The end came at last in 1821. The disease of which his father had died held Napoleon as well in its grip. He was an intractable patient, and diagnosis was not easy, but it certainly seems that the medical treatment he received was unspeakably bad. He was dosed with tartar emetic, of all drugs, at a time when his stomach was deranged with cancer. At times he suffered frightful agony. He bore it somehow; argued with his doctors, chaffed his friends, until at last he sank into unconsciousness, and he died while a great storm howled round the island. The lies and contradictions of the memoirists persist even here, for no one knows accurately what were his last words, or when they were uttered.
The post-mortem report is sufficient to convince any reader that none of the doctors concerned knew their business;[[A]] the man who had once ruled Europe was now thrust into a coffin too small to allow him to wear his complete uniform, so that his hat rested on his stomach; and he was buried in one of his old favourite spots in the island. Once more there arose the old vexed question of title, for the French wished to inscribe “Napoleon” on the coffin; Lowe insisted on “Bonaparte” being added; in the end it was a nameless coffin which was lowered into the grave.
| [A] | It is, I believe, a fact never previously published that the first post-mortem certificate drawn up by the doctors responsible was rejected by Sir Hudson Lowe. It contained the words “the liver was perhaps a little larger than natural,” and this remark naturally did not commend itself to Lowe, in consequence of the fierce quarrels he had had with Napoleon on this very subject. The post-mortem certificate in the English Record Office does not contain these words, but the Rev. Canon E. Brook Jackson, Rector of Streatham, has in his possession the earlier certificate, signed by the doctors concerned, with the footnote “N.B.—The words obliterated were suppressed by order of Sir Hudson Lowe. Signed, Thomas Short, P.M.O.” The words referred to are clearly legible and are those given above. |
Napoleon failed during his lifetime, but he was triumphant after death. His gallant fight at St. Helena against overwhelming odds was remembered with pride by every Frenchman. Men hearing garbled versions of his sufferings felt a pricking of their consciences that they had abandoned him in 1814 and 1815. The helpless policy of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and the humdrum policy of Louis Philippe set all minds thinking of the glorious days, not so very long ago, when France had been Queen of the Continent. Louis Napoleon skilfully employed the revulsion of feeling to his own advantage, and the glory of Austerlitz and Jena was sufficient to hide the absurdities of Boulogne and Strasbourg. But it was the six years’ struggle of St. Helena which made so refulgent that glory of Austerlitz.
What the British Government could have done to prevent the formation of a St. Helena legend cannot easily be decided. They were in terror lest he should escape again, and severe ordinances were necessary to prevent this. Had they treated him luxuriously, public opinion in England would have been roused to a dangerous pitch. They had originally tried to get out of the difficulty by handing him over to Louis XVIII. for execution, but Louis XVIII. had no real case against him. A state trial would have given Napoleon unbounded opportunities for the rhetoric in which he delighted, and which had so often rallied France to his side. Napoleon might well have pleaded, with perfect truth, that in the descent from Elba he was no rebel, but the Emperor of Elba making war upon the King of France; but so tame a plea would hardly have been employed. Napoleon would have proclaimed himself the purest altruist come to see that the French people obtained their rights, or to save France from the machinations of tyrants. Louis was wise in refusing the offer. The custody of Napoleon was thus thrust upon the British Government. If remarkably far-sighted, they might have lapped him in every luxury; have treated him subserviently as if he was Emperor in fact as well as in name; they might have encouraged him to debauchery as wild as Tiberius’ at Capri; and then by subtle propaganda they might have exhibited him to a scornful world as a man who cared nothing for his lost greatness, or for the dependence of his position. Such a scheme appealed favourably to the imagination, but there was an insuperable obstacle—Napoleon. Napoleon had a definite plan of campaign. He was going to complain about everything and everybody with whom he came in contact. He was going to clamour unceasingly against the brutality and arbitrariness of his gaolers. Without regard for truth he was going to proclaim continually that he was being ill-treated and martyred, and he would have done it whatever had been his treatment, and, being Napoleon, he would have done it well. The error of the British Government lay in their affording him so many opportunities, not in their affording him any at all.
And after he was dead there followed the events which he had foreseen and over whose engendering he had laboured so diligently. Little by little the evil features of the Imperial régime were forgotten; the glory of his victories blazed more brightly in comparison with the exhaustion of France under the Bourbons and the pettifogging Algerian razzias of Louis Philippe. The literature of St. Helena, both the spurious and the inspired, induced men to believe that Napoleon was the exact opposite of what he really was. It gave him credit for the achievements of Carnot; it shifted the disgrace of failure on to the shoulders of helpless scapegoats. It proved to the satisfaction of the uninquiring that Napoleon stood for democracy, for the principle of nationality, and even for peace. It raised to the Imperial throne the man who said “the Empire means peace.” The whole legend which developed was a flagrant denial of patent facts, but it was a denial sufficiently reiterated to be believed. The belief is not yet dead.
LOUIS NAPOLEON, KING OF HOLLAND