Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon BuonaparteWhately, Richard
Philosophy
Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte
Whately, Richard
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
"But what shall we say to the testimony of those many respectable
persons who went to Plymouth on purpose, and saw Buonaparte with their
own eyes? must they not trust their senses?" I would not disparage
either the eyesight or the veracity of these gentlemen. I am ready to
allow that they went to Plymouth for the purpose of seeing Buonaparte;
nay, more, that they actually rowed out into the harbour in a boat,
and came alongside of a man-of-war, on whose deck they saw a man in a
cocked hat, who, _they were told_, was Buonaparte. This is the utmost
point to which their testimony goes; how they ascertained that this
man in the cocked hat had gone through all the marvellous and romantic
adventures with which we have so long been amused, we are not told.
Did they perceive in his physiognomy, his true name, and authentic
history? Truly this evidence is such as country people give one for a
story of apparitions; if you discover any signs of incredulity, they
triumphantly show the very house which the ghost haunted, the
identical dark corner where it used to vanish, and perhaps even the
tombstone of the person whose death it foretold. Jack Cade's nobility
was supported by the same irresistible kind of evidence: having
asserted that the eldest son of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was
stolen by a beggar-woman, "became a bricklayer when he came to age,"
and was the father of the supposed Jack Cade; one of his companions
confirms the story, by saying, "Sir, he made a chimney in my father's
house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it; therefore,
deny it not."
Much of the same kind is the testimony of our brave countrymen, who
are ready to produce the scars they received in fighting against this
terrible Buonaparte. That they fought and were wounded, they may
safely testify; and probably they no less firmly _believe_ what they
were _told_ respecting the cause in which they fought: it would have
been a high breach of discipline to doubt it; and they, I conceive,
are men better skilled in handling a musket, than in sifting evidence,
and detecting imposture. But I defy any one of them to come forward
and declare, _on his own knowledge_, what was the cause in which he
fought,—under whose commands the opposed generals acted,—and whether
the person who issued those commands did really perform the mighty
achievements we are told of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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