Was Napoleon Poisoned?

The Emperor Napoleon died on the 5 May 1821 aged 52 on the island of St Helena where he had been exiled by the British following his defeat at Waterloo. The official cause of death was stomach cancer.

In the late 19th Century however new theories started appearing that suggested that the emperor’s demise may have been due to more sinister reasons. The British, it was claimed, had poisoned their erstwhile foe with arsenic. And when the diaries of Napoleon’s valet Louis Marchand came out in 1955, his depiction of Napoleon’s last months on St Helena and the portrayal of his agony leading up to his death seemed to be consistent with arsenic poisoning.

Further impetus was given to the poisoning theory in 2001 when Pascal Kintz a forensic expert analysed a lock of Napoleon’s hair, he concluded “The level of arsenic found in Napoleon's hair is higher than seven to 38 times normal amounts and is an unmistakable sign of poisoning”

The Wallpaper Theory
So how was he murdered? One of the most intriguing theories is that the wallpaper in Napoleon’s room on St Helena contained a dye called Scheele’s Green which had a colouring pigment that converted to copper arsenite (a vapour form of arsenic) when it became damp. So the when Napoleon became ill he was confined to his room which made him even more ill which eventually finished him off.

Who Murdered Him?
There are a number of conspirators on St Helena at that time who could have administered the poison such as Napoleon’s aides with the backing of the British governor of the island Hudson Lowe

However recent research has cast doubt on the poisoning theory. They point to the fact that Napoleon’s father also died of stomach cancer. Furthermore many hair tonics of the day contained a mixture which contained traces of arsenic. Moreover, a recent analysis of the post mortem taken at the time of his death shows symptoms consistent with stomach cancer.

Calls for Napoleons body to be exhumed from his resting place at Les Invalides in Paris in order to compare his DNA with the hair samples have been rejected by the French government.

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