Sovereignty of the island of Elba

Napoleon landed at Portoferraio on 4 May 1814. The island of Elba, between Corsica and Tuscany, had some twelve thousand inhabitants and lived on iron, salt, vines and fishing. The Treaty of Fontainebleau gave him full sovereignty over it.

He exercised it literally. He designed a flag — white ground, red diagonal band, three golden bees — installed himself in the Palazzina dei Mulini above the harbour, bought the villa of San Martino for the summer, and governed with a small administration copied from that of the Empire.

In ten months he had roads opened, the streets of Portoferraio cleaned up, chestnuts and mulberries planted, the working of the Rio iron mines — the island's chief resource — reorganised, and the salt pans put back in order. He reformed the hospital, created a theatre, imposed regulations on his guard.

His mother Letizia and his sister Pauline came to join him. Marie-Louise and the king of Rome, held in Vienna by the Austrian court, never would; he learned it gradually, from letters that came further and further apart.

The annuity of two million promised by the treaty was not paid: the island's treasury ran dry, and the upkeep of the guard became impossible. At Vienna, where the congress was sitting, there was open talk of moving him further off, to the Azores or to Saint Helena.

From France came converging news: the unpopularity of the Bourbons, the officers on half-pay, the humiliated army. On 26 February 1815, taking advantage of the absence of the British commissioner Campbell, he embarked on the brig Inconstant with a thousand men. He landed at Golfe-Juan on 1 March.