Exile to Elba
Napoleon was given a Mediterranean island 250 kilometres from France and governed it for nine months. Elba is about 220 square kilometres with a population of some 12,000, iron mines, vineyards and tuna fisheries, and he arrived in May 1814 aboard a British frigate. The Treaty of Fontainebleau made him sovereign of the island, allowed him the title of emperor, a guard of 600 men and an annuity of two million francs from the French treasury. He behaved exactly as anyone who knew him should have expected. He inspected the mines, reorganised the tax system, built roads, planted vines and chestnuts, drained marshes, opened a hospital and a theatre, redesigned the flag, and reviewed his guard. He also read the French newspapers. Three things decided him. The annuity was not paid, which left him short of money for a court and a garrison; reports arrived that the allies were discussing deportation to a remote island in the Atlantic; and France under the restored Bourbons was visibly discontented, with returning émigrés demanding their property and half-pay officers everywhere. His mother and his sister Pauline visited; his wife and son did not, being held in Austria. The British commissioner assigned to watch him left the island in February to visit a woman in Italy. He sailed on 26 February 1815 with about a thousand men, landed near Antibes on 1 March, and reached Paris without a shot on 20 March. The second exile was St Helena. The allies were still sitting at Vienna when he landed and had not finished dividing Europe. They declared him an outlaw within a week, which is the only time the European powers have collectively outlawed an individual, and settled the map while Waterloo was being fought.
- Year: 1814 CE
- Category: Political
