The Assassination of Napoleon

My summer reading pile gets higher and higher. I have managed to get several great books on Ebay. As the parcels trickle in through the mailbox I can see a lot of great hours of reading to come this fall. One of my favorite books is Ben Weider's "The Murder of Napoleon." His theory that Napoleon was murdered with arsenic has always received a great deal of press and I understand that the book has been translated into over twenty languages. The first book was published in 1982. I found it at a used book store and read it in one sitting. It was fascinating. What I did not know was that a second book was published in 1995. This one was renamed "Assassination at St. Helena Revisited." (Doesn't "assassinated" sound more like an X-File than "murdered?") Anyway, while doing an online search I came across the second book and now have a copy.

This year there have been several announcements that Napoleon died of cancer of the stomach like his father.....but if you read Ben's book, see the F.B.I. analysis and read the calendar of activity compared to the levels of arsenic in the hair samples, you too will become a Bonapartist Conspiracy supporter. He was poisoned.......I really believe it.

Napoleon, being a master spin doctor wrote the following in his last Will: I die prematurely, murdered by the English oligarchy* and its hired assassin.

Oligarthy defined: a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.