Whatever, then, were his ailments, they were not incompatible with great and sustained activity.  What were those ailments?  He is said to have suffered from intermittent affections of the lower bowel, of the bladder, and of the skin, the two last resulting in ischury (Dorsey Gardner’s “Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo,” pp. 31-37; O’Connor Morris, pp. 164-166, note).  The list is formidable; but it contains its own refutation.  A man suffering from these diseases, unless in their earliest and mildest stages, could not have done what Napoleon did.  Ischury, if at all pronounced, is a bar to horse exercise.  Doubtless his long rides aggravated any trouble that he had in this respect, for Petiet, who was attached to the staff, noticed that he often dismounted and sat before a little table that was brought to him for the convenience of examining maps; but Petiet thought this was due, not to ill health (about which he says nothing), but to his corpulence ("Souvenirs militaires,” pp. 196 and 212).  Prince Jerome and a surgeon of the imperial staff assured Thiers that Napoleon was suffering from a disease of the bladder; but this was contradicted by the valet, Marchand; and if he really was suffering from all, or any one, of the maladies named above, it is very strange that the surgeon allowed him to expose himself to the torrential rain of the night of the 17th-18th for a purpose which a few trusty officers could equally well have discharged (see next chapter).  Furthermore, Baron Larrey, Chief Surgeon of the army, who saw Napoleon before the campaign began and during its course, says not a word about the Emperor’s health ("Relation medicale des Campagnes, 1815-1840,” pp. 5-11).

Again, the intervals of drowsiness on the 15th and 18th of June, on which the theory of physical collapse is largely based, may be explained far more simply.  Napoleon had long formed the habit of working a good deal at night and of seeking repose during a busy day by brief snatches of slumber.  The habit grew on him at Elba; and this, together with his activity since daybreak, accounts for his sleeping near Charleroi.  The same explanation probably holds good as to his occasional drowsiness at Waterloo.  He scarcely closed his eyes before 3.30 a.m.; and he cannot have been physically fit for the unexpectedly long and severe strain of that Sunday.  That he began the day well we know from a French soldier named Barral (grandfather of the author of “L’Epopee de Waterloo"), who looked at him carefully at 9.30 a.m., and wrote:  “He seemed to me in very good health, extraordinarily active and preoccupied.”  Decoster, the peasant guide who was with Napoleon the whole day, afterwards told Sir W. Scott that he was calm and confident up to the crisis.  Gourgaud, who clung to him during the flight to Paris and thence to Rochefort, notes nothing more serious than great fatigue; Captain Maitland, when he received him on board the “Bellerophon,” thought him “a remarkably strong, well-built man.”  During the voyage to St. Helena he suffered from nothing worse than mal de mer; he ate meat in exceptional quantity, even in the tropics.