Articles : 1400
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ArticleNapoleon and the Pope: from the Concordat to the ExcommunicationIt should have been a marriage made in heaven. One of Napoleon’s first acts as consul was to bring religion back to France after the atheistic years of the Revolution. Pius VII, the somewhat progressive pope, saw the concordat of July 1801 as the presage of the…
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ArticleDartmoor Prison: the French connection
Dartmoor Prison: the French connection It was seven years ago that Alain Sibiril, Plymouth's Honorary Consul of France, first became aware, via Trevor James, the local writer who used to work at the prison, of the memorial to the French prisoners who died at Dartmoor while being held captive during the later years of the […]
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ArticleThe General Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte Volume 6: project update
Project update It has only been a few months since volume five came out, in November 2008, but already we have volume six ready to hit the shops. Everyone involved in the project is working as hard as ever. Whilst new additions have been harder to come by this year, especially compared to the wonderful discoveries […]
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ArticleIntroduction to the General Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. 6
The Correspondence project continues apace, and new additions, thanks to support all over the world, have once again enabled us to expand noticeably the epistolary heritage of Napoleon. For 1806, volume 6 compiles 2679 letters, that is to say an increase of 39 % on the Second Empire publication for the same year.(1)1806 was probably […]
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ArticleA letter from Napoleon I to Maréchal Berthier, 5 August, 1806
Napoleon's correspondence is still the principal and best source for studying the history of the period, and the succession of volumes of the complete correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte cannot but have convinced any remaining doubters of this fact. In these letters, the hero is not posing for posterity but rather devotes himself to his work, […]
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ArticleThe Battle of Aspern/Essling
Why did Austria go to war? Ever since the battle of Austerlitz, Austria had been trying rebuild its army (despite promises and agreements made to the contrary). In the two years leading up to the campaign of 1809, reforms of were made, conscription was brought in, the infantry was strengthened, the artillery was reorganised, medical […]
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ArticleThe Campaign in Austria, 1809: The Tenth Bulletin of the Grande Armée – the Battle of Aspern-Essling
Tenth Bulletin Ebersdorf, 23 May 1809Opposite Ebersdorf the Danube divides into three branches separated by two islands. The distance from the right bank to the first islands is 240 toises: this island has a circumference of about 1,000 toises. From this island to the greatest island is 120 toises, and here the stream runs with […]
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ArticleChateaubriand: Mémoires d’Outre-tombe, Book XX, ch. 10, "The Austrian campaign"
On the 9th of April 1809, the Fifth Coalition between England, Austria and Spain, was declared, silently relying on the discontent of other nations. The Austrians, complaining of the violation of previous treaties, all at once crossed the River Inn at Braunau: they have been reproached for their tardiness, they wanted to do a Napoleon; […]
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ArticleCommemoration: the construction of Dartmoor Prison
At 11am on 24 May 2009, Alain Sibiril, Honorary Consul of France, will commemorate the 1806 construction of Dartmoor Prison in Princetown, a small village in Dartmoor National Park, near Plymouth. After housing several thousand prisoners (mostly transfered from prison barges and ships), the prison closed its doors in 1816 and the remaining prisoners (mostly American […]
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ArticleNews from the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, FSU, Tallahassee, 2008-2009
Tribute to Ben Weider On 17 October 2008, Dr. Ben Weider, the principal benefactor of the Institute, passed away suddenly. His death is a great loss not only to the Institute, but to the entire international Napoleonic community. As a scholar and author of many books on Napoleonic history, Dr. Weider helped expand our knowledge […]