Who, Or What, Killed Napoleon?

Did Napoleon Bonaparte die of stomach cancer, as the textbooks say, or did British captors poison the fabled French emperor?

The latest chapter in the debate that has gripped historians and scientists for nearly half a century came with the publication of a new report disputing claims of foul play.

In its November edition, the magazine "Science et Vie" (Science and Life) said recent tests on strands of Napoleon's hair confirm exposure to arsenic — but that's not what killed him.

"At first, we thought arsenic was the cause of death," wrote Ivan Ricordel, one of the authors of the report and director of the toxicological laboratory at Paris police headquarters.

But on closer inspection, the arsenic likely came from an outside source, not by swallowing poison, Ricordel said.

Evidence included the fact that the arsenic was spread evenly throughout his hair, which would indicate "such chronic intake that it would literally have to have been daily" and would have killed him off much earlier, the report said.

Ricordel and his colleagues argue the arsenic came from hair products, or ash from wood fires, glue, or perhaps due to contact with rat poison.

The report concluded that the official cause of his death — stomach cancer — was probably right.

Proponents of the poison theory claim that Napoleon was the victim of a British and French conspiracy and was done away with at the hands of his friend, Count Charles de Montholon.

Born in Corsica, Napoleon died at age 52 on May 5, 1821 on the island of St. Helena, where he had been banished after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo.

Conspiracy theories first emerged in the early 1960s but took on new credibility in 1995 after the FBI and Britain's Scotland Yard discovered that clippings of Napoleon's hair were tinged with poison.

A separate controversy rages in France over whether the body lying under the gilded dome of Les Invalides in Paris is actually that of Napoleon.

French historian Bruno Roy-Henry is locked in an uphill battle against the government to allow a DNA test that he contends would end those doubts.

But the Defense Ministry has so far refused to sanction the test.

By Ingrid Rousseau