During the first days of our voyage we touched at Cadiz to get our last despatches before starting across the ocean. I was as glad as ever to see the white walls of Cadiz again, and I made a pilgrimage to the Cortadura, to the Trocadero (this in memory of the brilliant exploits of the Royal Guard in 1823), and also to the battle-field of Chiclana, which witnessed a terrible struggle between ourselves and the English in February 1811, some of the actors in which I had known. Coming back from Chiclana after a somewhat cheery luncheon, Arthur Bertrand, the general's son, well known at that time in the gay world of Paris, gave us a specimen of the maddest equestrian prowess. He galloped at full speed across the Alameda at Chiclana, which was paved with slippery flags, standing upright on his English saddle. There is a providence that watches over madmen!
A characteristic incident occurred on leaving Cadiz. In case of delicate negotiations with the English authorities at St. Helena, and also in order to draw up the protocol for the surrender of the body, a young diplomat, the Comte Philippe de Rohan Chabot,[Footnote: This gentleman died in London as French Ambassador, under the title of Comte de Jarna] had been associated with me.
We had hardly got out of the port of Cadiz, and cut our last communications with France, when I saw him approach me, looking very much embarrassed. He offered me a paper to read, saying it was only on account of his orders he had not communicated it to me before. I cast my eye over the signature at the foot of the paper and saw the name of M. Thiers, President of the Council. By these secret instructions, which were not to be imparted to me till we got to sea, M. Thiers informed M. de Chabot that he, Chabot, was his direct agent and that he invested him with superior authority to mine for as long as the mission should last. Such was the strange missive, aimed not only at the captain in command of the ship, but also, with an evident intention to wound, at the King's son—an application in a very small way of that maxim so dear to M. Thiers, "the King reigns but he does not govern." Stranger still was the care he took to keep it secret until, being cut off from France, I was no longer in a position to make any observation on the contradiction between these fresh instructions and the precise orders I had received previously. Friends from childhood as we were, Philippe and I, no idea of conflict between us was admissible. I made no complaint to any one and treated M. Thiers' behaviour to me with contempt, but from that day the sympathetic and almost affectionate relations I had previously lived in with that statesman came to an end—they were replaced by a sense of deep distrust and a scanty esteem for his character.
The Belle-Poule put in at Teneriffe to take in provisions and water, and I took advantage of this stoppage to finish the ascent of the famous Peak which I had had to break off in 1837. The last cone, all of crumbly pumice stone, and at a very acute angle, is tolerably tiring. On the summit is a small plateau, the soft soil of which is covered with flowers of sulphur and creviced with smoke holes from which scalding steam keeps escaping. Having got up in two days, we descended rapidly to the smiling little town of Orotava, built amidst the most lovely vegetation in a sort of ravine opening out on the sea. The female population of Orotava has a well-deserved reputation for beauty, and we were very kindly met by an invitation to make sure of the fact by being present at an afternoon dance, a sort of "garden party" got up in our honour—a great temptation truly, but a great perplexity as well! People coming back off a mountain climb, including two waterless bivouacs and a pull through the smoke and ashes of a volcano, are not in ball trim, either as to costume or to cleanliness. After a hasty council of war, it was decided that we should draw lots for the names of three of our party, who were to wash themselves, and to whom each of the non-chosen should furnish the least damaged articles of his own clothing, so as to put them in proper condition to go to the ball and keep up the honour of our flag before the belles of Orotava. We retired into a wood to proceed to draw lots and embellish the elect Fate did not favour me. I did not go to the ball, but my boots did, and our comrades came back full of admiration of all they had seen.
From Teneriffe our passage was a slow one. We had calms, storms, even gales, and then a fresh delay in port at Bahia in Brazil. I had been advised on leaving Paris to arrange the progress of the mission so as to make the return of the ashes of the Emperor to Europe coincide with the opening of the Chambers in the end of December. Indeed I believe the chief importance of the return of the ashes of Napoleon, in M. Thiers' mind, lay in this coincidence. It was the tom-tom by beating which he hoped to drown all those reports and inklings of ministerial changes which always sprout at such moments in the parliamentary soil. But it was somewhat difficult to time our arrival to a given moment, with a sailing ship, and after such a long voyage. Originally I was to have called at the Cape before going to St. Helena. I thought it better to replace our stoppage at the Cape by one at Bahia, so as to shorten the journey and save time. Very uninteresting our stay at Bahia was, save for the following picturesque incident.
I had chartered a small steamer on which I used to go on sporting expeditions with some of the officers. They were somewhat in the nature of voyages of discovery up the rivers which fall into Bahia Bay. During one of these excursions we had got some considerable distance up the Cachoeira without seeing a sign of any inhabitants, and leaving our boat at anchor, we had landed and spent our day in slaying toucans, parrokeets of all colours, and all the strange birds and beasts peopling the virgin forest, when at sunset we fell upon a cleared path, which led us to a wide glade and then to a village, the existence of which had been hitherto quite unsuspected by us. We entered it and found it deserted, the doors of all the houses shut. We went towards a very large square in the middle of the "Pueblo"—it was deserted too. We entered a fine church, the door of which stood open—not a soul within it, though the smell of the incense at some recently performed religious ceremony still hung in the air. In the middle of the square stood a kiosk, evidently intended for concerts; the instruments of an orchestra were still there, lying on the chairs before the desks, as if the music had only been broken off a few minutes previously. This suddenly deserted village rather puzzled us. But in the hope of bringing the population back to life, and with a certain spice too of mischief, we laid down our guns, and seizing on the big drum, and the abandoned trombones and clarionets, we raised a most alarming noise. It was mere waste of time, nobody came. The evening was falling, it was time to get back on board our steamer, and we quietly retook our way towards her. Night—a moonlight night it was—had completely closed in, when we got to the mangrove creek, where we had left the small boat which was to bring us back on board. We were crowding into the little craft, half aground on the mud, when a great clamour rose from the forest, and we saw weapons glint through the foliage on all sides. In the twinkling of an eye, before we had time to get over our surprise, a crowd of people armed with guns, swords, and pikes, rushed up at top speed, yelling loudly, and surrounded us, some remaining on shore and others throwing themselves into the water. We were instantly carried off, disarmed, separated, soundly thrashed, and dragged into the forest. Anybody who has looked at the picture of the savages attacking Captain Cook, in the history of his voyage, will have an exact idea of the scene. It was not otherwise than picturesque in the moonlight, and under that tropical vegetation; and it really was an attack by savages too, most of them negroes, and the rest mulattoes. Very luckily for us, our surprise and our unloaded guns, and the way we were crowded into the boat, prevented our making any resistance, otherwise we should certainly have been massacred, surrounded as we were by 200 armed men. Each of us had his own little experience in the scuffle. I, for my part, jumped into the water, knocking up the pikes of two negroes, who looked as if they were going to spit me, with my gun, and hurriedly caught a man—with a civilian's hat on his head, a sash over his shoulder, and a big sword in his hand, who seemed to me to be the leader of the band—round the waist. I gave him to understand, in a few words, in bad Portuguese, that I commmanded the French warships anchored at Bahia, and that if harm came to any of us, he and his fellows would live to repent it. But before I could finish my speech the angry crowd fell on me, carried me off, and dragged me to a mound, against which, as I seemed to understand, they meant to back me and shoot me. Indeed five or six negroes stationed in front of me hastily loaded their guns. The situation was far from pleasant, for those who know the negro race know what they are capable of when swayed by the paroxysms of excitement into which they work themselves, whether from drunkenness, or rage, or fear. Fouchard, whom two or three men were holding a few steps off from me, seeing what was happening, threw off his captors by a superhuman effort and sprang to my side. We clung fast to each other, and this caused a fresh struggle and a respite of a minute's duration, during which the man in the sash, who had quickly understood this was becoming a bad business for himself, charged at the head of the most reasonable of his mulattoes. We were captured and recaptured several times, but victory at last rested with the man in the scarf, and an explanation became possible. It appears there had been an election, with considerable disturbances—blessed be elections in all places and countries!—in the village, on the preceding day. The inhabitants, in their over-excitement, had been struck first with surprise, and afterwards with terror on hearing us firing at the parrokeets. Their terror reached its height when seven or eight white-skinned men, oddly armed and accoutred, were seen to enter the village. The whole population fled into the woods. Then noting from afar how small our number was, and more especially observing our retreat, valour took the place of fright, and arming itself, it rushed to the enemy's pursuit! We were set at liberty of course, and apologies were duly made; but that did not mend the blows received, especially by one of the lieutenants of the Belle-Poule, Penhoat, who had been half murdered. We boarded our steamer, and found the English engineer in charge of her completely drunk. When we told him our story he rushed below to his engine-room, and fetched out a huge pistol that must have dated from Cromwell's time; and we had all the trouble in the world to prevent him from going on shore alone to take signal vengeance on "those damned niggers."
Leaving Bahia, we had to go a long way down the Southern Atlantic before we got a favourable wind. We reached St. Helena at last—a great black rock, a jagged volcanic island resembling Martinique, minus its splendid vegetation—a scrap of Scotland set in mid-ocean, and swept incessantly by the Trade wind, which blows with wearisome continuance and gathers a thick and permanent cloud-clap above the isle. It looked gloomy from the sea, and the impression on arrival there was gloomy too. James Town, the capital, is simply a wretched village, stretching along a narrow valley, shut in by dreary-looking rocks crowned by forts, to which you climb by staircases counting six hundred steps. The country around Plantation House, the Governor's residence, the valley of the Tomb, the Tomb itself with the legendary willows, and Longwood, the prison house, all are equally gloomy, and equally calculated to kill the great genius banished thither, by inches.
The business which had brought me was quickly settled between myself and the Governor, General Middlemore. The orders of the British Government were clear and precise, and the local authorities showed great goodwill in carrying them out. They undertook the exclusive care of the exhumation and transport of the remains over British territory, and it was all done with the utmost propriety. The only request I made and obtained was, that the coffin should be opened before it was handed over to us, so as to be sure that we were taking neither a hotbed of infection nor an imaginary corpse on board. The Governor himself being ill I saw but little of him. He commissioned the officer in command of the troops, Colonel Trelawny, of the Royal Artillery, to represent him. He was a pleasant man, but decidedly eccentric. His great mania was the study of genealogy, and he never failed to explain when we met that he was my cousin, and that we were both related to the late Sultan Mahmoud on the female side!
When all was ready the exhumation took place, and very imposing it was. Everybody felt impressed when the coffin was seen coming slowly down the mountain side, to the firing of cannon, escorted by British infantry with arms reversed, the band playing, to the dull rolling accompaniment of the drums, that splendid funeral march which English people call The Dead March in Saul, but which is really no other than the ancient Catholic chant of Adeste Fideles. General Middlemore, dropping with fatigue, formally handed over the body to me; and the coffin was lowered into the long-boat of the Belle-Poule, which then started for the ship. The scene at that moment was very fine. It was a striking moment A magnificent sunset had been succeeded by a twilight of the deepest calm. The British authorities and the troops stood motionless on the beach, while our ship's guns fired a royal salute. I stood in the stern of my long-boat, over which floated a magnificent Tricolour flag worked by the ladies of St Helena. Beside me were the generals and superior officers, M. de Chabot and M de las Gazes. The pick of my topmen, all in white, with crape on their arms, and bareheaded like ourselves, rowed the boat in silence, and with the most admirable precision We advanced with majestic slowness, escorted by the boats bearing the staff. It was very touching, and a deep national sentiment seemed to hover over the whole scene.
Two days later we set sail for France, which was reached after a passage of forty-one days. During the passage, feeling anxious at having had no news from Europe for four months, I spoke several ships, and amongst others, south of the line, I spoke a Dutch man-o'-war on her way to Java, which gave us details of the coalition apparently directed against Mehemet Ali, the Egyptian Viceroy, but aimed, in reality, at France. Not knowing what might result from the performances of the allied naval forces on the Syrian coast, we on board the frigate and her consort, the Favorite, determined to take all usual precautions in case of war; and each of us made ready, after his own fashion, for his eventual departure to another world. There was, in most cases, a great destroying of souvenirs, papers, and compromising correspondence. General Gourgaud attracted our attention by the trembling care with which he re-read a perfect mountain of notes in a feminine hand, which he burnt one by one in a basin, gathering up the ashes and preserving them in a bottle—not a bad way of keeping tender memories quite safe from any inquisitiveness But all these warlike preparations were thrown away. When the Belle Poule cast anchor at Cherbourg on November 30th, the storm had passed by. My mission closed at Cherbourg, but I found orders there to tranship the coffin on to a steamboat, and then take it round to Paris by the Seine, my crew and that of the corvette Favorite to form the escort. I will not tell the story of this conveying of the body. At St Helena things had on the whole been done by the British army on the one part and our naval forces on the other, with all the chivalrous seriousness and dignity which always attend international relations when confided to those who wear the sword. In France the conveyance of the remains of Napoleon took on quite another character. It was first and foremost a show, in which, as always happens in our country, many people desired to play a part which was inappropriate and sometimes ridiculous. I had often to interfere to get things put to rights again. At La Bouille, for instance, which we reached at nightfall, to meet the river flotilla to which we were to be transferred, I was shown, as the vessel which was to receive the coffin and the staff of the escort, a frightful-looking boat on which a sort of hideous dais had been built, with all the frippery and plumes of the Pompes Funebres, an official catafalque worthy of Carpentras or of Brives-la-Gaillarde. I immediately gave orders for this masterpiece of bad taste to be destroyed, a coat of black paint given to the boat, and everything cleared forward, so as to place the coffin there well in sight, and covered with a violet velvet pall. My men at once fell to work at this transformation, when a gentleman in evening dress advanced, and in a tone of great authority, forbade my sailors to touch anything. "I got my orders from M. Cave (the Director of the Beaux Arts) and from the Minister. All the decoration was designed by me, and carried out under my direction, I hold to it, and I forbid anybody to touch it," he said. "But, my good sir," I replied, "my orders have been given, and will be carried out." My gentleman became so violent that I desired him to leave the vessel instantly. "But surely you are not going to put me ashore at this hour (it was almost dark) in the open fields? I don't know where I am; I don't see any houses." "That's nothing to me, you have been insolent, so it is your own fault. Put this gentleman ashore." Four sailors advanced, but he gave in, and nobody ever heard of him again. By the following morning the transformation was complete, and the coffin moving unsheltered up the course of the river, as though to take possession of the stream, was much more striking than all the tinsel and canopies imaginable. The whole voyage up to Courbevoie, the point of arrival, was a mere classic reproduction of the usual official journey—flags, authorities girt with tricolour sashes, clergy pronouncing blessings, shaking with terror all the time, horses, gendarmes, curious crowds of holiday makers, the only thing lacking being the speeches. From Courbevoie the body was taken in procession through the Champs Elysees to the Invalides, with the usual ceremonial, which I had already witnessed in the cases of Charles X. and the Duchesse d'Orleans, but with one extra point, the cold, and it was terrible.