St. Helena Posted Dec 5th, 2006 at 6:40am A tall man with an aquiline nose, Nicholas Thorpe takes huge strides in his sandaled feet as I follow him out of the mists that engulf the Blue Hill area, down a narrow road that winds through emerald fields of flax. Our destination is a holiday picnic to the south of us. The three Thorpe children scamper barefoot down the steep hillside. One wrong move could bring disaster, but you get the feeling that nothing bad could ever happen on St. Helena. Here on one of the remotest islands on earth, well below the equator in the South Atlantic, there is an air of peace about the place. There are no snakes, people don't lock their doors at night, and life is good. Other than the fact that Napoleon died in exile here, what I knew about St. Helena before I arrived was as vague as a cheap world map, many of which don't even bother to include the tiny island. The nearest landmass is Africa (1,200 miles away), but St.

Helena's closest neighbors in spirit are the other islands of the South Atlantic: Ascension to the north, Tristan da Cunha to the southwest and, far to the west, the Falklands. They form a kind of quartet, a small circle of competitive friends bound together by isolation - not to mention an almost slavish obedience to Britain. As we walk, I discover that Nicholas, on whose farm I've rented a cottage for a week, is a mine of information about St. Helena's history. He is, after all, half St. Helenian or, as the islanders are more popularly called, a Saint. Nicholas's great-great-grandfather came to this island from Britain in about 1840, maybe as a soldier (Nicholas is not sure), married a local woman, and then made this his home. The first people to see this place, however, didn't choose to stay. Talking over his shoulder as we walk, Nicholas says St. Helena has been a maritime pit stop since 1502, when Portuguese explorer Jo¿o da Nova Castella discovered it and named it after a feast day. After that the Portuguese kept the island's location secret for almost nine decades.

In 1659 the East India Company established the island's first settlement as a provisioning base for its trading fleet, and it wasn't until 1834 that St. Helena came under the direct government of the British Crown. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena in 1815, thousands of British troops were sent to guard him until his death in 1821. And St. Helena has remained a piece of Albion ever since. "For most people here," Nicholas points out, "the island could really be in the English Channel." This day, a Monday, the island has two reasons to celebrate. First, the only transport connecting islanders with the outside world, the RMS St. Helena, has arrived, carrying a dozen or so visitors like myself, as well as other Saints coming home after months or years abroad. Second, it's a bank holiday - a British tradition the island follows religiously, even though it's not a religious holiday, and though the island doesn't have a single bank of its own. We stop for a moment at Old Luffkins. What used to be a cottage is now just a pile of stones with a nickname.

It's perched all alone on the hillside, weeds growing through the dilapidated walls. The only sign of life is a cow grazing in the remains of an English garden. Below us stretches a valley and then the Atlantic. Both Old Luffkins and Whites, the old homestead we're heading to, were owned by a woman who left the island 40 years earlier to look for work elsewhere. The houses were left intact - lock, stock, and lacework - but no one else ever moved in. Throughout the last century Saints have had a knack for emigrating, Nicholas tells me, driven away by the high price of land and the scarcity of work, as well as the remoteness. His grandfather was one of ten children (and had ten children of his own), but of all Nicholas's relatives, only his mother, a brother, and a few cousins still live on the island. "Dare no place loik Sint Helena," is a comment, uttered in the curious Saint accent, that I heard countless times during the voyage to the island. But Saints often love it from afar. The next ridge brings Nicholas and me to Whites itself.

"I came in here as a child, and found an old Georgian coin on top of a broken bookshelf," Nicholas recalls. Though the house is a ruin, there is still a lawn with arum lilies and fruit trees. And the view is spectacular. In one direction the stark rocky outcrops known as Lot and Lot's Wife dominate the terrain. In another, we can see across to Horse Ridge, where the descendants of animals left by early sailors have grazed the hills into a virtual moonscape. And barely a mile behind us, where we started hiking an hour earlier, lie the luxuriant flax fields of Blue Hill. I'm amazed at how dramatically and quickly the terrain changes. There are so many landscapes and microclimates, in fact, it's hard to believe that St. Helena measures a mere ten miles by six. But I'm reminded how small the place is by the other families arriving to picnic here. We meet the acting governor and the headmaster's wife. They talk about mutual friends, island activities, the weather. It's like a small town in England. I first got the idea of going to St. Helena from a travel agency in London. I wanted to do a sea voyage, somewhere, anywhere.

Not a cruise, you understand, but a sea trip without the frills. The Fleet Street agency produced a brochure of all the world's noncruise voyages, including one lasting 96 days and with only two passengers. Another, more to my liking (and endurance), was on the RMS St. Helena, called the RMS for short. Six times a year it sails with 100 or so passengers from England to St. Helena, 14 days away, and goes on to Cape Town, where it begins the reverse voyage. It was really about the only way to go to St. Helena. Inaccessibility is at once the island's most charming asset and its biggest drawback. An airstrip was first surveyed here more than 50 years ago, and almost anyone you ask can pinpoint the place at Prosperous Bay where it's meant to go. But Britain argues that an airstrip would cost too much for such an out-of-the way place. Islanders respond that St. Helena wouldn't be out of the way if planes could land there. These Saints talk hopefully about the airstrip because it would help develop the island's tourism potential. St.

Helena is just waiting to be hiked and cycled, its safe blue waters snorkeled and dived, its seas sailed and fished. But each arrival of the RMS brings only about a dozen visitors, totaling less than several hundred a year. The airstrip, in the meantime, has become the island's Godot. As one islander puts it: "You go to any Thomas Cook in UK and you can book a flight to the Falklands, but to St. Helena? People keep saying, ¿Look at the Falklands. Now there's a success for you.' What are they trying to say, that we're a failure?" Cynics suggest that Britain, which annually pumps about $13.5 million into the island (making St. Helena's 5,500 inhabitants some of the highest per capita recipients of aid in the world), has developed a mindset about St. Helena: Ever since Napoleon, the place has made an ideal prison. Why not just keep it that way? It's true that Napoleon, though the best known prisoner, wasn't the last. After him came a South African Zulu chief, Dinizulu, whose incarceration lasted seven years.

(A polygamist, Dinizulu created a dilemma for the British, who would allow him to bring only one wife, although she was accompanied by several "female attendants.") Then, at the turn of this century, during the Boer War, some 6,000 Afrikaners were interned on Deadwood Plain and at Broadbottom Camp. And in the 1950s three Bahraini political dissidents were held at Munden's. The most recent foreign prisoner, jailed in 1990, was the first one Britain didn't fob off onto the island. A Dutchman sailing a trawler packed with cannabis from Bombay to the Virgin Islands made the mistake of calling in James Bay. For a time he was locked away in the prison on the main square. Escape, history dictated, seemed unlikely - but in June 1994, to the embarrassment of authorities, he did just that. I contemplate all these prisoners early one morning as I set out on foot for Longwood Estate, where Napoleon lived for all but two months of his nearly six years on the island. The Little Emperor was originally buried here on St.

Helena, but in 1840 his body was disinterred and shipped back to Paris, where it now lies in Les Invalides. Longwood House still belongs to France. Situated in the eastern part of the island not far from Deadwood Plain, it's maintained as a museum. The shrine pulls its share of pilgrims, including one of my fellow passengers on the RMS, a banker from Lyon who is the president of a French Napoleonic society. He had been to all Napoleon's battlefields and to Elba. St. Helena, quite fittingly, was to be his last stop. The morning we anchored in James Bay, in preparation for our landing, he dressed up in a grenadier's outfit. With his stout frame and cropped hair, he looked not unlike his hero. For a while an international incident threatened, because the acting governor wouldn't let him wear his ceremonial sword ashore. But in the end, the banker agreed to leave his sword in his cabin, and a crisis was averted. On this day the air in the hills is cool but refreshing, and the fields of lilies are covered in dew.

The road, like most roads on the island, snakes so wildly that you can't see a car till it's virtually upon you. I don't really worry about this, since cars honk at every bend, and there aren't many cars anyway. In an hour, I see two. Both drivers honk, then wave. If I wanted a lift, I could have asked. I prefer to walk. Along the way I meet two children - a boy, 12, and his sister, 14, who seem to epitomize the words "wholesome" and "old-fashioned." They both smile and call me "sir." I mention my name. They still call me "sir." The French consul, who lives in a house next to Napoleon's and pretty much keeps to himself, has written so many books about the emperor and Josephine that he's regarded as a world expert. He's lived on St. Helena for more than 30 years, but now that he's retired, his son has taken over the post. This day I'm the first and only visitor.

The gardener finds me near the crescent-shaped pond in the garden, and I feel as if I've intruded on his personal sanctuary. He has to open the house for me, then he follows me closely around the billiards room, Napoleon's study. He watches my every move, as if each item I look at - his camp bed and his truncated iron bath - is the most fragile on earth. Though an islander and a Briton, he clearly has the highest regard for the general whose house he guards. In the billiards room he points out the holes in the shutters through which Napoleon watched British troops march back and forth on Deadwood Plain. He explains that the garden paths were specially sunk so that the general could wander around his domain unhindered by the gaze of curious onlookers. I walk through the gardens and then, outside the property once again, peer over the wall to see what onlookers could have seen. Behind the dahlias, lavender, and hydrangeas, a small man could quite easily have walked in peace.

At a dinner party given by Nicholas Thorpe and his wife, Gail, our hostess moves around the kitchen (she's cooked three main courses, six vegetables, and five desserts) like a dancer, nimble - and barefoot. Meanwhile in an unconscious and refreshing mix of styles, the guests arrive in evening dress or jeans. The party also includes the head of forestry and his wife; the island's chief accountant and his wife; and Marian Jeremiah, then editor of the St. Helena News, and her husband, who's the attorney-general. If the governor were here, the room would hold practically the entire island government. Nicholas is the only Saint. Gail's from Bath, and everyone else has come on three-year contracts. As Tina Turner echoes in the background, the conversation turns to termites (which have plagued the island ever since they arrived in the timbers of a slave ship from Brazil in the 1840s) and, finally, to the RAF. The Royal Air Force, it appears, sometimes flies nonmilitary passengers between Ascension, where it has bases, and Britain, cutting at least ten days off a sea voyage from St. Helena to the mother country.

The only trouble is that, due to either a shortage of space or to an excess of bureaucracy, most people can't get on the plane. "The RAF's so stingy with their seats," someone sighs into the candlelight. Mothers worry about the logistics of sending their kids to school in Britain. First of all, they have to acquire a seat with the RAF, and then they have to worry about the plane's departure coinciding with the RMS's arrival at Ascension. On an upcoming trip, passengers in transit will have to wait five days in mess accommodations, since Ascension has no hotels. "Imagine putting two teenage girls on Ascension with all those single men for five days with nothing to do," says one mother, whose solution is to accompany her daughter as a chaperone. Rendered speechless by the five desserts as much as the thought of difficult logistics, no one ventures a reply. Jamestown, St. Helena's capital and only town, is quiet. Stone cottages spill onto the narrow lane that lines the cul-de-sac of James Valley. Like any country English village, the half-dozen bars have names like The White Horse and The Standard.

I head for coffee with Marian Jeremiah, who's just finished putting together the latest edition of the St. Helena News. Anne's Place is a frugal eatery next to the public garden, its walls and roof decorated with flags and ship ensigns. It has gained a certain renown among transatlantic yachtspeople, who have made it their unofficial clubhouse. Anne has six albums of photographs of "members," most of whom stopped while sailing between Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. "Phone fuh Tat!" says the young waitress helping Anne. "Phone fuh Tat!" I conclude, correctly, that Tat must be me, because Marian and I are the only customers. On the other end of the phone is Michael Hone, the acting governor, who wants me to join him after work for a walk near Pipe Ridge. It's a welcome invitation, as it means I can end my stay on the island the same way I started it - with a walk. What I can't figure out is how the acting governor knew to find me and what my itinerary would be. Marian shakes her head. "News travels fast," she says.

Later that afternoon the governor's official car, a spotless Jaguar, circa 1970s, picks me up in the town square, and we race up Side Path, one of two steep roads out of James Valley and into the hills. As the miniature Union Jack flaps madly from the car's hood, the islanders stop to watch us pass. Their curious looks suggest they can't understand why we bother to speed. On St. Helena you don't have to run. At most, you amble. The car turns off before Longwood House, drives through some cattle gates and over muddy grasslands until we're a quarter of the way across Deadwood Plain. As soon as we get out, we are struck by a ferocious wind. "They must have been sadists to put the Boers up here," says Michael. It was here that many of the POWs from South Africa were interned in 1900. The Boers tried to make the best of their circumstances: They opened little stores, gave the streets names from home, started a newspaper, even planted trees.

But the wind hits the island with such violence at this point that the few remaining trees, all cedars, have grown parallel to the ground. Michael and I slide down Pipe Ridge. Its slopes are made up, in equal parts, of shale and aloes, thousands of which have been planted in the hope that the aloes will bind the soil and hold the moisture for other plants to grow in between. When we get to the bottom (rather sore from the descent), we follow the pebbled shore of the bay to Munden's, where the Bahrainis were incarcerated. Barbed wire still bears testament to their time on the island, even though more than 40 years have passed. Few people know why they were here or even who exactly they were. Other artifacts also litter the landscape. Below us are rusty cannons from Napoleon's days, and protruding from the rockface are long iron pipes planted during World War II. They were meant to look like guns to an enemy ship. At one point it strikes me that our walk this day has retraced the history of St. Helena - from Napoleon, through the Boers, to Bahrainis.

Surrounded by centuries-old guns, battlements, and jails, I can't help but remember that St. Helena has been for most of its populated existence a fort, a place of exile, a prison, an island of sadness. Yet my stay has left me exhilarated, fascinated, happy, perplexed, maybe a bit bored. The next day, like so many Saints, I sail away on the RMS St. Helena, leaving the island - and its isolation - behind. Tags: Napoleon in Exile — Google Sightseeing Napoleon in Exile Friday, 17th February 2012 by Kyle Kusch When Napoleon was defeated in 1814 by the Sixth Coalition , it was decided to remove him from France permanently to prevent him from ever taking power again. It would take two separate exiles and another war to finally remove Napoleon from the world stage. The two islands he was exiled to could not have been more different: one, a historic tourist destination inhabited for millennia; the other, one of the most remote pieces of land on Earth. The Treaty of Fontainebleau removed Napoleon to the Mediterranean island of Elba off the Tuscan coast.

To pacify him, Napoleon was given rule over the picturesque island, where he promptly inaugurated a series of reforms and infrastructural improvements. It wasn’t enough to occupy him, apparently – he lasted just 300 days on Elba. Maybe he was sick of all the tourists crowding the many beaches . Napoleon had a number of homes on Elba. At first, he stayed in a first-floor apartment in the town hall of Portoferraio (Elba’s largest city) before taking up residence in the Villa dei Mulini overlooking the entrance to the city, where we can see the various gardens planted atop the cliffside building. The largest and most extravagant of Napoleon’s Elba residences was Villa San Martino , located in the mountains above Portoferraio. Interestingly, Napoleon never spent much of his time on Elba here despite San Martino’s sprawling acreage, opulence, and relative quiet. Both villas operate today as Napoleonic museums. After escaping Elba in February 1815, Napoleon returned to France, retook the country, launched another military offensive, and was defeated again by a British-Prussian-Dutch coalition.

This time, Napoleon would be sent away to a place he could not return from: Saint Helena 1 , a small British island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean located 1,870 km (1,160 mi) from the coast of Africa. Here, Napoleon would spend the rest of his life, doted on by a small group of followers and constantly at odds with the treatment he received at the hands of his British captors. Even today, remote and mountainous Saint Helena has a population of less than 5,000 people and can only be reached by boat (though a long-awaited airport is apparently on its way for 2015). The capital of the island is the narrow valley town of Jamestown 2 , the location Napoleon spent his first night on Saint Helena while waiting for his permanent residence to be renovated to accommodate him. Wary of being disturbed by the town’s residents, he looked to find a different residence further toward the interior of Saint Helena while his home was under construction. While returning from a horseback inspection of his not-yet-built estate, he spotted a green area in the valley below, rode down to investigate, and immediately signaled that he would rather stay there than in Jamestown.

This location was known as the Briars , and was owned by the Balcombe family. Mr. Balcombe offered Napoleon his family’s home; Napoleon refused to displace them out of respect and instead stayed in the smaller house directly adjacent. Here Napoleon famously became friends with Balcombe’s 13-year-old daughter Betsy; one of the few ever allowed to address the emperor as simply ‘Boney’. Napoleon’s final home, Longwood , was finally available for him to move into in December 1815. Napoleon was never happy here as this was a less hospitable part of the island, but British authorities thought it prudent to keep him here in order to prevent another possible escape attempt 3 . A new house was built adjacent to the original home, but Napoleon never occupied it, staying at Longwood until his death in May 1821. Today, Longwood is a museum owned by the French government. On the orders of the governor, Napoleon was originally buried not in France but on Saint Helena in a rather modest plot. An argument over whether the gravestone should read simply ‘Napoleon’ (as traditionally befitting an emperor) or his full civilian name led to the tomb being left nameless.

Napoleon’s remains were relocated to France in 1840, but the tomb remains in place , surrounded by a modest fence. Pronounced ‘Saint Huh-LEE-na’. ↩ Incidentally, today the main street in Jamestown is named – you guessed it – Napoleon Street. ↩ There were many crackpot schemes cooked up to hatch Napoleon from the island, including a Texan plan to extract him using a primitive submarine and bring him to North America to found a new empire! ↩ 1000+ images about Napoleon's Elba Experience and Epic Comeback on Pinterest | Frances o'connor, Back to and Islands Forward He abdicated his throne and surrendered. He signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which exiled him to Elba. The treaty got him 2 million francs a year, and allowed him to keep the title of Emperor, but Napoleon was distraught, and tried unsuccessfully to poison himself. See More Napolean Introduction ï¿½ Task ï¿½ Process ï¿½ Resources ï¿½ Evaluation - Conclusion INTRODUCTION Napoleon Bonaparte was ï¿½one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West.

He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code; the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized educationï¿½ - Encyclopedia Britannica In April 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. In March 1815, he escaped from Elba and thus began the hundred days of his leadership of the French again. Upon his defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, a remote island in the south Atlantic Ocean where he remained until his death on May 5, 1821. TASK Your Geography assignment is to compare and contrast the islands of Elba and St. Helena as they exist today. Are they still as remote as they were when Napoleon was exiled? Do people travel there? Elba is 12 kilometers (7 miles) off the coast of Tuscany in Italy. St. Helena is a 47 square mile tropical island in the South Atlantic Ocean, accessible only by ship. Charles Darwin remarked upon visiting there, ï¿½a little world, within itself, which excited our curiosityï¿½ï¿½.

A sympathetic ear: Napoleon, Elba and the British - from History Today (1994), vol. 44 - napoleon.org HISTORY TODAY 1994 vol. 44. On February 26th, 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba. On March 2nd, Lord Burghersh, His Majesty's Minister in Florence, wrote to the Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, regretting: … that a feeling has very generally been excited at Elba, at Leghorn, and to a degree at this place, that the English were privy to and connived at the escape of Bonaparte. This report originated in the language of Bonaparte's officers, who were perhaps instructed to hold it. A dissatisfaction with the King of France's governement was given as a reason why the English wished again to see Napoleon in that country. The British sloop-of-war Partridge was stated to have brought him a letter to that effect on Friday. Napoleon did foster these rumours of British complicity, with a view to creating mayhem among the Allies, his ploy was unwittingly seconded not only by his British admirers but also by the bungling of the Foreign Office itself.

The Treaty of Fontainebleau, drawn up five days after his abdication on April 6th, 1814, granted Napoleon the 'the free possession and the peaceable enjoyment in full sovereignty of the island of Elba, and of the Duchies of Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla', generous pensions for himself and his family and the right to retain his rank and imperial title. Castlereagh, shying at the latter article which, fraught with dynastic ambiguities, he could see would play into the hands of the Whig Opposition at home, refused to sign and only acceded to the treaty's territorial provisions. Castlereagh was in Dijon with the Emperor of Austria and Metternich during those crucial first ten days of April when peace was being negotiated in Paris.

They were waiting for the French themselves to declare for the restoration of the old dynasty (rather than having the Bourbons unilaterally imposed by the Allies) and wishing, as Castlereagh explained to the Duke of Wellington on April 14th, to: … avoid a dictatorial pledge, which might give his [Napoleon's] adherents in France, as well as the Opposition here, the handle to represent the support of the Bourbons as a foreign and not a French cause. This diplomatic delicacy was nonetheless shortsighted: it gave the policy advantage to the Tsar, Alexander I, who had entered Paris with Frederick William III of Prussia on March 31st. Of all the Allies, Alexander had the least to lose and the most to gain from the presence of Napoleon in the Mediterranean. His dislike of the Bourbons and admiration for Napoleon were further factors in his readiness to award lenient terms of exile to the fallen emperor. The abdication and exile of Napoleon not only spelt the apparent conclusion of twenty years of warfare but gave access to a continent from most of which the British had been barred since the rupture of the Peace of Amiens in 1803.

They flocked across the Channel in their hundreds, to the delight of the French tradesmen and caricaturists who revelled in the idiosyncratic dress and mores of a people straved of Gallic civilisation for eleven years. With the resumption of the Grand Tour the British swarmed south, skirting the island where 'the man of a thousand thrones, who strew'd our earth with hostile bones' had become an object of such curiosity that alabaster busts in his image had sold out in the Florentine shops by August. Whether souvenir-hunters or more serious art patrons like Lord John Russell, the future prime minister, who was in Italy with his father the Duke of Bedford to commission Canova, most tourists found the lure of 'the lion's den', as the Princess of Wales called Elba, irresistible. The lion's claws appeared to have been drawn. 'At Elba', recorded Lord Holland, 'Napoleon seemed absorbed in domestic details, the arrangements of the petty concerns of the place and the reception of his English visitor's. Their exact number is hard to establish: some sixty-one allegedly travelled across to Elba from Livorno.

Others would have sailed from Genoa or Naples, which, as a kingdom still ruled by Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat, was not subject to Allied passport controls. Napoleon appreciated that he was 'an object of great curiosity to them; let them stare, then they can go home and amuse the gentlemen by distorting my words and gestures… They have won the game and hold the cards'. Chevalier Mariotti, French consul in Livorno and Talleyrand's agent in the peninsula, had recruited a spy on the island, known as the Oil Merchant, who was baffled by 'the extreme curiosity to see Bonaparte and when they succeed they do not take their eyes off him'. Curiosity was deemed a sufficiently good reason for visiting the island to pass muster at the passport office. British seamen proved to be keen visitors. Indeed, Napoleon had embarked for Elba on April 28th, aboard the frigate HMS Undaunted, whose captain, Thomas Ussher, wrote home on May 1st: 'It has fallen to my extraordinary lot to be the gaolor of the instrument of the misery Europe has so long endured'.

By the end of the month, the man whom Ussher could not even bring himself to name had become his 'bon ami', and had given him 2,000 bottles of wine, and a diamond encrusted snuffbox. In return Ussher presented Napoleon with a barge, which he flatteringly reserved for his own exclusive use. Notwithstanding the British Government's refusal to recognise Napoleon's royal and imperial titles, Captain Towers placed a throne on deck when Napoleon attended a ball held on board HMS Curaçao on June 4th, to celebrate George III's birthday. By August 21st, Admiral Hallowell had to tell Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, the British Commissioner on the island, that he 'disapproved most strongly of several instances of voluntary court and unnecessary visits paid by naval officers at Portoferrario', and issued orders to stop these 'pilgrimages' forthwith. The more privileged visitors were entertained to lunch by Pons de l'Herault, administrator of the iron mines, whose observation that 'what all the English had in common, regardless of their class, was their praise of the Emperor' is vindicated by the surviving records of those who had conversations with Napoleon.

The MP Hugh Fortescue, Viscount Ebrington, who saw Napoleon for the first time on December 6th, 1814, related how: His manner put me quite at my ease almost from the first, and seemed to invite my questions, which he answered upon all subjects without the slightest hesitation, and with a quickness of comprehension and clearness of expression beyond what I ever saw in any other man.

John Henry Vivian, major in the Royal Stannary Artillery, reckoned he had 'never passed an hour, or indeed an hour and a quarter… more agreeably' than that spent on January 26th, with 'that wonderful man'; Lord John Russell described Napoleon as 'extremely good natured… his manner seems studied to put one at one's ease by its familiarity; his smile and laugh are very agreeable', though he alone seemed to notice that Napoleon's state of mind was 'very far indeed from the tranquillity of a philosopher'; John Barber Scott, later Fellow of Emmanuel College Cambridge, and his companions: … were so delighted with the reception he gave us that I must confess we drank Napoleon unanimously, in a bumper, on our return – a part of the afternoon of which, upon reflection, I feel rather ashamed. And the MP John Nicholas Fazakerley eulogised: I would rather have crossed the Alps twenty times for this scene, and would rather give up the recollection of anything I saw, than of these four hours. Napoleon relished these conversations with his British visitors. They helped to relieve the monotony of his life in exile, surrounded by a Lilliputian court.

Well-educated, wellborn and well-informed, they also kept Napoleon abreast of events in mainland Europe at a time when all but the most clandestine channels were closed to him. After his audience on December 24th, Lord John Russell recalled: He inquired if I had seen at Florence many Englishmen who came from there (France) and when I mentioned Lord Holland, he asked if he thought things went well with the Bourbons. When I answered in the negative he seemed delighted, and asked if Lord Holland thought they would be able to stay there. Lord Holland had met Napoleon in 1802 when he visited Paris with his uncle, Charles James Fox; his opinions were of particular value insomuch that Holland was the head of a cabal of Whigs who subscribed to Byron's view that the restoration of the Bourbons represented 'the triumph of tameness over talent' and had sworn 'mortal hate to all royal entails'. Most of the Whigs who visited Elba were close colleagues of Holland and habitués of Lady Holland's London salon.

An ardent Bonapartist, it was Lady Holland who supplied Napoleon with the October 19th issue of the Courrier in which the idea of exiling him to St Helena was first publicly aired. Her own plans to visit Elba were foiled by Napoleon's escape, news which, according to her husband, 'set Lady Holland's spirits in such a flurry and agitation that I suppose she will not be calm and sedate enough to enjoy the improving gravity of Doric architecture'. The circle over which Lord Holland presided was cosmopolitan, liberal and aristocratic. Immediately prior to his departure for France in July 1814, he had entertained both Metternich and the Tsar at Holland House. A month later in Paris, at a dinner hosted by Talleyrand, (an old friend from the days of the latter's exile in England during the Revolution) Holland not only met Napoleon's ex-minister of police, Fouché, but several of the military chiefs most opposed to the Bourbons. The calibre of information Holland's friends could place at Napoleon's disposal was therefore exceedingly high.

As prominent members of the Opposition they were also able to provide valuable insights into the state of the political parties at Westminster at a time when Europe appeared again to be on the brink of war. From the moment he abdicated, firm in his belief he would be recalled to the throne within six months, Napoleon brashly advised the Bourbons to change nothing but his sheets. On December 4th, Campbell reported to Castlereagh that Napoleon was convinced 'the sovereigns of Europe will find it necessary for their own repose to call upon him'. By the beginning of 1815, events seemed to vindicate his confidence: the differences between the Allies had reached such a pitch that the Austrians, French and British had drawn up a secret alliance against a Russo-Prussian axis. Yet none of the Powers convened at Vienna was blind to the fact that the French army's disenchantment with the Bourbons made it an unreliable fighting force, or that, for all Talleyrand's bluff, Louis XVIII's authority was dwindling: as Wellington recognised, 'the King of France without an army is no King'.

In Paris, where the British were held responsible for the Restoration, anglophobia waxed as Bourbon popularity waned: Louis XVIII was denounced as the viceroy of England and Wellington narrowly escaped assassination. Nor did the British Government escape criticism at home: opposition to Tory foreign and fiscal policies was so pronounced in Parliament that Lord Liverpool perceived his ministry to be on the point of collapse and repeatedly demanded the recall of Castlereagh from Vienna: 'In truth, as the government is now circumstanced, we could not go on without it'. It was against this backcloth that Napoleon's conversations with his Whig sympathisers took place. His was a highly polished performance: whilst giving the impression that he was entirely resigned to his fate, no longer 'goaded by ambition's sting', Napoleon nonetheless reminded his audience that France remained a mighty nation. Nor did he omit to mention his popularity with his soldiers, with the tacit implication that he could be recalled to power if the army were not mollified. It was no idle threat: the French army's reputation for invincibility had been tarnished, but not lost, at Leipzig.

Napoleon's very presence on Elba was a tribute to French military might insomuch that it represented the price the Allies were obliged to pay for his decision, in April 1814, to lay down his arms. Napoleon's successful return to power largely depended on the attitude of Great Britain, pay-masters of the four coalitions which had finally brought him down. The Whigs opposed renewed hostilities on the Continent, not only out of antagonism to the conservatism of Castlereagh, Metternich and Talleyrand, with their insistence on the 'legitimate' dynasties in Europe, but because, as great landlords, they largely shouldered the enormous financial cost of the wars. The long Recess (Parliament only sat for three weeks between July 1814 and February 1815) which now enabled some of these Whig MP's to travel abroad and sit at the feet of the fallen emperor was, ironically, orchestrated by Liverpool in order to forestall their criticism of government policy.

They returned home more intractable than when they had left and proved enthusiastic supporters of the motion introduced by Samuel Whitbread on April 28th, 1815, opposing intervention in the internal affairs of France. Far from acting as a deterrent, rumours of his removal to St Helena redoubled Napoleon's determination to quit Elba and his fears of being intercepted by the Royal Navy were largely allayed by the promise of asylum held out by some of his British visitors. In the course of summarising the conversation he had enjoyed with Ebrington over dinner in early December, Napoleon told Sir Neil Campbell they had spoken: … of removing him to England. There he would have society, and enjoy an opportunity of explaining the circumstances of his life, and doing away with many prejudices, such as was not possible in the island of Elba. In England he could even see and communicate with his partisans better than at Elba; four-fifths of the French people were in his favour.

According to Ebrington's own account, Napoleon asked him whether he would be stoned if he came to England: I replied that he would be perfectly safe there, as the violent feelings which had been excited against him were daily subsiding now that we were no longer at war. That Ebrington was not only profoundly impressed by his host but aware too of the likelihood of his leaving the island is evident from a letter written by the Duke of Bedford, whom he joined on his return to the mainland in December 1814, to that baroque' Bonapartist Lady Holland: Lord Ebrington has just come from him and everything I hear of this most extraordinary man, increases my desire to see him. Rely upon, it, he will again (author's italics) be numbered on the great scene of history. Napoleon's consideration of the possibility of asylum in England may also explain why he declined to receive the Princess of Wales, (an honoured guest, at the time, of King Joachim Murat in Naples) whose visit would have antagonised the Prince Regent profoundly.

On December 29th, Campbell noted in his diary: I think his inviting Lord Ebrington to dine with him, without me, was intended as a marked slight, for the purpose of inducing me to quit Elba entirely. The removal of Campbell was not in Napoleon's interest – he was admirably inefficient – but to pique him into frequent absences was highly expedient. Campbell needed little encouragement: he had a mistress, Countess Miniacci, in Florence (quitte possibly an agent of Napoleon's), was bored with his 'sultry confinement' and progressively denied access to the imperial presence. Napoleon used these audiences to feed Campbell, and, by extension, the Allies, with misinformation: I do not think of anything beyond my little island. I could have sustained the war for twenty years if I had wished it. I exist no longer for the world. I am a dead man. I am occupied in nothing but my family and my retreat, my house, my cows, and my mules.

Yet Campbell's absences were no less valuable than the principle of his presence which, by inferring Napoleon enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy, acted as a safeguard against the Barbary pirates, who terrorised shipping in those waters, or any other amphibian force that might threaten Napoleon's safety. Equally, the Allies were reassured by the residence on Elba of a British commissioner who seemed to guarantee Napoleon's captivity. As Campbell recorded in his diary on December 29th-31st: It is universally supposed in Italy, and publicly stated, that Great Britain is responsible to the other Powers for the detention of Napoleon's person, and that I am the executive agent for this purpose. Napoleon believes this. On March 3rd, shortly after Napoleon's escape from Elba, Burghersh wrote to Castlereagh: From an unwillingness to act unkindly towards an officer of Sir Neil Campbell's merit, I have abstained from bringing under your lordship's consideration the improper manner in which, I felt, he did the duties of the situation in which he was placed. His absences from the Elba (sic) were constant, and at times of considerable duration.

I represented my feelings to him at various times, and begged – at least till the Congress was over and the world placed at rest – he would remain steadily at his post. Sir Neil felt that his situation about Bonaparte was unpleasant, and that the duty was better done by occasional visits. This opinion was at variance with mine… I do not mean that any residence of a British officer could have prevented the event which has taken place; information, however, with regard to the intention might have been obtained. When, on March 9th, Lady Charlotte Bury, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales, met Captain Adye of the Partridge in Nice and heard his account of Napoleon's escape, she concluded: At best this is a blundering business; I should think either Sir Neil, or the ministry, or both, must answer for it with their heads, or at least with their reputations. All that is said by way of excuse for Sir Neil Campbell, does not appear to me to exonerate him from the greatest blame; indeed, I cannot fathom the whole affair, and do not wonder foreigners throw the blame on the whole nation.

Campbell's absence from Elba for the ten days preceding the escape, despite the protests of Burghersh who urged him most strongly to return on the 24th, was unquestionably a dereliction of duty. Yet, far from being pilloried by the Government, his conduct was whitewashed in the House of Commons by Castlereagh who was hamstrung by his own failure to issue Campbell with clear instructions. The only brief Campbell ever received was at Fontainebleau on April 16th, 1814: Conduct yourself, as far as the circumstances will permit, with every proper respect and attention to Napoleon, to whose secure asylum in that island it is the wish of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent to afford every facility and protection. By July 15th, in response to his request for more specific ordres, Campbell's position was defined as 'British resident in Elba without assuming any further official character'. In refusing to recognise Napoleon's imperial and royal titles, Castlereagh placed Campbell in an invidious position which Napoleon had been careful to exploit.

The absence of diplomatic clarity bred distrust both at Vienna, where Castlereagh was regularly lampooned, and in the peninsula. Mariotti, who suspected the entire Royal Navy of being under Napoleon's sway, complained to Talleyrand on August 9th, 1814, that 'every British captain has his portrait in his cabin'; he was unaware that this was not an act of idolatry but the result of an order from Ussher, to facilitate recognition should Napoleon try to escape to America. The Oil Merchant, who knew February 26th was the appointed day, was so distrustful of the British that he refused to divulge the fact to Adye, the one man who could have alerted the Royal Navy in time and foiled the escape as soon as Napoleon put to sea. Captain Adye may not have carried packages on February 24th, 1815, as was alleged, but his flamboyant admiration for the exile left him vulnerable to the accusation and alienated the very men with whom he should have been in confidence.

Furthermore, it was his indiscretion that signalled the date for the escape insomuch that he informed Bertrand of the precise movements of the Partridge at this crucial hour. When Wellington heard the news of the escape, he wrote to Burghersh: We should have known of his intention before he put it into execution, and then we might have hoped to have had some of our six sail of the line, now in the Mediterranean, off the island by the 26th. Writing on March 7th, to inform Louis XVIII of Napoleon's escape, Talleyrand accused the English of having surveyed Napoleon 'with a negligence they will be hard put to explain' and virtually all the Austrian agents reporting on the event to their chief of police, Hager, mentioned the widespread rumour: The English have allowed him to escape in order to recapture him or to have an excuse for treating him with the utmost severity; others say it was not an escape at all but a departure arranged by the English who perhaps wish to send him to America.

Much the same view prevailed in France where John Cam Hobhouse noted on March 21st, the day after Napoleon's return to the capital, 'the English were in great odium, even with the Bourbonists, the report being that they had let loose Bonaparte to cause a civil war in France'. To the Tsar's question: 'Why did you let him escape?' Wellington laconically replied: 'Why did you place him there?' The proximity of Elba to the mainland was the single most important factor in Napoleon's escape. Admiral Sir Sidney Smith wondered whether it were not likely: … that before Napoleon left Fontainebleau he looked at the map? Is the distance between Elba and the Southern Coast of France of any significance to a man who has marched from one end of Europe to the other? By the time Castlereagh arrived in Paris on April 10th, 1814, the Treaty of Fontainebleau, with its stipulation of Elba, was a fait accompli in which the fallen emperor had had more say than the British Foreign Secretary.

Castlereagh's efforts to steer a hazardous course between the Scylla of French public opinion on the one hand and the Charybdis of the Whig Opposition on the other, left in their wake Allied misgivings about British intentions. Napoleon, for whom success ultimately depended on the rupture of the Quadruple Alliance, did his utmost to foster these suspicions. By supplying him with information and encouragement, Napoleon's British visitors proved his willing accomplices. FOR FURTHER READING Jean Tulard, (trans. Theresa Waugh), The Myth of the Saviour (Methuen, 1985); J.C. Herold, The Age of Napoleon (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1969); Norman Mackenzie, The Escape from Elba (Oxford University Press, 1982); E. Tangye Lean, The Napoleonists (Oxford University Press, 1970); A.P. Herbert, Why Waterloo? (Methuen, 1952). Publication Title : Could Napoleon have escaped from St. Helena? - Shannon Selin Contact Could Napoleon have escaped from St. Helena? A View of the Town and Island of St.

Helena in the Atlantic Ocean belonging to the English East India Company The premise of Napoleon in America is that Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena. That was the island to which he was banished after being forced off the French throne in 1815 following his defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon was considered the prisoner of all four powers that allied to defeat him (Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia). Britain alone had custody of him. A volcanic speck in the South Atlantic Ocean – 1,200 miles (1,900 km) west of Africa and 2,000 miles (3,200 km) east of Brazil – seemed an ideal place to stash a public menace, especially one who had earlier in the year managed to escape from the considerably less remote island of Elba . St. Helena hard to escape Jailbreak would be a tough proposition. The island’s forbidding terrain was augmented by strong fortifications. As Alexander Beatson, an officer in the East India Company (which possessed the island) and governor of St.

Helena from 1808 to 1813, wrote: The extraordinary formation of the island itself, being encompassed on all sides by stupendous and almost perpendicular cliffs, rising to the height of from six to more than twelve hundred feet, and through which formidable barrier there are but few inlets to the interior, are collectively such a variety of natural advantages that perhaps they are not to be equalled…. The only accessible landing-places are James Town, Rupert’s Bay and Lemon Valley on the north and Sandy Bay on the South. All these points are well fortified and powerfully protected by Fleur d’eau Batteries, furnished (excepting Sandy Bay) with furnaces for heating shot; and as cannon are also placed upon the cliffs in their vicinity, far above the reach of ships…no ships could possibly stand the fire of the defences which protect the anchorage and the whole of the Northern coast; and in regard to the Southern landing place, Sandy Bay, it is equally secure against a naval attack….

[T]here are several small paths from the interior leading down the precipices to the sea, which are frequented by fishermen, but they are so very difficult of access that persons unaccustomed to such frightful roads would find it extremely difficult, if not impracticable, and particularly in the night, to ascend them…and they might very easily be defended by rolling stones from the heights…. Telegraphs…are placed upon the most commanding heights…and are so connected with one another, and so spread all over the island, that no vessel can approach without being descried at the distance of sixty miles…. Nothing can pass in any part or even in sight of the island without being instantly known to the Governor. (1) Plots to rescue Napoleon Despite Governor Hudson Lowe’s efforts to ensure that Napoleon and his retinue at Longwood House were heavily guarded, there was no shortage of escape plans. On the International Napoleonic Society’s website , Lally Brown has nicely transcribed an intercepted 1816 letter to Napoleon’s companion in exile, General Henri Bertrand .

This describes a “boat that will drift to the back of the Island…in the shape of an olde (sic) cask but so constructed that by pulling at both ends to be sea worthy and both boat and sails which will be found inside will be painted to correspond with the colour of the sea.” Napoleon was expected to slide down a cliff on a rope to get to this vessel, the ultimate destination being the United States. (2) Another of Napoleon’s companions, General Charles Montholon , refers in his memoirs to several schemes, including an 1820 proposal from a naval captain. “His vessel was returning from the Indies; he had arranged everything so as to be able to receive the Emperor in a boat at a point of the coast previously designated and convey him to his vessel without running the slightest risk of being stopped. He asked no reward for himself, but demanded a million of francs for the person whose concurrence was necessary, in order that the Emperor might safely pass from Longwood to the coast. This million was not to be payable until the Emperor had reached America, and even landed; another condition was, that the Emperor should only be accompanied by two persons….

Another project of a similar nature was conceived; it was to be carried out by means of submarine vessels; five or six thousand louis were expended on this project by a friend of O’Meara’s [an Irish surgeon who had earlier been Napoleon’s doctor on St. Helena].” (3) Though a submarine plot sounds far-fetched, an Irish adventurer named Tom Johnson claimed he had been offered £40,000 to attempt such a rescue. There is evidence Johnson was involved in such a plot and may even have possessed a primitive submarine, as detailed in couple of excellent articles–one by Emilio Ocampo in Napoleonica. La Revue, available at cairn.info ; the other by Mike Dash in the Past Imperfect blog at the Smithsonian.com website . Napoleon considered escape plans According to Montholon, Napoleon considered several escape plans but declined to take advantage of them. “[H]is resolution not to struggle against his destiny being immovable, he must persist in refusing his offers.” (4) Napoleon feared he would be assassinated or forgotten if he went to the United States, and thought it better to remain a martyr on St. Helena.

He also hoped that an eventual change of government in either London or Paris would allow a sanctioned return from exile. This did not stop tales of rescue attempts from circulating, many involving privateers and adventurers in the Gulf of Mexico or Brazil. The last chapter of The Bonapartes in America , by Clarence Edward Macartney and Gordon Dorrance (Philadephia, 1939), describes several. Historian Rafe Blaufarb posits that most such stories were spread deliberately by Napoleon’s supporters to foment panic among European governments and to retain the attention of the political opposition in France and Britain. (5) Still, Lowe’s cordon was penetrable. Napoleon and his suite were able to bribe British officers (including O’Meara) and others to elude the restrictions on communication and carry letters and papers to Europe. European visitors smuggled in messages and gifts for Napoleon, including locks of his son’s hair. Niles’ Weekly Register, a Baltimore paper, reported on August 8, 1818, that “[a] sailor belonging to an East India ship has terribly alarmed wise Johnny Bull by reporting that while the ship lay off St.

Helena he swam to the shore, clambered the rocks, eluded the guards and paid a friendly visit to some of Napoleon’s domestics, with whom he was acquainted!” (6) Over the years conspiracy theorists have contended that Napoleon did escape from St. Helena, winding up either in Europe or the United States; and that it was not Napoleon who was buried on St. Helena in 1821 and removed to Paris in 1840, but an alleged double (candidates for this role vary, depending on the theory). (7) This is the basis of the films The Emperor’s New Clothes (2001) and Monsieur N (2003). While I am firmly in the camp of those who believe Napoleon died on St. Helena, it is fun to speculate about what might have happened if he had escaped. You might also enjoy:

Question: With whom are the islands of Elba and St Helena associated?
Answer: Napoleon