The Death of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor who had dominated Europe for over a decade before his defeat and exile, died on May 5, 1821, on the remote British-controlled island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he had been imprisoned since 1815. He was 51. The official cause of death given by his personal physician was stomach cancer, and for over a century this was the accepted explanation for his prolonged illness and death in exile.

In 1961, a Swedish toxicologist named Sten Forshufvud published a controversial analysis of Napoleon's preserved hair and proposed that he had been poisoned with arsenic, pointing to the detection of high arsenic levels in samples taken from several different periods of his life. The theory suggested deliberate, slow poisoning, possibly by a member of his household staff acting for the British or Bourbon interests who wanted to ensure Napoleon never returned to France. The arsenic poisoning hypothesis attracted significant scholarly attention.

Subsequent analyses complicated the picture. While multiple independent hair analyses have confirmed elevated arsenic levels in Napoleon's hair, scientists also established that arsenic was ubiquitous in the nineteenth century — used in wallpaper dyes, medicines, and food preservation — and that the levels found in Napoleon's hair, while high, were not necessarily evidence of deliberate poisoning. A 2008 study found similarly elevated arsenic in hair samples from contemporaries not suspected of being poisoned, pointing to environmental rather than intentional exposure.

Modern forensic and genetic analyses of Napoleon's preserved hair and other biological materials continue to produce new findings. A 2021 study identified genetic variants in Napoleon's DNA consistent with a predisposition to certain health conditions. The debate between cancer, arsenic poisoning, and other causes has never been definitively resolved. Napoleon's death, like his life, remains a subject of international fascination, and the question of what killed him on Saint Helena is likely to continue generating scholarly and popular debate indefinitely.