The marshal, as he finished, held out his hand to the Emperor, who embraced him, weeping, and in silence.

The day of the marshal’s death his body was given to M. Larrey and M. Cadet de Gassicourt, ordinary chemist to the Emperor, with orders to preserve it, as that of Colonel Morland had been, who was killed at the battle of Austerlitz.  For this purpose the corpse was carried to Schoenbrunn, and placed in the left wing of the chateau, far from the inhabited rooms.  In a few hours putrefaction became complete, and they were obliged to plunge the mutilated body into a bath filled with corrosive sublimate.  This extremely dangerous operation was long and painful; and M. Cadet de Gassicourt deserves much commendation for the courage he displayed under these circumstances; for notwithstanding every precaution, and in spite of the strong disinfectants burned in the room, the odor of this corpse was so fetid, and the vapor from the sublimate so strong, that the distinguished chemist was seriously indisposed.

Like several other persons, I had a sad curiosity to see the marshal’s body in this condition.  It was frightful.  The trunk, which had been covered by the solution, was greatly swollen; while on the contrary, the head, which had been left outside the bath, had shrunk remarkably, and the muscles of the face had contracted in the most hideous manner, the wide-open eyes starting out of their sockets.  After the body had remained eight days in the corrosive sublimate, which it was necessary to renew, since the emanations from the interior of the corpse had decomposed the solution, it was put into a cask made for the purpose, and filled with the same liquid; and it was in this cask that it was carried from Schoenbrunn to Strasburg.  In this last place it was taken out of the strange coffin, dried in a net, and wrapped in the Egyptian style; that is, surrounded with bandages, with the face uncovered.  M. Larrey and M. de Gassicourt confided this honorable task to M. Fortin, a young chemist major, who in 1807 had by his indefatigable courage and perseverance saved from certain death nine hundred sick, abandoned, without physicians or surgeons, in a hospital near Dantzic, and nearly all suffering from an infectious malady.  In the month of March, 1810 (what follows is an extract from the letter of M. Fortin to his master and friend M. Cadet de Gassicourt), the Duchess of Montebello, in passing through Strasburg, wished to see again the husband she loved so tenderly.

“Thanks to you and M. Larrey (it is M. Fortin who speaks), the embalming of the marshal has succeeded perfectly.  When I drew the body from the cask I found it in a state of perfect preservation.  I arranged a net in a lower hall of the mayor’s residence, in which I dried it by means of a stove, the heat being carefully regulated.  I then had a very handsome coffin made of hard wood well oiled; and the marshal wrapped in bandages, his face uncovered, was placed in an open coffin near that of General Saint-Hilaire in a subterranean vault, of which I have the key.  A sentinel watches there day and night.  M. Wangen de Gueroldseck, mayor of Strasburg, has given me every assistance in my work.