A small island, lost in the Atlantic Ocean, became Napoleon's last refuge. Those five and a half years that he spent here (1815-1821) can be called the time of decline and slow agony of a great man, killed by the endless and mostly senseless nagging of the English jailers and the very nature of this dull island - the Rock, as the French called it. Hardly anyone could have told better about the life of Napoleon and other inhabitants of the island than Gilbert Martineau, a man who for forty years held the position of guardian of the French possessions in St. Helena and collected invaluable material about the last years of the life of the Emperor of the French and his entourage.< /p>