Waterloo in 100 Objects by Gareth Glover

Author:Gareth Glover
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750964487
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2015-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

The stallion was reputedly captured in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo and ownership soon transferred to a John Angerstein, the son of a City financier, whose superb art collection became the nucleus of the newly built National Gallery’s collection. The horse saw out his life at the Angerstein stables and he died in 1832. The body of Marengo was sent to London Hospital to be articulated so that it could be put on public show. This was the same year that the body of the philospher Jeremy Bentham was articulated and put on display at University College London.

With the resurgence in interest in Napoleon when his body was returned to France from St Helena in 1840, great interest was suddenly shown in the remains of ‘Marengo’ as well. But many of the claims made regarding Marengo are hard to reconcile with the known facts. The imperial stable books list no horse named Marengo. It is very unlikely that a horse born in 1792/3, as claimed, could have survived until 1832. In fact, checking the skeleton’s measurements against the imperial stables records reveals only one similarly sized horse – Ali, but he was recorded as being seven years younger. All in all it would seem that Marengo is probably a fake, with a manufactured name and history.

Another of Napoleon’s horses, Jaffa, is known to have been brought back to Britain, by a Mr Green who purchased it at a Belgian auction after Waterloo, but this horse lived in relative obscurity at his owner’s mansion in Kent. Jaffa had to be put down in 1829 and was buried at the estate with a memorial column erected over his grave stating, ‘Under this stone lies Jaffa the charger of Napoleon aged 37 years’. The provenance of this claim is also impossible to establish.

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