The Tragedy of St. Helena by Walter Runciman

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"Madame, notwithstanding the political shortsightedness which
has constantly deprived me of all news of the dear child whose
death you have been so considerate to announce to me, I have
never ceased to entertain towards him the devotion of a mother.
In him I still found an object of some consolation, but to my
great age, and to my incessant and painful infirmities, God has
seen fit to add this blow as fresh proof of His mercy, since I
firmly believe that He will amply atone to him in His glory for
the glory of this world.

"Accept my thanks, madame, for having put yourself to this
trouble in such sorrowful circumstances to alleviate the
bitterness of my grief. Be sure that it will remain with me all
my life. My condition precludes me from even signing this
letter, and I must therefore crave your permission to delegate
the task to my brother."

Never a word about the lady's relationship to her son or to herself.
Her reply is studiously formal, but every expression of it betokens
grief and thoughts of the great martyr whom the woman she was writing
to had wronged. There is not a syllable of _open_ reproach, though
there runs through it a polite, withering indictment that must
assuredly have cut deeply into the callous nature of this notorious
Austrian Archduchess who had played her son so falsely.

This wonderful mother of a wonderful family seems to have been the
least suspected of political plotting of all the Bonapartists. She
was respected by all, and revered and beloved by many. Crowned heads
were not indifferent to her strength and nobility of character, but
the stupid old King who succeeded her son to the throne of France got
it into his head that she was harbouring agents in Corsica to excite
rebellion, and he thereupon had a complaint lodged against her. Pius
VII., who knew Madame Mere, sent his secretary to see her about this
supposed intrigue. She listened to what the representative of the Pope
had to say, and then with stern dignity began her reply:--

"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me,
but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I
should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain
adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should
use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the
most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."

Then she bowed reverently and left the room.

This was indeed a slashing rebuff both to Pius VII. and the "Most
Christian King."

Another very good story is told of this extraordinary old lady by H.
Noel Williams. It appears she persisted after the fall of the Empire
in using the Imperial arms on her carriage.

"Why should I discontinue this symbol?" she asked. "Europe bowed to
the dust before my son's arms for ten years, and her sovereigns have
not forgotten it."

On one occasion she was out driving when a block occurred. Two
Austrian officers, who were riding past, boldly looked into the
carriage. Madame Mere, observing the Austrian uniform, to which she
had an aversion, was excited to indignation, so letting down the
window she exclaimed to them, "What, gentlemen, is your pleasure? If
it is to see the mother of the Emperor Napoleon, here she is!" The
officers were naturally crestfallen. They respectfully saluted and
rode off. These stinging shots of hers were quite disturbing; they
always went home, and reached too far for the comfort of her son's
persecutors.

Her letter to the allied sovereigns who met at Aix-la-Chapelle is one
of the most trenchant indictments that has ever been penned. Its
logic, its brave, though courteous, appeal for justice and
magnanimity, and above all the echo of motherly love which
characterises it, stamp it as a document worth cherishing. The last
paragraph will fascinate the imagination of generations yet to come,
and heavy judgment will be laid on those that were committing the
crime.

"Reasons of State," she says, "have their limits, and _posterity_,
which _forgets nothing_, admires above everything the generosity of
conquerors."

The allied sovereigns were afraid to answer the letter. Better for
their reputations if they had obviated the necessity of writing it.
The testimony of Pius VII. is that she was "a God-fearing woman who
deserved to be honoured by every prince in Christendom."

A great joy came to Madame Mere in 1830, when they told her that the
Government had decided to replace the statue of Napoleon on the
Vendome Column. She went into ecstasies over this, but bewailed her
lameness (she had broken her thigh that year) and total blindness,
which would forever prevent her beholding the statue. She turned away
from these painful reflections and comforted herself with a few words
of sad humour, remarking that if she could have been in Paris as in
former days, God would have given her strength to climb to the top of
the column to assure herself that it was there. She refused to
separate her lot from that of her children, and would not accept the
proposal that the sentence of banishment should be repealed unless it
included all her family. This remarkable woman died February 2, 1836,
aged eighty-five, and Napoleon III. had the remains of his grandmother
and Cardinal Fesch removed to Ajaccio in 1851. Six years later the
remains were again removed and deposited in a vault constructed to
receive them in a church which was built subsequent to the first
interment at Ajaccio.

Pity and strange it is that the Emperor's faithless second wife should
be noticed at all in history. Happily, very few even of those
historians who are anti-Napoleon have anything very complimentary to
say of her. She survived her son the King of Rome fifteen years, and
the earth claimed her in December, 1847, her age being fifty-six. Had
this amiable adulteress, who wished success to the allied armies
against her husband, lived a little longer, she would have witnessed
the humiliating spectacle of her father's successor being forced to
abdicate his throne in favour of the nephew of her Imperial husband,
whose memory all noble hearts revere, and whose sufferings, domestic
and public, will ever lie at the door of this woman who allowed
herself to be the base accomplice of a great assassination. The most
fitting reference to her death appeared in the _Times_ newspaper,
which said that "nothing in her life became her like the leaving it."
On April 15, 1821, in the third paragraph of his will, Napoleon, with
consistent magnanimity, if not wilful indifference to this passive,
icy female's abandonment of him, says: "I have always had reason to be
pleased with my dearest Marie Louise. I retain for her, to my last
moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order
to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy."
What irony!

It is quite a reasonable proposition to suppose that Napoleon must
have had a secret suspicion of his wife's infidelity. It is even hard
to believe that he had not a full knowledge of her actual association
with Count Neipperg. It will be observed that while his reference to
her is dutiful, not to say tender, there is still something lacking,
as though he kept something snugly in the back of his head, something
like the following:--"I cannot make this historical document without
alluding to you for my son's sake, though I know full well you have
wronged me and consorted with my enemies and betrayers. I know all
this, but I am about to pass on, and true to my instincts of
compassion and to my Imperial dignity, I must carry my sorrow and
grief with me, and having given you as good a testimonial as I can, I
must leave you to settle accounts with posterity as to your conduct
towards me and your adopted country. I shall not do by you as you have
done. I hope full allowance will be made for all you have made me
suffer. Meanwhile, I am about to relieve the digestion of Kings by
passing to the Elysian Fields, there to be greeted by Kleber, Desaix,
Bessieres, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Massena, and Berthier, and we shall talk
of the deeds we have done together. Yes, Marie Louise, I bend under
the terrible yoke your father, his Chancellor, and the allied
satellites have made for me, and yet I keep these incomparable
warriors of Europe in a state of alarm. I wish you joy of your allies,
who have behaved so nobly to your husband in captivity. I have often
thought in my solitude, Louise, that it would have been a more popular
national union had I carried out my intention of taking for my second
wife a Frenchwoman. It may be that my marriage with you, consummated
by every token of peace and goodwill, was really the beginning of my
downfall. Ah! how much more noble of you to have followed me in my
adversity to Elba. You might have done great service to France and to
your native land, to say nothing of the possibility of breaking up the
coalition against me and saving rivers of blood. Waterloo might never
have been fought had you emulated your matchless sister-in-law,
Catherine of Westphalia, in her attitude of supreme womanhood, and
your fame might have surpassed that of Joan of Arc, and been handed
down to distant ages as an example of heroic firmness and devotion,
and then you would have been beatified by the Church and acclaimed a
saint by the people to which you belong. You shared with me the
unequalled grandeur of the most powerful throne on earth. I was
devoted to you and you betrayed me. Your father insisted that you
should break your marriage vow and found in you a willing accomplice
in the outrage committed against me. You had shared my throne, and I
had reason to expect that every human instinct would call you to my
side in my exile, and the thought that burns into my soul is that in
the infamy of years, posterity will not be reproached for averting its
eye from you as well as from that heartless father who requested you
to forsake me. Catherine of Westphalia did better. She defied her
father, and clung more closely to her husband when he needed all the
succour of a sympathetic being to comfort him in his hour of dire
misfortune. These gloomy thoughts are forced upon me by every law of
nature, and now that I have but a brief time left, I am impelled to
bequeath to you in the third paragraph of my last will and testament
some tender remembrance of you. I do this notwithstanding that you,
Marie Louise, Empress of the French, prayed to God that He would bless
the arms of the enemies of the land of your adoption. And then that
letter which I sent you from Grenoble in a nutshell on my way from
Elba to Paris to reclaim the throne which treason had deprived me of.
I requested you to come to me with my son the King of Rome. You
ignored that, as you did other communications which I sent, and which
I am assured you received. I make no public accusation against you.
_That_ would be undignified and unkingly."

In spite of his apparent unaltered affection for his wife, Napoleon
reflectively made occasional remarks during his exile which indicated
that her conduct was much in his mind; and the foregoing portrayal of
his sentiments towards her may be regarded as a human probability. The
remarkable thing is that he should have made any reference at all to
this erotic woman in his will. It puzzled his companions in exile, who
knew well enough that she was the cause of much mental anguish to him.
It afflicted him so keenly on two notable occasions that he drew
pathetically a comparison between her conduct and that which would
have been Josephine's under similar circumstances. It is an
astonishing characteristic in Napoleon that he always forgave those
who had injured him most.

In order to emphasise the spirit of forgiveness, he specially refers
to a matter that must have taken a lot of forgiving. In the sixth
paragraph of his will he says: "The two unfortunate results of the
invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be
attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and La
Fayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I
do." Then in the seventh paragraph he pardons his brother Louis for
the libel he published in 1820, although, as he states, "It is replete
with false assertions and falsified documents." He heaps coals of fire
on Marie Louise by requesting Marchand to preserve some of his hair
and to cause a bracelet to be made of it with a little gold clasp. It
is highly probable that the wife of Count Neipperg would rather not
have been reminded of her amorous habits and other culpable conduct by
these little attentions.

Neipperg, this foul and willing instrument of seduction, whose
baseness insults every moral law, suffered great agony for three years
from an incurable disease, and died in December, 1828, aged
fifty-seven years. The Kings and regicides in their ferocious fear had
made it an important part of their policy that Marie Louise should be
the pivot on which the complete ruin of Napoleon should centre, so
Neipperg was fixed upon as a fit and proper person to mould the
ex-Empress into passive obedience to the wishes of her husband's
inveterate enemies. Meneval notes that this man had already amours to
his credit. He had indeed run away with another man's wife, and had
issue by her. Probably his amorous reputation influenced the
oligarchy in their choice.

In order that the plan might be carried out, he adroitly improvised
falsehood, poured into her ears stories of faithlessness on the part
of her Imperial husband, read books and pamphlets manufactured and
exactly suited for the purpose he had in view. His instructions were
to carry things as far he could get them to go, and he did this with
revolting success.

God's broad earth has not known a more ugly incident than that of
carrying personal hatred and political cowardice to such a pitch of
delirium as that of forcing a weak woman to forsake her husband,
sacrifice the interests of her child, and tempt her to break her
marriage vow in order that her husband's ruin might be more completely
assured. As a matter of high policy its wickedness will never be
excelled.

At the death of her morganatic husband Marie Louise became
"inconsolable." She gave orders for a "costly mausoleum to be put up
so that her grief might be durably established." In reply to a letter
of condolence written to her by the eminent Italian, Dr. Aglietti, in
which he seems to have made some courteous and consoling observations,
she says "that all the efforts of art were powerless, for it is
impossible to fight against the _Divine Will_. You are very right in
saying that time and religion can alone diminish the bitterness of
such a loss. Alas! the former, far from exercising its power over me,
only daily increases my grief." This "amiable," grief-stricken royal
sham, overcharged with expressions of religious fervour, succumbs
again to her natural instincts. "Time," she avers, "cannot console,"
but only increases the depth of her grief for "our dear departed."

Her sentiments would be consummately impressive were it not that we
know how wholly deceitful she was without in the least knowing it. But
the creeping horror of time is quickly softened by her marriage in
1833 to a Frenchman called De Bombelles, who was in the service of her
native land, and is said to have had English blood in his veins. In
spite of the loyal effort of Meneval to make her ironic procession
through life appear as favourable as he can, the only true impression
that can be arrived at is that she was without shame, self-control, or
pity.

A strange sympathiser of Napoleon in his dire distress was a daughter
of Maria Theresa and a sister of Marie Antoinette--Queen Marie
Caroline, grandmother to Marie Louise. She had regarded the Emperor of
the French with peculiar aversion, but when his power was broken and
he became the victim of persecution, this good woman forgot her
prejudices, sent for Meneval, and said to him that she had had cause
to regard Napoleon at one time as an enemy, but now that he was in
trouble she forgot the past. She declared that if it was still the
determination of the Court of Vienna to sever the bonds of unity
between man and wife in order that the Emperor might be deprived of
consolation, it was her granddaughter's duty to assume disguise, tie
sheets together, lower herself from the window, and bolt.

There is little doubt the dexterous and spirited old lady gave Louise
sound advice, and had she acted under her holy influence, her name
would have become a monument of noblemindedness, a lesson, in fact,
against striking a vicious, cowardly blow at the unfortunate. It is
moreover highly probable that Queen Caroline felt, at the time, that
the political marriage of her granddaughter to the French Emperor was
ill-assorted and tragic, but the deed having been done, she upheld the
divine law of marriage. Besides, she knew that Napoleon had been an
indulgent, kind husband to the uneven-minded girl, and that, whatever
his faults may have been, it was her duty to comfort him and share in
his sorrow as she had so amply shared in his glory. Hence she urges a
reunion with the exile, but the ex-Empress may have made it
impossible ere this to enjoy the consoling sweets of conjugal
companionship, and her subsequent conduct makes it more than likely
that she was too deeply compromised to abandon the vortex and face the
penalty of the errors she had committed.

"I could listen," says Napoleon, "to the intelligence of the death of
my wife, my son, or of all my family, without a change of feature--not
the slightest emotion or alteration of countenance would be visible.
But when alone in my chamber, _then_ I suffer. Then the feelings of
the man burst forth."

We are not accustomed to think of this strong personality as being
overcome with soft emotions. We have regarded him as the
personification of strength, and yet with all his gigantic power over
men and himself, he had a real womanly supply of human tenderness.
Once he was seen weeping before the portrait of his much beloved son,
whom he called "Mon pauvre petit chou." "I do not blush to admit,"
said he on a memorable occasion, "that I have a good deal of a
mother's tenderness. I could never count on the faithfulness of a
father who did not love his children."

FOOTNOTES:

[18] "Correspondance de Napoleon," vol. 128, p. 133.

[19] Quoted from De Wertheimer's "Duke of Reichstadt," p. 330.

[20] See "Memoirs."

[21] See "Memoirs."

CHAPTER IV

THE OLIGARCHY, THEIR AGENTS AND APOLOGISTS

It would be an easy task to enlarge on the excellent qualities of this
wonderful man. Volumes could be written about this phase of his
dazzling career alone, and yet we have miscreants such as Talleyrand
proclaiming to the Conference of "Christian Kings" and traitors that
the greatest, most powerful, and most humane prince of the age "must
be exterminated like a mad dog." The news of his flight from Elba and
arrival in Paris, vociferously acclaimed by the French people as their
lawful sovereign, threw this band of parasites into apoplectic terror;
Talleyrand, of all creatures, dictating to the Conference as to the
wording of the proclamation that should be issued outlawing his
Emperor, whom he and they styled "Usurper." If it were not so
outrageous a violation of decency, we would look upon it as the most
comical incident notified in history. Talleyrand, the most
accomplished traitor and barefaced thief in Europe, except perhaps
Bourrienne, he who could not prevent himself from fumbling in his
sovereign's and everybody else's pockets whenever the opportunity
occurred, to be allowed to sit in conference with the anointed rulers
of Europe is really too comic.

Napoleon was styled "Usurper" by these saintly Legitimists, not one of
whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately as the man whom
they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole of Europe were to be
drenched in blood by the process of it. They set themselves to
disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French people, who had only
just again ratified by millions of votes his claim to the throne, and
the gallant and heroic response to their requisition that he should
leave Elba and become their ruler again. Surely it will never be
contended that Napoleon's claims were less legitimate than those of
the Prince of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, or Frederic William
the great Elector, whose sole qualification for kingship consisted in
having the instincts of a tiger. Of the latter Lord Macaulay says,
"His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends." His sole
ambition seemed to be to pay fabulous sums for giant soldiers, and he
showed an inhuman aversion to his son, afterwards known as Frederic
the Great, and his daughter Wilhelmina. He was as ignorant and
ill-conditioned a creature as could be found in the whole world, a
cowardly rascal who found pleasure in kicking ladies whom he might
meet in the street and ordering them "home to mind their brats." No
more need be said of the father of the great Frederic, whose "Life"
took Thomas Carlyle thirteen years in searching musty German histories
to produce. Carlyle says, "One of the reasons that led me to write
'Frederic' was that he managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his
century was"; and indeed his adoration for Frederic is quite
pardonable. He had spent thirteen years of his life in the supreme
effort of making him a hero, and his great work, contained in eight
volumes, is a matchless piece of literature; but there is nothing in
it to justify anyone believing that Frederic was neither a liar nor a
charlatan. It is true Frederic finished better than he began, but
truthfulness and honesty were not conspicuous virtues of his. He lied,
broke faith, and plundered wherever and whenever it suited his
purpose, and some of his other vices were unspeakable. There is no
doubt he was both a quack and a coward when he broke the Pragmatic
Sanction and began to steal the territory of Maria Theresa. The powers
of England, France, Spain, Russia, Poland, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark,
the Germanic body, all had agreed by treaty to keep it. Had he been an
honourable man and possessed of the qualities Carlyle credits him
with, he would have stood by his oath. Instead of defending his ally,
he pounced upon her like a vulture, and plunged Europe into a
devastating, bloody war, with the sole object of robbery; and all he
could say for himself in extenuation of such base conduct was:
"Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk about me,
carried the day; and I decided for war."

Truly Frederic was not a good man, and his reputation for being great
was mainly acquired because the Powers and circumstances allowed him
to succeed after seven long years of sanguinary conflict.

Indeed, there was not a single act in the whole of Napoleon's career
that approaches the lawlessness and cruelty of Frederic. He really
usurped nothing, and Frederic usurped everything that he could put his
hands on, regardless of every moral law; but then he ignored all moral
laws. There is no need for comparison, but it is just as well to point
out that the plea of legitimacy is very shallow, and the contention of
the Allies is an amazing burlesque emanating from the brains of an
industrious mediocrity.

These legitimate monarchs, through their Ministers, used barefacedly
to inspire journalists to write the doctrine of waste of blood as
being a natural process of dealing with the problem of overpopulation.
History is pregnant with proof that their cry for peace was an
impudent hypocrisy. They might have had it at any time, but this did
not suit their policy of legitimacy. Countless thousands of human
beings were slaughtered to satisfy the aversion of kings and nobles to
the plan of one man who towered above them, and insisted on breaking
up the nefarious system of feudalism and kingship by divine right.
They loathed both him and his system. They plotted for his
assassination, and intrigued with all the ferocity of wild animals
against his humane and enlightened government. He trampled over all
their satanic dodges to overthrow the power that had been so often
enthusiastically placed in his hands by the sovereign people. He
constructed roads and canals, and introduced new methods of creating
commerce. He introduced a great scheme of expanding education,
science, art, literature. Every phase of enlightenment was not only
initiated, but made compulsory so far as he could enforce its
application. He re-established religion, and gave France a new code of
laws that are to this day notoriously practical, comprehensive, and
eminently just.

He not only re-established religion, but he upheld the authority of
the Pope as the recognised head of the Roman Church. He built his
"pyramids in the sea," established a free press, and declared himself
in favour of manhood suffrage. He included in his system a unification
of all the small continental States, and was declaimed against as a
brigand for doing it. Wherever his plans were carried out the people
were prosperous and happy, so long as they were allowed to toil in
their own way in their fields and in other industrial pursuits.

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