#descriptions of Napoleon

[empirearchives]

“The conversation was a long one,” writes Müller. “It embraced nearly all lands and nations in its scope... The more interesting he [Napoleon] became, the more did he drop his voice, so that at length I had to come very close to him, and no one else in the room can have heard what he was saying. Much of it, indeed, I shall never disclose.”

— Emil Ludwig, Napoléon

[captainknell]

A few years ago I copied all this down onto paper 😅 fortunately I wrote myself a source so I didn't have to type it all back up! @empirearchives @hoppityhopster23 @ic-napology

[auguste-marmonts-only-fan]

The best description of Marmont (in my opinion)

"He was lively, nimble, sincere, intelligent, a true Frenchman, a bit conceited, but also very generous, even simple-minded (the word was used by a good judge and I repeat it). Sharp with his words, penetrating in judgments, he spoke of people mockingly or enthusiastically.About things: ravishingly, passionately, and imaginatively. In a word, he was perfectly seductive, as one who is not always coldly sensible. He was eye catching, black protruding eyebrows covered a blue eye that never hid what he was thinking..."

(Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, 12th of April 1852.)

[microcosme11]

Description of Napoleon, 1815

Described by the Englishman, Hobhouse, who was a friend of Byron's.

Napoleon recaptures Paris, March 20, 1815 by Manceron, Claude, 1969.

Can be borrowed from archive.org

[gabrielferaud]

“Patient, precise, and painstaking in every stroke of the pen, he [Berthier] walked in his master's shadow until it was dark. Then he went away and killed himself.”

a description of Louis-Alexandre Berthier from R.F. Delderfield’s Napoleon’s Marshals

[aquitainequeen]

Ridley Scott: I made a film about two rival officers constantly duelling throughout and in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, and now I've actually done a film about Napoleon!

Me: Great! Could you also do a film about Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, a vital innovator in European battlefield surgery and triage, often considered the first military surgeon; who pioneered the ambulance volantes ("Flying ambulances") to quickly transport wounded men from the battlefield, effectively creating a forerunner of the modern MASH units; co-led the team that performed one of the first accurately recorded pre-anaesthetic mastectomies in Western medicine; was spotted helping wounded men while under heavy fire during the Battle of Waterloo by the Duke of Wellington who purposefully ordered for his soldiers not to fire in Larrey's direction; and when captured by the Prussians after the battle was about to be executed on the spot when he was recognised by one of the German surgeons, who pled for his life because he had saved the life of Field Marshall Blücher's son some years earlier?

Ridley Scott:

Ridley Scott: Um.

Me: Yeah. Didn't think so.

[clove-pinks]

"After a hard fought victory in Spain, Sharpe's chosen men head to the war-scarred frontier of Upper Canada to face a fanatical new foe - one that believes a 'second war of independence' & failing to conquer your neighbour are the same thing" (x)

[illustratus]

Frontispiece to The Description of Egypt 2nd ed.

The full title of the work is Description de l'Égypte, ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l'expédition de l'armée française (Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and researches which were made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army)

[ofbakerst]

loaded hunting crop in a 1914 “Manufrance” catalogue: features a “steel core, fully covered with braided leather with a lead filled head (and) can also be used as an implement of self-defense.”

[too-young-to-fall-in-love]

Just Like Me

summary:

From the convenient timing to his inability to stop talking about Paris, talk of their relationship is inevitable. Still, the chasm between them remains. While Napoleon hopes to cross it, he knows he’s only good for making things worse.

Or, the ending events of Amor Magnus Doctor Est - Chapter Five, but from Napoleon’s perspective.

notes:

After reading Amor Magnus Doctor Est for the umpteenth time, I started thinking about how Napoleon would react to the events towards the end of chapter 5.

If you haven’t read the fic, PLEASE DO SO!! I PROMISE you will not regret it (although it may take over your entire life and influence your trip to Chicago, but that’s probably something that only happens to yours truly). However, you don’t have to read the original fic to understand this standalone.

excerpt:

The bitter cold runs its sharp tendrils up his spine and he can’t hold back a slight shiver. Even faced with Illya’s so-called inhuman warmth, it’s a force to be reckoned with. He knows he should move; that they either need to continue this walk or he needs to duck out. At the same time, nothing could convince him to move from this moment.

As if to root him to said moment, Illya’s arm wraps gently around his shoulders, pulling him minutely closer. He blames it on instinct, the way he immediately slides his arm behind Illya’s waist and leans closer. Illya is warm, he notes, his presence soothing and achingly familiar even if they’ve never shared a moment quite like this. He finds himself hoping it will last forever. A voice in his head is quick to retort that he doesn’t deserve it, though it sounds close enough to Victoria’s voice that he steadfastly ignores it.

“You really are warm, Peril,” he murmurs, blaming the sudden looseness of his tongue on the pitch blackness of the night sky and the way it seems to absorb his words, or perhaps the alcohol that really had no impact on him. He’s terrified, though, of the real reason: he feels safe here.

read more on ao3

inspired by Amor Magnus Doctor Est by @cha-melodius

[dolphin1812]

I love that Hugo excuses this digression-within-a-digression as a “story-teller’s right;” he’s at least aware enough of how far from the main narrative he is that he’s explaining it.

(The digressions are fun to read, but they’re also fun to mock)

For all that Hugo claims he won’t “pretend” to write a history of the Battle of Waterloo, pleading ignorance to military strategy, he does speak of it a great deal. On the one hand, he says he does not write as a historian because it’s unnecessary; Napoleon himself, along with various historians, has already given excellent accounts of the battle. On the other, he specifies the framework through which he’s approaching the battle:

“As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a distant witness, a passer-by on the plain, a seeker bending over that soil all made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities, perchance; we have no right to oppose, in the name of science, a collection of facts which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice nor strategic ability which authorize a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents dominated the two leaders at Waterloo; and when it becomes a question of destiny, that mysterious culprit, we judge like that ingenious judge, the populace.”

Here, Hugo presents himself as two voices: his own (as a passerby) and the voice of the “populace.” In both cases, he emphasizes the people. As a “passer-by”, he sees the soil as being “made of human flesh,” prioritizing the ordinary soldiers (and civilians, as seen in the last chapter) who died at Waterloo over the famed generals who fought there. He also presents his perspective as being akin to that of the “populace” rather than the professionals (Napoleon, as a general, historians) who narrate the battle, asserting that the people are an “ingenious judge” and, consequently, are the ones who truly evaluate these sorts of events. Perhaps those historians and military figures are better qualified to describe the military and strategic aspects of Waterloo, but Hugo isn’t primarily focused on that; he’s interested in its impact, which is felt by the people who were there and the people who lived after it.

This return to the people is also contrasted with how he describes Napoleon as a “great man,” dedicating a full paragraph to questioning his stature before declaring that he deserved his fame as a general. While this does, in part, lend credence to his claim that Waterloo was lost for environmental (the rain) rather than strategic reasons, it also juxtaposes this “titanic charioteer of destiny” with those who live with the consequences of that “destiny,” whatever it may be. Hugo’s not exactly attacking the obsession with these “great men” here, as he praises the works dealing with them, but he is distancing himself from that kind of writing. Still, he also makes certain that his praise of Napoleon as a general is very clear, softening the prioritization of the people over him.

[empirearchives]

“There is something very interesting in witnessing the modest and unaffected demeanour preserved by Bonaparte in the midst of the universal applause with which he is greeted. I often enjoy this pleasure at the National Institute.”

— Johann Karl Burckhardt’s description of Napoleon

Source: Life of Alexander von Humboldt (1872), Vol. 1, Pg. 233, Karl Bruhns (ed.), Jane Lassell (trans.) and Caroline Lassell (trans.)

[phatburd]

Once Was All There Was

Chapter Six: A Race Through Dark Places

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,

but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but

for the heart to conquer it.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

[auguste-marmonts-only-fan]

Marmonts thoughts on Dalmatia and it's residents

He actually talks about this topic alot in his memoirs but I think this paragraph sums everything up the best

Sloppy huts where the whole family lives and sleeps together; rivers with clogged courses and unhealthy banks, and others which are hollowed out in the cliff vertical troughs twenty to thirty deep ; very rich but untapped coal and rock deposits,plains without any vegetation five to six miles long, over which rise mountains seven to eight hundred fathoms made of bare and exposed rock faces: such a picture is presented by the inner part of Dalmatia. But this very sad and poor country has beautiful, hardworking and cheerful inhabitants; ignorant, simple, bold, ready to sacrifice themselves for their leaders; but like all uncivilized .they do not understand wisdom; in order to start them, it is necessary to act On their senses and subject them to material action. Lazy like of all those whose civilization is late, they exaggerate in strength,women serve them for the most difficult jobs, while men rest and have fun. They are short-sighted, so they spend in seven to eight months all the food they could live on for a year, then every spring they starve and live on greens and goat's milk. Yet their strength and beauty surprises every stranger. This beauty and strength is the result various factors.

(Sorry that the translation is a little shitty)

[microcosme11]

The Comtesse de Boigne likes the Emperor a little more this time

The Comtesse de Boigne was an émigrée. She later had a famous salon in Paris. These memoirs were only published many years after her death while her relatives waited for most of the people in it to die.

Some years afterwards I was present as an onlooker at a ball given upon the occasion of the baptism of the King of Rome. [...] The Emperor, followed by his escort, crossed the room as he arrived to reach the platform which occupied the back. He walked first with such speed that almost everybody, not excepting the Empress, was almost obliged to run to keep up with him. Dignity and grace were thus out of the question, but this rustling of skirts and rapid pace seemed to symbolise a dominant power which suited him. It was magnificent, though not in our way.

He seemed, indeed, the master of all this magnificence. He was no longer in his imperial costume, and the simple uniform which he alone wore in the midst of all this full dress made him a yet more striking figure, and spoke more loudly to the imagination than all the gold lace in the world. He was anxious to be gracious and kind, and made a far better impression upon me than at the other ball.

The Empress Marie Louise was a fine woman, fresh in appearance, but somewhat too red. Notwithstanding her dress and her precious stones, she seemed very vulgar and entirely without distinction.

I saw there the Princess Borghese, who seemed to me the most ravishing beauty that I had ever looked upon: to all her perfections was added the air of candid maidenhood as complete as any young girl could have, though if history is to be believed, no one ever had less right to it.

Memoires of the comtesse de Boigne by Louise-Eleonore-Charlotte-Adelaide d'Osmond de Boigne, 1781-1866. Published 1907.

archive.org

[theragamuffininitiative]

One of my favorite things about TMFU (series) is how often Napoleon starts going into The Worst Over The Top Self-Inflated "Kiss Me I'm A Secret Agent And You Are Woman" Flirting with whatever female happens to be present and .2 seconds later someone else shows up to immediately embarrass him and throw off his groove. It goes from cringe to priceless every single time. You earned this, Napoleon. You worked for it and you deserve.