Marengo

With a bullet lodged in his tail and the imperial cipher of a crowned letter "N" burnt on his left flank, a diminutive Arab stallion drew crowds to Pall Mall, London, in 1823. Sightseers came to gaze at the horse advertised as "Bonaparte's personal charger", whose career had spanned the whole of the Napoleonic Wars, who, to the sound of marching songs had trotted, cantered and galloped from the Mediterranean to Paris, Italy, Germany and Austria, and at the age of 19, had walked 3000 miles to Moscow and back. Since then, both dead and alive, this horse with the same sonorous name as Napoleon's great victory, Marengo, has been a star exhibit in Britain. At London's earliest military museum his articulated skeleton was seen by Queen Victoria and displayed as the horse that had carried his master at Austerlitz in 1805, at Jena in 1806, at Wagram in 1809, in the Russian Campaign of 1812, and at Waterloo in 1815. In telling the story of Marengo, Jill Hamilton shows an unexpected side to the Emperor. She explores Napoleon's enormous regard for horses as well as why it was Marengo, and Marengo alone, who became part of the Napoleonic legend - not Jaffa, Ali, Desiree or any of Napoleon's many mounts.