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 …
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.
The city’s iconic Brandenburg Gate gained international prominence on October 27, 1806, when Napoleon Bonaparte paraded his victorious Grand Armée through its arches. The Quadriga, a bronze statue of Victory and her four-horse chariot by the artist Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764- 1850) graced the arcade, as it does now. That day in 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte instructed his cultural minister Vivant Denon to send it home to Paris.
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 …
200th Anniversary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Loss at Waterloo Read More »
War Games, by Donna Lomangino, available at www.lomanginoart.com My brother Jimmy and my sister-in-law Helen gave me this fun portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte playing video games. That someone would even think to paint it reminds me how much Napoleon remains a part of our collective memory.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a brilliant military and political leader, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t make disastrous mistakes. In that regard, the Russian Campaign of 1812 deserves top billing. His misadventures in Spain, poignantly illustrated in this painting from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, come in a close second. I won’t …
Finding Napoleon in Richmond, Virginia (and Spain) Read More »
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 …
In St Helena, Admiral Cockburn implemented the British policy of denying Napoleon his imperial title. Henceforth, he insisted, the former emperor was to be addressed as “General.” More than that, in a effort to delegitimize his right to lead the French, the British used the Corsican spelling of his name so “Bonaparte” reverted to the Italian-sounding “Buonaparte.”
I’m on vacation in Iceland for a dozen days, but even there I’ve been on the look-out for references to Napoleon Bonaparte. I had begun to despair of finding any when I came across this sympathetic puffin. He obligingly posed in the exiled Emperor Napoleon’s iconic posture, hands clasped behind his back, staring out from …
One hundred ninety-three years after his death, Napoleon Bonaparte still matters. According to a scientifically rigorous study, published by the Cambridge University Press, Napoleon ranks second to Jesus Christ as the most influential person in history. William Shakespeare comes in third. Study authors, Steven Skiena of State University of New York at Stony Brook and …
Big Data Shows Napoleon Bonaparte is History’s 2nd Biggest Figure Read More »
