In the end he gave up. At Deadwood Camp he ordered the flying of the blue flag, releasing the signal dreaded throughout the island: ‘General Bonaparte is missing’. Poppleton had to personally inform Cockburn of the catastrophe. He found him at lunch with Colonel Bingham and the Balcombe family at The Briars, as Betsy described: ‘He arrived breathless at our house, and, setting all ceremony aside, demanded to see Sir George, on business of the utmost importance. He was ushered at once into the dining room. The Admiral was in the act of discussing his soup, and listened with an imperturbable countenance to the agitated detail of the occurrence, with Captain Poppleton’s startling exclamation of “Oh! Sir, I have lost the emperor!”’

Colonel Bingham was thrown into ‘a state of anxiety’, although the admiral said: ‘There’s no danger. Just a lesson for you.’42 He advised Poppleton to return to Longwood where he would most probably find Bonaparte. ‘This, as he prognosticated, was the case . . . he found the emperor seated at dinner, and was unmercifully quizzed by him for the want of nerve he displayed in not daring to ride after him . . . Napoleon often afterwards laughed at the consternation he had created.’43 It had indeed been a lesson. Under the watch of Sir Hudson Lowe, Poppleton would have been court-martialled.

Henceforth the prisoner was obliged to have an officer in close attendance when outside the limits—with the result that he rejected the affront and would exercise only within the 12-mile boundary. For the next five years he stubbornly kept to this resolve. It was a decision that caused an inevitable decline in his health.

The bickering and backbiting continued, and stored resentments festered among members of the Longwood household. Gourgaud and Las Cases objected to someone of such lowly rank as Captain Piontkowski dining with them, and the Pole was relegated to the back dining room shared by Dr O’Meara and Poppleton, the British orderly officer. ‘We still quarrelled,’ wrote Las Cases, ‘over the few remains of our life of luxury, and the relics of our ambitions.’44

Gourgaud was recovering from an attack of dysentery, and O’Meara, who attended him, thought he had never seen ‘a man of the sword so excessively timorous’. Gourgaud’s excessive devotion and endless carping were also wearying. Napoleon made a suggestion which was duly recorded: ‘The Emperor orders me to buy a pretty slave for myself. I reply that I intend to do so.’45

Now that all the retinue lived within the Longwood boundary, Bonaparte’s utterances, his grievances, his disputes with Admiral Cockburn and later his great battle with Governor Lowe were comprehensively documented by his followers, each with their own personal bias. Along with the daily reports of the two orderly officers, the place became a virtual literary colony—one of those benevolent residential retreats where catering is provided and writers work in seclusion but gather together to exchange ideas over meals.

There was of course the regular dictation of the emperor’s vainglorious account of his military campaigns (which would become the massive and unreliable work Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, edited by Las Cases, who became known as the ‘Boswell of St Helena’), but other French companions—General Bertrand, Count de Montholon and his wife Albine—were taking notes and storing up memories for future books to be published years later, as Cahiers de Sainte Hélène, Récits de la Captivité and Souvenirs respectively. Even the two valets, Marchand and Ali, recorded their exchanges with their master after leaving his presence, jotting down his confidences and bons mots for posterity.

On 24 February, the Balcombe sisters made another visit to Longwood. Betsy reminded Napoleon that when he was at The Briars he had promised to join in a game of Blindman’s Buff but had not done so.46 When he recalled what the game was (he knew it in France as colin-maillard), a foolish blundering about with a handkerchief tied over one’s eyes, he tried to persuade her to choose something else, but then resigned himself to it.

Jane, young Tristan de Montholon and seven-year-old Napoleon Bertrand formed a circle in the reception room, with Marchand and Le Page the chef dragooned as well. They drew lots to see who would be blindfolded first. Betsy drew the paper with the words ‘La Mort’ (death)—‘whether accidentally or by Napoleon’s contrivance’, she wrote—and so was the first victim.

He tied a cambric handkerchief over her eyes. ‘Can you see, Miss Betsee?’

‘No,’ she replied, although she could glimpse him through a corner. He waved his hat in front of her face and she flinched.

‘Ah, leetle monkee,’ he said in English. ‘You can see pretty well!’ He tied another handkerchief over the first, excluding all light.