Napoleon Bonaparte and Saint Helena

As this is the Feast Day of Saint Helena ...

Napoleon Bonaparte, the military genius known contemptuously by the British as ‘the Little Corporal’, died in exile on the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena.
The island was discovered by the Portuguese on May 21, 1502 (St Helena’s Day in the Eastern Church - which is celebrated elsewhere on August 18). Napoleon lived there in exile from 1815 till his death in 1821.

In the year before his death he told Montholon, his secretary, “There is no more oil in the lamp”. At the age of 51 he took ill and fell into a coma on May 5, 1821, dying only a few hours later.

His wife, the Empress Josephine, whom he divorced in 1809 because she did not produce a male heir, died seven years before the great dictator, but his last word was her name.

It is said that all the weeping willow trees in Australia are descended from cuttings taken from four trees that surround Napoleon’s grave on St Helena. (More willow lore.)

Categories: folklore, france, biography, history, saint, tree