The Tragedy of St. Helena by Walter Runciman

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The Duchess of Abrantes, who smarted under some severe comments he
had made about her husband (Junot), the Duke of Abrantes, while at St.
Helena, has been generous enough to say many kind things of him in her
memoirs. One of her references to him is to this effect:--"All I know
of him" (and she knew him well from childhood) "proves that he
possessed a great soul which quickly forgets and forgives." She is
very fond of repeating in her memoirs that Napoleon proposed marriage
to her mother, Madame Permon, who was herself a Corsican and knew the
Bonaparte family well.

Madame Junot relates another story which is characteristic of
Bonaparte. Such was the enthusiasm of the people on his march towards
Paris after landing from Elba, that when he was holding a review of
the National Guard at Grenoble, the people shouldered him, and a young
girl with a laurel branch in her hand approached him reciting some
verses. "What can I do for you, my pretty girl?" said the Emperor. The
girl blushed, then lifting her eyes to him replied, "I have nothing to
ask of your Majesty; but you would render me very happy by embracing
me." Napoleon kissed her, and turning his head to either side, said
aloud, with a fascinating smile, "I embrace in you all the ladies of
Grenoble."

That Napoleon made mistakes no one will dispute; indeed, he saw
clearly, and admitted freely, in his solitude, that he had made many.
His minor fault (if it be right to characterise it as such) was in
extending clemency to the many rascals that were plotting his ruin and
carrying on a system of peculation that was an abhorrence to him.
Talleyrand, Fouche, and Bourrienne frequently came under his
displeasure and were removed from his service, but were taken back
after his wrath had passed.

Miot de Melito speaks of them as "Bourrienne and other subordinate
scoundrels," and, indeed, Miot de Melito does not exaggerate in his
estimate of them. Fouche says that Bourrienne kept him advised of all
Napoleon's movements for 25,000 francs per month, besides being both
partner and patron in the house of Coulon Brothers, cavalry equipment
providers, who failed for L120,000.

In 1805, Bourrienne was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at Hamburg,
and during his stay there he made L290,000 by delivering permits and
making what is known as "arbitrary stoppages," and besides betraying
Bonaparte to the Bourbons, this vile traitor wrote to Talleyrand, a
few days after the abdication at Fontainebleau: "I always desired the
return of that excellent Prince, Louis XVIII., and his august family."
But these things are mere shadows of the incomparable villainy of
this thievish human jackdaw.

His memoirs are said to have been written by an impecunious and
mediocre penman called Villemarest, who also wrote "Memoires de
Constant" (the Emperor's valet), and both books have been very
extensively read and believed. Men have got up terrific lectures from
them, authors have quoted from them whenever they desired an authority
to prove that which they wished themselves and their readers to
believe of trumped-up stories of Napoleon's despotism and evildoings.
Certainly, Bourrienne is the last and most unreliable of all the
chroniclers that may be quoted when writing a history of the Emperor.
Neither his character nor any of his personal qualities imbues the
impartial reader with confidence in either his criticisms or
historical statements.

Men like Fouche, Talleyrand, and Bourrienne, and political women like
Madame de Remusat and Madame de Stael, all of whom were brought under
the Emperor's displeasure by their zealous aptitude in one way and
another for intrigue, disloyalty, and, so far as the men are
concerned, glaring dishonesty in money matters, have assiduously
chronicled their own virtues and declaimed against Napoleon's
incalculable vices, and this course was no doubt chosen in order to
avert the public gaze from too close a scrutiny into their own
perfidy. Their plan is not an unusual one under such circumstances;
rascals never scruple to multiply offences more wicked than those
already committed in order to prove that they are acting from a pure
sense of public morality and historical truth. If the object of their
attack be a benefactor, and one who has been obliged to rebuke or
dismiss them for misdeeds, great or small, then they assail him with
unqualified hostility.

This unquestionably was the penalty paid by Napoleon for extending
clemency to men who, if they had been in the service of any other
monarch in Europe, would have been shut up in a fortress, or shot, the
moment their perfidies had been discovered. The pity is that so much
of this declamatory stuff has been so willingly believed and made use
of in order to defame the name of a sovereign whose besetting fault
was in relaxing just punishment bestowed on those who, he could never
altogether forget, were his companions in other days.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Montholon wished to have the following simple inscription:
"Napoleon, ne a Ajaccio, le 15 Aout, 1769, mort a St. Helena, le 5
Mai, 1821."

[13] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.

[14] Horne's "History of Napoleon," vol. ii.

[15] "Correspondence of Napoleon I."

[16] Ibid.

[17] Madame Walewska bore him two children. This caused him to develop
the idea of having an heir.

CHAPTER III

THREE GENERATIONS: MADAME LA MERE, MARIE LOUISE, AND THE KING OF ROME

It seems as though Hell had been let loose on this great man and his
family. The crowned heads of Europe and the plutocrats stopped at
nothing in order that they might make his ruin complete. They dare not
run the risk of putting him to death outright, but they engineered, by
means of willing tools, a plan that was unheard-of in its atrocious
character. They poured stories of unfaithfulness into the ears of a
faithless woman whose name will go down to posterity as an ignoble
wife and callous mother. She took with her into Austria the King of
Rome, a beautiful child who was put under the care of Austrian tutors.
He was watched as though he held the destinies of empires in the
hollow of his hand. His father's name was not allowed to fall on his
youthful ears, and more than one tutor was dismissed because he
secretly told him something of his father's fame. Treated as a
prisoner, spied upon by Metternich's satellites, not allowed to have
any visitors without this immortal Chancellor's permission, not
allowed to communicate with his father's family or with Frenchmen,
this pathetic figure, stuffed with Austrian views, is seized with a
growing desire to learn the history of his father, who declared in a
letter to his brother Joseph in 1814 that he would rather see his son
strangled than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince.[18]

Prince Napoleon in his excellent book--"Napoleon and His
Detractors"--refers to the young Prince playing a game of billiards
with Marmont and Don Miguel, the former having been one of his
father's most important generals. He it was who betrayed him, and now
he is become the Duke's confidant and instructor. The Prince says that
his cousin asked to be told about the deeds that his father had done,
his fall, and exile. There does not appear to be any record in
existence as to what Marmont conveyed or withheld from the son of
Marie Louise, but there is much evidence to show that the young man
was not only an eager student of his father's career, but fully
realised his own importance and influence on European politics.

It has been stated that until 1830 he really knew nothing of passing
events in the land of his birth. Obenaus, his tutor, states in his
diary, January 18, 1825: "During the afternoon walk, the political
relations of the Prince to the Imperial family and to the rest of the
world were discussed." Count Neipperg advised him to study the French
language, and his reply was: "This advice has not fallen on an
unfruitful or an ungrateful soil. Every imaginable motive inspires me
with the desire to perfect myself in, and to overcome the difficulties
of, a language which at the present moment forms the most essential
part of my studies. It is the language in which my father gave the
word of command in all his battles, in which his name was covered with
glory, and in which he has left us unparalleled memoirs of the art of
war; while to the last he expressed the wish that I should never
repudiate the nation into which I was born."[19] He further adds, "The
_chief_ aim of my life must be not to remain unworthy of my father's
fame."

His grandfather, the Emperor Francis--who was reputed to be quite
devoted to him--said, "I wish that the Duke should revere the memory
of his father." "Do not suppress the truth," says he to Metternich
(the disloyal friend of Napoleon). "Teach him above all to honour his
father's memory." The Chancellor replies, "I will speak to the Duke
about his father as I should wish myself to be spoken of to my own
son." What irony! Whatever attempts were made at any time to
depreciate the Emperor, his son's loyalty to him never flinched. He
regarded his father in the light of a hero whose glorious traditions
were unequalled by any warrior or ruler of men. He drank in every
particle of information he could discover about his father's life, and
was by no means ignorant of what would be his own great destiny should
he be permitted to live.

A strong party in France longed to have the son of their Emperor on
the throne of France. A section of the Poles clamoured to have him
proclaimed King of Poland after the Polish revolution, and the Greeks
claimed him as their future King. All existing records dealing with
the Prince's view concerning his position indicate quite clearly that
he never under-estimated his importance. He was fully alive to and
appreciated the growing devotion to himself, his cause, and to the
great name he bore. We learn from Marshal Marmont that the Prince
received him with marked cordiality when the Emperor Francis gave him
permission to relate to him his father's history. Marmont, like all
traitors, never neglected to put forth his popularity with the Emperor
Napoleon. This is a habit with people who do great injury to their
friends. They always make it appear that the injured person is
afflicted with growing love for them--they never realise how much they
are loathed and mistrusted.

The Prince at first received him with suspicion, then he tolerated him
coldly, and it was not until Marmont fascinated him with stories of
the genius and unparalleled greatness of his father's history that the
young man subdued his prejudices and encouraged the Marshal in his
visits to his apartments, in order that he might learn all that
Marmont could tell him of his father's qualities and accomplishments.
The young Napoleon caused the General to marvel at the quick
intelligence he displayed in the pointed comments made on his father's
career. In recognition of his services Marmont was presented with a
portrait of the Prince.[20]

His cousin, Prince Napoleon, son of King Jerome, in his book "Napoleon
and His Detractors," obviously desires to convey the impression that
all questions, important or unimportant, relating to the Emperor, were
studiously kept from his son, and until he arrived at a certain age
there can be little doubt that undue and unnatural precautions were
taken to prevent the Emperor's name being spoken, but the means used
for this purpose must have proved abortive, as everything points to
him having been well informed. He appears to have had an instinctive
knowledge that nullified the precautions of the Court of Vienna, and
especially its culpable Chancellor, Metternich, whose clumsy and
heartless treatment is so apparent to all students of history.
Probably this is the policy that prevailed up to 1830 which Prince
Napoleon complains of. Be that as it may, we are persuaded that the
Duke was not only well informed, but took a keen interest in the
events of his own and of his father's life, long before the advent of
Marmont as his tutor. For instance, on one occasion his friend, Count
Prokesch, dined with his grandfather in 1830, and at table the Prince
was afforded great pleasure in having the opportunity of conversing
with this distinguished man. The young Duke knew that Prokesch had
broken a lance in 1818 in defence of his father, and he eagerly
availed himself of the chance of saying some very complimentary things
to the Count. He informs him that he has "known him a long while, and
loved him because he defended his father's honour at a time when all
the world vied with each other to slander his name"; and then he
continues: "I have read your 'Battle of Waterloo,' and in order to
impress every line of it on my memory I translated it twice in French
and Italian."[21] Obviously this young man was neither a dunce nor
indolent when his father's fame and his own interests were in
question.

One of the most remarkable features of this pathetic young life is the
intense interest his mother's husband began to take in him, and he
probably owed a great deal to the fact that Count Neipperg urged him
to make himself familiar with the glory of the Empire and his father's
deeds. Strange though it may appear, the son of the Great Napoleon and
the morganatic husband of his mother were attached to each other in
the most intimate way. If he perceived the immoral relations between
Neipperg and Marie Louise, the Duke never seems to have divulged it;
but taking into account the passionate love and devotion he had for
his father's memory, it is barely likely that he knew either of the
amorous connection or marriage having taken place between the Count
and his mother, otherwise he would have had something to say about it,
not only to Neipperg himself, but certainly to his friends Prokesch,
Baron Obenaus, and Count Dietrichstein, and very naturally his
grandfather. It may be that the circumstances of his life made him
cautious, and even cunning, in keeping to himself an affair that was
generally approved by the most interested parties, but it is hardly
likely that the spirit of natural feeling had been so far crushed out
of him as to forbid his openly resenting a further monstrous wrong
being done to his Imperial father.

The young Prince was the centre of great political interest, and the
object of ungrudging sympathy and devotion of a large public in
Europe, and especially in France, and had his life been preserved a
few more years he would, in spite of obstacles and prejudices, have
been put on the throne of the land of his birth.

Metternich, the inveterate trickster, does not appear to have had any
serious thought of encouraging the project of making the Duke Emperor
of the French. His subtle game was to use him as a terror to Louis
Philippe when that monarch became refractory or showed signs of
covetousness.

The Prince carried himself high above sordid party methods. He was
proud of being heir to a throne that his father had made immortal and
he was determined not to soil it. If it was to be reclaimed, all
obstacles must be removed ere he would lend his countenance to it.
There must be a clear, uninterrupted passage. Thirty-four million
souls, it was claimed, were anxious for his restoration to France.
Amongst the leaders were to be found some of his father's old
companions in arms and in exile, amongst whom none were more
enthusiastic than the loyal and devoted Count Montholon, Bertrand, the
petulant and penitent Gourgaud, and Savary, Duke of Rovigo. These were
joined to thousands of other brave men who would have considered it an
honour to shed their last drop of blood for the cause, and in memory
of him whom they had loved so well. The two first-named were executors
to his father's will, in which Napoleon enjoins his son not to attempt
to avenge his death but to profit by it. He reminds him that things
have changed. He was obliged to daunt Europe by his arms, but now the
way is to convince her. His son is urged not to mount the throne by
the aid of foreign influence, and he is charged to deserve the
approbation of posterity. He is reminded that "MERIT may be pardoned,
but not intrigue," and that he is to "propagate in all uncivilised and
barbarous countries the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.
Religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded
philosophers are willing to believe. They are capable of rendering
great services to humanity."

These are only a few of the excellent thoughts transmitted to the
young man from the tragic rock whose memories will ever defame the
name of those who combined to commit a crime unequalled in political
history.

It is none the less a phenomenon that this "abode of darkness," so
monstrous in the history of its perfidy, should be illumined by the
great figure that stamped its fame for evermore with his personality.

One of the last and finest works of genius he did there was to draw up
a constitution for his son. It is doubtful whether Montholon ever
succeeded in conveying it to the Prince, who passed on before the
legitimate call to put it into practice came.

The Powers that made holy war for the last time on the great soldier
with 900,000 men against his 128,000 arrogated the right to outlaw and
brand him as the disturber of public peace. I have already said this
was their ostensible plea, but the real reason was his determination
to exterminate feudalism and establish democratic institutions as soon
as he could bring the different factions into harmony. He failed, but
the colossal cost of his failure in men and money is unthinkable. His
subjugation left Great Britain alone with a debt, as already stated,
of eight hundred millions, and then there was no peace.

The constitution intended for his son could have been very
beneficially applied to some of the nations represented at the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle by the allied sovereigns who declared him
an outlaw, and spent their time in allocating slices of other people's
territory to each other. The only nation that came badly out of the
Congress was Great Britain.

This terrible despot, who was beloved by the common people and hated
by the oligarchy, left behind him a constitution that might well be
adopted by the most democratic countries.

The first article--composed of six words: "The sovereignty dwells in
the nation"--stamps the purpose of it with real democracy. It might do
no harm to embody some of its clauses into our own constitution at the
present time. We very tardily adopted some of its laws long after his
death, and we might go on copying to our advantage. He was a real
progressor, but his team was difficult to guide. Had he been
conciliated and allowed to remain at peace, he would have democratised
the whole of Europe, but the fear of that, or the legitimacy idea, was
undoubtedly the great underlying cause of much of the trouble. The
mistrust and animus against the father was reflected upon the son, who
was practically a State prisoner.

During childhood the Prince was strong and healthy, and his robust
physique caused favourable comment. It was not until 1819 that his
health became affected by an attack of spotted fever. This passed away
in a few weeks, but the decline of his health, which was attributed to
his rapid growth, dates from that period. He died prematurely on July
22, 1832, at Schoenbrunn, and the accounts which may be relied upon
indicate either wilfully careless or incompetent medical treatment. It
is even asserted that this heir to the throne of France, ushered in
twenty-one years before as the herald of Peace, was to be regarded as
a source of infinite danger, and for that barbaric reason his health
was allowed to be slowly and surely undermined until death took him
from the restraining influences and crimeful policy of the Courts of
Europe. Great efforts have been made to convince a sceptical public
that his early death was the result of youthful indiscretions, but
this is stoutly denied by Prokesch, who declares that he was a
strictly moral youth, and Baron Obenaus, in his diary, justifies this
opinion, if there was nothing else to support it. Moreover the same
Anton, Count Prokesch was asked by Napoleon III. to tell him the truth
as to the alleged love affairs, and he averred that the rumours were
without foundation.

The King of Rome died at Schoenbrunn in the same room that his father
had occupied in 1809. In Paris a report was put about that he had been
poisoned by the Court of Vienna. This opinion has been handed down,
and there are many persons to-day who have a firm belief in its
possibility.

Another common rumour, current in 1842, was that Metternich sent a
poisoned lemon by Prokesch, which had done its work, and even this
highly improbable story is not without reason believed, because
Metternich was known to be the most heartless cunning Judas in
politics at that time. He had betrayed the father of the Prince while
he was declaring the most loyal friendship. He admits this, nay, even
boasts of it, in his memoirs, and his shameful conduct has its reward
by having won for him the stigma of wishing for, and hastening on, the
death of an unfortunate young man for whom ordinary manliness should
have claimed compassion. This moral assassin of father and son
declared that he had "used all the means in his power to second the
hand of God" by trapping Napoleon into the clutches of the combined
moralists of Europe. The Usurper was to be ruined, then peace
proclaimed for evermore. That was their pretence, though it could not
have been their conviction. If it was, they were soon disillusioned.

I made a long journey in company with a Danish statesman a few years
ago, and amongst other things that we conversed about was the reign
and fall of Napoleon. This gentleman held up his hands and said to me,
"Oh! what a blunder the criminal affair was. Had the Powers beheld the
mission of this man aright, what a blessing it would have been to the
world!"--and there is not much difficulty in supporting the view of
this Danish gentleman. The more one probes into the history of the
period, the more vivid the blunder appears.

Metternich has the distinction of being eulogised by M. Taine, who was
neither fair nor accurate, and there is not much glory in being
championed by a man whose book is made up of libels. Metternich may
here be dismissed as being only one of many whose highest ambition was
to destroy the man whom the French nation had made their monarch.
Their aim was accomplished, but the spirit that evolved from the wreck
of the Revolution still lives on, and may rise again to be avenged for
the great crime that was committed.

Whether the gifted and amiable son of the Emperor Napoleon was
despatched by the cruellest of all assassinations or came by his
premature death by neglect, or by natural and constitutional causes,
is a matter that may never be cleared up, though the actions of the
high commissioners in the nauseous drama cause lingering doubts to
prevail as to their innocence. It is certain that several determined
attempts were made to take the Prince's life, and large sums were
offered to desperadoes to carry out this murderous deed. Then the
Court of Vienna were in constant fear of his abduction. His
invitations to come to France were perpetual.

A lady cousin--the Countess Napoleone Camerata, daughter of Elisa
Bacciochi, a sister of the Emperor, easily obtained a passport from
the Pope's Secretary of State, and coquetted so successfully with the
Austrian Ambassador, that he gave it a double guarantee of good faith
by signing it. This impetuous and eccentric female made her way
uninterruptedly to Vienna, found her cousin on the doorstep, made a
rush for him and seized his hand, then shouted, "Who can prevent my
kissing my sovereign's hand?" She also found means to convey letters
to him. There is not much said about this Napoleonic dash, but from
the records that are available the incident set the heroes--comprising
the allied Courts (including France)--into a flutter of excitement.
The fuss created by the enterprise of the pretty little Countess gives
a lurid insight into the wave of comic derangement which must have
taken possession of men's minds.

This lady received a pension during the Third Empire, and in eighteen
years it mounted to over six million francs. She died in Brittany,
1869, and left her fortune to the Prince Imperial.

That there was a determined and well-conceived plot to carry the Duke
off is undoubted, but the counter-plots prevailed against the more
ardent Bonapartists who were thirsting for a resurrection of the
glorious Empire. Prince Louis Napoleon, the eldest son of King Louis,
disagreed with the idea of his family. He looked upon the Emperor's
son as being an Austrian Prince, imbued with Austrian methods and
policy, and therefore dangerous to the best interests of France. This
Prince went so far as to hail with pleasure the crowning of Louis
Philippe. He died in 1831. In the following year his Imperial cousin
passed on too, and his demise was a great blow to the Bonapartists'
cause, and it well-nigh killed the aged Madame Mere, who had centred
all her hopes in him. Marie Louise announced his death, to his
grandmother and asks her to "accept on this sorrowful occasion the
assurance of the kindly feeling entertained for her by her
affectionate daughter," and here is the cold, dignified, crushing
reply from Madame Mere. It is dictated, and dated Rome, August 6,
1832:--

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