Napoleon sleeping by Las Cases on board the Bellerophon
In red chalk by Lépicié.

1815-21

The ministry of Lord Liverpool, though ultra-Tory, was nevertheless embarrassed by the course of affairs. On June twentieth the premier wrote to Castlereagh that he wished Napoleon had been captured by Louis XVIII, and executed as a rebel. This amazing suggestion was the result of the progress made within a year by the doctrine of legitimacy. Although Talleyrand had observed the Hundred Days from the safe seclusion of Carlsbad, and was coldly received by his "legitimate" sovereign when he returned to Paris under Wellington's ægis, yet there was no one equally able to restore a "legitimate" government, and, with the aid of Wellington, who assumed without question the chief place in reconstructing France, he was soon in full activity. In strict logic, the allies reasoned that Napoleon was their common prisoner, and, as the chief malefactor, he should meet the fate which was to be Ney's, and later that of Murat. By long familiarity with such notions, the Czar had finally been converted to the once abhorrent idea of legitimacy, and was hatching the scheme of the Holy Alliance; even he would have made no objection. But English opinion, however irritated, would not tolerate the idea of death as a penalty for political offenses. Whatever ministers felt or said, they dared consider no alternative in dealing with Napoleon except that of imprisonment. Accordingly, St. Helena, the spot suggested at Vienna as being the most remote in the habitable world, was designated and the island was borrowed from the East India Company. Acts of Parliament were passed which established a special government for it, and cut it off from all outside communication, "for the better detaining in custody Napoleon Bonaparte." The Continental allies, therefore, on August second, declared the sometime Emperor to be their common prisoner. To England they yielded the right to determine his place of detention, but to each of themselves—Austria, Russia, and Prussia—was reserved the right of sending thither a commissioner who should determine the fact of actual imprisonment.

It was in Torbay that the newspapers brought on board the Bellerophon first announced what was under consideration. On July thirty-first, with inconsistent ceremony, the determination was formally announced by an embassy consisting of Lord Keith, the admiral; Sir Henry Bunbury, an under-secretary of state; and Mr. Meike, secretary to the admiral. To whom did this highest official authority address itself? To General Bonaparte, a private citizen! Their message was read in French, and Napoleon displayed perfect self-control. Asked if he had anything to say, the ex-Emperor, without temper or bitterness, appealed against the judgment of governments both to posterity and to the British people. He was, he said, a voluntary guest; he wished to be received as such under the law of nations, and to be domiciled as an English citizen (sic). During the interval before naturalization he would dwell under superintendence anywhere in England, thirty leagues from any seaport. He could not live in St. Helena; he was accustomed to ride twenty miles a day; what could he do on that little rock at the end of the world? He could have gone to his father-in-law, or to the Czar, but while the tricolor was still flying he had confided in British hospitality. Though defeated, he was still a sovereign, and deserved to be treated as such. With emphasis he declared that he preferred death to St. Helena.

The embassy withdrew in silence from the moving scene. Lord Keith had previously expressed gratitude to Napoleon for personal attentions to a young relative who had been captured at Waterloo. Him, therefore, the imperial prisoner now recalled, and asked if there were any tribunal to which appeal might be made. The answer was a polite negative, with the assurance that the British government would mitigate the situation as far as prudence would permit. "How so?" said Napoleon. "Surely St. Helena is preferable to a smaller space in England," answered Keith, "or being sent to France, or perhaps to Russia." "Russia!" exclaimed Napoleon, taken off his guard. "God preserve me from it!" This was the only moment of excitement; the witnesses of the long and trying scene have left on record the profound impression made on them by Napoleon's dignity and admirable conduct throughout. Subsequently the prisoner composed a written protest appealing to history. An enemy who for twenty years had waged war against the English people had come voluntarily to seek an asylum under English laws; how did England respond to such magnanimity? In his own mind, at least, he instituted and therefore wrote a comparison between-himself and Themistocles, who took refuge with the Persians, and was kindly treated. The parallel broke down in that the great Greek had never forced his enemy into entangling alliances, as Napoleon had forced England into successive coalitions for self-preservation. Moreover, his surrender was not voluntary: his life would not have been worth a moment's purchase either in France or elsewhere on the Continent, to have fled by sea would have been to invite capture. "Wherever," as he himself repeatedly said—"wherever there was water to float a ship, there was to be found a British standard." Still there were many in England who took his view; much sympathy was aroused, and some futile efforts for his release were made.

For the journey to St. Helena, Napoleon was transferred to Admiral Cockburn's ship, the Northumberland. The suite numbered thirty, and was chosen by Napoleon himself. Its members were Bertrand, Montholon, and Las Cases, with their families, together with Gourgaud and, following in a later ship, a Pole of doubtful duty and dubious personality, the self-styled Colonel Piontkowski. There were sixteen servants, of whom twelve were Napoleon's. The voyage was tedious and uneventful. The admiral adhered to English customs, and discarded the etiquette observed toward crowned heads; but he remained on the best of terms with his illustrious prisoner. There were occasional misunderstandings, and sometimes ill-natured gossip, in which the admiral was denounced behind his back as a "shark"; but such little gusts of temper passed without permanent consequences. Napoleon had secured the excellent library he desired, and every day read or wrote during most of the morning; the evenings he devoted to games of hazard for low stakes, or to chess, which he played very badly. He was careful as to his diet, took abundant regular exercise, and, since his health was excellent, he appeared in the main cheerful and resigned.

The island of St. Helena is the craggy summit of an ancient volcano, rising two thousand seven hundred feet above the sea, and contains forty-five square miles. Its shores are precipitous, but it has an excellent harbor, that of Jamestown, which was then a port of call on the voyage from England, by the Cape of Good Hope, to India. It lies four thousand miles from London, one thousand one hundred and forty from the coast of Africa, one thousand one hundred and eighty from the nearest point in South America. There were a few thousand inhabitants of mixed race, and the tropical climate, though moist and enervating, is fairly salubrious. Under the act passed by Parliament, England increased the territorial waters around the island to a ring three times the usual size, and policed them by "hovering" vessels, which made the approach of suspicious craft virtually impossible. This, with numerous other precautionary measures of minor importance, made St. Helena an impenetrable jail. It was October sixteenth, 1815, when Napoleon landed on its shores.

The residence provided for the imperial captive was a rather ordinary farm-house in the center of the island, on a plateau two thousand feet high. The grounds were level, and bounded by natural limits, so that they were easy to guard, and could be observed in all their extent by sentries; eventually a circuit of twelve miles was marked out, and within this the prisoner might move at will; if he wished to pass the line, he must be attended by an English officer. Considering the conceptions of state and chivalry then prevalent, the place was mean; long after, when enlarged and repaired, the house was thought not unsuitable for the entertainment of an imprisoned Zulu chieftain. Longwood, for this is the familiar name, might at a pinch have sufficed for the lodging of General Bonaparte; it was certainly better than a dungeon; but its modest comfort was far from the luxurious elegance which had become a second nature to the Emperor Napoleon. Such as it was to be, however, it was still uninhabitable in October, and its destined occupant was, until December ninth, the guest of a hospitable merchant, Mr. Balcombe, at his villa known as The Briars. The sentinels and patrols remained six hundred paces from the door during the day; at night the cordon of guards was drawn close around the house; twice in twenty-four hours the orderly must assure himself of the prisoner's actual presence, and human ingenuity could devise no precaution which was not taken by land and sea to make impossible any secret communication, inward or outward. Cockburn's serene good-nature rendered it out of the question for the captive to do more than declare his policy of protest and exasperation, until April, 1816, when the admiral departed, and was replaced by Sir Hudson Lowe. The latter was a vulnerable foe. A creature of routine, and fresh from a two years' residence as English commissioner in Blücher's camp, he had thoroughly absorbed the temper both of the Tory ministry and of the Continental reactionaries. Neither irascible, severe, nor ill-natured, he was yet punctilious, and in no sense a match for the brilliant genius of his antagonist. With the arrival of this unfortunate official properly begins the St. Helena period of Napoleon's life—a period considered by many to be instructive; but, as regards the talk and futile calculations in which he indulged, comparable only to that of his ineffectual agitations in Corsica.