by Will Durant
Comte Charles-Tristan de Montholon (1783–1853) hardly deserved Gourgaud’s hatred, for he was the most polite and accommodating of the imperial quartet. He had proud memories of having been taught mathematics, when he was ten, by a young artillery captain called Bonaparte. Later he followed Napoleon’s star in its rise and fall, and insisted on accompanying him to St. Helena. His wife, Albinie de Vassal, had come to him from two divorced and living husbands, so that Montholon was never quite sure of her. Gossip in St. Helena said she had helped Napoleon to warm his bed; the Russian representatives at Jamestown put the matter harshly: “Though old, debauched, and fat, she is today the mistress of the great man.”22 When she left the island (1819) Napoleon wept.23 Montholon himself remained to the end, shared with Bertrand the long watch over the dying gladiator, and was named coexecutor of the imperial will. Returning to France, he shared seven years of imprisonment with Napoleon’s nephew, and helped him to become another emperor.
IV. THE GREAT DICTATOR
The great enemy of all the exiles was time, and, next, its child, ennui. These men, who had been addicts of action and familiars of death, were limited now to caring for the body and ego of a world figure fallen from imperial state and robes to imprisoned helplessness, with all his ailments festering and human frailties revealed. “My situation is frightful,” he said; “I am like a dead man, yet full of life”24 or desire thereof. The hero who formerly had longed for more time to meet his chosen tasks, or carry out his plans, now felt the hours heavy on his hands, and welcomed night as an anodyne of time. Then, for lack of labor done, he found it hard to sleep, and moved from bed to cot or chair and back again in search of unconsciousness.
Almost daily he played chess; but since no opponent dared defeat him, he was bored by victory. In his first year of exile he had ridden his horse several miles daily, but he soon abandoned this exercise when he noted that some British officer always kept sight of him. He read several hours a day.
He had always loved books, had done some reading even on busy days, had taken hundreds of volumes on his campaigns—eight hundred to Waterloo (seventy of them by Voltaire).25 He had brought four hundred books from France; on a stop of the Northumberland at Madeira he had sent the British government a request for a number of learned works, which reached him in June, 1816; another package came a year later; and Sir Hudson Lowe sent him some from his own library.26 He became an expert on the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar. He read and reread the dramas of Corneille and Racine, sometimes aloud with his companions, distributing the parts. He liked English literature, and had Las Cases teach him enough English to read it, even to speak it; “His Majesty,” reported Gourgaud, “is always talking English to me.”27
He had one advantage over other prisoners: he could drown the present in the past by recounting the history of his country, and half of Europe, from 1796 to 1815, almost entirely from memory, and from the vantage of a principal participant. He was too impatient to write, but he could talk. It was apparently Las Cases who suggested that by dictating his memoirs to one or another of his entourage he could give interest and value to every day. Now he might find only imperfect truth in Dante’s lines “No greater pain than to recall, in misery, a time of happiness”; a memory of pleasant days might soften, even while deepening, present grief. “It was a beautiful empire!” he exclaimed; “I had eighty-three million human beings under my government—half the population of Europe.”28
So he inaugurated a new dictatorship on the Northumberland, and continued it, on and off, for four years at St. Helena. He began by recounting to Las Cases the story of those Italian campaigns of 1796 whose swift decisiveness had astonished Europe and made him indispensable to France. When Las Cases fled before Lowe’s wrath, the Emperor dictated to Gourgaud, later to Montholon, less to Bertrand, sometimes to two of them in one day. Now these warriors changed their swords for pens, and sallied forth in reams to shed their ink to save their Emperor’s record and good name in re-Bourbonized France and in the court of history. They were sooner exhausted than he, who felt that this was his last chance to defend himself against the orators, journalists, and cartoonists who had enabled his enemies to picture him as an inhuman, bloodthirsty ogre. Knowing that his recorders could not have so personal an urge to their labor, he gave to each of them full title to his manuscript and its proceeds; and actually each manuscript, when published, brought wealth to the scribe or his heirs.29
Naturally the author put the best face upon this apologia; but, all in all, it has been found as fair as could be expected from a man defending his life. Napoleon had by this time learned to admit that he had made serious mistakes in policy and generalship. “I was wrong in quarreling with Talleyrand. He possessed everything which I lacked. If I had frankly allowed him to share my greatness he would have served me well, and I would have died on the throne.”30 He confessed that he profoundly underestimated the difficulties of conquering Spain or subduing Russia. “I started too soon from Elba. I should have waited till the Congress had broken up, and the princes had returned home.”31 “I don’t yet understand the loss of the battle of Waterloo.”32 “I should have died at Waterloo.”33
His amanuenses, almost exhausted by his memories, yet found energy left to record his conversation. It was of course interesting, for who in his time had rivaled his range and excitement of adventures on three continents? He was an excellent raconteur, with a lively anecdote for any theme. He was, in his blunt way, a philosopher, and could speak forgivably on any subject from agriculture to Zeus. He had read history so widely that he predicted the future with some unreliable success. “The colonial system… is finished for everybody—for England, which owns all the colonies, as for the other powers, who have none left.”34 The yoke of the Bourbons would soon be thrown off by the French people.35 Germany would soon resume the unification which he had begun.36 The nineteenth would be a century of revolutions; the principles of the French Revolution, barring some excesses, would triumph in America, France, and England; and “from this tripod the light will burst upon the world.”37 “The old system is ended, and the new one is not consolidated, and will not be until after long and furious convulsions.”38 “Russia is the power that rushes most surely, and with the greatest strides, toward universal dominion.”39 One of his bad guesses: “The royal authority in England, daily augmented,… is now marching unimpeded on the high road to arbitrary and absolute power.”40
Finally he reviewed his political career, and summed it up most favorably:
I closed the gulf of anarchy and cleared the chaos. I purified the Revolution, dignified nations, and established kings. I excited every kind of emulation, rewarded every kind of merit, and extended the limits of glory…. The dictatorship was absolutely necessary. Will it be said that I restrained liberty? It can be proved that licentiousness, anarchy, and the greatest irregularities still haunted the threshold of freedom. Shall I be accused of having been too fond of war? It can be shown that I always received the first attack. Will it be said that I aimed at universal monarchy?… Our enemies themselves led me step by step to this determination. Lastly, shall I be blamed for my ambition? This passion I must doubtless be allowed to have possessed, and that in no small degree; but, at the same time, my ambition was of the highest and noblest kind that ever perhaps existed—that of establishing and consecrating the empire of reason, and the full exercise and complete enjoyment of all the human faculties. As here the historian will probably feel compelled to regret that such ambition should not have been fulfilled and gratified…. This is my whole history in a few words.41
On March 9, 1821, he warmed his failing heart with a proud vision of his postmortem fame: “In five hundred years’ time French imaginations will be full of me. They will talk only of the glory of our brilliant campaigns. Heaven help anyone who dares speak ill of me!”42 It was as good as any way of facing death.
V. THE LAST BATTLE
A variety of internal disorders, and a lack of physical exerci
se, brought Napoleon to old age while he was still in his forties. Lowe’s insistence on having a British soldier follow the Emperor whenever the latter rode outside Longwood limits had angered the captive into avoiding all rides, on horse or in caleche. Sentries stationed within sight of his rooms gave Napoleon a further reason for staying indoors; and his loss of interest in prolonging his life more and more inclined him to a listless inactivity. Bertrand reported in 1818: “A hundred days have elapsed since he… stirred out of the house.” Las Cases noted that the Emperor’s blood circulated with difficulty,43 with a pulse rate as low as fifty-five beats per minute.44
In 1820 he took to gardening, and attacked its problems with martial courage and discipline. He conscripted his entire colony to join in the enterprise, and they gladly turned from their old routine to the novel business of digging, carting, planting, watering, and weeding. Sir Hudson Lowe, in a new gesture of amity, sent his prisoner plants and tools.45 The garden, well watered, soon produced fresh vegetables which Napoleon consumed with delight. His health visibly improved. But when the garden’s harvest had been consumed, and bad weather set in, Napoleon returned to his former indoor indolence.
Soon his ailments resumed their attack, on a dozen fronts: toothaches, headaches, skin eruptions, vomiting, dysentery, cold extremities; his ulcer worsened, and the cancer that was to be revealed by a postmortem autopsy had begun to give him almost uninterrupted pain.46 These physical sufferings affected his mood, even his mind. He became gloomy, irritable, and bitter; vain and jealous of his dignity; ready to take offense but soon ready to forgive; counting his pennies but giving generously in his will.47 In 1820 he described himself despondently:
How I have fallen! I, whose activity knew no limits, whose head never rested! I am plunged into a lethargic stupor. I must make an effort to raise my eyelids. Sometimes I used to dictate, on different subjects, to four or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as I spoke. But I was Napoleon then; today I am nothing… I vegetate, I no longer live.48
He had a succession and medley of doctors, none of whom remained with him long enough to study his symptoms systematically, or to impose a consistent regimen. Dr. O’Meara was the first and best, but his stay at Long-wood was cut short. Two British physicians, Stokoe and Arnott, replaced him, both of them good men, patient and conscientious. But on September 21, 1819, the situation was confused by the arrival of Dr. Francesco Antommarchi, aged thirty-nine, with a recommendation from Napoleon’s uncle, Cardinal Fesch; the British physicians allowed him to take charge. Antommarchi amply justified Napoleon’s question to him, whether generals or doctors did the most killing. He was proud, confident, and merciless when Napoleon complained of stomach pains. Antommarchi prescribed an emetic in lemonade. Napoleon writhed in pain, and almost gave up the ghost; thinking himself poisoned, he dismissed Antommarchi and forbade him to return.49 But in a day or two Antommarchi was back with his chemicals and phials, and the Emperor, though cursing him with unprintable obscenities,50 had to put up with him.
About the middle of March, 1821, Napoleon took to his bed, and thereafter rarely left it. He suffered almost continuous pain, which Antommarchi and Arnott tried to dull with repeated small doses of opium. “If I should end my career now,” he said on March 27, “it would be a great joy. At times I have longed to die, and I have no fear of death.”51 During his final month he vomited nearly all food given him.
On April 15 he made his will. Some excerpts:
1. I die in the Apostolical Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born…. 2. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well. 3. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Marie Louise. I retain for-her, to my last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve, my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy…. 5. I die prematurely, assassinated by the English oligarchy.52
He had some 6 million francs to dispose of—5.3 million plus interest—on deposit with Laffitte; and he believed that he had 2 million francs left with Eugène de Beauharnais. He willed substantial sums to Bertrand, Montholon, Las Cases; to his chief valet, Marchand, and his secretary Méneval; to various generals or their children. He bequeathed diverse articles to a considerable number of persons who had served or otherwise helped him; no one was forgotten. Also “10,000 francs to the officer Cantillon, who has undergone a trial on the charge of having endeavored to assassinate Lord Wellington, of which he was pronounced innocent. Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish on the rock of St. Helena.”53
Separately he left some “Advice to My Son” (spring, 1821):
My son must not think of avenging my death; he should rather learn a lesson from it. He must always bear in mind the remembrance of what I have accomplished. He is always to remain, like myself, every inch a Frenchman. He must strive to rule in peace. If he were to try to begin my wars all over again out of a mere desire to imitate me, and without the absolute necessity for it, he would be nothing but an ape. To begin my work over again would be to assume that I had accomplished nothing. To complete it, on the other hand, will be to prove the strength of its foundations, to explain the complete plan of the edifice begun. Such work as mine is not done twice in a century. I have been compelled to restrain and tame Europe with arms; today it must be convinced. I have saved the Revolution as it lay dying. I have cleansed it of its crimes, and have held it up to the people shining with fame. I have inspired France and Europe with new ideas which will never be forgotten. May my son make everything blossom that I have sown! May he develop further all the elements of prosperity which lie hidden in French soil!54
The last preparation was to dispose of his soul. He had taken a long time to reach religious belief. As if he had read Gibbon, he seems to have considered all religions as equally false to the philosopher, and equally useful to the statesman;55 he had become a Mohammedan to win Egypt, and a Catholic to hold France. To Gourgaud he had expressed simple materialism: “Say what you like, everything is matter, more or less organized. When out hunting I had the deer cut open, and saw that their interior was the same as that of man. When I see that a pig has a stomach like mine, and digests like me, I say to myself, ‘If I have a soul, so has he.’ “56 “When we are dead, my dear Gourgaud, we are altogether dead.”57 On March 27, six weeks before his death, he said to Bertrand, “I am very glad that I have no religion. I find this a great consolation, as I have no imaginary terror, and no fear of the future.”58 How, he asked, can we reconcile the prosperity of the wicked, and the misfortunes of the saints, with the existence of a just God? “Look at Talleyrand; he is sure to die in bed.”59
As he neared death he began to find reasons for faith. “Only a madman,” he told Gourgaud, “declares that he will die without a confession. There is so much that one does not know, that one cannot explain.”60 After all, he felt, religion is a necessary part of patriotism:
Religion forms a part of our destiny. Together with the soil, laws, and customs, it constitutes the sacred whole which we call Fatherland, and whose interests we should never desert. When, at the time of the Concordat, some old revolutionists spoke to me of making France Protestant, I felt as much revolted as though they had asked me to abdicate my title of Frenchman and declare myself English or German.61
So he decided to humbly conform to the traditional rituals of a Frenchman’s death. He found a local priest, and arranged to have Mass celebrated every Sunday at Longwood. He fell back with ease and comfort into his childhood faith, and amused his friends and himself with a forecast of his reception in heaven: “I go to meet Kléber, Desaix, Lannes, Masséna,… Ney. They will come to meet me…. We shall speak of what we have done. We shall talk of our profession with Frederick, Turenne, Condé, Caesar, and Hannibal.”62
By April 26 he was so weak that for the first time he obeyed his doctors without question. That evening he raved for a while, prop
osing to give his son 400 million francs.63 Montholon, who now stayed with him night and day, reported that about 4 A.M. of April 26 Napoleon told him, “with extraordinary emotion,” “I have just seen my good Josephine…. She was sitting there; it was as if I had seen her only the night before. She hasn’t changed—always the same, still completely devoted to me. She told me that we were going to see each other again, never again to leave each other. She has promised me. Did you see her?”64
On May 3 he received the sacraments. On that day two physicians were added to Arnott and Antommarchi, and the four agreed to give the patient ten grains of calomel. “The unusually enormous dose of this unsuitable drug caused a terrible intestinal upheaval, with loss of consciousness, and… all the signs of a hemorrhage in the gastro-intestinal system.”65
He died on May 5, 1821, murmuring, “À la tête de l’armée—the head of the army.”
On May 6 Antommarchi conducted the postmortem examination, in the presence of sixteen others, including seven British surgeons, Bertrand, and Montholon. The autopsy revealed at once the chief cause of Napoleon’s suffering: cancerous ulcers in the pylorus—that part of the stomach which leads into the intestine. One ulcer had eaten a quarter-inch hole through the stomach wall, spreading putrefaction. Antommarchi had diagnosed hepatitis, but the liver, though larger than normal, showed no sign of disease.66 Adipose tissue was found not only in the skin and the peritoneum, but also in the heart, which may have caused its abnormally slow beat. The bladder was small, and contained several small stones; this, and a malformed left kidney, probably caused the Emperor’s need for frequent urination, and may explain a certain inconstancy of attention to the course of battle at Borodino and Waterloo. None of the examiners reported any sign of syphilis, but the genitals were small and apparently atrophied.67
