Sir Hudson Lowe

Sir Hudson Lowe, his character and social background

He had recently married a Mrs Johnson, a colonel’s widow with two daughters, and, at the time of a great reduction in military numbers, Lowe may have believed that the offer of the governorship was the only way by which he could remain employed and support his new and ambitious wife.

The leadership of the British Army was drawn mainly from its aristocracy and upper classes and, unlike the Navy, it was less usual to rise to its highest ranks without a ‘connection’ of some kind. Sir Hudson Lowe was more than a ranker-officer but less than a gentleman. Much of his career was spent as a staff, intelligence and supply officer, the latter being more about boots and blankets than service in the front line, but this was one reason for his appointment: He was a ‘safe pair of hands’.

Although his surgeon-father was a member of the 50th’s Officers Mess whilst serving with the regiment, he was not a permanent part of it and Sir Hudson Lowe may have felt the same social disadvantage with his military and governmental colleagues.

Lowe’s obsessive attention to detail

Wellington, who came from the minor Irish aristocracy and favoured those of the same class as himself in the higher ranks of the army recognised Lowe’s competence but later described him as ‘wanting in education and judgement. He was a stupid man’ and Lord Rosebery, writing a memoire of these times much later in the nineteenth century, wrote that Lowe was ‘a narrow, ignorant, irritable man and not a gentleman.’  

The result of this background, character and experience had produced in Sir Hudson Lowe a correctness, a fastidiousness and almost an obsessive attention to detail. However, if the worst that can be said about his character was that he had an excessive exactitude in the discharge of his duties that was to drive him almost mad, it was because he was obliged to manage the complexities of local and international politics that his role required and cope with the manipulative behaviour of his prisoner.

 Was Sir Hudson Lowe naïve not to appreciate that the harsh instructions that he had been given in London would become a poisonous assignment and that he would be known for ever after as Napoleon’s hated gaoler?

Napoleon’s exile caused divided opinion in Europe

Opinion in Britain and amongst its European allies was sharply divided from the very start of Napoleon’s exile and imprisonment on the island of St Helena. Although the Tory government of Lord Liverpool in London was adamant that the ex-emperor should never again threaten the peace of Europe, and should be kept as far away as possible from it, the opposition in Parliament believed that he was being treated atrociously and should be allowed to enjoy a comfortable retirement as a country gentleman in England at the Government’s expense.

This disagreement was part of a much greater discourse about the future of the country after nineteen years of war when the Cabinet was faced with increasing dissent caused by continuing unrest in Ireland; a deteriorating economy with machine breaking in industrial areas and rick burning in the countryside and the rise of movements for Parliamentary reform of the franchise throughout the country.     

Napoleon was used as an icon of liberty

The Whig Opposition had initially supported the aims of the French Revolution and had only taken fright when the tumbrils had begun to roll in Paris but now that the war had ended they were able to use Napoleon as an icon for liberty and vehemently opposed the way that Napoleon was being treated campaigning against the government both inside Parliament and beyond. 

The story of Napoleon’s exile, imprisonment and death has always absorbed the interest of the people of France more than in Britain and this has led to Sir Hudson Lowe’s reputation being comprehensively destroyed in their hatred of his regime. This included the accusation that Lowe had ordered the ex-emperor’s murder by poisoning instead of the more rational explanation that he had died of stomach cancer which was confirmed by five doctors on the island.

Hudson Lowe – the scapegoat

Have Lowe’s defects of character been used malignantly by those who opposed Napoleon’s exile and imprisonment on St Helena?

Much of what has been written about Napoleon’s time on St Helena has been hagiographic: A great leader and statesman brought down by ‘perfidious Albion’ and treated abominably by his British gaolers. Whilst Napoleon’s experience of exile on St Helena may have been considered harsh by his supporters, he was generally treated fairly by friends and enemies alike whilst on the island. The naval officers were generally on his side; the civilian population was respectful and his forty-strong household were provided with over two thousand bottles of wine each month at the British Government’s expense.

Betsy Balcombe

The great majority of the books written about Napoleon’s exile, captivity and death, that included those by members of his personal household, have been sympathetic to the ex-emperor whilst Lowe has been almost universally portrayed in a negative light. Amongst the most damaging books about Sir Hudson Lowe’s time as governor were by Barry O’Meara, the naval doctor who Lowe had court-marshalled and dismissed from St Helena for over-fraternisation and insubordination, and by Major Gorrequer, his ADC, who wrote a gossipy and disparaging portrait of Lowe in a coded diary. The best known English account was that of Betsy Balcombe, the fifteen-year old daughter of William Balcombe, the East India Company’s agent on the island, with whom Napoleon had flirted in the gardens at Longwood House, his residence (See also William Balcombe and Betsy in the St Helena topic). 

Following Napoleon’s death in May 1821, sir Hudson Lowe returned to London where he cut a sad figure seeking redress for the bad publicity that he had attracted and was only dissuaded from suing O’Meara for libel by being appointed by the Government as commander of British forces and deputy governor in Ceylon. However, Lowe did not succeed as governor and retired to London where he died in 1844.