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THIS WEEK'S BULLETIN
This month's book is Rafe Blaufarb's fascinating study of Bonapartists way down south in the US. Then we bring you our summer book selection and a remarkable exhibition of Napoleonic decorative arts in Saint Louis. Then there's news of two books soon to be published by members of the Fondation Napoléon team, a Napoleonic article in History Today, and the Napoleon Association's autumn conference...
Enjoy.
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THIS MONTH'S BOOK
Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835, by Rafe Blaufarb
In this ground-breaking book, Rafe Blaufarb examines manages to link and local and international history in the description of the founding of a Bonapartist settlement in Texas between 1815 and 1835. His books is a tour de force in its use of huge variety of local, national, and international resources, ranging from the Alabama State Archives, to U.S. Congressional and Supreme Court records, to the War, Diplomatic and National Archives in Paris.
© Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection
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BOOKS FOR THE BEACH…
Despite the ghastly weather (at least here in Europe) – it's either too hot, too cold or too wet, depending where you are – we bring you something to take your mind off the elements. If you read Spanish, there's Emilio O'Campo's remarkable discussion of St Helena, or if you can read French, why not try key text, Napoléon et l'Argent, by Pierre Branda. And if you're happiest in English, there's plenty for all, including music and a game for children. Enjoy…
© DR
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EXHIBITION: SYMBOLS OF POWER: NAPOLEON AND EMPIRE STYLE, 1800-1815
Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815, an exhibition held in the Saint Louis Art Museum, is the first comprehensive survey of the decorative arts of the Empire style. Drawing extensively from French collections, this exhibition brings to St. Louis more than 140 extraordinary works and includes bronze, furniture, jewellery, porcelain, silver, textiles, and wallpaper as well as drawings, paintings, and sculpture.
© musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon
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FONDATION NAPOLEON NEWS
Books: a Napoleonic summer for the Fondation Napoléon team
Two books are to come out this summer, for which members of the Fondation Napoléon team have been noses to the grindstone. On 17 August, French bookshops will see the arrival of the complete Clisson et Eugénie, the novel which Bonaparte wrote when he was romantically linked with Désiré Clary. Peter Hicks and Emilie Barthet have discovered new fragments and are to publish the most complete version ever of this "pre-Romantic" text by the future emperor. And on 22 August, you can buy the third volume of Thierry Lentz's, Nouvelle Histoire du Premier Empire. This is the third of what has become a four-volume series and it is entitled, La France et l'Europe de Napoléon (Napoleon's France and Napoleon's Europe). Both books are published by Editions Fayard.
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200 YEARS AGO
Tilsit (continued)
From 28 June to 6 July, 1807, Napoleon I, Alexander I and Frederick-William III met daily for their peace discussions. The three sovereigns ate together, reviewed manouevres together, and spoke at length.
Napoleon wrote to Cambacérès on 3 July: “Complete harmony reigns between the emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia and me. We are all three of us in this tiny town. It would be a very long letter were I recount all the little things that happen”. (Correspondence n°12 843)
And on the same day he wrote to Fouché: “Make sure that people stop saying negative things, either directly or indirectly, regarding Russia. Everything would seem to be pointing towards the fact that my system is soon to be linked in a fixed manner with that power.” (Correspondence n°12 845).
Architecture
"Restoration work on the church of Saint-Denis is well advanced. The interior has been completely renovated. Beautiful stained-glass windows, with coloured designs, shed a soft light on the whole of the temple. In on of the side aisles in the nave, on the right-hand side, there are two expiatory altars, one for the Merovingian, the other for the Carolingian dynasty. In between these two altars there is a column upon which are to be placed statues of the kings of France who bore the title in Emperor. The place surrounding these two altars is to be decorated with bees…" (Gazette de France, 2 July, 1807)
150 YEARS AGO
On 21 June, 1857, Baron Louis Jacques Thénard (1777-1857), died in Paris. His funeral took place on 28 June in Saint Sulpice. Thénard was a renowned professor of chemistry who in 1799 had drawn up a classification of metals according to their resistance to water. Elected professeur at the Collège de France in 1804, and appointed to the Sorbonne and Ecole Polytechnique in 1809, before entering the Académie des Sciences in 1810. In the years 1813 to 1816 he was to publish his celebrated manual of chemistry. He is still known today for Thénard's blue, a colorant for porcelain made especially for the Sèvres manufactory, and for the discovery of hydrogen peroxide (1799).
Wishing you an excellent, Napoleonic, Week.
Peter Hicks
Historian and Web editor
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, No 422, 29 June - 5 July, 2007
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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Got a problem with a link in the Bulletin? Go to the homepage: http://www.napoleon.org
THIS WEEK in the MAGAZINE
Press Review
History Today, Volume: 57 Issue: 7 July 2007
Seen on the web
- Photos of the opening of the Capellen Gendarmerie Museum (Musée de la Gendarmerie à Capellen) in Luxembourg, on 21 to 24 June, 2007, with re-enactors dressed as period gendarmes... (in French)
WHAT'S ON
Conferences:
- Napoleonic Association Autumn Conference, London, UK
Auction:
- Christie's sale 7411: Napoleon and Josephine autographs from the Albin Schram collection, London, UK
Exhibitions:
- Empress Josephine's Malmaison Collection, Somerset House, London, UK
- Nine hundred years of miniatures at the Château d'Arenenberg, Canton Thurgau, Switzerland
- Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815, Saint Louis, MO, USA
- Cardinal Fesch and the art of his time: Fragonard, Marguerite Gérard, Jacques Sablet, Louis-Léopold Boilly…, Ajaccio, Corsica
- The Polish and the Légion d'honneur, Paris, France
- People, portraits, places and the abolition of the Slave trade, National Portrait gallery, London, UK
- Napoleon's Description de L'Egypte, Dallas, Texas, USA
- Napoleon, Trikolore und Kaiseradler über Rhein und Weser, Wesel and Minden, Germany
- "The trace of the eagle", the Invalides dome, Paris, France
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