This too was unsuccessful, though as part of his general amnesty measures on assuming the presidency in January 1959 de Gaulle ordered the prisoners transferred to the slightly more comfortable surroundings of the île d’Aix, the fortress isle in the Bay of Biscay where Napoleon had passed his last days on French soil in July 1815 before being transported to his ultimate exile aboard H.M.S. Bellerophon.

XREF: Connects to Algerian war history/de Gaulle's amnesty policies and the symbolic irony of using a Napoleonic exile site as a French prison.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 972