One of the things of which Sir George said “I cannot allow it,” was the proposed gift of a handsome gratuity from “Bonaparte” to the sailors of the ship. Sir George evidently feared that such a gift, adding to “Bonaparte’s” already great popularity with the crew, might bear fruit unpleasant to the taste of Sir George.
Indeed, the manner in which all those who came in contact with Napoleon found their prejudice melt away, is very remarkable. Fouché had selected General Becker as Napoleon’s custodian in France for the reason that Becker bore the Emperor a grudge; yet by the time Napoleon went on board Maitland’s ship, Becker had become an ardent friend, and the parting between them left Becker in tears.
Captain Maitland liked him, Lord Keith liked him, the crews of the English ships liked him. Even Sir George Cockburn ceased to hate him. “Damn the fellow!” exclaimed Lord Keith; “I believe that if he and the Prince Regent should meet, the two would be the best of friends in half an hour.”
One incident of the voyage to St. Helena could not be told in words more vivid than those of Lord Rosebery:—
“Once only in that voyage did his apathy forsake him. At dawn one morning when the ship was making Ushant, the watch, to their unspeakable surprise, saw the Emperor issue from his cabin and make his way, with some difficulty, to the poop. Arrived there, he asked the officer on duty if the coast were indeed Ushant, and then taking a telescope, he gazed fixedly at the land. From seven till near noon he thus remained motionless. Neither the officers of the ship nor his staff as they watched him, durst disturb that agony. At last, as the outlines faded from his sight, he turned his ghastly face, concealing it as best he could, and clutched at the arm of Bertrand, who supported him back to his cabin. It was his last sight of France.”
Landed at St. Helena, he was given shabby quarters in a renovated, repaired, and amplified cow-house. The walls of it were thin, the rooms small; the rain and the wind pierced it, the heat made an oven of it, the rats infested it; no shade trees cast grateful shade about it; no fruits or flowers relieved its dismal repulsiveness.
To make sure that Napoleon should not escape from the isolated, precipitous rock of St. Helena, a considerable fleet of cruisers girdled the island, and nearly three thousand troops watched the prisoner. The eye could not range in any direction without resting upon a sentinel. During the daytime the Emperor had continual reminders of his fallen condition; and when night came on the line of sentries closed in, and no one could pass.
The prisoner and his friends were allowed to have books to read; and if Sir Hudson Lowe in browsing among the European newspapers and magazines happened upon some peculiarly bitter weed of abuse of Napoleon, that particular paper or magazine was sure to be sent up to Longwood, Napoleon’s residence. If books, papers, or magazines arrived in which the captive was tenderly handled, such articles became contraband, upon one plea or another, and rarely reached the lonely man they would have cheered. The prisoner and his companions were given enough to eat, generally, and a sufficiency of fuel and water. It was only occasionally that Napoleon had to feed the fire in his damp room by breaking up his furniture; nor was it often that the quality of the food was such that appetites were lost because of grave suspicions as to the manner in which the cow or sheep which supplied the beef or mutton had come to its death.
Excepting the bare necessities of life, the prisoner was given nothing to make captivity reasonably comfortable. Ditches and trenches were dug all about him, guns planted, soldiers posted, and absurdly minute, vexatious regulations made. If Napoleon rode, a British soldier must attend him; if he stayed in the house, a British soldier must have sight of him every day. No letter could come or go without having been opened and read by his jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe. Books sent him, pictures, and everything else had to come through the same channel. If any article sent him were addressed to him as Emperor, it was impounded relentlessly. A Mr. Barber who had come to live in the island had brought with him two portraits of Napoleon’s son, intending, as a kindness which would certainly be appreciated, to present them to the bereaved father. Sir Hudson Lowe forbade the gift, and the Emperor never laid eyes upon the treasures. It was only through Eugène that Napoleon finally received a portrait of his son: it came packed in a box of books. A marble bust of the King of Rome came also, and this was long held by Lowe, who threatened to break it in pieces. A letter from Napoleon’s mother, in which she offered to share his lot though blind and bending with age, was torn open and read by the governor before its delivery. The captive refused to consent that either his mother or his sister Pauline should come: he was unwilling to see them subjected to the insolence of his jailers.
The question of title gave more trouble at St. Helena than almost any other. It was vexatious, it was met at every turn, and it could never be settled. It angered Napoleon excessively when Sir Hudson Lowe persistently continued to shut off from him all letters, books, or other articles which came addressed to “The Emperor.” Great Britain was resolved that he should not be known by the title he had worn so long, which a vote of the French people had confirmed, which the Pope had consecrated so far as a pope can consecrate, which every king on the Continent had recognized, and which England herself had recognized at the Congress of Châtillon, if not under the ministry of Charles Fox. “General Bonaparte” was the highest title that Great Britain could now allow; and her prisoner resisted her as stubbornly on this point as General George Washington resisted her right to send him letters addressed “Mr. George Washington.”