The winds, to our great astonishment, veered to the west, (a circumstance which the Admiral informed us was more common than we supposed) and this tended to favour his opinion. He abandoned the bad sailers of his squadron, in proportion as they lagged behind: and he determined on gaining the place of his destination with all possible speed.
A STORM.—EXAMINATION OF CERTAIN LIBELS UPON
THE EMPEROR.—GENERAL REFLECTIONS.
14th-18th. After a few slight gales and several calms, we had on the 16th a considerable fall of rain, to the great joy of the crew. The heat was very moderate; it may, indeed, be said that, with the exception of the storm at Madeira, we had uniformly enjoyed mild weather. But water was very scarce on board the ship; and, for the sake of economy, the crew took advantage of the opportunity of collecting the rain water, of which each sailor laid by a little store for his own use. The rain fell heavily just as the Emperor had got upon deck to take his afternoon walk. But this did not disappoint him of his usual exercise; he merely called for his famous grey great coat, which the English regarded with deep interest. The Grand Marshal and I attended the Emperor in his walk. The rain descended heavily for upwards of an hour; when the Emperor left the deck, I had great difficulty in stripping off my wet clothes; almost every thing I wore was soaked through.
For several succeeding days the weather continued very rainy; this somewhat impeded my labours, for the damp penetrated into our wretched little cabin; and on the other hand, it was not very agreeable to walk on deck. This was the first time during our passage that we had had any thing like a continuance of wet weather; and it quite disconcerted us. I filled up the intervals, between my hours of occupation, in conversing with the officers of the ship. I was not on intimate terms with any of them; but I kept up a daily intercourse of civility and politeness to them all. They loved to talk with us on French affairs, and their ignorance of all that concerned France and the French people was almost incredible. We excited mutual astonishment in each other: they surprised us by their degenerate political principles, and we astonished them by our new ideas and manners, of which they had previously formed no conception. They certainly knew infinitely less of France than of China.
One of the principal officers of the ship, in a familiar conversation, happened to say—“I suppose you would be very much alarmed if we were to land you on the coast of France?”—“Why so?” I enquired.—“Because,” replied he, “the King would perhaps make you pay dearly for having left your country to follow another Sovereign; and also because you wear a cockade which he has prohibited.”—“And is this language becoming an Englishman?” observed I. “You must be degenerate indeed! You are, it is true, far removed from the period of your revolution, to which you so justly apply the epithet glorious. But we, who are nearer to ours, by which we have gained so much, may tell you that every word you say is heresy. In the first place, our punishment depends not on the King’s pleasure; we are subject only to the law. Now, there exists no law against us; and if any law were to be violated for the purpose of applying to our case, it would be your duty to protect us. Your general has pledged himself to do so by the capitulation of Paris; and it would be an eternal disgrace to the English Ministry were they to permit the sacrifice of lives which their public faith had solemnly guaranteed.
“In the next place, we are not following another sovereign. That the Emperor Napoleon was our sovereign is an undeniable fact; but he has abdicated, and his reign is at an end. You are confounding private actions with party measures; love and devotedness, with political opinions. Finally, with regard to our colours, which seem to have dazzled you so much, they are but a remnant of our old costume. We wear them to-day, only because we wore them yesterday. One cannot with indifference lay aside things to which one is attached; that can only be done from constraint or necessity. Why did you not deprive us of our colours when you deprived us of our arms?—the one act would have been as reasonable as the other. We are here only as private men; we do not preach sedition. We cannot deny that these colours are dear to us: we are attached to them because they have seen us victorious over all our enemies; because we have paraded them in triumph through every capital in Europe; and because we wore them while we were the first nation in the world.”
On another occasion, one of the officers, after glancing at the extraordinary vicissitude of recent events, said—“Who knows whether we may not yet be destined to repair the misfortunes which we have occasioned to you? What would be your astonishment if Wellington should one day conduct Napoleon back to Paris?”—“I should be astonished indeed,” I replied: “but I should certainly decline the honour of being one of the party: at such a price, I would not hesitate to abandon Napoleon himself! But I may rest easy on that score; for I can swear Napoleon will never put me to such a trial. It is from him I imbibe these sentiments: it was he who cured me of the contrary doctrine, which I call the error of my youth.”
The English were very fond of asking us questions concerning the Emperor, whose character and disposition, as they afterwards avowed, had been represented to them in the falsest colours. It was not their fault, they observed, if they formed an erroneous estimate of his character: they knew him only through the works published in England, which were all greatly exaggerated, and much to his prejudice: they had several of these publications on board the ship.—One day I happened to cast my eyes on one of a most malignant character: on another occasion, when I was about to look at a book which one of the officers was reading, he suddenly closed it, observing it was so violent against the Emperor that he could not prevail on himself to let me see it. Another time, the Admiral questioned me respecting certain imputations contained in different works in his library, some of which he said enjoyed a degree of credit, while all had produced a great sensation, in England. This circumstance suggested to me the idea of successively examining all the works of this kind that were on board the ship, in order to note down my opinion of them in my journal—conceiving that so favourable an opportunity might never again occur of obtaining, if I chose, information on those points which it might be worth while to enquire into.
Before I commence my review of these works, I must beg to offer a few general remarks: they will suffice to answer by anticipation many of the numberless accusations that will fall in my way. Calumny and falsehood are the arms of the civil or political, the foreign or domestic enemy. They are the resource of the vanquished and the feeble, of those who are governed by hatred or fear.—They are the food of the drawing-room, and the garbage of the public place: they rage with the greater fury in proportion as their object is exalted: there is nothing which they will not venture to promulgate. The more absurd, ridiculous, and incredible calumnies and falsehoods may be, the more eagerly are they received and repeated from mouth to mouth. Triumph and success are but fresh causes of irritation: a moral storm will invariably gather; and, bursting in the moment of adversity, it will precipitate and complete the fall, and become the immense lever of public opinion.
No man was ever so much assailed and abused as Napoleon. No individual was ever the subject of so many pamphlets, libels, atrocious and absurd stories and false assertions. Nor could it be otherwise. Napoleon, risen from the common rank of life to supreme distinction; advancing at the head of a revolution which he himself had civilized; plunged by these two circumstances into a deadly contest with the rest of Europe—a contest in which he was subdued only because he wished to terminate it too speedily—Napoleon uniting in himself the genius, the force, the destiny of his own power, the conqueror of his neighbours, and, in some measure, a universal Monarch—a Marius in the eyes of the aristocrats of Europe, a Sylla for the demagogues, a Cæsar for the republicans—could not but raise against himself a hurricane of passions both at home and abroad.