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LAST WEEK...
... Peter Hicks welcomed back the weekly newsletter with a few thoughts on 2012 and the various bicentenaries lined up for this year. This week, as preparations are ramped up in anticipation of events marking the 1812 Russian campaign, we have details of a series of English translations of Russian memoirs, many of which are previously unseen or out of print. Despite this intensification of activity and increasing focus on events in June and the latter half of 2012, we shan't forget to mention everything else that is going on at the same time. This week's letter includes details of a talk on prison hulks at The National Archives in Kew (UK), an exhibition dedicated to Joseph's time as king of Spain, which closes soon in Cadiz (Spain), and of course our own study day event, the fourth in the series, which will take place at the end of January. We shall also continue to upload new, informative and - in this case - curious content onto napoleon.org: further down the letter you will find your taste buds stimulated with our classic Second Empire recipe for a turkey shaped like a turtle. We continue the foodstuffs theme with a quick look at Napoleon's attempts to create a beet sugar industry in France during the First Empire period. Finally, we round the letter off this week with a retelling of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in 200 years ago and a report offering Second Empire population statistics from January 1862 (in 150 years ago).
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PAINTING OF THE MONTH
Jean-Antoine Houdon sculpting the bust of First Consul Bonaparte, by Louis Léopold Boilly
This canvas is one of a series of preparatory studies that Boilly carried out in preparation for L'Atelier d'un sculpteur. Tableau de Famille. The painting, better known today as L'Atelier de Houdon, was unveiled at the Salon of 1804 and is today held in the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. This particular work, completed between 1802 and 1803, reveals a great deal about the artist's journey towards the completed article that would be displayed in 1804. The painting is currently on display as part of the Boilly Retrospective at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France, which runs until 6 February.
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JUST PUBLISHED
Russian Voices of the Napoleonic Wars, translated & edited by Alexander Mikaberidze
As preparations for the bicentenary of the 1812 Russian campaign continue apace, the issue of Russian sources and their relative unavailability in French and English becomes more and more apparent. To address this shortcoming, Alexander Mikaberidze, assistant professor of European history at Louisiana State University, has launched a new series of rare and previously unseen Russian memoirs translated into English. Thus far, four volumes have been released, covering the writings of Pavel Pushin, Alexey Yermolov, Ilya Radozhitskii, and Moritz von Kotzebue. The memoirs left by von Kotzebue, the son of a prominent German playwright, are particularly interesting for his account of captivity in France after being taken prisoner by Napoleon's troops in August 1812 whilst serving near Polotsk in the advance guard of Count von Wittgenstein's 1st corps.
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WHAT'S ON
Les Ateliers de la Fondation Napoléon: the great jurists of the Consulate and Empire
As announced last week, the fourth Atelier de la Fondation Napoléon – on the great jurists of the Consulate and Empire periods – will be held in Créteil, near Paris, on 26 January 2012. The event is organised with the Faculty of Law at the Université de Paris-Est Créteil and will feature talks from – amongst others – Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Chantal Prévot (librarian at the Fondation Napoléon), Olivier Fouquet (Deputy-Treasurer on the Fondation Napoléon's board of trustees), and Alain Desrayaud. The event is free but pre-registration is essential.
"El viaje andaluz del Rey José I: Paz en la Guerra", Cadiz, Spain
As part of La Pepa 2012 bicentennial events, the Museo de Cádiz is holding an exhibition on Joseph Bonaparte. This exhibition retraces the journey undertaken by Napoleon's older brother into Andalusian territory and the impact it had on the "discovery of romantic Andalusia". You can find photos of the exhibition's inauguration, taken back in November, here (external link in Spanish). The exhibition closes on 29 January 2012.
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Prison hulks: talk at The National Archives, Kew, UK
At 2pm on 26 January 2012, Jeff James, Director of Operations and Services at The National Archives, is presenting a talk on British prison hulks, which were introduced in 1776. James will discuss the harsh reality for prisoners serving a sentence onboard the hulks, which remained in service for over a century and which at their height numbered more than fifty. For further information on prison hulks, you can also read the fascinating French-language two-part study written by Patrick Le Carvèse (a member of the project to publish the correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte), available here and here via Napoleonica. La Revue.
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NAPOLEON.ORG
Bon appétit! Turkey in the form of a turtle
Turkey is often considered a festive dish, but this particular version is a far more curious, indeed dazzling beast. This classic recipe – a perfect illustration of the Second Empire's tastes for the hearty and spectacular – mixes sweet and savoury, seafood and different meats, with the whole thing dressed up in a most surprising manner.
200 YEARS AGO
Napoleon and beet sugar
On 2 January 1812, Napoleon visited a beet sugar factory in Passy, France, which had been set up by Benjamin Delessert. The 3 January 1812 edition of the Moniteur reported on the imperial visit:
"His Majesty's visit to this establishment was extensive: he expressed his satisfaction to M. Delessert, who was awarded the Légion d'honneur. [His Majesty] accorded a week's pay to the workers as a sign of gratitude". Delessert would later rally to Napoleon during the Cent-Jours, in the spring of 1815.
The development of beet sugar was a product of the Continental Blockade introduced in 1806 by Napoleon, the goal of which was to stifle Britain's trade. But a side-effect of this blockade was the need to find replacements for products imported from the colonies, such as cane sugar. By now, the extraction of sugar from beet had been practised on a small scale by a number of chemists, but the methods had not been adopted industrially. Napoleon's former Minister of the Interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who was now president of the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, was to be instrumental in influencing the French emperor to look more closely at beet sugar extraction. The former subsequently orchestrated the announcement of two beet sugar decrees, in 1811 and 1812. Napoleon, convinced by his extremely successful visit to the factory, signed a new decree on 15 January 1812 which set out plans for the cultivation of 100,000 hectares of beet, grants for one hundred students in five chemistry academies, and five hundred new factory licences.
In 1813, following the return of cane sugar to France via ports on the Adriatic, the beet sugar industry went into decline. Very few of the these factories would survive the fall of the empire. It was not until the 1830s that the sugar beet industry really took off in France.
Delessert's cousin, Armand Delessert, was also in the industry and owned a sugar refinery in Nantes. He was joined - on the recommendation of Benjamin - by a certain Louis Say, who went on to found his own sugar empire under the name Louis Say et Cie. Later, in 1967, the company was taken over by the Béghin company, with the merger resulting in the Béghin-Say group, which today remains a well-known brand of sugar and sugar-products in France.
The capture of Ciudad Rodrigo
In the build-up to the French capture of Valencia (see bulletin n° 609), Napoleon had ordered Maréchal Marmont to dispatch some of his troops from the Armée de Portugal in support of Suchet's assault. This displacement of forces, coupled with Napoleon's preparations for the transfer of troops back to central Europe ready for his forthcoming Russian campaign, meant that Wellington had an opportunity to seize Ciudad Rodrigo, which had been held by a French garrison since July 1810. The garrison was small, but the town was well defended and lay on the road to Salamanca. Wellington invested the town on 8 January 1812, and proceeded to mount a siege. On the night of 8 January, British forces captured the Greater Tesson and the Reynaud Redoubt which the French had constructed there, and trenches were dug in preparation for the seizure of the town. On 13 and 14 January, British siege guns shelled the outlying areas of the town (including the convent of Santa Cruz) and holes were blown in the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington, pressed for time and intent on seizing the town before French reinforcements could be dispatched, ordered the assault on 19 January, despite the fact that the breaches were less accessible than usual. In the face of strong resistance, British troops penetrated the walls. A mine planted at the main breach and detonated as troops flowed through resulted in a great deal of deaths, including the officer leading the 3rd Division, Major-General Henry Mackinnon, but also blew out more of the wall. As Ciudad Rodrigo fell, British troops were given licence to plunder and pillage the town. Major-General Robert Craufurd was mortally wounded during the attack and died four days later, on 23 January. A monument to the two officers was erected in St Paul's Cathedral, in London (see this 1826 guide to St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey on Google Books).
150 YEARS AGO
The population of France
On 13 January 1862, the Moniteur Universel published a population report put together by the Duc de Persigny, Napoleon III's interior minister. As of 1 January 1862, France's population totalled 37,039,364, spread across eighty-six départements (including the relatively recent addition of Savoy and Upper Savoy).
The minister proceeded to describe the population changes in more detail, remarking that "for the period 1857 to 1861 [the total figure represented] an increase of 1,342,861, or 3.72 percent." The largest increase could be found, unsurprisingly, in the Seine département (up thirteen percent from the previous count to 1,953,660 individuals), whilst the Hautes-Alpes département saw a population decrease of seven percent, down to 125,100. The French Empire also now contained 37,510 communes, down by thirty-seven on the previous count following administrative reorganisation.
Wishing you an excellent "Napoleonic" week,
Peter Hicks & Hamish Davey Wright
Historians and web-editors
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, N° 610, 13 - 19 JANUARY 2012
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© 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...
MAGAZINE
Just published
- Washington & Napoleon: Leadership in the Age of Revolution, by Stephen E. Griffin and Matthew J. Flynn
- Diaries of the 1812-1814 campaigns, by Pavel Pushin
- Campaign Memoirs of the Artilleryman - Part 1: 1812, by Ilya Radozhitskii
- Memoirs of the Napoleonic Wars, by Alexey Yermolov
- Russian Prisoner of War Among the French, by Moritz von Kotzebue
Press review
- Book review: Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War, and Tyranny
Seen on the web
- Contract for Longwood restoration project signed
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
"Constantino e Napoleone - Due imperi a confronto" conference, Rome, Italy [14/01/2012-15/01/2012]
Full details
Study days
- Ateliers de la Fondation Napoléon: the great jurists of the Consulate and Empire, Créteil, France [26/01/2012]
Full details
Talks
- Prison hulks: talk at The National Archives, Kew, UK [26/01/2012]
Full details
Exhibitions
- Boilly Retrospective, Lille, France [04/11/2011 - 06/02/2012]
Full details
Finishing soon...
- "El viaje andaluz del Rey José I: Paz en la Guerra", Cadiz, Spain [23/11/2011 - 29/01/2012]
Full details
- "Napoleon III and Italy: birth of a nation 1848-1870", Paris, UK [06/10/2011 - 15/01/2012]
Full details
NAPOLEON.ORG
The best of the month:
- Book of the month
- Painting of the month
- Objet d'Art of the month
- Article of the month
NAPOLEONICA.LA REVUE
Available free on Cairn.info
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The library is open on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday between 1pm and 6pm and on Thursday between 10am and 3pm. Exceptionally, the library will be closed all day on 26 January 2012.
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