Recollections of Napoleon at St. Helena/Chapter 19

MY QUESTIONS TO THE EMPEROR RESPECTING THE ATROCITIES IMPUTED TO HIM AT JAFFA.—THE SONG UPON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN—NAPOLEON'S REMARKS UPON IT.—THE SCULPTOR.

The thoughtlessness of youth, or the consciousness of being a privileged person, prompted me more than once, whilst conversing with Napoleon, to touch upon tender, if not actually forbidden ground, and to question him about some of the many cruel acts assigned to him; entr' autres, the butchery of the Turkish prisoners at Jaffa, and the poisoning the sick in hospital at the same place, came one day on the tapis. I remember well his own explanation of ​the latter report, which though "an old tale and often told," may not prove the less interesting on that account, when recorded, as far as my memory serves me, in the emperor's own words.

"Before leaving Jaffa," said Napoleon, "and when many of the sick had been embarked, I was informed that there were some in hospital wounded beyond recovery, dangerously ill, and unfit to be moved at any risk. I desired my medical men to hold a consultation as to what steps had best be taken with regard to the unfortunate sufferers, and to send in their opinions to me. The result of this consultation was, that seven-eighths of the soldiers were considered past recovery, and that in all probability few would be alive at the expiration of twenty hours. Moreover, some were afflicted with the plague, and to carry those onward would threaten the whole army with infection, and spread death wherever they appeared, without ​ameliorating their own sufferings or increasing their chance of recovery, which, indeed, in such cases, was hopeless. On the other hand, to leave them behind was abandoning them to the cruelty of the Turks, who always made it a rule to murder their prisoners with protracted torture. In this emergency, I submitted to Desgenettes the propriety of ending the misery of these victims by a dose of opium. I would have desired such a relief for myself under the same circumstances. I considered it would be an act of mercy to anticipate their fate by only a few hours, ensuring them an end free from pain, and oblivions of the horrors which surrounded and threatened them, rather than a death of dreadful torture. My physician did not enter into my views of the case, and disapproved of the proposal, saying, that his profession was to cure, not to kill. Accordingly I left a rear-guard to protect these unhappy men from the advancing ​enemy, and they remained till nature had paid her last debt and released the expiring soldiers from their agony." Such is the true, and now almost universally acknowledged version of this atrocious story. "Not that I think it would have been a crime," Napoleon observed, "had opium been administered; on the contrary, I think it would have been a virtue. To leave a few miserables, who could not recover, in order that they might be massacred according to the custom of the Turks, with the most dreadful tortures, would I think have been cruelty; nor would any man under similar circumstances, who had the free use of his senses, have hesitated to prefer dying easily a few hours sooner, rather than expire under the tortures of those barbarians. I ask you, O'Meara, to place yourself in the situation of one of these men, and were it demanded of you which fate you would select, either to be left to suffer the tortures of those ​miscreants, or to have opium administered to you, which would you rather choose? If my own son, and I believe I love my son as well as any father does his child, were in a similar situation, I would advise it to be done; and if so situated myself, I would insist upon it, if I had sense enough and strength to demand it. Do you think if I had been capable of secretly poisoning my soldiers, or of such barbarities, (as have been ascribed to me,) of driving my carriage over the mutilated and bleeding bodies of the wounded, that my troops would have fought under me with the enthusiasm and affection they uniformly displayed? No, no; I should have been shot long ago; even my wounded would have tried to pull a trigger to despatch me."

It is be regretted that the conscience of Napoleon did not prompt him to feel or say with Richard III.,

​There are many reasons why the worst features of this report were at first readily believed. It was consistent with Napoleon's character to look at results rather than at the measures that were to produce them, and to consider in many cases the end as an excuse for the means; besides, not three months before, he had given the world a fearful example of how bloody a deed he was capable, when he considered it necessary to the furtherance of his own plans. The execution of the Turkish prisoners at Jaffa was equal in cruelty, though not in extent, to the fusillades of the revolution. Besides which, it was unjustifiable by the usages of war, the Turks having given up their arms and surrendered themselves prisoners of war on condition of safety of life at least. It is true that this dreadful deed will always remain a deep stain upon Napoleon's character, but it would be uncharitable to view it as the indulgence of an innate love of cruelty, for ​nothing in Bonaparte's history shews the existence of such a vice. It was one of the numerous and sad results of boundless ambition, united to unlimited power. In aiming at gigantic undertakings, he forgot to calculate the waste of human life which the execution of his projects necessarily involved.

There was a lady, the wife of an officer in the 66th regiment, a Mrs. Baird, who sang and played very well; among her favourite songs was a monody upon the Duke d'Enghien. I learned this, and sang it to Napoleon one day at Madame Bertrand's. He was pleased with the air, and asked me what it was. I shewed it to him: there was a vignette on the cover of the music, representing a man standing in a ditch, with a bandage round his eyes and a lantern tied to his waist; in front of him several soldiers, with their muskets levelled in the act of firing. He asked what it meant. I told him it was intended to ​represent the murder of the Duke d'Enghien. He looked at the print with great interest, and asked me what I knew about it. I told him he was considered the murderer of that illustrious prince. He said, in reply, it was true, he had ordered his execution, for he was a conspirator, and had landed troops in the pay of the Bourbons to assassinate him; and he thought from such a conspiracy, he could not act in a more politic manner than by causing one of their own princes to be put to death, in order the more effectually to deter them from attempting his life again; that the prisoner was tried for having borne arms against the republic, and was executed according to the existing laws; but not, as here represented, in a ditch, and at night. There was nothing secret in the transaction; all was public and open.

I told him I had heard that he wore armour under his dress, to render him invulnerable, as he was continually in dread ​of assassination, and that he never slept two nights together in the same bed-room. He told us all these things were fabrications; but that he ever adopted one rule—never to make public his intention whither he meant to go, five minutes before he actually took his departure, and he doubted not many conspirators were thus foiled, as they were ignorant where he was at any time to be found.

There was a sculptor named Caracchi, a Corsican, who had once made a statue of him, and who at one time had been strongly attached to Napoleon; but having become a fanatical republican, determined to kill him. For that purpose he went to Paris, and begged to be allowed to model another statue for him, saying, the first was not as well done as he could have desired. Napoleon, little thinking this man meant to assassinate him, only refused his consent because he did not like the trouble of sitting in the same posture ​for some days. This saved his life, as it was Caracchi's intention to have poniarded him whilst sitting.

Another time, a letter was sent to inform the emperor that a certain person was to leave at a stated time for Paris, where he would arrive on a day indicated in the letter, his intentions being to murder him. The police took measures, and watched him; he arrived on the day noted, and was seen to enter a chapel whither Napoleon had gone, in celebration of some festival. He was arrested, and expressed his intentions, and said, when the people knelt down on the elevation of the host, he observed the emperor gazing on a beautiful woman. At first, he intended to advance and fire; but, upon reflection, thought it would make it surer to stab him when coming out of chapel. "I forgave the wretch, for I never liked to execute, if I could save life, and merely ordered him to be put in confinement. After ​leaving France for Elba, I heard he had been ill treated by the other party at the head of affairs, and had escaped. On my return to Paris from Elba, retiring one night to my chamber, the same man somehow or other obtained entrance; by some accident he fell, and the fall caused something in his pocket, which was intended to despatch me, to explode, wounded him so severely instead, that he nearly died. I heard afterwards, that he had thrown himself into the Seine, and was drowned."