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NE'ER CAST A CLOUT TILL MAY BE OUT
The fine weather appears to be on its way back, but what a month of May we've just had: blustery, wet, cold... in short, awful. Could it be the end of the world, or global warming turned upside down (maybe the thermostat's gone haywire)? Perhaps not. Take, for instance, the first week of Roland Garros, which we all know is almost always disrupted by bad weather. Go even further back, to a time well before the famous tournament started, and we find that it could still be a little nippy around Ascensiontide. Madame Mère, writing from Pont-sur-Seine (hardly the North Pole) in a letter dated 24 May, 1813 - which incidentally goes on sale at auction soon -, complained to Cambacérès that "since our arrival here, the rain and the wind have spent their days battling it out; the worst of it is that the locals have confidently informed us that it will last until the end of the week. This contrary weather slightly troubled my health early on, but happily today I find myself in better form. Strolls outside have been replaced by games of billiards."
Seeing as nowadays fewer households dispose of a billiards table, we here at the Fondation Napoléon suggest instead that you take a stroll around our Napoleonic websites. What better way to pass the time and ignore the weather?
The very best Napoleonic week to you all,
Thierry Lentz
Director, Fondation Napoléon
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PAINTING OF THE MONTH
Bust portrait of Empress Marie-Louise
Gérard took his first steps at the 1791 Salon as a history painter but quickly established himself in the portrait genre. During the Empire period, he was the official portraitist to the imperial aristocracy and it is thus hardly surprising that he was charged with producing the official portrait of the new empress, initially on her own, and subsequently with the Roi de Rome. This lifelike study is probably one of the most authentic that we have of Marie-Louise, depicted here dressed in white, roses in her hair, and in the full bloom of youth.
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WHAT'S ON
Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, London (UK)
Put together with some the country's best-known cartoonists and comedy writers, this exhibition, which opens on 9 June, explores British comic art from the 1600s to the present day. Divided into thematic sections, of particular interest is the Politics room which focuses on a series of individuals who have been caricatured in particularly effective forms, including Fox, Pitt and of course Napoleon. The Social Satire room also examines some of the more famous works from the Golden Age of social satire - the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century -, including images by Hogarth, Gillray and Cruikshank. A talk by the curator of the exhibition, Martin Myrone, will also take place on 11 June at 1pm.
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PRESS REVIEW
The Paleis op de Meir in Antwerp reopens
The Paleis op de Meir, which during its history has been owned by Napoleon, the Dutch authorities and the Belgian royal family, has reopened. The old royal palace is located at the heart of the Meir shopping district in Antwerp.
The palace was originally designed by Jan-Peter van Baurscheit in 1745 for Johan-Alexander van Susteren, an Antwerp-based merchant who had made his fortune with the Oostendse Compagnie. Napoleon purchased the building, including its contents, in 1811-1812 and had Pierre Fontaine redesign the building as his imperial headquarters. It was not until 1996 that the palace's restoration project was begun. Delays in completing the palace inventories and protracted negotiations with the federal government over the return of furniture and objets d'art meant that it was only in May 2010 that the restoration was completed and the palace could once again reopen to the public.
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History Today June 2010
The June 2010 issue of History Today (UK) features a short recap of Garibaldi's Sicily campaign as part of their Months Past regular feature. Also of interest is David White's article on the transformative nature of the American Civil War, "Born in the USA: A New World of War". Elsewhere, there is a review of John Campbell's book Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown. Finally, Nick Poyntz's regular column on digital history (something that we here at the Fondation Napoléon, with our Digital Library, take very seriously indeed) takes a look at online archives and digitised primary sources, including the Early English Books Online (EEBO) site and The Old Bailey Online project. All of these articles are available online for free.
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NAPOLEONICA. LA REVUE
Taking a look back through the archives
This week we've been digging back through the Napoleonica archives again and have pulled out Rafe Blaufarb's article "The Creation of the Imperial Nobility", which takes the oft-posed question, "Did Napoleon preserve of betray the principles of the French Revolution?" and examines it in relation to the 1808 formation of an imperial nobility. Don't forget that all the previous issues of Napoleonica. La Revue are now available for free on cairn.info. The most recent edition, issue n° 7, is a special number which takes a look at the experience of music during the Napoleonic period.
200 YEARS AGO
Desperate times for the Swedish royal family
The 4 June edition of the Moniteur Universel in 1810 reported that the arrival in Helsingborg of Karl August, the Swedish crown prince, had been delayed due to his being taken ill whilst en route. In an unfortunate turn of events for the paper (although perhaps more unfortunate for the stricken royal), by the time the report had appeared in the Moniteur, Karl August had already arrived in Helsingborg and had promptly died on 28 May. The autopsy revealed that he had suffered a stroke. This event resulted in Jean Baptiste Bernadotte being offered the role. On 21 August, 1810, he was elected Swedish crown-prince.
Why not take a look at napoleon.org's biography of Bernadotte?
A French "plot" in Canada?
The Moniteur Universel from 5 June, 1810, published a curious piece (based on translated excerpts from the English press) describing how a number of "French emissaries", supposedly funded by Napoleon himself, had been arrested for plotting against the British throne. Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, the founder of Le Canadien - a French-language paper which became the mouthpiece for French Canadians rallying against the government of British governor, James Craig -, was arrrested and put in jail for publishing what one gentlemen in Quebec (in his letter published in The Aberdeen Journal on 6 June, 1810) described as "invective against the Government [...] with the intention of misrepresenting every act of the government, with the view of corrupting the people."
Whilst still in prison, Bédard was elected Member of Parliament on 27 March, 1810 and the prisoners were eventually released without trial. Craig was a confirmed Francophobe and convinced that Napoleon was actively conspiring to take back Louisiana and Canada. In his eyes Le Canadien was nothing more than an instrument for sowing discontent and revolt in preparation for the arrival of the French fleet. The episode, which caused a great stir in Canada, placed added strain on Craig who eventually returned home to Britain, and died in 1812.
For more on events leading up to the Anglo-American war of 1812 in which the Canadian territories were heavily involved, see our article of the month by Sylvain Pagé.
150 YEARS AGO
Garibaldi takes Sicily
After three confused days of urban fighting (27 - 30 May), Garibaldi took Palermo. The resistance of the ageing and hesitant general Ferdinando Lanza with his badly led troops, was in large part ineffectual, a surprising fact given that they largely outnumbered the Thousand. Lanza's tardy decision to bring his men into the citadel and to bombard the city caused a great deal of civilian causalities and was described as an atrocity by contemporaries. Lanza eventually wrote to Garibaldi demanding peace and a convention was signed, as reported by the Paris Moniteur, quoting the Cagliari telegraph:
"Writing from Cagliari by telegraph, on the date of 9 June:
The 6 June, a convention was signed between the royal stewards and Garibaldi. Eighteen thousand Neapolitans left their positions this morning with their arms and are camped near to the wharf in order to depart immediately. The citadel will be evacuated after the troops have boarded and prisoners have been exchanged."
Lanza's Neapolitan troops were allowed to leave "with their arms and their honour", as the convention put it, and to return to the Italian mainland. With this victory, Garibaldi was master of Sicily.
However, on the international stage, Garibaldi's victory was not greeted with unanimous applause. Cavour feared that with this success Garibaldi and the Piedmontese king would create a unified and royal Italy without his input and so sent his trusted Sicilian colleague, Giuseppe La Farina (who arrived on 6 June), to bring Garibaldi's project back within his sphere of influence. In France on 12 June (the court was at Fontainebleau), Napoleon III received the Sicilian minister but offered him no assistance, demanding that the Sicilians come to terms with the Piedmontese. Lord Palmerston in parliament on the same night gave the British government reaction, slating the atrocities committed by Lanza and supporting Garibaldi; indeed they had already given material support to the expedition, Garibaldi's troops having been able to disembark safely in the port at Marsala because of the presence of British ships.
The writing was on the wall for the isolated king in Naples. There then followed a confused month of Sicilian and Italian political in-fighting, stirred up by Cavour's man La Farina.
Wishing you an excellent "Napoleonic" week,
Peter Hicks & Hamish Davey Wright
Historians and web-editors
THE NAPOLEON.ORG BULLETIN, N° 545, 4 - 10 June, 2010
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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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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...
Statistic of the week:
In 1806, a yearly subscription to Le Canadien, the French-language Canadian newspaper that quickly evolved into an anti-British government mouthpiece, cost 10 chelins (shillings).
MAGAZINE
Just published
- The Waterloo Archive Volume I: British Sources, edited by Gareth Glover, with review from independent scholar Thomas Zakharis
Press review
- History Today June 2010
- The Paleis op de Meir in Antwerp reopens to the public
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.
Concerts
- Bicentenary concerts commemorating the marriage between Napoleon and Marie-Louise, Paris, France [08/06/2010 - 10/06/2010]
Full details
Conferences
- Fondation Napoléon/Souvenir Napoléonien "1810" conference, La Courneuve, France [08/06/2010 - 09/06/2010]
Full details
Exhibitions
- Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, London, UK [09/06/2010 - 05/09/2010]
Full details
Talks
- "Rude Britannia: Curator's Talk", London, UK [11/06/2010]
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
NAPOLEONICA ARCHIVES ONLINE
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