After his defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte’s final years were spent in exile on St Helena imprisoned by the British Government.
When Napoleon was not busy thinking up new ways to enrage Governor Lowe, he was to be found in the company of a number of pretty women (including Betsy Balcombe, the 14-year old daughter of the East India Company’s agent on St Helena) or lying in his bath for hours as his faithful ADC Captain Piontkowski replenished it with fresh jugs of hot water.
Napoleon received many important visitors who called in at St Helena en route to and from India and he kept himself up to date with the latest news of his family and his many other liberal sympathisers throughout Europe and the USA, including Elizabeth and Henry Holland who were his most prominent supporters in London.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s final years
Even before Napoleon arrived on St Helena, his health had begun to fail him and in the last two years he suffered from the illness that finally killed him. He died on May 5th 1821, aged 52.