Napoleon fell violently ill, one can heap up the circumstantial details that
seem to incriminate him. If Montholon was a Bourbon agent, as seems
probable, the periodicity of the poisoning could be convincingly
correlated with events in France. The cessation in poisoning in I8I9-20
could have mirrored the uncertain political situation in France, with the
Decazes administration a liberal interlude between the reactionary
governments of Richelieu and Ville! e. And the trigger for final orders sent
to Montholon could have been the murder of the Bourbon heir apparent,
the due de Berry, in I8zo by a Bonapartist; subsequent rioting revealed
the formidable dormant strength of crypto-Bonapartism.
The most convincing aspect of the Montholon case is the number of
mysterious incidents that would otherwise have to be written off as mere,
and sometimes singularly fortunate (for Montholon) coincidences.
Perhaps the most striking is the sudden death of Cipriani in I 8 I 8 and the
disappearance of his body. A few days later a maid and a young child,
who came in on a daily basis to assist him, also died suddenly of the same
symptoms. Had they also eaten or drunk something the poisoner had
prepared for Cipriani? Again, in I82I, Montholon, who in the past had
managed by expert manipulation and his contacts with Lowe to have Las
Cases, Gourgaud, O'Meara and Stokoe removed, contrived to be the
Emperor's de facto night nurse. On 24 March I82I the Swiss valet
Noverraz fell violently ill and was out of action for six weeks. When
Antommarchi stood on his dignity and petulantly refused to take his
place, Montholon eased himself into a position where he could work
largely unobserved. Dr Arnott, coming in on I April, was clay in his
hands, as he spoke no French or Italian and understood nothing of what
the Emperor said to him except through the garbled (and presumably
censored) translations of Montholon.
But the masterpiece in the assassination plot was the manipulation of
the British doctors into giving two different medications, one to relieve
thirst, the other to assuage constipation (both were symptoms of chronic
arsenic poisoning). The terrible beauty of the black art of slow poisoning
was that arsenic was not used to kill victims outright, but merely to break
down their health by destroying the immune system. When Montholon
overruled Antommarchi to get the dose of calomel administered to
Napoleon on 3 May, this was tantamount to signing his death warrant.
Having given the patient calomel to relieve constipation and orgeat to
relieve thirst, the doctors in effect created a lethal cocktail: the two
medications would have combined in the stomach to create mercury
cyanide, thus doing what bullets and bayonets in fifty battles had not
been able to do and putting an end to Napoleon Bonaparte.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1