Napoleon Bonaparte England'S Prisoner

My political life is over, and I proclaim my son Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon II. But Napoleon's hopes, expressed in a declaration to the French people after his defeat at Waterloo, were soon dashed. On 13 July 1815 the Emperor dictated a now-famous letter to the Prince Regent. Avoiding any hint of surrender, still less responsibility for the defeat, he said he came like Themistocles to throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people - I put myself under the protection of their laves, which I clairn from Your Royal Highness, as the most powerful, the most constant and the most generous of my enemies : His ideas of living peacefully in the English countryside was a pipedream : the Island of St Helena was a desolate and unappealing home. There Napoleon came under the supervision of Governor Sir Hudson Lowe, now reviled by some historians. Looking afresh at the evidence, Frank Giles gives a new perspective on Lowe, in an illuminating account of the Emperor's exile.