DAYS AT LONGWOOD.—TRIAL OF DROUOT.—MILITARY CHARACTERS.—SOULT.—MASSENA.—THE EMPEROR’S COMRADES IN THE ARTILLERY—HIS NAME THOUGHT BY HIM TO BE UNKNOWN TO SOME PEOPLE, EVEN IN PARIS.
23rd—26th. The weather was very unfavourable during the greater part of these mornings, on account of the heavy rains, which scarcely allowed us to stir out of doors. The Emperor read a work by a Miss Williams, on the return from the Isle of Elba; it had just reached us from England. He was much disgusted with it, and with good reason: this production is quite calumnious and false; it is the echo and collection of all the reports invented at the time in certain malevolent Parisian societies.
As to our evenings, the weather was almost indifferent to us; whether it rained, or the moon shone brightly, we literally made ourselves prisoners. Towards nine o’clock we were surrounded by sentinels; to meet them would have been painful. It is true that both the Emperor and ourselves might have gone out at a later hour, accompanied by an officer; but this would have been rather a punishment than a pleasure to us, although the officer never could conceive this feeling. He gave us reason to conclude, at first, that he imagined this seclusion to be merely the effect of ill-humour, and thought it would not last long. I know not what he may subsequently have thought of our perseverance.
The Emperor, as I believe I have already mentioned, sat down to table pretty regularly at eight o’clock; he never remained there above half an hour; sometimes scarcely a quarter of an hour. When he returned to the drawing-room, if he happened to be unwell or taciturn, we had the greatest difficulty in the world to get on till half-past nine or ten o’clock; indeed, we could not effect it without the assistance of reading. But when he was cheerful, and entered into conversation with spirit, we were presently surprised to find it eleven o’clock, and later: these were our pleasant evenings. He would then retire, with a kind of satisfaction, at having, as he expressed it, conquered time. And it was precisely on those days, when the remark applied with least force, that he used to observe that it must require our utmost courage to endure such a life.
On one of these evenings, the conversation turned upon the military trials, which are now taking place in France. The Emperor thought that General Drouot could not be condemned for coming in the suite of one acknowledged sovereign to make war upon another. On this it was remarked that what was now mentioned as his justification would be his greatest danger at the tribunal of legitimacy.
The Emperor acknowledged, in fact, that there was nothing to be said to the doctrines brought forward at this day: but, on the other hand, that, in condemning General Drouot, they would condemn emigration, and legitimize the condemnation of the emigrants. Whomsoever was found in arms against France, the Republican doctrines punished with death; it was not so with the Royal doctrine. If they should in this instance adopt the Republican doctrine, the emigrant and royal party would condemn themselves.
The case of Drouot, however, in a general point of view, was very different even from that of Ney; and besides, Ney had evinced an unfortunate vacillation of which Drouot had never been guilty. Thus the interest which Ney had excited was wholly founded on opinion; whilst that which was felt for Drouot was personal.
The Emperor dilated on the dangers and difficulties which the tribunals and ministers of justice must experience, throughout the affairs connected with his return from the Isle of Elba. Above all, he was extremely struck by a particular circumstance relating to Soult, who, we were told, was to be brought to trial. He (Napoleon) knew, he said, how innocent Soult was; and yet, were it not for that circumstance, and were he an individual and juror in Soult’s case, he had no doubt he should declare him guilty, so strongly were appearances combined against him. Ney, in the course of his defence, through some sentiment which it is difficult to account for, stated, contrary to the truth, that the Emperor had said Soult was in intelligence with him. Now, every circumstance of Soult’s conduct during his administration, the confidence which the Emperor placed in him after his return, &c., agreed with that deposition: who, then, would not have condemned him? “Yet Soult is innocent,” said the Emperor, “he even acknowledged to me that he had taken a real liking to the King. The authority he enjoyed under him,” he said, “so different from that of my ministers, was a very agreeable thing, and had quite gained him over.”
Massena (whose proscription was also announced to us by the papers) was, the Emperor said, another person whom they would perhaps condemn as guilty of treason. All Marseilles was against him; appearances were overwhelming; and yet he had fulfilled his duty up to the very moment of declaring himself openly. On his return to Paris, he had even been far from claiming any credit with the Emperor, when the latter asked him whether he might have reckoned upon him. “The truth is,” continued the Emperor, "that all the commanders did their duty; but they could not withstand the torrent of opinion, and no one had sufficiently calculated the sentiments of the mass of the people and the national impetuosity. Carnot, Fouché, Maret, and Cambaceres, confessed to me, at Paris, that they had been greatly deceived on this[this] point. And no one understands it well; even now.
“Had the King remained longer in France,” continued he, “he would probably have lost his life in some insurrection; but, had he fallen into my hands, I should have thought myself strong enough to have allowed him every enjoyment in some retreat of his own selection; as Ferdinand was treated at Valency.”
Immediately before this conversation, the Emperor was playing at chess, and his king having fallen, he cried out—"Ah! my poor king, you are down!" Some one having picked it up, and restored it to him in a mutilated state—"Horrid!" he exclaimed; “I certainly do not accept the omen, and I am far from wishing any such thing: my enmity does not extend so far.”
I would not, on any account, have omitted this circumstance, trifling as it may appear, because it is in many respects characteristic. We ourselves, when the Emperor had retired, reverted to the incident. What cheerfulness, what freedom of mind in such dreadful circumstances! we said. What serenity in the heart! what absence of malice, irritation, or hatred! Who could discover in him the man whom enmity and falsehood have depicted as such a monster! Even amongst his own followers, who is there that has well understood him, or taken sufficient pains to make him known?
On another evening, the Emperor was speaking of his early years, when he was in the artillery, and of his companions at the mess: he always delighted in reverting to those days. One of his messmates was mentioned, who, having been Prefect of the same department under Napoleon and under the King, had not been able to retain his place on the return of Napoleon. The Emperor, when he recollected him, said that this person had, at a certain period, missed the opportunity of making his fortune through him. When Napoleon obtained the command of the army of the Interior, he loaded this person with favours, made him his aide-de-camp, and intended to place great confidence in him; but this favoured aide-de-camp had behaved very ill to him at the time of his departure for the Army of Italy: he then abandoned his General for the Directory. “Nevertheless,” said the Emperor, "when once I was seated on the throne, he might have done much with me, if he had known how to set about it. He had the claim of early friendship, which never loses its influence; I should certainly never have withstood an unexpected overture in a hunting-party, for instance, or half an hour’s conversation on old times at any other opportunity. I should have forgotten his conduct: it was no longer important whether he had been on my side or not: I had united all parties. Those who had an insight into my character were well aware of this: they knew that, with me, however I might have felt disposed towards them, it was like the game of prison-bars; when once the point was touched, the game was won. In fact, if I wished to withstand them, I had no resource but that of refusing to see them."
He mentioned another old comrade, who, with intelligence and the requisite qualifications, might have done any thing with him. He also said that a third would never have been removed from him, had he been less rapacious.
We disputed amongst ourselves whether these people ever suspected the secret, or their own chances; and whether the elevated station and the Imperial splendour of Napoleon, had fairly allowed them to avail themselves of his favourable disposition towards them.
With respect to the splendour of the Imperial power, the Grand Marshal said that, however great and magnificent the Emperor had appeared to him on the throne, he had never made on him a superior, perhaps an equal, impression, to that which his situation at the head of the Army of Italy had stamped on his memory. He explained and justified this idea very successfully, and the Emperor heard him with some complacency.—But, we observed, what great events took place afterwards! what elevation! what grandeur! what renown throughout the world! The Emperor had listened. “For all that,” said he, “Paris is so extensive, and contains so many people of all sorts, and some so eccentric, that I can conceive there may be some who never saw me, and others who never even heard my name mentioned. Do not you think so?” And it was curious to see with what whimsical ingenuity he himself maintained this assertion, which he knew to be untenable. We all insisted loudly that, as to his name, there was not a town or village in Europe, perhaps even in the world, where it had not been pronounced. One person in company added—"Sire, before I returned to France at the treaty of Amiens, your Majesty being then only First Consul, I determined to make a tour in Wales, as one of the most extraordinary parts of Great Britain. I climbed the wildest mountains, some of which are of prodigious height; I visited cabins that seemed to me to belong to another world. As I entered one of these secluded dwellings, I observed, to my fellow-traveller, that, in this spot, one would expect to find repose, and escape the din of revolution. The cottager, suspecting us to be French, on account of our accent, immediately enquired the news from France, and what Bonaparte, the First Consul, was about."
“Sire,” said another, "we had the curiosity to ask the Chinese officers whether our European affairs had been heard of in their Empire. ‘Certainly,’ they replied; ‘in a confused manner, to be sure, because we are totally uninterested in those matters; but the name of your Emperor is famous there, and connected with grand ideas of conquest and revolution:’ exactly as the names of those who have changed the face of that part of the world have arrived in ours, such as Gengis Khan, Tamerlane," &c.
MARSHAL BERTRAND.
Published for Henry Colburn, March, 1836.