Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 369, July 1846

by Various

But events now thickened. On the 12th, the Paris journals arrived, announcing the entrance of the Allies into Paris, and the establishment of Louis XVIII. in the Tuileries! All was renewed confusion, consternation, and projects. On the next day Joseph Bonaparte came to the Isle of Aix, to propose the escape of his fallen brother in a merchant vessel from Bordeaux, for America, and remain in his place. This offer was generous, but it could scarcely be accepted by any human being, and it was refused. But delay was becoming doubly hazardous. It was perfectly possible that the first measure of the new government would be an order for his seizure, and the next, for his execution. On that evening he decided to accept the offer of the chasse-marées, to go on board before morning, and trust to the young midshipmen and chance for his passage across the Atlantic.

We know no history more instructive than these "last days" of a fugitive Emperor. That he might have escaped a week before, is certain, for the harbour was not then blockaded; that he might have made his way among the channels of that very difficult and obstructed coast even after the blockade, is possible; that he might have found his way, by a hundred roads, out of France, or reached the remnant of his armies, is clear, for all his brothers escaped by land. But that he still hesitated—and alone hesitated; that this man—the most memorable for decision, famed for promptitude, for the discovery of the true point of danger, daring to the height of rashness, when daring was demanded—should have paused at the very instant when his fate seemed to be in his own hand, more resembles a preternatural loss of faculty than the course of nature. His whole conduct on the shore of France is to be equalled only by his conduct among the ashes of Moscow,—it was infatuation.

Again the man of decision hesitated; and at four in the morning General Lallemand and Las Cases were sent on board the Bellerophon under the pretext of waiting for the admiral's answer, but in reality to ascertain whether the captain would express officially any pledge or opinion relative to Napoleon's favourable reception in England; which Las Cases had conceived him to express in his conversation with his officers, and of which this M. Las Cases was supposed not to have understood a syllable.

Captain Maitland's answer was distinct and simple. It was, "that he had yet received no information, but hourly expected it; that he was authorized to receive Napoleon on board, and convey him to England, where, according to his own opinion, he would receive all the attention and respect to which he could lay any claim." But, to prevent all presumptions on the subject, adding—"I am anxious that it should be well understood, that I am expressing only my personal opinion on this subject, and have in no respect spoken in the name of the government, having received no instructions from either the admiralty or the admiral."

It is almost painful to contemplate these scenes. What agonies must have passed through the heart of such a man, so humbled! What inevitable contrasts of the throne with the dungeon! What sense of shame in the humiliation which thus placed him at the disposal of his own few followers! What sleepless anxiety in those midnight consultations, in those exposures to public shame, in this sense of utter ruin, in this terrible despair! If some great painter shall hereafter rise to vindicate the pencil by showing its power of delineating the deepest passions of our nature, or some still greater poet shall come to revive the day of Shakspeare, and exhibit the tortures of a greater Macbeth, fallen from the highest elevation of human things into a depth of self-reproach and self-abasement to which all the powers of human language might be pale,—what a subject for them were here!

The theatrical habits of the French are singularly unfortunate for a nation which assumes to take an influential rank in the world. They deprive them of that capacity for coping with real things which is essential to all substantial greatness. With them the business of the world must be all melodrame, and the most commonplace, or the most serious actions of life, must be connected with scene-shifting, trap-doors, and the mimic thunders of the stage. Napoleon was now in a condition the most deeply calculated to force these stern realities of life on the mind. Yet even with him all was to be dramatic; he was to throw himself on the clemency of his conqueror, like one of the heroes of Corneille. England was to stand in admiration of his magnanimous devotedness. The sovereign was to receive him with astonishment and open arms, and, after an embrace of royal enthusiasm, he was to be placed in secure splendour, cheered by the acclamations of a people hastening to do him homage. In this false and high-coloured view of things, he wrote the famous and absurd note, in which he pronounced himself another Themistocles, come to sit by the hearth of the British people. A manlier, because a more rational view of things, would have told him that a war, expressly begun with a determination to overthrow his dynasty, could not be suffered to conclude by giving him the power of again disturbing the world—that his utter faithlessness prohibited the possibility of relying on his pledges—the security of the Bourbon throne absolutely demanded his being finally disabled from disturbing its authority—England owed it to her allies to prevent a repetition of the numberless calamities which his reign had inflicted upon Europe, and owed it to herself to prevent all necessity for the havoc of a new Waterloo.

The national passion for a coup de théâtre rendered all this knowledge of no avail, and he flung himself at the feet of the Prince Regent, with the flattering phraseology of claiming protection "from the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of his enemies."

The step was now taken. On the 15th of July, at daybreak, he left the Isle of Aix, and entered one of the boats which was to convey him on board the Bellerophon. He had still a parting pang to undergo. As he looked round the shore, a white flag was flying on all the ships and batteries. All the rest of this curious narrative has been already given to the world. We have no desire to repeat the details.

Count Montholon, in his fondness for excitement, here states that a privy council was held on the question, whether the terms of the Congress of Vienna prevented England from giving up Napoleon to the vengeance of Louis XVIII., adding that "the dispatches of the Duke of Wellington urged them to adopt bloody and terrible determinations." This we utterly disbelieve; and, if we required additional reasons for our disbelief, it would be in the Count's telling us that the energetic opposition of the Duke of Sussex alone prevented the delivery of the prisoner—there not being perhaps any prince, or any individual of England, less likely to have weight in the councils of the existing government.

Without presuming to trace the steps of Providence, it is natural and not unwise to follow them in those leading transactions which give character to their times, or which complete events decisive of the fates of eminent men or nations. One of the most characteristic and abhorred acts of the entire life of the French Emperor, was his imprisonment of the English who were travelling in his country at the commencement of his reign. The act was the most treacherous within human record—it was perfidy on the largest scale. Europe had been often scandalised by breaches of political faith, but the agents and the sufferers were sovereigns and nations. But in this instance the blow fell upon individuals with the most sudden treachery, the most causeless tyranny, and the most sweeping ruin. Twelve thousand individuals, travelling under the protection of the imperial laws, wholly incapable of being regarded by those laws as prisoners, and relying on the good faith of the government, were seized as felons, put under duress, separated from their families in England, suddenly deprived of their means of existence, stopt in the progress of their professions, plundered of their property, and kept under the most vigilant surveillance for eleven years.