“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
Before we all gorge ourselves on turkey and stuffing, it’s time for the conclusion of Napoleon Bonaparte’s tiniest war. Now, if you’re like me and hate military history, don’t tune out just yet – the battlefield is small, and the only casualty is – well, I won’t spoil it for you. Instead, this is the story of what happens when the world’s greatest ambition is thwarted by the world’s most inescapable obstacle: bureaucracy. The story of Napoleon in exile is pretty incredible. This story has it all: double-crossing, surprise comebacks, and petty warfare – no, I mean really petty warfare.
P.S. I’ll be on vacation until mid-December but I can’t wait to speak with everyone when I return. I hope everyone has a great start to the holiday season, and thank you for listening!
Episode 44: “Napoleon’s Tiniest Campaign, Part 2”
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Transcript
Bienvenue and welcome back to The Land of Desire. I’m your host, Diana, and this week we’re returning to the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, newly recaptured after his daring escape from the island of Elba.
For the first few weeks, St. Helena seemed like it would be another version of Elba. Jamestown, the only town on the island, was a pleasant, civilized little spot that enjoyed beautiful weather all year round. For a bunch of British soldiers, it was very heaven, and Napoleon enjoyed his first few weeks in Jamestown getting to know the neighbors, especially Betsy, the 14 year old girl next door. Betsy was a bit of a firecracker, and she cracked Napoleon up with all kinds of pranks and mischief, while he quizzed her about geography and music. The family invited him over for dinner regularly, and they all found him charming and funny. It’s poignant to think about Napoleon nearing his fifties, never to see his own children again, enjoying a brief period of almost normal family life. This sunny slice of retirement came to an end on April 14th, 1816, with the arrival of Napoleon’s last nemesis, his final foe, the new governor of St. Helena, Hudson Lowe. The great man was about to begin his teeniest, tiniest war.
“He was a stupid man, he knew nothing at all of the world, and like all men who knew nothing of the world, he was suspicious and jealous.” That’s what the Duke of Wellington had to say about Hudson Lowe. A career soldier, Hudson Lowe had served honorably for 34 years before accepting the post on St Helena, but that was about all he and Napoleon had in common. Governor Lowe was, to put it simply, a nerd: obsessed with rules, completely lacking in imagination, utterly unwilling to bend. You couldn’t pick anyone more likely to drive Napoleon nuts. Before his first meeting with the new governor, Napoleon noted optimistically that the two men had fought in a few of the same battles. He’d always gotten on well with soldiers, even British soldiers, “We have then probably exchanged a few cannon balls together, and that is always, in my eyes, a noble relation to stand in.” But his first meeting with Lowe didn’t go as planned. That night, Napoleon whipped off a furious letter calling Lowe “hideous, he has a most villainous countenance.” Over the next four months, Napoleon and Governor Lowe met six times after which point Napoleon Bonaparte lost it. He refused to meet with the governor ever again, and what could have been a companionable arrangement transformed into a cold war.
I’ll say this: Hudson Lowe has been unfairly villified by Napoleon’s publicity machine, and most modern historians are trying to rehabilitate the poor guy’s reputation a bit. He wasn’t a sadistic torturer, and most of the time he really was just trying to do his job. And frankly, if you were telling this story to a space alien, they’d be confused by my sympathies here, too. “But this man, he escaped the last island, yes? And it caused the deaths of 100,000 people, yes? So this is a very dangerous prisoner and he should not be treated like a cruise ship passenger who is just trying to play canasta when the mean old governor won’t let him.” And that space alien isn’t wrong! But man, Hudson Lowe is such an uptight little twig that it’s hard to stay on his side even when his position makes complete sense. He’s the Percy Weasley of Napoleonic history. Whatever else he did, it’s worth remembering this: Napoleon’s sentence was exile, it was not house arrest. Hudson Lowe’s duty was to prevent Napoleon from escaping the island of St Helena, not prevent Napoleon from escaping his own house. But that’s just what he did, and instead of devoting his considerable talents to improving St Helena the way he did Elba, Napoleon’s ambitions, no matter how tiny, were thwarted every time.
So, let’s say you take a man like Napoleon with an incredibly focused, impossibly energetic mind, and an irresistible urge to administer. A man like that needs a hobby – say, administering a remote island in the middle of nowhere. This man could spend his energies doing things like installing water fountains and planting squash and organizing a volunteer fire department. But let’s say you tell that man that he can’t do any of those things, because you say so, and he needs to sit on his hands. What do you think a man like Napoleon is going to do? He’s going to turn that incredible focus, that energy, that capacity for imagination and invention, and he’s going to use it to end you.
The day after his arrival, Sir Hudson Lowe made his way out to Napoleon’s house to introduce himself. After his first few weeks on St. Helena, where he’d stayed in Jamestown and befriended the family next door, Napoleon had been moved to Longwood, his official residence. On paper, it was one of the grandest residences on the island. In real life, it was a nightmare. Located in a remote clifftop, Longwood sat in fog 300 days a year, which is almost as much as I get here in San Francisco. The humidity in the house was often 100 percent, so everything in Longwood was constantly moldy and decayed. The wallpaper peeled off the walls, the trees grew covered in moss, and Napoleon’s playing cards had to be dried in the oven to prevent them from sticking together. The house was infested with termites, rats, mosquitos and cockroaches, and when the emperor wasn’t scratching himself, he was coughing, as the humidity gave everyone more or less constant low-level bronchitis. The house was constantly patrolled by soldiers, and a telegraph station on the property kept the governor up to date on Napoleon’s status. Therefore, Napoleon was in a sour mood the first time Governor Lowe came to call, coughing and itching in his miserable house in the clouds, and the Governor was told politely but firmly that the emperor could not see any visitors today. Also, 9 AM is too early to visit the emperor. Also, the governor should make an appointment before stopping by. At this point, the first game of hide-and-seek began, as the humiliated Governor crept on tip-toe around the house as his lieutenants looked on, and Lowe spent his first day on the island peeking through Napoleon’s shutters, trying to spy the ex-emperor before stamping off through the mud, muttering under his breath.
The next day, a more successful meeting actually took place, after which point Napoleon raised an eyebrow at the governor but noted ‘one cannot judge a man except by his behavior over a certain period’. The second meeting was not successful – Lowe referred to his prisoner as ‘General Bonaparte’ while Napoleon insisted on ‘Emperor Napoleon’. A month later, it was time for another game of hide-and-seek: Is the emperor free today? No, and he isn’t free tomorrow either. When they finally met, the meeting dissolved into arguments, and a witness noted ‘they parted in a greater state of misunderstanding than ever’. Then, Lowe began actually enforcing terms of Napoleon’s exile which no one had ever paid attention to before: soldiers needed to see Napoleon in person twice a day and report back to the Governor. Worse yet, Lowe forbade any communication between Napoleon and his companions and the townspeople in Jamestown – effectively cutting off Napoleon from his beloved ex-neighbors, Betsy and her family. Eventually, a trio of commissioners arrived from Austria, France and Russia, on orders to make sure Napoleon was in fact still on the island. It appears the 3 were nominated for no other reason than that they were the most ridiculous people society could find and it would be best if they were sent far, far away. Napoleon refused to see these 3 absurd figures, and Governor Lowe was reduced to another game of hide-and-seek, with Lowe and the 3 commissioners tiptoeing around Longwood, hoping to catch Napoleon on a walk, spying through the blinds. Napoleon appeared to spend the next three weeks in the bath. After one more meeting, which devolved into two hours of Napoleon and Lowe complaining and insulting one another, Napoleon snapped and refused to see the Governor anymore. True to his word, the two would never meet face-to-face ever again. I didn’t know it was possible to avoid someone on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere with a population the size of my high school, but when Napoleon sets his mind to something, he really commits. The silent war began.
How does a cold war play out on a tiny island? It plays out like this: The governor tells Napoleon he’s spending too much money. Napoleon says, “Fine!” and sends his servant off to Jamestown with a bag of silver to auction off at the market. When this reaches the newspapers back home, the public is shocked and Governor Lowe gets a bunch of hate mail. Later on, Governor Lowe limits the amount of firewood Napoleon can have, despite living in a fog prison. Napoleon says “Fine!” and begins burning his own furniture to stay warm. Once again, this reaches the newspapers back home, and the public is shocked and Governor Lowe gets a bunch of hate mail. Even as the Governor complains about the spending it requires to guard Napoleon, he’s the guy stationing 120 men around Longwood by day and 72 at night – please remember that this is a house on top of a cliff on a deserted island with one port 1,200 miles from land. I understand that Napoleon had just engineered an improbably escape two years earlier, but that had more to do with the fact that he was basically living on Alcatraz back then, not the land that time forgot. Ratchet it down a notch already.
The war continues: Governor Lowe yells at Betsy for riding one of Napoleon’s ponies. Napoleon gets his doctor to write nasty things about the Governor in his memoirs before returning to London and doing a book tour. Governor Lowe doesn’t allow Napoleon’s piano to be returned to him. Napoleon gives a favorite book to a friend, which had been inscribed to ‘Emperor Napoleon’ back in the day. Governor Lowe gets snippy about the ‘Emperor’ bit and the gift is returned.
The Governor insisted on reports of Napoleon’s presence twice a day. Napoleon responded by hiding out of sight of the poor officers for days at a time, until they, too, are forced to tip-toe around the windows as the Governor himself had done so many times. ‘In spite of the extra pay’, one historian noted, ‘no officer was willing to hold this position longer than he could help.’ One officer reported being on his feet ten hours at a time to catch a glimpse of Napoleon. Once, he caught sight of Napoleon strapping his razor. A few days later, he saw the top of a tall hat, which he hoped belonged to the Emperor. As the Duke of Wellington himself pointed out in a letter years later, Napoleon’s security was absurdly unnecessary. “I would have strictly guarded those very few landing-places along the coast, insisted upon his showing himself to an English officer every night and morning, and then for the rest of the time I would have let him do whatever or go wherever he pleased.”
The war continued: Someone sent Napoleon a bust of his son, and Governor Lowe held onto it for weeks until he could ascertain that nothing was smuggled inside it, making a half dozen bureaucrats run back and forth with the bust filling out paperwork in triplicate. When someone gifted Napoleon a chess set with the imperial N carved on them, the Governor confiscated it. Napoleon was allowed no contact with his son for fear that he would incite another revolution back on the continent, which makes sense until you remember that a) all of Napoleon’s letters were read before being transmitted home, and b) Napoleon’s son was four years old. When Napoleon attempted to give a snuffbox to the senior chaplain on the island, the Governor accused Napoleon of attempting to bribe an official. At one point, Napoleon found a cow destroying his precious garden and shot it. When Governor Lowe found out, his paranoia took hold. He told the French Commissioner, “He knows that you often use these cows and he wished to deprive you of them, and perhaps to prove to you that he can still make himself feared.” The cruelest blow of all came when Napoleon submitted a request to the Governor to be able to see Captain Murray Maxwell’s boa constrictor, which could eat a goat. Napoleon’s request was denied. Finally, the French commissioner stopped by to chat with a friend of Napoleon’s about the vegetable gardens at Longwood, which grew green beans and white beans. Noting that Bonaparte’s supporters wore green and the Bourbon family’s supporters wore white, Governor Lowe wrote that the commissioner “would have acted with more propriety if he had declined receiving either, or limited himself to a demand for the white alone.” General Lowe would refer to the beans again in later letters.
An unshakeable object paired against an immovable force: the feud between Napoleon Bonaparte and Hudson Lowe could have lasted for decades. On the other hand, perhaps the years would have eroded the sharper edges of their relationship, with their feud fading into a gentle stalemate and possibly a grudging respect. We’ll never know, because in September 1817, Napoleon asked to see his doctor. His symptoms were many, and obvious: he was vomiting, he had severe pain in his stomach, he suffered from fevers and he couldn’t stop sweating. By the end of 1818, he was even worse, and by January 1919 he was slipping in and out of consciousness. Governor Lowe hated Napoleon’s chosen doctor, and thought his diagnosis was a trick to incur the wrath of the folks back home, so he had the doctor dismissed from the island. When Napoleon began shedding his mortal coil, the Governor had a surgeon escorted from one of the navy ships patrolling the harbor come and inspect the suffering prisoner, and this new surgeon had the same diagnosis. Chronic hepatitis. Since hepatitis was thought to be caused by poor climate, Governor Lowe feared that the public would think Napoleon’s illness was his fault, and he did his best to suppress these reports and had this new doctor court-martialed. In 1820, Napoleon’s illness took another turn for the worse. Though the doctor’s prescribed more exercise outdoors, Napoleon hated doing so under the watchful eyes of the 120 guards. Think back to the last time you were really sick, embarrassingly sick, where you couldn’t stop sweating and throwing up, and you looked disgusting and felt even more so. I don’t even want my boyfriend to see me like that, let alone 100 guards. Yet Governor Lowe seemed to believe that a 50 year old man who couldn’t stop sweating and vomiting would possibly escape the deserted island if there were only, say, 99 soldiers standing guard at a time.
For three years, Napoleon’s suffering continued, wretched, painful, and mysterious. Eventually, by March 1821 Napoleon refused to go outside anymore. Over the next few weeks, Napoleon lay in agony, composing his will. “Examine well my stomach, and make a detailed report to my son. Indicate to him what remedies or mode of life he can pursue which will prevent his suffering from a similar disease.” As for himself, Napoleon expressed less concern. “Death is nothing but a sleep without dreams,” he told his companions. “As to my body, it will become carrots or turnips. I have no dread of death.” On May 5th, 1821, a tropical storm raged across St. Helena. The winds blew fiercely and rain soaked the island, and most of the trees in Longwood were torn out of the ground. While the heavens opened around the tiny speck in the ocean, Napoleon Bonaparte slipped into a coma and died.
The next day, Governor Lowe and a number of officials walked towards the Governor’s house discussing the emperor’s death. “Well, gentlemen,” the Governor said, “he was England’s greatest enemy, and mine too, but I forgive him everything. On the death of a great man like him, we should only feel deep concern and regret.” Fine words, but the Governor had one last petty act left in him before the war could draw to a close.
Napoleon requested in his final will to be buried ‘on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I loved so well’. Nevertheless, even the emperor supposed he would probably be buried on St. Helena. But what to write on the tombstone? Napoleon, as well as his followers at Longwood, wanted ‘Emperor Napoleon’ inscribed on the stone. General Lowe refused, as he’d received orders not to address his captive as such. But there was no denying the fact that Napoleon was, in fact, a former emperor. Fine, how about just ‘Napoleon’? Absolutely not, said the General, since everybody knows one word names are an indicator of power: Cher, Madonna, Beyonce, etc. Napoleon’s supporters lost patience. The man needed to be buried already! What would be acceptable? The Governor would allow the headstone to read ‘General Bonaparte.’ This was, of course, an insult – it would be like burying America’s former leaders as “Farmer Washington” or “Abraham Lincoln, Esquire”. Even Governor Lowe’s staunchest defenders cringed at what they called “a pedantic adherence to instructions which cannot be commended. To quarrel over a name at such a moment was ungracious.” But as always, General Lowe was absolutely unyielding, and so the greatest man in modern history was buried in the middle of an island in the middle of the sea in an unmarked grave.
And so the final, feeble battle of Napoleon Bonaparte came to an end. And yet, it cannot be said for certain that he lost. Now that Napoleon was dead and buried a thousand miles from anywhere, Governor Lowe was free to return home. He had followed every rule scrupulously, and by golly, Napoleon definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent did not escape under his watch. But if he expected accolades upon his return for a job well done – he didn’t get any. Back on the continent, Napoleon’s friends and family spread the news about the Governor’s petty tendencies and inhumanity. But they weren’t alone – just about every official from every country who had ever had the misfortune to be sent on business to St Helena came back with a story about the uptight bureaucrat running the place. Even people who were supposedly on Hudson Lowe’s side couldn’t stand him. While the Governor received the thanks of the king, nobody else was especially pleased with him, and he spent years defending his reputation and his actions. But he was no match for the mighty propaganda machine of Napoleon Bonaparte. The rest of Hudson Lowe’s career was unspectacular and he died in comfortable obscurity at an old age.
Back in France, of course, Napoleon’s fate was changing once again. In 1840, Louis XVIII’s cousin held the throne. When Louis XVIII died without kids, the throne passed to Charles X. After only 6 years on the throne, Charles found himself facing a mob of 14,000 angry Frenchmen and hightailed it to France. Now, the shaky Louis-Philippe tried desperately to keep the French monarchy alive, and figured a funeral for Napoleon would be a good PR stunt. A group of passionate Napoleon supporters raised the money to exhume the ex-emperor from St. Helena and bring his remains back to his beloved France and before long, like ghosts from a former world, a ship full of French soldiers appeared at Longwood. The farmer and wife who now owned the land on which Napoleon was buried, and who turned a nice profit leading tours, were sad to see their side hustle end. The farmer’s wife squeezed one last dime out of the affair by setting up a lemonade stand while the diggers worked. Finally, the retrieval crew took a last tour of Longwood, to see the home where Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last days. The humidity had soured everything it touched, and graffiti covered most of the walls. Napoleon’s bedroom was now occupied by goats. The soldiers grabbed the only salvageable memento they could find: Napoleon’s old billiard table, and dragged it on board while the farmer chased after them, shaking his fist and demanding compensation for the table. The trip home took nearly 100 days, in part because the young, peacetime sailors kept dropping anchor to party along the way, including a two week bonanza off the cost of Brazil. On December 2nd, the anniversary of his coronation, Napoleon received a massive state funeral. The weather was freezing, but people packed the street anyway, spilling out not only into the streets but piling onto the roofs of houses. Victor Hugo watched the procession from his own balcony: “In the distance could be seen slowly moving, amid steam and sunlight, upon the grey and red background of the trees of the Champs-Elysees…a sort of golden mountain. One could not make out anything but a kind of shimmering light that made the whole surface of the carriage glitter sometimes with stars.” Nearly a million French men and women watched the solemn procession of Napoleon’s coffin through the streets, until it reached Les Invalides, the great retirement home for French soldiers. Resting on the banks of the Seine as Napoleon had requested in his will, filled with the aging remains of Napoleon’s great army, the site was an appropriate resting place for France’s most famous military mind. In the final moments of the funeral, the governor of Les Invalides struggled to his feet. Marshal Moncey was the son of a lawyer who had fought alongside Napoleon from his earliest days. He fought bravely in Napoleon’s Italian campaign, received the marshal’s baton and in 1805 joined the legion of honor. Even at the last moment as Napoleon faced defeat at Waterloo and his enemies marched on the capital, Marshal Moncey fought the last battle for Paris from the top of the hills of Montmartre. On the brink of death, the elderly Marshal Moncey begged his doctors to keep him alive long enough to perform this last honor for his boss. Walking slowly down the aisle of Les Invalides, the marshal sprinkled holy water on the emperor’s coffin. “And now,” he said quietly, “let us go home to die.”
Thanks for listening to the Land of Desire. It’s a holiday weekend for my American listeners, as most folks travel for Thanksgiving. It can be hard being reunited with family in close quarters, and as Napoleon and Hudson Lowe discovered, familiarity breeds contempt. So here’s hoping that everybody enjoys the closeness of friends and family…and takes a moment from time to time to escape when they need to. I’ll be heading out of town for the next few weeks, ringing in my 30th birthday by visiting Japan for the first time! I know I have a number of listeners in Japan, so if any of you have recommendations for Tokyo, Kyoto or Hiroshima, let me know! For everyone else, I hope you have a wonderful start to your holiday season and I’ll look forward to hearing from you when I get back. Until then, au revoir!
Further Reading:
The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Exile to Escape, Mark Braude, Penguin, October 8, 2018 – just coming out!!
Moscow, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March, Adam Zamoyski, Harper Perennial, 2005.
“When Napoleon Became a British Tourist Attraction”, Greig Watson, BBC News, September 28, 2015.
“The Waterloo Myth: Where Was Napoleon Actually Defeated?”, Uri Friedman, The Atlantic, June 18, 2015.
“It Just Got Easier To Visit the Place Where Napoleon Was Exiled (the Second Time)”, Matt Blitz, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2015
“St. Helena, ‘Cursed Rock’ of Napoleon’s Exile”, Anthony Mancini, New York Times, March 29, 2012
Sources:
Napoleon: A Life, Andrew Roberts, Penguin Books, 2015.
Terrible Exile: The Last Days of Napoleon on St Helena, Brian Unwin, I.B. Tauris, 2013.
“Napoleon’s captivity in relation to Sir Hudson Lowe”, Robert Cooper Seaton, G. Bel and Sons, 1903.
“Napoleon—His Last Illness and Postmortem.” Paul E. Bechet, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 4.4 (1928): 497–502. Print.
“What If Napoleon Had Come to America?”, Linton Weeks, NPR, February 10, 2015
“The forgotten story of how Napoleon wanted to start a new life in America”, Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post, June 15, 2015.
“The Opening of ‘The World’s Most Useless Airport’ in Remote Saint Helena”, Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, October 17, 2017
Very entertaining. Reminds me of “The Classics Reclassified.”