The Tragedy of St. HelenaRunciman, Walter Runciman, Baron
History
The Tragedy of St. Helena
Runciman, Walter Runciman, Baron
Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Captivity, 1815-1821
The youthful Baranti found no scope for his talents at Coppet, and
being offered an inducement to go to the metropolis so that he might
have larger opportunities of advancement, he abandoned the famous
authoress, and she, in loving despair, was seized with the impulse to
immortalise his severance by attempting suicide, and thereby ending
her passion for liaisons, virulence, and fame. The attempt, presumably
feeble, left her long years of mischievous mania for attack on the
supposed author of all her woes. She readily found amongst his enemies
(and thus the enemies of France) those who yearned with her in the
hope she freely and openly expressed that her native land should
suffer defeats, and in this her desire was fully acquiesced in by the
combination of hysterical and purblind Kings, aided by a coterie of
irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in
order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world
should be driven from it. Many of these creatures were members of the
same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent
address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the
hold his personality had on the national life. The following is what
they say, and what they ask him to do:--"You have brought us out of
the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the
present. Great man, complete your work, and make it as immortal as
your glory!"
The authors of this whining appeal are worthy to be associated with
the traitorous daughter of Jacques Necker, Minister of Finance to
Louis XVI., and of those apoplectic monarchs who sought her guilty and
inflammatory aid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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