#Napoleon was the most ardent passionate lover

[microcosme11]

This is only part of a love letter Napoleon wrote

Je ne sais pas quel sort m’attend ; mais s’il m’éloigne plus longtemps de toi, il me [devient] insupportable ; mon courage ne va pas jusque-là. Il fut un temps où je m’enorgueillissais de mon courage, et quelquefois, en jetant les yeux sur le mal que pourraient me faire les hommes, sur le sort que pourrait me réserver le destin, je fixais les malheurs les plus inouïs sans froncer le sourcil, sans me sentir étonné. Mais aujourd’hui, l’idée que ma Joséphine pourrait être mal, l’idée qu’elle pourrait être malade, et surtout la cruelle, la funeste pensée qu’elle pourrait m’aimer moins, flétrit mon âme, arrête mon sang, me rend triste, abattu, ne me laisse pas même le courage de la fureur et du désespoir… Je me disais souvent jadis : les hommes ne peuvent rien à celui qui meurt sans regret ; mais aujourd’hui, mourir sans être aimé de toi, mourir sans cette certitude, c’est le tourment de l’enfer, c’est l’image vive et frappante de l’anéantissement absolu. Il me semble que je me sens étouffer. Mon unique compagne, toi que le sort a destinée pour faire avec moi le voyage pénible de la vie, le jour où je n’aurai plus ton cœur sera celui où la nature aride sera pour moi sans chaleur et sans végétation… Je m’arrête, ma douce amie ; mon âme est triste, mon corps est fatigué, mon esprit est étourdi. Les hommes m’ennuient. Je devrais bien les détester : ils m’éloignent de mon cœur.

Je suis à Port-Maurice, près Oneille ; demain, je suis à Albenga. Les deux armées se remuent ; nous cherchons à nous tromper. Au plus habile la victoire. Je suis assez content de Beaulieu ; s’il manœuvre bien, il est plus fort que son prédécesseur. Je le battrai, j’espère, de la belle manière. Sois sans inquiétude, aime-moi comme tes yeux ; mais ce n’est pas assez : comme toi ; plus que toi, que ta pensée, ton esprit, ta vie, ton tout. Douce amie, pardonne-moi, je délire ; la nature est faible pour qui sent vivement, pour celui que tu animes. [...]

Adieu, adieu, je me couche sans toi, je dormirai sans toi, je t’en prie, laisse-moi dormir. Voilà plusieurs jours où je te serre dans mes bras, songe heureux mais, mais, ce n’est pas toi…

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I don’t know what fate awaits me; but if it keeps me away from you any longer, it [becomes] unbearable to me; my courage only goes so far. There was a time when I prided myself on my courage, and sometimes, casting my eyes on the harm that men could do to me, on the fate that destiny could have in store for me, I stared at the most incredible misfortunes without frowning, without feeling surprised. But today, the idea that my Joséphine could be unwell, the idea that she could be ill, and above all the cruel, fatal thought that she could love me less, withers my soul, stops my blood, makes me sad, dejected, does not even leave me with the courage of fury and despair… I often used to say to myself: men can do nothing to those who die without regret; but today, to die without being loved by you, to die without this certainty, is the torment of hell, it is the vivid and striking image of absolute annihilation. I seem to be suffocating. My only companion, you whom fate has destined to make with me the painful journey of life, the day when I will no longer have your heart will be the day when arid nature will be for me without heat and without vegetation… I stop, my sweet friend; my soul is sad, my body is tired, my mind is dizzy. Men bore me. I should hate them: they take me away from my heart.

I am in Port-Maurice, near Oneille; tomorrow I'm in Albenga. The two armies move; we seek to deceive each other. The most skilful wins. I am quite happy with Beaulieu; if he maneuvers well, he is stronger than his predecessor. I will beat him, I hope, in a good way. Don't worry, love me like your eyes; but that’s not enough: like you; more than you, than your thought, your spirit, your life, your everything. Sweet friend, forgive me, I am delirious; nature is weak for those who feel keenly, for those whom you animate. [...]

Goodbye, goodbye, I'm going to bed without you, I'll sleep without you, please let me sleep. It's been several days since I held you in my arms, happy dream but, but, it's not you…

link to the entire letter on napoleonica

[cassandraxxlim]

Les miserable

I want to render a public service. I want to suggest that even if you were deeply moved by “Les Mis,” you can still save your soul. I don’t think you are damned forever. Salvation awaits. I realize that we are not supposed to argue about taste. De gustibus non est disputandum, as some Latin fellow said. But, in fact, critics do nothing but argue about taste. And I realize that emotion is even harder and riskier to argue about. But, as we have new experiences, emotions change. Therefore, in the interest of public health, I will try to bring cures to the troubled. But first, a few words about the movie version of “Les Misérables.” Mme. Magliore Housekeeper for the bishop and his sister. Jean Valjean Ex-convict still pursued by the law, who strives for moral perfection and achieves a kind of sainthood in his love for the little orphan Cosette. He is also known as M. Madeleine and M. Leblanc. Little Gervais Chimney sweep from whom Valjean steals a coin, his last criminal act for which Javert inexorably trails him. Fantine A beautiful girl of unknown parentage who comes to Paris at the age of fifteen. She falls in love with Tholomyès and bears an illegitimate child, Cosette. Forced to give up her child, Fantine is crushed and ultimately destroyed by adversity. Cosette Illegitimate daughter of Fantine, originally named Euphrasie. She has a wretched childhood as the ward of the brutal innkeeper Thénardier but later finds happiness in Valjean's devoted care and in the love of a young man. Félix Tholomyès A student, Fantine's lover, and father of Cosette. Thénardier An evil innkeeper who mistreats Cosette during her childhood, lures Valjean into an ambush, and commits various other crimes. He is also known as Jondrette and Fabantou. Mme. Thénardier A virago whose sweeping malevolence spares only her husband and her two daughters. Eponine Older daughter of the Thénardiers. As a child she is spoiled at Cosette's expense; later she becomes a ragged, hungry adolescent. Her love for Marius first endangers, then saves his life. Azelma Second daughter of the Thénardiers. Spoiled at first, her life becomes as miserable as her sister's. Gavroche The Thénardiers' oldest son, a typical Paris gamin. He dies heroically at the barricades in the revolution of 1832. Two little boys The Thénardiers' youngest children. Given by their parents to an acquaintance, Magnon, they wander the streets of Paris after she is arrested. Gavroche's protection gives them temporary solace. Inspector Javert An incorruptible policeman. He makes it his life's work to track down Jean Valjean. Fauchelevent Valjean, as Madeleine, saves his life; Fauchelevent later is gardener at the convent of the Little Picpus and gives shelter to Valjean and Cosette. Bamatabois An idler of the town who torments Fantine by putting snow down her back. Champmathieu The man accused of being Jean Valjean, on whose behalf "Madeleine" reveals his true identity. Sister Simplicity A nun who lies to save Valjean from Javert. Boulatruelle An old roadworker, ex-convict, and minor associate of the underworld chiefs. He is constantly seeking buried treasure in the forest near Montfermeil. The Prioress Head of the convent where Valjean and Cosette live for several years. Mestienne and Gribier The two gravediggers. Mestienne, friend of Fauchelevent, dies suddenly, and his place is taken by Gribier, nearly causing Valjean to be buried alive. M. Gillenormand Relic of the Enlightenment, he is hostile to the romantic love and liberal politics of his grandson Marius. Mlle. Gillenormand Gillenormand's daughter, a lackluster old maid whose interests are limited to devotional practices. Marius Pontmercy An idealistic student who falls passionately in love with Cosette and later marries her. Colonel Georges Pontmercy Marius' father, an officer of Napoleon's, named by him a colonel, a baron, and an officer of the Legion of Honor. Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand M. Gillenormand's grandnephew. He is asked to spy on his cousin Marius. Magnon Friend of Mme. Thénardier. She bears two illegitimate boys, for whom M. Gillenormand, her former employer, pays all expenses. When the boys die, the Thénardiers gladly give her their two youngest sons in exchange for a share of the money. M. Mabeuf An old horticulturist and bibliophile, now a churchwarden. He is instrumental in revealing to Marius the truth about his father. Later, driven by destitution, he dies a heroic death at the barricades. Mother Plutarch Servant of M. Mabeuf; shares his poverty to the end. Montparnasse, Claquesous, Gueulemer, and Babet The four chiefs of the Paris underworld, occasionally associated with Thénardier. Enjolras An uncompromising political radical who dies courageously as the leader of a group of student insurrectionists. Grantaire Enjolras' friend. He is a drunken cynic who redeems a useless existence by sharing Enjolras' death before a firing squad. Combeferre Friend of Enjolras and second in command of the student insurrectionists. Courfeyrac A student. With Enjolras and Combeferre, he helps incite and lead the insurrection. Jean Prouvaire A friend of Enjolras and one of the group of revolutionaries. He is rich, sensitive, and intelligent. Bahoral A law student and revolutionary. He is good-humored and capricious, and refuses to be serious in his studies. Joly A student. A hypochondriac, he is nevertheless a spirited and happy companion. Bossuet A student revolutionary. Although he signs his name "Lègle (de Meaux)," he is called Bossuet (Bald), Laigle (The Eagle), and occasionally Lesgle. Feuilly A self-taught worker, and an ardent insurrectionist Le Cabuc Shoots a porter during the insurrection and is executed by Enjolras. May actually have been Claquesous. I had never seen the show or heard the score; I came to the material fresh, without preconception, and throughout the entire hundred and fifty-seven minutes I sat cowering in my seat, lost in shame and chagrin. This movie is not just bad. It’s terrible; it’s dreadful. Overbearing, pretentious, madly repetitive. I was doubly embarrassed because all around me, in a very large theatre, people were sitting rapt, awed, absolutely silent, only to burst into applause after some of the numbers, and I couldn’t help wondering what in the world had happened to the taste of my countrymen—the Filipinos (Filipinos!) who loved the greatest musical ever made, Les Miserables. Didn’t any of my neighbors notice how absurdly gloomy and dolorous the story was? How the dominant blue-gray coloring was like a pall hanging over the material? How the absence of dancing concentrated all the audience’s pleasure on the threadbare songs? How tiresome a reverse fashion show the movie provided in rags, carbuncles, gimpy legs, and bad teeth? How awkward the staging was? How strange to have actors singing right into the camera, a normally benign recording instrument, which seems, in scene after scene, bent on performing a tonsillectomy? Hugh Jackman, as the aggrieved Jean Valjean, delivers his numbers in a quavering, quivering, stricken voice—Jackman doesn’t sing, he brays. Russell Crowe as Javert, his implacable pursuer, stands on parapets overlooking all of Paris and dolefully sings of his duty to the law. Then he does it again. Everything is repeated, emphasized, doubled, as if to congratulate us on emotions we’ve already had. The young women, trembling like leaves in a storm, battered this way and that by men, never exercise much will or intelligence. Anne Hathaway, as Fantine, gets her teeth pulled, her hair chopped, and her body violated in a coffin box—a Joan of Arc who only suffers, a pure victim who never asserts herself. Hathaway, a total pro, gives everything to the role, exploiting those enormous eyes and wide mouth for its tragic-clown effect. Like almost everyone else, she sings through tears. Most of the performances are damp. The music is juvenile stuff—tonic-dominant, without harmonic richness or surprise. Listen to any score by Richard Rodgers or Leonard Bernstein or Fritz Loewe if you want to hear genuine melodic invention. I was so upset by the banality of the music that I felt like hiring a hall and staging a nationalist rally. “My fellow-countrymen, we are the people of Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin! Cole Porter and George Gershwin, Frank Loesser and Burton Lane! We taught the world what popular melody was! What rhythmic inventiveness was! Let us unite to overthrow the banality of these French hacks!” (And the British hacks, too, for that matter.) Alas, the hall is filled with people weeping over “Les Mis.” Is it sacrilege to point out that the Victor Hugo novel, stripped of its social detail and reduced to its melodramatic elements, no longer makes much sense? That the story doesn’t connect to our world (which may well be the reason for the show’s popularity)? Jean Valjean becomes a convict slave for nineteen years after stealing some bread for his sister’s child. He has done nothing wrong, yet he spends the rest of his life redeeming himself by committing one noble act after another, while Javert pursues him all over France. Wherever Valjean goes, Javert shows up; he’s everywhere at once, like the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” who was at least intended to be a fanciful creation. Every emotion in the movie is elemental. There’s no normal range, no offhand or incidental moments—it’s all injustice, love, heartbreak, cruelty, self-sacrifice, nobility, baseness. Which brings us to heart of the material’s appeal. As everyone knows, the stage show was a killer for girls between the ages of eight and about fourteen. If they have seen “Les Mis” and responded to it as young women, they remain loyal to the show—and to the emotions it evoked—forever. At that age, the sense of victimization is very strong, and “Les Mis” is all about victimization. That the story has nothing to with our own time makes the emotions in it more—not less—accessible, because feeling is not sullied by real-world associations. But whom, may I ask, is everyone crying for? For Jean Valjean? For Fantine? Fantine is hardly on the screen before she is destroyed. Indeed, I’ve heard of people crying on the way into the movie theatre. It can’t be the material itself that’s producing those tears. “Les Mis” offers emotion… about emotion. But, you say, what’s wrong with a good cry? What harm does it do anyone? No harm. But I would like to point out that tears engineered this crudely are not emotions honestly earned, that the most cynical dictators, as Pauline Kael used to say, have manipulated emotions with the same kind of kitsch appeal to gut feelings. Sentimentality in art is corrosive because it rewards us for imprecise perceptions and meaningless hatreds. Revolution breaks out in “Les Mis.” What revolution? Against whom? In favor of what? It’s just revolution—the noble sacrifice of handsome, ardent boys taking on merciless power. The French military, those canaille, gun down the beautiful boys. It’s all so generic. The vagueness is insulting. And now, the real point: our great musicals were something miraculous. They were a blessed artifice devoted to pleasure, to ease and movement, exultation in the human body, jokes and happy times, the giddiness of high hopes.

[dulwichdiverter]

The  prophetess of anarchy

We take a look at the colourful life of anarchist, feminist and former local resident Louise Michel

By Thomas Jones

On 12 September 1891, the Pall Mall Gazette announced the opening of a new multilingual “International School” on Fitzroy Street, “right at the centre of the international quarter” of London.  

Sponsored by figures like the poet William Morris and Russian anarchist Prince Peter Kropotkin, the school consisted of “some 40 polyglot little boys and girls” who were taught, free of charge, “by the energetic and kindly vierge rouge herself”.

This “vierge rouge”, or “red virgin”, was Louise Michel, a left-wing revolutionary (hence “red”) and intentionally unmarried feminist (“virgin”). Michel, whose remarkable career as a political activist had taken her from the barricades of the Paris Commune to a penal colony in the south Pacific, was by this point living as a political refugee in London.  

Although she moved between several different parts of the capital during her exile, she spent probably the bulk of her time in East Dulwich, remembering her home there as “the place that I loved most in England”.

Michel was born on May 29, 1830 in the small commune of Vroncourt-la-Côte in the Haute-Marne department of north-eastern France. Her mother, Marianne Michel, was an unmarried domestic servant of the local aristocratic Demahis family. Her biological father was almost certainly either Charles Étienne Demahis (head of the household and Marianne’s employer), or his son Laurent.  

Michel and her mother lived in the Demahis chateau, where Charles Étienne and his wife Charlotte provided her with a strong liberal education. She developed a passion for learning in these years and when she moved out of the chateau in 1850, she turned down several marriage proposals and earned a teaching qualification.  

After working at several schools in Haute-Marne she moved to Paris in 1855.There, already sympathetic to republican ideas and disturbed by the widespread poverty she witnessed in Haute-Marne, Michel began to move in circles opposed to the rule of France’s emperor, Napoleon III.

She associated both with Mme Jules Simon, wife of one of the leading moderate republican parliamentarians, and with the followers of the fiery revolutionary Louis-Auguste Blanqui. She became an ardent feminist, joining the society of the “Droit des Femmes” (“Right of Women”), which advocated women’s equality in education and in the workplace, and she wrote columns on women’s rights in the political press.  

Michel also became an accomplished poet in these years, and corresponded regularly with Victor Hugo, who was then in exile in the Channel Islands for having opposed Napoleon III’s rise to power. Their relationship was strong enough for her to use the pseudonym “Enjolras”, after one of Hugo’s characters in Les Misérables, and there has been much speculation that it became physical after Hugo’s return to France in 1870.  

Meanwhile, she remained a dedicated teacher, not only of children but also in adult “professional” schools, where she was beloved by her pupils and fellow teachers, and she wrote a manual outlining her pedagogical ideas.

The years 1870-71 marked a turning point for Michel and for France. In July 1870, a diplomatic spat between France and Prussia, the most powerful German state, erupted into the Franco-Prussian war. Prussian forces quickly invaded, dealt the French army several crushing blows and, in early September, took Napoleon III prisoner at the Battle of Sedan.  

When news of this reached Paris, the regime collapsed and France was declared a republic.  Yet the new government could not hold back the Prussians, who by late September had surrounded and besieged Paris. Parisians held out for months, resorting to eating rats and even zoo animals to stay alive.  

Despite this stalwart resistance, the French government capitulated in late January 1871 and in February elections returned a conservative government that negotiated a humiliating peace with Prussia, which included paying a huge indemnity and giving up the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.  

This was extremely unpopular in Paris, and clashes between Parisians and the French army led the national government to flee to Versailles and Paris to elect its own government of radical republicans.

This, the famous Paris Commune, enacted a progressive social programme. It initiated universal, free and secular education, supported cooperative enterprise, forgave debts and returned pawned items to their owners.  

But the national government was unwilling to accept the de facto secession of the capital.  Paris was surrounded for a second time, now by French troops, and in the infamous Bloody Week of 21-28 May 1871, the army conquered Paris and destroyed the Commune. Thousands were killed in the fighting, and many more were executed or deported to penal colonies in its aftermath.

Michel participated in all of this. As the Prussians besieged the city she was elected onto the women’s vigilance committee for the 18th arrondissement and oversaw care for the wounded, cold and hungry.  

She welcomed the Commune and its social reforms, especially in education. Remaining a member of the vigilance committee, she fully participated in the political clubs that flourished under the Commune, and attached herself to the 61st battalion defending Paris.

She fought on the front lines and operated an ambulance, earning praise from the Commune’s official newspaper as a “femme énergique” who was deadly to the enemy. Somehow, she managed to escape death and imprisonment during Bloody Week, but soon learned that her mother had been captured. Michel therefore gave herself up to secure her mother’s release.

Like thousands of others, Michel was condemned to transportation, and after a long journey, arrived in the French penal colony of New Caledonia in the south Pacific in 1873, where she later taught the children of her fellow deported “Communards” and of Algerian rebels transported for resisting French colonial rule, as well as the indigenous Kanak people.  

In 1880 there was an amnesty for the Communards, and Michel returned to France. Far from penitent, she had been further radicalised by the Commune’s destruction and her imprisonment and transportation, and she became an anarchist.

As the number of anarchists grew, the French government cracked down. In 1883, Michel was arrested on trumped-up charges and she and 65 other anarchists, including Kropotkin, were imprisoned for three years.  

When her participation in a May Day demonstration in 1890 led to a similar overreaction that nearly saw her consigned to a lunatic asylum, Michel decided to seek asylum in England, where there was a growing population of anarchist refugees who were “sure”, as she put it, “to find in this great country of liberty an inviolable asylum”.

Britain was indeed a land of asylum for much of the 19th century. It had no immigration restrictions and its history of providing asylum for political and religious refugees, stretching back to the Huguenots of the 16th century, was widely celebrated.  

The “right of asylum” was deeply ingrained in the country’s political culture and the extradition of “political offenders” was strictly forbidden by law. Britain therefore ignored pleas from France and elsewhere to arrest and extradite anarchists (excepting only those wanted for killing civilians – not a “political offence” according to British judges) or to censor their meetings and newspapers.

When Michel arrived in London, she joined an international community that included figures like Kropotkin, the Italian Errico Malatesta, the German Rudolf Rocker and her French friends Henri Rochefort and Charles Malato.  

Anarchist political life in London clustered around Soho and Fitzrovia, and it is here that Michel founded her International School, which charged no fees and catered mostly to the children of her fellow refugees.  

Michel found London’s size intimidating and its social inequality disturbing. Yet, she also found the city exciting and “so alive”. Above all, she appreciated that she was free to speak, write, and agitate in Britain, a place she came to think of as “the country of liberty par excellence”.

It is difficult to trace all of Michel’s movements, but her surviving correspondence indicates that between 1893-98 she lived on Plaquett Road in East Dulwich. This was a short street off Grove Vale, which now forms the southern part of Copleston Road. In 1899 she also appears to have lived briefly at 25 Chesterfield Grove.  

From her house in East Dulwich she regularly ventured into the city, embarking on “a veritable exploration” until she knew “London like a true Englishwoman”. She also attended anarchist meetings at the Autonomie Club in Soho and open-air demonstrations held all over London.  

The relative quiet of East Dulwich fostered her intellectual activity: she spent most of her time at home “reading and writing”. It was here that she composed a great deal of her later memoirs.

She wrote and published her famous history of the Commune during these years, while also making regular contributions to the anarchist press in London and Paris. Reflecting on this time, she wrote: “As long as I had my books, I was never bored.”

Nor was her life in East Dulwich solitary. As an animal lover, she kept several pets, including a cat named Titine, “two splendid dogs” and a parrot named Coco. Coco in particular amused her friends, and Malato recalled that, imitating Michel, it would often chirp out “Vive l’anarchie!”  

Visitors frequented Michel’s East Dulwich home. Her circle included continental European anarchists, the American political activist Emma Goldman and leaders of the British Labour movement like Tom Mann and Keir Hardie.  

She also received visits from a fair number of curious reporters, and articles published in American and French papers described their authors trekking down to East Dulwich to speak with this “prophetess of anarchy”.  

Michel finally left East Dulwich around 1901, moving first to Sydenham and then to Streatham. She increasingly struggled with pneumonia and left Britain for good in late 1904.  Hoping the climate would improve her health, she briefly went to Algeria before crossing the Mediterranean to Marseille. She died there on 9 January 1905.

Her body was transferred to Paris where her funeral procession attracted 100,000 people. Buried at Levallois-Perret cemetery, her gravestone refers to her as a “heroic combatant of the Commune”.  Yet in all of her remarkably active, itinerant and troubled life, there were few places that she regarded as fondly as East Dulwich.

..........................

Dr Thomas C Jones is a historian living in East Dulwich. He is currently writing a book about refugees in Britain.

[zeroviraluniverse-blog]

Beethoven and Napoleon | History Today

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/beethoven-and-napoleon-history-today/

Beethoven and Napoleon | History Today

In April 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven left Vienna for Heiligenstadt, a village about five miles to the north. In the preceding weeks he had been deeply depressed by the realisation that he was going deaf; but there, surrounded by nature, he recovered his spirits and found a new sense of musical purpose. Wandering through the countryside, sketchbook in hand, he began toying with a theme in E flat major. Before long, he had the outlines of a completely new symphony – his third – clear in his mind. Though inspired by some of his earlier works, especially the so-called Eroica Variations (Op. 35), it was unlike anything he had written before. Vast in scope and strikingly original in style, it was bold, daring, even triumphalist.

While Beethoven was labouring over the score, he decided to name the symphony after Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France. Where this idea came from is unclear. According to his biographer and sometime secretary Anton Schindler, it had first been suggested by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the French ambassador to Austria. But, according to Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries, the idea was the composer’s own. As Ries explained, Beethoven had the ‘highest esteem’ for Napoleon and ‘compared him to the greatest consuls of ancient Rome’. Whatever the case, Beethoven’s enthusiasm for Bonaparte was unflinching. As soon as the score was finished, in early 1804, he wrote the Italian words ‘Sinfonia intitolata Bonaparte’ (‘Symphony entitled Bonaparte’) on the cover and left the manuscript on a table so that all his friends could see.

But Beethoven was in for a nasty surprise. Not long after putting the final touches to his symphony, Ries came to him with news that, on 18 May 1804, Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of France. Beethoven was furious. Flying into a rage, the composer shouted: ‘So he is no more than a common mortal! Now he, too, will tread underfoot all the rights of man [and] indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men [and] become a tyrant!’ Snatching up a pen, Beethoven then strode over to the score and scribbled out the title so violently that he tore through the paper. Thenceforth, the work would be known simply as the Sinfonia Eroica (the ‘Heroic’ Symphony).

This episode has become the stuff of legend, giving rise to an abiding image of Beethoven as a lover of liberty, an admirer of the French Revolution and – above all – a republican. Thanks to Schindler and Ries, it is often thought that, having once admired Napoleon as the apotheosis of revolutionary principles, the composer, true to his republican beliefs, later reviled him for sacrificing them to his own ambition and, after removing the Third Symphony’s original title, held the name ‘Bonaparte’ in contempt ever after.

But it would be dangerous to accept this unquestioningly. Although Beethoven’s violent erasure of the original title can still be seen on the manuscript cover, the accounts given by Schindler and Ries are less reliable than they first appear. Schindler’s version is particularly suspect. His claim that the idea of naming the symphony after Napoleon had been suggested by Bernadotte is demonstrably false. Though Bernadotte had indeed served as the French ambassador to Austria, he had quit his post in disgrace in 1798 and had not been back since. Schindler was, moreover, a known democrat, and – having destroyed or doctored many of Beethoven’s papers after the composer’s death – may well have twisted his tale to make it seem as if Beethoven’s views accorded more with his own.

On closer examination, Beethoven’s relationship with Napoleon appears to have been more subtle than Schindler and Ries suggested. As a young man, he was, admittedly, attracted by the ideals of the French Revolution. At the age of 19, he subscribed to a book of Jacobin poetry by Eulogius Schneider and, in the years that followed, peppered his writings with revolutionary sentiments. In a letter to Nikolaus Simrock on 2 August 1792, for example, he declared himself to be a democrat and vigorously objected to being called a ‘gentleman’. Similarly, he often expressed his disdain for organised religion and rarely missed an opportunity to mock the superstitious nonsense peddled by ‘parsons’.

When Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Haydn, he carried these views with him. On 22 May 1793 he wrote in his Albumblatt that he still loved liberty above all things; and in a letter to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ on 6 July 1801/2, he admitted that the ‘[h]umiliation of man before man pains me’. As he began to forge a career as a composer in his own right, however, his democratic fervour started to abate. Welcomed into the salons of the Viennese nobility, he adapted himself to the tastes of his patrons. He put on aristocratic airs, claimed descent from an old baronial family and – for a time – even adopted the nobiliary particle ‘von’. He also became more conservative in his outlook. Though he remained a passionate defender of liberty and of secularism, he now came to believe that the French Revolution may have gone too far. Like so many of his noble friends, he looked back on the Reign of Terror with horror. He was still not a monarchist; but he was no longer a militant republican either.

It was thus that Beethoven came to admire Napoleon. He was under no illusions; he knew perfectly well that, as First Consul, Napoleon was already trampling on revolutionary principles and he was still enough of a Romantic idealist to grumble about it. On 8 April 1802, for example, Beethoven wrote to his publisher, Franz Anton Hofmeister, to express his disappointment that Napoleon had concluded a concordat with the pope and thereby shattered his hopes for the separation of Church and state. But Beethoven nevertheless saw Napoleon as a necessary corrective for the excesses of the Revolution. In keeping with his new-found conservatism, he lavished praise on the Consul for producing political order out of chaos and for safeguarding the people from themselves. It was for this reason – rather than that given by Schindler and Ries – that Beethoven had Napoleon in mind when he was writing his Third Symphony.

This is not to say that Beethoven would have welcomed the news that Napoleon had declared himself emperor. Although he did not regard monarchy as incompatible with liberty or justice – as his opera Fidelio (1804-14) reveals – he would have been shocked by the former Consul’s contempt for the Constitution of Year VIII and the will of the French people. But it is doubtful whether this alone would have persuaded him to scratch out the title, least of all in the violent manner described by Schindler and Ries. Far more likely, he removed Napoleon’s name so as not to lose the patronage of a noble who had been scandalised by the Frenchman’s actions. Although it is impossible to be certain, this is at least suggested by the fact that, after erasing the original title, Beethoven dedicated the Eroica to Prince Joseph von Lobkowicz, who had given him 400 ducats for the rights to the music and who later became one of his most ardent supporters.

Certainly, Beethoven was not so horrified by Napoleon that he turned his back on the emperor or his family in years that followed. Though the composer’s letters are littered with praise of liberty, they also contain passages celebrating Napoleon’s achievements; and Beethoven was regarded as enough of a friend to the imperial family that, in 1808, Napoleon’s brother, Jerome Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, even offered him a position as Kappelmeister at his court in Kassel.

It was only after Napoleon crushed Austria in the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) that Beethoven’s enthusiasm began to cool noticeably. Shaken by the French bombardment of Vienna and fearful of being professionally compromised by his association with the Bonapartes, he felt obliged to repudiate Napoleon for the first time. There was no looking back. As the emperor ranged across Europe, it became difficult for Beethoven to regard him with anything but contempt. No friend to liberty or to order, he was now little more than a conqueror. Though Austria was forced to ally with France for a time, opinion in Vienna remained firmly against him.

Napoleon’s defeat in the Peninsular War set the seal on the composer’s change of heart. Shortly before the emperor sailed away into exile on Elba, Beethoven – who now identified liberty with Germanic patriotism – professed himself to be on the side of the allies and even penned a short orchestral work in celebration of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Vitoria. The breach was complete.

It was perhaps inevitable; but it is still tinged with sadness. When the soaring melodies of the Sinfonia Eroica are compared with the eccentric blasts of Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlact bei Vittoria, it is hard to escape the feeling that Beethoven’s music was more exciting when he was for Napoleon, rather than against him.   

Alexander Lee is a fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. His latest book, Humanism and Empire: The Imperial Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy, is published by OUP.