The Tragedy of St. Helena

by Baron Walter Runciman Runciman

Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great was mainly acquired because the Powers and circumstances allowed him to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.

Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's career that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic. He really usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral laws. There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an industrious mediocrity.

These legitimate monarchs, through their Ministers, used barefacedly to inspire journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as being a natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation. History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an impudent hypocrisy. They might have had it at any time, but this did not suit their policy of legitimacy. Countless thousands of human beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings and nobles to the plan of one man who towered above them, and insisted on breaking up the nefarious system of feudalism and kingship by divine right. They loathed both him and his system. They plotted for his assassination, and intrigued with all the ferocity of wild animals against his humane and enlightened government. He trampled over all their satanic dodges to overthrow the power that had been so often enthusiastically placed in his hands by the sovereign people. He constructed roads and canals, and introduced new methods of creating commerce. He introduced a great scheme of expanding education, science, art, literature. Every phase of enlightenment was not only initiated, but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its application. He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of laws that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and eminently just.

He not only re-established religion, but he upheld the authority of the Pope as the recognised head of the Roman Church. He built his "pyramids in the sea," established a free press, and declared himself in favour of manhood suffrage. He included in his system a unification of all the small continental States, and was declaimed against as a brigand for doing it. Wherever his plans were carried out the people were prosperous and happy, so long as they were allowed to toil in their own way in their fields and in other industrial pursuits.

It was the perpetual spirit of war that overshadowed the whole of Europe which prevented his rule from solving a great problem. He, in this, was invariably the aggrieved. The plan which he had carried into practical solution was wrecked by the allies, and in less than a century after the great reformer had been removed from the sphere of enmity and usefulness, Prince Bismarck forced these small States into unification with the German Empire, thereby carrying into effect the very system Napoleon was condemned for bringing under his suzerainty. What satire, what malignity of fate, that Bismarck, a positive refutation of genius in comparison with the French Emperor, should succeed in resurrecting the fabric that the latter had so proudly built up for France, only to be in a few short years the prize of Germany, recognised by the very Powers who fought with such embittered aggressiveness against the great captain and statesman who made not only modern France, but modern Europe; and who at any time during his reign could, by making a sign, as he has said, have had the nobles of France massacred. These bloodsucking creatures were always in the road of reform, always steeped overhead in political intrigue, always concerned in plots against the life of Napoleon, and always shrieking with resentment when they and their accomplices were caught. Some writers are so completely imbued with the righteousness of murdering Napoleon, they convey the impression that when any attempt failed, the perpetrators, instead of being punished, should have had the decoration of the Legion of Honour placed upon them by himself. They are also quite unconscious that they are backing a mean revenge and an awful mockery of freedom when they eloquently shout "Hosanna!"

According to them St. Helena was the only solution of the problem, if it may be so called, and the Powers who sent him there must have had an inspiration from above. They have no conception that the Allies perpetrated another crucifixion on the greatest and (if we are to judge him by reliable records) the best man of the nineteenth century. Ah! fickle France! you are blighted with eternal shame for having allowed these cowardly vindictive conspirators, popularly called the Allies, to besmear you, as well as themselves, with the blood of a hero.

France had resources at her command which could and should have been used to drive the invaders beyond her boundaries. Frenchmen can never live down the great blunder of abandoning their Emperor, forsaking themselves and the duty they owed to their native land. They forsook in the hour of need all that was noble and honourable, and cast themselves into a cauldron of treason, such as has never been heard of in the world's history. They were soon disillusioned, but it was then too late. The poison had done its work, and France was placed under the subjection of traitors, place-hunters and foreign Powers for many years to come.

I have already said that Louis XVIII. was put on the throne, not by the French people, but by their conquerors and their myrmidons. He did not long survive his ignoble accession. Then came Charles X., who had to fly to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh because he governed so ill. His qualification to rule was in putting down all reform and liberty; after him came Louis Philippe, but even he only governed on sufferance, though on the whole he occupied an onerous position with creditable success. A monarch who rules under the tender mercies of a capricious people, and worse still, a capricious and not too scrupulous monarchy of monarchs, is not to be envied, and this was exactly the position of Louis Philippe. He was beset by the noisy clamour of many factions, besides having to keep a shrewd eye on those lofty men to whom he had to look with perpetual nervous tension for the stability and endurance of his throne. He knew the heart of the nation was centred on St. Helena, and that a wave of repentance was passing over the land. The people wished to atone for the crime they allowed to be committed in 1815.

Louis Philippe showed great wisdom and foresight. Nothing could have been done with more suitable delicacy than the negotiations which caused the British Government to consent to give the remains of the Emperor up to the French. The air of importance and swagger put into it by Lord Palmerston is supremely farcical, but then the whole senseless blunder from beginning to end was a farce, which does not redound to our credit. It is incredible that a nation so thickly stocked with men of ability in every important department should have had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive. Men of meagre mental calibre, who hold office under the Crown or anywhere else, are invariably fussy, pompous, overbearing, and stifling with conceit. This condition of things was in full swing during the Napoleonic regime and captivity, and that is the period we are concerned about. There does not appear to have been a single man of genius in Europe but himself. The population of France who were contemporary with him during his meteoric leadership remembered him as a matchless reformer and an unconquerable warrior. Their devotion and belief in his great gifts had sunk deeply into their being. A couple of generations had come into existence from 1815 to 1840, but even to those who knew him only as a captive, he was as much their Emperor and their hero and martyr as he was to his contemporaries. The pride of race, the glory of the Empire and of its great founder, was suckled into them from the time of birth, and as they grew into manhood and womanhood they became permeated with a passionate devotion to his cause. They claimed that his deliverance to the people "he loved so well" was a right that should not be withheld. The spirit of sullen determination that he should be given up had taken deep root. They had arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark would have created a conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant business, and were resolved that they would stand no more red-tape fussy nonsense from either their Government or the Government who kept a regiment of British soldiers to guard his tomb, lest he should again disturb the peace of Europe. They let it be known that no more of that kind of humbug would be tolerated without reprisals, and the hint was taken. Louis Philippe grasped the situation, and formed an expedition with his son Prince Joinville as chief, who was accompanied by Baron Las Cases, member of the Chamber of Deputies; General Count Bertrand; M. l'Abbé Conquereau, almoner to the expedition; four former servants of Napoleon—viz., Saint Denis and Noverraz, valets-de-chambre; Pierron, officer of the kitchen; and Archambaud, butler—Marchand, one of the executors, and the quarrelsome and disloyal General Gourgaud, of whom we may have something more to say further on. This same Gourgaud, who lied so infamously about his Imperial benefactor when he landed in London, has said that "he could not express what he felt when he again found himself near that extraordinary being, that giant of the human race, to whom he had sacrificed all and to whom he owed all he was." These thoughts, and many more not uttered, would come to him when he stood beside the sepulchre of the master whom he had so grievously wronged and who was now and henceforth to be recognised as having been the "legitimate ruler of his country."

Count Montholon, the most devoted and most constant follower of Napoleon and his family, was not of the expedition. He was engaged in helping the nephew of his hero to ascend the throne of his illustrious uncle, and the effort landed them both in the fortress of Ham. Louis Philippe and his Ministers were very jealous of anyone sharing in any part of the glory of having Napoleon brought to the banks of the Seine. Hence, when King Joseph and Prince Louis Napoleon offered the arms of the Emperor to the nation, the King refused them, but prevailed upon General Bertrand to give them to him, that he might give them to the nation. Napoleon had given the sword he wore at Austerlitz and his arms to Bertrand when on his deathbed. Prince Louis could not stand the great captain's name being trumpeted about for other people's glory. He claimed that it belonged to him. He was the legitimate heir to all its glory, and this too previous assumption got him imprisoned in Ham for asserting what he protested was his right.