Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/400

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CHAPTER IX.

NAPOLEON'S LAST VOYAGES.[1]

Admiral Ussher was one of the many gallant Irishmen who have served the British Empire on sea. He took a prominent and a brave part in the naval engagements between England and France during the reign of Napoleon. In April, 1814, he was stationed off Toulon, and so he came unexpectedly to play a prominent part in one of the closing scenes of Napoleon's life. It was he who took Napoleon to Elba after the first abdication.

I.

AN ADVENTUROUS ENTERPRISE.

The narrative in which he described this great adventure is simple, straightforward, often sublimely and heroically unconscious. I cannot imagine anything more striking than the calm way in which the author describes what must have appeared, to any but a fearless man, a dare-devil and almost certainly fatal enterprise. As thus: On

  1. "Napoleon's Last Voyages," the Diaries of Admiral Ussher and John R. Glover. (London: Fisher Unwin.)