Talking Point with Peter Hicks: Writing about Napoleon 1821-1921-2021

Author(s) : HICKS Peter
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Just like the year 2021, 1921 was a period when people were remembering Napoleon and his extraordinary story. On 5 May 1921, Napoleon was uppermost in the minds of politicians and voters on both sides of the channel. Emblematic is the fact that when Foch made his famous speech about Napoleon over the tomb in the Invalides in Paris (no suspended horse skeletons in those days…), that speech was published in English in a special supplement the London Times of that day, alongside several articles on Napoleon by leading historians of the day.

Talking Point with Peter Hicks: Writing about Napoleon 1821-1921-2021
Peter Hicks ©Fondation Napoléon / Rebecca Young

As for the book publishing at the time, to mention just the books that have survived the years (and I’ve probably forgotten your favourite, so don’t shoot the pianist!), Philippe Gonnard and Frédéric Masson had been sparring over the St Helena episode for nearly 20 years, Jean Colin and Paul-Claude Alombert produced their magnum opus on the Austerlitz campaign, and Albert Vandal brought out his important books on Napoleon’s diplomacy and his accession to the Consulate. On the other side of the channel, John Holland Rose produced several editions of his great biography of Napoleon (and other works on Napoleonic subjects of all sorts), Mary Sophia Hely-Hutchinson Loyd translated Lecestre’s edition of Napoleon’s letters, but most of all the British enthusiasts Clement King Shorter (Napoleon but also St Helena), Alexander Meyrick Broadley (Napoleonic caricatures but also images of Napoleon), Thomas Hancock Arnold Chaplin (illness of Napoleon but above all St Helena), and George Leo de St M. Watson (Napoleon’s deathmask and also Piontkowski and St Helena) and the popular historian Norwood Young (Elba and St Helena) produced their fundamental reference works that have stood the test of time.

Fast forward to 2021 (again, I’m probably not going to talk about the one you like, so un-cock that pistol…). Whilst the forthcoming (Spring 2022) publication of the three-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars probably just slips under the wire as a bicentenary publication (Covid etc…), Michael Broers has produced a three-volume biography of Napoleon (the last volume coming out soon), Alexander Mikaberidze (in 2020) brought out a global History of the Napoleonic Wars, and Andrew Roberts produced his Grand-Prix-prize-winning biography of Napoleon in 2014, there has not been great deal published in English. On the other hand, in France we have seen particularly in this last year endless special issues of magazines and publications galore unmatched in English (and I haven’t even mentioned THE correspondence…). If you just look at the St Helena episode alone there is nothing in English to compare with Thierry Lentz’s three-volume work on Napoleon’s memoirs and the completely new versions not only of Las Cases’ Mémorial (Lentz, Peter Hicks, Houdecek and Chantal Prévot) but also of Gourgaud’s journal (Jacques Macé), Bertrand’s cahiers (François Houdecek) and even French translations of English sources (unknown in English!!) (Hicks, forthcoming).

So if we’re counting (and I think we are), whilst English certainly held its own as the language of Napoleon studies (especially St Helena) in 1921, French is looking at it in the rear-view mirror (above all in St Helena studies) in 2021.

 

Peter Hicks
January 2021

Peter Hicks is International Affairs Manager at the Fondation Napoléon.

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