Napoleon died on St Helena on 5 May 1821. His mortal remains were buried on the island four days later, where they remained until October 1840, when a French delegation came to collect them and bring them back to France, where they were laid to rest at the Invalides. This is what every history enthusiast knows. But as everyone is aware, some maintain that Napoleon’s body was “stolen” and that the corpse of one of his servants was put in its place… The approaching bicentenary of the Emperor’s death appears to be giving new energy to the supporters of this absurd thesis. So (oh dear!), one more time, here are some facts that ought to be enough to bring everyone to their senses.
In 1969, a journalist calling himself Georges Rétif de La Bretonne (his real name was Rétif) published a book entitled: Anglais! rendez-nous Napoléon! [Englishman! give us back Napoleon!] According to the author, between 1821 and 1840, the British exhumed the Emperor’s body and replaced it with that of his butler, Cipriani, who had himself died on St Helena in February 1818. Rétif further stated that Napoleon’s remains were transferred to Westminster Abbey of all places, where they are supposed to have remained under an (of course) unmarked and unidentified slab.
One of the consequences of media popularisation of the theory (they love a juicy scandal) is that it is not uncommon for people to say: “if we want to be sure Napoleon really is in the Invalides, we have to open the tomb beneath the Dome so as to identify the body”.
However, if historical enigmas are good for anything, they do at least remind us that history, even in its most elementary and simplified form, cannot exist without a minimum of objectivity and historical method. The theory of the substitution of Napoleon’s body is a classic demonstration: it is based on a single document and falls to pieces when this document is analysed critically. And once the cloud of “intrigue” has evaporated, the supporters of the “substitutionist” thesis proffer their “deep-seated conviction”, sometimes even aided and abetted by a psychic medium or two and witness-statements from none other than Napoleon himself!
First of all, it should be noted that Napoleon’s death, autopsy, burial (1821) and exhumation (1840) are all events that are highly “documented”: namely, minutes, letters, witnesses’ memoirs, and even sketches made from life. None of these documents leaves even the slightest shadow of a doubt about the Emperor’s presence at the Invalides.
So, you may ask, what exactly is the substitution thesis based on?
Episode 1: After being autopsied on 6 May, Napoleon’s body was laid to rest (in the late afternoon of the 7th) in a tin coffin encased inside a wooden coffin itself placed in another coffin made of lead. A fourth coffin made of fine mahogany was delivered on the evening of 8 May. The Emperor was therefore buried inside four coffins, one inside each other, a fact which is confirmed by all the memoirs of the witnesses. Despite this concert of certainty, nevertheless, the supporters of the substitution believed they could exploit a secondary point: namely that the Emperor’s valet, Louis Marchand, had drawn up a report on the evening of 7 May, in which he mentioned only three coffins.
Episode 2: On 15 October 1840, when Napoleon’s body was exhumed and brought back to France, the coffins were opened in order to verify that the remains were there. All the testimonies agree that four coffins had to be opened.
Episode 3: Leaving aside all the testimonies and archival evidence that there were indeed four coffins in 1821, Rétif and his disciples concentrated on the report of 7 May in order to affirm that there were only three. And so, if there were three in 1821 and four in 1840, it is because in the meantime, Napoleon’s tomb had been opened in order to steal his body and replace it with that of Cipriani. QED.
You have to be quite ‘creative’ to base the substitution thesis on the Marchand’s report alone, who, on 7 May, had indeed seen three coffins but who did not then know that the fourth would be delivered the next day. Indeed, the very same Marchand speaks of four coffins in his later Memoirs.
But substitutionists do not lack ‘creativity’: they develop their theory by targeting tiny contradictions in the accounts, seeing disturbing facts where everything could be easily explained, refuting the documents that contradict their thesis, and totally over-interpreting those which provide the smallest of hints of something, that noone could ever call credibility.
Almost silent on the reasons “why” this might have happened, the “substitutionists” are on the other hand very keen on the “how”, even when it gets in the way of their argument. Since they know that the governor of St Helena, the terrible Hudson Lowe, returned to the island in 1828, they concluded that it was he who carried out the substitution. He exhumed both Napoleon and Cipriani, dressed the latter with an Emperor’s uniform (ten years after the servant’s death, it can’t have been very easy), attached (badly) some decorations, a hat, silver boxes containing the heart and stomach, proceeded to rebury Cipriani this time in the Emperor’s tomb on St Helena and then loaded the heavy coffins of the victor of Austerlitz onto a boat, bound for England and Westminster Abbey. All this took place, of course, without anyone noticing or noting it in any document, even though during the three days and two nights he spent on the island (including a military review, two dinners, various visits) Lowe was constantly surrounded and accompanied. Similarly, the British archives do not contain a trace of a burial in Westminster Abbey in 1828 or 1829. To these objections, the substitutionists replied that it is quite normal that no such document exists… since the file is of course top-secret!
Because according to them, everyone in the “official circles” was aware of the affair. And the fact that, during the exhumation of 1840, all the witnesses affirmed that it was indeed Napoleon’s body (well preserved) that they saw when the coffins were opened, well, actually they were lying… to prevent the discovery of the substitution of bodies from causing a “war” with Britain. And ever since then, there has been a kind of “conspiracy of silence”. The secret has been spread by word of mouth, and those who are the holders of it, whether it is the British government, or our kings and presidents, they are not about to spill the beans. Even Napoleon III was aware of this, which would explain why he had reduced the budget for the Invalides tomb. All these powers-that-be would defend an “official history” in the interests of the preservation of the “Entente Cordiale” with “perfidious Albion”.
And to add more spice to the plot, behind it all is a sordid story of big money: if we were finally to recognize (because it is no longer a question of proving) that Napoleon is not at the Invalides, the stream of pilgrims there (one million visitors per year) would immediately cease, plunging the Musée de l’Armée into an inextricable financial crisis.
When examined closely, as a historian, with supporting documents and with an alert critical sense, the thesis of substitution reveals itself to be based solely on the unbridled imagination of its creators. It must be rejected without any hesitation. Therefore, we can only refuse the equally ridiculous idea of opening the tomb of the Dome: there is no serious justification for the desecration of one of the most important places in the French national memory.
March 2019 (English translation RY)