Napoleon, actually abstemious, read some of the reports and told O’Meara: ‘Why, I do not know what the English will make of me in the end; they say that I drink so many bottles of wine daily, that I eat so much, that I will produce a famine on this detestable rock. I suppose that they will make me eat a live bull at a meal by-and-bye.’14 Neither Lowe nor his prisoner nor anyone else on the island knew that the doctor’s reports of their conversations were read at the highest level of the Admiralty. Bathurst had been made privy and chose not to tell the governor, so almost two years passed before Lowe learned of the conduit.15 Meanwhile, he himself found O’Meara a useful channel for Longwood gossip.

Gourgaud and Bertrand visited Plantation House to farewell the retiring governor Colonel Sir Mark Wilks and his wife and daughter, departing in a few days for England. ‘I pay my respects to Madame Wilks and say “Goodbye” to the adorable Laura,’ Gourgaud lamented.16 But Bertrand had another agenda. He took Wilks aside to query if there would be ‘any impropriety’ in asking him ‘to take charge of a communication from the Emperor to your Government, or would you consider such a charge to be troublesome?’

Wilks was appalled at the attempt to bypass his replacement, who had been on the island just five days. He chose to misunderstand Bertrand’s meaning: ‘Far from troublesome; I shall be very happy to take charge of any communication from General Bonaparte which may be committed to me for that purpose by Sir Hudson Lowe.’

Bertrand looked confused. ‘And not otherwise?’

‘Certainly not,’ Wilks answered. ‘I am sorry you should think it necessary to propose to any person a deviation from the prescribed channel of communication; and very sorry that you should think it proper to make such a proposition to me.’17 Later in the day he informed Lowe of the exchange.

Nonetheless, Napoleon sent good wishes for Wilks’s health and an agreeable voyage as the former governor took his leave.18 On 23 April, the Balcombes were at the marina as the Wilks family embarked on the barge for the Havannah. As Betsy later recalled: ‘Not a dry eye was to be seen amongst the crowd then collected; that leave-taking of our much loved and respected governor and his family resembled more a funeral than a levée, so sad and solemn was every face.’19 Sir Hudson Lowe must have known that he would never inspire that kind of affection.

Lowe regarded Bonaparte’s attempt to appeal to the Prince Regent behind his back as little less than a declaration of war. He instituted the new restrictions advised by Bathurst. No stranger was to meet with ‘General Bonaparte’ without the governor’s permission. Certain officers of the 53rd Regiment who had been in the habit of making social calls on the Bertrands were told that their visits were not sanctioned. The number of sentries at Longwood was increased. Captain Poppleton was instructed to sight Bonaparte twice a day. Thomas Brooke, the governing council secretary, and Lowe’s secretary Major Gorrequer visited the town’s shopkeepers and instructed them to refuse credit to the French or risk severe punishment. ‘The tradespeople were forbidden to sell anything to us directly,’ wrote Montholon, ‘and were threatened, in case of disobedience, with the seizure and confiscation of their goods. Everything was now to pass through the medium of the governor or his agents.’20

Lowe was alarmed when he received a report from Poppleton on 30 April that the prisoner had not been sighted the previous day. He hurried to Longwood and met Montholon at the door, who said that his master was indisposed and suffering. It was after four o’clock in the afternoon and Lowe was agreeably surprised when Napoleon indicated he would see him. The governor was ushered into the bedroom and found his charge reclining in his dressing-gown, breathing heavily.

It became clear that Napoleon had admitted him having heard that some commissioners were arriving soon, representing the French, Russian and Austrian Allies. He launched into a harangue. The Allies had made a convention declaring him their prisoner, but they had no authority to do so. ‘I wish you to write to your Government and acquaint it I shall protest against it. I gave myself up to England and to no other Power . . . I misunderstood the character of the English people. I should have surrendered myself to the Emperor of Russia who was my friend, or to the Emperor of Austria who was my relation. There is courage in putting a man to death, but it is an act of cowardice to let him languish, and to poison him, in so horrid an island and in so detestable a climate.’

Lowe protested. St Helena had never been viewed in that light; except for necessary security precautions, it was the wish of the British government to render Napoleon’s situation as comfortable as possible; in fact, the components of a new house and furniture were being shipped from England.

Napoleon listed his grievances: he hated the locality of Longwood, the sparseness of trees, his exclusion from free conversation with the local inhabitants, the fact that he was denied a greater range for exercise unless accompanied by an officer, and the outrage that the governor had presumed to interrogate his servants.21

This rancorous second meeting proved pivotal.