“At the battle of Trebbia, sire.”
The veteran by this time was shaking with emotion, and all the crowd had clustered thickly about these two.
Taking off his cross of the Legion of Honor, Napoleon put it upon his old soldier; and while the veteran wept, the crowd shouted, “Live the Emperor!”
“My name! To remember my name after fifteen years!” the old man continued to repeat; and so great was the sensation this little incident was creating that the Commissioners who had charge of the exile grew alarmed, and hastened to get him back into the house.
The captain and the crew of the British frigate had never seen the French Emperor save through the glasses of the English editors. Any one who knows how great is the power of an unbridled press to blacken the fairest name, distort beyond recognition the loftiest character, and blast the hopes of the noblest career, can readily comprehend what was the current British opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814. Seen through the eyes of Tory editors and pamphleteers, he was a man contrasted with whom Lucifer might well hope to become a popular hero.
Great was the surprise of Captain Usher and his sailors to see a handsome, quiet, polite, and self-controlled gentleman, who talked easily with everybody, conformed without fuss to all the ship regulations, gave himself no airs of superhuman loftiness, and took an intelligent interest in the ship and in the folks about him. So great was the charm of his manner, and of his conversation, that English prejudice wore away; and the sailors began to say, “Boney is a good fellow, after all.”
It is amusing to note that Sir Walter Scott records with pride the fact that there was one sturdy sailor who was not to be softened, who retained his surliness to the last, and whose gruff comment upon all the good-humored talk of the Emperor was the word, “Humbug!” The name of this unyielding Briton was Hinton; and both Sir Walter and his son-in-law Lockhart record his name with a sort of Tory veneration. In spite of the unyielding Hinton, the sailors of the Undaunted grew fond enough of Napoleon to accept a handsome gratuity from him at the journey’s end; and the boatswain, addressing him on the quarter-deck in the name of the crew, “Thanked his honor, and wished him long life and prosperity in the island of Elba, and better luck next time.”
Neither Sir Walter Scott nor his son-in-law Lockhart, report Hinton’s remarks upon this occasion; and they leave us in doubt as to whether his virtue held out against the golden temptation, or whether he pocketed his share, with a final snort of, “Humbug!”
On May 4, 1814, the Emperor made his official landing in Elba, whose inhabitants (about thirteen thousand souls) received him well. He made a thorough investigation of his new empire, its industries, resources, etc., and sitting his horse upon a height from which he could survey his whole domain, remarked good-humoredly that he found it rather small.
Soon joined by his mother and by his sister Pauline, also by the seven hundred troops of the Old Guard assigned him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Napoleon’s establishment at Porto Ferrajo resembled the Tuileries in miniature. Imperial etiquette stiffened most of its joints, and put on much of its formidable armor. Visitors poured into Elba by the hundred, and with many of these Napoleon conversed with easy frankness, speaking of past events with the tone of a man who was dead to the world.