Researchers find one of Napoleon’s favorite generals buried in Russia under a dance floor
For over 200 years, General Charles Gudin has been buried somewhere in present-day Smolensk, Russia after dying on the battlefield in 1812 during Napoleon Bonaparte’s disastrous campaign there. Now, researchers believe they have finally found his remains.
Charles-Étienne César Gudin de La Sablonnière was born to an aristocratic family in 1768. After attending military school he rose through the ranks of the French military and became a top commander who served in multiple battles throughout the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic War campaigns, even getting injured a time or two in the process.
Most notably, Gudin personally knew Napoleon as they both attended school together in childhood. As such, he was one of Napoleon’s favorite commanders, which is why when a cannonball struck Gudin in the leg and killed him at the Battle of Valutino in 1812, his heart was cut from his body and transported back to Paris where it is interred in the chapel at Pere Lachaise cemetery.
In this way, Gudin’s heart would always be in France even if the rest of his body could not be.
The body was placed in a wooden coffin and buried, never to be seen again. That is, until the researchers found it while excavating a location at a park in Smolensk.
It turns out that the grave had been under the foundation of a dance floor for many years, which means people were literally dancing on Gudin’s grave all these years, albeit unknowingly.
The two teams believe they have found Gudin because his injuries from the cannonball match the injuries on the corpse, with a leg left missing and damage on the right leg, the exact injuries Gudin sustained from the blow. His leg needed to be amputated as a result