The Memorial of Saint Helena (French : Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène), written by Emmanuel de Las Cases, is a journal-memoir of the beginning of Napoleon Bonaparte's exile on Saint Helena. The core of the work transcribes Las Cases' near-daily conversations with the former Emperor on his life, his career, his political philosophy, and the conditions of his exile.
First published in 1823 after Napoleon's death, the work was an immediate and continuing literary success, receiving multiple translations and appearing in new editions throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The work entered the popular imagination as something like Napoleon's own personal and political testament, and as such became a founding text in the development of the Napoleon cult and the ideology of Bonapartism.
Charles de Gaulle, Leader of Free France during World War Two and President of France from 1958 and 1969, used it as inspiration for his memoirs.
Las Cases began his journal on June 20, 1815, two days after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and continued it until his expulsion from St. Helena on orders of the island's governor, Hudson Lowe, at the end of the following year.
According to Las Cases, the project of the Memorial commenced in early August, 1815 aboard the Bellerophon, where Napoleon was waiting for the ship that would transport him and a small party of companions to St. Helena. Napoleon suggests he finds comfort in the thought of suicide, but Las Cases insists there will still be purpose for them in the "desolate place" of exile:
"Sire, ... we will live on the past: there is enough in it to satisfy us. Do we not enjoy the life of Caesar and that of Alexander? We shall possess still more, you will re-peruse yourself, Sire!" "Be it so!" rejoined Napoleon; "we will write our Memoirs." [1]
At some point Las Cases began a daily routine of transcribing notes of the Emperor's conversation, leaving his son Emmanuel the task of producing a fair copy. From time to time Las Cases would provide Napoleon with excerpts to read, thus assuring himself of Napoleon's imprimatur. [2]
Being found in possession of personal letters that he was attempting to send surreptitiously to Europe, Las Cases was arrested on November 25, 1816, and expelled from St. Helena a month later. British authorities confiscated the manuscript of the Memorial and sent it to England in the keeping of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Bathurst. The manuscript was not returned to Las Cases until five years later, following the Emperor's death. [3]
The Memorial was reprinted for the first time less than a year after its publication in 1823, and was translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. It was one of the bestselling books in France in the years between 1826 and 1840.
In 1935, it was included in the French classics series La Pléiade, [3] published by the Éditions Gallimard [4] in a two-volume edition by Gérard Walter, historian of the French Revolution. It will be published in a boxed set in the same collection to mark the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon in 2021.
A copy of the memorial was in the British Library in the collections deposited in 1965 by the family of the then British Secretary of State for War, Lord Bathurst, superior of the Governor of St Helena, Hudson Lowe. This is the original memorial. It was republished in France in 2017 by the Éditions Perrin with a text prepared, presented and commented on by Thierry Lentz, Peter Hicks, François Houdecek and Chantal Prévost from the Fondation Napoléon.
1911: Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (or La Captivité de Napoléon), a French silent film of 20 minutes and 20 seconds, directed by Michel Carré.
Armand-Augustin-Louis de Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence, was a French military officer, diplomat and close advisor to Napoleon I.
Gaspard, Baron Gourgaud, also known simply as Gaspard Gourgaud, was a French soldier, prominent in the Napoleonic wars.
Charles Tristan, Marquis de Montholon was a French general during the Napoleonic Wars. He chose to go into exile on Saint Helena with the ex-emperor after Napoleon's second abdication.
Emmanuel-Augustin-Dieudonné-Joseph, comte de Las Cases was a French atlas-maker and author, famed for an admiring book about Napoleon, Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène.
Sir Hudson Lowe, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Saint Helena from 1816 to 1821. Seeing service during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, he is best known for serving as the de facto jailor of Napoleon when he was in exile on Saint Helena.
Henri-Gatien Bertrand was a French general who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Under the Empire he was the third and last Grand marshal of the palace, the head of the Military Household of emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he followed in both the exiles to Elba and Saint-Helena.
Mahomet is a five-act tragedy written in 1736 by French playwright and philosopher Voltaire. It received its debut performance in Lille on 25 April 1741.
Max Gallo was a French writer, historian and politician. He wrote over one hundred books.
Longwood House is a mansion in St. Helena and the final residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, the former Emperor of the French, during his exile on the island of Saint Helena, from 10 December 1815 until his death on 5 May 1821.
Briars is the small pavilion in which Napoleon Bonaparte stayed for the first few weeks of his exile on Saint Helena in late 1815 before being moved to Longwood House.
Gilbert Martineau was a French naval officer, author of books on Napoleon and his family, honorary consul, and curator 1956-1987 of the French properties on St Helena, where Napoleon had been in exile.
The retour des cendres was the return of the mortal remains of Napoleon I of France from the island of Saint Helena to France and the burial in Hôtel des Invalides in Paris in 1840, on the initiative of Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers and King Louis Philippe I.
Louis Charles René, comte de Marbeuf, grand-cross of the order of Saint Louis, was a French general.
The Saint Helena Medal was the first French campaign medal. It was established in 1857 by a decree of emperor Napoleon III to recognise participation in the campaigns led by emperor Napoleon I.
François Carlo Antommarchi was Napoleon's physician from 1819 to his death in 1821.
The French domains of Saint Helena is an estate of 14 ha, in three separate parts, on the island of Saint Helena within the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
The Saint Helena Journal of General Baron Gourgaud is a private journal written down by Gaspard Gourgaud as a result of his conversations with Napoleon I of France between June 1815 and March 1818 during the former's exile on Saint Helena.
Peter Geoffrey Barry Hicks is a British historian and church musician.
Michel Dancoisne-Martineau is the director of the French domains of Saint Helena. Since October 1990, he has been Honorary French Consul on the island.
Napoleon I's exile to St. Helena encompasses the final six years of the deposed emperor's life, commencing with his second abdication in 1815 and concluding with his military defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and the subsequent Hundred Days.