The Life of Napoleon I Part 58

The decease of a great man is always affecting: but the death of the hero who had soared to the zenith of military glory and civic achievement seems to touch the very nadir of calamity. Outliving his mighty Empire, girt around by a thousand miles of imprisoning ocean, guarded by his most steadfast enemies, his son a captive at the Court of the Hapsburgs, and his Empress openly faithless, he sinks from sight like some battered derelict. And Nature is more pitiless than man. The Governor urges on him the best medical advice: but he will have none of it. He feels the grip of cancer, the disease which had carried off his father and was to claim the gay Caroline and Pauline.

At times he surmises the truth: at others he calls out "_le foie_"

"_le foie_." Meara had alleged that his pains were due to a liver complaint brought on by his detention at St. Helena; Antommarchi described the illness as gastric fever (_febbre gastrica pituitosa_); and not until Dr. Arnott was called in on the 1st of April was the truth fully recognized.

At the close of the month the symptoms became most distressing, aggravated as they were by the refusal of the patient to take medicine or food, or to let himself be moved. On May 4th, at Dr. Arnott's insistence, some calomel was secretly administered and with beneficial results, the patient sleeping and even taking some food. This was his last rally: on the morrow, while a storm was sweeping over the island, and tearing up large trees, his senses began to fail: Montholon thought he heard the words _France, armee, tete d'armee, Josephine_: he lingered on insensible for some hours: the storm died down: the sun bathed the island in a flood of glory, and, as it dipped into the ocean, the great man pa.s.sed away.

By the Governor's orders Dr. Arnott remained in the room until the body could be medically examined--a precaution which, as Montchenu pointed out, would prevent any malicious attempt on the part of the Longwood servants to cause death to appear as the result of poisoning.

The examination, conducted in the presence of seven medical men and others, proved that all the organs were sound except the ulcerated stomach; the liver was rather large, but showed no signs of disease; the heart, on the other hand, was rather under the normal size. Far from showing the emaciation that usually results from prolonged inability to take food, the body was remarkably stout--a fact which shows that that tenacious will had its roots in an abnormally firm vitality.[590]

After being embalmed, the body was laid out in state, and all beholders were struck with the serene and beautiful expression of the face: the superfluous flesh sank away after death, leaving the well-proportioned features that moved the admiration of men during the Consulate.

Clad in his favourite green uniform, he fared forth to his resting-place under two large weeping willow trees in a secluded valley: the coffin, surmounted by his sword and the cloak he had worn at Marengo, was borne with full military honours by grenadiers of the 20th and 66th Regiments before a long line of red-coats; and their banners, emblazoned with the names of "Talavera," "Albuera,"

"Pyrenees," and "Orthez," were lowered in a last salute to our mighty foe. Salvos of artillery and musketry were fired over the grave: the echoes rattled upwards from ridge to ridge and leaped from the splintery peaks far into the wastes of ocean to warn the world beyond that the greatest warrior and administrator of all the ages had sunk to rest.

His ashes were not to remain in that desolate nook: in a clause of his will he expressed the desire that they should rest by the banks of the Seine among the people he had loved so well. In 1840 they were disinterred in presence of Bertrand, Gourgaud, and Marchand, and borne to France. Paris opened her arms to receive the mighty dead; and Louis Philippe, on whom he had once prophesied that the crown of France would one day rest, received the coffin in state under the dome of the _Invalides_. There he reposes, among the devoted people whom by his superhuman genius he raised to bewildering heights of glory, only to dash them to the depths of disaster by his monstrous errors.

Viewing his career as a whole, it seems just and fair to a.s.sert that the fundamental cause of his overthrow is to be found, not in the failings of the French, for they served him with a fidelity that would wring tears of pity from Rhadamanthus; not in the treachery of this or that general or politician, for that is little when set against the loyalty of forty millions of men; but in the character of the man and of his age. Never had mortal man so grand an opportunity of ruling over a chaotic Continent: never had any great leader antagonists so feeble as the rulers who opposed his rush to supremacy. At the dawn of the nineteenth century the old monarchies were effete: insanity reigned in four dynasties, and weak or time-serving counsels swayed the remainder. For several years their counsellors and generals were little better. With the exception of Pitt and Nelson, who were carried off by death, and of Wellington, who had but half an army, Napoleon never came face to face with thoroughly able, well-equipped, and stubborn opponents until the year 1812.

It seems a paradox to say that this excess of good fortune largely contributed to his ruin: yet it is true. His was one of those thick-set combative natures that need timely restraint if their best qualities are to be nurtured and their domineering instincts curbed.

Just as the strongest Ministry prances on to ruin if the Opposition gives no effective check, so it was with Napoleon. Had he in his early manhood taken to heart the lessons of adversity, would he have ventured at the same time to fight Wellington in Spain and the Russian climate in the heart of the steppes? Would he have spurned the offers of an advantageous peace made to him from Prague in 1813? Would he have let slip the chance of keeping the "natural frontiers" of France after Leipzig, and her old boundaries, when brought to bay in Champagne? Would he have dared the uttermost at all points at Waterloo? In truth, after his fortieth year was past, the fervid energies of youth hardened in the mould of triumph; and thence came that fatal obstinacy which was his bane at all those crises of his career. For in the meantime the cause of European independence had found worthy champions--smaller men than Napoleon, it is true, but men who knew that his determination to hold out everywhere and yield nothing must work his ruin. Finally, the same clinging to unreal hopes and the same love of fight characterized his life in St. Helena; so that what might have been a time of calm and dignified repose was marred by fict.i.tious clamours and petty intrigues altogether unworthy of his greatness.

For, in spite of his prodigious failure, he was superlatively great in all that pertains to government, the quickening of human energies, and the art of war. His greatness lies, not only in the abiding importance of his best undertakings, but still more in the t.i.tanic force that he threw into the inception and accomplishment of all of them--a force which invests the storm-blasted monoliths strewn along the latter portion of his career with a majesty unapproachable by a tamer race of toilers. After all, the verdict of mankind awards the highest distinction, not to prudent mediocrity that shuns the chance of failure and leaves no lasting mark behind, but to the eager soul that grandly dares, mightily achieves, and holds the hearts of millions even amidst his ruin and theirs. Such a wonder-worker was Napoleon.

The man who bridled the Revolution and remoulded the life of France, who laid broad and deep the foundations of a new life in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, who rolled the West in on the East in the greatest movement known since the Crusades and finally drew the yearning thoughts of myriads to that solitary rock in the South Atlantic, must ever stand in the very forefront of the immortals of human story.

APPENDIX I

LIST OF THE CHIEF APPOINTMENTS AND DIGNITIES BESTOWED BY NAPOLEON

[_An asterisk is affixed to the names of his Marshals_.]

Arrighi. Duc de Padua.

*Augereau. Duc de Castiglione.

*Bernadotte. Prince de Ponte Corvo.

*Berthier. Chief of the Staff. Prince de Neufchatel. Prince de Wagram.

*Bessieres. Duc d'Istria. Commander of the Old Guard.

Bonaparte, Joseph. (King of Naples.) King of Spain.

" Louis. King of Holland.

" Jerome. King of Westphalia.

*Brune.

Cambaceres. Arch-Chancellor. Duc de Parma.

Caulaincourt. Duc de Vicenza. Master of the Horse. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1814).

Champagny. Duc de Cadore. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1807-11).

Chaptal. Minister of the Interior. Comte de Chanteloupe.

Clarke. Minister of War. Duc de Feltre.

Daru. Comte.

*Davoust. Duc d'Auerstadt. Prince d'Eckmuhl.

Drouet. Comte d'Erlon.

Drouot. Comte. Aide-Major of the Guard.

Duroc. Grand Marshal of the Palace. Duc de Friuli.

Eugene (Beauharnais). Viceroy of Italy.

Fesch (Cardinal). Grand Almoner.

Fouche. Minister of Police (1804-10). Duc d'Otranto.

*Grouchy. Comte.

Jomini. Baron.

*Jourdan. Comte.

Junot. Duc d'Abrantes.

*Kellermann. Duc de Valmy.

*Lannes. Duc de Montebello.

Larrey. Baron.

Latour-Maubourg. Baron.

Lauriston. Comte.

Lavalette. Comte. Minister of Posts.

*Lefebvre. Duc de Danzig.

*Macdonald. Duc de Taranto.

Maret. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1811-14.) Duc de Ba.s.sano.

*Marmont. Duc de Ragusa.

*Ma.s.sena. (Duc de Rivoli.) Prince d'Essling.

Miot. Comte de Melito.

Meneval. Baron.

Mollien. Comte. Minister of the Treasury.

*Moncey. Duc de Conegliano.

Montholon. Comte.

*Mortier. Duc de Treviso.

Mouton. Comte de Lobau.

*Murat. (Grand Duc de Berg.) King of Naples.

*Ney. (Duc d'Elchingen.) Prince de la Moskwa.

*Oudinot. Duc de Reggio.

Pajol. Baron.

Pasquier, Duc de. Prefect of Police.

*Perignon.

*Poniatowski.

Rapp. Comte.

Reynier. Duc de Ma.s.sa.

Remusat. Chamberlain.

Savary. Duc de Rovigo. Minister of Police (1810-14).

Sebastiani. Comte.

*Serurier.

*Soult. Duc de Dalmatia.

*St. Cyr, Marquis de.

*Suchet. Duc d'Albufera.

Talleyrand. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1799-1807). Grand Chamberlain (1804-8). Prince de Benevento.