"Where should Napoleon have been exiled to? " Topic

OK, Elba was manifestly too close and St Helena inhumanely remote and desolate (it looks Godawful on Google Streetview even today).

Where should the Bone-ster have been exiled?

It had to be somewhere he couldn't be sprung from and quickly returned to France to thrash the Prussians again. That rules out most European islands.

Nice weather would be a bonus, but not if it comes with diseases. That rules out the Indies or Mauritius.

In fact, anywhere with diseases would be a bit steep, so nowhere in India or most of Africa.

He also needs to be safe from crazed nutters wanting to bump him off.

I see two possibilities.

One, south Africa. Nice climate, on a well-used trade route so probably lots of interesting visitors, remote but not a dot in the ocean.

Two, Canada. In civilisation, lots of interesting visitors. He'd have been a destination for American intellectuals and indeed in the 6 years he had left after 1815 he'd have had time to meet all of them.

Any other ideas?

Not Canada. Not with all those "je me souviens" license plates on the cars! I loosely translate that as "I'm still pissed off!"

How about New Zealand? By all accounts it's a lovely place, but too nice for the Corsican Ogre.

If you don't have the stomach to hang him, St Helena is as good a place as any. It's eadier to limit his internet access there.

Put him and his Old Guard into suspended animation and fire him off into space. By the time James Kirk finds him and thaws him out he'll be harmless. Right? Right?

I would recommend the United States, where Monsieur Bonaparte and Maréchal Ney could help out in the Alamo. I can picture Bonaparte taking over from Travis and Crocket and giving an impassioned speech before slipping out to join Houston.

Napoleon in Canada would make for a great "what-if." After a year or two, he'd be the ruler of Quebec and threatening the rest of British controlled Canada!

New Orleans!

Did he really deserve NOT to be dumped somewhere remote and desolate?

King William island, one of Canada's nicest, fit for a King (or Emporer)

The Hawaiian Islands.

The Tower of London!

Hell….!?

A timeshare in Aruba

Antartica

I heard the guillotine is very nice this time of year.

Svalbard is also nice. Desolate and cold but unlike st Helena it got polar bears.

Braintree.

Hanging. Failing that, St Helena was about right--isolated and small enough to patrol.

Has anyone done the numbers on what treating him humanely in 1814 cost in number of lives?

Slough?

Not Slough, that's inhumane. Bracknell maybe.

Braintree? Slough? Bracknell? amateur towns

Dewsbury Moor – the real deal

This conversation reminds me of the French Canal+ ad:

YouTube link

The Phantom Zone, duh!

Hmmm – Canada, eh?

You know, having him on a chalet in Upper Canada would be an interesting idea

Gotta love the nineteenth century. So much more civilized than the 20th and 21st if you look at what happens to leaders now.

Buenos Aires.

Gotta love the nineteenth century. So much more civilized than the 20th and 21st if you look at what happens to leaders now.

Well, not necessarily. I think Boney was lucky to avoid the fate of Ney, Murat, Maximilian, Walker and several others. Didn't he make a point to surrender to the British to avoid getting summary 'justice' from the Prussians?

Buenos Aires.

Or Valparaiso, if you believe that Lord Cochrane conspiracy…

This is an Englishman's viewpoint on the exile to St Helena:

On the death of Napoleon:

"the close of a most disgraceful transaction in which the Ministers have made this country to particpate. To be the persecutor of fallen glory and the gaoler for the European sovereigns is not the situation in which England ought to have been placed. Peace to the remains of that great man, whom History will treat hereafter with greater justice than his contemporaries have hitherto done, while our disgrace will I fear be handled with all due severity." – Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843), sixth son of George III.

We Bonapartists will never be satisfied until we see a scion of Napoleon eating the bouillabaisse at Buckingham Palace!

That said, in many ways it was a more civilized time, when the burning of cities (that's a pun on "civilized") and the subsequent burning and crushing of civilians in their own houses was not as widespread as in modern war. Still, the British introduced rocket bombing, which would flourish in later times. If N. had been exiled earlier, we would have lost decades of rocket science.

We've got a spare room now that our oldest son has moved out with his girlfriend.

I'll spare everyone my lecture on peaks and troughs of atrocity, but I look at the state of Spain in 1812-13 and agree that Napoleon was not treated with justice. Indeed, there was never any prospect that he would be--though Blucher might have come close.

The obvious answer is Haiti. The natives will love him.

You don't want him in North America. New Orleans would be a perfect base of operations to move on Saint Louis. In Canada? Lets send him to Quebec, shouldn't have any problems with him there. Inside of a month the entire province will be in open revolt and he would be marching on Toronto. If it's Canada, send him to the Yukon.

On second thoughts, they should have just used the guillotine on him. That would have been a fitting end to a defeated revolutionary.

New South Wales?

Sweden.

Mexico

Nashville, the Hermitage. He could move in with Andy Jackson and wouldn't they make a pair! They could spend their time talking about how to lick the British.

– Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773-1843), sixth son of George III

Wasn't he a remote ancestor of Lord Haw Haw?

But I agree with the main sentiment. Turn him over to the Bourbons. He would have gotten justice there.

Winston Smith
< Turn him over to the Bourbons. He would have gotten justice there >
he didn't start the revolution if any thing he saved France from the revolution. His only "crime" was not being of royal blood, and he sure treated his captured "royals" a lot better than he received in return

The Host in Lancaster has some open rooms

The Bourbons refused to honor the terms of the Treaty of Fontainebleu with Napoleon when he was exiled to Elba. They refused to allow him his pay, without which he couldn't pay his 1,000-man Guard on Elba.

And the Bourbons were not popular in France, especially with the army. Their bungling brought Napoleon back from Elba.

And contrary to how the Bourbons treated him, he did nothing to retaliate against them when he returned.

The Bourbons were both degenerate and incompetent.

Not Hartlepool. He'd definitely have been strung up there.

they should have just used the guillotine on him. That would have been a fitting end to a defeated revolutionary.

While Napoleon supported the Revolution he was personally disgusted with the atrocities committed in its name and took no part in them.

And he definitely ended the Revolution when he took over as First Consul, consolidated the social and political gains of the Revolution and reestablished law and order in France.

Contrary to Blucher's opinion, Napoleon did not deserve to be executed, nor did he deserve to be exiled to St Helena.

Vae victis

Napoleon and Ney at the Alamo …. its 1836 and Napoleon and Ney are both 67 by that time. And probably of little use to the Texans … just ask them if you doubt my word! ROFL

They'd have been on the Mexican side anyway;-)

Exiled (the first time) to the nearest tree with a convenient length of rope thereby saving many, many thousands of lives

Craggy Island

:-)

That would be an ecumenical matter

"Go on, go on"

Lancaster, PA