FINDING NAPOLEON: A NOVEL AVAILABLE NOW!
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Corsica
Finding Napoleon: Propaganda from a Plague
Here we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and too many of our leaders twist suffering and science into propaganda. Look back 220 years. You’ll find the same thing. For example, this painting of “Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa,” by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771 – 1835), makes propaganda from a plague. In …
Finding Napoleon at Notre Dame Cathedral
This past December, headlines screamed “First Christmas Without Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral in Two Hundred Years.” What happened two hundred years ago both to interrupt and to reinstate that structure’s sacred use? The French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte. Tragically, the photo above explains why there wasn’t a mass in 2019. On April 15, the …
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’S DRAMATIC RISE TO POWER
Finding Napoleon in Virginia Again The Napoleon Bonaparte exhibit at Richmond’s Museum of Fine Arts brought together exquisite artifacts, each fascinating in its own right. As a collection, they tell a visual story of Napoleon’s meteoric rise to power. Here are three pieces that touch on Napoleon Bonaparte’s early career: Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as …
FINDING NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AT THE FBI
Okay, not the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, but how about his American great-nephew? In 1908, U.S. Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1851 – 1921), founded the first corps of federal government investigators. Those thirty-four Special Agents became the Bureau of Investigation, later called the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With the FBI dominating today’s headlines, I thought I’d …
FINDING NAPOLEON BONAPARTE IN CUBA, PART 2
If you read my last blog post, you know I visited Havana’s Museo Napoleónico. Thanks to the Cuban sugar magnate, Julio Lobo, the museum houses the Western Hemisphere’s largest exhibition of Napoleon Bonaparte’s artifacts. My favorite piece is Napoleon’s pocket watch from his exile on St Helena. But how did it end up in Cuba? Like so …
Napoleon Bonaparte, A True Corsican?
A belated happy birthday to Napoleon Bonaparte who was born 246 years ago, on August 15, 1769, in this house on the island of Corsica. That lightly-populated island’s strategic position in the Mediterranean led to its repeated conquest and colonization, starting with the Phoenicians in 565 BCE. Over the next two millennia, Romans, Vandals, Ostrogoths, …
Finding Napoleon Bonaparte FACE-to-FACE
During my travels to do research on Napoleon Bonaparte, I’ve taken hundreds of photographs of Napoleonic sites, art, memorabilia, and related objects. I’ve learned a lot about about military campaigns, geopolitics, and daily life in his times. I’ve become fascinated (and distracted by) the countless characters who surrounded Napoleon, from his birth in Corsica through …
Napoleon on Camelback in the Musée Fesch
After seeing the photo of me riding an elephant, one of this blog’s readers asked if Napoleon had ridden a camel during his Egyptian Campaign (1798). Yes, Melanie! Here’s a photo I took of a small bronze statue of the Man himself on camelback. It’s displayed in the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio, Corsica, Napoleon’s hometown. …