As when formerly on board Captain Usher's vessel, Buonaparte showed great curiosity concerning the discipline of the ship, and expressed considerable surprise that the British vessels should so easily defeat the French ships, which were heavier, larger, and better manned than they. Captain Maitland accounted for this by the greater experience of the men and officers. The Ex-Emperor examined the marines also, and, pleased with their appearance, said to Bertrand, "How much might be done with an hundred thousand such men!" In the management of the vessel, he particularly admired the silence and good order of the crew while going through their manœuvres, in comparison to a French vessel, "where every one," he said, "talks and gives orders at once." When about to quit the Bellerophon, he adverted to the same subject, saying, there had been less noise on board that vessel, with six hundred men, in the whole passage from Rochefort, than the crew of the Epervier, with only one hundred, had contrived to make between the isle d'Aix and Basque roads.
He spoke, too, of the British army in an equal style of praise, and was joined by his officers in doing so. One of the French officers observing that the English cavalry were superb, Captain Maitland observed, that in England, they had a higher opinion of the infantry. "You are right," said the French gentleman; "there is none such in the world; there is no making an impression on them; you might as well attempt to charge through a wall; and their fire is tremendous." Bertrand reported to Captain Maitland that Napoleon had communicated to him his opinion of the Duke of Wellington in the following words:—"The Duke of Wellington, in the management of an army, is fully equal to myself, with the advantage of possessing more prudence." This we conceive to be the genuine unbiassed opinion of one great soldier concerning another. It is a pity that Napoleon could on other occasions express himself in a strain of depreciation, which could only lower him who used it, towards a rival in the art of war.
During the whole passage, notwithstanding his situation, and the painful uncertainty under which he laboured, Napoleon seemed always tranquil, and in good temper;[185] at times, he even approached to cheerfulness. He spoke with tenderness of his wife and family, complained of being separated from them, and had tears in his eyes when he showed their portraits to Captain Maitland. His health seemed perfectly good; but he was occasionally subject to somnolency, proceeding, perhaps, from the exhaustion of a constitution which had gone through such severe service.
On 23d July, they passed Ushant. Napoleon remained long on deck, and cast many a melancholy look to the coast of France, but made no observations. At daybreak on 24th, the Bellerophon was off Dartmouth; and Buonaparte was struck, first with the boldness of the coast, and then, as he entered Torbay,[186] with the well-known beauty of the scenery. "It reminded him," he said, "of Porto Ferrajo, in Elba;" an association which must at the moment have awakened strange remembrances in the mind of the deposed Emperor.
PLYMOUTH SOUND.
The Bellerophon had hardly anchored, when orders came from the admiral, Lord Keith, which were soon after seconded by others from the Admiralty, enjoining that no one, of whatever rank or station, should be permitted to come on board the Bellerophon, excepting the officers and men belonging to the ship. On the 26th, the vessel received orders to move round to Plymouth Sound.
In the meantime, the newspapers which were brought on board tended to impress anxiety and consternation among the unhappy fugitives. The report was generally circulated by these periodical publications, that Buonaparte would not be permitted to land, but would be presently sent off to St. Helena, as the safest place for detaining him as a prisoner of war. Napoleon himself became alarmed, and anxiously desirous of seeing Lord Keith, who had expressed himself sensible of some kindness which his nephew, Captain Elphinstone of the 7th Hussars, had received from the Emperor, when wounded and made prisoner at Waterloo. Such an interview accordingly took place betwixt the noble admiral and the late Emperor, upon the 28th July, but without any results of importance, as Lord Keith was not then possessed of the decision of the British Government.
That frenzy of popular curiosity, which, predominating in all free states, seems to be carried to the utmost excess by the English nation, caused such numbers of boats to surround the Bellerophon, that, notwithstanding the peremptory orders of the Admiralty, and in spite of the efforts of the man-of-war's boats, which maintained constant guard round the vessel, it was almost impossible to keep them at the prescribed distance of a cable's length from the ship. They incurred the risk of being run down—of being, as they might apprehend, shot (for muskets were discharged for the purpose of intimidation,) of all the dangers of a naval combat, rather than lose the opportunity of seeing the Emperor whom they had heard so much of. When he appeared he was greeted with huzzas, which he returned with bows, but could not help expressing his wonder at the eagerness of popular curiosity, which he was not accustomed to see in such a pitch of excitation.
SIR HENRY BUNBURY'S MINUTES.