In March 1995 a single lock of human hair was sold to an
American for £3,680.1 This was no ordinary relic. It came from the head of an exile who spent
the last six years of his life upon a lonely speck of rock in the South
Atlantic. For decades those frail strands of hair had kept a dark secret. Each
contained minute traces of arsenic, a clear indication that the donor had been
poisoned. The lock still exists today as mute testimony to the crime of the
century – the murder of Napoleon.
History
is written by the victors. During his time as First Consul, and then Emperor of
the French, Napoleon was castigated by the British press and by its corrupt
Establishment. He was the Corsican Ogre, the cause of all wars, an evil man who
had to be destroyed at all costs. Mothers threatened their children with his
name and his face appeared inside chamber pots.
Black
propaganda has coloured innumerable subsequent histories written over a period
of two hundred years and, as a result, errors, misinformation and downright
lies have come to be accepted as fact. In England he has been dubbed a ‘monster
genius’ by one historian and ‘a great, bad man’ by another. Many English
writers dismiss him merely as the general who lost at Waterloo.2
In
France, after his fall from power, the Royalists printed anything that might
sully his name. During the so-called White Terror, officers and men who had
fought for him were hunted down and executed without trial, at the express
demand of Lord Liverpool, the British Prime Minister, who was determined to
wreak a fanatical revenge upon those misguided French nationals who had dared
to support Napoleon.
We know of
Trafalgar and Waterloo, but how many British people know about this?
Napoleon
embodied the principle that the individual mattered, that careers should be
open to talent and should not just be the province of the highborn and the
well-to-do. This was anathema to the British ruling class and their
counterparts, the French aristocracy who clung to a belief in the divine right
of kings. To them there was no such thing as the Rights of Man, only the Right
of Might.
Following
the spread of the doctrine of democracy after the American War of Independence,
the French Revolution of 1789, the death knell of privilege, was bound to
provoke a furious reaction from the courts of Europe. They would do anything to
nip the concept of individual freedom in the bud. Hence common cause was made
against the figurehead of the new ideas – Napoleon. The huge bribes secretly
paid by the British Government to foreign powers to entice them into wars
against France certainly helped this process along.
In
Napoleonic France, advancement was possible for gifted people of all ranks. The
Emperor was a pragmatist. He even allowed hundreds of former aristocrats back
into France if they were prepared to serve him. In the process he unwittingly
welcomed his would-be assassins.
The ordinary
Frenchman did much better under Napoleon than they had ever done under the
Bourbons. Napoleon restored peace within France; his Concordat with the Pope
re-established Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French
people; his Napoleonic Code instituted a body of laws that confirmed the
property rights of the millions of peasants who had gained land after the
Revolution – it is still the basis of the French legal system today.
His
soldiers worshipped him. One has only to read the memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne
and Captain Coignet to see that. Under Napoleon, every soldier believed there
was a baton in his knapsack. Anything was possible - they had seen it happen.
Men of humble birth like Ney and Murat became marshals, princes, even kings.
Napoleon’s personal charisma was almost magical. When he was a boy, Heine, the
German poet, saw him: ‘high on horseback, the eternal eyes set in the marble of
that imperial visage, looking on, calm as destiny, at his guards as they march
past. He was sending them to Russia, and the old grenadiers glanced up at him
with so anxious a devotion, such sympathy, such earnestness and lethal pride: Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant!’3
Napoleon
supported French industry and provided political stability after the chaos of
the Revolution. As a result, the peasants and the middle-classes prospered and
France became a great nation once again. Compared to the days of the old
monarchy, the French people had never had it so good. What else had Europe to
offer?
In England,
Old Farmer George, King George III, after losing the American colonies because
of his asinine inability to compromise, went mad and spent his time shaking
hands with trees and talking to them. His son Prinny, the Prince Regent, convinced himself he had actually led
the charge at Waterloo, when the only charge he did lead was the one for the
dinner table. Prinny was loathed by the British public because of the way he
treated his estranged wife, Princess Caroline. The Royals lived in a world of
their own, blind to the misery endured by ordinary Britons at a time of
economic hardship and depression.
Wellington was short of cavalry at Waterloo because the politicians at
Whitehall relied on mounted troops to keep the people down in Britain and
Ireland. They were even more concerned with quelling internal dissent than they
were in defeating France. Some 78,400 people were transported to Australia in
only nine years, 1816-1825, many for merely daring to question the way the
country was being governed.4
Napoleon
was three times acclaimed by national plebiscite in France. No one ever voted
for Louis XVIII who succeeded him. If Napoleon became the heart and soul of
France, Louis can be said to have been its stomach. A political lightweight, he
made up for it on the personal level, weighing in at 310 lbs. Twice he returned
to Paris in the baggage train of the Allies – he needed it, no horse could
carry him. Waddling along, limping, plagued by gout, and with his penchant for
blond young men, he was yet mystified by the fact that the populace preferred
Napoleon to himself.
It was
Louis’ sinister brother and heir Charles, comte d’Artois, who began making
plans for the murder of Napoleon. D’Artois could execute ‘traitors’ every day
of the week and still go to Mass on a Sunday. He was a true scion of the Old
School.
Comte
d’Artois, brother of Louis XVIII – Bowes Museum, England © John Tarttelin
In 1792,
with the blessing of Pitt’s government, d’Artois began planning the Bourbon
restoration from a base on Jersey. Living there were 7,500 émigré priests and
nobles, all eager to regain privileges and sinecures swept away by the
Revolution. There, in the greatest secrecy, with the knowledge of just a few
men in the British Cabinet, d’Artois set up his infamous Chevalier de la Foi.
This nest of spies and death squads was given the task of restoring Louis to
the throne. From Jersey, British vessels could easily land agents on the
mainland at the dead of night.5
When
Napoleon overthrew the French Directory in 1799, the issue became personalized.
D’Artois’ pathological hatred of the Corsican Usurper knew no bounds. To him,
Napoleon was evil incarnate, the Antichrist.
Royalist
guerrillas fought in Brittany and Normandy and when his troops defeated them,
Napoleon had the magnanimity to offer one of their leaders, Georges Cadoudal, a
commission in the Army. Cadoudal fled to Jersey instead. Once there he
organized a plot to kill Napoleon with a bomb.
On
December 24th 1800, Cadoudal’s man, Saint-Regent, abandoned a wine cart in the
rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris. A thirteen- year-old girl was left holding the
horse’s reins. Napoleon was due to pass on his way to the opera. However, his
coachman was suspicious. Whipping his horses on, he careered past the cart. The
people in the carriages behind were not so lucky. The innocent girl was blown
to bits, more than a dozen others were killed, and over 200 were wounded.
Cadoudal slunk back to Britain.
D’Artois
had backed the plot. His agent, d’Auvergne, who was also the British naval
commander in Jersey, provided the gunpowder, the money for the operation, and
the vessel necessary to land Cadoudal on the French coast – all on the orders
of William Pitt. It was nothing less than state sponsored terrorism.
Two years
later, during the Peace of Amiens, Captain d’Auvergne went to Paris to meet
fellow agents. He wore his British uniform in case he was arrested as a spy. He
was caught and imprisoned, but when the British Ambassador intervened, Napoleon
had him released after thorough questioning.
Parliament was in uproar. Napoleon had dared to arrest a British officer
with a valid passport at a time of peace. The French Ambassador in London
leaked the real reason for d’Auvergne’s arrest to prominent political figures.
With the possibility of Chants D’Auvergne
ringing in their ears, the Cabinet panicked. The thought that the British
public might find out about their illicit dealings with d’Artois, which were
still continuing despite the peace, terrified them. Thus, with delicious irony,
Lord Liverpool was forced to speak up in Parliament on Napoleon’s behalf.
Perhaps that is why, after Waterloo, he was determined to have killed as many
people as possible who had ever supported Napoleon.
Napoleon’s military career is well known. More than 300,000 books have
been written about him, more than any other individual in history. After his
final defeat, with misplaced trust, he threw himself upon British justice,
seeking asylum upon these shores. There was precious little freedom and justice
for ordinary Britons, still less was there to be for the fallen Emperor.
Betrayed
by numerous Frenchmen he had elevated to prominence, Napoleon surrendered to
Captain Maitland of HMS Bellerophon –
‘Billy Ruffian’. He was taken to Torbay where crowds of people came from all
over Britain just to catch a glimpse of him. However, it was imperative for the
Cabinet that he did not land. The public, far more noble than their
self-seeking politicians, had sympathy for Napoleon and would have allowed him
to stay in England. On August 3rd 1815 an article appeared in The Times stating that an Act of
Parliament was necessary to detain Napoleon and another would be necessary to
intern him in a British colony.6 Frightened by this growing support for him, Lord Liverpool gave the
order to have Napoleon transported to Saint Helena on board HMS Northumberland. With him was a
certain comte de Montholon.
Montholon had attached himself to Napoleon after Waterloo and
asked to share his exile. He was, in fact, d’Artois’ agent, and murder was on
his mind.7
Napoleon’s death had to be seen as an accident. Any obvious action would
have led to widespread insurrection in France and, at the very least, extremely
awkward questions being raised in a Parliament that was already greatly
concerned with the growing republican movement in Britain. So Montholon began
to lace Napoleon’s wine with arsenic. The body’s natural reaction is to
disperse the poison where it will do the least harm, hence it got into his
hair.
Montholon
arranged for the removal of most of Napoleon’s faithful companions after
inveigling his way into the Emperor’s affections. Montholon was soon the only
person Napoleon trusted. His fate was sealed. With his health failing rapidly,
Napoleon stated in his will: ‘I die before my time, murdered by the English
oligarchy and its hired assassin.’ To the very end, he never suspected
Montholon. He died on May 5th 1821, leaving Montholon 2,000,000 francs in his
will. For the final time, Napoleon had been betrayed by someone he trusted. A
lock of hair was taken from his corpse and eventually found its way to
Phillips’ Saleroom in London.
A French
delegation arrived at Saint Helena to reclaim Napoleon’s body in 1840. When his
grave was opened the onlookers were stunned. Napoleon’s sightless eyes stared
back at them, for the arsenic which had poisoned the Emperor had also preserved
his body. His remains now lie in a splendid mausoleum in Paris.
In June
1994 Professor Maury of Montpelier University announced that he had Montholon’s
written confession to Napoleon’s murder. This corroborates the findings of Dr
Sten Forshufvud, Ben Weider, and David Hamilton-Williams. Tests done on samples
of Napoleon’s hair at Glasgow University have revealed traces of arsenic inside the hair follicles. There is no
way that arsenic from wallpaper or hair pomades could get inside the hair.
Furthermore, Sten Forshufvud, a trained toxicologist who had studied the
Emperor’s mysterious symptoms for years, proved that the levels of arsenic inside the strands of hair, coincided
with bouts of illness described in the memoir of Marchand, Napoleon’s trusted
valet. Whenever the levels of arsenic reached critical levels, Napoleon became
ill. The work of Sten Forshufvud and Ben Weider has proved beyond a doubt and
with scientific certainty, that Napoleon was poisoned on Saint Helena.
Does
Napoleon’s corpse continue with its victory over death even to this day? If a
lock of hair was worth £3,680 in 1995, an intriguing question remains – what is
his body worth? Napoleon’s signature alone fetched £150 back then and its value
increases every year.8 His reputation meanwhile, needs to be reassessed and revalued.
©
John Tarttelin 2016
M.A.
History, FINS, Legion of Merit
A
Souladream Production
This
article forms one chapter of my book
THE REAL NAPOLEON – The Untold
Story
Available
as a paperback, on Amazon Kindle
and on Smashwords.
NOTES &
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. The Sunday Times London March 26th 1995. It also reported that
there were more than 100 other Napoleon lots up for auction in March 1995
alone. In the article by Peter Johnson it says: ‘In a multitude of forms from
portrait miniatures to life-sized statues, from love letters to battlefield
autographs, he is revered by collectors.’ He also adds: ‘by contrast a lock of
hair from the Duke of Wellington’s (head) was a snip at £598.’
Napoleon’s popularity with collectors is phenomenal.
On September 18th 1988 The Sunday
Telegraph London reported a: ‘Brush with history – No plaque is expected to
mark the spot, but Napoleon’s silver and gold-plated toothbrush goes under the
hammer next month at the Munich auction house of Herman Historica.’
2. Napoleon was called a ‘monster
genius’ by the English journalist Nigel Nicholson in an article in the Daily Telegraph London of September 3rd
1988. Nicolson’s twisted portrayal of Napoleon is far too ludicrous ever to be
called ‘history’. Napoleon was called a ‘great bad man’, by David Chandler in
the video series called The Great
Commanders. Chandler, who was a great historian, shortly before his own
death came to accept that Napoleon had been murdered by Montholon – for years he would not accept the
fact.
3. Quoted in Paul Britten Austin 1812 The March On Moscow (1993) 29
4. David Hamilton-Williams The Fall Of Napoleon (1994) 330
5. Ibid. APPENDIX II The Royalist
Underground and the Chevaliers de la Foi 302-308
6. Ibid. 271
7. Ibid. 273
8. Peter Johnson article in The Sunday Times March 26th 1995. See
above.
Bibliography
1.
Austin Paul
Britten 1812 The March On Moscow
(London: Greenhill Books, 1993)
2.
Hamilton-Williams David The
Fall Of Napoleon (London: Arms
and Armour Press, 1994)
3.
Nicolson Nigel 1812
(London: Weidenfeld And Nicolson, 1985)
4.
Weider Ben And
Hapgood David The Murder Of Napoleon
(New York: Congdon And Lattès Inc. 1982)
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