The 46-year-old veteran was accompanied by his wife of three and a half months, her two adolescent daughters, his aide-de-camp, a private secretary, a military secretary, other officials, and the 2nd Battalion of the 66th Regiment of Foot. Lowe had every reason to believe that this appointment as the guardian of England’s greatest enemy would be a high point in his career, although not necessarily the highest; he had been assured that ‘it should not stop there’.2 He could not have imagined that his new position would ultimately cause him to be reviled by many of his own countrymen, including some in positions of power, for the rest of his days.

Napoleon was inclined to welcome the arrival of the new governor, who would supplant both Sir George Cockburn and Governor Wilks as his chief custodian. The admiral had proved upright, inflexible, difficult to charm—unlike the British commissioner on Elba, Sir Neil Campbell, who had been trusting enough to absent himself from the island, so facilitating Napoleon’s escape. Campbell was an experienced military man, as was Lowe, and Napoleon claimed to understand soldiers. He heard that Lowe had seen action at Champaubert and Montmirail and remarked: ‘We have then probably exchanged a few cannon-balls together, and that is always, in my eyes, a noble relation to stand in.’3 It was hoped by the French party that the new governor was bringing instructions to ‘extend the prison to the entire island’ and so he was ‘awaited with impatience’.4

The day after landing, Lowe was officially inaugurated as governor and then set about meeting his important charge, sending a message that he would call at Longwood at nine o’clock the following morning. Napoleon was not in the habit of receiving callers until the afternoon and simply ignored the message. He told O’Meara that it was a deliberate insult on Admiral Cockburn’s part, an attempt to embroil him with the new governor, for ‘he well knew that I never had received any persons, nor ever would, at that hour; he did it out of malice’.5 The admiral, he grumbled, was a ‘real shark’. But O’Meara had been in town and learned from someone on the governor’s staff that Lowe brought instructions from the British government infinitely more severe than those the admiral had put into effect. As he left the room, the doctor whispered to Marchand: ‘I wish the shark could remain with us; we will regret him, you can be sure.’6

When Governor Lowe, the admiral and some of their staff arrived in the pelting rain the following morning they were refused admission. As the officially appointed custodian of the prisoner, Lowe naturally assumed that he could see him when he chose. He strode around the house, attempting to peer in. They were told that ‘the emperor’ was ‘indisposed’ but was prepared to offer an audience the next day at four o’clock.

When it took place in Longwood’s drawing room on the afternoon of 17 April, the meeting was brief but pleasant enough. However, the admiral was summarily excluded, something he never forgave. ‘He told me,’ Lowe wrote in a despatch, ‘that Bertrand had almost shut the door in his face as he was following me into the room; that a servant had put his arm across him.’7 This slight to Cockburn had not been intended by Napoleon and was soon regretted by him.

The two men who faced each other in the room were born within a month of each other.8 They were diametrically opposed physical types. Napoleon was short and increasingly rotund, with the famous Roman-coin profile, smooth olive skin and blue-grey eyes known from a thousand portraits and caricatures. His visitor was tall and wiry, with greying reddish hair, sandy tufted eyebrows and the mottled pink complexion of a sun-intolerant Celt who tended to blink through pale eyelashes. At Napoleon’s request they spoke in Italian. He had heard that the new governor had commanded a regiment of Corsicans, although he may not have known that Lowe had requisitioned the Buonaparte house in Ajaccio.9

Napoleon asked how Lowe had found the Corsicans: ‘They carry the stiletto; are they not a bad people?’

‘They do not carry the stiletto, having abandoned that custom in our service,’ the new governor replied. ‘They have always conducted themselves with propriety. I was very well satisfied with them.’

The encounter passed off tolerably well and Lowe had clearly striven to be diplomatic. However, Napoleon had developed ‘an instinctive antipathy’ towards him.10 He remarked to O’Meara: ‘He is hideous. He has a most villainous countenance. But we must not decide too hastily. The man’s disposition may, perhaps, make amends for the unfavourable impression which his face produces. This is not impossible.’11 He was willing to wait and see.

Good relations were not advanced when Lowe—carrying out the specific instruction of Lord Bathurst—left a document with Montholon, requiring that all the French sign it. It stated that they were at liberty to leave St Helena and return to Europe; however, if they wished to remain on the island they must declare this in writing and submit to all restrictions imposed on them. Montholon showed a translation of the paper to Napoleon, who promptly tore it up and dictated new words: ‘We, the undersigned, wishing to continue in the service of HM the Emperor Napoleon, consent, horrible as is the abode in St Helena, to remain here. We submit to the restrictions, though unjust and arbitrary, that are imposed upon HM and upon the persons in his service.’12 This version was promptly rejected by the governor. All the French were eventually obliged to sign the original document.

Lowe had brought directions from Bathurst ‘to supply Buonaparte’s table in the most liberal manner’ instead of just the eight dining places which the admiral, following instructions, had imposed.13 This was good news for Balcombe, whose percentage increased accordingly. He now had 52 people to feed in the Longwood establishment: Napoleon’s companions, their four children, 36 servants (many of them hired locally), the two orderly English officers and O’Meara.

British newspapers held that Bonaparte’s appetite was voracious, that he drank a pot of port and two bottles of claret at breakfast.