The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon. Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases
and, above all, the base and atrocious perfidy of the Austrian Cabinet, which has ended in our destruction.
At a subsequent period Duroc might still have exerted an influence over other great events, and probably changed the face of affairs. Finally, even at a later conjuncture, at the time of Napoleon’s fall, he would never have separated his destiny from that of the Emperor: he would have been with us at St. Helena; and this aid alone would have sufficed to counterbalance all the horrible vexations with which Napoleon was studiously oppressed.
Bessieres, of the department of the Lot, was thrown by the Revolution into the career of arms. He commenced as a private soldier in the constitutional guard of Louis XVI. Afterwards, having attained the rank of captain of chasseurs, he attracted the attention of the Commander-in-chief of the army of Italy by acts of extraordinary personal bravery; and, when the general formed his corps of guides, he chose Bessieres to take the command of them. Such was the beginning of Bessieres, and the origin of his fortunes. From that instant we find him always at the head of the Consular or Imperial guard, in charges of the reserve, deciding the battle, or profiting by the victory. His name is gloriously connected with all our great battles.
Bessieres rose with the man who had distinguished him, and shared abundantly in the favours which the Emperor distributed. He was made a marshal of the Empire, Duke of Istria, colonel of the cavalry of the guard, &c.
His qualities developing themselves as he rose, proved him always equal to his fortune. Bessieres was always kind, humane, and generous, of antique loyalty and integrity, and, whether considered as a citizen or as a soldier, a honest worthy man. He often made use of the high favour in which he stood to do extraordinary services and acts of kindness even to people of very different ways of thinking from his. I know some who, if they have a spark of gratitude in them, will confirm my assertion, and can bear testimony to his noble elevated sentiments.
Bessieres was adored by the Guards, in the midst of whom he passed his life. At the battle of Wagram a ball struck him off his horse, without doing him any farther injury. A mournful cry arose from the whole battalion; upon which Napoleon remarked, the next time he saw him: “Bessieres, the ball which struck you drew tears from all my Guard. Return thanks to it; it ought to be very dear to you.”
He was less fortunate at the opening of the campaign of Saxony. On the very eve of the battle of Lützen, a trifling engagement occurred, in which, having advanced into the very midst of the skirmishers, he was shot dead on the spot by a musquet-ball in the breast. Thus, after living like Bayard, he died like Turenne.
I had conversed with him a little before this fatal event. Chance had brought us together by ourselves in a private box at the theatre. After talking of public affairs which deeply interested him, for he idolized his country, his last words, as he left me, were, that he was to set out for the army that night, and hoped we should meet again. “But, at the present crisis,” said he, “with our young soldiers, we leaders must not spare ourselves.” Alas! he was never to return.
Bessieres was sincerely attached to the Emperor; he almost worshipped him; he, like Duroc, would certainly never have abandoned his person or his fortunes. And one would really think that Fate, which proved so decidedly hostile to Napoleon in his latter days, had resolved to deprive him of the sweetest consolation, by thus removing two such valuable friends; and at the same time to prevent these faithful servants from acquiring the very highest claim to glory, that of gratitude to the unfortunate.
The Emperor caused the remains of these two men whom he so much esteemed, and by whom he knew himself to be beloved in return, to be carried to the Invalides at Paris. He intended extraordinary honours for them, of which subsequent events deprived them. But History, whose pages are far more imperishable than marble or bronze, has consecrated them, and secured them for ever from oblivion.31
STUDY OF ENGLISH.—REFLECTIONS.—RIDE.—MIRED
HORSE.
31st.—Our days passed, as it may be supposed, in an excessively stupid monotony. Ennui, reflection, and melancholy, were our formidable enemies; occupation our great and only refuge. The Emperor followed his pursuits with great regularity. English was become an affair of importance to him. It was now nearly a fortnight since he took his first lesson, and from that moment he had devoted some hours every day, beginning at noon, to that study, sometimes with truly admirable ardour, sometimes with visible disgust; an alternative which kept me in the greatest anxiety. I considered success as of the utmost importance: every day I dreaded seeing him abandon the ground gained on the day preceding; and consequently being regarded as having wearied him with the most tedious labour, without having produced the fortunate result that I had promised myself. On the other hand, I was also daily spurred on by the consciousness that I was approaching the goal at which I aimed. The attainment of the English language was a real and serious conquest to the Emperor. Formerly, he said, it had cost him a hundred thousand crowns a year, merely for translations; and how did he know whether he had them exact—whether they were faithful? Now that we were imprisoned, as it were, in the midst of this language, surrounded by its productions, all the great changes and questions which the Emperor had given rise to, on the continent, had been taken up by the English on the opposite side; and in their works presented so many new faces to him, to which he had hitherto been a stranger.
It may be added that French books were scarce with us; that the Emperor knew them all, and had read them even to satiety; whilst we could easily procure a multitude of English works altogether new to him. Besides, to learn the language of a foreigner, always prepossesses him in our favour; it is a satisfaction to one’s self; it facilitates intercourse, and forms in a certain degree the commencement of a sort of connection between the parties. However this may be, I began to perceive the limits of our difficulties; I anticipated the moment when the Emperor would have got through all the inevitable disagreeables incident to beginners. But let any one form an idea, if possible, of what the scholastic study of conjugations, declensions, and articles must have been to him. It could never have been accomplished without great courage on the scholar’s side and some degree of artifice on the part of the master. He often asked me whether he did not deserve the ferula, of which he now comprehended the vast utility in schools; he declared, jestingly, that he should have made much greater progress himself, had he stood in fear of correction. He complained of not having improved; but, in reality, the progress he had made would have been extraordinary in any one.
The more grand, rapid, and comprehensive the mind is, the less it is capable of dwelling on regular minute details. The Emperor, who discovered wonderful facility in apprehending all that regarded the philosophy of the language, evinced very little capacity for retaining its material mechanism. He had a quick understanding and a very bad memory; this vexed him much; he conceived that he did not get on. Whenever I could subject the matters in question to any regular law or analogy, they were classed and comprehended in an instant; the scholar even preceded the master in his applications and deductions; but as to learning by heart, and retaining the gross elements of the language, it was a most difficult affair. He was constantly confounding one thing with another; and it would have been thought too fastidious to require too scrupulous a regularity at first. Another difficulty was that, with the same letters, the same vowels, as ours, a totally different pronunciation is required; the scholar would allow of none but ours; and the master would have multiplied the difficulties and disagreeables tenfold, had he required any better. Besides, the scholar, even in his own language, was incorrigibly addicted to maiming proper names and foreign words; he pronounced them quite at his own discretion, and when once they had passed his lips, they always remained the same in spite of every thing, because he had thus got them, once for all, lodged, as it were in his head. The same thing happened with respect to most of our English words: and the master found it best to have the prudence and patience to let it pass; leaving it to time to rectify by degrees, if it should ever be possible, all these defects. From these concurring circumstances actually sprang a new language. It was understood by me alone, it is true; but it procured the Emperor the pleasure of reading English, and he could, in the strictest sense, make himself understood by