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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XXII}
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$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
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$Subject{napoleon
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$Date{1906}
$Log{See On The Bellerophon*0005501.scf
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Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XXII

Napoleon's Surrender - Sent To St. Helena - Life In Exile - Death Of Napoleon

     When it became evident that it was impossible to escape to the United
States, Napoleon considered two courses - to call upon the country and renew
the conflict, or seek an asylum in England.  The former was not only to
perpetuate the foreign war, it was to plunge France into civil war; for a
large part of the country had come to the conclusion of the allies - that as
long as Napoleon was at large, peace was impossible.  Rather than involve
France in such a disaster, the emperor resolved at last to give himself up to
the English, and sent the following note to the regent:

          "Royal Highness: Exposed to the factions which divide my country and
     to the hostility of the greatest powers of Europe, I have closed my
     political career.  I have come, like Themistocles to seek the hospitality
     of the British nation.  I place myself under the protection of their laws,
     which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most
     constant, and the most generous of my enemies.

                                                                 "Napoleon."

     On the 15th of July he embarked on the English ship, the "Bellerophon,"
and a week later he was in Plymouth.

[See On The Bellerophon: He embarked on the English ship, the "Bellerophon",
and a week later he was in Plymouth]

     Napoleon's surrender to the English was made, as he says, with full
confidence in their hospitality.  Certainly hospitality was the last thing to
expect of England under the circumstances, and there was something theatrical
in the demand for it.  The "Bellerophon" was no sooner in the harbor of
Plymouth than it became evident that he was regarded not as a guest, but as a
prisoner.  Armed vessels surrounded the ship he was on; extraordinary messages
were hurried to and fro; sinister rumors ran among the crew.  The Tower of
London, a desert isle, the ends of the earth, were talked of as the
hospitality England was preparing.

     But if there was something theatrical, even humorous, in the idea of
expecting a friendly welcome from England, there was every reason to suppose
that she would receive him with dignity and consideration. Napoleon had been
an enemy worthy of English metal.  He had been defeated only after years of
struggle.  Now that he was at her feet, her own self- respect demanded that
she treat him as became his genius and his position. To leave him at large
was, of course, out of the question; but surely he could have been made a
royal prisoner and been made to feel that if he was detained it was because of
his might.

     The British government no sooner realized that it had its hands on
Napoleon than it was seized with a species of panic.  All sense of dignity,
all notions of what was due a foe who surrendered, were drowned in hysterical
resentment.  The English people as a whole did not share the government's
terror.  The general feeling seems to have been similar to that which Charles
Lamb expressed to Southey: "After all, Bonaparte is a fine fellow, as my
barber says, and I should not mind standing bare-headed at his table to do him
service in his fall.  They should have given him Hampton Court or Kensington,
with a tether extending forty miles round London."

     But the government could see nothing but danger in keeping such a force
as Napoleon within its limits.  It evidently took Lamb's whimsical suggestion,
that if Napoleon were at Hampton the people might some day eject the Brunswick
in his favor, in profound seriousness.  On July 30th it sent a communication
to General Bonaparte - the English henceforth refused him the title of
emperor, though permitting him that of general, not reflecting, probably, that
if one was spurious the other was, since both had been conferred by the same
authority - notifying him that as it was necessary that he should not be
allowed to disturb the repose of England any longer, the British government
had chosen the island of St. Helena as his future residence, and that three
persons with a surgeon would be allowed to accompany him.  A week later he was
transferred from the "Bellerophon" to the "Northumberland," and was en route
for St. Helena, where he arrived in October, 1815.

     The manner in which the British carried out their decision was irritating
and unworthy.  They seemed to feel that guarding a prisoner meant humiliating
him, and offensive and unnecessary restrictions were made which wounded and
enraged Napoleon.

     The effect of this treatment on his character is one of the most
interesting studies in connection with the man, and, on the whole, it leaves
one with increased respect and admiration for him.  He received the
announcement of his exile in indignation.  He was not a prisoner, he was the
guest of England, he said.  It was an outrage against the laws of hospitality
to send him into exile, and he would never submit voluntarily. When he became
convinced that the British were inflexible in their decision, he thought of
suicide, and even discussed it with Las Cases.  It was the most convenient
solution of his dilemma.  It would injure no one, and his friends would not be
forced then to leave their families.  It was easier because he had no scruples
which opposed it.  The idea was finally given up.  A man ought to live out his
destiny, he said, and he decided that his should be fulfilled.

     The most serious concern Napoleon felt in facing his new life was that he
would have no occupation.  He saw at once that St. Helena would not be an
Elba.  But he resolutely made occupations.  He sought conversation, studied
English, played games, began to dictate his memoirs. It is to this admirable
determination to find something to do, that we owe his clear, logical
commentaries, his essays on Caesar, Turenne, and Frederick, his sketch of the
Republic, and the vast amount of information in the journals of his devoted
comrades, O'Meara, Las Cases, Montholon.

     But no amount of forced occupation could hide the desolation of his
position.  The island of St. Helena is a mass of jagged, gloomy rocks; the
nearest land is six hundred miles away.  Isolated and inaccessible as it is,
the English placed Napoleon in its most sombre and remote part - a place
called Longwood, at the summit of a mountain, and to the windward. The houses
of Longwood were damp and unhealthy.  There was no shade. Water had to be
carried some three miles.

     The governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, was a tactless man, with a propensity for
bullying those whom he ruled.  He was haunted by the idea that Napoleon was
trying to escape, and he adopted a policy which was more like that of a jailer
than of an officer.  In his first interview with the emperor he so antagonized
him that Napoleon soon refused to see him. Napoleon's antipathy was almost
superstitious.  "I never saw such a horrid countenance," he told O'Meara.  "He
sat on a chair opposite to my sofa, and on the little table between us there
was a cup of coffee.  His physiognomy made such an unfavorable impression upon
me that I thought his evil eye had poisoned the coffee, and I ordered Marchand
to throw it out of the window.  I could not have swallowed it for the world."

     Aggravated by Napoleon's refusal to see him, Sir Hudson Lowe became more
annoying and petty in his regulations.  All free communication between
Longwood and the inhabitants of the island was cut off.  The newspapers sent
Napoleon were mutilated; certain books were refused; his letters were opened.
A bust of his son brought to the island by a sailor was withheld for weeks.
There was incessant haggling over the expenses of his establishment.  His
friends were subjected to constant annoyance.  All news of Marie Louise and of
his son was kept from him.

     It is scarcely to be wondered at that Napoleon was often peevish and
obstinate under this treatment, or that frequently, when he allowed himself to
discuss the governor's policy with the members of his suite, his temper rose,
as Montholon said, "to thirty-six degrees of fury." His situation was made
more miserable by his ill health.  His promenades were so guarded by sentinels
and restricted to such limits that he finally refused to take exercise, and
after that his disease made rapid marches.

     His fretfulness, his unreasonable determination to house himself, his
childish resentment at Sir Hudson Lowe's conduct, have led to the idea that
Napoleon spent his time at St. Helena in fuming and complaining.  But if one
will take into consideration the work that the fallen emperor did in his
exile, he will have a quite different impression of this period of his life.
He lived at St. Helena from October, 1815, to May, 1821.  In this period of
five and a half years he wrote or dictated enough matter to fill the four
good-sized volumes which complete the bulky correspondence published by the
order of Napoleon III., and he furnished the great collection of conversations
embodied in the memoirs published by his companions.

     This means a great amount of thinking and planning; for if one will go
over these dictations and writings to see how they were made, he will find
that they are not slovenly in arrangement or loose in style.  On the contrary,
they are concise, logical, and frequently vivid.  They are full of errors, it
is true, but that is due to the fact that Napoleon had not at hand any
official documents for making history.  He depended almost entirely on his
memory.  The books and maps he had, he used diligently, but his supply was
limited and unsatisfactory.

     It must be remembered, too, that this work was done under great physical
difficulties.  He was suffering keenly much of the time after he reached the
island.  Even for a well man, working under favorable circumstances, the
literary output of Napoleon at St. Helena would be creditable.  For one in his
circumstances it was extraordinary.  A look at it is the best possible
refutation of the common notion that he spent his time at St. Helena fuming at
Sir Hudson Lowe and "stewing himself in hot water," to use the expression of
the governor.

     Before the end of 1820 it was certain that he could not live long. In
December of that year the death of his sister Eliza was announced to him.
"You see, Eliza has just shown me the way.  Death, which had forgotten my
family, has begun to strike it.  My turn cannot be far off." Nor was it.  On
May 5, 1821, he died.

     His preparations for death were methodical and complete.  During the last
fortnight of April all his strength was spent in dictating to Montholon his
last wishes.  He even dictated, ten days before the end, the note which he
wished sent to Sir Hudson Lowe to announce his death.  The articles he had in
his possession at Longwood he had wrapped up and ticketed with the names of
the persons to whom he wished to leave them. His will remembered numbers of
those whom he had loved or who had served him.  Even the Chinese laborers then
employed about the place were remembered.  "Do not let them be forgotten.  Let
them have a few score of napoleons.

     The will included a final word on certain questions on which he felt
posterity ought distinctly to understand his position.  He died, he said, in
the apostolical Roman religion.  He declared that he had always been pleased
with Marie Louise, whom he besought to watch over his son.  To this son, whose
name recurs repeatedly in the will, he gave a motto - All for the French
people.  He died prematurely, he said, assassinated by the English oligarchy.
The unfortunate results of the invasion of France he attributed to the treason
of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. He defended the death of the
Duc d'Enghien.  "Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way."
This will is sufficient evidence that he died as he had lived, courageously
and proudly, and inspired by a profound conviction of the justice of his own
cause.  In 1822 the French courts declared the will void.

     They buried him in a valley beside a spring he loved, and though no
monument but a willow marked the spot, perhaps no other grave in history is so
well known.  Certainly the magnificent mausoleum which marks his present
resting place in Paris has never touched the imagination and the heart as did
the humble willow-shaded mound in St. Helena.

     The peace of the world was insured.  Napoleon was dead.  But though he
was dead, the echo of his deeds was so loud in the ears of France and England
that they tried every device to turn it into discord or to drown it by another
and a newer sound.  The ignoble attempt was never entirely successful, and the
day will come when personal and partisan considerations will cease to
influence judgments on this mighty man.  For he was a mighty man.  One may be
convinced that the fundamental principles of his life were despotic; that he
used the noble ideas of personal liberty, of equality, and of fraternity, as a
tyrant; that the whole tendency of his civil and military system was to
concentrate a power in a single pair of hands, never to distribute it where it
belonged, among the people; one may feel that he frequently sacrificed
personal dignity to a theatrical desire to impose on the crowd as a hero of
classic proportions, a god from Olympus; one may groan over the blood he
spilt.  But he cannot refuse to acknowledge that no man ever comprehended more
clearly the splendid science of war; he cannot fail to bow to the genius which
conceived and executed the Italian campaign, which fought the classic battles
of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram.  These deeds are great epics. They move in
noble, measured lines, and stir us by their might and perfection.  It is only
genius of the most magnificent order which could handle men and materials as
Napoleon did.

     He is even more imposing as a statesman.  When one confronts the France
of 1799, corrupt, crushed, hopeless, false to the great ideals she had wasted
herself for, and watches Napoleon firmly and steadily bring order into this
chaos, give the country work and bread, build up her broken walls and homes,
put money into her pocket and restore her credit, bind up her wounds and call
back her scattered children, set her again to painting pictures and reading
books, to smiling and singing, he has a Napoleon greater than the general.

     Nor were these civil deeds transient.  France to-day is largely what
Napoleon made her, and the most liberal institutions of continental Europe
bear his impress.  It is only a mind of noble proportions which can grasp the
needs of a people, and a hand of mighty force which can supply them.

     But he was greater as a man than as a warrior or statesman; greater in
that rare and subtle personal quality which made men love him.  Men went down
on their knees and wept at sight of him when he came home from Elba - rough
men whose hearts were untrained, and who loved naturally and spontaneously the
thing which was lovable.  It was only selfish, warped, abnormal natures, which
had been stifled by etiquette and diplomacy and self-interest, who abandoned
him.  Where nature lived in a heart, Napoleon's sway was absolute.  It was not
strange.  He was in everything a natural man; his imagination, his will, his
intellect, his heart, were native, untrained.  They appealed to unworldly men
in all their rude, often brutal strength and sweetness.  If they awed them,
they won them.

     This native force of Napoleon explains, at least partially, his hold on
men; it explains, too, the contrasts of his character.  Never was there a life
lived so full of lights and shades, of majors and minors.  It was a
kaleidoscope, changing at every moment.  Beside the most practical and
common-place qualities are the most idealistic.  No man ever did more
drudgery, ever followed details more slavishly; yet who ever dared so
divinely, ever played such hazardous games of chance?  No man ever planned
more for his fellows, yet who ever broke so many hearts?  No man ever made
practical realities of so many of liberty's dreams, yet it was by despotism
that he gave liberal and beneficent laws.  No man was more gentle, none more
cruel.  Never was there a more chivalrous lover until he was disillusioned; a
more affectionate husband, even when faith had left him; yet no man ever
trampled more rudely on womanly delicacy and reserve.

     He was valorous as a god in danger, loved it, played with it; yet he
would turn pale at a broken mirror, cross himself if he stumbled, fancy the
coffee poisoned at which an enemy had looked.

     He was the greatest genius of his time, perhaps of all time yet he lacked
the crown of greatness - that high wisdom born of reflection and introspection
which knows its own powers and limitations, and never abuses them; that fine
sense of proportion which holds the rights of others in the same solemn
reverence it demands for its own.