He found it hard to forgive the way he had been treated as a common exhibit, gaped at like a wild animal in Josephine’s menagerie at Malmaison, a zebra or ridiculous kangourou!

Sir George Cockburn understood that the situation was difficult for the preservation of dignity. He ensured that an armed guard kept the jostling crowd at bay as he escorted Bonaparte and his French companions across the drawbridge, through the town gates, past the castle entrance and its gardens to the three-storey lodging house owned by Henry Porteous. Bonaparte detested the tall narrow building as soon as he saw it and complained of its very public situation and lack of a private courtyard. He was no happier when he inspected the arrangements inside.

As night set in, most of the crowd dispersed. Still holding lanterns and torches, people wended their way, mounted or on foot, up Ladder Hill or the Sidepath. But a few of the curious still loitered outside the Porteous house. Among them was Thomas Brooke, secretary of the governing council and the island’s first historian; he hoped to see a legendary figure at the candlelit windows, ‘everyone anxious to catch a glance whilst he walked up and down the room’. Brooke was astonished to be invited inside by the admiral and his credentials announced: ‘I was accordingly ushered up to Buonaparte, who was standing, and introduced in regular form. His first words were “Hah! L’auteur de l’Histoire de St Hélène.” He then said he had read it on the passage . . . I observed that I trusted he would find the interior of the island more prepossessing in appearance than the first view of it might lead him to expect.’8

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Three months earlier, at dawn on 24 July, Bonaparte had stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Bellerophon next to Captain Maitland and gazed through his field glass at the port of Torbay, the sea cliffs of Devon and green pastureland beyond. As the ship sailed on to Plymouth, he was astonished to find himself massively feted. They were surrounded by an immense clutter of small craft, filled with the curious, desperate to see the infamous enemy. Marchand tells us that ‘accompanied by the grand marshal [General Bertrand], he went on deck and showed himself to the eager crowd . . . But a painful scene for us was that a few ships with our prisoners wounded at Waterloo sailed by, some distance from the Bellerophon.’9 Within the month some 4000 French prisoners were marched 25 miles up to the grim granite prison on Dartmoor, established in 1809 by none other than Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who, as Member of Parliament for Plymouth before he was appointed Black Rod in 1812, had seen the opportunity.

The Bellerophon was at Plymouth for three weeks. During that time, Admiral Viscount Keith, Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet, was responsible for the security of the prisoner and represented the voice of the British government.10 The Times urged government ministers ‘to do their duty and rid the world of a monster’,11 but it seemed ‘the whole population of the country, without distinction of rank or sex’, was descending on the port for a glimpse of him.12 ‘I am worryed to death with idle folk coming, even from Glasgow, to see him,’ Admiral Keith complained to his daughter. ‘There is no nation so foolish as we are!’13

An officer reported that people had flocked from all parts of the country to see Bonaparte. His every appearance on deck was an event for thousands of citizens who came out in tour boats and waved their hats. Upwards of a thousand boats were from morning to night around the warship, and its seamen were willing to give an account of Napoleon’s movements for the avid spectators. They wrote in chalk on a board, and exhibited a short account of his different occupations: ‘At breakfast’, ‘In the cabin with Capt. Maitland’, ‘Writing with his officers’, ‘Going to dinner’, ‘Coming upon deck’, et cetera.14 One of the ship’s officers reported that the ‘great number of well-dressed females . . . never failed to attract his particular attention . . . He appeared greatly pleased with the beauty and elegance of our fair countrywomen, and was always wishing to know their names, families, and any circumstance that could be communicated to him concerning them.’15

The celebrity prisoner understood that he was awaiting the Prince Regent’s decision.