Braine-l'Alleud (Belgium) (AFP)

His copper bathtub, his indoor clothes, his billiard balls: an exhibition in Belgium reveals a lesser-known facet of Napoleon, that of a fallen emperor who must fight against boredom during his forced exile on the island of Saint Helena.

Baptized "From Waterloo to Saint Helena, the birth of a legend", the exhibition opened on Wednesday, the bicentenary of his death, on May 5, 1821, in this small British territory lost in the middle of the South Atlantic.

It is held until October at the Memorial of the Battle of Waterloo, south of Brussels, a high place of memory in Belgium to celebrate the one who also reigned for a time over the country (the former "Southern Netherlands", which became the Kingdom of Belgium in 1830).

"This daily in Saint Helena, it was the missing link between the defeat of Waterloo in 1815, which everyone knows, and the moment of his death", argues the curator of the exhibition, the French historian David Chanteranne, during a press visit.

A death surrounded by suspicion which will earn him a total of "five autopsies", according to the historian.

He explains that the English wanted to verify the initial conclusions of the Emperor's personal physician, the Corsican surgeon François Antommarchi.

Napoleon, who died at 51 from a stomach ulcer, had been ill for several years, a situation which helped to darken his mood even further on St Helena.

- Landscape gardener -

When Antommarchi arrived at his bedside in 1819 he found him depressed and encouraged him to go outside to "exercise".

This is how the former military leader turns into a landscape gardener, says Chanteranne.

The gardens around Longwood's house in Sainte-Hélène were "designed by Napoleon in person", now boasts the eponymous Foundation by presenting this 16-hectare estate which in the mid-19th century became the property of the French State.

Most of the personal objects exhibited at the Waterloo Memorial, in the town of Braine-l'Alleud, come "directly" from the estate and have never been presented elsewhere, assure the organizers.

Among them: this dark copper bathtub in which Napoleon spent "between an hour and an hour and a half a day", "every afternoon from 2:00 p.m.", they point out.

History holds that in addition to his stomach ailments, the former consul had suffered from skin problems since the Revolution, requiring "hot, almost boiling baths".

The habit of long sessions in the water was reinforced during his distant exile, to the point that certain relatives were invited around the bathtub for "interminable talks", it is also indicated.

The exhibition shows a pair of silk stockings, a long white blouse and a soft leather shoe that belonged to Napoleon, as if his bathrobe was still waiting for the ex-emperor ... Far from the image of the most immortalized man in boots, military jacket and bicorn hat.

After his death, Napoleon was buried at the bottom of a valley in Sainte-Hélène, where his body remained for almost twenty years, until his transfer to the Invalides in Paris in 1840.

© 2021 AFP