The allies had entered Paris on 7 July, and Napoleon did not relish the idea of being dragged back there as a captive, so the next day he sent Savary and his chamberlain Las Cases over to the British man-of-war blockading the port, HMS Bellerophon. At the same time, a number of plans were discussed for his escape. Joseph found a merchantman which would take him to America incognito, but Napoleon refused this subterfuge, judging it undignified. Captain Maitland, the commander of the Bellerophon, had given Savary and Las Cases to understand that Napoleon would be offered asylum in England, which seemed a more fitting solution. Napoleon wrote the Prince Regent a letter declaring that, trusting in his magnanimity and that of his subjects, he wished, ‘like Themistocles, to come and sit by the fireside of the British people’.37
In the early hours of 15 July he put on his campaign uniform of colonel of the Chasseurs of the Old Guard, and at four o’clock in the morning boarded the French brig l’Épervier, which took him out to within a cannon-shot of HMS Bellerophon and dropped anchor. To Becker, who had suggested escorting him, he replied, ‘No, General Becker, it must not ever be said that France delivered me to the English.’ He drank a cup of coffee and conversed calmly about the technicalities of shipbuilding while a launch came over from the British ship. Madame Bertrand acted as interpreter during the exchange that then took place with the British naval officer, and Napoleon ordered his party to get into the launch. He got in last and sat down. As it pulled away, the crew of the Épervier shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’, at which Napoleon scooped up some seawater in his hand and blessed them with it.38
It was 137 days since he had landed in the Golfe Juan, but supporters of the returning Louis XVIII tried to belittle the interlude by referring to the 110 that had elapsed between the king’s evacuation of the Tuileries in March and his return at the beginning of July as a mere ‘hundred days’. As with so much else in his extraordinary life, Napoleonic propaganda turned this into ‘The Hundred Days’, a tragic-glorious chapter in the emperor’s march through history.
He was piped aboard the Bellerophon, and declared to Captain Maitland that he had come to throw himself on the protection of the Prince Regent and the laws of England. The British naval officers had doffed their hats and addressed him as ‘Sire’, as did Admiral Hotham, who sailed up in HMS Superb that day and invited Napoleon to dinner. He felt respected and, ironically, safe as he returned to the Bellerophon, which set sail for England the same day. His Hundred Days in France were over.
As the Bellerophon rounded Ushant on 23 July, Napoleon looked on the land of France for the last time, not yet knowing that Louis XVIII had resumed his place on the throne with a ministry under Fouché and Talleyrand. What he would never know was that on hearing the news Marie-Louise wrote to her father saying that it had caused her great relief, as it put paid to ‘various silly rumours that had been circulating’ – that her son might be made emperor of the French.39
44
A Crown of Thorns
On 24 July the Bellerophon dropped anchor in Torbay, and as soon as news got round that Napoleon was on board it was surrounded by a multitude of small craft full of locals eager to catch a glimpse of the great man. Themistocles obliged, appearing on deck and at the poop windows, tipping his hat to the ladies, evidently enjoying the attention and taking heart from the fact that it was not hostile. The newspapers wrote of his probable exile to St Helena, but that had been in the air for over a year, and the more ordinary English people saw him the more likely it seemed that he might be allowed to retire by their fireside. On 26 July Bellerophon weighed anchor and sailed for Plymouth, where it was flanked by two frigates with the aim of keeping away the tourists, but more than a thousand boats ferried people out to see the illustrious captive.1
The blow fell on 31 July, when Admiral Lord Keith came aboard accompanied by the under-secretary for war Sir Henry Bunbury to inform him that he was to be taken to St Helena as a prisoner of war. Napoleon protested vehemently, saying he had been tricked into believing he would be allowed to stay in England. Captain Maitland had certainly been equivocal, allowing him to think what he wished, and some of the officers of the Bellerophon felt he had been deceived. He objected that the British had no right to imprison him, as he had made war legally on the King of France, who had defaulted on a binding treaty. He retired to his cabin, from which he hardly emerged over the next three days, and on the fourth wrote out a formal protest at the manner in which he had been treated.2
By then Bellerophon had sailed from Plymouth to rendezvous with the flotilla under Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn that was to escort him to St Helena. He was to travel on the flagship, HMS Northumberland, and the transfer would take place at sea, as the government was keen to get him away as quickly as possible. There had already been an attempt by British sympathisers to use legal means to bring him ashore by issuing a subpoena for him to attend court. If Napoleon had been allowed on English soil it would have been very difficult to get him off, and the British penchant for making a hero out of a loser might well have turned him into Themistocles.3
A limit was set to the number of people who could accompany him, and Savary and others were not allowed to go. Those permitted to share their master’s captivity were Bertrand with his wife and young son, General Tristan de Montholon with his wife and five-year-old son, General Gourgaud, and the former chamberlain and member of the Council of State Émmanuel de Las Cases with his son. Napoleon’s service consisted of his valet Louis Marchand, his Mameluke Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis, his second valet Noverraz, his butler Cipriani, his grooms the Archambault brothers, another valet, a cook and a pastry-cook, and a man in charge of the silver. Servants attached to the other members of the party brought the total up to twenty-seven, and since Napoleon’s physician had balked at the prospect of going, the Irishman Barry O’Meara, surgeon of the Bellerophon, agreed to go along in his stead.
After a cordial farewell from the officers of the Bellerophon Napoleon was drummed off with the honours due to a general, but on coming aboard Northumberland he and his party had their baggage searched unceremoniously. A large sum of money was confiscated without any pretext being given. Having foreseen something of the sort, Napoleon had entrusted cloth belts full of gold coins to each of his entourage, and in that manner saved a small amount.
He seemed resigned to his fate, and remained remarkably serene throughout the long passage. He bore the discomforts of shipboard life well, often remaining in his cabin to read. He chatted with the sailors, asking technical questions and trying to improve his English, and during dinner treated the ship’s officers to reminiscences and accounts of his campaigns. Although they were unimpressed by his table manners, he got on well with most of them, whiling away the time in conversation or games of cards and chess. He was occasionally indisposed and sometimes irritable, which is understandable, given that from the moment he came aboard the Bellerophon at Rochefort to the day he stepped off Northumberland at St Helena, he would have spent three months at sea.4
On 14 October they sighted their destination, a volcanic outcrop rising out of the waters of the South Atlantic, accessible only at Jamestown, a small settlement nestling in a cleft which goes down to the sea. The island has a surface area of 122 square kilometres, and lies 1,900 kilometres off the coast of Africa, the nearest land. The climate is tropical but mild, and damp for much of the year. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, it was currently in the possession of the East India Company, serving the vital purpose of watering ships bound for India and South-East Asia. In 1815 the population consisted of 3,395 Europeans, 218 black slaves, 489 Chinese, and 116 Indians and Malays. The island produced little, and depended heavily on the import of food from Cape Town, a three-week trip away. There was a military governor and a small British garrison manning strategic forts and batteries, which was hugely inflated by the arrival of Cockburn’s fleet, with 600 men of the 53rd Regiment of Foot and four companies of artillery totalling another 360, which, along with the sailors now perm
anently on station, brought to about 2,500 the number who had come to guard Napoleon.5
He came ashore at seven o’clock on the evening of 16 October, and was put up in provisional quarters in Jamestown. By six o’clock the next morning he was on horseback with Cockburn and off to inspect the place that was to serve as his residence, a former farmhouse situated on a remote plateau at Longwood. Described by one English observer as ‘an old extremely ill-built barn’, it was virtually derelict and too small, so there could be no question of his moving there for some time. The British government had ordered a prefabricated wooden house to be shipped out along with some furniture, but this would take months to arrive and erect, so Cockburn set his ship’s carpenters and sailors to work on patching up the existing structure and adding further accommodation.6
On their ride back, just over a mile short of Jamestown, they passed a bungalow set in flourishing gardens and known as ‘The Briars’ for its multitude of roses, the residence of the agent of the East India Company, William Balcombe. As there was nowhere else to put him, Napoleon was billeted in a small pavilion Balcombe had erected to serve as a ballroom, with an adjacent marquee. His campaign bed and nécessaire were installed at one end, and a makeshift study was arranged at the other, with a curtain dividing the two. Las Cases and his son moved into the garret and a skeleton staff of Marchand, Saint-Denis and Cipriani accommodated themselves as best they could. The rest of his suite remained at Jamestown.
Napoleon would spend the next seven weeks there, working in the mornings with either Las Cases or Montholon, Bertrand and Gourgaud, who would take it in turns to come up from Jamestown to take dictation of his accounts of the principal episodes of his life: Las Cases the Italian campaign, Bertrand Egypt, Montholon the empire, and Gourgaud the revolutionary period, the Consulate, Elba, the Hundred Days and Waterloo. He took exercise by riding out with Captain Poppleton of the 53rd, who was detailed to keep a constant watch over him, or walking around the extensive gardens of the Briars, which were filled with fruit trees, including mangoes and figs, as well as shrubs and flowers. In the afternoons he would go for a drive with one or other of his entourage. He sometimes dined with the Balcombes and often spent his evenings with them, playing cards and other games with the children – two girls and two boys.
The second daughter, the fourteen-year-old Betsy, was pretty and vivacious, and remarkably precocious. She spoke French, and once she had got over the fear of meeting the dreaded Bonaparte and the awe of seeing ‘the most majestic person [she] had ever seen’, captivated by his ‘fascinating smile’, she began chatting away with him. He delighted in her impish ways and happily joined in whatever games his ‘Mademoiselle Betsee’ chose to play, displaying unexpected talents at mimicry and blind-man’s-buff; one day when a young friend of hers called to catch a glimpse of the Corsican Ogre he obliged by acting a grimacing, howling monster. Betsy treated him like a companion or a brother. ‘He seemed to enter into every sort of mirth or fun with the glee of a child, and though I have often tried his patience severely, I never knew him lose his temper or fall back upon his rank or age,’ she later reminisced, only dimly aware of the pleasure he derived from moments spent with his ‘bambina’ or ‘leettle monkee’, as he referred to her.7
He had not been on the island a week when the full implications of his position sank in. Not only was he a prisoner, he was lodged in a miserable shed without curtains or furniture, he was watched day and night, and separated from his companions, who could only visit him accompanied by a guard. The food was inadequate and revolting, with no good bread and a shortage of fresh meat and vegetables. He was soon going to be put in an uncomfortable barn in the most dismal part of the island, damp and either windswept or enveloped in cloud. He was to be treated with the barest civility by his gaolers, and, what rankled most, could expect not the slightest recognition of his former status.
On 24 October, in the presence of all four of his officers, he gave vent to his bitterness, saying that he had never treated any of his enemies with such heartless contempt. They had all been only too happy to call him their brother when he was in power, and were now assuaging their shame by humiliating him. The Emperor Francis tried to bury his grandson’s origins by giving the King of Rome an Austrian title and bringing him up accordingly; the man Napoleon had made King of Württemberg was doing his utmost to get his daughter to divorce Jérôme, as was the similarly crowned King of Bavaria with regard to his daughter and Eugène.8
Napoleon declared that he would make no more public protests himself, it being below his dignity, and would let others speak on his behalf. In a note he prepared for the captain of one of the accompanying ships who had come to take his leave before returning to Britain, he set out a number of points he wished him to make known there. The first was that the British government had declared him to be a prisoner of war, which was incorrect, since he had not been taken but had voluntarily placed himself under the protection of the laws of England; and if it had been true, then he should have been released as all prisoners of war are at the cessation of hostilities. The second was that by subjecting him to an unsuitable climate and harsh conditions, refusing him the consideration he deserved and preventing him from communicating with his wife and child, or even getting news of them, the British government was not only breaking international law but denying him basic human rights.9
On 9 December Cockburn took him to see Longwood, which had undergone extensive work. The stone barn had been partitioned to create living quarters for Napoleon consisting of a small bedroom, a study, a bathroom and a small room for the valet on duty, a dining room and pantry, and a library. A long wooden structure had been added on to the front at right angles, containing a parlour and a sitting room. Further additions at the back provided a kitchen, servants’ quarters, various utility rooms, and accommodation for the Montholon family, Gourgaud and, in a loft reached by a ladder, Las Cases and his son (the Bertrands were to be lodged separately in a cottage halfway between Longwood and Jamestown). The building work on the annexes was still in progress, and Napoleon complained that the smell of paint made him feel sick, but even though the rooms were small and there was hardly any furniture, on the whole the accommodation was an improvement on the pavilion in the Balcombes’ garden. The following day he put on his uniform and, after thanking the Balcombes for their hospitality, set off on horseback with Cockburn for his new residence, where he was greeted with military honours by a detail of the 53rd.
His campaign bed had been installed in his bedroom, a portrait of Marie-Louise had been hung on the wall, with a bust of the King of Rome beneath it, and that day he was able to relax for an hour in his first hot bath since leaving Malmaison. As their quarters were not yet ready, the Montholons, Gourgaud, Dr O’Meara and others had to make do with tents in the garden. It was not long before the disadvantages of Longwood made themselves felt. The climate on the plateau was the worst on the island, and the desolate surroundings the least appealing. The buildings were entirely unsuited to the conditions. They were roofed with paper covered in pitch, which soon began letting in the rain, and damp seeped through the walls of the annexes, which were of wood covered with the same, permeating clothes, bedding, books and everything else. The house was full of flies and mosquitoes, and infested with rats. The floors were of cheap pine, and as there was no cellar or underpinning, they rotted, occasionally giving way to reveal the damp earth beneath. The smoking chimneys did not give off enough heat to dry the rooms out.
The conditions depressed Napoleon and his entourage, who were used to a dry climate, good food and a modicum of luxury. They also brought into sharp relief the reality of their situation, and aggravated tensions which had been mounting since they left Europe. Each of the four officers who had chosen to come out with Napoleon had reasons of their own for their decision, which had been made under pressure at a moment of uncertainty. Bertrand’s wife Fanny, a beautiful, well-born creole of Irish descent, had threatened to drown herself when her husband dec
lared his intention of going. Pangs of regret at what had seemed at the time the right gesture of loyalty were not long to hit all of the men, and their spouses even more so, as they contemplated limitless exile in such conditions. The spirit of emulation in these soldiers and courtiers, possibly manipulated by Napoleon, had aroused jealousies and animosities between them during the voyage, and these only grew with time. The Bertrands and Montholons, and particularly their wives, were locked in rivalry. Las Cases, a forty-nine-year-old minor nobleman of no evident talents, was generally referred to as ‘the Jesuit’. Gourgaud was a product of the Napoleonic system: the son of a court violinist, he had fought his way up from the ranks at Austerlitz and Saragossa, been wounded at Smolensk and swum the Berezina, ending up with the rank of general, the tile of baron and the position of orderly officer to Napoleon. But he was excessively sensitive and histrionic, and they all took pleasure in baiting him.10
They nevertheless constituted a court around Napoleon, observing imperial etiquette and routine. Unless he was receiving a formal visit, during the day he usually wore his green hunting coat or a ‘colonial’ costume of white linen coat and trousers. In the evenings the company assembled for dinner in full uniform, the ladies in court dresses and bejewelled, and after dinner they played cards, conversed or listened as Napoleon read from a book. He revisited his old favourites, Paul et Virginie, Racine and Corneille, discussed other works and went over his life in endless monologues on what he should have done or not done, passing severe judgement on people, making unpleasant comments about the women in his life, blaming others and particularly bad luck, treachery or ‘fate’ for his failures. The house was furnished with whatever had come to hand, but shards of splendour were on display – imperial silver, a magnificent Sèvres coffee set depicting the salient events of his life, a few portraits and miniatures.
Napoleon Page 74