Napoleon's Appeal to the British Nation, on His Treatment at Saint Helena

by Emperor of the French Napoleon I; comte de Charles-Tristan Montholon

General,

I HAVE received the Treaty of the 3d of August 1815, concluded between his Britannic Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, which accompanied your letter of the 23d of July.

The Emperor Napoleon protests against the contents of that Treaty. He is not the prisoner of England. After having placed his abdication in the hands of the Representatives of the Nation, for the advantage of the Constitution adopted by the French People, and in favour of his Son, he repaired voluntarily and freely to England, with the view of living there, as a private individual, under the protection of the British laws. The violation of every law cannot constitute a right. The person of the Emperor Napoleon is actually in the power of England; but he neither has been, nor is, in the power of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, either in fact or of right, even according to the laws and customs of England, which never included, in the exchange of prisoners, Russians, Prussians, Austrians, Spaniards, or Portuguese, though united to these powers by treaties of alliance, and making war conjointly with them.

The Convention of the 2d of August, concluded fifteen days after the Emperor was in England, cannot have of right any effect. It exhibits only a spectacle of the coalition of the four greatest Powers of Europe for the oppression of a single man!—a coalition which the opinion of every nation and all the principles of sound morality equally disavow.

The Emperors of Austria and Russia, and the King of Prussia, having neither in fact or in right any claim over the person of the Emperor Napoleon, could decide nothing respecting him.

Had the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the Emperor of Austria, that Prince would have recollected the relations which religion and nature have formed between a father and a son—relations which are never violated with impunity. He would have recollected that Napoleon had four times restored to him his throne; viz. at Leoben in 1797—at Luneville in 1804, when his armies were under the walls of Vienna—at Presburg in 1806—and at Vienna in 1809, when his armies had possession of the capital and three-fourths of the monarchy! That Prince would have recollected the protestations he made to Napoleon at the bivouac in Moravia in 1806—and at the interview in Dresden in 1812.

Had the person of the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the Emperor Alexander, he would have recollected the ties of friendship contracted at Tilsit, at Erfurth, and during twelve years of daily correspondence. He would have recollected the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon the day after the battle of Austerlitz, when, though he could have made him, with the wreck of his army, prisoner, contented himself, with taking his parole, and allowed him to operate his retreat. He would have recollected the dangers to which the Emperor Napoleon personally exposed himself in order to extinguish the fire at Moscow, and to preserve that capital for him; assuredly, that Prince would never have violated the duties of friendship and gratitude towards a friend in misfortune.

Had the person of the Emperor Napoleon been in the power of the King of Prussia, that Sovereign could not have forgotten that it depended on the Emperor, after the battle of Friedland, to place another Prince on the throne of Berlin. He would not have forgotten, in the presence of a disarmed enemy, the protestations of attachment, and the sentiments of gratitude, which he testified to him in 1812, at the interview in Dresden.

It accordingly appears, from Articles II. and V. of the Treaty of the 2d of August, that these Princes, being incapable of exercising any influence over the disposal of the Emperor, who was not in their power, accede to what may be done thereon by his Britannic Majesty, who takes upon himself the charge of fulfilling every obligation. These Princes have reproached the Emperor Napoleon with having preferred the protection of the English laws to their’s. The false ideas which the Emperor Napoleon had formed of the liberality of the laws of England, and of the influence of the opinion of a great, generous, and free people over their government, decided him to prefer the protection of these laws to that of a father-in-law, or an old friend.

The Emperor Napoleon had it in his power to secure, by a diplomatic treaty, whatever was personal to himself, by putting himself either at the head of the army of the Loire, or at the head of the army of the Gironde, commanded by General Clausel; but wishing, henceforth, for nothing but retirement, and the protection of the laws of a free state, either English or American, all stipulations appeared to him unnecessary. He conceived that the English people were more bound by a conduct which was, on his part, frank, noble, and full of confidence, than they would have been by the most solemn treaties. He has been deceived: but this error will for ever cause true Britons to blush; and will, in the present, as well as the future generations, be a proof of the bad faith of the English administration.