What happened to the Vatican documents Napolean sent to France?

Question

The documents container extensive records of the Spanish Inquisition, including names of entire families tortured and so on.

Answer 1

Napoleon took them to Paris in the eighteenth where many volumes were recycled into butcher paper; and much fell into the hands of the Italian government later on.
http://www.theharrowing.com/vatican.html

While the territorial ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte are well known, his ambitions for a consolidated archive for his empire are often ignored. However, he did envision that the greatest art, manuscripts, and archives of his empire would be brought eventually to Paris. He planned a great central archive to be built in Reims (he later decided on Paris), where the archives of European capitals would be brought together. In December 1809, shortly after he arrested and imprisoned Pius VII (1800-1823), he dispatched one of his generals to Rome with instructions to bring to Paris the whole of the Vatican Archives.
The shipments via wagon began in 1810 and continued through 1813. In all, 3,239 chests arrived in Paris with very few lost. The inventory prepared by French archivists counted more than 102,435 registers, volumes, or bundles. The great central archives building was never realized, so the archives were stored in the Archives Nationales at the Palais Soubise.

With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the newly established authorities immediately ordered the archives returned to the Vatican. However, that was easier said than done. Napoleon had expended an enormous sum to transport the load' to Paris. Defeated France did not have the resources to return the archives. There are many stories and legends about the fate of the archives during the years between the order for their return and the arrival in Rome of the last of the chests in December 1817.
http://bentley.umich.edu/bhl/projects/vatican/history.htm

this was something I had never heard of, so I searched and searched until I found an answer. Thanks for a new path! Hope this info helps...I know I have quite a lot more to look into!

Answer 2

Noone knows exactly what they contained.
The archives were given back to Rome after Napoleon was sent into exile. This was stopped briefly when he came back, they restarted after he was sent to St Helen. However the transfer was done so badly - lost chariots, misfiled boxes - and there was so much of them that there were losses. As well, Ercole Consalvi, the envoy from the pope, decided that all worthless documents could be burned to lighten the load, which was done by Count Ginnasi in Paris. Thousands of documents were either burned or sold to Paris butcher shops to be used as wrapping paper.
Later a lot of the misplaced and misfiled documents were found and sent to Rome.

Answer 3

I have shouted Vive La France but I was dressed like Marie Antoinette... More dramatic!!