ON 22 June, aboard his flagship Chatham in Cawsand Bay, west of Plymouth, the seventy-year-old commander of the Channel fleet, Admiral Lord Keith, ordered a salute to be fired ‘in honour of the late glorious victory’.1 Two days later, anxiety concerning the well-being of his nephews was allayed by news that, although injured in the battle, they were both out of danger. One of them, Captain James Drummond Elphinstone of the 7th Light Dragoons, had been wounded in two places and taken prisoner by the French on 17 June. Confined overnight at Genappe and throughout the following day, he had been left behind in the chaotic retreat, his guard saluting him as he left with Mon Capitaine, je vous souhaite bonsoir – I wish you good night.2 When first captured, he had been brought before the Emperor for questioning and treated with great kindness. Napoleon even had occasion to reprimand the Comte de Flahault for discourtesy when his aide-de-camp expressed doubts about Captain Elphinstone’s story. Admiral Keith would soon have the opportunity to convey his personal thanks to Napoleon for the consideration shown his kinsman.
In the late afternoon of 26 June, the Chatham received a message by telegraph: ‘Buonaparte abdicated.’ During the following day, Keith waited impatiently for further information and for orders from London. ‘I suppose I shall be off very soon,’ he wrote to Lady Keith, ‘and all us sea-folks.’ But no post came on the 27th and the weather was ‘too thick for telegraph’.3 Then a ‘Private and Secret’ letter arrived from Robert Saunders Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, writing from his home in Wimbledon. Intelligence had reached the government from various sources that, ‘in the event of adverse fortune, it was the intention of Bonaparte to escape to America’. Melville thought it probable that this attempt was to be made soon, and if by a small vessel from one of the obscurer western ports, it would be scarcely possible to prevent. However, if Bonaparte waited until a sloop or frigate had been fitted out for him, the Royal Navy might ‘perhaps receive information of such preparation, and may thereby be enabled to watch and intercept her’. Keith had his orders: ‘it is desirable that you should take every precaution in your power with a view to [Bonaparte’s] seizure and detention, should he endeavour to quit France by sea’.4
On the night of 30 June, the British government received ‘an application from the rulers of France, for a passport and safe conduct for Buonaparte to America’. The next day, this application ‘was answered in the negative’.5
During the following week, Admiral Keith offered naval support to the forces fighting for Louis XVIII’s restoration. He sent transports to royalist rebel strongholds in the west of France, landing weapons and clothing at strategic ports down the coast, from Quiberon Bay in Brittany to as far south as the Gironde estuary. The insurgency in Quiberon continued to ‘go well’, that in Morbihan ‘famous’, but in La Vendée, ‘things is not so well’, despite 6,000 pairs of shoes Keith had sent there on 28 June. At the same time, he was ‘seeking for Bonny on the sea’, he told his wife, using, as was his habit, this spelling instead of the more common ‘Boney’. In Plymouth, the same rumours were reaching him as reached other newspaper readers across the country. ‘It is now said that little Nap is assassinated at Paris,’ he wrote to Lady Keith on 29 June, the day Napoleon left Malmaison for the coast. Two days later, ‘it is said Bonny is in London’. Within a week, Napoleon was said to be even closer at hand: ‘at Windsor’s Hotel, to which place all Plymouth and Dock repaired’.6 At the time he remarked upon this absurd rumour, Keith was clearly unaware that Napoleon had been in Rochefort for three days. Intelligence reaching him in Plymouth concerning developments on the western coast of France continued to be as much as a week out of date throughout this crisis.
On 2 July, Keith apprised Rear Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, commanding the squadron cruising off the Breton ports of Brest and Lorient, of Bonaparte’s supposed intentions, ‘furnishing them with instructions as to the measures to be taken to intercept him’.7 The Glasgow, Prometheus, Esk and Ferrol were to patrol westward of the Channel island of Ushant; Swiftsure to cruise off Cape Finisterre; Vengeur to patrol ‘in the track of the Channel’.
*
A month earlier, on 31 May, another vessel of Hotham’s squadron had arrived in the Basque Roads: the seventy-four-gun man-of-war HMS Bellerophon. Beyond the channel separating the Ile de Ré from the Ile d’Oleron – the middle and widest of three approaches to Rochefort – the English lookouts could see, lying between them and the entrance to the port, the small, heavily fortified Ile d’Aix and, anchored close under its southernmost point, a French sloop, a brig and two large frigates, the Méduse and the Saale. For the following two months, the Bellerophon’s crew, and Captain Maitland her commander, would be engaged in the soul-destroying monotony of blockade duty – ensuring that no French ship entered or left port and never, by day or night, being more than three miles from the land. Despite this proximity to France, news of the great events affecting that nation and their own came to them surprisingly late. Not until 28 June – by which date much of Britain was illuminated in celebration – did they learn of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo and the devastating defeat of Napoleon.
Afterwards news arrived with greater frequency but was not always to be relied upon. On 30 June, Maitland received an anonymous note from Bordeaux – written on very thin paper and rolled into the quill of a goose feather – that Napoleon had just passed through that city and was expected to be embarking from the mouth of the Gironde, or from La Teste to the south. Meanwhile, Rear Admiral Hotham was anticipating a possible embarkation much further north: from the mouth of the Loire, at Nantes. ‘It is impossible to tell which information respecting Buonaparte’s flight may be correct,’ he told Maitland, ‘but in the uncertainty, it is right to attach a certain degree of credit to all.’ But on 7 July, the Slaney brought Maitland the latest intelligence: that Napoleon was making for Rochefort. The following day, another dispatch from Hotham expressed concern, assuming the frigates off the Ile d’Aix were to be used in the escape attempt, that Maitland would have sufficient force to stop them, ‘as Bellerophon could only take one, if they separated, and that might not be the one [Bonaparte] would be on board of’. But Maitland had retained the Slaney, a twenty-gun sloop, under his command and recalled another, the Myrmidon, of equal strength, from patrolling off Bordeaux. These three ships – together with the Daphne, patrolling twenty-five miles to the south, and later the Cyrus – would be capable of containing the Méduse and the Saale in the Basque Roads. ‘I depend on your using the best means that can be adopted’, Hotham told the Bellerophon’s captain, ‘to intercept the fugitive on whose captivity the repose of Europe appears to depend.’
*
Napoleon had arrived in Rochefort – installing himself and his fifty-strong entourage at the residence of the maritime prefect, Casimir de Bonnefoux – on the morning of 3 July. It was the same day, Montholon pointed out, ‘that Paris, for the second time, opened its gates to the enemy’.8 For the next five days they waited, making no move to board the frigates lying off the Ile d’Aix ready to receive them. The time was spent investigating alternative means of escape. They had been informed by the prefect while still on the road to Rochefort that the port was blockaded by English ships, albeit lightly at first, but with increasing strength.
General Lallemand, who had joined the company from Paris a day or so earlier, was sent south to inspect the corvette Bayadère, anchored in the Gironde, and returned with an assurance that its master, Captain Baudin, ‘was devoted to his Majesty [and] would receive him with the highest distinction’.9
Another plan was for Napoleon to leave on board a ninety-ton Danish brig, the Magdeleine, whose captain, one Frühl d’Oppendorff, happened to be the father-in-law of a French naval officer at Rochefort, Lieutenant Besson. Las Cases drafted a complicated legal agreement between himself and Besson, comprising eight separate articles and involving 25,000 francs, a cargo of brandy and unnamed ‘passengers’.10 Not mentioned in the agreement was the concealment of Napoleon – should the ship be boarded and searched by an English patrol – inside a barrel stowed among the ballast in the hold ‘with tubes so constructed as to convey air for his breathing’.11
A third option was that he and his people would take to the sea aboard two chasse-marées. Small, decked vessels rigged like an English lugger, and between twenty and thirty-five tons, they were primarily used in the coastal trade, the name itself deriving from the French term for wholesale fishmonger. A footnote in Maitland’s memoir made clear the ‘utter impracticability’ of this plan: ‘[taking] into consideration the indolent habits that Buonaparte had of late years given way to; the very small space for the accommodation of himself and suite, and of the stowage of provisions, water, and other necessaries; that there was no friendly port he could have touched at, to gain supplies …’
Still with no decision made, Napoleon left the mainland of France at ten past five in the afternoon of 8 July, and went on board the Saale. No salute was fired to mark the occasion in case it attracted the premature attention of the Bellerophon. Apart from a brief visit the following morning to inspect the fortifications of the Ile d’Aix and receive its inhabitants’ acclamations, Napoleon would remain on the Saale for the next four days while negotiations were opened on his behalf with the commander of the British vessel.
*
At dawn on 10 July, a small schooner flying a flag of truce approached the English ship. On board were Savary and Las Cases bearing a letter from Marshal Bertrand:
[The Emperor] expects a passport from the British Government, which has been promised to him, and which induces [him] to demand of you, Sir, if you have any knowledge of the above-mentioned passport, or if you think it is the intention of the British Government to throw any impediment in the way of our voyage to the United States.
Maitland would make no mention, either in his written reply or verbally to the emissaries, that to his certain knowledge, the British government had already declined the issue of passports. The captain first asked if either of his visitors understood English, and when Savary alone answered in the negative, their conversation was conducted in French. Las Cases, however, had spent some time in England and was acquainted with the language but did not admit to it, hoping to gain information from any unguarded asides Maitland might direct to his officers.
Savary and Las Cases had been instructed to make informal enquiries of their host whether – if permission were to be refused for the frigates to leave port under a French flag – Maitland intended preventing Napoleon from proceeding on his way in some neutral vessel.
Maitland replied that he could not say what his government’s intentions might be. However, ‘the two countries being at present in a state of war, it is impossible for me to permit any ship of war to put to sea from the port of Rochefort’. As for the proposal put to him of allowing the Emperor to travel in a neutral merchant ship, he did not have the authority ‘to allow any vessel, under whatever flag she may be, to pass with a personage of such consequence’.12
During the two or three hours they spent on board his ship, Maitland’s visitors tried to convince him that it would be in the interest of peace to allow Napoleon’s passage to America. He was, they said, in wishing to leave Europe, ‘actuated solely by motives of humanity; being unwilling … that any further effusion of blood should take place on his account’. They pointed out also that he still commanded considerable support in the centre and south of France, and that ‘if he chose to protract the war, he might still give a great deal of trouble’.
At one stage of the conversation, Maitland asked: ‘Supposing the British Government should be induced to grant a passport for Buonaparte’s going to America, what pledge could he give that he would not return, and put England, as well as all Europe, to the same expense of blood and treasure that has just been incurred!’
‘The influence he once had over the French people is past’, Savary replied, ‘and he could never regain the power he had over their minds. Therefore, he would prefer retiring into obscurity, where he might end his days in peace and tranquillity …’
It was then that Captain Maitland made a suggestion – whether casual or considered – which, in the light of future developments and decisions, was to give Napoleon grounds for accusing the English of bad faith: ‘If that is the case why not ask for an asylum in England!’
Savary gave a number of reasons why not: ‘The climate is too damp and cold; it is too near France; he would be … in the centre of every change and revolution that might take place there, and … be subject to suspicion … [and] the English [would] look upon him as a monster, without one of the virtues of a human being.’
Maitland thought the two Frenchmen were trying to give him the impression ‘of Buonaparte’s situation being by no means so desperate as might be supposed’. It was clear, however, that on their return to the Saale with news of the intractability of the English blockade, increasingly desperate measures were contemplated.
At about noon on 11 July, Maitland received reliable information that a message had been sent from the Ile d’Aix offering a large sum of money to a local pilot – the only man, it was said, who had ever succeeded in navigating a frigate through the treacherous Mamusson Passage, southernmost and narrowest out of Rochefort – to take d’Oppendorff’s Danish brig to sea by the same route. Maitland took the precaution of reinforcing the Daphne’s patrol of that stretch of water with the Myrmidon. The following day he was able to telegraph to another sloop, the Cyrus, sighted in the offing, ordering her to take position close in with the Baleine lighthouse and thereby cover the Breton Channel, the northernmost passage from the port. The blockade of all three ways out of Rochefort was thus secured for the time being.
Escape on board the Danish brig having been abandoned, an even more drastic strategy was proposed by the Méduse’s Captain Ponét. It amounted to a suicide mission. Under cover of darkness, he would surprise the English man-of-war at anchor, engage in close combat his sixty guns against the Bellerophon’s seventy-four, and ‘lash his vessel to her sides, so as to neutralise her efforts and impede her sailing’. During this fight, in which the outgunned Méduse ‘would necessarily be destroyed’, the Saale could take advantage of the breeze that invariably blew from the land each evening, slipping past the smaller English ships and so gaining the open sea. The heroic plan was declined, both by Captain Philibert of the Saale and by Napoleon himself, unwilling, it was said, ‘to sacrifice a ship and her crew to his personal safety’.13 Deprived of her bid for glory, the Méduse would leave Rochefort in June of the following year and sail into infamy. Commanded by an inexperienced captain, she ran aground off the coast of West Africa and 147 passengers were cast adrift on a hastily constructed raft, all but fifteen succumbing to violence, heat, thirst and madness, the survivors feeding on the raw flesh of the dead.
*
Over the following two days, awaiting further developments, Maitland watched the apparent fluctuations of royalist and Bonapartist fortunes in the port of La Rochelle to the north. On 12 July, for the first time, the white Bourbon standard was hoisted and Maitland felt it his duty to reciprocate, flying the French King’s flag from the main topgallant masthead, and ordering a royal salute to be fired. As though in defiance, two tricolours continued to fly over La Rochelle throughout the afternoon and by sunset all the white flags had been struck and replaced by those of the revolution. The following day ‘nothing of importance occurred, except the white flag being once more hoisted all over [La] Rochelle … to the entire exclusion of the tri-coloured ensign’. But as Maitland turned his spyglass on the Saale and Mèduse from a distance of about three miles, he could tell, by the activity of boats passing between them and the Ile d’Aix; by the arrangement of their yards and reeving of their studding sail gear; and by ‘having their sterns covered with vegetables’, that they were preparing to put to sea. He immediately signalled to the vessels under his command that ‘everything [be] kept ready to make sail at a moment’s warning’. All that night the Bellerophon’s guard boats rowed as close to the two frigates as possible, ready to signal any indication that they were getting under way.
Then, at dawn, the officer of the watch indicated that the same schooner as before was approaching, once again under a flag of truce. Las Cases and, this time, General Lallemand came aboard. As they approached, Maitland had signalled the Slaney’s commander to join him as a witness to the talks, and Captain Sartorius arrived while they were at breakfast. Later, in the after-cabin, Las Cases opened the second round of negotiations:
‘The Emperor is so anxious to spare further effusion of human blood that he will proceed to America in any way the British Government chooses to sanction, either in a French ship of war … a merchant vessel, or even in a British ship of war.’
Maitland replied that he still had no authority to agree to any such arrangement; nor did he believe that his government would consent to it.
Then …
‘But I think I may venture to receive him into this ship, and convey him to England. If, however, he adopts that plan, I cannot enter into any promise as to the reception he may meet with, as, even in the case I have mentioned, I shall be acting on my own responsibility, and cannot be sure that it would meet with the approbation of the British Government.’14
According to Las Cases, Maitland ‘declared it as his private opinion, and several [officers] who were present expressed themselves to the same effect, that there was not the least doubt of Napoleon’s meeting with all possible respect and good treatment’. The emissaries were assured that England was not ruled by despots and that this was reflected in the temper of its citizens: ‘that there, neither the king nor his ministers exercised the same arbitrary authority as those of the Continent: that the English people possessed a generosity of sentiment and liberality of opinion, superior to sovereignty itself’. In retrospect, and even in light of what Napoleon and his followers would subsequently regard as the British government’s betrayal of trust and confidence, Las Cases maintained that Maitland and his colleagues behaved honourably: ‘I will do him, as well as the other officers, the justice to believe, they were honest and sincere in the description they gave us of the sentiments of the people of England.’ When General Lallemand, a man ‘implicated in the civil dissensions of his country’,15 enquired whether he had any reason to fear being delivered up by England to the vengeance of France, ‘Certainly not!’ Maitland replied, considering such suspicion an insult.16
Before leaving, Las Cases remarked to Maitland: ‘Under all circumstances, I have little doubt that you will see the Emperor on board the Bellerophon.’
About seven o’clock that evening he returned, accompanied by General Gourgaud. Maitland had again ensured that he had witnesses to the meeting and Captain Sartorius was in attendance, together with the Myrmidon’s Captain Gambier. Las Cases handed Maitland a letter from Marshal Bertrand, informing him of His Majesty’s intention to ‘proceed on board your ship with the ebb tide to-morrow morning, between four and five o’clock’. It was accompanied by a list of the fifty individuals – generals, officers, women, children and domestics – who would be travelling with the Emperor. Finally, General Gourgaud declared that he was the bearer of a letter from the Emperor himself, which he had been charged to deliver personally into the hands of the Prince Regent:
Your Royal Highness,
A Victim to the factions which distract my country, and to the enmity of the greatest powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of their laws; which I claim from your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies.
It was signed, as befitted a communication between monarchs, with the forename only: ‘Napoleon’. A copy was given to Maitland to read, ‘which he greatly admired’, and the captains of the Slaney and the Myrmidon were allowed to make copies for themselves, to keep as souvenirs of the event.17 Maitland was convinced that Napoleon had decided on his course of action even before that morning’s negotiation, because the letter was dated 13 July, the previous day.
Gourgaud carried an additional document: a memorandum from the Emperor with which, in the event of the general being granted an audience with the Prince Regent, he was to outline the stipulations and conditions of his master’s surrender:
If HRH sees no objection to granting me passports to go to the United States, it would be my intention to go there. But I do not desire to go to any other colony. If I cannot go to America, I wish to stay in England, assuming the name of Muiron or Duroc. In England, I would like to live in a country house about ten to twelve leagues from London, after arriving strictly incognito. I would need a house large enough for my staff. I ask to keep away from London where I do not think the Government would like me to live. If the Government intends to provide me with a superintendent, he must not be a jailor but a man of quality and honour.18
Maitland gave orders for the Slaney to be immediately readied to take Gourgaud to England. It was explained, however, ‘that he would not be allowed to land until permission was received from London, or the sanction of the Admiral at the port he might arrive at obtained’. Meanwhile, the copy of the Emperor’s letter would be forwarded ‘without loss of time’ to His Royal Highness.
The Slaney sailed within the hour – Captain Sartorius waiting only for Maitland’s dispatch to Sir John Barrow, the Second Secretary of the Admiralty, informing him of the momentous developments. Las Cases stayed on board the Bellerophon, offering advice as to the Emperor’s accommodation. He was, as a matter of course, to be assigned the captain’s spacious after-cabin. Maitland suggested that, as the entourage included Mme Montholon and Mme Bertrand, the cabin be divided in two and the ladies given half. ‘If you allow me to give an opinion,’ Las Cases replied, ‘the Emperor will be better pleased to have the whole of the after-cabin to himself, as he is fond of walking about, and will by that means be able to take more exercise.’ As thirty-three of the fifty passengers were to be accommodated on the Bellerophon – the remainder going aboard the Myrmidon – Maitland would be occupied until past one o’clock in the morning making the necessary arrangements.
At about ten o’clock that night, however, he was called on deck by the officer of the watch to receive information that threatened to render his preparations superfluous. A boat had come alongside bearing news that two chasse-marées had been sighted off La Rochelle some twelve hours earlier, and in one of them Maitland’s informant had seen ‘a man wrapt up in a sailor’s great coat’, who was pointed out to him as being Bonaparte himself. Both vessels were at that moment moored off a point of land on the north side of the Breton Channel, apparently intent on putting to sea. If this proved true, and his quarry were to escape, Maitland would be humiliated in the eyes of the naval community. The Slaney was out of sight and beyond recall, carrying a dispatch containing his confident promise to Sir John Barrow that Bonaparte ‘is to embark on board this ship to-morrow’.
Maitland went below and confronted Las Cases, who assured him that his information must be false, as he had last seen the Emperor at four o’clock that afternoon on the Ile d’Aix, where in fact he had been since 12 July. Reassured, Maitland took no further action, despite receiving similar information of an escape attempt from another source in the early hours of the morning. He was later informed that the two chasse-marées had indeed been moored on the Breton Channel, ‘prepared, manned, and officered … to be used as a last resource to attempt an escape in, in the event of Las Cases’ mission to the Bellerophon not being successful’.
*
The man who stepped on to the deck of the Bellerophon at six o’clock the following morning wore ‘an olive-coloured great coat over a green uniform with scarlet cape and cuffs, green lapels turned back and edged with scarlet, skirts hooked back with bugle horns embroidered in gold, plain with sugar-loaf buttons and gold epaulettes’. It was a colonel’s uniform of a chasseur à cheval in the Imperial Guard. ‘He wore the star, or grand cross of the Legion of Honour, and the small cross of that order; the Iron Crown; and the Union, appended to the button hole of his left lapel.’ His outfit was completed by ‘a small cocked hat, with a tri-coloured cockade; plain gold-hilted sword, military boots, and white waistcoat and breeches’.19
Captain Maitland had been given no instructions as to the manner in which Napoleon was to be received. The ship’s guard of marines was drawn out on the poop but did not present arms. No salute was fired, nor did the crew man the yards, as would be expected when welcoming a person of high rank. Because it was not the custom on board a British man-of-war to pay these honours before the colours had been hoisted at eight o’clock in the morning, Maitland was relieved of any awkwardness regarding protocol. The earliness of the hour was sufficient excuse for withholding them.
But Napoleon gave no sign of offence, and appeared delighted by everything that was shown him. ‘Une belle chambre,’ he said, when shown to his cabin. Seeing the portrait of his wife that Maitland had left hanging on the wall, he asked: ‘Qui est cette jeune personne?’ Then, ‘Ah! elle est très jeune et très jolie.’ It was clear to his host that Napoleon was intent on ‘making a favourable impression on those with whom he conversed, by seizing every opportunity of saying what he considered would be pleasing and flattering to their feelings’. When Sir Walter Scott read the manuscript of Maitland’s memoir prior to publication in 1826, he thought that ‘the praise would have been bestowed even had the portrait less charm’. Nevertheless, he argued for the inclusion of the comments, however embarrassing to Mrs Maitland, on the grounds that ‘everything connected with such a remarkable passage of history becomes historical’.
During breakfast, Napoleon plied Maitland with questions about the English and their customs. ‘I must now learn to conform myself to them,’ he said, ‘as I shall probably pass the remainder of my life in England.’ Maitland noticed that he ate little of the traditional English fare of coffee, tea and cold meat; learning that he was accustomed to a hot breakfast, the captain ordered his steward to allow the Emperor’s maître d’hotel to give instructions, ‘that he might invariably be served in the manner he had been used to’. Thereafter, they ‘lived in the French fashion’.
HMS Superb, the flagship of Rear Admiral Hotham, arrived and dropped anchor close to the Bellerophon at about half past ten that same morning. Later in the day, Hotham, his secretary and the Superb’s captain came aboard to pay their respects and were received in the after-cabin, which Napoleon had made his own, surrounded by the small travelling cases of his portable library. The rear admiral and his party were invited to stay for dinner, which was served on Napoleon’s plate and arranged by his maître d’hotel, Bonaparte having led the way into the dining room as befitted his royal status. Afterwards he invited the entire company to the after-cabin, where he took great pleasure in showing them his cunningly designed campaign bed, of which he was evidently proud. Before assembly it consisted of two small packages in leather cases. One measuring two feet long and eighteen inches in circumference contained a folded steel bedstead. The other case contained a mattress and green silk curtains. In just three minutes, Napoleon’s valet erected the whole into ‘a very elegant small bed, about thirty inches wide’.
The following morning, 16 July, while the crew of the Bellerophon made the necessary preparations for departure on the afternoon tide, Napoleon and his entourage were invited on board the Superb for breakfast. Maitland observed that her yards had been strung with ‘man ropes’, and that the tampions stoppering her guns had been removed, suggesting that Hotham intended honouring his visitor with manned yards and a salute. Worried again by the niceties of protocol, he sent an officer to enquire of the admiral whether this was so; if it were, was he to man the Bellerophon’s yards and fire a salute when Napoleon set out? Hotham answered ‘that it was not his intention to salute, but he meant to man ship; that [Maitland] was not to do so on [Napoleon’s] quitting the Bellerophon, but was at liberty to man yards on his return’.
Napoleon ate little of Hotham’s breakfast, ‘served in the English manner’, but he was talkative and in good spirits. Throughout the meal, Maitland noticed that a young French officer, Lieutenant Colonel Planat, ‘had tears running down his cheeks, and seemed greatly distressed at the situation of his master’. After breakfast, in the after-cabin, Napoleon raised the subject of the horses and carriages left behind at Rochefort that he wished to take with him. Maitland had been prepared to take two carriages on board the Bellerophon, and as many horses as she could conveniently stow. But time was pressing if she was to sail that day. So Admiral Hotham made out a passport allowing a French vessel to transport all six carriages and forty-five horses to England, which he forwarded to Captain Philibert of the Saale. It was the only English passport issued on Napoleon’s behalf. To Maitland’s knowledge, ‘it was never acted upon’.
Hotham had given Maitland his orders. He was to put to sea in the Bellerophon, accompanied by the Myrmidon, ‘and make the best of [his] way with Napoleon Buonaparte and his suite’ to Torbay. On arrival, dispatches were to be sent to Sir John Barrow in London, and to Admiral Lord Keith at Plymouth. Maitland was then to ‘await orders from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, or his Lordship, for [his] further proceedings’.
As they got under way, the schooner that had taken Las Cases and his fellow negotiators to and from the Bellerophon during the previous week came alongside for the last time to deliver ‘three or four sheep, a quantity of vegetables and other refreshments’, a gift to the Emperor from the French commodore at Rochefort.
*
On the morning of 24 July, the Bellerophon and the Myrmidon dropped anchor in Brixham harbour, at the southern end of Tor Bay, Devon. The Slaney had arrived the day before, with General Gourgaud on board, and anchored outside the harbour, off Berry Head, flying a quarantine flag to deter the curious. Three boys, John Smart and the brothers Charlie and Dick Pudicombe, watched from the quay as officers bearing dispatch wallets were rowed ashore and post-chaises hired from the London Inn. Like many English schoolboys during the summer of 1815, they were enjoying an extra week’s holiday in celebration of the recent victory over the French. That morning, they joined the local baker when he rowed out to the ships with a sack of loaves ‘as a speculation and as a suggestion for further orders’. As they approached the man-of-war, they could see that other shore vessels were involved in an altercation with someone on board.
‘They won’t let us come alongside,’ one disappointed tradesman told the baker, ‘and they say as how they don’t want no shore boats at all.’
‘But they’ll want some shore bread, I reckon,’ said the baker and continued rowing. A swell of the tide carried their boat towards the vessel’s stern. Above them they could see an armed sentry and an officer leaning over the rail.
‘Come, sheer off; no boats are allowed here,’ the officer roared.
‘But I’ve brought you some bread,’ shouted the baker and caught hold of the sill of the lower gun port with his boat hook.
‘If we want bread we’ll come ashore and fetch it,’ said the officer, ‘and if you don’t let go I’ll sink you.’
The sentry put down his musket, left the rail and returned holding a large cannon round shot, which he held out directly over the baker and his crew. It was heavy enough, if dropped, to hole the bottom of their boat.
‘Let go, you old fool, or by the Lord I’ll sink you!’
The baker rowed back to a safer distance. One of the warship’s longboats approached them, containing a dozen men armed with cutlassses and commanded by an officer:
‘Now, my man, you had better not get yourself into trouble; we have orders to keep off all shore boats, so you know it’s no use trying.’
A tradesman’s boat returned from the sloop after encountering the same embargo. The baker was indignant: ‘Man and boy have I sailed on these waters, and never have I been so treated.’
The other shore boats were returning to the quay, but the baker and his young crew lingered. As the tidal current carried them along the side of the ship, John Smart noticed a sailor standing in one of the lower gun ports. He seemed to be trying to attract their attention and at the same time wishing to stay out of sight. He placed a finger to his lips. The baker rowed around the ship at a proper distance and was troubled no further by the boat patrol. As they completed the circuit and drifted with the tide along the line of gun ports, the sailor was still there, standing further back in the shadows and scarcely visible, but with his hand resting on the port sill. Smart saw a small black object drop from the man’s fingers into the water and float away. The baker bent his strokes towards it and Smart, sitting in the bow and trailing his hand in the water, was able to scoop it up as it drifted by. It was a ‘foreign-looking’ bottle. At a distance from the ship and masked from the sentries’ view by the broad back of the baker, the schoolboy drew out the cork. It was slightly oily and perfumed as though the bottle had once contained spirits. Smart unrolled the scrap of paper that he found inside. The anonymous crewman of the Bellerophon gained no advantage from his covert communication, only the relief of at last imparting information he must have been bursting to tell – to someone, to anyone – beyond the wooden confines of the ship.
‘We have got Bonaparte on board.’
Within a short time of the baker’s boat returning to shore, ‘there was not a soul in Brixham, except babies, ignorant of the news’. By noon the quayside was swarming with people; those possessed of boats putting out laden with sightseers; the ship surrounded by small craft, kept at a distance by the armed patrols. There were cries of ‘Bonaparte! Bonaparte!’ from the floating crowd of several thousand, and occasional sightings of his face in the stern windows of the ship. Then, about three o’clock in the afternoon, Napoleon came on deck. John Smart thought ‘how little he looked, and that he was rather fat’. He took off his hat and bowed to the crowd, as he had to the Paris mob when showing himself from the balcony of the Élysée Palace. The English crowd cheered him loudly and Smart recalled ‘a feeling of triumph, mixed with a natural satisfaction at seeing a wonderful sight’. John Bowerbank, a naval lieutenant on the Bellerophon, was a witness to this extraordinary reception of a man who had been their enemy for twelve years of war, and was ‘surprised at not hearing a disrespectful or abusive word escape from anyone’. Napoleon himself seemed nonplussed. ‘How very curious these English are!’ he remarked.
Hero or monster, adored or execrated, friend or enemy – it did not matter. The most famous man in the world, foremost of the age, greatest in all of history perhaps, had come to Brixham. And word spread. The following day, an extensive flotilla of boats surrounded the Bellerophon as the curious came from Torquay, Dartmouth, Exmouth, Teignmouth, Exeter and Plymouth. General Montholon enjoyed ‘the immense and endless spectacle of beautiful and elegant women, who saluted us with their pocket-handkerchiefs and shawls, which they transformed into flags as evidences of their sympathy’. He even hoped that such acclamation was a sign ‘that the national feeling would open the gates of England for our reception, or at least force the ministers to allow us to proceed to America’.20
Brixham’s business thrived. Boatmen took more from passengers in two days than they usually did in a month. All the inns were full, and stabling for horses at a premium. When Napoleon was not on deck, the ship’s crew kept the crowd informed of his activities with chalked bulletins on a board hung over the side. One of them read: ‘He’s gone to breakfast.’
Captain Maitland was importuned by members of the nobility and local worthies for more exclusive access. A lady sent a note, accompanied by a basket of fruit, requesting a boat be sent for her the following morning. Maitland replied that his orders would not permit him to comply with her request and ‘no more fruit was sent from that quarter’. Lord Charles Bentinck and Lord Gwydir also asked to be allowed on board, ‘but with no better success’.21 Even Lady Keith had to be dissuaded by her husband from travelling from Exeter ‘upon the chance of the influence of the name to get on board’.22
*
Lord Melville was disturbed by what he read in Hotham’s and Maitland’s dispatches: that HMS Superb, a flagship of the Royal Navy, had honoured Bonaparte by welcoming him on board with manned yards; that he ‘insists upon being treated with royal respect’; that he had invited Captain Maitland and his officers to their own table to dine with him; that ‘he had been allowed to assume a great deal more state, and even authority, and had been treated with more submissiveness, than belongs to his situation as a prisoner of war, or to his rank as a General Officer, which is all that can be allowed to him in this country’.23 He was to be addressed in future as ‘General Bonaparte’. Privately, Napoleon would take particular exception to this, arguing that although the British government had never acknowledged him as Emperor of France, they should at least do so as First Consul. ‘They have sent Ambassadors to me as such,’ he told Maitland.24 Lord Melville would nevertheless express satisfaction that he ‘submits quietly to be unemperored’.25
*
On the day that Bellerophon dropped anchor in Brixham harbour, the South Atlantic island of St Helena was first mentioned in the London papers as Napoleon’s ultimate and most likely destination. The Morning Chronicle provided its readers with a suitably stark sketch of the accommodation: ‘One entire rock, about twenty miles in circumference, immensely steep above the sea, the waves of which dash constantly on it … The island is infested with rats, which commit the most dreadful destruction; otherwise it produces corn and fruit, and abounds in game.’26 Another newspaper declared this confinement to be ‘much too good a fate for such a Wretch’.27
The nearest land was Ascension Island, 800 miles away to the north-west. St Helena was 5,000 miles from Europe; 1,800 miles from the coast of South America; 1,200 miles from Africa. ‘At such a distance and in such a place,’ Lord Liverpool had written to Lord Castlereagh three days before, ‘all intrigue would be impossible, and, being withdrawn so far from the European world, he would be very soon forgotten.’28
On board the Bellerophon, the French party grew anxious as the prospect of such a place of exile loomed in everyone’s mind. General Gourgaud returned from the Slaney. Far from having been granted an audience with the Prince Regent, he had not even been allowed on shore. Since he had refused to deliver the Emperor’s letter into any other hands, it remained undelivered. Napoleon’s hopes of his retirement to the life of a country squire in England were receding.
*
In the early hours of 26 July, Brixham’s two-day wonder came to an end. Amid fears that an attempt might be made by Napoleon’s supporters to effect his escape from an anchorage exposed and open to the Channel, the Bellerophon, Slaney and Myrmidon received orders to proceed without delay to Plymouth. Once there, Admiral Keith ordered two frigates, the Liffey and the Eurotas, to drop anchor at a convenient distance either side of the Bellerophon, ‘as well for the purpose of preventing the escape of Bonaparte … from that ship, as for restraining shore-boats and others from approaching too close’. Each frigate was to keep ‘a boat manned and armed alongside, in constant readiness, as a guard boat’. No shore boats were to be allowed nearer than a cable’s length* ‘and no boats … permitted to loiter about the ship, even at that distance, either from curiosity or any other motive’.29 The distance was increased to a cable’s length and a half after ‘a foreign spy [was] detected hovering around the ship, with letters addressed to BONAPARTE, and without a passport, [and] who could give no account of himself’. The suspicious individual was taken into custody.
The security provision of a larger, enclosed and heavily guarded anchorage at Plymouth had to be reconciled with increased publicity, visibility and greater accessibility by stagecoach. ‘I am miserable’, Keith wrote to his daughter, Margaret Elphinstone, ‘with all the idle people in England coming to see this man.’ He estimated that every bed in every hotel in the town was taken by visitors, Windsor’s Hotel alone accounting for fifty. As at Brixham, so at Plymouth, the crowd that gathered daily beyond the cordon of guard boats raised their hats and cheered the former Emperor whenever he showed himself, ‘apparently’, it was thought, ‘with the view of soothing his fallen fortunes, and treating him with respect and consideration’. Just as at Brixham, every boat-owner was turning a profit. One entrepreneur hired the town crier to make an announcement several times daily:
O yes! O yes! O yes!
This is to give notice that the Ely pleasure boat, J. BURT, Master, will take passengers for the Sound this afternoon, from the Barbican, at one shilling and sixpence each, to see Bonny party.30
On 30 July, a Sunday, Captain Maitland counted ‘upwards of a thousand [boats] collected round the ship, in each of which, on an average, there were not fewer than eight people’.31 The following day there were 1,500 boats in the Sound, and a local newspaper estimated that ‘10,000 persons, at least, were supposed to be congregated’. The guard boats frequently fired musket volleys over the heads of the crowd to deter them. On occasion the Bellerophon kept the boats back by ‘play[ing] water from an engine on the starboard quarter’, causing ‘groans, hisses and shouts [from] the enraged multitude’. For the most part, however, the ship’s crew encouraged the sightseers and continued their chalked bulletins of Napoleon’s activities: ‘At Breakfast’, ‘In the cabin with Captain Maitland’, or ‘Going to Dinner.’ At least once a day there would be a buzz of anticipation with the chalking up of ‘Coming upon deck.’
Privileges of kin, as well as rank, were shamelessly – if vainly – exploited to get within the security cordon. ‘Here is among others my niece Anne,’ wrote Keith, ‘with “dear friends” she never saw before, arrived from Exmouth! Sir J. Hippisley and Sir H. McLean and family – [other] people all the way from Birmingham.’32 Lady Keith was allowed aboard the Eurotas on 28 July – the day that her husband had his first meeting with Bonaparte – but as they remained in the after-cabin for the duration of the interview, she got no better view of him than did the crowd, to whom ‘indescribable disappointment was occasioned’.33 Captain Maitland’s wife was more fortunate. Joined in her boat by Sir Richard and Lady Strachan, and Lady Duckworth, she managed to get close enough to have conversation with Napoleon. He invited Mrs Maitland on board, and when it was explained that Admiral Keith’s orders forbade it, he said to her: ‘Milord Keith est un peu trop sevère, n’est-ce pas, Madame?’ He also observed to the captain that the portrait in his cabin did not do her justice.34 For his part, Keith was becoming increasingly exasperated with the situation: ‘I am worried to death with idle folk coming, even from Glasgow, to see him; there is no nation so foolish as we are!’
There was a rival attraction in town whenever Napoleon’s linen – ‘exceedingly fine in texture’ – was sent ashore to be laundered. ‘Many individuals’, it was reported, ‘have temporarily put on one of his shirts, or waistcoats, or neck cloths, merely for the purpose of saying that they had worn his clothes.’ The laundress who indulged this ‘blind infatuation’ doubtless did so for a price. The ‘exquisite cambric’ bed sheets were closely examined. It was noted that some were decorated in the corners with a letter ‘L’ embroidered in red silk and surmounted by a flat crown. These were assumed to have been left behind at the Tuileries by Louis XVIII when he fled Paris. Others were embroidered with a red letter ‘N’ and a much taller crown.35
*
At ten o’clock in the morning of 31 July, Admiral Lord Keith and Major General Sir Henry Bunbury, Under-Secretary for War, went on board the Bellerophon to formally break the news to ‘General Bonaparte’ of the British government’s intentions. Melville had anticipated that this would be a painful meeting and for that reason suggested Bunbury be present. As he explained to Keith, ‘it will probably be more agreeable to you that some person should accompany you at the conference which it will be necessary for you to have’. The two men were shown into the after-cabin, where they found Napoleon, with Bertrand in attendance. Following the usual civilities, Keith began to read aloud the letter Melville had sent him:
It would be inconsistent with our duty to this country and to his Majesty’s allies if we were to leave to General Buonaparte the means or opportunity of again disturbing the peace of Europe and renewing all the calamities of war.
Melville had not thought fit to provide a French translation of this document and Keith had not proceeded far in his reading before Napoleon interrupted and requested him to translate it as he went along. Keith’s French being inadequate, Bunbury, who had a better command of the language, was asked to continue:
It is therefore unavoidable that he should be restrained in his personal liberty to whatever extent may be necessary to secure our first and paramount object.
Napoleon knew what was coming next, not only from references that had appeared in the English press over the previous week, but because Captain Maitland had acquainted him with the main drift before Keith and Bunbury arrived:
The island of St Helena has been selected for his future residence. The climate is healthy, and the local situation will admit of his being treated with more indulgence than would be compatible with an adequate security elsewhere …
Most of Bunbury’s lengthy report of the meeting, written for his superior, Lord Bathurst, was devoted to Napoleon’s protests, arguments and appeals, which, rambling and repetitious, were delivered at considerable length, with few gestures, and without interruption. In his report to Lord Melville, Keith was able to summarise the monologue more succinctly:
That [Napoleon] had no power; that he could do no harm; that he would give his word of honour to hold no communication with France; that he could have remained there with the Army [had he wished]; that it was not an act of necessity, but of choice, which induced him to throw himself for protection into the hands of the English; and that he now claimed that protection out of justice and humanity.
On the subject of his proposed future domicile, he remained adamant: ‘Go to St Helena – no! – no! I prefer death.’ Often he appealed personally to his listeners, asking what they would do under the same circumstances. Several times Keith attempted to bring the meeting to a close and withdraw, but ‘the General continu[ed] to urge to the last the same style of argument’.
As Napoleon spoke on, Bunbury was able to study him closely, and even had time to make descriptive notes for his future memoirs:
bald about the temples and the hair on the upper part of his head is very thin, but long and ragged, looking as if it were seldom brushed … eyes are grey, the pupils large, his eyebrows thin … his complexion pallid, his flesh rather puffy. His nose is well-shaped, the lower lip short, a good mouth, but teeth bad and dirty; he shows them very little.
As for his expression and demeanour, Bunbury thought him ‘serious and almost melancholy’, and despite the injustices he felt were being done to him, ‘showed no sign of anger or strong emotion’.
The two men eventually succeeded in terminating the interview and retired to the quarterdeck, only for Keith to be immediately recalled for further talk. He returned to the after-cabin alone. Napoleon asked for his advice:
‘Is there any Tribunal to which I can apply?’
‘I am no lawyer, but I believe none,’ replied the Admiral. He could only repeat the official line: ‘I am satisfied there is every disposition on the part of the British Government to render your situation as consistent with prudence.’
Napoleon became briefly animated. Snatching up the government papers that still lay on the table, he flourished them: ‘How so! St Helena?’
‘Sir, it is surely preferable to being confined in a smaller space in England, or being sent to France, or perhaps to Russia.’
‘Russia! Dieu garde!’ he replied. ‘God forbid!’ And the admiral took his leave.
During the days that followed, Napoleon would repeat his protests both verbally and in writing.
After concluding their talks with ‘General Bonaparte’, Keith and Bunbury visited the fore-cabin, where the members of his immediate circle had assembled to learn their fate. Of the company of fifty who had come with Napoleon from Rochefort, only twelve domestics were to be allowed to join him on St Helena, together with three senior officers of his choice, Generals Savary and Lallemand excepted. Neither of these two men had wished to be included, but, having both been recently proscribed by the restored King, they were alarmed at the prospect of being returned to face French justice and a probable French firing squad. Lallemand had been given Maitland’s assurance that a rendition of this nature was out of the question, and the Bellerophon’s captain would later appeal directly to Lord Melville on the grounds that his honour as an English officer would be compromised were it to prove otherwise.
Keith suspected that fewer than half even of the limited number permitted would be willing to follow Napoleon into exile. ‘No one but Bertrand has offered,’36 he told his daughter. The marshal’s wife, however, was not of the same mind as her husband, and begged the admiral to use his influence with the government to forbid him from going as well. That night, after Keith and Bunbury had left the ship, the highly strung Mme Bertrand attempted to drown herself, and was halfway out of the first lieutenant’s cabin window before she could be dragged back inside and laid on her bed ‘in strong hysterics, at intervals abusing the English nation and its Government, in the most vehement and unmeasured terms’. She was of Irish extraction and raged sometimes in English, sometimes in French.37
*
Meanwhile, the clamour to catch sight of the notorious captive and the congestion of vessels around the Bellerophon became critical: ‘The crush was so great as to render it quite impossible for the guard-boats to keep them off; though a boat belonging to one of the frigates made use of very violent means to effect it, frequently running against small boats, containing women, with such force as nearly to upset them, and alarming the ladies extremely.’38 Inevitably some capsized. One containing three gentlemen, a woman and child was run down by a guard boat and sank. The mother and child were rescued by members of the Bellerophon’s crew, but one of the gentlemen was drowned, ‘leaving a wife and four little children to deplore his loss’.39 The following evening a boat ‘was cut into two pieces by a man of war’s launch’. John Boynes, a thirty-five-year-old stonemason from Plymouth dockyard, was drowned, ‘his wife and three children happily escaping’.40
According to a report in The Times, it was ‘the concourse of boats in Plymouth Sound and the loss of some lives which had already taken place [that] induced the Government to remove the Bellerophon to a greater distance’.41 There were, however, other considerations governing the ship’s departure on 4 August, not least of which was the dubious legal status of Napoleon’s captivity.
*
If Mr Capel Lofft had been so distressed by news of the French defeat at Waterloo as to consider deserting his dinner guests at the mere mention of the catastrophe, he was equally appalled by the fate the British government appeared to have in store for the former Emperor: ‘The intelligence that the great Napoleon … is to be sent perhaps to St Helena is almost overwhelming to me.’ In a letter to the Morning Chronicle that appeared on 2 August, the radical barrister outlined the relevant tenets of constitutional law. ‘All persons within the Realm of England, which includes the adjoining seas,’ he pointed out, ‘are temporary subjects if aliens, or permanent if natural born.’ By dint of his location on board one of His Majesty’s ships presently at anchor within English territorial waters, and regardless of his nationality, Napoleon was a ‘temporary’ English subject, and ‘though not on the British soil he [was] within the protection of the British law’. This meant that he was also protected by the ancient statute of habeas corpus and could not legally be held without trial, nor sent against his will to St Helena or anywhere else. ‘Deportation, or transportation, or relegation’, declared Lofft, ‘cannot legally exist in this country, except where the law expressly provides it on trial and sentence.’ A writ of habeas corpus, being ‘the legal mode of investigating, as to all persons, whether their liberty be legally or illegally restrained’, would necessitate either Napoleon’s appearance in a court of law or his release.
According to Montholon, General Savary ‘succeeded in establishing secret communications with an English lawyer, who sent him a variety of notes and documents, in order to guide us in the adoption of a course, which … would place the Emperor under the protection of the English law’. No details were given as to how the channel of ‘secret communications’ was effected, apart from mention of a sailor from the Bellerophon ‘who was a good swimmer’.42 However, if the helpful legal authority was Mr Capel Lofft, and the ‘notes and documents’ related to the law of habeas corpus, both his and the swimmer’s efforts were in vain.
Habeas corpus was not applicable in time of war, nor was a prisoner of war protected by it. The French prisoners on Dartmoor and in the Solway hulks would never be brought to trial, but on conclusion of a peace treaty between France and England, they would be set free. Such would also be the case with Napoleon if he were regarded as an ordinary prisoner of war. That eventuality threatened, however, not only the national security of Great Britain but also the future security and peace of Europe. A legal nicety was required to permanently remove the former Emperor from posing any such threat. After due deliberation, Lord Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, ruled that Napoleon was to be considered a sovereign with whom England was at war; that the war could only be terminated by a peace treaty between England and himself; that it rested with England to conclude, or refrain from concluding, such a treaty; and that until it was concluded, England had the legal right to continue his detention as a prisoner of war.43 In short, he would remain imprisoned without trial, the sole combatant of a war that would cease only with his death.
And the place of his imprisonment had been selected with care. The moment he set foot on St Helena, Napoleon would be even further disqualified from the safeguard of English law by the anomalous territorial peculiarity of the island itself. Since 1657, this isolated volcanic rock had been the property of the East India Company, and although afforded the protection of the Royal Navy, it was neither ruled by the British Crown, nor was it under the jurisdiction of the English courts. Two centuries after the decision was made to send Napoleon to St Helena, the transportation of prisoners to legally ambivalent destinations for the supposed preservation of national security would be termed ‘extraordinary rendition’.44
Following Lofft’s intervention, government ministers braced themselves for a challenge. Lord Melville wrote to Admiral Keith:
In some of the newspapers a notion is held out that [Bonaparte] may be brought out of the ship by a writ of habeas corpus. The serious public inconvenience and danger which would arise from such an occurrence … renders it indispensably our duty to prevent it … If we were to receive an intimation of any such proceeding going forward here, we should order the Bellerophon to sea.45
Some such intimation must have been received, because two days later, in the early hours of Friday 4 August, a courier arrived in Plymouth with news that a ‘lawyer’ was on his way from London to serve a writ, either on Napoleon or on any one of his keepers. Keith ordered Maitland to ‘make preparations to be under weigh at a moment’s notice’.46 That day would prove an ordeal for Keith, the writ server chasing him from his home and from ship to ship throughout the morning and into the afternoon. The man who pursued him was not in fact a lawyer and the paper he carried not a writ of habeas corpus. It could, however, have considerably delayed Napoleon’s deportation and attracted unwelcome publicity to what was being done to him, thereby creating severe embarrassment to the British government. The document which that importunate individual would try so hard to serve on Admiral Keith was a subpoena summoning the former Emperor of the French to testify at a trial for criminal libel.
In August of the previous year, a pamphlet had been published purporting to be the ‘Secret Memoirs’ of three members of the Cochrane family. It included ‘an Account of the Circumstances which led to the Discovery of the Conspiracy of Lord Cochrane and others to Defraud the Stock Exchange’. The conspiracy in question had been perpetrated the previous February. A false report of Napoleon’s death – in which it was said he had been captured and hacked to pieces by a band of Cossacks – caused a steep hike in the price of government stock, greatly enriching, among others, it was alleged, the Member of Parliament and naval commander Charles, Lord Cochrane, and his uncle, Mr Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone. Both men had been tried and convicted in June 1814, fined £1,000 and imprisoned for twelve months. Lord Cochrane had also been sentenced to stand for an hour in the pillory opposite the Royal Exchange.47
The third target of the pamphlet, however, had played no part in the Stock Exchange conspiracy. Cochrane-Johnstone’s elder brother, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Cochrane, was charged in the ‘Secret Memoirs’ with misconduct while he was commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands. His accuser, and author of the pamphlet, was a Mr Anthony McKenrot,48 employed between 1803 and 1813 as a translator to a naval agent on the Caribbean island of Tortola, where he had conceived a deranged animosity towards the vice admiral.
McKenrot claimed that Cochrane had smuggled mules from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and sold them in Tortola ‘for his own profit’ without entering them at the custom house; that he had defrauded the navy victualling board by purchasing ‘a quantity of duck’ on his own account, using bills of exchange ‘purporting to be for fresh beef supplied to his Majesty’s ships’; that he had ‘fraudulently appropriated to himself about 200 prize negroes’ and transported them to ‘a sugar plantation of his own at Trinidad’. But the allegation that was to bring McKenrot to Plymouth in early August 1815 was as follows:
That [Cochrane] was guilty of cowardice, when he was Commander in Chief of the Leeward Islands station on 6th July [1806] in not making the necessary preparations to fight the French squadron under Admiral Willaumez and Jérome Bonaparte [captain of the seventy-four-gun Vétéran], off the island of Tortola and St Thomas, &c.
There was in all probability as little truth in this charge as there was in any of the other three. Nevertheless, as a defendant in the libel suit Cochrane had brought against him in June, McKenrot was entitled to call witnesses in support of his case. He had accordingly obtained a subpoena commanding the appearance in the King’s Bench Court, ‘on Friday the tenth of November by nine of the clock in the forenoon of the same day’, not only of Willaumez and Captain Bonaparte, but also of the Emperor himself, ‘to testify the truth according to [their] knowledge’. On the day this document was issued, 14 June 1815 – with Napoleon approaching the Belgian border at the head of a 90,000-strong invasion force – there must have seemed scant prospect of his being available to testify in an English court of law. Seven weeks later, with the former Emperor a prisoner in English territorial waters, McKenrot saw his chance and hurried to Plymouth.
Arriving at Keith’s residence on the morning of the 4th, he was told by James Meek, the admiral’s secretary, that his lordship was away from home. After perusing the writ, Meek directed McKenrot to the office of Sir John Duckworth, Plymouth’s naval commander-in-chief, before writing an urgent note to Keith on board HMS Tonnant, warning him to expect the visitor. Duckworth also examined McKenrot’s writ and suggested where he might find Keith. By the time McKenrot had hired a boat and been rowed to the Tonnant, Keith was on his way from that ship to the Eurotas. Then, just as his pursuer’s boat touched the landward side of the Eurotas, the nimble Keith clambered down the opposite side into a twelve-oared launch. Easily out-rowing the other boat, the admiral’s crew pulled towards the Rame peninsula, west of Plymouth. He landed at the little village of Cawsand – still followed by the implacable McKenrot – and made his way out to the point, where he was at last able to shake off his pursuer by going aboard the Prometheus, lying at anchor off Rame Head. By sunset, he was back where he started, his flag flying once more from HMS Tonnant.
Meanwhile, on board the Bellerophon, Maitland had been making urgent preparations to sail since dawn. He replied to anxious enquiries from his French passengers that his orders were to meet HMS Northumberland, expected from Portsmouth, to which larger and more seaworthy vessel Napoleon was to be transferred for the long voyage to St Helena. ‘L’Empereur n’ira pas à St Hélène,’ General Bertrand declared: ‘The Emperor will not go to St Helena.’
At half past nine they weighed anchor, but with the flood tide against them and a light breeze blowing towards land, it took a considerable time to clear the Sound. Maitland ordered the guard boats forward to tow, but progress was protracted and the ship still some way from the open sea when he caught sight of ‘a suspicious-looking person in a boat approaching’. McKenrot, returning from Cawsand to Plymouth, and frustrated in his attempt to serve his writ on Admiral Keith, saw in the slowly departing Bellerophon his final opportunity. He caught sight of Napoleon’s face at one of the stern windows, stood up in the boat and waved his paper, as though offering to serve the subpoena personally there and then. At the very least he could serve it on the ship’s captain. Maitland, however, had ordered one of the guard boats to leave off towing and keep under the ship’s stern – ‘and not allow any shore boat, under any pretext, to come near’. When McKenrot persisted, the officer of the guard threatened to shoot him.
That night in his room at the King’s Arms Tavern, Plymouth Dock, the disappointed McKenrot wrote to Admiral Keith:
I humbly entreat your Lordship to consider that an evasion to give due facility to the execution of any process would amount to a high contempt against that Honourable Court from whence it issued and that under the continuance of such circumstances I shall be under the painful necessity of making my return accordingly. Leaving the issue to your Lordship’s discretion, I shall remain here until tomorrow night.49
He received no reply. None of the witnesses mentioned in the subpoena appeared in his defence at the King’s Bench Court, and he was never tried for libel. In an entirely unconnected case, McKenrot would be indicted in January 1816 for ‘forging and uttering a bill of exchange for £800’. He would plead insanity. After several witnesses were called to testify that he had exhibited ‘acts of absolute madness’, that he had ‘thrown his cat on the fire’, and that he had ‘gone to Plymouth to subpoena Bonaparte’, he was acquitted and confined to Bedlam.50
As HMS Bellerophon laboured out of the becalmed Sound that afternoon, Maitland watched two well-dressed ladies in a boat – the last of the Plymouth spectators – following as close to the ship as the guards would allow, ‘and, whenever Buonaparte appeared at the stern window, [they] stood up and waved their handkerchiefs’.51
*
As the Bellerophon and the Tonnant approached Torbay from the east, another ship came into view ahead of them. HMS Northumberland, flying the flag of Admiral Sir George Cockburn, had sailed from Portsmouth two days earlier with orders to meet the Bellerophon and relieve her of her prisoner. It was Sunday 6 August.
Lord Bathurst had sent detailed instructions to Admiral Cockburn regarding Napoleon’s reception aboard the Northumberland, his transhipment to St Helena, and the security measures that were to be taken in order to keep him there. Before embarkation, a complete inventory of Napoleon’s property and that of his companions was to be drawn up. He would be allowed to take with him to St Helena any ‘Articles of Furniture, Books, and Wine’ that he had brought from France. His plate and other silverware was to be included under the heading of furniture, ‘provided it be not to such an amount as to bespeak it to be rather an article of convertible property than of domestic use’. However, ‘His Money, Diamonds, and Negotiable Bills of every description [were] to be given up’. Cockburn was to explain to him the reason for this stipulation: ‘It is by no means the intention of the British Government to confiscate His Property, but simply to take the Administration of these Effects into their own Hands for the purpose of preventing their being converted by him into an Instrument of Escape.’52
The three senior officers chosen by Bonaparte to accompany him were General Gourgaud, General Montholon, with his wife and child, and General Bertrand. There had been some doubt as to whether Bertrand was to be included because of the volatile character of his wife, but at last Napoleon agreed and Fanny Bertrand, reconciled to the voyage, joined the party with her three children. When Dr Maingault, Napoleon’s physician and personal secretary, baulked at the prospect of a life in the tropics, the Bellerophon’s surgeon, Barry O’Meara, agreed to go in his place. Las Cases came in the capacity of private secretary and was joined by his fourteen-year-old son, acting as pageboy.
The redundant fifteen or so domestic staff, together with the surgeon, Maingault, remained aboard the Bellerophon and were taken to Portsmouth, whence they were transported to Cherbourg. Savary, Lallemand and another six officers – including Lieutenant Colonel Planat, who had wept through breakfast aboard the Superb – were transferred to the Eurotas and shipped to Fort Manoel on Malta as prisoners. A sixteen-year-old subaltern by the name of Sainte-Catherine – said to be a nephew of the Empress Josephine – was a native of Martinique, and was returned to that island aboard a sloop of war.
At midday on 7 August, Napoleon and his retinue, including the chosen domestics, went on board the Northumberland.
Two more lives were lost to curiosity before England saw the last of him. A boat from Torquay containing a gentleman, three ladies, a child and a servant went out to watch the former Emperor cross from one ship to the other. Rounding one of the vessels, their boat was run down by a cutter and capsized. The first lieutenant of the Northumberland jumped into the water and succeeded in rescuing Mrs Harris and the child. The husband of this lady was saved by his own exertions and dragged into the cutter, along with the servant and two boatmen. But the other two ladies ‘sank to rise no more’.53 They were an aunt and her niece, both of them young.