On the completion of our armaments and at the approach of the decisive moment, were the English alarmed for the safety of their island, to collect their strength in front of their principal arsenals, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and the Thames, our three divisions of Brest, Cherbourg, and Antwerp, would attack them, and our wings would turn then upon Ireland and Scotland. Were they, relying upon their skill and bravery, resolved to oppose us in one great body, then the struggle would be reduced to a decisive issue, of which we should have been at liberty to choose the time, the place, and the opportunity;—and this is what the Emperor called the battle of Actium, in which, if we were defeated, we should experience but simple losses, while, if we proved victorious, the enemy would cease to exist. But our triumph, he maintained, was certain, for the two nations would have to contend man to man, and we were upwards of forty millions against fifteen. This was the favourite position on which he uniformly dwelt. Such was one of his grand ideas, his gigantic conceptions.
Napoleon has been the founder of so many establishments, that his works and monuments are injurious to each other by their number, variety, and importance. It was my earnest wish to have given a full relation of his works, which were executed at Cherbourg, as well as of those which he had projected. A person precisely of the profession best qualified to appreciate the subject, and one of its brightest ornaments, has promised me a description of them. Should he keep his word, it shall be given hereafter.
LONG AUDIENCE GIVEN TO THE GOVERNOR.—REMARKABLE
CONVERSATION.
16th.—About nine o’clock, the Emperor took an airing in the calash. There was a vessel in sight, at which he looked through the glass. He invited the Doctor, whom he found employed in the same way, to accompany him. On our return, we breakfasted under the trees. He conversed at great length with the Doctor respecting the Governor’s conduct to us, his endless vexations, &c.
About two o’clock, a person came to enquire if the Emperor would receive the Governor. He gave him an audience that lasted nearly two hours, and ran over, without falling into a passion, he said, all the objects under discussion. He recapitulated all our grievances; enumerated all his wrongs; addressed himself, he observed, by turns to his understanding, his imagination, his feelings, and his heart. He put it in his power to repair all the mischief he had done, to recommence upon a plan altogether new, but in vain, for that man, he declared, was without fibres; nothing was to be expected from him.
This Governor, said the Emperor, assured him that, when the detention of M. de Montholon’s servant took place, he did not know he was in our service, and he added that he had not read Madame Bertrand’s sealed letter. The Emperor observed to him that his letter to Count Bertrand was altogether repugnant to our manners and in direct opposition to our prejudices; that if he, the Emperor, were but a mere general and a private individual, and had received such a letter from him, the Governor, he would have called him out; that a man so well known and respected in Europe, as the Grand Marshal, was not to be insulted, under the penalty of social reprobation; that he did not take a correct view of his situation with regard to us; that all his actions here came within the province of history, and that even the conversation which was passing at that moment belonged to history; that he injured every day, by his conduct, his own government and his own nation, and that in time he might feel the consequences of it; that his government would disclaim his conduct in the end, and that a stain would attach itself to his name, which would disgrace his children. “Will you allow me,” said the Emperor, “to tell you what we think of you? We think you capable of every thing; yes, of every thing; and while you retain your hatred, we shall retain our opinion. I shall still wait for some time, because I like to act upon certainties; and I shall then have to complain, not that the worst proceeding of ministers was to send me to St. Helena, but that they gave you the command of it. You are a greater calamity to us than all the wretchedness of this horrible rock.”
The Governor’s answer to all this was that he was about to make a report to his government; that he learned at least something from the Emperor, but that he received only provoking treatment from us, and that we made matters worse.
With respect to the Commissioners of the powers, whom the Governor wished to present, the Emperor rejected them in their political capacity, but assured the Governor that he would readily receive them as private individuals; that he had no dislike to any one of them, not even to the French Commissioner, M. de Montchenu, who might be a very worthy man, who had been his subject ten years, and, having been an emigrant, was probably indebted to him, the Emperor, for the happiness of returning to France; that, besides, after all, he was a Frenchman; that title was indelible in his eyes, and no opinion could destroy it in his estimation, &c.
With regard to the new buildings at Longwood which were the great object of the Governor’s visit, the Emperor replied to his communication on that topic that he did not wish for them; that he preferred his present inconvenient residence to a better, situated at a great distance, and to be obtained at the expense of a great deal of bustle and the trouble of moving; that the buildings which he had just mentioned to him required years to be completed, and that before that time, either we should not be worth the cost incurred for us, or Providence would have delivered him from us, &c.