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General Charles-Etienne Gudin, 44, died 22 August 1812 in Smolensk, Russia
Napoleon's favorite general has been formally identified after DNA tests on a one-legged skeleton found under a dance floor in western Russia.
An aristocrat by birth, Gudin was a veteran of both the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
He attended the same military school as Napoleon Bonaparte, and is believed to have been one of the French emperor's favourite generals.
Gudin, aged 44, was hit by a cannonball near the city of Smolensk during the French invasion of Russia in 1812.
He had to have his leg amputated and died three days later from gangrene.
At the time of his death on 22 August 1812, the French army removed Gudin's heart and buried it in a chapel in Paris' Père Lachaise cemetery.
Researchers used the memoirs of Louis-Nicolas Davout, another French general of the Napoleonic era, who organised Gudin's funeral and described the location. They then followed another witness account, which directed them to the coffin.
The search for Gudin's remains was led by Pierre Malinowski, a historian with support from the Kremlin.
The skeleton was discovered in July 2019 in a wooden coffin in a park beneath building foundations by a team of French and Russian archaeologists.
Analysis confirmed that the bones belonged to Charles-Etienne Gudin, French archaeologists say.
... DNA tests from the remains found in Russia matched those of Pierre-César Gudin, Charles-Etienne Gudin's brother and also a Napoleonic general.
"The DNA fits 100%," Mr Malinowski told France's France Bleu broadcaster. "There is no longer any doubt."
LINK:
Mystery of Napoleon's missing general solved in Russian discovery
