Napoleon Bonaparte: England's Prisoner

by Frank Giles (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2002

  $15.00

  On 13 July 1815, after Waterloo, Napoleon dictated his famous letter to the Prince Regent. Avoiding any hint of surrender, still less responsibility for the defeat, he said he came 'like Themistocles to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people.' But his idea of living peacefully in the English countryside was a pipedream: the island of St Helena was desolate and unappealing. The Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, has been reviled by historians, but Giles gives a fresh perspective on Lowe, as on other aspects of the Emperor's exile.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2001

  $3.25

  'My political life is over, and I proclaim my son Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon II'. It was not to be. Napoleon's hopes, expressed in his declaration to the French people after his defeat at Waterloo, were vain. On 13 July 1815, after the great battle, Napoleon dictated his famous letter to the Prince Regent. Avoiding any hint of surrender and claimed to come like Themistocles to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people - I put myself under the protection of their laws, which I claim from Your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most constant and the most generous of my enemies . Napoleon's idea of living peacefully in the English countryside was a pipedream. The island of St Helena, to which the Royal Navy conveyed him, was an unappealing home. The respect accorded to him by the officers and men of the navy revealed, however, his sure touch with fighting men, and the magnetism he exerted even in defeat. Once in his prison of Longwood, Napoleon came under the supervision of its Governor Sir Hudson Lowe. What really happened there? Was the fallen Emperor badly treated - perhaps even poisoned? Lowe has been reviled by some historians, but looking afresh at the evidence Frank Giles portrays him, though unattractive in many ways, in a more favourable light.