Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

IX.

1821.

doubt. The British government was the first to blame: CHAP. its conduct in the main, and in all essential articles, was indulgent and considerate; but in matters of lesser real moment, but still more important to a person of Napoleon's irritable disposition, their instructions were unnecessarily rigid. Admitting that after his stealthy evasion from Elba it was indispensable that he should be seen daily by some of the British officers, and attended by one, beyond certain prescribed limits, where was the necessity of refusing him the title of Emperor, or ordering everything to be withheld which was addressed to him by that title? A book inscribed "Imperatori Napoleon" might have been delivered to him without his detention being rendered insecure. A copy of Coxe's Marlborough, presented by him to a British regiment which he esteemed, might have been permitted to reach its destination, without risk of disaffection in the British army.1 It is hard to 1 Forsyth, say whether most littleness was evinced by the English government refusing such slight gratifications to the fallen hero, or by himself in feeling so much annoyed at the withholding the empty titles bespeaking his former greatness. It is deeply to be regretted, for the honour of human nature, which is the patrimony of all mankind, that he did not bear his reverses with more equanimity, and prove that the conqueror of continental Europe could achieve the yet more glorious triumph of subduing himself.

1

iii. 277,279.

For a year before his death he became more tractable. 118. The approach of the supreme hour, as is often the case, Change on softened the asperities of previous existence. He per- before his Napoleon sisted in not going out to ride, in consequence of his death. quarrel with the governor of the island, who insisted on his being attended by an officer beyond the prescribed limits; but he amused himself with gardening, in which he took great interest, and not unfrequently, like Dioclesian, consoled himself for the want of the excitements of royalty, by labouring with his own hands in the cultivation of the earth. The cessation of riding exercise, how

1

IX.

1821.

Forsyth,

iii. 190, 196;

CHAP. ever, to one who had been so much accustomed to it, proved very prejudicial. This, to a person of his active habits, coupled with the disappointment consequent on the failure of the revolutions in Europe, and the plans Ann. Hist. formed for his escape, aggravated the hereditary malady in the stomach, under which he laboured, and in spring Chateaub. 1821 caused his physicians to apprehend danger to his life. 1

iv. 215,216;

Lam. vi.

416, 417;

Mem. vii. 160, 163.

119.

The receipt of this intelligence caused the English His death, government to send directions for his receiving every posMay 5. sible relief and accommodation, and even, if necessary, for his removal from the island. But these humane intentions were announced too late to be carried into effect. In the beginning of May he became rapidly worse; and on the evening of the 5th, at five minutes before six, he breathed his last. A violent storm of wind and rain at the same time arose, which tore up the trees in the island by their roots, it was amidst the war of the elements that his soul departed. The howling of the wind seemed to recall to the dying conqueror the roar of battle, and his last words were -"Mon Dieu-La Nation française-Tête d'armée." He declared in his testament, "I die in the Apostolic and Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born, above fifty years ago.' When he breathed his last, his sword was beside him, on the left side of the couch; but the cross, the symbol of peace, rested on his breast. The child of the Revolution, the Incarnation of War, died in the Christian faith, with the emblem of the Gospel on his bosom! His will, which had been made in the April pre* Ann. Hist. ceding, was found to contain a great multitude of bequests, Forsyth, iii. but two in an especial manner worthy of notice. The first 281, 287; was a request that his body " might finally repose on the Antomarchi, Derbanks of the Seine, among the people he had loved so de Napo well;" the second, a legacy of 10,000 francs to the assassin 246, 312. Cantillon, who, as already noticed,* had attempted the life of the Duke of Wellington,2 but had been acquitted by

iv. 216, 217;

niers Mom.

leon, ii. 229,

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

the jury, from the evidence being deemed insufficient. He CHAP. died in the 53d year of his age, having been born on the 5th February 1768.

IX. 1821.

120.

Napoleon had himself fixed upon the place in the island of St Helena where he wished, in the first instance at His funeral. least, to be interred. It was in a small hollow, called Slanes Valley, high up on the mountain which forms the island, where a fountain, shaded by weeping willows, meanders through verdant banks. The tchampas flourished in the moist soil. "It is a plant," says the Sanscrit writings, "which, notwithstanding its beauty and perfume, is not in request, because it grows on the tombs." The body, as directed by the Emperor, lay in state in a "chapelle ardente," according to the form of the Roman Catholic Church, in the three-cornered hat, military surtout, leather under-dress, long boots and spurs, as when he appeared on the field of battle, and it was laid in the coffin in the same garb. The funeral took place on the 9th May. It was attended by all the military and naval forces, and all the authorities in the island, as well as his weeping household. Three squadrons of dragoons headed the procession. The hearse was drawn by four horses. The 66th and 20th regiments, and fifteen pieces of artillery, formed part of the array, marching, with arms reversed, to the sound of mournful music, and all the touching circumstances of a soldier's funeral. When they approached the place of sepulture, and the hearse could go no farther, the coffin was borne by his own attendants, escorted by twentyfour grenadiers of the two English regiments who had the honour of conveying the immortal conqueror to his last resting-place. Minute-guns, during the whole ceremony, were fired by all the batteries in the island. The place of sepulture was consecrated by an English clergyman, according to the English form, though he was buried with the Catholic rites.1 Volleys of musketry and discharges 192," of artillery paid the last honours of a nation to their noble

*The Rev. Mr Vernon.

1

Ann. Hist. syth, iii. Antomar

iv.217; For

296, 298;

chi, ii. 180,

IX.

CHAP. antagonist. A simple stone of great size was placed over his remains, and the solitary willows wept over the tomb of him for whom the earth itself had once hardly seemed a fitting mausoleum.

1821.

121.

sensation it

excited in

Europe.

The death of Napoleon made a prodigious sensation in Immense Europe, and caused a greater change of opinion, especially in England, than any event which had occurred since that of Louis XVI. There was something in the circumstances of the decease of so great a man, alone, unbefriended, on a solitary rock in the midst of the ocean, and in the contrast which such a reverse presented to his former grandeur and prosperity, which fascinated and subdued the minds of men. All ranks were affected, all imaginations kindled, all sympathies awakened by it. In England, in particular, where the antipathy to him had been most violent, and the resistance most persevering, the reaction was the most general. The great qualities of their awful antagonist, long concealed by enmity, misrepresented by hatred, misunderstood by passion, broke upon them in their full lustre, when death had rendered him no longer an object of terror. The admiration for him in many exceeded what had been felt in France itself. The prophecy of the Emperor proved true, that the first vindication of his memory would come from those who in life had been his most determined enemies. Time, however, has moderated these transports; it has dispelled the illusions of imagination, calmed the effervescence of generosity, as much as it has dissipated the prejudices and softened the rancour of hostility. It has taken nothing from the great qualities of the Emperor; on the contrary, it has brought them out in still more colossal proportions than was at first imagined. But it has revealed, at the same time, the inherent weaknesses and faults of his nature, and shown that "the most mighty breath of life," in the words of genius, "that ever had animated the human clay, was not without the frailties which are the common inheritance of the children of Adam."

IX.

1821.

122.

last of the

men who rule their

With Napoleon terminated, for the present at least, CHAP. the generation of ruling men—of those who impress their signet on the age, not receive its impression from it. "He sleeps," says Chateaubriand, "like a hermit at the He was the extremity of a solitary valley at the end of a desert path. He did not die under the eye of France; he disappeared on the distant horizon of the torrid zone. The grandeur of the silence which shrouds his remains, equals the immensity of the din which once environed them. The nations are absent, their crowds have retired." The terrible spirit of innovation which has overspread the earth, and to which Napoleon had opposed the barrier of his genius, and which he for a time arrested, has resumed its course. His institutions failed, but he was the last of the great existences. The shadow of Napoleon rises on the frontier of the old destroyed world, and the most distant posterity will gaze on that gigantic spectre over 1Chateaub. the gulf into which entire ages have fallen, until the 168, 171. appointed day of social resurrection.1

Mem. vii.

« ForrigeFortsett »