Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

by Alan Schom

  With Las Cases gone, Gourgaud came under greater attack by both Bertrand and Montholon, who now taunted “Gogo,” Napoleon chuckling in the background. Gourgaud, who felt he should have precedence over the fake soldier and upstart, saw his enemy superseding him in Napoleon’s esteem. Montholon now even went so far as to tease Gourgaud about having saved Napoleon at Brienne, which Napoleon even fully denied had ever happened. That did it. Gourgaud snapped, challenging Montholon to a duel. But like all bullies, Montholon was a coward and backed off, and Napoleon intervened, forbidding the action and criticizing Gourgaud for his part in it, but not Montholon for his.

  That was the final insult, and General Gourgaud asked Napoleon’s permission to leave the island, which was quickly granted. Bonaparte was also unhappy with Gourgaud for having written positive letters to his mother about their living conditions, assuring her that they had been treated well and even generously by Sir Hudson Lowe. Some of these letters reached official circles in Paris, countering the black tales of horror Napoleon’s clique had been manufacturing and circulating.

  On February 13, 1818, Gourgaud left Longwood, spending his remaining weeks at a cottage near Plantation House awaiting the next ship. Napoleon refused to advance him any money, money legally due him, leaving the penniless Gourgaud in a predicament until Governor Lowe advanced him one hundred pounds out of his own pocket. Perfidious Albion...

  On reaching England on May 1, Gourgaud spoke with the Under Secretary of State, warning him that Napoleon had been plotting, sending apocryphal accounts of their living conditions and of Sir Hudson’s administration to Europe. He also pointed out how easily he could escape. Gourgaud did admit that, “However unhappy he [Napoleon] is there, he secretly enjoys the importance attached to his custody, the interest that the Powers take in it, and the care taken to collect his least words.” Las Cases confirmed this independently, quoting Napoleon just before leaving the island: “Our situation here may even have its positive points. Everyone in Europe is looking at us. We remain the martyrs of an immoral cause.”

  Intrigue, the intense intimacy enforced on the inmates of Longwood House, and their conflicting personalities were taking their toll. Las Cases, Gourgaud and O’Meara were gone, and now both Mesdames Bertrand and Montholon insisted on departing with their children. To be sure, there were a few pleasant days, when even Napoleon would appear in his wide-brimmed hat, his body gaining more and more flesh, his hair growing thinner and thinner. At night they would read aloud, or play chess or billiards, to which Napoleon added a new twist, using his hand instead of a cue.

  Three Corsicans arrived at St. Helena, sent by Uncle Fesch, including two priests and Dr. Francesco Antommarchi. But it hardly improved the almost lethal atmosphere of Longwood. A depressed Albine de Montholon was permitted to sail with her children, including her newborn daughter, Napoléonne, in the first week of July 1819. Alas the lovely, tall, blond Fanny Bertrand, who so disliked Napoleon after his months of insults that she refused to visit Longwood anymore, was forced to remain. Life was reduced to a dreary bachelor existence, becoming quite unbearable. The only reason Tristan Montholon did not leave was because Napoleon had bribed him, too, offering to pay large sums to his wife and children once they reached France, with hints of a spectacular legacy in his will if Montholon stayed.

  Meanwhile Madame Bertrand too was becoming more and more desperate to escape the island altogether, especially after having learned of her mother’s death back in 1817. When in 1820 she was finally about to leave with her son, Arthur, and daughter, Hortense, however, Bertrand announced that he would join her that same year. Napoleon forbade it. A simmering Fanny unpacked her trunks but refused any further communication with Bonaparte until just hours before his death.

  However, there had earlier been three successful, if involuntary, departures from Longwood, beginning on February 24, 1818, with Napoleon’s Corsican butler, Cipriani, who in fact was his intelligence officer (their two families had been old friends back in Ajaccio). A very strong man who never suffered from even a cold, on February 24, 1818, he suddenly collapsed with severe chills, sharp burning abdominal pains, nausea, and vomiting. Forty-eight hours later he was dead. The doctors consulted were puzzled, but there it was, and the poor man was buried nearby. But when an inquiry was launched from a suspicious Longwood, and an autopsy ordered, it was discovered that the body had disappeared. Within a matter of weeks a young maid also died, with similar symptoms, and then the child of a servant — all residents of, or people working at, Longwood House.

  Napoleon was not without his own growing number of health problems, even collapsing on at least one occasion. It is not clear when the first signs of serious illness were noted, but certainly by early 1818 they were well in evidence. Napoleon complained of violent stomachaches, “burning” he called them, chills, vomiting, accompanied by loss of appetite. Finally, by the end of 1820, he was reduced to a diet of fluids and cold drinks — no more bread, meat, or vegetables — yet he continued to gain weight. He knew he was ill, very ill, and William Balcombe, who still occasionally visited Napoleon, had suggested poisoning as the cause as early as 1818, after the suspicious deaths of Cipriani and the others.

  From 1820 onward all life at Longwood seemed to come to a standstill. The large stacks of timber and stone intended for the new wing of the house gathered mildew, because Napoleon still refused to authorize the new construction. After all, what would world public opinion say about the poor man’s sufferings at the hands of the cruel British if it were learned that he was living in a twenty-room country house? With those additional rooms Napoleon could hardly have continued to dispatch the embarrassed General Bertrand to complain about the “appalling living conditions” there.

  Bertrand continued to make his appearance at Longwood, but it was for shorter and shorter periods, as he found himself supplanted by the controlling Montholon, who still wanted to rejoin his wife and children but also wanted the substantial sum Napoleon was dangling before him. Napoleon’s valet, Marchand, was still there, but he spoke with Napoleon only in the morning when dressing and shaving him, and in the evening. Lunch and supper became painful affairs, with all those empty chairs, leaving only Montholon and Napoleon, the latter on a liquid diet, finding even the sight of food repulsive.

  To prevent Napoleon from vomiting what little food he was now taking, calomel was administered, with strict instructions from Dr. Antommarchi that not more than one-quarter of one grain be given at a time, due to its toxicity (it contains mercury chloride). But in fact the cause of Napoleon’s steady, dramatic decline was arsenic poisoning.

  Prior to Cipriani’s death in February 1818, it would have been difficult for anyone to do this, for the Corsican “butler” was responsible for ordering Napoleon’s food supplies from abroad, including his favorite Capetown claret, and for carefully inspecting the kitchen and the food served Napoleon. Now that the devoted but more suspicious Cipriani was out of the way, and seven servants had been fired in a belt-tightening exercise, not to mention the departure of the ever-present Las Cases and Gourgaud, there was far less supervision of supplies received and food served. In addition, there was one item that was reserved solely for Napoleon, his special wine, which no one else touched. Arsenic, largely odorless and tasteless, could be readily introduced into wine without being detected, and apparently that was how it was done. But after the sudden deaths of three perfectly healthy individuals, the killer had to conceal his or her tracks. If Napoleon suddenly died, especially from the same cause as the butler, the maid, and the child — and he had the same symptoms — the British would demand an autopsy, and many questions would be asked. Therefore the would-be murderer had to switch tactics, adding a different poison.

  In March 1821 Dr. Antommarchi allowed Napoleon to be given a new lemonade drink with a tartar emetic. The drink would quench the patient’s insatiable thirst while countering the severe problem of constipation. But the base of this emetic was antimony potassium tartrate, a highly toxi
c substance. Napoleon was now taking two potentially lethal substances, arsenic and the emetic. Then on April 22 a new fruit drink, orgeat, was introduced, to which the murderer added an oil of bitter almonds. (A case of bitter almonds had been delivered to Longwood in April; before that an oil of ground peach stones, which contain hydrocyanic, or Prussic, acid, had been used.) This of course was done without the doctor’s knowledge. Napoleon was now ingesting four toxic substances including the calomel, for the arsenic continued to be administered secretly (if irregularly) in his wine, thereby increasing Napoleon’s thirst, causing him to drink more of the poisoned orgeat, resulting in the toxic chemicals combining to form mercury cyanide. And, as the vomiting was now largely stopped by the calomel, the mercury cyanide remained in Napoleon’s body.

  “The Emperor had a sudden relapse,” Dr. Antommarchi recorded on February 21, 1821. “He is worse than yesterday,” he noted the following day, Napoleon feeling nauseous, complaining of a burning sensation in his abdomen, a “burning thirst,” and coughing. Clearly another large dose of arsenic had been administered. Now, in the waning days of winter and the dawning of spring, Napoleon was confined to his bed. “Today he is a corpse animated by a mere breath of life,” Montholon described to his wife on March 5. Part of the poisoning was purely accidental, of course. The physician-prescribed tartar emetic, beginning on March 22, aggravated the situation, which grew critical a month later, when Napoleon began drinking large quantities of the orgeat. Napoleon declined rapidly and remained in constant pain now.

  By April death appeared not only inevitable but imminent, which did not prevent Napoleon from continuing with his accusations, haranguing the latest British physician, Dr. Arnott, as late as April 20: “I came to sit at the hearth of the British nation, asking only for honest hospitality...[and instead] was put in chains...How have I been treated since my arrival here? There is not a single indignity that has not been heaped upon me by my captors...And now perishing on this loathsome rock, I bequeath the name of my death to the Ruling House of England.”

  After April 22 Napoleon no longer had the energy for tirades against anyone. With a patient suffering from so many conflicting symptoms, his personal physician was stymied, and feeling that the end was near summoned Dr. Arnott from Plantation House. After a long consultation they agreed to increase the dose of calomel. “This is one last desperate attempt,” Bertrand recorded, “for the emperor is lost. We must not leave ourselves in a position afterward where we could reproach ourselves for not having taken every possible measure to save him.”

  Before receiving the massive dose at 5:30 P.M. on May 3, Napoleon could still occasionally mumble a few words, most of them unintelligible except for “Josephine” and “my son.” The calomel was administered in sugared water, after he had earlier swallowed large amounts of the poisoned orgeat. Bertrand’s coded diaries, only recently deciphered, describe the results: “Shortly thereafter he became unconscious and completely paralyzed.”[799] The mercury cyanide was eating into his system.

  At 7:00 A.M. on Saturday, May 5, Fanny Bertrand reappeared at Longwood House to pay her last respects, taking a chair at the foot of Napoleon’s bed, and then all the French staff working around or in Longwood were brought into the bedroom as well. Napoleon Bonaparte died at 5:49 P.M., the paralysis so complete that he could no longer swallow or breathe. Moments later a signal cannon was fired to notify the governor and the island. The most destructive man in European history since Attila the Hun was no more.

  The faithful Henri Bertrand approached and, kneeling at the bedside, kissed his master’s hand. Dr. Arnott brought in an ordnance officer to witness the death, as two more doctors were dispatched from Plantation House by Sir Hudson Lowe.

  Following their instructions, the testamentary executors retired to the billiards room to read the last will and testament and its thirty-seven articles, dividing perhaps six million francs left with Napoleon’s banker, Laffitte. After bequeathing a few hundred thousand francs to both Bertrand and his valet, Marchand, nothing to Marie Louise or any of his brothers, and only his properties in Ajaccio to his son, to the astonishment of everyone he left the major portion, 2 million francs, to Tristan de Montholon.

  An official autopsy attended by seven physicians discovered that his stomach was seriously ulcerated, leading to the unanimous decision that Napoleon had died of cancer, like his father before him, despite the fact that the corpse before them was fatter than before his arrival back in 1815. After removing the rather small heart and stomach — the latter to be sent to England for further medical study — the body was cleaned and placed in Napoleon’s favorite uniform as a chasseur of the Guards, with its white cashmere underjacket and breeches, and a green jacket. A hat with a tricolor cocarde was placed on his head, while the orders of the Legion of Honor and the Iron Crown were pinned on his chest and the Grand Cordon of the Legion attached as well.

  After being left in a chapelle ardente, the body was finally placed in four caskets, one inside another, two of metal, two of mahogany, all of them sealed with lead. After Abbé Vignali celebrated the mass and twelve British grenadiers in dress uniform carried the heavy casket into the garden of Longwood and placed it on the hearse, Bertrand covered it with the blue cape Napoleon had worn at Marengo, and his sword. Two thousand British troops in immaculate scarlet uniforms stood at ramrod attention, presenting arms as the British military band played the funeral dirge. Sir Hudson Lowe, in dress uniform, attended by his wife and daughter, a rear admiral, and a representative of the French government, stood over the newly finished stone crypt, eleven feet deep and six feet wide. Fifteen grenadiers fired three salvos as the heavy mahogany coffin was lowered. Because the French had insisted on a tombstone bearing the words “Emperor Napoleon” and the British, refusing a title their government had never officially recognized, suggested instead “Napoleon Bonaparte,” the French declined any marker whatsoever. Napoleon Bonaparte, or Emperor Napoleon, was finally laid to rest, and Europe could sigh with relief.

  *

  The autopsy conclusions notwithstanding, there is no doubt that Napoleon was murdered. Recent scientific analyses of Napoleon’s hair have found arsenic levels from 35 to 640 times that found in the hair of a healthy human being. Facts are facts.

  Needless to say, if the killer had given Napoleon one enormous, lethal dose, it would have been too evident. Therefore the doses remained just strong enough gradually to break down his constitution, while adding the powerful hydrocyanic acid. Thus, though he was administered arsenic in his wine for many months, Napoleon ultimately died of cyanide poisoning.

  Only a few people were consistently in Napoleon’s intimate proximity the last few months and thus in a position to murder him: General Bertrand, Marchand, Napoleon’s bodyguard Ali Saint-Denis, and Montholon. Marchand and Ali had respectable pasts and personalities inconsistent with that of a stealthy poisoner. The same applied to the loyal, steadfast Bertrand, who in any case lived well over a mile away from Longwood. The killer had only a few hours in the middle of the night when the kitchen was empty in which to prepare the poison and add it to the food or drink. With Cipriani out of the way, the poisoner was free to act.

  Montholon was not only present throughout this period but also had the devious personality required to execute such a diabolical plot. He was a consistent deceiver, as his military record clearly shows, not to mention a little larceny in the process. Moreover, he had a double motive: to leave the island and gain a fortune. Persona non grata with King Louis XVIII and deeply in debt and harried by French creditors, he wormed his way into Napoleon’s good graces through his ancien régime manners, courtesies, and unusual charm. This boundless bounder escaped debtors’ prison by serving Napoleon on faraway St. Helena. When Montholon discovered that Napoleon preferred his company to that of Las Cases, Gourgaud, and even Bertrand, Montholon took advantage of it, gradually forcing both Las Cases and Gourgaud to flee, and nearly doing the same in the case of the Bertrands.

  Napoleon
’s promise to provide a substantial income for Montholon’s wife and children in France and also to leave a major portion of his fortune to him proved to be the former emperor’s undoing. The sooner Montholon killed him, the sooner he could escape from St. Helena and return to France in style. The scheme would have worked — if the Bonaparte clan, in a rare moment of family solidarity, had not blocked his access to the loot, thanks to the cooperation of his banker, Lafitte. Montholon died penniless in Belgium.

  One final irony: The French emperor, who had successfully escaped death time and again from Prussian, Russian, British, Austrian, German, Italian, and Spanish artillery, muskets, swords, and bayonets, had been killed by his closest chosen companion — a Frenchman.

  Epilogue

  “For all the attempts to restrict, suppress and muffle me, it will be difficult to make me disappear from the public memory completely. French historians will have to deal with the Empire...and will have to give me my rightful due.”

  Clearly Napoleon had forgotten the hundreds of smoking villages he had bombarded or burned to the ground, from Moscow to Warsaw to Prussia, throughout northern and southern Italy, and sweeping across the plains and mountains of Iberia. He had forgotten the thousands of genuine POWs he had subsequently executed in cold blood. He had forgotten the hundreds of thousands of civilian refugees rendered homeless by his wars, the thousands upon thousands of old women and young girls raped by his Grande Armée, of the hundreds of towns and cities he had ruthlessly looted, the three million or so dead soldiers of all nations left rotting across the face of Europe, and the millions of wounded and permanently handicapped, the destroyed political institutions of a few hundred states and principalities — the shattered economies, the fear and dread he had left behind everywhere, France included. The memory of Genghis Khan paled in comparison. “What utter madness to believe that one can prevent the truth of history from eventually being written,” a much tried but undaunted Emile Zola reflected at the end of the nineteenth century, in the midst of the Dreyfus affair. I have attempted to give Napoleon Bonaparte his rightful due.