1815.] THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. 37 Waterloo. As the heaps of dying and dead lay around him, the emotions must have rushed upon him which he so beautifully expressed the next day, in a letter to the duke of Beaufort: "The losses I have sustained have quite broken me down, and I have no feeling for the advantages we have acquired." To the earl of Aberdeen, in a letter dated the same day, he said, "I cannot express to you the regret and sorrow with which I look around me, and contemplate the loss which I have sustained, particularly in your brother. The glory resulting from such actions, so dearly bought, is no consolation to me.' The total loss of both armies in this tremendous battle is thus stated:British and Hanoverians, 11,678; Netherlanders, 3,547; troops of Brunswick, 1000; of Nassau, 1000; Prussians, 7454. Total, 24,679. Of the French army, 18,500 were killed or wounded, and 7800 made prisoners.† Napoleon's return to Paris-His abdication-On board the Bellerophon, at Plymouth-Sails for AFTER the fatal night of the 18th of June, Napoleon had travelled with all haste to Paris, where he arrived at four o'clock on the morning of the 21st. The Chamber of Representatives met at noon on that day, and declared its sitting permanent. Its manifest intention was to assume the executive power, and to compel Napoleon to abdicate. Lucien Bonaparte appeared at the bar of the Chamber to urge the claims of his brother upon the gratitude of France. Lafayette replied, that "during the last ten years three millions of Frenchmen had perished for a man who would still struggle against all Europe. We have done enough for him. Now our duty is to save our country." During the 22nd Napoleon was urged to abdicate. He resisted for some time, exclaiming, "The Chamber is composed of nothing but Jacobins and ambitious men. I ought to have driven them away." He yielded at last, and dictated his abdication in favour of his son Napoleon II.; and in this document, in which he said "My political life is ended," he invited the Chambers to organize a Regency. The Chambers sent a deputation to thank Napoleon for the sacrifice which he had made to the independence and happiness of the French nation; but he replied that he had only abdicated in favour of his son, and that if the Chambers did not proclaim him, his own abdication would be null. Instead of appointing a Council of Regency, it was determined by the Chambers that the government should be put into the hands of a Commission of five members. This was indirectly to set aside Napoleon the Second. The provisional government required that Napoleon should leave France, and embark at Rochefort for the United States. He demanded that the government should give him two frigates for his passage there. The frigates were placed at his disposal, and their commanders were ordered to set sail within twenty-four hours after he was on board, if the English cruisers were not in the way. Bonaparte arrived at Rochefort on the 3rd of July. 1815.] NAPOLEON AT PLYMOUTH-ST. HELENA. 39 Finding that he had no chance of escaping by sea, he sent Las Cases and Savary to captain Maitland, who commanded the Bellerophon, to ask for leave to proceed to America, either in a French or a neutral vessel. The reply of captain Maitland was, that his instructions forbad this; but that if Napoleon chose to proceed to England, he would take him there, without entering into any promise as to the reception he might meet with. In the house of a gentleman at Plymouth we have looked with no common interest upon a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, painted under very extraor dinary circumstances. At the end of July, 1815, the British ship of war Bellerophon is at anchor in Plymouth harbour. On board is the ex-emperor of the French, who, on the 13th of July, had addressed a letter to the Prince Regent from Rochefort, in which he said, "I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British nation" (m'asseoir sur les foyers). The Bellerophon, with Napoleon and his suite, had sailed from Rochefort on the 14th of July. Whilst the British government was in a state of indecision as to the final disposal of its fallen enemy, he was not permitted to land, nor was any person from the shore allowed to enter the vessel. But round the Bellerophon numerous boats, filled with curious observers, were perpetually rowing, and to these gazers Bonaparte seemed rather disposed to show himself than to remain in the privacy of his cabin. The opportunity of making a portrait of this remarkable man was not lost upon a young artist, a native of Plymouth. Charles Eastlake, now President of the Royal Academy, was sketching that stout figure and superb head from one of the boats surrounding the ship of war; and when Napoleon perceived the object of the artist, he would stop his walk upon the deck, so as to afford him the opportunity of proceeding successfully with his work. The Bellerophon remained a fortnight in Plymouth Roads, and then Napoleon was removed to the Northumberland, which sailed for St. Helena. On the 31st of July, lord Keith, with sir Henry Bunbury, the UnderSecretary of State, had announced to Napoleon the resolution of the British government, that the island of St. Helena should be his future residence. He protested that he was not a prisoner of war, although he subsequently acknowledged that he had made no conditions on coming on board the Bellerophon. The question as to the status of the ex-emperor under the law of nations gave rise to very grave discussions amongst English jurists. Lord Campbell says, "I think lord Eldon took a much more sensible view of the subject than any of them-which was, 'that the case was not provided for by anything to be found in Grotius or Vattel; but that the law of self-preservation would justify the keeping of him under restraint in some distant region, where he should be treated with all indulgence compatible with a due regard for the peace of mankind.' ” * The probability is, that if Napoleon had fallen into the hands of the Prussians, who were near Paris on the 29th of June, the question of his fate would have been disposed of in a much more summary way than could arise out of any discussion upon the law of nations. On the 28th of June, Wellington wrote to sir Charles Stuart, "General has been here this day, to negotiate for Napoleon's passing to America, to which proposition I have answered that I have no authority. The Prus * "Lives of the Chancellors," chap. ccii. 40 SPECIMENS OF THE TRUTH OF HISTORY. [1815. sians think the Jacobins wish to give him over to me, believing that I will save his life. [Blücher] wishes to kill him; but I have told him that I shall remonstrate, and shall insist upon his being disposed of by common accord. I have likewise said, that, as a private friend, I advised him to have nothing to do with so foul a transaction; that he and I had acted too distinguished parts in these transactions to become executioners; and that I was determined that, if the sovereigns wished to put him to death, they should appoint an executioner, which should not be me."* The Prussian general Muffling states in his "Memoirs," that having been appointed to obtain the concurrence of Wellington in the design of Blücher that Napoleon should be shot in the place where the duke d'Enghien had been killed, Wellington had replied" Such an act would disgrace our names in history, and posterity would say of us, they were not worthy to have been the conquerors of Napoleon.'" The prisoner of St. Helena repaid this conduct by bequeathing ten thousand francs to the man who had attempted to assassinate Wellington, during his residence in Paris as the commander of the Army of Occupation. French historians have attempted to justify this odious testamentary expression of Napoleon's hatred of his victor, by, attributing to Wellington that he instigated the banishment to St. Helena. It is now known that, as early as May 1814, the plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna decided, in a secret conference, that if Napoleon should escape from Elba, and should fall into the power of the Allies, a safer residence should be assigned him, at St. Helena or at St. Lucia. The assumption that the Sovereigns wished to put Napoleon to death was the interpretation which, in the excitement of that time, many persons attached to the declaration of the Allied Powers of the 13th of March, that he had placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations; adding, as an enemy and a disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance." Lord Eldon, referring to this declaration, says that the Allies have "considered him as out of the pale of the law of nations, as the Hostis humani generis, as an outlaw (without knowing very well what they.mean by that word), as a robber and freebooter, who might be put out of the world." + M. Thiers, in a spirit very different from that of the impartial historian, argues, with regard to the words of the 13th of March, that "the obvious conclusion is, that whoever could seize Bonaparte ought immediately to shoot him, and would be considered as having rendered to Europe a signal service." ‡ The declaration of the Allies was signed by the plenipotentiaries of eight powers, who had been parties to the Treaty of Paris of the previous year. Talleyrand and three others signed on the part of France; Wellington and three others on the part of Great Britain. When Wellington insisted, against the opinion of Blücher, that Bonaparte should "be disposed of by common accord," he rightly interpreted the words of the declaration of the 13th of March:comme ennemi et perturbateur du repos du monde, il s'est livré à la vindicte publique." It is established by the papers of Talleyrand that the + Wellington's "Despatches," vol. xii. p. 516. "Life of Eldon," (Letter to Sir William Scott), vol. ii. p. 279. THE ALLIES ENTER PARIS-TREATY WITH FRANCE. 41 1815.] precise words of the declaration were proposed by Talleyrand himself. Yet M. Thiers attributes to Wellington that he was the instigator, upon his own responsibility, of the measures which the Allies took in this crisis, including, of course, this declaration against Napoleon. This eminent writer, in a mistaken view which we are unwilling to characterize by any harsher name, further represents the duke of Wellington as plunging the British nation into a war without the authority of his government, for the gratification of his own personal ambition. Lord Wellington, he says, who had replaced lord Castlereagh, relying upon his great services and his popularity in England, hesitated not to take his resolution. Although he had received no instructions, he judged that it was worth while to renew the war, to maintain the state of things that England was about to establish in Europe. "He had a confused hope of increasing his own glory in this new war; and he was not afraid of involving his government, convinced that no one would dare to disavow him in England, whatever might be thought of his conduct." * One of the duke's objects in going to Belgium in April, says M. Thiers, was that he might be nearer London, "to uphold the courage of his own government, and to compel it to ratify the engagements which he had made without being authorized." The English Cabinet, he concludes, if it had been present at Vienna, would not have engaged in the war as easily as the duke of Wellington, for they were aware that public opinion was opposed to it. The opinions thus expressed by M. Thiers, that the war against Napoleon was urged on by the personal ambition of the duke of Wellington, that the British government was reluctant to engage in it, and that the British people were decidedly opposed to it, are quite upon a par with the belief of the same historian, that Bonaparte had returned from Elba entirely changed,—a lover of peace, an upholder of liberty, a friend to the free expression of opinion, a ruler who would vindicate the choice of the people by equity and moderation. Of his good faith no one ought to have doubted. "He gave to the world, after so many spectacles of such instructive grandeur, a last spectacle, more profoundly moral and more profoundly tragic than any which had gone before; genius, vainly, though sincerely, repentant." When statements and opinions such as these are boldly put forward, we may give their author the benefit of that charitable scepticism which thinks that "the Historian, affirming many things, can, in the cloudy knowledge of mankind, hardly escape from many lies."§ On the 7th of July the English and Prussian armies entered Paris, and took military possession of all the principal points, under a convention signed on the 3rd of July, by which the French army was to evacuate Paris and to retreat beyond the Loire. Louis the Eighteenth made his public entrance, escorted by the National Guards, on the 8th of July. To the firm moderation of Wellington it is wholly due that the Parisians were not doomed to suffer any humiliation beyond that of the presence of foreign armies. He calmed Blücher's thirst for vengeance by exhortation, and even by stronger modes of remonstrance. When the Prussian general had begun to mine the bridge of Jena, with the intention to blow it up, because that monument "Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire," tome xix. p. 361. + Ibid., p. 366. Ibid., p. 629. § Sir P. Sidney-"Defence of Poesy," p. 33, "Poetical Works," ed. 1720. |