Volume II Part 3 (2/2)
Beside these n.o.ble examples of good government, many other advantages were bestowed on the French people by their emperor. Their ”Code Napoleon,” their ”Legion of Honour,” their ”Central Schools,” their _new roads_, _bridges_, and _ca.n.a.ls_, will be lasting evidences of the gigantic powers of his mind, and of his sincere desire to serve his country, and render himself worthy of the exalted station to which he had been called by her grat.i.tude for his pre-eminent military services.
Had Napoleon bounded his ambition to the glory of ruling France upon free and liberal principles, it had been happy for himself, his relations, and his country; but to talk of his foreign despotism, and his _carrying_ tyranny to where, in fact, he _found_ tyranny,--tyranny the most rank and inveterate,--is to use the language of folly or of knavery, and to merit the contempt of every thinking mind.
But if it be even allowed that Napoleon was all that his enemies would make him, where did our ministers get the unheard-of privilege of setting themselves up as cosmopolite censors? By what right did the British government const.i.tute itself a tribunal to judge and punish, in the last resort, delinquent monarchs? Could it by any reasoning have made out a claim to that office, was it just or decent to make a victim of _one_,--a man of unquestioned talent and greatness of soul,--and at the same moment to compliment and make alliances with all the worse tyrants, the maudlin hypocrites, and base violaters of their word? Or did these moral Quixotes and immaculate judges only profess to ”do _justice_” upon _one_ sinner ”against the spirit of the age,”--and that one a _fallen_ enemy?
The only plausible pretence for the treatment of the abdicated emperor was--that his surpa.s.sing genius, and his great hold on the military part of the French character, rendered him a necessary exception to the rule regarding prisoners of war, and made it indispensable to the safety and repose of the world, that he should be prevented from appearing again on the grand stage of European politics. This is confessedly on the dangerous plan of doing positive injustice for the sake of what the doers think safe and necessary. But we deny the necessity. We say the argument is built on utter ignorance of human nature, and a wilful blindness to all history and experience. Napoleon was grand in his views, because he admired and loved greatness for its own sake. He never sullied his conquests by part.i.tioning and dividing the conquered. He could afford not to weaken his enemies by petty violations of national integrity. He encouraged every thing liberal and n.o.ble, which did not at the same time interfere with his personal authority. He cherished literature, art, and science; and they, in return, reflected true glory upon him. He never insulted and mocked mankind by pretending an eternal right in himself and his successors to trample them under his feet, because he was an emperor. He had always a respect for liberty, though he so often forgot it in his greater eagerness for power. He never laid claim to _holiness_, but acknowledged himself, in his proudest moments, sovereign, ”_by the const.i.tutions of the empire_.” He was not vindictive; his long military rule was never sullied by any act which could be compared in infamy with the imprisonment of the unfortunate TRENCK by that Prussian FREDERICK, whom the legitimate abusers of NAPOLEON call ”the _Great_.” The prominent fault of his career as a leader of a new and revolutionary period, was that, instead of looking forward, he looked backward, and became an imitator instead of an original. He evidently had the glories of former ages strongly in his view; and was to be a great conqueror, not because the times wanted _him_, but because there are medals and statues in the world, and dynasties were founded by CaeSAR. In the height of his prosperity, he was a CHARLEMAGNE--another ”Emperor of the West;” and, in his adversity, he forgot the Prince Regent of England so far as to talk to him of THEMISTOCLES[68:A]. And yet there was a romance even in this, which set him above all ordinary conquerors. He had the poetry, as well as the prose, of the military art about him. _He_ would never have sunk into a mere lounger and man of pleasure, or stood behind any commonplace man with a gold stick in his hand.
[68:A] The following is a translation of the letter above referred to:
”Rocheford, 13th July, 1815.
”YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS,
”A victim to the factions which distract my country, and to the enmity of the greatest powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws, which I claim from your royal highness, as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies.
”NAPOLEON.”
As a soldier, his military career has never been surpa.s.sed in brilliancy. Quick, active, decisive, he never paused in the vigorous and persevering execution of the plans which his genius prompted him to undertake. He introduced a new, high, and successful mode of conquest, by striking immediately at the centre of armies and countries; and he was finally overthrown, both as general and sovereign, not because his individual antagonists were greater, but because the very physical remains of old English liberty were greater, and because public opinion was greater than all. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the great art of estimating and working upon the characters of his adversaries, and the still greater art of gaining the affections of his soldiers, who were always pa.s.sionately fond of him, and who at this day adore his memory.
As a prince and a conqueror, his master-pa.s.sion was a restless ambition, the impetuous tide of which bore him onward to his ends through many signal acts of injustice and violence. We shall not dwell upon them: there has been plenty of ”envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness,” to ring the changes on his worst deeds, and an abundance of those feelings, we find, survive the object that particularly roused them. Neither shall we indulge in uselessly regretting the good he _failed_ to do, or in reproaching him with the want of moderation and wisdom. Our business is with the ill.u.s.trious soldier as he was, not as he might have been without his defects:
”His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear; His high-designing thoughts were figured there.”
His character was spoilt, or at least not adapted to the purposes of freedom, by a military education. The BOURBONS brought him up at one of their military schools, where his head was filled with CaeSAR and ALEXANDER, and then complained of him for his ambition: that is to say, the legitimate monarchs will let you be as ambitious and warlike as you please, provided you a.s.sist _their_ ambition and wars; but if not, you are a blood-thirsty conqueror and a tyrant. Some writers have attempted to confound, on _this_ occasion, ambition with mere ordinary selfishness. This is paltry and ridiculous. Napoleon was never so cool as when contemplating eminent success. Those who have carried him the news of victory have frequently supposed that he had learnt it before, or that he did not credit them. It warmed no feature of his countenance; it lit up no additional l.u.s.tre in his eye. Yet this was not indifference; he had acquired a habit of subduing the ordinary emotions of mankind. Defeat and error certainly enraged him towards those who contributed to such mortifications; but they never had power to hurry him into any efforts to repair disaster. His intemperance never extended itself to his plans or resources, as a general. Let us look to the course of his feelings when the thunderbolt of his fortune was expended at Moscow. He had recourse to no dribbling efforts on which to hang the flame of military hope. He negotiated the plan of his retreat with all the precision of an attorney, who leaves nothing unprovided for. Trifles alone disturbed Napoleon. The offence of an inattention on the part of an attendant would make him angry; but if the world had burst asunder, and only left him a place to stand upon, he would have regarded it through his eye-gla.s.s as an experiment in natural philosophy!
Had Napoleon lived in times of less turbulence, he would have been a still greater statesman than a warrior. It is a fact not to be disputed, that it was this great man who definitively freed the entire Continent of Europe from that democratic mania, of all other tyrannies the most cruel, savage, and unrelenting, and which was in full, though less rapid, progress when he, by accepting the diadem of France, restored the _principles_ of monarchy to its vigour, and, at one blow, overturned the many-headed monster of revolution. To attain this beneficial end, HE SPILT NO BLOOD! The decapitation of Louis, in which he could have had no concern, completely overwhelmed the Bourbon dynasty; but Napoleon, in one single day, re-established that monarchial form of government which the imbecile ministers of England had, with so much expense of human life and treasure, been for many years unsuccessfully attempting to restore!
One of Napoleon's greatest admirers was Mr. Fox, who, speaking of him one day, said, ”If we even shut our eyes on the martial deeds of this great man, we must allow that his _eloquence alone_ has elevated the French people to a higher degree of civilization than any other nation in Europe,--they have advanced a century during the last five years.
Bonaparte combines the declamation of a Cicero with the soul-stirring philippicks of a Demosthenes; he appeals _to the head and the heart_, to honour and to self-interest, at the same time. Had this wonderful man turned his attention to poetry, instead of war, he would have beaten Homer out of the field! Whatever his manner of delivery may be, and I understand it is impressive, he is certainly the greatest orator that the world ever produced. The soaring grandeur of his conceptions is admirable, and his adaptation of the deeds and sayings of the heroes and statesmen of ancient times to present circ.u.mstances, not only shows the extent of his reading and the correctness of his taste in their application, but also serves to a.s.sure the French people that he is as capable of governing as he has proved himself to be in leading them forth to conquest. But it is in his power of simplification that he s.h.i.+nes most; although as romantic as Ossian, he disdains all rodomontade and circ.u.mlocution; and, by stripping his subject of all extraneous matter, he reduces the most complex proposition down to the laconic simplicity of a self-evident axiom.”
What, then, are we to think of a British minister, who could violate his most sacred pledges of protection to a man of this exalted description?
But Lord Castlereagh's mind was not capable of estimating the worth and talents of Napoleon, and the mean expedient to which his lords.h.i.+p resorted to gain possession of the emperor's person will ever reflect the greatest possible disgrace upon his character, both as a man and a minister. The petty, vexatious, and unjustifiable conduct, to which the Emperor Napoleon was afterwards subjected at St. Helena, was equal in meanness to his capture. When the emperor quitted the Bellerophon, on the 8th of August, the officers and s.h.i.+p's company were in consternation; they felt implicated in the shame and the injustice of such a procedure. Napoleon traversed the deck to descend into the sloop, with calmness and a smile upon his lips, having at his side Admiral Keith. He stopped before Captain Maitland, charged him to testify his satisfaction to the officers and crew of the Bellerophon, and, seeing him extremely grieved, said to him, by way of consolation, ”_Posterity cannot, in any way, accuse you for what is taking place; you have been deceived as well as myself._” Napoleon enjoyed, during twenty-four days, the protection of the British flag; he sojourned in the inner roads of Torbay and Plymouth; and it was not until after that lapse of time, on the 8th of August, when pa.s.sing on board the Northumberland, that Admiral Keith disarmed the French,--the delivering up of arms being one of the characteristics of prisoners of war. The arms of the emperor, however, were not demanded.
It would be unnecessary to give a copy of the ”official” regulations, which Lord Castlereagh ordered to be observed towards the ill.u.s.trious Napoleon; their tyrannical operation will be made manifest in the following correspondence:
LETTER FROM COUNT MONTHOLON TO THE GOVERNOR, SIR HUDSON LOWE.
”_Longwood, 23rd August, 1816._
”GENERAL,
”I have received the treaty of the 2nd August, 1815, concluded between his Britannic Majesty, the Emperor of Austria, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, which was annexed to your letter of the 23rd July.
”The Emperor Napoleon protests against the contents of that treaty. He is not the prisoner of England: after having abdicated, into the hands of the representatives of the nation, for the advantage of the const.i.tution adopted by the French people, and in favour of his son, he repaired voluntarily and freely to England, to live there as a private individual, in retirement, under the protection of the British laws. The violation of all laws cannot const.i.tute a right; in point of fact, the person of the Emperor Napoleon is in the power of England; but in fact, and of right, he has not been and is not in the power of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, even according to the laws and customs of England, who never admitted into the balance, in the exchange of prisoners, the Russians, the Austrians, the Prussians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, although she was united to those powers by treaties of alliance, and made war conjointly with them. The convention of the 2nd August, made fifteen days after the Emperor Napoleon was in England, cannot, of right, have any effect; it exhibits only a spectacle of a coalition of the four great powers of Europe for the oppression of a SINGLE MAN!--a coalition disclaimed by the opinion of all people, and at variance with all the principles of sound morality. The Emperors of Austria and of Russia, and the King of Prussia, not having, either in fact or of right, any controul over the person of the Emperor Napoleon, they have had no power to decree any thing concerning him. If the Emperor Napoleon had been in the power of the Emperor of Austria, that prince would have recollected the relations which religion and nature have placed between a father and a son,--relations which are never violated with impunity.
He would have recollected, that Napoleon has four times restored him to his throne: at Leoben, in 1797, and at Luneville, in 1801, when his armies were under the walls of Vienna; at Presburg, in 1806, and at Vienna, in 1809, when his armies were masters of the capital, and of three-fourths of the monarchy. That prince would have recollected the protestations which he made to him at the bivouac of Moravia, in 1806, and at the interviews at Dresden, in 1812. If the person of the Emperor Napoleon had been in the power of the Emperor Alexander, he would have called to mind the bonds of friends.h.i.+p contracted at Tilsit, at Erfurt, and during twelve years of daily intercourse. He would have remembered the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon on the day after the battle of Austerlitz, when, having it in his power to make him prisoner with the wreck of his army, he contented himself with his parole, and suffered him to operate his retreat. He would have called to mind the dangers which the Emperor Napoleon personally braved to extinguish the conflagration of Moscow, and preserve to him that capital. Certainly, that prince would not have violated the duties of friends.h.i.+p and grat.i.tude towards a friend in misfortune. If the person of the Emperor Napoleon had even been in the power of the King of Prussia, that sovereign would not have forgotten, that it depended on the emperor, after the day of Friedland, to place another prince on the throne of Berlin; he would not have forgotten, in the presence of a disarmed enemy, the protestations of devotedness and the sentiments which he expressed to him in 1812, at the interviews of Dresden. Accordingly, it is obvious in the Articles 2 and 9 of the said treaty of the 2nd August, that, being unable in any way to influence the fate of the Emperor Napoleon's person, which is not in their power, those same persons agree to what shall be done thereon by the King of Great Britain, who undertakes to fulfil all obligations. These princes have reproached the Emperor Napoleon with having preferred the protection of the English laws to their protection. The false notions which the Emperor Napoleon had of the English laws, and of the influence which the opinion of a great, generous, and free people had on their government, induced him to prefer the protection of their laws to that of his father-in-law, or his old friend. The Emperor Napoleon was ever competent to ensure what concerned him personally, by a diplomatic treaty, either by replacing himself at the head of the army of the Loire, or by placing himself at the head of the army of the Gironde, which General Claus commanded. But, seeking thenceforward only retirement, and the protection of the laws of a free nation, either English or American, all stipulations appeared to him unnecessary. He thought the English would be more bound by his frank, n.o.ble, and confident procedure, than they would have been by the most solemn treaties. He was mistaken. But this error will always make true Britons blush; and, both in the present and in future generations, it will be a proof of the faithlessness of the English administration.
An Austrian and a Russian commissioner have arrived at St. Helena. If the object of their mission be the fulfilment of the duties which the Emperors of Austria and Russia contracted by the treaty of the 2nd of August, and to see that the English agents, in a small colony, in the midst of the ocean, do not fail in the attentions due to a prince, bound to them by the ties of kindred and by so many other relations, there may be recognised in this procedure some characteristics of those sovereigns. But you, sir, have affirmed that those commissioners had neither the right nor the power to form any opinion as to whatever takes place on this rock.
”The English ministry have caused the Emperor Napoleon to be transported to St. Helena, 2000 leagues from Europe. This rock is situated in the tropic, 900 leagues from any continent; it is subject to the consuming heats of this lat.i.tude; it is covered with clouds and fogs during three quarters of the year; it is at once the driest and the most humid country in the world; such a climate is most adverse to the emperor's health. It was hatred that dictated the choice of this abode, as well as the instructions given by the English ministry to the officers commanding at this place. They have been ordered to call the Emperor Napoleon, 'General,' wis.h.i.+ng to oblige him to acknowledge that he has never reigned in France; and this has determined him not to a.s.sume a name of incognito, as he had resolved to do on quitting France. As first magistrate, for life, of the republic, he concluded the preliminaries of London and the treaty of Amiens with the King of Great Britain; he received, as amba.s.sadors, Lord Cornwallis, Mr. Merry, and Lord Whitworth, who sojourned in this quality at his court. He accredited to the King of England Count Otto and General Andreossy, who resided as amba.s.sadors at the court of Windsor. When, after an interchange of letters between the two administrations of foreign affairs, Lord Lauderdale came to Paris, invested with full powers from the King of England, he treated with plenipotentiaries invested with full powers from the Emperor Napoleon, and sojourned several months at the court of the Thuilleries. When, subsequently, at Chatillon, Lord Castlereagh signed the ultimatum which the allied powers presented to the plenipotentiaries of the Emperor Napoleon, he thereby recognised the fourth dynasty. That ultimatum was more advantageous than the treaty of Paris; but it was demanded that France should renounce Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, which was contrary to the propositions of Frankfort, and to the proclamations of the allied powers, which was contrary also to the oath by which at his coronation the emperor had sworn to the integrity of the empire. The emperor then thought that the natural limits were necessary to the guarantee of France, and to the equilibrium of Europe. He thought that the French nation, in their then existing circ.u.mstances, ought rather to incur all the chances of war than to depart from them. France would have obtained that integrity, and with it preserved her honour, if TREASON had not come to the aid of the allies.
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