Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847», sayfa 8

HISTORY OF THE CAPTIVITY OF NAPOLEON AT ST HELENA. ¹⁰

Whatever may be the pursuits of our posterity, whether the mind of nations will turn on philosophy or politics, whether on a descent to the centre of the earth, or on the model of a general Utopia—whether on a telegraphic correspondence with the new planet, by a galvanised wire two thousand eight hundred and fifty millions of miles long, or on a Chartist government—we have not the slightest reason to doubt, that our generation will be regarded as having lived in the most brilliant time of the by-gone world.

The years from 1789 to 1815 unquestionably include the most stirring period since the great primal convulsion, that barbarian deluge, which changed the face of Europe in the fifth century. But the vengeance which called the Vandal from his forest to crush the Roman empire, and after hewing down the Colossus which, for seven hundred years, had bestrode the world, moulded kingdoms out of its fragments, was of a totally different order from that which ruled over our great day of Change. In that original revolution, man, as the individual, was scarcely more than the sufferer. It was a vast outburst of force, as uncircumscribed as uncontrollable, and as unconnected with motives merely human, as an inroad of the ocean. It was a vast expanse of human existence, rushing surge on surge over the barriers of fair and fertile empire. It was hunger, and love of seizure, and hot thirst of blood, embodied in a mass of mankind rushing down upon luxury and profligacy, and governmental incapacity embodied in other masses of mankind. An invasion from the African wilderness with all its lions and leopards in full roar, could scarcely have less been urged by motives of human nature.

But the great revolution which in our time shook Europe, and is still spreading its shock to the confines of the world, was human in the most remarkable degree. It was the work of impulses fierce and wild, yet peculiarly belonging to man. It was a succession of lights and shadows of human character, contrasted in the most powerful degree, as they passed before the eye of Europe—the ambition of man, the rage of man, the voluptuousness, the ferocity, the gallantry, and the fortitude of man, in all the varieties of human character. It was man in the robes of tragedy, comedy, and pantomime, but it was every where man. Every great event on which the revolution was suspended for the time, originated with some remarkable individual, and took its shape even from some peculiarity in that individual.

Thus, the period of mob-massacre began with the sudden ascendency of Marat—a hideous assassin, who regarded the knife as the only instrument of governing, and proclaimed as his first principle of political regeneration, that "half a million of heads must fall."

The second stage, the Reign of Terror, began with Robespierre, a village lawyer; in whose mingled cruelty and craft originated the bloody mockeries of that "Revolutionary Tribunal," which, under the semblance of trial, sent all the accused to the guillotine, and in all the formalities of justice committed wholesale murder.

The third stage was the reign of the Directory—the work of the voluptuous Barras—and reflecting his profligacy in all the dissoluteness of a government of plunder and confiscation, closing in national debauchery and decay.

The final stage was War—under the guidance of a man whose whole character displayed the most prominent features of soldiership. From that moment, the republic bore the sole impress of war. France had placed at her head the most impetuous, subtle, ferocious, and all-grasping, of the monarchs of mankind. She instantly took the shape which, like the magicians of old commanding their familiar spirits, the great magician of our age commanded her to assume. Peace—the rights of man—the mutual ties of nations—the freedom of the serf and the slave—the subversion of all the abuses of the ancient thrones—all the old nominal principles of revolutionary patriotism, were instantly thrown aside, like the rude weapons of a peasant insurrection, the pike and the ox-goad, for the polished and powerful weapons of royal armouries. In all the conquests of France the serf and the slave were left in their chains; the continental kingdoms, bleeding by the sword until they lay in utter exhaustion, were suffered to retain all their abuses; the thrones, stripped of all their gold and jewels, were yet suffered to stand. Every pretext of moral and physical redress was contemptuously abandoned, and France herself exhibited the most singular of all transformations.—The republic naked, frantic, and covered with her own gore, was suddenly seen robed in the most superb investitures of monarchy; assuming the most formal etiquette of empire, and covered with royal titles. This was the most extraordinary change in the recollections of history, and for the next hundred, or for the next thousand years, it will excite wonder. But the whole period will be to posterity what Virgil describes the Italian plains to have been to the peasant of his day, a scene of gigantic recollections; as, turning up with the ploughshare the site of ancient battles, he finds the remnants of a race of bolder frame and more trenchant weapons—the weightier sword and the mightier arm.

What the next age may develop in the arts of life, or the knowledge of nature, must remain in that limbo of vanity, to which Ariosto consigned embryo politicians, and Milton consigned departed friars—the world of the moon. But it will scarcely supply instances of more memorable individual faculties, or of more powerful effects produced by those faculties. The efforts of Conspiracy and Conquest in France, the efforts of Conservatism and Constitution in England, produced a race of men whom nothing but the crisis could have produced, and who will find no rivals in the magnitude of their capacities, the value of their services, in their loftiness of principle, and their influence on their age; until some similar summons shall be uttered to the latent powers of mankind, from some similar crisis of good and evil. The eloquence of Burke, Pitt, Fox, and a crowd of their followers, in the senate of England, and the almost fiendish vividness of the republican oratory, have remained without equals, and almost without imitators—the brilliancy of French soldiership, in a war which swept Europe with the swiftness and the devastation of a flight of locusts—the British campaigns of the Peninsula, those most consummate displays of fortitude and decision, of the science which baffles an enemy, and of the bravery which crushes him—will be lessons to the soldier in every period to come.

But the foremost figure of the great history-piece of revolution, was the man, of whose latter hours we are now contemplating. Napoleon may not have been the ablest statesman, or the most scientific soldier, or the most resistless conqueror, or the most magnificent monarch of mankind—but what man of his day so closely combined all those characters, and was so distinguished in them all? It is idle to call him the child of chance—it is false to call his power the creation of opportunity—it is trifling with the common understanding of man, to doubt his genius. He was one of those few men, who are formed to guide great changes in the affairs of nations. The celebrity of his early career, and the support given to him by the disturbances of France, are nothing in the consideration of the philosopher; or perhaps they but separate him more widely from the course of things, and assimilate him more essentially with those resistless influences of nature, which, rising from we know not what, and operating we know not how, execute the penalties of Heaven:—those moral pestilences which, like the physical, springing from some spot of obscurity, and conveyed by the contact of the obscure, suddenly expand into universal contagion, and lay waste the mind of nations.

In the earlier volumes of the Journal of Count Montholon, the assistance of Las Cases was used to collect the imperial dicta. But on the baron's being sent away from St Helena—an object which he appears to have sought with all the eagerness of one determined to make his escape, yet equally resolved on turning that escape into a subject of complaint—the duty of recording Napoleon's opinions devolved on Montholon. In the year 1818, Napoleon's health began visibly to break. His communications with O'Meara, the surgeon appointed by the English government, became more frequent; and as Napoleon was never closely connected with any individual without an attempt to make him a partisan, the governor's suspicions were excited by this frequency of intercourse. We by no means desire to stain the memory of O'Meara (he is since dead) with any dishonourable suspicion. But Sir Hudson Lowe cannot be blamed for watching such a captive with all imaginable vigilance. The recollection of the facility which too much dependance on his honour gave to Napoleon's escape from Elba, justly sharpened the caution of the governor. The fear of another European conflagration made the safeguard of the Ex-Emperor an object of essential policy, not merely to England, but to Europe; and the probability of similar convulsions rendered his detention at St Helena as high a duty as ever was intrusted to a British officer.

We are not now about to discuss the charges made against Sir Hudson Lowe; but it is observable, that they are made solely on the authority of Napoleon, and of individuals dismissed for taking too strong an interest in that extraordinary man. Those complaints may be easily interpreted in the instance of the prisoner, as the results of such a spirit having been vexed by the circumstances of his tremendous fall; and also, in the instance of those who were dismissed, as a species of excuse for the transactions which produced their dismissal. But there can be no doubt that those complaints had not less the direct object of keeping the name of the Ex-Emperor before the eyes of Europe; that they were meant as stimulants to partisanship in France; and that, while they gratified the incurable bile of the fallen dynasty against England, they were also directed to produce the effect of reminding the French soldiery that Napoleon was still in existence.

Yet there was a pettiness in all his remonstrances, wholly inconsistent with greatness of mind. He thus talks of Sir Hudson Lowe:—

"I never look on him without being reminded of the assassin of Edward II. in the Castle of Berkeley, heating the bar of iron which was to be the instrument of his crime. Nature revolts against him. In my eyes she seems to have marked him, like Cain, with a seal of reprobation."

Napoleon's knowledge of history was here shown to be pretty much on a par with his knowledge of scripture. The doubts regarding the death of Edward II. had evidently not come to his knowledge; and, so far as Cain was concerned, the sign was not one of reprobation, but of protection—it was a mark that "no man should slay him."

But all those complaints were utterly unworthy of a man who had played so memorable a part in the affairs of Europe. He who had filled the French throne had seen enough of this world's glory; and he who had fallen from it had been plunged into a depth of disaster, which ought to have made him regardless ever after of what man could do to him. A man of his rank ought to have disdained both the good and ill which he could receive from the governor of his prison. But he wanted the magnanimity that bears misfortune well: when he could no longer play the master of kingdoms, he was content to quarrel about valets; and having lost the world, to make a little occupation for himself in complaining of the want of etiquette in his dungeon. But the spirit of the intriguer survived every other spirit within him, and it is by no means certain that the return of O'Meara and Gourgaud to Europe was not a part of that intrigue in which Napoleon played the Italian to the last hour of his life. It is true that the general returned under a certificate of ill health, and it is also perfectly possible that the surgeon was unconscious of the intrigue. But there can be no doubt of the design; and that design was, to excite a very considerable interest in Europe, on behalf of the prisoner of St Helena. Gourgaud, immediately after his arrival, wrote a long letter to Marie Louise, which was palpably intended more for the Emperors of Russia and Austria than for the feelings of the Ex-Empress, of whose interest in the matter the world has had no knowledge whatever.

In this letter it was declared, that Napoleon was dying in the most frightful and prolonged agony. "Yes, Madame," said this epistle, "he whom Divine and human laws unite to you by the most sacred ties—he whom you have beheld an object of homage to almost all the sovereigns of Europe, and over whose fate I saw you shed so many tears when he left you, is perishing by a most cruel death—a captive on a rock in the midst of the ocean, at a distance of two thousand leagues from those whom he holds most dear."

The letter then proceeds to point out the object of the appeal. "These sufferings may continue for a long time. There is still time to save him: the moment seems very favourable. The Sovereigns are about to assemble at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle—passions seem calmed—Napoleon is now far from being formidable. In these circumstances let your Majesty deign to reflect what an effect a great step on your part would produce—that, for instance, of going to this Congress, and there soliciting a termination to the Emperor's sufferings, of supplicating your august father to unite his efforts with yours, in order to have Napoleon confided to his charge, if policy did not permit him to be restored to liberty; and how great would be your Majesty's own happiness: It would be said, the sovereigns of Europe, after having vanquished the great Napoleon, abandoned him to his most cruel enemies, they conducted him towards his grave by the most prolonged and barbarous torments, the continuation of his agony urged him even to demand more active executioners; he seemed forgotten, and without hope of aid; but Marie Louise remained to him, and he was restored to life."

Whether this letter ever reached its address is not clear; but if it did, it produced no discoverable effect.

But the absence of those confidants increased the troubles of the unlucky Montholon in a formidable degree, and Napoleon's habit of dictating his thoughts and recollections, (which he frequently continued for hours together, and sometimes into the middle of the night,) pressed heavily on the Count and Bertrand; the latter being excluded after six in the evening, when the sentinels were posted for the night, as he resided with his family, and thus devolving the task of the night on Montholon. Those dictations were sometimes on high questions of state, and on theories of war; sometimes on matters of the day, as in the following instance.

The death of the Princess Charlotte, which threw the mind of England into such distress, had just been made known at St Helena. Napoleon spoke of it as reminding him of the perilous child-birth of Marie Louise. "Had it not been for me," said he, "she would have lost her life, like this poor Princess Charlotte. What a misfortune! young and beautiful, destined to the throne of a great nation, and to die for want of proper care on the part of her nearest relations! Where was her husband? where was her mother? why were they not beside her, as I was beside Marie Louise? She, too, would have died, had I left her to the care of the professional people. She owes her life to my being with her during the whole time of danger; for I shall never forget the moment when the accoucheur Dubois came to me pale with fright, and hardly able to articulate, and informed me that a choice must be made between the life of the mother and that of the child. The peril was imminent; there was not a moment to be lost in decision. 'Save the mother,' said I—'it is her right. Proceed just as you would do in the case of a citizen's wife of the Rue St Denis.' It is a remarkable fact, that this answer produced an electric effect on Dubois. He recovered his sang froid, and calmly explained to me the causes of the danger. In a quarter of an hour afterwards, the King of Rome was born; but at first the infant was believed to be dead, he had suffered so much on coming into the world, and it was with much difficulty that the physicians recalled him to life."

It will probably be recollected as a similar instance of the advantage of care and decision, that Queen Caroline was rescued from the same hazard. Her accouchment was preceded by great suffering, and her strength seemed totally exhausted. The attendants were in a state of extreme alarm, when Lord Thurlow said, in his usual rough way, "Don't think of princesses here: treat her like the washerwoman, and give her a glass of brandy." The advice was followed, and the Princess speedily recovered.

Connected with the history of this short-lived son, is an anecdote, which Napoleon related as an instance of his own love of justice. When the palace was about to be built for the King of Rome at Passy, it was necessary to purchase some buildings which already stood on the ground. One of these was a hut belonging to a cooper, which the architects valued at a thousand francs. But the cooper, resolving to make the most of his tenure, now demanded ten times the sum. Napoleon ordered the money to be given to him; but when the contract was brought to him to sign, the fellow said, that "as an Emperor disturbed him," he ought to pay for turning him out, and must give him thirty thousand francs. "The good man is a little exacting," said Napoleon, "still there is some sense in his argument. Give him the thirty thousand, and let me hear no more about it." But the cooper, thinking that he had a fine opportunity, now said that he could not take less than forty thousand. The architect did not know what to say; he dared not again mention the matter to the Emperor, and yet it was absolutely necessary to have the house. Napoleon learned what was passing, and was angry, but allowed the offer of the forty thousand. Again the dealer retracted, and demanded fifty thousand. "He is a despicable creature," said the Emperor. "I will have none of his paltry hut: it shall remain where it is, as a testimony of my respect for the law."

The works were still going on at the time of the exile, in 1814; and, the cooper, finding himself in the midst of rubbish and building materials, groaned over the consequences of his folly, or rather of his extortion, for he had thus, deservedly, lost the opportunity of making his fortune.

The death of Cipriani, the maître d'hôtel, occurred about this time, and was startling from its suddenness. He was serving Napoleon's dinner, when he was attacked by such violent pains, that he was unable to reach his chamber without assistance. He rolled on the ground, uttering piercing cries. Four-and-twenty hours afterwards his coffin was carried to the cemetery of Plantation House! Cipriani had been employed in the secret police, and had distinguished himself by some difficult missions in the affairs of Naples and Northern Italy. It was only after the banishment to Elba that he had formed a part of the household. It was to Cipriani that the taking of Capri was owing. In 1806, Sir Hudson Lowe commanded at Capri, as lieutenant-colonel of a legion, composed of Corsican and Neapolitan deserters. The position of Capri in the Bay of Naples was of some importance for carrying on communications with those hostile to the French interest in Italy. Salicetti, prime minister of Naples, was vainly pondering on the capture of Capri; when it occurred to him to employ Cipriani, to put it into his power by surprise or treachery. Among the Corsicans under Sir H. Lowe's command, was one Suzanelli, a profligate, who had reduced himself by his debaucheries to acting as a spy. Cipriani soon ascertained that they had been fellow-students at college.

The whole story is curious, as an instance of the dexterity of Italian treachery, and of the difficulty which an honest man must always find in dealing with that people. Cipriani instantly found out Suzanelli, who was then in Naples, and said, "I know all, but we are fellow-countrymen—we have eaten the same soup: I do not desire to make you lose your head: choose between the scaffold, and making your fortune from your own country.—You are the spy of the English: help me to expel them from Capri, and your fortune is made. Refuse, and you are my prisoner, and will be shot within twenty-four hours." "I take your offer," was the answer. "What do you want with me?" Cipriani proposed to give him double what he received from the English, on condition of handing over all the letters which he received for Naples, and delivering the answers as if he had received them from the writers. Suzanelli thenceforth communicated all news relative to the movements of old Queen Caroline, and the British in the Mediterranean. Sir Hudson Lowe's confidence in Suzanelli was so much increased by the apparently important communications which the Neapolitan police had purposely made to him, that he rewarded him profusely, and at length accepted his offer of furnishing recruits to the Corsican legion at Capri. When the garrison was corrupted through the medium of those recruits, and an expedition was prepared at Naples, Suzanelli, in order to hoodwink the governor of Capri, whose vigilance might be awakened by the preparations, sent him a detailed report of the strength and object of the expedition, but telling him that it was meant to attack the Isle of Ponza. The expedition, under General La Marque, sailed at night, and the French effected their landing by surprise. The Royal Maltese regiment contained a great number of Suzanelli's recruits. They laid down their arms, and surrendered the forts in their charge. The commandant succeeded with difficulty in shutting himself up in the citadel with the royal Corsican regiment. It was inaccessible by assault, but the French dragged some heavy guns to a commanding height, and after a cannonade the garrison capitulated.

This story is not exactly true; for the capitulation was not the result of the cannonade; but water and provisions had totally failed. The attempt made by an English frigate to succour the island had been frustrated by a violent gale, and there was no resource but to give up the island. Yet, if our memory is exact, there was no capitulation; for the garrison escaped without laying down their arms.

It is proverbial, that great events frequently depend upon very little causes. All the world now blames the precipitancy of Napoleon in leaving Elba while the Congress was assembled. If he had waited until it was dissolved, he would have gained all the time which must have been lost by the Allies in reuniting their councils. The princes and diplomatists would have been scattered; the armies would have marched homewards; months would probably have elapsed before they could again have been brought into the field; and during that period, there would have been full opportunity for all the arts of intrigue and insinuation, which Napoleon so well knew how to use. Or, if he had delayed his return for a twelvemonth longer, he would have only found the obstacles so much the more diminished. In short, to him, the gain of time was every thing.

His own narrative on the subject now was, that he had been misled; that he was fully sensible of the advantages of delay, but that accident had betrayed him. He had established a secret correspondence with Vienna, through which he received weekly accounts of all that had passed in Congress, and was prepared to act accordingly. One of his agents, De Chaboulon, arrived at Elba, at the same period with the Chevalier D'Istria, (whom the King of Naples had sent with the despatch received from his ambassador at Vienna,) announcing the closing of the Congress, and the departure of the Emperor Alexander. On this intelligence Napoleon determined immediately to set sail for France, without waiting for the return of Cipriani, whom he had sent on a special mission. Had he waited for that return, the Emperor Alexander would have been on his way to Russia. But the result of his precipitancy was, that by rushing into France, while the emperors and diplomatists were still in combination, they were enabled to level the blow at him immediately. Instead of negotiations, he was pursued with a hue and cry; and instead of being treated as a prince, he was proclaimed an outlaw. Cipriani arrived in Elba on the 27th of February, but Napoleon had sailed on the evening of the 26th. So delicate was the interval between total ruin and what might have been final security; for Cipriani brought news of the Congress, and despatches from Vienna, which would have proved the importance of delaying the departure of the expedition.

But it must now be acknowledged that, if there ever was a human being under the influence of infatuation, that being was Napoleon, in the latter stages of his career. For ten years the favourite of fortune, the long arrear had begun to be paid in the year 1812. His expedition to Moscow was less a blunder than a frenzy. There was, perhaps, not one man in a thousand in Europe but foresaw the almost inevitable ruin of his army. We can recollect the rejoicing with which this perilous advance was viewed in England, and the universal prediction that the Russian deserts would be the grave of his army, if not of his empire. Poland had been conquered in a march and a month. The residence of Napoleon at Warsaw for the winter would have raised a Polish army for him, and would have given him a year for the march to Moscow. But he was infatuated: there is no other solution of the problem. He rushed on, captured the capital, and was ruined. Even with Moscow in ashes round him, he still persisted in the folly of supposing that he could persuade into peace an empire which had just given so tremendous an evidence of its fidelity and its fortitude. He was infatuated. He was detained amid the embers until it was impossible to remain longer, and equally impossible to escape the horrors of a Russian winter in a march of six hundred miles. His hour was come. Of an army which numbered four hundred thousand men on crossing the Niemen, probably not one thousand ever returned; for the broken troops which actually came back had been reinforcements which reached the Grand Army from time to time. He reached Paris with the stamp of fallen sovereignty on his brow: the remainder of his career was a struggle against his sentence. Waterloo was merely the scaffold: he was under irretrievable condemnation long before.

In his captivity, Napoleon was liberal in his donatives. On the departure of Balcombe, in whose house he had remained for some time on his arrival in the island, he gave him a bill for seventy-two thousand francs, with the grant of a pension of twelve thousand,—saying to him "I hear that your resignation of your employment is caused by the quarrels drawn upon you through the hospitality which you showed me: I should not wish you to regret ever having known me."

A quarrel relative to the bulletins of Napoleon's health, produced an order from the governor for the arrest of O'Meara. There was a vast quantity of peevishness exercised on the subject, and Napoleon attempted to raise this trifling affair into a general quarrel of the commissioners. But on his declaring that he would no longer receive the visits of O'Meara while under arrest, the governor revoked the order, and O'Meara continued his attendance until instructions were received from Lord Bathurst, to remove him from his situation in the household of the Emperor, and send him to England. This gave another opportunity for complaint. "I have lived too long," said Buonaparte; "your ministers are very bold. When the Pope was my prisoner, I would have cut off my arm rather than have signed an order for laying hands on his physician."

Before leaving the island, O'Meara drew up a statement of his patient's health, in which he seems to have regarded the liver as the chief seat of his disease. A copy of this paper reached home, when Cardinal Fesch and the mother of Napoleon had it examined by her own physician and four medical professors of the university. They also pronounced the disease to consist of an obstruction of the liver. So much for the certainty of medicine. The whole report is now known to have been a blunder. Napoleon ultimately died of a fearful disease, which probably has no connexion with the liver at all. His disease was cancer in the stomach.

The result of those quarrels, however, was to give a less circumscribed promenade to Napoleon. On the decline of his health being distinctly stated to Sir Hudson Lowe, he enlarged the circle of his exercise, and Napoleon resumed his walks and works. From this period, too, he resumed those dictations which, in the form of notes, contained his personal opinions, or rather those apologies for his acts, which he now became peculiarly anxious to leave behind him to posterity.

Whatever may be the historic value of those notes, it is impossible to read them without the interest belonging to transactions which shook Europe, and without remembering that they were the language of a man by far the most remarkable of his time, if not the most remarkable for the result of his acts, since the fall of the Roman empire. In speaking of the return from Elba—"I took," said he, "that resolution as soon as it was proved to me that the Bourbons considered themselves as the continuance of the Third Dynasty, and denied the legal existence of the Republic, and the Empire, which were thenceforth to be regarded only as usurping governments. The consequences of this system were flagrant. It became the business of the bishops to reclaim their sees; the property of the clergy, and the emigrants must be restored. All the services rendered in the army of Condé and in La Vendée, all the acts of treachery committed in opening the gates of France to the armies which brought back the king, merited reward. All those rendered under the standard of the Republic and the Empire were acts of felony." He then gave his special view of the overthrow of the French monarchy.