Articles : 1400
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ArticleThe true significance of Trafalgar
Now that the jubilation aroused by the centenary of Nelson‘s great triumph has subsisted, it may be well to inquire what results accrued from the battle of Trafalgar. Perhaps in the case of few victories has the outcome been so different from that which has been assigned to it in the popular belief. The reason […]
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ArticleThe Franco-Spanish and British forces present at the Battle of Trafalgar
French Ships and Crews Achille (74 cannon): 800 sailors and officersAigle (74): 800Algésiras (74): 800Argonaute (74): 750Berwick (74): 814Bucentaure (80): 943Duguay-Trouin (74): 750Formidable (80): 921Fougueux (74): 750Héros (74): 750Indomptable (80): 1 050Intrépide (74): 800Mont-Blanc (74): 865Neptune (80): 1 008Pluton (74): 773Redoutable (74): 750Scipion (74): 817Swifsure (74): 797 TOTAL: 18 vessels: 14,938 sailors and officers Spanish Ships and Crews […]
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ArticleNapoleon and the Corsican Dilemma – part 2
His first political document On the 31st October 1789 in Ajaccio, Napoleon drafts a letter to the National Assembly. This will be his very first political document. In the letter, he questions the legitimacy of the Corsican deputies (62) to represent the people of the island (63) and denounces the manipulations of the “zealous royalists” […]
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ArticleFirst Bulletin of the Grande Armée
Nördlingen, 15 Vendémiaire, An 14, 7 October 1805 [Paris, 20 Vendémiaire, 12 October] The emperor left Paris on 2 Vendémiaire (24 September) and arrived at Strasburg on the 4th (26th).Marshal Bernadotte, who once the army had set out from Boulogne had advanced from Hanover towards Göttingen, began marching via Frankfort for Würzburg, which he reached on […]
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ArticleNapoleon and the Corsican Dilemma – part 1
Napoleon was not yet 10 years old(1) when he left Corsica(2) for the first time on the 1st of January 1779 to go to the College in Autun(3), and later, on the 12th May in the same year(4), to the military school in Brienne. Granted a royal scholarship, he was to study in France(5) where, suffering existential pain […]
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ArticleNapoleonic pages: La fête impériale, by Frédéric Loliée (Paris: F. Joven, 1907)
Almost forty years after the fall of the Second Empire, people began to be nostalgic for that gay, insouciant Paris of Napoleon III, not however forgetting (or perhaps remembering especially) the darker side to her reputation. Whilst the extraordinary costume balls, the lights, the cafes, the theatres were admired and the dissolute showgirls were tut-tutted, […]
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ArticleNapoleon; or, the Man of the World from Representative Men (1850)
Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte is far the best known and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief, the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. (1) It is Swedenborg’s theory that every organ is made […]
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ArticleNapoleonic pages: Histoire de l’Empereur Napoléon (History of the Emperor Napoleon), by Laurent de l’Ardèche, illustrated by Horace Vernet (Paris: J.-J. Dubochet, 1839)
1839: the statue of Napoleon once again stood on top of the Vendôme Column, the Arc de Triomphe was finished, the songs of Béranger recounting the fall of the eagle were hummed on streets corners, one after the other petitions were sent to the Chambre des députés asking for the return of the Emperor’s human […]
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ArticleO’Meara’s account of Napoleon on the invasion of the England
O'Meara to Hudson Lowe 28th January 1817, Longwood (1) Dear Sirthe following conversation which took place yesterday between General Bonaparte and myself may probably not be uninteresting to you. Finding him in a tolerable good humour and apparently ready to communicate, I took an opportunity of asking him whether he ever had really intended to invade England? […]
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ArticleApril 2005: grandiose re-enactment of the Battle of Caldiero – despite the rain…
On the weekend of 23/24 April, 2005, more than four hundred re-enactors from all over Europe (not to mention five hundred spectators) witnessed a replay of the Battle of Caldiero, a small town near Verona. It was just like two hundred years earlier – the French in blue and the Italians in green faced off […]