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Napoleon: An Extraordinary Rendition (2010)

When Napoleon surrendered to a British naval captain after his defeat at Waterloo, the victors faced a judicial headache. Was St Helena Britain’s Guantanamo Bay? On July 15th, 1815, after being defeated at Waterloo and deposed in Paris, the former Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte presented himself to Captain Frederick Maitland, commander of HMS Bellerophon, which was blockading the exit from Rochefort on the French Atlantic coast.

In fact, the Whig opposition, led by Lord Holland, had been a ‘peace party’ for years and – in a country which was barely democratic – there was still a vociferous radical ferment expressed in newspapers and demonstrations that broke through the repressive measures of the Tory government. The need for guard ships to control the crowds was emphasised by an attempt by a lawyer named Alexander Mackenrot to use one of the complicated provisions of the habeas corpus acts to get Napoleon off Bellerophon and into the courts: a writ was issued summoning him to appear in November as a witness in a libel case. To prevent even greater trouble, Keith desperately took Bellerophon and her escorts to sea and kept tacking to and fro off Berry Head until HMS Northumberland – which was to take Napoleon to St Helena – arrived and the prisoner could safely be transferred for the long voyage.

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