As the French army disintegrated on the field of Waterloo the night of 18 June 1815, Napoleon stepped from a square of his faithful Guardsmen to board his coach, only to be forced to abandon it for horseback shortly thereafter to avoid pursuing Prussian cavalry. He abandoned, too, any hope of rallying the disorganized mob of fugitives found jamming the streets of Genappe a few miles from the battlefield. Next morning at Quatre Bras, site of one of the opening battles of the campaign, he failed to find the reserve division he had summoned from Ligny. Realizing that his presence in Paris would be paramount, Napoleon left Marshal Soult, later joined by Marshal Grouchy, to rally what remained of the French army: eventually some 55,000 troops. Arriving in Paris on 21 June, where Marshal Davout was gathering some 60,000 troops for its defense, with another 170,000 conscripts in training, the exhausted Napoleon failed to heed advice to seize the ministries immediately. By noon, the Chambers had rebelled; in the early hours of 22 June 1815, Napoleon abdicated for a second and final time. As the victorious Allied armies advanced, Napoleon left Paris, hoping to seek refuge in the U.S. This hope vanished within a few days, and to escape arrest by royalists, he surrendered to the British warship Bellerophon on 15 July, with the expectation that he might be allowed to live in Britain. By 31 July, Britain, with Allied concurrence, deported him to exile on St. Helena, where he arrived on 15 October. Napoleon's myth making began when he started his first army newspapers in the Italian campaign of 1796 to broadcast his achievements to the citizens of France. Even in exile nineteen years later, he continued this propaganda effort by alleging mistreatment, lobbying for improved conditions, and dictating his version of his life story. Even without the exaggerations, it was truly more incredible than fiction. Unfortunately, a long retirement was not part of his destiny. He died on 5 May 1821 after only six years in exile, a few months short of his 52nd birthday. His body was initially buried on St. Helena, but it was returned to France in 1840 and interred in an impressive sarcophagus at the Invalides in Paris. Although the official diagnosis was stomach cancer, some of his followers suspected foul play. Recently, the reasons for Napoleon's death have become an international controversy, championed by Ben Weider. Weider has been a tireless promoter of a theory offered by amateur toxicologist Stan Forshufvud, whose interpretation of the previously unpublished memoirs by Napoleon's valet, Louis Marchand, suggest that the French Emperor may have been slowly poisoned by arsenic. The motive for the murder is that the Bourbon rulers of France did not want to risk a repeat of Napoleon's return from exile and seizure of the throne as he accomplished in 1815. Therefore, they paid one of Napoleon's retinue on St. Helena to commit the crime. With the witnesses all dead and evidence circumstantial, only the opening of Napoleon's tomb in Paris might prove the validity of Weider's claim. Back to Table of Contents -- Napoleon #17 Back to Napoleon List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Napoleon LLC. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. The full text and graphics from other military history magazines and gaming magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com Order Napoleon magazine direct