Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice

by Dr Martin Howard

  The defendant then called more witnesses. Verling recalled that Stokoe asked him a few questions of ‘no importance’ but he and Nicholls both agreed that it would have been very difficult for the surgeon to limit his conversation to purely medical matters; both had discussed all kinds of things with the French prisoners. Although Stanfell had no memory of the word ‘order’ on the note he gave to Stokoe he accepted that he would have regarded the doctor’s refusal to attend Napoleon as an act of disobedience. Lieutenants James Hay and William Clark testified that Stokoe had fallen from his horse and had sustained severe bruising to his shoulder. All these witnesses deserved credit as any statement favouring Stokoe required courage.

  On paper, the surgeon’s self-defence is coherent and persuasive. He successfully undermines all the chief charges against him. We have less knowledge of his demeanour; we cannot know whether he presented his case with confidence or whether he was diffident. Verling thought that his colleague managed his defence ‘indifferently’. Bertrand notes in his journal that Stokoe’s case was well written but ultimately ‘feeble’. None of the French entourage attended the trial and he is probably just repeating Verling’s opinion. Major Charles Harrison, an eyewitness to the whole trial, thought the doctor’s defence to be ‘bad, irritating, and disrespectful’. Balmain is more positive.

  [Stokoe] had to conduct his own defence which he did with considerable skill and presence of mind; acknowledged that he had been insubordinate, confessed being the dupe but not the accomplice of the enemies of Plantation House and moved all who heard him to compassion …

  The trial records do not suggest that the surgeon acknowledged ‘insubordination’ at any stage. It is very unlikely that the Russian actually attended the trial on the Conqueror and he was probably expressing the popular view on the island.9

  The trial lasted four days, from 30th August to 2nd September. Stokoe may have had his sympathisers on St. Helena but the members of the court-martial knew what was expected of them and, after six hours of consideration, they found him to be guilty and ordered that he be dismissed from the service. All charges except the ninth – that pertaining to Napoleon’s proper title – were proved. Chaplin comments, ‘It is difficult to understand why Stokoe was treated so harshly, unless partisanship on the part of his judges is admitted.’ The trial members were biased, and it is also transparent that the action against the doctor was carefully planned by his commanding officers. Charles Harrison was impressed with Plampin’s testimony.

  I shall not forget the firmness, perspicuity, and force (added to which a little bitterness) with which the old Admiral went through the whole of the evidence, and he not only astonished the doctor by producing documents he could have had very little idea were in the Admiral’s possession but he made a certain Knight [Thomas Reade] stare with all eyes, when he produced every note, every letter, and also minutes of every syllable of conversation that had taken place, from the very commencement, between himself and Mr Stokoe relative to his visits to Longwood.

  That which Harrison interpreted as thoroughness, others may have regarded as persecution.

  A number of procedural irregularities made the trial at least unfair and, at most, illegal. Stokoe should not have been deemed fit to return to St. Helena on the word of a single doctor. He was entitled to review by a full Medical Board which would have had proper authority to invalidate his leave. He should, of course, have been informed of the court-martial prior to his departure from England to allow him good time to prepare a proper defence. Once on St. Helena, he was forced to act as his own advocate. Harrison says, ‘Mr Stokoe could not get any one to assist him in his defence; none of his friends would come forward.’ Acting for himself, he could not tell the whole truth. He was unable to raise sensitive issues such as the grudge that the Admiral held against him or the closeness of the compact between Admiral and Governor. Captain Stanfell both presided over the trial and played a role as a key prosecution witness, a clear conflict of interest. Finally, Plampin was guilty both of perjury and of attempts to suppress the evidence of this. The Admiral had denied on oath that Stokoe had asked him to return the original note of the 17th ordering him to attend Napoleon, but the Admiral’s secretary admitted that he had heard the doctor make the request. Caught in the act, Plampin had the wording of the trial minutes altered to conceal the fraud.

  Word of Stokoe’s fate spread quickly. Balmain, whose support for Stokoe greatly irritated Lowe, wrote:

  The authorities of the island naturally made a great sensation of this affair and almost persuaded people that he would be hung … Everyone is wondering why Surgeon O’Meara, who Sir H. Lowe says is much guiltier, is not likewise tried either before an ordinary jury on board the Conqueror or before an extraordinary tribunal at London.

  The feeling that Stokoe had been unfairly singled out and dealt with was not confined to the Russian Commissioner and not restricted to the inhabitants of St. Helena. Lowe, realising that he had to defend his actions, wrote to Bathurst on 1st September expressing the views of Sir William Wiseman.

  He [Wiseman] told me after the court-martial was over, he believed that there had never been a court-martial assembled where the deliberation had been more full and impartial or where the members had taken more pains to inform themselves on every point, and to form the judgement without any motives of prejudice. He had been a very short time here. He expressed his astonishment at the infamous falsehoods, as he termed them, which had been circulated in England respecting the system observed here.

  These words are quoted in several works to justify the treatment of Stokoe but they are meaningless. Wiseman was himself a member of the court-martial and he was bound to applaud a legal process in which he was one of the most senior participants.10

  Stokoe left St. Helena for England on 12th September 1819 but he was not quickly forgotten by the French. Napoleon had great confidence in him. When the doctor had returned to the island for his court-martial, the Emperor dictated urgent letters on three occasions asking for his renewed care. Napoleon tried to send the physician a letter of support and sympathy following the guilty verdict and before his final departure but this was ruthlessly intercepted by the British authorities and it did not reach him. During the delirium in the later stages of his disease, it was Stokoe’s name he called out.11

  Stokoe would not meet Napoleon again but he did have the opportunity to confront Plampin. The Admiral returned to England during 1820 and the doctor was waiting for him on the quay at Portsmouth. We have no record of exactly what passed but it seems that Stokoe expressed his opinion of his adversary’s conduct in no uncertain terms. The doctor later claimed that the Admiral made a complaint to the Admiralty regarding this meeting but the authorities denied this. Indeed, Plampin remained uncharacteristically quiet about the incident. Perhaps he understood that any legal action would highlight his unpopularity within the service. It was not only Napoleon who disliked him. When the Admiral clumsily applied for the Order of the Bath in early 1821, Lord Melville dismissed his application in a superficially polite but clearly ironic letter. ‘I feel it my duty to state that I do not consider myself at liberty to submit to His Majesty the name of any naval officer to be a Knight Commander of the Bath for any services except such as were performed during war against the enemy.’12

  The details of Stokoe’s punishment suggest that he commanded more sympathy among his naval peers than his former Commander-in-Chief. Although removed from the service, his judges recommended to the Admiralty that, in consideration of his long and previously unblemished service, he should be granted half pay. This was not possible for a dismissed officer but he was allowed a civil list pension of £100 per year with £300 extra pay for the St. Helena period of service and eleven-twelfths of full pay from the time he was invalided to his return to the Conqueror. This financial settlement was more than was necessary and it indicates that there was official unease at Stokoe’s treatment. The surgeon was heartened. ‘This spontaneous generosity’, he
says, ‘spoke volumes and was gratifying to me. It showed that I was not regarded as a culprit; it evinced milder feelings towards me, and encouraged the hope that, after the lapse of a few years, I might be restored to my rank.’

  Public opinion was largely, but not entirely, in his favour. The Morning Chronicle, a newspaper that was mostly critical of Britain’s management of Napoleon’s exile, detected a scandal and was quick to turn on Lowe. In a leading article, the Governor was accused of forcing the doctor from his patient’s bedside at the hour of greatest need. The trial was deemed to be unfair. ‘The system of terror so powerfully operating in St. Helena that a military officer declined giving Surgeon Stokoe his countenance and assistance on a plea of ill-health: and a writer in the Admiral’s offices begged he would excuse him from attending to take notes for fear of incurring displeasure.’ Regional papers, such as the Liverpool Mercury, joined in the clamour. The charges against the doctor were pronounced to be ‘frivolous and vexatious’. The Western Luminary referred to Stokoe’s ‘excellent character’. On the other hand, The Times sided with authority, stating that the sentence had been both ‘proper and humane’. Stokoe visited the newspaper’s editor but could get no redress for the views expressed except for an undertaking to publish the minutes of the trial.13

  The doctor had brought back a faithful clerk’s copy of the proceedings of the court-martial from St. Helena and when he compared this with the official copy, which he only obtained twelve months later, he discovered the change to the wording that had been made at Plampin’s instigation. Realising that the Admiral had committed fraud and that this in itself ought to lead to the verdict being overturned, Stokoe wrote a detailed letter to John Barrow, Secretary to the Admiralty, on 4 November 1820. He describes the Admiral’s misdemeanours and ends with a heartfelt plea for justice.

  Such conduct in a man [Plampin] to whom I had been endeavouring to recommend myself by every attention in my power, and to whom I looked up as my friend and protector, excites feelings in my mind that cannot be described, and might, in the opinion of many, justify a spirit of recrimination on my part where facts are not wanting to prove that those who have been chiefly instrumental in depriving me of the fruits of twenty-five years’ service, degrading me by a public trial, were not always the most strict observers of those laws and regulations for the alleged violation of which I have experienced so much real suffering and endless anxiety.

  This was not only a vigorous defence of his own position but also an attack on the probity of Plampin and Lowe. It is a measure of the disquiet at the Admiralty regarding the surgeon’s plight that he received no admonition for this daring letter but only a polite rejection. Their Lordships were unable to comply with his request to reconvene the members of the court-martial to consider any alleged mistake. Stokoe had also referred to Plampin’s communication with the Admiralty following the contretemps on the quay at Portsmouth but Barrow denied that the Admiral had made any such complaint.14

  If the British authorities were keeping the surgeon at arm’s length, he was being lauded elsewhere. The Bonapartes were highly appreciative of his sympathetic treatment of Napoleon and were well aware of the sacrifice which had been forced upon him. They not only made efforts to ensure his financial security but they showed him friendship and trust, involving him in the most intimate parts of their family life. The initial introductions – to Madame Mère, Cardinal Fesch (Napoleon’s uncle) and Louis Bonaparte – were made by Las Cases who had probably been instructed to do so by the Emperor. Las Cases also connected the doctor with his fourth and greatest benefactor, Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s elder brother. Joseph had sought refuge in Philadelphia and had quickly become accustomed to the American way of life. In 1816 he wrote to his sister-in-law: ‘I am growing more and more attached to this country every day. It is the land of liberty, peace and happiness.’ He was a womaniser and his wife, Queen Julie, preferred to stay in Europe with her two daughters, moving from Frankfurt to Brussels.

  Towards the end of 1821, the youngest of the girls, Charlotte, who was only eighteen years, decided to join her father, and Stokoe was asked to accompany her. They embarked at Antwerp and endured a difficult voyage of two months during which the doctor vigilantly watched over his charge. Joseph showed his gratitude by treating Stokoe as a personal friend and the surgeon remained in America until 1823 when he re-crossed the Atlantic to fetch the other daughter, Princess Zenaide. The following year, a third and final mission was entrusted to him as he returned Princess Charlotte, who was betrothed to Prince Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, to France. From this time he only saw Joseph occasionally but he maintained a warm correspondence with Napoleon’s brother and other family members up to Joseph’s death in 1843.

  In the early years of the nineteenth century, Frédéric Masson discovered a note which Napoleon had handed to Stokoe at their last meeting at Longwood on 21st January, 1819. It was addressed to King Joseph.

  I would be obliged if you would pay Doctor Stokoe £1,000 sterling which I owe him. When he sends you this note, he will give you all the information you might desire regarding me.

  Napoleon

  Bertrand makes a reference to this payment in his journal entry for the 21st but, rather confusingly, says that the letter was addressed to Denzel Ibbotson, the commissary who served the French after the departure of Balcombe. According to the Grand Marshal, Stokoe was also presented with a letter of recommendation to Marie-Louise and all her family and instructed to write a work favourable to the Emperor. There is no evidence that he produced any written record beyond his memoirs. Marchand gives a muddled account of Stokoe’s demise but does allude to the doctor being accused of being bribed by Napoleon’s money which suggests that he also knew that payment had changed hands. The note is conserved in the Bibliotheque Thiers and was obviously cashed – on the reverse, William Holmes has written, ‘Received the sum of the with mentioned order’. O’Meara was probably also involved in this deposit into Stokoe’s account.

  It is unlikely that Stokoe gave his care to Napoleon expecting such a reward. His determination to distance himself from Longwood as quickly as possible was not the behaviour of a man who had accepted a large bribe to fulfil the role of Napoleon’s doctor. More likely it was a spontaneous gesture by Napoleon, an attempt to recompense the surgeon for the damage to his career that had resulted from performing his medical duties. Nevertheless, it is questionable that Stokoe should have accepted the gift. Whatever the moral implications of his decision, his action was unequivocally against regulations. He was extremely fortunate that the British authorities on the island, particularly Lowe and Plampin, were unaware of the transaction at the time of his court-martial.15

  Stokoe never lost hope of clearing his name and he continued to seek advice from his friends and lawyers. There were many legal mistakes in the trial proceedings against him but British law at this time was inflexible and there was little hope of retrospectively changing the outcome of a naval court-martial. When Sir George Cockburn became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1842, Stokoe made a final effort to gain reinstatement to the service. Cockburn was an active participant in the injustice and perhaps he would now show generosity. The doctor received the following prompt reply.

  Leamington, Warwicks

  October 15, 1842

  Sir,

  I beg to acknowledge the receipt at this place of your letter of the 10th instant, and I am sorry to learn from it that circumstances have caused me to appear so much connected with the misfortunes you have mentioned. It must, I hope, be quite unnecessary for me to assure you that I have never entertained any adverse feeling towards you personally, and though the jealousy which prevailed relative to all the St. Helena transactions seems to have pressed so hardly upon you, I have always considered the errors attributed to Dr O’Meara and you to have proceeded from your having been placed in so trying a position, rather from any real intention on your parts to oppose and counteract the orders and intentions of the Governor and of your immed
iate commanding officers. I do not recollect, nor can I here refer to documents to inform me, why you were ordered to be tried by court-martial on your return to St. Helena, nor what description of complaint, if any, was made to the Admiralty relative to the imprudent transaction at Portsmouth of which you speak; but I will inform myself on these points when I return to town, and you may rest assured of my disposition to view the whole as little unfavourably as the facts set forth in the official documents may permit, and, at all events, I cannot but much lament your having experienced such severe misfortunes.

  Cockburn’s lapse of memory with regard to the court-martial charges was convenient but his admission that Stokoe and O’Meara had been victims of difficult circumstances was as close to an official apology as either ever received. If he consulted the documents as promised, he decided to let the matter rest. Lowe and many of the officers of the court were still alive and to give amnesty to Stokoe would have been to impugn their original decision and their reputations.16

  The passage of time had not diluted the virulent nature of much of the literature pertaining to the Emperor’s exile. Two years later, an anonymous article in the United Service Magazine criticised Stokoe and O’Meara, implying that they were largely responsible for Napoleon’s death by misdiagnosing his illness as hepatitis. Stokoe was moved to collect his papers and to write his memoirs. Their publication would be his self-defence against any more attacks. On the other hand, he had by now married and had a family to support and, despite the help he had received from the Bonaparte clan, he remained dependant on his government pension. He feared that publication of such a controversial memoir might result in a charge of libel and threaten his financial security. In the same situation, O’Meara would have published, but Stokoe was of a more cautious disposition.