Hemorrhoids. They happen, and for folks who do a surfeit of sitting, they can get pretty gnarly. Truckers, writers, and horseback riders are especially susceptible to this accursed condition. And they apparently did to Napoleon’s backside what he did to Austria.
Scott acknowledged this in an interview with Empire, and, in classic Scott fashion, discussed the subject with amusing bluntness. “Napoleon was a horseman, he suffered from piles,” said the director. “That’s varicose veins up your butt, right? I don’t have them, but they’re very, very painful, it ain’t funny. It’s like having a toothache up your butt. There’s nothing you can do.”
Over the years, some historians have speculated that Napoleon’s throbbing tuchus cost him the battle of Waterloo. He was in such searing posterior pain that he couldn’t summon his celebrated battlefield genius. Scott initially sought to depict this facet of Napoleon’s final defeat, but thought better of it. Here’s how he explained his thinking to Empire:
“We sense history might have been different had Napoleon not had a very bad attack of piles on the day of Waterloo. You heard this one? Okay. So I had him at Waterloo, sitting on the loo, and it’s pouring with rain outside, and he does his business. He gets up, looks in the loo, there is blood. Then he does the day in battle, sweating and in agony with the piles. David [Scarpa, the screenwriter] said, ‘Isn’t this rather undignified?’ I said, ‘Maybe, but it’s accurate.’ But we took it out of the movie because it became too distracting.”
