Mystery of Napoleon’s treasure. Part II

The Voice of Russia: Mystery of Napoleon’s treasure. Part II
We present another edition in our series dedicated to the 1812 Patriotic War against France. Today we will continue our story about Napoleon’s found and lost treasures.

As we’ve mentioned in the previous program, alongside the French, Russian people themselves also tried to find Napoleon’s lost treasure. Thus, following the 1835 release of Sir Walter Scott’s 14-volume series titled The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the Frenchin St. Petersburg, Nikolay Khmelnitsky, the then governor of Smolensk, read the following in one of the books: “Napoleon commanded that the Moscow loot - ancient armor, guns and a big cross from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower - were thrown into the Semlev Lake as trophies that he did not want to lose but was not able to carry with him.”

A poet, playwright and governor, Khmelnitsky was enchanted by this news - Napoleon’s loot was buried just outside Smolensk! Adding to his confidence in the credibility of Walter Scott’s lines were memoirs of French marshals and generals, particularly Bonaparte’s most-informed aide Philippe-Paul De Ségur.

In 1824-1829, the latter published his memoirs about the French army’s “Russian Campaign” that read as follows: “From Gzhatsk to the Mikhailovskaya village, between Dorogobuzh and Smolensk, the imperial convoy met with nothing remarkable, except that we had to throw the entire Moscow pillage into the Semlev Lake: cannons, ancient guns, Kremlin jewelry and Ivan the Great cross. Trophies, fame - all the blessings for which we had sacrificed everything - became a burden for us. Now we only thought about how to save our lives.” De Ségur compared the French army with a big ship broken by a terrible storm, throwing everything hampering its advance into the sea of snow.

Apart from a little less detailed version suggested by Walter Scott, this text reveals several literature references to the fact of Moscow loot’s having been drowned in the Semlev Lake.

Along with the French general’s memoirs, there is a very curious report by a Russian lieutenant colonel on January 9th, 1836. He wrote that during his visit to the Vyazemsky region, where the mentioned lake is located, in search of more information, he found out that following the French retreat, a local landowner sent 40 gun carriages to the country court, with their cannons never discovered. The Russian officer concluded that the army’s deplorable state prevented the retreating French soldiers from taking the loot any farther and could have made them bury all the useless guns in the lake, even without Napoleon’s orders.

Judging by these literature works and sure that the treasure was almost in his hands, Smolensk Governor Nikolay Khmelnitsky ordered to exhaust the lake but found nothing valuable there. Later, treasure-hunting efforts around the Semlev village also involved several St. Petersburg citizens, among them warrant officer von Ludwig, Lieutenant Colonel Schwanebach and a person named Chetverikov. However, none of them succeeded in discovering the traces of Napoleon’s lost gems.

The next stage of this large-scale treasure hunt in Russia and the Smolensk province in particular lasted from 1910 to 1912 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of victory in the 1812 Patriotic War. It proved fruitless as well.

The search for buried valuables continued in the Soviet period, with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper sending a delegation of its employees to the Semlev Lake. They had been working in vain for two years, from 1958 to1960, having found neither gold or silver, nor cannons or guns dating back to the 1812 war era.

The failed expedition made most treasure seekers sit up and think whether the notorious treasure exists after all or not. The latest research carried out by Russian enthusiasts proves that the French emperor’s looted jewels are really hidden somewhere in Russia.

You’ve been listening to the second part of our story about the mystery surrounding Napoleon’s treasures.