By Sir W. Q. Orchardson, R.A.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W.
His “star” had led him far from insignificant Ajaccio and was now leading him still further. Unknown lad, cadet, lieutenant, general, emperor, statesman, constructor, destructor, he had been all, and more. Destiny had now set him a far more difficult task, namely, to reign over himself. In this he was perhaps less successful than myriads who have gone down to the grave in silence, and whose names find no place in the printed page or the scrolls of history. In lonely St Helena, isolated from other human habitation, spied on by soldiers of the army which had done so much to bring about his downfall, but surrounded by a little band of men who refused to desert him in his last days of trial and despair, he spent the remainder of a life which had been lived to the full. Sometimes his old enthusiasm would revive as he reviewed the history of a campaign, at others he would show the capriciousness of a spoilt child at the over-conscientious sense of duty displayed by Sir Hudson Lowe, the Governor of the island. It is perhaps a more dramatic ending to so marvellous a story than if he had fallen in battle. Many men have met their death in that way, but there has been but one Imperial prisoner at St Helena, the exiled monarch whose soul took its flight on the stormy night of the 5th May 1821.
“The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings;
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.”
“I desire that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people I have loved so well,” wrote Napoleon in his will, and the nation responded with emotion to the wish of its great Son. They forgot that he had lavished French treasure and resources as a spendthrift, that his insane ambitions had brought them financial and political ruin; they forgave him that he had led the youth of France to the shambles and had bereaved their homes of fathers, of husbands, of brothers, of sons. They remembered only that he had glorified France, and in the midst of beautiful Paris they raised the most noble Tomb that the genius of modern times has conceived. It is a sacred place of pilgrimage to every son and daughter of France, and men and women of other nations pass, a continual stream, before the massive sarcophagus which—oh, irony of fate!—was hewn out of a Russian quarry, the memorial tribute of Czar Nicholas I. to his brother’s mighty antagonist. None who enters that quiet place fails to bow the head before those ashes, and we, too, perhaps from afar, may reflect one moment upon the vanity of human glory and ponder the eternal truth:
“Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.”
The less deeply shaded portion shows the extent of the French Empire at the height of Napoleon’s power. The darker part shows its diminished size after 1815.