The seas around the tiny island were constantly patrolled by an entire Royal Navy squadron consisting of 11 ships and even a separate island—1200 miles further out in the Atlantic—was stocked with further garrisons to prevent a rescue attempt from South America. They were right to be concerned. During Napoleon’s last six years of life on St. Helena, escape plans included boats, balloons, and even a pair of primitive submarines. Notorious British smuggler Tom Johnson later claimed that in 1820 he was offered £40,000 to rescue the emperor. He hatched a scheme to do so that included a pair of ships with collapsible masts that could sneak up to the island fully submerged and a bosun’s chair to scale the cliffs. It’s unclear how far this plan ever got—or, indeed, if Johnson ever accepted such an assignment—but had it succeeded it would have made for one of the most fantastic prison breaks in all of history.
14. A HOUSE WAS BUILT FOR NAPOLEON IN NEW ORLEANS.
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Nicholas Girod, the fifth mayor of New Orleans, was a Frenchmen and avid supporter of Napoleon. Following the abdication at Waterloo, Girod helped members of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard escape to the New World. But he also had plans for the emperor himself to move to NOLA. In 1821, Girod, who had retired from the mayoral office, began renovating a home on the corner of Chartres and St. Louis Streets, which he claimed would be Napoleon’s residence after an intended escape expedition by Dominique You (also called Dominique Youx). When Napoleon died later that same year, Girod moved his own family into the building, but even today it is still known as Napoleon House.
15. NAPOLEON LIKELY DIED OF STOMACH CANCER—DESPITE 200 YEARS OF ARSENIC SPECULATION.
Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, at the age of 51, while still in exile on St. Helena. At the time, his personal physician reported on the death certificate that the emperor had died of stomach cancer, consistent with reports that he suffered from abdominal pain and nausea in the last weeks of his life. But his body remained remarkably well preserved, a common side effect of arsenic poisoning, inspiring centuries of suspicion about foul play. In 1961, elevated levels of arsenic were detected in surviving samples of Napoleon’s hair, fueling these rumors further. Even if he wasn’t assassinated in that way, some theories suggested, perhaps he was accidentally poisoned by the fumes created by the arsenic in his bedroom wallpaper and the damp humidity on St. Helena.
A 2008 study conducted by a team of scientists at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Milan-Bicocca and Pavia, however, disproved the poison suspicions. A detailed analysis of hairs taken from Napoleon’s head at four times in his life—as a boy in Corsica, during his exile on the island of Elba, the day he died on St. Helena, at age 51, and the day after his death—showed that while the levels of arsenic present were astronomical compared to modern standards (about 100 times what is present in the hair of people living today), there was no significant change throughout his life. What’s more, hairs from his son, Napoleon II, and his wife, Empress Joséphine, showed similar—albeit elevated—levels of arsenic. Chronic exposure, in paints and even as a medicine, throughout Napoleon’s life seem to be responsible for the inflammatory 1961 findings. Of course, all that arsenic—not to mention the myriad other toxic chemicals believed to be tonics at the time—likely hastened the emperor’s demise.
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