Bon Bon

Karen/Mostly Napoleon Bonaparte. I have other blogs: other historical things Art Columbo

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The Army of Napoleon Bonaparte Pledging Allegiance to Him by JOB. This image was published in the book Bonaparte, written by Georges Montorgueil and illustrated by Job. (I believe the book is online somewhere but don't remember where.)

meisterdrucke

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Depictions of the Champ de Mai was a massive public assembly held by Napolèon on June 1, 1815, at the Champ de Mars in Paris.

The objective of the Champ de Mai was to gather public support behind Napoleon's Charter of 1815, a constitutional reform that promised a more liberal government than under his earlier rule. The Charter was put to the citizens in a constitutional referendum and the results of this would be announced during the ceremony by representatives of the electoral college.

Several temporary structures were constructed including a semi-amphitheatre, housing 9-10,000 military and civic dignitaries; a throne platform for Napolèon and his brothers; and a religious altar and a platform from which Napolèon was to distribute imperial eagles, the French standards, to his troops. Around 200,000 spectators attended the event which included a parade of 25,000 soldiers and 25,000 National Guardsmen.

After a Catholic mass, the results of the referendum, a landslide in favour, were announced. Napolèon afterwards signed the Charter and swore, on a copy of the New Testament, that he would uphold it. Napolèon then advanced to a separate platform, decorated with trophies of French victories, from which he distributed new eagles to his regiments.

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“General Bonaparte presides over the divan (governing Council) of Cairo”

By Julien Peytard

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"Do you want to know about Napoleon's treasures? They are immense."

The Memorial of St. Helena illustrated by Louis Bombled.

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Alexandre Louis d'Allonville d'Oysonville. No info but it looks like a Dutertre portrait from the Egyptian campaign. I don't know who this guy was.

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Illustration of Napolèon sitting in front of his tent, his hands clasped, his head down.

By Julien Le Blant

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Illustration from The narrative of Captain Coignet (soldier of the empire) which is on archive. The original French (Les Cahiers de capitaine Coignet) is also there. All of the illustrations from this book are on wikimedia commons, if you search for Julien le Blant. Thanks to @napolebonasacc for alerting me to this artist.

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Le Maréchal Davout, Prince d'Eckmühl

par Augustin-Alexandre Dumont

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Joseph Fouché described by women, a compilation

“Fouché wasn't handsome, but he had a charming wit and was extremely amiable.”

– Mémoires de Charlotte Robespierre sur ses deux frères, Dépôt central, Paris, 1835, p. 122

“The winter of 1801 in Paris was quite agreeable to me, due to the ease with which Fouché granted the various requests I made to him regarding the return of the émigrés. In the midst of my disgrace, he gave me the pleasure of being useful, and I remain grateful to him for that. [...] Fouché was Minister of Police. His approach, as my mother used to say, was to do as little harm as possible, once the necessity of the goal was acknowledged.”

– Madame de Staël, Dix années d’exil, Charpentier, Paris, 1861, pp. 235 & 305

“Assured of my discretion, Fouché spoke before me and with me in the most honorable manner. Never have I had a better sense of his intellect. Our conversations covered everything; we reviewed people and events; never have I formed a more favorable opinion of him, and I can say that I became attached, with esteem and affection, to a man who seemed to me to be of such superior stature and of such independent and genuine kindness. [...] Fouché was quite tall, thin, and pale, a pallor that was mainly due to the fact that in his youth his hair had been, or must have been, a very dull blond. His eyes, very small, set close together, and very red, were nevertheless quite piercing, and his entire face lacked neither character nor, at times, a certain nobility.”

– Mémoires de Mme de Chastenay, v. I & II, pp. 464 & 39-40

“Fouché [...] was a genuine product of the Revolution. Careless of his appearance, he wore the gold lace and the ribbons which were the insignia of his dignities as if he disdained to arrange them. He could laugh at himself on occasion : he was active, animated, always restless ; talkative, affecting a sort of frankness which was merely the last degree of deceit ; boasting ; disposed to seek the opinion of others upon his conduct by talking about it, and sought no justification except in his contempt of a certain class of morality, or his carelessness of a certain order of approbation.”

– Mémoires de madame de Rémusat, v. I, S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, Londres, 1880, pp. 426-427

“Madame de Custine’s closest friends—those who belonged to her inner circle and whom she saw constantly—were [first] Fouché, whom she affectionately called Chéché.”

– Gaston Maugras, Delphine de Sabran, marquise de Custine, Paris, Plon, 1912, p. 370

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From a nice Spanish site called "El Rincon de Byron" (Byron's Corner). The movie title is known here as "Conquest."

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After Asperen

By Felicien baron de Myrbach-Rheinfeld

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Napolèon and Massena on the Island of Lobau

By Frederic Theodore Lix

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The Return of Napoleon to the Island of Lobau after the Battle of Essling, May 23, 1809

By Charles Meynier

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Larrey:

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Quote from Louis-Napoléon in his published book Des idées napoléoniennes (1839), nine years before the Revolutions of 1848.

Friends of liberty, who have rejoiced at the downfall of Napoleon, your error has been fatal! How many tedious years must pass, how many struggles and sacrifices must be gone through and suffered, before you will arrive again at the point to which Napoleon had advanced you!

And you, statesmen of the Congress of Vienna, who have been masters of the world, while standing upon the ruins of the Empire you might have played a splendid part, but you did not comprehend it! You have aroused the people in the name of liberty, and even of license, against Napoleon; you have put him under the ban of Europe as a despot and a tyrant; you claim to have delivered the nations and assured their repose. They for a moment have believed you; but nothing solid and permanent can be built upon falsehood and error. Napoleon had elosed the gulf of revolutions; you, overthrowing him, have reopened it.

Take care that the gulf does not swallow you up!

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Good post following my "Sad but True"!

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Sad but true

The explosion of recantation and apostasy which attended Napoleon's decline (in 1814), is in some degree to be considered as an extravagant, almost a grotesque, reaction after an unduly prolonged confinement. The country, finding itself at liberty to renounce him whom it had lately seemed to worship, made an unseemly and violent use of this, its first moment of independence. If there is any moral to be drawn from the fact that France hailed the fall of Napoleon with joy, and accompanied his flight to Elba with menace to his person and maledictions on his name, it is that the French people will not long submit to a jealous and unrelaxing tyranny. They had welcomed the dictatorship of Napoleon, fifteen years before, as a relief from social anarchy, and as the least of two evils. As time progressed, all symptoms of disorder disappeared; absolutism, rigidly applied and enforced, had worked a speedy and radical cure. But Napoleon continued to subject the nation thus recovered of its disorder, to the same system he had employed to combat the evil; the physician persisted in administering to the convalescent patient the same remedies he had used in the crisis of the disease. Here was Napoleon's error — an error fatal and irreparable. His system was not progressive; it was sullen, stationary, inflexible. There was no graduation, no adaptation, no relaxation; iron he began and iron he ended. His despotic temper did not permit him to perceive that there are milder systems and gentler influences that may be often substituted for the ruder processes of force and compression. He chose to effect by might what another would have effected by persuasion. He seized the nation in his relentless grip, and maintained his hold till a power stronger than his own compelled him to abandon it. He had doubtless imagined that time and habit had moulded the people into a form that they would mechanically retain even when the compulsory force was withdrawn. He had sought to reduce the nation as the ship-builder bends the ash, which pliantly assumes a shape and still faithfully preserves it. But Napoleon had labored upon a very different material. France is like a Damascus blade — elastic and readily yielding to pressure, and yet ever returning to its original form. Whoever disregards its temper is sure to feel its edge. Napoleon's mistake was radical; he was always and everywhere a despot. He mastered the continent of Europe, but was himself destroyed by the recoil; he mastered France, but his overthrow was hailed by the people as a deliverance. Such is the lesson taught by the incidents attending the fall of Napoleon : that a nation — and especially the French nation — may yield transiently to tyranny and bow with apparent satisfaction to despotic control, and yet upon the day of reckoning, compensate for the servility of its submission, by the fervor of its apostasy and the vehemence of its renunciation. The descendants of Napoleon may make useful commentaries on this painful chapter in the history of the first of their race. [This American book was published during the reign of Napoleon III, in 1857.]

The Court of Napoleon by Frank Boott Goodrich

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Napolèon shows the Portrait of his Son Napolèon II to the Generals

By Henry Justice Ford