I said that I thought Spain was not ready for such changes, and that the Spanish people would resist them. ‘Ils succomberaient,’ he said, and then the subject dropped.
He asked me whether I knew anything of what was passing at the Congress of Vienna. I said, ‘Nothing.’ He said he expected that each Power would have confirmed to it by treaty the territories which its forces occupied. In respect to the three great military Powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, this prediction was nearly verified. Mr. Pitt, however, had intended, in 1805, to give Belgium to Prussia; Lord Castlereagh gave it to the Netherlands.
Napoleon spoke of Lord Ebrington, whom he had recently seen, and said he was ‘un homme fort instruit; du moins, il m’a paru un homme fort instruit.’ It struck me afterwards that while he had spoken to Lord Ebrington of great events of his past life—of Jaffa, of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, and other acts on which the world had passed its judgment—he spoke to me almost entirely of the existing aspect of affairs. His past history had ceased to be his main object, and his mind was busy with the present and the future. He said, ‘You must be very well satisfied, you English, to have finished the war so successfully.’ I answered, ‘Yes, Sire, especially as at one time we thought ourselves in great danger.’
He burst out laughing, ‘Ha! ha! ha! C’était le système continental, eh?’
I said, ‘Yes, Sire; but as that system did not ruin us, it did us a great deal of good. For men are much governed by their physical wants.’
The interview ended soon after this. The next morning I was told that a horse from the Emperor’s stable was at my disposal, and I rode to a villa which he was constructing for his summer occupation.
The day after I embarked, in the gun-brig in which I had come, for Civita Vecchia.
I remain, my dear Van de Weyer,
Yours truly,
RUSSELL.