LITMIR.BIZ

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the contrary doctrine, which I call the error of my youth.”

      The English were very fond of asking us questions concerning the Emperor, whose character and disposition, as they afterwards avowed, had been represented to them in the falsest colours. It was not their fault, they observed, if they formed an erroneous estimate of his character: they knew him only through the works published in England, which were all greatly exaggerated, and much to his prejudice: they had several of these publications on board the ship.—One day I happened to cast my eyes on one of a most malignant character: on another occasion, when I was about to look at a book which one of the officers was reading, he suddenly closed it, observing it was so violent against the Emperor that he could not prevail on himself to let me see it. Another time, the Admiral questioned me respecting certain imputations contained in different works in his library, some of which he said enjoyed a degree of credit, while all had produced a great sensation, in England. This circumstance suggested to me the idea of successively examining all the works of this kind that were on board the ship, in order to note down my opinion of them in my journal—conceiving that so favourable an opportunity might never again occur of obtaining, if I chose, information on those points which it might be worth while to enquire into.

      Before I commence my review of these works, I must beg to offer a few general remarks: they will suffice to answer by anticipation many of the numberless accusations that will fall in my way. Calumny and falsehood are the arms of the civil or political, the foreign or domestic enemy. They are the resource of the vanquished and the feeble, of those who are governed by hatred or fear.—They are the food of the drawing-room, and the garbage of the public place: they rage with the greater fury in proportion as their object is exalted: there is nothing which they will not venture to promulgate. The more absurd, ridiculous, and incredible calumnies and falsehoods may be, the more eagerly are they received and repeated from mouth to mouth. Triumph and success are but fresh causes of irritation: a moral storm will invariably gather; and, bursting in the moment of adversity, it will precipitate and complete the fall, and become the immense lever of public opinion.

      No man was ever so much assailed and abused as Napoleon. No individual was ever the subject of so many pamphlets, libels, atrocious and absurd stories and false assertions. Nor could it be otherwise. Napoleon, risen from the common rank of life to supreme distinction; advancing at the head of a revolution which he himself had civilized; plunged by these two circumstances into a deadly contest with the rest of Europe—a contest in which he was subdued only because he wished to terminate it too speedily—Napoleon uniting in himself the genius, the force, the destiny of his own power, the conqueror of his neighbours, and, in some measure, a universal Monarch—a Marius in the eyes of the aristocrats of Europe, a Sylla for the demagogues, a Cæsar for the republicans—could not but raise against himself a hurricane of passions both at home and abroad.

      Despair, policy, and fury, in every country, painted him as an object of detestation and alarm. Thus, all that has been said against him can excite no astonishment: it is only surprising that more calumny has not been uttered, and that it has not produced a much greater effect. When in the enjoyment of his power, he never would permit any one to reply to the attacks that were made upon him. “The pains bestowed on such answers,” said he, “would only have given additional weight to the accusations they were intended to refute. It would have been said that all that was written in my defence was ordered and paid for. The ill-managed praise of those by whom I was surrounded had already, in some instances, been more prejudicial to me than all the abuse of which I was the object. Facts were the most convincing answers. A fine monument, another good law, or a new triumph, were sufficient to defeat thousands of such falsehoods. Declamation passes away, but deeds remain!”

      This is unquestionably true with regard to posterity. The great men of former times are handed down to us free from the ephemeral accusations of their contemporaries. But it is not thus during the lifetime of the individual; and, in 1814, Napoleon was convinced by cruel experience that even deeds may vanish before the fury of declamation. At the moment of his fall, he was absolutely overwhelmed by a torrent of abuse. But it was reserved for him, whose life had been so fertile in prodigies, to surmount this adverse stroke of fate, and almost immediately to arise resplendent from amidst his own ruins. His miraculous return is certainly unparalleled both in its execution and its results. The transports which it called forth penetrated into neighbouring countries, where prayers for his success were offered up either publicly or in secret; and he who, in 1814, was defeated and pursued as the scourge of human nature, suddenly re-appeared in 1815 as the hope of his fellow-creatures.

      Calumny and falsehood in this instance lost their prey by having overshot their mark. The good sense of mankind in a great measure rendered justice to Napoleon, and the abuse that had been heaped upon him would not be believed now. “Poison lost its effect on Mithridates,” said the Emperor, as he was the other day glancing over some new libels upon himself, “and, since 1814, calumny cannot injure me.”

      In the universal clamour which was directed against him when in the enjoyment of his power, England bore the most conspicuous part.

      In England two great machines were maintained in full activity; the one conducted by the emigrants, for whom nothing was too bad; and the other under the control of the English ministers, who had established a system of defamation, and who had regularly organized its action and effects. They maintained in their pay pamphleteers and libelists in every corner of Europe; their tasks were marked out to them: and their plans of attack were regularly laid and combined.

      The English ministry multiplied the employment of these potent engines in England more than elsewhere. The English, who were more free and enlightened than other nations, stood the more in need of excitement. From this system the English ministers derived the two-fold advantage of rousing public opinion against the common enemy, and withdrawing attention from their own conduct by directing popular clamour and indignation to the character and conduct of others: by this means their own character and conduct were screened from that investigation and recrimination which they might not have found very agreeable. Thus the assassination of Paul at St. Petersburgh, and of our envoys in Persia; the seizure of Napper-Tandy in the free city of Hamburgh; the capture, in time of peace, of two rich Spanish frigates; the acquisition of the whole of India; the retaining of Malta and the Cape of Good Hope, against the faith of treaties: the Machiavelian rupture of the treaty of Amiens; the unjust seizure of our ships previously to a new declaration of war: the Danish fleet seized with such cold and ironical perfidy, &c. &c.; all these aggressions were overlooked in the general agitation which had been artfully stirred up against a foreign power.

      In order to take a just view of the accusations which have been heaped upon Napoleon, by the numerous publications written against him, it is necessary to make allowance for passions and circumstances; to reject with contempt all that is apocryphal, anonymous, and purely declamatory; and to adhere solely to the facts and proofs which would doubtless have been produced by those who, after the overthrow of their enemy, became possessed of the authentic documents, the archives of the public departments and courts of law, in short, of all the sources of truth which are usually to be found in society. But nothing has been published; nothing has been brought forward; and, therefore, how much of this monstrous scaffolding falls to the ground. And to be still more rigidly equitable, if we wish to judge Napoleon by the example of his peers, or great men in analogous circumstances; that is to say, by comparing him with the founders of dynasties, or those who have ascended thrones by dint of popular commotions, it may then confidently be said that he is unequalled, and that he shines purely from amidst all that is opposed to him. It would be a loss of time to cite the numberless examples furnished by ancient and modern history: they are accessible to every one. It is only necessary to refer to the two countries which are here under consideration.

      Did Napoleon, like Hugues Capet, fight against his sovereign? Did he cause him to perish in captivity?

      Did Napoleon act like the princes of the present house of Brunswick, who, in 1715 and 1745, crowded the scaffold with victims—victims to whom the present English ministers, through their inconsequential policy and the principles they now profess, leave no other title than that of faithful subjects dying for their lawful sovereign?

      The course by which Napoleon advanced

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