It all starts with a British decision.
On July 15, 1815, even before he learned of his surrender, the British Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, decided the fate of his oldest enemy:
"We are strongly inclined to think that the best place of detention would be a place at a great distance from Europe and that Cape Town or Saint Helena would be the best places for this purpose, ”
he wrote.
The Europe of monarchies then has only one obsession: to neutralize once and for all the one who made them tremble for so many years by deporting him very far.
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Meanwhile, the loser of Waterloo is deluding himself.
In Rochefort harbor, prevented from going to America because of the British fleet, he attempted a daring bet: to force his enemy to treat him with dignity by symbolically giving him his sword.
Refusing the adventurous solutions offered to him, he hopes that his chivalrous gesture will earn him a comfortable exile near London.
Comforted by the reassuring words
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