Experts have confirmed that a letter donated to Brock University was written by Napoleon Bonaparte.
David Sharron, the head of Brock University’s Special Collection and Archives, said the department received a donation from a rare book collector several years ago.
“[The collector] wanted people to use the books and enjoy them like he did. But among those books was this letter. We didn’t even expect it. It was a complete surprise,” Sharron said.
The letter had Napoleon’s signature at the bottom. Catherine Parayre, French studies director at Brock University, said the process of confirming the signature began at a university event, Humanities and Social Sciences Congress last May.
“It is a huge event every year . . . we had guests from all over the world, including the director of the Library of the National Archives in Paris [Philippe Nieto],” she said.
Parayre, along with Nieto and Sharron, examined the letter.
“We looked at the letter and we thought, ‘Well, it looks really authentic,’” she said. Nieto then took a copy of the letter to Paris, where experts confirmed Napoleon’s signature by December, according to Parayre.
Sharron said he would show students the letter but could never tell them it was actually authentic. After the signature was confirmed, things changed.
“When you pick up that document, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, this is something that was once handled by Napoleon Bonaparte,’” he said.
Pararye said the letter is interesting, but not as rare as one might think.
“Letters written by Napoleon are not a rarity. There are lots of them . . . Napoleon wrote a lot,” she said. “However, what is really strange is to have one here at Brock in Niagara . . . There is no connection between Napoleon and Niagara.”
Sharron noted the letter was from Napoleon’s early history, before he became emperor of France.
Napoleon wrote the letter to famous philosopher Guillaume-Thomas Raynal in June 1791.
“The letter was written in [Corsica] and it was sent to this philosopher, who at the time was probably more famous than Napoleon,” Pararyre said. “The two men have met somewhere before . . . Napoleon in this letter is saying, ‘I am sending you a history of Corsica, please have a look at it.’”
Napoleon had his brother deliver the letter to Raynal, according to the English transcription of the letter.
Brock University will host a free workshop on Jan. 22, where the letter will be displayed for students. The workshop will be hosted by Pararyre and Sharron along with other staff in the French Studies department.
The letter will also be available on Brock University’s library catalogue and digital repository in the future. Sharron said it is a great document to attract student interest.
“When students want to study that aspect of French history . . . we have something to show. It’s a really great way to make history very authentic and appealing to our first and second-year students,” he said.
