For almost two centuries in the so-called "Napoleonic circles" there has been a curious legend about the death of the Emperor. There is a legend about the flight of Napoleon from the island of St. Helena, organized by a secret Bonapartist organization and based on the replacement of Napoleon by an extremely similar person to him …
According to rumors, from the very beginning of his reign, Napoleon gave the order to search for his counterparts throughout Europe. As a result, four were found. Subsequently, their fate developed in different ways: with one soon misfortune happened, he fell from his horse and became a useless cripple, the second turned out to be feeble-minded, the third secretly accompanied the Emperor for a long time and, allegedly, was even with him during exile to Elba Island, but was soon killed under unexplained circumstances.
The fate of the fourth doppelganger of the Emperor François-Eugene Robo is the most interesting and mysterious.
Napoleon Bonaparte after his abdication at the Palace of Fontainebleau. Delaroche (1845)
As you know, after the defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the distant island of St. Helena. Corporal Robo, who became useless to anyone, returned to his house in the village of Baleykur.
Quiet provincial life flowed sluggishly and monotonously. But suddenly (this was in 1818) something very unusual happened in Baleikur: a luxurious carriage drove up to the village house of Robo, one of those that rarely happened to be seen in those parts (maybe that is why it was remembered by many).
It is unknown who was in this carriage behind the drawn curtain. In any case, the carriage stood at the house for at least two hours. The owner of the house later told the neighbors that the man who came to him first wanted to buy rabbits from him, then for a long time persuaded him to hunt together, but he allegedly did not agree. A few days later, Robo disappeared from the village along with his sister.
Later, the authorities woke up and began to search for the former double of the Emperor. In the end, they found only his sister, who lived in the city of Nantes, and in an incomprehensible source of luxury. She stated that the money was given to her by her brother, who went on a long trip, but where exactly, she does not know: "I got hired as a sailor and went to sea, swimming somewhere …". Subsequently, Robo never showed up anywhere else.
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It was in this way that the legend was built that Napoleon managed to escape from Saint Helena, leaving a double in his place (presumably François-Eugène Robo). In any case, Napoleon's cousin, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, and Emperor Letizia's mother in the fall of 1818 and in 1819, were, oddly enough, really convinced that the prisoner of Saint Helena had managed to escape.
That is why they rejected the opportunity to send first-class doctors to Napoleon, which was associated with considerable expenses, and sent only the young doctor Francesco Antommarchi in exchange. Madame Letizia, who did not spare anything for her children, of course, did not want to spend money on the treatment of some kind of double who replaced her great son.
Napoleon on Saint Helena. Artist Benjamin Robert Haydon. National Portrait Gallery. London.
Let us now listen to other arguments of the supporters of this theory, for example, T. Wheeler, the author of the book “Who rests here. A New Study on Napoleon's Last Years”(New York, 1974).
The author of the book emphasizes that Napoleon already had the experience of imperceptible disappearance from the island - in 1815, he escaped from Elba. Preparations for this flight included the use of techniques that allowed to deceive the enemy scouts, who were sent to Napoleon by the British Commissioner at Elba Campbell. The Governor of Saint Helena, General Goodson Law, who was simply obsessed with espionage, did the same.
Since the secrets of preparing to escape from the Elbe were never revealed, they were repeated on St. Helena. It cannot be believed that a man like Napoleon was willing to accept his fate. He decided to leave the island, but so that the jailers would not even suspect about it after his escape.
Napoleon deliberately exacerbated relations with the English governor and his officials, acting out scenes of anger in order to keep his guards away from Longwood. Since all the correspondence of Napoleon and his entourage was first looked through by Goodson Law himself, and then in London, the captives, starting in 1816, resorted to sending secret couriers.
The Bonapartists made more than one attempt to organize the flight of Napoleon. One of them, in particular, was undertaken by his former Egyptian mistress Pauline Fures, whom, after the breakup, Napoleon found a new rich husband - a retired officer Henri de Rancho, immediately made consul in Santender (Spain), and then in Gothenburg (Sweden).
Margarita-Polina Fures
Countess de Rancho (as Pauline began to call herself) in 1816 arrived in Rio de Janeiro with her lover Jean-Opost Bellard and bought a ship there, intended to save Napoleon. Despite the failure of this attempt, Polina continued to act together with other Bonapartists in Brazil for a long time and died on March 18, 1869, having outlived Napoleon by almost half a century.
Napoleon received several more offers of escape from his supporters (it is widely known, for example, the proposed rescue option on the Fulton submarine). But he invariably rejected them. Is it because I had another, more reliable option in stock?
Memories of Napoleon's associates about life in Longwood are very biased, and the memoirs of the British were transmitted only by rumors, since only certain individuals were occasionally invited to the former Emperor - doctors, artists or travelers who came to the island for a short time. None of the outsiders who visited Napoleon from 1818 to 1821 had known him in earlier times. None of the British since the fall of 1818 have seen the famous prisoner near.
But let's return to the mysterious disappearance of François-Eugène Robo, because this legend, carefully researched by the journalist-historian Alexander Gorbovsky living in London, should have a continuation.
Soon after the disappearance of Robo in the Italian city of Verona, the appearance of a certain Frenchman Révar was noticed, who opened a small store with his companion. It is thanks to this companion, the merchant Petrucci, that a fairly noticeable trace of Mr. Révar remained in the memory of the descendants.
Meanwhile, the famous prisoner on St. Helena suddenly became very forgetful and began to confuse obvious facts from his previous life in his stories. And his handwriting suddenly changed greatly, and he himself became very obese and awkward. The official authorities attributed this to the influence of not very comfortable conditions of detention on the God-forsaken island.
Napoleon on Saint Helena
The behavior of the visiting Frenchman Reward in Verona was also very strange: he rarely showed up in his store, and almost never went outside. At the same time, all the neighbors noticed that he was very similar to the portraits of Napoleon, and gave him the nickname "Emperor".
Revar himself responded to this treatment with only a restrained smile. With regard to commerce, then, according to Petrucci, his companion did not have the slightest talent for it. When it turned out that the next undertaking brought him only a loss, this did not upset him in the least. He seemed indifferent to money, and one wondered why he chose this particular occupation.
This went on for several years. On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte officially died on St. Helena. And on September 23, 1823, the owner of the shop Révar, who looked like him like two drops of water, abandoned everything and left Verona forever. This happened under very strange circumstances.
At noon, a messenger knocked on the door of the store, where both partners were at that hour. Making sure that it was Monsieur Révar in front of him, he handed him a letter sealed with a wax seal. After reading it, Revard excitedly informed Petrucci that urgent circumstances were forcing him to leave, and went home to get ready for the trip.
Two hours later, he returned without luggage. The carriage in which the messenger had arrived was still waiting for him at the porch. Saying goodbye, Revard left an envelope for his companion: if for some reason he did not return after three months, Petrucci had to deliver the letter to its destination. When the sound of the carriage on the stone pavement died down, Petrucci glanced at the envelope. It was inscribed: "To His Majesty the King of France."
Not three months later, nor ever did Monsieur Révar return to Verona. Following this promise, Petrucci went to Paris and delivered the letter to the King of France. For his troubles he was rewarded, and inexplicably generously. As for his stay at the French court, Petrucci preferred to remain silent about him. And he was silent for almost thirty years.
And after they passed, Petrucci unexpectedly appeared to the officials of Verona and made an extremely important statement, confirmed by an oath. His every word was recorded by a clerk, and under the document, as expected, signed by Petrucci himself, officials and witnesses. The last sentence in the document was the statement that Petrucci's companion for five years was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte.
It is impossible to say with certainty what happened to Revar-Napoleon after he left Verona. True, some biographers of the Emperor associate this disappearance with the incident at Schönbrunn Castle in the suburbs of Vienna on the night of September 4, all of the same 1823.
The sentry who guarded the castle, where at that time Napoleon's son was dying of scarlet fever, shot at night a stranger who was trying to climb over the stone palace fence. When the authorities examined the body of the victim, who had no documents, the police immediately cordoned off the castle. What for? No explanation followed.
At the urgent request of the former Empress Marie-Louise, the body of the murdered stranger was buried on the territory of the castle next to the place that was intended for the burial of Napoleon's wife and son. This intriguing story, with some variations, has been used more than once in literature.
François-Eugene Robo was more fortunate: his death, it seems, was not violent. According to Alexander Gorbovsky, a record has been preserved in the church book of his native village: “François-Eugene Robo, was born in this village in 1771. He died on St. Helena. The date of death, however, was erased. The only reason why someone considered it necessary to do this may be the coincidence of this date with the day of Napoleon's death, Gorbovsky believes.
It is clear that this beautiful legend does not and cannot be any official confirmation. There are only indirect facts that we will try to analyze.
If none of this happened, and in 1821 the real Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St. Helena, then how then can one explain the fact that in 1817-1818. the island under various pretexts left many of the closest confidants of the Emperor: secretary Bartolle de Las Kaz, General Gaspar Gurgo, then six servants at once, as well as servants of Napoleon's entourage? It is known that by mid-1819, only half of the French who had previously lived there remained in Longwood.
In addition, some biographers of Napoleon quote a letter from the wife of General Henri-Gracien Bertrand, who was one of the Emperor's associates during his years of glory and accompanied him in exile with his wife.
This letter is dated August 25, 1818 (recall once again that according to the generally accepted version, Napoleon died in 1821). The letter contains a strange phrase: “Victory, victory! Napoleon left the island. And that's all. No comments, no explanations. The person to whom the letter was addressed apparently did not need explanations.
And shortly before this strange letter was written, a fast American sailing ship appeared near the island and began to raid, which caused great alarm among the British. The point is not only that the very behavior of the sailboat aroused their suspicion, but also that in the event of any complications, none of the British ships nearby could keep up with the American. It is likely that Robo's twin arrived on this ship and Napoleon himself left.
But the double (such is its purpose) had to die. This was important both for the "Napoleonic legend" itself, and for saving the participants of the escape from cruel persecution. Napoleon himself, supposedly leaving for Verona, continued to keep in touch with Robo and probably sent his original testament (after all, it was “written” on the island of St. Helena in the presence of only one adjutant Charles-Tristan Montolon).
The version about the substitution of Napoleon for Robo is not supported by any evidence. All the documentary evidence cited by her adherents, for example, the entry in the archives of the village of Baleycourt, department of Meuse, in the homeland of François-Eugène Robo, that he died on the island of Saint Helena, upon verification, turned out to be fiction.
The legend also suffers from obvious contradictions. Robo, in particular, left Baleikur at the end of 1818, while the disease that drove Napoleon to the grave was discovered a year before, in October 1817. Yes, and the papers that Napoleon wrote and dictated in the last years and even months of his life, testified to the knowledge of hundreds of things, many details, details that could only be known to the Emperor, and not his double.
In addition, in 1823 Napoleon would have reached the age of 54, and it is unlikely that this obese and athletic person could climb over the high stone fence that surrounded Schönbrunn Castle at night.
But nevertheless, the main argument confirming the version that in 1821 it was not Napoleon who was buried on St. Helena, but someone else, is the hypothesis of the French historian Georges Retif de la Bretonne, developed in recent years by the researcher of the Napoleonic era, Bruno Roy- Henri.
The essence of this hypothesis, made by Retif de la Bretonne in 1969 in the book "The British, Give Us Napoleon Back", is that the British allegedly replaced the body of the deceased Napoleon or the one who pretended to be Napoleon with the corpse of the former housekeeper of the Emperor Francesco Cypriani …
In 1818, this Corsican was convicted of spying for the British and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In any case, his grave on the island was never found. According to the French historian, in 1840, it was the remains of this very Cypriani, and not Napoleon, that were solemnly transferred to Paris (from ourselves we add: or the one who pretended to be Napoleon).
In support of his hypothesis, Retif de la Bretonne gives several reasons, the most important of which are the absence in 1840 of some elements of the uniform and awards of the deceased in comparison with what he had in 1821. In particular, it is indicated the absence of one of the orders listed by the valet Marchand, and the spurs, which were not seen by any of the participants in the exhumation in 1840, although they were in 1821.
In Marchand's Memoirs, it is clearly stated that the Emperor wore "a green uniform with red trimmings of the Jaeger Guards, adorned with the Orders of the Legion of Honor, the Order of the Iron Crown, the Order of Reunification, the Badge of the Great Eagle and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor." In 1840, the Order of Reunification was not on the uniform of the deceased.
The same Marchand notes that Napoleon was wearing "riding boots", that is, with spurs. General Bertrand also points out the presence of spurs. In 1840, the boots were already spurless. In addition, the position of the above-described insignia, described by the always accurate General Bertrand, was significantly violated.
Roy-Henri, continuing the work of Retif de la Bretonne, is also sure that it is not Napoleon who solemnly rests in the Les Invalides in the center of Paris. His book "The Secret of the Exhumation of 1840", published in Paris in 2000, is fully devoted to the proof of this.
Roy-Henri's argument, supplementing the above arguments, is an analysis of the position of the Emperor's knees during exhumation. They were slightly bent, supposedly in order to place the body in a narrow coffin. But the coffin was 1.78 m long, and Napoleon's height was 1.69 m, that is, there was no need to bend your knees!
The remaining 10 cm, even if we left 4 cm at the height of the heels, quite allowed the Emperor's body to lie stretched out to its full height. And he was lying at full height in 1821, and none of the burial witnesses had ever noted such a problem.
Exhumation of Napoleon's body in 1840.
The argument that the knees of the deceased could bend themselves during the careless carrying of the coffin by the English grenadiers does not stand up to criticism: the Emperor died on May 5, and the coffin was moved for burial on May 9, that is, four days later.
Another important point: according to the testimony of Dr. Francesco Antommarchi and the governor of the island of Goodson Law, the silver vessels containing the heart and stomach of the Emperor were placed along the edges of the coffin in 1821 (free space allowed for this), and in 1840 they were found during exhumation under the bent knees of the deceased, who at the same time turned out to be slightly taller.
Also in 1840, silk stockings were not found on the legs of the deceased, which, according to the testimony of the same Marchand, were worn on the feet of the Emperor under boots. Couldn't they have disappeared by themselves? And finally, the imperial death plaster mask, made by Dr. Antommarchi, whose is it really?
Roy-Henri claims that it is fake, because it contains dark hairs from about three days' stubble (3-5 mm), while Napoleon was carefully shaved.
In the Museum of Lausanne (Switzerland), Napoleon's death mask and a lock of his hair are on display. The mask was donated to the museum in 1848 by Jean-Abraham Noverra, one of the Emperor's servants on the island of Saint Helena, whom he called “his Swiss bear” and to whom he deposited his household items before his death.
A lock of hair was allegedly cut after the death of Napoleon and, like the mask, also fell into the hands of Noverre, who, in turn, handed it over to Lausanne jeweler Marc Jelly (he once worked in Paris in Napoleon's jewelry workshop, and it was with this explains such a generous gesture on the part of the former servant). The curl came to the museum in 1901 from a relative of Zheli.
Journalists of the Swiss newspaper "Maten", after conducting their own investigation, found out that there is another strand, which until recently was kept under seven seals by a resident of Lausanne Edgar Noverre, a descendant of Jean-Abraham Noverre. The hair comparison results were stunning. The curls turned out to be completely different: the first was light blond, thin and silky, like a child's, the second was black and thick. And which one is the real one?
Scientists can argue endlessly about the causes of Napoleon's death, analyzing the percentage of arsenic in his hair, but all this will not make any sense until it is precisely established which of the curls was cut off in 1821 from the deceased Napoleon, and was is it really Napoleon?
Regarding the death mask, Roy-Henri, for example, is sure that it does not belong to the Emperor, but possibly to Francesco Cipriani, also a Corsican, very similar to Napoleon Bonaparte during the Italian campaign and expedition to Egypt.
Let's dwell on this in more detail. As you know, there are many so-called "posthumous" plaster masks of Napoleon. But there was really only one posthumous, made by Dr. Antommarchi directly on the island of St. Helena.
A cast of the Emperor's head was made by him on May 7, 1821 at four o'clock in the evening in the presence of the British military medic Francis Barton from poor quality clay found on the island. The imprint of the plaster mask consisted of three parts: the first part included the face itself, the second - the chin and neck, the third - the upper part of the forehead, as well as the upper and back parts of the skull.
On May 8, it turned out that the first part of the mask had disappeared somewhere. There is speculation that she was kidnapped by Madame Bertrand, wife of General Bertrand, and then handed over to Dr. Antommarchi. Burton left the island with only two remaining parts of the mask.
Antommarchi, who remained on the island, tried to restore the mask completely on the basis of the part he had, using for this death drawings made by the English artist Rubidge.
Death mask of Napoleon (1821)
It is this mask that is now recognized as the most reliable, since all the rest are either copies of it, or amateur reconstructions. It is she who is exhibited in Paris at the Museum of Les Invalides. But there are many incomprehensible things in this story.
First, according to Roy-Henri, Dr. Antommarchi has significantly embellished the face of the mask, selling copies of it left and right.
Secondly, who, in fact, proved that this even embellished mask is the mask of Napoleon himself? It is known that all those present at the death of the Emperor noted that in the first hours after death he looked rejuvenated.
The same Bertrand, in particular, wrote: “At eight o'clock they began to prepare to make a plaster mask of the Emperor, but they did not have everything necessary at hand. The emperor seemed younger than he really was: it seemed that he was not more than forty years old. By four o'clock in the evening, he already looked older than his years."
What Bertrand described refers to the evening of May 6th. And exactly one day later, Bertrand stated: "At four o'clock in the evening, a plaster mask of the Emperor was made, who was already completely disfigured and emitted an unpleasant odor."
How, in such circumstances, can it be argued that the mask that has survived to this day is the mask of Napoleon, because it represents the face of a relatively young man, and not a sixty-year-old sick old man?
Thirdly, according to Dr. Antommarchi, the size of Napoleon's head was 56.20 cm. But, according to Constant, a servant of Napoleon who worked for him for 14 years and was responsible for sewing hats, the size of the Emperor's head was 59.65 cm!
In short, we may never know whose mask is on display in museums, like the mask of the Emperor (François-Eugene Robo, Francesco Cipriani or someone else), but the fact that it is not the mask of the Emperor is, seems to be a fait accompli. In the same way, we, it seems, will never know who rests in Les Invalides in Paris - Napoleon or one of his doubles.
You can, of course, carry out another exhumation of the body and carry out a DNA analysis of the deceased, comparing it with DNA analyzes of direct descendants of Napoleon. Modern methods make it possible to do this even after so many years. But will the so-called public opinion, historical traditions and interests of the nation allow? Indeed, for the French to officially admit that they have been worshiping not their national hero for almost two centuries, but some rogue, will be tantamount to a universal catastrophe.
Sergei Nechaev