crew, though his prodigious need for sleep was much commented on. On
23 July he saw the last of the European mainland off Ushant, and
remained for seven hours from dawn until noon on the poop deck
observing geographical features with his spy-glass.
When the Bellerophon anchored at Torbay, boatloads of sightseers
came alongside to try to catch a glimpse of the sensation of the hour.
Napoleon was encouraged by his reception, but would have been deeply
despondent had he known of the fate being prepared for him by a deadly
triumvirate of his enemies. The three men who decided his future were
the Prince Regent, the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, and Lord
Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies - all men who
hated Napoleon for the vast sums he had cost the exchequer, the fear he
had caused them and the knowledge that he had been very close to
victory. Liverpool's attitude is very clear in a letter to Castlereagh on 15
July: 'We wish that the King of France would hang or shoot Bonaparte,
as the best termination of the business ... if the King of France does not
feel himself sufficiently strong to treat him as a rebel, we are ready to take
upon ourselves the custody of his person.'
By legal sleight of hand this unsavoury British trio declared the
Emperor a prisoner of war, although no state of war existed between
France and Britain and Napoleon could not be considered a prisoner
anyway, since he had embarked on the Bellerophon freely. Liverpool's
tame lawyers were in a quandary, since they could never quite decide
whether Napoleon was an enemy alien or an outlaw and pirate, outside
the scope of the law of nations. Their problem was that, if he was not an
enemy alien, he could not be detained as a prisoner of war. But how could
he be an enemy alien if he was not the subject of any ruler (France had
disowned him)? And how could somebody legally be treated as an enemy
alien if England was not at war with any other country? If, on the other
hand, Napoleon was a pirate, the situation was clear: he must be
executed. The middle solution, adopted in a later era at Nuremburg,
would have been to put the Emperor on trial for war crimes, but such a
conception, even with its notorious inability to transcend mere 'victors'
justice', did not yet exist.
When the Bellerophon departed from Torbay to Plymouth, Napoleon
began to suspect he had a fight for survival on his hands. His one card
was public opinion and the legal skill of his British supporters.
Everything depended on getting Napoleon on to land by a writ of habeas
corpus and an ingenious stratagem devised to this end. A fo rmer judge
from the West Indies accused Admiral Cochrane of having failed in his
duty by not having attacked Willaumez's squadron off Tortilla and
marcin
(Marcin)
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