His palaces were said to be harems, and his libertinism to put Oriental potentates to the blush. So industrious were these foes to human fairness that they manufactured a silly story just before the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens, to the effect that Napoleon had made a violent attack on Lord Whitworth, the British Ambassador. So violent was he in his gestures, the Ambassador feared lest the First Consul would strike him. Even Oscar Browning is obliged to refute this unworthy fabrication as being absurd on the face of it, but it has taken ninety years to produce the authentic document from the British Archives which disproves the scandal. Napoleon was too much absorbed in things that mattered to take notice of the stupid though virulent stories that were constantly being concocted against him. When he was appealed to by his friends to have the libels suitably dealt with, he merely shrugged his shoulders, as was his custom, and said, "All this rubbish will be answered, if not in my time, by posterity. It pleases the chatterers and scandalmongers, and I haven't time to be perturbed, or to meddle with it."
It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the side of morality. It is well enough known that the French Court during the Empire was the purest in Europe. In his domestic arrangements, the one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that his Court should have the reputation of being clean. He took infinite pains to assure himself of this. His private amorous connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a staunch admirer of his. But to accuse him of libertinism is an outrage. He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal friends. As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so. Not merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]
His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation under which any of his priests were bound in the shade. So shocked were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of so corrupt a monster. But the moral dodge fell flat. It was not exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and rugged tars aboard the Bellerophon and Northumberland were drawn in touching sympathy towards the man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent belief that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of war.
We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to avail himself of them. He had resolved after his abdication to live the time that was left to him in retirement, and believing in the generosity of the British nation, he threw himself on their hospitality. He had made his way through a network of blockade when he returned from Egypt and Elba, and looking at the facts as they are now before us, it is preposterous to adhere to the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed in that he had no option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as the guest of England aboard the Bellerophon, and it may be taken for granted that the resourceful sailors knew that he had many channels of escape. They knew the Bellerophon was a slow old tub, and that she would be nowhere in a chase.
Besides, it was not necessary for Napoleon to make Rochefort or Rochelle his starting-point. The troops and seamen at these and the neighbouring ports were all devoted to him, and would have risked everything to save him from capture. He knew all this, but he was possessed of an innate belief in the chivalry of the British character, and left out of account the class of men that were in power. He knew them to be his inveterate foes, but was deceived in believing they had hearts. Their foremost soldier had taken an active share in his defeat, and he acknowledged it by putting himself under the protection of our laws. The honest English seamen who were his shipmates on both ships were not long in forming a strong liking to him, and a dislike to the treatment he was receiving. They felt there was something wrong, though all they could say about it was that "he was a d——d good fellow."
Lord Keith was so afraid of his fascinating personality after his visit to the Bellerophon that he said, "D——n the fellow! if he had obtained an interview with His Royal Highness, in half an hour they would have been the best friends in England." In truth, Lord Keith lost a fine opportunity of saving British hospitality from the blight of eternal execration by evading the lawyer who came to Plymouth to serve a writ of Habeas Corpus to claim the Emperor's person, and the pity is that an honoured name should have been associated with a mission so crimeful and an occasion so full of illimitable consequences to England's boasted generosity. Except that he too well carried out his imperious instructions, Lord Keith does not come well out of the beginning of the great tragedy. The only piece of real delicacy shown by Lord Keith to the Emperor was in allowing him to retain his arms, and snubbing a secretary who reminded him that the instructions were that all should be disarmed. This zealous person was told to mind his own business.
Napoleon asks the Admiral if there is any tribunal to which he can apply to determine the legality of him being sent to St. Helena, as he protested that he was the guest and not the prisoner of the British nation; and Keith, with an air of condescending benevolence, assures him that he is satisfied there is every disposition on the part of the Government to render his situation as comfortable as prudence would permit. No wonder Napoleon's reply was animated, and his soul full of dignified resentment at the perfidy that was about to be administered to him under the guise of beneficence.
Scott describes the interview with Keith as "a remarkable scene." He says: "His (Napoleon's) manner was perfectly calm and collected, his voice equal and firm, his tones very pleasing, the action of the head was dignified, and the countenance remarkably soft and placid, without any marks of severity." That is a good testimony from the author of the "Waverley Novels," who was anything but an impartial biographer. Not even the novelist's most ardent admirers (and the writer is one of them) can give him credit for excessive partiality towards the hero who was the first soldier, statesman, and ruler of the age, who not only knew the art of conquering men as no other (not even Alexander) had ever known it, but had the greater quality of knowing how to conquer and govern himself under conditions that were unexampled in the history of man.
I say again, that apart from the violence of the treatment of the Powers towards him (and they all had a shameful share in it), it was a fatal blunder to send this great mind to perish on a rock when, by adopting a more humane policy, his incomparable genius might have been used to carry out the reforms he had set his mind on after his return from Elba. The tumult which surrounded his career had changed; he saw with a clear vision the dawn of a new era, and at once proclaimed to Benjamin Constant and to the French nation his great scheme of renewing the heart of things. He knew it would take time, and he foresaw also that a combination of forces was putting forth supreme efforts to destroy him. They were out for blood, and he was in too great a hurry.
In one of his day-dreams at St. Helena he exclaimed, "Ah! if I could have governed France for forty years I would have made her the most splendid empire that ever existed!"