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 […]
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Whenever I travel, I’m on the lookout for signs of Napoleon Bonaparte’s influence. I didn’t expect to find any on a recent trip to Costa Rica and Panama, but there’s a statue of his great-nephew in Panama City. In 1877, Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte Wyse, the grandson of Emperor Napoleon’s brother Lucien, obtained the first agreement from
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Portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte by Ingres As I explained in my last post, in general, the Spanish aren’t fans of Napoleon Bonaparte. In fact, I didn’t find a single portrait of Napoleon in the Prado Museum’s huge collection. The Prado was, however, hosting a travelling exhibition of works by the French painter Ingres (1780-1867). There
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When you’re visiting Madrid, it’s painful to be an admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte. It’s similar to how I felt on my visit to Vietnam when I heard the Vietnam War called “the War of American Aggression.” In Madrid, what I know as “the Peninsula War” became “the War for Spanish Independence.” History’s a matter of
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On October 27, 1806, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte marched his Grande Armée into Berlin. He spent the night at the Charlottenburg Palace, home to the Prussian King Frederick William III and his queen, Louise.
Finding Napoleon in Berlin – Part 2 Read More »
My last post covered a few of the ways Napoleon Bonaparte filled his days during his five-and-a-half-year exile on St Helena Island. However, his most important pastime—the one he did every day—was reading. Throughout his life, Napoleon was a voracious reader and book collector. As an impoverished young man, he lived a monkish life, often
Napoleon on St Helena: Reading Books Read More »
How did Napoleon Bonaparte spend the 2,029 days of his exile on St Helena? After all, the Great Man (or Monster, depending on your point of view) jam-packed his previous forty-six years. At sixteen, he rushed through Paris’ École Militaire to graduate after one year instead of the normal two. In 1798, on his way
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On October 15, 1815, four months after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on St Helena Island for his second and last exile. As you can see in the photo above, the island rises out of the south Atlantic Ocean like a forbidding rock in a vacant sea. It’s the very definition of remote:
Napoleon’s Exile on St Helena 200th Anniversary Read More »
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,
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On June 18, 2015, people around the world who either admire or despise Napoleon Bonaparte will pause to remember his greatest loss, the Battle of Waterloo. Two hundred years later, endless arguments continue. Did the French Marshal Ney betray Napoleon? Or was it Napoleon’s reluctance to send Ney reinforcements that caused the loss? Why didn’t
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