by Alan Schom
Emmanuel de Las Cases was quite another kettle of fish, totally unlike General Bertrand. Las Cases was born in the Château de Las Cases, in Languedoc, in 1766, the eldest son of the marquis. Raised in refined surroundings, he was well educated at the College de Vendôme, and then at the Ecole Militaire in Paris. Like Napoleon and Gourgaud, Las Cases was abnormally small, which apparently was the reason for his choosing a career in the French Royal Navy over the army. He was wounded fighting the British during the siege of Gibraltar in November 1782, and was eventually promoted to naval lieutenant and presented at court in July 1790. He was one of the many thousands of fellow aristocrats emigrating, keeping alive by tutoring the children of friends.
He finally returned to France in 1803 and swore his allegiance to Napoleon. Although he was refused the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1809, Napoleon did make him a baron of the Empire as a result of his book, Atlas Historique et Généalogique. In 1810 he was appointed to the position of master of petitions for the naval section of the Council of State, next presiding over the Debt Liquidation Commission for the Illyrian Provinces, resulting in a boost up the peerage as count. Although he was capable of hard work, he intrigued far more strenuously at obtaining honors and was considered quite an egotist by his colleagues. With the approach of the Allied armies in 1814, he was named temporary commander in the Paris National Guard and simultaneously was promoted to naval captain and state councillor, after which he fled the country for England.
He was accepted back by Napoleon during the Hundred Days, serving as president of the Commission of Petitions, and with Montholon served as one of Napoleon’s chamberlains. At Malmaison in June 1815 he agreed to go into exile with Napoleon, who asked, “Do you know where we are going?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” Las Cases replied, “but my supreme wish is only to be granted this favor of accompanying you.” At the age of forty-nine he would leave his wife and all his children behind, with the exception of his fifteen-year-old son, whom he withdrew from his lycée.
Unlike Bertrand, however, the insecure Las Cases was not truly loyal or devoted to Napoleon, though he certainly admired him. Nor had he agreed to follow him in hope of financial gain. Perhaps as he approached his fiftieth year, at a crossroads in an unhappy marriage, without having really achieved anything of permanence, flitting from one post to another, he simply wanted a change. But what a change! It hardly boded well for Napoleon that thus far he had selected two men who for various reasons seemed particularly unreliable in the long term, especially under conditions of considerable stress — the curious Las Cases, and the emotionally unstable Gour-gaud with his enormous inferiority complex.
What was to prove the most disastrous personnel decision of Napoleon’s entire life, however, was the selection of the obsequious Charles Tristan de Montholon to join him in exile. Born in 1783, Tristan de Montholon was given the title of comté de Lee at birth. His father died when the boy was five, and his mother remarried Huguet de Montaran de Sémonville, a man who was to have much influence in Paris and in future promotions for Tristan as a result of his own spectacular rise, first as a parliamentary counselor and then as future ambassador under Napoleon. One of Montholon’s sisters, Félicité, was to marry first General Joubert and later Marshal Macdonald, who was also to give Montholon a leg up the ladder. At the age of sixteen Tristan de Montholon was sent off to the Army of Italy, receiving his commission the following spring and promoted to captain when attached to General Augereau’s command in 1801.
But thereafter most of the long military career he subsequently claimed at St. Helena was one of the most extraordinary web of lies and fabrications ever recorded in the annals of the French army. He said, for instance, that he had fought and distinguished himself during the Hohenlinden campaign, for which he received a sword of honor, whereas Montholon was not only not present at Hohenlinden in December 1800, but was in fact in the process of being cashiered from the army for incompetence. Thanks to influential friends, no doubt brother-in-law Macdonald among them, Montholon was reintegrated into the army, soon as aide-de-camp to General Macdonald himself. For such a brave and enterprising warrior, clearly promotion was long overdue, and thus influential stepfather Sémonville had a word with his good friend War Minister Berthier, and in November 1804 the twenty-one-year-old Montholon, who had never commanded even a platoon, was breveted lieutenant colonel. However, Semonville, not satisfied with such a mediocre reward for a stepson who had spent almost two and a half years in the army, had another one of his famous chats with Marshal Berthier, and then with Secretary of State Maret, both of whom then personally recommended young Tristan to Bonaparte. On looking at his service record, Napoleon rejected the request, stating what was obvious to anyone who could add and subtract, that “this officer has not served the requisite time.” Thus Montholon merely got himself transferred to a soft general-staff posting with Macdonald again.
In 1809, thanks to effective politicking on his part and more stringpulling on the part of his stepfather and brother-in-law, the persistent Montholon was promoted to full colonel, created a peer of the realm (as comté de Semonville), awarded a state pension of four thousand francs a year, based on property stolen in Hannover. Naturally, achieving all that in less than twelve months was fatiguing. Pleading that “the breakdown of my health resulting from my exhausting war service no longer permits me to serve as an active officer,” the twenty-six-year-old colonel sought instead a position at the Tuileries as chamberlain to Napoleon. The record he now submitted to Napoleon was once again a superb list of colorful lies: wounded at Jena — not true, according to an affidavit from his commanding officer later; singlehandedly saved several battalions of Savary’s division from destruction at Heilsberg — alas, a little too imaginative, there having been no Savary division at Heilsberg at that time. Not satisfied with these yarns, the boundless Montholon, emboldened, now embroidered further, waxing truly eloquent over a famous cavalry charge he had led at Eckmühl, followed by another in Madrid at the head of the marines in recapturing the main arsenal, while not forgetting his distinguished leadership at Wagram — total fabrications, the lot, but a jolly good read for all that. Moreover Montholon, though legally a colonel, neglected to mention that he had never earned any of his promotions on the battlefield, a unique record even in those corrupt times.
As a civilian Montholon — thus saved from the arduous duties of high field command, not to mention the rigors of life as a court chamberlain — in 1811 got himself named minister plenipotentiary to the grand duke of Würzburg at a salary of forty thousand francs a year. But by the age of twenty-eight, finding all those state balls a little too fatiguing and the ducal receptions a little too boring, in May 1812 our hero abandoned that post too (without permission) and returned to Paris to marry one Madame Roger. Alas, he had failed to request Napoleon’s blessings on these nuptials, and the slighted emperor was most put out. Moreover, Napoleon did not approve of young men of bonne famille marrying divorcées: it set a bad example. As a result the dumbfounded Montholon at the age twenty-nine found himself dismissed as both court chamberlain and minister plenipotentiary, and with that went the loss of a considerable income and the usual bribes, which really hurt — Tristan being an inveterate gambler and spendthrift, and of course a bounder par excellence. The official communiqué from the foreign minister informed him that he had “judged the marriage you have just contracted to be incompatible with the honorable functions that have been conferred upon you.” That was in October 1812, in the midst of the Russian campaign. Then the second blow followed, for shortly after their marriage his wife gave birth to their first child, clearly conceived out of wedlock. That proved the final straw for both Napoleon — with two bastards of his own — and the foreign minister, as the ex-soldier, ex-diplomat was ordered to retreat to his estate near Nogent-sur-Vernisson at Changry and not to show his handsome face in Paris again.
After the disastrous Russian campaign, however, Napoleon literally needed every man who could
still walk — or at least limp — and thus Montholon was called to the colors again in April 1813 by a desperate war minister, who was truly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Montholon’s assignment was to serve as chief of staff of the Second Light Cavalry Division. But the idea of all that exertion, not to mention the real danger this time, was too much for the thirty-year-old, who replied: “It is with the greatest regret that as a result of my wounds...I am unable even to mount a horse without causing awful hemorrhaging,” and tossed those egregious orders into the fire. When in December of that year the war minister wrote again with a fresh assignment not involving horses — in damp, foggy Holland, clearly a most disagreeable place to pass the winter and to fight a war — the elusive Montholon added yet another notch to his flummery, replying, “I would have set out immediately had I not been kept in bed with a raging fever,” as he threw the second set of orders into the fire. But by now General Hulin (who had ordered the murder of Enghien at Vincennes) had had quite enough and premptorily ordered the evasive Montholon to appear forthwith — which Tristan as usual declined to countenance. Surely if he were patient enough, the war minister could come up with something a little more amenable. And lo! patience duly had its reward in the form of a direct order straight from the Tuileries, this time to take command of the troops of the Department of the Loire, for the final defense of France. It was getting better and better.
This time “General Montholon” — another hard-earned promotion — actually went to Montbrison on March 12, 1814, to form an army with which to defend the region. Ordered to lead his four-thousand-or-so-man army to aid General Augereau at St.-Bonnet-le-Château in the mountains, Montholon set out, only to abandon his troops in mid-March to rejoin his wife and children, informing the war minister that the Austrians had advanced quickly and seized St.-Etienne, and that he was making a “strategic retreat” to beef up his “weak corps.” Finally rejoining his troops but abandoning his entire department to the approaching Allies, he fell back to Clermont-Ferrand, well out of gunshot, just long enough to seize the 5,970 francs’ pay due some of his troops, and on April 16 abandoned his entire army, now totaling some eight thousand men, absconding with the funds, fleeing not the enemy but the gambling debts he owed his own junior officers.
Montholon later wrote Napoleon that he had been betrayed at Lyons by Augereau and had thus withdrawn, but he was now offering to bring an entire brigade to the Emperor’s aid. “Entirely devoted to Your Majesty,” he informed Napoleon, “I have sacrificed everything for Him.” Meanwhile, that same day, Montholon wrote another letter, this time to Louis XVIII’s staff, explaining that “after having suffered eighteen months of disgrace at the hands of [Napoleon’s] government,” he would like to serve the Bourbons. “My Lord, permit me to request of your goodness the rank of brigadier general. I shall serve the king as faithfully as my forefathers served Henri II and François I.” He now signed himself “the Marquis de Montholon.” In a follow-up letter he added, “I have served my country in thirteen campaigns and ten great battles in the course of which I was wounded three times and had several horses shot out from beneath me.” All lies including his new title of “marquis.”
Needless to say, the king could hardly pass up an officer of such sterling qualities, and on August 24, 1814, duly accorded him a commission as brigadier general in the Bourbon army. But scarcely had the ink dried on the parchment when Montholon’s past finally caught up with him — not in the form of all those fictitious campaigns he had never witnessed and wounds he had never received but ironically a little heist from an army safe in Clermont-Ferrand. An arrest warrant was ordered for the “brigadier.” The outraged Montholon immediately reminded the king of his “long and good services to the crown” — he had held his commission for seven days — and explained that the only reason he had not handed over the pay to his men was because of the approach of the enemy, and in the past four months he had not had an opportunity to pay them.
This time it simply did not wash, and General Augereau — whom Montholon had denounced at Lyons — ordered a court-martial, Montholon saved at the eleventh hour by the timely intervention of Louis XVIII’s brother, the comte d’Artois (the future Charles X), who quashed the proceedings but ordered Montholon to return to his estate and not to appear in public again.
Thus when Napoleon had made his appearance at the Tuileries in March 1815, it proved a godsend for the ill-used Montholon. Cautiously waiting to see if Bonaparte would stay the course, it was only at the beginning of June that Montholon finally wrote officially to War Minister Davout demanding a command, followed by a personal letter to Napoleon on June 5 in which among other things he pleaded: “Sire, by the devotion I have shown you [listing two full pages of previous exploits], I retain the hope of being called to serve Your Majesty in a military capacity...and that you accord me an active and honorable post.” No response from either the War Office or the Tuileries, but that did not prevent Montholon from concocting the story in his Mémoires that Napoleon had named him an aide-de-camp and promoted him to the rank of major general during the Hundred Days, whereas of course Napoleon had declined the honor of calling on Montholon’s redoubtable military talents in any capacity.
That Montholon was able to inveigle himself in Napoleon’s good graces after Waterloo, while awaiting deportation at Malmaison, remains perhaps his greatest coup of all — and Napoleon fell for it.
Now at Longwood, 4,400 miles from Malmaison in the absolute middle of nowhere, Tristan de Montholon had finally succeeded in edging out the faithful Bertrand himself, becoming to all intents and purposes Napoleon’s chief of staff and closest intimate, causing severe rifts and jealousies among a bewildered Bertrand, hysterical Gourgaud, and a pouting Las Cases. The latter, after filling his notebooks with all the confidences and remembrances, real and imagined, that Napoleon had purportedly shared with him since his arrival in 1815, left in a huff in November 1816, after quarreling with Napoleon over the insults he had received from both Gourgaud and Montholon. Gourgaud, himself terribly insecure, had attacked Las Cases for coming to St. Helena solely “in order to be talked about” on his return to France “and to write anecdotes, which he intends to exploit financially.” (Las Cases would in fact publish his long talks with Napoleon in eight volumes entitled Memorial of St. Helena shortly after Napoleon’s death, not to mention his own personal Mémoires.) As for Montholon, he was delightened to have succeeded in chasing away the nervous Las Cases, leaving now only two men between him and Napoleon.
In fact Sir Hudson Lowe had first ordered Las Cases to leave Longwood when he learned that, on Napoleon’s orders, he had bribed a servant to send two letters to Europe. But later, when the governor offered to permit Las Cases to return to Napoleon, he instead begged to be allowed to take the first boat back to France. Having been insulted by Montholon and Gourgaud — both goaded by Napoleon — Las Cases never wanted to see the great man again.
The growing acrimony at Longwood was not helped by the weather, with frequently long periods of rain, wind, and low-hanging cloud over nearby Diana Peak. Napoleon always reacted sharply to chilly, gloomy weather. To this was added the isolation, not just from Jamestown but also from civilization even on the island, since Napoleon had ordered them all to keep their distance from the English, the pressure stemming from their self-imposed intimacy playing havoc with everyone’s nerves.
The women were the first to react, and although Sir Hudson provided a billiards table when requested, and then a piano, and hundreds of books, nevertheless petty disputes and disagreements, along with daily friction, increased. Harmless games of whist during the long, repetitious evenings frequently ended in tiffs, and Fanny Bertrand could not abide the presence of “that woman,” the notorious comtesse de Montholon. Even when they did manage an evening of cards or chess, Napoleon’s outrageous cheating — tolerated at Malmaison — set their hackles up at Longwood. It was perhaps even worse for Gourgaud, however, for unlike Bertrand and Montholon, he had neither wife
nor children there.
Napoleon himself was in the same position, of course, for the first time in his life finding himself without a woman, or even wanting one, as his depression increased, along with a decline in health. “I don’t like women very much,” he said at Longwood, “or games of any kind, or anything else. I am I suppose a purely political creature.” Nor was he very sympathetic to the plight of those caught in the political upheaval he had left behind in France. On learning of the arrest and execution of two of the men who had so helped him during the Hundred Days — young La Bédoyère and Michel Ney, instead of commiserating on their fate and praising their contributions, he merely snarled to Gourgaud: “One ought never to break one’s word...I despise traitors.” (They had sworn allegiance to Louis XVIII before returning to him.) Gourgaud, scarcely believing his ears, sat there speechless. Was this really his great hero, around whom he had centered his life and career? If he said that about two men who had volunteered their lives for him, what would he say about Gourgaud himself in his absence? As for Las Cases, both Montholon and Gourgaud had rejoiced at his departure: “the little Jesuit,” Gourgaud spitefully called him. Napoleon seemed disappointed in only one respect — he would be unable to continue his English lessons, which Las Cases had been attempting to inculcate, without much success, however, as Napoleon’s last letter in English reflected.
Count Lascases,
Since sixt week y learn the English and I do not any progress. Sixt week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivty word, for day, i could know it two thousands and two hundreds. It is in the dictionary more of fourty thousand: even he could most twenty; bot much tems. For know it or hundred and twenty weeks, which do more two years. After this you shall agree that the study one tongue is a great labour who it must do into the young aged.
