On Saint Helena, the exiled emperor is determined to learn English in order to be able to read English newspapers without having them translated. He takes lessons from Count de Las Cases, who accompanied him to Saint Helena, and on 17 March 1816 presents the count with the following letter:
‘Since sixt week j learn the Englich and j do not any progress. Six week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivity word four day I could konow it two thusands and two hundred. It is in the dictionary more of fourty thousand; even he could must twinty bout much of tems for know it our hundred and twenty week, which do ore two yars. After this you shall agree that to study one tongue is a great labour who it must do into the young aged.’1
Napoleon is bored. Much as he would love it, he will not ride because he objects to the rule that he always be accompanied by a British officer. To relieve the tedium, he has surprised everyone by taking up gardening, which he insists is better for his health than any doctor’s pills and potions, and has planted willows, oaks and peach trees to shade the house, and a vegetable garden.
Golden wattle, an Australian shrub he brought from Malmaison – and a favourite of his and of Josephine’s – is blooming in his garden and is growing wild, spreading its yellow sunbursts across the heathland.
He has often told his friend Louis de Bourrienne that he expects to die of a scirrhus of the pylorus (stomach cancer), which killed his father and others of his family.
‘Occasional manifestations of its presence had been exhibited for some years,’ Bourrienne says, ‘but his usual health always returned after every attack, and its fatal nature was not suspected.’2
Since the middle of 1818, his health has deteriorated sharply. Doctors were called in but for a long time he either ignored their advice or refused to see them.
‘Well, doctor, what is your opinion?’ he asked François Antommarchi, a young Corsican surgeon engaged by Napoleon’s mother as his personal physician. ‘Am I to trouble much longer the digestion of kings?’
The surgeon, overawed in the presence of a living legend, abandoned science for sycophancy. ‘You will survive them, sire,’ he declared. ‘You have yet a long career to run.’
This was not what Napoleon wanted to hear. ‘No, doctor!’ he barked. ‘I cannot hold out long under this frightful climate.’
‘Your excellent constitution is proof against its pernicious effects,’ said Antommarchi.
‘It once did not yield to the strength of mind with which nature has endowed me,’ Napoleon told him, ‘but the transition from a life of action to a complete seclusion has ruined all. I have grown fat. My energy is gone. The bow is unstrung.’3
By the end of 1820 he can walk only with assistance, and even then just for a short distance. Mostly confined to bed, he is in constant pain, has almost no appetite, and suffers from nausea, fever and fainting spells. Yet Antommarchi persists in peddling vain hope. ‘Your Majesty is in no danger,’ he says. ‘You are still reserved for some glorious enterprise.’
‘I am no longer Napoleon,’ he answers. ‘Now I am no longer anything. My strength, my faculties forsake me. I do not live – I merely exist.’4
May of 1821 brings fits of delirium, in which he imagines he is on some battlefield. ‘Victory is declaring itself!’ he shouts. ‘Run! Rush forward! Press the charge! They are ours!’5
Antommarchi tells Bourrienne that on the afternoon of 3 May, while keeping vigil, ‘Napoleon, suddenly collecting his strength, jumped onto the floor and would absolutely go down into the garden to take a walk. I ran to catch him in my arms but his legs bent under the weight of his body. He fell backwards, and I had the mortification of being unable to prevent his falling.
‘We raised him up and entreated him to get into bed again, but he did not recognise anybody, and began to storm and fall into a violent passion.’6
Later, on regaining his senses, he said to Antommarchi, ‘Doctor, I am very ill. I feel I am going to die.’7
Two days later, on Saturday 5 May 1821, just before six in the evening, with the land outside his window laid waste by a violent storm that struck the island on Friday, Napoleon Bonaparte dies. In his last moments, he murmurs a few indistinguishable words, then one word clearly.
‘Josephine.’