Las Cases Memorial

On 18 June 1815, the Battle of Waterloo sounded the death knell of the French Empire. The defeated Napoleon was exiled. England decided on the Emperor’s last residence: Saint Helena, a small island bristling with jagged contours in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon disembarked on the island with his most faithful companions and settled at Longwood House, a modest residence to say the least, where he would end his days in 1821. On the rock of Saint Helena, the fallen Emperor launched his final battle, that of posterity, making his last residence a place for writing and creating the legend. Isolated in the midst of the Atlantic, everything conspired to make Longwood a tragic hell on earth. However, Napoleon refused to submit to this and decided to write, thus turning his exile into one last test before his apotheosis. Forced into introspection, he looked back on his political career, making a lie of the adage that history is only written by the conquerors. Before his death, on 5 May 1821, his actions and gestures had already been published, disseminated and amplified, and false stories and genuine rumours had all begun to create the legend. The most insignificant object associated with the place of his exile and death took on a memorial dimension, and its proximity to the Emperor raised it to the status of a relic.