Chapter XI: Appendix: A. Members of Parliament, 316 (9)

In flat contradiction, however, to the police bulletins, Wansey describes the Parisians as glad to see English visitors once more amongst them.[282] The British milord was good-naturedly burlesqued, as Weston tells us, in a farce called _La Route de Paris_. A provincial innkeeper welcomes milord and miladi. His bad French and her veil excite amusement. The lord asks for beefsteak for dinner. The lady is enchanted with everything. The lord cries ‘God dem, vive la paix,’ while the lady remarks that French and English have always been near enough to shake hands. The landlord rejoices that the lily after twenty years’ preservation in an English conservatory is as flourishing as ever. Birkbeck, moreover, testifies to the welcome given to Englishmen at Montpellier, which he attributed to the kindness shown to French prisoners in England. Yet Haydon relates that on the performance of Ducis’ _Hamlet_ at the Comédie Française, the whole pit rose and applauded a line against England, shouting ‘Bravo, à bas les Anglais,’ and pointing to the English present.

If the French authorities looked askance on English visitors, it is but fair to say that some of the latter sympathised with Napoleon. Lord and Lady Holland were doubtless among them, for Lord Holland subsequently protested against the transportation to St. Helena, and Lady Holland, as already stated, forwarded books thither to the captive. They were not likely, when in Paris, to parade their anti-Bourbon sentiments, but Hervey Montmorency Morris was less scrupulous. He, on the 19th April 1814, presented his newly born infant at the mairie of the tenth arrondissement, and gave its name as Napoleon.[283] A young Irishman named Charles Honoré Lyster, describing himself as a student, a few months later landed at Toulon from Elba, and the authorities very naturally ordered him to be watched. Lord Oxford’s papers, moreover, were seized, and Wellington acknowledged that this was justified by his conduct and conversation, and by the Bonapartist correspondence of which he had taken charge.

I have spoken of Wellington, but it should be stated that the Embassy was at first filled by Sir Charles Stuart, afterwards Lord Stuart de Rothesay. He presented his credentials to Louis XVIII. on the 22nd June, but was soon transferred to The Hague. Wellington arrived with his troops from Spain on the 7th May, but went back to Madrid to see the Spanish dynasty restored, returned to England to take his seat in the Lords as Duke, and was then appointed ambassador. He presented his credentials on the 24th August, but with much greater pomp than Stuart. Three royal carriages, each drawn by eight horses, escorted from the Embassy his three carriages, each drawn by six horses. He was accompanied by Major Fremantle and Major Percy. On reaching the foot of the throne he made a profound reverence, whereupon the King rose, then sat down again, putting on his hat and motioning to Wellington and the princes of the blood to cover also. The crowd murmured at these honours, though they were also accorded to all the other ambassadors, while the ultra-royalists professed indignation at the Duke’s fixing a ball in honour of Queen Charlotte’s birthday for the 18th January 1814, as being a date too close to the 21st, the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s execution. They were also suspicious of his intimacy with the Duke of Orleans. He paid a visit to the Abbé Sicard’s deaf and dumb boys, who were not, however, dumb, for they articulated ‘Vive notre bon roi Louis XVIII.!’ The Duchess of Wellington was presented by the King with a Sèvres dinner-service. The British Government was very uneasy lest Wellington should be ‘kidnapped’--an euphemism for being murdered--in some military rising. Anxious, therefore, for him to leave, its first idea was to send him to America to command in the short war with the United States. He himself, however, wished to remain in Paris, thinking that his departure would weaken Louis XVIII. A mission to the Vienna Congress he considered a poor pretext, but the Government persisted, though allowing him to choose his own time for departure. General Macaulay meanwhile went back to London with alarming reports. Wellington, writing to Lord Liverpool on the 23rd October, said:--

‘It appears to me that Macaulay considers the danger of a revolt
more certain and more likely to occur than I do, that is to say,
he believes it certainly will occur within a very short period
of time. I think it may occur any night, but I know of no fact
to induce me to believe it is near, excepting the general one
of great discontent and almost desperation among a very daring
class of men.’

Macaulay feared that the royal family would be massacred and Wellington ‘detained.’ Wellington stayed, however, till the 22nd January. Meanwhile he was besieged with all sorts of applications. Hervey Montmorency Morris asked permission to return to Ireland, promising to be a loyal subject. Wellington demurred, suggesting that in spite of his good intentions he would fall back into the company of his old associates through the disinclination of loyalists to associate with him. Morris accordingly remained in the French army, was naturalised in November 1816, and remained in France till his death in 1839.

A man designating himself representative of De Beaune, who in 1790 negotiated a loan for the three English royal dukes, also called on Wellington. He stated that the bondholders were pressing him for payment of the principal and of the twenty years’ arrears of interest. Wellington forwarded his documents to London, but nothing more is heard of the affair. Impey was there again on the same errand as in 1802, and Long, ex-president of the Irish College, went over to seek restitution; but these claims all stood over till after the Hundred Days. The Scottish College, however, was restored to its owners, and on the 13th December Robertson, bishop-coadjutor of Dublin and inventor of a process of embossing books for the blind, solemnised a _Te Deum_ there in the presence of numerous British ecclesiastics. Quintin Craufurd likewise sent in a statement of British claims to compensation, and he obtained the restitution of eighty pictures, engravings, and sculptures confiscated in 1792.

Wellington received directions to prevent Princess Caroline from repairing from Strasburg to Paris, though his own opinion was that she might safely have been permitted to amuse herself. Louis XVIII., out of consideration for the Prince Regent, had resolved not to receive her. She nevertheless in October paid an incognito visit.

But few of the English visitors could have been in time to see the Tsar, with his sons Constantine and Nicholas, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, with his two sons, one of them the future William I., destined to re-enter Paris as a conqueror in 1871, for their stay was very short. The Russian and Prussian sovereigns went on to England in June, while the Austrian Emperor pleaded Italian affairs as preventing him from also going. The brilliant uniforms of their officers, however, continued to enliven the streets of the capital. Louis had pressed the Prince Regent to come over, telling him that the three monarchs seconded the invitation, but the Prince, ‘fat, fair, and forty,’ or rather, as Leigh Hunt had been imprisoned for describing him, ‘an Adonis of fifty,’ probably shrank from the fatigue of the journey, or possibly he was not too confident of the stability of the restored dynasty. He made the excuse that a Regency Act would be necessary if he left his realm, yet his ancestors had paid visits to Hanover. His subjects were of course eager to be presented at Court. Shepherd speaks of Louis as ‘uncomfortably corpulent and seemed very infirm in his feet, but his countenance is extremely pleasing, and if any reliance is to be placed on physiognomy, he is a man of a very benevolent disposition.’[284] Shepherd went in clerical costume, fancying that this would be sufficient, but Stuart telling him the contrary, he had to hurry off to a tailor to get properly equipped.

Dr. Williams presented the King with portraits of George III. and the Prince Regent, ‘two princes to whom,’ Louis said, ‘he had vowed the most faithful remembrance.’ Sir Herbert Croft presented to him verses addressed to the Duchess of Angoulême. Galignani, who, though an Italian ex-priest, may be considered an Englishman by marriage and adoption, presented thirty volumes of his English reprints, his _Paris Guide_, and his _Modern Spectator_. Street, editor and part proprietor of the _Courier_, also had an audience, and was complimented on his journal’s ten years’ advocacy of the cause of the Bourbons.[285]

Those visitors who were not presented at Court had an opportunity of seeing the King on his way to chapel. Haydon, who describes him as ‘keen, fat, and eagle-eyed,’ joined in shouting ‘Vive le roi!’ He remarked that Napoleon’s initials still dotted the vestibule of the chapel. The Duke of Rutland also remarked that the draperies of the Tuileries were dotted with bees, and that ‘N’ or an eagle was visible on all the furniture. This was a perpetual reminder to the Bourbons of the dethroned ruler. But few of these emblems appear to have been at first effaced in Paris, lest this should provoke counter-demonstrations, though provincial authorities displayed more zeal and less tact. Yet Stephen Weston speaks of thousands of workmen being employed in removing them, and Birkbeck observed men busily effacing Napoleon’s name and eagles from public buildings, which he thought very pitiful, while Scott noticed ingenious attempts to turn ‘N’ into ‘L’ or ‘H’ in honour of Louis XVIII. or Henri IV. He also speaks of a sign ‘Café de l’Empereur’ being converted into ‘Café des Empereurs’ in honour of the Russian and Austrian monarchs.

On the 21st January, the anniversary of Louis XVI.’s execution, there was an imposing procession on the transfer of his and his Queen’s remains to St. Denis, and requiem masses were celebrated all over France, the Protestant pastors Monod and Marron also holding services, albeit the latter had flattered Napoleon. These masses were ordered to be annual, but were never repeated. There were other spectacles. There was the proclamation of peace by a herald on the 1st June with all the revived formalities of the old Monarchy. The spoils of Italian art, including the Venetian horses, still embellished Paris, though destined to removal as a punishment for the Hundred Days. Sunday and festival observance was enforced on shops and factories, by a decree of the Prefect of Police on the 7th June. The host, for the first time since the Revolution, was carried through the streets on Corpus Christi day, all houses on the route having to be draped, and bystanders being expected, if not required, to uncover as it passed. The streets, says Haydon, were hung with tapestries, and altars were erected at various points. It was the first Sunday since the Revolution that shops had been shut, yet the gaming-tables were open as usual. Parisians did not fail to remark that these measures were decreed by a notorious sceptic, Beugnot. When Corpus Christi day came round again on the 25th May 1815, Napoleon was once more on the throne. On the 29th August the King paid a State visit to the Hotel de Ville, in honour of which Paris illuminated. The fountains in the Champs Elysées poured forth wine for all comers, and comestibles were also gratuitous.[286]

The London newspapers expressed distrust in the stability of the new government, and doubtless on that account were prohibited admission to France. English officials seem to have shared this sentiment, for in July 1814 Admiral Mackenzie, who had brought over the Duc de Berri, suddenly renounced his intended wintering in the south and recrossed the Channel. Crabb Robinson remarked that when the King reviewed the National Guard the cheers were very faint, and that there were some cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Even the Rev. R. W. Wake, curate of Maidstone, who, having only a week’s holiday, went no further than Calais and Boulogne, was struck by the regret with which Napoleon’s fall was spoken of.[287] Yet some of the visitors descried no troubles ahead. Wansey, who was in Paris in June, going thither by Dieppe and returning by Boulogne, says:--

‘That there are many dissatisfied with the new order of things,
particularly among the military, there is no doubt, and we may
expect to hear of partial insurrections and commotions among the
men returned from the wars.... But a Government that employs
men of such talents as those I have mentioned (Talleyrand,
Fouché, Louis, and Montesquiou) will not be easily overturned,
particularly as the leaders of the army are with the Court; and
as to the return of Napoleon, he ran the full length of his
tether. You will hear no more of his rule in France.’[288]

John Scott, however, in the diligence between Dieppe and Paris, heard an officer with Napoleon’s portrait on his snuff-box say, in reply to English expressions of satisfaction at the peace, ‘All very well, this tranquillity of Europe is a fine thing, but will it not keep me always a captain?’ Another officer, though originally forced away from the study of medicine into the army, spoke with enthusiasm of Napoleon, and the mass of the people, while admitting Napoleon’s faults, were in Scott’s judgment in his favour. ‘Ah but he was a great man!’ was the common phrase.

Richard Boyle Bernard, M.P., son of the Earl of Bandon, remarked that Louis XVIII., passing on his way to mass, was repeatedly greeted with cries of ‘Vive le roi!’ and he believed the most respectable portion of the nation to be loyal; but the number of discontented spirits would, he thought, necessitate prolonged vigilance. At Calais theatre, moreover, on his way back in the autumn, Bernard heard a passage expressing satisfaction with the peace hissed by the officers present.[289] He was struck, too, by the dislike felt in France for the English, which was in striking contrast to their cordial welcome in Germany.

Ward, who saw Louis XVIII. enter Paris, remarked that the applause was neither long nor vehement, and that the Bourbons were received with cold acquiescence.[290]

Eustace, the Catholic priest, likewise gives no hint of another overturn, yet his visits of 1790 and 1802 should have taught him the instability of French politics. Moreover, a sentry told him that the Emperor had in ten years done more to embellish Paris than the Bourbons in a century, and that had he reigned ten years longer he would have made it the finest city in the world. Jones, chaplain on board the _Blenheim_ at anchor off Marseilles, was more excusable in regarding the fall of Napoleon as definitive, yet the very parallel which he drew in his 29th May sermon between the English and the French Restoration might have reminded him that 1660 was reversed by 1688. Weston, however, was struck not by any feeling in favour of Napoleon, but by the sarcasms heaped on him; and Shepherd, though he doubted the allegiance of the army, thought the mass of the people friendly to the Bourbons. The smallest spark amid so much inflammable matter might, he knew, produce an extensive conflagration. Some of the numerous pamphlets on Napoleon which, pending the institution of a censorship, were freely hawked in the streets, were the work of admirers, and the Grand Duke Constantine heard Louis XVIII. gravely reply, when the rest of the royal family had been disparaging Napoleon, ‘Napoleon has done wonders for the glory and welfare of France, and if I can render her happy it will be by following the documents which he has left. I should like to have as good a head as he whose chair I am occupying and whose table is serving me to write at, for I feel myself inferior to him.’[291] But even pessimists, while apprehending a revolution, had no fear of Napoleon’s return.

Return however he did, and those Englishmen who had visited him at Elba cannot have been among the most startled. As early as the 29th July, less than three months after Napoleon’s arrival in his little realm, General Spallannchi reported from Florence that some Englishmen had gone out of curiosity to Elba but had returned in ill-humour, the fallen monarch having barely allowed them to see him and that only in his garden. It seems from the statement of Vice-Consul Innes that the party numbered seven, including one lady, and that after being kept a long time waiting for an answer the garden interview was assigned them for the next day. A Warwickshire man who had passed through Paris and whose letter, intercepted by the Leghorn police, was signed ‘Richard,’ evidently his Christian name, sailed from Leghorn with his sister on the 24th November, but was told that Napoleon refused to receive curiosity-mongers. Not easily to be foiled, however, he made a second voyage and on alighting at an hotel at Porto Ferrajo on the 2nd December found covers laid for thirty Corsican functionaries in honour of the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. Such a celebration did not argue renunciation of empire. On the following day he was allowed an audience, but nothing having been said about his sister he had to leave her outside. Napoleon, whom he found standing in a small room, advanced with an affable air and asked, ‘Where do you come from?’

‘Warwickshire.’

‘I do not remember the name.’

‘It is in the very centre of England.’

‘What is your occupation?’

‘General commerce, but chiefly manufactures.’

‘Do you find much custom in Italy?’

‘Tolerable.’

‘None in France, eh?’

‘None at present, for want of a commercial treaty.’

‘A commercial treaty would suit you?’

‘Certainly, but I do not think we shall get it.’

‘I did your commerce much mischief.’

‘Not so much as was supposed. Our trade found outlets out of Europe which were very profitable.’

‘The troubles in Spain will open up their colonies to you?’

‘Yes, but at first they will be jealously closed.’

‘Your licence system was bad. It was semi-robbery.’

‘This kind of conversation’ (says Richard), ‘lasted about an
hour, and then turned on France.... He asked me whether I was
in Paris during the Peace of Amiens. “Yes.” “You found it now
much altered?” “Yes, much larger than in 1802.” “It is a fine
city,” he added.... I took the opportunity of reminding him of
my sister, but he took no notice. He then conversed for a few
minutes, making altogether half an hour. On getting up to leave
he asked me to introduce my sister, whom he received with the
greatest affability, keeping up a conversation with her till a
carriage was heard coming, when he bowed and we retired.... He
frequently put his fingers into a small snuff-box, but did not
seem to take much notice of its contents. He asked me whether
I thought the Bourbons were really popular in France. He told
me he had found the heat more trying in Russia in the month of
August than in any other part of Europe, and he explained the
reason. I remarked evident signs of interest and inquisitiveness
when speaking of the Bourbons. He twice asked me whether they
were popular in France and what was said of them, and was not
satisfied with a vague reply.’[292]

Frederick Douglas, M.P., son of Lord Glenbervie, on his way home from Athens had a courteous reception, which did not however prevent him from speaking and voting in 1815 for the renewal of the war.

‘Why have you come?’ asked Napoleon.

‘To see a great man.’

‘Rather to see a wild beast,’ rejoined Napoleon, who inquired whether Douglas had seen Murat or the Pope. The latter, said Napoleon, ‘is an obstinately resigned old man. I did not treat him properly. I did not go the right way to work with him.’ As to the state of France, Douglas reported that there was much enthusiasm for the Bourbons, though there were a few malcontents. ‘Yes,’ remarked Napoleon, ‘people who belong to whatever party pays them and make much stir in order to get money.’ Napoleon went on to complain of the treachery of his officers, of the pamphleteers who styled him a usurper, of his brothers for not having seconded him, and of the sovereigns who had abandoned him. Douglas reported that he could no longer mount a horse, and that he had fallen into profound apathy. Perhaps Napoleon intentionally gave him this erroneous impression, knowing that he was on his way to Paris, which he reached in January 1815.[293]

Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India, with a friend were sumptuously regaled, but we have no record of the conversation, and an English lady ‘of angelical beauty,’ whom Pons does not name, but who may have been Lady Jersey, for he says she showed the Emperor continued sympathy during the St. Helena captivity, was received with marked favour. When, on her return to London, she saw the Russian and Prussian sovereigns pass by, she said to the fashionable gathering round her, ‘Those men cannot seem imposing to persons who like me have had a close view of the Emperor Napoleon.’ Another visitor in September 1814 was John Barber Scott, of Bungay, Suffolk, ultimately a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but then a graduate twenty-two years of age, who was accompanied by Major (Patrick?) Maxwell, R.A., Colonel (afterwards General) John Lemoine, R. A., Captain Smith, and Colonel Niel Douglas.

They encountered Napoleon as he was out riding, and on their saluting him he stopped for a few minutes to question them. They thought he looked more like a crafty priest than a hero. On being told that Scott was a Cantab he said, ‘What, Cambridge, Cambridge? Oh yes, you are a young man; you will be a lawyer. Eh, eh, you will be Lord Chancellor?’ Being told by Douglas that he belonged to a Highland regiment, Napoleon asked whether they did not wear kilts (_jupes_). On Douglas replying in the affirmative, Napoleon asked whether he had brought his kilt with him, as he should like to see it, but Douglas was unable to gratify his curiosity.[294]

Equally short, or even shorter, had been the interview of Sir Gilbert Starling and a Mr. Campbell.[295]

One visitor said he was as pleased to have spent nine days at Elba as if he had won £30,000. Napoleon, however, refused audiences to Englishmen whom he suspected of simple curiosity or of exultation at his fall.[296] When he went to Longone, the second town in the island, there were numerous English visitors, and it was remarked to him that they followed him wherever he went. He replied, ‘I am an object of curiosity; let them satisfy themselves. They will go home and amuse the gentlemans (_sic_) by describing my acts and gestures.’ He added in a sad tone, ‘They have won the game; they hold the dice.’

Yet so far from showing him disrespect, Pons states that these sixty visitors of all classes vied in extolling him. Pons also acknowledges that Colonel Campbell, though deputed by his Government to watch Napoleon, veiled his supervision so carefully that only the closest observation could detect it.[297]

But the principal visitor, and the only one invited to dinner, was Lord Ebrington, afterwards Earl of Fortescue and in 1839–1841 Viceroy of Ireland. He first waited on the Emperor at 8 P.M. on the 6th December, and for three hours walked up and down the room with him. ‘You come from France; tell me frankly,’ said Napoleon, ‘whether the French are satisfied.’ ‘Only so-so,’ replied Ebrington. ‘It cannot be otherwise,’ rejoined Napoleon; ‘they have been too much humiliated by the peace. The appointment of the Duke of Wellington as Ambassador must have seemed an insult to the army, as also the special attentions shown him by the King. If Lord Wellington had come to Paris as a visitor, I should have had pleasure in showing him the attentions due to his great ability, but I should not have liked his being sent to me as Ambassador.’

The justice of this remark is obvious. Napoleon extolled the House of Lords as the bulwark of the English constitution. He denounced the duplicity of the Emperor Alexander, expressed esteem for the Austrian Emperor, and spoke slightingly of the King of Prussia. ‘How should I be treated,’ he asked Ebrington, ‘if I went to England? Should I be stoned?’ Ebrington replied that he would run no risk, and that the irritation formerly existing against him was daily dying out. ‘I think, however,’ rejoined Napoleon, ‘that there would be some danger from your mob’--he used the English word--‘at London.’

‘The grace of his smile and the simplicity of his manner,’ says Ebrington, ‘had put me quite at my ease. He himself appeared to wish me to question him. He replied without the least hesitation, with a promptitude and clearness which I have never seen equalled in any other man.’

Next day, just as Ebrington was preparing to sail, came an invitation to dinner, and this second interview lasted from seven till eleven. Napoleon inquired for the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Whitworth, Erskine, and Holland, and spoke especially of Fox. Informed that Fox felt much flattered at his reception in 1802, Napoleon said, ‘He had reason to be so. He was everywhere received like a divinity because he was known to be in favour of peace.’ ‘Tell Lord Grenville,’ added Napoleon, ‘to come and see me. I wager that you in England thought me a devil, but now that you have seen me and France also you must be somewhat disabused.’ He justified the detentions of 1803. Ebrington, however, maintained that the embargo on French shipping in British ports prior to the formal declaration of war was in accordance with precedent, on which Napoleon replied, ‘Yes, you considered it right because it was to your advantage; other nations who lost by it thought it wrong. I am sure that at heart you in England approved me for showing force of character. Do you not see that I am a bit of a pirate like yourselves?’

Napoleon half in earnest advocated polygamy, especially in the colonies, where a planter might have a wife of each colour, so that the two families might grow up together harmoniously. He inquired for ‘my good friend Ussher’--Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas Ussher--who had conveyed him to Elba.

On surprise being expressed by Ebrington at his calm endurance of adversity, Napoleon said, ‘It is because everybody was more surprised at it than myself. I have not too good an opinion of mankind, and have always distrusted fortune. Moreover, I had little enjoyment. My brothers were much more kings than I was. They tasted the sweets of royalty, while I had only the worries and cares.’[298]

Lord John Russell, the future statesman, then twenty-three years of age, being taken by his father to Florence in the autumn of 1814, embraced the opportunity of visiting Elba. ‘When I saw Napoleon,’ he says, ‘he was in evident anxiety respecting the state of France and his chances of again seizing the crown which he had worn for ten years. I was so struck with his restless inquiry that I expressed in a letter to my brother in England my conviction that he would make some fresh attempts to disturb France and govern Europe.’[299]

But by far the most curious incident of Napoleon’s reign at Elba was his presence at an entertainment in honour of George III.’s birthday, given on the 4th June 1814 by Captain Tower on board the frigate _Undaunted_. Napoleon, on reaching Fréjus after his abdication in April, had embarked in the _Undaunted_ in preference to a French vessel assigned for his passage to Elba, and had taken a fancy to the captain, Ussher. The _Undaunted_ went to and from Elba and Leghorn, and it might have celebrated the royal birthday at the latter port. Napoleon afterwards thought that Colonel (ultimately Sir Neil) Campbell purposely planned the celebration at Elba. When, however, Towers invited him to come on board, and sent round invitations to the principal inhabitants of Porto Ferrajo, he readily accepted the invitation, and directed his courtiers, if such a phrase can be used, to do likewise. One of these, Pons de l’Hérault, to whom we are indebted for the fullest account of the festival--not published, however, till 1897[300]--was inclined indeed to regard the invitation as an insult and the festival as a bravado; but his master told him that it was the duty of British sailors to observe their sovereign’s birthday wherever they might happen to be. A ‘throne,’ says Pons, had been prepared for the Emperor on the bridge; and he continues:--

‘The Emperor arrived, and the ship’s officers received him at
the top of the ladder. Guns could not be fired, as they were
not mounted, but the crew, clustered on the rigging, gave him
three hearty cheers, and the Emperor looking up at them raised
his hat. He then passed to the quarter-deck. There all were
ranged in a circle, and the Emperor, as though quite at home,
his left hand as usual in his fob, put the trivial questions
which he nearly always employed on such occasions, for he did
not bother himself with finding remarks appropriate to each
particular individual. It was not his moment for parade. When
the circle had broken up the Emperor asked for an interpreter
and went to talk to the sailors, especially to a mate with whom
he had several times conversed during his passage from Fréjus
to the isle of Elba. The entire crew seemed eager to see him
again. The countenances of these good fellows expressed the very
contrary of the perversity of their Government. Captain Tower
sincerely admired the Emperor, and watched all his movements
with a gaze full of respect and interest. He had one of those
open countenances which inspire confidence. The Emperor said
to me ... “The English Government will never forgive me for
having been the most determined Frenchman in breaking down its
supremacy. Not that hatred actuated me, it was duty, it was love
of country.[301]

All well-bred Englishmen consequently honour me. If I went to
England the English Government would be afraid of my popularity
and would pack me off.” ... The same cheers accompanied the
Emperor on his departure, and he responded with the same
salute.’[302]

Pons, with his wife and children and the other guests, remained to the dinner and ball. Unfortunately, two of the ship’s officers drank a little too much, and so misbehaved themselves as to oblige several of the ladies to withdraw. It is pathetic to think that Napoleon’s next and last acquaintance with British tars was when, thirteen months later, he gave himself up to the _Bellerophon_, and was conveyed as a captive in the _Northumberland_ to St. Helena.

One Englishman at least was a spectator of Napoleon’s departure from Elba. A Mr. Grattan (probably the father of Thomas Colley Grattan, the traveller and novelist) had landed on the island on the 24th February. On the evening of the 26th he noticed unusual bustle, as though something was about to happen, and at 9 P.M. he saw Napoleon, escorted by General Bertrand, come out in his sister Pauline’s four-horse carriage, enter a boat, and go on board the brig _Inconstant_. Thereupon the whole flotilla got under way, the soldiers shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ Scarcely believing his eyes, Grattan hired a boat to go alongside the brig, and thence he saw Napoleon in his grey overcoat and round hat pacing the quarter-deck. One of the boatmen, however, cried out that there was an Englishman on board, upon which an officer on the poop of the _Inconstant_ demanded who he was and what he wanted. Grattan had to explain that he had merely come to have a look at the Emperor, whereupon he was told to be off, and he complied with alacrity, expecting every instant to be fired at or arrested.[303]

Up to the 20th March the _Moniteur_ had continued publishing loyal addresses to Louis XVIII., but on the 21st it announced, ‘The King and the Princes left last night. His Majesty the Emperor arrived this evening at eight o’clock in his palace of the Tuileries.’ One of Napoleon’s first inquiries to a lady of his court was whether there were many English in Paris. On being told that nearly all had left he exclaimed, ‘Ah, they recollect what I did before, but those times are past. You do not repeat yourself.’ John Cam Hobhouse, Byron’s friend, afterwards Lord Broughton, tells us this, and he adds that the detentions of 1802 were against French feeling and could not have been repeated in 1815 in defiance of such a feeling. Napoleon, moreover, may have thought there was a chance of his recognition by the allies,[304] and the detention of foreigners would have been a virtual declaration of war. Yet the stampede was obviously prudent, and the principal Englishman who remained did not escape molestation. Francis Henry Egerton, as we have seen, had come over to Paris in 1802, and he had apparently continued to reside uninterruptedly, for he published several works there, both in English and French, between 1812 and 1826. He had hired a house till 1814, but on the restoration of the Bourbons he purchased the mansion of the Noailles family in the rue St. Honoré, and to show his sympathy with the new Government he paid up at once, on the 2nd March 1815, in lieu of by instalments, the stamp duty of 30,000 francs. This seems to have marked him out for Napoleon’s resentment. The house with its contents was requisitioned to serve for a Government office. Egerton resisted, stood a kind of siege, and appealed to the tribunals. He could not, it is obvious, have permanently withstood Napoleon, but he seems to have held his ground until Waterloo arrived and put an end to the affair. He lost no time in securing legal domicile and civic rights, for in default of the latter one alien could not bequeath property to another, such property being forfeit to the French Crown. His support of the Bourbons should have shielded him from further annoyance, but in 1818 he had an unpleasant episode. Workmen who were placing flower-pots on the pillars of the Tuileries gardens found it convenient to fasten ropes to the wall of his back garden in the rue de Rivoli. Egerton drove out in his carriage and required them to desist. An altercation ensued, there were cries of ‘Down with the Englishman!’ and he was dragged out of his carriage to the guardhouse. Though promptly released, he was very punctilious in exacting an apology for this indignity, threatening otherwise to quit France. He was very eccentric in his latter years, if we are to believe that cats and dogs dressed up as human beings sat at his dinner-table, and that he kept rabbits and partridges in his garden in order to have shooting on his own premises. He died as Duke of Bridgewater in 1829, aged seventy-nine, and left £8000 for eight prize treatises which were named after him. The Hôtel St. James, into which his house has been converted, contains the original staircase and other relics of the mansion in which Marie Antoinette welcomed Lafayette and Noailles on their return from America.

Englishmen who, like Egerton, remained or arrived during the Hundred Days witnessed curious scenes. Hobhouse in his passport of 1814 had seen the word _empire_ erased and _royaume_ substituted. He now found a contrary change made. He saw Napoleon review the National Guard on the 16th April, and attend the Comédie Française on the 21st, on both which occasions his reception was enthusiastic. He also witnessed the ceremony on the Champ de Mars, when Napoleon closely scrutinised the crowd with his eyeglass during the mass on which he had resolved in order to show that the Empire was not anti-catholic. Hobhouse, though strenuously opposed to the renewal of the war by the allies, acknowledges that Napoleon was not popular in Paris except with the military, and that the cheers were very faint. Yet he courted popularity by visiting public institutions and by walking about almost unattended and conversing with people of all classes. He removed on the 17th April from the Tuileries, where, however, he still held his councils, to the Elysée, close to the Borghese palace which Wellington had purchased for the British Embassy. The latter was of course vacant, for all the ambassadors had followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent, Fitzroy Somerset assuring him previously to his flight that England would stand by him. In the absence of ambassadors foreigners could not of course be formally presented, but Mrs. Damer obtained an interview to give Napoleon the bust of Fox, which she had promised him in 1802. The jewelled snuff-box bearing his own portrait which he gave her in return is now in the British Museum. Up to the 4th May, if not later, the Calais and Dover mail-packets continued to run, and took many French passengers. When Corpus Christi festival arrived the processions, as from the Revolution till 1813 and as ever since, were confined in Paris to the churches or their enclosures.

Napoleon affected liberal views, not only by summoning Benjamin Constant to his councils, but by inviting to return to Paris his friend Madame de Staël, who had not joined in the exultation at his fall, and indeed had sent him warning to Elba, through his brother Joseph, of a plot against his life. She did not accept the invitation, but wrote to Quintin Craufurd a letter intended for transmission to the English Government, in which she affirmed the sincerity of his liberal professions. Yet she might justly have distrusted these.

Among the Frenchmen who fled to England was one whose Irish extraction entitles him to mention. Jean Baptiste Lynch, whose Jacobite ancestors had settled at Bordeaux, was imprisoned during the Revolution. In 1808 Napoleon made him Mayor of Bordeaux, and in 1810 created him a Count. Lynch was lavish in his professions of fidelity to the Empire, but in 1813 he had secret dealings with a royalist emissary, and in 1814, on the approach of Wellington’s army, he proclaimed Louis XVIII. at Bordeaux. He was the first man in France to do this, and he also sent a deputation to Louis in England. On hearing of Napoleon’s return from Elba and unopposed march on Paris, he despatched the Duchess of Angoulême to England to be out of his reach, and he himself followed her. He was at Newcastle on a visit to a relative when news of Waterloo arrived, and he was cheered by the populace.[305] Louis, who in 1814 had awarded him the grand cross of the Legion of Honour, thus giving him a Napoleonic decoration for deserting Napoleon, made him a peer. In a letter written to a Bordeaux editor in 1816 Lynch urged the justice of Catholic emancipation, but deprecated Irish independence, and expressed a wish to go and deliver loyalist speeches in Ireland, that he might render service to his ancestral as he had done to his native country.

No foreigners applied during the Hundred Days for domicile or naturalisation, whereas previously Philip Dormer Stanhope had obtained domicile,[306] as also James George Hartley, a law student, and naturalisation had been accorded to two Irish officers in the French service--Julius Terence O’Reilly and William Corbett.

On the 12th June Napoleon left for the frontier, and a period of suspense followed. Hobhouse started on the following day for Geneva, but found he could not pass through the armies, and accordingly returned to Paris on the 28th. ‘I cannot help wishing,’ he says in his letters to Byron, which the _Quarterly_ characterised as ‘infamous libels on the English name and character,’ ‘that the French may meet with as much success as will not compromise the military character of my own countrymen; but as an Englishman I cannot be witness of their triumph; as a lover of liberty I would not be a spectator of their reverses.’ This was an utterance published after the event. Perhaps Hobhouse at the time, like Byron, was nevertheless sorry to hear of Waterloo. He seems to have quitted Paris before the re-entry of Louis XVIII., but British residents like Helen Williams, Croft, Craufurd, and Egerton, witnessing the first fall of Napoleon, the accession of Louis, his flight, the arrival of Napoleon, his return from Waterloo, and the re-accession of Louis, beheld in the short space of fourteen months a series of vicissitudes unexampled in human annals.

No Englishman who saw Napoleon in Paris after Waterloo, if any such there were, has left any record of it. It is obvious, indeed, that the few Englishmen then in Paris would shun observation during those days of suspense. An Englishwoman, daughter of one of the officers detained in 1803 and herself born in captivity, may, however, have then seen him. In any case her husband, Legouvé, the Academician who died in March 1903, at the age of ninety-four, was in all probability the last survivor of those who had seen Napoleon in Paris, for he was six years of age in 1815. The last survivor who had mixed in his society at St. Helena was Madame Hortense Eugénie Thayer, daughter of General Bertrand by Henrietta, daughter of General Arthur Dillon. This was one of Napoleon’s compulsory marriages, but Bertrand succeeded in gaining his unwilling bride’s affection. Hortense, born at Paris in 1810, was presented by Napoleon at St. Helena with a pair of earrings, and he witnessed the boring of her ears for this purpose, complimenting her on her composure during the operation. She married Amédée Thayer, a French Senator under the Second Empire, of American extraction. Dying in 1890, she bequeathed to Prince Victor Bonaparte a red damask coat presented to her by Napoleon for a spencer to be made out of it, but preserved intact, together with other relics. We do not hear what became of the earrings. Her mother gave Napoleon lessons in English at St. Helena, and I subjoin a short article on this subject published by me in the _Atlantic Monthly_, November 1895:--

A recent exhibition of Napoleonic relics in Paris comprised,
among numerous specimens of handwriting--one of them the draft
abdication of Fontainebleau, another the draft ‘Themistocles’
letter to the Prince Regent--a lesson in translating French
into English. Pitying Napoleon as we must, though conscious
that captivity alone secured France and Europe against another
Hundred Days, his attempt to learn English is irresistibly
pathetic. We are reminded of Ovid learning to speak, and even
to versify, in Dacian, but Napoleon does not seem to have
mastered English sufficiently to be able to write in prose
without numerous mistakes. He had been acquainted from his
youth, by translations, with several English authors. He was
fond of Ossian, and a collection of thirty-four books, given
him by his sister Pauline to take with him to Egypt, included
Bacon’s Essays, in which he marked in pencil two passages:
one in the chapter Of Great Place, from the third sentence,
‘It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty,’
to the sentence preceding the lines from Seneca; the other in
the chapter Of Kingdoms and Estates, from ‘triumph amongst
the Romans’ to the end. Patronised by the younger Robespierre
and by Barras, he had already exemplified the saying, ‘By
indignities men come to dignities’; and he was destined also,
like Bacon himself, to find that ‘the standing is slipping, and
the regression is either a downfall or at least an eclipse.’ He
never, apparently, saw acted even an adaptation of Shakespeare,
yet on the eve of the rupture of the Treaty of Amiens he
surprised his Council of State by diverging from a coinage
question into a tirade against both Shakespeare and Milton.
Too busy, even if inclined, to study English, he would, had he
invaded England in 1803 and commissioned Sir Francis Burdett
to organise a republic, have taken with him one hundred and
seventeen interpreter guides, in red coats and white trousers--a
corps which he expected to recruit from Irish and other
refugees. One of these refugees, the notorious Lewis Goldsmith,
read the London newspapers for him. But Napoleon was not fated
to get nearer to English soil than William III.’s
landing-place, Torbay.

Captivity afforded him the requisite leisure and also a strong
inducement, for he was anxious, not to acquaint himself with
English literature, but to see what was said of himself in the
English press. Accordingly, on the six weeks’ voyage to St.
Helena, he took two lessons from Las Cases, who, when himself an
exile, had taught French and learned English in London. It seems
likely that he had acquired just a smattering before Waterloo,
if not before Elba; for while waiting at Balcombe House till
Longwood was ready for him, he occasionally spoke English
(desiring her to correct his mistakes) to the lively Betsy
Balcombe, that _enfant terrible_ who coolly questioned
him not only as to his supposed atheism, but as to the ‘happy
dispatch’ of the wounded French at Jaffa and as to the execution
of the Duc d’Enghien. He sent, moreover, for some English books,
one of them an edition of Æsop, and, pointing to the picture
of the ass kicking the sick lion, he remarked in English, ‘It
is me (_sic_) and your governor’ (Sir Hudson Lowe). His
accent then, and probably to the last, was very peculiar, and
he usually talked and joked with Betsy in French, though her
French was not of the best. He got her to translate to him Dr.
Warden’s account of the voyage of the _Northumberland_.
Though addicted to teasing, he had so won her affection that
she shed many tears on quitting the island, where, according
to a recent French visitor, the recollections of Napoleon have
been effaced by a wild-beast show, a visitor quite as rare as an
imperial captive. When settled at Longwood, Napoleon resolved
on seriously renewing the study. Las Cases gave him a daily
lesson; sometimes finding him a diligent scholar, at other
times so inattentive that Napoleon would himself laughingly
ask his teacher whether he did not deserve the rod, regarded
by him as an essential adjunct to education. He even wrote
several letters in English to Las Cases, but the irregular verbs
overtaxed his patience. He managed, however, to read after a
fashion, and, according to Las Cases, might at a push have made
himself understood in writing; but it does not appear that
the lessons went on more than a few weeks. They had probably
ceased long before December 1816, when Las Cases had to quit the
island. A scrap of paper, presented by him to a friend, and also
included in the exhibition, is the only trace of these lessons.
We read on it, in his pupil’s handwriting: ‘Gone out, _aller
dehors_, _sortir_. Opened, _ouvert_. To see,
_voire_ (_sic_), _regarder_.’

Napoleon’s next professor, after how long an interval we cannot
tell, was Countess Bertrand, daughter of General Arthur Dillon
by Anne Laure Girardin, cousin to the Empress Josephine. She had
never even visited England, but her father, guillotined when
she was eight years of age, had probably taught her his native
tongue. Napoleon, disposing of rich heiresses with Oriental
despotism, had required her to marry Bertrand, one of his
generals; and though the poor girl was at first in despair and
refused to see her suitor, she speedily became attached to him,
and they lived happily ever after. One of their children, named
Arthur, not, as one of the St. Helena narratives states, after
the Duke of Wellington, but after the grandfather--was born on
the island in January 1817, and archly introduced by the mother
to Napoleon as ‘the first Frenchman who had entered Longwood
without a pass from Sir Hudson Lowe.’ She was extremely fond
of society, and though, with her husband, she had accompanied
the Emperor to Elba, she was so averse to St. Helena that she
stormed at Napoleon for involving Bertrand and his family in his
banishment, and even tried to throw herself overboard. This,
unlike some of her other antipathies, she never overcame, and
at the time of Napoleon’s death she was arranging for a return
to France, on the plea of getting her children educated. One
of those children, whose ears were bored in Napoleon’s presence
that he might present her with earrings, survived, as Madame
Thayer, widow of one of Napoleon III.’s senators, till
1890. Madame Bertrand, apparently, gave a specimen of Napoleon’s
lessons to Madame Junot, whose granddaughter, Madame de la
Ferrière, lent it to the recent exhibition. A sheet of letter
paper, yellow with age, contains alternate lines of French and
English; but it will be more convenient to give first the theme,
and then the translation, which has never yet been published.
The italics in brackets indicate the erasures.

‘Quand serez-vous sage?

‘Quand je ne serai plus dans cette île. Mais je le deviendrai
après avoir passé la ligne.

‘Lorsque je débarquerai en france, je serai très content. Ma
femme viendra près de moi, mon fils sera grand et fort, il
pourra boire sa bouteille de vin à dîner, je trinquerai avec
lui. Ma mère sera vieille, mes sœurs seront laides, ce qui ne
leur sera pas agréable, elles seront _toujours_ coquettes,
car les femmes se croient toujours jolies.’

‘When will you be wise?

‘Never [_then that_] as long as I [_should_] could
be in this isle, but I shall become vise after [_have_]
having passed the line. When I shall [_landed_] land in
france I shall be very content. Mi [_wive_] wife shall
come [_after_, _bef_-] near me. Mi son shall be great
and [_fort_] strong. He [_shall get_] will be able to
take his bottle of wine at dinner. I shall trink with him. Mi
mother shall be olde, mi sisters shall ... for the women believe
they....’

The pronoun _I_ is uniformly written _j_. The
corrections are mostly inserted above the line, but some are
a continuation of the line, showing that the translation was
written in Madame Bertrand’s presence. The first sentence, it
is evident, had been playfully uttered by her on account of
Napoleon’s teasing her for being boisterously gay; for it is
the question addressed to obstreperous or fretful children,
and Napoleon himself used to say to Betsy Balcombe, ‘Quand
seras-tu sage?’ _Sage_ does not here mean wise, but good
or well behaved. Madame Bertrand passed over this and some
other obvious blunders, either because her own English was
defective, or because she would not discourage her pupil by too
many corrections. At one corner of the sheet is a rude drawing
of a ship, the imaginary ship in which Napoleon was to return
to France, and in another corner is a sketch apparently meant
for a line of muskets extended for firing. There are also the
words, ‘Qui vous a apporté cette lettre? (Who has brought you
this letter?) The writing is small and cramped, but fairly
legible; much more so than other specimens at the exhibition,
such as the audit of Napoleon’s accounts. The allegation that he
wrote a scrawl to conceal his bad spelling seems far-fetched.
Like many people, he had a hasty scrawl for drafts, which he was
sometimes himself unable to decipher, and a plainer hand for his
correspondents.

To quote from Manzoni’s famous ode:--

‘He vanished, in a narrow isle
His vacant days to keep,
Object of boundless envy once,
Now of compassion deep,
Of inextinguishable ire
And of unconquered love.’

There still survive two English witnesses of Napoleon’s funeral, for _Public Opinion_ of the 28th March 1903 contained a letter from Mr. G. B. Bennett of Cape Town, who states that he was born at St. Helena on the 30th November 1816, that he attended the funeral, and that his sister, three and a half months old, was also present in her nurse’s arms.

The daughter of Sir Hudson Lowe, born at St. Helena in 1818, is also still living, unmarried, at Balham, near London. Considering, however, the strained relations between her father and Napoleon, she is scarcely likely, in her nurse’s arms, to have seen the caged lion.

* * * * *

_PS._--Miss Clara Lowe died at Tooting on the 7th May 1904.