m 0- NAPOLEON IN HIS OWN DEFENCE BY THE SAME AUTHOR NAPOLEON AND HIS FELLOW TRAVELLERS CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITEU London, New YorJi, Toronto & Melbourne ^¥ NAPOLEON IN HIS OWN DEFENCE BEING A REPRINT OF CERTAIN LETTERS WRITTEN BY NAPOLEON FROM ST. HELENA TO LADY CLAVERING, AND A REPLY BY THEODORE HOOK WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED NOTES AND AN ESSAY ON NAPOLEON AS A MAN OF LETTERS BY CLEMENT SHORTER « \ WITH FIVE PLATES CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1910 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION ix I. NAPOLEON AS A MAN OF LETTERS. Suggested by THE Republication of his " Letters from the Cape." By the Editor xv II. LETTERS FROM THE CAPE. Attributed to O'Meara AND Las Cases, but Actually Written by Napoleon. With a Prefatory Note by the Editor .... 3 III. NAPOLEON IN ST. HELENA. Bv Theodore Hook, being a Reply to the " Letters from the Cape." With a Prefatory Note on Hook by the Editor . 163 APPENDIX. HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED LETTERS BY T. H. BROOKE, SECRETARY TO THE GOVERNOR OF ST. HELENA 261 INDEX 273 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Napoleon on the Northumberland . Frontispiece Napoleon Dictating His Memoirs to Las Cases facing page xl Prominent Men in "Napoleon in His Own Defence" „ 80 A Little-Known Napoleon Memorial . „ 176 Views of Longwood House .... „ 208 INTRODUCTION No one, it may be said, should venture without an apology to add yet another to the forty thousand or more books and pamphlets that treat of Napoleon. Possibly it may be thought an adequate excuse when I suggest that I am not here actually adding to that vast mass of Napoleonic literature. The two thin books, published in 1817 and 1819, that will be found reprinted within these covers, whatever success they may have had in their day, are quite out of print. Both are inaccessible to the majority of readers, and Theodore Hook's little volume is particularly so. As a collector of books upon what Lord Rosebery " has picturesquely called The Last Phase," I have found it impossible to obtain a copy of Hook's pamphlet. I am therefore grateful to my publisher in that he has permitted me to secure it for my own shelves in a very much better type than the rare original. Here, in any case, is a companion volume to one that I pub- " lished in 1908, under the title of Napoleon and His Fellow Travellers." It will be remembered that this included William Warden's account of his voyage with the fallen Emperor on the Northumberland. That book was read by Napoleon at St. Helena. To it " he made answer in the Letters from the Cape," a book that was much reviewed at the time under the assumption that it was written by Las Cases. It has since been revealed that Napoleon was the author, and this gives it a much wider interest, and raises the very interesting question of Napoleon fighting X INTRODUCTION with his pen when he could no longer fight with his sword. I am aware that many will ask the question that " was asked by the Times at the publication of Napoleon " " and his Fellow Travellers : Does the interest in Napoleon's career justify the reproduction of all this " literary lumber ? I was able to point out in a later issue of the Times* that the "lumber" in question had brought me many letters of thanks from very unexpected quarters, including an ex-Cabinet Minister on the Liberal side, and an ex-Viceroy of India on the Conservative side in politics. Our present-day politics, indeed, are so remote from Napoleon's epoch that it should be possible to discuss him with the same detach- ment that we bring to the career of Alexander or Caesar. But this seems an unattainable ideal. I heard two educated men summing up the character of " Napoleon the other day. One called him a cad," ** the other a scamp," just as if they were passing judgment upon some objectionable contemporary of their acquaintance. One of these men has been three times a candidate for Parliament on the Liberal side, the other is a bulwark of the Conservative party, and has written important books. My explana- tion is that neither of these gentlemen had really studied Napoleon's career in all its aspects, but had only read this or that biography of him, with a marked preference for the violently anti-Bonapartist books. On the other hand, I have found advanced Liberals, as well as strong Conservatives, who are enthusiasts for Napoleon. This is as it should be, for Con- servatives as well as Liberals of to-day may well separate themselves from the Tory and Whig poli- ticians of the early days of the nineteenth century. Granted that Napoleon was at heart a thorough despot, * The Times Literary Supplement, December 24, 1908. INTRODUCTION xi whose point of view would now be intolerable, we may still be content to survey the permanent work he did on behalf of liberal ideals, and to contrast him with the Alexanders and Ferdinands, the George the Fourths and Louis the Eighteenths who afflicted the European peoples after his destruction. But the purpose of a preface should be to conciliate rather than to antagonise. Let me therefore express a hope that these two little-known documents may prove of interest to those same kind enthusiasts who welcomed "Napoleon and his Fellow Travellers." To some few people I trust that this book will justify itself if only by virtue of the Appendix of certain hitherto unpublished letters from St. Helena written by Secretary Brooke. I have to thank Dr. Holland Rose for many courtesies and Mr. A. M. Broadley for the loan of a copy of Theodore Hook's rare pamphlet. I NAPOLEON AS A MAN OF LETTERS NAPOLEON AS A MAN OF LETTERS All the world thinks of Napoleon as a great soldier and a great administrator—Mr. Gladstone declared him to be the greatest man in both departments of life that the world has ever seen—but few there be who think of him as a distinguished man of letters. Yet here before me are some half-dozen editions of " " Napoleon's Works," or fragments of such Works," and they make indeed a formidable array of volumes.* " " The thirty-eight volumes of Commentaires and " " Correspondance are truly a noble set of folios. Probably no author of the past two hundred years has * The following, among other books, have been consulted for the purposes of this essay : — " Memoires pour servir a I'histoire de France sous Napoleon, ecrits k Sainte-Heldne, par les g^neraux qui ont partage sa captivite et publics sur les manuscrits entidrements corriges de la main de Napol6on, 1823-25." " CEuvres choisies de Napol6on Bonaparte revue et augment6es, par M. B. ., General de division de I'ex-vieille garde." Six volumes. Philippe: Paris, 1829. " CEuvres litteraires et politiques de Napol6on." Paris : H. L. Delloye, 1840. " Commentaires de Napoleon Premier." Six volumes. Paris : Im- primerie Imp6riale, 1867, " Correspondance de Napoleon Premier." Thirty-two volumes. Paris: Imprimerie Imp6riale, 1869. " Napoleon Bonapaxte : CEuvres litt6raires, publi6es d'apr^ les originaux et les meilleurs textes, avec une introduction, des notes historiques et litteraires et un index," par Tancrdde Martel. Four volumes. Savini: Paris, 1888. " Memoires et CEuvres de Napoleon," par Tancrdde Martel. Albin Michel: Paris, 1910. xvi NAPOLEON IN HIS OWN DEFENCE been quite so well treated, for this was the monument erected by Napoleon III. to the memory of his great uncle, and it is scarcely less splendid than the marble one that the last of the Bourbon kings erected in the Hotel des Invalides to the great dead enemy of his race. Yet although these thirty-eight volumes provide an abundance of good reading, and are essential to a complete understanding of the Napoleonic story, they form only a fragment of the literary achievement of the Emperor. Many letters are not there, and volume after volume has been published* that supplements the official collection. No one has, however, published the drama "The Count of Essex" —Mr. Sloane calls it a novel—^with which the young Bonaparte, whose mind was then bent entirely upon a literary career, opened his first campaign. Dramas, tragedies, essays, fill up the leisure of these early years. At the age of 21 he had " written a History of Corsica," which he dedicated to Paoli, and of which we are told that he sent the manu- script to the Corsican patriot for his approval. Paoli, it is said, retained the manuscript but failed to acknowledge it, and finally, when worried about the neglected treasure, wrote that the consciousness of having done his duty " sufficed for in his old for the rest him age ; and history should not be written in youth." As against this story, " we have it recorded of Paoli that he said, This young man is formed on the ancient model. He is one of " Plutarch's men." Only a few fragments of the History of Corsica" survive,! but an enemy of Bonapartism ** has described them as un des plus beaux monuments de notre langue, 1' expression d'une ame deja effrenee, * " " " Letters to Joseph," Letters to Josephine," New Letters," etc. t M. Libri, in his "Souvenirs de la Jeunesse de Bonaparte," tells us that the manuscript of this history is still in existence, and forms part of the collection of papers which were confided by the Emperor to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch. NAPOLEON AS A MAN OF LETTERS xvii mais encore pure."* At the Academy of Lyons, in 1791, Napoleon competed for a prize on the question, " What are the Truths and FeeUngs most essential to impress upon Mankind for their happiness ?"f According to Las Cases, after he became Emperor, Napoleon was one day conversing with Talleyrand upon the subject of that essay, and shortly afterwards the latter presented him with his own manuscript, which he had procured from the archives of the Academy at Lyons.