Betsy and the Emperor

by Anne Whitehead

  Another despatch arrived for Lowe, enclosing a letter from the British ambassador at Rio de Janeiro outlining what could have been a very serious rescue attempt. An American schooner had landed four Frenchmen at Pernambuco in north-east Brazil. ‘They soon attracted the notice of the Governor and they were arrested.’ Their leader, Colonel Paul de Latapie, ‘had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the French Army under Bonaparte, in all whose campaigns he had served’. He was offered his liberty and a free passage to America if he made a full disclosure of their plans: ‘These were nothing less than the liberation of General Buonaparte from St Helena, which he said all Frenchmen who had served under him that were gone to America, are determined to attempt—that being chiefly indebted to him for all they possess, they will never cease to regard him as their Sovereign, and that not only he, Latapie, but many thousand others are ready to sacrifice the last drop of their blood for his sake.’

  The rebel Frenchmen had intended to fit out a number of fast sailing vessels, ‘sufficiently capacious to contain several small steamboats’. The larger ships would keep at a safe distance from St Helena while the steamboats were to be sent at night to various landing places, indicated to Napoleon in clandestine messages. The French chargé d’affaires at Rio had decided that Colonel Latapie was ‘too dangerous a man to be allowed scope for making other attempts’, and the whole scheme was quashed at the outset.25

  Longwood was more than ever an unhappy place, swept by rumours, the atmosphere suffused with resentment and mistrust. Gourgaud’s jealousy of the Montholons dominated his thoughts. He grumbled to Bertrand: ‘I shared the dangers of the battlefield with His Majesty when he didn’t know what Montholon looked like.’ Bertrand advised him to be calm, not to suffer torments just because the emperor preferred the Montholons above them all.

  On 26 January 1818, Albine de Montholon gave birth to another daughter. Gourgaud wrote: ‘The child is born with a caul. She wanted a boy—probably in order to have a Napoleon in the family!’ The namesake remarked: ‘And I too was born with a caul,’ referring to a membrane sometimes found covering a newborn’s head. It was thought to be a good omen, signifying that the child would be special. Gourgaud and Fanny Bertrand whispered their belief that Napoleon had sired the child, who was christened Napoleone Josephine.26 ‘The Emperor refrains from visiting Madame Montholon,’ Gourgaud wrote in his journal, ‘for such visits provoke scandal in the eyes of the English.’27

  Count Balmain met Gourgaud and confided to him details of the elaborate attempt to liberate Napoleon by the French partisans in Brazil. ‘They were planning to attempt the Emperor’s rescue in a steamboat.’28 The apparent sophistication of this plot had greatly alarmed Lowe. He was determined that no future attempt would succeed. In February 1818, he extended the fortifications, ordered new semaphore signal posts and batteries for various places and doubled the guard at Longwood. Balmain noted: ‘The Bonapartist plots at Pernambuco have greatly excited the Governor . . . I see him always on horseback, surrounded by engineers, and galloping in all directions.’29

  Gourgaud finally announced his intention to leave St Helena. ‘What do you want then?’ Napoleon demanded. ‘To take precedence over Montholon? To see me twice a day? Am I to dine with you every day?’ He warned Gourgaud that he was likely to be detained as a prisoner at the Cape: ‘The Governor will think you have been sent on a mission.’ He advised that the best excuse was to say he was unwell: ‘I will instruct O’Meara to give you a certificate of illness. But listen to my advice. You must not complain to anyone. You must not talk about me, and once in France, you will soon see the chess-board on which you are to play.’30

  The following day, 3 February, the storeship Cambridge anchored at Jamestown, bringing news of Princess Charlotte’s death in childbirth three months earlier, her baby lost as well.31 The Prince Regent was said to be inconsolable to have lost his only legitimate child and heir. O’Meara informed Napoleon, who was shocked to hear of the princess ‘cut off in the prime of youth and beauty’. He was even more cast down by the collapse of his own expectations of her future lenience towards him. He blamed the midwives for incompetence or worse, ‘and expressed his surprise that the populace had not stoned them to death. He thought the business had a strange appearance, and that precautions appeared to have been taken to deprive the princess of every thing necessary to support and console her in a first accouchement. It was unpardonable in the old Queen [Charlotte’s grandmother, wife of George III], not to have been on the spot.’32 Gourgaud described Napoleon’s disappointment to Baron von Stürmer, who sent a report to Prince Metternich: ‘He regards it as one more misfortune. Every one knows that [Caroline] the Princess of Wales has an almost fanatical admiration for him. He hoped that when her daughter came to the throne, she would try to have him transferred to England. “Once there,” he said, “I am saved.”’33

  Gourgaud packed his bags and his papers, including some that were not his. Napoleon was waiting for him in the reception room. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re leaving then?’

  ‘Tomorrow, Sire.’

  ‘First of all, go to the Cape, then to England. You will be well received there. They are creating a national army in France—I can imagine you commanding the artillery against the English. Tell them in France that I still detest those rogues and scoundrels—the English. Everybody will give you a welcome, now that Louis XVIII has turned nationalist . . . We shall meet again in another world. Come now, goodbye. Embrace me.’

  Gourgaud wrote that he wept as he embraced the man he claimed to love. Bertrand farewelled him, expressing sorrow that he was leaving; his wife would be lonely without him. He confided that the emperor had assigned a yearly income of 12,000 francs for him and so his future was assured.34 Perverse to the end, Gourgaud refused to accept the money.

  When he had gone, Napoleon exclaimed to Bertrand: ‘Speak to me no more of that man; he is mad. He was jealous, in love with me. Que diable, I am not his wife and can’t sleep with him! I know he will write these things against me, but I don’t care. If he is received in France, he will be shut up, hung, or shot.’35

  A fine dinner was waiting for Gourgaud at Plantation House and he was gratified that the governor was so obliging towards him. Secretary Gorrequer retained Gourgaud’s papers, to study his dictation notes on Waterloo and other campaigns. These Gourgaud had surrendered willingly—‘My bags are open’36—while managing to hide his coded journal among his clothing. Bertrand wrote: ‘We know that at Plantation House, everyone is busy copying.’37

  Gourgaud paid little heed to the news that Cipriani, the Corsican butler, was desperately ill, stricken with agonising pains in the abdomen, nausea and vomiting, and had fallen to the floor in convulsions. Gourgaud felt too slighted by those at Longwood to care, resentful that he had not received £20 owed to him by Bertrand and concerned that his funds were diminishing. But his sense of self-importance grew by the day and the governor believed he would soon be primed to impart information.

  Gourgaud told Balmain of Napoleon’s offer of 12,000 francs (then equalling £500 sterling) and why he had refused it: ‘Those five hundred pounds are too little for my needs, and not enough for my honour. The Emperor gave as much to his groom and to the servants who returned to France. Las Cases got two hundred thousand francs. You might remind Bertrand that I am in a position to play the Emperor a scurvy trick, if I were so inclined; that I could reveal a good many secrets. My Longwood diary would be worth fifteen thousand pounds in London, and he had better not go too far.’38

  Over another delightful dinner at Plantation House, Lowe told Gourgaud that there was no need for him to go to the Cape: ‘I have never spoken to you about your departure, but I hope that a boat will be available soon to take you to Europe. Whatever you do will be all right. No one will hear from me any complaint or objection concerning you.’39

  During the night, Cipriani died. O’Meara and the military physicians Baxter and Walter Henry diagnosed ‘inflammation of the bowels’, but no auto
psy was performed. Gourgaud heard the news from the Marquis de Montchenu, who called in, drenched from the rain. ‘I rather think,’ Gourgaud mused, ‘that His Majesty will miss Cipriani more than any of us.’

  Cipriani was interred that morning in St Paul’s churchyard, close by Plantation House.

  CHAPTER 19

  FAREWELL TO THE ISLAND

  The inexplicable suddenness of Cipriani’s death was a huge shock to Napoleon. He felt a blood tie with the Corsican, for their two families had been friends back in Ajaccio. Cipriani’s espionage work had facilitated the escape from Elba; on St Helena he had frequented the town shops, mixed with seamen in the taverns, and been tireless in collecting intelligence. An elaborate headstone was ordered (but apparently never completed), and Bertrand paid Saul Solomon his hefty fee of 1400 gold francs for the burial arrangements.1

  Poison was suspected and Napoleon feared assassination himself. He became especially vigilant about his food, which was Balcombe’s department, supervised in his absence by his partner Joseph Cole. The purveyor had not been to Longwood for some time, a violent attack of gout preventing his daily ride up the mountain. Meanwhile, Lowe learned from Gourgaud about the Sèvres plates given to the Balcombe girls on New Year’s Day; he said they had been accepted without his consent and that Balcombe must hand them over. Lowe told Gorrequer: ‘How we’ll do him when we come to that!’2

  Gourgaud was relishing his new life. He dined out most evenings, at Plantation House, where Sir Hudson and Lady Lowe treated him with respect, or at Rosemary Hall with Baron von Stürmer and his wife and Balmain. He had regular interviews with Stürmer, who sent verbatim accounts to Prince Metternich and made copies available to Balmain. The reports were read avidly in Vienna and St Petersburg. Much of the information was passed on to Lowe, who then shared the intelligence extracted from the Frenchman by his agents Reade and Gorrequer.

  Balmain, generally astute in his judgements, considered the Frenchman a vain braggart, ‘jealous of Napoleon as of a mistress’. Although he had heard a rumour that Gourgaud was play-acting, while really on a secret mission for Bonaparte, he doubted the man was clever enough for that.3 Indeed, much of the information Gourgaud imparted, far from helping those at Longwood, was treacherous to them. He informed Gorrequer that correspondence, pamphlets and money could be transmitted with ease, thanks to the help of visiting Englishmen and captains of merchant ships, mostly for payment, but sometimes offered freely. He said that Napoleon had no trouble gaining access to large sums of money through his stepson Prince Eugene, who had arranged an account he could draw upon with Andrews, Street & Parker of London. Most damaging of all for Napoleon, he said that his apparent illness was feigned and that O’Meara was taken in by him. ‘He will bury us all; he has a constitution of iron. His swelling of the legs dates from Moscow. As for his insomnia, since I have known him he has never slept several hours in succession.’4

  One of Gourgaud’s most spiteful revelations was that Captain Poppleton, the well-liked former British orderly officer at Longwood, had received a gold snuff box as a parting gift from Napoleon. He mentioned this knowing that Poppleton, who had done many favours for the French, including some for Gourgaud himself, could be ‘demoted or worse for having accepted the gift’. As it turned out, Lowe attempted (without success) to obstruct the officer’s career.5

  Naturally, the garrulous Frenchman was probed about sexual relationships at Longwood. The commissioners knew that any gossip of Napoleon having a lover would greatly enliven reports to their superiors; it would also tarnish the annoying legend growing up about him in the liberal press. The jealous and resentful Gourgaud, not mentioning his own seedy liaisons with slave girls and prostitutes, was only too happy to suggest that Napoleon had flirted with Betsy Balcombe, and also with a pretty neighbour, Miss Robinson, whom he called the ‘Nymph of the Valley’, another one he called ‘Rosebud’ (Miss Knipe), and even with Madame Bertrand. But in particular he implicated his two prime enemies, Madame de Montholon and her allegedly compliant husband.

  Baron Stürmer repeated the salacious stories for Prince Metternich’s titillation: ‘After having flattered for a long time the whims of the former Emperor, fulfilling the role of royal procurer, Madame de Montholon has been able to triumph over her rivals and managed to get to the imperial bed herself. Her husband, it is said, is quite proud.’6 The amount of epistolary chatter concerning a carnal relationship between Napoleon and Albine de Montholon with the acquiescence of her husband suggests it very likely existed.

  Certainly Napoleon became heavily dependent on Montholon. The dictation work on the memoirs had originally been divided between Napoleon’s four principal companions, the ‘four apostles’, but Las Cases and Gourgaud had departed. Marchand noted that of the two who remained, General Bertrand went to his home at nine o’clock each night. The overwhelming majority of the work fell to Montholon, as did the management of the household. The valet made a generous observation of his ascendancy: ‘Count de Montholon—without the grand marshal losing any of the Emperor’s esteem and his old friendship for him—became the man sharing his everyday habits and his affection, until the day of his death. Count de Montholon became entirely the Emperor’s man after the Countess was forced to return to Europe.’7

  In mid-February, O’Meara was called to Plantation House. The governor enquired after Bonaparte’s health, but—according to the surgeon’s account, which must be treated with caution—the interview soon deteriorated. Sir Hudson rose and, looking at O’Meara ‘in a menacing manner’, accused him of communicating with Napoleon and other members of his household on matters that were not medical.8

  Secretary Gorrequer, observed the entire encounter. He wrote in his coded diary: ‘After the confab with Dr O’Meara was over, he desired me not to take any notes on it.’ Lowe remarked to him that the doctor ‘had conducted himself very properly till the arrival of Sir Pulteney Malcolm. It was that fellow who was the cause of it all.’9

  O’Meara returned to Longwood and found Napoleon in better spirits. The doctor related his clash with Lowe and the ban placed on his discussing any but medical matters. Napoleon warned him to watch out for Gorrequer, who would perjure himself at the govern- or’s bidding. ‘You are in a very dangerous situation,’ he said. ‘He has a witness, who is his creature and who will sign everything that he dictates, and have no other conscience or will than his. You have only your own word to plead; and this man’s conduct, in endeavouring to make a spy of you, by ill treatment and abuse, is so extraordinary that people unacquainted with him will with difficulty believe it. I see no other mode for you to act than to maintain an absolute silence.’10

  Apart from more positive days such as this, Napoleon’s health continued to decline. O’Meara believed that the location of his problem was the liver, and diagnosed hepatitis.11

  Lord Bathurst had profound suspicions about William Balcombe. One French Bonapartist escape plan had mentioned possible assistance from a ‘Colonel Bouher living at the Briars’, perhaps a code name.12 Balcombe’s excessive invoices could be used to pin him down for a start. In a stern letter to Lowe, Bathurst urged that he set up an enquiry into the purveyor’s charges, for ‘there must be some foundation for aspersions so confidently made, and that therefore it is to be presumed that the Purveyor imposes upon the Government and does not supply Longwood as he ought, and the blame which in this supposition attaches on you is that you may not have taken proper measures to provide against such imposition’.13

  Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt must have heard that his protégé was in official disfavour, for he sent him an urgent communication, warning that it would be politic to take a break from the island for a few months, and come to England with his family.14

  On 16 February, Lowe himself received a letter from Sir Thomas, who had returned to London from France on hearing of Princess Charlotte’s death:

  Parliament Place, Dec 8th 1817

  My Dear Sir

  It is impossible for me to allow the first
conveyance to St Helena since my arrival in England to pass unnoticed without thanking you very sincerely for the protection and kindness you have been pleased to shew Mr Balcombe at my recommendation. I do trust and believe he will not prove unworthy of it—Upon the event that has lately not only plunged this Country but the Continent also into such deep affliction, I was at Marseilles and as you may suppose lost not a moment in repairing hither to be of what service I could to my Royal friend. Thank God he bears up against his loss with Resignation though at moments his grief is dangerous to his health. I think however his general looks are more pleasant than when I left him in August. He takes more exercise than he did but I wish I could say he was less in size.

  In thanking Lowe for the ‘protection and kindness’ he had shown to Balcombe, there was clear encouragement for this to continue. Sir Thomas managed at the same time to refer to his own intimacy with the Prince Regent and to flatter Lowe by including him in royal gossip—‘Rumour gives wives both to the Duke of Kent and Clarence but I do not believe anything is yet determined upon’—and by sending a special memento for Lowe’s wife: ‘There are Portraits and Drawings without end which have appeared of the lamented Princess, but that which I take the liberty of sending to Lady L is thought to be the most striking resemblance of her.’ Sir Thomas concluded with an assurance that he personally had no patience with those who were soft on Bonaparte: ‘Lord Holland is in a week or two to give us a Display upon Napoleon’s Calamities; but as long as you keep him close, nobody cares for speeches.’15