Wolseley’s Mistake
Lord Wolseley ends his “Decline and Fall of Napoleon” with the following words:
“So wrote the finger on the wall about the proud King of Babylon. It might with equal truth have been written of him whose overthrow at Waterloo is thus described in verse:
“‘Since he miscalled the morning star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.’”
Wolseley’s assumption that Byron referred to the defeat at Waterloo is incorrect. The “Ode to Napoleon” was written in 1814, and the date of Waterloo is June, 1815. The reference is to Napoleon’s abdication in April, 1814, and the “sullen isle” in stanza xiv, is Elba, not St. Helena.