ELEGY; OR, DIRGE.
I.
All in the town of Tunis,
In Africa the torrid,
On a Frenchman of rank
Was played such a prank,
As Lepaux must think quite horrid.
II.
No story half so shocking,
By kitchen fire or laundry,
Was ever heard tell,—
As that which befel
The great Jean Bon St. André.[[258]]
III.
Poor John was a gallant Captain,
In battles much delighting;
He fled full soon
On the first of June—
But he bade the rest keep fighting.
IV.
To Paris then returning,
And recovered from his panic,
He translated the plan
Of Paine’s Rights of Man,
Into language Mauritanic.
V.
He went to teach at Tunis—
Where as Consul he was settled—
Amongst other things,
“That the people are kings!”
Whereat the Dey was nettled.
VI.
The Moors being rather stupid,
And in temper somewhat mulish,
Understood not a word
Of the doctrine they heard,
And thought the Consul foolish.
VII.
He formed a Club of Brothers,
And moved some resolutions—
“Ho! ho! (says the Dey),
“So this is the way
“That the French make Revolutions”.
VIII.
The Dey then gave his orders
In Arabic and Persian—
“Let no more be said—
But bring me his head!
These Clubs are my aversion”.
IX.
The Consul quoted Wicquefort,
And Puffendorf and Grotius;
And proved from Vattel
Exceedingly well,
Such a deed would be quite atrocious.
X.
’Twould have moved a Christian’s bowels
To hear the doubts he stated;—
But the Moors they did
As they were bid,
And strangled him while he prated.
XI.
His head with a sharp-edged sabre
They severed from his shoulders,
And stuck it on high,
Where it caught the eye,
To the wonder of all beholders.
XII.
This sure is a doleful story
As e’er you heard or read of;—
If at Tunis you prate
Of matters of state,
Anon they cut your head off!
XIII.
But we hear the French Directors
Have thought the point so knotty;
That the Dey having shown
He dislikes Jean Bon,
They have sent him Bernadotté.
On recurring to the French papers to verify our Correspondent’s statement of this singular adventure of Jean Bon St. André, we discovered, to our great mortification, that it happened at Algiers, and not at Tunis. We should have corrected this mistake, but for two reasons—first, that Algiers would not stand in the verse; and, secondly, that we are informed by the young man who conducts the Geographical Department of the Morning Chronicle, that both the towns are in Africa, or Asia (he is not quite certain which), and, what is more to the purpose, that both are peopled by Moors. Tunis, therefore, may stand.
[Marshal Bernadotté, the French Prince of Monté Corvo, died as Charles John XIV., King of Sweden, 8th March, 1844, in his eighty-first year. He married, in 1798, Eugenia-Bernardina-Désirée de Clary, daughter of a Marseilles merchant, and sister of Madame Joseph Buonaparte (Queen of Spain). “She, who was not a common-place person,” says Madame de Rémusat, in her valuable Memoirs, “had before her marriage been very much in love with Napoleon, and appears to have always preserved the memory of that feeling! It has been supposed that her hardly extinguished passion caused her obstinate refusal to leave France.” She survived her husband many years, and died in Paris, in the Rue d’Anjou Saint Honoré. Her husband was succeeded on the throne of Sweden by their son, Oscar I., who married Joséphine, daughter of Eugène Beauharnais, Duc de Leuchtenberg, and granddaughter of the Empress Josephine.
Bernadotté owed his elevation to the throne to the misgovernment of Gustavus IV., who had brought the nation to the verge of ruin, and who was deposed in 1809, when his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, became king as Charles XIII.; and the next year, Bernadotté was elected Crown Prince, and successor to the throne.
In 1813, he rendered great assistance to the Allies, for, as Crown Prince, he joined the confederacy against France with 30,000 men; and, after defeating Marshal Ney, with great loss, on the 6th September, he, on the 18th October, with the co-operation of Blücher, again defeated him at the decisive Battle of Leipsic; and, on the 19th, the Emperor Alexander, the King of Prussia, and the Crown Prince, entered the great square of Leipsic, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. He was a decided democrat, and hated by Napoleon, but was the only sovereign of the revolutionary branch who was permitted to retain his dominions after the great reaction in 1814. The choice made of this great soldier of fortune excited the surprise of all Europe at the time, but the wisdom of it was soon demonstrated by his prudent conduct. He had distinguished himself from all Napoleon’s other marshals by his clemency in victory. For half a century before his accession, Sweden had not known the peace and prosperity in which he left the country on his death.
In T. Raikes’s Diary will be found some interesting anecdotes of Bernadotté’s gratitude for services rendered him while a young subaltern. But one is of a more startling nature, as it records his narrow escape from the death intended for him by the widow of the late king, who had purposely prepared a poisoned cup of coffee for him, which she herself presented to him at her own table. Having been suddenly warned, he succeeded in forcing it upon her. She resolutely accepted her fate, and died during the night.—Ed.]
