Napoleon will be in the spotlight during prime time Monday, April 19, 2021 on France 2. In the latest issue of Secrets of History, the presenter Stéphane Bern will return to the course of Napoleon, one of the greatest figures in the history ofe France, died 200 years ago, on May 5, 1821, on Île Sainte-Hélène. The opportunity to look at the story of Charlotte Chappuis, a mysterious woman who has claimed throughout her life that she was the illegitimate daughter of the first emperor of the French. In his book Napoleon’s Daughter (Éd. Les Arènes), the historian Bruno Fuligni brings to life the fate of this woman born in 1795 whose life resembled a novel according to Point which devotes an article to it on Sunday April 18, 2021.
Charlotte Chappuis would have been born from the connection of Napoleon and Antoinette Cattin, known as Cotain, who was a prostitute and who would have had about twenty children. After spending part of her childhood in boarding school, Charlotte Chappuis was entrusted to her uncle, who was a notary in Arnay-le-Duc. Her mother Antoinette Cattin revealed to her who her father was years later on her deathbed. And Napoleon never knew anything about it. When Charlotte Chappuis tried to talk about it publicly, she was placed in a mental hospital, and silenced. Once out, she married Jacob Muller, an owner and manager of a metallurgical establishment., with whom she had six children.
Was Charlotte Chappuis a sham?
For Bruno Fuligni, Charlotte Chappuis “is not a hoax”. “She really existed”, he explained to the Point. “I was able to find her descendants, who brought me precious testimonies, in particular the letters she wrote in detention. I also discovered that she had been in close contact with General Delort, companion of epic of Napoleon, deputy then peer of France, an influential man who has always been struck by Charlotte’s resemblance to the Emperor “, he confided. General Delort supported her, protected her relatives, and was even the godfather of her son Adrien. “Proof that his story had to be convincing”, considers the historian.
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