Napoleon Bonaparte, revolutionary general and Emperor of the French, died on May 5, 1821, after a six-year exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena.

At the height of his powers, Napoleon had been the master of Europe. The French Empire, its allies and its tribute states had extended from the shores of Spain to the plains of Russia. Only England, with its geographic isolation and its unmatched navy, remained outside of Napoleon's sphere during the whole of the Napoleonic Wars.

Napoleon's first exile occurred after he had signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1814, a direct result of a series of French military disasters that began with the 1812 invasion of Russia. Exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, Napoleon's forced retirement was meant to be spent in grand style. In effect, Napoleon was made ruler of the tiny island, though after his former glory, reigning in Elba held little joy and he soon plotted to return to France.

In early 1815 the Emperor returned to the continent, and soon every army that the restored King of France, Louis XVIII, sent to arrest him he convinced to defect to his forces. This marked the beginning of the Hundred Days, the brief period where Napoleon ruled France once again. The Hundred Days culminated in Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815.

Facing combined British, Prussian and Dutch armies, Napoleon very nearly won the day. The British commander, the Duke of Wellington, famously said later that the battle had been "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

After the battle Napoleon eventually surrendered himself to the British. This time, his exile would be far enough away to ensure that he would never again return to France. Awaiting transportation to his new home in the South Atlantic, Napoleon spent time aboard several Royal Navy vessels where he was generally well treated and impressed his captors.

A midshipman named Home wrote of his ship's peculiar prisoner: "His mouth had a charm about it that I have never seen in any other human countenance." A lieutenant named Bowerbank wrote, "His manners struck me as very engaging."

Napoleon spent the final six years of his life in comfortable though not luxurious circumstances. The estate he made his home was owned by William Balcombe, an East India Company agent, whom Napoleon soon befriended. Napoleon also began a genuine friendship with Balcombe's two teenage daughters.