[4] Talma was present at the last parting, at Malmaison, between the Emperor and his mother, and he said it was one of the most tragic scenes he ever witnessed. When the last moment arrived, the Empress-mother, prostrated with grief, and with tears streaming from her eyes, could only utter in a tremulous voice, “Adieu, my son! Adieu.” And Napoleon was so affected that he caught hold of both her hands and cried, “Adieu, my mother!” and burst into tears as he left her.—(Gronow’s Anecdotes.)
When almost every other chance was gone, he trusted himself to Captain Maitland of the British navy, whom Napoleon had understood to promise asylum for him in England.
* * * * *
The armies of Wellington and Blücher continued their advance. There was some fighting before Paris; then came capitulation; and then came the Bourbons, skulking back to the throne in the rear of the enemies of France. Lafayette and the provisional government were quietly swept into the outer darkness. In after years he lamented his error of 1815, and in 1830 he did what he could to square accounts with his friends, the elder Bourbons.
CHAPTER L
Whatever legal right Great Britain had to treat the French Emperor as prisoner of war, must necessarily have grown out of the manner in which she got possession of his person. In regard to this, the actual facts are that Lord Castlereagh in 1814 had suggested that he come to England, where he would be well received; and Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon, while disclaiming any authority to bind his government, had certainly not said anything which would warn the Emperor not to expect such treatment as Castlereagh, an English minister, had seemed to offer in 1814. Upon the contrary, Napoleon was received on board Captain Maitland’s ship with formal honors; and when Napoleon said, “I come to place myself under the protection of the British laws,” Captain Maitland gave him no hint that those laws had no protection for him. If Great Britain did not intend to accept him in the spirit in which he offered himself, should she have received him without giving him notice that he was acting under a delusion? Was it honorable, was it right? If she considered him a captive, why not tell him so? Why receive him on board with formal demonstrations of honor; why invite him to banquets where British admirals treated him as a sovereign? Why wait till the fleet was on the English coast before reading to him the cold lines which consigned him to St. Helena?
The entire episode reeks with dishonor. It will not do to say that he was certain to have been captured anyhow; for that statement cannot be true. There were three vessels offered him at Rochefort, in either of which he might have escaped to America; or he could have placed himself at the head of some of the French troops, near by, and have recommenced the war. With Napoleon’s standard once more up, his sword in his hand, who can doubt that he could have wrung from his enemies some settlement better than hopeless captivity upon a barren rock? At all events, it seems a shocking thing to open one’s door to a vanquished foe, after he has knocked thereon with the plea of a guest; and then, after having let him enter as a guest, to bar the door upon him as a prisoner. No amount of argument can hide the shame of such a transaction.
When Napoleon came on board Captain Maitland’s ship, there is no doubt whatever that he was sincere in his belief that he would be permitted to live in England as a private citizen. Nor is there any doubt that Maitland thought so too. When Admiral Hotham, of the British man of war, Superb, visited the Bellerophon, Maitland’s ship, on the evening of Napoleon’s going on board, he asked permission to see, not a prisoner, but an Emperor. And the breakfast he gave in Napoleon’s honor next morning on the Superb was given, not to a captive, but to a sovereign. Not only the admiral, but all the officers of the squadron, paid to the distinguished visitor every honor; and he was invited to continue his journey in the more commodious vessel, the Superb. He declined, out of regard for Maitland’s feelings; and it was Napoleon’s preference, and not Hotham’s, which prevailed.
These things being considered, who can doubt that Napoleon and the naval squadron which had possession of him were honestly acting in the belief that he was on his way to England as a guest, as a great man in misfortune, who was seeking asylum in the magnanimity of a great people?