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- Feb 23, 2013
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- East Texas
Well, Napoleon's valet, Jean-Baptiste Cipriani, who resembled him closely, died on the island of St Helen in 1818.
Empereur dies the 5 may 1821.
When his tomb was opened at the same time as Napoleon's in 1840, it was empty.
The second major fact was 20 years later. One of Napoleon officer concludes that Cipriani's body was substituted for that of the emperor, who had bribed the British governor to look the other way.
So did Napoleon fakes his own die, or may be not?
I'm familiar with the story of Cipriani and his supposed resemblance to the young Napoleon, as well as the likely bogus "Napoleon's death mask" possibly made using Cipriani's corpse as the true subject. I seriously doubt Napoleon faked his own death and tend to believe Ben Wieder's theory based on forensic examination of strands of Napoleon's hair that he likely died of arsenic poisoning, whether deliberate at the hands of Count Montholon (a likely suspect) or accidental, who knows?