The dragoons marched first.  Then came the 20th Regiment of infantry, the marines, the 66th, the volunteers of St. Helena, and lastly, the company of Royal Artillery, with fifteen pieces of cannon.  Lady Lowe and her daughter were at the roadside at Hut’s Gate, in an open carriage drawn by two horses.  They were attended by some domestics in mourning, and followed the procession at a distance.  The fifteen pieces of artillery were ranged along the road, and the gunners were at their posts ready to fire.  Having advanced about a quarter of a mile beyond Hut’s Gate the hearse stopped, the troops halted and drew up in line of battle by the roadside.  The grenadiers then raised the coffin on their shoulders and bore it thus to the place of interment, by the new route which had been made on purpose on the declivity of the mountain.  All the attendants alighted, the ladies descended from their carriages, and the procession followed the corpse without observing any regular order.

Counts Bertrand and Montholon, Marchand and young Napoleon Bertrand, carried the four corners of the pall.  The coffin was laid down at the side of the tomb, which was hung with black.  Near were seen the cords and pulleys which were to lower it into the earth.  The coffin was then uncovered, the Abbe Vignale repeated the usual prayers, and the body was let down into the grave with the feet to the east.  The artillery then fired three salutes in succession of fifteen discharges each.  The Admiral’s vessel had fired during the procession twenty-five minute guns from time to time.  A huge stone, which was to have been employed in the building of the new house of the Emperor, was now used to close his grave, and was lowered till it rested on a strong stone wall so as not to touch the coffin.  While the grave was closed the crowd seized upon the willows, which the former presence of Napoleon had already rendered objects of veneration.  Every one was ambitious to possess a branch or some leaves of these trees which were henceforth to shadow the tomb of this great man, and to preserve them as a precious relic of so memorable a scene.  The Governor and Admiral endeavoured to prevent this outrage, but in vain.  The Governor, however, surrounded the spot afterwards with a barricade, where he placed a guard to keep off all intruders.  The tomb of the Emperor was about a league from Longwood.  It was of a quadrangular shape, wider at top than at bottom; the depth about twelve feet.  The coffin was placed on two strong pieces of wood, and was detached in its whole circumference.

The companions of Napoleon returned to France, and the island gradually resumed its former quiet state, while the willows weeping over the grave guarded the ashes of the man for whom Europe had been all too small.

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