In the summer of 1875, Empress Elisabeth of Austro-Hungary spent two months in Normandy at the Château of Sassetot-le-Mauconduit. It is now called the Château de Sissi, in honour of her brief visit, and is an excellent hotel. I stayed there, faute de pire, during a cycle ride in May (https://wordpress.com/post/paulhhodson.wordpress.com/5933).
On 12 July 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, Emperor Napoleon of France came to stay at the house of the commander of the garrison of the Ile d’Aix. Napoleon had had the island fortified to protect the estuary of the river Charente, and Rochefort upriver – at that time, after Brest and Toulon, France’s third naval port.
This imperial visit was more significant than Empress Elisabeth’s holiday in Normandy. It comprised the last four days Napoleon spent in France before, on 15 July, he gave himself up to the British and was exiled to St Helena. In honour of his brief stay the house is now called the Maison de l’Empereur.
An inscription placed above the entrance under Emperor Napoleon III reads To the memory of our immortal Emperor Napoleon I. 15 July 1815!!! Everything was sublime in him, his glory, his setbacks, and his respected name floats above the universe!
In the 1920s the house became a museum. The first exhibit you see is a case containing forty Napoleon-themed clocks, each with their hands set to eleven minutes to six, the time at which Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821.
Nearby, in the African museum, are the stuffed remains of what is said to be the camel Napoleon rode during the Egyptian campaign of 1798-99.
This sort of thing is easy to make fun of. At first I intended to do no more than that. I am not a fan of Napoleon. I think of him as one of those people who can with difficulty be called a liar because they seem to have no concept of the truth. They only know what it is useful to eloquently say at any particular moment – like, it seems, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and one or two of the senior managers with whom I worked during my career.
Nevertheless, the exclamation marks and the clocks are not Napoleon’s. Nor, probably, is the camel. They are the responsibilities of Napoleon’s nephew (Napoleon III) and of Baron (Napoleon) Gourgaud, the great grandson of a general who went with Napoleon to St Helena. Reading over the draft of this post, I felt that I was using these artefacts unfairly as sticks with which to beat the emperor.
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The British leader who comes closest to being the subject of a cult like this is, I think, not Nelson (though I have read a paper that investigates what colour his hair was) but Churchill. Churchill did bad things but was a brilliant war leader at a time when Britain needed one. He was brilliant in never losing sight of the main goals; in his restlessness in demanding that things were done and checking that they were; and in his love and memory for detail. (See for example Jock Colville’s Downing Street diaries, 1985). The same could be said of Napoleon. These are not the qualities of a Johnson or a Trump.
By coincidence a couple of days ago I saw, in the Hatchards bookshop at St Pancras station, a biography of Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts (2014), a British historian who has also written about Churchill. I’ll feel more comfortable reading that before using hagiographic pictures like the one below from the 1840s (showing Napoleon standing in an improbable position while dictating his memoirs to several generals, probably including Gourgaud, on St Helena) to tease Napoleon himself.
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All this because Travelling Companion, Dog and I recently spent a night on the Ile d’Aix, a holiday within our holiday. We stayed in the Hotel Napoleon which stands on Place Austerlitz, named after Napoleon’s greatest victory. Three local couples run the hotel; inside it is nautical rather than Napoleonic. They gave Dog a lovely bed so she scorned the Shawl that we’d brought her to sleep on.
On the way over, one of the ferry’s crew used two clickers to count how many people boarded. Was the second one to count children? bicycles? gendarmes?
The ferry crossing from Fouras takes twenty minutes. The photo shows our boat’s sister ship and Fort Enet, another bastion protecting the estuary. The Ile d’Oléron (far bigger than either) is in the background.
The ferry carried over three gendarmes.
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Two more waited to meet them as we tied up on the island.
Six handshakes. I thought of the arrival of Commissioner Maigret and Inspector Pyke on the island of Porquerolles in Georges Simenon’s Mon ami Maigret (1949).
We dropped our luggage at the hotel and walked on along an island road where we saw two of the gendarmes haring up the road on bicycles. (There are no cars on Aix except a couple that we saw, and delivery vans first thing.)
Not long after they hared back.
The island is a commune in its own right, with a voting population of around two hundred. I read in the newspaper Sud Ouest that there was an altercation between the mayor, who got rid of all the bins so that we tourists will take our rubbish back to the mainland
Without bins the island is more beautiful
and an environmentalist, who has deployed flower pots for smokers to put their cigarette butts in.
Aix – no fag-ends – I support it
It seems possible though not, I admit, likely that it was a renewal of this altercation that brought the gendarmes ashore.
Châtelaillon-Plage, where we are on holiday this summer, has two supermarkets, two cheese shops, two off licences, two newsagents, three boulangeries, two crèperies, loads of other restaurants and one place to hire bikes. In general there is one of each thing at each end of town. The Ile d’Aix, whose bourg is too small to have different ends, has one supermarket, one newsagent, one boulangerie, loads of restaurants – and two places to hire bikes.
In the summer thousands of day trippers get off the boats each day. As you cross the green towards the town you see the first bike-hire place. It has plenty.
The first bike-hire place at dusk (the landing stage is off to the left)
The second bike hire place, though, is hidden away from new arrivals. It advertises innovatively. I wonder if the advertising works, and why bike hire is the one sector to have this sharp competition.
The notice says “Bike hire – opposite the boulangerie – in the centre of the village“
In one of the island’s restaurants, Le Pressoir, out in the sticks2, we sat on the terrace and ate grilled mackerel that was almost perfect
and, Travelling Companion said, the best caramel ice cream she’s had this holiday. The combination at that restaurant of speed, running to the tables and back even when it was almost empty (they want to get two sittings in) and warmth reminded me of Les Flots in Châtelaillon in the old days. The woman who served us said that fruits de mer don’t sell so well there. In the past people wanted meat above all, but now fish – especially from the grill – is doing better. As we came to the end of the meal a limping man of forty or fifty with a long beard and two young children went inside, knowing it was there, and played the piano grandly.
We’ve been coming to this part of France for a long time, originally because it was convenient to get to from Brussels. Twenty years ago already, La Rochelle was a prime British destination. Twelve kilometres south in Châtelaillon, though, you only heard French. Now plenty of British people come to Chatel, especially in August when it’s the English school holidays. There is still not much English spoken on the Ile d’Aix. It’s another step on from the airport at La Rochelle, I suppose.
We loved this visit.
One reason is that a place that doesn’t have cars is just different. Dogs and children walked freely in the streets. We ought to build new neighbourhoods where cars can’t go – for example on the Stag brewery site in Mortlake, near where we live in London – and see what would happen to rents and house prices there. (The developers argue that they need a lot of parking to make the project viable. I don’t think that’s the only way to make money.)
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1 Returning home, after we’d got off the ferry on the mainland, we saw three nuns in bright blue habits hurrying happily towards the landing stage. As an atheist I wondered why I was comfortable photographing the police and not the nuns. Travelling Companion said she felt the same.
2 The layout of the island from south to north is fort – town – lots of countryside.
Paul Hodson 