NAPOLEON ON ST. HELENA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29324, 1 October 1960, Page 3

NAPOLEON ON ST. HELENA

[Reviewed by A-.V.M.1

The Last Years of Napoleon. By Ralph Korngold. Gollancz. 429 pp.

When, after surrendering himself to the British government in 1815, Napoleon was notified that he was to be sent to St. Helena, he comforted himself with the thought that as “a Prometheus on a rock in the Atlantic, guarded by infantry, artillery, and a squadron he was still a world figure.” The outpouring of books and articles on his exile, both at the time and since has more than justified this calculation. Mr Korngold’s book has now coma along to add further justification

Yet Napoleon could so easily have miscalculated. His petty bullying of his bored retainers, his attempts to seduce their wives, his desperate effort to maintain the practices and forms of the Tuileries, and his perpetual dictation of egocentric and often inaccurate memoirs could have turned his last years into a pathetic anti-climax to his career. It was thp achievement of the British government to turn the exile into a tragedy; to give an heroic stature to Napoleon by petty persecution which won him the sympathy of the world. Denied the dignity of the best house on the island, he was relegated to damp, exposed and rat infested Longwood House, and there plagued with a whole series of needling and unnecessary regulations imposed from London. The constant niggling economy added to his humiliation, for the Government wanted to reduce expenditure on Napoleon and his suite to £BOOO a year on an island where the cost of living was extremely high, and at a time when £250,000 was being spent every year on guarding him. The final blow was the appointment of Sir Hudson Lowe, a neurotic and insensitive tyrant as Governor. Lowe was obsessed by the quite unrealistic fear that Napoleon might escape or raise a mutiny on the island. He bombarded the home government with lengthy and ' exaggerated reports, and detected plots everywhere. When a present of green and white beans was made by a member of Napoleon’s suite to the French Commissioner on the island, Lowe feared a coded message, and suggested that the Commissioner should have accepted only the white beans.

Because of Lowe's treatment a battle of wills soon developed between Emperor and Governor. Lowe refused to write or forward any letters addressed to the "Emperor,” or to “Napoleon,” insisting that he should be referred to only as “General Bonaparte,” Napoleon'for his part refused to receive any letters undei* that name. Lowe ordered that Napoleon should be seen daily by a British officer, Napoleon refused ‘to admit one, and -the hapless officer had to spend his days in the garden in all weathers ’ peering through chinks in the curtains. Lowe cut down the area within which the Emperor could go out riding. Napoleon refused to ride. Lowe refused to allow doctors acceptable to Napoleon. Napoleon refused to see any who were acceptable to the Governor. The result was that the Emperor’s last years were turned into a misery, and a great man was reduced by a lesser one to his own level of obsession with trifles.

Mr Korngold tells this story in

all its detail. Indeed,, it is the detail which makes his book so interesting, and his use of the mass of long available sources, together with a newer one in the long unpublished Bertrand diaries, have enabled a full compilation. His book has many faults. It is too long. It tends to be repetitive, at times his style leaves something to be desired, and he is perhaps unduly sympathetic to Napoleon. His stock, “potted biography,” method of introducing every character is irritating after a few such introductions as is his method of splitting each chapter into numbered sections. Finally, there are several minor mistakes which a fuller acquaintance with the background, and with the period, would have enabled him to avoid. Yet the fascination of his story and subject more than compensate. for these faults. Mr Korngold has an absorbing, and a moving story to tell; a story which is well worth reading.