carried out, arrived on the island, they too found Lowe a sore trial. The
French Commissioner, the marquis de Montchenu, he who had been
given the beans by Montholon, found Lowe constantly trying to censor
his small talk and malicious gossip, even the absurd canard he tried to
spread that the Emperor and Betsy Balcombe were lovers. The Austrian
Commissioner Balmain felt that Lowe treated the Allied observers with
scant respect, reported back examples of his egregious rudeness to
Vienna, and complained at the paranoid system of espionage with which
Lowe oversaw every ·trivial detail of life on the island. The Russian
Commissioner Sturmer was even more forthright: 'It would be difficult
to find a man more awkward, extravagant and despicable ... The English
fe ar and avoid him, the French make a mock of him, the Commissioners
complain of him, and everybody agrees that he is touched in the head.'
Admiral Malcolm had nothing good to say of a man who became insanely
jealous because Napoleon enjoyed good relations with Malcolm and
confided in him. Even the Duke of Wellington, who had sacked Lowe
from his staff before Waterloo, recorded that he was 'a damned fool'.
The long feud took its toll on both men. Though Lowe was
consistently outwitted and outpointed intellectually, he had the consola
tions of power and the solace of a huge salary. Napoleon was dragged
down by the intrinsic stress of his impotent position, by the internecine
conflict between his 'courtiers' and by the unhealthy climate itself. His
dreary life of reading, walking, pottering in the garden, dictating memoirs
and staging dramatic readings from Corneille, Racine and Moliere was
made more tedious by the foggy, rainy climate of the volcanic island, the
decreasing opportunities for physical exercise resulting from Lowe's
strictures and the constant threat from amoebic dysentery. Whereas
Napoleon's external conflict in these years was with Lowe, his internal
battles concerned disease and the prima donnas in his household.
Almost from the moment of Lowe's advent, Napoleon was frequently,
though intermittently, ill. In May r8r6 he complained of weakness in his
legs, headaches, abnormal sensitivity to light and a feeling of perpetual
chill; his courtiers noticed that his speech was slurred, he had a gloomy
air and seemed to be drugged. In July he was complaining of a pain in his
side like a razor. In September the same year he had a week-long illness,
of which the symptoms were insomnia, fever, headaches, colic and bad
temper. Then, from r October to 9 November r8r6, he had his most
serious bout pf illness yet, with headaches, swelling of the gums,
looseness of the teeth, persistent coughing, shivering fits, trembling
sensations, feelings of intense cold and weak and swollen legs; he
marcin
(Marcin)
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