The Tragedy of St. Helena Part 4

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 const.i.tution 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 succ.u.mbed 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 cla.s.s, 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociates 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 G.o.d, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.serted: "One of my grand objects was to render education accessible to everybody. I caused every inst.i.tution 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 ma.s.s of the nation instead of brutifying them by ignorance and superst.i.tion." 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 superst.i.tion 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 ma.s.ses.

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 doc.u.ment:--

"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 inst.i.tutions 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.ses, even by those he led his armies against and so often conquered. Even in our own country, where enmity against him was a.s.siduously 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 cla.s.ses. 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 ingrat.i.tude. 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 la.s.situde 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 c.o.c.kburn, 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 Amba.s.sador 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 pa.s.sages 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 n.o.bleminded 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 ant.i.thesis of "n.o.bleminded." 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 "n.o.bleminded." 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 fort.i.tude hardships well-nigh beyond human endurance. Their mission was to carry out the dying command of the hero whom they adored, and who had succ.u.mbed 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 n.o.blemen, 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.