Napoleon's horse - 200 years old and stuffed

The last of Napoleon Bonaparte’s horses, stuffed about 200 years ago, is getting a renovation. The purebred Arabian stallion, with the initials of Emperor Napoleon branded into his hide, is being rehydrated and restored at the Army Museum in Paris. It has a large crack in one shoulder, as well as several smaller tears and gashes.

The horse, named Le Vizir, is a white Arabian stallion, a gift from an Ottoman sultan in 1802. It was branded with the mark of Napoleon – a letter N with a crown. Le Vizir means The Vizier – a high-level officer in the Turkish Ottoman rule. It carried Napoleon to victory against the Prussians and Russians, and also went into exile with his owner when Napoleon was forced to abdicate in 1814.

Leon de Chanlaire, an officer in Napoleon’s army looked after the horse until Napoleon died in 1821, and until the horse’s death in 1826 at the age of 33. The officer sent the horse’s body to the taxidermists to be stuffed, and sold it to William Clark, an Englishman living in France.

Clark smuggled the stuffed horse to England in 1839 with the help of John Greaves, who took the stuffing out and packed the remains in a trunk. When the horse arrived in England it was re-stuffed and put on display at the Manchester Natural History Society in 1843.

Le Vizir was returned to France in 1868. It was kept in a storeroom until it was displayed in the Army Museum in Paris in 1905.

The horse will be on display in a climate-controlled glass case when it is restored, but visitors can watch the repair work as two taxidermists carry out the one-month makeover.

http://news.sky.com/story/1721061/napoleons-stuffed-horse-gets-paris-makeover

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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