1809 · Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna

Napoleon vs the Turk: the 1809 chess game of the automaton, told as a legend

Napoleon vs the Turk is a legendary 1809 chess game between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton built by Wolfgang von Kempelen. The Turk won, with the mate 24…Qe2#. The game is probably apocryphal: the Turk was a hidden human player, and the course tells the story as a legend.

Date: 1809
Place: Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna
Players: Napoleon Bonaparte (White) vs the Turk automaton (Black)
Result: 0-1 in 24 moves (apocryphal)
Opening: Open Game (1.e4 e5 2.Qf3 Nc6 3.Bc4)
On Chess History: You play the Turk, the automaton, against Napoleon

Play the story Interactive: the moves, the characters, the endings to find.

The moves

1.e4 e5 2.Qf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ne2 Bc5 5.a3 d6 6.O-O Bg4 7.Qd3 Nh5 8.h3 Bxe2 9.Qxe2 Nf4 10.Qe1 Nd4 11.Bb3 Nxh3+ 12.Kh2 Qh4 13.g3 Nf3+ 14.Kg2 Nxe1+ 15.Rxe1 Qg4 16.d3 Bxf2 17.Rh1 Qxg3+ 18.Kf1 Bd4 19.Ke2 Qg2+ 20.Kd1 Qxh1+ 21.Kd2 Qg2+ 22.Ke1 Ng1 23.Nc3 Bxc3+ 24.bxc3 Qe2#

The key errors are 10.Qe1?? (the queen move loses about nine pawns) and 14.Kg2, which allows 14…Nf4+! and a mate in three. The score is probably apocryphal, and the course says so.

The automaton

The Turk was built by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770 and shown to the courts of Europe. It was a cabinet with a chessboard and a mechanism, and inside it a human chess player hid and moved the pieces. The machine was a magic trick, and it was taken seriously for more than 80 years.

Johann Baptist Allgaier was one of the players who worked the Turk. The story of the 1809 game, with Napoleon at Schönbrunn, is told in many books, but no reliable record of the moves exists.

The illegal move

The legend says Napoleon tried an illegal move, and the Turk refused it: the piece was put back, then taken away, and when Napoleon tried again the board was swept clean. The course tells this as the cheat of the story, and it is the one moment every version agrees on.

The moves that the course plays are checked to be legal, and the final attack is sound. But the game itself is best read as a story about a machine that could not be beaten, and about the men who hid inside it.

Questions and answers

Did Napoleon really play the Turk?

Probably not in the form of the famous game. The Turk was a machine with a hidden player, and the 1809 score is considered apocryphal.

Who built the Mechanical Turk?

Wolfgang von Kempelen, in 1770. It toured Europe and America for decades.

How does the game end?

24…Qe2#, after a long run of checks and the bishop sacrifice 23…Bxc3+.

Sources and checks

Wikipedia, “Mechanical Turk” and “Johann Baptist Allgaier”
chessgames.com, “Napoleon vs The Turk” (1809)
Engine check on this site: Stockfish 17 (depth 18)

The moves on this page are checked for legality, and the engine evaluations come from Stockfish 17. Where a game is more legend than fact, the story says so.