LE VIZIR – NAPOLEON’S HORSE
July 5, 2016 - The Chairman in News & Blog Posts, Chairman's Blog
This horse has recently hit the news, (See Daily Telegraph of 4 July). It is the stuffed body of Le Vizir which lay in the cellars of The Louvre for many a year. It has recently been re found and will be restored and placed in the Les Invalides to be seen by all.
The existence of the horse was largely unknown until 1868 when the Natural History Society of Manchester presented it to Napoleon III when he was visiting England . Clearly not knowing what to do with such a gift he had it put in The Louvre for safe keeping. How the naturalists of Manchester got hold of this extraordinary item in the first place is a mystery. The horse died in 1829 but was then presented to the Society by a Mr John Greaves of Staffordshire who had allegedly acquired it from a Mr Clarke who had obtained it from a Monsieur de Chaulaire near Boulogne. How he got it noone knows. All quite mysterious and hardly the “stuff” (sorry) of authenticated history. Most of this information comes from Jill Hamilton’s Book on Marengo published by Fourth Estate in 2000.
