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In the first place, he declared that England meant to kill parts of Italy. No sooner, therefore, did he arrive than him by sending him to a notoriously unhealthy climate. Buonaparte began a system of the most unmeasured insult Now, St. Helena, by all the medical authorities who have to him. He opened his address at his very first interview treated of it, and by the condition of our troops there, is with "Monsieur, vous avez commandé des brigands." Sir shown to be one of the most healthy islands in the world. Hudson replied that he had never commanded brigands, As shown by the thermometer, its temperature is mild, and but soldiers employed by his country in a legitimate most remarkably equable. In the course of the year-from manner, though it might not be in a manner agreeable September, 1820, to September, 1821-the thermometer to him. But this style of insult was not only kept up never rose higher than seventy-six degrees, or fell lower than by Buonaparte, but by the whole of his suite, in whom it fifty-seven degrees of Reaumur. Dr. Shortt, physician to the forces at that time, says that the sickness amongst the troops employed there, and of course constantly exposed to all the changes of weather, did not exceed one man in forty-five; and he attributes this extraordinary degree of salubrity in a tropical island to its being situated in the trade winds, which carry off the superfluous heat, and with it such noxious vapours as might affect the human constitution. Dr. Arnott, and the other medical men who have served there, all bear the same testimony.

Napoleon landed in St. Helena on the 16th of October, 1815, and, till the house at Longwood, intended for his residence, could be fitted up, he took up his abode at a pleasantly-situated villa, called Briars, near James Town. He remained there till the 9th of December, when Longwood was ready for him. At Longwood he was not only farther from the coast, but he had the largest piece of ground around him fit for horse exercise in the island. Within a circle of twelve miles, he could take daily exercise with his suite, and without the presence of any Englishmen. If he wished to exceed those bounds, he could visit any part of the island accompanied by an English officer. He refused to have such attendant, and not only so, to approach any part of the bounding circuit, because he there saw English sentinels. At night, these sentinels drew in and surrounded the house, so as not to be seen from it, but, at the same time, so that no one could go to or from it without their challenge. These regulations, and the regular manner in which they were maintained, as they cut off the hopes of his escape, excited not only his wrath, but that of all his suite. Sir George Cockburn, who remained in command there till a suitable governor of the island should be appointed, though a most gentlemanly man, could not avoid becoming the object of much calumny and abuse both from Napoleon and his followers. On the island resided a Russian, a French, and an Austrian commissioner, to assist in the onerous task of preventing a second escape of this man, who observed no treaties or engagements, and whose elopement from Elba had cost the lives of so many thousands of men much better than himself. None of these would Buonaparte admit to his presence, because he regarded them as his gaolers, and because they refused him any higher title than that of general. The same causes excluded the officers in the British service there.

In July, 1816, Sir Hudson Lowe arrived at St. Helena as governor, and relieved Sir George Cockburn of his irksome office. Sir Hudson had served in the English army much on the coast of Italy, and had distinguished himself as a good and brave officer in the resistance which had been made to Buonaparte's usurpations in Calabria and other

was more intolerable. Here were these French people, maintained by England in ease and luxury, and who could at any moment be sent out of the island, constantly employed in abusing the governor, and in inventing all kinds of lying stories to excite the anger of Buonaparte against him. Sir Hudson stated that he could have borne the petulance of Napoleon, and made great allowances for it; but these Montholons, Bertrands, Las Cases, and the women more especially, were a perpetual and insufferable pestilence. Much odium was heaped upon Sir Hudson Lowe and propagated throughout Europe by every possible channel, and which was received to a very great extent in England, so that Sir Hudson Lowe became rather unpopular. But the fact remains, that the commissioners of the other allied powers on the island at the same time perfectly approved of the conduct of Sir Hudson, and his own government, who had the fullest information on every particular, not only supported him in his proceedings, but afterwards presented him to a far superior appointment-the government of Ceylon. As to the sarcasms of Buonaparte and his suite on Sir Hudson having commanded brigands, it would apply to all our commanders on that coast, for they commanded mixed troops

Sicilians, Corsicans, and others. General Stuart, the victor of Maida, Sir Sidney Smith, lord William Bentinck, and others, were all in the same category with Sir Hudson.

But the fact was that no one placed in the unenviable position of Sir Hudson Lowe could avoid exciting his unmitigated hatred; and he who had not spared the characters of his own most meritorious officers was not likely to spare that of the British officer set to keep him secure in his island prison. Sir George Cockburn had found that no word of honour, no parole, could for a moment bind Buonaparte. He expressed such repugnance to have the company of an English officer whenever he exceeded his twelve mile circuit, and pledged his word so solemnly that he would hold no communication with the people of the island if allowed to ride about anywhere without such escort, that Sir George accepted his word of honour, and it was immediately broken; he therefore withdrew the indulgence, in consequence of which the most violent outery was raised, and sent to Europe, against the capriciousness of the admiral.

Sir Hudson Lowe was too well acquainted with the character of Napoleon to need this warning. His flight from Elba was proof enough that nothing but the impossibility of escape would keep him in St. Helena. His orders from Downing-street were of the most explicit kind. "You will observe that the desire of his majesty's govern ment is, to allow every indulgence to general Buonaparte

A.D. 1815.]

TREATMENT OF BUONAPARTE IN ST. HELENA.

which may be compatible with the entire security of his person. That he should not by any means escape, or hold communication with any person whatsoever, excepting through your agency, must be your unremittent care." These orders, issued on the 12th of September, 1816, were reiterated on the 26th of October. Whilst advising him to make every allowance for the effect of so sudden a change on a person of his irritable temper, it was added-" You will, however, not permit your forbearance or generosity towards him to interfere with any regulations which may have been established for preventing his escape, or which you may hereafter consider necessary for the better security of his person." Any one has, therefore, only to place himself in the situation of Sir Hudson Lowe, under these explicit orders, and with the tremendous responsibility of such a person escaping once more to embroil Europe, in order to feel that the firmest adherence to his orders was necessary; and, recollecting that Sir Hudson did nothing without consulting his government, or informing it of what he had been obliged to do on the spur of the moment, to understand that the British government, and not the governor, were responsible for the system pursued. So far from the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe being one of a mean and gaoler-like kind, it was, in truth, one of a most important character-he held in his hands the security of the whole civilised world. But his office was certain to bring down on him the bitterest vituperation of the Buonapartists, and he found them far more ready to vilify him than his own government to justify him. There were those, however, who, from first representations, took a decided part against Sir Hudson Lowe, who, on further inquiry, did him full justice, and amongst these were pre-eminent lord and lady Holland.

Under such circumstances wore on the six years and seven months of Napoleon's captivity in St. Helena. For six years of this time, never, probably for a moment, was there any abandonment of plans for his escape; and the vigilance and ability with which these were defeated necessarily intensified the hatred of Buonaparte and his suite to the governor. General Gourgaud, who returned to Europe in 1818, made no scruple in stating to the British government that plans for Buonaparte's escape had constantly been agitated at Longwood during his abode there, but that the emperor had regarded them all as too hazardous, trusting to some change in the cabinet of England for his liberation.

The story of Buonaparte's captivity is one of constant warfare on his part with his detainers. First he and his followers complained of the allowance of eight thousand pounds a-year for their maintenance. Sir Hudson Lowe had the liberty of extending the allowance to twelve thousand pounds, and he did so at once, and he was authorised to extend it still further in case of any advance in the price of provisions. But no extension diminished the complaints of the French. They ate of the very best that could be procured, and drank claret of the most expensive kind obtainable-namely, Carbonel, at six pounds a dozen, without duty. Every officer of superior rank had a bottle of this daily, and the labourers and soldiers had each a bottle of excellent Teneriffe. All was of no avail. Buonaparte

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complained that his establishment was starved, and determined to sell his plate to procure the means of more ample supplies. Accordingly, his plate was broken up and sold for old silver, at the same time that it was known to everybody on the island, and this was confessed by general Gourgaud, that he had just received ten thousand pounds in Spanish doubloons! But the thing was done to tell in Europe, and thus to stigmatise the English, who were expending altogether, in detention of this troublesome personage, some hundred thousands of pounds annually, And it had its effect.

The British government sent out the materials for constructing a much better house than Longwood, and Sir Hudson waited on Buonaparte to ask his pleasure as to the proposed building; but he received him with the greatest violence and ferocity, and boasted of it to his retinue. Sir Hudson withdrew, with the remark, "You were pleased to remark, sir, in our last interview, that you had miscalculated the spirit of the English people. Give me leave to say that you at present miscalculate as erroneously the spirit of an English soldier."

The conduct of Sir Hudson in this interview was fully approved by the British government. The new house, said to have cost sixty thousand or seventy thousand pounds, was erected, but being, after the fashion of many English houses, surrounded by a brick fence and iron railings of an ornamental character, Buonaparte immediately imagined that it was intended as an additional means of confine ment. On learning his objection, Sir Hudson, finding all explanation unavailing, pulled down the palisades, and levelled the ditch; but in vain-Buonaparte refused to go into it.

Napoleon admitted persons of distinction who touched at St. Helena to an audience, on which occasions he put on his most amiable aspect, that they might carry a favourable impression to Europe, and thus give force to his complaints which he lavished on all who came near him. Amongst these visitors were captain Basil Hall, lord Amherst, then returning from his embassy to China, and Mr. Henry Ellis, the third commissioner of the embassy. In 1817 Buonaparte began to complain of the failure of his health, which he attributed to the air of the island, but which turned out to be the result of an hereditary disease, probably accelerated by his refusal to take necessary exercise under the restrictions established. On the 18th of March of that year a parliamentary inquiry into his treatment, by his great advocate, lord Holland, was made by motion. The chief heads of lord Holland's charges were the climate, the restriction on Napoleon's intercourse with Europe by letter, and the refusal to allow him books. Lord Bathurst showed, from the best authorities, that the island was remarkably healthy; that no restriction was put on his correspondence, but that it was required that all letters should be first inspected by the governor, and this was justified by the constant attempts to organise a plan of escape. With respect to the complaint of the refusal of books, lord Bathurst replied that general Montholon had sent over a list of books for Napoleon, which the general termed a few books, but which would cost nearly one thousand five hundred pounds. All of these that could be procured had

been sent. The complaints were so evidently groundless lington, of which he was pronounced innocent. Cantillon that lord Holland's motion was not seconded. had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena Wellington, who proposed this outrage, attempted to justify himself by pleading the interests of Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would have excused himself, and have been justified by the same motives-the interest of France-to get rid of a general who, moreover, had violated the capitulation of Paris, and by that had rendered himself responsible for the blood of the martyrs Ney, Labédoyère, &c., and for the crime of having pillaged the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties."

It should be remembered that the museums here referred to as pillaged by authority of Wellington, were those of the Louvre, and others in Paris, glutted with the pillage of all nations, which they reclaimed, and with which lord Wellington had nothing to do; for Britain, never having been over-run by Buonaparte, had nothing to reclaim; and, as for lord Wellington, he even refused the statue of Napoleon taken from the top of the column in the Place Vendôme, which was offered to him to place in his house in London. If, after tracing his amazing career, we still needed any proofs that the genius of Buonaparte resembled the lightning-quick, brilliant, and deadly—and had no resemblance to the sun-permanent, genial, and beneficent-we have them in these lamentably petty sentiments in his last solemn hours. There never was a mind so vigorous, which was so wholly destitute of true greatness.

Las Cases and Mr. O'Meara, the surgeon, were sent from the island in consequence of breaking the regulations-Las Cases by keeping up intrigues with the islanders, and O'Meara by forwarding Buonaparte's secret correspondence with Europe. As Buonaparte's disease increased, Sir Hudson Lowe offered him the services of the best physicians in the island, but he refused their attendance, and, in September, 1818, arrived Dr. F. Autommarchi, as his medical attendant; but Buonaparte refused to take medicine, declaring that the human being was a machine made to live, and that doctors only interrupted the provisions of nature to set herself right. It was not till the 2nd of April, 1821, that Dr. Autommarchi prevailed on Napoleon to allow Dr. Arnott to see him, and it was then too late, if, indeed, medicine could have done anything for him at any time. The disease was cancer at the stomach. His father died of the same complaint, and Napoleon had long asserted that this was his ailment, and no other; that the physicians of Montpelier had declared that it would be hereditary in his family. On his body being opened in the presence of five English medical men, including Drs Shortt and Arnott, as well as Dr. Autommarchi and several distinguished officers, both French and English, this was demonstrated to be the case. The stomach presented a fearful appearance; the rest of the viscera was sound. Buonaparte expired on the 5th of May, 1821, like Oliver Cromwell, amid tempests of wind and rain, so violent that nearly all the trees about Longwood were To follow the great actor in the vast drama which we torn up by the roots, and amongst them a weeping-willow, have been witnessing to his exit, we have overstepped other which was a great favourite of his, and under which he used events, and even the bounds of the reign narrated by this often to sit. And thus closed that life which had been death history. We must return to the entrance of the allies into to millions. "Napoleon's passing spirit," says Sir Walter Paris. The Buonapartists were loud in their assertions of Scott, was deliriously engaged in a still more terrible strife the sufferings and spoliations which their unhappy country than that of the elements around. The words 'tête d'armée '—was about to undergo at the hands of the allies. They had the last which escaped his lips-intimated that his thoughts had very little feeling for all the miseries which France, were watching the current of a heady fight. About eleven under their favourite leader, had inflicted on almost every minutes before six in the evening, after a struggle which country in Europe. indicated the original strength of his constitution, he breathed his last." His convulsions were emblematic of those in which he had kept all Europe for above twenty years.

One of the worst features of Napoleon's character was his vindictiveness. This was especially shown in his latter days against the duke of Wellington, who had finally put him down. He delighted in nothing so much as in depreciating his military talents, and in attributing his captivity to his counsels. If we do owe it to lord Wellington that Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, we will remain his debtors for the obligation. But, to his very last hour, Buonaparte brooded over this fall before the man with whom he said, on going to Waterloo, that he meant to measure himself with, and he left in his will the most shocking proof of a more undying enmity than ever before disgraced human nature. It has been said that his bequest to Cantillon for attempting to assassinate the duke of Wellington, of ten thousand francs, was a myth; but it stands only too really in the fourth codicil of his will, paragraph five, added only eleven days before his death. "Item.-Ten thousand francs to the subaltern officer, Cantillon, who has undergone a trial upon the charge of having endeavoured to assassinate lord Wel

The congress of Vienna, which had been interrupted by the last razzia of Buonaparte, resumed its sittings, and, finally, the conditions betwixt France and the allies were settled, and treaties embodying them were signed at Paris by Louis XVIII. on the 20th of November. France was to retain the limits settled at the former treaty in 1814; but, to prevent any danger of a recurrence of the calamities which had called the allies thus a second time to Paris, they were to retain in their hands seventeen of the principal frontier fortresses, and one hundred and fifty thousand of their soldiers were to be quartered and maintained by France in different parts of the kingdom. The term of their stay was not to exceed five years, and that term might be curtailed should the aspect of Europe warrant it. The allied sovereigns also insisted on the payment of the enormous expenses which had been occasioned by this campaign of the hundred days— the amount of which was estimated at seven hundred millions of francs. This sum, however, was not to be exacted at once, but to be paid by easy instalments.

There was one restitution, however, which the allies had too delicately passed over on their former visit to Paris— that of all the works of art which Buonaparte and his generals

A.D. 1815.]

FINAL CONDITIONS BETWIXT FRANCE AND THE ALLIES.

had carried off from every town in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, during their rapacious wars. This was the pillaging of museums to which Buonaparte, the wholesale pillager, alluded. Accordingly, there was a great stripping of the Louvre, and other places, of the precious pictures and statues which the hands of the greatest marauder that the world had ever seen had accumulated there. The "Horses of the Sun," from St. Mark's, Venice, the "Venus de Medici," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Horses of the Car of Victory," which Buonaparte had carried away from Berlin, and many a glorious painting by the old masters, precious books, manuscripts, and other objects of antiquity, now travelled back to their respective original localities, to the great joy of their owners, and the infinite disgust of the French, who deemed themselves really robbed by this defeat of robbery.

Louis XVIII., having raised an army of thirty thousand men, thought that he could protect himself, and was anxious that France might be spared the expense of supporting the one hundred and fifty thousand men. Accordingly, onefifth of the army was withdrawn in 1817. In the following year a congress was held, in the month of September, at Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the emperors of Russia and Austria, and the king of Prussia attended; on the part of France, the duke of Richelieu; and of England, the duke of Wellington and lord Castlereagh, when it was determined that a complete evacuation of France might and should take place by the 20th of November, when the three years terminated. At this congress, it was determined also that, besides the seven hundred million francs for the charges incurred by the allied armies, another seven hundred millions should be paid in indemnification of damages to private individuals in the different countries overrun by France. These and other items raised the total to be paid by France for Napoleon's outbreak of the hundred days to about sixty million pounds sterling.

England, who had amassed so enormous a debt in aiding the continental sovereigns against Napoleon, played the magnanimous to the last. She gave up her share of the public indemnities, amounting to five million pounds, to the king of Holland and the Netherlands, to enable him to restore that line of fortresses along the Belgian frontiers which our Dutch king, William III., had planned, and which Joseph II. of Austria had suffered to fall to decay, thus rendering invasion from France especially easy. Nor was this all: she advanced five million pounds to enable the different sovereigns to march their troops home again, as she had advanced the money to march them up, the money demanded of France not being ready. Truly might Napoleon, in St. Helena, say that England, with her small army, had no business interfering in continental wars. "That with our fleet, our commerce, and our colonies, we are the strongest power in the world, so long as we remain in our natural position; but that our gains in continental wars are for others, our losses are for ourselves, and are PERMANENT." Regarded, however, from the magnanimous point of view, no nation ever acted with a like generosity. Truly England may be said, in this gigantic contest, to have loved her neighbours better than herself. She charged herself for them with debts which appear likely to be more immortal than her fame, or the gratitude of those she served,

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who now, as every one who has lived on the continent knows, attribute her enormous outlay to a selfish, trading regard to her own commercial interests.

Here, then, our history of the political transactions of the reign of George III. terminates. That reign really terminated in 1811, with the appointment of the regency, which continued the ruling power during the remainder of his life. From that date it is really the history of the Regency that we have been prosecuting. But this was necessary to maintain the unity of the narrative of that most unexampled struggle which was involving the very existence of every nation in Europe. Of all this the poor old, blind, and deranged king knew nothing-had no concern with or in. The reins of power had fallen from his hands for ever; his "kingdom was taken from him, and given to another." He had lived to witness the rending away of the great western branch of his empire, and the sun of his intellect went down in the midst of that tempest which threatened to lay in ruins every dynasty around him. We have watched and detailed that mighty shaking of the nations to its end. The events of the few remaining years during which George III. lived but did not rule, were of a totally different character, and belong to a totally different story. They are occupied by the national distresses consequent on the war, and the efforts for reform, stimulated by these distresses, the first chapter of which did not close till the achievement of the Reform Bill in 1832.

The government and parliament which, with so lavish a hand, had enabled the continental monarchs to fight their battles, which had spent above two thousand millions of money in these wars, of which eight hundred millions remained as a perpetual debt, with the perpetual necessity of twenty-eight millions of taxation annually to discharge the interest—that burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced PERMANENT

this same government and parliament, seeing the war concluded, were in great haste to stave off the effects of this burden from the landed aristocracy, the party which had incurred this, and to lay it upon the people. They saw that the ports of the world, once more open to us, would, in exchange for our manufactures, send us abundance of corn; and, that the rents might remain during peace at the enormous rate to which war prices had raised them, they must keep out this foreign corn. True, this exclusion of foreign corn must raise the cost of living to the vast labouring population to a ruinous degree, and threatened fearful convulsions from starving people in the manufacturing districts; but these considerations had no weight with our land-holding government and its parliamentary majority. In 1814 they were in haste to pass a corn law excluding all corn except at famine prices; but the lateness of the season, and an inundation of petitions against it, put it off for that session. But in 1815 it was introduced again, and carried by a large majority. By this all corn from abroad was excluded, except when the price was eighty shillings per quarter. By this law it was decreed that the people who fought the battles of the world, and who would bear the bulk of the weight of taxation created by these wars, were never, so long as this law continued, to eat corn at less than four pounds per quarter. This was, in fact, not only a prohibition of cheap

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