Sir Hudson Lowe, GCMG KCB (28 July 1769 – 10 January 1844) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Saint Helena from 1816 to 1821.

The son of John Lowe, an English surgeon in the British Army, he was born in County Galway, Ireland, his mother's native country.

The same year he was granted eighteen months' leave, and chose to spend the time travelling through Italy rather than return to Britain.

The 50th were sent to take part in the Defence of Toulon which had been seized by an Allied force under Lord Hood after an invitation by French Royalists in the city.

[4] When he recovered, Lowe returned to Corsica, and was stationed in the citadel at Ajaccio as an aide to the Governor, Colonel Wauchope, close to where Napoleon Bonaparte's sisters had recently been living before they fled to mainland France.

On the capture of Capri, he proceeded there with his battalion and a Maltese regiment; but in October 1808, Joachim Murat ordered an attack upon the island, which was organized by General Lamarque.

He won praise from Blücher and Gneisenau for his gallantry and judgment, and was chosen to bear to London the news of the first abdication of Napoleon in April 1814.

Charged with the duties of quartermaster-general of the army in the Netherlands in 1814–1815, he was about to take part in the Belgian campaign when he was offered the command of the British troops at Genoa; but while still in the south of France, on 1 August 1815 he received news of his appointment to the position of custodian of Napoleon, Emperor of the French, who had surrendered to Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland on board HMS Bellerophon off Rochefort.

At the time of Lowe's appointment, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Lord Bathurst, wrote to Wellington:I do not believe we could have found a fitter person of his rank in the army willing to accept a situation of so much confinement, responsibility and exclusion from society.

News that Napoleon was burning his furniture to stay warm again caused such a backlash of public sympathy that the supply of firewood was restored.

Barry Edward O'Meara, the Irish surgeon, while initially providing information for Lowe, ultimately sided with Napoleon, and joined in criticisms from Las Cases and Montholon.

The French, Russian and Austrian commissioners on St. Helena, while hostile to Napoleon, were also very critical of Lowe's conduct and found it impossible to get on with him.

Lowe's restriction of the former Emperor of the French to what amounted to house arrest rather than simply exile certainly affected Napoleon's ability to exercise and his general health.

[9] However, an autopsy conducted after his death concluded that Napoleon died from natural causes, specifically complications arising from "stomach cancer".

His treatment of Napoleon and the subsequent public relations problems for the British Government remained an underlying issue for the rest of his career.

[15][17] Sir Hudson Lowe was portrayed by Orson Welles in Sacha Guitry's film Napoléon (1955), by Ralph Richardson in Eagle in a Cage (1972), by Vernon Dobtcheff in L'Otage de l'Europe (1989), by David Francis in the Napoleon miniseries (2002), and by Richard E. Grant in Monsieur N. (2003).