A. Plan of Investigation
Napoleon’s death has been attributed to many causes: stomach cancer, arsenic poisoning, improper medical treatment, hepatitis, and St. Helena’s climate. The purpose is to ascertain the likeliest cause, and if foul play was involved. With each possible cause, there are different implications, i.e., cancer frees everyone from blame, hepatitis incriminates the British, improper medical treatment the doctors, and poisoning implicates the suspected poisoner. The focus is on four causes - cancer, poisoning, improper treatment, and hepatitis - common explanations for Napoleon’s failing health, and evidence that supports or refutes each case.
B. Summary of Evidence
1. Napoleon’s Last Days:
On May 5th, 1821; Napoleon died after a lengthy sickness, joined by more than six doctors in 1821(Kauffmann 87). He was 51. His health had started to decline March 1821; Antommarchi, Napoleon’s lead physician, introduced a tartar emetic (antimony potassium tartrate, highly toxic) to Napoleon’s diet to help with his persisting ailments. In April, Napoleon was feeling no better, and Montholon, the alleged poisoner of Napoleon who came to St. Helena for Napoleon to dictate notes on his career, thought orgeat, an almond drink would help ease thirst - Antommarchi titled the orgeat ‘orange-flower water’ in his papers, not knowing the true nature of the drink, which contained hydrocyanic acid. Napoleon had toxic substances in his system which he couldn’t expel due to the emetic (Schom 784). Napoleon, unfortunately, looked to Dr. Archibald Arnott, who after seeing the fate of O’Meara and Stokoe (previous doctors who had been dismissed over their diagnoses of hepatitis), and knowing Hudson Lowe, St. Helena’s governor and warden of ...
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...icopathologic approach to staging, pathogenesis, and etiology." Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology 4.1 Jan. (2007): 52-57. Print.
Johnson, Paul. Napoleon. New York: Viking, 2002. Print.
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McLynn, Frank. Napoleon: a biography. London: Pimlico, 1998. Print.
Schom, Alan. Napoleon Bonaparte . New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997. Print.
Thompson, James Matthew. Napoleon Bonaparte, his rise and fall. . Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1952. Print.
Unwin, Brian. Terrible exile the last days of Napoleon on St Helena. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Print.
Weider, Ben, and David Hapgood. The murder of Napoleon . New York: Congdon & Lattes, 1982. Print.
Williams, David. The fall of Napoleon: the final betrayal. New York: Wiley, 1994. Print.
Theodore argued that Napoleon sickness helped in a negative way throughout the campaign such that Napoleon wasn’t able lift the morale of his troops during the campaign. Throughout Napoleons campaign on the European front he has always was able to interact and make speeches in front of the whole of his army which helped bring the troops morale exponentially. However, during the campaign in Russia Napoleon was sick with an unknown disease that rendered him unable to interact for very long. Communication is the most important aspect in the war because without communication an army cannot be organized. An army’s morale also is very high at the beginning of the war but it will constantly fall as the war goes on, so a morale booster such as speeches and better accommodations would have helped the troop’s morale. Reiterating here that Napoleon should have brought more doctors which would have his army survive longer than it
I don't know if you have noticed but Napoleon has recently been getting into some human habits like sleeping in a bed, drinking alcohol and talking to humans. There is only one way he could have picked
Bibliography D. M. G. Sutherland, France 1789-1815 Revolution and Counterrevolution (London 1985). Tom Holmberg, “Napoleon and the French Revolution”, 1998, www.napoleonbonaparte.nl/html/body_nap_and_revolution.html. www.chesco.com/artman/napoleonbonaparte.html (Quotes by Napoleon Bonaparte). George Orwell, Animal Farm, Middlesex, England 1945. Colin Jones, The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, (New York, 1988).
Only a year before Napoleon was born, Genoa had been forced to sell Corsica to France. In one of history’s amazing coincidences, this would forever tie Napoleon to France, even going so far as to change his name to a more French sounding name. Had Genoa kept hold of Corsica, Napoleon would have been born an Italian, and the thousands of books since written about him would have ceased to exist. Alas, fate had a role to play, and Napoleon found himself a part of a minor noble family in an island wishing for independence. From a young age Napoleon would wish to be a part of the struggle to regain sovereignty for Corsica. Here is where he would become fascinated with history in an attempt to write a history of his homeland. At that time one could not learn about history without learning about the great empire of Rome. This knowledge of Rome would influence Napoleon’s actions for the rest of his life.
The History Guide. “Napoleon’s Proclamation to His Troops in Italy (March-April 1796)”. Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. Steven Kreis, 2000. Web. 17 January 2014. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/nap1796.html. Primary.
Kreis, S. (2001). The History Guide. Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History: The Code Napoleon. 15 July, 2010, http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/code_nap.html
Napoleon to the French Nation, 15 Dec 1799, Howard, John Letters and Documents of Napoleon (London, 1961) p.428.
Napoleon had four children: Napoleon II, Eugene, Charles Leon, and Stephanie. He also had many grandchildren, including Augsaste de Beauharnais. Napoleon once stated, "Medicine is only for old people." He died on May 5th, 1821, from cancer at Longwood House, where he lived after being exiled to the Island of Saint Helena. Longwood House is on a windswept plain 61 miles from Jamestown.
Kirchberger, Joe H. The French Revolution and Napoleon. New York: Facts on File inc, 1989.
Kreis, Steven. “Europe and the Superior Being: Napoleon.” The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History. 13 May. 2004. 6 Dec. 2004.
How did a man with a promising military career loose it so quickly? Napoleon was one of the greatest military minds but did not always use it correctly, which eventually led to his downfall. This essay will explain what led to the downfall of Napoleon.
...e and he is captured. Marshal Ney is shot and Grouchy is hung. The Empire is dissolved and the European countries that were conquered by Napoleon, reclaim their borders. Also the congress of Vienna was reestablished. Napoleon tells them he does not want to go back to Elba, that instead he would like to go to America to see Thomas Jefferson and meet the Indians there. The British agree and they even put him on a ship. Napoleon sensed something was wrong but it was too late, they had set him out on St Helen Island with only two guards. He was basically told to have a nice life. Some say he died of a stomach cancer and others say that it was arsenic in the wallpaper that was in his one room house that had started leaking through the walls, either way it was a slow death. This was the ending the great Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest military minded men ever.
With all the glory and the splendour that some countries may have experienced, never has history seen how only only one man, Napoleon, brought up his country, France, from its most tormented status, to the very pinnacle of its height in just a few years time. He was a military hero who won splendid land-based battles, which allowed him to dominate most of the European continent. He was a man with ambition, great self-control and calculation, a great strategist, a genius; whatever it was, he was simply the best. But, even though how great this person was, something about how he governed France still floats among people's minds. Did he abuse his power? Did Napoleon defeat the purpose of the ideals of the French Revolution? After all of his success in his military campaigns, did he gratify the people's needs regarding their ideals on the French Revolution? This is one of the many controversies that we have to deal with when studying Napoleon and the French Revolution. In this essay, I will discuss my opinion on whether or not was he a destroyer of the ideals of the French Revolution.
Even though Napoleon did not gain control until one year before the next century, the people of France no longer wanted their revolution. For my conclusion, I would like to step back and deliver my own opinion. In my brief time on this planet, I have never come across a more brutal. depiction of a man at his worst. The sad truth is that events of this nature have occurred with amazing regularity.
Reasons for Napoleon's Defeat The Campaign of 1812 should have been another crusade for Napoleon, but he now faced 2 new policies that he had never faced before, the severe Russian winter and the notorious scorched-earth policy. On June 23, 1812 Napoleon's Grande Armee, over 500,000 men strong, poured over the Russian border. An equal amount of Russian forces awaited them. The result of the campaign was a surprise.