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One last effort for the emperor's home
With their donations both large and small, nearly 1,200 companies and private individuals have to date contributed to the campaign to save the home of Napoleon I on the island of St Helena. We offer our most sincere thanks for their efforts.
Today, we can announce that our fundraising appeal has reached its first goal, set at 700,000 €, to fund the restoration of the Generals' Wing. This has been added to the 700,000 € set aside by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Work is scheduled to begin before the end of 2012. This fantastic news can only serve to encourage us towards one last effort.
Thanks to the generosity of one and all, we are now in a position to continue our work and proceed with restoring the interiors and furniture of the emperor's apartments. For this, a further 200,000 € is required, which - once added to the sum already raised by the appeal - will allow us to:
- restore the drapes, carpets, and tapestries in the bedroom, the bathroom, and the salon at Longwood (the latter was the room in which the emperor died).
- repatriate to France one-hundred or so original items of furniture from Longwood to allow specialists to restore them. Once this work is complete, they will be placed on public display in a specially-organised exhibition, before being transported back to St Helena.
We understand the current economic climate is not ideal, and that this is just one of many fundraising requests that we all receive throughout the year, but we should nevertheless like to appeal to you one final time, be it for the 2011 fiscal year, or for that of 2012. It really is an important, most Napoleonic cause.
If we are successful in this new goal, we shall all have contributed to the most extensive restoration project undertaken since the 1860s, an achievement most worthy of national recognition.
To paraphrase you-know-who, we shall all one day be able to say: "I was there for the glorious appeal which saved the home of the emperor".
The very best Napoleonic week to you all,
Thierry Lentz
Director, Fondation Napoléon
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PORTRAIT OF THE MONTH
Execution of Maximilian, by Edouard Manet
At the same time as the huge Parisian triumph of the Exposition Universelle of 1867, international news arrived, casting a terrible pall over the fête. It was on 1 July, the very day on which the imperial couple were to distribute the prizes, that Paris learned of the execution of Maximilian, the puppet emperor set on the Mexican throne by Napoleon III, which had taken place in Queretaro (north Mexico). This was the tragic conclusion to Napoleon III's catastrophic Mexican expedition. This striking portrait forms part of our forthcoming close-up covering the Mexican campaign, which retells the history of the French intervention in Mexico between 1862 and 1867 and the attempt to create a Catholic monarchy in Central America.
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NAPOLEONICA. LA REVUE
Issue n° 11 out now
Issue eleven of Napoleonica. La Revue is now out, and this latest number marks a return to source for the review. Subtitled "Personalities of the two empires", issue eleven features articles that run the gamut of subjects, ranging from the first part of what will come to be considered the defining bibliography on St Helena (from Chantal Prévot), via a look at Napoleon's so-called "submarine" (by Emilio Ocampo), to a previously-unseen letter from Joseph written in 1792, which sheds light on his role within the Bonaparte family during the late-Revolution period (from Vincent Haegele). And alongside articles from Antonietta Angelica Zucconi (on the salons held by Mathilde and Julie Bonaparte during the Second Empire) and Zoe Viney (on the imperial vestments at St Michael's Abbey, in Farnborough), this issue also comes complete with two book reviews, on Karine Salomé's L'ouragan homicide : l'attentat politique en France au XIXe siècle, and Colin Carlin's William Kirkpatrick of Malaga: Consul, Negociant and Entrepreneur, and Grandfather of the Empress Eugenie.
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WHAT'S ON
"Napoleon III and Italy: birth of a nation 1848-1870", Paris, France
Solferino, Alma, Malakoff, Garibaldi: these are all familiar names adorning roads and metro stations in Paris and across France. But above all they are testament to a common history shared by France and Italy, the history of a key moment in European history of the nineteenth century: how Italy as a unified state was constructed. In 2011, as part of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, the exhibition organised by the Musée de l'Armée retraces the ties that bound the two countries, the role played by Napoleon III, and the intensity of the French public's reaction as events unfolded. Mixing Italian and French perspectives to retell the various military, political, and diplomatic events that marked the unification process, the exhibition features nearly three-hundred objects and works of art, many of which have never been presented in their original context.
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"The Empire: an experience of European construction?", Lille, France & Brussels, Belgium
Organised by the Université de Lille 3-IRHiS and the Académie royale de Belgique, the international symposium entitled "The Empire: an experience of European construction" sets out to discuss the Europe-wide implications of the First Empire, and features papers from Alan Forrest ("La guerre, les perceptions et la construction de l'Europe"), Malcolm Crook ("What can be learnt about attitudes towards the Napoleonic Empire from the electoral data"), Michael Broers, ("Un empire des lois? Français et peuples réunis face au Code civil"), and Annie Jourdan ("Entre Républiques et royaumes : les décompositions et recompositions des Pays-Bas de 1799-1815"). The symposium takes place in Lille and Brussels between 20 and 22 October.
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Call for papers: "The Patriotic War of 1812: Screening Memory", Moscow, Russia
The organisers behind a conference set to be held in Moscow in May next year have launched a call for papers. "The Patriotic War of 1812: Screening Memory", which comes as part of the bicentenary events marking the war in Russia, will seek to analyse how Napoleon's campaign of 1812 is depicted in screen-based media, such as film and television, and how this contributes to national cultural memory. Full details, including contact details, suggested subject areas, and proposal procedure can be found here. The deadline date for all proposals is 1 December, 2011.
200 YEARS AGO
Mozart continues to divide critics...
A French translation of Il Don Giovanni had played in Paris in 1797, to disastrous results: as one critic put it, "the extreme weakness and the ridiculous improbabilities of the text did great wrong to the music [...] one was left with an imperfect understanding of Mozart's masterpiece". The week beginning 14 October, 1811 saw a run of Mozart's famous comic opera, this time in the original Italian. Critical reaction remained mixed, however. One particularly biting writer described how "boredom, loyal companion to this masterpiece, continues to follow it onto the stage". And whilst some continued to genuflect at the altar raised to the Austrian composer's genius (the source of "truly celestial music [...] beyond all praise," gushed one particular fan], many felt moved to pursue their criticism of the production: "As it is played today, the work is a skeleton the deformities of which nothing can hide", wrote one. Another, more prosaic but no less barbed, wrote simply: "Many people, little pleasure, much boredom: that, in few words, is the impression offered by this [...] performance."
150 YEARS AGO
“Moving in unfashionable circles: wearing a crinoline”
An article from The Daily News and a reaction piece in another British newspaper, The Guardian (published on 16 October, 1861), reported on the awfulness of an exceedingly popular female fashion feature in France and Britain across the middle of the nineteenth century. Extended crinolines, aside from being "responsible for more deaths than any other fashion ever caused", are dubbed "a real social evil" by The Daily News, and The Guardian proceeded to describe quite how socially obnoxious the fashion was, noting that "We have had no comfort in social meetings, because no dinner table and no ballroom, no box or stall at the theatres, no carriage, and no boat, could accommodate both our families and ourselves. We have found it difficult and disagreeable to walk with our wives and daughters on pavements, and in lanes and country footpaths, made for people more naturally dressed."
Moreover, it continued gravely, there was also an economic criticism to be levelled against it: "We have paid a fare and half each for wife and daughters travelling by coach in rural districts [...] The cost of female dress in a household when every gown and petticoat, from the wife's to the cook's, is twice as large as it ought to be, is no small consideration to the bread-winner of the establishment." Finally, the potential danger to the lady and others around her was significant: "The cook could not pursue her business without incessant personal danger; the housemaid may meet the fate of other housemaids, and be burnt to death upon the hearth; and the nursemaid is more likely than not to push some one of the children off a footbridge, or a river side path, or from the causeway into the road. [...] Besides the deaths by fire there have been many by crushing under carriage wheels and in machinery, and in narrow spaces where a woman reasonably dressed would be in no danger. There have been cases of actual disembowelling from the gashes inflicted by broken steel springs and hoops. There have been drownings, wounds, crushings, burnings, - many torturing modes of death."
Wishing you an excellent "Napoleonic" week,
Peter Hicks & Hamish Davey Wright
Historians and web-editors
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, N° 599, 14 – 20 OCTOBER, 2011
Interested in the work of the Fondation Napoléon? Why not participate, either generally or in a specific project, by making a donation?
© This Napoleon.org weekly bulletin is published by the Fondation Napoléon. Reproduction or all or part of this bulletin is forbidden, without prior agreement of the Fondation Napoléon.
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OPERATION ST HELENA
The Fondation Napoléon and the Souvenir Napoléonien, in association with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have announced an international fund-raising campaign to restore and save Napoleon I's residence on the island of St Helena. All the details regarding the campaign as well as donation forms and advice for donating from outside France, can be found on napoleon.org.
FONDATION NAPOLEON ON THE WEB
Each week we offer you a "mystery" link to somewhere on napoleon.org. Click on the link to discover a part of the website you might not have visited before...
EVENTS
On now and coming up
A selection of events taking place now or in the coming weeks, taken from our What's on listings.
Conferences
"The Empire: an experience of European construction?", Lille, France & Brussels, Belgium [20/10/2011 - 22/10/2011]
Full details
"The Patriotic War of 1812: Screening Memory", Moscow, Russia [24/05/2012 - 26/05/2012]
Full details
"Alliances, strongholds, and reforms: Europe in 1806", Turgau, Germany [28/10/2011 - 29/10/2011]
Full details
Exhibitions
"Napoleon III and Italy: birth of a nation 1848-1870", Paris, France [06/10/2011 - 06/10/2011]
Full details
NAPOLEON.ORG
The best of the month:
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- Objet d'Art of the month
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NAPOLEONICA.LA REVUE
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NAPOLEONICA ARCHIVES ONLINE
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Situated at 148 boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris, the library is open on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 1pm - 6pm, and Thursday 10am - 3pm.
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