In 1815, Joseph Cole was the postmaster in the same building. He shared the office space with William Balcombe, superintendent of public sales for the East India Company and senior partner in their private trading business, Balcombe, Cole & Company.

Although there is a Napoleon Street in Jamestown, it seems few locals waste time thinking about the exiled emperor, who was a disgruntled resident for less than six of the island’s rich and varied history of more than five hundred years. A white-bearded Anglican priest with a country parish told me: ‘Back in 1815 the Saints flocked to the waterfront. They saw this little man arrive and found him very uninteresting and they’ve remained uninterested ever since.’

But it is altogether a different matter for visitors to the island. One of the most popular excursions is a charabanc tour of the ‘Napoleonic sites’, the three French ‘domaines’ looked after by the honorary French consul and Napoleonic scholar Michel Dancoisne-Martineau. I booked for the Napoleonic tour: Longwood House; the empty Tomb where the emperor’s corpse was interred for nineteen years before its return to France; and The Briars. I was pleased that the first stop would be the latter, William Balcombe’s old property where Bonaparte stayed for two months in the summer-house pavilion.

It was all activity at The Briars, where a guardhouse had been established at the front gates. An oxcart was coming from town with ‘the General’s’ baggage, while two of his followers walked up the steep Sidepath to settle their master into his new premises. The young valet Marchand enjoyed the physical exercise after the long sea voyage. A talented artist, he had purchased a set of paints during the Madeira stopover, and was now exhilarated by the dramatic scenery.1 The diminutive Count de Las Cases, who lagged behind, was 49 years of age but looked older, with mournful but refined features, a sharp nose, and coarse grey hair tied at the back.

They were questioned by the British captain on duty at The Briars before proceeding to the pavilion. Marchand saw that the Balcombes were going out of their way to make Napoleon comfortable: ‘The hostess and her two lovely daughters offered everything that could contribute to the furnishing of the room for the Emperor; I accepted a few chairs, an armchair and a table; what Noverraz was bringing from town would soon allow the Emperor to settle into his usual habits. At the Briars one had to consider oneself to be camping; the Emperor had around him the furnishings of a field tent.’2 However, Napoleon was accustomed to field tents, having spent more time in them than in palaces.

Las Cases was delighted to see the solitary figure of Napoleon outside the pavilion, gazing at the view, and advanced to salute him.

‘Ah,’ said the emperor, ‘here you are! Why have you not brought your son?’

‘Sire,’ replied Las Cases, ‘the respect, the consideration I owe you prevented me.’

‘Oh, you must learn to dispense with that,’ said Napoleon. ‘Bring your son to me.’3

The count’s fourteen-year-old son Emmanuel had been removed from his lycée to accompany his father and the deposed emperor. The boy’s mother had remained in France, appalled by the prospect of America, let alone St Helena.

Las Cases had a rather grand lineage. A nobleman of the ancien régime, with the full title Marie Joseph Emmanuel Auguste Dieudonné, Comte de Las Cases, he was the elder son of a marquis.4 During the Terror of 1793 he was an obvious candidate for the guillotine and escaped from France. With other desperate aristocrats he had thrown himself into an English coal ship and remembered being treated ‘exactly like a cargo of negroes’. They landed on the banks of the Thames a great distance from London and he stumbled on foot to the city.5

The count’s memoirs describe how he eked out an existence giving French lessons but was rescued from penury by Lady Clavering, a Frenchwoman living with her English baronet husband.6 In 1802 (during the Peace of Amiens), Las Cases accompanied his employers to France as tutor to their children. Through old connections by then returned to favour, he met Bonaparte, and was soon in thrall to him, becoming convinced that he was ‘the most extraordinary man who has appeared for centuries’.7 He offered his life in service to his hero. In 1804, the Emperor Napoleon appointed him a chamberlain or Councillor of State at his court and made him a Baron of the Empire. Although Las Cases’ devotion was unquestioned, many people found it astonishing that he volunteered for exile on St Helena. But there is little doubt that he had a shrewd idea of the value of becoming the deposed emperor’s memorialist, and he applied himself seriously to the task, honoured to record the great man’s account of how Europe had been won—and so inexplicably lost.

It was now agreed that the count and his son would live with Napoleon at the pavilion, sleeping in the tiny loft space and by day recording a description of his campaigns for the benefit of history. Napoleon himself took a sceptical view of the benefit of history and believed it would do ‘what it usually does with those who have won a hundred battles but lost the final one. For what is history, but a fable agreed upon?’ But he thought it worth telling some fables of his own.

The count spoke excellent English, a relief for the Balcombes to have an efficient interpreter.

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William Balcombe and Admiral Cockburn had been busy trying to sort out the financial and logistical details. Balcombe informed his patron in England that he had become the first Englishman in history to entertain Napoleon Bonaparte as a house guest, which was braggadocio of the highest order: ‘He is very affable and pleasant, plays at cards with us and speaks French with my Daughters, amuses himself about the garden and appears in very good spirits . . .’

In the rest of his letter of 20 October to Tyrwhitt he quickly got down to business. He explained that the admiral had recommended to the British government that he should have an adequate salary for supplying Bonaparte’s wants: ‘I assure you that I have enough to do to supply his Table and it is a very arduous task to do it at this place. Sir G. Cockburn has advised me to write to you to recommend to Government something handsome may be allowed me per Annum for my trouble. I should be satisfied if they were to give 7½ per cent upon what his expences amount to per Annum.