Valley of the Tomb

• 1. Introduction

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  The Valley of the Tomb sits on Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the south Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon died there in exile on the 5th of May 1821, and was buried in the valley itself. He had given the hollow a different name during his years on the island. The ceremony at his graveside became a standoff between a French general and a British governor. The valley's legal status today is stranger than anyone present at that burial could have imagined.

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• 2. A Valley Renamed

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  The hollow had been called the Sane Valley before Napoleon took an interest in it. He renamed it, not officially but persistently. He called it the Valley of the Geraniums, the name he used on his walks. He had not expected to die on Saint Helena. But he left a precise burial request: "have me buried in the shade of the willows where I used to rest on the way to see you at Hutt's Gate, near the fountain where they go to fetch my water every day." His request named the valley he had walked. It would hold him after all.

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• 3. The Blank Slab

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  Napoleon was buried with full military honours as a general. Three thousand men of the full British garrison lined the route of the cortège, arms reversed in respect. At the graveside, French general Tristan de Montholon put forward a precise request. The tomb should bear only the name "NAPOLEON" and the dates of his birth and death. The British governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, refused. He insisted the name "Bonaparte" be added instead. Montholon held firm; Lowe would not move. The result was a tomb slab with nothing carved into it at all. The blank stone would remain in place for nearly two decades.

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• 4. The Retour des Cendres

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  The French government under Louis Philippe I formally requested that Napoleon's remains be repatriated. On the 15th of October 1840, his body was exhumed from the valley. This event was known as the Retour des cendres. Napoleon was later reburied at the Invalides in Paris. The Valley of the Tomb was now empty, and France had not finished with the site.

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• 5. French Soil

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  In 1854, the French government under Napoleon III began negotiating with Britain to acquire the Valley of the Tomb and Longwood House. The purchase was completed in 1858. Both sites have been French property ever since, administered by a French representative. They fall under the authority of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A quiet hollow on a British island in the south Atlantic Ocean is, by legal fact, a piece of France.

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