The Tragedy of St. Helena | Page 8

out to the
letter the cast-iron instructions given to him by Bathurst. The Emperor
spoke of him as having the heart of a soldier, and regretted his removal
to give place to Sir Hudson Lowe, who arrived in the Phaeton on April
14, 1816.
The new Governor's rude, senseless conduct on the occasion of his first
visit to Longwood indicated forebodings of trouble. He does not appear
to have had the slightest notion of how to behave, or that he was about
to be introduced to a man who had completely governed the destinies
of Europe for twenty years. Napoleon with his eagle eye and
penetrating vision measured the man's character and capabilities at a
glance. He said to his friends, "That man is malevolent; his eye is that
of a hyena." Subsequent events only intensified this belief.
Perhaps the best that can be said of Lowe is that he possessed distorted
human intelligence. He was amiable when he pleased, a good business
man, so it is said, and the domestic part of his life has never been
assailed; but it would be a libel on all decency to say that he was suited
to the delicate and responsible post he was sent to fulfil. In fact, all his
actions prove him to have been without an atom of tact, judgment, or
administrative quality, and his nature had a big unsympathetic flaw in it.
The fact is, there are indications that his nature was warped from the
beginning, and that he was just the very kind of man who ought never
to have been sent to a post of such varied responsibilities. His
appointment shows how appallingly ignorant or wicked the
Government, or Bathurst, were in their selection of him.
He was a monomaniac pure and simple. If they thought him best suited
to pursue a policy of vindictiveness, then their choice was perfect,
though it was a violation of all moral law. If, on the other hand, they
were not aware of his unsuitableness, they showed either carelessness
or incapacity which will rank them beneath mediocrity, and by their act
they stamped the English name with ignominy. And yet there is a
pathos at the end of it all when he was brought to see the cold,
inanimate form of the dead monarch. He was seized with fear, smitten

with the dread of retribution, and exclaimed to Montholon, "His death
is my ruin."[4]
Forsyth has done his utmost to justify the actions of Hudson Lowe, but
no one can read his work without feeling that the historian was
conscious all through of an abortive task. He reproduces in vain the
instructions and correspondence between Lowe and his Government,
and the letters and conversations with Napoleon and members of his
household, and deduces from these that the Governor could not have
acted otherwise than in the manner he did. It is easy to twist words used
either in conversations or letters into meanings which they were never
intended to convey, but there are too many evidences of cold-blooded
outbursts of tyrannical intent to be set aside, and these make it
impossible to regard Sir Hudson Lowe in any other light than that of a
petty little despot.
He had ability of a kind. Napoleon said he was eminently suited to
"command bandits or deserters," and tells him in that memorable verbal
conversation which arose through Lowe requesting that 200,000 francs
per annum should be found as a contribution towards the expenses at
Longwood: "I have never heard your name mentioned except as a
brigand chief. You never suffer a day to pass without torturing me with
your insults." This undoubtedly was a bitter attack, and the plainspoken
words used must have wounded Lowe intensely. Probably Napoleon
himself, on reflection, thought them too severe, even though they may
be presumed to be literally true, and it may be taken for granted that
they would never have been uttered but for the spiteful provocation.
A more discerning man would have foreseen that he could not treat a
great being like the late Emperor of the French as though he were a
Corsican brigand without having to pay a severe penalty. An ordinary
prisoner might have submitted with amiable resignation to the
disciplinary methods which, to the oblique vision of Sir Hudson Lowe,
seemed to be necessary, but to treat the Emperor as though he were in
that category was a perversion of all decency, and no one but a Hudson
Lowe would have attempted it. It is quite certain that the dethroned
arbiter of Europe never, in his most exalted period, treated any of his

subordinates with such airs of majesty as St. Helena's Governor
adopted towards him.
Lowe seems to have had an inherent notion that the position in which
he was placed