Level 4 Reading 8A

Reading 8A

WHO KILLED THE EMPEROR? It's a story as compelling as any murder mystery. It begins in 1821 on the remote British island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. This is where Napoleon Bonaparte—one-time emperor of France— is held prisoner after losing his final battle at Waterloo in 1815. In February 1821, Napoleon's health reportedly begins to fail, and he dies three months later at the age of 51. An autopsy performed the next morning reveals a stomach ulcer, possibly cancerous. The real cause of death, however, has been in dispute ever since. Historians, toxicologists, doctors, and other experts— as well as amateur investigators—have considered the question of how and why Napoleon died. Many are convinced that he was actually murdered. So far, though, the experts have not been able to reach an agreement. Political Murder? Ben Weider, founder of the International Napoleonic Society, believes that Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic, a deadly chemical. Weider has relentlessly sought the cause of Napoleon's death for more than four decades and has put considerable resources into solving the mystery. In his view, Napoleon was poisoned by the British and by French royalists, who wanted him out of the way once and for all. Weider offers as the central point of his hypothesis the hair analysis done by Pascal Kintz, a French toxicologist at the Legal Medicine Institute of Strasbourg. Kintz analyzed Napoleon's hair and confirmed that it contained arsenic. While Kintz can't say exactly how or why the arsenic was there, Weider is convinced that "the poisoning of Napoleon was planned and deliberate."

Poisoned by His Wallpaper? David Jones, an immunologist at the University of Newcastle in England, has studied the walls at Longwood House, the building on St. Helena where Napoleon lived his last years. He found that the wallpaper was painted with a substance containing arsenic. According to Jones, conditions on the hot and humid island caused the arsenic to be released into the air. Then again, paint may not have been the only source of arsenic on St. Helena. Some toxicologists say that it is not uncommon for people who eat large amounts of seafood to have an unusually high level of arsenic in their blood. Because St. Helena is a small island 2,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland, it is likely that a large part of Napoleon's diet consisted of seafood. Additionally, the doctors who examined Napoleon's body after his death didn't find any of the usual symptoms associated with arsenic poisoning, such as bleeding inside the heart. Doctors Mistake? Steven Karch, an American heart disease expert, believes that Napoleon was killed by his own doctors. They gave him large doses of dangerous chemicals commonly used as medicine at the time. According to Karch's theory, the day before Napoleon's death, he was given a massive amount of mercurous chloride—a chemical once given to patients with heart disease. That and other medications, Karch theorizes, disrupted Napoleon's heartbeat and ultimately caused his heart to cease beating. While Karch admits that arsenic exposure was a partial cause, he believes it was the doctors' errors that actually caused the heart attack. Disease? Historian Jean Tulard believes that cancer and ulcers, as reported by doctors who examined the body, were the cause of Napoleon's death. Tulard remains unconvinced by Kintz's hair analysis. In his estimation, the hair that was tested may not even have been Napoleon's. Tulard also discounts the poisoning theory on the grounds that no one has yet found anything linking the British or the French royalists— or anyone else for that matter—to a plot against Napoleon's life. Still, doubts remain that cancer was one of the main causes. One cancer specialist believes that Napoleon probably didn't have advanced stomach cancer because people with that disease always lose a lot of weight. According to reports, Napoleon never lost any weight during his stay on St. Helena. In fact, he gained a fair amount.

A Case of Revenge? "One of my ancestors did it," says Francois de Cande-Montholon. "I'm an aristocrat. Aristocrats don't like revolution, and Napoleon made revolutions." Cande-Montholon's great-great-great-great-grandfather—the Count of Montholon—was stationed with Napoleon on St. Helena. Napoleon had a love affair with the count's wife, and there were rumors that Napoleon was in fact the father of her youngest child. The count, it is observed, had control of Napoleon's wine cellar and food. Could he, motivated by revenge, have poisoned the wine? "Everyone is right, and no one is right," says Paul Fornes of the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris. Fornes has reviewed the 1821 autopsy report and other historical records and concludes: "Napolcon may have died with cancer, but he didn't die of cancer." Likewise, he says that although the hair analysis indicates the presence of arsenic, no one can say if he was intentionally given the arsenic, or if it was what ultimately killed him. In Fornes's opinion, evidence for murder by poisoning is inconclusive and wouldn't hold up in a court of law. Napoleon Bonaparte's body was returned to France in 1840, and it has rested in a grand tomb in Paris ever since. Some think it is time to open the tomb and to examine the remains using modern methods. French historian and doctor Jean-Francois Lemaire, however, believes that serious science and history have little to do with it anymore: "We are now in the world of entertainment," he says. It seems unlikely that new facts will settle the issue—people just enjoy the mystery too much.

♪