Elba
Island in ItalyWikipedia
133
MENTIONS
38
EPISODES
35
PODCASTS
Search complete. 133 mentions across 38 episodes found for "Elba".
Oct 22, 2026
speaker_0NARRATOR
Despite a brilliant defensive campaign in 1814, the Allies entered Paris and Napoleon was forced to abdicate.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Exiled to the tiny island of Elba, his story seemed over.
speaker_0NARRATOR
But in a final, breathtaking act of audacity, he escaped, landed in France in March 1815, and rallied the nation behind him for the hundred days.
speaker_0NARRATOR
It all came to a final, desperate end on June 18th, 1815, on the rain-soaked fields of Waterloo.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Defeated for the last time, Napoleon was exiled to the remote, windswept volcanic rock of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, a captive of the British, who were determined there would be no second Elba.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Here, in this harsh and humiliating final chapter, he embarked upon his last and perhaps most successful campaign, the battle for his own legacy.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Under the watchful eye of his jailer, the petty and vindictive Sir Hudson Lowe, a man who seemed to embody all the worst characteristics of the British oligarchy Napoleon despised, he spent his final six years dictating his memoirs to a small coterie of loyal followers.
Scott HornerGUEST
And basically, it was a holiday.
Scott HornerGUEST
I went to visit some family on the island of Elba.
Scott HornerGUEST
And where my relatives live is very rural.
Scott HornerGUEST
And there's a lot of fig trees growing.
speaker_1HOST
Re-energized coalition forces push back, eventually entering Paris in 1814, forcing him to abdicate.
speaker_1HOST
They exile him to the Mediterranean island of Elba.
speaker_2HOST
And there is a delicious mocking irony in how the European powers treat him here.
speaker_1HOST
No, totally.
speaker_2HOST
They strip him of his control of Europe, but grant him a new insulting title, Emperor of the Isle of Elba.
speaker_2HOST
It was a deliberate attempt to humiliate a man whose ego required a continent by giving him a tiny mountainous rock with a population of a few thousand people to rule.
speaker_1HOST
That's so petty.
speaker_1HOST
I love it.
Graeme FosterHOST
The burning of Moscow being one.
Graeme FosterHOST
His exile to Elba is only really referenced in the novel.
Graeme FosterHOST
It's not a big set piece or anything.
Graeme FosterHOST
It barely makes a mark on the novel's narrative, I would say.
Massimo AloisGUEST
That's pretty awkward, you know? But we do find palagrello bianco and palagrello nero.
Massimo AloisGUEST
And then, it might sound strange to you, but they planted the Aleatico, which is a typical grape from Tuscany and from Isola d'Elba.
Massimo AloisGUEST
Why? Because they were kings of this teeny tiny area, the Piombino area and the Orbetello and part of the Elba island, because it was given to them after...
Massimo AloisGUEST
you know, the big war between the Austrians and the Spanish, they realized that the kings of Naples had to, you know, inherit Spain, southern Italy, and those that they called the presidi, okay, presides, whatever you want to translate it.
Massimo AloisGUEST
Okay, so there they were cultivating the Aleatico.
Penny LordNARRATOR
Before the end of the year, Napoleon's armies had suffered defeat after defeat.
Penny LordNARRATOR
He was all but finished, and by the beginning of the new year, he was on his way to his first place of exile, Elba, In January 1814, all the priests in Italy were freed and allowed to return to their homes.
Penny LordNARRATOR
Gaspar was on his way to Rome and a powerful ministry for the Lord.
Bob LordNARRATOR
During the almost four years Gaspar was incarcerated, he dreamt about going back to Rome and working with the people he'd left behind.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
So nothing I'm saying undermines any of that.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
But no, when he came back from Elba, Napoleon of the 16 marshals could only call on six marshals and the rest he'd managed to alienate in one way or another.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
And of those six, he only had two on the actual battlefield of Waterloo, both of whom were in the wrong positions, the wrong jobs, and they both hated each other.
Andrew RobertsGUEST
So, you know, in the end, if he'd had 10 marshals like he had at the Battle of Borodino, it undoubtedly has to be true that he'd have done better.
DamonHOST
So, where were we? Well, we'd reached the year 1814.
DamonHOST
Napoleon had just been packed off to Elba, so instead of being in charge of most of Europe, all he had now was a small island off the Italian coast, a 600 to 1000 strong guard, depending on which source you believe, so I'm going to split the difference and go with 800, a generous pension, and more of that later, and probably a chip on both shoulders.
DamonHOST
Louis XVIII, and he's the brother of the executed Louis XVI, was now on the throne of France, but only as a constitutional monarch.
DamonHOST
And if you're wondering, Louis XVI's son, Louis XVII, had died in prison back in 1795, aged just ten.
DamonHOST
Not by a long choke.
DamonHOST
So today we'll be covering four main items and mentioning one other thing that would have a delayed but significant impact in certain parts of the world.
DamonHOST
So those four main events or themes are Napoleon's time on Elba and what he eventually decided to do and how that all went.
DamonHOST
how the coalition powers reacted to that, Tsar Alexander's spiritual health, and how things finally concluded in North America.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Corsica is considerably smaller.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Ilva or Elba is between Corsica and the mainland.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Aegilium is of Etruria.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Capriae is in the Bay of Naples.
1 HR 38 MINS LATER
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Thus the country around Carthage was weak, and the moment a foreign enemy landed in Africa, the war was merely a siege of its chief city.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
The power of Carthage lay in her commerce.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
Through her hands passed the gold and pearls of the Orient, the famous Tyrian purple, ivory, slaves, and incense of Arabia, the silver of Spain, the bronze of Cyprus, and the iron of Elba.
Tony RichardsonNARRATOR
But the harsh and gloomy character of the people, their cruel religion, which sanctioned human sacrifice, their disregard of the rights of others, their well-known treachery, all shut them off from the higher civilization of Rome and Greece.
Julian FeeldHOST
Remember? That is true.
Julian FeeldHOST
I had my Elba Island moment.
Travis ViewHOST
But certainly one of the downsides is, you know, the problem explored by Kierkegaard and existential philosophers who came after him.
Travis ViewHOST
That
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