CONCLUSIONNapoleon's death on St Helena initially passed almost unnoticed. By a
bizarre correlation, which would set those of a Jungian fr ame of mind
thinking, all those who were most devoted to him died young and all who
had betrayed him or let him down enjoyed longevity. Of the marshals,
apart from those who had predeceased 1815 or were swept away that year
(and almost all of those were loyal Bonapartists - Berthier, Bessieres,
Poniatowski, Lannes, Ney), the faithful Davout, Suchet and Mortier died
young or prematurely. All the marshals who had betrayed him (except for
Murat who had virtually self-destructed in 1815) lived on to the fabled
old age: Soult died only in 1851, Grouchy in 1847, Bernadotte in 1844,
Marmont in 1852, Oudinot in 1847, MacDonald in 1844.
The same pattern can be discerned in the lives of Napoleon's family
and intimates. His favourite sister Pauline died at 45, Elisa Bonaparte at
43, Eugene de Beauharnais at the same age, and Marie Walewska at z8. It
is yet another strike against the death-by-cancer theory that in the
Bonaparte family the sisters seemed to have inherited the paternal gene
that determined a short life while the males inherited Letizia's biological
factor of longevity (she died at 86): Joseph was 76 at death, Jerome also
76, Lucien 75 and Louis 68. It need hardly be reiterated that this quartet
of sibling ingrates owed everything to their brilliant brother and requited
his favour with incompetence, defiance and treachery. The saddest fate
was that of Napoleon's son, the 'King of Rome' who, after years as a
virtual prisoner of his Austrian grandfather at Schonbrunn, died of
tuberculosis at 21 in 1832.
Although she had been under duress in 1814, the weak-willed Marie
Louise owed more than the grudging tribute she paid him when news of
his death on St Helena reached her: 'Although I never entertained any
strong sentiment of any kind for him, I cannot forget that he is the father
of my son, and far from treating me badly, as most people believe, he
always manifested the deepest regard for me - the only thing one can
expect in a political marriage. So I am very affected. Although I ought to
be pleased that he has ended his miserable existence, I could have wished