CHAPTER XCIV
Buonaparte's alleged grievances considered – Right to restrict his Liberty – Limits allowed Napoleon – Complaints urged by Las Cases against Sir George Cockburn – Sir Hudson Lowe appointed Governor of St. Helena – Information given by General Gourgaud to Government – Agitation of various Plans for Buonaparte's Escape – Writers on the subject of Napoleon's Residence at St. Helena – Napoleon's irritating Treatment of Sir Hudson Lowe – Interviews between them.
Hitherto, as we have prosecuted our task, each year has been a history which we have found it difficult to contain within the limits of half a volume; remaining besides conscious, that, in the necessary compression, we have been obliged to do injustice to the importance of our theme. But the years of imprisonment which pass so much more slowly to the captive, occupy, with their melancholy monotony, only a small portion of the page of history; and the tale of five years of St. Helena, might, so far as events are concerned, be sooner told than the history of a single campaign, the shortest which was fought under Buonaparte's auspices. Yet these years were painfully marked, and indeed embittered, by a train of irritating disputes betwixt the prisoner and the officer to whom was committed the important, and yet most delicate, task of restraining his liberty, and cutting off all prospect of escape; and whose duty it was, at the same time, to mix the necessary degree of vigilance with as much courtesy, and we will add kindness, as Napoleon could be prevailed on to accept.
We have had considerable opportunity to collect information on this subject, the correspondence of Sir Hudson Lowe with his Majesty's Government having been opened to our researches by the liberality of Lord Bathurst, late secretary of state for the colonial department. This communication has enabled us to speak with confidence respecting the general principles by which the British Government were guided in their instructions to Sir Hudson Lowe, and the tenor of these instructions themselves. We therefore propose to discuss, in the first place, the alleged grievances of Napoleon, as they arose out of the instructions of the British Government; reserving as a second subject of discussion, the farther complaints of the aggravated mode in which these instructions are alleged to have been executed by the Governor of St. Helena. On the latter subject our information is less perfect, from the distance of Sir Hudson Lowe from Europe precluding personal inquiry, and the impossibility of producing impartial evidence on the subject of a long train of minute and petty incidents, each of which necessarily demands investigation, and is the subject of inculpation and defence. We have, however, the means of saying something upon this subject also.
We have already discussed the circumstances of Napoleon's surrender to the British, without reserve, qualification, or condition of any kind; and we have seen, that if he sustained any disappointment in being detained a prisoner, instead of being considered as a guest, or free inmate of Britain, it arose from the failure of hopes which he had adopted on his own calculation, without the slightest encouragement from Captain Maitland. We doubt greatly, indeed, if his most sanguine expectations ever seriously anticipated a reception very different from what he experienced; at least he testified little or no surprise when informed of his destiny. But, at any rate, he was a prisoner of war, having acquired by his surrender no right save to claim safety of life and limb. If the English nation had inveigled Napoleon into a capitulation, under conditions which they had subsequently broken, he would have been in the condition of Toussaint, whom, nevertheless, he immured in a dungeon. Or, if he had been invited to visit the Prince Regent of England in the character of an ally, had been at first received with courteous hospitality, and then committed to confinement as a prisoner, his case would have approached that of Prince Ferdinand of Spain, trepanned to Bayonne. But we should be ashamed to vindicate our country by quoting the evil example of our enemy. Truth and falsehood remain immutable and irreconcilable; and the worst criminal ought not to be proceeded against according to his own example, but according to the general rules of justice. Nevertheless, it greatly diminishes our interest in a complaint, if he who prefers it has himself been in the habit of meting to others with the same unfair weight and measure, which he complains of when used towards himself.
Napoleon, therefore, being a prisoner of war, and to be disposed of as such, (a point which admits of no dispute,) we have, we conceive, further proved, that his residence within the territories of Great Britain was what could hardly take place consistently with the safety of Europe. To have delivered him up to any of the other allied powers, whose government was of a character similar to his own, would certainly have been highly objectionable; since in doing so Britain would have so far broken faith with him, as to part with the power of protecting his personal safety, to which extent the country to which he surrendered himself stood undeniably pledged. It only remained to keep this important prisoner in such a state of restraint, as to ensure his not having the means of making a second escape, and again involving France and Europe in a bloody and doubtful war. St. Helena was selected as the place of his detention, and, we think, with much propriety; since the nature of that sequestered island afforded the means for the greatest certainty of security, with the least restriction on the personal liberty of the distinguished prisoner. Waves and rocks around its shores afforded the security of walls, ditches, bars, and bolts, in a citadel; and his hours of exercise might be safely extended over a space of many miles, instead of being restrained within the narrow and guarded limits of a fortress.
The right of imprisoning Napoleon being conceded, or at least proved, and the selection of St. Helena, as his place of residence, being vindicated, we have no hesitation in avowing the principle, that every thing possible ought to have been done to alleviate the painful feelings, to which, in every point of view, a person so distinguished as Napoleon must have been subjected by so heavy a change of fortune. We would not, at that moment, have remembered the lives lost, fortunes destroyed, and hopes blighted, of so many hundreds of our countrymen, civilians travelling in France, and detained there against every rule of civilized war; nor have thought ourselves entitled to avenge upon Napoleon, in his misfortunes, the cruel inflictions, which his policy, if not his inclination, prompted him to award against others. We would not have made his dungeon so wretched, as that of the unhappy Negro chief, starved to death amidst the Alpine snows. We would not have surrounded him, while a prisoner, with spies, as in the case of the Earl of Elgin; or, as in that of Prince Ferdinand, have spread a trap for him by means of an emissary like the false Baron Koli, who, in proffering to assist his escape, should have had it for an object to obtain a pretence for treating him more harshly. These things we would not then have remembered; or, if we could not banish them from our recollection, in considering how far fraud and ignoble violence can debase genius, and render power odious, we would have remembered them as examples, not to be followed, but shunned. To prevent the prisoner from resuming a power which he had used so fatally, we would have regarded as a duty not to Britain alone, but to Europe and to the world. To accompany his detention with every alleviation which attention to his safe custody would permit, was a debt due, if not to his personal deserts, at least to our own nobleness. With such feelings upon the subject in general, we proceed to consider the most prominent subjects of complaint, which Buonaparte and his advocates have brought against the Administration of Great Britain, for their treatment of the distinguished exile.
ALLEGED GRIEVANCES
The first loud subject of complaint has been already touched upon, that the imperial title was not given to Napoleon, and that he was only addressed and treated with the respect due to a general officer of the highest rank. On this subject Napoleon was particularly tenacious. He was not of the number of those persons mentioned by the Latin poet, who, in poverty and exile, suited their titles and their language to their condition.219 On the contrary, he contended with great obstinacy, from the time he came to Portsmouth, on his right to be treated as a crowned head; nor was there, as we have noticed, a more fertile source of discord betwixt him and the gentlemen of his suite on one side, and the Governor of St. Helena on the other, than the pertinacious claim, on Napoleon's part, for honours and forms of address, which the orders of the British Ministry had prohibited the governor from granting, and which, therefore, Napoleon's knowledge of a soldier's duty should have prevented his exacting. But, independently of the governor's instructions, Buonaparte's claim to the peculiar distinction of a sovereign prince was liable to question, both in respect of the party by whom it was insisted on, and in relation to the government from whom it was claimed.
Napoleon, it cannot be denied, had been not only an Emperor, but perhaps the most powerful that has ever existed; and he had been acknowledged as such by all the continental sovereigns. But he had been compelled, in 1814, to lay aside and abdicate the empire of France, and to receive in exchange the title of Emperor of Elba. His breach of the treaty of Paris was in essence a renunciation of the empire of Elba; and the reassumption of that of France was so far from being admitted by the allies, that he was declared an outlaw by the Congress at Vienna. Indeed, if this second occupation of the French throne were even to be admitted as in any respect re-establishing his forfeited claim to the Imperial dignity, it must be remembered that he himself a second time abdicated, and formally renounced a second time the dignity he had in an unhappy hour reassumed. But if Napoleon had no just pretension to the Imperial title or honours after his second abdication, even from those who had before acknowledged him as Emperor of France, still less had he any right to a title which he had laid down, from a nation who had never acquiesced in his taking it up. At no time had Great Britain recognised him as Emperor of France; and Lord Castlereagh had expressly declined to accede to the treaty of Paris, by which he was acknowledged as Emperor of Elba.220 Napoleon, indeed, founded, or attempted to found, an argument upon the treaty of Amiens having been concluded with him, when he held the capacity of First Consul of France. But he had himself destroyed the Consular Government, of which he then constituted the head; and his having been once First Consul gave him no more title to the dignity of Emperor, than the Directorship of Barras invested him with the same title. On no occasion whatever, whether directly or by implication, had Great Britain recognised the title of her prisoner to be considered as a sovereign prince; and it was surely too late to expect acquiescence in claims in his present situation, which had not been allowed when he was actually master of half the world.
But it may be urged that, admitting that Napoleon's claim to be treated with royal ceremonial was in itself groundless, yet since he had actually enjoyed the throne for so many years, the British ministers ought to have allowed to him that rank which he had certainly possessed de facto, though not de jure. The trifling points of rank and ceremonial ought, it may be thought, according to the principles which we have endeavoured to express, to have been conceded to eclipsed sovereignty and down-fallen greatness.
To this it may be replied, that if the concession recommended could have had no further consequences than to mitigate the repinings of Napoleon – if he could have found comfort in the empty sound of titles, or if the observance of formal etiquette could have reconciled his feelings to his melancholy and dethroned condition, without altering the relative state of the question in other respects – such concession ought not to have been refused to him.
But the real cause of his desiring to have, and of the British Government's persisting in refusing to him, the name and honours of a sovereign, lay a great deal deeper. It is true, that it was a foible of Buonaparte, incident, perhaps, to his situation as a parvenu amongst the crowned heads of Europe, to be at all times peculiarly and anxiously solicitous that the most strict etiquette and form should be observed about his person and court. But granting that his vanity, as well as his policy, was concerned in insisting upon such rigid ceremonial as is frequently dispensed with by sovereigns of ancient descent, and whose title is unquestionable, it will not follow that a person of his sense and capacity could have been gratified, even if indulged in all the marks of external influence paid to the Great Mogul, on condition that, like the later descendants of Timur, he was still to remain a close prisoner. His purpose in tenaciously claiming the name of a sovereign, was to establish his claim to the immunities belonging to that title. He had already experienced at Elba the use to be derived from erecting a barrier of etiquette betwixt his person and any inconvenient visitor. Once acknowledged as Emperor, it followed, of course, that he was to be treated as such in every particular; and thus it would have become impossible to enforce such regulations as were absolutely demanded for his safe custody. Such a status, once granted, would have furnished Napoleon with a general argument against every precaution which might be taken to prevent his escape. Who ever heard of an emperor restricted in his promenades, or subjected, in certain cases, to the surveillance of an officer, and the restraint of sentinels? Or how could these precautions against escape have been taken, without irreverence to the person of a crowned head, which, in the circumstances of Napoleon Buonaparte, were indispensably necessary? Those readers, therefore, who may be of opinion that it was necessary that Napoleon should be restrained of his liberty, must also allow that the British Government would have acted imprudently if they had gratuitously invested him with a character which they had hitherto refused him, and that at the very moment when their doing so was to add to the difficulties attending his safe custody.
The question, however, does not terminate even here; for not only was Great Britain at full liberty to refuse to Buonaparte a title which she had never recognised as his due – not only would her granting it have been attended with great practical inconvenience, but farther, she could not have complied with his wishes, without affording the most serious cause of complaint to her ally the King of France. If Napoleon was called emperor, his title could apply to France alone; and if he was acknowledged as Emperor of France, of what country was Louis XVIII. King? Many wars have arisen from no other cause than that the government of one country has given the title and ceremonial due to a sovereign, to a person pretending to the throne of the other, and it is a ground of quarrel recognised by the law of nations. It is true, circumstances might have prevented Louis from resenting the supposed recognition of a royal character in his rival, as severely as Britain did the acknowledgment of the exiled Stuarts by Louis XIV., yet it must have been the subject of serious complaint; the rather that a conduct tending to indicate England's acquiescence in the imperial title claimed by Napoleon, could not but keep alive dangerous recollections, and encourage a dangerous faction in the bosom of France.
Yet, notwithstanding all we have said, we feel there was an awkwardness in approaching the individual who had been so preeminently powerful, with the familiarity applicable to one who had never stood more high above others than he would have done merely as General Buonaparte. A compromise was accordingly offered by Sir Hudson Lowe, in proposing to make use of the word Napoleon, as a more dignified style of addressing his prisoner. But an easy and respectable alternative was in the prisoner's own power. Napoleon had but to imitate other sovereigns, who, either when upon foreign travel, or when other circumstances require it, usually adopt a conventional appellative, which, while their doing so waves no part of their own claim of right to royal honours, is equally far from a concession of that right on the part of those who may have occasion to transact with them. Louis XVIII. was not the less the legitimate King of France, that he was for many years, and in various countries, only known by the name of the Comte de Lille. The conveniency of the idea had struck Napoleon himself; for at one time, when talking of the conditions of his residence in England, he said he would have no objection to resume the name of Meuron, an aide-de-camp who had died by his side at the battle of Arcola.221 But it seems that Napoleon, more tenacious of form than a prince who had been cradled in it, considered this vailing of his dignity as too great a concession on his part to be granted to the Governor of St. Helena. Sir Hudson Lowe, at one time desirous to compromise this silly subject of dispute, would have been contented to render Napoleon the title of Excellency, as due to a field-mareschal, but neither did this meet with acceptation. Napoleon was determined either to be acknowledged by the governor as Emperor, or to retain his grievance in its full extent. No modifications could be devised by which it could be rendered palatable.
Whether this pertinacity in claiming a title which was rendered ridiculous by his situation, was the result of some feelings which led him to doubt his own title to greatness, when his ears were no longer flattered by the language of humility; or whether the political considerations just alluded to, rendered him obstinate to refuse all epithets, except one which might found him in claims to those indemnities and privileges with which so high a title is intimate, and from which it may be said to be inseparable, it is impossible for us to say; vanity and policy might combine in recommending to him perseverance in his claim. But the strife should certainly, for his own sake, have been abandoned, when the point remained at issue between the governor and him only, since even if the former had wished to comply with the prisoner's desires, his instructions forbade him to do so. To continue an unavailing struggle, was only to invite the mortification of defeat and repulse. Yet Napoleon and his followers retained so much sensibility on this subject, that though they must have been aware that Sir Hudson Lowe only used the language prescribed by his government, and indeed dared use no other, this unfortunate phrase of General Buonaparte occurring so often in their correspondence, seemed to render every attempt at conciliation a species of derogation and insult, and made such overtures resemble a coarse cloth tied over a raw wound, which it frets and injures more than it protects.
COCKBURN'S INSTRUCTIONS
Whatever might be the merits of the case, as between Napoleon and the British Ministry, it was clear that Sir George Cockburn and Sir Hudson Lowe were left by their instructions no option in the matter at issue. These instructions bore that Napoleon, their prisoner, was to receive the style and treatment due to General Buonaparte, a prisoner of war; and it was at their peril if they gave him a higher title, or a different style of attention from what that title implied. No one could know better than Napoleon how strictly a soldier is bound by his consigne; and to upbraid Sir Hudson Lowe as ungenerous, unmanly, and so forth, because he did not disobey the instructions of his government, was as unreasonable as to hope that his remonstrances could have any effect save those of irritation and annoyance. He ought to have been aware that persisting to resent, in rough and insulting terms, the deprivation of his title on the part of an officer who was prohibited from using it, might indeed fret and provoke one with whom it would have been best to keep upon civil terms, but could not bring him one inch nearer to the point which he so anxiously desired to attain.
In fact, this trivial but unhappy subject of dispute was of a character so subtle, that it penetrated into the whole correspondence between the Emperor and the governor, and tended to mix with gall and vinegar all attempts made by the latter to cultivate something like civil intercourse. This unlucky barrier of etiquette started up and poisoned the whole effect of any intended politeness. While Sir George Cockburn remained on the island, for example, he gave more than one ball, to which General Buonaparte and his suite were regularly invited. In similar circumstances, Henry IV. or Charles II. would have attended the ball, and to a certainty would have danced with the prettiest young woman present, without dreaming that, by so doing, they derogated from pretensions derived from a long line of royal ancestors. Buonaparte and Las Cases, on the contrary, took offence at the familiarity, and wrote it down as a wilful and flagrant affront on the part of the admiral. These were not the feelings of a man of conscious dignity of mind, but of an upstart, who conceives the honour of preferment not to consist in having enjoyed, or in still possessing, a high situation, gained by superiority of talent, so much as in wearing the robes or listening to the sounding titles, which are attached to it.
A subject, upon which we are called upon to express much more sympathy with the condition of Napoleon, than moves us upon the consideration of his abrogated title, is, the screen which was drawn betwixt him, and, it may be said, the living world, through which he was not permitted to penetrate, by letter, even to his dearest friends and relatives, unless such had been previously communicated to, and read by, the governor of the island.
It is no doubt true, that this is an inconvenience to which prisoners of war are, in all cases, subjected; nor do we know any country in which their parole is held so sacred as to induce the government to dispense with the right of inspecting their letters. Yet the high place so lately occupied by the fallen monarch might, we think, have claimed for him some dispensation from a restriction so humiliating. If a third person, cold-blooded at best, perhaps inclined to hold up to scorn the expressions of our grief or our affection, is permitted to have the review of the effusions of our heart towards a wife, a sister, a brother, or a bosom-friend, the correspondence loses half its value; and, forced as we are to keep it within the bounds of the most discreet caution, it becomes to us rather a new source of mortification, than the opening of a communion with those absent persons, whose friendship and attachment we hold to be the dearest possession of our lives. We the rather think that some exercise of this privilege might have been left to Napoleon, without any risk of endangering the safe custody of his person; because we are pretty well convinced that all efforts strictly to enforce this regulation did, and must have proved, ineffectual, and that in some cases by means of money, and at other times by the mere influence of compassion, he and his followers would always acquire the means of transmitting private letters from the island without regard to the restriction. Whatever, therefore, was to be apprehended of danger in this species of intercourse by letter, was much more likely to occur in a clandestine correspondence, than in one carried on even by sealed letters, openly and by permission of the government. We cannot help expressing our opinion, that, considering the accurate attention of the police, which would naturally have turned in foreign countries towards letters from St. Helena, there was little danger of the public post being made use of for any dangerous machinations. Supposing, therefore, that the Exile had been permitted to use it, it would have been too dangerous to have risked any proposal for his escape through that medium. A secret correspondence must have been resorted to for that purpose, and that under circumstances which would have put every well-meaning person, at least, upon his guard against being aiding in it; since, if the ordinary channels of communication were open to the prisoner, there could have been no justifiable reason for his resorting to private means of forwarding letters from the island. At the same time, while such is our opinion, it is founded upon reasoning totally unconnected with the claim of right urged by Napoleon; as his situation, considering him as a prisoner of war, and a most important one, unquestionably entitled the government of Britain to lay him under all the restrictions incident to persons in that situation.
Another especial subject of complaint pleaded upon by Napoleon and his advocates, arose from a regulation, which, we apprehend, was so essential to his safe custody, that we are rather surprised to find it was dispensed with upon any occasion, or to any extent; as, if fully and regularly complied with, it would have afforded the means of relaxing a considerable proportion of other restrictions of a harassing and irritating character, liable to be changed from time to time, and to be removed and replaced in some cases, without any very adequate or intelligible motive. The regulation which we allude to is that which required that Buonaparte should be visible twice, or at least once, in the day, to the British orderly officer. If this regulation had been submitted to with equanimity by the Ex-Emperor, it would have given the strongest possible guarantee against the possibility of his attempting an escape. From the hour at which he had been seen by the officer, until that at which he should again become visible, no vessel would have been permitted to leave the island; and supposing that he was missed by the officer at the regular hour, the alarm would have been general, and, whether concealed in the town, or on board any of the vessels in the roadstead, he must necessarily have been discovered. Indeed, the risk was too great to induce him to have tried an effort so dangerous. It might easily have been arranged, that the orderly officer should have the opportunity to execute his duty with every possible respect to Napoleon's privacy and convenience, and the latter might himself have chosen the time and manner of exhibiting himself for an instant. In this case, and considering how many other precautions were taken to prevent escape – that every accessible path to the beach was closely guarded – and that the island was very much in the situation of a citadel, of which soldiers are the principal inhabitants – the chance of Napoleon's attempting to fly, even if permitted the unlimited range of St. Helena, was highly improbable, and the chance of his effecting his purpose next to an impossibility. But this security depended upon his submitting to see a British officer at a fixed hour; and, resolute in his plan of yielding nothing to circumstances, Napoleon resisted, in every possible manner, the necessity of complying with this very important regulation. Indeed, Sir Hudson Lowe, on his part, was on many occasions contented to wink at its being altogether neglected, when the orderly officer could not find the means of seeing Napoleon by stealth while engaged in a walk, or in a ride, or as it sometimes happened, through the casement. This was not the way in which this important regulation ought to have been acted upon and enforced, and the governor did not reap a great harvest of gratitude from his conduct in dispensing with this act of superintendence upon his own responsibility.
We have seen that a circuit of twelve miles and upwards was laid off for Buonaparte's private exercise. No strangers entered these precincts without a pass from Bertrand, and the Emperor had uninterrupted freedom to walk or ride within them, unaccompanied by any one save those in his own family. Beyond these privileged bounds, he was not permitted to move, without the attendance of a British officer; but under the escort of such a person he was at liberty to visit every part of the island. To this arrangement Napoleon was more averse, if possible, than to that which appointed that a British officer should see him once a-day.
Other subjects of complaint there were; but as they chiefly arose out of private discussions with Sir Hudson Lowe – out of by-laws enacted by that officer – and restrictions of a more petty description, we limit ourselves for the present to those of a general character, which, however inconvenient and distressing, were, it is to be observed, such as naturally attached to the condition of a prisoner; and which, like the fetters of a person actually in chains, are less annoying when submitted to with fortitude and equanimity, than when the captive struggles in vain to wrench himself out of their gripe. We are far, nevertheless, from saying, that the weight of the fetters in the one case, and the hardship of the personal restrictions in the other, are in themselves evils which can be easily endured by those who sustain them. We feel especially how painful the loss of liberty must have been to one who had not only enjoyed the freedom of his own actions, but the uncontrolled right of directing those of others. Impatience, however, in this, as in other instances, has only the prerogative of injuring its master. In the many hours of meditation which were afforded to Buonaparte by his residence in St. Helena, we can never perceive any traces of the reflection, that he owed his present unhappy situation less to the immediate influence of those who were agents in his defeat and imprisonment, than to that course of ambition, which, sparing neither the liberties of France, nor the independence of Europe, had at length rendered his personal freedom inconsistent with the rights of the world in general. He felt the distresses of his situation, but he did not, or could not, reason on their origin. It is impossible to reflect upon him without the idea being excited, of a noble lion imprisoned within a narrow and gloomy den, and venting the wrath which once made the forest tremble, upon the petty bolts and bars, which, insignificant as they are, defy his lordly strength, and detain him captive.