It ill became the subjects of George IV. to attack Napoleon on the side of morality.  It is well enough known that the French Court during the Empire was the purest in Europe.  In his domestic arrangements, the one thing that Napoleon was jealous of, above all others, was that his Court should have the reputation of being clean.  He took infinite pains to assure himself of this.  His private amorous connections are fully described by F. Masson, a Frenchman, and a staunch admirer of his.  But to accuse him of libertinism is an outrage.  He had mistresses, it is true, and it is said he would never have agreed to the divorce of Josephine had it not been that Madame Walewska (a Polish lady) had a son by him. (This son held high office under Napoleon III.) But even in the matter of mistresses he was most careful that it should not be known outside a very few personal friends.  As a matter of high policy it was kept from the eye of the general public, and he gives very good reasons for doing so.  Not merely that it would have brought him into serious conflict with Josephine, but he knew that in order to maintain a high standard of public authority food for scandal must be kept well in hand.[17]

His enemies, however, were adepts at invention, and although the moral code of that period was at its lowest ebb, they pumped up a standard of celibacy for the French Emperor that would have put the obligation under which any of his priests were bound in the shade.  So shocked were they at the breaches of orthodoxy which were written and circulated by themselves without any foundation to go upon, that they advocated excommunication, assassination, anything to rid the world of so corrupt a monster.  But the moral dodge fell flat.  It was not exactly in keeping with the unconventionalities of the times, and, in fact, they had carried their other accusations and grievances to so malevolent a pitch, the straightforward and rugged tars aboard the Bellerophon and Northumberland were drawn in touching sympathy towards the man who had thrown himself into their hands in the fervent belief that he would be received as a guest and not as a prisoner of war.

We know that he had other means of escape had he chosen to avail himself of them.  He had resolved after his abdication to live the time that was left to him in retirement, and believing in the generosity of the British nation, he threw himself on their hospitality.  He had made his way through a network of blockade when he returned from Egypt and Elba, and looking at the facts as they are now before us, it is preposterous to adhere to the boastful platitude that he was so hemmed in that he had no option but to ask Captain Maitland to receive him as the guest of England aboard the Bellerophon, and it may be taken for granted that the resourceful sailors knew that he had many channels of escape.  They knew the Bellerophon was a slow old tub, and that she would be nowhere in a chase.