render of his person to the English. There as a rebel. This amazing suggestion was the was no other course open which seemed feasi- result of the progress made within a year by ble to a broken-spirited man in his position. the doctrine of legitimacy. Although TalleyHis admirers are correct in thinking that it rand had observed the Hundred Days from was more noble for him to have survived his the safe seclusion of Carlsbad, and was coldly greatness than to have taken his own life. received by his legitimate » sovereign when To have entered on a series of romantic he returned to Paris under Wellington's ægis, adventures such as were suggested-con- yet there was no one equally able to restore cealment on the Danish vessel, flight in a «legitimate » government, and, with the aid open boats, embarkment and concealment of Wellington, who assumed without question in a water-cask on an American merchant- the chief place in reconstructing France, he man, and the like-would have been merely was soon in full activity. In strict logic, the the addition of ignominy to his capture; allies reasoned that Napoleon was their comfor his presence under the American flag mon prisoner, and, as the chief malefactor, would have been reported by spies, and at he should share the fate destined for Ney, that day the standard of the United States and later for Murat. By long familiarity with would have afforded him no immunity. It is such notions, Alexander had finally been conpossible that on the morrow of Waterloo verted to the once abhorrent idea of legitiNapoleon might, with Grouchy's army, the macy, and was hatching the scheme of the other survivors, and the men from Vendée, Holy Alliance; even he would have made no have reassembled an army in Paris, but it is objection. But English opinion, however irdoubtful. Nothing in revolutionary annals ritated, would not tolerate the idea of death can equal in horror the royalist frenzy, known as a penalty for political offenses. Whatever as the White Terror, which broke out in Pro- ministers felt or said, they dared consider no vence and southern France on receipt of the alternative in dealing with Napoleon, except news from Waterloo. The ghastly distemper that of imprisonment. Accordingly, St. Hespread swiftly, and when Napoleon embarked, lena, the spot suggested at Vienna as being the tricolor was floating only at Rochefort, the most remote in the habitable world, was Nantes, and Bordeaux; his family was pro- designated; the island was borrowed from scribed, Ney and Labedoyère were imprisoned, the East India Company, and acts of Parliaand doomed to execution. To have surren- ment were passed which established a special dered either to Wellington or Blücher would government for it, and cut it off from all outhave been seeking instant death; to have col- side communication, «for the better detainlected such desperate soldiers as could be ing in custody Napoleon Bonaparte.>> The got together would have been an attempt at allies, therefore, on August 2, declared the guerrilla warfare. To seek refuge with the sometime Emperor to be their common prisofficers of England's navy was the only dig- oner. To England they yielded the right to nified course with any element of safety in determine his place of detention, but to each it. Naturally, the negotiators did not pro- of themselves-Austria, Russia, and Prussia claim their extremity. Considering the date was reserved the right of sending thither a of Gourgaud's embassy, it is clear they were in no position to demand terms, and Maitland's character forbids the conclusion that he made formal terms. It is unfortunate that he did not commit to writing all his transactions with Lallemand, Savary, and Las Cases; perhaps he was injudiciously polite, but it is certain that, contrary to their representations, he made no promise, even by implication, that under England's flag Napoleon should find a refuge, and not a prison. ST. HELENA. THE ministry of Lord Liverpool was ultraTory, but it was embarrassed by the course of affairs. On June 20 the premier wrote to Castlereagh that he wished Napoleon had been captured by Louis XVIII, and executed VOL. LII.-114. 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 31, 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, the former's secretary. 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 selfcontrol. Asked if he had anything to say, Napoleon, without temper or bitterness, appealed against the judgment both to posterity and to the British people. He was, he said, a voluntary guest; he wished to be re ceived 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 used 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-inlaw, or to the Czar, but while the tricolor was still flying he had confided in British hospi 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 a com tality. 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 parison 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. His suite numbered thirty, and was chosen by Napoleon himself. Its members were Bertrand, Montholon, and Las Cases, with their families, together with Gourgaud, and a Polish adjutant, Prowtowski. There were sixteen servants, of whom twelve were Napoleon's. The voyage was tedious, and uneventful. The admiral observed 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 2700 feet above the sea, and contains about 45 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, 4000 miles from London, 1140 from the coast of Africa, 1180 from the nearest point in South America. There were a few thousand inhabitants of mixed race, and the climate, though moist and enervating, is fairly salubrious. Under the act passed by Parliament, England increased the limit of territorial waters around the island to three times the usual limit, 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 16, 1815, when Napoleon landed on its shores. The residence provided for the imperial captive was a substantial farm-house in the center of the island, on a plateau 2000 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; even now, when enlarged and repaired, it is thought suitable 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 its destined occupant. Such as it was to be, however, it was still uninhabitable in October, and the ex-Emperor was, until December 9, 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 made it impossible 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. Being a creature of routine, and fresh from a two years' residence as English commissioner in Blücher's camp, he had thoroughly absorbed the temper 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 psychologically as instructive as any other, but, as regards its futile calculations, comparable only to that of his ineffectual agitations in Corsica. Napoleon, the prisoner, had a double object-release and self-justification. The former he hoped to gain by working on the feelings of the English liberals; the latter by writing an autobiography which, in order to win back the lost confidence of France, should emphasize the democratic, progressive, and beneficent side of his career, and consign to oblivion his inordinate, tyrannical, personal ambitions. The dreary chronicle of the quarrel between a disarmed giant and a potent pygmy is uninteresting in detail, but very illuminating in its large outlines. The routine of a court was rigidly observed at Longwood, and the powerless monarch so successfully simulated the wisdom and judgment of a chastened soul that the accounts which reached the distant world awakened a great pity among the disinterested. As on shipboard, and at The Briars, he gave his mornings to literature, clad in a studied, picturesque dishabille. The afternoon he devoted to amusement and exercise, but a distaste for more physical exertion than was actually essential to health grew steadily, until he became sluggish and corpulent. At table he was always abstemious; his sleep was irregular and disturbed. The evenings he spent with favorite authors, Voltaire, Corneille, and Ossian; frequently, also, in reading the Bible. The opinions he expressed were in the main those of his pseudo-scientific days; among other ideas, he upheld polygamy as an excellent institution. Much time was spent by the household in abusing Longwood, and so effectually that a wooden mansion was constructed in England, and erected near by; but the prisoner made difficulties about every particular, and never occupied it. There were continuous schemings for direct intercourse with friends in France, and partial success ended in the dismissal of Las Cases. Gourgaud, too, departed, ostensibly because of a quarrel with Montholon, really to agitate with Alexander, Francis, and Marie Louise for Napoleon's release. The exile confessed, in an unguarded moment, that no man alive could have satisfied him in the relation of governor of St. Helena, but he was adroit and indefatigable in his efforts to discredit Lowe. The «Letters from the Cape of Good Hope,» published in England anonymously, but now incorporated in the official edition of his works as the thirty-first volume, abuse the climate of St. Helena, depict the injustice of the imprisonment, and heap scorn on the governor. The book was widely read, and furnished the Whigs in Parliament with many shafts of criticism. This success emboldened the author, and further compositions by his hand were mysteriously published in Europe. Yet for three years Napoleon's self-appointed task as a historian was unremittingly pursued, and the results, while he had the assistance of Las Cases and Gourgaud, were voluminous; thereafter the output was a slender rill. Most of the volumes which record his observations and opinions bear the names of the respective amanuenses, Montholon, Las Cases, Gourgaud, O'Meara, and Antommarchi, the two latter his attendant physicians. The period he took pains to elucidate most fully in these writings was that between Toulon and Marengo. Over his own name appeared monographs on Elba, the Hundred Days, and Waterloo. His professional ability is shown in excellent short studies on the « Art and History of War,» on «Army Organization,» and on «Fortification »; likewise by his full analyses of the wars waged by Cæsar, Turenne, and Frederick the Great. All these are worthy of the author's reputation; his versatility is displayed in a few commonplace notes-some on Voltaire's «Mahomet,» some on suicide, and others on the second book of the Æneid. A widely circulated treatise, the «Manuscrit de St. Helène, which warped the facts of history much in his style, and was long attributed to him, he repudiated. It was written in the Bourbon interest, by an unknown hand. For nearly four years Napoleon's health was fair. O'Meara, the physician appointed to attend him, was assiduous and skilful, but when he became his patient's devoted slave, he was dismissed by Lowe. Thereupon certain disquieting symptoms, which had been noted from time to time, became more pronounced, and the prisoner began to brood and mope in seclusion. In the autumn of 1819 Dr. Antommarchi, a Corsican physician chosen by Fesch, was installed at Longwood. For a time he had some success in ameliorating the exEmperor's condition, and to their confidential talks we owe our knowledge of Napoleon's infancy. But from month to month Napoleon's strength diminished, and the ravages of his mysterious disease at length became very apparent. The obstinacy of Lowe in carrying out the letter of his instructions, and intruding on the sufferer to secure material for a daily report, seriously aggravated Napoleon's miseries. «Not every man is an atheist who would like to be,» was a remark he dropped to Montholon. Two priests accompanied Antommarchi, and after their arrival mass was celebrated almost every morning in the chapel adjoining the sick room. Yet, though preparing for death, Napoleon was making ready simultaneously to speed his Parthian arrow. His will displays his qualities in their entirety. The language sounds simple and sincere; there is a hidden meaning in almost every line. His religion had been, at best, that of a deist; at the last he professed a piety which he never felt or practised. During his life France had been loved and used as a skilful artificer uses his tool; the last words of his testament suggest a passionate devotion. To his son he recommended the love of right, which alone can incite to the performance of great deeds »; for his faithless wife he expressed the tenderest sentiments, and proba |