It was not, according to General Gourgaud, for want of means of escape, that Napoleon continued to remain at St. Helena. There was one plan for carrying him out in a trunk with dirty linen; and so general was the opinion of the extreme stupidity of the English sentinels, that there was another by which it was proposed he should slip through the camp in disguise of a servant carrying a dish. When the Baron Sturmer represented the impossibility of such wild plans being in agitation, Gourgaud answered, "There was no impossibility to those who had millions at their command. Yes, I repeat it," he continued, "he can escape from hence, and go to America whenever he has a mind."[224]—"Why, then, should he remain here?" said Baron Sturmer. Gourgaud replied, "That all his followers had urged him to make the experiment of escape; but he preferred continuing on the island. He has a secret pride in the consequence attached to the custody of his person, and the interest generally taken in his fate. He has said repeatedly, 'I can no longer live as a private person. I would rather be a prisoner on this rock, than a free but undistinguished individual in the United States.'"[225]
General Gourgaud said, therefore, that the event to which Napoleon trusted for liberty, was some change of politics in the court of Great Britain, which should bring into administration the party who were now in opposition, and who, he rather too rashly perhaps conceived, would at once restore to him his liberty. The British ministers received the same assurances from General Gourgaud with those given at St. Helena. These last are thus expressed in the original:—
"Upon the subject of General Buonaparte's escape, M. Gourgaud stated confidently, that although Longwood was, from its situation, capable of being well protected by sentries, yet he was certain that there would be no difficulty in eluding at any time the vigilance of the sentries posted round the house and grounds; and, in short, that escape from the island appeared to him in no degree impracticable. The subject, he confessed, had been discussed at Longwood amongst the individuals of the establishment, who were separately desired to give their plans for effecting it. But he expressed his belief to be, that General Buonaparte was so fully impressed with the opinion, that he would be permitted to leave St. Helena, either upon a change of ministry in England, or by the unwillingness of the English to bear the expense of detaining him, that he would not at present run the hazard to which an attempt to escape might expose him. It appeared, however, from the statement of General Gourgaud, and from other circumstances stated by him, that Buonaparte had always looked to the period of the removal of the allied armies from France as that most favourable for his return; and the probability of such an event, and the consequences which would flow from it, were urged by him as an argument to dissuade General Gourgaud from quitting him until after that period."
WARDEN—O'MEARA, ETC.
General Gourgaud's communications further bear, what, indeed, can be collected from many other circumstances, that as Napoleon hoped to obtain his liberty from the impression to be made on the minds of the English nation, he was careful not to suffer his condition to be forgotten, and most anxious that the public mind should be carefully kept alive to it, by a succession of publications coming out one after another, modified according to the different temper and information of the various authors, but bearing all of them the stamp of having issued in whole or in part from the interior of Longwood. Accordingly, the various works of Warden,[226] O'Meara,[227] Santini,[228] the letter of Montholon,[229] and other publications upon St. Helena,[230] appeared one after another, to keep the subject awake; which, although seemingly discharged by various hands, bear the strong peculiarity of being directed at identically the same mark, and of being arrows from the same quiver. Gourgaud mentioned this species of file-firing, and its purpose. Even the Manuscrit de St. Hélène, a tract, in which dates and facts were misplaced and confounded, was also, according to General Gourgaud, the work of Buonaparte, and composed to puzzle and mystify the British public. He told Sir Hudson Lowe that he was not to consider the abuse in these various pamphlets as levelled against him personally, but as written upon political calculation, with the view of extorting some relaxation of vigilance by the reiteration of complaints. The celebrated Letter of Montholon was, according to the same authority, written in a great measure by Napoleon; and the same was the case with Santini's, though so grossly over coloured that he himself afterwards disowned it.[231] Other papers, he said, would appear under the names of captains of merchantmen and the like, for Napoleon was possessed by a mania for scribbling, which had no interruption. It becomes the historian, therefore, to receive with caution the narratives of those who have thus taken a determinedly partial part in the controversy, and concocted their statements from the details afforded by the party principally concerned. If what General Gourgaud has said be accurate, it is Napoleon who is pleading his own cause under a borrowed name, in the pages of O'Meara, Santini, Montholon, &c. Even when the facts mentioned in these works, therefore, are undeniable, still it is necessary to strip them of exaggeration, and place them in a fair and just light before pronouncing on them.
The evidence of O'Meara, as contained in a Voice from St. Helena, is that of a disappointed man, bitterly incensed against Sir Hudson Lowe, as the cause of his disappointment. He had no need to kindle the flame of his own resentment, at that of Buonaparte. But it may be granted that their vindictive feelings must have strengthened each other. The quarrel was the more irreconcilable, as it appears that Dr. O'Meara was originally in great habits of intimacy with Sir Hudson Lowe, and in the custom of repeating at Plantation-house the gossip which he had heard at Longwood. Some proofs of this were laid before the public, in the Quarterly Review;[232] and Sir Hudson Lowe's correspondence with government contains various allusions to Mr. O'Meara's authority,[233] down to the period when their mutual confidence was terminated by a violent quarrel.[234]
Count Las Cases is not, in point of impartiality, to be ranked much above Dr. O'Meara. He was originally a French emigrant, a worshipper by profession of royalty, and therefore only changed his idol, not his religion, when he substituted the idol Napoleon for the idol Bourbon. He embraces with passive obedience the interests of his chief, real or supposed, and can see nothing wrong which Napoleon is disposed to think right. He was also the personal enemy of Sir Hudson Lowe. We have no idea that he would falsify the truth; but we cannot but suspect the accuracy of his recollection, when we find he inserts many expressions and incidents in his Journal, long after the period at which it was originally written, and it is to be presumed from memory. Sir Hudson Lowe had the original manuscript for some time in his possession, and we have at present before us a printed copy, in which Sir Hudson has, with his own hand, marked those additions which had been made to the Journal since he saw it in its primitive state. It is remarkable that all, or almost all, the additions which are made to the Journal, consist of passages highly injurious to Sir Hudson Lowe, which had no existence in the original manuscript. These additions must therefore have been made under the influence of recollection, sharpened by angry passions, since they did not at first seem important enough to be preserved. When memory is put on the rack by passion and prejudice, she will recollect strange things; and, like witnesses under the actual torture, sometimes avow what never took place.
ANTOMMARCHI.
Of Dr. Antommarchi it is not necessary to say much; he was a legatee of Buonaparte, and an annuitant of his widow, besides being anxious to preserve the countenance of his very wealthy family. He never speaks of Sir Hudson Lowe without rancour. Sir Hudson's first offence against him was inquiring for clandestine correspondence;[235] his last was, preventing the crowd at Napoleon's funeral from pulling to pieces the willow-trees by which the grave was sheltered, besides placing a guard over the place of sepulture.[236] What truth is there, then, to be reposed in an author, who can thus misrepresent two circumstances—the one imposed on Sir Hudson Lowe by his instructions; the other being what decency and propriety, and respect to the deceased, imperatively demanded?