In summer 1815, Europe was a continent with a
problem.
Emperor Napoleon of France had just been overthrown for the second time, ending decades of chaos.
But while peace had returned, an uneasy question lingered: What to do with the defeated emperor?
Since 1803, the Napoleonic Wars had killed between 3.2 and 6.5 million people.
Already exiled once, Napoleon had simply returned, like some sort of 19th Century Ernest Blofeld.
But with Europe’s Big Bad now captured, the Allies had to decide: kill Napoleon and
risk martyring him; or imprison him again, and risk a second comeback?
Their solution was elegant in its simplicity.
Rather than put Napoleon in an ordinary jail, they would construct a super-prison.
One even the Petit Corporal couldn’t escape.
The name of that prison?
Longwood.
A former summer residence on St Helena, Longwood was remote, isolated, and surrounded by gun
turrets, cliffs, and crashing waves.
Converted into a jail by the British, it became the only place on Earth capable of holding
the emperor.
But what made Longwood so special, and how did Napoleon come to end his life there?
Today, we’re investigating the final home of the man who brought Europe to its knees.
The First Alcatraz
Out in the wilds of the Atlantic Ocean, over 2,000km from the nearest major landmass, sits
an insignificant little speck.
Seen from above, this speck looks like nothing more than a mistake - an accidental twitch
of a cartographer’s pen.
Even up close, it retains that air of unbelievability.
Unbelievable that anyone could live here.
But make no mistake: this island of barren mountains and sheer cliff-faces; this hostile
lump of rock surrounded by swirling currents, is inhabited all right.
In this, the year of our Lord 1815, it counts among its number 4,000 civilians, and 1,000
slaves.
To that total, it’s about to add one defeated emperor.
Discovered in 1502 by the Portuguese, the island of Saint Helena had briefly passed
to the Dutch before being taken by the East India Company.
Although today associated with the British Crown, the East India Company really was a
company: a private corporation that conquered islands and annexed swathes of India.
They were also good at getting others to do their dirty work.
When they needed inhabitants for Saint Helena, they settled it with Londoners who’d lost
everything in the Great Fire.
It was on this strange, remote island that Longwood would come to be built.
Although Longwood today is famous as Napoleon’s prison, it wasn’t originally intended to
house dictators.
Constructed in 1743, it was first used as a storage barn, before becoming a summer residence
for Saint Helena’s lieutenant-governor.
But while “summer residence” may sound fancy, it was only fancy if your last abode
was now charred London rubble.
8km from the island’s sole port, Longwood was on a vast, desolate plain, battered by
howling winds and infested with rats.
Were anyone to be held captive there, they would almost certainly be seen trying to flee.
And even if they did make it to the island’s edge, the sheer cliffs and churning water
would make escape impossible.
So, yeah, Longwood may not have been constructed as a jail, per se, but it certainly had all
the makings of one.
Hence the letter St Helena’s governor received in fall of 1815.
At that time, getting to the island was so difficult that news arrived years late, when
it arrived at all.
The last anyone there had heard, Napoleon had just been defeated and exiled to Elba.
So imagine their surprise when the letter-writer told them that Napoleon had not only escaped
Elba, restarted the French empire, and then been defeated all over again…
...but that he was now on his way to Saint Helena.
The moment they heard the news, the islanders must’ve suppressed an internal shudder.
Somewhere out there, on the dark waves, a tyrant was approaching; a man who’d once
had the whole of Europe beaten and cowed at his feet.
What would happen when he finally arrived in his new prison, no-one could say.
Life of an Empire
At this stage, you may be wondering how Napoleon went from “emperor of the French” to “dude
getting imprisoned in the middle of the Atlantic.”
Well, if that thought has crossed your mind, just know you’re watching the right channel!
Napoleon had come to power in 1799 with the Coup of 18 Brumaire - which isn’t the French
way of saying “November,” but one of the wacky months the French Revolutionaries invented
for their new calendar.
Not that there were many revolutionaries left by the time of the Coup of 18 Sillyname.
In 1795, the Directory had come to power and replaced revolutionary fervor with dull authoritarianism.
It was these amateur despots Napoleon had overthrown, eventually making himself emperor
in 1804.
From that point on, Europe had become his personal whipping boy.
At its height, the Napoleonic Empire and its client states had ruled over 70 million people.
Even nominally-independent empires, like Austria, had been forced to do Napoleon’s bidding.
Because if you didn’t obey, then Boney was only too happy to hand your ass to you on
the battlefield.
From 1799 to 1809, Europe’s states had assembled their own Avengers teams - known as the Second,
Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalitions - only to have French Thanos beat them every time.
It got so bad that, by 1812, everyone was pretty much certain that Napoleon had won.
He had the entire continent locked into his boycott of Great Britain, and nobody so much
as sneezed without handing over a pile of francs.
And then the emperor had gone and made the classic European dictator mistake.
He’d invaded Russia.
You probably already know what a total disaster this became.
Turns out, Russia is pretty damn cold.
And when the Russians have burned all shelter and destroyed all food in the places you’ve
just conquered, that can become something of a problem.
As Napoleon retreated towards Paris, his men died in droves.
Russian irregulars harassed their lines, killing even more.
Although exact numbers are hard to come by, it’s thought Napoleon took over 680,000
troops into the snow and ice of the east.
When he returned west, only 27,000 remained.
For the rest of Europe this was all like, “party time!”.
In the spring of 1813, the Sixth Coalition formed.
And they wouldn’t rest until Napoleon’s empire was finished.
The climactic battled had come in mid-October.
Starting on the 16th, 370,000 Allied troops faced off for three days against a rebuilt
French army of 198,000 at the Battle of Leipzig.
It was the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars.
An apocalyptic clash that shook Europe.
When the dust settled, Napoleon had suffered the greatest defeat of his career.
Although Napoleon fought on for nearly six more months, the writing was on the wall.
By March, 1814, the Sixth Coalition was marching on Paris.
As the emperor fled the capital, its citizens took one look at the incoming armies and declared
“Hell with this.”
In a special session, the government announced that Napoleon had been deposed.
When the news reached the emperor, he tried to abdicate in favor of his son, Napoleon
II, but everyone was like “yeeeeeeaaah… no.”
On April 6, 1814, Emperor Napoleon abdicated unconditionally.
Finally, the upheaval that had started with the 1789 French Revolution was over.
Now the victorious Allies just needed to figure out what the heck to do with the former emperor.
Into Exile
For a guy who’d just killed several million Europeans in a vicious war, Napoleon sure
wasn’t treated like a pariah.
The Treaty of Fontainebleau that set out the terms for his defeat was less a punishment,
and more an epic consolation prize.
Although Napoleon was forced to surrender his family’s claim on the French throne,
he was allowed to keep the title of emperor, and awarded an annual salary of 2 million
francs.
On top of that, the Allies just gifted him Elba, basically saying “sorry about your
lost empire.
Here, have an entire island to make up for it!”
Today, we talk about Napoleon’s exile on Elba like it was some sort of punishment.
But, I mean, have you seen Elba?
Covering over 200 km2, and home to 12,000 people, Elba in 1814 was warm, beautiful,
and seriously relaxing.
And Boney wasn’t a prisoner!
Nope, he was Elba’s new ruler, with all the rights of any monarch.
Jeez, Napoleon tries to conquer the world and it’s all “here, have a kingdom,”
while I try to conquer the world and it’s all “Simon, put down that sword and get
off that horse!”
It’s not like the Allies weren’t aware of how ridiculous this was.
But they were exhausted by fifteen years of fighting France.
They’d won the war in part by assuring the French that they weren’t gonna exact vengeance.
Part of that deal was to let the dictator who’d started it all live out the rest of
his life in peace.
On May 3, 1814, Napoleon arrived on Elba.
He brought with him the remnants of his court, and 700 loyal guards.
Although he publicly declared “I want to live from now on like a justice of the peace,”
in private he told his friends that the restored Bourbon monarchy wouldn’t last 6 months.
And so Elba adjusted to life under its new ruler.
As the European powers gathered to hammer out a post-Napoleon future, Napoleon busied
himself overhauling Elba; refining its education system, building roads, draining its marshes.
But if anyone expected the emperor to be content on his island, they were doomed to disappointment.
The problems started before the year was out.
By late 1814, it was clear the restored Louis XVIII had no intention of paying Napoleon
his 2m francs a year.
On top of that, the great powers were openly discussing sending the Petit Corporal further
away, putting more distance between him and Europe.
Realizing his time on Elba was running short, Napoleon decided to act first.
On March 1, 1815, landed a ship in France and began marching toward Paris, gathering
an army as he went.
It was the start of the Hundred Days, a time when the French Empire rose from its ashes
to fight again.
But, as the name suggests, it didn’t fight very long.
Within five days of Napoleon’s return, Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia had formed the
Seventh Coalition.
When Napoleon finally met them in battle on June 18, it wasn’t as a great returning
general, but as a disappointing tribute act - a performer who doesn’t know when to leave
the stage.
The Battle of Waterloo ended with Napoleon’s final defeat.
Although the emperor fled the battlefield, hoping to catch a boat to America, the jig
was up.
On July 15, Napoleon surrendered to the British - likely to avoid capture and execution by
the Prussians.
Still unwilling to martyr the emperor, the Brits were left with no choice but to exile
him all over again.
But this time, it wouldn’t be to some comfy, sundrenched island a mere 10km from the European
mainland.
No, this time, the Petit Corporal was gonna find himself sent to the most secure prison
the world had ever seen.
The Remotest Island
Until the airport opened in 2017, the only way to get to Saint Helena from Europe involved
flying to South Africa, then jumping on a ferry and sailing for five days.
So you can imagine how long the journey took over 200 years ago.
Napoleon left Plymouth for his second exile on August 8, 1815.
He didn’t set eyes on Saint Helena until October 14.
After seeing the rock he was doomed to spend the rest of his life on, Napoleon is said
to have muttered:
“It seems no charming place to live in.
I should have done better to stay in Egypt (a reference to his 1798 campaign).
I should now have been Emperor of the whole Orient.”
The boat landed the next day, although Napoleon refused to disembark until the 17th, and then
only under cover of darkness.
As the 5,000 inhabitants of Saint Helena watched in solemn silence, the man who’d once made
Europe tremble departed the boat and began his new life as a British prisoner.
However, his sentence didn’t start at Longwood.
Because news of Napoleon’s arrival had only reached the island days ahead of Napoleon
himself, there had been almost no time for preparations.
So Napoleon had to spend the first two months at cozy Briar’s Pavilion.
The house was owned by the Balcombe family, and while they were so stoutly British they
probably bled tea, they were also extremely gracious hosts.
In fact, their 13-year old daughter Betsy managed to befriend the emperor, playing Blind
Man’s Buff with him and teasing him for his inability to sing.
It’s said the Petit Corporal later regarded his short stay with the Balcombes as the high
point of his second exile.
Shortly after getting settled in at Briar’s, Napoleon was taken to inspect Longwood.
Although his reaction was one of intense disappointment, don’t kid yourself into thinking that it
was anything like a regular prison.
Longwood had a private lounge.
A decorated bedroom.
Antique furniture.
A study where Napoleon could write his memoirs.
It was so cushy it would’ve made even a Norwegian jail look like a Texan prison.
Yet, for a man who’d once lived in France’s finest palaces, it looked like nothing but
an insult.
Work continued on Longwood until December, while Napoleon cooled his heels with the Balcombes.
Finally, shortly before Christmas, 1815, the emperor moved into his final prison.
Once there, the British made every effort to keep him happy.
Napoleon was allowed to run Longwood like a private court.
At dinner each day, he made the male guests wear military uniforms, and the female guests
come wearing gems.
During the daytime, he worked alternately on his memoirs, and on a vast plan to turn
the desolate plain around the house into a sculpted garden.
The British even gave him run of the island.
Napoleon was allowed to go to any point on Saint Helena - even riding a horse - so long
as he took a British valet with him.
All in all, then, Napoleon’s first months at Longwood were far from miserable.
While he might chafe under the rules, he was still living a more comfortable life than
nearly any other prisoner in existence.
But Napoleon’s comfort wasn’t destined to last.
Already, the British had dispatched a new man to act as the emperor’s jailer.
And Governor Hudson Lowe was gonna make it his mission to make Napoleon as uncomfortable
as possible.
Decline and Fall
In Napoleon literature, Hudson Lowe has a pretty dismal reputation, often seen as less
a governor and more a petty tyrant.
For an actual tyrant like Napoleon, Lowe’s reign must've been infuriating.
The interactions between the two were frosty from the get-go.
When Governor Lowe arrived in April, 1816, he refused to call Napoleon “emperor,”
instead referring to him as “general.”
We know.
What a bastard.
But Lowe did more than just insult the emperor’s dignity.
During his tenure, Lowe ended Napoleon’s freedom of movement.
He forced the emperor to present himself in the flesh each day to prove he hadn’t escaped.
Lowe also banished the Balcombe family from the island, sending Betsy back to England
for getting too friendly with the emperor.
For the already-gloomy Napoleon, this was a crushing blow.
Deprived of possibly the one person within 2,000km who actually liked him, Napoleon retreated
from life, shutting himself up inside Longwood and refusing to go out.
He had peepholes cut in the wooden shutters so he could spy on the outside world, and
settled into a kind of listless slump - like a teenager having an extended sulk.
Locked away in his comfy prison, the one-time ruler of Europe lost his extraordinary edge.
Became just another man; almost boring in his simplicity.
The routine that eventually came to characterize Longwood began with Napoleon rising late and
breakfasting at 10.
After that, he sometimes practiced his English, sometimes worked on his memoirs; sometimes
even spread campaign maps out on his desk, and relived his glory days pushing little
toy soldiers around.
Then it was dinner at 7, followed by reading, then a game of cards, and then bed at midnight.
The only time this routine was disturbed was when Boney went to work on his garden, a pastime
that included digging secret, sunken pathways so he could move about without the British
seeing him.
Not for any practical purpose, you understand.
Just so he could feel like he was still winning at something.
By now, it was becoming clear just how hellish Longwood really could be.
The rat infestation was out of control, with vermin crawling over every surface.
One evening at dinner, Napoleon picked up his hat to put it on, only to have a rat leap
out scuttle down his coat.
After that, a good half hour’s rat catching was added to the daily evening schedule.
The weather, too, was becoming a trial, with water seeping through the roof, leaving everything
damp and miserable.
Mould claimed clothing.
Termites chewed the walls.
On bad days, mist swirled around outside, infused with a cold which seemed to seep inside
your bones and poison you from the inside.
Speaking of poison, almost everything in Longwood was doused in arsenic.
Not as part of a clever British assassination plot, but because that’s just what stuff
was made of in the 19th Century.
Trapped inside his damp, poisonous jail, the general who’d once taken everything Europe
could throw at him stopped exercising.
Slowly, got fat and listless.
But if you’re tempted to think of Napoleon as a tragic figure, and Hudson Lowe as a bad
guy, don’t be.
Although he’s often cast as the villain in these pieces, Governor Lowe was a remarkable
man.
In 1818, for example, he unilaterally freed every child slave on Saint Helena - 15 years
before the British parliament outlawed slavery in the colonies.
Napoleon, on the other hand?
In his early days as ruler of France, he’d fought a war with the former colony of Haiti
to put all its freed slaves back in chains.
He may have been a Great Man of history, but up close Napoleon was less great than he was
just another despot.
A Forgotten Piece of France
The last years of Napoleon’s life were taken up with absurd escape plots.
There’s a good chance these plots were never serious, and only spread by Napoleon as a
way to make Governor Lowe freak-out.
That would certainly explain their general wackiness, such as smuggling Napoleon back
to France on a homemade submarine.
But even if they were serious, Napoleon would never have got very far.
Saint Helena was surrounded by a cordon of British gunships, all waiting for an escape
attempt.
The Navy had even garrisoned the “neighboring” island of Tristan da Cunha 2,400km away - just
in case Napoleon might attempt to make use of it.
No matter how hard he tried, the emperor was gonna be stuck in this jail until the very
end.
When that end finally came, it was drawn out and miserable.
Napoleon had been ill since 1817, and had repeatedly accused Governor Lowe of poisoning
him.
In reality, though, he’d developed both a stomach ulcer, and likely gastric cancer.
All through his harsh winters and lonely summers on Saint Helena, the diseases ate away at
his insides, leaving only a rotten shell.
Napoleon began to complain of pain.
Of night sweats that left him drenched.
Of blurred vision and headaches.
As 1821 dawned the illness became so bad that Napoleon wrote into his will that:
“My death is premature.
I have been assassinated by the English oligopoly and their hired murderer.”
That first sentence was at least right.
On May 4, 1821, Napoleon lost consciousness at Longwood for the final time.
Although he never woke up, he did manage to slur out a few last words.
“My God…” he said, “the French nation…my son…head of the army.”
Napoleon Bonaparte died in his luxurious, depressing prison on May 5, aged only 51.
Shortly after, Governor Lowe had him buried in a grave 3 meters deep and lined with bricks.
Even in death, it seems the British didn’t want to give the Petit Corporal an easy escape.
In the wake of its prisoner’s death, Longwood was sold to a farmer, who converted it into
a barn.
Within years a handful of years, Napoleon’s former bedroom was home to a flock of sheep,
while chickens clucked and left droppings all over his one-time study.
After holding history’s most-notorious prisoner for over half a decade, it seemed Longwood
was already doomed to be forgotten.
Luckily, though, fate intervened.
In 1848, a revolution in Paris deposed the French monarchy for the final time.
That very same year, the nation’s first free elections returned an outsider populist
with famous family connections as president.
His name was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.
But you likely know him as Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon himself.
Like his uncle before him, Napoleon III quickly launched a coup and had himself made emperor.
Then, once his position was secure, he set about protecting his uncle’s legacy.
In 1854, the British were contacted by French representatives who wanted to buy Longwood
- then little more than a collapsed shack.
Since this was in the middle of the Crimean War and France and Britain were fighting as
allies, London said yes.
Four years later, the British handed over both Longwood and Napoleon’s former grave
to France for the sum of £7,100.
Although Napoleon III would himself be deposed in 1870, the new French Republic never thought
about washing its hands of Longwood.
The building remains a French possession even now.
Looking at Longwood from the outside today, you’d never think that it had once been
a prison.
That it had once held the world’s most dangerous man.
Yet, in the end, Longwood House achieved its goal.
Napoleon never escaped its brightly decorated walls.
Never again set foot on European soil.
Although it was a mere footnote at the end of a great life, the tale of Longwood deserves
to be more widely known.
Here the man who helped forge the modern world ended his life in bitterness and luxury, as
alone and as isolated as a character from Shakespeare.
If that isn’t an ending that deserves to be remembered, then what is?