by Emil Ludwig
A book arrives. It is a collection of his manifestoes and decrees. He reads. Then he throws the volume aside, strides to and fro, and says to Las Cases :
" Every future historian will have to allow me my share. . . . Facts speak for themselves. I closed up the chasm of anarchy, and put an end to chaos. I cleansed the revolution from the filth it had accumulated, I ennobled the peoples, I stabilised the thrones. I encouraged all those who had talents, rewarded every merit, and widened the boundaries of fame and glory. . . . Could not historians protect me against many grave charges ? ... If I am accused of despotism, they can claim that dictatorship was necessary in the circumstances. Is it freedom I attacked ? They can answer that anarchy was still threatening on our very threshold. Love of war ? I was never the aggressor. Striving for world dominion ? This arose accidentally, because of the conditions of the time. Too ambitious ? Yes, true indeed. But my ambition was of the sublimest: to found the kingdom of reason, with full development and unrestricted enjoyment of all the human faculties. The historian may deplore that such ambition could not wholly attain its goal." After a momentary silence, he concludes : " There, my dear fellow, in a few words, you have my entire story."
Here he is on the defensive. But neither in such moods nor in any other do we ever hear him rave enthusiastically over his battles. In all the six years of his captivity, he does not seem, even once, to have sung the praises of General Bonaparte. If he is summing up what he achieved, he says :
A European System
" My fame does not rest upon my forty victorious battles, nor does it lie in the fact that I bent the monarchs to my will. Waterloo will wipe out the memory of so many victories ; the last act makes one forget the first. What will never pass away, is my book of laws, the minutes of my Council of State, my correspondence with my ministers. . . . Through its simplicity my code of laws has had more effect than any civil codes before it; the schools I have set up, my methods of instruction, are creating a new generation; crime has decreased during my rule, whereas in England crime has become more prevalent. . . . I wanted to found a European system, a European code of laws, a European court of appeal; there would have been but one people throughout Europe."
He reads in an English newspaper that Napoleon has hidden away vast treasures. He leaps to his feet, and dictates, to the man who happens to be his companion at the moment, these splendid sentences :
" Would you like to know about Napoleon's treasures ? Yes, they are vast, but they are not hidden away. The harbours of Antwerp and Flushing, where there is room for the largest fleets in the world, harbours which are open all through the winter; the waterworks at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice ; the huge docks at Cherbourg; the port of Venice ; the high roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam, from Mainz to Metz, and from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes over the Simplon, Mont Cenis, La Corniche, and Mont Genevre, which open up the Alps in four directions, and excel all the constructions of the Romans. Then there are the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezia, and from Savona into Piedmont; the bridges across the Seine, and the bridges of Tours and of Lyons ; ... the Rhine-Rhone canal and the draining of the Pontine marshes ; . . . the re-establishment of the Church destroyed by the revolution ; the setting up of new industries; the new Louvre ; warehouses, streets, the water supply of Paris, the quays along the Seine; . . . the revival of the weaving mills in Lyons; more
Napoleon's Treasures
than four hundred sugar factories; the repair and embellishment of the royal palaces at a cost of frs. 50,000,000, and the refurnishing of them out of Napoleon's private fortune at a cost of frs. 60,000,000 ; the redemption of the only remaining crown diamond, the Regent, which had been pawned to Jews in Berlin for frs. 3,000,000; the Napoleon Museum, where all the works of art had been obtained by purchase or by the peace treaties ; many millions for the support of agriculture and horse breeding. . . . These are the treasures of Napoleon, which represent an expenditure of milliards, and will outlast the centuries ! These are the monuments which defy calumny. . . . Moreover, history will record that they were all erected while long wars were being waged, and without loans being raised to pay for them ! "
There he is in his little room, in the narrow house, on the rock in the midst of the sea, defending his work, and, with a regal gesture, shaking things together pell-mell—main roads, sugar factories, crown diamonds, and the Catholic Church ! Foreseeing the criticisms of history, he is fully aware of the truth about himself; though a century will elapse before posterity will begin to see in him something more than the military commander whose fame (as he says) was dimmed by the failure at Waterloo.
One evening, after dinner, the question assumes a personal aspect. An inquisitive member of his circle has asked when he was happiest, and all present give their ideas. Napoleon tells them that he was made content by his marriage and when his son was born, " I cannot say happy, but content."
" When you were First Consul ? "
" I was not yet sure enough of myself."
" At the coronation ? "
" In Tilsit, I think. By that time I had learned the vicissitudes of fortune ; Preussisch-Eylau had been a warning to me, and nevertheless I had won a victory there ; I had dictated the terms of peace ; the tsar and the king of Prussia were paying court to me.
Fame Still Lures Him
But no, I am wrong, that was not the best. The happiest days I ever knew were after my first victories in Italy, when the masses surrounded me, shouting : ' Evviva il liberatore !' I was only twenty-six, but I foresaw what I might become. It was as if I were being lifted up into the air, and the world were disappearing beneath my feet! "
With a sudden transition, he hums an Italian song, and then stands up, saying : " Ten o'clock. Time for bed."
How pale do these comparisons of happy moments seem in contrast with the fiery rhapsody of his deeds ! It was in the work he did that was concentrated the life happiness of the man who enjoyed nothing but the completed action. He surveys his past; doubts this suggestion and that, saying that he was no more than " content," and finally hears again the first chorus of ewivas. In imagination he is again the youth soaring upwards; and in the evening of his life, spent in this tropical exile, the vision of fame floats once more before his eyes. That was what the disciple of the classical heroes had set out to win—fame !
Fame, whose lure he had felt for the first time on the island of his birth, still allures him on the island to which he had been banished. Moreover, he knows that it is the glamour of warlike fame which has made him most widely known among men. He asks whether there can be any one in Paris who has never heard of Napoleon ; he does not really mean Paris, but the world. When Las Cases tells him how, in the remotest valleys of Wales, shepherds had asked for news of the First Consul, or how yellow men in China had spoken of him in the same breath with Tamerlane, then the Emperor Napoleon forgets the shame and the weariness of his life on the rock, and knows his happiest moments. If he is in such a mood, some trifling item in the newspaper may arouse a flight of fancy:
" Yes, the reaction is doomed ! Nothing can destroy great principles ; they will endure for ever in the light of the wonderful deeds we have done ! The first stains have been washed out
' What a Ballad My Life Has Been I '
in the waters of glory, and now the principles are immortal. . . . Adorned with our laurels, acclaimed by the peoples, sanctified by treaties with the powers, they are breathed from all lips and hearkened to by all ears. . . . They will rule the world ; will become the faith and the morality of all the peoples ; and, say what you will, this new epoch is associated with my name. I lighted the torch; friends and foes alike will acclaim me the leading champion, the greatest representative of the new principles. After my death, for the nations I shall still be the sun of their rights ; my name will be the war cry of their struggle, the slogan of their hopes ! "
Still, these heroics about himself lack the right conclusion. Politically he overestimates the value of his martyrdom;
it has not been able to save the dynasty: but he does not foresee the effect which this last act of the drama will have upon the hearts of men. A soldier's death looms before his eyes; he had sought it under fire on the last battle-fields ; again and again he turns his own story over in his mind, in search of the romantic moment which would have been the most appropriate close ; he often recurs to the subject in conversation. Like a playwright he looks for the fitting climax: "I ought to have died in Moscow. Till -then my fame was undiminished. ... If only heaven had sent me a bullet in the Kremlin ! My dynasty would have been established; history would have compared me with Alexander and Csesar. Whereas, as things have turned out, I am practically nothing." On another occasion he thinks that death shortly before attaining the goal, would have had even more effect on posterity : " Had I fallen at Borodino, my death would have been like Alexander's. A death at Waterloo would have been a good one. But perhaps Dresden would have been better. No, no, at Waterloo would have been best. The love of the people, their mourning ! "
Once he summarises the whole as follows :
" Taking it all in all, what a ballad my life has been ! "
The Gardener XVII
Sunrise. A man stands at the door of a house where all the inmates are still asleep. He wears a white coat, red slippers, a broad-brimmed straw hat; he holds a spade in one hand, and rings a huge bell with the other, rousing the sleepers to work. A wall is to be raised, a ditch lengthened; land is to be reclaimed from the inroads of the sea ; this is the scheme. Doors open, tent-flaps are flung back, and from all directions men flock to the master's side. They are armed with shovels, rakes, axes ; and are eager to carry out the Emperor's commands.
He resembles the centenarian Faust.
The last year of his life has opened. He has made up his mind, come what may, to stay on this rock; and, since no one offers to make a verdant bower for him, he has decided, after yearlong feuds and resistance to his plans, to make a garden for himself. A half-circle of wall is to protect the growths from too much sun, from the trade wind, and from the watchful eye of the sentry. Cisterns are to store rain water; within the ramparts, earth is distributed for the flowers and the bushes ; four-and-twenty large trees are planted; peaches, oranges, and, in front of his window, an oak. The trees have been imported from the Cape, and are brought to Longwood with the aid of the English artillery regiment—an old acquaintance of the Peninsular War. Chinese gardeners, Indian coolies, French servants, English stablemen, all help in the work; the doctor must take a hand too, with Montholon and Bertrand ; and when the English officer on duty draws near, he sees the Emperor take a turf from his grand marshal's hands, fit it into its place on the bank, and pat it down carefully. But since Napoleon knows that transplanted soldiers must be especially well treated in foreign parts, he waters the square of grass assiduously.
The work goes on for seven months ; and, when it is finished, the garden, so swiftly brought into being on the rock, is regarded as a wonder. The governor's daughter comes secretly to look at it. This is the last miracle wrought by
Waiting for Death
Napoleon.
It is because he has become aware of the decline in his energies, that he has decided to beautify the place in which he is to pass the remainder of his days. He is overheard murmuring to himself Voltaire's line : " See Paris once more ? I cannot hope for that." When his birthday comes round, he says it will be the last, gives the children presents ; " at dinner, where we were all assembled, he beamed on us like a father in the family circle."
That autumn, he takes his last ride, a long one, going out of bounds for the first time after four years.
He seldom dictates now, but has a fancy to do so sometimes at night when sleep will not come ; dictates comments on the battles of Turenne, Frederick, and Csesar; literary criticism upon Voltaire's Mahomet and Virgil's Mneid; remarks on suicide, which he had condemned long ago when he had been a lieutenant. His best secretaries, Gourgaud and Las Cases, have left the island long since. For a quarter of an hour at a time, he will stand drumming with his fingers on the door of the veranda, watching the gulls, or gazing at the clouds ; he no longer scrutinises the ships through the telescope ; he is only waiting for death.
The news of a fresh conspiracy against the Bourbons, originating in the army and widely supported by civilians, no longer excites him. During the last six months of his life, he rejects two schemes of rescue. " It is written in the stars that I am to die here. In America I should be assassinated, or forgotten. Nothing but my martyrdom can save my dynasty. That is why I prefer to stay in St. Helena."
His mortal illness gains on him. The climate of the island is dangerous to persons whose livers are healthy when they first come ; Napoleon, at thirty-five, had foretold that he would die of liver trouble like his father, and his liver complaint is greatly aggravated. He says that his stomach burns like fire ; in some of the paroxysms, he rolls on the floor in agony. He complains of a
Corsica Comes to St. Helena
pain in the gastric region, " like the stab of a penknife." He shivers with cold, though he is burning within; when hot compresses are applied, they can never be hot enough for him.
He watches his symptoms, and studies their meaning; will not take any medicine until its action has been explained to him. He says ruefully: " I have got so fond of my bed that I would not exchange it now for a throne. What a pitiful creature I have become ! I, who hardly ever needed sleep, pass my days in lethargy. It seems a desperate resolve merely to open my eyes. Often enough, I used to dictate on different topics to four secretaries at once. In those days, I was Napoleon." His mood vacillates between heroic pathos and irony. When his valet reports that a comet is visible, the Emperor rejoins : " That was the sign before the death of Csesar." But when his doctor declares that there is no comet to be seen, the sick man says : "Well, people die without comets ! "
His medical attendant is a Corsican named Antommarchi. Owing to the quarrel with the governor, the prisoner had no doctor for a year after O'Meara's departure. At length Madame Letizia, after much effort, was able to arrange for the sending of this compatriot as his physician, together with two priests, a body servant, and a cook. Thus it is that, after years of silence, the Emperor hears trustworthy details about his mother. Once, during these last days, he says in simple words what she means to him : " All that I am and was, I owe to my mother; she taught me her own principles, and encouraged in me the habit of work."
Now there are five Corsicans round the lonely man. Only two of them are any good : the body servant and the cook. Of the two priests, one is a deaf old man, partially paralysed, and unable to articulate clearly; the other, fresh from the seminary, is ignorant and uncouth. Antommarchi, too, is a young man, inexperienced but pretentious. Still, the sight of these islanders, men of his own race, revives memories of his Corsican home. Hence, towards the close, feelings reawaken which in early life
Without a Fatherland
he had stifled because of his determination to be a Frenchman. Napoleon dies as he was born, an Italian.
He often talks Italian, now, or intersperses his French with strange locutions literally translated from his mother tongue. When he reads an attack made on him by a senator who declares that in the day of the Empire France had chosen her master from among a people whom the Romans did not consider good enough to use as slaves, Napoleon's comment is that it is a great compliment to the Corsicans, " for the Romans knew that this people could not be forced to serve. . . . Besides, Corsica, lying between France and Italy, was an appropriate birthplace for a man who was to rule both."
Then, suddenly, it is again his fatherland. " Ah, Doctor, where are the lovely skies of Corsica ? If only I could have fled thither, the people would have received me with open arms, and would have become my family. Do you think that the allies could have mastered me in Corsica ? You know our mountaineers, their courage and their pride ! I am familiar with every ravine in the island, every stream ! " He declares that he would
fain have made much of this island (about which he never troubled after leaving it), would have signalised his love for it before all France. Only his misfortunes had prevented his carrying out these plans. He speaks of the spiritual greatness of the islanders, of their veneration for honour, of the blood feuds they hand down from generation to generation ; he speaks of Paoli. " Everything is better there, the very smell of the ground. If my eyes were shut, I should recognise it; I have never come across it anywhere else. . . . No longer to own the house where one was born, to be homeless—this is to be without a fatherland ! " Thus late, thus painfully, and thus indirectly, does this man without a fatherland make his great discovery; or thus late does he acknowledge his true feelings.
The Corsican doctor has no great sympathy with the Emperor ; he does not credit Napoleon's sufferings; he believes them to be simulated for political ends, in the hope of a removal
The Faithful Grow Weary
to Europe ; and is absent during the worst paroxysms. Thus the political use the Emperor has made of his ailments works out its own revenge ; for now, when he is really dying, his own compatriot regards his sufferings as spurious. There is ample record of these differences between doctor and patient. Napoleon wishes to get rid of Antommarchi, and asks Lowe to have him sent back to Europe. This is a new triumph for the governor, to whom the quarrel between the great Corsican and the little is useful ammunition. Only four weeks before the Emperor's death, his gaoler once more tries to force a way into his presence, and the consequent excitement is very bad for Napoleon.
The number of the faithful diminishes, as if to justify the misanthropist at the close of his life. Now, in the very last weeks, four of the servants and the old priest set sail for Europe ; two others fall sick, and the last remaining members of his suite are meditating flight: Montholon is corresponding with the countess about the possibility of a substitute ; Bertrand is about to yield to the continued solicitations of his family, and return to France. Montholon, to induce him to remain, has to assure him that when the Emperor talks of being seriously ill, this is not done merely to play upon Bertrand's sympathies. When Bertrand finally decides to remain, the invalid is greatly encouraged. The only one who never thought of leaving, was Marchand, the valet. The Emperor says to him : " If this goes on much longer, no one will be left here but you and me. But you will look after me till the end, and will then close my eyes for me."