Page:Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte 11th ed - Richard Whately (1874).djvu/40

 at St. Helena (which, by the way, it is acknowledged, many of the French disbelieve), how do we know who he is, or why he is confined there? There have been state-prisoners, before now, who were never guilty of subjugating half Europe, and whose offences have been very imperfectly ascertained. Admitting that there have been bloody wars going on for several years past, which is highly probable, it does not follow that the events of those wars were such as we have been told that Buonaparte was the author and conductor of them; or that such a person ever existed. What disturbances may have taken place in the government of the French people, we, and even nineteen twentieths of them, have no means of learning but from imperfect hearsay evidence; and how much credit they themselves attach to that evidence is very doubtful. This at least is certain,–that a M. Berryer, a French advocate, has published memoirs, professing to record many of the recent events of the history of France, in which, among other things, he states his conviction that Buonaparte's escape from Elba was. And we are assured by many travellers that this was, and is, commonly reported in France.

Now, that the French should believe the whole story about Buonaparte, according to this version of it, does seem utterly incredible. Let any one suppose them seriously believing that we maintained for many years a desperate struggle against this formidable emperor of theirs, in the course of which we expended such an enormous amount of blood and treasure as is reported; that we finally, after encountering enormous risks, succeeded in subduing him, and secured him in a place of safe exile; and that, in less than a year after, we turned him out again, like a bag-fox, or rather a bag-lion, for the sake of amusing ourselves by again staking all that was dear to us on