How did Napoleon Bonaparte die?
Napoleon Bonaparte
August 15, 1769 — May 5, 1821
Longwood House, Saint Helena
Napoleone di Buonaparte was born in Corsica a year after France bought it, spoke French with an accent his whole life, and was mocked for both at the military school that admitted him at nine. He was a general at twenty-four, First Consul at thirty, Emperor at thirty-five, and, at forty-five, a prisoner on a wet rock in the South Atlantic that it took the British two months to reach. He was fifty-one when he died there, in a damp house infested with rats, attended by a doctor he didn't trust and a household that had spent six years quarrelling.
He is still the person more books have been written about than anyone except Jesus, and the argument about him has never settled: the man who ended the Revolution's chaos and wrote the legal code half of Europe still uses, and the man whose wars killed somewhere between three and six million people. He was short only in English propaganda. He dictated to four secretaries at once. He could sleep anywhere and did.
His body was returned to France in 1840 and lies under the dome of Les Invalides in six nested coffins. The hair clipped from his head on Saint Helena has been tested more times than any hair in history.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Stomach cancer, with a perforated gastric ulcer (autopsy by Dr. Francesco Antommarchi, witnessed by British surgeons, May 6, 1821)
He had been ill for most of his last year, with stomach pain, vomiting, and steady weight loss, and spent his final weeks mostly in bed at Longwood House. He died at 5:49 p.m. on May 5, 1821, aged 51, after days of semi-consciousness; his last words were variously reported as "France, the army, the head of the army, Josephine."
The autopsy was performed the next day by his Corsican physician, Francesco Antommarchi, in the presence of seven British doctors. All of them agreed on what they saw: a stomach cancer, an ulcer that had eaten through the stomach wall, and a liver that Antommarchi, alone, described as enlarged. The British officers signed a report naming stomach cancer. His father had died of the same thing at 38. The finding was accepted for 140 years.
In 1961, a Swedish dentist, Sten Forshufvud, had locks of Napoleon's hair tested and found arsenic at levels many times normal. He argued that the Emperor had been slowly poisoned by a member of his household, probably the Count de Montholon, and that the symptoms recorded in his final months matched chronic arsenic poisoning. Later tests of other hair samples, including hair from 1805 and 1814, long before Saint Helena, also found high arsenic. A 2008 Italian study concluded that the levels, though high by modern standards, were typical of the era and not consistent with poisoning. The wallpaper in his bedroom at Longwood was found to contain an arsenic-based green pigment that releases arsenic vapor in damp conditions.
What happened
The family hasn’t confirmed a cause. These are the community’s theories, in the order the community finds them most likely. Everyone here is anonymous.
Seven doctors watched the autopsy and saw stomach cancer. His hair is full of arsenic. His father died of the same cancer. His wallpaper was poison. Was he killed, or did he die?
The page creator
- Most likely48 of 55 readers find this likely
Stomach cancer, exactly as the autopsy said
Seven doctors from two hostile nations stood around the body and agreed. His father died of the same disease. The symptoms of his last year are the symptoms of stomach cancer: pain after eating, vomiting, wasting, then collapse. A 2007 re-analysis of the autopsy notes staged the tumor and concluded it was terminal. Everything else on this page is an attempt to make a boring death interesting.
Anonymous. Says they are a gastroenterologist.
ReportThe page creator can confirm or correct this. - Also raised24 of 39 readers find this likely
The wallpaper: arsenic vapor from Scheele's green in a damp house
A real phenomenon: the green pigment in Longwood's wallpaper contained copper arsenite, and in humid conditions mold converts it into a toxic arsenic gas. Victorian households were poisoned by their wallpaper, documented and fatal. Longwood was notoriously damp. This explains the arsenic without needing a murderer. It doesn't explain the cancer, but it could explain why he was sick and weak for so long before the cancer finished him.
Anonymous. Says they are a chemist.
- Also raised19 of 31 readers find this likely
His doctors killed him with the treatment
In his final days he was given large doses of calomel (mercurous chloride) and tartar emetic (antimony), standard purgatives of the day, in a body that was already bleeding internally. A 2004 study in the journal of the American Society of Clinical Pathology argued that the combination caused a fatal drop in potassium and a heart rhythm failure. On this view he had terminal cancer and was still, in the last 48 hours, killed by medicine.
Anonymous.
- Also raised17 of 45 readers find this likely
Chronic arsenic poisoning by someone in his own household
Forshufvud's theory, developed over decades with the Canadian Ben Weider: a member of the exile household, most likely Montholon, dosed his wine with arsenic for years, then finished him with a calomel purge that reacted with the arsenic. The symptoms in his valet's diary do track chronic arsenic exposure in places, and the hair levels are high. The problems: his hair was high in arsenic years before anyone had a motive; the levels match his era; and arsenic doesn't cause the cancer that seven doctors saw.
Anonymous.
When the family confirms the cause, the confirmed answer moves to the top and gets this mark. Theories stay, but are labeled as what people thought before the family knew.
Stomach cancer in a 51-year-old with a family history, with months of pain, vomiting, and weight loss, and a perforated ulcer found at autopsy, is a complete and ordinary explanation. The 2007 study that re-examined the autopsy descriptions and his trouser measurements (he lost about 11 kilograms in the last six months) concluded the cancer was advanced enough to have killed him within a year wherever he was.
Arsenic in hair: in 1821 arsenic was in medicines, cosmetics, hair tonics, wallpaper, and the smoke from coal fires. Hair from across early-nineteenth-century Europe routinely tests high. The question is not whether his hair has arsenic in it (it does) but whether it has more than his contemporaries' (the best studies say no) and whether chronic arsenic poisoning produces a perforated stomach cancer (it does not).
Autopsy report of Francesco Antommarchi and the British surgeons' report, May 6, 1821 Sten Forshufvud, Who Killed Napoleon? (1961) Lugli et al., "Napoleon Bonaparte's gastric cancer: a clinicopathologic approach to staging," Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 2007 Lin et al. / Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics hair study, 2008 Wikipedia, "Death of Napoleon"
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