The great novelist is assured that the "ex-Emperor" was pre-disposed to the "cruel complaint of which his father died." "The progress of the disease is slow and insidious," says he, which may be true enough, but predisposition can be either checked or accelerated, and the course adopted towards Napoleon was not calculated to retard, but encourage it. But in order to palliate the actions of the British Government and their blindly devoted adherents at St. Helena, Gourgaud, who was not always strictly loyal to his imperial benefactor, is quoted as having stated that he disbelieved in the Emperor's illness, and that the English were much imposed upon.
Why does Scott quote Gourgaud if, as he says, it is probable that the malady was in slow progress even before 1817? The reason is quite clear. He wishes to convey the impression that St. Helena has a salubrious climate, that the Emperor was treated with indulgent courtesy, and had abundance to eat and drink. It will be seen, however, by the records of other chroniclers who were in constant attendance on His Majesty, that Sir Walter Scott's version cannot be relied upon.
If the statements in the annexed letter are true—and there is no substantial reason for doubting them, supported as they are by facts—then it is a complete refutation of what Scott has written as to the health-giving qualities of the island.
Here is the statement of the Emperor's medical adviser (see p. 517, Appendix, vol. ii., "Napoleon in Exile"):—
"The following extract of an official letter transmitted by me to the Lords of the Admiralty, and dated the 28th October, 1818, containing a statement of the vexations inflicted upon Napoleon, will show that the fatal event which has since taken place at St. Helena was most distinctly pointed out by me to His Majesty's Ministers.
"I think it my duty to state, as his late medical attendant, that considering the disease of the liver with which he is afflicted, the progress it has made in him, and reflecting upon the great mortality produced by that complaint in the island of St. Helena (so strongly exemplified in the number of deaths in the 66th Regiment, the St. Helena regiment, the squadron, and Europeans in general, and particularly in His Majesty's ship Conqueror, which ship has lost about one-sixth of her complement, nearly the whole of whom have died within the last eight months), it is my opinion that the life of Napoleon Bonaparte will be endangered by a longer residence in such a climate as that of St. Helena, especially if that residence be aggravated by a continuance of those disturbances and irritations to which he has hitherto been subjected, and of which it is the nature of his distemper to render him peculiarly susceptible.
—(Signed) BARRY E. O'MEARA, Surgeon R.N. To John Wilson Croker, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty."
It is a terrible reflection to think that this note of warning should have gone unheeded. A body of men with a spark of humane feeling would have thrown political exigencies to the winds and defied all the powers of earth and hell to prevent them from at once offering their prisoner a home in the land of a generous people. What had they to fear from a man whose political career ended when he gave himself up to the captain of the Bellerophon, and whose health was now shattered by disease and ill-usage? Had the common people of this nation known all that was being perpetrated in their name, the Duke of Wellington and all his myrmidons could not have withstood the revolt against it, and were such treatment to be meted out to a political prisoner of our day, the wrath of the nation might break forth in a way that would teach tyrants a salutary lesson.
But this great man was at the mercy of a lot of little men. They were too cowardly to shoot him, so they determined on a cunning dastardly process of slow assassination. The pious bard who sings the praises of Napoleon's executioners—Wellington and his coadjutors—and whose "History" was unworthy of the reputations of himself and his publishers, will have sunk into oblivion when the fiery soul of the "Sultan Kebir"[2] will seize on the imagination of generations yet unborn, and intoxicate them with the memory of the deeds that he had done.
Napoleon has said, "In the course of time, nothing will be thought so fine nor seize the attention so much as the doing of justice to me. I shall gain ground every day on the minds of the people. My name will become the star of their rights, it will be the expression of their regrets."[3] This statement is as prophetic as many others, more or less important, made by Napoleon to one or other of his suite. It is remarkable how accurately he foretold events and the impressions that would be formed of himself.