Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

His jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe, seems to have been a most unfortunate choice in the surveillance of a high-spirited and remarkable man.

Napoleon was allowed to walk or ride only within certain limits, with a British officer near at hand. His accommodations were poor and plain. "The rats," says Dr. O'Meara, "are in numbers almost incredible. I have frequently seen them assemble like broods of chickens round the offal thrown out of the kitchen." Besides he says, through the roof "the rain entered in torrents." Napoleon's letters were all opened, both those sent or received. He was never addressed as Emperor, England ungenerously insisting that he be called simply General Bonaparte. Books addressed to "The Emperor" were not delivered to him. William O'Connor Morris says: "His humiliation was degrading and needless.... Admitting that the allies had a right to deprive him of liberty, they had no right to subject him to insult and wrong; and St. Helena is a blot on the fair fame of England." From his idolized son he was not permitted to hear.

He said to Countess Montholon, at St. Helena, "On receiving into my arms that infant, so many times fervently implored of Heaven, could I have believed that one day he would have become the source of my greatest anguish? Yes, madame, every day he costs me tears of blood. I imagine to myself the most horrid events, which I cannot remove from my mind. I see either the potion or the empoisoned fruit which is about to terminate the days of that young innocent by the most cruel sufferings."

The boy worshipped his father. "Tell him," said the little King of Rome, then four years old, when Meneval, Napoleon's former secretary, left Marie Louise in Austria, "that I love him dearly." He looked like his father, had his ambition, and, as he grew to manhood, longed to return to France. When Charles X. was overthrown in 1830, he said, "Why was I not there to take my chance?" He was then nineteen. Napoleon had foreseen the fall of the Bourbons, as he said at St. Helena, "They will not maintain their position after my death; a reaction in my favor will take place everywhere, even in England."

Napoleon II. died at Vienna, July 22, 1832, at the age of twenty-one, of consumption, at Schönbrunn, the summer home of the Emperor. He expired upon the same narrow bed on which his father slept when he came as the conqueror of Austria. General Hartmann said, "Having passed my life on battle-fields, I have often seen death, but I never saw a soldier die more bravely."

When near death, Napoleon II. said, "So young, and is there no remedy? My birth and my death will be the only points of remembrance." He lies buried in the plain Church of the Capucines, beside his mother. His heart is in a small silver urn in St. Augustine's Church.

For six years Napoleon lived in this prison at St. Helena, dictating his memoirs and commentaries to Count Montholon, Baron Gourgaud, and Count Las Cases. His health failed rapidly after the first year. Not taking exercise, on account of the constant espionage, he was finally prevailed upon by the physician to work a little in a garden, which he found a relief.

At the end of a year, Las Cases was banished with his son to England, because he had forwarded a letter to Lady Clavering, telling how badly the Emperor was treated, and it had not passed through the hands of Sir Hudson Lowe. This was a great blow to Napoleon, as he was the only one who could read, speak, and understand English. Dr. O'Meara was also obliged to leave St. Helena on account of Sir Hudson Lowe's treatment of him.

After some months of illness, the friends of Napoleon were permitted to send Dr. Antommarchi, a Corsican, to him. In the spring of 1821, Napoleon grew feeble and emaciated. He made his will, remembering his friends most generously. April 22, from perspiration on account of his great pain, Count Montholon writes, "On this night I changed the Emperor's linen seven times." April 25, as Montholon watched by his bedside, at four o'clock in the morning, Napoleon exclaimed, "I have just seen my good Josephine, but she would not embrace me. She disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms. She was seated there.... She is not changed. She is still the same, full of devotion to me. She told me that we were about to see each other again, never more to part. Did you see her?"

Three days later he gave directions about his death, asking that his heart might be put in spirits of wine, and carried to Parma, to Marie Louise. "You will tell her that I tenderly loved her," he said, "that I never ceased to love her."