On This Day In History: Napoleon Bonaparte Dies In Exile On The Island Of Saint Helena – On May 5, 1821

MessageToEagle.com – On May 5, 1821 – Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte – whose empire covered all of Europe – dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Bonaparte, born in Corsica, served in the French Revolutionary Army and then in the government.

His reorganized army defeated Austria in 1802, and in 1804 he introduced a new system of law called the Napoleonic Code.

In 1804 he was declared emperor and within less than five years his empire stretched through Europe.

However, by 1812, losses began to mount after an ill-planned invasion of Russia and the loss of Spain during the Peninsula War.

In 1814, he was exiled to the island of Elba but escaped back to France a year later. After raising a new army, he was defeated at Waterloo by forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington.

After being exiled to Saint Helena, he died six years later. In 1840, his body was returned to Paris where it was interred in the Hotel des Invalides.

Was Napoleon Bonaparte poisoned? This question has baffled historians since the defeated French emperor’s death.

Napoleon himself had suspicions, writing in his will a mere three weeks before his demise at age 51.

 

“I die before my time, murdered by the English oligarchy and its assassin.”

Among many theories for the exiled emperor’s death, there is especially one interesting; it is arsenic poisoning—an idea reinforced by the remarkable condition of his body when it was exhumed in 1840 for reburial in Paris.

Because it is also toxic to microorganisms, arsenic slows down the decomposition of human tissue, a phenomenon described as “arsenic mummification.” Subsequent 20th-century tests of preserved locks of Napoleon’s hair tested positive for arsenic.

But even if arsenic was the cause of death—which has not been proven with certainty—Napoleon’s charge of foul play may not be justified. A less dramatic but nonetheless plausible alternative is that Napoleon could have been exposed to the poison through the toxic fumes given off by wallpaper at Longwood, his prison home.

In what is perhaps the most convincing hypothesis, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2004, an international team of toxicologists and pathologists concluded that Napoleon’s death was a case of “medical misadventure,” and that the various drugs he was administered combined with the arsenic and a weak state of health to create a fatal imbalance and cardiac arrest. They added,

“If the arsenic poisoning was intentional, it would still be homicide.”

This mystery has never been solved.

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