In this island is mummified the body of Napoleon's philhellene nephew, Paul Bonaparte and the fallen Frenchmen of the Battle of Navarino (October 8/20, 1827).

Paul Maria Bonaparte was a prince of the Bonaparte Family, nephew of Napoleon the Great. He was a philhellene and took part in the war of Greek Independence.
Paul Bonaparte was the third child of Lucien Bonaparte and his wife Alexandrina de Blessab-Bonaparte. He studied at the University of Bologna.
In March 1827, at the age of 18, he left the city secretly from his parents, and went to Ancona from there with a foreign name traveled to Greece to take part in the war for the independence of the Greeks.
Pavlos Bonaparte first arrived in the Ionian Islands, later he was in Nafplio with the British Admiral Cochran, who at that time was in charge of the Greek fleet.
In Nafplio, the capital of the Greek revolutionaries, he was welcomed by the English Admiral Cochran, commander of the Greek fleet.
However, on August 25 / September 6, while cleaning his weapon, he was seriously injured by clumsy handling and died the next day. He was only 19 years old.
In Nafplio, rumors circulated that the death of the young Bonaparte was not accidental, since it even came from the ship of Cochran, which the Greeks suspected of serving the interests of Great Britain.
However, the American philhellene Samuel Howe, who was an eyewitness of the events, assures that as soon as Cochran learned that the wound was fatal, "he began to walk in the cabin of his tears as a child ...".
As it is said, the body of the young Bonaparte was kept for three years in a barrel of rum in the Monastery of Agios Nikolaos Spetses, until it was received by the French Navy. After the liberation, in 1832, the stuffed body of Paul Maria Bonaparte was buried in a mausoleum on the island of Sfaktiria, near the French sailors who fell in the Battle of Navarino.

Text: Giannis Makris