admin, Author at Shannon Selin

Sir Hudson Lowe, Napoleon’s jailor

British general Sir Hudson Lowe was the governor of St. Helena during Napoleon’s imprisonment on the island. Napoleon, who reached St. Helena before Lowe did, looked forward to the arrival of a fellow soldier. “Did you not tell me,” he reportedly said to his companions, “that he was at Champ Aubert and at Montmirail? We have then probably exchanged a few cannon balls together, and that is always, in my eyes, a noble relation to stand in.” (1)

Napoleon’s view of Hudson Lowe

Hudson Lowe was born on July 28, 1769, making him two-and-a-half weeks older than Napoleon. After their first meeting on April 16, 1816, Napoleon pronounced Lowe “hideous; he has a most villainous countenance.” Still, he said,

we must not decide too hastily. The man’s disposition may perhaps make amends for the unfavourable impression which his face produces; this is not impossible. (2)

Napoleon’s impression of Lowe did not improve. It got worse. After a total of six interviews between April and August 1816 (their conversations were conducted in Italian), Napoleon refused to meet with Lowe again. The next time Lowe got a good look at Napoleon was when he saw the Emperor’s corpse on May 6, 1821, the day after Napoleon died.

The details of the relationship are well documented by Peter Friedman on the Fondation Napoléon’s website. For a fuller treatment, I recommend Napoleon’s Jailer – Lt. Gen. Sir Hudson Lowe: a Life by Desmond Gregory (1996), or Sir Hudson Lowe and Napoleon by Robert Cooper Seaton (1898).

Just doing his job

Although Hudson Lowe could be petty, pedantic and vindictive (see my post about Engelbert Lutyens), he was not the villain Napoleon’s supporters made him out to be. He was a conscientious administrator who adhered, for the most part, to the British government’s instructions. He was also, at times, sympathetic to Napoleon, such as when he convinced London to increase the annual allowance for Longwood from eight thousand to twelve thousand pounds. Lowe lacked the tact and intelligence necessary to handle Napoleon well, but he had a difficult job. Whoever was in the post would have been prey to a clever propaganda campaign designed to paint him as the bad guy. As Napoleon’s companion Count Charles de Montholon wrote, “an angel from heaven could not have pleased us as Governor of St. Helena.” (3) The Duke of Wellington, when asked whether he thought Lowe was an unnecessarily harsh jailor of Napoleon, responded:

Buonaparte is so damned intractable a fellow there is no knowing how to deal with him.… As for Lowe he is a damned fool. (4)

When Napoleon died, Lowe was magnanimous.

[H]e 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. (5)

Napoleon’s adherents showed no such generosity towards Lowe. In July 1822 Dr. Barry O’Meara published Napoleon in Exile; or A Voice From St. Helena. O’Meara had been Napoleon’s doctor on St. Helena until July 1818, when he was expelled by Lowe for trying to undermine the governor behind his back. The book showed Lowe in a very bad light, adding to the undercurrent of feeling against him. Lowe wanted to sue for libel, but his lawyers took so long to compile the evidence that the judge declared the time for bringing the case to court had expired. Having spent most of his military life outside England, Lowe lacked a local crowd of friends and supporters. He appealed to the British government to defend him, but received a cool response. The government was content to make Lowe the scapegoat for any criticism of British treatment of Napoleon.

The Duke of Wellington thought Lowe’s treatment shameful. In November 1822, he wrote to Lord Bathurst, Secretary for War and the Colonies, in respect of an unprovoked assault with a whip on Lowe by one of Napoleon’s erstwhile companions, the son of Count Emmanuel de Las Cases.

I hope that government propose to do something upon this outrage committed upon Sir Hudson. If Sir Hudson treated De las Cases [sic] ill, which I don’t believe he did, government ought to disapprove of his conduct. If he did not treat him ill, if, on the contrary, government either approved of his conduct, or took no notice of it at the time, they ought to protect Sir Hudson; and at all events ought not to allow a blackguard to insult him with impunity in the streets for his conduct in the performance of his duty…. [Y]ou may rely upon it that if you don’t take some steps to mark the sense of the government upon this occasion, there is no well-thinking man in either of the military professions who will not feel it; and you will not easily find another who will brave the popular cry to serve you. (6)

Wellington later rose to Lowe’s defence in the House of Lords when, in 1833, another Lord made a disparaging remark about Lowe.

I have the honour to know Sir Hudson Lowe, and I will say, in this House or elsewhere, wherever it may be, that there is not in the army a more respectable officer than Sir Hudson Lowe, nor has His Majesty a more faithful subject. (7)

Hudson Lowe’s sad end

In 1825 Hudson Lowe became commander of British forces in Ceylon. After returning to England in 1831, he petitioned the government for an office in recognition of his services. But O’Meara’s and others’ uncontradicted lies had done their work, and Lowe was not given a high post. Neither was he given a pension. In 1842 the King of Prussia advanced Lowe to the First Class of the Red Eagle of Prussia, recalling his “signal services to the common cause in the glorious campaigns of 1813-14.” (8) The next year Lowe was belatedly given the Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George.

Hudson Lowe died on January 10, 1844 in relative poverty at the age of 74. He was buried in the crypt of St. Mark’s Church, North Audley Street, London. St. Mark’s is no longer used as a church and is generally kept locked. Judging from this slide show, it has a lovely interior. According to Peter Friedman, Lowe’s grave has never been located; only a plaque remains on the church wall, citing his burial. (9)

Seaton closes Lowe’s biography with apt words from an unnamed “military writer”:

To have been charged with an amount of responsibility from which most men would have shrunk aghast; to have performed a painful duty with sleepless vigilance; to have been exposed from circumstances not of his own seeking to an amount of obloquy almost without parallel in the annals of party; to have firmly carried out what he had reluctantly undertaken – the safe custody of a baffled tyrant; to have ‘obeyed instructions,’ and then to have been rewarded by coolness and neglect when he might have expected cordiality and praise, seems a hard destiny. It was that of Sir Hudson Lowe. (10)

Life at Longwood

Lutyens’ reports to Governor Hudson Lowe – via Lowe’s aide-de-camp Major Gideon Gorrequer – provide a daily candid snapshot of life at Longwood. They portray both the tedium and the nature of amusement for the man who had once ruled a large part of Europe. For example:

February 15, 1820 – General Bonaparte was very busy the whole of yesterday, with the large tub. In consequence of putting the fish into it so soon after it was painted, many of the fish have died. Therefore, all the paint is to be scraped off this morning…. General Bonaparte wishes for three hundred feet of invisible fence, likewise a plumber. General Bonaparte was in his garden this morning early, looking at his fish, which are now in small tubs. He was dressed in a long white dressing-gown, and a silk handkerchief on his head. (1)

April 5, 1820 – General Bonaparte remained out until two o’clock yesterday and finished the sod-wall. The four Chinese, who have constantly been employed in the gardens, got sulky at the General having given a bottle of wine to each of the Chinese that are employed in the house (who worked at the sod-wall), and did not give them the same indulgence. They, therefore, refused doing what the General wanted them to do, which put him in a great rage and he ordered them off instantly. General Bonaparte is hard at work this morning in the same garden. He has cut a large hole, like an embrasure, in the sod-wall facing my side-window, in which they are now fixing a large tub, half up the wall, to form a sort of cascade into the long tank in the garden. (2)

As Napoleon’s health worsened, Lutyens’ reports conveyed the pathos of Napoleon’s decline.

January 25, 1821 – About six o’clock last evening, I saw General Bonaparte (leaning on the arm of Count Montholon) walk down to the stable-gate, where they got into the phaeton, and drove once round the wood. The General walked very slow. (3)

Napoleon’s gift

By all accounts, the residents of Longwood liked Lutyens and he liked them. He started his tenure there optimistically, writing on February 11, 1820:

When I get settled in my rooms, I have every reason to think I shall be very comfortable and happy in this establishment. (4)

However, Lutyens’ stay at Longwood House came to an unfortunate conclusion. On April 14, 1821, Napoleon presented Dr. Archibald Arnott, surgeon of the 20th Regiment of Foot, with the three-volume Life of Marlborough by William Coxe, as a gift for the regiment’s library. The books had been given to Napoleon by Marlborough’s great-grandson, the Honourable Robert Spencer, who stopped off at St. Helena in October 1820. Arnott accepted the books and, in accordance with standing instructions, took them to the orderly officer. As Lutyens was with Lowe at the time, Arnott left them in Lutyens’ room.

When Lutyens found the books, he reported the fact to Gorrequer and forwarded the books for inspection. The title page of the first volume was found to contain the inscription “L’Empereur Napoléon” (not in Napoleon’s hand, probably in that of his second valet Louis Étienne Saint-Denis). This was a problem because the British government insisted on treating Napoleon as a retired general, rather than as an emperor. Napoleon refused to go along with this treatment. He said he did not call himself Emperor of France but the Emperor Napoleon, that the title had been conferred upon him by the French people, and that sovereigns generally retained their titles.

They can have no right to call me General; they may as well call me Archbishop, for I was head of the church, as well as the army. (5)

The issue of “General” versus “Emperor” became one of many points of contention between Lowe – who scrupulously adhered to his government’s instructions – and the French at Longwood.

Thus Major Edward Jackson, in temporary command of the 20th Regiment, wrote to Lutyens:

I really do not see how you can with propriety, as a Captain of the 20th Regiment, undertake to forward, as a present from General Bonaparte to the Officers of the Regiment, whether through me as the commanding officer of it or through any other channel, a book which bears the Imperial name on the title-page. (6)

Jackson advised Lutyens to return the books to Napoleon’s companion Count Montholon and to explain the delicacy of the situation. Assuming that Jackson’s letter had been written with Lowe’s sanction, Lutyens at first responded to Gorrequer that he would comply. Shortly after, he reread Jackson’s letter. Finding no mention of Lowe in it, Lutyens sent another response saying he had no authority for receiving directions from Jackson in regard to his conduct at Longwood. In reply, Gorrequer confirmed that Lowe approved of Jackson’s instructions and reprimanded Lutyens for not returning the books as soon as he had seen them in his room.

Lutyens thus returned the books to Count Montholon, telling him he had received a letter from Major Jackson that prevented him from forwarding the books to the 20th Regiment, for reasons that included the presence of the imperial title. This set off a chain of recrimination in which three factors sank Lutyens:

1) Jackson considered Lutyens’ letter to be “very disrespectful, presuming and tending to insubordination.”

2) Lowe and Jackson were annoyed that Lutyens, in his conversation with Montholon, blamed Jackson for the books’ refusal, whereas the objection should have come from Lutyens himself.

3) Lowe was annoyed that Napoleon had avoided the appropriate channels for presenting such a gift, and that Lutyens appeared to go along with this. As Lowe wrote in 1823:

It had been the direct tendency of many of the acts of the late General Bonaparte, and of his immediate followers, to unite to a disregard of authority in their relations with the officers on the Island, and it formed an essential part of Sir H. Lowe’s duty to be watchful that such regards were maintained; hence, his objections, except on account of the Imperial title, would not have been so much against the acceptance of the books, as to the indirect mode…in which it was attempted to be presented, through the Surgeon and a Captain of the Regiment, to the Officers of the Corps, without any reference being supposed either to the Officer-Commanding or to the General-Commanding on the Station…. (7)

Lutyens continued to insist he had not been insubordinate. He believed that, as a senior captain with an extra-regimental appointment, he was answerable to Lowe rather than to Jackson. Lutyens followed up his complaint with persistence.

Lutyens’ dismissal

On April 26th Engelbert Lutyens was relieved of his duties at Longwood and returned to the 20th Regiment. He was replaced as orderly officer by Captain William Crokat. Crokat was thus on duty when Napoleon died on May 5th, and therefore had the privilege of sailing to England on May 7th bearing Lowe’s dispatches announcing the death of Napoleon. For this service he was promoted to the rank of Major and given £500, honours that would otherwise have gone to Lutyens.

At the protest of his regiment, who thought he had been poorly treated, Lutyens was given the rank of major, antedated to a date previous to that of Crokat’s elevation. Napoleon left his opinion of Lutyens in the form of instructions, near the end of his life, for Montholon to give Lutyens a pair of pistols as a testimony of satisfaction with his behaviour. Another of Napoleon’s companions, Countess Bertrand, sent Lutyens a piece of coral with some of Napoleon’s hair.

Lutyens was later posted to India. He died on January 26, 1830, age 46, on the ship Bolton, two days after leaving Bombay, following a long illness.

Crokat was the last survivor of those who saw Napoleon on his deathbed. He died in Edinburgh at the age of 90 in November 1879. Among the many relics of Napoleon in his possession was the wooden spatula used by Napoleon to clean his spade when gardening. (8)

The 20th Regiment eventually regained possession of the offending volumes of the Life of Marlborough. The books now reside in the Fusilier Museum in Bury, Greater Manchester. You can see a photo of the imperial inscription on John Tyrrell’s excellent “Reflections on a Journey to St. Helena” blog.

St. Helena hard to escape

Napoleon was considered the prisoner of the four major powers that had allied to defeat him: Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia. Britain had custody of him. A volcanic speck 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.

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, author of the excellent The Countess, Napoleon and Saint Helena, 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, referred in his memoirs to several schemes of escape, 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 articles–one by Emilio Ocampo in Napoleonica. La Revue; the other by Mike Dash on the Smithsonian website.

Napoleon considered escape plans

Napoleon at St. Helena, a postcard based on a painting by Paul Delaroche. Source: Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive—Gift of Leonard A. Lauder

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 him to return from exile.

This did not stop tales of rescue attempts from circulating. Many of these involved 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 of these escapades. 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, Governor Lowe’s cordon was penetrable. Napoleon and his suite were able to bribe British officers and others to get around 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 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 and wound up either in Europe or the United States. They claim 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 can read an excerpt from Napoleon in America here.