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
On April 11, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst:--"The enclosed extract of
a letter from Count Montholon may merit, as usual, your lordship's
perusal." (This, of course, is intended as wit.) "It may be regarded
as a bulletin of General Bonaparte's health, meant for circulation at
Paris."
Dr. Antommarchi, in writing to Signor Simeon Colonna on March 17,
1821, after dilating on his master's health, the climate, &c., bursts
out in a paragraph: "Dear friend, the medical art can do nothing
against the influence of climate, and if the English Government does
not hasten to remove him from this destructive atmosphere, His Majesty
soon, with anguish I say it, will pay the last tribute to the earth";
and in a postscript he adds: "I offer the _undoubted facts_ stated
above, in opposition to the gratuitous assertions in the English
newspapers relative to the good health which His Majesty is stated to
enjoy here."
On March 17, 1821, Montholon writes to Princess Pauline Borghesi:
"The Emperor reckons upon your Highness to make his real situation
known to some English of influence. He dies without succour upon this
frightful rock; his agonies are frightful." At the time Napoleon was
suffering thus, letters were published in some of the Ministerial
newspapers purporting to have come from St. Helena and representing
him to be in perfect health.
On May 6, 1821, Lowe writes to Bathurst announcing the death of the
Emperor. It is a long rigmarole not worth quoting, except that he
condescends to allow the body to be interred with the honours due to a
general officer of the highest rank. Then follows the majestic reply
of Bathurst. He says, "I am happy to assure you that your conduct, as
detailed in those despatches, has received His Majesty's approbation";
which indicates that Lowe did not feel quite happy himself as to how
the effusions would be regarded by his employers, now that the Emperor
had succumbed to their and his own wicked treatment. In his despatches
of February and April, 1821, he had mockingly referred to Napoleon's
indisposition as being faked, and in May he is obliged to write
himself as an unscrupulous liar, but notwithstanding this, his action
meets with the approval of the chief of the executioners, which is
very natural, seeing that this person was regarded as one of the most
prominent scoundrels in Europe. But Sir Hudson Lowe craved for
approbation, and was so mentally constituted that he believed he
deserved it by committing offences against God and man.
"Every good servant does not all commands, no bond but to do just
ones," but Lowe, in his anxiety to please his employers, went to the
furthest limits of injustice. How void of human understanding and what
Mrs. Carlyle called "that damned thing, human kindness" this wretched
man was!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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