a shell fell very near him one day at the siege of Acre, and that two men clasped him in their arms, choosing rather to destroy themselves than that any injury should happen to their chief. One of these men was a private in the Chasseurs, and is now a general. He lost his arm at the battle of Borodino, and was made Governor of the Castle of Vincennes. When the Allies penetrated into France in 1814 this officer was summoned to surrender. He answered that when they restored him the arm he had lost in Russia he would comply with their request.

After dinner Napoleon was again questioned on the subject of his projected invasion of England. Sir George Cockburn said that many people in the country were persuaded it was never intended otherwise than merely as a feint, and to put us to expenses; his answer was :

'Mr. Pitt never thought so; I had well weighed the consequences, and I calculated that if I did not succeed the demonstrations would do me great disservice, as it would make the English a military nation, and at the same time would give the ministers a command of money, since no other measure could authorise them to call for so large a sum as in this case was requisite. I was very well pleased to see the preparations the English made on the coast opposite Boulogne, at which place it was never my intention to have attempted a landing. I kept up this farce by frequent embarkations and by the exercise of my flotilla. My real point of attack would have been somewhere between Margate and Deal. I calculated that I could have possessed myself of the lines of Chatham as a point of retreat. I should then have pushed for London, and, had I arrived there, I should have offered very moderate terms of peace, taking care, however, so far to cripple you that you could have done no further mischief, nor have disturbed my future plans. Whether I should have succeeded or not I can't say, but such were my projects.'

He then talked of Ireland, where he said he had as many friends amongst the Protestants as amongst the Catholics.

An expedition for the country was at one time nearly ready to sail. It was to have left Antwerp, and have gone north, and was to have landed thirty thousand men in the North of Ireland. Roger O'Connor was to have accompanied them; but I knew better than to trust him with the command. I granted them everything they asked, relative to the settlement of the government of the country, if it should have been conquered. It

mattered little to me whether they adopted a republican or any other form of government; my sole object was to divide it from England, and to have occupied the attention of the English in reconquering or tranquillising it. Could the division once be effected, peace, and the ultimate ruin and subjugation of both countries, would have been the consequence. I carried on my communications with Ireland by means of the smugglers; they were the most staunch friends I had. At one time they offered to carry off Louis XVIII. from Hartwell, and to deliver him to me. I declined this, as I should not have known what to have done with him; but I found the smugglers exceedingly useful and intelligent.'

I forgot to mention that, when Bonaparte was talking of having London in his possession, the Admiral asked him if he did not think it a politic measure to fortify all capitals, and why he had never fortified Paris. His answer was, that every capital ought to be put out of the power of any enemy to insult; many instances had occurred where the occupation of a capital had occasioned the conclusion of a war. 'For myself,' he added, 'I never was so firmly established as to be able to attempt it at Paris; I owed my empire to the popular prejudice, and I dare not so far insult it as to attempt fortification, which could not have united the people of that city.'

Saturday 16th.-Napoleon talked yesterday of his Russian campaign. He said that he ought to have halted at Smolensko; that had he done so, he should have entered on the next campaign with such reserves as would have insured him success. He had a twofold object in this campaign: one was to erect, in the establishment of the kingdom of Poland, a barrier against Russia; the other was to compel that power to embrace the continental system. He said he had encouragement given him before he entered Russia to advance and free the peasantry; he added he entered Moscow almost without opposition, and that he remained there for two days with the most flattering prospects. On a sudden the town was observed to be on fire in several places; he thought it had been done by his own people, and in riding towards it in order to stop it, soon discovered it to have been set on fire by the orders of Rostopchin. Three hundred Russians were shot by his orders, having been found with matches in their hands. He himself remained in the Kremlin as long as he was able, and had at last great difficulty in getting his horses through the burning town.

The country-house to which he went was three miles from the city, but the atmosphere was so heated that they were obliged, even at that distance from the conflagration, to close the windows and exclude the air entirely.

Thursday 21st.-We have seen but little of Bonaparte lately; he now seldom or never plays at cards, never appears till dinner-time, and stays but a short time on deck. He writes a good deal, or rather dictates, for he writes so illegibly himself that he generally employs Las Cases as an amanuensis.

The Admiral asked him yesterday if, when he meditated his invasion of England, he had any idea of the strength of the lines of Chatham. He said he had no exact plan of them, but that he had understood there were lines there. He said he had at that time his information from Goldsmith, who transmitted every intelligence to him by the smugglers; he was aware, he said, that the same men furnished our Government with information in return, but he had no other means of obtaining it himself. The English Government endeavoured as much as possible to prevent a correspondence with France, and he (Bonaparte) appointed Gravelines as the only place where he allowed any communication to take place; at the same time he watched them very narrowly.

Yesterday Gourgaud showed me a map on a very large scale of the environs of Brussels, which the Emperor used the day of the battle of Waterloo. The English position was marked in pencil, and a scale added near in red lead to show the neighbouring distances.

Napoleon has a Mameluke sabre with this inscription on it: 'This is the sabre the Emperor carried at the battle of Aboukir.' It is very handsomely mounted in gold. . . . Gourgaud talked to me of the number of people he had killed in the course of his services with his own hands, and he showed me his sword, on which he had displayed in the waterwork a Cossack attacking and just on the point of killing the Emperor, with the following explanation: 'Gourgaud, first orderly to the Emperor, shooting with a pistol the Cossack who attacked him near Brienne.'

[Sir George cannot be suspected of having invented this incident, yet it throws a striking light on the untrustworthiness of Gourgaud's own narrative, which, Lord Rosebery believes, suffered less than the rest from the air of unveracity pervading St. Helena. 'Gourgaud,' writes Lord Rosebery, was supposed, by Warden at any rate, to have had his sword engraved with an account of this

exploit. This was all very well; but Napoleon heard too much of it, and so the following scene occurred [at St. Helena] :—Gourgaud : 'I never had engraved on my sword that I had saved your life, and yet I killed a hussar that was attacking your Majesty.' Napoleon: 'I do not recollect it.' Gourgaud: This is too much!' And so poor Gourgaud storms. At last, the Emperor puts a stop to this outburst of spleen by saying that Gourgaud is a brave young man, but that it is astonishing that with such good sense he should be such a baby.'']

Monday, October 2nd.-As the voyage lengthens, Napoleon grows more tired of his confinement, and has less and less intercourse with any of us. His attendants are divided into parties, and do nothing but abuse each other behind their backs.

In a conversation between Bonaparte and the Admiral, the former confessed that he could have raised more than 800,000,000 of livres a year in France, even when he had extorted to the utmost, in the last year of his reign. In answer to a question put to him relative to the greatest number of men he ever had in action under his command, he said he had 180,000 at the battle of Eylau, and 1,000 pieces of cannon; the allies had nearly the same number.

Thursday 5th.—The day before yesterday Napoleon got hold of the Life of Nelson, which was read to him by Bertrand, and in which he appeared to be particularly interested.

At dinner he talked a good deal about Corsica, and said we had committed one great fault when in possession of that island.

'Paoli,' he said, 'expected to have been made Viceroy when he introduced you into the island, and had you done so and given him 20,000l. per annum, you might have defied the whole force of France, and the island would have been yours now. He knew how to treat the Corsicans, who cannot be governed in the same. manner as you would treat other nations.'

Bonaparte said he had obtained great supplies of wood from Corsica, although there existed a great prejudice against it in the navy; but he could furnish at the dockyard at Toulon ten masts from that island at the same price as one from Riga. . . . He frequently says with a sigh. The French nation have not a turn for the sea; I never could have got a French ship into the order that this is.'

6

Tuesday 10th.-Saturday evening we were surprised, on going

'Lord Rosebery's Napoleon, p. 42.

into the cabin, to find the ex-Emperor reading a fairy tale, of course to a very attentive audience. . . . Bonaparte appeared to read well, but very fast, and several times laughed heartily.

Yesterday he produced a snuffbox which had on it a beautiful portrait of young Napoleon. He was represented in the uniform of the Lancers of the Guard; his hands clasped towards heaven, imploring its blessings for his father and his country. It was painted when he was about four years old, and during his father's misfortunes.

[The Dutch Baron de Dedem, who commanded a brigade in Davoust's advanced guard in the invasion of Russia, has left record of an instance of Napoleon's absorbing devotion to this boy.

Napoleon seated himself at the beginning of the battle' upon the ruins of a great redoubt, and then moved three hundred paces forward on the edge of a ravine. They brought him word from time to time of the result of movements which he had ordered; he seemed to receive all reports with equal indifference, as much that of the enemy having retaken the central redoubt as of the splendid devotion of our troops and of the fine cavalry charge which rendered us masters of the position. He held in his hands a portrait of the King of Rome which the Empress had sent him by M. de Bausset; he played with it and kept saying, 'Let us see what he will be at five-and-twenty.' The Imperial Guard was massed as a reserve behind him, 36,000 strong. Their trumpets flourished, while the rest of the army strove for victory. In vain, when the Russians began to fall back, did Marshal Ney implore the Emperor to move up only the Young Guard, which probably would have delivered into our hands 15,000 or 20,000 of the enemy who took the direction of Kalouga. These owed their safety to the inaction of the Guards, and especially to Napoleon's indecision.]

After dinner he walked four hours with the Admiral, and conversed with great freedom; he gave him a sketch of his life, and said that until after the battle of Lodi, he entertained no idea beyond his profession. . . . It was at this time Sir Sidney Smith applied to him to assist him in his exchange, which he declined, saying he had entirely withdrawn himself from public business. The Government then wished to employ him as a diplomatist, which he refused, as he also did the command of an army destined to invade England. They then prepared an expedition to Egypt, which he immediately caught at as a means of withdrawing himself from France until his schemes were more matured. He foresaw that if he could escape the English fleet his career would be a brilliant one.

The death of the Duc d'Enghien he avowed; he said the conspiracies formed against him by the Royalists were numerous, and it was a measure of necessity to secure his throne.

1 Of Borodino.