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When I was originally booking my trip to St. Helena, perhaps unsurprisingly most people kind of looked at me a bit blankly and had never heard of it, before having to have St. Helena's location and status explained to them. The few that had heard about it, basically knew because of a foreign guy who has been dead almost 200years. Although it is understandable, I still always find it a bit strange that such a person can hold that level of fascination for people even now. But then Napoleon Bonaparte was no ordinary foreign gent.
Napoleon had a fairly busy life, though we won't go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that after fighting the Napoleonic Wars (during which amongst much much else, he introduced the Metric system, re-introduced slavery, sold Louisiana, lost the Battle of Trafalgar and established Switzerland) and almost taking over the whole of Europe, surrendering and being exiled to Elba (where he was not as a prisoner as such, but was given sovereignty over the Island), deciding to escape, re-stablishing himself as French emperor and losing the Battle of Waterloo, he eventually choose to surrender to the British. Who promptly stuffed him on a ship and exiled him to St. Helena.
Napoleon was not, necessarily, the happiest of campers by this turn of events. Upon arrival at St. Helena on 15 October 1815, he said “It is not an attractive place: I should have done better to remain in Egypt”.
( ...)
Napoleon died of stomach cancer in 1821. His tomb, in Sane Valley, is actually in a gorgeous little grotto that again somehow imparts a feeling of quiet awe being there. The fact that the grave is both massive and entirely unmarked somehow adds to the depth of seriousness: The grave is unmarked due to a political squable as Governor at the time, Hudson Lowe, insisted that it should be marked as “Napoleon Bonaparte” whereas the his remaining French entourage insisted on just Napoleon, as was customary for royalty. They never agreed, and so it remains nameless.
Napoleon was also of such importance and esteem as a figurehead for the French, that even after his death he was closely guarded until his body was removed and passed over to the now more friendly French. Even now, 170 years after his body was removed to France, the guardhouse remains.