Betsy found the view dismal and forbidding: the overhanging cliffs and the great hulk of the Barn, the iron-coloured rocks scattered with prickly pear and aloes. Madame Bertrand had told Mrs Balcombe that the emperor stared for hours at the clouds rolling across it, wreathing into fantastic shapes.35

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Life for Napoleon and his court at Longwood settled into a pattern. He rose late and soaked in a hot bath, revelling in this pleasure. His offer to Las Cases to enjoy a plunge was declined with ‘profound respect’. ‘Mon cher,’ Napoleon chided him, ‘in prison we must learn to help each other. After all I can’t make use of this contraption all day long, and a bath will do you as much good as it does me.’36 The count raised another subject: he wished to return Queen Hortense’s diamond necklace that he still wore in a velvet band under his clothes. ‘Napoleon asked, “Does it annoy you?” “No, Sire,” was my answer. “Keep it then,” said he.’37

Dictation of the memoirs continued during the day, broken by a three-course lunch and a more elaborate dinner. After the informality of The Briars, meals were now observed with great pomp and ceremony and a nightly tussle for precedence, the men in full dress uniform, the ladies resplendent in jewels and décolleté gowns. The liveried servants stood at attention throughout the meal. No one sat until invited by their emperor.

Fanny Bertrand sometimes found the dinners too tiresome. It demanded too great an effort to dress up, leave her children and walk or ride the mile to Longwood, particularly as Napoleon usually despatched his meal in twenty minutes, obliging his companions to stop eating when he did. However, he was annoyed when she and her husband absented themselves. ‘They did the same thing at Elba,’ he grumbled to Gourgaud. ‘They think only of themselves, forgetting what they owe me. They take my house for a hotel. Let them dine here always or not at all.’38

After dinner there were games of chess and reversi [a strategy board game], or someone would read aloud from Racine, Molière or Voltaire. Madame de Montholon was often rebuked for nodding off. Intrigue, rivalry and jealousy simmered between members of the court, while their anger at the British often focused on the person of Sir George Cockburn, despite his efforts to make their lives more pleasant. As a New Year’s offering, the admiral presented Napoleon with a German-built barouche—a four-wheeled carriage purchased from the departing governor.39 He also returned the men’s fowling pieces, but they responded that there was ‘absolutely nothing to shoot upon the bleak rocks of Longwood’.40

After some prevarication, Napoleon was persuaded to join an excursion with the admiral and his secretary John Glover. They rode through undulating green fields and wooded hills; the lushness of the countryside was a surprise compared to the island’s grim exterior. Their objective was Sandy Bay and one of the extraordinary sights of St Helena, the dramatic volcanic outcrop known as Lot, rising 1550 feet above the sea, with smaller jagged pinnacles—called Lot’s Wife and Daughters—thrusting up from a barren ridge. But Napoleon would have been far more interested in the fact that Sandy Bay itself was one of the few places other than Jamestown where a boat could conceivably be landed, despite the roiling surf.

A few days afterwards, Napoleon entertained the admiral and several others to a formal dinner at Longwood. He managed to persuade Sir George that on walking and riding expeditions beyond the 12-mile boundary, Captain Poppleton, the English orderly officer, should follow on his horse 30 or 40 yards behind, instead of accompanying the party. Napoleon’s ability to charm and ensnare a person was at work, for he later informed his followers ‘that he could do what he liked with the Admiral’.41

The next day he rode off with Bertrand and Gourgaud to test the limits. Bertrand rebuked Poppleton: ‘Captain, do you think that we are wanting to escape? You are almost on our backs! His Majesty desires that you should keep a greater distance.’ The young officer deferred to him and, as they descended into a steep valley, kept his horse a hundred paces to the rear. At the bottom of the defile the French were out of Poppleton’s sight. ‘Let us gallop,’ cried Napoleon. Suddenly he turned sharply to his left, and spurring his horse violently, urged him up the face of the precipice, making the large stones fly from under him and leaving the orderly officer aghast. The French took their mounts along a path observed during the Sandy Bay excursion, following the ridge above a valley which, a mile away, opened out to the sea and another possible, but still treacherous, landing place, Powell’s Bay.

Captain Poppleton was in a state of panic, galloping wildly in every direction, but he baulked at the precipitous slope.