Napoleon on how he was being murdered in cold blood.

If, in future ages, a King of England should be one day brought before the awful tribunal of his nation, his defenders will urge in his favour the sacred character of a king, the respect due to the throne, to all crowned heads, to the anointed of the Lord!

But his accusers will have, a right to answer thus :

One of the ancestors of this King, whom you defend, banished a man that was his guest, in time of peace ; afraid to put him to death in the presence of a nation governed by positive laws and by regular and public forms, he caused his victim to be exposed in the most insalubrious point of a rock situated in another hemisphere in the midst of the ocean, where this guest perished after a long agony, a prey to the climate, to want, to insults of every kind ! Yet that guest was also a great sovereign raised to the throne on the shields of thirty-six millions of citizens ; he was master of almost every Capital of Europe, the greatest Kings composed his Court ; he was generous towards all ; he was during twenty years the arbitrator of nations ; his family was allied to every reigning family, even to that of England; he was twice the anointed of the Lord ; twice consecrated by the august ceremonies of religion !!!

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Hortense on Napoleon

These liberals, these energetic patriots whom France should honor since they defended so courageously its rights and its liberties, lost their cause because they separated it from that of the one man who could have saved them. To be sure the position was a critical one. Those in office found themselves confronted either with the necessity of accepting again absolute authority or surrendering their Country to the foreign invader.


They would have done better to place their confidence in the promises of the victorious warrior. It was the desire for freedom that made them enslave themselves. I have heard it said often enough, and I cannot deny the fact, that the authority of a legal Constitution is preferable to that of a single man, but at this moment the memory of all the great things the Emperor had accomplished filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else.


Had he not rescued the country from anarchy and chaos, established a throne founded on the essential equality of man, increased France's fame abroad, reestablished its finances, religion, industry and social order?

 

Had he not accomplished a host of other glorious and useful acts which the nation had benefited by because they were the product of his genius?


Yet the man who had done so much was forsaken. He and his few faithful friends found themselves exposed to all sorts of dangers, including the schemes of revenge which the enemy might entertain.

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