A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV | Page 7

and more tragic than that which closed with the death of
Caroline Amelia, wife of George the Fourth.
[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon Bonaparte]
While the joy-bells of London were already chiming for the coronation
of George the Fourth, the most powerful enemy George's country had
ever had was passing quietly away in St. Helena. On May 5, 1821, the
Emperor Napoleon died in his island exile. No words could exaggerate
the sensation produced through the whole world by the close of this
marvellous career. He was unquestionably one of the greatest figures in
history. As a conquering soldier he has no rival in the modern world,
and indeed all the history we know of, ancient or modern, can give but
very few names which may bear comparison with his. Unlike Caesar
and Alexander, he had made his way from the humble obscurity of
common life, and, unlike Caesar, he did not seem to have had in him
the intellectual greatness which must have made him, under any
conditions, a master of men and of hemispheres. So far as mere
dramatic effect is concerned, he was less fortunate than Caesar in his
disappearance from the world's stage. Napoleon was doomed to pine
and wither away on a lonely island in the South Atlantic for years and
years, and there was something like an anticlimax in the closing scenes
of that marvellous life-drama. It is pitiful and saddening now to read of

the trumpery annoyances and humiliations to which his days of exile
were subjected, and to read, too, of the unceasing complaints with
which he resented what he regarded as the insults offered to him by his
jailers. There was, indeed, much that was ignoble in the manner of his
treatment by those who had him in charge, in the paltry indignities
which he had to endure, and which he could not endure in the patient
dignity of silence. The mere refusal to allow to him his title of Emperor,
and to insist {13} that he should only be addressed as General
Bonaparte, was as illogical as it was ungenerous; for if revolutionary
France had not the right to make him an Emperor, she certainly could
not have had the right to make him a General. Every movement he
made and every movement made by any of his friends on the island
was watched as jealously and as closely as if he had been some vulgar
Jack Sheppard plotting with his pals for an escape through the windows
or the cellars of his prison.
One cannot but regret that Napoleon could not have folded himself in
the majestic mantle of his dignity and his fame, could not even, if it
were needed, have eaten out his own heart in silence, and left his
captors to work their worst upon him without giving them the
satisfaction of extorting a word of querulous remonstrance. His captors,
no doubt, were perpetually haunted by the dread that he might
somehow contrive to make his escape, and that if he once got away
from St. Helena the whole struggle might have to begin all over again.
No doubt, too, his captors would have said, speaking in the spirit of the
times, that Napoleon was not to be trusted like an honorable prisoner
on parole, and that there was no way of securing the peace of the world
but by holding him under close and constant guard. The whole story of
those years of captivity is profoundly sad, and is one which may
probably be read with less pain even by Frenchmen than by
high-minded Englishmen. There has lately been given to the world in
the pages of an American magazine, The Century, a continuation of the
record once made by Dr. Barry E. O'Meara of his conversations with
Napoleon during Napoleon's exile in St. Helena. Dr. O'Meara was a
surgeon in the English navy, and was serving in the Bellerophon when
Napoleon came on board. He was allowed to take care of Napoleon by
the British Government, and, as he was an Irishman, he felt a certain

sympathy with Napoleon and came to be treated by the fallen Emperor
as a friend. He published a volume called "A Voice from St. Helena,"
in which he gave a detailed account of his talks with the great Emperor.
The book was much read {14} at the time of its publication, and
created a deep interest wherever it was read. From this work O'Meara
left out many of the memoranda he had written down, probably because
he thought they might give offence needlessly to living persons; but the
withheld memoranda were all carefully preserved and passed into the
hands of some of his descendants in New Jersey, and have after this
long lapse of time been published at last. They tell