by Paul Johnson
Whence came this abuse? In England it was orchestrated by the Holland House circle of Whigs, who had always sympathized with Bonaparte as an opponent of absolute monarchy by divine right, and were anxious to effect his release or escape. Having failed to serve a habeas corpus writ, Lord and Lady Holland, immediately after Lowe’s appointment was announced, invited him repeatedly to Holland House and used all their considerable charm and flattery to bring him around to their viewpoint and persuade him to impose the lightest of regimes on his famous prisoner. Lowe was bewildered at first, thus to be brought into the most exclusive society in Europe, but soon realized what the Hollands were up to. He made it clear he intended to follow closely the instructions of Earl Bathurst, the colonial secretary, endorsed by the cabinet and Parliament, that Bonaparte was to be afforded every consideration compatible with security. At that point the Hollands dropped him and thereafter became his dedicated enemies.
On the island itself, the campaign was deliberately conducted by the court. Bonaparte himself began by trying to charm Lowe but quickly realized he was incorruptible. Thereafter Lowe was characterized as Satan: mean, suspicious, mendacious, bribing his servants, an expert poisoner, and a man capable of the basest cruelty, who had led a gang of murderous Corsican brigands. It is often implied that Lowe and Bonaparte were in daily dispute about trifles, the small-minded Lowe contrasted with the magnanimous Bonaparte. In fact they met only six times, and the last two conversations consisted entirely of abuse on Bonaparte’s side and silence on Lowe’s.
Bonaparte had always, as we have noted, been good at propaganda, from Italy and Egypt onward, and now, encouraged and assisted by Holland House, he began the most prolonged and successful propaganda campaign of his life. It was summed up by Basil Jackson, a young British officer on guard duty around Bonaparte:
The policy—heartily and assiduously carried out by Napoleon’s adherents, who liked banishment as little as the great man himself—was to pour into England pamphlets and letters complaining of unnecessary restrictions, insults from the governor, scarcity of provisions, miserable accommodation, insalubrity of climate, and a host of other grievances, but chiefly levelled at the governor, as the head and front of all that was amiss.
Later, after Bonaparte was dead, de Montholon admitted to Jackson: “C’était nôtre politique, et que voulez-vous?” (“It was our policy—but what did you expect?”)
The truth is, Lowe was a humane man, as numerous episodes in his life show. In 1808 he had appealed personally to Bonaparte’s close colleague Berthier against the mass executions carried out by the French army of Naples against Ca labrian patriots. He was highly popular with the civilian populations in the various administrative posts he held in Italy and the Ionian Islands, being presented with testimonials and swords of honor in gratitude. He was popular, too, in Saint Helena, among all classes, even the landowners, despite the fact that, by his own act of prerogative, he ended slavery there in 1817, sixteen years before it was abolished in the empire as a whole. The islanders were sad to see him go, soon after Bonaparte’s death (he was succeeded by the lugubrious Brigadier John Pine Coffin).
There is no evidence that Lowe treated Bonaparte meanly or cruelly. On the contrary, it was Lowe who raised the sum allocated to Bonaparte’s household from £8,000 a year to £12,000, equal to his own as governor. The later reduction to the original sum was a diktat from the Colonial Office, which left Lowe with no choice. He must have smiled grimly to himself at Bonaparte’s blaming the resulting economies entirely on Government House, accompanied by ostentatious propaganda devices, such as the public sale of his silver and the breaking up of furniture for firewood. In fact Bonaparte did not go short of anything. Longwood, in which he was eventually established, was probably the best house on the island, with more than forty rooms. It had a fine library, and Lowe also offered access to his own large collection of books (it was declined). The restrictions on Bonaparte’s riding and walking—that he be accompanied at all times by a British officer, when outside the grounds of Longwood—were minimal. The restrictions on his correspondence were more irksome, but entirely justified, in view of what we now know.
Lowe was in an impossible position. Bonaparte was not held as a close prisoner, or even under house arrest. He had a court and staff and a legion of supporters in the outside world, even in England—people in high positions and of great means. Lowe had to ensure, on peril of his life, that he prevented from escaping the most dangerous man Europe had ever suffered from, who was responsible for the deaths of millions and wars that had kept the entire Continent in an uproar for a decade and a half. Bonaparte’s word was worthless. He had broken every treaty he had ever signed, most notably the agreement that set him up in some style in Elba. This last perjury had cost the lives of nearly 100,000 brave men and huge destruction of property. If Bonaparte was at large again, what further pain and misery might he not inflict on innocent people by the insensate pursuit of his ambition? These considerations made Lowe strict, and Europe had reason to be grateful that he was.
Bonaparte’s metier was army command. His purpose in life—one must not, perhaps, say his delight—was battle. Naturally, on Saint Helena he was unhappy. He needed women on call. He needed excitement. He needed, above all, events. But there were no events on Saint Helena. He dug in the garden. He dictated. He tried to learn to speak and write English, without success, as a scrap in his handwriting, dated 7 March 1816, testifies: “Count Lascasses. Since sixt wek, y lern the english and y do not any progres. Sixt wek do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivty word, for day, I could knowm it two thousands and two hundred.” He discoursed endlessly. He held soirées, even a dance occasionally. He had periods of acute depression or illness, chiefly digestive, in which he appeared to none but his servants. He visited and received visitors. He played whist with the English officers. He stood, gazing out to sea, as he had often stood on the battlefield, a small, squat, rounded figure, in an old gray greatcoat, his hat planted firmly on his massive brow.
Thus he was seen and described. On 8 March 1817 the Prince Regent put into the island. Aboard were the five-year-old William Makepeace Thackeray, returning from India for school in England, and his black servant, Lawrence Barlow. Barlow, the future novelist recorded later, “took me a long walk over rocks and hills until we reached a garden, where we saw a man walking. ‘That is he,’ said the black man, ‘that is Bonaparte! He eats three sheep every day and as many little children as he can lay his hands on!’” Impressions of those who actually met Bonaparte varied. The sailor who took him out to Saint Helena, George Cockburn, took a liking to him but deplored his unfriendly habit of leaving the table as soon as he had bolted his food. Betsy Briars, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the East India Company agent on the island, made a real friend of the ex-emperor, though she accused him of cheating at cards (she was not the only one to make the charge). He was sad when she returned to England in 1818, and she remembered him with love and kisses, and talked to Napoleon III about his famous relative, being rewarded with the gift of a vineyard in Algeria. Some visitors had the good fortune to be received by the great man and reported him to be affable, asking numerous questions as was his wont, but not always listening to the answers. From 1819 onward his personal appearances became less frequent and from the middle of 1820 he was a sick man who kept mostly to his house.
As Bonaparte’s death became part of his mythology, it is necessary to dwell on it in a little detail. He was attended, at one time or another, by at least six doctors during his last illness, which began on 17 March 1821 and ended with his death on 5 May. They disagreed about the treatment, as did his court. His symptoms included a swollen stomach, slow pulse, rising and falling temperature, vomiting and coughing, abundant sweating and nausea, delirium, shivering, hiccups, and, eventually, loss of memory and delusions. He was dosed with mercury and calomel but, in his more authoritative moments, he refused to take medicine or even see his doctors. He also declined to be administered
to by the two priests his family had sent out, saying he had no religion; but they secretly gave him the last rites all the same. When clearheaded, he revised his will. Two of the changes are significant. First, he left 10,000 francs to André Cantillon, the old soldier who in Paris on 11 February 1818 had tried to shoot Wellington but had been released for lack of witnesses. Second, the fifth paragraph read: “My death is not natural. I have been assassinated by the English oligarchy and their hired murderer (Lowe). The English people will not be long in avenging me.”
Whether Bonaparte actually believed he was poisoned is doubtful, though he made the accusation repeatedly, long before he stated it in writing in his will. But then he made many wild accusations in Saint Helena. He abused Madame Bertrand, for instance, as “a whore, who should have walked the streets as an ordinary prostitute: she has slept with all the English officers of the garrison.” In his Italian-Corsican way, he often thought of the risk of poison and had accused all kinds of enemies of trying it against him, throughout his career. He was not an easy man to poison, it seems. The only occasion when poison was actually administered to him, by himself in a suicide dose taken in March 1814, the dose—“strong enough to kill two of his troopers,” according to the account—had no effect at all. This may have been due to the incompetence or deviousness of his court physician, Jean Corvisart. Or perhaps the whole story is an invention. Bonaparte was certainly not a suicidal type, and he made no effort to kill himself in July 1815, when he had a much stronger motive. Many Bonapartist historians have mooted the theory of arsenical poisoning, though they have disagreed about whether it was given in small or large doses, and the direct scientific evidence is inconclusive. It is inconceivable that Lowe could or would have administered it on the instructions of the cabinet. Indeed, Bonaparte himself, from time to time, thought a more likely killer would have been the comte d’Artois, the future Charles X, or “white” terrorists, or the Russians or Prussians.
Bonaparte’s whole medical history, needless to say, has been examined in great detail by doctors with historical tastes. Considering the life he led and the risks he took, he was a fortunate man in health. He was probably present at more military engagements, and within cannon and rifle shot, than any other man of his time, including Ney and Wellington, though both ran him close. He had at least nineteen horses killed under him in battle (and he spurred to death many more). At Toulon he was wounded in the face and had a bayonet thrust into the inner side of his left thigh, a wound (he said) that bothered him always. His other battle wounds, though numerous, were all superficial. He joked that one of the worst was inflicted by Josephine’s jealous lapdog during the “battle” of their wedding night. There are stories that he contracted gonorrhea (from Josephine) and syphilis, but no direct evidence of either exists.
Bonaparte obviously feared he would go the same way as his father, who had died of stomach cancer. He often complained about abdominal pains throughout his life. He ate moderately and drank his wine watered. On the other hand, he gobbled his meals in ten minutes if he could. He took vigorous exercise on horseback throughout all his active life. Nonetheless, from about the age of thirty he began to put on weight, and his body began to acquire the pale-pink fatty appearance that became notable in his last phase and that led people to compare him to a china pig. He had blackouts when making love on several occasions (his women complained that he copulated ardently but quickly and without regard to them). There was intermittent trouble with his chest, though no sign of tuberculosis, then the second biggest killer of youngish men. From about 1810 he had trouble passing water. This caused him much distress during the Russian campaign and again during the Hundred Days. From the very start of his Saint Helena sojourn he complained of constipation, stomachaches, and vomiting, but said his chief hardship was passing water. Indeed, he was seen several times leaning against a wall or a tree, trying to urinate, and was heard to groan: “This is my weak spot—this will kill me in the end.”
Bonaparte was officially pronounced dead by the Floren tine doctor Francesco Antommarchi, who proceeded to carry out a postmortem examination, watched by five English surgeons, Mitchell, Livingstone, Arnott, Burton, and Shortt, who signed the report, and a sixth, Henry, who drew it up but was too junior to sign it. Their conclusion was that Bonaparte had died of a cancerous ulcer or carcinoma in his stomach, and they reached this verdict without knowing that the dead man’s father had suffered the same fate. Antommarchi refused to sign this report, producing one of his own that indicated that an enlarged liver, presumably caused by hepatitis, was the cause. Both reports describe the condition of the body. The teeth were healthy but stained black by the chewing of licorice. The left kidney was one-third larger than the right. The urinary bladder was small and it contained gravel; the mucosa was thickened with numerous red patches. Had the urethra been sectioned (or so runs one theory) it would probably have demonstrated a small circular scar, too tight to allow the passing of even small stones. That would have been the key to the slow decline in health and performance that started when Bonaparte was in his late thirties. The body was what doctors call “feminized”—that is, covered by a deep layer of fat, with scarcely any hair and well-developed breasts and mons veneris. The shoulders were narrow, hips broad, and genitals small. We can all make up our own minds about these findings, their significance and reliability.
The news of Bonaparte’s death reached London on 3 July. George IV was told: “It is my duty to inform your Majesty that your greatest enemy is dead.” He replied: “Is she, by God!” (he thought the ailing Queen Caroline was meant). Wellington got the news the next day in Paris, at a party attended by Talleyrand. Someone, on hearing the news, exclaimed: “Quelle événement!” Talleyrand dryly replied: “Non, ce n’est pas un événement, c’est une nouvelle.” (Not an event, just a news item.) Wellington’s friend Mrs. Arbuthnot recorded in her diary of 4 July: “The Duke of Wellington called on me and said, ‘Now I think I may say I am the most successful Gen[eral] alive.’”
The death of Napoleon Bonaparte did not long remain a news item. His last words had been—so it was said—“tête d’armée,” and he was buried as a soldier, in his favorite green uniform of the Guards cavalry, and the famous gray overcoat he had worn at Marengo. The site was the Rupert Valley, a beautiful place, and the grave was marked by a stone that bore only the words CI-GIT (“here lies”), because the French and the English could not agree on the inscription. It might have been better for the world, including France, if this simple enterrement had been left undisturbed. For if Bonaparte had died as a stricken and defeated man, Napoleon soon began to rise as an immortal myth, a victorious soldier, and a model ruler. The returned Bourbons had never been popular, and in 1830 they were sent packing by the Paris mob. And even the Bourbons had been unable to prevent the emergence of a Napoleon industry. It began effectively with the publication of Las Cases’s Memorial de Saint-Hélène (1822-23), an immensely popular account of the exile, full of falsehoods and exaggerations but successfully designed to evoke sympathy for a stricken giant in the chains of an alien pygmy. Other memoirs, following the same “policy,” by Gourgaud, Montholon, and Bertrand, followed. The poets, led by Pierre-Jean de Béranger, soon took a hand: Souvenirs du peuple, nostalgic for former glories, appeared in 1828. And Victor Hugo, who had welcomed the Bourbons back, switched sides and began to write impassioned poems in Napoleon’s honor, beginning with Ode de la Colonne, which dates from 1827. Soon, virtually all the considerable forces of French literature were hard at work, and the powerful Paris printing industry produced cheaply a colored picture history of Napoleon’s life and achievements that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, was lovingly treasured by the poor, and was the first introduction to history for generations of French children.
This was the buildup to official rehabilitation—indeed, glorification. Louis-Philippe, succeeding the Bourbons in 1830, significantly called himself “king of the French,” in imitation of Napoleonic populism. In 1833 he put back
Napoleon’s statue on top of the column in the Place Vendôme in Paris. In 1830, too, the Whigs at last got power in England, ousting the Wellington government. Bonaparte, in his will, had asked to be buried “on the banks of the Seine.” Lord Holland, now a minister, repeatedly urged that the wish be respected; at last in 1840 the British government agreed, and the body was dug up. Louis-Philippe sent his son François in a warship to collect the remains of the man now universally known in France as “the emperor.” A magnificent funeral was held in Paris in December 1840, before the body was conveyed to the historic military hôpital of the Invalides, created by Louis XIV and turned by Bonaparte himself into a military pantheon. There, over the next twenty years, the most sumptuous tomb-memorial since antiquity was prepared, under the dome, for the glorification of “the greatest soldier who ever lived.” The light streams down theatrically onto the catafalque in one of the greatest visual frissons of tourist Paris—vulgar certainly, but spectacular and unforgettable.
The legend achieved its first major impact on history in December 1851, when Bonaparte’s nephew Louis-Napoleon exploited it to stage a coup d’état in the manner of his uncle and made himself “emperor of the French” the following year. The Napoleon industry thereafter received official backing and financial support.
