Napoleon Myths Checked: His Height, the Sphinx's Nose, Arsenic and 11 More Stories

02“He was very short”

Credited to Popular story

Doesn't hold up He was about average height for a Frenchman of his time.

The famous figure comes from his autopsy. His doctor, Francesco Antommarchi, recorded his height as five pieds, two pouces and four lignes. Those are old French units. The French inch, the pouce, was 2.7 cm, while the English inch was 2.54 cm.

Read in French units, that is about 1.67 to 1.69 m. It is about 1.69 m with the four lignes, and about 1.67 m for just over 5 pieds 2 pouces.

History.com gives around 1.67 m, a little above average for a Frenchman of the early 1800s. In 1900 the historian Frédéric Masson converted the full figure to 1.687 m. Read as English feet and inches, the same numbers shrink to 5 ft 2 in.

Cartoons did the rest. The British caricaturist James Gillray’s 1803 cartoon “Maniac-raving’s-or-Little Boney in a strong fit” ushered in the tiny Napoleon that many people still picture.

03“Short men are more aggressive”: the ‘Napoleon complex’

Credited to Popular idea

Partly In one small 2018 study, shorter men took more resources but were not more physically aggressive, and its authors called that support preliminary.

The idea is that short men make up for their height by acting more aggressively. Its origins are unclear, though it has been linked to Alfred Adler’s theory of the inferiority complex.

In the 2018 study, researchers in the Netherlands paired men with taller or shorter opponents in games about sharing resources. Shorter men kept more for themselves in a game where they held all the power. They were not more likely to show direct, physical aggression toward a taller opponent. The authors described their results as “preliminary support” for the idea.

The study was small, with 42 men in one experiment and 164 in another.

Its design and analysis plans were not preregistered, meaning they were not fixed in public before the data came in. We searched PubMed for the phrase in October 2026 and found no independent repeat of the experiment. The authors also note that Napoleon was of average stature for his time.

04“French soldiers shot off the Sphinx’s nose”

Credited to Popular story

Doesn't hold up The Sphinx’s face was damaged long before Napoleon’s army reached Egypt.

Napoleon began his Egyptian campaign in 1798. About sixty years earlier, the Danish traveller Frederic Louis Norden set out for Egypt in 1737. In the English edition of his travels, published in 1757, he describes the Sphinx. He writes of the indignation a visitor feels at those “who have had the brutality to disfigure strangely its nose”.

The damage is older still. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi wrote about it as an event of his own time, as quoted by the archaeologist Selim Hassan in 1949. In the Islamic year 780, al-Maqrizi says, a Sufi named Saim ed-Dahr went to the pyramids and “disfigured the face of Abul-Hol”, the Arabic name for the Sphinx.

That year ran from 1378 to 1379.

05“His army fired cannon at the pyramids”

Credited to 2023 film

Doesn't hold up The scene comes from a 2023 film, and a historian writing about it treats it as invented.

Joan Tumblety, a historian of France at the University of Southampton, lists Napoleon “ordering his men to fire at the pyramids” among the inventions of Ridley Scott’s film.

The real battle named after the pyramids was fought on 21 July 1798. In Napoleon’s own later account, the enemy’s main camp stood in front of the village of Embabeh, on the left bank of the Nile. The far end of their line rested on the pyramids.

By the same account, he pointed the pyramids out to his troops, telling them that forty centuries were watching them.

06“His hand in his coat was a sign of stomach pain”

Credited to Popular story

Doesn't hold up The pose was taught as good manners decades before he was born.

A 1737 London guide to deportment, François Nivelon’s The Rudiments of Genteel Behavior, shows a gentleman standing with “the right Hand” placed “in the Waistcoat easy and genteel”.

Napoleon was born in 1769, more than thirty years after that book. Our reading: a portrait with his hand in his waistcoat shows a well-known gentleman’s stance. We found no early source for the stomach-pain story.

07“He said ‘Not tonight, Josephine’”

Credited to Popular saying

Doesn't hold up The line turns up long after his death, with no link to him.

Napoleon died on 5 May 1821. The earliest use we found is in an 1882 story in an illustrated weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. There a woman says “Not to-night, Josephine” to a girl she has just decided to call Josephine.

By 1908 the show-business paper Variety treated it as a familiar line, comparing something to “the remark ‘Not to-night, Josephine’”. We searched the Internet Archive’s full text and found no use from his or Joséphine’s lifetime.

08“Arsenic killed him”

Credited to Popular theory

Still argued His hair did hold high levels of arsenic, and his stomach was cancerous. Nobody in the recent reviews we read argues for murder. The open question is how large a part toxic substances played.

The arsenic itself is real. Debate over whether he died of arsenic poisoning has been active since 1960. In 1961 three researchers reported in Nature on the arsenic in a sample of his hair. Later work added three findings.

• A 2004 study found raised arsenic in hair cut on Elba in 1814, seven years before he died, as well as in hair cut in 1821. The authors said this disfavours the poisoning theory.

• A 2007 study found that more than 97% of the arsenic in two samples was inorganic, which it called “consistent with a chronic intoxication”. Our reading: that shows he was exposed to arsenic over time; it does not show who or what exposed him.

• A 2026 study tested sediment from places where he lived on Saint Helena. It found no evidence of a health risk from arsenic, except at one site that may hold more recent rubbish.

The 2021 pathologists cite a 2008 study that found raised arsenic in hair from his childhood, and from his son and Joséphine. They say that study “finally dismissed” the arsenic poisoning hypothesis. We could not open the 2008 paper itself.

On the cause of death, two 2021 papers read the evidence differently.

• The pathologists. An international group of pathologists who specialise in the digestive tract re-read the autopsy reports. They concluded that he died of an advanced malignant tumour of the stomach, with bleeding in the upper gut.

  They judge an unnatural component unlikely: the cancer caused the bleeding, and a dose of calomel, a mercury compound his doctors gave him, was “just a trigger”. His health had been declining since October 1820, which they see as in line with cancer progression.

• The toxicology review. A systematic review classed his death as “unnatural”. It found massive stomach bleeding in which toxic substances played a primary part, perhaps triggering or worsening an underlying disease that could well be stomach cancer.

Most of the papers the review covered put the bleeding down to stomach cancer, or to medicines containing antimony, mercury or arsenic. It added that its finding “does not imply criminal intent”.

Our reading: both papers accept a badly diseased, bleeding stomach, so stomach cancer is the leading explanation. How large a part toxic substances played is still argued.

One 1999 paper, by Weider, of the International Napoleonic Society, and Fournier, argues for deliberate poisoning. A comment on it by Corso, Hindmarsh and Stritto was published the next year. The recent reviews we read do not support it.

09“He wasn’t really French”

Credited to Popular claim

Partly Corsica had been French for a little over a year when he was born, and his family had sided with Paoli against the French.

• Corsica officially became French, after being Genoese, by the Treaty of Versailles of 15 May 1768.
• French troops subdued Paoli’s men at Ponte Nuovo on 9 May 1769. Napoleon’s father, Charles Bonaparte, was among Paoli’s partisans.
• Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769, and his name at birth was Napoleone di Buonaparte.

In 1779 he went to school at Autun to perfect his French. At the military school of Brienne, his strong Corsican accent and fierce Corsican patriotism set him apart.

His first known piece of writing, a history of Corsica from 1786, was a draft complaint about the French occupation of the island. A letter he wrote in 1791 shows his leanings towards Corsican independence and his support for Paoli. Our reading: he was French by law from birth, and Corsican by upbringing for years after.

10“He rose from humble beginnings”

Credited to Popular story

Doesn't hold up He was born into a family of minor Corsican nobility, though not a rich one.

His family’s noble status was officially recognised in September 1771. That let him enter the military school at Brienne in 1779, where four degrees of nobility were required. He went as a king’s scholar, and the school was meant for nobles short of money.

11“He snatched the crown from the Pope”

Credited to Popular story

Doesn't hold up He did crown himself, but as planned.

For the ceremony at Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804, Napoleon had invited Pope Pius VII to consecrate him. He picked up the crown resting on the altar and put it on his own head, “following the agreed order of service”. He then crowned Joséphine, the moment Jacques-Louis David chose for his painting Le Sacre.

12“He wrote the Napoleonic Code himself”

Credited to Popular claim

Doesn't hold up A commission of four lawyers drafted it, and he chaired many of the debates.

• The commission was Bigot de Préameneu and Tronchet, experts in customary law, with Maleville and Portalis, experts in written law.

• Its draft was debated in the Council of State from 17 July 1801, with Napoleon in the chair, or Cambacérès when he was away.

• Earlier drafts had been presented in 1793, 1794 and 1796, but none was adopted.

His personal mark is real, though. He left it on the code by restoring the authority of the husband and father in the family. The civil code took the name Code Napoléon in 1807.

13“He lost Waterloo because of the rain”

Credited to Popular claim

Partly The storm delayed the start, but on its own it does not explain the defeat.

In his own later account, the rain fell in torrents in the night before the battle. His officers thought it impossible to fight that day, because the soaked ground would stop the artillery and cavalry from moving. They reckoned it would take twelve hours of fine weather to dry.

The historian Thierry Lentz writes that the French had to wait until 11am for the ground to dry enough to get their artillery into position.

On 18 June 1815 he was defeated at Waterloo by the British and Prussian allied armies. Lentz sums it up: Napoleon “was of course slowed down by the storm, but this alone does not explain the defeat”.

A 2005 study in the journal Weather asked whether the weather changed the course of history; we could not read it. Our page on Napoleon’s battles covers Waterloo in full.

14“He crossed the Alps on a rearing horse”

Credited to David's painting

Doesn't hold up He crossed the Great St Bernard Pass on a mule. The rearing horse is a painting.

Jacques-Louis David’s famous picture of the 1800 crossing was produced in 1801, and David never went to the pass. Napoleon crossed on surefooted mules, not on his thoroughbred.

The pose seems to have been his own wish.

In 1827 P.-A. Coupin, an editor of an arts journal, reported what Napoleon told David: “Je veux être peint calme, sur un cheval fougueux”. In English: I want to be painted calm, on a fiery horse.

In 1848 Paul Delaroche painted a far less heroic version, Napoleon haggard and cold. It shows him on a mule led by a local guide, Pierre-Nicolas Dorsaz.

15“His last words were ‘France, army, Josephine’”

Credited to Montholon's memoirs

Partly That is one witness’s version. The people at his bedside wrote down different words.

• His doctor, Antommarchi, wrote in memoirs published in 1825 that the last words he spoke were “tête armée”: head, army.

• General Montholon, who shared his exile, wrote in memoirs published in 1846–47 that he thought he heard “France — armée, tête d’armée — Joséphine”.

• Grand Marshal Bertrand’s journal, published only in 1949, records “at the head of the army” that night.

All three mention the army. Only Montholon has Joséphine, and the Fondation Napoléon calls his memoirs “untrustworthy”.