by John Barth
We must surmise what followed. When their ship reaches British-held Bordeaux at the end of June and they learn of Waterloo, of Napoleon’s second abdication and his flight from Paris to nearby Rochefort, Andrew offers either to dispatch her to Mme de Staël in Leghorn, Italy (whither I learn’d Germaine had fled with her guardsman-husband for the sake of his health, & to wait out the Hundred Days); or to introduce her, as one former novelist to another, to Joseph Bonaparte, presently in Bordeaux & about to flee aboard a charter’d American schooner to New York. But she declined both offers, coldly informing me she would set & sail her own course thro life, without my or any other man’s aid. That she had, she believed, found her true vocation. Finally, that the real defect in “that business of Don Escarpio’s poison’d snuffbox” was not that it wanted re-working in fiction, but that it had not workt in fact!
On this discordant note they part. After learning all he can about the emperor’s situation from Joseph’s entourage and from the U.S. consul in Bordeaux (a Mr. Lee, to whom he attaches himself long enough to observe his signature and appropriate some consulate stationery, and for whom he volunteers to act as unofficial liaison with Napoleon’s party), Andrew hurries to Rochefort to reconnoiter and to revise his plan.
Napoleon, he learns, is being uncharacteristically indecisive, to the growing desperation of his suite. Having offered his services in vain to the provisional government in Paris as a mere general of the army (he had noted on his maps a vulnerable gap between the armies of Wellington and Blücher, both marching toward Paris), he has announced his decision to take refuge in America. But as if in hope of some marvelous re-reversal of fortune, he has put off his flight aboard the French frigates at his disposal and given the British time to reinforce their blockade of the harbor. Captain Ponée of the Méduse still )believes it possible to run the blockade: he will engage the chief blockading vessel, H.M.S. Bellerophon, a 74-gunner but old and slow; he estimates he can survive for two hours, enough time for Napoleon to slip through on the Saale and outrun the lesser blockaders. Napoleon has approved the audacity of the plan, but declined to sacrifice the Méduse. Another loyal frigate stands ready farther south, at the mouth af the Gironde; and there is Joseph’s charter boat at Bordeaux. The French master of a Danish sloop in the Aix Roads has even offered to smuggle the emperor out in an empty wine cask rigged with breathing tubes. Every passing day makes escape less feasible; the options narrow to capture and possible execution by Blücher’s Prussians, arrest by the Bourbons, surrender to the British, or suicide (it is an open secret that he carries a vial of cyanide always on his person). But Napoleon will not act.
Delighted by this unanticipated turn of fortune—which of course revives at once his original hope that Bonaparte himself might lead the “Louisiana Project”—“André Castine” attaches himself to the emperor’s party on the strength of a letter “from Mr. Consul Lee” authorizing him to oversee and facilitate Napoleon’s “American arrangements,” should the emperor choose to go to that country. He urgently advances Jean Lafitte’s Champ d’Asile/New Orleans/Barataria connection, flourishing his letter “from Mayor Girod”; the proposal finds favor with many of the party, but the emperor himself (through intermediaries: Andrew does not see him personally until the last minute) is dilatory. On July 4, our ancestor’s 39th birthday, Joseph sails aboard the U.S.S. Pike, afraid to delay longer. Andrew begins to share the desperation of Napoleon’s aides.
Legality was the official sticking-point, he writes: Bonaparte had long since requested of the Paris government passports to America, & had renew’d that request thro Commander Maitland of Bellerophon, without reply. He had, he declared, been condemn’d an outlaw by the Congress of Vienna since his escape from Elba; moreover, he had been defeated on the field of battle & forced to abdicate. To flee now like a common fugitive was in his eyes but a further ignominy. But some said privately he fear’d life in America, so remote from the terrain of his career. Others, that he had fallen ill, slipt his hold on reality, & half believed a way would yet show itself, to make another Elba of Rochefort.
On July 8, on orders from Paris, the party boards the French frigates anchored in the harbor. On the 10th a letter arrives from Bellerophon, in reply to Napoleon’s query: Maitland does not mention the passports (he has been secretly instructed to intercept and take custody of the emperor if he attempts to flee, and deliver him to Tor Bay), but politely forbids Napoleon passage out of the harbor on any but his own vessel, and that to England. On the 11th they learn of Louis XVIII’s re-restoration. The circle is closing. On the 13th Napoleon drafts his famous letter of surrender to the prince regent:
Your Royal Highness,
A victim to the factions which distract my country, and to the enmity of the greatest powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws; which I claim from your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies.
Rochefort, 13 July, 1815,
Napoleon
But before delivering it, and himself, to Bellerophon, he decides to make a final inquiry concerning the passports, at the same time testing the air on the subject of his second choice: asylum in England, where his brother Lucien already resides, and the likely nature of his reception there. On the morning of Bastille Day, therefore, he sends emissaries under a flag of truce to Bellerophon. Commander Maitland again declares (what is technically correct) that he has had no word yet from his admiral concerning the passports; that he cannot permit Napoleon passage to America without them; and that he is not empowered to enter into any agreement concerning the emperor’s reception in England—which, however, he cannot personally imagine will be other than hospitable. The embassy returns; there is no alternative, Napoleon decides, to surrendering to Maitland and taking his chances with the prince regent. A new letter is drafted to that effect, enclosing a copy of the “Themistocles” letter, re-requesting passports and passage to America, but accepting in lieu of them passage to England “as a private individual, there to enjoy the protection of the laws of your country.” He will deliver himself and his entourage to Bellerophon, he declares, on the morrow’s ebb tide.
Andrew sees here a long chance to salvage his mission, which Napoleon’s refusal to escape has rendered all but hopeless: he volunteers to rush overland to London “in [his] capacity as a U.S. diplomatic attaché,” discover if he can what the British cabinet plan to do with their prisoner, and, if that news is not good, do what he can to arrange Bonaparte’s escape before he is landed and taken into custody. In return he stipulates (to the Count de Las Cases, Napoleon’s acting counselor of state and second-ranking aide, whom Andrew has befriended) that any such escape be to Champ d’Asile, and that Las Cases urge Napoleon to lead the “Louisiana Project.”
A fan of Chateaubriand’s redskin romances, Las Cases declares himself ready without hesitation to hazard “the naked but noble savages” rather than the elegant but perfidious Bourbons or what he fears may be the implacable English. He is impressed by Andrew’s showing him, on a map of America, the territory he has in mind, three times the size of France. He inquires as to the quality of Indian wine. Before dawn the next morning he reports that the emperor has approved and will finance Andrew’s London mission, and has regarded that same map with interest but no further comment. News has reached them that Louis XVIII has ordered the commander of the Saale frigate to hold them all under arrest on that vessel; the officer has loyally passed word of his order along, but cannot indefinitely delay executing it. They are leaving at once.
Andrew asks and is given permission to accompany them to Bellerophon. ’Twas no reason of strategy at all, only to see, perhaps for the last time, that man Joel Barlow had come justly so to loathe, but who had play’d as none before him the Game of Governments, & convinced a whole century, for good or ill, that one man can turn the tide of history. The e
mperor speaks to—or of—him once, and briefly, not recognizing him as the man he’d dispatched years before to oversee young Jérôme in America. “So this is the fellow who would crown me king of the Corsairs,” he remarks, and turns his attention to the choreography of boarding the British warship with most impressive effect.
That day and the following morning Andrew spends aboard the “Billy Ruffian,” as her crew call Bellerophon. He watches Napoleon display his talent for ingratiating himself with those useful to him, intuitively exploiting every circumstance to best advantage. So far from abject, the man turns his surrender into a diplomatic and theatrical coup, and receives, without having to ask, every royal prerogative—except the passports. Andrew also completes the letter to Andrée begun in Fort Bowyer and put aside in New Orleans, describing the sack of Washington and the siege of Fort McHenry: he will leave it with Consul Lee to dispatch to Canada via Washington by diplomatic pouch, having reported “officially” to that gentleman the details of Bonaparte’s surrender. In his satisfaction at having got hold of the emperor before his superiors could snatch that plum for themselves (the sails of Admiral Hotham’s Superb are visible all through the morning of the 15th, standing in for Rochefort), Maitland accepts Las Cases’s voucher that “M. Castine” is the party’s “American liaison,” and both permits him aboard and allows him to leave at his pleasure on the 16th.
By noon of when, the emperor having breakfasted aboard the Superb with Hotham, Maitland, and his own aides—and been given a second royal reception, and returned without either the passports or any word of them, but encouraged that his reception in England will not be hostile—it is clear to Andrew that he must commence his next move at once. As the crew of Bellerophon man the yards and weigh anchor to beat out into the Bay of Biscay, Napoleon complimenting them on their quiet efficiency, Andrew returns by longboat to Méduse and thence to Rochefort, bearing in his ear the whispered last charge of the Count de Las Cases, who does not share his master’s optimism: “Sauvez-nous la peau!”
His letter sent on its way, Andrew rushes overland to the Channel, avoiding Paris lest in the confusion of the new government his credentials be too closely examined. But at Tours, at Rouen, at Dieppe, the news is the same: Louis wants Napoleon dead, is relieved to be relieved of the political consequences of seeing personally to his execution, but fears the British will give him asylum or let him go to America despite their secret assurances to the contrary. On July 20 he crosses from Dieppe to Newhaven; by the 21st he is in London, seeking out his erstwhile brother-in-audacity Admiral Sir George Cockburn. He has no plan, beyond learning what the Admiralty’s and the cabinet’s intentions are. He presumes that the dispatch boat carrying Napoleon’s “Themistocles” letter to the prince regent will have arrived, and remembers that Cockburn and the prince regent are friends.
I had learn’d in the Chesapeake, he writes, that the surest road to Sir George’s confidence was a frank confession of rascality, especially as apply’d against his rivals. And so I gain’d his presence as “one André Castine, bringing news of Napoleon”; but once in his company I reveal’d myself as Andrew Cook, & told him all that had transpired since we saw each other last off Baltimore. In particular I regaled him with the rivalry between General Pakenham & Admiral Cochrane at New Orleans, & the tale of Mrs. Mullens, & Cochrane’s disgust that the peace came ere he had properly ransom’d a city. I then recounted the details of Bonaparte’s surrender (whereof England had as yet heard only the fact) & his hope for passport or asylum.
He has judged his man correctly. At first incredulous, then skeptical, Cockburn is soon delighting in the story of Admiral Malcolm and Mrs. Mullens, of Cochrane’s artillery duel with Andrew Jackson. He calls for maps, and argues persuasively that even after the January massacre it was Cochrane’s fecklessness and General Lambert’s shock that lost New Orleans: at the time of the burial truce the British had command of the west bank of the Mississippi above Jackson’s line, 50 armed vessels en route upriver and a blockade at its mouth, and clear superiority of numbers; to withdraw and rebegin a whole month later from Fort Bowyer was a foolish judgment and crucial loss of time, since everyone knew the peace was imminent. But that was Cochrane! Did Andrew know that the man had left Admiral Malcolm the ugly job of getting rid of all those Negroes and Indians he had so ardently recruited with false promises, and himself rushed home to litigate for prize money? And that while he was about it he was suing for libel any who dared say in print what everyone said in private: that he was a fool and, but for the odd foolhardy display, a coward?
As for Napoleon (whom Cockburn, in the English fashion, calls “Buonaparte”), the truth is that the British cabinet have no mind whatever to grant him either passport to America or asylum in England: they wish him heartily to the Devil and are annoyed that he did not conveniently dispatch himself to that personage. They dare not put him on trial, for they know him to be a master of manipulating public sympathy. Their resolve is to whisk him as speedily, quietly, and far as possible from the public eye forever. The legal and political questions about his status are many and delicate (Is he a prisoner of war? Of Britain or of the Allies? Does habeas corpus apply? Extradition?), and no one wants either to deal with them or to incur the consequences of not dealing with them. Now Sir George happens to know that Prime Minister Liverpool has already decided to confine the man for life in the most remote and impregnable situation in the empire, and consulting the Admiralty on that head, has been advised that the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, owned by the British East India Company, best fits the bill.
How does Cockburn know? Why, because he himself has been proposed for promotion to commander in chief of His Majesty’s naval force at the Cape of Good Hope and adjacent seas—i.e., the whole of the South Atlantic and Indian oceans—and the immediate reason for this promotion, he quite understands, is to sweeten the responsibility of fetching Bonaparte to St. Helena and seeing to it he stays there until a permanent commission has been established for his wardenship! He expects his orders daily, and though he readily accepts the “sweetening,” it is in fact an assignment he welcomes: perhaps his last chance to walk upon the stage of History. For that reason, while the cabinet would be relieved to hear that their captive has taken poison aboard Bellerophon en route to Tor Bay, he Cockburn would be much chagrined: he looks forward to many a jolly hour with Old Boney.
Speaking of whom, and of the splendid absurdities of that “English law” on whose protection the rogue has thrown himself: has Andrew heard the tale that bids to bring together General Buonaparte and Admiral Cochrane? Andrew has not. Well: it seems that Sir Alexander’s return from New Orleans in the spring, and his commencement of prize litigations, prompted a number of sarcastic comments in the London press about his being more eager to fight in court than on the high seas. Among his detractors was one Anthony Mackenrot, an indigent merchant who had done business with the West Indies fleet under Cochrane’s command back in 1807, and who lately declared in print that out of cowardice Sir Alexander had failed to engage the French fleet in that area that year, though it was known to be of inferior strength and vulnerable. Ever tender of his honor—especially when a fortune in prize money was still litigating—Cochrane had clapped a libel suit on this Mackenrot, hoping to intimidate him into public retraction. But he misjudged his adversary: with an audaciousness worthy of Buonaparte himself (or the teller of this tale), Mackenrot had promptly sought and got from the chief justice of Westminster a writ of subpoena against both Napoleon and his brother Jérôme—who we remember had left the French West Indies fleet in 1803 with his friend Joshua Barney to come to Baltimore—commanding them to appear in court at Westminster 9 A.M. Friday, November 10, 1816, to testify as to the state of readiness of the French fleet at the time in question! And this subpoena, mind, Mackenrot had secured in June, before Waterloo, when Buonaparte was still emperor of the French and at war with England!
Cockburn must set down his Madeira (“carry’d twice ’round the Horn f
or flavor, in the holds of British men-o’-war”) and wipe his eyes for mirth. English law! Let that Napoleon has cost more British blood and treasure in fourteen years than a normal century would expend, he may count upon it that no sooner will Bellerophon drop anchor in Tor Bay than a cry of habeas corpus will go up from the Shetlands to the Scillys, to give the devil his day in court! Only the decommissioning of his own Northumberland in Portsmouth, and the unfitness of old Bellerophon for so long a voyage, keeps Sir George from petitioning the prince regent to let him intercept Maitland at sea, effect the transfer, and head smack for St. Helena before the newspapers know what’s what.
Andrew has heard enough: legal passage to America being out of the question, Napoleon must be rescued before he can be shipped off to exile, and the most immediate hope of rescue is delay. He reaches Tor Bay on the afternoon of the 24th to find that Bellerophon has arrived there that same morning; it rides at anchor off the quay of Brixam, already surrounded by flotillas of the curious. Next day the crowd increases, and security around the ship is tightened; Andrew cannot negotiate his way aboard. And on the 26th (the newspapers are talking already of St. Helena, and of habeas corpus, and of the right of asylum, at least of trial) the ship is moved around to Plymouth harbor and anchored between two frigates for greater security. Andrew removes there as well, and haunts Admiralty headquarters, where he learns that Cockburn’s new command has been issued and his flagship Northumberland ordered back in commission—to the great chagrin of her crew, who have just completed a long tour of sea duty and were expecting shore leave. Cockburn himself will board ship at Spithead in a week or ten days; a fortnight should see the business done. By now Napoleon must understand that neither asylum nor passport is forthcoming; the cabinet have not even acknowledged receipt of his “Themistocles” letter, lest such recognition be argued against the Allies’ decree of outlawry. Andrew hopes that Las Cases has brought him around to the Louisiana Project…