The 2022 What?! Explain. Valentine's Day Special!

As with all good holiday specials, this one comes with a content warning, which will be after the description. 

That being said, this is a Valentine's Day special, and what could be more romantic than the story of one of the world's most famous Frenchmen, Napoleon Bonaparte, his travels throughout his military history... and... well, after his death. Well, part of him travelled after his death anyways. 

Listen to the episode, it'll all make sense. 

Content warning: death, post-death dismemberment

I cannot emphasize enough, if you're a bit squeamish, you may want to give this one a miss. 

Season 3 is in production, but enjoy these specials while we work! 

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Transcript

1.       Napoleon Bonaparte, for better or for worse, is one of the most well-known figures in history. Whether as a conquerer of large portions of Europe, a boogeyman to the British empire at the time, or just as a theoretically very short Frenchman who took his height personally. (For the record, he was 5’7. Take from that what you will.)

2.       His military career took him all over Europe and North Africa, from his birth in Corsica to his death in Saint Helena, a British-held Island. And one would assume that his travels would have stopped there. For most people, it would. But Napoleon Bonaparte is not most people. 

3.       And what exactly makes this a Valentine’s Day special? Well, I’ll tell you. Not all of napoleon ended up interred with the man. In fact, one particular part was smuggled out beneath the watchful eyes of the doctors at the autopsy, and created controversy for over a hundred years afterwards. I am of course, talking about his little emperor, his petite baguette, his Napoleon Bone-that-was-now-definitely-apart from him. 

(Pause)

4.       It’s his penis. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and this is What?! Explain. 

5.       Napoleon Bonaparte’s rapid ascension to power was against the backdrop of the French Revolution, where he was a staunch anti-royalist. Since the deposition of the ruling royal family in France, the revolutionary government was in conflict with many European nations, particularly those with close ties to the royal family, as well as many within France that wanted a return to rule by the monarchy. 

6.       Bonaparte’s suppression of a royalist insurrection in Paris to try and put the royal family of France back on the throne in 1795 got him promoted to Major-General in the Revolutionary army.

7.       Bonaparte was one of the leading generals of the government, and the Directory, the five-person group governing France at the time, offered Bonaparte the lead in invading England. Napoleon, realizing that the French Navy might not be able to survive a direct invasion with the British navy, which was the most powerful in the world at the time, decided to try and sever some supply lines between Britain and their colonies instead, particularly in India. 

8.       This led to Bonaparte spending most of the next four years in various conflicts in Egypt and Syria, attempting to cut off Britain from their colonies. However, Bonaparte wasn’t content to be following orders for the rest of his life. When the political situation for the Directory became precarious in 1799, Napoleon abandoned his army in Egypt and returned to France. 

9.       He was received very positively by the public in France, who saw him as a successful battlefield general in the war against Britain. Bonaparte took part in a coup against the Directory that resulted in him becoming the leading political figure in France.

10.   He cemented his popularity in France by defeating the Austrians in 1800, and forcing Britain to sign a peace treaty favorable to the French in 1802. Later that year, he made himself first consul for life, and in 1804, he crowned himself Emperor of France. 

11.   His hatred of the British was one of the things that remained constant for Bonaparte, from mere soldier to Emperor of France. With his new power, he made efforts to try and stymy the British at every turn, either through open warfare or through economic means via a blockade of the European continent, preventing British ships from accessing mainland Europe. 

12.   Given that many of the trade routes needed by the British had at least one stop in Europe, this created significant difficulty for them. With further defeats of Russia and Austria expanding the French empire, Napoleon wanted to deal a finishing blow to Britain. However, this was not to be. 

13.   Napoleon over-extended his forces trying to invade Russia initially in summer, but the campaign dragged out into winter, this resulted in his legendary defeat, as well as a general bit of knowledge of the folly of invading Russia in winter. 

14.   While his campaign in Russia was going badly, French forces were simultaneously being driven out of Spain by a combination of Spanish, Portuguese, and British forces, and out of what is now Germany by a coalition of nations including Russia, Sweden, and Austria. 

15.   It turns out that being an expansionist conqueror does not win you many friends from the countries you are conquering. Napoleon ended up having to retreat to France, and in March of 1814, the coalition forces marched into Paris. 

16.   One month later, Napoleon was forced to abdicate the throne, and was exiled to Elba, a small island off the coast of Italy. As a consolation prize of a sort, he was given sovereignty of that island. However, he again was not content to just live out his life in exile. 

17.   Less than a year later, he escaped the island of Elba and sailed back to France with a group of over a thousand supporters. When he returned to Paris in March of 1815, the new King, Louis the eighteenth, ran for the hills, and Napoleon crowned himself emperor again. 

18.   Napoleon’s plan was to pre-emptively strike at the four major powers that opposed him – The British, Austrains, Prussians, and Russians, taking them out one by one before they could unite. While sound in theory, it didn’t work in practice, as the French forces were soundly defeated by the british at the battle of Waterloo three months later. 

19.   Four days after this defeat, on June 22nd, Napoleon was forced to abdicate again, and AGAIN was exiled to a small island, this time a British-held island called Saint Helena. He never left that island, dying of stomach cancer in 1821. And of course, this is where most historians of Napoleon Bonaparte would stop. 

20.   But of course, we at What?! Explain. Are not most historians.  

21.   The day after Bonaparte’s death, his autopsy was done by his personal doctor, supervised by seven British doctors, three British officers, and six men from Bonaparte’s retinue. His stomach was removed, as the cause of death was theorized as stomach cancer. His heart was removed, as Bonaparte wished for it to be sent to his estranged wife, Marie Louise. Whether or not Marie Louise WANTED said heart is lost to history, but I guess it is the thought that counts? 

22.   However, the British governor wanted all parts of Bonaparte to be buried with him, as he did not want any Bonapartist sentiments to arise in France if any part of him would be returned. With this very supervised autopsy and the british orders to make sure that all of Bonaparte was buried, what happened next is all the more astonishing. 

23.   Taking advantage of the eyes of the British being distracted for a time, Bonaparte’s doctor took two small pieces of the emperor’s ribs, giving one piece to his valet, and the other to his chaplain. Also for reasons not confirmed by history, the doctor also removed… well, Bonaparte’s penis. 

24.   The reason why exactly the penis was taken varies, whether it was just as a sort of ghoulish souvenir, or something a bit more personal. There is documentation at the time that Napoleon had routinely berated his chaplain, calling him “impotent”, and that his genitals being cut off during the autopsy may have been due to the chaplain paying off the doctor to take some post-death revenge. To paraphrase greatly, be careful on who you’re being mean to, because they may be in a position to steal your penis after your death. Or something like that. 

25.   Regardless, the penis ended up in the possession of the chaplain, who smuggled it off Saint Helena, and the empirical genitals remained in the possession of the chaplain’s family for generations, until it was sold as a part of a collection of Napoleonic artifacts, to a British rare books collector in 1916. 

26.   The collection (and penis included) changed hands many times over the next decade, until it ended up displayed in the Museum of French Art in New York, placed on a velvet pillow, and described as a “mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem”. As the New York Times reported, Maudlin sentimentalizers sniffled; shallow women giggled and pointed. In a glass case they saw something looking like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shriveled eel. Not a description anyone wants of their genitals, no matter how far post-mortem it is. 

27.   This was not the famed genital’s only brush with fame. IN 1972, the penis itself was put up for auction at a London auction house, but with nobody bidding high enough to reach its reserve price, the owner withdrew the genitals from the auction block. Five years later, it was sold to a man named John K Lattimer for $3,000. 

28.   Ironically enough, in addition to being an artifact collector, Lattimer was also one of the leading urologists in the United States. He felt that the penis was being made fun of, that it was an object of derision, so he purchased it to take it out of circulation. He stored it in a suitcase underneath his bed until his death. 

29.   Lattimer’s daughter inherited his artifact collection, penis included, and to this day has stayed true to  her father’s wishes, reportedly refusing multiple offers of over $100,000 for the Bonapartian genitals.  

30.   It’s incredibly rare that someone achieves an element of fame and notoriety that artifacts of theirs become things to be sought after. And if it is rarity that a collector is after, you don’t get much more one-of-a-kind than something taken off the body itself. 

31.   Granted, many of these post-mortem souvenirs are things such as hair, grave-clothes, or maybe a finger if one is exceedingly ambitious. To have one’s genitals removed and smuggled away does seem to speak to someone having either a personal vendetta against Bonaparte, or just a VERY strange idea of a keepsake. 

32.   But I guess in death, Napoleon Bonaparte has earned what many, MANY men on internet dating sites have claimed: that their genitals have made them famous. I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and I’ll talk to you in a bit. 

33.   Audio mixing for this episode was done by Craig Murdock, who says that the descriptions of Napoleon’s penis will haunt him to the end of his days.  

34.   If you want to be up to date with all things podcast-related, why not follow us on Instagram at Whatexplaincast and on our Facebook page as What?! Explain. Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have some time, please rate and review us! 

35.   This is the first of some of the in-between special episodes of What ?! Explain. I’m hoping to be able to take the time to make Season 3 even better than the previous ones, but in the meantime, I’m not leaving you without content. 

36.   There will be some more mini episodes chock full of unusual facts I loved, but couldn’t quite make into a full episode, more horrifying history, and guest schedules permitting, the pilot episode of What?!, No YOU Explain., the talk show in which I have various people on to explain THEIR weird facts and stories. 

37.   Thanks again for listening, and I’ll talk to you later!