Napoleon’s body is definitely at Invalides!

Now that it has been proved that Napoleon suffered for years with gallstones and died as a result of complications from a malignant stomach tumour – without Hudson Lowe or Montholon having to poison him – the Emperor has again been the object of media intrigue, thanks to a theory about his body’s disappearance, which resurfaces every time an opportunity presents itself. The proponents of the theory that an unknown corpse was substituted for Napoleon’s – let’s say it’s the body of his butler, Cirpriani, who died at Longwood – have such fertile imaginations for discovering new “proofs” of this theory that it is once again necessary to put a stop to this hypothesising using the tools of historical accuracy and cold, hard fantasy-free logic.

The Known Facts

Napoleon Bonaparte, former Emperor of France, died at Longwood, on the island of Saint Helena, at 5.49pm on Saturday 5 May 1821.

An autopsy was carried out on 6 May at 2pm, in the Waiting Room (or Billiards Room) at Longwood by Dr. Antommarchi, assisted by seven British doctors and in the presence of both French and British witnesses. Napoleon’s corpse was then dressed in the uniform of a Colonel of the Chasseurs de la Garde and laid out in a makeshift mortuary chapel that had been set up in his study. His heart and stomach were removed to a soup tureen, then placed in two silver vases.
In the late afternoon of 7 May, Dr. Burton, assisted by Dr. Autommarchi, took a cast of the head in three parts: the face, the top of the skull, and the base of the skull. Immediately following this casting, the body was placed in three coffins: one of tin (which was soldered shut), one of wood (which was screwed shut), and one of lead (which was again soldered shut). The silver vases had been placed in the first coffin.

At dawn on 9 May, the outer coffin (in lead) was placed in a mahogany coffin. The interment took place in Geranium Valley, in a tomb lined with stone slabs, situated three metres deep inside a brick-lined pit and sealed on top by a giant stone slab, which was itself fixed in place by a layer of cement. The next day, a second covering of cement was laid and the grave was covered with two metres of stones and clay, and finally topped with three stone slabs. A circular railing was placed around the site a little later.

Nineteen years later, on 15 October 1840, the grave was opened in the presence of both French and British witnesses who had been present at the original interment. With considerable force, the two layers of cement were broken. The giant stone slab was lifted up and the outer mahogany coffin appeared to be intact, bearing only slight traces of the effects of humidity. Two holes were pierced in the coffin to allow any gases to escape. The casket (used here to indicate the multiple coffins) was brought out of the tomb, and the outer mahogany coffin was cut up to facilitate the extraction of the lead coffin within it. The lead coffin was opened, the wooden coffin unnailed, and the tin casket unsealed. The body appeared to be, if not wholly intact, then certainly in an excellent state of conservation and perfectly identifiable. After two or three minutes of quick observations, the tin and wood coffins were closed, the lead coffin was re-soldered and all were placed in a second lead casket, which was also soldered shut. These were then all plqced inside an ebony sarcophagus, whose lid contained a complex closure system, including a lock and key.

Brought back to Invalides, the ebony sarcophagus was on display for twenty years before being placed in the porphyry sarcophagus, in which it has stood ever since. There is no document, account or testimony to suggest it has been opened since 15 October 1840. Nevertheless, throughout the nineteenth century, stories and plays have depicted, with varying levels of talent, Napoleon’s triumphant escape, his survival in the United States or in Australia, or even his death at Schönbrunn while climbing the perimeter wall to find his son – such is the extent to which the immortal hero has made his mark on the popular imagination.

The Substitution

The story that broke in 1969, however, was on a completely different scale to these literary flights of fancy. Right in the middle of the celebrations for the bicentenary of Napoleon’s birth, one Georges Rétif de la Bretonne published his Anglais, rendez-nous Napoléon (“English, give us Napoleon back!”), which contained a very flattering Afterword by Comte Léon, the last grandson of Napoleon and Éléonore Denuelle de La Plaigne.

Georges Rétif’s book starts with a trivial observation: on 15 October 1840, during the identification of the body on Saint Helena before its repatriation, four caskets were opened in order, without causing any surprise to the witnesses who had been present at the entombment nineteen years earlier: one in mahogany, one in lead, one in wood, and one in tin (counting from the exterior to the interior), until finally the body was revealed in a much better state of conservation than had been expected. And yet, the accounts of the entombment on 7 May 1821 state that “this first casket [of tin], having been sealed in our presence, was placed inside another made of lead, which, having also been soldered shut, was placed in a third, mahogany casket.” By this account, a wooden casket was missing!

However, this wasn’t really any kind of mystery, since, as early as 1825, Dr. Antommarchi had published the following account: “The body was placed in the tin case… It was sealed with care, and then placed in another coffin of mahogany, which we placed in a third made of lead, which was itself placed in a fourth made of mahogany.” Bertrand’s diary, written daily, is equally precise: “On 9 May, the lead coffin was placed inside a mahogany coffin.” That this procedure took place over two days is also confirmed by the later account of Ali, who recounts that the three first coffins were put in the fourth the day after the body was laid in the first coffin. In fact, as the undertaker and upholsterer Andrew Darling noted, mahogany was a rare wood on Saint Helena; he had had to find and dismember a dining table in order to build the fourth casket. So, how to explain the apparently switched order of lead and mahogany in the official account? Either, since tin is not very strong, tin caskets were always doubled with a wooden casket, and the two were considered as one, or there was an error in transcription, and the order of the second and third caskets was inverted. But it was enough for the chaos and confusion to start…

Georges Rétif had no interest in seeing things in a logical manner, and so linked this business back to another – it must be said, somewhat shady – matter: that of the Emperor’s death mask. Rétif presents a scenario that would be pretty compelling, if you were looking for a crime novel rather than a historical account. But he announces on his first page that this is “a history book.” Rétif’s hypothesis loses much of its spicy detail when it’s abridged, but I shall try to convey it both briefly and faithfully.

It runs:

The English on Saint Helena secretly exhumed Napoleon’s body around 1824 or 1825 and substituted the body of his butler, Cipriani, dressed in the uniform one of the Chasseurs de la Garde, complete with boots and medals etc., which had been recovered from one of Napoleon’s coaches that had been seized at Waterloo. Hudson Lowe, who passed through Saint Helena again in 1828, brought back to England not only the hearse that had been used in 1821 (which he owned), but also the body of Napoleon in its casket, which he buried at Westminster Abbey. In fact, Queen Victoria made a gift of the famous hearse to Napoleon III in 1858: after many years spent beneath the gallery at Invalides, it is today held in the Musée des Voitures at Malmaison.

Rétif’s theory continues:

In 1840, Bertrand, Marchand, Gourgaud etc., had easily seen that the exhumed body was not that of Napoleon, but of Cipriani. Here, they found themselves trapped, because they themselves had committed a fraud, substituting Cipriani’s death mask for that taken by Dr. Burton on 7 May, which was too grotesque to be shown to the Emperor’s family. This mask, somewhat remodelled, had been sold in dozens of copies since 1833. All in it together, the English and French hid the deception and no facts about it were ever leaked, until 130 years later Georges Rétif smelled a rat. Rétif lists all the differences between the accounts of 1821 and the rapid observations made during the three minutes in which the casket was open in 1840. If, however, there is agreement between the later account of Marchand and that of the exhumation, it is explained, for Rétif, by the fact that the valet wrote his memoires according to what he’d seen in 1840 and not according to what he remembered. Such impeccable logic! Rétif doesn’t tie himself down to one clear motif for this supposed operation, alternating between England’s desire to possess the remains of its most prestigious enemy, and their desire to destroy any chance of an investigation in the poisoning of the Emperor by arsenic since, in the meantime, Swedish physician Sten Forshufvud had published his no-less-celebrated enquiry into Napoleon’s poisoning. The three mysteries – the poisoning, the death mask and the substitution of the body – rubbed shoulders to become one of the greatest intrigues of history, which we can now finally lay to rest.

The great minds of the time, Paris-Match and France-Dimanche, jumped on the case. Even as the Napoleonic world was outraged that anyone could think that the tomb at Invalides contained unknown remains, the case reached such a degree of hype that Minister of Defence Pierre Messmer had, in the presence of Georges Rétif, to issue a firm denial. Colonial Dugué MacCarthy, curator of the Musée de l’Armée, took care to analyse each of Rétif’s arguments in a long article published by the Revue des amis du Musée de l’Armée in 1971 – « Les cendres de l’Empereur sont-elles aux Invalides? » – explaining the apparent inconsistencies and demonstrating the unrealistic nature of the substitution theory. In 1973, historian Jean Boisson published Le Retour des Cendres, a work which, it was believed, put final pay to Georges Rétif de la Bretonne and his macabre farce.

Twenty Years Later

In the early 1990s, however, an author named Bruno Roy-Henry rediscovered the case and, convinced by Rétif’s reasoning, decided to relaunch the campaign, which had languished since Rétif’s death. Moreover, in the archives held by Rétif’s widow, he found new clues which had not yet been exploited. The revival by Ben Weider and then by René Maury of poisoning theories developed a passionate following. In February 2000, Roy-Henry published a sensational article in La Revue Historia, followed in August 2000 by the publication of his work, L’énigme de l’exhumé de 1840 (“The Enigma of the Exhumed Body of 1840”). Weider and Maury, already grappling with doctors and historians, were not best pleased to find this extravagant hypothesis butting into the promotion of their own works. With a certain media-knowhow, Bruno Roy-Henry has since used all occasions in which “poisoning” is spoken off to publicise his own hypothesis, recently causing both the Musée de l’Armée and even the Minister of Culture to publish clarifications. While nominally supporting the theory of Rétif de la Bretonne, Roy-Henry in fact brings in his own theories and variations. The subject has become so complicated and embroiled that it is worthwhile analysing its individual elements.

The Coffins

Although anyone seriously looking at the sources cannot, in good faith, contest the presence of four coffins in 1821, the journalistic arguments about the number of coffins, presented with a degree of complacency, have proved impossible for the public to forget. To finally finish this controversy, those who doubt the French eye-witness accounts should direct themselves to the account given by the undertaker Darling, who explicitly states in his journal the instructions he was given for the construction of the coffins: “The coffins had to be, the first in tin…, the second in wood, the third in lead, and finally one in mahogany covered in purple velvet, if that can be obtained. I told them that I had searched for it some days earlier, but that there was none to be had on the island. It was therefore decided that the exterior coffin should be in the most beautiful mahogany that could be found on the island, which was done.”

Since the difference in the number of coffins formed the whole foundation of Rétif de la Bretonne’s argument, this evidence crumbling should bring down with it the whole edifice of his hypothesis. However, that is to put too much faith in logic, so we must also examine the other arguments.

The Silver Vases

The governor of Saint Helena demanded that the vases containing the heart and stomach of the Emperor were buried with him. Antommarchi wrote in 1825: “I filled the one containing the heart with alcohol; I sealed it hermetically, I welded it shut and then left them, each against a corner of the coffin. Napoleon was then laid out; he was placed in the tin coffin.” In 1840, all the accounts agreed that the vases had been placed between the body’s legs. We can see the shift in Antommarch’s text from “je” to “on”, marked in English by the shift from the first person to the passive voice. Since the casket measured only some 20 centimetres across at the base, it is clear that the Emperor’s booted feet would have had a hard time sliding between two vases. “On”, which is to say the valets who placed Napoleon in the casket, had therefore found a different arrangement for fitting the vases in. What could be more natural than to lightly separate the legs in order to fit the vases in there?

The Socks and Boots

Marchand dressed the Emperor in silk socks and a pair of riding boots. In 1840, the two boots were found half-open at the ends and with the toes showing. Can we deduce from this that the supposedly substituted corpse was not wearing socks? No: it is completely normal that the seams of these boots, which had suffered the climate of Saint Helena for six years – a climate in which everything mouldered –  should have come apart, as would the threads of the silk socks, especially if Marchand had chosen the best pair.

The Ribbon of the Légion d’honneur

It is a known fact that Napoleon, except for rare ceremonial occasions, wore the ribbon of the Légion d’honneur on his waistcoat and therefore underneath his uniform. It was thus that the corpse was observed in 1840, with the cross hidden by the left basque of the uniform. On 6 May 1821, Bertrand wrote: “At 4 o’clock the Emperor was dressed in the uniform of the Chasseurs de la Garde, with boots, spurs, cordons, plaques, crosses and hat.” Should we then conclude that there were at least two cordons and that they were on the uniform and put in place after it? This is in opposition to Antommarchi’s description, written in 1825, which notes “Large ribbon of the Légion d’honneur, uniform of a Colonel of the Chasseurs de la Garde.” Here, there is only one ribbon and is described before the uniform. Those who are familiar with Bertrand’s handwriting will appreciate the difficulty of using it to argue for a supposed “s” at the end of a word. Equally, why would “plaques” be in the plural?

The Decorations

Bertrand talks of plaques and orders without any precision. Marchard says: “a uniform decorated with the orders of the Légion d’honneur, the Couronne de fer, the Réunion, the Plaque and the Cordon of the Légion d’honneur.” The English ensign Darroch, on guard at Longwood the 6 and 7 May, wrote to his mother: “On the left side of the chest you could see a star and two decorations, I don’t know of which order.” As for Ali, he does not describe any decorations at all. In 1840, the witnesses observed the presence of the Plaque de la Légion d’honneur (what Darroch called “a star”) and two medals, the Légion d’honneur and Couronne de fer. Marchard is therefore the only one to cite, in 1821, the order of the Réunion and to remember that there were three medals in addition to the Plaque. Sometimes, it seems that it’s Bernard who sees one cordon too many; sometimes it’s Marchand who sees one too many medals. It seems entirely reasonable, however, to put this down to the unreliability of witnesses… 

The Spurs

Bertrand and Antommarchi both note, during the presentation of the dressed body, the presence of spurs fixed to the boots (Antommarchi even specified that these were little spurs). Marchand and Ali, who, the next day, were responsible for laying the body in the coffin, do not mention them. In 1840, the leather of the boots at the heels was found to be very deteriorated and the presence of spurs was not observed. But Darling tells us that the depth of the tin coffin was only 30.5 cm (twelve inches). As Napoleon wore a modern size 37-38, the length of the sole of his boots measured around 26 cm. In the mortuary room, the spurs could dig into the three mattresses which had been laid out (cf. Darling) but, in the coffin, with a thin mattress, the spurs would have caused problems for the stability of the feet and the tips of the boots, with spurs attached, would have almost touched the lid: it’s therefore most likely that the spurs were removed during the placement of the body in the coffin.

The State of the Body

As early as the afternoon of 7 May, the flesh of Napoleon’s face had begun to collapse, so quickly that the moulding of the plaster mask by Dr. Burton, assisted by Dr. Antommarchi, proved to be difficult. According to the ensign Darroch and other witnesses, the corpse began to give off an unpleasant odour; so they proceeded without delay to place it in the first three coffins. In 1840, it was expected that the body would be found in a state of extreme decomposition, and one of the reasons for opening the caskets was the necessity of taking sanitising measures to avoid transporting on the Belle Poule any source of infection. There was therefore a great deal of surprise to find the body, if not intact (as is sometimes suggested), then at least immediately recognisable and in a good state of conservation, as was the uniform, whose red elements were still brightly coloured. General Betrand, who, at the last moment in 1821, had seized the Emperor’s left hand and kissed it, before placing it back on the thigh rather than along the length of the body, found the hand in exactly the same position. The legs were lightly bent, likely due to a slight shift in the body after it had lost its rigor mortis. There were still a few hairs on the head, although in principal they had all been shaved off to aid in the moulding of the death mask. The lower lip had slipped down revealing three canine teeth. A light beard was visible, which could well have been either the result of the flesh sagging or the post-mortem growth of the hair, a subject on which medical experts are divided. The most likely explanation for the good state of conservation is the phenomenon of saponification (the transformation of flesh into adipocere) in the absence of air, since the coffins were hermetically sealed. Instances of this occurring without embalmment are fairly frequently observed. There is therefore no reason, in light of the observations made in 1840, to suppose that this was not the body buried in 1821, then exhumed in the presence of Darling and the other workers who had sealed the tomb nineteen years earlier, who did not signal any anomaly.

Let us add that some commentators have found, in the conservation of the body, proof of poisoning, arsenic being a compound used in taxidermy. This explanation is foolish since, to conserve a body, arsenic needs to be applied in very strong concentrations, which have nothing in common with those found by chronic, long-term arsenic poisoning.

The Tomb

From the morning of 7 May to the dawn of May 9, construction work on the burial chamber in the Geranium Valley was conducted at a steady pace. The gravesite was almost four metres deep (10 to 12 feet), two and a half metres long and a metre and a half wide, and entirely brick-lined. Eight stone pillars of 30 cm in height were placed along the bottom, on which was constructed, by assembling and cementing stone slabs, a tank – Ali called it a trough, Hudson Lowe conferred more dignity by terming it a sarcophagus – 2.15 m length and one metre wide, which was destined to receive the casket and to be closed in by a large stone slab. A hoist was mounted above the pit and two beams placed across the opening. Having been brought down from the road on the shoulders of eight English grenadiers, the casket was placed on the two beams, according to Marchand and Ali’s testimonies, to receive the last benedictions from the Abbé Vignali. The casket was then lifted up by ropes linked to the hoist, the beams were pulled back, and the descent began. Betrand wrote: “The body was lowered into the tomb with pulleys, the burial chamber was covered over with a large stone… The stone that covered the body was bricked in and afterwards everything was covered with a layer of cement. The top opening, which was about seven by four feet, was closed off and protected with a wooden base over which we secured the black drapery.”

The Two Beams

Thus begins an imprecision in the testimonies, which has been widely seized upon by the substitutionists. Describing the construction of the tomb, many pages before the account of the funeral, Marchand writes: “Measures were taken so that the humidity would not reach [the body] even after centuries, right down to the mahogany coffin which would itself lie on two pieces of wood.” These can’t be the two beams placed on the surface, since they were longer than the length of the grave. Having recounted the descent of the casket, Antommarchi returns on the following page to the construction of the burial chamber and writes: “ The casket has been placed on two strong pieces of wood, and isolated from the ground along its entire perimeter.” But Ali, for his part, write: “The casket was lowered with the aid of the hoist; the noise it made in touching the bottom resounded  in the hearts of all present.” So now the casket rests directly on the base of the grave! After this, all accounts agree that the heavy flagstone was lowered and cemented. The ring that worked as a handle was removed (Marchand, Ali and Antommarchi are all agreed).

In 1840, the work to access even this stone was difficult and took longer than had been expected. After the stone was removed, the casket was discovered, scarcely damaged by humidity, resting on the bottom of the grave, the ropes that had served to lower it still resting underneath it.

Marchand discusses the placement of the beams at the base of the grave as an intention, not a fact. On the other hand, it would be necessary to subject Antommarchi to a cross-examination, since has he not created a confusion between the two surface beams discussed previously? But the substitutionists conclude immediately from this that casket had been lifted up after 9 May and thus could have been replaced by another, without replacing the beams. Wanting to take into account Antommarchi’s text, Colonel MacCarthy admits that the casket could have been brought up in order to finish the works on the interior part of the grave. In my opinion, this reasoning is invalid since, if the works had not been finished, the flagstone would not have been sealed and the ring would certainly not have been removed! The works did effectively continue the morning after the burial but on the top part of the tomb, above the stone slab, to fill the pit with a layer of very strong cement, which they had an incredibly hard time breaking in 1840, and then with a thick layer of clay soil two metes in depth and sealing everything with three stones from New Longwood House. Marchand writes: “When I returned the next morning, three slabs supported on concrete blocks covered the opening.” On 12 May, General Bertrand declared that his wife and Antommarchi had visited the grave and had found that the opening was filled with “masonry, stone and a cast of lime.” Hudson Lowe later had the tomb surrounded with a railing, borrowed from the new house.
The argument about the ropes remains. But how can it be imagined that people who had such a perfect grasp on the details of the situation in replacing Napoleon’s body and casket with an almost identical replica could have been so stupid as to leave proofs as blatantly obvious as forgetting to put the beams at the bottom of the tomb or most of all to leave their ropes lying around as evidence of their operation, when it would have been enough to have cut them in order to pull them out from the grave? Marchand is not categorical about the presence of the beams; Antommarchi, whose testimony is never of the soundest quality, clearly causes a confusion about them; and there is no evidence to confirm that, on 9 May 1821, the casket had not been placed directly on the base of the grave without taking care to remount the ropes.

The Death Masks

To make their claims even more dramatic, the substitutionists established a link between their hypothesis and the problematic question of Napoleon’s death masks. Although this link barely stands up, it’s worth addressing it here for the sake of being exhaustive. On 6 May, when Napoleon’s face still had the serene expression that it had found after the suffering of his death, it was not possible to take a cast of his face, thanks to a fault with the plaster. The next day (May 7), Dr. Burton procured some plaster – supposedly by visiting an island where there was a deposit – and proceeded to take a cast, with the assistance of Dr. Antommarchi. But by this time, Napoleon’s face had already changed dramatically. The mould was taken in three parts and the Countess Bertrand stole the most important part – the face, which had been drying on a mantelpiece – much to the dismay of Dr. Burton, who spent years trying to reclaim his work. With this cast of the face, and the help of a young English artist called Rubidge who was passing through Saint Helena, Antommarchi modelled on the island half a dozen death masks, of which two examples were taken to Europe, one to the sculptor Canova, one to Madame Mère. It seems that they are now held in the Musée de l’Armée and at Malmaison. The other examples returned to Europe later, one brought back by Hudson Lowe in 1828. This set of masks – more reworked artworks than exact representations, insofar as at each counter-moulding the original plaster was necessarily morphed a little – was reproduced in large numbers and sold by subscription in 1833, on Antommarchi’s initiative.

But at least two other masks exist. One, in wax, lacks the nobility of Antommarchi’s; it represents a bloated old man, who somewhat resembles photographs of Jérôme Bonaparte and his son Plon-Plon as old men. Some people believe that this is the original Burton mask; others imagine that this was taken by Dr. Arnott on the night of 5-6 May, after the funeral toilet had been carried out. This hypothesis is nonsense, since Arnott never claimed to have done such a thing and since the French companions would never have let an Englishman watch over the body alone. We know that the Abbé Vignali and Chief Officer Pierron also kept watch, so the provenance of this mask remains a mystery.

Finally, there also exists in Lausanne a mask which is somewhat different to the Antommarchi mask, with a provenance that leads back to the valet Noverraz. Also moulded in wax, it includes the hairs of the beard and eyebrows, so the attribution to Napoleon is contestable. It was thanks to this piece that Georges Rétif de la Bretonne’s imagination began to run wild. Although nothing indicates that a death mask of the butler Cipriani had been taken after this brutal death in February 1818, and although there are no traces of any particular friendship between Noverraz and Cipriani, Georges Rétif relates the tale that Noverraz was in possession of a death mask of his friend Cipriani and that, the Burton mask being too horrid to be presented to the family, the Cipriani mask was used instead to create the Antommarchi mask. It was for this reason, he claims, that the companions were so amazed in 1840 to open the grave and discover the face that they had used for their own deceit – the English, of course, having swapped the body of Napoleon for the body of Cipriani in the meantime – and it was this that accounted for the haste with which they resealed the coffins. Marshal Bertrand survived for years after the return of the remains – Noverraz for nine, Gourgaud for twelve, Saint-Denis for sixteen, Arthur Betrand for thirty-one, Marchand and Pierron for thirty-six years. Not a single one of them ever let the slightest detail escape, nor showed any signs of remorse for the ignoble deceptions in which they had been the accomplices! Yet the substitutionists do not miss a single occasion to demand the opening of the sarcophagus at Invalides and the coffins within to allow the examination of the body and the objects found with it, as well as to take anatomical samples with a view to performing a mitochondrial DNA analysis against the female descendants of the Bonaparte family (descended from Caroline Murat).
To create even more publicity for thi
s request to the highest authorities of the French state, Bruno Roy-Henry published, in January 2003, an enlarged version of his work, in which he developed two new arguments to which our desire for exhaustiveness demands we now attend.

The Hearse

This latest episode in the conspiracy theory brings the Saint Helena hearse into the spotlight. This hearse was actually the base platform of a carriage used for a time by the Emperor, from which Darling’s workers had removed the cabin. It thus appeared as a long platform, 198 cm by 98 cm, supplemented by a small lip on the harness end. Four strips were fixed to the platform, delimiting a hexagonal space for the space of the casket. The base of this, at the harness end, measured 34.9 cm.

Now, the fourth coffin (in mahogany) was not preserved in 1840, but was rather cut up and the pieces distributed to members of the mission. General Gourgaud received the piece that had constituted the small transverse side of the coffin and this relic survives today in the Musée Napoléonien de l’île d’Aix (the inventory suggests that it came from the foot-end of the coffin). The panel piece measures 39.6 cm high by 35.7 cm wide, with a thickness of 2 cm. Can we deduce, as Roy-Henry does, that the panel would not fit between the straps (oversized by 8 mm!) and that it comes from a different coffin – not the one used in 1821, but the one used in the substitution? No, we cannot, because a simple calculation – too simple, really – shows that it would be possible to move the coffin 3.5 cm along the platform in order for it to fit between the strips. Darling left us the interior dimensions of the coffin, but we do not know the degree of adjustment that could have taken place between the four elements or the exterior dimensions of the mahogany coffin. In reasonably estimating a length of 194 cm, with the platform of the hearse measuring 198 cm, the head of the coffin is not hanging off the edge and the task of conveying the coffin could have been done without any difficulty. Anyway, Roy-Henry’s reasoning supposes that the four strips were put in place in 1821 and not later – in 1857, for example, when the hearse was prepared and reconditioned to be brought back to France. An examination of the hearse does not therefore introduce “a new element” into the case files.

It should be noted that the strips delimited a hexagonal area for the coffin, while the majority of engravings illustrating the events of 1821 and 1840 represent the coffins in four-sided form, slightly wider at the head than at the feet. Now, Darling’s description clearly states that he had built a six-sided coffin, wider across the shoulders than at the head or the feet, as the placement of the four strips on the hearse would have us believe. If you see an engraving of the period illustrating the exhumation of 1840 and representing a four-sided coffin, only slightly wider at the head than at the feet, don’t imagine that, in conducting a substitution, the English would have been stupid enough to make such an obvious mistake! This difference serves only to illustrate the fallibilities of eye-witness accounts, memories, drawings made retrospectively, and hearsay.

A Fragment of Skin

Indefatigable researcher, Bruno Roy-Henry discovered at the Musée de l’Armée a miniscule portion of skin to add to this curious history. Effectively, the satin veil that covered the lid of the tin coffin was removed on 15 October 1840 and was used to cover up the body. It was rolled up by Dr. Guillard, doctor aboard the Belle Poule, who observed a light layer of skin from the face sticking to the veil. Guillard could, therefore, have taken a sample of this loose skin, although no accounts signal that he did. The doctor’s descendants delivered this “relic” to Napoleon III, who supposedly offered it to one of his aides de camp, Firmin Rainbeaux, whose heirs presented it in 1936 to the Musée de l’Armée. The museum accepted it, displayed it, and thus gave credence to its origins.

A DNA analysis of this piece of skin would present fewer problems and raise fewer ethical issues than the re-opening of the Invalides sarcophagus and coffins. Technically, however, it is feared that the sample has been polluted due to the handling it has undergone, that it has been in mediocre conditions of conservation, and that its small size would not allow a control test to be taken, all of which combines to remove any real academic interest from an operation whose results would presumably be fairly random and would only serve to relaunch the polemic.
Conclusion

Judges and police officers are only too aware of the unreliability of witnesses. That’s why, faced with contradictory testimony, judges sometimes organise reconstructions, to try and shed greater light on events as they actually happened. Unfortunately, it is hardly possible for us to cross-examine the witnesses to the Emperor’s death on Saint Helena about the discrepancies between their various accounts. What’s more, the brevity of the period for which the coffins were opened in 1840 – which we can put down to a concern not to allow contact with the atmosphere to destroy what remains were left, rather than the Machiavellian wranglings of an Anglo-French conspiracy – allows some uncertainties to remain. In the absence of cross-examinations, historians have to seek out the synthesis of the information they posses, not exploit a few minor clerical errors to create increasingly outlandish hypotheses. Novelists or scriptwriters, on the other hand, have free rein, and can use either the lack of precise information or the contradictions between witness accounts to create whatever mysteries and intrigues they like, especially if they do so with talent, as we have been able to see in recent cinematographic endeavours.
We cannot, however, mix these genres, and, voluntarily or not, consciously or not, this is what the proponents of the substitution theory have done. In view of the facts and the documents, in all logic and without fantasy, there is no real evidence to suggest that the body present in the tomb at Invalides is any other than Napoleon’s. It is psychologically troubling that Georges Rétif de la Bretonne was persuaded of the veracity of his own hoax. His disciple, Bruno Roy-Henry, today uses more subtle reasoning. He recognises, when he has to, the most flagrant of Rétif’s mistakes, then rephrases the same affirmation in a different way, so as to distil suspicion and maintain doubt. His ultimate objective is to open the tomb at Invalides and identify, by the most modern scientific methods, the remains that it contains. However, if the opening of the coffins in 1840 was justified as a principle of precaution and (as we might think of it today) as a matter of Health and Safety, we hope to have shown in this article that nothing justifies this demand for a re-identification of the body, which would be nothing more than profanity inspired by hype.

Translated from the French by Francesca Whitlum-Cooper