The Tragedy of St. Helena Part 5

The recognition of Napoleon's claim, not to "sanct.i.ty," 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 p.r.o.ne 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 sanct.i.ty 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sembly."

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]

Muller, 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 Muller 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 const.i.tutions and history; to the theory of const.i.tutions; 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 Const.i.tutions (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 inst.i.tutions and customs. "I opposed him occasionally," says Muller, "and he entered into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before G.o.d, 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 Muller, 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. Muller 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, una.s.suming 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 a.s.siduously 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 n.o.bility 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 t.i.tle, 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, t.i.tles given for the sake of a political system, can change in the smallest degree one's relations with one's friends and a.s.sociates? 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 t.i.tles 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 Muller) 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 pa.s.sion 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, 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 Amba.s.sador. So violent was he in his gestures, the Amba.s.sador 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sure himself of this. His private amorous connections are fully described by F. Ma.s.son, 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, a.s.sa.s.sination, 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 plat.i.tude 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 Roch.e.l.le 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociated 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, a.s.sures 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 a.s.sa.s.sin'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 succ.u.mb 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 s.p.a.ce in England or sent to France or Russia, and the Emperor's supposed reply--"Russia! G.o.d preserve me from it!"--is almost unbelievable, and in the light of what he constantly a.s.serted 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 ill.u.s.tration of how he was regarded by the poorer cla.s.ses. 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 n.o.bles, Bonaparte is the king of the people." This idea of the old woman was the universal feeling of her cla.s.s 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 ma.s.ses of its population. No cruel inhuman despot could magnetise with an enduring fascination mult.i.tudes 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Abrantes, who smarted under some severe comments he had made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrantes, while at St.