The Tragedy of St. Helena

by Baron Walter Runciman Runciman

Tumult raged round the Emperor during the whole of his public career, and powerful agencies were constantly proclaiming against him and his methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of democracy, which cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere. His system destroyed and affected too many interests not to leave behind it feelings of revenge, but this revenge did not exist among the common people. Those who persecuted the common people felt his heavy hand upon them. The populace entered into his service in shoals, only to betray him when the time of trial came. He knew the risk he ran, but did not shrink from it. He hoped that he might bring them to adopt the great principles he held and the plan he had in view.

His ambition was to seek out all those who had talent and character and give them the opportunity of developing their gifts for the benefit of the race. Humble origin had no deterrent effect on him. His most brilliant officers and men of position sprang from the middle and lower middle class, and taking them as a whole, their devotion never gave way, even during the most terrible adversity that ever befell mortal man. One small instance of admiration and sympathy is evidenced by the beautiful reverence shown by the officers and men of the English army and navy, who defiled before the dead hero's remains and bent their knees to the ground.

Montholon says that "some of the officers entreated to be allowed the honour of pressing to their lips the cloak of Marengo which covered the Emperor's feet." Lowe must have felt a pang of remorse when he saw these simple men pouring out in their sailorly and soldierly way tokens of profound sorrow. Everything that could had been done to cause their captive to be regarded as a menace to human safety, and to be forgotten altogether; but how futile to attempt such a task while the world of civilisation is swayed by human instinct and not by barbarity!

The report of Napoleon's death did not relieve the anxieties of the European Cabinets. They knew the danger of being overwhelmed by a revulsion of feeling, and the difficulty of stopping the masses once they are set in motion, and there were strong manifestations of the popular indignation breaking loose, with all the terrible consequences of a reign of terror. The feeling of grief was universal and intense. A spark might have caused a great conflagration. Lord Holland declared in Parliament that the very persons who detested this great man had acknowledged that for ten centuries there had not appeared upon earth a more extraordinary character.... "All Europe," he added, "has worn mourning for the hero"; and those who contributed to that great sacrifice are destined to be the objects of the execrations of the present generation as well as to those of posterity.

Just at the time the great spirit of the hero was passing on to the Elysian Fields, there, as he used to fancifully foreshadow, to meet his brave comrades in arms who had preceded him, a tempest of unusual severity broke over "the abode of darkness and of crimes." Houses were shaken to their foundation; the favourite willow-tree, where he had often sat and enjoyed the fresh breezes, was torn up by the hurricane, as indeed were the other trees round about Longwood. This terrible disturbance of the elements was characteristically interpreted as being the voice of the living God proclaiming to the world that the Emperor was being thundered into eternity to meet his Creator, and to be judged by Him for the wrongs his political and other opponents said he was guilty of towards themselves and the human race generally. In true British orthodoxy, the Great Judge is always claimed as a fellow-countryman, and Sir Walter Scott is not singular in attributing this phenomenal disturbance as an indication of coming vengeance against England's prisoner. The Scottish bard is not altogether impartial in the send-off of the exile. He associates another colossal personage with the great Corsican. The Lord Protector, we are reminded, was similarly borne from time into eternity on the wings of a devasting tornado. Poor Oliver! whose war-cry was "The Lord of Hosts," and who never doubted that he was the high commissioner sent by the Almighty to clean the earth of mischievous Royalists, traitors, Papists, and other ungovernable creatures in Ireland and elsewhere.

It does not appear to have struck these gentlemen, with their thoughts centred on Holy Writ and finding comfort in the support it gave to their contention, that the Great God, instead of making nature break out with such terrible violence to indicate His displeasure against this wonderful man, made in His own image and sent by Him to serve both a divine and a human purpose, was using accumulated natural forces to show His wrath at the culmination of the most atrocious tragedy that had ever been perpetrated.

The good Sir Walter and the unctuously pious biographer of Sir Hudson are obviously overcome by the coincidence of the storm and Napoleon's death coming simultaneously. To them it is the voice of God shouting forth gladness that the enemy of the British race is being made to pay the penalty of all the evil he has wrought. This is a very comforting conclusion to arrive at after having kept your victim on the rack for six years and made war on him for twenty, but did it never occur to them that the greatest sacrifice ever offered culminated in just such natural disturbances and that at the same time "the veil of the temple was rent in twain"?

Happily for the fair fame of human rights, many writers of Napoleonic history have got over national prejudices and timidity, and are chronicling very different views from those of Sir Walter and the uninteresting defender of Lowe; and the more impartial the minds who inquire into the first as well as the last phase of this extraordinary career, the more will it appear that he was not an enemy, but a powerful reforming agency of mankind. He vowed over and over again that he "never conquered unless in his own defence, and that Europe never ceased to make war upon France and her principles." And again he asserted: "One of my grand objects was to render education accessible to everybody. I caused every institution to be formed upon a plan which offered instruction to the public, either gratis or at a rate so moderate, as not to be beyond the means of the peasant. The museums were thrown open to the canaille. My canaille would have become the best educated in the world. All my exertions were directed to illuminate the mass of the nation instead of brutifying them by ignorance and superstition." These ideals are in striking contrast to the policy of the oligarchy of Europe, who were fighting to suppress knowledge and to re-establish the worst form of superstition and despotism.

It is a deplorable thought that the nations (and especially Great Britain) who allied themselves against this man of the people and sent him to an inhuman death might have saved themselves the eternal condemnation of future ages had they made their peace with him, as the sagacious Charles James Fox would have done had he lived. Had they been wise, they would have made use of his matchless gifts and well-balanced mind to help forward the regeneration of the human chaos which was both the cause and the result of the Revolution. Above all, had the "Liberty loving" British nation been true to her declared principles, she would either have kept aloof from the conflict that was raging or found some honourable means of co-operating with him, and thereby earned a share of the glory that will be eternally attached to his name in the great effort of extinguishing thraldom and ameliorating the condition of the masses.

Instead of this, she basely linked her destiny with the traitors of France and the allies of Europe to dethrone the monarch elected by the French people, and to place in his stead a king who was forced upon them by the Allies, and not the people of France. This is a strange travesty of "Liberty loving" government. Had the great Quaker been kept in power, instead of Pitt, who was always in a chronic state of scare and whining that he could never survive the downfall of his country, the rivers of British blood that were shed and the eight hundred million pounds sterling of debt need not have been squandered. All this was done at the bidding of a few men who were entrusted with the government of a great nation, and either by odious deception, or sheer incapacity to judge of the fitness of things, caused it to be believed that they were bound to maintain the balance of power or status quo which was endangered, and that the one man who had upset their nerves and incurred their hatred should be removed at all costs.