but there is no dealing with you—you are a most intractable man. You suspect everything and everybody. You are a Lieutenant-General but you perform your duty as if you were a sentinel; you never commanded any men but Corsican deserters. I know the name of every English general who has distinguished himself, but I have never heard of you except as a clerk to Blücher, or as a commandant of assassins. You do not know how to conduct yourself towards men of honour, your soul is too low. Why do you not treat us like prisoners of war? You treat us like Botany Bay convicts.’

Lowe spoke with cool deliberation: ‘I have every desire to render your situation as agreeable as is in my power, but you prevent me . . . I am the subject of a free government. I hold every species of tyranny and despotism in execration, and I will repel every attack upon my character on this point.’

Bonaparte turned to the admiral again. ‘There are two kinds of people employed by governments—those whom they honour, and those whom they dishonour; he is one of the latter; the situation they have given him is that of an executioner. I, who have been the Master of the World, know the type of man such positions are given to. It is only the dishonoured who accept them.’26

Soon an account of the meeting was circulating around the island. Sir Hudson Lowe had been spoken to with intolerable rudeness and Bonaparte knew it. ‘I must not see that officer again,’ he told Las Cases. ‘He makes me lose my temper and forget myself. I said things to him that would have been inexcusable at the Tuileries. If they are excusable here it is because I am in his hands and in his power.’27

The governor would never speak to Bonaparte again. For the next five years he saw him only occasionally and at a distance. His next close view was when he inspected the prisoner’s corpse. For the present, he resented Admiral Malcolm’s apparent friendship with Bonaparte—and with William Balcombe. He had heard that Balcombe had told Bonaparte that he, the governor, was gossiping about Madame Mère’s letter and her offer to travel to the island to be with her son—something he categorically denied.28 In his mind The Briars was shaping as a hostile camp. A hostile naval camp. He would ensure that Major Sir Thomas Reade kept the Balcombes under surveillance.

The next day Montholon delivered a long letter, signed by him, to the governor. It had been composed by Napoleon with input from his companions. It stated the rights he claimed as prisoner, listed all their grievances and demanded redress. A copy eventually found publication in Europe, where it became known as ‘The Remonstrance’ and caused a sensation. It concluded by explaining the impossibility of reducing household expenses: ‘You demand from the Emperor £4000 sterling, your government allowing only £8000 for all expenses. I have already had the honour to tell you that the Emperor has no funds.’29 Las Cases was confident that the document would ‘set Europe on fire’. Malcolm asked Lowe for a copy and was offended to be refused.