The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

The accusations brought by the prisoner and his instruments against the government of England, in regard to the accommodations at Longwood, the arrangements concerning the household establishment, and the regulations adopted with a view to the security of his person, have been so often answered in detail, that we may spare ourselves the pain of dwelling on transactions little worthy of filling a large space in the story of Napoleon. It being granted that it was necessary to provide against the evasion of Buonaparte; that the protracted separation from him of his wife and son (not, at any rate, the act of England, but of Austria) was in itself justified by obvious political considerations; and that England would have given good reason of offence to the King of France, had she complied with Napoleon's repeated demands, to be styled and treated as Emperor—if these things be granted, we do not see how even the shadow of blame can attach to the much-abused ministers, on whom fortune threw one of the most delicate and thankless of all offices. His house was, save one (that of the governor), the best on the island: from the beginning it was signified that any alterations or additions, suggested by Napoleon, would be immediately attended to; and the framework of many apartments was actually prepared in England, to be sent out and distributed according to his pleasure. As it was, Napoleon had for his own immediate personal accommodation, a suite of rooms, consisting of a saloon, an eating-room, a library, a billiard-room, a small study, a bedroom, and a bathroom; and various English gentlemen, accustomed to all the appliances of modern luxury, who visited the exile of Longwood, concur in stating that the accommodations around him appeared to them every way complete and unobjectionable. He had a good collection of books, and the means of adding to these as much as he chose. His suite consisted in all of five gentlemen and two ladies: the superior French and Italian domestics about his own person were never fewer than eleven; and the sum allowed for his domestic expenditure was £12,000 per annum—the governor of St. Helena, moreover, having authority to draw on the treasury for any larger sum, in case he should consider £12,000 as insufficient. When we consider that wines, and most other articles heavily taxed in England, go duty-free to St. Helena, it is really intolerable to be told that this income was not adequate—nay, that it was not munificent—for a person in Napoleon's situation. It was a larger income than is allotted to the governor of any English colony whatever, except the governor-general of India. It was twice as large as the official income of a British secretary of state has ever been. We decline entering at all into the minor charges connected with this humiliating subject: at least a single example may serve. One of the loudest complaints was about the deficiency and inferior quality of wine: on examination it appeared, that Napoleon's upper domestics were allowed each day, per man, a bottle of claret, costing £6 per dozen (without duty) and the lowest menial employed at Longwood a bottle of good Teneriffe wine daily.—That the table of the fallen Emperor himself was always served in a style at least answerable to the dignity of a general officer in the British service—this was never even denied. Passing from the interior—we conceive that we cannot do better than quote the language of one of his casual and impartial visitors, Mr. Ellis. "There never, perhaps," (says this gentleman), "was a prisoner, so much requiring to be watched and guarded, to whom so much liberty and range for exercise was allowed. With an officer he may go over any part of the island: wholly unobserved, his limits extend four miles—partially observed, eight—and overlooked twelve. At night the sentinels certainly close round Longwood itself." It indeed appears impossible to conceive of a prisoner more liberally treated in all these respects. There remains the constantly repeated vituperation of the climate of St. Helena. It appears, however, by tables kept and published by Dr. Arnott, that the sick list of a regiment, stationed close to Buonaparte's residence during his stay, rarely contained more than one name out of forty-five—a proportion which must be admitted to be most remarkably small. In effect, the house of Longwood stands 2000 feet above the level of the sea; the ocean breezes purify the air continually; and within the tropics there is probably no healthier situation whatever. If it be said that Napoleon should not have been confined within the tropics at all—it is answered that it was necessary to remove him from the neighbourhood of the countries in which his name was the watchword of rebellion and discord—and that, after all, Napoleon was a native of Corsica, one of the hottest climates in Europe, and was at all times, constitutionally, able to endure the extremes of heat much better than of cold—witness Egypt and Russia.

There was a rule that Napoleon's correspondence should all pass through the hands of the governor of St. Helena—and this Sir Walter Scott condemns. Had the English government acted on the Buonapartean model, they would have made no such regulation, but taken the liberty of privately examining his letters, and resealing them, after the fashion of the post-office under Lavalette. It diminishes our regret when we learn from Sir Walter Scott's next page, that, in spite of all laws and severities on this score, Napoleon and the companions of his exile contrived, from the beginning to the end, to communicate with their friends in Europe, without the supervision of any English authorities whatever.

The finishing touch is put to the picture of unworthy duplicity by one of Napoleon's own followers, and most noisy champions, General Gourgaud. This gentleman himself informed the English government, that at the time when Napoleon, in order to create the notion that his supplies were restricted beyond all endurance, sent some plate to James's Town to be broken up and sold, he, Napoleon, had in his strong box at Longwood at least £10,000 in gold coin.

There is one name which will descend to posterity laden with a tenfold portion of the abuse which Napoleon and his associates lavished on all persons connected in any degree with the superintendence and control of his captive condition—that of Sir Hudson Lowe, a general officer in the English army, who became governor of St. Helena in May, 1816, and continued to hold that situation down to the period of the ex-emperor's death in 1821. The vanity of Napoleon appears to have been wounded from the beginning by this appointment. According to him, no person ought in decency to have been entrusted with the permanent care of his detention, but some English nobleman of the highest rank. The answer is very plain, that the situation was not likely to find favour in the eyes of any such person; and when one considers what the birth and manners of by far the greater number of Buonaparte's own courtiers, peers and princes included, were, it is difficult to repress wonder in listening to this particular subject of complaint. Passing over this original quarrel—it appears that, according to Buonaparte's own admission, Sir H. Lowe endeavoured, when he took his thankless office upon him, to place the intercourse between himself and his prisoner on a footing as gracious as could well be looked for under all the circumstances of the case; and that he, the ex-emperor, ere the governor had been a week at St. Helena, condescended to insult him to his face by language so extravagantly, intolerably, and vulgarly offensive, as never ought, under any circumstances whatever, to have stained the lips of one who made any pretension to the character of a gentleman. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe was not an officer of the first distinction—it must be admitted that he did no wrong in accepting a duty offered to him by his government; and that Napoleon was guilty, not only of indecorum, but of meanness, in reproaching a man so situated, as he did almost at their first interview, with the circumstances—of which at worst it could but be said that they were not splendid—of his previous life. But this is far too little. Granting that Sir Hudson Lowe had been in history and in conduct, both before he came to St. Helena and during his stay there, all that the most ferocious libels of the Buonapartists have ever dared to say or to insinuate—it would still remain a theme of unmixed wonder and regret, that Napoleon Buonaparte should have stooped to visit on his head the wrongs which, if they were wrongs, proceeded not from the governor of St. Helena, but from the English ministry, whose servant he was. "I can only account," says Mr. Ellis, "for his petulance and unfounded complaints from one of two motives—either he wishes by these means to keep alive an interest in Europe, and more especially in England, where he flatters himself he has a party; or his troubled mind finds an occupation in the tracasseries which his present conduct gives to the governor. If the latter be the case, it is in vain for any governor to unite being on good terms with him to the performance of his duty."

Napoleon did everything he could to irritate this unfortunate governor. He called him scrivener, thieftaker, liar, hangman; rejected all his civilities as insults; encouraged his attendants to rival in these particulars the audacity of his own language and conduct; refused by degrees to take the exercise which his health required, on pretext that it did him more harm than good when he knew himself to be riding within view of English sentinels (which was not necessary at all within four miles of Longwood), or attended by an English officer—which was not necessary unless at the distance of twelve miles from Longwood: above all, opposed every obstacle to the enforcement of that most proper regulation which made it necessary that his person should, once in every twenty-four hours, be visible to some British officer. In a word, Napoleon Buonaparte bent the whole energies of his mighty intellect to the ignoble task of tormenting Sir Hudson Lowe; and the extremities of degradation to which these efforts occasionally reduced himself, in the eyes of his own attendants, are such as we dare not particularise, and as will be guessed by no one who has not read the memoir of his Italian doctor, Antommarchi.

Meantime, the great object was effectually attained. The wrongs of Napoleon, the cold cruelty of the English government, and the pestilent petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, were the perpetual themes of table-talk all over Europe. There were statesmen of high rank in either house of the British parliament, who periodically descanted on these topics—and the answers as often elicited from the ministers of the crown, only silenced such declamations for the moment, that they might be renewed with increased violence after time had elapsed sufficient to allow the news to come back to England with the comments of Longwood. The utter impossibility of an escape from St. Helena was assumed on all such occasions, with the obvious inference that there could be no use for sentinels and domiciliary visitations at Longwood, except for the gratification of malignant power. But it is now ascertained, that, throughout the whole period of the detention, schemes of evasion were in agitation at St. Helena, and that agents were busy, sometimes in London, more frequently in North America, with preparations which had no other object in view. A steamship, halting just beyond the line of sight, might undoubtedly have received Napoleon at certain seasons of the year without difficulty, could he only contrive to elude the nocturnal vigilance of the sentinels about the house of Longwood: and that this was impossible, or even difficult, General Gourgaud himself does not hesitate to deny. The rumours of these plots reached from time to time Sir Hudson Lowe; and, quickening of course his fears and his circumspection, kept the wounds of jealousy and distrust continually open and angry.

There were moments, however, in which Napoleon appeared, to persons likely to influence public feeling in Europe by their reports, in attitudes of a far different description. When strangers of eminence (generally officers on their way to or from India), halting at St. Helena, requested and obtained permission to pay their respects at Longwood, Napoleon received them, for the most part, with the ease and dignity of a man superior to adversity. It was by these worthier exhibitions that the fallen Emperor earned the lofty eulogy of Byron:

"—Well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide,
With that untaught innate philosophy,
Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,
Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.
When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,
To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;
When Fortune fled her spoiled and favourite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled."

Among the visitors now alluded to was Captain Basil Hall: and he has, perhaps, presented the world with the most graphic sketch of Napoleon as he appeared on such occasions at Longwood. "Buonaparte" (says this traveller) "struck me (Aug. 13, 1817) as differing considerably from all the pictures and busts I had seen of him. His face and figure looked much broader and more square—larger, indeed, in every way, than any representation I had met with. His corpulency, at this time reported to be excessive, was by no means remarkable. His flesh looked, on the contrary, firm and muscular. There was not the least trace of colour in his cheeks; in fact, his skin was more like marble than ordinary flesh. Not the smallest wrinkle was discernible on his brow, nor an approach to a furrow on any part of his countenance. His health and spirits, judging from appearances, were excellent; though, at this period, it was generally believed in England that he was fast sinking under a complication of diseases, and that his spirits were entirely gone. His manner of speaking was rather slow than otherwise, and perfectly distinct: and he waited with great patience and kindness for my answers to his questions. The brilliant and sometimes dazzling expression of his eye could not be overlooked. It was not, however, a permanent lustre, for it was only remarkable when he was excited by some point of particular interest. It is impossible to imagine an expression of more entire mildness, I may almost call it of benignity and kindliness, than that which played over his features during the whole interview. If, therefore, he was at this time out of health and in low spirits, his power of self-command must have been even more extraordinary than is generally supposed; for his whole deportment, his conversation, and the expression of his face, indicated a frame in perfect health, and a mind at ease."

These favourable reports from seemingly impartial witnesses, lent new wings to the tale of Sir Hudson Lowe's oppression; and perhaps the exile of St. Helena continued to fill a larger space in the eye of the world at large, than had ever before fallen to the lot of one removed for ever, to all appearance, from the great theatre of human passions. It was then that Lord Byron thus apostrophised him: