the legacy left him by
+Napoleon. He died in 1881.
+
+The birth of Leon gives him a prominent place in the history of the
+political divorce, though so far as Napoleon was concerned or affected
+by it, there is strong evidence to show that he really thought it was
+a way out, and had he been left to his own inclinations, the
+probability is that there would have been no second marriage so long
+as Josephine lived. From 1807 to 1809 his brain was racked to pieces
+with the inevitable shadow he struggled to evade. He could not bring
+himself to sever the tie that bound them together in strong attachment
+for nearly fifteen years. He invented every conceivable device to try
+and find a more congenial solution than divorce.
+
+For two years the Emperor lived in an atmosphere of intolerable
+anguish which distracted him. The nearer he approached the dreaded
+theme, the more fascinating his wife appeared to him, and the more
+tenaciously he clung to the deep impressions that had been made by
+that youthful passion that swayed his very being in other days. She
+had frequently recaptured him from the subtle blandishments of an
+agency that was ever on his track, and then his devotion became more
+rapturous than ever. Fouche was frequently rebuked with stern severity
+for his pertinacious advocacy of the separation. At another time we
+hear of him falling into Josephine's arms, shedding copious tears,
+and, choking with grief, he sobs out, "My poor Josephine! I can never
+leave you," "I still love you," and so forth.
+
+Those who pretend to see in these outbursts of devotion nothing but
+artifice, cannot have informed themselves of the true character of
+this extraordinary man. In truth, his was a sacrifice of affection
+forced upon him for the benefit of the State. That is the conclusion
+the writer has come to after much research. Even after he was
+persuaded that he would have to submit, the recollections of the glory
+they had shared together, and of their happy days, and the grief and
+suffering the parting would cause, filled him with remorse and pity,
+and then would come a period of wavering which exasperated his family
+and the upholders of the stability of the Empire. At last he saw
+clearly that it was an imperative duty that must be fulfilled.
+
+The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the amiable
+Marie Walewska, who was living close to Schoenbrunn, was about to give
+birth to a child which he knew to be his, and it is not improbable
+that this double assurance that he might reasonably expect to have an
+heir if he married again brought him to the definite decision to go on
+with the divorce; and the Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to
+form an alliance by offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.
+
+At the end of December, 1809, the great political divorce was ratified
+amid sombre signs of sympathy. Even the Bonapartes were compelled to
+yield to emotion, and Napoleon himself was profoundly affected. The
+subdued distress of Josephine pierced through the chilly hearts of
+those who had looked on with composure while men and women were being
+led to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. But even Josephine's
+tears and grief were graceful and fascinating, so that it was not
+surprising that the spectators extended sympathy to her in her sorrow.
+Almost immediately after the ceremony Napoleon became overcome with
+grief. He allowed a little time to elapse before asking Meneval to
+accompany him to Josephine's apartments. They found her in a condition
+of inexorable despair. She flung herself into the Emperor's arms; he
+embraced and fervently kissed her, but the ordeal was too great. She
+collapsed and fainted. He remained with her until she showed signs of
+consciousness, then left her in charge of Meneval and women
+attendants. The sight of her grief was too much for him to bear.
+
+Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had
+taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate
+attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown.
+Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was
+overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others. An annual
+income of three million francs was settled on her for life, which,
+should he pre-decease her, was to be paid by his successors. She
+retained the title of Empress and every other appearance of
+sovereignty.
+
+The negotiations for the second marriage were conducted from Trianon.
+The Russian alliance fell through, ostensibly on religious grounds.
+Napoleon did not like the thought of having Russian priests about him,
+and besides, the Princess Anne was too young to marry, and even if
+there had been no other difficulty, the Emperor Napoleon could not
+wait. The Saxon alliance did not appeal to him, so he gave preference
+to the House of Austria, and on March 11, 1810, His Majesty was
+married by proxy at Vienna to the Austrian Archduchess, and on the 1st
+of April the civil marriage took place at St. Cloud, and the following
+day they were ecclesiastically united.[31]
+
+Better for him and for France had he defied the advocates of royal
+alliance and stuck to Josephine, or even married Marie Walewska. If it
+was merely the policy of succession that was aimed at, he could have
+adopted his natural son, the brilliant Alexander Walewska, whose
+subsequent career in the service of France would have justified this
+course.
+
+The desire to unite the French Emperor with one of the powerful
+reigning families in order to give stability to the Empire and put an
+end to incessant warfare was a theory which proved to be a delusion,
+and perhaps Napoleon, with his clear vision, foresaw the jealousies
+and international complications that would arise through a political
+marriage of this character. This, and his unwillingness to part with
+Josephine, is a conclusion that may reasonably account for the
+vacillation that was so pronounced from time to time.
+
+The flippant attitude (which indicates the scope and summit of an
+ill-informed mind) that he was the victim of abnormal ambition to be
+connected with one or other of the royal families is ludicrous. If he
+had been eager to have such distinction, it was within his reach at
+any time after he became First Consul. He had only to impart a hint
+and there would have been a competition of available princesses, the
+choice of which would have bewildered him. Assuredly he showed no
+youthful impetuosity in this respect, and it may not be an overdrawn
+hypothesis to conclude that his marriage with Marie Louise was neither
+popular with the French people as a whole nor with other
+nationalities. It excited jealousy and mistrust amongst the larger
+Powers, and in France itself the memory of the last ill-fated union of
+France with Austria--that of Marie Antoinette and Louis--had left
+rankling effects in the minds of the people of the Revolution.[32]
+
+
+Murat had urged on his brother-in-law and the grand dignitaries the
+fact that a marriage with a relative of Marie Antoinette, who was an
+abhorrence to the adherents of the Revolution, would alienate a large
+public, but Murat's objections were suspected of having personal
+colour and overruled. It is, however, beyond conjecture that the King
+of Naples had diagnosed aright; whether from self-interest or not, the
+warning proved accurate. The most loyal and devoted of his subjects
+felt that their invincible hero was drifting into a vortex of trouble.
+They had learned by bitter experience the duplicity of Austrian
+diplomacy. The remembrance of the cruel wars they had been cunningly
+trapped into, the bleached bones of Frenchmen that lay on Austrian
+soil, and the denuded homes that resulted from Austria's odious policy
+of greed, worked on them like a subtle poison. And the glory of their
+conquests over her was nullified by the eternal suspicion that she was
+ever hatching new grounds of quarrel. They thought, indeed, their
+premonition of Austria's perpetual treachery was clear and definite,
+and that the new Empress would be a useful medium of their enemies'
+machinations.
+
+We can never fully estimate to what extent these impressions
+influenced their minds and actions and the part they played in
+hastening the great national humiliation. It is a pretty certain
+conclusion that it was only the colossal successes and magical
+personality of the Emperor that kept subdued the spirit of resentment
+which the marriage had caused.
+
+And we have historic evidence before us which clearly shows that the
+well-balanced mind of Napoleon was torn and tattered between doubt and
+conviction, and he fell into the fatal error of allowing his judgment
+to be overruled either by circumstances or pride. Had he relied on his
+superstition even, the chances are that St. Helena would never have
+had the stigma of his captivity stamped upon it.
+
+French and Austrian alliances have never, so far as they affected
+political history, been very successful. The stability of earthly
+things is governed, not by sentiment or theoretic doctrines, but by
+facts as hard as granite, and no one knew this more thoroughly than
+the man who fell a victim to the devices of the Austrians and their
+French allies.
+
+He was usually reticent about his domestic sorrows while in exile, but
+when his thoughts were far off, reviewing the great mystery of human
+destiny, he broke the rule, and with a sort of languid frankness spoke
+the thoughts that crowded his mind, and it was during these spasmodic
+periods that he opened his soul by declaring that it was his "having
+married a princess of Austria that ruined him, and that his marriage
+with Marie Louise was the cause of the expedition into Russia," and
+that "he might not have been at St. Helena had he married a
+Frenchwoman." It is said that he seriously thought of doing this, and
+had some available ladies put before him with that object. These
+dreamy utterances reveal that his mind was centred on the causes of
+his misfortunes, and that he held definite views on the marriage
+tragedy, and perhaps his sense of pride, the interests of his son (the
+King of Rome), and the reluctance to admit that he knew he was going
+wrong at the time, constrained him to withhold much that he thought
+and knew. The impression we get is that he could not bring himself to
+utter the whole of the unutterable canker which haunted him.
+
+It is strange that this keen-sighted man should have yielded up his
+own convictions and sunk under the admonitions of less capable judges.
+Even so far back as the Directory days, when Bernadotte was insulted
+at Vienna, he summed up the Austrian character in the following
+terms:--"When the Austrians think of making war, they do not insult;
+they cajole and flatter the enemy, so that they may have a better
+chance to stick a knife into him." He told the Directory they did not
+understand the Cabinet of Vienna; "it is the meanest and most
+perfidious to be found." "It will not make war with you because it
+cannot." "Peace with Austria is only a truce." His diagnoses were
+confirmed by Bernadotte, and more than confirmed in after years. The
+marvel is that he did not allow himself to benefit by his shrewd
+observations at a moment when so much depended on strength, not
+vacillation and weakness.
+
+A vivid justification of the opposition to another Austrian princess
+sharing the throne of France is embodied in the lofty ideals (?) of
+the Emperor Francis to his daughter Marie Louise at Schoenbrunn after
+she had deserted Napoleon. He said to her:--"As my daughter, all that
+I have is yours, even my blood and my life; as a sovereign, I do not
+know you."
+
+The benediction, pure and big of heart, benignly expressed, is
+promptly qualified with kingly sternness; the orthodoxy being that so
+long as Napoleon was in power she was his daughter, all that he had
+was hers, including his life and blood, but now that he has fallen she
+must not thwart his wishes, and loyally share the fate of him who was
+the father of her son, who had given her unparalleled glory, and been
+so merciful to Francis himself. If she elected to be at all wifely and
+cling to her husband in his misfortune, then he would assert the
+sovereign, and as readily gore her as he would Napoleon if, in his
+patriarchal wisdom, he judged national interests were at stake. His
+spirit-crushing rhetoric had a real ultra-monarchical ring about it.
+But it was meant for other ears and a purpose other than that of
+making his daughter shudder. So far as she was concerned, he might
+have saved himself any anxiety on that score. She bowed her head in
+conformity, and swiftly cast her amorous eyes on Neipperg, a man after
+his and her own heart. This was the culminating event that brought her
+destiny with Napoleon to an end, though _he_ tried to avert it, and
+the causes are summarised in his own pathetic language, clearly
+expressed from time to time.
+
+His nephew, Napoleon III., taking a lesson from his folly, refused to
+be buffeted into political matrimony by any of the matchmaking
+factions. When his turn came he acted with independence and wisdom by
+ignoring the blandishments of meddling advisers and royal
+conventionalism, and elected to marry the lady on whom he had set his
+affections.
+
+Incidentally, it may be stated that Napoleon III.'s merits have been
+overshadowed by the greater genius of his uncle, but as time separates
+the reigns of the two men it will be realised that, though he was not
+looked upon as a great military general, he had genius of a different
+kind, and was unquestionably a great ruler, acting under somewhat
+changed conditions, but subject to the same human caprices, and a time
+will come when the benefits he bestowed upon the French nation will be
+appreciated more than they are this day.
+
+In 1812, Europe was in a state of dammed convulsion. The wars, though
+always successful for France, had brought about no definite settlement
+of international affairs. Peace was transitory, and the dread of
+Napoleon's power and genius was the only check on rapacious designs on
+his dominion.
+
+What direct or indirect share Marie Louise had in bringing about the
+war with Russia and then the great European struggle will never be
+wholly known, but as the wife of Napoleon she would have opportunities
+of hearing from himself and those who were in his confidence remarks
+and even discussions on the complexities of the political situation.
+She was in daily communication with Metternich, and constantly
+corresponding with her father; and even allowing that her intentions
+were loyal at that time to her husband and to the country of her
+adoption, she may have unconsciously conveyed something that in the
+hands of adroit diplomats would reveal the pivot on which great issues
+might depend. Then, placing the Regency in her hands was an unchecked
+temptation, and must be counted as one of Napoleon's great mistakes.
+Imbued with an abundant share of Austrian predilection, and occupying
+a mechanical or fictitious position towards France and its ruler, and
+in view of her subsequent conduct, it is a reasonable assumption that
+during the Regency she conveyed important information of military
+movements and intentions to the Austrian Court, which it was not slow
+to take advantage of; and if truth were told, it would be found that
+the Allies owed much of their success to the Austrian Archduchess. May
+it not have been part of the subtle policy of Austria in arranging the
+marriage? Everything certainly points to it.
+
+Instead of making Metternich a present at the Prague Congress of a
+snuff-box which cost 30,000 francs, as a token of friendship, Fouche,
+who always had his mind well stored with ideas of corruption,
+suggested to the Emperor that, if it was intended to buy Austria off,
+he ought to make it millions. If Napoleon had been a man after his own
+heart, this might have been a successful solution for a time, but
+only for a time. Meneval says that the Emperor, who had a horror of
+corruption, replied to him with a gesture of disgust.
+
+In the early part of 1812, when war with Russia had become imminent,
+Napoleon carried out a promise that Josephine should see the King of
+Rome. The meeting took place at Bagatelle. She hugged and kissed the
+child with motherly affection, and her tears flowed with profusion.
+The scene was touching, and proved to be the everlasting farewell.
+Strange as it may appear, Josephine formed an enduring affection for
+Napoleon's natural son, afterwards Count Colonna (Alexander Walewska),
+and for his mother, Marie Walewska. She loved the child and treated
+him with the same indulgence as she did her own grandchildren. The
+mother was a regular visitor, and no one was more welcome at Malmaison
+than she. These incidents of magnanimity, characteristic of Josephine,
+would make her not only attractive but lovable, were it not there are
+also left on record flaws which show that she was seriously lacking in
+probity and fidelity to him to whom she owed everything. Her maternal
+affection and loving care of her children are without reproach, and
+her generosity to worthy and unworthy people was extraordinary. She
+loved Napoleon with peculiar eccentricity. His honour and interests
+were never a consideration. She allowed herself to be surrounded at
+Malmaison during the Russian campaign with Royalist plotters and
+treachery of the most implacable character. She poured out her woes to
+them with acceptable results, and nothing that would damage him and
+draw sympathy to herself was left uncommunicated. Her whole thought
+was of herself. She did not intend to be false or cruel to him, and
+yet she was both cruel and false.
+
+As soon as the Allied Armies had taken possession of Paris, the
+irrepressible Madame de Stael made a call on Josephine to ascertain
+how she stood now towards her former husband. She promptly asked her
+whether she still loved him. Josephine resented the impertinence, so
+the Duchesse de Reggio relates, and told some of her visitors that she
+had never ceased to love the Emperor in the days of his prosperity,
+and it was unthinkable that she should cease to do so in his
+adversity. Unhappily for Josephine, she adopted a most astounding
+course of showing her devotion by agreeing to the visits, first, of
+the Emperor of Russia, and then the other sovereigns and foreign
+dignitaries. She gave balls and treated the enemies of France, and
+especially the Tsar, as though they were the real descendants of the
+builders of the Temple to Jehovah. She and Hortense walked about the
+grounds linked to Alexander's arms during frequent visits, which was
+indicative of strongly formed affection.
+
+Had Josephine been possessed of a grain of discernment or a proper
+estimate of her dignity, she would have seen that this was part of a
+well-defined policy of striking a blow through her at the man she
+professed to love still, even with a greater passion now that he was
+the victim of combined and unrelenting hostility. Hortense, it would
+appear, refused at first to have any dealings with Alexander, but this
+sovereign's personal charms, winning manners, and homely ways soon
+fascinated and captured her. She may be excused, but her mother did
+not act the part of a nobleminded woman, and her memory must bear the
+reproach of it.
+
+Apart from the respect she owed to herself, she should have remembered
+the duty and loyalty she owed to a vast French public, and to the
+victim of her guests, who had been to her the most forgiving,
+indulgent friend that ever a human soul was blessed with. He had been
+a father to her children, and even when he was overwhelmed with the
+consequences of great disaster, his tenderest and most generous
+thoughts were sent to her.
+
+A woman who had a high sense of duty and honour would not have
+accepted a single favour from either one or the other of the inimical
+sovereigns, even if it had been offered to her; much less would she
+have cringed and whined indelicately in order that she might receive
+either their smiles or their favours at so abhorrent a price.
+
+Some writers have endeavoured to give Josephine credit for having
+influenced Alexander in a way that secured for Napoleon better terms
+than he would have otherwise got at the first abdication. The
+suggestion is ludicrous. Presumably the alternative was that he should
+be shot or confined in a fortress for the balance of his life. Either
+of these ideas of disposing of his person would have created reaction
+and public vengeance. The Allies shied at this, though some of the
+most ferocious, but by no means the bravest, of the set clamoured for
+shooting, which is always the way with spurious heroes.
+
+The diplomats amongst them devised the more subtle plan of exiling him
+first to Elba with the title of Emperor, and a pension of L200,000 per
+annum, never a penny of which was paid, or, in the light of history,
+was ever intended to be paid.
+
+They had preconceived the notion of masking the St. Helena plan until
+they thought they had cheated the public into believing that they were
+inspired by humane motives and the necessity for the peace of Europe.
+They laboriously studied out the most ingenious plots so that they
+might be glorified for ridding Europe of a "monster."
+
+Napoleon was kept advised, during his stay at Elba, of their designs
+on the liberty they had graciously (?) given him (with a pension that
+was designedly withheld), and, acting on certain specific information,
+he promptly developed one of his most brilliant achievements--the
+sudden landing in France, his triumphal march to Paris, and the
+resultant flight of the Bourbons at his unexpected approach at the
+head of an enthusiastic army.
+
+The campaign which followed--ending with the Battle of
+Waterloo--enabled the Allies, after his defeat, to satisfy the
+cravings of their savage instincts by carrying out their plan as
+mentioned above and sending him to martyrdom.
+
+But one of their most brutal acts was in refusing the request that his
+wife and child should accompany him to Elba. These are the ultimate
+"better terms" that Josephine is said to have secured by coquetting
+with Alexander of Russia!
+
+She revelled in grasping at every fragment of wreckage that would be
+of advantage to herself and her family, and Alexander's crafty
+friendship unquestionably gave her opportunities to indulge unchecked
+in complaints of her grievances against the man who had been so foully
+betrayed. Her mania for the distribution of confidences of the most
+sacred character was only equalled by her capacity for intriguing and
+piling up debts, and these attributes never forsook her at any time.
+
+Josephine's moral qualities cannot be accurately judged by her
+frequent outpourings of admiration and affection for Napoleon to
+Eugene and Hortense. In the letters to each which are extant, she
+declares it would be impossible for anyone to be kinder, more amiable,
+or considerate than he has always been, and even after the divorce she
+writes that if she loved him less sincerely, he could not show more
+anxiety to mitigate anything that might be painful to her.
+
+But notwithstanding these declarations, she never failed to gratify
+her insatiable love of pouring forth to his most inveterate enemies
+faults and failings that her constitutional moral obliquity indicated
+he had. It is not an unfair assumption, therefore, that their
+Majesties and others had conveyed to them in handfuls (unwittingly
+perhaps) much that was valuable to their pernicious purpose while they
+were being entertained at Malmaison. It has been said that it was her
+intention to be presented to the Bourbon King, and though we would
+fain believe her to be incapable of such perfidy, it is quite in
+keeping with the by-ways of her complex character, more especially as
+Eugene had paid him a visit. The promises of the sovereigns that the
+interests of herself and children would be protected became less
+reassuring as the few days that were left to her went on. At last she
+realised they were mere silken verbiage, and gave way to despair.
+This, and the anxiety of entertaining her royal guests, accentuated
+the illness she had contracted. Alexander paid his first visit on May
+14th, and she died of quinsy or diphtheria on May 29, 1814.
+
+The allied monarchs were all represented at her funeral, and the
+Prince of Mecklenburg (the Queen of Prussia's brother) was amongst the
+mourners. It was of him the Court gossipers assiduously circulated
+reports that he was paying suspicious attention to Josephine after the
+divorce. Napoleon, on hearing of the flirtation through Fouche,
+rebuked her with justifiable vigour on the ground of it being a gross
+violation of dignity to go about with the Prince and others of lower
+ranks to second-rate theatres, even under the cover of incognito. He
+does not appear to have thought there was anything more than
+Josephine's habitual lack of respect for herself and the high position
+he had preserved for her, though according to the unreliable Madame de
+Remusat Napoleon suggested to his divorced wife that she should take
+Prince Mecklenburg as her husband. The same authority (?) asserts that
+the Prince had written to Napoleon asking his permission, and,
+further, says that Josephine told her this curious story. It is
+entirely unsupported by either the words or actions of the Emperor
+himself, and may be put aside as another of the fabrications of the
+memoir writer.
+
+That there was a flirtation there can be little doubt, but the
+Prince's object may have been part of the political intrigue, rather
+than carnal intercourse with a woman of nearly fifty years of age.
+Josephine, always sorry for herself, a sieve of the first water,
+susceptible to flattery, blind to device, yearning for admiration and
+pity, was rejoiced to find attention extended to her from any quarter,
+but coming from the Royal House of Prussia or any other royal
+personage it was a dazzling compliment to the high esteem in which she
+believed she was held, and enhanced the luxury of feeling that she was
+the centre of international sympathy.
+
+It was not that she had any malicious intent to do deliberate wrong to
+Napoleon, or any thought of degrading herself. Her mind did not work
+in these grooves. She was merely carried off her feet by vain love of
+self-approbation, which led her far beyond the bounds of honourable
+prudence. She was interred at Rueil amidst quiet solemnity, and in
+1825 Eugene and Hortense erected a monument in her memory.
+
+The legend is that her last articulate utterance was the enchanted
+name of "Napoleon"--"Elba." Corvisat, the Imperial physician, was
+piteously asked by the Emperor on his return why he allowed her to
+die, and the nature of the malady that took her spirit away. He
+replied that she "Died of grief and sorrow." Her own doctor, Horeau,
+told him pretty much the same thing, which brought forth the sad
+reply, she was a "good woman" and "loved me well." The intimation that
+she had spoken often and kindly of him brought back all the old
+passion for her and filled him with emotion. He had heard of her death
+while at Elba, and told Corvisat that it was a most acute grief to
+him, and although she had her failings _she_ at least would "never
+have abandoned him"; and possibly this latter expressed opinion, so
+often repeated, might have been fulfilled had he at once thrown Marie
+Louise over after her desertion of him.
+
+The popular charges against Napoleon, by those who are either
+prejudiced or have failed to inform themselves of his history, are
+that he must have been a cruel and barbarous husband or he would not
+have divorced his wife, and that, as a ruler, he thirsted for blood.
+Each of these, as well as many other silly things that are said and
+believed of him, is palpably false. As a husband, so far as kindness
+and indulgence goes, he was exemplary. As a soldier, First Consul, and
+Emperor, his desire at all times was for peace. History has revealed
+the real man, and in recent years it has been convincingly proved that
+he was the very antithesis of the monster he has been given out and
+supposed to be. Now, in the light of more accurate knowledge and
+calmer judgment, the world is showing a desire to do him the justice
+he never ceased to believe that it would do him.
+
+His unexampled personality and fame is spreading and inspiring
+everywhere. His faults are being put in the limelight of public
+opinion, and the growing desire to treat even these with proper
+generosity is an indication that reason and knowledge are taking the
+place of stereotyped international prejudice, political and personal.
+We are beginning to see more clearly through the fog of enmity that he
+had rare virtues, besides having unparalleled genius. The divorce of
+Josephine was unquestionably political, though had he been the
+ferocious creature he has been made to appear, the opportunities she
+gave him so frequently would have justified the divorce at a much
+earlier stage on other than political grounds.
+
+It ill becomes a nation which knew George I., George IV., and Henry
+VIII. to take such unctuous exception to the gentle and benevolent
+attitude of Napoleon before and after the annulment of the marriage.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] It has been asserted that when Josephine found the divorce to be
+inevitable she herself suggested the alliance with Marie Louise. One
+reason for believing that this might be the case lies in the fact that
+the affection of Josephine's children for Napoleon suffered no
+diminution on account of the divorce--indeed, Eugene took a leading
+part in the negotiations for the marriage.
+
+[32] In the notorious "Letters from the Cape," addressed to Lady
+Clavering and variously attributed to an Englishman, Las Cases, and
+even Napoleon himself, there is noted a curious coincidence with
+regard to the two Franco-Austrian alliances. Both marriage contracts
+were signed under somewhat similar circumstances, and in both cases
+fetes were held in honour of the event. At the marriage fete of Louis
+XVI. and Marie Antoinette a calamity occurred which resulted in the
+loss of about two thousand lives. To celebrate the union of Napoleon
+and Marie Louise, Prince Schwartzenberg gave a fete, at which a fire
+occurred, the Prince's wife and some twenty other people being burnt
+to death. The superstitious drew attention to the coincidence, and it
+is said that Napoleon looked upon it as an evil omen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON
+
+
+In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral
+restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any
+grounds--administrative, strategical, religious, domestic--he was
+preeminent above his contemporaries. On religious grounds alone, those
+thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight
+of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply
+religious being. His conversations with Gourgaud on religious
+subjects, some of which are quoted in Lord Rosebery's admirable book,
+"The Last Phase," are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as
+authentic beliefs. It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to
+the line he took.
+
+It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with and
+contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual exercise. At
+one time he declares to his refractory companion, "If I had to choose
+a religion, I would worship the sun, because the sun gives to all
+things life and fertility." At another time he torments the Count,
+after tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by
+saying that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all." But when
+his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares "that religion
+lends sanctity to everything." "The remission of sins is a beautiful
+idea." "It makes the Christian religion so attractive that it will
+never perish. No one can say 'I do not believe and I never shall
+believe.'"
+
+Montholon is more to the writer's liking than Gourgaud, even though
+Gourgaud's authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we shall see
+later what _he_ says about his Emperor's religious beliefs. It was he
+who endeavoured to mitigate his master's mental and physical
+sufferings, and it was he whom he desired should close his eyes in
+death when the nefarious assassination had been completed. It was he,
+too, who got himself locked up in the fortress of Ham for seven years
+by adhering steadfastly to the cause of the great exile's nephew.
+Gourgaud was loyal and devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led
+him to do great injustice to the stricken hero. Montholon's devotion
+was consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud's
+fluctuated with his moods.
+
+None of Napoleon's companions in exile were admitted to such close
+intimacy with the illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count
+Montholon, not even Bertrand or Marchand. It was he who had won
+confidence by the most amazing attachment that one human being could
+give to another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon
+should respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity. He was the
+beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the last
+forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the death-chamber, and
+at his request he kept vigil and witnessed, his spirit pass away.
+
+It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the smitten
+rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts, domestic,
+civil, and religious. He made him one of his executors, bequeathed to
+him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of precious documents,
+and to his dying day the recipient of such flattering confidences
+never betrayed by word or act the faith that was reposed in him, nor
+did he ever falter in his devotion to the martyr's cause. It is from
+him we have handed down the famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon
+for his son, which is pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with
+the genius of statesmanship. We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the
+religious side of Napoleon's versatile character. His talks and
+dictations on this controversial subject are unorthodox if you like,
+but nevertheless religious; copious in thought and trenchant in
+vocabulary, they disclose the magic of a well-stored inspired mind. He
+indulges in neither puerilities nor conventionalities. He is a
+vigorous student of the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and
+speaks his reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the
+vision of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.
+
+In the first clause of his will he declares: "I die in the Apostolic
+Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years
+since." If any other proof were needed that he believed in the
+divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration on the eve of the
+great transformation may be confirmed by the fact that the cardinal
+doctrine of the Roman religion centres in the divinity of Christ.
+Again, in the course of his public and private duties, you frequently
+come across passages in his letters and official documents such as
+"May God have you in His holy keeping." It may be said that this is a
+mere form or figure of speech but then unbelievers do not use such
+phrases.
+
+We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and be
+generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of political,
+historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's message to the
+world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct
+conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a
+perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist
+Napoleon's discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever
+was seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the sun,
+or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he ever
+showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of his race.
+
+He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as
+honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with
+scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct
+towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan. But this in no
+way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ. He
+says that "religious ideas have more influence than certain
+narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; they are capable of
+rendering great services to humanity." Again, he says that "the
+Christian religion is the religion of a civilised people; it is
+entirely spiritual, and the reward which Jesus Christ promises to the
+elect is that they shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency
+is to subdue the passions; it offers nothing to excite them."
+
+There were frequently heated arguments on religion between Napoleon
+and members of his suite during the dreary hours at Longwood, and on
+one of these occasions he, Montholon, and Antommarchi are the
+debaters. To the former he suddenly flashed out: "I know men well, and
+I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man"; then he curtly attacks
+the pretentious doctor by informing him that "aspiring to be an
+atheist does not make a man one."
+
+Dr. Alexander Mair published in the _Expositor_, some twenty years
+ago, a critical study of the authenticity of the declarations imputed
+to Napoleon when at St. Helena on the subject of the Christian
+religion, from which I make the following extract:--
+
+"One evening at St. Helena," says M. Beauterne, "the conversation was
+animated. The subject treated of was an exalted one; it was the
+divinity of Jesus Christ. Napoleon defended the truth of this doctrine
+with the arguments and eloquence of a man of genius, with something
+also of the native faith of the Corsican and the Italian. To the
+objections of one of the interlocutors, who seemed to see in the
+Saviour but a sage, an illustrious philosopher, a great man, the
+Emperor replied:--
+
+"'I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.
+
+"'Superficial minds may see some resemblance between Christ and the
+founders of empires, the conquerors, and the gods of other religions.
+That resemblance does not exist.
+
+"'I see in Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet merely legislators;
+but nothing which reveals the Deity. On the contrary, I see numerous
+relations between them and myself. I make out resemblances,
+weaknesses, and common errors which assimilate them to myself and
+humanity. Their faculties are those which I possess. But it is
+different with Christ. Everything about Him astonishes me; His spirit
+surprises me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and anything of
+this world there is no possible comparison. He is really a Being
+apart.
+
+"'The nearer I approach Him and the more clearly I examine Him, the
+more everything seems above me; everything continues great with a
+greatness that crushes me.
+
+"'His religion is a secret belonging to Himself alone, and proceeds
+from an intelligence which assuredly is not the intelligence of man.
+There is in Him a profound originality which creates a series of
+sayings and maxims hitherto unknown.
+
+"'Christ expects everything from His death. Is that the invention of a
+man? On the contrary, it is a strange course of procedure, a
+superhuman confidence, an inexplicable reality. In every other
+existence than that of Christ, what imperfections, what changes! I
+defy you to cite any existence, other than that of Christ, exempt from
+the least vacillation, free from all such blemishes and changes. From
+the first day to the last He is the same, always the same, majestic
+and simple, infinitely severe, and infinitely gentle.
+
+"'How the horizon of His empire extends, and prolongs itself into
+infinitude! Christ reigns beyond life and beyond death. The past and
+the future are alike to Him; the kingdom of the truth has, and in
+effect can have, no other limit than the false. Jesus has taken
+possession of the human race; He has made of it a single nationality,
+the nationality of upright men, whom He calls to a perfect life.
+
+"'The existence of Christ from beginning to end is a tissue entirely
+mysterious, I admit; but that mystery meets difficulties which are in
+all existences. Reject it, the world is an enigma; accept it, and we
+have an admirable solution of the history of man.
+
+"'Christ speaks, and henceforth generations belong to Him by bonds
+more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union more sacred,
+more imperious than any other union beside. He kindles the flame of a
+love which kills out the love of self and prevails over every other
+love. Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ is the
+reign of love. All who believe in Him sincerely feel this love,
+wonderful, supernatural, supreme. It is a phenomenon inexplicable,
+impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred fire given to the
+earth by this new Prometheus, of which Time, the great destroyer, can
+neither exhaust the force nor terminate the duration. That is what I
+wonder at most of all, for I often think about it; and it is that
+which absolutely proves to me the divinity of Christ!'
+
+"Here the Emperor's voice assumed a peculiar accent of ironical
+melancholy and of profound sadness: 'Yes, our existence has shone with
+all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty; and yours, Montholon,
+Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the dome of the Invalides,
+gilded by us, reflects the rays of the sun. But reverses have come;
+the gold is effaced little by little. The rain of misfortunes and
+outrages with which we are deluged every day carries away the last
+particles; we are only lead, gentlemen, and soon we shall be but dust.
+Such is the destiny of great men; such is the near destiny of the
+great Napoleon.
+
+"'What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal reign of
+Christ, proclaimed, worshipped, beloved, adored, living throughout the
+whole universe! Is that to die? Is it not rather to live?'"
+
+A more beautiful panegyric on the divinity of Christ has never been
+pronounced. The thrilling and convincing conclusions evolved from the
+mind of a great reader, a great thinker--a man, in fact, who had
+studied and knew the human side of life, and could describe it with
+flawless accuracy--are a complete refutation of the opinions expressed
+either from prejudice or personal and political motives. Napoleon
+conversed about religion with other men in a critical way, not always
+with orthodox reverence, but certainly with the conviction that he had
+a thorough knowledge of every phase of the subject. Perhaps he derived
+pleasure from showing that he did not accept the popular doctrine
+unreservedly.
+
+His unorthodox view of the Catholic religion is shown by the fact that
+in 1797 he endeavoured to get Pius VI. to suppress the Inquisition
+throughout Europe. The Pope, in his reply, addressing the General as
+his "very dear son," urges him to abandon the idea and assures him
+that the charges made against the Holy Office are false. He further
+says that the Inquisition is not tyrannical, and that sooner than
+remove the Holy Office he would part with a province. Napoleon for a
+time gave way, and it was not until 1808 that he issued a decree
+suppressing the institution in France and confiscating its property.
+This incident is another proof of Napoleon's humane attitude towards
+his people and his abhorrence of religious intolerance.
+
+The basis for such an attitude towards an accepted institution of the
+Roman Catholic Church was Napoleon's belief that "Faith is beyond the
+reach of the law and the most sacred property of man, for which he has
+no right to account to any mortal if there is nothing in it contrary
+to social order."
+
+Unquestionably he had pride in impressing his auditors with the
+vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study. He had,
+moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel that he was
+not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior, even when they got
+him to talk on their own subjects. This habit was especially
+pronounced at St. Helena.
+
+But this in no way impairs the evidences of his spiritual character.
+One of his first acts when his authority was established in France was
+to face the most hostile declamation against the Concordat, but
+believing that no good government could be assured without religion,
+he carried his convictions through in spite of it being a reversion of
+one of the cardinal doctrines of the Revolution, and there is
+abundance of proof that when he was faced with the last great problem,
+he accepted it without a sign of superstitious dread, believing in the
+immortality of the soul which should reveal all things.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+LIST OF SOME OF THE BOOKS REFERRED TO OR CONSULTED BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+Correspondence of Napoleon.
+Last Letters of Napoleon.
+Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, by Bingham.
+Napoleon's Miscellanies.
+Napoleon's Own Memoirs.
+Napoleon Anecdotes, Ireland.
+Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Count Gourgaud.
+Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph.
+Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, by H.F. Hall.
+Letters from the Island of St. Helena.
+History of Napoleon, by Lanfrey.
+Life of Napoleon, by Sir Walter Scott.
+Life of Napoleon, by J.H. Rose.
+Napoleon, by Phyfe.
+Private Life of Napoleon, by Levy.
+Life of Napoleon, by Bourrienne.
+Short Life of Napoleon, by J.R. Seeley.
+Life of Napoleon the Third, by Blanchard.
+Life of Napoleon, by W. Hazlitt.
+History of Napoleon, edited by R.H. Horne.
+Life of Napoleon, by MacFarlane.
+History of Napoleon, by George Moir Bussey.
+Life of Napoleon, by W.M. Sloane.
+Napoleon, by J.T. Bailey.
+Napoleon, by Dr. Max Lenz.
+Baron de Meneval, Memoirs.
+Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito.
+Memoirs of General Count Rapp, written by himself.
+Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo.
+Memoirs of Madame Junot, Duchess of Abrantes.
+Secret Memoirs of Napoleon, by Charles Doris.
+Mallet Du Pan, by B. Mallet.
+Madame de Stael.
+Recollections of Marshal MacDonald.
+Memoirs of the Empress Josephine.
+Memoirs of Queen Hortense.
+Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud.
+Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise, by De St. Amand.
+Memoirs of Joseph.
+Memoirs of Madame de Remusat.
+Life of Nelson, by Southey.
+Life of Wellington, by George Hooper.
+Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart.
+Dumourier Memoirs.
+Life of Byron.
+William Pitt, by Lord Rosebery.
+William Pitt, by Charles Whibley.
+Memoirs of the Court of the Empress Josephine, by Ducrest.
+The Sailor King, by Fitzgerald Molloy.
+Marmont Memoirs.
+General Marbot Memoirs.
+Marshal Berthier, by General Derrecagaix.
+Constant, Memoirs of the Life of Napoleon.
+Napoleon and Marie Louise, by Madame Durand.
+The Women Napoleon Loved, by Tighe Hopkins.
+The Marriages of the Bonapartes, by Bingham.
+Napoleon at Home, by F. Masson.
+Napoleon et les Femmes, by F. Masson.
+Josephine, Imperatrice et Reine, by F. Masson.
+Love of an Uncrowned Queen, by Wilkins.
+The Love Affairs of Napoleon, by Joseph Turquan.
+The Women Bonapartes, by Noel Williams.
+Las Cases' Journal.
+Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe, by Forsyth.
+Napoleon's Captivity in Relation to Sir Hudson Lowe, by R.C. Seaton.
+The Exile of St. Helena, by Philippe Gonnard.
+Napoleon, Last Voyages, by J.H. Rose.
+The Last Days of Napoleon, by Dr. F. Antommarchi.
+Duke of Reichstadt, by De Wertheimer.
+Napoleon, the First Phase, by Oscar Browning.
+Napoleon, The Last Phase, by Lord Rosebery.
+Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Latimer.
+The Surrender of Napoleon, by Rear-Admiral Sir Frederick Maitland.
+Napoleon in Exile, by Barry O'Meara.
+The Drama of St. Helena, by Paul Frembeaux.
+History of a Crime, by Victor Hugo.
+History of the Captivity of Napoleon, by Count Montholon.
+Warden's Letters from St. Helena.
+With Napoleon at St. Helena, by Dr. John Stokoe.
+Napoleon's Last Voyages, by Sir Thomas Usher.
+Napoleon and His Fellow Travellers, by Clement Shorter.
+An Exposition of Some of the Transactions that have taken
+  place at St. Helena since the Appointment of Sir Hudson
+  Lowe as Governor of that Island, by B.E. O'Meara.
+Facts Illustrative of the Treatment of Napoleon Bonaparte
+  in St. Helena, by Theodore Hook (?).
+History of the Consulate and the Empire, by Thiers.
+Napoleon's Expedition to Russia, by Count Philippe de Segur.
+Napoleon in Russia, by Verestchagen.
+Napoleon, King of Elba, by Paul Gruyer.
+Cambridge Modern History, Volume IX., Sections by--
+  Georges Pariset.
+  T.A. Walker.
+  H.W. Wilson.
+  Anton Guilland.
+  H.A.L. Fisher.
+  L.G. Wickham-Legg.
+  E.M. Lloyd.
+  J. Holland Rose.
+  August Keim.
+  C.W. Oman.
+  Eugen Stschepkin.
+  Julius von Pflugk-Harttung.
+  A.W. Ward.
+  G.P. Gooch.
+Napoleon and His Detractors, by Prince Napoleon.
+Heinrich Heine's Essays.
+France, by J.E.C. Bodley.
+Talleyrand, by Lady Blennerhassett.
+Napoleon's Marshals, by R.P. Dunn Pattison.
+French Revolution, by Thomas Carlyle.
+French Revolution, by Lord Acton.
+Bonaparte and the Consulate, by Thibeaudeau.
+Napoleonic Studies, by J. Holland Rose.
+Biographical Sketches, by Harriet Martineau.
+From Howard to Nelson, by Mahan.
+The Life of Nelson, by Mahan.
+A Mariner of England, 1780-1817, edited by Colonel Spencer
+    Childers.
+Bonapartism, by H.A.L. Fisher.
+Bernadotte's Correspondence with Napoleon.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF EVENTS AND DATES HAVING REFERENCE TO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+1769. Aug.  15. Napoleon the First born.
+
+1789. July  14. French Revolution breaks out with the
+                  destruction of the Bastille.
+
+1790. July  14. France declared a Limited Monarchy.
+
+      July  14. Louis XVI. swears to maintain the Constitution.
+
+1791. June  21. The King, Queen, and Royal family arrested
+                  at Varennes.
+
+      Sept. 15. Louis (a prisoner) signs the National Constitution.
+
+1792. July  17. First coalition against France.
+
+      Nov.  19. French people declare their fraternity
+                  with all nations who desire to be free
+                  and offer help.
+
+1796. Mar.   9. Bonaparte's marriage with Josephine.
+                Bonaparte's successful campaign in Italy.
+
+1798.           Expedition to Syria and Egypt.
+
+1799. April.    European coalition against France.
+
+      Nov.  10. Council of 500 deposed by Bonaparte; he
+                  is declared First Consul.
+1800. June  14. Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at Marengo.
+      Dec.  24. Bonaparte's life attempted by an infernal
+                  machine.
+
+                Bank of France founded by Napoleon.
+
+1802. Mar.  28. Peace of Amiens (with England, Spain,
+                  and Holland) signed.
+
+1802. May   19. Legion of Honour instituted by Napoleon.
+
+      Aug.   2. Napoleon made First Consul for life.
+
+1803. April 14. Bank of France established.
+
+      May   22. Declaration of war against England.
+
+1804. Feb.  15. Conspiracy of Moreau and Pichegru against
+                Napoleon.
+
+      Mar.  21. Duc d'Enghien executed.
+
+      May   18. Napoleon proclaimed Emperor of France.
+
+      Dec.   2. Napoleon crowned by the Pope.
+
+1805. May   26. Napoleon crowned King of Italy.
+
+      Aug.      Third coalition against France.
+
+      Dec.   2. Napoleon defeats the Allies at Austerlitz.
+
+1806. Oct.  14. Napoleon defeats the Prussians at Jena.
+
+1807. Feb.   8. Napoleon defeats the Russians at Eylau.
+
+      July   7. Peace of Tilsit signed.
+
+      Dec.  17. Napoleon issues his Milan Decree against
+                  British commerce.
+
+1808. Mar.   1. New Nobility of France created.
+
+      May    5. Abdication of Charles IV. of Spain and his
+                  son in favour of Napoleon.
+
+      July      Commencement of the Peninsular War.
+
+1809. April     Alliance of England and Austria against
+                  France.
+
+      May       Napoleon defeats the Austrians and enters
+                  Vienna.
+
+      Oct.  14. Peace of Vienna signed.
+
+      Dec.  16. Divorce of the Emperor and the Empress
+                  Josephine decreed by the Senate.
+
+1810. April  1. Marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise of
+                  Austria.
+
+      July   9. Holland united to France.
+
+1811. Mar.  20. Birth of the King of Rome (Napoleon II.).
+
+1812. June  22. War with Russia declared.
+
+      Oct.      The retreat from Moscow.
+
+1813. Mar.      Alliance of Austria, Russia, and Prussia
+                  against France.
+
+      Oct.   7. British enter France.
+
+1814. Mar.  31. Surrender of Paris to the Allies.
+
+1814. April  5. Abdication of Napoleon negotiated.
+
+      May    3. Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty.
+                  Louis XVIII. arrives at Paris.
+
+      May    4. Napoleon arrives at Elba.
+
+      May   29. Death of Josephine.
+
+1815. Mar.   1. Napoleon  escapes  from   Elba   and lands
+                  at Cannes.
+
+      Mar.  20. Napoleon arrives at Fontainebleau.
+
+      Mar.  22. Napoleon is joined by all the Army.
+
+      Mar.      The Allies sign a treaty against him.
+
+      Mar.  29. Napoleon abolishes the slave trade.
+
+      June  12. Napoleon leaves Paris for the Army.
+
+      June  18. Battle of Waterloo.
+
+      June  20. Napoleon returns to Paris.
+
+      June  22. Abdicates in favour of his son.
+
+      July   3. He arrives at Rochefort, intending to
+                  embark for America.
+
+      July   3. Louis XVIII. re-enters Paris.
+
+      July  15. Napoleon surrenders to Captain Maitland,
+                  of the _Bellerophon_, at Rochefort.
+
+      Aug.   8. Is transferred at Torbay to the _Northumberland_,
+                  and, with Admiral Sir George Cockburn,
+                  sails for St. Helena.
+
+      Oct.  15. Arrives at St. Helena, to remain for life.
+
+      Dec.   7. Execution of Marshal Ney.
+
+1816. Jan.  12. Family of Bonaparte excluded _for ever_
+                  from France by the Law of Amnesty.
+
+1821. May    5. Death of Napoleon.
+
+1836. Oct.  29. Attempted insurrection by Louis Napoleon
+                  (afterwards Emperor).
+
+1837. May    8. Amnesty proclaimed for political offences.
+
+1838.           "Idees Napoleoniennes" published by
+                  Prince Louis Napoleon.
+
+1840. May   12. The Chambers decree the removal of
+                  Napoleon's remains from St. Helena.
+
+      Oct.  15. Exhumation of Napoleon's remains.
+
+      Nov.  30. Arrival of _Belle Poule_ frigate at Cherbourg
+                  with remains on board.
+
+1840. Dec.  15. Remains deposited in the Hotel des Invalides.[33]
+
+      Aug.   6. Descent of Louis Napoleon, General Montholon,
+                  and fifty followers at Vimeraux, near Boulogne.
+
+      Oct.   6. The Prince captured and sentenced to
+                  imprisonment for life.
+
+1841. Aug.  15. Bronze statue of Napoleon placed on the
+                  column of the Grande Armee, Boulogne.
+
+1846. May   25. Louis Napoleon escapes from Ham.
+
+1847. Oct.  10. Jerome Bonaparte returns to France, after
+                  an exile of thirty-two years.
+
+1848. June  13. Election of Louis Napoleon to the National
+                  Assembly.
+
+      Sept. 26. Louis Napoleon takes his seat in the
+                  National Assembly.
+
+1857.           Longwood, the residence of Napoleon
+                  Bonaparte at St. Helena, bought for
+                  180,000 francs.
+
+1860. June  24. Jerome Bonaparte (the  Emperor's uncle)
+                  dies, aged 76.
+
+1861. Mar.  31.  Napoleon's body finally placed in the crypt
+                   of the Hotel des Invalides.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[33] The ceremony was witnessed by about 1,000,000 persons and 150,000
+soldiers assisted at the obsequies. No relatives of the Emperor were
+present, as at this time the various members of the Bonaparte family
+were either proscribed and in exile or in prison.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Abrantes, Duke and Duchess of, _see_ Junot
+Acton, Lord, 115
+Aglietti, Dr., 157
+Alexander, _see_ Russia, Emperor of
+Amherst, Lord, 48
+Anne of Russia, Princess, 268
+Antommarchi, Dr., 32, 75, 82, 85, 195, 293
+Archambaud, 171
+Arnott, Dr., 85
+Augereau, General, 156, 176
+Austria, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Austria, Emperor of, 49, 55, 113, 124, 133, 267, 274
+
+
+Baranti, M., 217
+Barras, "Citizen," 240, 241, 251
+Bathurst, Lord, 34, 35, 45, 70, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 103, 181, 184
+Beauharnais, Alexandre, 231, 232, 234, 235
+Beauharnais, Eugene, 235, 240, 254, 283, 285
+Beauharnais, Hortense, 116, 232, 235, 254, 262, 279, 280, 283, 285
+Beauharnais, Marquis de, 231, 232
+Beauterne, M., 293
+Beauvais, Bishop of, 104
+Bernadotte, Marshal, 175, 273
+Berthier, General, 153, 176
+Bertrand, Count, 15, 34, 51, 57, 139, 171, 172, 195, 290
+Bertrand, Madame, 72
+Bessieres, General, 153
+Bismarck, Prince von, 166
+Bluecher, Marshal, 189
+Bombelles, M. de, 158
+Bonaparte, Caroline, 246
+Bonaparte, Joseph, 49, 115, 172, 244, 245, 262
+Bonaparte, Leon, 263, 264
+Bonaparte, Louis, 262
+Bonaparte, Lucien, 254, 262
+Bonaparte, Madame Mere, 146 _et seq._
+Bonaparte, Napoleon, 15, 19, 32, 35, 37, 40, 44, 48, 50, 58, 73, 75, 83,
+                     84, 85, 105, 106, 108, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124,
+                     126, 127, 128, 139, 155, 160, 162, 172, 194, 201,
+                     206, 207, 210, 213, 221, 240, 241, 243, 247, 250,
+                     252, 253, 254, 257, 259, 261, 265, 267, 271, 277,
+                     281, 284, 286, 288 _et seq._;
+  on the Christian religion, 293 _et seq._
+Bonaparte, Pauline, 116, 249, 250
+Borghesi, Countess Pauline, 83
+Bourrienne, M., 113, 128, 129, 162, 177
+Browning, Oscar, 117
+Brutus, Marcus, 124
+Buelow, von, 189
+Burton, Dr., 85
+Byron, Lord, 191, 199 _et seq._, 216
+
+Cadoudal, 262
+Caesar, Julius, 123
+Camerata, Countess Napoleone, 145
+Carlyle, Jane, 84
+Carlyle, Thomas, 163
+Carnot, 241, 244
+Cases, Count Las, 34, 64, 65, 68, 70, 75, 171, 195
+Castlereagh, Lord, 45, 80, 103, 181
+Catherine of Westphalia, 153, 154
+Charles, Hippolyte, 249, 250, 251, 252
+Charles VII., 105, 106
+Charles X., 168
+Cipriani, 54
+Cockburn, Captain, 27, 34
+Collot, 253
+Colonna, Count, _see_ Walewska, Alexander
+Colonna, Signor Simeon, 82
+Commissioners of the Powers, 45, 49
+Compoint, Louise, 246
+Conquereau, l'Abbe, 171
+Constant, Benjamin, 123, 207, 213, 215, 216
+Corvisat, Dr., 286
+Coulon Brothers, 128
+Cromwell, Oliver, 90
+
+Davoust, Marshal, 176
+Denuelle, Madame Eleanore, 263
+Desaix, General, 153
+Dietrichstein, Count, 137
+Documents, _see_ Official Documents
+Dottot, M., 258
+Duroc, Marshal, 126, 153
+
+Editor of _Edinburgh Review_, 50
+Eliot, George, 216
+d'Enghien, Due, 51, 262
+
+Fesch, Cardinal, 150
+Flachats, MM., 261
+Forsyth, William, 36, 76, 91, 99, 100, 101, 179, 192, 196
+Fouche, M., 128, 129, 176, 206, 261, 263, 277, 284
+Fox, Charles James, 92, 93
+France, Commissioner for, 45, 49, 72
+Francis, _see_ Austria, Emperor of
+Frederick of Prussia, 49, 162
+Frederick the Great, 163
+Freron, M., 250
+
+George I., 162, 287
+George IV., 33, 70, 94, 95, 117, 180, 201, 287
+Gohier, M., 256
+Gorrequer, Major, 99, 100
+Gourgaud, General, 29, 53, 65, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 112, 139, 171, 179,
+                   193, 194, 195, 207, 288, 289
+Granville, Earl, 19
+Grouchy, Marshal, 189, 191
+Guizot, M., 17
+
+Hanover, Elector of, 162
+Henin, General, 190
+Henry, Mr., 99, 100
+Henry VIII., 287
+Hill, General Lord, 189
+Hoche, General, 240
+Holland, Lady, 49, 57
+Holland, Lord, 80, 89
+Hooper, 61
+Horeau, Dr., 286
+
+Jersey, Lady, 201
+Joan of Arc, 104, 106, 153
+Joinville, Prince, 26, 171, 173
+Josephine, 101, 118, 155, 210, 220, 231 _et seq._
+Jourdan, General, 176
+Junot, Marshal, 127, 245, 246
+
+Keith, Lord, 21, 65, 66, 120, 121, 122, 124
+Kellerman, General, 242, 243
+Kleber, General, 153
+
+La Fayette, 156
+Lallemand, 65
+Las Cases, _see_ Cases, Las
+Leclerc, General, 249, 250
+Lenz, Dr. Max, 193, 198, 209
+Liverpool, Lord, 80, 103, 181
+Livingstone, Dr., 85
+Louis Philippe, 16, 21 _et seq._, 138, 168, 169, 171, 172
+Louis XVI., 126, 270
+Louis XVIII., 94, 168
+Lowe, Sir Hudson, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51,
+                  57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 72, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 99,
+                  103, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, 191, 194, 195,
+                  196
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 162
+Macdonald, Marshal, 176
+Maceroni, Colonel, 75
+Manning, Mr., 57
+Mair, Dr. Alexander, 293
+Maitland, Captain, 63, 65, 66, 118
+Marchand, M., 75, 156, 171, 290
+Marie Antoinette, 270
+Marie Caroline, Queen, 158
+Marie Louise, 49, 85, 131, 137, 146, 151 _et seq._, 267, 270, 274, 276, 286
+Marmont, General, 132, 134, 135, 156, 176, 247
+Massena, General, 153, 176
+Masson, F., 118, 234, 235, 264
+Mecklenburg, Prince of, 284
+Melito, Miot de, 128
+Meneval, 156, 159, 189, 190, 267, 278
+Metternich, Count, 133, 136, 138, 143, 144, 276, 277
+Miguel, Dom, 132
+Montchenu, Marquis de, 45, 49, 72
+Montholon, Count, 15, 34, 39, 40, 43, 50, 51, 65, 75, 82, 83, 88, 139,
+                  172, 195, 289, 290, 293
+Montholon, Countess, 58
+Moreau, M., 262
+Mueller, 109, 110, 111
+Murat, Marshal, 153, 245, 246, 271
+
+Napoleon, Charles, Prince, 262
+Napoleon I., _see_ Bonaparte, Napoleon
+Napoleon II., _see_ Rome, King of
+Napoleon III., 118, 142, 275, 276
+Napoleon, Prince Louis, 132, 135, 146, 172, 265
+Neipperg, Count, 49, 133, 137, 152, 156 _et seq._, 274
+Ney, Marshal, 153
+Noverraz, 171
+
+Obenaus, Baron, 133, 137, 142
+Official Documents, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21 _et seq._, 81, 82, 83, 95, 197
+O'Meara, Dr. Barry E., 30, 43, 46, 49, 50, 64, 73, 77, 79, 81, 181, 188,
+                       195, 241
+Orange, Prince of, 162
+Oudinot, Marshal, 176
+
+Pagerie, Joseph Tascher de la, 232
+Palmerston, Lord, 17, 20, 169
+Peel, Sir Robert, 186
+Permon, Madame, 127
+Philipon, Jeanne Marie, 236, 237
+Pichegru, 267
+Pieron, 171
+Pitt, William, 93
+Pius VII., 148, 150
+Plampin, Sir Robert, 195, 196
+Poppleton, Captain, 61
+Prokesch, Count, 136, 137, 142, 143
+Prussia, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Prussia, King of, _see_ Frederick
+
+Radowich, Gunner, 57
+Reade, Sir Thomas, 41, 42, 43, 50, 62, 63
+Reggio, Duchess of, 279
+Remusat, Charles de, 219
+Remusat, Madame de, 129, 219 _et seq._, 284
+Remusat, M. de, 220, 221
+Remusat, Paul de, 219
+Robespierre, 213, 235, 237
+Rocca, M., 214 _et seq._
+Roderer, M., 114
+Rome, King of, 49, 57 _et seq._, 131 _et seq._, 278
+Rosebery, Lord, 193, 288, 289
+Rovigo, Duke of, 65, 139
+Ruskin, John, 196
+Russia, Commissioner for, 45, 49
+Russia, Emperor of, 49, 65, 124, 279, 280, 282
+
+Saint-Denis, 171
+Samson (M. de Paris), 237
+Santini, 54, 55, 56, 75
+Scott, Sir Walter, 28, 90, 91, 122, 182, 184
+Seguier, M., 115
+Serbelloni, Duke of, 247
+Short, Dr., 85
+Somerset, Lord Charles, 68, 69
+Soult, Marshal, 176, 190
+Stael, Madame de, 129, 204 _et seq._, 279
+Stokoe, Dr. John, 195, 196
+Strange, Sir Thomas, 42
+
+Taine, M., 144
+Talleyrand, M., 128, 129, 156, 161, 176, 206, 251, 261, 263
+Teynham, Lord, 187
+Thiers, M., 17
+
+Vandamme, General, 190
+Villemarest, 129
+Volney, Senator, 116
+
+Walewska, Alexander (Count Colonna), 269, 278
+Walewska, Madame, 118, 267, 269, 278
+Wellington, Duke of, 31, 103, 186, 187, 188, 189, 216
+Wieland, 108, 111
+Whitworth, Lord, 117
+Wilhelmina of Prussia, 163
+Williams, H. Noel, 148
+Wolseley, Lord, 191
+Wordsworth, William, 200
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Tragedy of St. Helena, by Walter Runciman
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