French first king death remained a mystery until today.
Only a day after his death on 5 May 1821 16 witnesses, including seven physicians, attended the autopsy. They all came to the same conclusion: Napoleon Bonaparte died of stomach cancer. Although the verdict was clearly emerged over time numerous conspiracy theories about why that led to the demise of the French Empire first ruler: he was killed by the British government? He was poisoned by its French rivals? The body was discovered at Longwood House at the king? Historian and writer Siân Rees took into account each variant, analyzing it in detail.
What is known for sure is that, for several months Napoleon had severe abdominal pain, dizzy and often accuse intense fever. His health was worsening more and more, and this has not gone unnoticed by those around him. At one point, Bonaparte told that these symptoms are due to the fact he had been poisoned, but in the end he held strongly that suffers from a form of cancer that brought his father. On 5 May 1821, the French leader went into a coma, and the next day the whole world was shocked to learn that Napoleon I no longer exist.
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The first conspiracy theory related to Bonaparte's death was made even his personal physician Barry O'Meara. It claimed that the British governor of the island of St. Helena, Sir Hudson Lowe, ordered him,, shorten the life of Napoleon ". In 1818 the Irishman made public this accusation, but could still not prove the presence of a foreign substance in the body French emperor, especially since it was submitted in four coffins buried under a thick layer of stone.
In the 1950s were published personal notes (valet chambre ,, ") of Bonaparte and the doctor Forshufvud Sten took advantage of this and studied documents, hoping to find out the cause of death of the king. He found that the French leader present 28 of the 31 symptoms associated with arsenic poisoning and immediately requested a university in Scotland to perform analyzes on a few hairs that had belonged driver. it turned out that Barry O'Meara was right: Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. with However, Forshufvud failed to find the killer.
There was indeed a killer of Napoleon Bonaparte?
Although the results obtained in the 50s were verified by experts, this is not convinced conspiracy theorists. In this regard, in the 1980s, the idea of arsenic poisoning of Napoleon Bonaparte take a different direction: if the French leader was poisoned with the substance of the environment in which he lived and would not necessarily have been killed by someone in particular? The answer came from research in the UK which, over several years, conducted a series of analyzes on samples from the hair of Napoleon's son, the wife of the king, and of that coming from 10 individuals are alive. Comparing the results showed that in the nineteenth century, the amount of arsenic in the human body was 100 times greater than that present today in our body. Therefore, there is a good chance that Napoleon died of arsenic have accumulated in the environment in which he lived.
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Other conspiracy theories claim that the body buried on the island of St. Helena were not at anyone else but Napoleon Bonaparte. One of these assumptions states that the king has not been found on the island and was never killed, in fact, trying to climb the wall of a palace in Austria to meet with his younger son. Another theory says that the king died during an outbreak of hepatitis in February 1818 after being buried in secret by the British. Another allegation was brought to the British in 1969 during the bicentennial of the birth of Napoleon, when a French journalist asked the head body to be brought back to France because he was secretly buried by the British royal family at Westminster Abbey.
One of the most likely candidate of the place where the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte, however, remains Invalides in Paris. However, until the French authorities will not allow open sarcophagus where it's supposed bones, death of the first leader of the French Empire remains a mystery.
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