For nearly twenty years after his death the cult of Napoleon was officially discouraged in France. Although poems were published, for years mention of his name in the theatre was forbidden. Nonetheless, the lacklustre nature of the monarchies of Louis XVIII and Charles X meant that patriots could not prevent themselves looking back, nostalgically, to the time of glory. Workers became increasingly Bonapartist, hoping above all, so the police thought, for revenge for Waterloo.
In the so-called ‘July Revolution’ of 1830 Louis Philippe took over the throne from the Bourbon Charles X. Louis Philippe knew of the popular affection towards Napoleon, and decided to try and appease the population. Slowly, Napoleon’s army officers were returned to their ranks, or appointed to political and legal posts throughout the country. The Arc de Triomphe was completed.
The Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers officially requested of the English that the Emperor’s body be returned to France. Permission was granted. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, wrote to the British Ambassador in Paris stating that ‘he hoped that the promptness of his reply, would be considered as testimony to the eagerness of the British Government to extinguish any surviving remnants of the national animosities that had kept the two countries at arms during the life of the Emperor.’
Accordingly, the body was exhumed from its tomb in St Helena and brought solemnly back to France. The quality of preservation of the body after nearly twenty years, a common side-effect of arsenic, was remarked on. He was perfectly preserved. His hair and nails had grown considerably afdter death. He looked like a man aged thirty. His lips were slightly parted, showing white teeth—he appeared to be smiling.
At dawn on 14 December 1840 the hearse, pulled by sixteen black horses, carried the remains of the Emperor through the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs Elysées to the Place de la Concorde, over the Seine to Les Invalides, the chapel of the military school, where Napoleon was to lie.
It was a freezing cold day, but that did not prevent an astonishing crowd, estimated at 600,000 people, from waiting to see the catafalque pass. Shafts of sunlight occasionally pierced the falling snow. An army of 80,000 men lined the route from the Arc de Triomphe to Les Invalides. Old soldiers had brought out their uniforms. They had brushed and polished their souvenirs for Napoleon’s return to France. Cannons boomed and every church in Paris rang its bells.
The bent but dignified figure of a grey-haired old man followed the coffin. It was Count Bertrand, the constant and most trustworthy of all Napoleon’s followers on St Helena. Around his ears rang shouts of ‘Vive l’Empéreur!’ It was his greatest moment, his greatest reward.
Napoleon had come home.
Napoleon certainly died from carcinoma of the stomach which had spread into his liver. However, some one hundred and fifty years after his death it was found that during the last six years of his life on the island of St Helena the Emperor had abnormally high levels of arsenic in his system. This sensational discovery was made by Dr Sten Forshufvud, a Swedish dentist with an interest in forensic pathology. He was convinced that Napoleon had all the signs and symptoms of arsenical poisoning. The discovery stimulated a rich flora of suggestions as to the source of the arsenic. Everything from the wallpaper to members of Napoleon’s intimate group was proposed as the source. A favourite villain is Count Montholon; he presumably had the opportunity (though Longwood was always fully populated, as Appendix 1 makes clear), and his motives have been adduced as anything from jealousy at the attentions Napoleon was supposed to be paying to his wife, to a botched attempt to make Napoleon so sick that the great powers would permit a return to Europe.
The arsenic in Napoleon’s hair |
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Date |
Arsenic concentration (PPM)* Source |
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|
High |
Low |
|
14 Jan 1816 |
60.0 |
25.0 |
Commander John |
3 July 1817 |
4.9 |
1.5 |
Admiral Pulteney Malcolm |
16 March 1818 |
26.0 |
1.8 |
Betsy Balcombe |
6 May 1821 (day after death—head shaved |
51.0 |
3.7 |
Jean Noverraz |
*The normal amount in hair is 0.8 parts per milliion. Only the highest and lowest amounts are shown. |
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Source: Forshufvud, Hamilton Smith and Wassen ‘Napoleon’s illness (1816–1821) in the light of activation analysis of hairs from various dates’ Archiv fur Toxikologie 20 (1964) pp 210–19.
Analysis of the arsenic in Napoleon’s hair makes it clear that he was ingesting much less arsenic when under Barry O’Meara’s care between April 1816 and July 1818.
Arsenic is stored in hair and nail. It has a half-life of two thousand years. Thus it can be detected many years after death. Dr Forshufvud decided to investigate, but firstly he had to find authentic samples of Napoleon’s hair, a difficult task, and one which would occupy the greater part of the rest of his life. Hair grows at approximately five and a half inches per year—so if we know when the hair was cut then we can work out when the arsenic was taken. Fortunately, the date was written on each souvenir. On St Helena, Napoleon gave samples of his hair to his friends. Eventually, Dr Forshufvud found four people who had inherited four samples of genuine Napoleonic hair. They were all generous enough to donate a few strands of their precious souvenirs to Dr Forshufvud for examination.
The four samples were sent to the Harwell Institute under the care of Professor Hamilton Smith, a forensic pathologist who had devised a new method for detecting arsenic called ‘activation analysis’. The hair was cut into many equal parts and then bombarded with thermal neutrons. This made every trace of arsenic radioactive. It is then a relatively simple matter to measure the amount of arsenic in each of the hair samples. The normal amount of arsenic in hair is approximately 0.8 parts per million (ppm). The level of arsenic in Napoleon’s hair varied from double that, 1.5 ppm, to an astonishing 71·ppm.
In the past, arsenic was prescribed as a medical treatment for almost every known disease. It was given for everything from gout and ear infection to gonorrhoea. It is odourless, colourless, tasteless and mixes easily with other liquids. It was known as the silent death. Since it was readily available as rat poison, it was the favourite of Victorian poisoners. More sinisterly, because it is secreted in breast milk, it can be given to an unsuspecting wet nurse without causing her too much harm or discomfort, but in quantities lethal for the suckling infant.
Arsenic was widely available on the island. It was used in vast amounts by the local farmers to keep the hordes of starving black rats under control. The faithful maître d’hôtel Cipriani had no difficulty obtaining the poison from Mr Solomon’s shop in Jamestown.
Napoleon was convinced that there was an ‘inner force’ within him—indeed within us all—which, when called upon, could prevent him from becoming ill or even poisoned. He told O’Meara that he could make himself feel better when he called upon this ‘inner force’. He could make himself stay awake for many days without sleep and yet be fully clear-headed at the end of that time. If he were ill he would take to his bed for a few hours and make himself feel better. He was wrong, however, in assuming (like the Papal Borgias) that taking arsenic in minute amounts would protect him from arsenical poisoning.
It is this writer’s belief that he was taking arsenic himself as a prophylactic from as early as 1805 (the earliest known sample of hair). He had a phobia about being poisoned. The amount taken varies strikingly. It is highest on his arrival at the island. The levels are lowest during 1817 and 1818. The values suddenly rise again after the forcible dismissal of Dr O’Meara from the island. We are told that Napoleon refused to take any medicine from anyone after O’Meara departed for England. Yet in the last year of his life we now know that the Emperor had arsenic on no fewer than 21 occasions. It seems likely that in the absence of a doctor he trusted, Napoleon increased the amount he took.
This constitutes striking evidence that Napoleon liked and trusted his Irish doctor, perhaps far more than Barry O’Meara himself realised.
Sit finis libri sed non finis quaerendi.