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EDITORIAL
This week we bring you Winterhalter's remarkable (and huge) painting of the Empress Eugénie and her ladies-in-waiting. Then there's Anti Napoleon, our special dossier on Napoleonic caricatures. There is also a timeline new on the site, bringing you the greater and sometimes lesser events in our period. In ‘200 years ago' there's conscription, Napoleon's statue of d'Alembert for the Institut, and in 150 years ago there are portraits of the Second Empire's great industrialists Pereire and Rouher. In the Magazine we bring you a new sale of Napoleonic (inter alia) medals and coins, a Waterloo evening in Belgium, and a new book on the military history of Murat's reign in Naples.
A happy Easter to you all.
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THIS MONTH'S PAINTING
The Empress Eugénie surrounded by her ladies in waiting, by Franz-Xaver Winterhalter
Taking its inspiration from 18th-century bucolic scenes, this monumental composition sets the sovereign and her entourage against the backdrop of a shady clearing in a forest. Indeed, Eugénie most probably used her own personal fortune in 1855 to pay for this renowned collective portrait, and it was to hand in Fontainebleau Palace during the Second Empire.
©RMN
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SPECIAL DOSSIER
Anti-Napoleon
Ogre? Devil? Poisoned dwarf?
Though often idolised these days, Napoleon in his time aroused the most violent hatred. English humour, German satires, French political subversion...
© Musée de Malmaison
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TIMELINES
October 1801 – February 1802
The greater (and lesser) events of 200 years ago..., both in France, and abroad, including: the London preliminaries to Amiens, the savage child in the Aveyron, the horses on St Mark's Venice, Volta's'electric fluids', Parisian house renumbering, the marriage of Napoleon's step-daughter, Hortense, to his brother, Louis, Napoleon as president of the Italian republic, the birth of Victor Hugo and a constitution for the Helvetic Republic…
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200 YEARS AGO
April 1807: A second conscription followed only four months after the preceding draught for the year 1808.
The Gazette de France dated 10 April noted: «an arrêté (bill) passed the Prefect for the Département de la Seine, enjoined all the conscripts for 1808 to report, before 10 May, to the chef-lieu or chief town of their arrondissement in order to sign up. All young men born in the period January to December 1788 form part of this draught».
April 1807: Napoleon decided to have a statue of the French mathematician d'Alembert erected in the ‘Salle des séances' at the Institut. In his opinion, d'Alembert had been the person «who had most contributed» to the furthering of that science. «The Emperor desires that the first class [that of the mathematical sciences] of the Institut should see in this gesture a proof of his esteem for that class and his constant desire to give honours and to provide encouragement for the work of that body, important as it is for the prosperity and welfare of the peoples.» (Journal de l'Empire, 12 April 1807)
Napoleon had been elected to the Institut on 5 Nivôse, An VI (25 December, 1797), not so much for his mathematical genius (which was not exceptional) but rather for the extraordinary results of the First Italian Campaign and his successful negotiation at Campo Formio. In his letter of acceptation, Napoleon was famously to write: ‘The votes of the men of distinction who form the Institut honour me. I feel that I will long be their pupil before I can become their equal. If there was a more expressive way of communicating the esteem which I have for them, I would use it. The real victories - the only ones which bring no regret - are those which we make over ignorance. The most honourable and most useful occupation for the nations is to contribute to the spreading ‘idées humaines' (human(e) knowledge). The French Republic's real power must from now on rest in ensuring that that there is not one single new idea which does not belong to her'. (Correspondence générale (2004), 2280, 6 Nivôse, An VI, (26 December, 1797)).
On 12 April, 1807, the text of the decisions taken by the Great Sanhedrin is published in the Journal de l'Empire. See our dossier on the Great Sanhedrin.
150 YEARS AGO
On 8 April, 1857, Emile Pereire, President of the Board of Directors of the Compagnie du Chemin de fer du Midi (South of France Railway Company), was appointed officer of the Légion d'honneur.
(Le Moniteur Universel, 10 April, 1857)
On the same day, in Poissy (west of Paris), the French minister for agriculture, commerce and public works, Eugène Rouher, awarded the prizes in the annual show of animals for slaughter. For the first time, English and Scottish breeders took part.
(Le Moniteur Universel, 9 April, 1857)
Wishing you an excellent, Napoleonic, Easter.
Peter Hicks
Historian and Web editor
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, No 4109, 6 - 12 April, 2007
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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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THIS WEEK in the MAGAZINE
Just published:
- ILARI Virgilio, CROCIANI Pietro, BOERI Giancarlo, (eds) Storia Militare del Regno Murattiano, 1806-1815
- PEYRUSSE Baron, Mémorial et Archives de M. le baron Peyrusse (1809 - 1815) Trésorier général de la Couronne. Pendant les Cent-Jours Vienne, Moscou, Ile d'Elbe
WHAT'S ON
Auctions:
- Baldwin's Auctions Number 51 - Commemorative Medals, Military Medals and Numismatic Books, London, UK
Theatre:
- Waterloo... la fin d'un monde, Waterloo, Belgium
Re-enactments:
- Re-enactment of the Battle of Nieuwleusen, Netherlands
- Re-enactment of the Battle of Rivoli, 1797-2007, Rivoli, Italy
Fairs:
- The 14th International Napoleonic Fair, Cressing Temple, UK
Conferences:
- Napoleon at the Zenith: a bi-centennial seminar, Liverpool, UK
Exhibitions:
- Napoleon's Description de L'Egypte, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Napoleon, Trikolore und Kaiseradler über Rhein und Weser, Wesel and Minden, Germany
- NAPOLÉON An Intimate Portrait, Oklahoma, USA
- Das Königreich Württemberg 1806–1918. Monarchie und Moderne (The kingdom of Württemberg 1806–1918. Monarchy and modernity), Stuttgart, Germany
- "The trace of the eagle", the Invalides dome, Paris, France
Got a problem with the letter? Try the home page: http://www.napoleon.org
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