NAPOLEONIC LITERATURE

Commentary

A Metrical History of the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte by William J. Hillis, pp208-209
 
"Sir John Moore could no doubt have made terms with Marshal Soult, whereby he would have been permitted to embark his troops under very reasonable conditions; but he chose to ask no favours from the French commander, and he fell, fighting gallantly for the honour of his country. His burial at midnight upon the ramparts of Corunna, from which place he had hoped to take his army in safety on the morrow, has been made familiar to all of us in the following lines:"

Extracts

Burial of Sir John Moore, 1809.
Rev. Charles Wolfe
 
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
 As his corse to the rampart was hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
 O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
 The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
 And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
 Nor in sheet, nor in shroud, we wound him;
But he lay, like a warrior taking his rest,
 With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
 And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
 And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed,
 And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
 And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
 And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on,
 In the grave where a Briton has laid him!

But half of our heavy task was done,
 When the clock struck the hour for retiring,
And we heard by th' distant and random gun,
 That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
 From the field of his fame, fresh and gory!
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,
 But we left him - alone with his glory!"

Sources

William J. Hillis, A Metrical History of the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1896

Commentary

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, the reading public nevertheless devoured such anecdotes of 'luxury and indulgence'.
 
Frédéric Loliée, literary critic and avid theatre-goer, became a specialist in the genre: indeed he loved to paint portraits of the personalities who enlived the 'Fête impériale', not only the members of Parisian high society but also the women classed as "Hors du Monde" (outside society) - the cortisans, the artists, the chanteuses… who whilst being 'shady ladies' were nevertheless irresistable. Loliée described these women and the balls and dinners during which they climbed the social ladder and built their fortunes. The photographic portraits included in the volume give readers a great sense of being close to these figures of the past.
 
In French writing, the Second Empire "life of pleasure" was a recurrent theme throughout the late 19th-century, and continued to be so during the 20th, hence Alain Decaux's Amours Second Empire in 1958 (Hachette), and André Castelot's La féerie impériale (Perrin 1973).
 
Author: Frédéric Loliée
Title: La fête impériale
Publisher and date of publication: Paris: F. Joven, 1907.
Physical description: XI-371 p., grav.: portr.,  in-8°
 
Author: LHEUREUX-PRÉVOT, Chantal