Death of Napoleon
died on 5 May 1821 at Longwood, on the Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he had been exiled following his defeat at the battle of Waterloo and his abdication as Emperor of the French. He was 51. An autopsy concluded that he had died of internal bleeding caused by stomach cancer.
Napoleon and 27 followers had arrived at Saint Helena in October 1815. In mid-1817 his health worsened and his physician diagnosed chronic hepatitis. In November 1818 the allies announced that he would remain a prisoner on Saint Helena for life. He became depressed and more isolated, spending longer periods in his rooms, which further undermined his health. From July 1820 he suffered frequent stomach pains, nausea and vomiting. In March 1821 he was confined to bed and he was given the last rites on 3 May. Following his death, he was buried on Saint Helena, but his remains were transferred to Paris in 1840.
Despite the conclusion of the original autopsies, there has been scholarly debate on the cause of Napoleon's death. A theory that he died from deliberate arsenic poisoning has been rejected by numerous scholarly studies and historians in the 21st century. Other theories of the cause of his death include a perforated gastric ulcer, chronic bleeding from a mass of gastric ulcerations, and accidental calomel poisoning. A 2021 study by an international team of gastrointestinal pathologists concluded that Napoleon died of stomach cancer.
Background
Following Napoleon's defeat at the battle of Waterloo and his subsequent abdication, he was held in British custody and transferred to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean, from the west coast of Africa. Napoleon and 27 followers arrived at Jamestown in October 1815 on board HMS Northumberland.Napoleon stayed for two months at a pavilion in Briars before he was moved to Longwood House, a 40-room wooden bungalow. The location and interior of the house were damp, windswept, rat-infested and unhealthy. The Times published articles insinuating the British government was trying to hasten his death. Napoleon often complained of his living conditions in letters to the island's governor Hudson Lowe while his attendants complained of "colds, catarrhs, damp floors and poor provisions".
Napoleon circulated reports of poor treatment in the hope that public opinion would force the allies to revoke his exile on Saint Helena. Under instructions from the government, Lowe cut Napoleon's expenditure, refused to recognize him as a former emperor, and made his supporters sign a guarantee they would stay with him indefinitely. Accounts of Napoleon's treatment led in March 1817 to a debate in the British Parliament where Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland made a call for a public inquiry.
In mid-1817, Napoleon's health worsened. His physician, Barry O'Meara, diagnosed chronic hepatitis and warned Lowe that he could die from the poor climate and lack of exercise. Lowe thought O'Meara was exaggerating and dismissed him in July 1818. In November 1818 the allies announced that Napoleon would remain a prisoner on Saint Helena for life. When he learnt the news, he became depressed and more isolated, spending longer periods in his rooms, which further undermined his health. Much of his entourage left Saint Helena including Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases in December 1816, General Gaspard Gourgaud in March 1818, and Albine de Montholon in July 1819. In September 1819 two priests and the physician François Carlo Antommarchi joined Napoleon's retinue.
Declining health and death
From July 1820 Napoleon suffered from severe stomach pains, nausea and vomiting, and on 17 March 1821 he was confined to bed. In April he wrote two wills declaring that he had been assassinated by the "English oligarchy", that the Bourbons would fall, and that his son would rule France. He left his fortune to 97 legatees and asked to be buried by the Seine. By late April he was vomiting blood and a dark fluid. On 3 May he was given the last rites but could not take communion due to his illness. On 4 May there was some hope following a high dose of calomel administered by his English physician Archibald Arnott and two of his colleagues, but against the advice of Antommarchi. A few hours later, Napoleon vomited blood and his pulse became rapid. He died on 5 May 1821 at age 51. His last words, variously recorded by those present, were either France, l'armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine, or qui recule...à la tête d'armée or "France, my son, the Army."Autopsy and burial
An autopsy was performed on 6 May, conducted by Antommarchi in the presence of seven British medical practitioners. Antommarchi and the British wrote separate autopsy reports, each concluding that Napoleon had died of internal bleeding caused by stomach cancer, the disease that had killed his father. Five autopsy reports were eventually produced: Antommarchi's original report of 8 May, the official British report by Thomas Shortt, an unofficial report to Lowe by medical officer Thomas Reade, another unofficial report to Lowe by Assistant Surgeon Walter Henry in 1823, and Antommarchi's detailed report of 1825. This 1825 report was partially plagiarized and is considered unreliable.Napoleon was buried with military honours in the Valley of the Geraniums, Saint Helena. His heart and intestines were removed and sealed inside his coffin. His penis was allegedly removed during the autopsy and sold and exhibited. In 1840 the British government gave Louis Philippe I permission to return Napoleon's remains to France. His body was exhumed and found to be well preserved as it had been sealed in four coffins and placed in a masonry tomb. On 15 December 1840 a state funeral was held in Paris with 700,000 to 1,000,000 attendees who lined the route of the funeral procession to the chapel of Les Invalides. The coffin was later placed in the cupola in St Jérôme's Chapel, where it remained until Napoleon's tomb, designed by Louis Visconti, was completed. In 1861, during the reign of Napoleon III, his remains were entombed in a sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.
Reaction
When news of Napoleon's death reached England on 4 July 1821, reaction in the British press ranged from qualified acknowledgement of his greatness to polemics depicting him as a war-mongering tyrant. Reaction in France was also polarized between public mourning and castigation of his memory by royalists and some liberals. From July to November 1821, 164 pamphlets appeared debating his legacy. Although the police reported public indifference to the news in most regions of France, in Paris crowds gathered to read newspaper reports and buy cheap engravings depicting his death. However, the restoration regime's strict censorship and laws forbidding public support for Napoleon make it difficult to assess the public response to his death. Pamphlets claiming that Napoleon had been poisoned soon appeared. Rumours that he was still alive and would return to France persisted into the 1830s, as did false sightings of the former emperor.Literary figures including Alessandro Manzoni, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Franz Grillparzer, and Alexander Pushkin wrote reflections on Napoleon's death. Paintings, lithographs and engravings proliferated, often depicting Napoleon's death in quasi-religious terms as an apotheosis. Horace Vernet's Napoleon's Tomb depicts Napoleon ascending into an imperial Valhalla. The painting was suppressed by the restoration regime and was first publicly exhibited in 1830.
Cause of death
Despite the conclusion of the two initial autopsy reports, there has been considerable scholarly debate about the cause of Napoleon's death.Stomach cancer
The original autopsy reports concluded that Napoleon died of gastric cancer associated with a perforated ulcer. A 2021 study by an international team of eight gastrointestinal pathologists again concluded that Napoleon died of stomach cancer.Ulcer and chronic gastritis
Antommarchi and the British doctors noted in their autopsy reports the existence of a chronic perforated gastric ulcer, probably evolving into cancer, and pulmonary lesions linked to tuberculosis. Walter Henry's report of 1823 confirmed this ulcer, aggravated by cancerous ulcerations. Thierry Lentz and Jacques Macé, writing in 2009, considered this thesis, which corresponds to the initial report, to be the most historically credible.A study published in 2007 suggested that Napoleon died of a haemorrhage associated with a gastric tumour. This study, however, is based on Antommarchi's report of 1825, which partly plagiarizes a medical article published in 1823 and is now considered unreliable. Nevertheless, the 2007 study concluded that clinical descriptions of Napoleon's decline was consistent with terminal stomach cancer and concluded this was probably caused by an ulcer of bacterial origin.
Alain Golcher, writing in 2012, studied the initial autopsy reports and concluded that the perforated gastric ulcer did not cause Napoleon's death. He argued that Napoleon suffered from fibrosis, dating from several weeks or months before death, but that the cause of death was a mass of ulcerations causing chronic microscopic bleeding, leading to iron deficiency, anaemia, and death from exsanguination.
The international study of 2021 concluded that Golcher's thesis stood "on extremely shaky ground", as Napoleon showed many of the symptoms of gastric cancer, his health decline was consistent with cancer progression, his anaemia could have been caused by a tumour, and the macroscopic description in the two original autopsy reports is not consistent with chronic gastritis.
Arsenic poisoning theory
A paper published in 1961, written by Swedish dentist Sten Forshufvud and others, reported elevated levels of arsenic in Napoleon's hair and concluded that he had died of arsenic poisoning. A number of studies from 2003 to 2006, led by Pascal Kintz, President of the Association Internationale des Toxicologues de Médecine Légale, also studied samples of Napoleon's hair and concluded that Napoleon was possibly murdered by arsenic poisoning.In 2008, the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Universities of Milan and Pavia studied hair samples conserved in Napoleonic museums in France and Italy. It concluded that arsenic levels in Napoleon's hair were abnormally high, but comparable to those found in the hair of his youth, and not exceptional compared to the levels found in samples from Josephine de Beauharnais and Napoleon II. The institute noted that the quantity of arsenic observed in these samples was a hundred times higher than the level measured today, and observed that "in the emperor and his contemporaries, you find a level of arsenic that would be considered toxic today". The authors concluded, "the concentration of the substance would not be enough to cause Napoleon's death".
Subsequent studies by Golcher and others have ruled out the theory that Napoleon was killed by deliberate arsenic poisoning. Historian Phillip Dwyer has called the thesis a conspiracy theory.