Sad last days of ‘dynamic and daring’ Napoleon
13-year-old girl was emperor’s only playmate
IT WAS a year in which he attempted a remarkable comeback by leading his army into battle at Waterloo – yet ended with him playing whist and blind man’s bluff with a 13-year-old girl on one of the world’s most remote islands.
Wednesday marks the 200th anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death.
The most dominant figure in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, his conquests stretched as far east as Russia’s borders.
He is credited with creating the modern French state and introducing the metric system.
After more than a decade as emperor, he was brought low by a coalition of countries including Britain and first exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off Italy.
But he escaped, only to be narrowly defeated a year later at Waterloo, in 1815. The man who won the vast majority of his 60 battles was ultimately defined by his last defeat.
This time his vanquishers were taking no chances. Many of his enemies wanted him executed.
But, as historian Andrew Roberts, author of acclaimed biography Napoleon The Great, says: “Living on St Helena, having once ruled most of Europe, was considered a tough enough punishment by the British.”
St Helena is a ten by five-mile volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic. Some 1,200 miles off the west African coast, with south America 2,000 miles in the other direction, it could scarcely be further removed from the existence Napoleon had previously known.
He arrived there after 10 weeks at sea, with 28 attendants, including former military comrades.
He was initially put up at a house owned by East India Company employee William Balcombe. It was with the latter’s daughter Betsy that the former emperor struck up an unlikely friendship.
Her knowledge
French meant she could communicate with their non-english speaking guest.
Besides playing games, Betsy brought him flowers. In return, he let her use his sword in play fights. But this comparative idyll ended when he was moved to Longwood House, a damp, neglected residence nearby. He also became subject to the whims of his effective jailer: the island’s governor, Sir Hudson Lowe.
He refused to address Napoleon by his imperial title, and restricted him to virtual house arrest, especially after rumours broke of sympathisers planning to whisk him away to the United States.
Lowe demanded that Napoleon pay for part of his imprisonment and reduced the firewood he was allowed until public uproar forced him to back down.
Even Napoleon’s nemesis at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, said of Lowe on hearing how he had treated his old foe: “Like all men who knew nothing of the world, he was suspicious and jealous.”
Denied access to French publications, Napoleon learned English to read newspapers and books that arrived on the island.
He spent up to 12 hours a day dictating his memoirs. “What a novel my life has been!” he exclaimed. After his death, they became the biggest international bestseller of the 19th century.
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An Irish surgeon called Barry O’meara, who accompanied him to St Helena, performed the first and only operation on Napoleon: extracting a wisdom tooth.
But as well being tormented by toothache, the exile was in ever greater pain from what turned out to be terminal stomach cancer.
Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, aged 51. His last words were said to be: “The army… head of the army…. Josephine.” His celebrated wife died seven years previously, a loss that left him grief-stricken even though they were by then divorced.
Perhaps the greatest ignominy to befall him was that his penis was cut off during his post mortem exam. In a bizarre saga, it was first acquired by the priest who read him the last rites, later displayed in a New York museum, and in 1977 was bought for $3,000 by a US urologist.
Napoleon was first buried on St Helena, but his remains returned to France later in the 19th century, where he has since lain in rest at the Invalides monument, Paris. Remarkably, not a single street or square in central Paris is named after him, there is only one statue of his likeness and France does not officially commemorate any of his anniversaries.
Mr Roberts, however, is adamant: “He was the most daring and dynamic figure of his age, living proof that individual heroes could still make a difference, and that greatness could be attained through hard work, risk-taking and talent, rather than just birth.”
Longwood House is now a museum, containing an exact replica of the room where he died.
The island remains a British Overseas Territory. It gained its first airport only five years ago.
The Napoleon tourism link provides the island’s 4,500 inhabitants with one of their main sources of income (even though the visitor numbers it might have expected to mark this week’s anniversary have been much curtailed by Covid).
St Helena’s most celebrated resident today is a 189-year-old giant tortoise named Jonathan, believed to be the world’s oldest living land animal. He appears on the island’s 5p coin, has a Facebook page and lives in greater luxury than Napoleon ever did – in the grounds of the governor’s residence.
BARONESS Betty Boothroyd, the former Commons Speaker, is being plagued by Parliament’s ethics committee for failing to attend an online sexual harassment course.
It is a compulsory chore for bottompinching peers but not for Mps.the Baroness failed to attend the course calledvaluing Everyone because she was recovering from open-heart surgery and doesn’t do Zoom. She is currently under investigation, though what there is to investigate beats me.
It’s laughable that this distinguished and highly esteemed Labour politician should be treated so shabbily.though with typical good grace (and possibly a hint of tongue in cheek) she said: “I’m very happy to be trained when this is all over – you’re never too old to learn.”
She is 91, born in Dewsbury, educated in council schools and the child of textile workers. She was atiller Girl dancer in the 1940s and 50s so it’s fair to say that she could probably high-kick any hint of sexual harassment into next week.
Good luck to anybody who has ever tried to harass Betty
Boothroyd.
IT’S the stuff of nightmares. A woman in Texas, Caron Davis, recently learned that there was a 21-year-old outstanding warrant for her arrest in Oklahoma.
Her crime? She’d failed to return a copy of Sabrina The Teenage Witch rented from a video store in Oklahoma in 1999.
She was only collared when she tried to change her name on her driving licence after getting married.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” said Mrs Davis.
The embezzlement charge has now been dropped, which makes sense seeing as the video shop closed in 2008.
It could happen to anyone.who hasn’t come across the occasional library book or… ahem… video cassette with a squirm of guilt. One day there will be a knock on the door.
THERE’S always been a messianic quality abouttony Blair – the piercing eyes, missionary zeal and now he’s gone all the way with that Old Testament hair. He always secretly thought he was God. But now he’s gone public.