Наполеон на Святой Елене и другие карточные игры

Card game
Alternative names include Le Cadran ("The Dial") and, in the US, Forty Thieves, Big Forty and Roosevelt at San Juan.

"Napoleon at St. Helena" is recorded as early as 1870 by Annie Henshaw who describes it as a "most excellent game which has the added charm of having been a favorite with Napoleon at St. Helena". The game appears frequently in patience collections of the late 19th century. Lady Adelaide Cadogan (1874) calls it Le Cadran which reinforces a possible French origin. In the 1920s, American sources started recording Big Forty and Forty Thieves as alternative names, along with the early variant forms known as Twenty Four Card Tableau, Twenty Eight Card Tableau, Thirty Two Card Tableau and Thirty Six Card Tableau. In 1939, the alternative name of Roosevelt at San Juan is first recorded by Coops.

Napoleon at St Helena forms the basis for several variant games, most of which make it easier to win. Common variations are: dealing the aces to the foundations at the start of the game, building the tableau down by alternating colour rather than by suit, and allowing cards built down on top of a tableau to be moved, as a sequence, together. Others include: allowing use of any card from the waste, dealing some of the tableau cards face down, and changing the number of tableau piles and/or the number of cards in each tableau.

There is also a triple pack variant called Sixty Thieves in which twelve columns of five cards are dealt.

Other closely related games include Congress, Diplomat, Napoleon's Square, Corona, and Blockade. Busy Aces is a simpler game that is also part of the family.