Portrait of Napoleon before his death

It's been revealed today that Napoleon's tomb could contain the remains of his butler and not that of the famous Napoleon himself.

Historian Bruno Roy-Henry claims that a death mask of Napoleon which is on show in a Paris museum does not show the scar on Napoleons left cheek which is displayed clearly in a 1815 portrait of the Emperor. However says Roy-Henry the scar features in another death mask which was auctioned off in 2004 to an anonymous bidder from the United States, this one he claims was the real mask. Apart from lacking the crucial scar the death mask does not match up with other of Napoleon's facial attributes.

Napoleons' tomb at Les Invalides in Paris

Conspiracy theories about the authenticity of Napoleon's remains have been about since 1840 when his body was first exhumed by the British in Saint Helena some 19 years after his death. In recent years there have been even more suspicions about his remains after the French authorities refused to allow DNA testing.

So who is the man behind the mask? Roy-Henry thinks that the British may have replaced the original remains with that of Napoleons butler Jean-Baptiste Cipriani who was his maitre-d'hotel on Saint Helena.
If his theory is true then just what the British did with the original Napoleon we may never know.


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