Margaret’s Blog

While I focused on writing my novel (working title: The Eaglet’s Legacy), October has flown by. As a final post before November, here’s a reminder to take a look at the video of photos from my trip to St Helena.

Before Napoleon died in 1821, the British government had instructed Governor Hudson Lowe that the emperor’s body was to stay on St Helena. A burial site was chosen about a mile from Longwood House on land owned by the merchant Richard Torbett. Initially, Torbett received £650 as an indemnity plus an annual subsidy of £50, […]

Last weekend, my husband Bert and I attended the Napoleonic Historical Society’s annual conference. Held this year in Baltimore, Maryland, the agenda included lectures on Napoleonic topics as well as NHS president Sheperd Paine’s excellent overview of the War of 1812, in which the Baltimore region played a part. (Francis Scott Key wrote the Star […]

Last weekend at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, I came across Francisco Goya’s stunning painting of the Napoleonic general Nicolas Philippe Guye.  Guye had been wounded at Austerlitz and later served as aide-de-camp to Napoleon’s older brother Joseph. In 1810, when Goya painted this portrait, Guye was governor of Seville and Joseph […]

One of my blog readers commented on the Not Finding Much Napoleon at the Louvre post that “sadly, [I] missed the excellent romantic painting of a Napoleonic-era cavalry officer by Géricault.” His comment sent me scrambling for the DVD where I store my Louvre photos, certain I remembered the piece he had in mind. Sure […]

At the Napoleon birthday celebration at Fort Myer, Napoleon Historical Society member Vince Hawkins displayed his plaster death mask of the Emperor.  It’s been authenticated as one of only a hundred struck from the original that the attending doctor, Dr Antommarchi, created two days after Napoleon’s death in 1821.   Napoleonic death masks appear in […]

Yesterday, I celebrated today’s 242nd anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s birth with a group of new friends from the Napoleonic Historical Society. Over a champagne brunch at the Fort Myer officers club, we toasted the Emperor. I’m looking forward to seeing these folks and other Napoleonic enthusiasts at the Historical Society’s annual conference, held this year […]

A BOOK REVIEW:  To Befriend an Emperor: Betsy Balcombe’s Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte on St Helena, edits and introduction by J. David Markham, Ravenhall Books, 2005. (Originally published in 1844 as Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon on the Island of St Helena, by Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe Abell.) As I covered in my last blog, Napoleon’s […]

In 1815, a few days before Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on St Helena, a fast sloop brought the governor news that the island had been chosen for the defeated emperor’s exile.  The surprised authorities scrambled to find a secure residence for their illustrious prisoner, but the remote South Atlantic island offered few choices. They settled on […]

I love meeting fellow Napoleonic enthusiasts, such as my new friend Alix Sundquist.  Her fascination began when, twelve years old and living in Argentina, she came across Emil Ludwig’s Napoleon in the library at her grandfather’s estancia.  She’s been hooked on Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte ever since.  After a career in the U.S. Foreign Service, […]