This file photo shows two people restoring Vizir, the last horse of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the Museum of the Army at Hotel des Invalides in Paris. (Photo: AFP)
Visitors to the Army Museum in Paris are being treated to the rare sight of two taxidermists at work restoring a stuffed horse — the last one ridden by Napoleon Bonaparte. Le Vizir is a little worse for wear more than 200 years after carrying the emperor to victory against the Prussians and the Russians — not to mention being stuffed not just once, but twice.
“It’s a specimen that has suffered,” was the expert, if understated, assessment of taxidermist Yveline Huguet as she worked putty into a crack in Le Vizir’s chest.
The white Arabian stallion sports a brand on his rump made up of an N topped with a crown. One of the emperor’s favourites — recalling great victories at Jena and Eylau — he accompanied his master to exile in Elba.
By the time Napoleon swept back to power — for 100 days — in France the following year after escaping from Elba, Le Vizir was old enough to retire.
So, while Le Vizir also returned to France he was spared the ignominy that awaited Napoleon at Waterloo. Chanlaire had Le Vizir stuffed shortly after the horse died at the ripe old age of 33 in 1826.
Fearing that reprisals against those suspected of ties to Napoleon would extend to the emperor’s horse, Chanlaire sold Le Vizir on to William Clark, an Englishman living in northern France.
Chanlaire “had a few relationship problems with the regime of Charles X, because he was very supportive of the empire,” said Mr Gregory Spourdos, the 36-year-old deputy curator of the Army Museum’s modern section. But Clark too feared association with the defunct empire, and he arranged for Le Vizir to be smuggled to England in 1839.
