Free The Ghost of Waterloo by Robin Adair Page B

few of the 140000 men, Allies or French, on the field could have said).
    He had a fascination with the fallen Emperor and keenly followed his progress in exile. He found it quite surprising how much private information about the celebrity prisoner was public knowledge.
    During this dissection, he was given an earlier report by a physician from the island garrison, Dr Alexander Arnott, and it seemed perfectly borne out by the result of the autopsy. There was, however, one oddity in the account: the illustrious patient had, curiously, insisted on being examined in a darkened room. Owens had also studied the diagnoses of a Dr Barry O’Meara, who had treated Bonaparte in 1817 when he first complained of pain under the right ribs, and he also knew the opinions of other medical visitors. While the Arnott report now broke no new medical ground, Thomas Owens found the other case notes more intriguing, and confusing. As was the banishment of Barry O’Meara in 1818 for being too friendly with the former Emperor.
    Today, they had all seen the unarguable evidence of a stomach ailment and a small stone in the bladder. The feet were very swollen and the body had lost much of its hair. Owens noted that even the greying thatch of black pubic hair was sparse around the wizened, circumcised penis.
    What also troubled him was the state of two other vital parts of the corpse now laid out before him. O’Meara and Antommarchi had separately diagnosed a grossly enlarged liver and suggested hepatitis. Owens understood that a damaged liver, even one hobnailed by drink, could often regenerate remarkably, but the organ now shown him by the bloody-handed anatomist seemed pristine, apparently never affected in any way. And the late patient was not jaundiced, as one might have expected of a man with liver problems.
    The puzzled doctor also knew that Bonaparte, all his adult life, had suffered greatly from prolapsed piles. This may have even cost him victory at Waterloo. There, when he had a chance to turn the battle, his haemorrhoids were so strangulated and protruding that he could not walk or ride, and paused in pursuit while leeches gorged to reduce the swelling.
    At Owens’ request, the surgeon had gently turned the body and parted the posterior cheeks to examine the Emperor’s anus. There were no signs of any disease or healed wounds; there was no evidence of surgical repair.
    How very strange, thought Owens. Something must have happened between the earlier diagnoses of the doctors and the final analysis of dissection. But exactly what?
    Thomas Owens kept his counsel. Anyway, to the Frenchmen here he represented the enemy – and who would listen to a half-pay army surgeon who was now a ship’s sawbones?
    The torn carcass was packed with aromatic herbs then stitched together and prepared for a rapid burial nearby. The body was dressed in the uniform of the Chasseurs of Bonaparte’s beloved Imperial Guard, which he had formed seventeen years earlier – but there was an odd incident.
    The dressers could not find the General’s best uniform and had to make do with a spare green coat and doeskin trousers. The procession was then free to move across Longwood Green to the grave in Geranium Valley, led by the Emperor’s favourite horse, the grey named Le Vizir, a gift in 1807 from the Ottoman Sultan.
    The Emperor’s will was read, and among the bequests was one of 80000 francs to a certain William Balcombe. But there was little money for anyone. And there was a strange remark: ‘I die prematurely, murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins.’
    Apart from the uniform, several other items could not be found among the dead man’s personal possessions. The bedside pictures of his Empress, Marie-Louise, and of their baby King of Rome were missing. As was the small leather bag on its ribbon sling, an object Napoleon Bonaparte had carried for as long as the island’s intimates could recall.

Chapter Fifteen
    Sydney, Australia –