Bertrand 2005

When Napoleon died the resident British physician, Dr. Burton, hoping to profit from the lucrative business of selling copies of the death masks of famous or notorious people as souvenirs, made one of the dead man as a master mold. He did this 42 hours after death and with considerable difficulty due to the already rapid deterioration of the imperial flesh. This mask, of whose authenticity there is no doubt, can be seen today at Sandhurst, the British military academy. However, the accurate likeness of an aging, sick man was so ugly showing as it did all the ravages of fortune, time, and disease on the Emperor’s face and spirit- that the small band of faithful followers led by Marshall Bertrand, who comprised the illustrious prisoner’s pathetic court and shared his exile to its sad end, protested that to distribute copies of this mask throughout France and the rest of the world would be an injustice to the vigorous man they knew in the prime of his power.

Afraid it would tarnish the Napoleonic legend, they stole the mask from Dr. Burton. The physician appealed to St. Helena’s military governor for help only to have that official surprisingly rule that the disputed property rightfully belonged to the French. Perhaps the governor merely wished to wash his hands of a messy situation. Or may be his interests were less disinterested. For he learned that the little French group –aided by its own imperial physician, Dr. Antommarchi, had dug up the dead butler Cipriani whose resemblance to Bonaparte was well known to all of them and, finding him still well preserved, ten years less aged than the Emperor, and healthy looking, had made their own counterfeit version of Napoleon’s death mask on the dead traitor’s face. It is this second mask which was sold everywhere as the true death mask of Napoleon. It was so widely accepted it can still commonly be seen today in many museums and books labelled as such.

(...)Thus, switching the death masks set up a situation which was made to order for the subsequent changing of the bodies. The French, above all, Marshall Bertrand, who was also present in 1840 –could hardly deny that the corpse who obviously resembled the death mask they had officially recognized as Napoleon’s was not, in fact, who they said it was. Such a scandal could have brought down the government and ruined many a brilliant career, illustrious name, and large fortune, in addition to creating a dangerous confrontation with Great Britain. - Est-ce bien le corps de Napoléon qui repose aux Invalides ? - Bruno Roy-Henry at www.empereurperdu.com