“France… Tête d'armée”. Historiography, and especially Napoleonic hagiography, will indicate that they were the last words spoken by the Emperor during the last moments of his agony on the afternoon of May 5, 1821. Certainly the man who would be remembered not for forging an empire from the dictatorship military that followed the coup d'état of Brumaire 18, the consulate, but for definitively establishing part of the advances derived from the Revolution, and establishing from them the political, administrative, economic and even cultural structure of modern France, He knew perfectly well that the revaluation of his figure and his legacy meant squeezing his captivity in Santa Elena to the end , thus achieving that the decision of the British Government to declare him a prisoner on July 31, 1815 was part of the creation of his legend. Napoleon, despite attempts to organize his escape, was aware of his fate:
After the first years of seclusion during which he dictated the reflections that would be collected by Count Emmanuel de Las Cases (1766-1842) in the Mémorial de Sainte Hélène , the starting point of the myth of captivity after its publication in 1823, many of the first companions of the Emperor left the island for various reasons , reducing the number of faithful to a handful of servants:Count Charles-Tristan de Montholon (1783-1853) and his wife Albine de Vassal (1779-1848), considered Napoleon's last mistress and whom her husband would divorce in 1828 after his return to France; General Henri-Gatien Bertrand (1773-1844) and his wife Élisabeth-Françoise Dillon, known as Fanny; and the Corsican doctor François Antommarchi (1780-1838), the last doctor who cared for the Emperor, who came to the island on behalf of his mother, Letizia Ramolino (1750-1836), but with whom the patient was unable to establish a good relationship.
A brittle health
Health problems will worsen during 1820, derived from what will later be officially considered liver cancer , a disease that Napoleon considered hereditary as it was the cause of the death of his father Carlo Buonaparte (1746-1785) and for which he recommended his doctor to perform an autopsy in order to inform and prevent his son, l 'Aiglon , confined to the court of Vienna with the title of Duke of Reichstadt (1811-1832) and whom he will not see again after the start of the French campaign in 1814. However – and apart from the conspiracy theories – he treated for chronic hepatitis plus a stomach ulcer and the wrong medication to treat both.
severe stomach pains will give you seizures, repeated chills and deep pain forcing him to stay in bed. The lack of strength to continue with his activity will cause mood swings, a strong anger and even the symptoms of a deep depressive depression that he will try to remedy by remembering the landscapes of Corsica with Antommarchi and the rest of the Corsican servants, especially his help from cameraman and cook at the Longwood estate:
The return to the origins is the result of the progressive distancing of Bertrand and Montholon, wishing that the death of the Emperor would allow them to return to Europe as others did before, such as Las Cases or General Gaspard Gourgaud (1783-1852), obtain financial benefit from their experiences as exile memorialists and recover his social position by requesting the royal pardon to settle again in France. Between April 15 and 25, the Emperor will dictate his will to Montholon, which he will then transcribe in his own handwriting to confer validity. Together with the main text, the inventories of goods, nine codicils and several letters and provisions for the execution of it, will make up his last wishes.
Napoleon's testament
Along with the story of Las Cases, The Emperor's Testament is possibly the most studied Napoleonic text , by mixing elements of a private nature with others of a political nature. He will thank him for the efforts during his captivity of his mother Letizia, his maternal uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839) and his brothers José, Luciano, Jerónimo, Paulina and Carolina, as well as Julia, Hortensia, Catherina and Eugenio, forgiving his brother Luis for the libel against him that he published in 1820, denying his claims, also disapproving the false memoirs published during the years of exile. He will declare his love for his second wife, Maria Luisa (1791-1847), although she was aware of his life as Archduchess of Austria, and entrusted him with the care of his son, whom he urged to never forget that he was a French prince; to never lend themselves to being an instrument of "the triumvirs who oppress the peoples of Europe" in reference to Prussia, Austria and Russia; to never fight against France, and to adopt his motto:"All for the French people." In the political sphere, he will justify the kidnapping and subsequent execution of the Duke of Enghien (1772-1804), indicating that he would make the same decision again, recalling that on the same dates the Count of Artois – the future Charles X – (1757-1836) sent regularly agents to Paris with the order to assassinate him with the aim of reinstating the monarchy. He also designated for posterity his enemies, whom he accused of having killed him prematurely:the English oligarchy instigating the successive coalitions and wars against France and its henchmen – a possible reference to Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, (1769-1822) maker of the political agreements against France in the last years of the Empire–, but not the English people, who he considered would disapprove of his government's action when the circumstances of his arrest became known –and, in fact, it will be that way when the Governor of Saint Helena, Hudson Lowe (1769-1844), would end his days repudiated by British society, while among the French he disapproved of the betrayals of Marshals Auguste Marmont (1774-1852) before Paris and Pierre Augereau (1757-1816 ) in Lyon during the campaign of 1814, of the minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838) and the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), to whom he expressed his forgiveness with a reference to whether the posterid French ad could forgive them like him. This would not be possible in the case of Marmont, defeated in the glorious days of July 1830 that marked the fall of the Bourbons, who would die in exile in Venice after more than twenty years wandering through Europe and the Near East. He will declare himself a member of the apostolic and Roman religion into which he was born, and will express his desire to rest by the Seine in the midst of the French people whom he declared to have loved.
Regarding the distribution of goods, he bequeathed to his son his personal belongings, and established a series of legacies for his fellow exiles :two million francs to Count Montholon; five hundred thousand francs to Count Bertrand; four hundred thousand to Louis-Joseph Marchand (1791-1876), his valet, whom he will recognize as a friend and will express his wish that he should marry a widow, sister or daughter of an officer or soldier of the Old guard; one hundred thousand to Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis (1788-1856), known as the Mamluk Ali, who was his faithful escort in Russia, Elba and Saint Helena; and various amounts to service personnel in Longwood; and among his former collaborators, the Count of Las Cases and Count Antoine de Lavallette (1769-1830) would receive one hundred thousand francs each. Monetary bequests reflect the Emperor's degree of respect and friendship for some of his officers. He will award one hundred thousand francs to Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey (1766-1842), "the most virtuous man I have ever known", and to Generals Michel Brayer (1769-1840), Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes (1773-1822), Antoine Drouot (1774-1847), Pierre Cambronne (1770-1847), Bertrand Clausel (1772-1842), Colonel Jean Baptiste de Marbot (1782-1854), whom he will encourage to persevere in the writings he dedicated to highlighting the glories of the army French and to refute "slanderers and apostates," as well as the sons of Generals Charles de La Bédoyère (1786-1815), Jean Baptiste Girard (1775-1815), Jean Hyacinthe Chartrand (1799-1816), and Jean -Pierre Travot (1767-1836), most of whom had been faithful to him during the Hundred Days, falling in combat like Girad en Ligny, or executed during the White Terror, like La Bédoyère and Chartrand. Baron Louis Pierre Bignon (1771-1841) will also receive one hundred thousand francs and the commission to write the history of French diplomacy between 1792 and 1815. Napoleon will indicate that all sums should be made against the deposit of six million francs that he had made in Paris before leaving the capital in July 1815, also counting on the interest generated, at 5%, from that date, naming Montholon, Bertrand and Marchand as executors. The money remaining after facing the indicated distributions should be divided between the wounded in Waterloo and the soldiers and officers of the battalion of the island of Elba, according to a statement that they had to make, in addition to Montholon and Bertrand, Drouot, Cambronne and Larrey.
The first provisions show the affections of the Emperor for those who he considered his faithful between 1815 and 1821 , leaving out the marshals who had again aligned themselves with the Bourbons, such as Soult, and other illustrious men who fell during the Belgian campaign or in the subsequent repression, such as Michel Ney. However, it is interesting that when reviewing his life he also remembered those who had supported him at the beginning, arranging bequests of one hundred thousand francs for the children or grandchildren of Baron Jean-Pierre du Teil (1722-1794), who had been the director of the Artillery School of Auxonne where he was trained, "as a memory and recognition of the teachings that that brave general had with me while I served under him as a lieutenant and captain"; of General Jacques François Dugommier (1738-1794), commander in chief of the French army during the siege of Toulon, who had trusted him by assigning him command of the artillery; to the deputy in the National Convention Thomas Augustin Gasparin (1754-1793), who as representative of the people in the army had approved the plan of attack that he proposed to conquer Toulon and who "had protected him from the persecutions product of the ignorance of the states elders who directed the Army before the arrival of my friend Dugommier”; for his aide-de-camp Jean-Baptiste Muiron (1774-1796), who saved his life by covering him with his body during the attack on the Arcole bridge, and another ten thousand francs for Sergeant Cantillon, accused, but acquitted, of having tried to assassinate the Duke of Wellington, justifying this action by the role he had played during the occupation of France:
Finalized the codicils that included a memory of his two illegitimate children , Charles León (1806-1881), had with Éléonore Denuelle de la Plaigne (1787-1868), and Alexandre Walewski (1810-1868), product of his relationship with the "Polish wife" María Waleska (1786-1817) . They would not be the last provisions. In fact, the Emperor revised the texts on different occasions to carefully reward a greater number of people, accurately relating their goods and personal objects, among which were some of great symbolic value such as the weapons he carried in his arms. campaigns and that, in principle, should have been delivered to his son, although Bertrand kept them in his possession and ended up delivering the sword of Austerlitz to King Louis-Philippe of Orleans (1773-1850) in 1840, when during the government of Adolphe Thiers ( 1797-1877) allowed the delivery of the remains of the Emperor to be demanded from Great Britain and the expedition to Santa Elena to be organized, of which Bertrand himself would be a part. The monarch would deposit the piece in the Treasury, an act that was harshly considered by the Bonapartists, who considered the king little less than a continuation of the Bourbons restored after Waterloo.
Illness or murder. The debate about the causes of Napoleon's death
The rumors about the assassination of the Emperor began immediately after his death, wielding both political reasons such as the possibility of a return to France and the revival of Bonapartist sentiments among the population due to both the policy of Louis XVIII's ministers and the progressive change in Napoleon's vision six years after its fall and the occupation of France by the allied powers ended, as economic reasons derived from the cost for the British Government of maintaining the land and maritime surveillance system, consisting of some five thousand men and several ships for an amount £8 million a year. However, the lack of reliable data did not allow this hypothesis to be established. But the analysis of the testimonies of those who lived with him during his captivity, both French and British, shows that the Emperor, upon his arrival in Santa Elena in October 1815, was in good health, was active and took long walks both foot as on horseback. However, in the course of little more than six months, various problems began to appear, such as chronic fatigue that forced him to stay in bed for days; he began to have oral problems such as bleeding gums and lip access and, at the beginning of 1817, the Irish surgeon Barry O'Meara (1786-1836) reported a swelling of the legs that made it difficult for him to move. It should be noted that O'Meara will secretly inform the British Government of the treatment dispensed by Governor Lowe to the Emperor, but the only result will be the order by which he was expelled from the island in July 1818, with which Napoleon will not have a doctor. staff until Antommarchi's arrival in September 1819, at which time his health deteriorated rapidly.
Since the rest of the exiles did not show such a serious deterioration in their health, the doubt about the possibility of poisoning began to make its way from the core of the conspiracy theories, since the study of the different and contradictory reports on the autopsy did not allow to fit what was documented with the process of stomach cancer. In 1995, at the behest of a Napoleonist , Ben Wider, president of the Société Napoléonienne Internationale de Montréal, the FBI's department of toxic chemistry, carried out a toxicological analysis of a group of the Emperor's hair, concluding that “the amount of arsenic present in the hair studied is significant from a poisoning” . The controversy remained open since the results of the study commissioned by Wider ratified the hypotheses that another Napoleonist , the Swedish Sten Forshufvud, had enunciated almost three decades earlier:arsenic poisoning, indicating that the symptoms collected by the memorialists were perfectly compatible with a dosed and prolonged intake of said poison.
The current consequence is the disagreement between those who maintain the thesis of the murder and focus on determining the possible culprit, and who try to demonstrate that the amount of arsenic present in the Emperor's body may be due to non-criminal causes. The so-called "poisoners" for defending the thesis of the murder, have determined Montholon as possible culprit considering that he could be an agent of the Count of Artois and that he had reached the rank of brigadier general during the first restoration after declaring himself a firm supporter of Louis XVIII. Given his background between 1810 and 1814, derived both from the problems for his marriage to be approved, and the continued reluctance to join the ranks between 1813 and 1814, it is quite incomprehensible that Napoleon chose him, along with Bertrand and Gourgaud, to accompany him. Two last reasons could be jealousy, due to the affaire of his wife Albine with the Emperor and the doubts about the paternity of a daughter born in 1819, after which he left the island, and the greed to enter into possession of the two million francs assigned to him in the will of the. According to these hypotheses, Montholon would have slowly poisoned the Emperor by poisoning his wine, especially from 1818 after the unexplained death of the intendant Cipriani, in charge of the supplies.
As in all conspiracy theories, the opponents have less attractive arguments for reverie, but more realistic. Montoholon did not know of Napoleon's legacy until the writing of the will a few weeks before the Emperor's death, so the economic benefit could not be the cause of a prolonged conspiracy process; Napoleon's was not Albine's only dalliance during her stay on the island and, to this we must remember that a relationship of this type was considered more a benefit than an affront, especially in such a small court in which amorous gossip they also reached other members of the entourage. Finally, Montholon did not benefit from the Bourbons after his return to France. On the contrary, after squandering the legacy, he was left in ruins and tried to change his fortune by supporting the Bonapartist cause, not the royalist, between 1830 and 1831 in support of the Duke of Reichstadt, and in 1840 participating in the coup attempt of Luis Bonaparte, with whom he shared prison in the fortress of Ham.
If it was not a murder, the question is the origin of the high levels of arsenic –from 2 to 51 parts per million compared to the normal 0.8 ppm– that they were undoubtedly in the body of the Emperor and that they would have facilitated the extraordinary preservation of the body reported by all those who attended the opening of the tomb on October 16, 1840 before its transfer to France, which does not constitute, in itself, itself, an absolute reason for forensic medicine. The "anti-poisoners" maintain that the proportion of arsenic in human beings was four or five times higher than current parameters at the beginning of the 19th century , which would place the results of the analyzes perfectly in the low range of what is considered normal, in addition to questioning the methodology used by the FBI laboratory – although the results have also been confirmed by samples analyzed at the Harwell Nuclear Research Laboratory in London and the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Glasgow, whose technicians indicated that the poison had been administered to him in progressive doses, a factor that coincides with the progressive deterioration of his health–; they also state that the study of other locks of the Emperor's hair cut in 1805 and 1812 would have provided arsenic levels of 10.5 ppm, so the final levels would not in themselves be extraordinary. Other hypotheses derived from the occasional event have been based on the compounds of the Longwood wallpaper, which was not changed until 1819 and which would have slowly released the substance, or due to poor combustion of the coal used to heat the rooms, the products used to the preservation of the wigs and, ultimately, the corruption of the wine that the Emperor drank, without implying that the liquid had been intentionally poisoned. Other possibilities focus on the intake in small doses in different medications since it was an important component of various drugs, although it caused addiction. Although most experts in the Napoleonic period currently opt for death due to illness, conspiracy theses continue to have many followers.
Funeral honors
What is proven since all the witnesses agree is that it will be a British military doctor, Archibald Arnott (1772-1855) , who had been on the island since 1819 but who did not visit the Emperor for the first time until April 21, 1821, fifteen days before his death, who made the final medical decisions. He will administer various potions to stop vomiting and fever; he will prescribe opium as a sedative to calm him down and allow him to rest and, on the afternoon of May 3, against the advice of Antommarchi and Bertrand, but with the support of Montholon, he administered a dose of ten grains of calomel, a drug based on the mercuric chloride used for gastric complaints, a quantity much higher than the normal dose of one or two grains. He will not respond to treatment. In any case Napoleon trusted Arnott in the two weeks in which he treated him, leaving him in payment for his services 600 Napoleons to which the British Government added the sum of 500 pounds. A disproportionate remuneration.
Napoleon's death occurred at 5:47 p.m. on May 5 after several hours of agony in which he will pronounce unconnected phrases as a result of fever and delirium, having received extreme unction the day before. Antommarchi will carry out the autopsy on May 6 at 2:00 p.m., assisted by seven doctors from the garrison, which will demonstrate the poor condition of the liver and stomach, as those present will verify, with the succession of contradictory reports written to explain the results of the autopsy of the bases used by the defenders of the accusations of murder. However, in May 1821 the problem was different:to ask whether the Emperor's death had been due to natural causes or was the consequence of the island's climate and the conditions of exile. If the second option was chosen, it was evident that relations between Great Britain and France would fester due to the large number of Bonapartists and opponents of the Bourbons, so it would be decided to declare the viscera healthy and choose to certify death as a consequence of the normal process. of his illness, stomach cancer as a result of the process of degradation of the ulcer he suffered from. The heart and stomach were removed from the corpse before the medical analysis was completed and placed inside silver goblets with wine vinegar as a preservation agent.
Once the body was recognized by Governor Hudson Lowe , who will try to compensate for his years of bad relationship with the Emperor and the label of ferocious jailer with which he will be remembered not only in France, but also in the United Kingdom, declaring upon leaving the wake "he was the greatest enemy of England and also mine, but I forgive him everything. At the time of the death of a great man, nothing but deep pain and great sorrow should be manifested ”in a sarcastic display of hypocrisy that no one will believe, the body of the Emperor will be shrouded in the uniform of a colonel of the Chasseurs on Horseback regiment of the Imperial Guard dressed in all his decorations, covered, like a shroud, with the cloak he had worn at the battle of Marengo, and laid out on the iron cot he used on his campaigns. He will receive the military honors corresponding to a division general by the island's garrison, after refusing the possibility of transferring his body to Europe both for political reasons and for the execution of the continuation of the idea of exile and prison when buried the body in the place of captivity. The grave will be opened in an enclave of the Geranium Valley, later known as the Valley of the Tomb, in the shade of some willows. Although he will maintain the perpetual guard of a sentinel, the slab that will cover the grave will lack inscription , given that, in his desire to lower the figure of his prisoner, whom he will always deny the imperial title and will treat because of his military rank, Governor Lowe will refuse to include only "Napoléon" in the inscription if he is not accompanied by his surname, which was opposed by the members of his entourage, who returned to Europe once the funeral was over and will become, along with those who had previously left the island, the main disseminators of the conditions of exile and, with it, a fundamental piece in the creation of the Napoleonic legend.
The legend will be definitively established when, on December 15, 1840, Napoleon's funeral remains arrive at Les Invalides in a ceremony known as Le retour des ashes which brought together 800,000 people on the streets of Paris.
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