Hudson Lowe (28 July 1769-10 January 1844) was a British Army lieutenant-general who served as Governor of Saint Helena from 1816 to 1821, during which time he jailed the exiled Emperor Napoleon I.
Biography[]
Hudson Lowe was born in County Galway, Ireland, the son of an English surgeon and his Irish wife. He was raised in the Caribbean and England before joining the East Devon Militia at the age of 11 and then the 50th (Queen's Own) Regiment of Foot in Gibraltar. He and his regiment fought at the Siege of Bastia and the Siege of Calvi on Corsica before leading the Royal Corsican Rangers in Egypt from 1800 to 1801. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1803 and led his Corsican battalion in the capture of Capri, only to be forced to evacuate the island by General Jean Maximilien Lamarque's French force. In 1809, he captured the islands of Ischia and Procida as well as the Ionian Islands, and he served as governor of Cephalonia and Ithaca until his return to Britain in 1812. He accompanied the Prussian and Russian armies during the German campaign of 1813, and he brought hte news of Napoleon's abdication to London in April 1814. He went on to serve as quartermaster-general of the Allied army in the Netherlands during the Hundred Days, and, on 1 August 1815, he was made custodian of Napoleon after his surrender to the British. Lowe governed Saint Helena from 1816 to 1821 and posted sentries to ward off planned Bonapartist rescue expeditions from the United States, and he had a stormy relationship with "Bony the Ogre" and only met him half a dozen times. He attempted to force Napoleon to pay for his own captivity, and his refusal to give Napoleon ample firewood to keep warm led to Napoleon's death. Lowe returned to England on Napoleon's death, and he received little reward from the British government due to his cruelty. He commanded the Sutherland Highlanders and then the British forces on Ceylon from 1825 to 1830, and he died in 1844.