Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

Again the man of decision hesitated; and at four in the morning General Lallemand and Las Cases were sent on board the Bellerophon under the pretext of waiting for the admiral's answer, but in reality to ascertain whether the captain would express officially any pledge or opinion relative to Napoleon's favourable reception in England; which Las Cases had conceived him to express in his conversation with his officers, and of which this M. Las Cases was supposed not to have understood a syllable.

Captain Maitland's answer was distinct and simple. It was, "that he had yet received no information, but hourly expected it; that he was authorized to receive Napoleon on board, and convey him to England, where, according to his own opinion, he would receive all the attention and respect to which he could lay any claim." But, to prevent all presumptions on the subject, adding – "I am anxious that it should be well understood, that I am expressing only my personal opinion on this subject, and have in no respect spoken in the name of the government, having received no instructions from either the admiralty or the admiral."

It is almost painful to contemplate these scenes. What agonies must have passed through the heart of such a man, so humbled! What inevitable contrasts of the throne with the dungeon! What sense of shame in the humiliation which thus placed him at the disposal of his own few followers! What sleepless anxiety in those midnight consultations, in those exposures to public shame, in this sense of utter ruin, in this terrible despair! If some great painter shall hereafter rise to vindicate the pencil by showing its power of delineating the deepest passions of our nature, or some still greater poet shall come to revive the day of Shakspeare, and exhibit the tortures of a greater Macbeth, fallen from the highest elevation of human things into a depth of self-reproach and self-abasement to which all the powers of human language might be pale, – what a subject for them were here!

The theatrical habits of the French are singularly unfortunate for a nation which assumes to take an influential rank in the world. They deprive them of that capacity for coping with real things which is essential to all substantial greatness. With them the business of the world must be all melodrame, and the most commonplace, or the most serious actions of life, must be connected with scene-shifting, trap-doors, and the mimic thunders of the stage. Napoleon was now in a condition the most deeply calculated to force these stern realities of life on the mind. Yet even with him all was to be dramatic; he was to throw himself on the clemency of his conqueror, like one of the heroes of Corneille. England was to stand in admiration of his magnanimous devotedness. The sovereign was to receive him with astonishment and open arms, and, after an embrace of royal enthusiasm, he was to be placed in secure splendour, cheered by the acclamations of a people hastening to do him homage. In this false and high-coloured view of things, he wrote the famous and absurd note, in which he pronounced himself another Themistocles, come to sit by the hearth of the British people. A manlier, because a more rational view of things, would have told him that a war, expressly begun with a determination to overthrow his dynasty, could not be suffered to conclude by giving him the power of again disturbing the world – that his utter faithlessness prohibited the possibility of relying on his pledges – the security of the Bourbon throne absolutely demanded his being finally disabled from disturbing its authority – England owed it to her allies to prevent a repetition of the numberless calamities which his reign had inflicted upon Europe, and owed it to herself to prevent all necessity for the havoc of a new Waterloo.

The national passion for a coup de théâtre rendered all this knowledge of no avail, and he flung himself at the feet of the Prince Regent, with the flattering phraseology of claiming protection "from the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of his enemies."

The step was now taken. On the 15th of July, at daybreak, he left the Isle of Aix, and entered one of the boats which was to convey him on board the Bellerophon. He had still a parting pang to undergo. As he looked round the shore, a white flag was flying on all the ships and batteries. All the rest of this curious narrative has been already given to the world. We have no desire to repeat the details.

Count Montholon, in his fondness for excitement, here states that a privy council was held on the question, whether the terms of the Congress of Vienna prevented England from giving up Napoleon to the vengeance of Louis XVIII., adding that "the dispatches of the Duke of Wellington urged them to adopt bloody and terrible determinations." This we utterly disbelieve; and, if we required additional reasons for our disbelief, it would be in the Count's telling us that the energetic opposition of the Duke of Sussex alone prevented the delivery of the prisoner – there not being perhaps any prince, or any individual of England, less likely to have weight in the councils of the existing government.

Without presuming to trace the steps of Providence, it is natural and not unwise to follow them in those leading transactions which give character to their times, or which complete events decisive of the fates of eminent men or nations. One of the most characteristic and abhorred acts of the entire life of the French Emperor, was his imprisonment of the English who were travelling in his country at the commencement of his reign. The act was the most treacherous within human record – it was perfidy on the largest scale. Europe had been often scandalised by breaches of political faith, but the agents and the sufferers were sovereigns and nations. But in this instance the blow fell upon individuals with the most sudden treachery, the most causeless tyranny, and the most sweeping ruin. Twelve thousand individuals, travelling under the protection of the imperial laws, wholly incapable of being regarded by those laws as prisoners, and relying on the good faith of the government, were seized as felons, put under duress, separated from their families in England, suddenly deprived of their means of existence, stopt in the progress of their professions, plundered of their property, and kept under the most vigilant surveillance for eleven years.

The retribution now fell, and that retribution exactly in the form of the crime by which it was drawn down. We give a few extracts of the document by which Napoleon protested against his detention, as a most complete, though unconscious indictment against his own act eleven years before.

Protest at sea, on board the Bellerophon, August 1815 – "In the face of God and man, I solemnly protest against the injury which has been committed upon me, by the violation of my most sacred rights, in forcibly disposing of my person and liberty.

"I came freely on board the Bellerophon, and am not a prisoner, – I am the guest of England.

"I presented myself in good faith, and came to place myself under the protection of the laws of England. As soon as I set my foot on board the Bellerophon, I felt myself on the soil of the British people. If the orders issued by the government to receive myself and my suite were merely intended as a snare, then they have forfeited their bond. If such an act were really done, it would be in vain for England in future to speak of her faith, her laws, and her liberty.

"She pretended to offer the hand of hospitality to an enemy, and when he had trusted to her fidelity, she immolated him."

If the detenus at Verdun, and scattered through the various fortresses of France, had drawn up a petition against the desperate act which had consigned them to captivity, they might have anticipated the language with which Napoleon went to the dungeon, that was never to send him back again amongst mankind.

There was but one preliminary to his departure now to take place. It was the execution of an order from the Government to examine the baggage in the strictest manner, and to require the surrender of all money or jewels of value in the possession of Napoleon and his suite. Necessary as this act was, for the prevention of bribery, and attempts to escape from St Helena, not for any undue seizure of private property, for a most ample allowance was already appointed by the government for the expenses of the prisoner, this duty seems to have been most imperfectly performed. As the Count tells us, "the grand-marshal, gave up 4000 Napoleons, as constituting the Emperor's chest. We kept secret about 400,000 francs in gold – from three to four hundred thousand francs in valuables and diamonds, and letters of credit for more than four million of francs." Whether this immense sum was overlooked by the extraordinary negligence of those whose duty it was to fulfil the orders of government, or whether their search was baffled, the narrative does not disclose. But there can be no question that the suite were bound to deliver up all that they possessed; and that there can be as little question that with such sums of money at his disposal, Napoleon's subsequent complaints of poverty were ridiculous, and that the subsequent sale of his plate to supply his table was merely for the purpose of exciting a clamour, and was charlatanish and contemptible.

We pass rapidly over the details of the voyage. Napoleon spent a considerable part of his time on the quarter-deck, took opportunities of conversing affably with the officers, and even with the crew. On one occasion, after some conversation with the master, he invited him to dine at the admiral's table. The master declined the invitation, as a sin against naval etiquette. "Oh! in that case," said Napoleon, "you must come and dine in my own cabin." The admiral, however, had the good sense to tell Napoleon, that any one invited by him to the honour of sitting at his table, was, by that circumstance alone, placed above all rule of etiquette, and that the master should be welcome to dinner next day. This conduct, of course, made him very popular on board; but the chief interest of these important volumes is in the conversations which he held from time to time with the officers, and especially in the long details of his military and imperial career, which he dictated at St Helena, and which make the true novelty and value of the work. In one of those conversations which he had with them, he referred emphatically to his own efforts to make France a great naval power. "Unfortunately," said he, "I found nobody who understood me. During the expedition to Egypt, I cast my eyes on Decrés. I reckoned on him for understanding and executing my projects in regard to the navy. I was mistaken; his passion was to form a police, and to find out, by means of the smugglers, every web which your ministers, or the intriguers of Hartwell, were weaving against me. He had no enlarged ideas; always the spirit of locality and insignificant detail – paralysing my views." He then proceeded to state the hopeless condition of the French navy when he assumed the throne. The navy of Louis XVI. was no longer in existence; the Republic possessed but four ships of the line; the taking of Toulon, the battle of the river Jenes in 1793 – of Rochefort in 1794, and finally, the battle of Aboukir, had given the death-blow to the navy. "Well, notwithstanding the disaster of Trafalgar, which I owe entirely to the disobedience of Admiral Villeneuve, I left to France one hundred ships of the line, and 80,000 sailors and marines, and all this in a reign of ten years." The truth is, that the attempt to make the French navy was one of the pre-eminent blunders of Napoleon. France is naturally a great military power, but her people are not maritime. England is not naturally a great military power, but her people are maritime. France has an immense land frontier which can be defended only by a land force. England has no land frontier at all. The sea is her only frontier, and it, of course, can be defended only by a fleet. A fleet is not a necessary of existence to France. A fleet is a necessary of existence to England. It is therefore self-evident that France only wastes her power in dividing it between her fleet and her army; and may be a great power, without having a ship; while England is compelled to concentrate her strength upon her fleet, and without her fleet must be undone. Thus the law of existence, which is equivalent to a law of nature, gives the naval superiority to England. There are symptoms in France at the present day, of falling into Napoleon's blunder, and of imagining the possibility of her becoming the naval rival of England. That she may build ships is perfectly possible, and that she may crowd them with a naval conscription is equally possible. But the first collision will show her the utter folly of contending with her partial strength against the power on which England rests her defence – a struggle between a species of volunteer and adventurous aggression, and the stern and desperate defence in which the safety of a nation is supremely involved.

On crossing the Line, the triumph of Neptune was celebrated in the usual grotesque style. The Deity of the Sea requested permission to make acquaintance with Napoleon, who received him graciously, and presented him with five hundred Napoleons for himself and the crew, upon which he was rewarded with three cheers, and "Long live the Emperor Napoleon!"

On the 16th of October 1815, the Northumberland cast anchor in the roads at St Helena. The Count remarks that the 17th, the day on which he disembarked, reminded him of a disastrous day. It was the anniversary of the last day of the battle of Leipsig. If distance from all the habitable parts of the globe were to be the merits of Napoleon's prison, nothing could have been more appropriate than the island of St Helena. It was two thousand leagues from Europe, twelve hundred leagues from the Cape, and nine hundred from any continent. A volcanic rock in the centre of the ocean.

In the month of April, the frigate Phaeton anchored in the roads, having the new governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, with his family, on board. Sir Hudson is now where neither praise nor blame can reach him, but the choice was unfortunate in the very point for which probably he had been chosen; – he had been colonel of the Corsican regiment in our service, had served much in the Mediterranean, and had already been (as far as we remember) the object of Napoleon's bitterness in some of his Italian manifestoes. There can be no doubt that the mildest of governors would have been no favourite with the prisoner of Longwood. But in the present instance Napoleon's blood boiled at the idea of being placed under the jurisdiction of the colonel of the Corsican rangers; and he, accordingly, took every opportunity of exhibiting his indignation – a sort of feeling which, in a foreigner, and especially one of southern blood, always amounts to fury.

We pass over a multitude of minor circumstances, though all characteristic, and all invaluable to the historian of the next century; but which would retard the more interesting conversations of the extraordinary captive. On the communication of the convention signed at Paris in August 1815, declaring him the prisoner of the four allied powers, and the announcement of the commissioners under whose charge he was to be placed, Napoleon burst out into a passionate remonstrance, which, however, he addressed only to the people around him. On those occasions he always adopted that abrupt and decisive style which in a Frenchman passes for oracular.

"The expenses of my captivity will certainly exceed ten millions of francs a-year. It has not been the will of fate that my work should finish by effecting the social reorganisation of Europe." He then ran into his old boasting of his probable triumph in his great collision with the British army. "At Waterloo I ought to have been victorious – the chances were a hundred to one in my favour; but Ney, the bravest of the brave, at the head of 42,000 Frenchmen, suffered himself to be delayed a whole day by some thousands of Nassau troops. Had it not been for this inexplicable inactivity, the English army would have been taken flagrante delicto, and annihilated without striking a blow. Grouchy, with 40,000 men, suffered Bulow and Blucher to escape from him; and finally, a heavy fall of rain had made the ground so soft that it was impossible to commence the attack at daybreak. Had I been able to commence early, Wellington's army would have been trodden down in the defiles of the forest before the Prussians could have had time to arrive. It was lost without resource. The defeat of Wellington's army would have been peace, the repose of Europe, the recognition of the interests of the masses and of the democracy."

Napoleon was always fluent on this subject; but the only true matter of surprise is, that so clever a personage should have talked such nonsense. In the first place, he must have known that Ney with his 40,000 men had been soundly beaten by about half that number, and was thus unable to move a step beyond Quatre-Bras. In the next, that Grouchy, instead of suffering the Prussians to escape him, was gallantly fought by their rear-guard, was unable to make any impression whatever on them, and if he had not made his escape in the night, would unquestionably have been crushed to pieces the next day; and thirdly, as to the English armies being saved by the rain, the Duke of Wellington fought the French from eleven in the forenoon till seven in the evening without being driven an inch from the ground. If the French could not beat him in eight hours, they could not beat him in as many days. It was not until seven in the evening that the Prussian guns were heard coming into the field. Even then they were a mile and a half from Wellington's position. The British then charged, swept the French before them, Napoleon himself running away amongst the foremost, leaving 40,000 of his troops on the field or in the hands of the enemy. It would have been much wiser to have said not a syllable upon the battle, or much manlier to have acknowledged that he was more thoroughly beaten than he had ever seen an army beaten before; and that with 72,000 French veterans in the field, he had been routed and ruined by 25,000 British, three-fourths of whom had never fired a shot before in their lives.

We have from time to time some curious acknowledgments of the political treacheries which formed the actual system of Napoleon's government, whether consular or imperial. On dictating a note relative to St Domingo to Count Montholon, he elucidated this policy in the most unequivocal manner. It will be remembered that, on the peace of Amiens, he had sent out a powerful fleet and an army of thirty thousand men to the West Indies. It will also be remembered, that in reply to the remonstrance of the British government, who naturally looked on so formidable an armament with considerable suspicion, the First Consul disclaimed in the most solemn manner all sinister views, pronounced, with every appearance of sincerity, that his sole object was the subjection of a French island then in revolt, and when this object was effected his whole purpose would be accomplished. But in St Helena, where candour cost nothing, he amply acknowledged the treachery. "I had two plans," said he, "for St Domingo. The first was that of acknowledging the power of the blacks, making Toussaint L'Ouverture governor, and, in fact, making St Domingo a West Indian vice-royalty. This plan was my favourite, and why? The French flag would acquire a great development of power in the American waters, and a variety of expeditions might have been undertaken against Jamaica and all the Antilles, and against South America, with an army of thirty thousand blacks trained and disciplined by French officers."

We are to remember that at this time he was at peace with both England and Spain, whose territories he was thus about to dismember; for we cannot believe that the affairs of St Domingo were suffered greatly to occupy his mind. In the busy days from Marengo to the loss of Egypt, and the conclusion of peace, he had intended to have raised an universal negro insurrection in our islands. Upon the colours of his negro army he was to have inscribed "Brave blacks, remember that France alone recognises your liberty" – which would have been, in fact, a manifesto, calling upon all the negroes of the West Indies to revolt without delay. But the negroes of St Domingo, having formed plans of liberty for themselves, dispatched one of their colonels with a demand of independence. The chance, therefore, of invading Jamaica through their means was extinguished at once, and France was punished by the loss of her greatest colony for ever.

In a conversation with Colonel Wilks, the ex-governor, on taking his leave, he told him that India had been constantly an object of his policy – that he had constantly assailed it by negotiations, and would have reached it by arms, had he been able to come to an understanding with the Emperor of Russia on the partition of Turkey. He then talked of his constant wish for peace – a declaration which the colonel probably received with a smile; and next disclosed a transaction, which, on any other authority, would have been incredible, but which amounted to perhaps the boldest and broadest piece of bribery ever attempted with a distinguished minister.

While the French army was still on the right bank of the Elbe, the offer of the Austrian mediation was brought by Prince Metternich, demanding, as a preliminary, the abandonment of the great German fortresses which still remained in French hands.

"I said to Metternich with indignation," are the words of this singular conference – "Is it my father-in-law who entertains such a project? Is it he who sends you to me? How much has England given you, to induce you to play this game against me? Have I not done enough for your fortune? It is of no consequence – be frank– what is it you wish? If twenty millions will not satisfy you, say what you wish?"

He adds, that on this scandalous offer of corruption, Metternich's sudden sullenness and total silence recalled him to a sense of what he had just expressed, and that thenceforth he had found this great minister wholly impracticable. Who can wonder that he did so, or that the offer was regarded as the deepest injury by a man of honour? But Napoleon's conception of the matter, to the last, was evidently not that he had committed an act of bribery, but that he had "mistaken his man." "It was," as Fouché observed, "worse than a crime, it was a blunder."

One of the absurdities of the crowd who collected anecdotes of Napoleon, was a perpetual affectation of surprise that he should not have terminated his imprisonment by his own hand. He was conscious of the imputation, and it seems to have formed the occasional subject of his thoughts. But his powerful understanding soon saw through the sophistry of that species of dramatic heroism, by which a man escapes "with a bare bodkin" all the duties and responsibilities of his being.

"I have always regarded it," said he, "as a maxim, that a man exhibits more real courage by supporting calamities, and resisting misfortunes, than by putting an end to his life. Self-destruction is the act of a gambler who has lost all, or that of a ruined spendthrift, and proves nothing but a want of courage."

The attempts to prove that Napoleon wanted personal intrepidity were at all times childish. His whole career in his Italian campaigns was one of personal exposure, and from the period when he rose into civil eminence, he had other responsibilities than those of the mere general. His life was no longer his own; it was the keystone of the government. Whether as consul or as emperor, his fall would have brought down along with it the whole fabric on which the fate of so many others immediately depended. It is, however, certain, that his courage was not chivalric, that no gallant fit of glory ever tempted him beyond the necessary degree of peril, and that he calculated the gain and loss of personal enterprise with too nice a view as to the balance of honour and advantage. A man of higher mind – an emperor who had not forgot that he was a general, would never have deserted his perishing army in Poland; an emperor who had not forgot that he was a soldier, would never have sent his Imperial guard, shouting, to massacre, and stayed himself behind. But to expect this devotion of courage is to expect a spirit which Napoleon never exhibited; and which is singular among the military exploits of the south. Napoleon might have commanded at Platea, but he would never have died at Thermopylæ.