this prodigious man. It is a truism to say that he has cast a doubt
on all past glory; let us hope that he has rendered future glory
impossible, for to judge by the late war it seems impossible that
any rival to the glory of Napoleon can ever arise. In the matter of
slaying his fellow-creatures he appears to have reached the summit of
human achievement; possibly also in all matters of organization and
administration. Material things hardly seemed to affect him; bestriding
the world like a colossus he has given us a sublime instance of
Intellect that for many years ruthlessly overmastered Circumstance.
That Intellect was finally itself mastered by disease, leaving behind
it a record which is of supreme interest to mankind; a record which,
alas, is so disfigured by prejudice and falsehood that it is difficult
to distinguish between what is true and what is untrue. Napoleon
himself possessed so extraordinary a personality that nearly every
one whom he met became a fervent adorer. With regard to him we can
find no half-tones, no detached reporters; therefore it is enormously
difficult to find even the basis for a biography. Fortunately, that is
not now our province. It is merely necessary that we shall attempt to
make a consistent story of the reports of illness which perplex us in
regard to his life and death; it adds interest to the quest when we
are told that sometimes disease lent its aid to Fate in swaying the
destinies of battles. And yet, even after Napoleon has lived, there are
some historians who deny the influence of a “great man” upon history,
and would attribute to “tendencies” and “ideas” events which ordinary
people would attribute to individual genius. Some persons think that
Napoleon was merely an episode--that he had no real influence upon
history; it is the custom to point to his career as an exemplification
of the thesis that war has played very little real part in the moulding
of the course of the world. Into all this we need not now enter, beyond
saying that he was the “child of the French Revolution” who killed
his own spiritual father; the reaction from Napoleon was Metternich,
Castlereagh, and the Holy Alliance; the reaction from these forces of
repression was the late war. So it is difficult to agree that Napoleon
was only an “episode.” We have merely to remark that he was the most
interesting of all men, and, so far as we can tell, will probably
remain so. As Fielding long ago pointed out in _Jonathan Wild_, a
man’s “greatness” appears to depend on his homicidal capacity. To make
yourself a hero all you have to do is to slaughter as many of your
fellow-creatures as God will permit. How poor the figures of Woodrow
Wilson or Judge Hughes seem beside the grey-coated “little corporal”!
Though it is quite probable that either of these most estimable
American peacemakers have done more good for the human race than was
achieved by any warrior! So sinful is man that we throw our hats in the
air and whoop for Napoleon the slaughterer, rather than for Woodrow
Wilson, who was “too proud to fight.”
When Napoleon was sent to St. Helena he was followed by a very few
faithful friends, who seem to have spent their time in hating one
another rather than in comforting their fallen idol. It is difficult
to get at the truth of these last few years because, though most of
the eye-witnesses have published their memoirs, each man seems to have
been more concerned to assure the world of the greatness of his own
sacrifice than to record the exact facts. Therefore, though Napoleon
urged them to keep diaries, and thereby make great sums of money
through their imprisonment, yet these diaries generally seem to have
aimed rather at attacking the other faithful ones than at telling us
exactly what happened.
The post-mortem examination of Napoleon’s body was performed by
Francesco Antommarchi, a young Corsican physician, anatomist, and
pathologist, who was sent to St. Helena about eighteen months before
Napoleon’s death in the hope that he, being a Corsican, would be able
to win the Emperor’s confidence and cure the illness of which he was
already complaining. Unfortunately, Antommarchi was a very young man,
and Napoleon suspected both his medical skill and the reason of his
presence. Napoleon used to suffer from severe pains in his stomach;
he would clasp himself, and groan, “O, mon pylore!” By that time he
was suffering from cancer of the stomach, and Antommarchi did not
suspect it. When Napoleon groaned and writhed in agony it is said
that Antommarchi merely laughed, and prescribed him tartar emetic in
lemonade. Napoleon was violently sick, and thought himself poisoned; he
swore he would never again taste any of Antommarchi’s medicine. Once
again Antommarchi attempted to give him tartar emetic in lemonade;
it was not in vain that Napoleon had won a reputation for being a
great strategist, for, when Antommarchi’s back was turned he handed
the draught to the unsuspecting Montholon. In ten minutes that hero
reacted in the usual manner, and extremely violently. Napoleon was
horrified and outraged in his feelings; quite naturally he accused
Antommarchi of trying to poison him, called him “assassin,” and refused
to see him again. Another fault that Napoleon found with the unhappy
young man was that whenever he wanted medical attendance Antommarchi
was not to be found, but had to be ferreted out from Jamestown, three
and a half miles away; so altogether Antommarchi’s attendance could not
be called a success. Napoleon in his wrath was “terrible as an army
with banners.” Even at St. Helena, where the resources of the whole
world had been expended in the effort to cage him helpless, it must
have been no joke to stand up before those awful eyes, that scorching
tongue; and it is no wonder that Antommarchi preferred to spend the
last few weeks idling about Jamestown rather than forcing unwelcome
attention upon his terrible patient.
Worst of all, Antommarchi at first persuaded himself that Napoleon’s
last illness was not serious. When Napoleon cried in his agony, “O,
mon pylore!” and complained of a pain that shot through him like a
knife, Antommarchi merely laughed and turned to his antimony with
catastrophic results. It shakes our faith in Antommarchi’s professional
skill to read that until the very last moment he would not believe
that there was much the matter. The veriest blockhead--one would
imagine--must have seen that the Emperor was seriously ill. Many a case
of cancer of the stomach has been mistaken for simple dyspepsia in
its early stages, but there comes a time when the true nature of the
disease forces itself upon even the most casual observer. The rapid
wasting, the cachexia, the vomiting, the pain, all impress themselves
upon both patient and friends, and it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that Antommarchi must have been both careless and negligent.
When the inevitable happened, and Napoleon died, it was Antommarchi who
performed the autopsy, and found a condition which it is charitable to
suppose may have masked the last symptoms and may have explained, if it
did not excuse, the young anatomist’s mistaken confidence.
We conclude our brief sketch of the unhappy Antommarchi by saying that
when he returned to Europe he published the least accurate and most
disingenuous of all accounts of Napoleon’s last days. His object seems
to have been rather to conceal his own shortcomings than to tell the
truth. This book sets the seal on his character, and casts doubt on
all else that comes from his pen. He may have been, as the _Lancet_
says, a “trained and competent pathologist”; he was certainly a most
unfortunate young man.
The post-mortem was performed in the presence of several British
military surgeons, who appear to have been true sons of John Bull,
with all the prejudice, ignorance, and cocksureness that in the eyes
of other nations distinguish us so splendidly. Though truthfulness
was not a strong point with Antommarchi, he seems to have known his
pathology, and has left us an exceedingly good and well-written report
of what he found. Strange to relate, the body was found to be still
covered thickly with a superficial layer of fat, and the heart and
omenta were also adipose. This would seem impossible in the body of a
man who had just died from cancer of the stomach, but is corroborated
by a report from a Dr. Henry, who was also present, and is not unknown.
I remember the case of an old woman who, though hardly at all wasted,
was found at the autopsy to have an extensive cancerous growth of the
pylorus; the explanation was that the disease had been so acute that
it slew her before there had been time to produce much wasting. At one
point Napoleon’s cancerous ulcer had perforated the stomach, and the
orifice had been sealed by adhesions. Dr. Henry proudly states that he
himself was able to thrust his finger through it. The liver was large
but not diseased; the spleen was large and “full of blood”--probably
Antommarchi meant engorged. The intestine was covered by small
bright-red patches, evidently showing inflammation of lymphatic tissue
such as frequently occurs in general infections of the body. The
bladder contained gravel and several definite calculi. There was hardly
any secondary cancerous development, except for a few enlarged glands.
Antommarchi and the French generally had diagnosed before death that
he was suffering from some sort of hepatitis endemic to St. Helena,
and the cancer was a great surprise to them--not that it would have
mattered much from the point of view of treatment.
Napoleon’s hands and feet were extremely small; his skin was white and
delicate; his body had feminine characteristics, such as wide hips and
narrow shoulders; his reproductive organs were small and apparently
atrophied. He is said to have been impotent for some time before he
died. There was little hair on the body, and the hair of the head was
fine, silky, and sparse. Twenty years later his body was exhumed and
taken to France, and Dr. Guillard, who was permitted to make a brief
examination, stated that the beard and nails appeared to have grown
since death; there was very little sign of decomposition; men who had
known him in life recognized his face immediately it was uncovered.
Leonard Guthrie points out that some of these signs seem to indicate
a condition of hypo-pituitarism--the opposite to the condition of
hyper-pituitarism which causes “giantism.” Far-fetched as this theory
may appear, yet it is possible that there may be something in it.
The autopsy showed beyond cavil that the cause of death was cancer of
the stomach, and it is difficult to see what more Antommarchi could
have done in the way of treatment than he did, although certainly an
irritant poison like tartar emetic would not have been good for a man
with cancer of the stomach, even if it did not actually shorten his
life. But Napoleon was not a good patient. He had seen too much of
army surgery to have a great respect for our profession; indeed, it is
probable that he had no respect for anybody but the Emperor Napoleon.
He, at least, knew his business. He could manœuvre a great army in the
field and win battles--and lose them too. But even a lost Napoleonic
battle--there were not many--was better managed than a victory of any
other man; whereas when you were dealing with these doctor fellows you
could never tell whether their results were caused by their treatment
or by the intervention of whatever gods there be. Decidedly Antommarchi
was the last man in the world to be sent to treat the fallen, but still
imperious, warrior.
The symptoms of impending death seem to have been masked by a continued
fever, and probably Antommarchi was not really much to blame. This idea
is to some extent borne out by a couple of specimens in the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons, which are said to have belonged to
the body of Napoleon. The story is that they were surreptitiously
removed by Antommarchi, and handed by him to Barry O’Meara, who in his
turn gave them to Sir Astley Cooper. That baronet handed them to the
museum, where they are now preserved as of doubtful origin. But their
genuineness depends upon whether we can believe that Antommarchi would
or could have removed them, and whether O’Meara was telling the truth
to Sir Astley Cooper. It is doubtful which of the two first-mentioned
men is the less credible, and Cooper could not have known how
untruthful O’Meara was to show himself, or he would probably not have
thought for one moment that the specimens were genuine. O’Meara was
a contentious Irishman who, like most other people, had fallen under
the sway of Napoleon’s personal charm. He published a book in which
he libelled Sir Hudson Lowe, whose hard fate it was to be Napoleon’s
jailer at St. Helena--that isle of unrest. For some reason Lowe never
took action against his traducer until it was too late, so that his own
character, like most things connected with Napoleon, still remains a
bone of contention. But O’Meara had definitely put himself on the side
of the French against the English, and it was the object of the French
to show that their demigod had died of some illness endemic to that
devil’s island, aggravated by the barbarous ill-treatment of the brutal
British. We on our side contended that St. Helena was a sort of earthly
paradise, where one should live for ever. The fragments are from
_somebody’s_ ileum, and show little raised patches of inflamed lymphoid
tissue; Sir William Leishman considers the post-mortem findings,
apart from the cancer, those of some long-continued fever, such as
Mediterranean fever.
Mediterranean or Malta fever is a curious specific fever due to the
_Micrococcus melitensis_, which shows itself by recurrent bouts of
pyrexia, accompanied by constipation, chronic anæmia, and wasting.
Between the bouts the patient may appear perfectly well. There are
three types--the “undulatory” here described; the “intermittent,” in
which the attacks come on almost daily; and the “malignant,” in which
the patient only lives for a week or ten days. It is now known to be
contracted by drinking the infected milk of goats, and it is almost
confined to the shores of the Mediterranean and certain parts of India.
It may last for years, and it is quite possible that Napoleon caught
it at Elba, of which Mediterranean island he was the unwilling emperor
in 1814. Thence he returned to France, as it was said, because he had
not elba-room on his little kingdom. It is certain that for years he
had been subject to feverish attacks, which army surgeons would now
possibly classify as “P.U.O.,” and it is quite possible that these may
in reality have been manifestations of Malta fever.
It has been surmised by some enthusiasts that the frequency of
micturition, followed by dysuria, to which he was liable, may have
really been due to hyper-pituitarism. Whenever we do not understand a
thing let us blame a ductless gland; the pituitary body is well hidden
beneath the brain, and its action is still not thoroughly understood.
But surely we need no further explanation of this miserable symptom
than the stones in the bladder. Napoleon for many years might almost
be said to have lived on horseback, and riding is the very thing to
cause untold misery to a man afflicted with vesical calculus. Dysuria,
attendant upon frequency of micturition, is a most suggestive symptom;
nowadays we are always taught to consider the possibility of stone, and
it is rather surprising that nobody seems to have suspected it during
his lifetime. This could be very well accounted for by remembering the
general ignorance and incompetence of army surgeons at the time, the
mighty position of the patient, and his intolerance of the medical
profession. Few men would have dared to suggest that it would be well
for him to submit to the passage of a sound, even if the trouble ever
became sufficiently urgent to compel him to confide so private a matter
to one so lowly as a mere army doctor. Yet he had known and admired
Baron Larrey, the great military surgeon of the Napoleonic Wars; one
can only surmise that his calculi did not give him much trouble, or
that they grew more rapidly in the sedentary life which he had led at
St. Helena.
During the last year or so he took great interest in gardening, and
spent hours in planting trees, digging the soil, and generally behaving
somewhat after the manner of a suburban householder. He was intensely
bored by his forced inaction, and used to take refuge in chess. His
staff at first welcomed this, but unhappily they could find nobody bad
enough for the mighty strategist to beat; yet nobody dared to give him
checkmate, and it was necessary to lose the game foolishly rather than
to defeat Napoleon. It is clear that the qualities requisite in a good
chess-player are by no means the same as those necessary to outmanœuvre
an army.
Throughout his life his pulse-rate seldom exceeded fifty per minute; as
he grew older he was subject to increasing lassitude; his extremities
felt constantly chilly, and he used to lie for hours daily in hot-water
baths. Possibly these may have been symptoms of hypo-pituitarism; Lord
Rosebery follows popular opinion in attributing his laziness to the
weakening effects of hot baths. Occasionally Napoleon suffered from
attacks of vomiting, followed by fits of extreme lethargy. It is quite
possible that these vomiting attacks may have been due to the gastric
ulcer, which must have been growing for years until, about September,
1820, it became acutely malignant.
The legend that Napoleon suffered from epilepsy appears, according
to Dr. Ireland, to rest upon a statement in Talleyrand’s memoirs.
In September, 1805, in Talleyrand’s presence, Napoleon was seized
after dinner with a sort of fit, and fell to the ground struggling
convulsively. Talleyrand loosened his cravat, obeying the popular
rule in such circumstances to “give him air.” Remusat, the chief
chamberlain, gave him water, which he drank. Talleyrand returned to the
charge, and “inundated” him with eau-de-Cologne. The Emperor awakened,
and said something--one would like to know what he said when he felt
the inundation streaming down his clothes--probably something truly
of the camp. Half an hour later he was on the road that was to lead
him--to Austerlitz, of all places! Clearly this fit, whatever it may
have been, was not epilepsy in the ordinary sense of the term. There
was no “cry,” no biting of the tongue, no foaming at the mouth, and
apparently no unconsciousness. Moreover, epilepsy is accompanied by
degeneration of the intellect, and nobody dares to say that Austerlitz,
Jena, and Wagram--to say nothing of Aspern and Eckmuhl--were won by
a degenerate. Eylau and Friedland were also to come after 1805, and
these seven names still ring like a trumpet for sheer glory, daring,
and supreme genius. I suppose there is not one of them--except perhaps
Aspern--which would not have made an imperishable name for any lesser
general. It is impossible to believe that they were fought by an
epileptic. If Napoleon really had epilepsy it was assuredly not the
“_grand mal_” which helps to fill our asylums. It is just possible that
“_petit mal_” may have been in the picture. This is a curious condition
which manifests itself by momentary loss of consciousness; the patient
may become suddenly dreamy and purposeless, and may perform curious
involuntary actions--even crimes--while _apparently_ conscious. When he
recovers he knows nothing about what he has been doing, and may even
resume the interrupted action which had occupied him at the moment of
the seizure. Some such explanation may account for Napoleon’s fits of
furious passion, that seem to have been followed by periods of lethargy
and vomiting. It is a sort of pleasing paradox--and mankind dearly
loves paradox--to say that supremely great men suffer from epilepsy.
It was said of Julius Cæsar, of St. Paul, and of Mohammed. These men
are said to have suffered from “falling sickness,” whatever that may
have been; there are plenty of conditions which may make men fall to
the ground, without being epileptic: Ménière’s disease, for instance.
It is ridiculous to suppose that Julius Cæsar and Napoleon--by common
consent the two greatest of the sons of men--should have been subject
to a disease which deteriorates the intellect.
It is possible that some such trouble as “_petit mal_” may have been
at the bottom of the curious stories of a certain listless torpor
that appears to have overcome Napoleon at critical moments in his
later battles. Something of the kind happened at Borodino in 1812, the
bloodiest and most frightful battle in history till that time. Napoleon
indeed won, in the sense that the exhausted Russians retreated to
Moscow, whither he pursued them to his ill-fortune; but the battle was
not fought with anything like the supreme genius which he displayed in
his other campaigns. Similarly, he is said to have been thus stricken
helpless after Ligny, when he defeated Blucher in 1815. He wasted
precious hours in lethargy, which should have been spent in his usual
furious pursuit of his beaten foe. To this day the French hold that,
but for Napoleon’s inexplicable idleness after Ligny, there would
have been no St. Helena; and, with all the respect due to Wellington
and his thin red line, it is by no means certain that the French are
wrong. But nations will continue to squabble about Waterloo till there
shall be no more war; and 1814 had been the most brilliant of his
campaigns--probably of any man’s campaigns.
“Of woman came the beginning of sin, and through her therefore we
all die,” said the ungallant author of Ecclesiasticus; and it is
certain that Napoleon was extremely susceptible to feminine charms.
Like a Roman emperor, he had but to cast a glance at a woman and she
was at his feet. Yet probably his life was not very much less moral
than was customary among the great at that time. When we remember
his extraordinary personal charm, it is rather a matter for wonder
that women seem to have had so little serious effect upon his life,
and he seems to have taken comparatively little advantage of his
opportunities. His first wife, Josephine Beauharnais, was a flighty
Creole who pleased herself entirely; in the vulgar phrase, she “took
her pleasure where she found it.” To this Napoleon appears to have
been complaisant, but as she could not produce an heir to the dynasty
which he wished to found, he divorced her, and married the Austrian
princess Marie Louise, whose father he had defeated and humiliated as
few sovereigns have ever been humiliated. She deserted him without
a qualm when he was sent to Elba; when he was finally imprisoned at
St. Helena there was no question of her following him, even if the
British Government had had sufficient imagination to permit such a
thing. Napoleon, who was fond of her, wanted her to go with him; but
one could not expect a Government containing Castlereagh, Liverpool,
and Bathurst, to show any sympathy to the fallen foe who had been a
nightmare to Europe for twenty years. She would never consent to see
Josephine. It is said that Napoleon’s _libido sexualis_ was violent,
but rapidly quelled. In conversation at St. Helena he admitted having
possessed seven mistresses; of them he said simply, “C’est beaucoup.”
When he was sent to St. Helena his mother wrote and asked to be allowed
to follow him; however great a man’s fall, his mother never deserts
him, and asylum doctors find that long after the wife or sisters forget
some demented and bestial creature, his mother loyally continues her
visits till the grave closes over one or the other. But more remarkable
is the fact that Pauline Bonaparte, who was always looked upon as a
shameless hussy, would have followed him to St. Helena, only that
she was ill in bed at the time. She was the beautiful sister who sat
to Canova for the statue of Venus in the Villa Borghese. It was then
thought most shocking for a lady of high degree to be sculptured as a
nude Venus--perhaps it is now; I say, _perhaps_. There are few ladies
of high degree so beautiful as Princess Pauline, as Canova shows her.
A friend said to her about the statue, “Were you not uncomfortable,
princess, sitting there without any clothes on?” “Uncomfortable,” said
Princess Pauline, “why should I be uncomfortable? There was a stove
in the room!” There are many other still less creditable stories told
about her. It was poor beautiful Pauline who lost her husband of yellow
fever, herself recovering of an attack at the same time. She cut off
her hair and buried it in his coffin. This was thought a wonderful
instance of wifely devotion, until the cynical Emperor remarked: “Quite
so; quite so; of course, she knows it will grow again better than ever
for cutting it off, and that it would have fallen off anyhow after the
fever.” Yet when he was sent to Elba, this frivolous sister followed
him, and she sold every jewel she possessed to make life comfortable
for him at St. Helena. She was a very human and beautiful woman, this
Pauline; she detested Marie Louise, and once in 1810 at a grand fête
she saucily poked out her tongue at the young Empress in full view
of all the nobles. Unhappily Napoleon saw her, and cast upon her a
dreadful look; Pauline picked up her skirts and ran headlong from the
room. When she heard of his death she wept bitterly; she died four
years afterwards of cancer. Her last action was to call for a mirror,
looking into which she died, saying, “I am still beautiful; I am not
afraid to die.”
In attempting to judge Marie Louise it must be remembered that there
is a horrid story told of Napoleon’s first meeting with her in France
after the civil marriage had been performed by proxy in Vienna. It is
said that the fury of his lust did her physical injury, and that that
is the true reason why she never forgave him and deserted him at the
first opportunity. She bore him a son, of whom he was passionately
fond, but after his downfall the son--the poor little King of Rome
immortalized by Rostand in “_l’Aiglon_”--fell into the hands of
Metternich, the Austrian, who is said to have deliberately contrived
to have him taught improper practices, lest he should grow up to
be as terrible a menace to the world as his father. But all these
are rumours, and show how difficult it is to ascertain the truth of
anything connected with Napoleon.