One hand in the vest, a headgear screwed on the head, a conquering posture: no doubt, we are dealing with good old Napoleon Ier. If the French emperor (1804-1815) is often portrayed as a glorious war leader, a fine strategist and visionary, stopping at nothing (except the coldness of the Russian winter), the Little Corporal also hides a dark side, much less known.
Impetuous, obstinate, he would have had suicidal thoughts during a dark period of his life. Worse, he would even have taken action! Really? Let’s return to this little-known event, which could have changed the history of France.
From success to suicide?
A particular night could have been remembered: that of April 12 to 13, 1814. Alone in a room in the Château de Fontainebleau, Napoleon Bonaparte, humiliated, seeing his years of glory brutally interrupted, holds in his hand… a sachet of poison. But, uh, wait a minute: aren’t we going a little fast here?
Let’s go back. After having put almost all of Europe at his feet, Napoleon Ier saw, in 1814, his empire collapse in a few days. The French campaign was a failure: the sixth coalition, bringing together the United Kingdom, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Austria (the rest of Europe in short), brought the French giant to its knees. April 6, Napoleon Ier signs his abdication. The height of humiliation, the Bourbons were preparing to return to the throne of France, barely twenty-five years after the French Revolution. He is promised exile on the island of Elba.
And what does Napoleon do when he has just lost everything? Like any human being, he is brooding. Lots of black. In the almost deserted Château de Fontainebleau, he refuses to dine with his last supporters. His chamberlain closes the shutters, leaving a single lamp to illuminate the apartments of the crestfallen general.
There, the fallen emperor dwells on the betrayals he had to face in these last moments of combat. Joachim Murat, king of Naples and loyal general of Napoleon Ierpreferred to make a pact with the Italians to save his crown. Bernadotte, who became king of Sweden, never stopped stabbing him in the back. Or even Marshal Marmont, who capitulated and delivered Paris to the Allies on March 30, 1814, without even consulting him. Treason!
Assailed by these thoughts, Napoleon Bonaparte then thought about putting an end to it. On his desk, two pistols that he had ordered from the gunsmith Louis Marin Gosset await him. But his great squire, Armand de Caulaincourt, who had felt the blow, removed the powder. No matter: Napoleon had planned something else.
April poison
Well, let’s romanticize a little: we weren’t in the room with him. But the event is attested by historians, who base themselves on numerous writings and we can easily put ourselves in the place of the one who was at the very top, before falling to the lowest.
Let’s return to our story. Since the invasion of Russia, Napoleon Ier always carries with him… a small sachet of cyanide, which his doctor made for him. A last resort in the event of capture, intolerable humiliation. Except this: the humiliation, after his defeat in France, is indeed there.
It’s too much! On the night of April 12 to 13, 1814, Napoleon poured the poison into water and, presto, swallowed the contents. After a few minutes, the spasms and then the moans alert his valet. The latter goes to look for General Armand de Caulaincourt, who runs to his bedside. The night is long… but Napoleon Bonaparte survives!
The poison, too old or in too small a quantity, was not fatal to him. In the morning, he whispered to Caulaincourt a phrase that has remained famous: “If even death doesn’t want me, then it’s high time I go!” A few days later, he ratified the treaty and accepted his exile on the island of Elba.
This night at Fontainebleau is, upon closer inspection, not a simple moment of confusion for Napoleon Bonaparte. The story of the man who would become emperor is littered with a certain suicidal melancholy, which would have accompanied him since adolescence.
“Since I have to die, isn’t it worth killing myself?”
At the age of 16, while he was far from his native Corsica, in garrison in Valencia, the young man wrote, for example, a true philosophical memoir on… suicide. “Life is a burden to me, because I taste no pleasure and everything is pain for mewe can for example read there. What fury leads me to want my destruction? Since I have to die, isn’t it better to kill myself?” Instead dark the Napoleon.
In the book Napoleon facing death (published in April 2021), historian Alain Frerejean looks back on several of these suicidal moments. As in 1795, when he found himself without assignment in a Paris in revolution and he wrote to his brother: “If this continues, my friend, I will end up not turning away when a car passes.”
Or again in 1799, on his return from Egypt, when he gave the formal order to blow up the ship in the event of boarding by English vessels. Even during the famous French campaign, where he said to Caulaincourt: “Life is unbearable for me. I did everything to die in Arcis, the cannonballs didn’t want me.” And until the final battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815), the Little Corporal would never stop flirting with death. Does anyone have the number of a good First Empire version psychologist to recommend?
It was only once exiled for good on the island of Saint Helena, where he died on May 5, 1821, that Napoleon seemed to take a step back from this tendency to constantly want to put an end to things. “It has always been my maxim that a man shows more true bravery in enduring calamities and resisting coming misfortunes than in throwing away life.”he confided to his doctor. We are reassured.
This dark side of Napoleon Bonaparte is today part of his legend and still fascinates crowds. In 2021, the two pistols with which the emperor wanted to commit suicide (you know, the ones with the powder removed) were sold at auction for the modest sum of… 1.69 million euros! Before the French authorities refused their export certificate. Don’t touch Napoleon.
