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THIS WEEK IN THE BULLETIN
This week we bring you Napoleon's remarkable letter concerning insubordination in French occupied Prussia. Then there's our mini-site of extraordinary photographs of the imperial couple's visit to the newly founded military camp in the Champagne region of France, 150 years ago this week. Following this, there's a beautiful new exhibition of pieces related to Louis King of Holland. In the 200 years ago section, we bring you Napoleon keeping tabs on his younger brother, Prussian high politics, and an Egyptian-scene carpet made at the Gobelins manufactory. In The Magazine there's a Napoleon rock band, a clutch of conferences in Spain, a sumptuous album of Napoleonic uniforms and two new conferences in Italy…
Enjoy!
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MINISITE: THE CHALONS CAMP
In 1997 the Paris Musée de l'Armée held an exhibition of the albums of photographs detailing the visit of the Emperor and Empress to the recently created Châlons military camp erected in the Champagne region of France. The website of that exhibition can be seen here on the site. It shows photographs of the French army of the Second Empire and moments taken from the visit of the Emperor and Empress in October 1857, exactly 150 years ago this week, with its reviews, its manoeuvres and (totally unlike the army of the ‘republican' First Empire) its religious offices.
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EXHIBITION AT THE INSTITUT NEERLANDAIS, PARIS
AT THE COURT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON, FIRST KING OF HOLLAND (1806-1810)
An exhibition on Louis King of Holland and Franco-Ducthe relations during the Napoleonic period opens at the Institut Néerlandais in Paris on 10 October. It is the fruit of a partnership between the Institut Néerlandais and the Fondation Napoléon and includes many pieces from the Fondation's collection and remarkable exhibits from the Het Loo palace in the Netherlands.
The sumptuous exhibition catalogue is published by Editions Walburg Pers.
Portrait of Louis by the Baron Gérard © Château de Fontainebleau
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200 YEARS AGO
The Continental system
In a letter dated 29 September, 1807, Napoleon firmly reminded his brother Louis, king of Holland, of Hollland's duty to France and at the same time that that his big brother was watching him...
“Your plan to break off relations between Holland and Britain has not been implemented. The Dutch government continues to give passports for Hamburg, via sea, which of course means for Britain. Merchants from Amsterdam left a few days ago for London, by boat. At the last Rotterdam fair, all the shops were filled with British goods, and none of these goods was confiscated. I must inform you that if British goods are not stopped, especially at the borders of my lands, I shall send flying squads to confiscate the goods and to arrest their owners. I make no mention of the attachment which you owe France. By their alliance and by their treaties, the Dutch do not have the right to trade with Britain, and Britain is the Dutch's keenest and most important ally. He is no king who cannot get obedience in his own kingdom.”
(Letter dated 29 September, 1807, Correspondance n°13,196, to Louis Napoléon, King of Holland)
See our Bicentenary dossier on the Continental System (1806)
Prussia
On 4 October, 1807, in the aftermath of the Peace of Tilsit, the King of Prussia, Frederick William swallowed his pride and appointed Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom Stein (1757 - 1831) at the head of a civilian administration (in many ways his role was to be one of a ‘dictateur de salut public'). Relations between the two men however had been strained : at the beginning of 1807, the King had sacked Stein for refusing to accept portfolio of Foreign Minister. On Stein's arrival in Königsberg, he submitted to the King a plan for wide-ranging reforms (The Nassau memorandum) and on 9 October the Edict of emancipation was issued in Memel by which the principle of free trade in land was established. Serfdom throughout Prussia was to be abolished, and all distinctions affecting the tenure of land (noble land, peasants' land, etc.) were similarly swept away.
Craftsmanship
“A tapestry has been woven at the Gobelins imperial manufactory whose decoration is based on Monsieur Gros's fine canvas representing the General in chief's visit to the plague hospital in Jaffa. They say that the tapestry is destined for one of the principal apartments in the Tuileries Palace” (Moniteur, dated 30 September, 1807)
150 YEARS AGO
Imperial progress
On 30 September, 1857, the emperor Napoleon III left his successful summit meeting at Stuttgart with Alexander II, arriving in Paris the following day to join up with his wife, the Empress Eugénie, who had recently returned (29 September) from Biarritz with their son, the Prince impérial. They left together the next day, 2 October, for the recently established Châlons military camp where the emperor was to review the troops.
(Moniteur Universel, 28 September and 2 October, 1857)
Wishing you an excellent, Napoleonic, week.
Peter Hicks
Historian and Web editor
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, No 427, 28 September - 4 October, 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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NOTA BENE: PARTIAL CLOSURE OF THE ARCHIVES OF THE FRENCH MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFRAIRS (MAE)
The archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) are soon to leave the Quai d'Orsay (autumn 2008) to be re-sited in the diplomatic complex under construction at La Courneuve on the outskirts of Paris.
In the preparation for this change, users of the Paris reading room will be faced with certain restrictions, namely, the archives will be closed in the first tend days of every month and certain documents will be no longer accessible.
For further information, please ring +33 (0)1 43 17 52 68
THIS WEEK in the MAGAZINE
SNIPPETS
- Napoleonic rock band...
SEEN ON THE WEB
- Spanish Military History Forum - Foro para el Estudio de la Historia Militar de España
JUST PUBLISHED
- John Elting and Herbert Knötel, Napoleonic uniforms
WHAT'S ON
Conferences:
- Italian and French architectural culture in the Napoleonic period: professional and stylistic problems, Rome, Italy
- The idea of the antique in the French decade, Naples, Italy
- Napoleon Historical Society, Annual Conference, Chicago, USA
- Napoleonic Association Autumn Conference, 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
- Napoleon's Description de L'Egypte, Dallas, Texas, USA
- "The trace of the eagle", the Invalides dome, Paris, France
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