The thing you’d never guess is where Napoleon’s masculinity is being kept today

Bonaparte Napoleon, the “little corporal,” had a meteoric career in Europe ruled by great dynasties: from a simple artillery officer to emperor and the master of a continent almost overnight. When he eventually died in exile, his doctor cut off his manhood, which was measured only recently.

Was Napoleon small?

A common yet false belief is that the French emperor was excessively short. It is said his favourite saying to his insubordinate officers was that they stood a head taller than him, though this could be corrected. In the era of the guillotine, such a statement was easy enough to make.

Yet by the standards of the time Napoleon was not short. In the early 19th century, the average height for men in France was 165 centimetres; the French emperor, at 169 centimetres, stood above that. Today he would be considered short, but back then he was more or less of average height, though his tall, slender-body guards would naturally make the eye compare him with them.

What happened to the imperial penis?

And how do we know Napoleon’s height? At his death, on the island of Saint Helena, his doctor, François Carlo Antommarchi, measured him. The Independent states that his penis was cut off at the same time, in front of 17 witnesses. To whom did it belong? To none other than the funeral director Anges Paul Vignali abbé, whose family it had been passed down for roughly a century. In 1924 it was bought by an American rare-books dealer, a certain A. S. W. Rosenbach, so that it could be displayed in New York in 1927.

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From the dealer it passed to a urologist, a certain Lattimer, whose heirs now own the imperial manhood. In 2014 he permitted exactly ten people to view it. According to Lattimer, Napoleon’s penis is perfectly formed, and a university has even confirmed its provenance. Those statements were addressed to those who doubted that the organ truly belonged to the emperor. Index.hu previously investigated the matter thoroughly and confirmed the story.

It was measured

In 2014, the Channel 4 programme “Dead Famous DNA” reported the size as well: barely 3.8 centimetres. The channel’s announcer, Mark Evans, even described it as “very stumpy.” At the same time, they could not film it, so no one saw its condition.

And since we’re talking about sizes: before making any definitive statements about Napoleon’s masculinity, it’s worth noting that research suggests the size of a flaccid penis does not correlate with its erect size. Nevertheless, a 2015 study of 15,000 men concluded that even when flaccid, the average size is about 9 cm.

Napoleon was reburied in 1840. The emperor’s body, which had been buried in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in what was said to be relatively pristine condition, was transported to Paris, where it received a place of honour in the Invalides Cathedral in 1861. By then his great-nephew, Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, had become ruler of the country as Napoleon III. The tombstone, of course, can still be viewed today.

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