The man who once rearranged the entire map of Europe spent his final days arguing with a British governor about how many bottles of wine he was allowed. It’s a bit of a letdown, honestly. When you think of Napoleon Bonaparte, you think of the thundering cannons at Austerlitz or the chaotic mud of Waterloo. You don't usually picture a bloated, graying man clutching his stomach in a damp, rat-infested house on a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic. But that’s exactly where the story ends. If you’re asking how does Napoleon die, the answer depends entirely on whether you trust the 19th-century doctors or the 20th-century toxicologists.
He died on May 5, 1821.
The official cause of death listed at the time was stomach cancer. This made sense back then. His father, Carlo Buonaparte, had died of the same thing. Napoleon himself was convinced his "pylorus"—the opening from the stomach to the duodenum—was his undoing. He told his doctors as much. But for decades, people haven't been satisfied with a simple "natural causes" explanation for a man who changed the world. Conspiracy theories have suggested everything from British assassins to wallpaper glue.
The Longwood House Nightmare
Saint Helena is a miserable place to be an exile. It’s a volcanic speck over 1,000 miles from the nearest coast. The British chose it specifically because it was a natural prison. Napoleon lived at Longwood House, which was essentially a converted barn with poor ventilation and rising damp.
Living there was a slow grind. He was bored. He was lonely. And by 1817, he started getting sick. It wasn’t just one thing; it was a cascading failure of his health. He complained of abdominal pain, nausea, and a persistent, "shattering" cough. His legs swelled. He grew pale. Sir Hudson Lowe, the governor of the island, basically thought Napoleon was faking it to gain sympathy or a ticket back to Europe. Lowe was a bureaucrat, not a doctor, and his petty restrictions on Napoleon’s movements likely made the Emperor’s physical decline much faster.
Imagine being the most powerful man on Earth and then spending your afternoons soaking in a bathtub because it’s the only place your stomach doesn't hurt. That was his reality.
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The Arsenic Theory: Murder or Bad Decor?
In the 1960s, a Swedish dentist named Sten Forshufvud read the memoirs of Napoleon’s valet, Louis Marchand. He noticed that Napoleon’s symptoms—the hair loss, the thirst, the leg weakness—sounded a lot like chronic arsenic poisoning.
This sparked a massive controversy. Forshufvud managed to get hold of actual strands of Napoleon’s hair that had been saved as souvenirs. He sent them to be tested using nuclear activation analysis. The results were shocking. The hair contained levels of arsenic significantly higher than what you’d expect to find in a normal person. Suddenly, the history books were being rewritten. Was he murdered? Did the British poison his wine? Did a jealous French count in his entourage slip something into his drink?
Actually, the truth is probably less "James Bond" and more "bad interior design."
Arsenic was everywhere in the 19th century. It was in the dyes, the cosmetics, and the medicine. Specifically, a pigment called Scheele’s Green was used in the wallpaper at Longwood House. In a damp environment like Saint Helena, mold can grow on the wallpaper and convert the arsenic in the dye into a toxic gas called trimethylarsine. Napoleon was literally breathing his room.
But here is the kicker: recent studies by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy tested hair samples from Napoleon’s childhood, his son, and his wife, Josephine. They found that everyone back then was walking around with arsenic levels that would be considered toxic today. It was just a part of the environment. While the arsenic didn't help, it probably wasn't what killed him.
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The 1821 Autopsy: What the Doctors Found
The day after he died, seven British doctors and Napoleon’s own physician, Francesco Antommarchi, performed an autopsy. They did it on a billiard table.
They found a massive lesion in his stomach. It was an ulcerated growth that had actually perforated the stomach wall. The liver was also enlarged, which some attributed to the "climate of the island," but the stomach was the clear culprit. Antommarchi and the British doctors actually disagreed on some of the finer points—mostly because of the political tension—but the physical evidence of a tumor was undeniable.
If you look at the medical data from a 2007 study published in the journal Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, a team of researchers analyzed the autopsy reports and the descriptions of his stool (yes, history gets gross). They concluded that Napoleon had a "T3N0M0" stage gastric cancer. He had lost roughly 20 pounds in his final months, which is a classic sign of malignancy.
Why the Controversy Persists
People hate boring endings for great men. "He died of a common disease in a damp house" doesn't have the same ring as "He was assassinated by the British Empire."
There's also the weirdness regarding his body. When the French exhumed him in 1840 to bring him back to Paris (to be buried at Les Invalides), his body was remarkably well-preserved. Arsenic is a preservative. This fueled the poisoning fire for another century. However, being buried in four nested coffins (tin, lead, lead, and mahogany) in a dry stone vault is also a pretty good way to stay mummified.
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Solving the Mystery of How Does Napoleon Die
The most likely reality is a "perfect storm" of health failures. You have a man with a genetic predisposition to stomach cancer. You put him in a high-stress environment with poor diet and little exercise. You surround him with 19th-century "medicine"—including large doses of calomel (mercury chloride) and tartar emetic.
In fact, some modern doctors believe the medical treatment killed him faster than the cancer. Shortly before he died, his doctors gave him a massive dose of calomel to induce a bowel movement. This likely caused a severe electrolyte imbalance, leading to a cardiac arrest.
So, how does Napoleon die? He dies of a perforated stomach ulcer caused by gastric cancer, likely exacerbated by chronic arsenic exposure from his environment and finished off by the well-intentioned but deadly medical practices of the era.
Actions to Deepen Your Understanding
To truly grasp the end of the Napoleonic era, you should look beyond the medical reports and see the physical evidence:
- Visit Les Invalides in Paris: Seeing the scale of his sarcophagus helps you understand why the mystery of his death matters so much to the French national identity.
- Read "The Murder of Napoleon" by Ben Weider: If you want to see the best arguments for the arsenic poisoning theory, this is the book that started the modern firestorm, even if most scientists now disagree with its conclusions.
- Examine the Autopsy Sketches: Several sketches exist from the 1821 procedure. They are haunting, but they provide a clinical look at a man who was stripped of his titles and reduced to a medical specimen.
- Study the Wallpaper: Samples of the actual "Scheele's Green" wallpaper from Longwood are held in various museums. It's a vivid reminder of how the luxuries of the past were often toxic.
Napoleon’s death was a messy, political, and painful affair. It wasn't the heroic end he probably envisioned for himself, but it remains one of the most scrutinized medical cases in human history. He went from ruling the continent to being a victim of his own biology and the limitations of 19th-century science.