But in 1815
Englishmen felt differently, and naturally so. To them Napoleon had
been for years a more troublesome and dangerous enemy than a Philip II
or a Louis XIV. By them he was deemed the unregenerate child of
darkness and of the evil spirit. And "General Bonaparte," as the
British authorities persisted in calling him, was not suffered to touch
foot upon the sacred soil of England, but was dispatched on another
British warship to the rocky island of St. Helena in the south
Atlantic.
On St. Helena Napoleon lived five and a half years. He was allowed
considerable freedom of movement and the society of a group of close
personal friends. He spent his time in walking on the lonely island or
in quarreling with his suspicious strait-laced English jailer, Sir
Hudson Lowe, or in writing treatises on history and war and dictating
memoirs to his companions. These memoirs, which were subsequently
published by the Marquis de Las Cases, were subtly compounded of truth
and falsehood. They represented Napoleon Bonaparte in the light of a
true son and heir of the Revolution, who had been raised by the will of
the French people to great power in order that he might consolidate the
glorious achievements of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
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