Shannon Selin, Author at Shannon Selin

Napoleon’s Funeral in Paris in 1840

Louis XVIII of France: Oyster Louis

The Tuileries Palace under Napoleon I and Louis XVIII

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, Napoleon’s American Sister-in-Law

Austria and the Austrians, Vol. I (London, 1837), pp. 209-213.

What would Niagara Falls be like without all of its tourist trappings? To get an idea, we can look at the accounts of people who visited Niagara Falls before tourism became the area’s main industry. If Napoleon had made the journey to Niagara Falls in the early 19th century – as he does fictionally in Napoleon in America – this is what he would have found.

A General View of Niagara Falls by Alvan Fisher, 1820

A General View of the Falls of Niagara by Alvan Fisher, 1820

This prodigious cascade

Niagara Falls consists of three waterfalls on the Niagara River, which flows north from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. The river forms part of the border between Canada and the United States. The largest waterfall, Horseshoe Falls, is on the west side of the river and lies mainly in Canada. It is separated from the other falls by Goat Island, which is part of the United States. To the east of Goat Island is small Bridal Veil Falls (formerly known as Luna Falls), followed by tiny Luna Island, and then the large American Falls.

Niagara Falls was formed by the action of a continental ice sheet about 10,000 years ago. The rock beneath has been eroding ever since, changing the shape of the falls and causing them to retreat very slowly southward.

Although French explorers Jacques Cartier (1535) and Samuel de Champlain (1604) were told about Niagara Falls by the Native American inhabitants of the area, the first written eyewitness account of the falls comes to us from Belgian missionary Louis Hennepin, a member of Robert Sieur de la Salle’s expedition to North America. He saw the falls in December 1678.

We passed back by the great Fall of Niagara and employed ourselves during half a day in contemplating this prodigious cascade. …

[T]he discharge of so much water, coming from these fresh water seas, centres at this spot and thus plunges down more than six hundred feet, falling as into an abyss which we could not behold without a shudder. The two great sheets of water which are on the two sides of the sloping island that is in the middle, fall down without noise and without violence, and glide in this manner without din; but when this great mass of water reaches the bottom then there is a noise and a roaring greater than thunder.

Moreover this spray of the water is so great that it forms a kind of clouds above this abyss, and these are seen even at the time when the sun is shining brightly at midday. (1)

Early honeymooners to Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls from the American Side by John Vanderlyn, 1801-1803

In the early 19th century, Niagara Falls became a destination for well-off American and European visitors. In the spring of 1801, Theodosia Burr, daughter of US Vice-President Aaron Burr, and her husband Joseph Alston went on a “bridal tour” to Niagara Falls. In 1804, Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his American bride Elizabeth (Betsy) Patterson followed suit.

The journal of Englishman John Grew, who visited Niagara Falls in July 1803, provides a sense of what the honeymooners might have encountered. He approached the falls from Fort Erie on the Canadian side.

At length we arrive at the tremulous precipice which has continually rolling over it the waters of the different lakes & rivers which run into them from the Lake of Woods to Lake Erie. We however do not stop at them but ride on to a house situated about a mile & a half farther down the river, which commands a fine view of the whole scene. Here we put up our horses, get some little refreshments & fit ourselves to descend the banks of the river that we may thoroughly view them. As we expected to be completely drenched by the sprays, we here undressed ourselves, & put on loose trousers, that we might have dry clothes upon our return.

We walk about a quarter of a mile towards the river where we came to a place where we were told by our conductor we should get down its bank, but its being so rocky so perpendicular & so high from the bed of the river that the prospect of it almost made us shudder. Determined however to make the attempt we followed our guide and by making use of our hands as well as feet – holding by rocks & trees & winding down by a kind of track that was made, we at length got down nearly half way. Here we came to a place for a number of feet entirely perpendicular where had been placed a kind of ladder for the convenience of those who wish’d to descend, but it was so broken & weak that without the assistance of our guide we could not have got down.

We however arrive at the bottom but have no sooner surmounted these difficulties than we found we had fresh ones to encounter. We had now to go nearly a mile over rocks along the bank and a rougher path cannot be conceived. We were heartily tired of our expedition before we had got half way, & wish’d ourselves safely lodged on the top of the bank. Not willing to turn back we proceeded over rocks & stones & sometimes on all fours to the foot of the Falls, & to have it in our power to say it, we just went under the edge of them – a situation which it is impossible to describe. The force of the air rushing from between the water & the rock is so great carrying the sprays with such violence that the only thing which in least resembles it is a summer storm or hurricane of wind & rain, but if possible the confined air – here – exceeds it in velocity. We make the best of our way from this shower bath, & scramble over the stones for a quarter of a mile where we ascended the bank by what is called the New Ladder. Compared with our descent we got up this path easily and for fifty or sixty feet had only to climb up a proper & strong ladder. We hastened back to the house where we had left our horses & clothes, & after resting ourselves we proceed on our way towards Chippewa.

When we get up to the Falls we again dismount to view them from the bank upon a line with them, & take our station from Table Rock, so called from its projecting over the river nearly 50 feet, & from its thinness being composed of only one solid sheet of rock. Here we had the best prospect of them. The noise however was so great (as well as below) that we could not hear one another speak. The view here is truly grand & majestic. The height from the bed of river is almost terrific. The sprays ascending in a column & forming vast clouds in the atmosphere is not the least surprising object, to which may be added the various tints & hues of them which the sun rendered dazzling & beautiful. We had now a full view of the rainbow which was nearly a complete circle and whose arch extended from one end of the fall to the other. …

An immense number of logs are continually falling down with the stream & the force with which they are carried is so great that the bark is entirely stripped off, and they carry the appearance of being turn’d, their ends likewise undergo various & great alterations. The timber which floats down and thrown amongst the rocks is sufficient to supply the surrounding country & towns of Chippewa & Niagara with fuel. (2)

A fashionable route

View of Niagara Falls by John Vanderlyn, 1801-1803

During the War of 1812, several battles were fought in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. This added to the popularity of the area after the war. A newspaper noted in 1816 that “the crowd of visitors this season from every part of the country has been unexampled.” (3)

In 1817, Augustus Porter, the owner of land and water rights on the American side of Niagara Falls, built a bridge to Goat Island. Prior to this, the only way to get to the island was to put a boat into the river a mile or so above the falls and then steer carefully between the rapids to avoid being swept over the precipice. Unfortunately the bridge was carried away by an unusual buildup of ice in the spring of 1818. Undaunted, Porter soon had a new bridge erected in a more favourable location. In addition, a flight of stairs was constructed on the American side so that ladies could safely descend to the bottom of the falls. These improvements were well-timed.

[Niagara Falls] has, during the present season, from the unusual number of visitors, been frequently spoken of in the public journals, and the journey to it is now considered a fashionable route. It is, however, one of those stupendous phenomena which repays the fatigue and gratifies the curiosity of all. It realizes expectation, though raised to an inordinate degree, and the contemplation of it has this salutary effect: to impress every one with an idea of his own insignificance. (4)

Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte, who fled to the United States after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat, visited Niagara Falls during this period.

No longer one of nature’s secret mysteries

Distant View of Niagara Falls by Thomas Cole, 1830

British author Frances Wright approached Niagara Falls from Lewiston on the American side in September 1819.

This mighty cataract is no longer one of nature’s secret mysteries; thousands now make their pilgrimage to it…over a broad highway; none of the smoothest, it is true, but quite bereft of all difficulty or danger. This in time may somewhat lessen the awe with which this scene of grandeur is approached….

[W]e alighted to look down from a broad platform of rock, on the edge of the precipice, at a fine bend of the river. From hence the blue expanse of [Lake] Ontario bounded a third of the horizon; Fort Niagara on the American shore; Fort George on the Canadian, guarding the mouth of the river, where it opens into the lake; the banks, rising as they approached us, finely wooded, and winding, now hiding and now revealing the majestic waters of the channel. Never shall I forget the moment when…I first beheld the deep, slow, solemn tide, clear as crystal, and green as the ocean, sweeping through its channel of rock with a sullen dignity of motion and sound, far beyond all that I had heard, or could ever have conceived. You saw and felt immediately that it was no river you beheld, but an imprisoned sea; for such indeed are the lakes of these regions. …

A mile farther, we caught a first and partial glimpse of the cataract, on which the opposing sun flashed for a moment, as on a silvery screen that hung suspended in the sky. It disappeared again behind the forest, all save the white cloud that rose far up into the air, and marked the spot from whence the thunder came. We now pressed forward with increasing impatience, and after a few miles reaching a small inn, we left our rude equipage, and hastened in the direction that was pointed to us.

Two foot-bridges have latterly been thrown, by daring and dexterous hands, from island to island, across the American side of the channel, some hundred feet above the brink of the fall; gaining in this manner the great island which divides the cataract into two unequal parts, we made its circuit at our leisure. From its lower point, we obtained partial and imperfect views of the falling river; from the higher, we commanded a fine prospect of the upper channel. Nothing here denotes the dreadful commotion so soon about to take place; the thunder, indeed, is behind you, and the rapids are rolling and dashing on either hand; but before, the vast river comes sweeping down its broad and smooth waters between banks low and gentle as those of the Thames. Returning, we again stood long on the bridges, gazing on the rapids that rolled above and beneath us; the waters of the deepest sea-green, crested with silver, shooting under our feet with the velocity of lightning, till, reaching the brink, the vast waves seemed to pause, as if gathering their strength for the tremendous plunge. …

Descending the ladder (now easy steps), and approaching to the foot of this lesser [American] Falls, we were driven away blinded, breathless, and smarting, the wind being high and blowing right against us. A young gentleman, who incautiously ventured a few steps farther, was thrown upon his back, and I had some apprehension, from the nature of the ground upon which he fell, was seriously hurt; he escaped, however, from the blast, upon hands and knees, with a few slight bruises. Turning a corner of the rock (where, descending less precipitously, it is wooded to the bottom) to recover our breath, and wring the water from our hair and clothes, we saw, on lifting our eyes, a corner of the summit of this graceful division of the cataract hanging above the projecting mass of trees, as it were in mid air, like the snowy top of a mountain. Above, the dazzling white of the shivered water was thrown into contrast with the deep blue of the unspotted heavens….

The wind at length having somewhat abated, and the ferryman being willing to attempt the passage, we here crossed in a little boat to the Canada side. The nervous arm of a single rower stemmed this heavy current, just below the basin of the Falls, and yet in the whirl occasioned by them….

Being landed two-thirds of a mile below the cataract, a scramble, at first very intricate, through, and over, and under huge masses of rock, which occasionally seemed to deny all passage, and among which our guide often disappeared from our wandering eyes, placed us at the foot of the ladder by which the traveller descends on the Canada side. From hence a rough walk along a shelving ledge of loose stones brought us to the cavern formed by the projection of the ledge over which the water rolls, and which is known by the name of the Table Rock.

The gloom of this vast cavern, the whirlwind that ever plays in it, the deafening roar, the vast abyss of convulsed waters beneath you, the falling columns that hang over your head, all strike, not upon the ears and eyes only, but upon the heart. For the first few moments the sublime is wrought to the terrible. This position, indisputably the finest, is no longer one of safety. A part of the Table Rock fell last year, and in that still remaining, the eye traces an alarming fissure, from the very summit of the projecting ledge over which the water rolls….

The cavern formed by the projection of this rock extends some feet behind the water, and could you breathe, to stand behind the edge of the sheet were perfectly easy. I have seen those who have told me they have done so; for myself, when I descended within a few paces of this dark recess, I was obliged to hurry back some yards to draw breath. …

From this spot (beneath the Table Rock), you feel, more than from any other, the height of the cataract and the weight of its waters. It seems a tumbling ocean; and you yourself what a helpless atom amid these vast and eternal workings of gigantic nature! …

Never surely did nature throw together so fantastically so much beauty with such terrific grandeur. Nor let me pass without notice the lovely rainbow that, at this moment, hung over the opposing division of the cataract as parted by the island, embracing the whole breadth in its span. …. We now ascended the precipice on the Canada side, and having taken a long gaze from the Table Rock, sought dry clothes and refreshment at a neighbouring inn. (5)

Infinitely exceeded anticipations

Niagara Falls by Karl Bodmer, 1839

In 1821 there were further enhancements for tourists at Niagara Falls.

[T]he accommodations for visitors are daily increasing here, and there are now besides Forsyth’s tavern on the Canadian side, two new houses of entertainment, Whitney’s on the American side, and Brown’s on the Canadian side of the river…. Scarce anything has yet been done to facilitate the access to the falls. You will be pleased to learn however, that this defect is likely to be soon remedied. During the late visit of our fellow-citizen Colonel Parkins to the falls, a subscription was set on foot by him and headed with the liberal sum of fifty dollars, for the purpose of laying a plank walk over the wet grounds, which must be passed in approaching the Falls, and of building a covered staircase to descend from Table Rock [on the Canadian side] immediately to the foot of the main sheet. The subscription rose in two days to near 200 dollars and the work is already in progress. (6)

British naval officer Basil Hall visited Niagara Falls in June 1827. He approached from Lockport on the American side.

[T]he Falls of Niagara…infinitely exceeded our anticipations. I think it right to begin with this explicit statement, because I do not remember in any instance in America, or in England, when this subject was broached, that the first question has not been, ‘Did the Falls answer your expectations?’

The best answer on this subject I remember to have heard of, was made by a gentleman who had just been at Niagara, and on his return was appealed to by a party he met on the way going to the Falls, who naturally asked him if he thought they would be disappointed. ‘Why, no,’ said he; ‘not unless you expect to witness the sea coming down from the moon!’ …

The first glimpse we got of the great Fall, was at the distance of about three miles below it, from the right or eastern bank of the river. Without attempting to describe it, I must say that I felt at the moment quite sure no subsequent examination, whether near or remote, could ever remove, or even materially weaken, the impression left by this first view.

From the time we discovered the stream, and especially after coming within hearing of the cataract, our expectations were of course wound up to the highest pitch. Most people, I suppose, in the course of their lives, must, on some occasion or other, have found themselves on the eve of a momentous occurrence; and by recalling what they experienced at that time, will perhaps understand better what was felt, than I can venture to describe it. I remember myself experiencing something akin to it at St. Helena, when waiting in Napoleon’s outer room, under the consciousness that the tread which I heard was from the foot of the man who, a short while before, had roved at will over so great a portion of the world; but whose range was now confined to a few chambers – and that I was separated from this astonishing person, only by a door, which was about to open. So it was with Niagara. I knew that at the next turn of the road, I should behold the most splendid sight on earth, — the outlet to those mighty reservoirs, which contain, it is said, one-half of the fresh water on the surface of our planet. …

The scenery in the neighbourhood of Niagara has, in itself, little or no interest, and has been rendered still less attractive by the erection of hotels, paper manufactories, saw-mills, and numerous other raw, staring, wooden edifices.…

I had the satisfaction of walking over the whole of Goat Island one day with the proprietor, who seemed unaffectedly desirous of rendering it an agreeable place of resort to strangers. He had been recommended, he told me, by many people, to trim and dress it; to clear away most of the woods; and by all means to extirpate every one of the crooked trees. I expressed my indignation at such a barbarous set of proposals, and tried hard to explain how repugnant they were to all our notions of taste in Europe. His ideas, I was glad to see, appeared to coincide with mine; so that this conversation may have contributed, in some degree, to the salvation of the most interesting spot in all America. (7)

Hall went into the cavern beneath Horseshoe Falls, which had so frightened Frances Wright.

We reached a spot 153 feet from the outside, or entrance, by the assistance of a guide, who makes a handsome livelihood by this amphibious pilotage. There was a tolerably good, green sort of light within this singular cavern; but the wind blew us first in one direction then in another with such alarming violence, that I thought at first we should be fairly carried off our feet, and jerked into the roaring caldron beneath. This tempest, however, was not nearly so great an inconvenience as the unceasing deluges of water driven against us. Fortunately the direction of this gale of wind was always more or less upwards, from the pool below, right against the face of the cliffs; were it otherwise, I fancy it would be impossible to go behind the Falls, with any chance of coming out again. Even now there is a great appearance of hazard in the expedition, though experience shows that there is no real danger. Indeed the guide, to reassure us, and to prove the difficulty of the descent, actually leaped downwards, to the distance of five or six yards, from the top of the bank of rubbish at the base of the cliff, along which the path is formed. The gusts of wind rising out of the basin or pool below, blew so violently against him that he easily regained the walk. …

All parties agreed that there was considerable difficulty in breathing; but while some ascribed this to a want of air, others asserted that it arose from the quantity being too great. The truth, however, obviously is, that we have too much water; not too much air. For I may ask, with what comfort could any man breathe with half a dozen fire-engines playing full in his face? …

Though I was only half an hour behind the Fall, I came out much exhausted, partly with the bodily exertion of maintaining a secure footing while exposed to such buffeting and drenching, and partly, I should suppose, from the interest belonging to this scene, which certainly exceeds any thing I ever witnessed before. All parts of Niagara, indeed, are on a scale which baffles every attempt of the imagination to paint, and it were ridiculous, therefore, to think of describing it. The ordinary materials of description, I mean analogy, and direct comparison with things which are more accessible, fail entirely in the case of that amazing cataract, which is altogether unique. (8)

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John Bull and Bonaparte (1803)

John Gilmary Shea, A Description of Louisiana by Father Louis Hennepin (New York, 1880), p. 378.
John Grew, Journal of a Tour from Boston to Niagara Falls and Quebec (1803), pp. 69-73.
“Falls of Niagara,” The Supporter (Chillicothe, Ohio), December 3, 1816.
“Niagara Falls (From the American Daily Advertiser),” The Morning Post (London, England), October 26, 1818.
Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America (London, 1821), pp. 237-245.
“Falls of Niagara [From the Boston Daily Advertiser],” The Morning Post (London, England), October 2, 1821.
Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, I (Edinburgh, 1829), pp. 177, 180-181, 190, 192.
Ibid., pp. 198-199, 204.

John Bull and Bonaparte, one of many songs about Napoleon written during the Napoleonic Wars. Source: Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

More songs have been written about Napoleon Bonaparte than about any other military leader in history. Hundreds of songs about Napoleon were written and performed in the 19th century. Napoleon also features as the subject matter of some 20th- and 21st-century songs. If songs that simply mention Napoleon are added to the tally, the number probably reaches into the thousands. Here’s a look at popular songs about Napoleon that have been written in English.

Napoleon in Popular Song

The Napoleonic Wars had an enormous influence on cultural life in Great Britain. According to Scottish folk song collector Gavin Greig, “the twenty years that ended with Waterloo have left more traces on our popular minstrelsy than any other period of our history has done.” (1) Popular song was “the most widespread and influential form of literary and musical expression” in Britain at the time, and Napoleon was a common subject matter.

Never were so many melodies, verses and choruses expended in praise, condemnation, pity and ridicule as in the case of Napoleon. (2)

Many songs about Napoleon were printed cheaply as texts on broadside ballad sheets.

Sold in large numbers on street-corners, in town-squares and at fairs by travelling ballad-singers and pinned on the walls of alehouses and other public places, [broadside ballads] were sung, read and viewed with pleasure by a wide audience, but have been handed down to us in only small numbers. (3)

Ballad singers sang on the streets or in pubs in exchange for pennies. Performances were often a cappella, with lyrics and tunes varying from one appearance to another.

As in British caricatures of the time, Napoleon was often portrayed in an unflattering manner: “little Boney,” “the Corsican monster,” “the Corsican pest,” etc. During 1803-1805, when Napoleon was threatening to invade Britain, songs formed part of a propaganda campaign aimed at arousing British patriotism and getting more men to enlist in the army and the navy.

In later songs, particularly those written after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat and exile to St. Helena, Napoleon is regarded more favourably: “that hero bold,” “brave Napoleon,” “Bonaparte, the Frenchman’s pride.” These songs tend to focus on Napoleon as a man, rather than as an enemy leader.

[B]y envisaging a noble husband permanently separated from his family, people could articulate and indeed ennoble their own grief for lost servicemen, or – more happily – valorise the less permanent sacrifices and hardships endured whilst husbands or lovers served on foreign stations. In these songs, Napoleon is always the individual, his opponents the state apparatus, this in itself securing him sympathy among much of the populace. (4)

Some songs about Napoleon became truly popular and were passed down through the generations. These were written down by folk song collectors in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry Burstow, a Sussex shoemaker and bell ringer who was born in 1826 and died in 1916, claimed he knew 420 songs, at least seven of which were about Napoleon (Boney’s Farewell to Paris, Boney in St. Helena, Boney’s Lamentation, Bonny Bunch of Roses, Deeds of Napoleon, Dream of Napoleon, The Grand Conversation of Napoleon).

Songs about Napoleon, 1803-1821

Here is a selection of songs about Napoleon written during his lifetime, with a sample of the lyrics. For the full text, click on the song title, which will take you to the relevant broadside sheet in Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries. To listen to the songs, go to Soundcloud, where Oskar Cox Jensen, the author of Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822 (2015), has posted recordings of several of the songs listed below, as well as other songs about Napoleon. You can also listen to the first verses of several Napoleonic ballads, and many other broadside ballads, by following the “Free First Verse Recordings” link on traditional folksinger Dick Holdstock’s website. Dick is the author of the excellent Again With One Voice, British Songs of Political Reform, 1768 to 1868 (2021).

Tune – “Blue Bell of Scotland”

When and O when does this little Boney come?
Perhaps he’ll come in August! Perhaps he’ll stay at home;
But it’s O in my heart, how I’ll hide him should he come.

That is “hide” in the sense of hitting with a stick.

Harlequin’s Invasion (1803)

High on a rock, his cunning eye
Surveys half Europe at a glance,
Fat Holland, fertile Italy,
Old Spain, and gay regen’rate France.

Little Boney A-cockhorse (1803)

O dear, Little Boney’s coming over;
With his legions of troops to land them at Dover:
But our brave Volunteers they’ll soon do him over,
And blow him quite over to France!

The Pitman’s Revenge Against Buonaparte

Aye, Bonaparte’s sel aw’d tyek,
And thraw him i’ the burning heap,
And wi’ greet speed aw’d roast him deed;
His marrows, then, aw wad nae heed. (5)

A Dumpling for Buonaparte (1805)

The now crop-sick hero must soon change his note
For a large Norfolk dumpling sticks fast in his throat,
Then let us rejoice that we live in a land
Where GEORGE has some thousands such-like at command.

Crocodile’s Tears: Or, Bonaparte’s Lamentation. A New Song (1805 or later)

Tune – “Bow, wow, wow.”

By gar, I find my ardor fail, and all my courage cool, Sir,
De World confess I am de Knave – de English call me fool, Sir:
Hard fate! Alas, that I am both! My heart of grief is full, Sir.
By gar, me wish I was at peace! With honest Johnny Bull! Sir.

The Despairing Hero

Tune – “Despairing beside a clear Stream”

Ah! Boney, thy wishes are vain,
Thy murd’ring schemes lay aside;
For Britains are lords of the Main,
And Providence fights on their side.

The Threatening of the Whole Continent Against Buonaparte (after 1810)

Swaggering Boney,
Galloping Boney,
Runaway Boney,
Where are you now?

Bonaparte’s Mistake at Germany (1813)

They set fire to his tail so off Boney runs,
O poor Boney, long-headed Boney,
Short-legged Boney we’ll soon have you now.

The Devil’s Own Darling (1814)

His race is run at last, tho’ for a long time past,
He never studied anything but evil, O.
Although he was but small he’d swagger over all.
Led on by his dear friend, old nick the Devil, O.

Boney’s Lamentation (1814)

There are different versions of this song about Napoleon’s exile to Elba, one in the Broadside Ballads Online collection, and this one, sung in 1893 by Henry Burstow (who learned it from his father) for folk song collector Lucy Broadwood. She identified the tune as a variant of “the Princess Royal,” which was in print in English books as early as 1727. (6)

I did pursue the Egyptians sore,
Till Turks and Arabs lay in gore;
The rights of France I did restore
So long in confiscation.
I chased my foes through mud and mire
Till in despair my men did tire.
Then Moscow town was set on fire.

You can listen to Irish traditional singer Jim MacFarland performing a version of “Boney’s Lamentation” on the Irish Traditional Music Archive.

The Corsican Tyrant (1814)

Who was it spread war’s dire alarms,
And set all Europe up in arms?
Who shower’d upon us discord’s storms?

The Corsican Drover (1815)

This song, about Napoleon’s escape from Elba and return to France, is also known as “Boney’s Return to Paris.”

Tune – “London now is out of Town”

London now is come to town
Few are found who tarries,
Boney there, has made them stare,
And drove them back from Paris.

Boney’s Total Defeat, and Wellington Triumphant (1815)

You’ve heard of a battle that’s lately been won,
By our brave British troops under Duke Wellington,
How they bang’d the French army and made Boney run,
Before the brave lads of Old England,
Huzza for Old England’s brave boys.

Napoleon’s Farewell to Paris (1815)

My name’s Napoleon Bonaparte, the conqueror of nations
I’ve banished German legions, and drove Kings from their thrones,
I’ve trampled Dukes and Earls, and splendid congregations,
Tho’ they’ve now transported me to St. Helena’s shore.

Napoleon Buonaparte’s Exile to St. Helena (1815)

In Rochford dock the fleet lay moored,
The streamers wavered in the wind,
When Napoleon Buonaparte came on board.
Saying, ‘where shall I some refuge find.’

Songs about Napoleon, 1821-1899

Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, as a prisoner on the remote British island of St. Helena. The following songs were written after his death.

Napoleon on the Isle of St. Helena (1821)

The Parliament of England and your Holy Alliance,
To a prisoner of war you may now bid defiance,
For your base intrigues and your base misdemeanors,
Have cause him to die on the Isle of St. Helena.

Boney was a Warrior (after 1821)

An Anglo-French sea shanty.

Oh, Boney marched to Moscow, way, hay, yah!
Across the Alps through ice an’ snow, Jean François!
Shantyman (solo): Boney was a warrior,
All (refrain): Way-ay-ya,
Shantyman (solo): A warrior, a terrier,
All (refrain): John François!

The Bonny Bunch of Roses (before 1832)

The song takes the form of a conversation between Napoleon’s son (Napoleon II) and his mother, Napoleon’s second wife Marie Louise. It says Napoleon was defeated because he failed to beware of the “bonny bunch of roses”: the British army and, symbolically, the union of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

But while our bones do moulder,
And weeping willows round us grow,
The deeds of bold Napoleon
Will sting the bonny bunch of Roses, O.

The Deeds of Napoleon (after 1832)

Tune – “Mouth of the Nile”

Tho’ Kings he did dethrone and some thousands caused to groan,
Yet we miss the long lost emperor Napoleon.…
Oh! Bring him back again it will ease the Frenchman’s pain,
And in a tomb of marble we will lay him with his son.

The Grand Conversation on Napoleon (between 1832 & 1840)

Ah England! He cried, did you persecute that hero bold,
Much better had you slain him on the plains of Waterloo;
Napoleon he was a friend to heroes all, both young and old,
He caus’d the money for to fly wherever he did go.

You can listen to folk singer Andy Turner singing a version of “The Grand Conversation of Napoleon” on A Folk Song A Week.

Napoleon’s Dream (before 1838)

When I led them to honour and glory,
On the plains of Marengo, I tyranny hurled,
And wherever my banner, the Eagle, unfurled,
Twas the standard of freedom all over the world,
The signal of fame! Cried Napoleon.

Removal of Napoleon Buonaparte’s Ashes (1840)

This song refers to the return of Napoleon’s remains to France in 1840.

But of a valiant Corsican, as ever stood on Europe’s land,
I am inclined to sing in praise, how noble was his heart,
In every battle manfully, he struggled hard for liberty.
And to the world a terror was, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon the Brave (before 1855)

Napoleon is no more, the French did him adore,
Their allied powers did join their kingdom for to save,
They ne’er could him subdue, till he made some of them rue
And they were in a stew, by Napoleon the Brave.

Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine

This tune, also known under other “Napoleon Crossing…” titles, may actually have originated as a military march during the Napoleonic Wars (see the Banjo Hangout Discussion Forum).

Bonaparte’s Retreat

This song, which nearly causes a brawl between General Charles Lallemand and a fiddler in Napoleon in America, originated as a fiddle tune in the 19th century.

Songs about Napoleon, 1900-present

Old Napoleon, Hank Thompson (1957)

Waterloo, Stonewall Jackson (1959)

Done with Bonaparte, Mark Knopfler (1996)

The Ballad of Sir Hudson Lowe, Roger D’Arcy (2017)

Hudson Lowe was the governor of St. Helena during Napoleon’s imprisonment on the island.

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Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon’s Scandalous Brother

Napoleon in Advertising

Vic Gammon, “The Grand Conversation: Napoleon and British Popular Balladry,” http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/boney.htm. Accessed January 12, 2018.
Oskar Cox Jensen, Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822 (London, 2015), p. 1.
“About The Project,” Broadside Ballads Online from the Bodleian Libraries, http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about. Accessed January 12, 2018.
Napoleon and British Song, 1797-1822, p. 133.
The Tyne Songster, A Choice Selection of Songs in the Newcastle Dialect (Newcastle, 1840), pp. 33-34.
Lucy E. Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols (London, 1908), pp. 34-35, 117.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, had a morganatic marriage

A morganatic marriage is a marriage contracted between a member of a royal or noble family and someone (typically, but not necessarily) of lower status, in which the spouse and any resulting children have no claim to royal or noble rank, title, or hereditary property. Another term for a morganatic marriage is a left-handed marriage, stemming from the custom of the groom extending his left hand, rather than his right hand, to the bride. Morganatic marriages primarily took place in the Germanic areas of the Holy Roman Empire and its successors between the 15th and 19th centuries.

A way to limit the claims of sons

Morganatic marriage originated in the law of the Lombards, a Germanic people who ruled much of Italy from 568 until they were conquered by Charlemagne in 774. Feudal German society was divided into legally defined classes: upper nobility; lower nobility; burgher; peasant. Each class had specific rights and obligations, and people were expected to marry within their class. A morganatic union enabled royals and nobles to marry someone of lower status.

Morganatic comes from the German word “Morgengabe” which means “morning gift.” It refers to the dowry given by the husband to the wife on the morning after the wedding. The idea was that the wife’s and the children’s share of the husband’s estate was limited to this dowry.

By the 15th century, morganatic marriage had become a legal tool in many of the autonomous German territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Since feudal law required land to be divided equally among male siblings, morganatic marriage offered a method by which noble families could reduce the fragmentation of their estates, by confining inheritance to one or a few sons. Even if younger sons married someone of the same class, the claims of their offspring could be limited. Second marriages, where there were already heirs from a first marriage, were also commonly morganatic marriages, for the same reason. A morganatic marriage was also a way to sanctify a relationship with a mistress.

Marriages of love

Morganatic marriages tended to be love matches, as indicated in these observations by a British visitor to Austria in the 1830s.

I first heard, without well comprehending the meaning, the term ‘Left-handed marriages’…at Munich, where some members of the royal family have had the philosophical courage, at the expense of princely dignity, to marry those they loved and with whom they knew they could be happy, rather than ally themselves politically with those with whom they might probably have no community of feelings, affections, or ideas. But these marriages, virtuous and Christian in celebration as they are, do not figure on the leaves of the Gothaischer- genealogischer – Hof-Kalender, or on those of other courtly or gothic registers. …

Removed by choice for a great part of the year from the capital, Archduke John, of Austria, resides upon his lands in Styria. There he lives in happy simplicity, with an amiable wife, by a left-handed marriage. This marriage was grounded on reason and affection. He considered that if he married a royal princess, his offspring would be included with the already too multiplied number, who, with their probable descendants, must live out of the civil list allowance of the empire; he, in consequence, wisely determined on marrying a woman formed to be loved, and fitted to be his friend and companion, as well as a proper mother for his offspring. For the benefit of the latter, whom he is determined not to leave as heritages to be provided for by the country, he is turning his lands and mines to the best account that can be effected by well applied skill. (1)

By the 20th century, morganatic marriages had become increasingly rare. One of the most famous was that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, to Sophie Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg, on July 1, 1900. They were both assassinated at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, thus triggering World War I.

In 1936, King Edward VIII proposed that he be allowed a morganatic marriage to Wallis Simpson, as a way of getting around the fact that a British king could not marry a divorcée. But morganatic marriages are not part of British law, and this option was rejected by the British cabinet. The King abdicated to proceed with his love match.

Napoleon and morganatic marriage

Morganatic marriage did not exist in French law. However, historically in the French royal family there were “secret marriages” that were similar to morganatic marriages. These were authorized by the king, but not officially acknowledged; they took place in private, and the wife did not assume her husband’s rank, title, or coat of arms. An example is the marriage of Louis XIV to Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon, in 1683 or 1684.

Napoleon took a commanding interest in marriages within the Bonaparte family, wanting to be able to select, or at least approve, spouses for his siblings, especially his brothers. When he became Emperor of the French in 1804, Napoleon specified in the imperial constitution that princes of the imperial family could not marry without the Emperor’s authorization. Should an unauthorized marriage take place, both the offender and his descendants would be deprived of their rights of inheritance. A decree of March 30, 1806, further stated that unauthorized marriages would be considered null and void, and that any children of such marriages would be deemed illegitimate.

Napoleon tried to convince his brother Lucien to give up his wife, Alexandrine de Bleschamp, the widow of a French banker. Lucien refused. He and his children were barred from the imperial line of succession. Napoleon had more success with his youngest brother Jérôme, who quickly renounced his first wife, the American Elizabeth Patterson, upon being threatened with the removal of imperial privileges.

Napoleon married Jérôme off to a German princess, Catharina of Württemberg, who died in 1835. In 1840, Jérôme contracted a morganatic marriage with a rich Italian widow named Justine (Giustina) Bartolini-Baldelli. This ensured that Jérôme’s title and privileges as Prince of Montfort – granted by Catharina’s father – and his claims as a Bonaparte would not extend to Giustina or any children (they never had any).

Another notable morganatic marriage connected with Napoleon was that of his widow Marie Louise, an Austrian Habsburg princess who was then Duchess of Parma, to Austrian nobleman Count Adam Albert von Neipperg, who appears in Napoleon in America. They wed on September 7, 1821, four months after Napoleon’s death. At the time, Marie Louise already had three children with Neipperg. Neipperg did not become Duke of Parma, and the children were not given Habsburg estates. On February 17, 1834, four years after Neipperg’s death, Marie Louise married French Count Charles René de Bombelles, in another morganatic marriage.

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Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, Napoleon’s American Sister-in-Law

Adam Albert von Neipperg, Lover of Napoleon’s Wife

10 Interesting Facts About Napoleon’s Family

Royal Wedding? Humbug!

Austria and the Austrians, Vol. I (London, 1837), pp. 247, 250-51.

Giuseppina Grassini in the role of Zaira, by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, circa 1805

Giuseppina Grassini was a famous Italian opera singer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Though her voice was a contralto, she worked it into a higher register to sing roles written for mezzo-sopranos. Napoleon Bonaparte was enraptured by the quality of Madame Grassini’s singing, as well as by her physical beauty. He took her as his lover and paid her to sing at his court for many years. Giuseppina Grassini also became the lover of Napoleon’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington.

Humble origins

Maria Camilla Giuseppina Grassini (or Josephina, as she later signed herself) was born at Varese, north of Milan, on April 18, 1773. Her parents were Antonio Grassini, a bookkeeper for a local convent, and Isabella Luini, who claimed descent from the painter Bernardino Luini, a student of Leonardo da Vinci. Antonio and Isabella had 18 children. Young Giuseppina stood out for her beautiful voice. She sang like a nightingale to the accompaniment of her mother’s violin. (1)

Giuseppina Grassini’s first teacher was the church organist Domenico Zucchinetti. He recommended that she be sent to Milan to study for the opera. There Count Alberico Belgiojoso became her protector, promoter and lover. He oversaw Giuseppina’s musical education and arranged for her stage debut in Parma in 1789, at the age of 16. She sang small roles in two comic operas: Pietro Guglielmi’s La pastorella nobile and Domenico Cimarosa’s La ballerina amante. The following year, she sang at Milan’s La Scala in three more comic operas.

In 1792, Giuseppina began to appear in tragic operas. She performed in Vicenza, Venice, Milan, Naples and Ferrara, to growing acclaim. In 1796, she starred with one of her teachers, the castrato Girolamo Crescentini, in the premieres of two operas, performing roles for which she became famous: Giulietta in Giulietta e Romeo by Niccolò Zingarelli, and Horatia in Gli Orazi e i Curiazi by Cimarosa.

Madame Grassini meets Napoleon

Madame Grassini – La Grassini – was thus already a celebrated singer when French troops led by General Napoleon Bonaparte entered Milan triumphantly on May 15, 1796, after defeating Austrian troops at the Battle of Lodi. Count de Las Cases, to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs when imprisoned on St. Helena, implied that Giuseppina Grassini tried to seduce the French general. He reported Grassini as telling Napoleon in 1800:

I was then [in 1796] in the full lustre of my beauty and my talent. My performance in the Virgins of the Sun [La vergine del sole, by Gaetano Andreozzi] was the topic of universal conversation. I fascinated every eye and inflamed every heart. The young General [Napoleon] alone was insensible to my charms, and yet he was the only object of my wishes! What caprice, what singularity! When I possessed some value, when all Italy was at my feet, and I heroically disdained its admiration for a single glance from you; I was unable to attain it, and now, how strange an alteration, you condescend to notice me – now, when I am not worth the trouble and am no longer worthy of you! (2)

However, Giuseppina Grassini’s biographer, Arthur Pougin, makes no mention of Napoleon seeing Grassini in 1796, or of Grassini appearing in La vergine del sole in that year. What is clear is that when Napoleon returned to Milan prior to the Battle of Marengo in 1800, he saw Madame Grassini perform at La Scala on June 4. Later that night, when Napoleon’s private secretary Bourrienne woke him to announce that Genoa had capitulated to French forces, “Madame Grassini also awoke.” (3) According to Bourrienne:

I several times took tea with her and Bonaparte in the General’s apartments…. Napoleon was charmed with Madame Grassini’s delicious voice, and if his imperious duties had permitted it he would have listened with ecstasy to her singing for hours together. (4)

Napoleon was so taken with Madame Grassini’s voice and person that he insisted on her joining him in Paris. On July 14, 1800, she sang at the national fête under the dome of the Invalides. Napoleon provided Madame Grassini with a house and an income.

Having a tolerably rich establishment of fifteen thousand francs a month, she exhibited her brilliancy at the theatre and the concerts at the Tuileries, where her voice performed wonders. But at the time [Napoleon] made a point of avoiding scandal; and not wishing to give Josephine [his wife], who was excessively jealous, any subject of complaint, his visits to the beautiful vocalist were abrupt and clandestine. Amours without attention and without charms were not likely to satisfy a proud and impassioned woman, who had something masculine in her character. [Madame Grassini] had recourse to the usual infallible antidote; she fell violently in love with the celebrated violin player, [Pierre] Rode. (5)

Accompanied by Rode, Grassini left Paris in November 1801, embarking on a concert tour of Holland and Germany.

Madame Grassini in London

In 1803, Giuseppina Grassini played for four months at the Haymarket Theatre in London. She also sang there in 1804.

This very handsome woman was in every thing the direct contrary of her rival [Elizabeth Billington]. With a beautiful form, and a grace peculiarly her own, she was an excellent actress, and her style of singing was exclusively the cantabile, which became heavy à la longue, and bordered a little on the monotonous: for her voice, which it was said had been a high soprano, was by some accident reduced to a low and confined contralto. She had entirely lost all its upper tones, and possessed little more than one octave of good natural notes; if she attempted to go higher, she produced only a shriek, quite unnatural, and almost painful to the ear.

Her first appearance was in La Vergine del Sole…well suited to her peculiar talents; but her success was not very decisive as a singer, though her acting and her beauty could not fail of exciting high admiration. So equivocal was her reception, that when her benefit was to take place she did not dare encounter it alone, but called in Mrs. Billington to her aid, and she, ever willing to oblige, readily consented to appear with her. The opera, composed for the occasion by [Peter] Winter, was Il Ratto di Proserpina, in which Mrs. Billington acted Ceres, and Grassini Prosperine. And now the tide of favour suddenly turned; the performance of the latter carried all the applause, and her graceful figure, her fine expression of face, together with the sweet manner in which she sung several easy simple airs, stamped her at once the reigning favourite…. Not only was she rapturously applauded in public, but she was taken up by the first society, fêtée, caressed, and introduced as a regular guest in most of the fashionable assemblies. Of her private claims to that distinction it is best to be silent, but her manners and exterior behaviour were proper and genteel. (6)

Madame Grassini continued to perform in London for the next two years. Thomas de Quincey found her voice “delightful…beyond all that I had ever heard.” (7)

Back in Paris

In 1807, Giuseppina Grassini returned to France, engaged to sing in Napoleon’s newly established imperial choir, along with her former teacher Girolami Crescentini. She received a salary of 36,000 francs, a pension of 15,000 francs, and the proceeds of an annual benefit concert, as well as other rewards.

One evening in 1810, she and Signor Crescentini performed together at the Tuileries, and sang in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ At the admirable scene in the third act, the Emperor Napoleon applauded vociferously, and Talma, the great tragedian, who was among the audience, wept with emotion. After the performance was ended, the Emperor conferred the decoration of a high order on Crescentini, and sent Grassini a scrap of paper on which was written, ‘good for 20,000 livres – Napoleon.’ (8)

Madame Grassini became a well-known figure in Paris.

Received everywhere, loved by everyone, she had a natural kindliness, spontaneity, true and original. She spoke a mixed jargon of French and Italian, all her own, which allowed her to say anything, and by which she profited to make the most amusing remarks and the most amusing confidences, blaming what she said on her ignorance of the language whenever she said anything that could shock or hurt someone. (9)

Attentions of the Duke of Wellington

After Napoleon was exiled to Elba in 1814, Giuseppina Grassini attracted the favours of the Duke of Wellington, who was then serving as the British ambassador to France. On November 13, Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough, wrote to Granville Leveson Gower from Paris:

The Duke of Wellington is so civil to me, and I admire him so much as a hero that it inclines me to be partial to him, but I am afraid he is behaving very ill to that poor little woman [Wellington’s wife Kitty]: he found great fault for it, not on account of making her miserable or of the immorality of the fact, but the want of procédé and publicity of his attentions to Grassini. (10)

The affair continued after Napoleon’s return to France and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The composer Felice Blangini described a meeting with Wellington and Grassini in July of that year.

As I often saw Madame Grassini, she took me to Lord Wellington’s, where we often made music. Lord Castlereagh was a constant visitor there; he sang with us, very tolerably for an English minister. When Madame Grassini was at these small gatherings at Lord Wellington’s, she recited and sang scenes from Cleopatra and from Romeo e Giulietta. Alone in the centre of the salon, she gestured as if she were on the stage, and with the aid of a big shawl she dressed up in various ways. I do not remember whether, during these sessions, she sang the arias that end with a ‘sgauardo d’amor’; but what I am sure of is that Lord Wellington was overjoyed in ecstasy. (11)

Regarding soirées hosted by Wellington in Paris in 1816, the Countess de Boigne wrote:

I recall that on one occasion he decided to make Grassini, then in possession of his favours, the queen of the evening. He placed her on a raised sofa in the ballroom and never left her side. He had her served first before anyone else, arranged everyone so that she could dance, gave her his hand to take her into supper first, sat her next to him, and finally paid her the kind of attention normally granted only to princesses. (12)

Retirement

In 1817, Giuseppina Grassini returned to Italy. She continued to appear in operas, but her voice was not what it used to be, and she retired from the stage in 1823. She settled in Milan and devoted herself to teaching. Captain Gronow recollected:

When I first met her in 1825 she still possessed some remains of the remarkable beauty which had won for her the attention and admiration of so many of the great men of the age. Napoleon and Wellington, the Marshals of France, the Generals of the allied armies, English, Russians, Prussians, Austrians, as well as the Dukes and Marquises of the Restoration, had all bowed before Grassini’s shrine, and had all been received with the same Italian bonhomie and liberal kindness. She would often say, ‘Napoleon gave me this snuff-box; he placed it in my hands one morning when I had been to see him at the Tuileries, and added, ‘Voilà pour toi; tu es une brave fille!’ He was indeed a great man, but he would not follow my advice. Il aurait du s’entendre avec ce cher Vilainton. By the by, c’est ce brave Duc qui m’a donné cette broche….’ And so she would run on, with anecdotes and remarks on a long list of admirers.

All Madame Grassini’s recollections came out quite naturally, with true southern frankness, or rather cynicism; and she narrated her liaisons in as unconcerned a manner before every one she met, as she were speaking of her drive in the Bois de Boulogne. Her face must have been in her youth still handsomer than that of her niece, Giulia Grisi. The eyes were larger and more expressive, and she had more regular features and finer teeth. There was a tragic dignity in the contour and lineaments of her countenance, which formed a strange contrast with her unrefined language and gipsy style of dress; every colour of the rainbow was represented in her garments, which she tied on without the smallest regard to taste, and gave her very much the appearance of a strolling actress equipped at Ragfair.

Grassini’s once fine voice had, when I saw her, degenerated into a sharp, loud, unmelodious soprano, which grated harshly on the ear. She had no cleverness or wit, and the bons mots that are cited as hers are amusing only from the cynic bonhomie which inspired them, as well as the strong Italian accent with which they were spoken. (13)

Giuseppina Grassini died on January 3, 1850 in Milan at the age of 76. An obituary described her as “one of the most celebrated Italian singers, and the most beautiful woman, of her day…. Few of her profession ever boasted of a career so long and so brilliant as hers. In Italy, France, Germany, and England, she achieved for herself the highest reputation, and for many years ruled in undisputed possession on the throne of song.” (14)

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Arthur Pougin, Une Cantatrice ‘Amie’ de Napolon: Giuseppina Grassini, 1773-1850 (Paris, 1920), p. 9.
Emmanuel-August-Dieudonné de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. III, Part 5 (London, 1823), p. 21.
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. II (New York, 1891), p. 395.
Ibid., p. 395.
Joseph Fouché, The Memoirs of Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto (Boston, 1825), p. 144.
Richard Edgcumbe, Musical Reminiscences, Containing an Account of the Italian Opera in England, From 1773 Continued to the Present Time, Fourth Edition (London, 1834), pp. 92-94.
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London, 1930), p. 191.
“Death of Signora Grassini,” The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Vol. 23 (New York, May 1851), p. 48.
Madame Ancelot, Les salons de Paris: Foyers éteints (Paris, 1858), p. 34.
Castalia Countess Granville, ed., Lord Granville Leveson Gower (First Earl Granville) Private Correspondence, 1781 to 1821, Vol. II (London, 1916), p. 507.
Felice Blangini, Souvenirs de F. Blangini (Paris, 1834), p. 279.
Adèle d’Osmond, Mémoires de la Comtesse de Boigne, Vol. II, M. Charles Nicoullaud (Paris, 1908), p. 145.
Rees Howell Gronow, Celebrities of London and Paris: Being a Third Series of Reminiscences and Anecdotes of the Camp, the Court, and the Clubs (London, 1865), pp. 151-154.
“Death of Madame Grassini,” The Musical World, Vol. 25, No. 4 (London, January 26, 1850), p. 52.

New Year’s Day was a bigger celebration than Christmas in 19th-century France. “Le Jour de l’An, as the French emphatically call it – the day of the year – the day of all others – is a holiday indeed,” reported a London newspaper in 1823. (1) New Year’s Day in Paris was particularly festive, as described in the following accounts.

New Year’s Day in Paris by Just L'Hernault, 1862

The Boulevards of Paris on New Year’s Day by Just L’Hernault, 1862

The most remarkable day

“New Year’s Day in Paris is the most remarkable day in the whole year; all the shops are shut; labour suspends his toil; commerce reposes on her oars; and the philosopher postpones his studies…. For several weeks preceding New Year’s Day, various classes of ingenious artists employ all their talents and skill to shine with an uncommon lustre on the auspicious opening of the New Year; these are the confectioners, the embossers of visiting cards, the jewellers, &c.; and their shops on this day display a degree of taste and magnificence difficult to describe, and totally unknown in England. This is the day of universal greetings, of renewing acquaintances, of counting how many links have been broken by time last year in the circles of friendship, and what new ones have replaced them.

“All persons, whatever may be their rank, degree, or profession, form a list of the names of persons whose friendship they wish to preserve or cultivate, to each of these persons a porter is sent, to deliver their card. Those more particularly connected with them by blood or friendship are visited in person; and all who meet embrace on this happy day. Millions of cards are distributed; and nothing is seen in the streets but well-dressed persons going to visit their friends and relations, and renew, in an affectionate manner, all the endearing charms of friendship. On this day, too, parents, friends, and lovers, bestow their presents on the various objects of their affection, & pour out many draughts of the most delightful balm that human nature can partake.” (2)

Visions of sugar plums

“The Parisians pay no honours to the old year; it has performed its office, resigned its place; it is past, gone, dead, defunct; all the harm or the good it could do is done, and there is an end of it. But what a merry welcome is given to its successor! …

“The Jour de l’An is everybody’s holiday, the holiday of all ages, ranks, and conditions. Relations, friends, acquaintances, visit each other, kiss, and exchange sugar plums. For weeks previous to it, all the makers and vendors of fancy articles, from diamond necklaces and tiaras, down to sweetmeat boxes, are busily employed in the preparation of étrennes – New Year’s presents. But the staple commodity of French commerce, at this period, is sugar plums. At all times of the year are the shops of the marchands de bon-bons, in this modern Athens (as the Parisians call Paris), amply stocked, and constant is the demand for their luscious contents; but now the superb magasins in the Rue Vivienne, the splendid boutiques on the Boulevards, the magnificent depots in the Palais Royal, are rich in sweets beyond even that sugary conception, a child’s paradise, and they are literally crowded from morning till night by persons of all ages, men, women, and children.

“Vast and various is the invention of the fabricants of this important necessary of life; and sugar is formed into tasteful imitations of carrots, cupids, ends of candle, roses, sausages, soap, bead-necklaces – all that is nice or nasty in nature and art. Ounce weights are thrown aside, and nothing under dozens of pounds is to be seen on the groaning counters; the wearied vendors forget to number by units, and fly to scores, hundreds, and thousands. But brilliant as are the exhibitions of sugar-work in this gay quarter of the town, they must yield for quantity to the astounding masses of the Rue des Lombards. That is the place resorted to by great purchasers, by such as require not pounds, but hundred weights for distribution. There reside all the mighty compounders, the vendors at first hand; and sugar-plum makers are as numerous in the Parisian Lombard-street, as are the traffickers in douceurs of a more substantial character in its namesake in London.

Engaging a vehicle

“The day has scarcely dawned, and all is life, bustle, and movement. The visiting lists are prepared, the presents arranged, the cards are placed in due order of delivery. Vehicles of all descriptions are already crossing and jostling in every part of the city. Fortunate they are who, unblest with a calèche or a cabriolet of their own, have succeeded in engaging one for the day at six times its ordinary cost.

“On New Year’s Day, the Paris fraternity are allowed the enjoyment of what seems to be their birth-right – rudeness and extortion; or rather the exercise of it is tolerated. There, on yonder deserted stand, are collected eighteen or twenty people who have been waiting the greater part of the morning, the possibility of the arrival of an unhired vehicle. At length – for wonders never case – a cabriolet approaches. It is surrounded, besieged, assaulted, stormed. It is literally put up to auction to be let to the highest bidder. That poor servant of the public, its driver, now finds that the public is his, and his very humble and beseeching servant too. ‘Eh, bien, voyons, combien me donnerez vous?’ – ‘I’ll give you,’ says one, taking out his watch. ‘Au diable, l’imbecile he wants a cabriolet à l’heure on New Year’s Day – to drive him to Pontoise, perhaps.’ (A place celebrated for its calves.) ‘And you there, grand nigaud, with your watch in your hand! À bas les montres, or I’ll listen to none of you. À la course, à la course! And you, ma petite demoiselle, what is it you offer? How! Three francs! Elle est gentile, la petite, avec le trois francs! Allons tout ça m’ennuie. I’ll go take a drive in the Bois de Boulogne for my own pleasure.’ At length he consents to take a little squat négociant at five times the usual fare, exclaiming as he drives off, ‘Ma foi, j’ai trop bon coeur – je me laisse attendrir.’

Visiting, kissing and present-making

Le beau jour des étrennes by Gustave Doré, 1848. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

“That is Mademoiselle –, of the Theatre Français. Her first visit is to Monsieur –, editor of the – journal. Three days ago she received a hint that he had prepared a thundering article against her intended performance of Célimène, which she is to act for the first time on Monday next. The chased silver-gilt soupière at her side is a New Year’s present for Monsieur le Rédacteur. The article will not appear. Her performance will be cited as a model de grâce, d’intelligence, et d’esprit.

“That? – Hush! Turn away, or he will call us out for merely looking at him. Tis Z–, the celebrated duellist. Yesterday he wounded General de B–, the day before he killed M. de C–, and he has an affair in hand for tomorrow. Today he goes about distributing sugar plums, as in duty bound, for c’est un homme très amiable.

“I don’t know either of the two gentlemen who are kissing both sides of each other’s faces, bowing and exchanging little paper packets. The very old man passing close to them, in a single-breasted faded silk coat, the colour of which once was apple blossom, is the younger brother of the Comte de –. He is on his way to pay his annual visit to Mademoiselle –, who was his mistress some years before the breaking out of the Revolution. He stops to purchase a bouquet composed of violets and roses. Violets and roses on New Year’s Day! – his accustomed present. His visit is not one of affection – scarcely of friendship – c’est une affaire d’habitude.

“I am of your opinion that Mademoiselle Entrechat, the opera dancer, is extraordinarily ugly, and of opinion with every one else, that she is a fool. She is handsome enough, however, in the estimation of our countryman, Sir X– Y– (who is economizing in Paris), because she dances, and has just sense enough to dupe him – very little is sufficient. Heaven knows! He is now on his way to her with a splendid cachemire and a few rouleaus. ‘Vraiment, les Anglais sont charmants.’ The poor simpleton believes she means it, and sputters something in unintelligible French in reply: at which Mademoiselle’s brother swears a big oath, that ‘Monsieur l’Anglais à de l’esprit comme quatre.’ Sir X– Y– invites him to dinner, but the Captain ‘makes it a rule to dine with his sister on New Year’s Day.’ O! If some of our poor simple countrymen could but see behind the curtain! But tis their affair, not mine.

“In that cabriolet is an actress who wants to come out at the Comic Opera. What could have put it into her head that Monsieur L–, who has a voice potential in the Theatrical Senate, has just occasion for a breakfast service in Sèvres porcelain!

“Behind is a hackney-coach full of little figurantes, who have clubbed together for the expense of it. They are going to étrenner the ballet-master. One does not like to dance in the rear where nobody can see her; another is anxious to dance seule; a third, the daughter of my washerwoman, is sure she could act Nina, if they would but let her try; a fourth wants the place of ouvreuse de loges for her maman, who sells roasted chestnuts at yonder corner. They offer their sugar plums, but, alas! they lack the gilding. Never despair, young ladies. Emigration is not yet at an end; economy is the order of the day in England, and Paris is the place for economizing in. Next year, perhaps, you too may be provided with eloquent douceurs to soften the hearts of the rulers of your dancing destinies.

Heartless forms?

“So then, it may be asked, is all this visiting, and kissing, and present-making, and sugar-plumizing to be set down, either to the account of sheer interest, or to that of heartless form? Partly to the one, perhaps, partly to the other, and some part of it to a kinder principle than either. But, be it as it may, motives of interest receive a decent covering from the occasion; these heartless forms serve to keep society together; and, without philosophizing the matter, let it be set down that, of all the days in the year, none is so perfect a holiday as New Year’s Day in Paris.” (3)

Happy New Year!

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Napoleon’s First New Year’s Day on St. Helena

The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

Celebrating a 19th-Century Christmas

Sweetbreads, Sweetmeats and Bonaparte’s Ribs

The Palais-Royal: Social Centre of 19th-Century Paris

Sunday in Paris in the 1830s

Napoleon’s Funeral in Paris in 1840

“New Year’s Day in Paris,” The Times (London), January 1, 1823, p. 3.
“New Year’s Day,” Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette (Devizes, England), December 26, 1822, p. 2.
“New Year’s Day in Paris,” The Times (London), January 1, 1823, p. 3.

Hanging stockings on Christmas Eve European immigrants brought many Christmas traditions to America between the 17th and 19th centuries. Pennsylvania, with its mix of Swedish, Dutch, Quaker, German, French, Welsh, Scots-Irish and other settlers, had a rich assortment of Christmas customs to draw upon. Joseph Bonaparte and the other Napoleonic exiles who settled in the Philadelphia area after 1815 probably encountered some of the Christmas Eve traditions described in the following article, which appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper in 1827.

Christmas Eve in the countryside

“We like a holiday, and so does every care-worn, labour-stricken animal in the community, and the preparation, preliminaries, and anticipations of a pleasure are frequently quite as agreeable as the reality. Of all the religious festivities, none are so religiously observed and kept in the interior of our state, especially in the German districts, as Christmas. It is the Thanksgiving day of New England. Every one that can so time it, ‘kills’ before the holidays, and a general sweep is made among pigs and poultry, cakes and mince pies. Christmas Eve too, is an important era, especially to the young urchins, and has its appropriate ceremonies, of which hanging up the stockings is not the least momentous. ‘Bellschniggle,’ ‘Christkindle’ or ‘St. Nicholas,’ punctually perform their rounds, and bestow rewards and punishments as occasion may require.

Bellschniggle

“Our readers are perhaps aware this Mr. Bellschniggle is a visible personage – ebony in appearance, but topaz in spirit. He is the precursor of the jolly old elf ‘Christkindle’ or ‘St. Nicholas,’ and makes his personal appearance, dressed in skins or old clothes, his face black, a bell, a whip, and a pocket full of cakes or nuts; and either the cakes or the whip are bestowed upon those around, as may seem meet to his sable majesty. It is no sooner dark than the Bellschniggle’s bell is heard flitting from house to house, accompanied by the screams and laughter of those to whom he is paying his respects. With the history of this deity we are not acquainted, but his ceremonious visit is punctually performed in all the German towns every Christmas Eve. Christkindle, or St. Nicholas, is never seen. He slips down the chimney, at the fairy hour of midnight, and deposits his presents quietly in the prepared stocking.

“We need not remark that Bellschniggle is nothing more than an individual dressed for the occasion. He goes his rounds. The younger part of the community each hang up a stocking in the chimney corner, and shortly after old and young are quietly dreaming of the joys of Christmas. This is Christmas Eve in the country.

Christmas Eve in the city

“In the city, the scene is somewhat different: the ceremonies run more upon trinkets and presents. Confectionery, fancy, and toy-shops are illuminated and decorated. Pies and pastry, sugar-plums and candy, trinkets and toys, are lighted up and displayed in tempting array. Gloves, ribbons, work-cases, hats, shawls, and ‘forget me nots,’ plums, nuts, and trinkets are staple commodities for the night. In one place you see a pretty damsel dressed and ornamented queen, in a palace of ice-creams, frosted cakes, jellies, sweetmeats, and cordials. In another, the handmaid of the graces in the midst of bracelets, bandeaus, wreaths, and flowers, herself the fairest, and perchance not the least artificial flower. And there a toy-shop, the world in miniature, kings, beggars, soldiers, priests, dogs, cats, elephants, and sheep, wolves and parrots, bears and fiddles, camels and musical glasses, pigs and fine ladies, and the pigmy representatives of every animate and inanimate thing under the sun, congregated together in glorious confusion; which, with a throng of animated bipeds – maids, mothers, and children – and a perpetual volley of cross-questions, half French, half English; inquiring prices, ‘beating down,’ making bargains, form a rich medley of ‘sights and sounds’ on a Christmas eve in the city. During the night the streets are alive with people passing to and fro, joyful and merry.

“Ringing of bells, the cry of fire, the racket of convivial and serenading parties, calls of watchmen, and the singing parties from various religious societies, ushers in Christmas in the city.” (1)

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas.

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The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

Saturday Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), December 29, 1827.

Doing some Christmas shopping? Consider these Christmas gift ideas from the 19th century.

Christmas Morning by Paul Seignac

A well-chosen book

Books were popular 19th-century Christmas gifts. People especially liked literary annuals, which were collections of essays, short fiction and poetry. The first English annual – Rudolph Ackermann’s Forget Me Not, A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1823 – was published in November 1822. Here’s an ad for the following year’s edition.

We think a book the very best present that can be made to a young person; a piece of dress can merely be worn – a trinket but pleases the eye; a well-chosen book, if handsome at the same time, will please the eye, inform the mind, and improve the heart. This recommendation is possessed in an eminent degree by the FORGET ME NOT for 1824….

No man has done more for the light and elegant department of our literature than Mr. Ackermann. He has introduced a style of embellishment unrivalled in its tastefulness and in its beauty, and a selection of little pieces in which we have never found a single sentence to offend. Hence we would say, a priori, that a Christmas gift, coming from where this one comes, would be a tribute both to good taste and to right feeling. Some of the most tender of our poets have here done their best: we have the innocence of Bernard Barton, the tenderness of Montgomery, and the touching elegance of Henry Neele. The prose pieces, too, are exceedingly well written; and the engravings (which are numerous) are first rate. (1)

The first American annual, entitled The Atlantic Souvenir: A Christmas and New Year’s Offering for 1826, was published in December 1825.

Bread, bullocks and coal

It was customary for wealthy people to distribute gifts to poor people. Here are some charitable Christmas gift ideas from England in the 1830s.

Colonel Cooper and his lady have benevolently distributed among the labourers and poor of the parishes of Corfe and Pitminster a bullock, with a proportionate quantity of bread to each individual. This bounty is of annual recurrence, and diffuses a grateful joyousness among all who partake of it.

On Wednesday, H.B. Hickam, Esq., of Thonockhall, distributed in the Town Hall, Gainsborough, his annual charity to the poor, consisting of blankets, petticoats, stocking, &c., amounting in value to 56£. He also distributed to the poor of Thonock and Blyton the same value in similar articles, which, no doubt, will swell with gratitude the hearts of many poor persons at this chilling season….

Saturday 1,440 lbs. of beef were distributed to the resident poor of Stoke-Edith, by order of E. T. Foley, Esq., M.P., with from half a peck to half a bushel of wheat to each family, 30£ was also distributed amongst the poor of Tarrington, Yarkhill, Weston Beggard, Westhide, Dormington, and Mordiford; and several of the aged poor and poor children were supplied with warm and useful clothing….

The annual Christmas gift of a fat cow and a quantity of warm clothing, given by J. Higford, Esq. to the poor residing upon his property at Abbey Dore, has been distributed to near 50 poor families.

The Rev. Braithwaite Armitage, vicar of the parish of Peterchurch, supplied all the poor of the parish, containing 1,000 souls, with beef and soup for Christmas. (2)

The Rev. G.L. Harvey, of Diseworth, has presented the poor of that village with 20 tons of coals as a Christmas gift, which were gratuitously conveyed from Pegg’s Green Colliery by several farmers. (3)

Elegant preparations for the toilet

Rowlands Macassar Oil, one of many 19th century Christmas gift ideas

As wigs went out of style in the late 18th century, fashionable men and women needed products to help their hair look its best. London barber Alexander Rowland came up with Macassar Oil – a combination of palm oil and fragrant ylang-ylang oil, imported from Indonesia. Rowland and his sons promoted Macassar Oil not only as a styling aid, but also as a means of strengthening hair, restoring colour, and encouraging hair growth. The antimacassar – a small cloth placed over the back of chairs and sofas – was invented to protect upholstery from the resulting oily deposits.

Rowland and Sons branched out into other products, as indicated in this article regarding Christmas gift ideas from 1840.

There are perhaps few objects which present more difficulty in the selection than the choice of that very appropriate token of affection and esteem, a Christmas Gift. The Annuals at one time offered a highly eligible mode of conveying the expression of our sentiments, and we were surrounded with a host of bijoux, gems, and souvenirs, which now have passed away and become extinct. In this difficulty we are happily relieved by the choice of the various and elegant preparations for the toilet invented by Messrs. Rowland and Sons, which constitute the most appropriate offering that can possibly tendered to the fair sex at this peculiar season. We allude to their incomparable OIL MACASSAR for the hair; their matchless KALYDOR, unrivalled for its effects on the complexion; and their invaluable ODONTO, for the teeth and gums.

Those who have experienced the torture of a rough or irritable skin will be able to appreciate the value and advantage of GUERLAIN’S Cream for Shaving, which has obtained the patronage of the most fashionable classes, both on the continents of Europe and America, and in this country. Its soothing, agreeable, and indeed luxurious qualities, are such as actually to convert pain into pleasure, and render a task, formerly one of a most repugnant nature, a duty of the most pleasing kind. (2)

Guerlain began in 1828 as a perfume store in Paris. Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain created custom fragrances with the aid of his sons.

Useful articles of kitchen furniture

Some young gentlemen in Boston came up with these Christmas gift ideas for young ladies in 1841.

At a social hop, given at the West End a few weeks ago, the young ladies began to banter the young gentlemen in the subject of Christmas gifts, and extorted abundance of promises. On the party’s breaking up, the expected presents were again referred to, and the givers were particularly requested to remember not to forget that the gifts were to be of no perishable or useless nature, as bouquets of flowers, baskets of confectionery, or any such trash, but serviceable articles that might be kept a long time and exhibited with pleasure and pride, as memorials of a happy evening. All of which was duly and truly promised.

The gentlemen agreed on unity of design, and the result was that on Christmas Eve the presents were distributed. To one lady was given a wooden bowl and chopping knife. To another, a clothes horse and ironing board. To a third, a dough board and rolling pin. To another, a dozen skewers and a larding pin. To a fifth, a pestle and mortar. To another, half a dozen patty-pans. To another, a ruffling iron. To another an egg-beater. And so on to the rest – some useful articles of kitchen furniture to each. The joke was taken in good part, and caused quite a frolic. It was proposed, in convention, that the various articles should be collected and present to the first who might be so unlucky as to get married, but the proposition was voted down by an immense majority. (5)

Pistols, toys, &c.

The New York Herald recommended these Christmas gift ideas in 1843.

This is the time to throw money into the hands of managers of theatres, museums, booksellers, &c., and make large and little children happy….
Those who wish to shoot any one can obtain their pistols at Spies’, 218 Pearl Street.
Barnett, 59 Courtlandt Street, will engrave a beautiful visiting card for you.
Any thing in the shape of jewelery can be obtained at Lyon’s, No. 80 Chatham Street.
For superior wines, &c. go to Gilbert’s, in William Street, and to Clark, Binniger & Cozzens, 56 Vesey Street.
The Alhamra will supply every one with cakes, ice creams, &c.
Lamps of all kinds can be purchased at Hooker’s 468 Broadway. They are said to be cheap.
As all parlors must be decorated, we advise every one to step into Niblo’s Garden and buy some bouquets, &c., for that purpose….
Toys! toys! toys! At 233 Centre Street. (6)

A decided novelty

An English newspaper jokingly reported an unusual gift in 1838.

At this time of year it is customary to make presents, and almost everything is advertised in the newspapers as being peculiarly adapted for the purpose. One person recommends a book, another a cosmetic, a third a hamper of wine, a fourth a case of toys, &c.; but a decided novelty, and one of a very peculiar description, was mentioned the other day at the Mansion-house. ‘Several cases of destitution, which were picked up in the street,’ says Mr. Jopp, the relieving officer to the city of London union office in Cannon Street, ‘have been sent to me by gentlemen.’ Mr. Jopp does not appear to have known very well what to do with this Christmas gift. (7)

If you’re still looking

If someone on your list would enjoy a well-chosen book with a 19th-century flavour, check out Napoleon in America. This historical novel imagines what might have happened if Napoleon had escaped from St. Helena and wound up in the United States in 1821.

A fantastic read for fans of French history and those who like ‘what if’ kind of stories; any fan of Napoleon will want to read this, too, and imagine a world where this might have happened. Those new to speculative fiction should give this a try – it’s dangerously addictive! – Unabridged Chick

For more reviews, and to read an excerpt, click here.

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Shopping in the Early 19th Century

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A 19th-Century Austrian Christmas

Christmas in Mexico in the 1800s

Celebrating with Light: Illuminations and Transparencies

The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

The Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette (Norwich, England), December 6, 1823.
“Christmas Charities,” The Sunday Times (London, England), December 29, 1833.
The Leicester Chronicle; or, Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (Leicester, England), January 3, 1835.
“Christmas Gifts,” John Bull (London, England), December 19, 1840.
[From the Boston Trans.] Milwaukee Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), February 12, 1842.
“Christmas Gifts and Amusements,” The New York Herald (New York, NY), December 25, 1843.
“Things in General,” The Era (London, England), December 30, 1838.

In writing Napoleon in America, it was easy to find French exiles in the United States in the early 1820s who could fictionally help Napoleon carry out his schemes. From Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte to scoundrels like Louis-Joseph Oudart, many Bonapartists fled to the United States after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat, to avoid persecution by the government of Louis XVIII. Some, like Simon Bernard, were relatively content in their new land. Others, like Louis Lauret, wound up miserable. What was the American attitude toward the Napoleonic exiles in their midst?

View of Aigleville, Colony of Texas or Field of Asylum, by Ambroise Louis Garneray, circa 1819. An idealized depiction of the Napoleonic exiles in America. Source: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg, www.mfah.org

Raising the tone of society

Initially, the Napoleonic exiles were esteemed for their wealth and their military expertise, as indicated in this letter from a resident of New York, dated May 23, 1816.

In so large, opulent, and of itself so populous and busy a city as New York, the addition of a few thousand individuals could scarcely make any difference; but in our places of public resort the presence of so many foreigners becomes very perceptible, and the many emigrant Frenchmen now here are not without influence on the tone in society, There are at present in this place a multitude of French ex-dukes, counts, barons, ministers, and counsellors of state, high officers of court and state, both civil and military, who have all brought more or less money. Joseph Buonaparte lives here without any great show…. He seldom visits in the societies of this city, and his circle is chiefly confined to Frenchmen. He lately made a journey to Philadelphia, where he was accompanied by Marshal Grouchy and General Lefebvre Desnouettes. In Lansdowne, where he resided for some time, General Clauzel was also in his suite. Regnault de St. Jean d’Angely has recently returned to New York from Charlestown, where he purchased 10,000 acres of land in South Carolina….

Eight thousand acres of land, on the Ohio, have been purchased on the account of M. Real (formerly Counsellor of State and Prefect of Paris), who is daily expected here: portions of these lands are to be given gratis to such French families as choose to settle there. Among the persons who have brought off large sums from France to America, Messrs. Lacepede and Chaptal are particularly spoken of, both celebrated naturalists and formerly members of the Paris Institute – the former a Count and President of the Senate, the latter also a Count, and for some years Minister of the Interior under Napoleon. European veteran officers are at present in demand for the American service. Many French military men have already obtained advantageous appointments. This measure is generally approved of; because it was particularly ascribed to the want of good officers in the militia, that, in the late war [War of 1812], the enemy was able to attempt landings, which were very mortifying to the American national pride. Experience has also taught, that in the United States, in a period of common danger, it is easy to increase the regular army, which in peace is very small, by voluntary levies to almost any amount, though it is not so easy to find in this country officers to lead them. (1)

Pursuing a laudable calling

In March 1817, Congress granted a number of the French exiles land in Alabama, near the present site of Demopolis.

The French emigrants to whom Congress has allotted a parcel of land, in the new purchase, ‘for the cultivation of the vine and olive,’ have reached the Tombigbee [River], and are now on their way to the Black Warrior [River], where they intend selecting a situation for the purpose of forming a settlement and pursuing the laudable calling of husbandry. There are fifty families of these adventurers, they have brought with them cuttings and scions of choice traits, &c. together with the necessary tools and implements to commence their operations immediately. Such emigrants as these, who have been trained in the field of industry from their earliest years, are truly desirable guests in a country so widely extended and so susceptible of improvement as is this our Western World. (2)

Taking advantage of public generosity

Sympathy for the Napoleonic exiles started to evaporate when many of those who had stakes in the Alabama colony sold their land grants to help finance an armed expedition to Texas, which was then under Spanish rule.

The events in Europe, and the changes of dynasty, have driven to this country a number of illustrious French exiles. Feeling for them and their state a sympathy not warranted by all the rules of prudence, has been evidenced; and we have not only held out the hand of succour and hospitality, but have even gone further – we have, by law, granted them facilities in the purchase of public lands, which it now appears they have sold or discarded, and have gone to the province of Texas to establish a species of commonwealth. This province we have ever claimed as our own, and these associations should be discountenanced in the very bud. Those emigrants who are not satisfied with our country and laws should not be permitted to erect independent governments on our borders. They will, eventually, give us trouble; and, however humble these commencements may be – however modest these declarations may seem, they will, in time, carve work for our army and unlock the coffers of the nation. (3)

In 1817, 22,240 people arrived at US ports from abroad – an unprecedented number. (4) There was concern that American generosity to the French exiles could set an undesirable precedent when it came to other immigrant groups.

It is not politic for the nation…to hold forth to emigrants more than the general advantages arising from an equality of rights and equal and exact justice. If the power of Congress is to be bent to any special object, having in view the benefit of emigrants, we shall have associations from every part of Europe claiming, by precedence, an equal distribution of national favors. These, in time, will create a species of chaos, of independent confederacies; and where our policy is to amalgamate emigrants with the mass of citizens, to divest them of their foreign attachments, we shall, on the contrary, nourish their national predilections, foreign propensities, and foreign manners; and, in the heart of our country, instead of being purely American, we shall partake of a parti-colored complexion, and native citizens will attach themselves to the habits of such foreigners as may suit their inclination. We have national strength, and we must establish and provide for national character. As to these independent associations, with arms to their hands on our borders, they must occupy the attention of the government. These confederacies, in a quarter where a thin population is found, may give us serious trouble in time. On the threshold of these expeditions, measures should be taken to prevent their extension, and any evil consequences which may grow out of them. (5)

Hezekiah Niles, editor of the Baltimore-based weekly news magazine Niles’ Weekly Register, wrote bluntly:

Among the splendid fooleries which have at times amused a portion of the American people, as well as their Representatives in Congress, was that of granting, on most favourable terms, to certain emigrants of France, a large tract of land in the Alabama territory, to encourage the cultivation of the vine and olive.…

What was honestly intended as a common benefit to a number of unfortunate persons, is understood to have immediately centred, like banking, into the benefit of a few; and I am told that one man’s gains by this speculation are estimated at from 500,000 to a million of dollars. …

It was the abuse of the Alabama grant that caused the rejection of the petition of the Irish emigrant associations for the laying off a tract of land in the Illinois, though everybody felt satisfied that their design was an honest one….

I very much question the policy of any act of government that has a tendency to introduce and keep up amongst us a foreign national language or dialect, manners or character, as every large and compact settlement of emigrants from any particular country must necessarily do. Though some have been almost ready to quarrel with me for the often-repeated assertion, I still assert and will maintain it, that the people of the United States are yet wretchedly deficient in national character, though it is rapidly forming, and in a short time will be as the vanguard of the national strength. Its progress, however, is retarded by the influx of foreigners, with manners and prejudices favorable to a state of things repugnant to our rules and notions of right, since few enlightened men may be called citizens of the world; but most men’s ideas are narrowed to the spot or country, with its habits of thinking and of acting, where they received their education, which it requires at least the mixture of a generation to remove. These prejudices extend as well to the religious as to the political supremacy of certain poor, weak and miserable individuals; and considerably prevent an exercise of the right which man has to worship God after the dictates of his own heart, and are at open war with the power that he has, in its liberal sense, to manage all his concerns in his own way. To lessen the force of prejudices so hostile to our free institutions, it is important that those subject to them should be cast into the common stock of the people, in which, if they do not get more expanded ideas and fall in with the general habits of the nation of which they are members, their scattered condition will measurably forbid them from retarding the growth of a general feeling – or at least, prevent a powerful action against it. (6)

Tempting the male sex?

The Napoleonic exiles soon abandoned their Texas colony (Champ d’Asile). Many of them went to New Orleans, where they were met with sympathy by the largely French-speaking population. Over the following years, several senior French officers were granted amnesty by Louis XVIII and returned to France. Joseph Bonaparte remained in the United States until the 1830s. In June 1822, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine took a jab at both the Americans and the French by writing:

The Yankees appear to us a testy and quarrelsome race, and we like them the better for it; they shew young blood, and swagger becoming a nation in its teens. Nevertheless, we wish, for their own sakes, that they would somewhat amend of these propensities; inasmuch as they savour more of national vanity than of national pride, and betray (we allude chiefly to the quarrels at Gibraltar,) more a want of confidence in their own dignity, than any genuine and sound-nerved sensibility of insult. As to their national manners, we do not believe half of what we hear; nor can we credit the account of their ladies hanging their legs out of the window in hot weather, any more than Mr. Nodier’s slanders concerning the Glasgow belles. But this we will assert, that in Philadelphia and other towns frequented by the French exiles, society has rapidly degenerated, both in morals and in manners, from its pure English origin; and that by taking, or attempting to take, the ton from these upstart mousquetaires, American high-life unfortunately unites the vulgarity of English simplicity with the ten-fold vulgarity of French refinement. (7)

This prompted Louisa Adams, who visited Philadelphia that summer, to write to her husband, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams:

The Philadelphians are very angry with Blackwoods Magazine. This last stroke of ‘the ladies hanging their legs out of the windows’ is quite too much. I differ with them in opinion, as these exaggerations can never be credited by rational people. And instead of stopping emigration, such a thing must act as a temptation to the male sex, who generally admire such sights. (8)

You might also enjoy:

Why didn’t Napoleon escape to the United States?

What happened to the Bonapartists in America? The story of Louis Lauret

General Charles Lallemand: Invader of Texas

General Charles-Lefebvre Desnouettes: Unhappy in Alabama

5 People Driven to America by the Napoleonic Wars

National Stereotypes in the Early 19th Century

“French Exiles in America,” The Times (London, England), August 8, 1816.
[From the New Orleans Commercial Press], The Supporter (Chillicothe, Ohio), July 29, 1817.
“Emigrants,” The National Advocate (New York, NY), July 27, 1818.
Dennis Wepman, Immigration (New York, 2008), p. 94.
“Emigrants,” The National Advocate (New York, NY), August 11, 1818.
“French Emigrants,” Niles’ Weekly Register (Baltimore, MD), August 8, 1818.
Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine (Edinburgh, UK), Volume XI, January-June 1822, p. 685.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 27 August 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified November 26, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4144.

The adventures of a Napoleonic soldier in the bedroom can be as entertaining as his exploits on the battlefield. At least that’s the case when Jean-Roch Coignet, a grenadier in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, tells the tale. In late 1809, at the age of 33, Coignet was back in Paris after the Austrian campaign, during which he had been promoted to sergeant. Wanting to improve his appearance to suit his new rank, he bought some false calves – padded attachments for the lower limbs – to make his legs look more shapely. Shortly thereafter, Coignet was invited to dinner at his captain’s house, along with some “distinguished military men and citizens and ladies of high degree.” The next morning, one of the ladies sent him a letter asking him to call on her at eleven o’clock. This “warmed [his] imagination.” What follows is Coignet’s account of how the affair played out.

A Receipt for Courtship, 1805

A Parisian conquest

I found a comrade to mount guard for me, dressed myself up to the nines, and took a cabriolet to the address indicated. I am not ashamed to confess that I felt the thrill of love (my age is excuse enough). On arrival I gave my name, and the chambermaid showed me into a fine drawing-room, where I found one of the two ladies between whom I had sat at dinner at my captain’s, dressed in a captivating negligée. I could hardly contain myself.

“You may go,” said she to the chambermaid.

Finding myself alone with the lovely lady, I was confused and had not a word to say; she took my arm and led me into her bedroom, where I saw a table spread with tempting dishes, wine and sugar, and all kinds of restoratives; this was her way of opening the ball. The conversation turned on her intentions with regard to me; she explained that she had looked upon me favourably, but could not openly receive me in her own house.

“If you are my man, I will give you an address where we can meet three times a week. I go to the Opera, and you will find a room ready prepared close by. When my carriage sets me down there, I will come to you, and we will pass the evening together.”

“You can count on me.”

“At all costs, find a substitute to mount guard for you; I will pay.”

She plied me with wine and sugar; I saw by her excited condition that it was for me to repay her with my person, and, seizing one of her hands, I said: “I am at your service.”

She led me to her easy-chair, and I had to prove my mettle there and then; she showed me her fine bed, which had mirrors above and all round it; never had I seen such a room. She seemed pleased with me; I spent a day of bliss with that fair lady, and only left her to answer roll-call. I was a little unsteady on my legs as a result of the stormy day I had passed, but was delighted with my conquest, and did not fail to keep my appointment on the day arranged. I found a cold dinner laid for me, and was waited on by the pretty chambermaid, who was there for the purpose of helping her mistress to dress and undress. I sat down and dined like a spoilt child.

“And you, Mademoiselle, are you not dining?”

“Yes, Monsieur, after you, if you please. Madame is delighted with you; she is coming early to take coffee, and will spend the evening with you. Dine well and drink plenty of wine; it is claret, and here is some sugar, which will improve it.”

“Thank you.”

“I should explain that I am going to undress Madame. She will be easier in her dishabille; and I shall come back to dress her before she goes home.”

“I understand perfectly.”

Madame arrived at eight, and after the usual civilities had been exchanged, sent for coffee. We were left alone, and I drew near to her.

“Wait,” she said, “we are going to have the whole evening together.”

“I know, Madame.”

“Stay where you are!”

Coffee was served immediately; that finished, she said: “Go into the next room, I will send for you.”

I went out, and sat down to await my fate; soon I was sent for, and told that Madame was waiting for me. What was my surprise to find her in bed!

“Now for it!” said I to myself.

“Come and sit close by me in this armchair. Have you got twenty-four hours’ leave?”

“Yes, Madame.”

She gave the chambermaid her orders, and dismissed her till next morning, when she was to bring our coffee and make her mistress’s toilette. As for me, I felt mighty awkward about undressing, and especially about how I was to hide my wretched false calves and my three pairs of stockings. What a fix I was in! If only I could put out the candle, all would be well. However, somehow I managed to hide them under the pillow; but it damped my spirits considerably. And the problem of how to get them on next morning tortured me.

Fortunately my beauty got up first to make things easy for me, and went into the next room with her maid to dress. I lost no time, and at once set about pulling my three pairs of stockings on under the bedclothes; the difficulty was to avoid twisting them awry, and I only succeeded with one leg, but Madame never noticed.

It would have taken a barber to dress my hair properly; and in a very short time I was asked if I was up. “Tell Madame I can present myself now, and am at her service.”

Madame looked fresh and beautiful, and we drank our chocolate together. As soon as matters had been adjusted between us, she left with her maid, and I returned to barracks in no little disorder.

“One of your stockings is twisted, it looks like a false calf,” said one of my comrades.

“So it does,” I answered in confusion, “I must go and put it straight.”

When I reached my quarters, I undressed and took off the infernal calves that had so tortured me for twenty-four hours; nor have I ever worn false calves since.

I continued to see my beauteous and witty dame according to the programme, but the task was too much for my strength; I had found my master, and should have been forced to surrender. But she gave me the chance of beating a retreat; I received a letter from her, asking me to let her see a specimen of my style. I was to send my answer to the address indicated. I found myself in an awkward position, being a very poor hand at writing; but however, I faced the situation and did the best I could. My phrases did not answer her expectations, and she reproached me very justly with my lack of education.

“Your letter disappointed me,” she said; “the spelling is wretched, and you have no style.”

I immediately answered: “Madame, I deserve all your reproaches, and I can’t complain. If you want a perfect letter, I will write out twenty-five letters of the alphabet and all the full stops and commas that are needed for a letter worthy of you; put them where they ought to be, and so help my feeble powers.”

I refused ever to see her again; and all her powers of persuasion were exerted in vain. (1)

For more about false calves, see “Victorian Fad of False or Artificial Calves” by Geri Walton, and “Bums, Tums and Downy Calves” by Sarah Murden.

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Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue (New York, 1929), pp. 188-191.

Madame de Staël by François Gérard, circa 1810

John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, met the witty French writer Madame de Staël in Russia in 1812, and again in France in 1815. Though Adams admired her eloquence more than her logic, he found that on the subject of Napoleon, there was “no difference of sentiment” between them.

Madame de Staël

Madame de Staël was born in Paris on April 22, 1766 as Anne Louise Germaine Necker. Her father, Jacques Necker, was a Swiss banker who became Louis XVI’s finance minister. Her mother, Suzanne Curchod, established a brilliant literary and political salon in Paris. Young Germaine was known for her conversational wit. She later hosted her own lively salon, frequented by liberal intellectuals.

Madame de Staël wrote novels, plays, essays, literary criticism, memoirs and poems. As a supporter of the French Revolution, she was critical of Napoleon Bonaparte. Their differences developed into a well-known feud. Among other things, when Madame de Staël asked Napoleon who he thought was the greatest woman in history, he said it was ‘she who had borne the most children.’ (1)

In 1803, Napoleon banished Madame de Staël from Paris. She spent much of her exile at Château de Coppet in Switzerland. Her home became a centre for Napoleon’s opponents. Hounded by Napoleon’s police, Madame de Staël fled to Austria in May 1812, and from there to Russia. She reached St. Petersburg in August, having gone out of her way to avoid Napoleon and his troops, who were advancing towards Moscow.

Meeting in St. Petersburg

John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1818

John Quincy Adams was then the US Minister to Russia. On September 6, 1812, Madame de Staël invited him to call on her at noon “concerning something relative to America.” (2) Though John Quincy Adams had never met Madame de Staël, he was familiar with her work. In 1797, when serving as US Minister to the Netherlands, he had sent his father John Adams (America’s second president), a copy of Madame de Staël’s A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations. In an accompanying letter, John Quincy Adams described the publication as “curious.”

It contains many very sensible and smart remarks; a profusion of sparkling sentences, and a perpetual proof of that half-reflected system, that absurd mixture of ignorance and experience of nonsense and wisdom, of depravity and virtue, which characterizes the school of French politicians ever since the opening of their Revolution. One great object of this publication was doubtless, to offer a sort of expiatory sacrifice to the present rulers in France, and to recommend the authoress to the restoration of their good graces. (3)

As requested, John Quincy Adams went to the Hôtel de l’Europe, where Madame de Staël was staying. He described the visit in a letter to his father.

I went accordingly at the hour appointed and upon entering the Lady’s salon found there a company of some fifteen or twenty persons, not a soul of whom I had ever seen before. An elderly gentleman in the full uniform of an English general [William Cathcart, the British ambassador to Russia] was seated on a sofa; and the Lady, whom I immediately perceived to be Madame de Staël, was complimenting him with equal elegance and fluency upon the glories of his nation, his countryman Lord Wellington, and his own. The Battle of Salamanca and the bombardment of Copenhagen were themes upon which much was to be said, and upon which she said much. When I went in, she intermitted her discourse for a moment to receive me and offer me a seat, which I immediately took, and for about half an hour had the opportunity to admire the brilliancy of her genius, as it sparkled incessantly in her conversation.

There was something a little too broad and direct in the substance of the panegyrics which she pronounced to allow them the claim of refinement. There was neither disguise nor veil to cover their naked beauties; but they were expressed with so much variety and veracity that the hearer had not time to examine the thread of their texture. Lord Cathcart received the compliments pointed at himself with becoming modesty, those to his nation with apparent satisfaction, and those to the conqueror of Salamanca with silent acquiescence. The Lady insisted that the British was the most astonishing nation of ancient or modern times – the only preservers of social order – the exclusive defenders of the liberties of mankind. To which his Lordship added that their glory was in being a moral nation, a character which he was sure they would always preserve. The glittering sprightliness of the Lady and the stately gravity of the Ambassador were as well contrasted as their respective topics of praise; and if my mind had been at ease to relish anything in the nature of an exhibition, I should have been much amused at hearing a French woman’s celebration of the generosity of the English towards other nations, and a lecture upon national morality from the commander of the expedition to Copenhagen.

During this sentimental duet between the Ambassador and the Ambassadress, I kept my seat [as] merely an auditor. The rest of the company were equally silent. Among them was an English naval officer, Admiral Bentinck, since deceased. He was then quite the chevalier d’honneur to Madame de Staël; but whether the scene did not strike him precisely as it did me, or whether his feelings resulting from it were of a more serious nature than mine, the moment it was finished and the Ambassador had taken leave, he drew a very long breath and sighed it out as if relieved from an offensive burden, saying only, ‘Thank God, that’s over.’

He and all the rest of the company immediately afterwards retired, and left me tête-a-tête with Madame de Staël. Her subject respecting America was to tell me that she had a large sum in the American funds, and to enquire whether I knew how she could contrive to receive the interest which she had hitherto received from England. I gave her such information as I possessed. She had also some lands in the State of New York, of which she wished to know the value. I answered her as well as I could, but her lands and her funds did not appear to occupy much of her thoughts. She soon asked me if I was related to the celebrated Mr. Adams, who wrote the book upon government [A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America]. I said I had the happiness of being his son. She said she had read it and admired it very much; that her father, Mr. Necker, had always expressed a very high opinion of it.

She next commenced upon politics, and asked how it was possible that America should have declared war against England [the War of 1812]. In accounting for this phenomenon, I was obliged to recur to a multitude of facts not so strongly stamped with British generosity or British morality as might be expected from the character which she and the Ambassador had just been assigning to that nation. The orders in council and the press-gang afforded but a sorry commentary upon the chivalresque defence of the liberties of mankind, and no very instructive lessons of morality. She had nothing to say in their defence; but she thought that the knights-errant of the human race were to be allowed special indulgence, and, in consideration of their cause, were not to be held to the ordinary obligations of war and peace. There was no probability that any arguments of mine could make any impression upon opinions thus toned.

She listened, however, with as much complacency as could be expected to what I said, and finally asked me why I had not been to see her before. I answered that her high reputation was calculated to inspire respect, no less than curiosity; and that, however desirous I had been of becoming personally acquainted with her, I had thought I could not without indiscretion intrude myself upon her society. The reason appeared to please her. She said she was to leave this city the next day at noon. She was going to Stockholm to pass the winter, and then to England. She wished to have another conversation with me before she went, and asked me to call on her the next morning. I readily accepted the invitation, and we discussed politics again, two or three hours.

I found her better conversant with rhetoric than logic. She had much to say about social order, much about universal monarchy, much about the preservation of religion – in which she gave me to understand she did not herself believe – and much about the ambition and tyranny of Bonaparte, upon which she soon discovered there was no difference of sentiment between us. But why did not America join in the holy cause against this tyrant? First, because America had no means of making war against him: she could neither attack him by sea nor land. Second, because it was a fundamental maxim of American policy never to intermeddle with the political affairs of Europe. Thirdly, because it was altogether unnecessary. He had enemies enough upon his hands already.

What! Did not I dread his universal monarchy? Not in the least. I saw indeed a very favourable mass of force arrayed under him, but I saw a mass of force at least as formidable arrayed against him. Europe contained about 160 millions of human beings. He was wielding the means of 75 millions, and the means of 85 millions were wielding against him. It was an awful spectacle to behold the shock, but I did not believe, nor ever had believed, that he would ever be able to subjugate even the continent of Europe. If there had ever been any real danger of such an event, it was passed. She herself saw that there was every prospect of his being very shortly driven out of Spain, and I was equally convinced he would be driven out of Russia. It was the very day of the Battle of Borodino….

She said, ‘Everything that you say of him is very just, but I have particular reasons for resentment against him. I have been persecuted by him in the most shameful manner. I was neither suffered to live anywhere, nor to go where I would have gone, and all for no other reason but because I would not eulogize him in my writings.’

As to our war with England, I told her that I deeply lamented it and yet cherished the hope that it would not last long – that England had forced it upon us by measures as outrageous upon the rights of an independent nation, as tyrannical, as oppressive, as any that could be charged upon Bonaparte. [England’s] pretences were retaliation and necessity. Retaliation upon America for the wrongs of France, and necessity for man-stealing. We asked of England nothing but our indisputable rights, but we allowed no special prerogatives to political quixotism. We did not consider Britain at all as the defender of the liberties of mankind, but as another tyrant pretending to exclusive dominion upon the ocean – a pretension full as detestable, and I trusted in God, full as chimerical, as the pretension of universal monarchy upon the land.

Madame de Staël was of her own opinion still, but on the point of impressment she owned that my observations were reasonable. I have not yet found a European of any nation except the English who, on having this question in its true state brought to a precise point, had a syllable to say for the English side. In conclusion, I told her that the pretended retaliation of England had compelled us to resort to real retaliation upon them, and that as long as they felt a necessity to fight for the practice of stealing men from American merchant vessels on the high seas, we should feel the necessity of fighting against it. I could only hope that God would prosper the righteous cause. (4)

After the meeting, Adams wrote in his diary:

She is one of the highest enthusiasts for the English cause that I have ever seen; but her sentiments appear to be as much the result of personal resentment against Bonaparte as of general views of public affairs. She complains that he will not let her live in peace anywhere, merely because she had not praised him in her works. (5)

Meeting in Paris

After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, Madame de Staël returned to Paris. Visiting the city in February of 1815, John Quincy Adams had another opportunity to visit her. He regarded her more favourably, since her enthusiasm for Britain had cooled. As Adams wrote to his mother, Abigail:

[S]ince the overthrow of Napoleon, and the European peace, she has been among the most distinguished friends of our country, and contributed in no small degree to give the tone to the public opinion of France and Europe, with regard to the vandalism of the British exploit at Washington. (6)

Adams called on Madame de Staël on February 8, 1815. He again found himself in a company of about 20 strangers. His hostess introduced him to French journalist Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and an Englishman whose name he was unable to determine. They conversed on general topics.

On February 15, Adams went to Madame de Staël’s for dinner. There were 17 people at the table, including Henry Clay, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the French writer and political activist Benjamin Constant, who was Madame de Staël’s lover.

The conversation was not very interesting – some conversation between the lady and Mr. Constant, who seemed to consider it as a principle to contradict her. At one time there were symptoms of a conversation arising upon a subject of political economy, upon which she said, ‘J’interdis tout discours sur l’économie politique. Ah! Je crains l’économie politique, comme le feu.’ [I forbid any talk of political economy. Ah! I fear political economy, like fire.]

Immediately after dinner she left us, saying ‘Je vous laisse mon fils, qui est très-aimable,’ [I leave you my son, who is very agreeable] and went to the Theatre Français to see the tragedy of Esther. She invited me to come and see her again, and said she was at home almost every evening. She also apologized for being obliged to leave her company so soon ‘pour aller au spectacle’ [to go to the show]. I went myself with Mr. Le Ray de Chaumont to the Odeon and saw ‘Le Nozze de Figaro’ with the music of Mozart.” (7)

They did not meet again. On February 26, Napoleon escaped from Elba. Upon learning he had landed in France, Madame de Staël fled to Switzerland. John Quincy Adams went to London to take up the post of US Minister to Britain. Madame de Staël died on July 14, 1817, at the age of 51.

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Assassination Attempts on Napoleon Bonaparte

Gaspard Gourgaud, Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena with General Baron Gourgaud, translated and with notes by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer (Chicago, 1904), p. 244.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1873), p. 399.
“To John Adams from John Quincy Adams, 16 February 1797,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-1857.
“To John Adams from John Quincy Adams, 22 March 1813,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-2265.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. II, p. 401.
“From John Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, 21 February 1815,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-2779.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. III (Philadelphia, 1874), pp. 155-156.

Napoleon in 1814, by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, 1862

In 1812, a case went to trial in England involving a wager on Napoleon Bonaparte’s life. Ten years earlier, Sir Mark Masterman Sykes had rashly committed to pay Reverend Robert Gilbert one guinea per day as long as Napoleon lived. Famous at the time, the case raised the question: was it legal to bet on the assassination of a national enemy?

The wager

Sir Mark Masterman Sykes was born on August 20, 1771. Descended from a line of wealthy Yorkshire traders turned landowners, he was educated at Oxford. In 1795-96, he served as High Sheriff of Yorkshire. In September 1801, upon the death of his father, Sykes inherited the title of baronet and the estate of Sledmere House, 25 miles northeast of York.

On Saturday, May 29, 1802, Sykes and his wife hosted a dinner party for friends. After the ladies retired from the table, the bottle was liberally passed around and the conversation turned to European politics. Napoleon Bonaparte – whom the French Tribunat had recently voted to make Consul for Life – was thought to be in a precarious situation. Sykes and his friends were likely influenced by newspaper reports such as this:

The situation of Bonaparte at the present moment is beyond doubt extremely critical. It is easy to conceive that…it would not have been easy for him to reconcile his military followers to the tranquil obscurity and the torpid poverty of a peace establishment. That Massena, Delmas, Bernadotte…should, in the littleness of their present lives, become dissatisfied with the prize they hold in the lottery of the Revolution, compared with that of others, is extremely probable…. Indeed it may be questioned whether any class of the people are very eager to indulge Bonaparte in this object. (1)

Some of the company expressed the opinion that attempts would be made to assassinate Napoleon. Sykes said he considered Napoleon’s life to be in such great danger that if anyone would give him 100 guineas (equivalent to 105 pounds sterling), he would pay them one guinea per day for the rest of Napoleon’s life.

Reverend Robert Gilbert, Rector of the local parish of Settrington, immediately said, “Will you, Sir Mark? I’ll take you – done!” Sykes appeared surprised and somewhat displeased that the offer was so hastily accepted. The others cried out, “No bet, no bet.” Observing the general displeasure, Gilbert said to Sykes, “If you will ask me as a favour, I will let you off.” Sykes replied “that he would not ask any favour or make any concessions at his own table, or in his own house.” His lawyer later explained that Sykes “felt that he could not lay himself under a pecuniary obligation to a person who had entrapped him in consequence of a hasty expression.” (2)

On Monday, May 31, Robert Gilbert paid Mark Masterman Sykes 100 guineas. Thereafter, Sykes paid Gilbert a guinea a day, usually in weekly amounts of 7 guineas. He continued the payments until December 25, 1804. In 1805, Sykes asked a friend to call upon Gilbert and relay the message that he would give £500 to have the bet cancelled. By then Gilbert had received a total of £970 from Sykes. Gilbert said he would refer the question to the Jockey Club. Sykes heard nothing more from Gilbert and assumed the matter was settled.

The trial

Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, who wagered on Napoleon’s life

In 1807, Sykes (a Tory) became the Member of Parliament for the city of York. In January 1812, Gilbert sued him for breach of promise. He sought damages of £2,296 and seven shillings – the amount he calculated he would have received if Sykes had continued to pay him a guinea per day.

The case was tried in March 1812 at the York Lent assize court. Two witnesses from the original dinner party testified. In addition, a Mr. Anderson – a messenger for the American chargé d’affaires in London – was called to certify that Napoleon was still alive. He said he had seen Napoleon in December or January, reviewing troops at the Tuileries. Sykes’ counsel asked how Anderson could be positive it was Napoleon, since the messenger seemed to have been unable to distinguish anything but a white horse.

Witness replied that it was him, but that it was not easy to approach while he was reviewing 30,000 troops; he believes that he also passed him when travelling rapidly in his carriage from an hunting excursion, and was present when Napoleon Bonaparte made his grand entrance into Amsterdam in October last, being not more than the distance of the table from him. Witness knows his person, and can distinguish him from his brothers, having seen them all, except Lucien Bonaparte.

When asked about Napoleon’s health, Anderson replied:

I am very sorry to inform you that he will probably live 30 or 40 years longer; when I saw him near 5 years since (crowned Emperor of France) he had an oval Italian face, but is now grown fat, and as good-looking, and quite as en bon point as yourself. (3)

The defence argued that Sykes’ proposal was not meant as a serious bet. It was “an unguarded expression, used in a moment of jollity, at his own table, amongst those whom he imagined his friends,” for which he had already paid a considerable sum to Gilbert, the minister of an extensive parish with a benefice of £1,400 per annum. However, if it was a real wager,

there may eventually be an interest revealed inconsistent with the public safety. The idea of invasion is now generally laughed at, but sometimes these things which are laughed at become serious realities, and putting the case that Bonaparte should, at the head of his army succeed in effecting a descent upon this country, it is clear that the Plaintiff would have an interest in protecting that life, which every true subject and friend of his country would be interested in destroying; he would have an annuity of 365 guineas per annum depending upon the personal safety of this inveterate enemy of our Country. (4)

After a brief consultation, the jury ruled in Sykes’ favour, on the grounds that the wager had not been seriously made and should be considered null and void.

The appeal

Gilbert appealed to the Court of King’s Bench in London for a new trial to be granted. The question was argued before the court on June 8-12, 1812. Here the case turned on the legality of the wager. The Justices decided it was illegal, on the grounds that it gave Gilbert an interest in preserving Napoleon’s life and Sykes an interest in assassinating Napoleon. In delivering the judgment, Chief Justice Lord Ellenborough said:

The objection to this wager was its tendency to produce public inconvenience and mischief. At a time when the enemy’s threats of invasion were actual, and when they were deprecated weekly in every church, could it be said that in case of Buonaparte landing, the interest of 365 guineas per annum to preserve his life was too remote? Besides, one great object of the nation ought to be to obviate the suspicion of attempting the assassination of Buonaparte…and to prevent a war of assassination, with which any attempt of that kind would not fail to be revenged. (5)

Ellenborough concluded:

Wherever the tolerating of any species of contract has a tendency to produce a public mischief or inconvenience, such a contract has been held to be void…. I consider it as a wager against public policy and of immoral tendency, and that no new trial should be granted. (6)

The other justices agreed. They also deplored the waste of time and “inconvenience of countenancing idle wagers in courts of justice.” (7)

Shortly thereafter, a satirical poem about the case, called “The Death of Bonaparte: or, One Pound One. A Poem, in Four Cantos,” was published under the pseudonym “Cervantes.” It included this stanza:

At last the reverend jockey brought,
This moral matter into court;
O justice! justice! wer’t thou napping,
That such a thing as this could happen!
Thou shoulds’t have ta’en a good horsewhip,
And made both knight and parson skip;
A case replete with such disgrace,
Should ne’er have come before thy face. (8)

The aftermath

Reverend Robert Gilbert died on December 30, 1820 at the age of 69. He was survived by daughter Elizabeth and sons Robert and John. His wife Ann had died in 1801.

In 1820 Mark Masterman Sykes retired from his parliamentary seat due to ill health. He died at Weymouth on February 16, 1823 at the age of 52. He was survived by his second wife Mary Elizabeth Tatton Egerton. He had no children.

Sykes was a knowledgeable book collector, with an extensive library that included many rare volumes. He also collected pictures, bronzes, coins, medals and prints. His collections were sold at auction in 1824. The book sale, at which “most of the opulent London Bibliopolists…enriched their collections,” continued for 11 days and fetched nearly £10,000. (9) The sale of Sykes’ pictures brought in nearly £6,000.

Napoleon died on the island of St. Helena on May 5, 1821 at the age of 51.

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“Bonaparte,” Hampshire Telegraph & Portsmouth Gazette (Portsmouth, England), May 24, 1802.
Report of a Cause, the Reverend Robert Gilbert versus Sir M.M. Sykes, Bart. M.P. tried at the York Lent Assizes, 1812 (York, 1812), pp. 7-12, 19-20.
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid., p. 23.
“Law Report,” The Times (London), June 13, 1812.
Edward Hyde East, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Court of King’s Bench, Vol. 16 (London, 1814), pp. 157, 160.
Ibid., p. 162.
The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature, Series 4, Vol. II (London, 1812), p. 663.
The Edinburgh Annual Register for 1824, Vol. 17 (Edinburgh, 1825), pp. 312-313.

Founded in 1714 – four years before New Orleans – the city of Natchitoches, Louisiana is the oldest permanent European settlement located within the area covered by the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. The settlement was named after a local Native American tribe that is part of the Caddo Confederacy. As for how to pronounce Natchitoches, though locals now say “Nakadish,” in the 19th century people said “Nakitosh” and often spelled it that way.

Replica buildings at Fort St. Jean Baptiste Historic Site in Natchitoches, Louisiana

Principal place of an excellent and delightful province

In 1713, Louis Juchereau de Saint-Denis, a French-Canadian soldier and explorer, was commissioned by the governor of Louisiana (then part of New France) to open a trading route to New Spain (Mexico). The following year, Saint-Denis founded the trading post of Fort Saint Jean Baptiste de Natchitoches on an island in the Red River. French settlers initially established themselves on the east bank of the river. In 1735, St. Denis moved the fort to the west bank. Other settlers followed.

From the beginning, relations between the residents of Natchitoches and those of nearby Texas (then part of New Spain) were close. Trade with Indian tribes, particularly the Caddos, dominated the local economy. Natchitoches supplied the rest of Louisiana with horses and cattle, most of which had been stolen from Spanish ranches by Comanches or other Indians.

In 1762, Spain acquired Louisiana from France. Spain continued to administer the territory even after it was secretly transferred back to France in 1800. Spanish officials encouraged the cultivation of tobacco, which had already become the main commercial crop around Natchitoches. The town grew accordingly. When the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, Natchitoches had 1,848 inhabitants, of which over half (948) were slaves. (1) In 1804, French physician Paul Alliot described Natchitoches as follows:

It is the principal place of an excellent and delightful province. It is the abode of five hundred inhabitants, while a thousand others others dwell in the country [round about]. It is the residence of a priest and a district commander who renders zealous and paternal justice to all persons claiming it. The trade of a portion of the inhabitants of the city consists in pelts, cattle, hogs, and cheese; while the other portion is engaged in the chase. Numbers of bears, roe deer, red deer and other fallow deer which live in the woods and in those vast and beautiful prairies, form a powerful attraction for these hunters, who gather all told more than twenty thousand skins in three or four months – which gives each one net fifteen or sixteen hundred francs. The flesh of all those animals remains where they have been skinned and becomes food for birds of prey and other carnivorous beasts. When those hunters depart [for the chase], fifteen of them form a party and choose one of their number to look after their eating. That man has an equal share with the others in the skins of the animals.

The inhabitants in the country engage especially in the culture of the tobacco so famed for its good taste…. The other products raised there by these inhabitants prove equally well by their abundant yield the richness of its soil. The forests are filled with excellent vines, which yield muscats and other delicious grapes of various colors, wild fruits, wax plants, honey bees, mulberry trees (on the leaves of which are found cocoons in which are enclosed the eggs of the silkworm), wild olives, and a number of other fruit trees. The hills there are seen to be filled with walnut trees of huge growth, with magnificent chestnuts, whose fruit is indeed, very small, but of an excellent taste, with beautiful pecan trees which produce a kind of acorn whose fruit is good, sweet, and delicate. If those inhabitants were industrious, they could make excellent eating oils from the fruit of the nuts and the pecans. But…inhabitants who work in the fields are not susceptible to any innovation. (2)

According to Alliot, residents traded with the Caddo, Cocinthés and Panis Indian tribes. The Indians exchanged animal pelts for guns, gunpowder, vermilion, taffia (rum) and jewelry.

A map of Louisiana in 1763, showing the location of Natchitoches

A very thriving village

In early 1804, the Americans established Fort Claiborne to replace Fort Saint Jean Baptiste. A description of the town published in 1816 observed:

The town of Natchitoches stands upon the right bank of Red River…a very thriving village, consisting of about one hundred and fifty houses. Fort Claiborne occupies a pine hill behind the town. Here is the seat of the Indian agency for the N.W. savages. The settlements on the alluvion are upon the banks of the streams, but in the pine woods, are scattered over the country. The common time necessary to make a voyage from Natchitoches to and from New Orleans is from thirty to forty days. (3)

Indian interpreter Gaspard Philibert lived in Natchitoches. His boss, Indian Agent Dr. John Sibley, wrote:

The water of the Red River is so salt that, wherever it is stagnant, large cockles, clams, shrimps, &c, resembling those on the sea-coast, are found in plenty. At Natchitoches, lime made of cockle shells is plenty, and used altogether, though limestone exists in abundance. Lime made of shells is sold at twenty-five cents a bushel, and a common labourer’s wages is seventy-five cents a day. I have never seen on Red River any fever of the putrid bilious infectious kind, none worse than an intermittent, or remittent, that six or eight doses of bark a day, for three or four days, after proper evacuations, would [not] cure; though I have found often such a degree of debility, that blistering, and the diffusive stimulus, was necessary…. At Natchitoches there are several instances of longevity. There is a German that has been here fifty years, who is now ninety-five years old, in good health, labours constantly, and can walk thirty miles a day, several who were born here of between eighty and eighty-five, and upwards of twenty above seventy…. Sugar cane grows pretty well here, and sour oranges. (4)

In 1819, the garrison at Natchitoches moved to Fort Selden, six miles north, and Fort Claiborne was demolished. In 1822, Fort Selden was closed and the garrison moved to a new fort, Cantonment Jesup, 25 miles west of Natchitoches, under the command of Colonel James B. Many. It had the dual mission of protecting frontier settlers against slave revolts and guarding against incursions from newly-independent Mexico.

The Mexicans – like the Spaniards before them – were worried about incursions from the opposite direction. Natchitoches was a staging ground for filibustering expeditions to Texas, and for Anglo-American colonists going to settle in Texas without permission. The Mexicans also wanted the residents of Natchitoches to stop their illicit dealings with Texas Indians. The American practice of buying stolen horses encouraged Indians to raid Texas settlements. In 1821 a citizen of San Antonio complained that

the Traders of Natchitoches have been long since in the practice of introducing among the savage nations arms of good quality. Double barrel guns, good lances and a great quantity of ammunition. Last year only, the amount of arms thus disposed of amounted to over $90,000, and the whole supplied by the merchants of Natchitoches and New Orleans. Further, the Spanish and American traders used to remain eight and even ten months among the Indians, and there is positive information that they go to plunder and murder the Spaniards jointly with the Indians. (5)

The resort of desperate, wicked and strange creatures

American clergyman Timothy Flint provides an impression of what Natchitoches was like in the early 1820s, which is when Napoleon fictionally sets up camp there in Napoleon in America. At the time, Natchitoches was the largest settlement in Louisiana west of the Mississippi.

The village is compact…and composed of Spanish, French, and American houses, and a population composed of these races together, with a considerable mixture of Indian blood. There are many respectable families here, and a weekly newspaper in French and English. From its position, this must be a great inland town. At the head of steam-boat navigation, the last town westward towards the Spanish frontier, and on the great road to that country and to Mexico, it has already a profitable trade with that country. The Spanish come there for their supplies, as far as from the Rio del Norte [Rio Grande]. They pay in bars of silver and mules. I have seen droves pass of four hundred horses and mules….

Being, as they phrase it, the ‘jumping off place,’ it is necessarily the resort of desperate, wicked and strange creatures who wish to fly away from poverty, infamy and the laws, and those who have one, from conscience. If I were to enter into any kind of detail of the singular scenes that have been witnessed here, under the different regimes, Spanish, French, and American, in its different stages of a pastoral, hunting, and commercial existence; and from the period when its navigation was conducted in canoes, hollowed from trees, to the stately steam-boat; if I could describe its Indian powwows, its Spanish fandangos, its French balls and its American frolics, the different epaulets of the Spanish, French, and American officers, and the character, costume, and deportment of the mottled damsels that attended them, I must be the “great Unknown” to do it, and I must have ten volumes for elbow. Pity, that all this interesting matter should be lost, for want of a historian. I wandered to its ancient grave-yard, and experienced indescribable emotions in trying to retrace mouldering monuments, where the inscriptions were originally coarse and are now illegible, where Spanish, French, Americans, Indians, Catholics and Protestants lie in mingled confusion.

I passed two weeks here, receiving daily invitations to entertainments by the hospitable citizens of this place. The luxury of the table is understood and practiced in great perfection. I was charmed with the singing and playing of two young ladies in this place, the one Spanish, the other American. (6)

Fort St. Jean Baptiste has been reconstructed as a state historic site in Natchitoches.

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Sophie Burton and F. Todd Smith, Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier (College Station, TX, 2008), p. 18.
Paul Alliot, “Historical and Political Reflections,” in Louisiana Under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States 1785-1807, translated and edited by James A. Robertson, Vol. I (Cleveland, 1911), pp. 125-129.
William Darby, Geographical Description of the State of Louisiana (Philadelphia, 1816), p. 211.
John Sibley, “An Account of the Country and Productions near the Red River in Louisiana,” The Literary Magazine and American Register, Vol. VI (Philadelphia, 1806), p. 173.
Joseph Carl McElhannon, “Imperial Mexico and Texas, 1821-1823,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 2 (October 1949), p. 125.
Timothy Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years Passed in Occasional Residences and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi (Boston, 1826), pp. 365-367.

Napoleon crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, 1800

Napoleon has been used as an example in self-help books ever since the genre was invented. Authors of self-help books often misquote Napoleon (see 10 Things Napoleon Never Said) and tend to be vague or inaccurate on historical details. The self-help lessons drawn from Napoleon say as much about the preoccupations of the author, and the age in which he or she is writing, as they do about the former French Emperor.

Power, without beneficence, is fatal

The first self-help book is generally considered to be Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859) by Scottish author Samuel Smiles. Smiles included Napoleon in a chapter on “Energy and Courage,” not as someone to emulate, but as something to avoid.

His life, beyond most others, vividly showed what a powerful and unscrupulous will could accomplish. He threw his whole force of body and mind direct upon his work. Imbecile rulers and the nations they governed went down before him in succession. He was told that the Alps stood in the way of his armies – ‘There shall be no Alps,’ he said, and the road across the Simplon was constructed, through a district formerly almost inaccessible. ‘Impossible,’ said he, ‘is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.’ He was a man who toiled terribly; sometimes employing and exhausting four secretaries at a time. He spared no one, not even himself. His influence inspired other men, and put a new life into them. ‘I made my generals out of mud,’ he said. But all was of no avail; for Napoleon’s intense selfishness was his ruin, and the ruin of France which he left a prey to anarchy. His life taught the lesson that power, however energetically wielded, without beneficence, is fatal to its possessor and its subjects; and that knowledge, or knowingness, without goodness, is but the incarnate principle of Evil. (1)

Smiles was far more admiring of Napoleon’s British opponent, the Duke of Wellington, whom he lauded for honesty, punctuality and assiduous attention to detail.

Our own Wellington was a far greater man. Not less resolute, firm, and persistent, but much more self-denying, conscientious, and truly patriotic. Napoleon’s aim was ‘Glory;’ Wellington’s watchword, like Nelson’s, was ‘Duty.’ (2)

Though Smiles was writing in Victorian times, he was born in 1812, three years before the end of the Napoleonic Wars. He remembered the militia occupying the barracks in his small town, and the celebrations that followed Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo: “the bands of the militia, the drums and pipes that paraded the town, and the illuminations that followed [made] a deep impression on the imagination of a child. … The talk by our firesides long continued to be about wars, with remembrances of recent campaigns.” (3) Smiles also recalled the high food prices and the heavy taxation that were among the economic effects of the wars. It’s not surprising he presented Napoleon in a cautionary manner.

Don’t wait for your opportunity – make it

American inspirational author Orison Swett Marden had a sunnier take on Napoleon. His first self-help book, Pushing to the Front or Success Under Difficulties (1894) appeared when there was a resurgence of American interest in the French Emperor. In 1894/95, journalist Ida Tarbell wrote a series of favourable articles about Napoleon for McClure’s Magazine. These became the basis for a popular Napoleonic biography, published in 1895.

Marden frequently cited Napoleon in his book. The first chapter, “The Man and the Opportunity,” includes the example of Napoleon crossing the Alps.

‘Is it POSSIBLE to cross the path?’ asked Napoleon of the engineers who had been sent to explore the dreaded path of St. Bernard. ‘Perhaps,’ was the hesitating reply, ‘it is within the limits of possibility.’ ‘FORWARD THEN,’ said the Little Corporal, without heeding their account of apparently insurmountable difficulties. (4)

The lesson?

Don’t wait for your opportunity…. Make it, as Napoleon made his in a hundred ‘impossible’ situations…. Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest chances golden. (5)

Napoleon was also held up in a chapter entitled “The Triumph of Promptness.”

Napoleon laid great stress upon that ‘supreme moment,’ that ‘nick of time’ which occurs in every battle, to take advantage of which means victory, and to lose in hesitation means disaster. He said that he beat the Austrians because they did not know the value of five minutes; and it has been said that among the trifles that conspired to defeat him at Waterloo, the loss of a few moments by himself and Grouchy on the fatal morning was the most significant. Blücher was on time, and Grouchy was late. It was enough to send Napoleon to St. Helena, and to change the destiny of millions. (6)

Other lessons Marden drew from Napoleon were the importance of getting up early in the morning, enthusiasm, persistence, and practicality.

A practical man not only sees, but seizes the opportunity. There is a certain getting-on quality difficult to describe, but which is the great winner of the prizes of life. Napoleon could do anything in the art of war with his own hands, even to the making of gunpowder. (7)

Character, not ability, is most important

Marden conceded that Napoleon had his flaws. In a chapter on “Character is Power,” he wrote:

What is this principle that Napoleon and Webster lacked? Is it not a deathless loyalty to the highest ideal which the world has been able to produce up to the present date? This is what we admire and respect in strong men whose roots are deep in the ground and whose character is robust enough to keep them like oaks in their places when all around is whirling. (8)

Men of personality are the last to say die

By the time American actor Douglas Fairbanks published his self-help book, Laugh and Live (1917), the Napoleonic Wars were a distant memory, overshadowed by the Great War (World War I) then in progress. Napoleon appears only once, in a chapter called “Building of a Personality,” in which personality is defined as “the most perfect combination possible of man’s highest attributes.” Fairbanks helped to perpetuate the myth that Napoleon was short.

It is impossible to come into the presence of a personality without becoming immediately aware of it. It is reflected by people of small stature…poor physiques…homely visages, as well as men of the highest physical development. The great Napoleon was just above five feet while Lincoln towered over the six-foot line. Men of personality are the last to say die. Their store of combativeness carries them beyond their real span of existence either in years or achievement. (9)

Sex influence is more powerful than any substitute created by reason

Perhaps the oddest Napoleonic self-help lesson was drawn by Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, first published in 1937.

The pages of history are filled with the records of great leaders whose achievements may be traced directly to the influence of women who aroused the creative faculties of their minds through the stimulation of sex desire. Napoleon Bonaparte was one of these. When inspired by his first wife, Josephine, he was irresistible and invincible. When his ‘better judgment’ or reasoning faculty prompted him to put Josephine aside, he began to decline. His defeat and St. Helena were not far distant…. Napoleon was not the only man to discover that sex influence, from the right source, is more powerful than any substitute of expediency, which may be created by mere reason. (10)

Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful

By the mid-20th century, Napoleon was again being used as a cautionary tale, this time in the service of popular psychology. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), Dale Carnegie brought up Napoleon to illustrate his Rule 1, “Think and act cheerfully, and you will feel cheerful.”

Napoleon had everything men usually crave – glory, power, riches – yet he said at Saint Helena, ‘I have never known six happy days in my life.’ (11)

For more self-help lessons from Napoleon, consider what the newspapers said when he died.

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Samuel Smiles, Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (London, 1859), pp. 156-157.
Ibid., p. 157.
Samuel Smiles, The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles, edited by Thomas MacKay (New York, 1905), p. 4.
Orison Swett Marden, Pushing to the Front or Success Under Difficulties (New York, 1894), p. 3.
Ibid., p. 26.
Ibid., pp. 140-141.
Ibid., p. 225.
Ibid., p. 253.
Douglas Fairbanks, Laugh and Live (New York, 1917), p. 49.
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (Bombay, 1937), p. 271.
Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (New York, 1948), p. 96.

If you liked 10 Interesting Facts About Napoleon Bonaparte, you might enjoy these interesting facts about Napoleon’s family.

The Espousal of Jérôme Bonaparte and Catharina of Württemberg, by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1807. This painting depicts most of Napoleon’s family (Lucien is absent).

1. Letizia was a child bride.

Napoleon’s mother Letizia married Napoleon’s father Carlo Buonaparte on June 2, 1764, when she was only 13 years old (Carlo was 18). At the age of 14, Letizia gave birth to their first child, a son who died in infancy.

2. Joseph lived in the United States.

Napoleon’s older brother Joseph fled to the United States after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat. He rented a house in Philadelphia and bought an estate called Point Breeze in Bordentown, New Jersey. His mansion was said to be the most impressive house in the United States after the White House. He also owned land in northern New York State around what is now called Lake Bonaparte (Joseph named it Lake Diana). Joseph returned to Europe in 1832, but lived in the United States again in 1835-36 and 1837-39.

3. Lucien was a British prisoner-of-war.

In 1810, while attempting to sail from Italy to the United States, Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien and his family and servants were captured by the British. They were allowed to live comfortably on parole at Ludlow in Shropshire, and later at Thorngrove mansion in Grimley, Worcestershire. Lucien became a local celebrity, much like the French Bourbons who were also living in England at the time. Lucien and his family were released in 1814, when Napoleon was exiled to Elba. They moved to Rome.

4. Elisa was Paganini’s patron.

In 1807, Napoleon’s sister Elisa, Princess of Lucca and Piombino, appointed the Italian violin virtuoso and composer Niccolò Paganini as court violinist, conductor and captain of the gendarmes. Paganini gave violin lessons to Elisa’s husband Felice Bacciochi. He was also reportedly Elisa’s lover. When Elisa became Grand Duchess of Tuscany in 1809, she moved the court to Florence. Paganini left abruptly in early 1813, after showing up one evening to conduct the court orchestra wearing his brilliant captain’s uniform. When Elisa ordered him to change into an ordinary dress suit. Paganini refused. He finished the concert, paraded around the room a few times, and then left in a carriage for Milan. He never returned to Elisa’s court, despite her attempts to recall him.

5. Louis wrote a romance novel.

In 1812, the fifth Bonaparte child, Louis, published Marie ou les peines de l’amour, a two-volume romance novel set in Holland, of which Louis had briefly been King. In 1814, he released an updated version under the title Marie, ou les Hollandoises. The book appeared in English in early 1815 as Maria, Or, The Hollanders. Anticipating criticism, the publisher noted in the preface, “if [the author] should be refused a place among the most brilliant and most skilful of those who have endeavoured to please and to improve their fellow-creatures, [h]e is yet secure of his rank among the best-designing and most amiable.” (1) Louis’ mother Letizia said he “had written several romances, which she admired, and was sure would be generally esteemed, such as would be fit for young ladies to read.” (2)

6. Pauline had a son.

With her first husband Victoire Leclerc, Napoleon’s sister Pauline had a son in Milan on April 20, 1798. Napoleon, the boy’s godfather, named him Dermide after a character in his favourite epic, The Poems of Ossian. Pauline and Dermide accompanied Leclerc to Saint-Domingue (Haiti), where the latter died of yellow fever in 1802. In 1803 Pauline married Prince Camillo Borghese, a wealthy Roman nobleman. Pauline’s health was troubling her, so Borghese suggested that they visit the baths of Pisa. Pauline wanted to bring Dermide, but her husband advised against it. Instead the six-year-old stayed with Borghese’s brother. On August 14, 1804, in Pauline’s absence, Dermide died of fever and convulsions. Borghese at first tried to hide the news from his wife. When she found out, Pauline blamed Borghese for Dermide’s death. She called him “the butcher of my son.” (3) Pauline began to live separately from her husband. The two did not reconcile until shortly before Pauline’s death in 1825.

7. Caroline was Metternich’s lover.

Though Pauline is often noted for her love affairs, Napoleon’s youngest sister Caroline – the wife of General Joachim Murat – was also generous with her favours. In 1806 she began a dalliance with Clemens von Metternich, then Austrian ambassador to France. Neither cared deeply for the other. Metternich hoped to gain inside information about Napoleon, and Napoleon’s ministers wanted Caroline to pass along secrets about the Austrians. Caroline was, however, jealous by nature, and when Metternich later took up with Laure Junot, the wife of General Jean-Andoche Junot (another one of Caroline’s lovers), Caroline made sure General Junot found out about it. In 1813, Caroline resumed her liaison with Metternich, who was then Austrian foreign minister. Metternich arranged for the Murats to remain as King and Queen of Naples in exchange for Caroline’s betrayal of Napoleon to Austria. In 1815, after Napoleon was defeated and Murat was executed, Metternich tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission for Caroline to settle in Rome near her mother and siblings. When this failed, he ensured she could live in the castle of Frohsdorf, south of Vienna.

8. Jérôme’s wife lived into the 20th century.

In 1805, Napoleon made his youngest brother Jérôme end his brief marriage to the American Elizabeth (Betsy) Patterson and instead marry Princess Catharina of Württemberg. After Catharina’s death in 1835, Jérôme took up with a rich Italian widow named Justine (Giustina) Bartolini-Baldelli (maiden name Pecori-Suárez), who could conveniently pay off his many debts. They wed secretly in Florence in 1840. Jérôme was 56. Giustina was 29. At Jérôme’s insistence, it was a morganatic marriage, which meant his title and privileges as Prince of Montfort – granted by Catharina’s father – and his claims as a Bonaparte would not extend to Giustina or any children (they never had any). In 1847 they moved to France, where Jérôme’s nephew Louis Napoleon (the son of Louis) became President and later Napoleon III. Jérôme took a mistress and sent Giustina back to Florence, accusing her of adultery. After Jérôme’s death in 1860, Napoleon III granted Giustina a pension. She died in Florence on January 30, 1903, at the age of 91, having outlived all of Napoleon’s siblings, their spouses, and their children, with the sole exception of Jérôme’s and Catharina’s daughter Mathilde, who died on January 2, 1904, at the age of 83.

9. Marie Louise was good at pool.

Billiards was one of the most popular games in early 19th-century France and Napoleon’s second wife Marie Louise excelled at it. According to a member of Napoleon’s guard:

Marie Louise was a first-rate billiard-player. She beat all the men; but she was not afraid to stretch herself out across the billiard-table, as the men did, when she wanted to make a stroke, with me always on the watch to see what I could. She was frequently applauded. (4)

10. Napoleon’s son was related to the Bourbons.

Marie Louise’s father, Emperor Francis I of Austria, was a nephew of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, who was originally an Archduchess of Austria. This means that Marie Louise’s and Napoleon’s son, Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte – also known as the King of Rome, Napoleon II, or the Duke of Reichstadt – was a first cousin twice removed of Marie Antoinette’s and Louis XVI’s daughter Marie Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême. Thus Napoleon’s son was related to the House of Bourbon, the rulers of France before the French Revolution and after Napoleon’s fall from power. As Napoleon tells the American visitors to his birthday party in Napoleon in America, “My family is allied to the families of all the sovereigns of Europe, including the Duchess of Angoulême.”

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Louis Buonaparte, Maria; Or, The Hollanders, Vol. I (Boston, 1815), pp. ix-x.
Neil Campbell, Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba (London, 1869), p. 278.
Flora Fraser, Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte (London, 2009), p. 119.
Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue, (New York, 1929), p. 197.

At the Battle of Trafalgar, fought off the southwest coast of Spain on October 21, 1805, a British fleet led by Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet under Vice Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve. It was the most decisive naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. More than 4,800 people were killed, including Lord Nelson, and over 3,700 were wounded. The majority of the casualties were French and Spaniards. Traveller Robert Semple described the horrible scene at Cádiz, the closest Spanish port, a week after the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Battle of Trafalgar by J.M.W. Turner, 1806

Crossing the Bay of Cádiz

Soon after leaving the little creek on which el Puerto de Santa Maria is situated…some of the terrible effects of the late battle became visible. On the north-west side, between el Puerto and Rota, lay a large Spanish ship, the San Raphael, seventy-four [guns], broadside upon the rocks, bilged and the waves breaking over her. At the bottom of the bay was a large French ship, the name of which I have forgotten, aground, but upright. In the centre towards Cadiz lay a group of battered vessels, five or six in number, bored with cannon shot; some with two lower masts standing, others with only one and a piece of a bowsprit, and one without a single stump remaining from stem to stern….

As the wind was contrary to our crossing over, the boat was obliged to make several tacks. In one of these we approached so near the shore that we plainly discerned two dead bodies which the sea had thrown up. Presently one of a number of men on horseback, who for this sole purpose patroled the beach, came up, and having observed the bodies, made a signal to others on foot among the bushes. Several of them came down, and immediately began to dig a hole in the sand, into which they dragged the dead. Such is a faint account of the scenes to be observed in the bay of Cadiz eight days after the battle. (1)

In Cádiz after the Battle of Trafalgar

[I]n Cadiz, the consequences, though equally apparent, were of a very different nature. Ten days after the battle, they were still employed in bringing ashore the wounded; and spectacles were hourly displayed at the wharfs and through the streets sufficient to shock every heart not yet hardened to scenes of blood and of human sufferings. When, by the carelessness of the boatmen, and the surging of the sea, the boats struck against the stone piers, a horrid cry which pierced the soul arose from the mangled wretches on board. Many of the Spanish gentry assisted in bringing them ashore, with symptoms of much compassion; yet as they were finely dressed, it had something of the appearance of ostentation, if there could be ostentation at such a moment. It need not be doubted that an Englishman lent a willing hand to bear them up the steps to their litters; yet the slightest false step made them shriek out, and I even yet shudder at the remembrance of the sound.

On the tops of the pier the scene was affecting. The wounded were carrying away to the hospitals in every shape of human misery, whilst crowds of Spaniards either assisted or looked on with signs of horror. Meanwhile their companions who had escaped unhurt walked up and down with folded arms and downcast eyes, whilst women sat on heaps of arms, broken furniture and baggage, with their heads bent between their knees. I had no inclination to follow the litters of the wounded; yet I learned that every hospital in Cadiz was already full, and that convents and churches were forced to be appropriated to the reception of the remainder.

If leaving the harbour I passed through the town to the point, I still beheld the terrible effects of the battle. As far as the eye could reach, the sandy side of the Isthmus, bordering on the Atlantic, was covered with masts and yards, the wrecks of ships, and here and there the bodies of the dead. Among others, I noticed a topmast marked with the name of the Swiftsure, and the broad arrow of England, which only increased my anxiety to know how far the English had suffered; the Spaniards still continuing to affirm that they have lost their chief admiral and half their fleet.

While surrounded by these wrecks I mounted on the cross-trees of a mast which had been thrown ashore, and casting my eyes over the ocean beheld, at a great distance, several masts and portions of wreck still floating about. As the sea was now almost calm, with a slight swell, the effect produced by these objects had in it something of a sublime melancholy, and touched the soul with a remembrance of the sad vicissitudes of human affairs. The portions of floating wreck were visible from the ramparts; yet not a boat dared to venture out to examine or endeavour to tow them in, such was the apprehensions which still filled their minds, of the enemy. (2)

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Robert Semple, Observations on a Journey Through Spain and Italy to Naples; and Thence to Smyrna and Constantinople, Vol. I (London, 1807), pp. 147-149.
Ibid., pp. 154-157.

John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1818

John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, liked to measure things – the width of a river, the distance between two points – by counting his steps. “I have found, by experiments frequently repeated, that my ordinary pace is two feet six inches and eighty-eight one-hundredths of an inch, or about twenty-nine French inches, and that in my ordinary pace I walk one hundred and twenty steps to a minute.” (1) When Adams became Secretary of State in 1817, his fascination with measurements coincided with the desire of Congress to establish a uniform standard for weights and measures across the United States. After three-and-a-half years of obsessive work (which frustrated his wife, Louisa), John Quincy Adams produced his Report Upon Weights and Measures. He thought it would be his most important literary accomplishment.

Fixing the standard of weights and measures

The importance of everyone in the country using the same system of weights and measures was recognized by the founders of the United States. The Constitution gave Congress the power to “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures” (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5). However, there was no agreement as to which weights and measures should become the national standard. Each of the original thirteen states was using its own weights and measures, which differed from those used by other states. No Congressman wanted to be blamed for changing his constituents’ customary way of measuring things.

All of the early presidential messages to Congress included an appeal for legislation to establish a uniform system of weights and measures. In 1790, at the urging of George Washington, the House of Representatives asked Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to draw up a plan. Jefferson put forward two options: one a refinement of the existing English system of weights and measures; the other a new decimal system based on the foot. Jefferson’s report was transmitted by the House to the Senate, where a select committee concluded that, since Britain and France were each considering national standards of measure which could become a universal standard, it was not desirable, “at present, to introduce any alteration in the measures and weights which are now used in the United States.” (2) In 1796, the House passed “An act directing certain experiments to be made to ascertain uniform standards of weights and measures for the United States,” but the bill was never taken up by the Senate.

In his December 1816 message to Congress, President James Madison again called for action. In response, in March 1817 the Senate passed a resolution directing the Secretary of State to prepare “a statement relative to the regulations and standards for weights and measures in the several States, and relative to the proceedings in foreign countries, for establishing uniformity in weights and measures, together with such propositions relative thereto, as may be proper to be adopted in the United States.” (3)

When John Quincy Adams took up his post as Secretary of State in the administration of President James Monroe in September 1817, he found the Senate’s instruction waiting for him. He embraced the task with enthusiasm.

The measurement inquiries of John Quincy Adams

An apothecary’s balance

John Quincy Adams had been interested in the subject for many years. During his post as the US Minister to Russia (1809-1814), Adams began – as a hobby – an investigation of Russian weights and measures, as described in his diary entry of June 30, 1810.

I wrote something this day but still gave an undue proportion of the time to my inquiries concerning weights, measures, and coins. My precise object is to ascertain those of Russia, with their relative proportions to those used in America. But I find it extremely difficult, and indeed, as yet have not succeeded in fixing accurately my ideas on the subject. I procured some time since a Russian nest of brass weights, from one pound to a quarter of a zolotnik, and a pair of scales. I have compared them with an apothecary’s scale and weights which we brought with the medicine-chest from America. By this comparison I found that the Russian pound was equal to 6312¾ grains [troy]. But all the smaller Russian weights were incorrect, some weighing more, and some less, than the proportion. The scales, too, are so coarsely made that they scarcely indicate any variation of less than a quarter zolotnik, which is the smallest of the weights they use among the silversmiths. My apothecary’s balance was much more accurate, and much more sensible to small weights. There are, however, differences of full half a grain in several of them.

Maudru, in his Russian Grammar, says that the Russian pound is equal to four hundred and nine grammes of the new French standard, and Webster, in his Dictionary gives 15.44 grains troy weight for the gramme. Supposing both these correct, the Russian pound will be equal to 6316.596 grains troy – about three and three-quarters of a grain more than I found it by the comparison of the weights and scales. But I had no English weight of more than two drachms, or 120 grains, and all my apothecary’s weights together amount only to 301¾ grains. I was therefore obliged, by means of these, to make other heavier weights, to compare with the larger portions of the Russian pound, and, having no smaller weight than one-quarter of a grain, I could come within that only by conjecture. These circumstances, together with the slight difference in my smallest weights, accounting for the difference of three and three-quarter grains between my experiment and the numbers given by Maudru and Webster, I have considered them as correct, and accordingly take the Russian pound to be = to 6316.596 grains English troy weight. (4)

By 1812, Adams was comparing Russian and English weights, measures and coins to those of the metric system, which had been introduced in France in 1799.

I have been for years uncertain of the exact comparison between the length of the French and English foot; which is yet essential to ascertain that of all the new French weights, measures and coins. (5)

His study of metric measures “absorb[ed] all the time that has no indispensable occupation, and even encroach[ed] much upon that which ought to have one.” (6) Adams’ wife Louisa complained:

Mr. Adams too often passed [the evening] alone studying weights and measures practically that he might write a work on them: no article however minute escaped his observation and to this object he devoted all his time. (7)

The Congressional resolution gave Adams the opportunity to write his work.

Swallowed up in calculations

The State Department inherited by John Quincy Adams was small, with no more than a dozen employees. Adams was responsible for consulting with the President, making departmental decisions, meeting with foreign dignitaries, writing instructions to American ministers abroad, drafting treaties, supervising the department’s day-to-day operations, running the patent office, meeting with Congressmen, responding to Congressional inquiries, recording Congressional laws and resolutions, and overseeing the census. With such a heavy workload, Adams had to undertake the weights and measures report in the little free time he had, which meant early in the morning and on vacations.

Adams began by reading Jefferson’s 1790-91 report, and by asking the states to submit information about their weights and measures. By the summer of 1818, he was drafting his report, though he found his time so absorbed by “the researches necessary to prepare a draft upon weights and measures…that I can make scarce any progress with the report itself.” (8) He was also frustrated by the unrelenting demands of his position. In November 1818 he wrote:

The pressure of current business upon me is so unintermitting, that since the close of the last session of Congress I have scarcely been able to write a line upon this subject [weights and measures], and here is another session to commence in ten days, when everything will be still more hurried. (9)

As the summer of 1819 approached, Adams hoped he would “have leisure, or at least some control of my own time” to work on the report, but he met “with almost constant disappointment.” (10) In July, he finally found time to devote to the report, which meant being drawn into a rabbit hole.

I was swallowed up in calculations and meditations upon coins, currency, and exchange, the only excuse for which that I can devise is the connection of the subject with weights and measures, upon which I am called to report to the Senate….

The deeper I go, the deeper and darker appears the deep beneath, and although the want of time will soon force me to break away from the subject without even finding its bottom, yet it now fascinates and absorbs me to the neglect of the most necessary business. (11)

After further interruptions, in the summer of 1820 Adams set out to write his report.

I now sit down, the moment after rising, to my task, in which I write slowly, with great difficulty, and much to my own dissatisfaction. My division of the subject remains as I struck it out on first beginning the report three years since. But my plan and many of my opinions vary as I write. My views of the subject multiply. Different aspects present themselves of the same materials. I approve and disapprove of the new French system. I admire its design and perseverance with which it has been pursued. I think it erroneous in some of its principles and impracticable in many of its provisions. The enquiry into natural standards has led me into speculations which by many may be thought ridiculous or absurd. I am going into a commentary upon the old English statutes relating to weights and measures, which will be dry and tedious, and am in constant danger of consuming the little time left me for preparing the report without being ready for it at the next meeting of Congress. (12)

Instead of going on vacation with his family, John Quincy Adams spent July and August in steamy Washington working on the report, to the frustration of both his father and his wife. On August 18, Louisa wrote to their son John Adams:

Your father [is] more deeply immersed in business than ever and less capable of participating in any domestic enjoyments…his whole mind is so intent on weights and measures that you would suppose his very existence depended on this report. (13)

In the fall of 1820, the Adams family moved out of the house they had been renting at 4½ and C streets and into a brick townhouse at 1333 F Street. While Louisa managed a renovation that nearly doubled the size of the house, John Quincy Adams continued to work on his report. On October 25, he wrote:

We are repairing the house into which we have removed and at the same time building an addition to it, which multiplies inconveniences while my Report upon weights and measures allows me scarcely a moment even for thinking of anything else. (14)

A mass of knowledge

On February 22, 1821, three and a half years after beginning the project, John Quincy Adams submitted his Report upon Weights and Measures to Congress. Former president John Adams wrote to his son:

Though I cannot say and perhaps shall never be able to say that I have read it, yet I have turned over Leaves of it enough to see that it is a Mass of historical, philosophical, chemical, mathematical and political knowledge which no Industry in this country but yours could have collected in so short a time. (15)

It was a massive work, including a detailed history of weights and measures in France, England and the various states of the union. Despite all the information presented, John Quincy Adams recommended that “no innovation upon the existing weights and measures should be attempted.” (16) This was not because he thought new uniform measures were undesirable. Rather, he doubted whether Congress had the authority to undertake such an overreaching project. “The means of execution for exacting and obtaining the conformity of individuals to the ordinances of the law, in the case of weights and measures, belong to that class of powers which…are reserved to the separate states.” (17) And if Congress did try to fix a standard, it would be up to the states to implement and enforce “a law of great and universal innovation upon the habits and usages of the people. Of such a law the transgressions could not fail to be numerous: any doubt of the authority of the legislator would stimulate to systematic resistance against it: and the power of enforcing its execution being in other hands, naturally disposed to sympathise with the offender, the whole system would fall into ruin, and afford a new demonstration of the impotence of human legislation against the laws of nature, in the habits of man.” (18)

Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessaries of life, to every individual of human society. They enter into the economical arrangements and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry; to the distribution and security of every species of property; to every transaction of trade and commerce; to the labours of the husbandman; to the ingenuity of the artificer; the studies of the philosopher; to the researches of the antiquarian; to the navigation of the mariner, and the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace, and all the operations of war. The knowledge of them, as in established use, is among the first elements of education, and is often learnt by those who learn nothing else, not even to read and write. This knowledge is riveted in the memory by the habitual application of it to the employments of men throughout life. Every individual, or at least every family, has the weights and measures used in the vicinity, and recognized by the custom of the place. To change all this at once, is to affect the well-being of every man, woman, and child, in the community. It enters every house, it cripples every hand. No legislator can attempt it with any prospect of success, or any regard to justice, but upon two indispensable conditions: one, that he shall furnish every individual citizen easy access to the new standards which take the place of the old ones; and the other, that he shall enable him to know the exact proportion between the old and the new. … But, were the authority of Congress unquestionable to set aside the whole existing system of metrology, and introduce a new one, it is believed that the French system has not yet attained that perfection which would justify so extraordinary an effort of legislative power at this time. (19)

Adams thought it would be great if Britain, France, Spain and the United States (all of whom were considering new weights and measures) could have a uniform system among them. “Could they agree upon one result, the advantages of that agreement would be great to each of them separately, and still greater in all their intercourse with one another.” He proposed that the President “be requested to communicate…with the governments of those nations, upon the subject of weights and measures, with reference to the principles of uniformity as applicable to them.” He didn’t have in mind a treaty, “but it is hoped that the comparison of ideas, and the mutual reciprocation of observation and reflection, may terminate in concurrent acts, by which, if even universal uniformity should be found impracticable, that which would be obtained by each nation would at least approximate nearer to perfection.” (20)

In the meantime, if Congress wanted to do something to establish greater uniformity of weights and measures within the United States, Adams recommended that it “declare what are the weights and measures to which the laws of the United States refer as the legal weights and measures of the Union,” and “procure positive standards of brass, copper, or such other materials as may be deemed advisable, of the yard, bushel, wine and beer gallons, troy and avoirdupois weights; to be deposited in such public office at the seat of government as may be thought most suitable.” (21) He also recommended giving exact duplicates of the metal standards to the governments of every state and territory.

For the purposes of the law, it will be sufficient to declare that the English foot, being one-third part of the standard yard of 1601 in the exchequer of Great Britain, is the standard unit of the measures and weights of the United States; that an inch is a twelfth part of this foot; that thirty-two cubic feet of spring water, at the temperature of 56 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, constitute the ton weight of 2,000 pounds avoirdupois; that the gross hundred of avoirdupois weight consists of 112 pounds…; that the troy pound consists of 5,760 grains, 7,000 of which grains are of equal weight with the avoirdupois pound; that the bushel is a vessel of capacity of 2,150.42 cubic inches, the wine gallon a measure of 231, and the ale gallon a measure of 282 cubic inches.

The various modes of division of these measures and weights, the ell measure, and the application of the foot to itinerary, superficial and solid measure, producing the perch, rood, furlong, mile, acre, and cord of wood, may be left to the established usage, or specifically declared, as may be judged most expedient. The essential parts of the whole system are, the foot measure, spring water, the avoirdupois pound, and the troy grain. (22)

Should the fortunate period arrive when the improvement in the moral and political condition of man will admit of the introduction of one universal standard for the use of all mankind, it is hoped and believed that the [platinum] metre will be that measure. But, as the principle respectfully recommended in this report is that of excluding all innovation or change, for the present, of our existing weights and measures, it is with a view to uniformity that the preference is given, for the choice of a new standard, to the same metal of which that measure consists which has been the standard of our forefathers from the first settlement of the English colonies, and is exactly coeval with them. (23)

John Quincy Adams commented on the final report in his diary:

It is, after all the time and pains that I have bestowed upon it a hurried and imperfect work; but I have no reason to expect that I shall ever be able to accomplish any literary labour more important to the best ends of human exertion, public utility, or upon which the remembrance of my children may dwell with more satisfaction. (24)

Louisa wrote:

Thank God we hear no more of Weights and Measures. (25)

Congress took no action on the report. Three years later, Britain adopted the system of imperial units, abandoning the English units John Quincy Adams had championed in his Report Upon Weights and Measures.

And, with the report out of the way, John Quincy Adams was free to concentrate fictionally on his next challenge: dealing with Napoleon’s arrival in the United States after his escape from St. Helena.

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The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

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Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1873), p. 353.
Ralph W. Smith, The Federal Basis for Weights and Measures, National Bureau of Standards Circular 593 (Washington, 1958), p. 5.
John Quincy Adams, Report upon Weights and Measures (Washington, 1821), p. 5.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1873), p. 353.
Ibid., p. 353.
Ibid., p. 354.
Jane Hampton Cook, American Phoenix: John Quincy and Louisa Adams, the War of 1812, and the Exile that Saved American Independence (Nashville, 2013), p. 185
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IV (Philadelphia, 1875), p. 123.
Ibid., p. 159.
Ibid., pp. 375-376.
Ibid., pp. 402-403.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. V (Philadelphia, 1875), pp. 402-403.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Adams, 18 August 1820,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-3828.
John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 – 20 March 1821, 10 November 1824 – 6 December 1824, page 437 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2004. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries
“From John Adams to John Quincy Adams, 10 May 1821,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-3898. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-3898
John Quincy Adams, Report upon Weights and Measures (Washington, 1821), p. 125.
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., p. 121.
Ibid., pp. 119-120.
Ibid., p. 125.
Ibid., p. 125.
Ibid., pp. 126-127.
Ibid., pp. 132-133.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. V, pp. 132-133.
Margery M. Heffron, Louisa Catherine: The Other Mrs. Adams (New Haven, 2014), p. 320.

Bust of Napoleon, after a model by Antonio Canova, circa 1808-1814. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Roger Prigent, 2015

In the years after Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1815 defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, London hosted numerous exhibits related to the fallen French Emperor. Napoleon’s carriage was displayed, his battles formed the subjects of panoramas, the events of his life were depicted, and his portrait and various effects appeared on show. The oddest exhibit was a girl with Napoleon in her eyes.

A sort of miracle

The girl was named Josephine Louis. She was born around 1825 to a peasant family in the Lorraine region of France. By the time she was two and a half years old, Josephine was the talk of Paris.

It is said that [her eyes] exhibit in distinct letters, which grow in size as she advances in age, the words ‘NAPOLEON EMPEREUR,’ in capitals. The word Napoleon is above, and the word Empereur below the sight of the eye, which is a lively blue. She has been visited by the most eminent anatomists who were unable to detect any deception in appearance. The fact seems to be strongly attested; and is of course, wholly unaccounted for. The people seem to look upon it as a sort of miracle; while the more reflecting regard it merely as one of those sports of nature, which are so fantastic, and at times so amazing. (1)

François Magendie and Georges Cuvier were among the learned men who examined her. A letter printed in the London Medical Gazette, dated Paris, May 26, 1828, observed:

[T]here appears to be no doubt that the effect is natural, and not, as you suppose, by the operation of tattooing, or puncture. (2)

The Countess de Boigne described the cause to which the parents attributed their daughter’s unusual eyes.

In 1828, or perhaps it was in 1827, a little girl of two years old was brought to me with bright blue eyes which seemed in no way remarkable at first sight. When, however, the eyes were examined more carefully, it was seen that the iris was composed of little filaments forming white letters on a blue background placed around the pupil, and making the words ‘Napoleon Emperor.’ The word ‘Napoleon’ was equally distinct in either eye; the first letters of the word ‘Emperor’ were indistinct in one eye and the last letters in the other. The little girl was very pretty, and seemed to enjoy excellent sight.

Her mother, who was a Lorraine peasant, told me very simply what she considered to be the cause of this strange freak of nature. A brother, to whom she was deeply attached, had drawn a bad number in the conscription, and as he went away had given her a newly-struck coin of twenty sous, asking her to keep it in memory of him. A short time afterwards she learnt that his regiment was passing three leagues away from her village, and she went to the spot to see him for a moment. As she returned she was exhausted with fatigue and thirst, and stopped at a tavern half way upon her road to drink a glass of beer. When it was necessary to pay, she perceived that she had given her brother all the money she had upon her, and had nothing left but the precious coin of twenty sous, which she always carried upon her person. She asked for credit, but the inn-keeper was pitiless. She therefore sacrificed her poor treasure with regrets, and came home in despair. Her tears flowed incessantly. The next Sunday her husband went in search of the coin, and succeeded in restoring it to her. When he brought it back, her joy was so keen that the child leaped in her womb, and, in her own words, she left ‘faint with delight.’

The little girl bore in her eyes the inscription upon the coin. I have no intention of writing a physiological treatise to explain the possibility of this fact; I merely affirm that I have seen it, and that any fraud was impossible. The doctor in the neighbouring village had proposed to show the child for money, and the mother accompanied him. The Government objected to any public performance, advertisements were not permitted, and their stay at Paris was cut short. (3)

A silver franc from 1810 with the inscription “NAPOLEON EMPEREUR”

The Countess must have garbled the tale, as it is impossible for a Napoleonic coin to have been freshly minted at the time of the mother’s pregnancy – a decade into the Bourbon restoration. More simply, newspapers reported that “the mother of the child lost a favourite brother during the late war, who, on his departure for the army, gave her a franc-piece as a keepsake, which piece she used to be continually looking at when pregnant with this present child.” (4)

Exhibit at the Royal Bazaar

What the Countess did get right is that the government of Charles X would not allow the little girl to be exhibited in Paris. Thus, in July 1828, Josephine’s parents took her on a steamship to London.

The Marchioness of Downshire is to show the child to the King before the public can see her; the parents have letters to all the chief medical men in London, and to his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, who had been previously made acquainted with this most surprising phenomenon. (5)

By August, the girl with Napoleon in her eyes was on display for a fee at the Royal Bazaar on Oxford Street. The Bazaar had opened just a few months earlier, under the proprietorship of silversmith Thomas Hamlet. He billed it as “the most elegant and splendid establishment in London, having constantly on sale a brilliant assortment of fashionable articles of every description at the very lowest prices.” (6) It also showed dioramas.

An ad for the Royal Bazaar exhibit of the girl with Napoleon in her eyes, The Morning Post (London), August 19, 1828

We have just seen, at the Royal Bazaar, the little Josephine, from Paris, on whose eyes are inscribed the words Napoleon Empereur and Empereur Napoleon; and certainly it is (not to pun) a very extraordinary sight. The child is a pretty and lively girl, of about three years of age, with a rather capacious forehead, and light, or we should say, not very dark, blue eyes. Radiating about the pupil of each in the iris, removed a small distance from the pupil, and almost touching the outward circle, appear the characters alluded to. In the left eye, the word Napoleon is uppermost; in the right, the word Empereur. The colour of the letters is almost white, but shot through, like what is called silk, by the blue of the crystalline humour. This, and the motion of the eye, renders the whole inscription a little indistinct; but such parts as NAP and other separate letters are tolerably obvious, without the slightest aid from the imagination of the beholder. (7)

[A]t first sight of the child [the letters] appear like rays, which render the eyes very vivacious and sparkling. The accuracy of the inscriptions is much assisted by the stillness of the eye, on its being directed upwards, as to an object on the ceiling of the room, &c.; and with this aid the several letters may be traced with the naked eye. (8)

Not everyone was immediately able to discern the inscription.

A casual observer would doubtless notice that the appearance of the organ was unusual, but it would not be without a minute investigation that he would be able to trace the letters forming the name described, and even then, allowance must then be made for a fanciful imagination. Upon looking as attentively as we were able, we certainly think we could trace the letters EMP and NAP, but visitors will be grievously deceived if they expect to find them as distinct as the letters upon their direction cards. (9)

At least one poor fellow couldn’t see it at all.

An old gentleman, not very clear sighted, having visited this wonder the other day, and having failed to discover anything like printing or letters on the child’s right iris, proceeded to examine her lip…but the little girl undeceived him and said, ‘It not dere, Sir – it is altogeder my eye.’ (10)

These are the only reported words of young Josephine, who was described as having “marked and rather interesting features” and being “of a slight form, and short for her age.” (11) There is no report on how the three-year-old felt about sitting still for long periods with her eyes open so strangers could peer into them.

Not a unique case

“With the help of a little imagination, something like letters may occasionally be discovered”

The London Medical Gazette noted:

There are various instances on record in which individuals have been said to have words (generally a name) marked upon the iris. For the most part, these individuals have had light-coloured irides, marked with lines of various figure, and generally of darker colour; and, with the help of a little imagination, something like letters may occasionally be discovered. In the present case, the iris is of a light blue or grey colour, and is traversed by lines of a lighter colour, or nearly white. Among the irregular figures thus formed, a willing spectator may read Napoleon Empereur – or anything else. (12)

Shortly after Josephine arrived in London, a letter appeared in The Morning Post stating that, according to the Diary of John Evelyn, in April 1701 “a Dutch boy, about nine years old, was carried by his parents to Shewe, who had about the iris of one eye the letters Deus Meus, and of the other Elohim in the Hebrew character.” (13)

And before long the Manchester Guardian claimed that a boy, age 11, “had lately been at Manchester, having the name of his father, ‘John Wood,’…perfectly legible on the iris of his right eye, and the date of his birth, ‘1817,’ on that of his left!” (14)

The girl with Napoleon in her eyes was exhibited at the Royal Bazaar until at least February of 1829. On May 27, 1829 the Royal Bazaar was destroyed by fire. It was rebuilt and reopened later that year. There is no word on what happened to young Josephine.

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The Josephine Delusion: A Woman Who Thought She Was Napoleon’s Wife

Katharine A. Ware, ed., The Bower of Taste, Vol. I (Boston, 1828), p. 763.
The London Medical Gazette, Vol. II (London, 1828), p. 311.
Adèle d’Osmond, Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne, Vol. III, edited by M. Charles Nicoullaud (New York, 1908), pp. 185-187.
The Morning Chronicle (London), July 30, 1828.
Ibid.
The Age (London), November 16, 1828.
Berrow’s Worcester Journal (Worcester, UK), August 14, 1828.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Vol. VIII (London, 1828), p. 186.
Cherokee Phoenix (New Echota, Georgia), November 12, 1828.
John Bull (London), August 25, 1828.
Cherokee Phoenix (New Echota, Georgia), November 12, 1828.
The London Medical Gazette, Vol. II (London, 1828), p. 311.
The Morning Post (London), July 31, 1828.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Vol. VIII (London, 1828), p. 186.

Do you make a packing list before a trip? Do you take a couple of small suitcases, or one large one? Do you fold or roll your clothes, or just shove them in? If you were wealthy in the 19th century, these were things you didn’t have to worry about, since servants did the packing for you and carried your bags as well. That’s why Joseph Bonaparte is able to travel with mountains of luggage when he and Napoleon set out on a tour of the United States in Napoleon in America. As railway travel became widely available in the mid-1800s, more common folk had to figure out how to pack. Many 19th-century packing tips sound remarkably like those of today.

These folks could use some packing tips.

Miseries of Travelling: The Overloaded Coach, Thomas Rowlandson, 1807. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959

Remember the goal

[J]udging by the remarkable results one sees, packing is the vaguest possible term applied to any method of getting one’s possessions into the receptacles provided for them.

With many young ladies, whose only idea is to avoid crushing, it means having the largest possible trunks, and laying their possessions neatly in them, one on the top of each other, entirely ignoring the vacant sides and corners. With the majority of young men, on the contrary, the predominant idea is to take nothing but absolute necessaries, and to squeeze them into the smallest possible compass; which laudable desire they carry out by cramming everything into a small valise, utterly regardless of the consequences, and then standing upon it till the clothes are sufficiently crushed together to enable the key to be turned.

If we could only combine in ourselves the merits of these two types of packers, our trunks would indeed be models of perfection. Let us remember then that, in packing, the ideal we have to aim at is to get our possessions into the smallest possible compass consistently with the least possible crushing; and the problem before us is, how is this to be done? (1)

Take as little as possible

Honoré Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, circa 1862-64. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

In travelling, take the least amount of luggage that you can manage with, and this should be properly directed. Woollen stockings are preferable to cotton; the latter cut the feet in a long walk; worsted socks, or cotton stockings with worsted feet, are the best. Gaiters are useful in wet weather to keep the socks clean. To protect the eyes from dust and cinders while riding in railway carriages, black glass spectacles are useful. (2)

Gather everything that needs to be packed

Before beginning, it is always advisable to collect all the things that have to be packed; in fact, it is impossible to do our work satisfactorily in any other way. When everything is put together, you can judge how much space will be required, and can then pay your visit to the box-room and select the trunk best suited to your requirements. Sometimes, however, this process has to be revised; in arranging a tour, for instance, in which you intend to leave the line of railways, and consequently may sometimes have difficulties with your luggage, you will have to consider first what sized trunk you can take, and then make up your mind to content yourself with only just what you can pack into it. (3)

Choose appropriate luggage

Travelers who appear to have followed 19th-century packing tips

Midland Railway of England poster by Edward Penfield, circa 1890-1920. Source: Boston Public Library

It is a strange fact that ladies almost always prefer a trunk of some sort or other to a portmanteau…but the adherents of leather valises have this argument on their side: that in the course of a tour one never knows into what sort of inconvenient vehicles one’s luggage will be expected to go; and any kind of leather bag adapts itself to unlikely holes and corners, which would not accommodate the straight sides and square corners of a trunk.…

There is a good deal to be said, however, for trunks, when visiting friends or going to only one or two places. They require much less careful packing to avoid crushing; and it is always evident which is at the top and which is the bottom, so that one never has the annoyance which can sometimes happen with a portmanteau, of finding, after carefully packing all one’s heavy goods at the bottom, that we have had it wrong side up all the time; but this advantage is rather nullified by the perversity of railway porters, who, unless the trunk is very heavy, lift it about by one handle, and finally leave it standing on end, so that all one’s care to put the heavy things at the bottom is of very little use. (4)

Write down what you put in each bag

[Those] who anticipate packing a trunk for a vacation trip may gain some suggestion from the following description of how one woman does it.

First she makes a list of what she wants to put in a certain trunk. She travels a great deal, and she always takes two small trunks in preference to one large one. She is system itself in everything she undertakes, and so she has reduced the art of packing to a science. She has an awning cloth bag, into which she slips her music. These bags she puts in the bottom of her trunk, with articles of underwear. She saves her old sheets, and tears them in two, using them to pin her nicest dresses in. After the trunk is packed, the list of articles is pasted in the trunk lid, and she keeps a duplicate list in her satchel. In this way she knows exactly the contents of each trunk. This arrangement serves the purpose of jogging her memory when she is packing, and in case she should lose her trunks she knows what is in them. A troublesome experience with a transfer company caused her to adopt this precaution. (5)

Pack in this order

Having arranged at the bottom of the trunk all the music and books, except time tables, guide books, and others which are in constant use, take care that the interstices between them are well filled up with small soft articles, such as stockings; not only does this economize space, it saves the books from injury.…

Next to books should come linen, which is heavy, and will not injure by crushing; but, of course, if you are packing for a tour…articles required every day, whether heavy or light, must be put at the top.…

Collars and cuffs must be packed at the bottom with the linen.… They should be laid side by side, lengthwise, between two articles of linen, say two nightdresses, and then, nightdresses and all, rolled up; the collars will come out perfectly clean and uncrushed, and the nightdresses will be none the worse for being rolled instead of packed flat.

Next in order come rather lighter articles: dressing-gown, plain skirts, and such like; but these large articles cannot be squeezed into corners, they must be as far as possible spread out flat, and this involves leaving the sides and corners vacant, making convenient niches for sponge bags, scent-bottles, work-case and shoes.… [Boots] must be covered in some way, and the device of wrapping them in paper is both inconvenient and untidy. Bags are very little trouble to make, and add much to one’s comfort in travelling.

By the end of a tour, or a sojourn by the sea, one has generally collected a number of fragile treasures, the packing of which without breaking it is a difficult and anxious task. If small enough, they can be greatly protected by being stowed inside the boots, the stiff leather of which forms a shield around them. (6)

Don’t crush dresses & bonnets

The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth), James Tissot, circa 1876. Source: Wikimedia Commons

We next come to dresses, the most difficult part of the whole matter, and especially difficult to give any advice about, as each new fashion requires a completely new style of packing. It is always advisable, on getting a new dress home, to unfold it carefully and observe the way the dressmaker has folded it.… Some people think that dresses and mantles are the least crushed by being rolled up instead of folded; this applies particularly to velvet or plush, which is completely spoiled by creasing. The dress should be folded as smoothly as possible, and only just as much as is necessary to go in to the length of the box, and then very evenly rolled up.…

Bonnets are as great a difficulty as dresses, and it saves a great deal of trouble to have a separate bonnet box or basket; but, of course, when the amount of luggage has to be restricted this is impossible; and one has to make the best of the difficulty by packing the bonnet in a cardboard box in the trunk; or if even this much space cannot be spared, by so arranging the heavier goods as to leave a space at one end in which to put the bonnet, protecting it from injury by a sort of barricade of large articles, which, as they extend the whole length of the box, will be kept in place, and so will not slip down on the bonnet. (7)

Leave space for souvenirs

In travelling, whether by sea or land, it is well, if practicable, not to fill one’s trunk quite full; even on a long voyage one always puts in at a few ports, and visitors to a strange land are always tempted to carry away some souvenirs of their visit; but if the luggage does not contain a spare inch of room, these relics are a dreadful encumbrance. (8)

Label your luggage

Let your name and destination appear legibly on your luggage; and if you wish to be safe against all chances of loss, put your name and address inside also of each package. Picture to yourself the trunk lying on the road, left in the corner of an office, or sent out to a wrong direction, and imagine what you would then wish should be on or in it, that it might be correctly and speedily sent to you. What you would then wish you had done, do before you start. Let the label be of a strong material, and firmly attached to the package. (9)

How not to pack

Steamboat Travel on the Hudson River, Pavel Petrovich Svinin, 1811-1813. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1942

Lest you’re tempted to disregard these packing tips, consider the cautionary tale of one gentleman.

I had, as is my custom in the afternoon, left all my minor commissions unexecuted up to 2 o’clock of the day of my departure. I had already travelled a few miles by land and a few by water that morning and reached New York only two hours before the departure of the steamboat. Then the hurry of buying, paying, forgetting, remembering, packing up, bolting my dinner, paying the bill – thermometer 82 degrees – two cambric handkerchiefs and one silk one wanting to be hung out to dry. In short, the departure of a comet occasions less fuss and perspiration than my departure from New York did.

The porter of the hotel had burglariously entered my room, and taken my baggage to the boat, as I was informed. I made myself happy in the expectation that I had packed everything carefully up, and five minutes before four made one more pop upstairs, to see how the room looked without shirts, vests, trousers, et cetera, occupying each chair in the room, as though they were sitting up for company. No, said I to myself, I have packed up everything. I shall see nothing there but that rascally narrow bed, not broad enough, by half a league, for a fertile imagination; and it is fortunate – for the miserable side pocket of my surtout is full of handkerchiefs, and my trousers are crammed with receipts, small change, barley sugar, and tooth brushes; so that I can scarce walk up stairs.

Bang went the door, and, horror upon horror! Lo! A clean shirt on the pillow, which I had intended to regale my feverish shoulders with, just before I went on board; next, my razors, cake of soap, pot of Naples soap, tooth brush, nail brush, hair brush, all arrayed on the table by the provident chamber-maid, who had brought them to light from the drawer where I had forgotten them. Here was enough, and to spare, to capsize the greatest statesman in China. I was a lost man. Oh, my dear trunk, and sac de nuit, thought I, if I had you here once more, I should be in danger of laying my back on this wretched bed, and my legs on a couple of chairs at the foot of it, tonight. All this passed in less than a minute, besides a great many carriages that I heard rattling along, and heartily did I wish myself in them, or out of them, or anywhere but in such a quandary.

At length, remembering that time and the steamboat wait for no man, I desperately seized a newspaper, and I stuffed shirt, and all the barbarous paraphernalia before me into it, and with giant strides gained the steamboat just at neap tide, when the last ebb of the natives had withdrawn itself into the bosom of the population on the wharf. Mr. Fidget, said the captain, it was touch and go with you. Is there any air to be had on board, I inquired. Go on the poop deck, he replied; and there I went and sat myself down, thankful that the dreadful business of getting out of New York was over.

When the river breeze had somewhat cooled me, and I began to feel calm, I found time to observe that…I was seated next to a very amiable person of my acquaintance…. We were conversing…when, from a voice behind me, I heard ‘well, here’s full proof at last that Sir Walter Scott is not the author of the Scotch novels.’ Curious to see the full proof so nigh at hand, of what I deemed incredible, I instantly turned towards a narrow sky light dividing the bench where I sat from that where the speaker was; but all the proof I saw, and it was enough to take me out of my senses, was my shirt, razors, soaps, brushes, &c. &c. laid out in apple-pie order on the sky light.

‘All these things (said my lady acquaintance, continuing our conversation) come very well in their places, but are only to be occasionally used.’

‘Upon my word, Ma’am,’ I replied, ‘my difficulty is to understand how they came here at all… They seem to me to have come by themselves, and I expect every moment to see a basin of water and towels borne by invisible hands.’ … I could not forbear exclaiming, ‘Who the devil put these things here?’

‘I did sir,’ replied a gentleman, whose voice I recognized – ‘they were falling out of this newspaper; and a passage having caught my eye stating that the public mind was now satisfied Scott was not the author of the celebrated novels, I was curious to examine the reasons which were given in it, and placing the articles carefully on the sky light, I was reading the paper when you turned round. (10)

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Dora Hope, “The Art of Packing,” in Charles Peters, ed., The Girl’s Own Outdoor Book (Philadelphia, 1889), p. 260.
William Jones, How to make home happy; or, Hints and cautions for all, (London, 1857), p. 148.
“The Art of Packing,” p. 260.
Ibid., pp. 260-261.
“How to Pack a Trunk,” The Teacher’s World: A Journal of Methods, Aids and Devices, Vol. I, No. 10 (New York, June 1892), p. 397.
“The Art of Packing,” pp. 261-262.
Ibid., pp. 262-263.
Ibid., p. 263.
Adam and Charles Black, Black’s Picturesque Tourist and Road-book of England and Wales (Edinburgh, 1847), p. ix.
Sanders M’Fun, “Sir Walter Scott,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), September 4, 1823.

When Louis XVIII, King of France, returned to his country to ascend the throne after Napoleon’s 1814 abdication, he sailed from England, his home for the preceding seven years. The King’s younger brother, the Count of Artois (future King Charles X of France), had lived in England for even longer. In fact, the entire French royal family lived in England throughout much of the Napoleonic Wars, generously subsidized by the British government.

Louis XVIII, King of France, leaving Hartwell House, 1814

Escaping the French Revolution

Louis XVIII (then known as the Count of Provence) escaped from France in June 1791, at the same time that his older brother, Louis XVI, and his family tried unsuccessfully to flee the country. The Count of Artois had left France two years earlier, shortly after the storming of the Bastille.

With a small court of émigrés, the Count of Provence took refuge in Brussels, then in Coblenz, and then in Hamm, Westphalia. In 1795, upon learning of the death in prison of his nephew, Louis-Charles (son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were executed in 1793), Louis XVIII proclaimed himself the rightful King of France.

As the reach of Republican France, and subsequently Napoleon’s Empire, expanded, progressively fewer courts were willing to host the exiled French royal family. Louis XVIII and his entourage shuffled to Verona, Blankenburg, Mittau (Jelgava), Warsaw, and then – in 1805 – back to Mittau, which was under the rule of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Meanwhile, the Count of Artois, with his own followers, went to Britain.

In July 1807, Tsar Alexander signed the Treaty of Tilsit with Napoleon. Knowing he was no longer safe in Mittau, Louis XVIII went to Sweden to consult with King Gustavus IV Adolphus. Louis was in need of money, as the pension he had been getting from Spain – now under Napoleon’s control – had stopped. He was also jealous of his brother, Artois, who was receiving British subsidies and directing a network of royalist agents. Louis travelled to Gothenburg where he embarked for Britain on the Swedish frigate Freya.

Arrival in England

Louis XVIII, King of France

On October 29, 1807, Louis XVIII, accompanied by his nephews the Duke of Angoulême and the Duke of Berry (sons of the Count of Artois), as well as members of the French nobility, arrived at Yarmouth. There was scrambling on the part of the British government, since Louis had failed to give notice of his intention to visit the country. King George III is said to have expressed “considerable surprise” on hearing of the French royal family’s arrival. (1)

The British government was willing to give Louis XVIII asylum as a private individual, but did not want to receive him in the capacity of King of France. They offered him Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, where the Count of Artois had stayed from 1796 to 1803. “The illustrious Prince,” however,

on being informed of his destined residence, and that it was provided for him as a safe and hospitable asylum, refused to proceed thither, observing that he wanted no asylum; that, contrary to report, it was not necessity that had induced him to come to this country; that he had a safe asylum in the Russian territory, where he had left his wife and niece; that the object of his journey was of a nature purely political, and immediately concerned his interest as King of France; and that rather than go to Scotland, or be treated otherwise than as a Sovereign claiming the aid of Britain to recover the sceptre of France, he would return to Russia. (2)

The government let him disembark on the condition that he abstain from political activity and reside at least 50 miles outside London. After being greeted by the Count of Artois and the other Bourbon princes (Prince of Condé and Duke of Bourbon) already in England, Louis proceeded to the mansion of Gosfield Hall in Essex, offered to him by the Marquis of Buckingham.

Louis adopted the title of Comte de L’Isle-Jourdain, which the British shortened to Count de Lille (or Count de Lisle). A local paper reported:

The Count de Lille appears greatly delighted with the residence of Gosfield, which presents a very striking contrast to the bleakness of the country which he has quitted. He walks a great deal; but, from his size, has now left off riding. The French in this country who wish to pay their respects to their Sovereign, write for permission to wait upon him, and are received agreeably to priority and rank. (3)

The King of France at Hartwell House

Louis XVIII taking a walk with the Duchess of Angoulême in the grounds of Hartwell House, circa 1810

In August 1808, Louis was joined by his wife, Marie Joséphine of Savoy, and his niece, the Duchess of Angoulême (daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette), who had remained at Mittau. To accommodate them, he moved to Hartwell House, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. Hartwell belonged to the Reverend Sir George Lee, Baronet. Louis took it on a five-year lease.

The house and gardens, for which he is to pay 550£ per annum, are commodious and pleasant; but the former is hardly half-furnished. Louis XVIII is the first titular King of France who has set foot in this country since the year 1364, when John, taken prisoner by the Black Prince, at the battle of Poitiers, in 1356, died in London, at the Palace of the Savoy, in the Strand. (4)

In November 1809, in honour of the 50th anniversary of King George III’s reign, Louis donated £100 to the poor of the parishes of Hartwell, Aylesbury and Stowe. He also gave an “excellent dinner of roast beef and plum pudding” to the prisoners in the county jail. (5)

Although Louis was not allowed to meet with members of the British government, he corresponded with them. He received visits from French émigrés and was frequently entertained by sympathetic members of the British aristocracy. At one shooting party with Lord Talbot, he was said to be “the most unerring shot in this country.” (6)

Diarist Charles Greville described a visit to Hartwell with his father in 1812.

The house is large, but in a dreary, disagreeable situation. The King had completely altered the interior, having subdivided almost all the apartments in order to lodge a greater number of people. There were numerous outhouses, in some of which small shops had been established by the servants, interspersed with gardens, so that the place resembled a little town.

Upon entering the house, we were conducted by the Duc de Grammont into the King’s private apartment. He received us most graciously, and shook hands with both of us. This apartment was exceedingly small, hardly larger than a closet, and I remarked pictures of the late King and Queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the Dauphin, Louis XVII, hanging on the walls. The King had a manner of swinging his body backwards and forwards, which caused the most unpleasant sensations in that small room, and made my father feel something like being sea-sick. …

After our audience with the King we were taken to the salon, a large room with a billiard table at one end. Here the party assembled before dinner, to all of whom we were presented – the Duchesse d’Angoulême, Monsieur the Duc d’Angoulême, the Duc de Berry, the Prince and Princess de Condé (ci-devant Madame de Monaco), and a vast number of ducs, &c.; …. At a little after six dinner was announced, when we went into the next room, the King walking out first. The dinner was extremely plain, consisting of very few dishes, and no wines except port and sherry. His Majesty did the honours himself, and was very civil and agreeable. We were a very short time at table, and the ladies and gentlemen all got up together. Each of the ladies folded up her napkin, tied it round with a bit of ribbon, and carried it away.

After dinner we returned to the drawing-room and drank coffee. The whole party remained in conversation about a quarter of an hour, when the King retired to his closet, upon which all repaired to their separate apartments. Whenever the King came in or went out of the room, Madame d’Angoulême made him a low curtsy, which he returned by bowing and kissing his hand. … After the party had separated we were taken to the Duc de Grammont’s apartments, where we drank tea. After remaining there about three quarters of an hour we went to the apartment of Madame d’Angoulême, where several card tables were laid out. The King played at whist with the Prince and Princess de Condé and my father. His Majesty settled the points of the game at ‘le quart d’un sheling.’ The rest of the party played at billiards or ombre. The King was so civil as to invite us to sleep there, instead of returning to the inn at Aylsebury. …

In the morning when I got out of bed, I was alarmed by the appearance of an old woman on the leads before my window, who was hanging linen to dry. I was forced to retreat hastily to bed, not to shock the old lady’s modesty. At ten the next morning we breakfasted, and at eleven we took leave of the King (who always went to Mass at that hour) and returned to London. We saw the whole place before we came away; and they certainly had shown great ingenuity in contriving to lodge such a number of people in and about the house – it was exactly like a small rising colony. (7)

The French royals also did some sightseeing during their years in England. They visited, among other places, Blenheim, Oxford, Woburn Abbey, Arundel Castle, the Isle of Wight, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Bath.

British support for the King of France

Though it was reported that “the unfortunate Prince [did not have] patrimony of his own sufficient to buy himself a brown loaf,” Louis XVIII had some family jewels, an annual British pension of £16,000, and the equivalent of £1,600 a year from Portugal and £4,000 from Russia. (8) When Louis’s wife, Marie Joséphine, died of edema at Hartwell House on November 13, 1810, the British government paid part of the cost of her funeral, which was held at Westminster Abbey.

The Prince of Wales (future King George IV), a strong supporter of the Bourbons, promised to restore Louis XVIII to the French throne at a time when few thought such a feat was possible. On June 19, 1811, Louis XVIII and his family were the guests of honour at the Prince’s lavish fête at Carlton House in London, to celebrate his new position as Prince Regent of Britain. Some 2,000 guests attended.

The august personages arrived about ten o’clock in the evening, and were received in a room reserved expressly for them, hung with sky-blue satin embroidered with fleurs-de-lys in gold. This refined attention seemed to express, in an ingenious allegorical manner, the peace and prosperity which will one day, and perhaps before long, be for the universe the result of the re-establishment of legitimate authority in the place of the present disorder….

These illustrious and unfortunate victims of a revolution, of which 22 years have not relaxed the activity, nor softened the rigours, were received by all the assembly with the most delicate marks of respect and attention. It was the first time that his Majesty Louis XVIII and the interesting daughter of Louis XVI had appeared in public in England, and received the homage due to their rank and to their times. All eyes were naturally turned towards them, and to their august Host, who thus did them the honours of the nation. (9)

Threatening letters

Not everyone felt warmly about the presence of the King of France and his family in England. The Bourbons received various threatening letters, extracts of which were released to British papers.

You are of a bad Race, mercy is in the Protestant, you imposing Vagabonds Die by nostra manns. I visit your House every week you damn’d Villain – look at your Effigie inclosed.

Bone has offered a Dutchy for your Head he shall have it. Mind, a good Boat and many of us Prisoners of War will seize on you, put you into it at Yarmouth you Enemy of Europe. A Man can die but once you Vagabond Louis.

Your proceedings will not do, our intentions have been delayed in hopes of something being abjured or done on your part and the Prisoners of War your countrymen, restored to their Native land our party increase very strong against you and only temporize for a time, but many are near your own Person of our Party which makes us sure of our designs. So if I do not get my Friends home you shall be arrested, murdered, shot or slain. Charlotte Corday shall visit you first. You are at our Bar and renounce, adjure, or die by our hands.

You shall be attacked from us in our Prison Wincanton, Crediton, Tiverton, and other Places.

If there be any commotion among the People. The Populace know the Road to the House you live at. Resign your pretensions, live in peace, or be overcome in L’Assyle. Given at our association of Warning. (10)

The war ends

In general, British public opinion favoured the Bourbons. Napoleon’s defeat in Russia strengthened this enthusiasm. Louis XVIII issued a proclamation to the people of France, dated Hartwell, Feb. 1, 1813. It began:

The moment is at length arrived when Divine Providence appears ready to break in pieces the instrument of its wrath. The Usurper of the Throne of St. Louis, the devastator of Europe, experiences reverses in his turn. Shall they have no other effect but that of aggravating the calamities of France? And will she not dare to overturn an odious power, no longer protected by the illusions of victory? What prejudices, or what fears, can now prevent her from throwing herself into the arms of her King; and from recognizing, in the establishment of his legitimate authority, the only pledge of union, peace, and happiness, which his promises have so often guaranteed to his oppressed subjects? (11)

In the House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh denied any British participation in the proclamation and said he had no intention of making the restoration of the Bourbons the basis of peace negotiations between the Allies and France. At the same time, the British government provided Louis with the financial means to print the declaration, and there were rumours that copies had been sent on board British ships for distribution on the coast of France. Dispatches from Hartwell House to European capitals were carried by British couriers.

In January 1814, conferences took place among Louis XVIII, the Bourbon princes, Lord Liverpool (the British Prime Minister) and the Foreign Office. On January 22, the Count of Artois, the Duke of Angoulême and the Duke of Berry left for the continent with British passports. In February, the Count of Artois arrived in Eastern France. One of his companions wrote:

We have been received in all the French towns and villages with acclamations by the whole of the people, and with cries of Vive le Roi Louis XVIII. Vive les Bourbons. … Every place desires to surrender to Louis XVIII. All France is ready to rise. … Had he been an angel from heaven the people could not have shown more eagerness to come to see him. (12)

On March 12, British and Portuguese troops under the Duke of Wellington arrived at Bordeaux. The Duke of Angoulême, who had been for some time at Wellington’s headquarters, made a triumphant entry into the city. On March 31, the Allies entered Paris.

Return to France

On April 6, 1814, Louis XVIII was proclaimed King of France. On April 20, dressed in the uniform of the Marshals of France, his hat surmounted with a plume of white feathers, the King of France left Hartwell. He was accompanied by the Duchess of Angoulême, the Prince of Condé, the Duke of Bourbon and their households. They were met by the Prince Regent at Stanmore. The party continued to London in a procession of six royal carriages, each drawn by six horses ornamented with white ribbons, together with outriders and attendants.

On the entrance of the procession into Hyde Park…the motion of the crowd in the wide part of the park became like a torrent. The procession arrived at Hyde Park Corner exactly at half past five o’clock, and proceeded along Piccadilly at a slow pace, amidst the shouts of the populace and congratulations of crowded houses, the compliments of the royal party at Pulteney Hotel, &c. Among the emblems of rejoicing, Devonshire House was the most conspicuous: over each gate were new English and French colours, and boughs of laurel.

A little before six o’clock, the cavalcade arrived at Grillon’s Hotel, Albemarle Street. The band of his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent was stationed near the hotel, who played, ‘God save the King’ as the distinguished persons alighted. As the carriage with the cream-coloured horses approached, in which were his Majesty Louis XVIII, and his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, the people unanimously huzzaed, the ladies from the windows waving their handkerchiefs. His Majesty had hold of the Prince’s arm, who conducted him to the principal apartment prepared for the French monarch by the especial order of the Prince Regent, fleurs de lis being embroidered in gold upon hangings of crimson velvet. In this superb room, the Earls of Buckinghamshire, Bathurst, and Liverpool, the Russian, Austrian, and Spanish Ambassadors, and about one hundred and fifty of the ancient French Noblesse were in attendance to receive his Majesty, who seemed much fatigued, an arm chair was brought, in which his Majesty seated himself, the Duke of York on his left, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent and the Duchess d’Angoulême on his right, the Prince de Conde and the Duc de Bourbon facing him, with all his suite surrounding him. The Marquis of Hertford and the Earl of Cholmondeley were behind the chair.

The Prince Regent then addressed his Majesty to the following effect:

‘Your Majesty will permit me to offer you my heartiest congratulations upon that great event which has always been amongst the warmest of my wishes, and which must eminently contribute to the happiness, not only of your Majesty’s people, but to the repose and happiness of all other nations. I am sure I may add that my own sentiments and feelings are in union with those of the universal British nation, and that the triumph and transport with which your Majesty will be received in your own capital can scarcely exceed the joy and satisfaction which your Majesty’s restoration to the throne of your ancestors has created in the capital of the British empire.’

His Majesty’s reply:

‘Your Royal Highness will accept my most sincere and grateful thanks for your Royal Highness’s congratulations – for the invariable kindness with which I have been treated by your Royal Highness and by every member of your illustrious house. It is to your Royal Highness’s councils – to this great country, and to the constancy of its people, that I shall always ascribe, under Providence, the restoration of our house to the throne of our ancestors, and that state of affairs which promises to heal the wounds, to calm the passions, and to restore the peace, tranquillity, and prosperity of all nations.’ (13)

The King of France then invested the Prince Regent with the Order of Saint Esprit. Later, at Carlton House, Louis XVIII was elected a Member of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and given a Knighthood.

On April 23, the King of France and his family left London for Dover. The papers reported:

Every house, even the meanest, is full of lights from top to bottom. … The inhabitants are parading the town with white cockades, and every Frenchman who passes is sure to receive a hearty salutation of welcome. The appearance of the road from London to Dover was, if possible, still gayer than Dover itself; it seemed a universal holyday. … [E]very town, village, and even hamlet poured out all its inhabitants dressed in their choicest attire and their pleasantest smiles. …[T]he most splendid military spectacle was at Chatham, where several hundreds of the Guards were standing at their arms; next to them were stationed large bodies of cavalry, partly of the line, and partly yeomanry and volunteers. At Canterbury seemed to be collected half the population of the county, who hailed with the warmest marks of friendship and brotherhood the passing of the different parties of French, and were enthusiastic at the appearance of the Regent and the King of France. (14)

The whole of the road from London to Dover was one continued bustle, the villages and towns crowded to excess. A poor man, a parish clerk, was pushed by the crowd under the King’s carriage, and the wheels went over him; he was not killed, but extremely injured. The circumstance affected his Majesty very much, and he put out a 10£ bank of England note to be given to the poor man’s family; and he pledged himself, that, in case death was the consequence of the accident, he would provide for his family. (15)

The Prince Regent received the King of France and his companions on board the royal yacht the Royal Sovereign, which he was lending for the trip to France. The yacht was escorted by the British frigate Jason, under the Duke of Clarence (Admiral of the Fleet and future King William IV), and the French frigate Polonais. On April 24, the King of France and his entourage set sail. The Duchess of Angoulême was on deck, waving a white handkerchief and kissing her hand, saying farewell to the inhabitants of England. Two hours and ten minutes later, the ship arrived at Calais.

Twenty-three years after leaving France, Louis XVIII was back home. He had to leave again 11 months later, when Napoleon escaped from Elba. That exile was only a few months, spent in Ghent. Louis XVIII never returned to England, but he always had fond memories of the country. Among other things, he kept at the Tuileries Palace the wooden desk he had used at Hartwell House. He is sitting at it when he learns of Napoleon’s (fictional) escape from St. Helena in Napoleon in America.

The Count of Artois, who in 1824 succeeded Louis XVIII as Charles X, did return to Britain. He and his family sought asylum there when they were exiled after the French Revolution of 1830. The Bourbons lived at Holyrood Palace for two years, before moving to Prague. They never regained the French throne.

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The Morning Chronicle (London), November 2, 1807.
Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), November 5, 1807.
The Ipswich Journal (Ipswitch), November 14, 1807.
The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull), August 16, 1808.
The Morning Post (London), November 10, 1809.
The Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Advertiser (Cheltenham), December 10, 1812.
Charles C. F. Greville, The Greville Memoirs, edited by Henry Reeve, Vol. II (London, 1874), pp. 345-346.
The Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Advertiser (Cheltenham), September 3, 1812. Philip Mansel, “From Coblenz to Hartwell: the Émigré Government and the European Powers, 1791-1814,” in The French Émigrés in Europe, and the Struggle against Revolution, 1789-1814, edited by Kirsty Carpenter and Philip Mansel (London, 1999), p. 13.
The Morning Chronicle (London), June 25, 1811.
The Times (London), September 10, 1811.
The Morning Post (London), March 13, 1813.
The Morning Chronicle (London), March 10, 1814.
Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh), April 25, 1814.
The Times (London), April 25, 1814.
The Hull Packet and Original Weekly Commercial, Literary and General Advertiser (Hull), May 3, 1814.

What was life like for a foreigner in the United States in the early 1820s? This was one of many questions I looked into when writing Napoleon in America. Fortunately, many early 19th-century writers provided answers. One of them was William Cobbett, a farmer, journalist and politician described by historian A.J.P. Taylor as the second greatest Englishman (after Samuel Johnson) ever to have lived. (1) Cobbett resided in the United States from 1792 to 1800, and again from 1817 to 1819, where he settled on a farm on Long Island. In 1820, “a farmer, whose lease will expire this year, and who says that he has four children, and that his capital may possibly amount to five thousand pounds,” asked Cobbett about emigrating from Britain to America. Here’s the answer Cobbett gave in his Political Register, a weekly newspaper that he published from 1802 until his death in 1835.

The Bay of New York Taken from Brooklyn Heights by William Guy Wall, 1820-1825. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Edward W. C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps, and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W. C. Arnold, 1954

Where to go

You ask me, first, whether I would advise you to go to America; second, what part of it I would advise you to go to; and, third, what I would advise you to do with your money, when you get there.

As to the first, I give you no advice at all. I never have advised any one to go to America, and I never shall. I would wish every one to stay and take his chance with his country; for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse. …

With regard to the part of America which it is best to settle in, it is such perfect madness for Englishmen to think of going into a wilderness, that I shall suppose you quite incapable of entertaining any such notion. Somewhere on the borders of the Atlantic is the place for you. … [T]he City of New York is inhabited, in great part, by English, Scotch and Irish, and…it resembles an English town, in point of manners and customs, much more than any other place that I have seen in America.

Fish and game

The neighbourhood of New York is abundant, also, in bays, inlets and other beauties and conveniences produced by water. Fish, of all sorts, and in abundance beyond conception, caught at a few yards from a man’s own door. In innumerable instances, the farmer, or country gentleman, has only to keep a little net in the water to be furnished at any hours in the day, with several sorts of excellent fish. I have seen eels, lobsters, flounders and a half-a-dozen other sorts taken out at a time, and brought forth, for breakfast. A little boat going a few yards from the shore, with a man, having a grapple in his hand, brings you oysters at any time of the day and any season of the year.…

As to game, and wild water fowl, there are no bounds as to the quantity, if any one has a mind to pursue them. There is another advantage attending New York and its neighbourhood; and that is, a speedy and constant communication with England. There is, I believe, upon an average, one stout ship a day either coming in, or going out, from or to Liverpool or London.…

Money

As to what a man ought to do with his money, the advice I give to you is that which I have always given to Englishmen with money in their pockets; namely, not to lay it out, or any part of it, in house, land or trade, or farming, for one whole year from the day of your landing. … Money yields seven per cent, lawful interest of the state of New York. And that interest you can also obtain upon landed security of the best possible description without any deduction for those accursed things called Stamps, and without any of the delays of the law. If you have a liking for the public securities of the United States, they give you six per cent; and, pray mark this well, you are in both cases, paid in SPECIE. There are no Bank Restriction Acts there; and the National Debt is so small (and is gradually diminishing) that it is impossible that any one should ever think of a tax upon the funds or a reduction upon the interest. … Your five thousand pounds make twenty two thousand five hundred dollars. … A dollar is four shillings and sixpence sterling; and a cent is the hundredth part of a dollar; or little more than an English half-penny. …

Furnishing a house

To furnish a house does not cost above half as much as it costs to furnish a house in England. … How cheap wood is there, you may guess from this fact: that I used to give twelve cents and a half, which is an English sixpence-half-penny, for pine boards an inch thick, twelve feet long, and nine inches wide! And these are to be gotten at any time and in any quantity, at any place, within forty or fifty miles of New York, the expenses of carriage being hardly worth naming. Goose feathers, which, in England, sell for five or six English shillings a pound, are there to be bought for two and sixpence; and for much less if you go a little back into the country. All articles that go from England are to be bought cheaper at New York than in London; and the most elegant furniture, in wood, is made at New York, for less than half the London price.

Then, as to horses and carriages. The former may be nearly the same price as in England; but the latter, figure for figure, do not cost nearly so much as in England; while the durability of the American carriages, and their lightness (both these latter qualities owing to the vast superiority of the woods which are used in America), render the American carriages not a fourth part of the price of those in England.

A very neat and convenient house, with several acres of land to it, always including an orchard, a real orchard, and generally of peaches as well as of pears and apples, of the finest sorts, may always be had, at a distance from five to ten miles from the city of New York, for about two hundred dollars a year. …

Food and drink

The hog meat is far superior to any thing of the kind known in England. There is more than one reason for this; but the chief reason is that the pigs are fatted with that delightful thing, the Indian Corn, which is eaten in all its stages of growth by man, woman and child. The beef in America is as full fine as in England…. Butter is cheaper than in England. Cheese full as good, upon an average, as the English cheese, is at about two thirds of the English average price. Spices of all sorts, at a quarter part of the English price. Tea, at less than half the English price. Sugar, the same. Coffee at a third of the English price. The chocolate in England is at about six shillings a pound, at New York it is about fourteen pence, English money. Candles and soap, at about half the English price; and, if you choose to make them yourself, they cost still less. Wax candles are very little dearer there than tallow mould candles are in London. Salt for an eighth part of the English price. Beer, if you brew it yourself, will not cost you more than about eight-pence English money, a gallon. I mean strong beer; for nobody will drink small beer in that country. Claret wine, from six pence to eight pence English, a quart. Port wine, from a shilling to sixteen pence a quart. Madeira wine from two shillings to three shillings a quart, and, as to spirits, if you should be so beastly as to use them, you may have them for eighteen pence, English money, a gallon.

The taxman

No tax on the house, on the land, on your horses, or on any thing else. But there would come a taxgatherer, once in the year, and only once, to take from you three or four pounds sterling for the support of the Government, the repairs of the excellent highways, the maintenance of schools in your township, and the relief of the poor! … Plenty of churches and of meeting-houses, to one, or all of which you might belong, if you pleased, and to the support of which you might pay, if you pleased. But if you did not please, you might go to them when you liked, without paying any thing at all.

Fruit

Fruit is a thing not to be overlooked; and here the abundance is such, that the difficulty is to restrain one’s self from eating. For, besides the apples and pears and peaches and cherries, which are so abundant, except in the cities themselves, that they are hardly deemed to be property, you can buy at New York, during several months of the year, pine-apples, which are brought there in ship loads, at the price of from an English sixpence to an English eighteen-pence, each. I have very often seen a carter, at New York, going along gnawing a pine-apple. As to melons, which are so great a rarity in England, you have them, if you are not too lazy to drop a few seeds in to the ground, laying about your garden in hundreds, and that, too, of a much finer flavour than they can be produced in England. …

Servants

You want not more than one servant woman, and her wages will be about fifty dollars a year…. Suppose you to have a boy, besides, to look after a couple of cows or a horse or two, you may have him for about forty dollars, or, say fifty. … Your rent and servant’s wages will amount to three hundred a year. … You will, of course, bake your own bread. You will fat your own pigs, too, to be sure; and you will rear your own poultry…. It is not as in this country, where we have constantly to feed these animals; for if you have an orchard or any thing of space in America you never think of feeding fowls, except in the very hard weather, or except for the purpose of fatting them. …[Y]ou scarcely see a farm house, however small and pitiful the farm may be, without a flock of turkeys about it in the month of October. …

Dress

As to dress, all English goods are cheaper at New York than in any part of England! … All coarse goods, whether cotton or woollen or linen; all bedding stuff; can be made there so cheap that our manufacturers with their present taxes to pay cannot meet them in the same market; unless they sell their goods at a loss. But besides these articles of dress, the women in America are supplied with China crapes, Levantine silks, French silks, French laces of all sorts, parasols, all the things that go to the making of caps, hats and bonnets, and they are supplied with these at so cheap a rate that even the servant girls in New York are seen sweeping down the doorways dressed in China crapes: nay even the black girls are frequently seen wearing them. So that…the most gay promenades in and about London, and even the boxes of our licenced and degraded theatres, are, in point of female dresses, perfect beggary compared with the every day exhibition in the “Broad way” of New York; where the very look of every creature you meet gives evidence of the existence of no taxation without representation. …

Shoes and hats

And then as to shoes, the climate is so fine that there are not more than about twenty-five dirty days in a year; and those are wet, rather than dirty. … As to hats…they cost about the same sum that hats do here, but for that same sum you have a hat about three times as good. The hats being made there, in great part, at least, of real beaver fur, and not of wool and glue. Your head is covered completely without your feeling a weight upon it enough to squeeze your brains out. In summertime people wear white hats, some of which are made there. The most elegant come from the Spanish and Italian dominions, and these, not having passed under the grip of an English tax-gatherer, you have for a quarter part of the price that you can buy them in England.

Live like a rich man

Now, take a review of what I have said here, and you will find that the whole of your expenses, even if you keep two servants, two horses, two cows and a table such as nothing short of a tax-eater or a great land-owner can keep in England, will not exceed seven hundred dollars a year. … You may live in this manner any where at from five to ten miles of the city of New York.…

But what about the people?

[T]he people in and about New York, taken altogether, are those that an Englishman would like best. They are neither puritans nor libertines; they are neither niggardly nor wasteful. They are free and easy in their manners; open in all their transactions, and hospitable to a degree of which, unhappily, an Englishman who has never been there, cannot have the most distant idea. We are so harassed here by the tax-gatherer. We are so pinched; we see so much misery constantly before our eyes; the dread of future want is so constantly hanging about our minds, that all that is worthy of the name of hospitality has taken its flight from our country. (2)

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Glimpses of Canada in 1817

How to Spend Summer in London in the Early 19th Century

Some 19th-Century Money-Saving Tips

AJP Taylor, An Old Man’s Diary (London, 1984), p. 96.
Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, Vol. 35, No. 19 (London, January 15, 1820), pp. 583-598.

When Napoleon Bonaparte called history “a fable agreed upon,” he was talking about his own life and times. (1) There are so many myths about Napoleon that it is sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction. Here are ten popular myths about the French Emperor.

1. Napoleon was short.

Maniac Ravings or Little Boney in a strong fit by James Gillray, 1803. British caricatures like this one contributed to the myth that Napoleon was short.

Napoleon was 5’6” – 5’7” (168-170 cm) tall, which was slightly above average for Frenchmen of his time. The myth about Napoleon being short arose because the British liked to portray their French enemy as “little Boney.” And since Napoleon was often surrounded by soldiers from his Imperial Guard, who were above average height, he appeared short in comparison. At his autopsy, Napoleon measured 5’2”, but that was in French inches, which were larger than British and American inches. See “How tall (short) was Napoleon Bonaparte” by Margaret Rodenberg.

2. Napoleon crossed the bridge at Arcole.

Napoleon leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole by Horace Vernet, 1826. It’s a myth that Napoleon crossed the bridge.

In the November 1796 battle to take the Italian village of Arcole (Arcola) from the Austrians, French forces under Napoleon had to cross a small wooden bridge across the River Alpone. Austrian cannon were placed in such a way that they could fire on anyone approaching the bridge. Rather than advance, the frightened French troops took cover behind a dyke. General Pierre-François Augereau seized the lead battalion’s flag and advanced towards the enemy. Some courageous men followed him, but after several were killed, the attack faltered, and Augereau had to withdraw. Napoleon then seized a flag and tried to lead the men across the bridge, but he didn’t even make it to the bridgehead. A number of the officers around Napoleon were hit, some fatally. During the retreat, Napoleon fell into a swamp behind the dyke and his men had to drag him to safety. The myth arose because Napoleon later presented the battle in a way that suggested he had successfully charged the bridge. The fact that the attempted crossing failed was ignored. Paintings that showed Napoleon with a flag on the bridge perpetuated the myth.

3. Napoleon converted to Islam.

This myth also originated from Napoleon himself. When he invaded Egypt in 1798, Napoleon tried to reassure the people of Egypt that he came as a friend of Islam. He knew he had to gain the support of the local muftis and religious leaders. Among other things, his staff circulated the transcript of a long “Conversation of Bonaparte in the Grand Pyramid with several imans and muftis,” in which Napoleon said, “Glory to Allah! There is no other God but God; Mohammed is His prophet, and I am one of his friends.” (2) However, Napoleon never actually entered the pyramid and this supposed conversation did not take place. As Paul Strathern writes:

The muftis eventually agreed to issue a fatwa recognizing the French as the legitimate rulers of Egypt, on condition that Napoleon and the French army converted to Islam. Napoleon, for his part, had no objection to this, and felt with a little persuasion he could sell this to his army as a mere formality. … But the muftis insisted that such a move should be more than a formality: the French would all have to be circumcised and swear to abstain from alcohol. At this stage Napoleon was forced to concede that such a move was impossible: no French soldier would ever swear to abstain from alcohol. Even so, he continued to press the muftis at their afternoon meetings, until finally they found their way to a suitably devious concession: because the French were not Christians, although they were not Muslims they could be recognized as allies of the Muslim religion. (3)

See “Napoleon at the Pyramids: Myth versus Fact.”

4. Napoleon shot off the Sphinx’s nose.

View of the Sphinx by Frederik Ludvig Norden, 1737. Sixty years before Napoleon’s troops allegedly shot it off, the Sphinx’s nose was already missing. Source: Wellcome Images, https://wellcomeimages.org/

Another myth says that Napoleon was responsible for the destruction of the Sphinx’s nose, having ordered his troops to use it for target practice with their cannons. In fact, the Sphinx’s nose was gone years before Napoleon and his troops arrived in Egypt. In 1737, Danish naval captain Frederik Ludvig Norden made sketches of the Sphinx that were published in 1755 and clearly show a nose-free monument. See “Did Napoleon’s troops shoot the nose off the Sphinx?” by Tom Holmberg on The Napoleon Series.

5. Napoleon met Princess Caraboo.

In April 1817, a British imposter named Mary Baker convinced residents in the Bristol area that she was the exotic Princess Caraboo from a far-off island kingdom. After Baker’s fraud was discovered, she set sail for Philadelphia. On September 13, 1817, the Bristol Journal reported that Baker’s ship had been blown close to the South Atlantic island of St. Helena by a storm. “Princess Caraboo” allegedly leapt into a boat, cut herself adrift and rowed ashore, where St. Helena Governor Hudson Lowe introduced her to Napoleon, who was imprisoned on the island. Napoleon “embraced her with every demonstration of enthusiastic rapture” and “intimated to Sir Hudson his determination to apply to the Pope for a dispensation to dissolve his marriage with Maria Louisa, and to sanction his indissoluble union with the enchanting Caraboo.” (4) The report was a joke by a British journalist. There is zero evidence that Baker ever reached St. Helena, let alone met Napoleon. For more about Princess Caraboo, see “Mary Baker – The Princess Caraboo” by Geri Walton.

6. Napoleon escaped from St. Helena and a double took his place on the island.

The myth that Napoleon was replaced by a double named François-Eugène Robeaud first appeared in print in 1911, “supposedly derived from the memoirs of a police agent named Ledru (purportedly published in Liège in 1840 but not to be found in any library today).” (5) Robeaud, allegedly impoverished and living in the French village of Baleycourt, was said to have disappeared sometime in 1818 after reportedly being visited by General Gaspard Gourgaud, one of Napoleon’s former companions on St. Helena. There is no evidence that Robeaud ever existed, or that he replaced Napoleon. And, though my novel Napoleon in America is based on Napoleon escaping from St. Helena, there is no evidence that Napoleon ever left the island. See “Could Napoleon have escaped from St. Helena?”

7. Napoleon’s last word was Josephine.

Napoleon died on St. Helena on May 5, 1821 at the age of 51. In the eyewitness accounts of his final hours, there are differences regarding his last words. There is general agreement that Napoleon said (in French; he did not speak English) something about the “army,” possibly “head of the army.” According to two witnesses, Napoleon also said “France” and “my son.” Only one witness, General Charles de Montholon reported that Napoleon said “Josephine.” Montholon did not write this down until 20 years after Napoleon’s death, when he was imprisoned in a fortress with Louis-Napoléon (the future Napoleon III), who was the son of Napoleon’s brother Louis and Josephine’s daughter Hortense. Montholon and Louis-Napoléon had been captured during one of the latter’s attempted coups. It is not unreasonable to suspect that Montholon wanted to honour his friend and help rally the French to Louis-Napoléon’s cause by showing that Napoleon’s last thought was for Louis-Napoléon’s grandmother. Thus, although “Josephine” is often cited as one of Napoleon’s last words, it is actually the least probable of them. See “What were Napoleon’s last words?”

8. Napoleon was poisoned.

At an autopsy conducted the day after Napoleon’s death, doctors concluded that Napoleon died from a cancerous growth in his stomach (see “What happened to Napoleon’s body?”). Nonetheless, rumours that Napoleon had been poisoned soon arose. They were revived in 1961 by Swedish dentist Sten Forshufvud and widely circulated by Canadian businessman Ben Weider. Forshufvud and Weider accused Montholon of poisoning Napoleon with arsenic. Others claimed that Napoleon was killed by high levels of arsenic in the wallpaper of Longwood House, his St. Helena home. However, the claim that Napoleon was killed by arsenic has been convincingly refuted in a number of scientific studies. Most notably, in a study published in 2007, American, Swiss and Canadian researchers used modern medical techniques to analyze historical accounts of Napoleon’s illness, death and autopsy. They found no signs of arsenic poisoning. Instead, they concluded that Napoleon died of an advanced case of gastric cancer. (6)

9. The British substituted another body for Napoleon’s.

The opening of Napoleon’s coffin on St. Helena in October 1840, by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin

The substitution myth, first advanced by French photographer and journalist Georges de Rétif de la Bretonne in 1969, claims that the British government secretly removed Napoleon’s body from St. Helena in 1828 and substituted the corpse of his Corsican maître d’hôtel, Jean-Baptiste Cipriani Franceschi, who died on the island in February 1818. The alleged British motive? To conceal that Napoleon had died of arsenic poisoning, in case the body was ever exhumed. The theory rests on alleged discrepancies between the state of Napoleon’s body and caskets in 1821, and how they appeared when his body was disinterred for transportation to France in 1840. The fact that Cipriani’s grave has never been found is also presented as evidence, as are differences between Napoleon’s death masks. However, numerous people who were present at Napoleon’s original burial confirmed that it was still him in the tomb in 1840. See “What Happened to Napoleon’s body?”

10. Napoleon’s penis wound up in the United States.

In 1927, an object described as a “mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem” was displayed at the Museum of French Art in New York. The “tendon,” purported to be Napoleon’s penis, was allegedly cut off by Napoleon’s physician Dr. François Antommarchi during Napolon’s autopsy and given to the Corsican priest, Ange-Paul Vignali. After Vignali’s death, it was passed down through his family and eventually sold to various collectors, until acquired in 1977 by American urologist John K. Lattimer. Upon Lattimer’s death, his son inherited the object. A 1924 catalogue claimed:

The authenticity of this remarkable relic has lately been confirmed by the publication in the Revue des Deux Mondes of a posthumous memoir by St. Denis, in which he expressly states that he and Vignali took away small pieces of Napoleon’s corpse during the autopsy. (7)

What the memoir by Napoleon’s valet Louis Étienne Saint-Denis actually says is that Vignali was given a little piece from Napoleon’s rib. (8) Nowhere does Saint-Denis, or any of the 16 other people present at the autopsy, say that Napoleon’s penis was removed. It is hard to believe that such a significant part of Napoleon’s anatomy could have been cut off without anyone noticing and eventually saying something about it.

With thanks to Paul Maney, whose favourite Napoleon myths inspired this article.

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Emmanuel-August-Dieudonné de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. 4, Part 7 (London, 1823), pp. 250-255.
A. Bingham, A Selection from the Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, Volume I (London, 1884), p. 222.
Paul Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt (New York, 2007), p. 140.
“The Princess Caraboo,” Milwaukee Daily Journal, May 13, 1884.
Michael Sibalis, “Conspiracy on St. Helena? (Mis)remembering Napoleon’s Exile,” French History and Civilization, Vol. 4, January 2011, p. 96.
See UT Southwestern Medical Center. “Napoleon’s Mysterious Death Unmasked.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 January 2007. sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070116131630.htm and Alessandro Lugli et al., “Napoleon Bonaparte’s gastric cancer: a clinicopathologic approach to staging, pathogenesis, and etiology,” Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Vol. 4 (2007), pp. 52-57. http://www.nature.com/nrgastro/journal/v4/n1/full/ncpgasthep0684.html See also J. Thomas Hindmarsh and John Savory, “The Death of Napoleon, Cancer or Arsenic?” Clinical Chemistry, Vol. 54, No. 12 (December 2008), pp. 2092-2093. http://www.clinchem.org/content/54/12/2092.full For a study of Napoleon’s case presented as a modern clinicopathologic conference, see Robert E. Gosselin, “Exhuming Bonaparte,” Dartmouth Medicine, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2003), pp. 38-47, 61.
Description of the Vignali Collection of Relics of Napoleon (Philadelphia and New York, 1924), p. 5.
“Souvenirs de Saint-Denis dit ali Second Mameluck de l’Empereur; V – La Mort et les Funérailles de l’Empereur,” Revue Des Deux Mondes, Vol. 65, No. 5 (September-October 1921), p. 40.

In September 1818, a hurricane struck the coast of Texas. It destroyed pirate Jean Laffite’s settlement on Galveston Island and visited fresh horrors on the Bonapartists who had taken refuge there after abandoning their attempt to establish a colony beside the Trinity River. Though Spaniards had reported hurricanes along the Texas coast as early as the 16th century, the 1818 Texas hurricane was one of the first to be recorded in detail.

Carrying bodies from the wreckage of the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. The Texas hurricane of 1818 also considerable damage on Galveston Island.

Carrying bodies from the wreckage of the 1900 hurricane in Galveston. The Texas hurricane of 1818 also caused considerable damage on Galveston Island.

Texas in 1818

In 1818, Texas was part of the Spanish colony of New Spain (Mexico), which was then fighting for independence from the mother country. The Spaniards had settlements at San Antonio de Béxar, La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (present-day Goliad), and Nacogdoches. The total Hispanic population probably numbered less than 4,000. Texas was primarily inhabited by Native Americans. Stephen F. Austin and his American colonists did not arrive until 1821.

In 1816, French privateer Louis-Michel Aury established a base on Galveston Island, a short distance from the Texas mainland. In April 1817, when Aury left to help Francisco Mina invade Mexico, pirate Jean Laffite took control of the establishment. He ran a privateering, smuggling and slave-laundering operation from the island. A visitor who arrived in January 1818 described Galveston as a “wild sand bar with four or five ‘temporary miserable hovels’ for the 50 men, mostly blacks and mulattoes, living there.” (1) Laffite inhabited a two-story frame house built on a slight elevation.

In early 1818, Laffite and his men were temporarily joined by approximately 100 Bonapartists – mainly French supporters of Napoleon – on their way to found a colony called Champ d’Asile beside the Trinity River. A few months later, after learning that a Spanish force was coming to eject them, the French colonists returned to Galveston Island to wait for transportation to New Orleans. They arrived in July and settled near Laffite’s village. The Champ d’Asile refugees built a small protective earthwork on a three-foot rise about 400 yards from the water. They were still there when the hurricane struck in September.

The 1818 Texas hurricane

On September 10, 1818, a hurricane passed the Cayman Islands. It blew across the Yucatán Peninsula and then veered north towards Texas. The residents of Galveston Island saw the storm approaching on the evening of September 12, but did not anticipate a hurricane. The French refugees were preparing to go to bed when it struck.

The raging winds, the rushing waves shook the earth: the rain fell in torrents, the sky was ablaze; the piles supporting our hut broke: the canvas covering it was torn, and I saw a black column, a whirlwind that carried ravage and destruction in its flanks. The sea flowed in from all sides, the wind lifting the waves. A vortex of wind tore off and removed the remnants of the sail that sheltered us. Night passed and faint light, whitening the horizon, announced that day was soon to appear. Complaints and cries could be heard from all sides when the wind ceased for a moment to roar, and then redoubled its fatal efforts.

Day broke, the storm was not yet calm; but since we could see the danger, it was easier to avoid it. We were able to bring relief to those who were hurt and save them from death. We transported them to the strongest dwelling [Laffite’s], around which we had all gathered.

The island of Galveston, invaded by the sea, seemed to be part of it. This scene of desolation became more terrible when we saw that the waves, redoubling to flee, broke the cables that held our boats and dragged them into the gulf; every means of salvation was taken from us; I dared not announce it, the words died on my lips, and my heart broke. However, the wind subsided, and the sea began to re-enter the gulf.

As we were on a rise, the ground was soon dry, and we were able to sit down. What a sight! We all had pale and drained complexions; our soaked clothing seemed to be glued to the skin and forming part of it; a burning thirst devoured us, and seawater was the only refreshment nature offered us. (2)

By the time the storm was over, only six buildings remained on Galveston, one of them Laffite’s house. At least four of Laffite’s vessels were sunk or driven ashore. Wrecks from the storm were reportedly found five miles inland in the 1820s. Virtually all of the French refugees’ supplies were lost and the island’s wells were contaminated with salt water. The settlers were dependent on Laffite’s generosity for survival.

Although there is no good estimate of the number of lives lost in the hurricane, many Karankawa Indians reportedly perished.

The great 1818 hurricane is said to have blown a high flood into Aransas and Copano Bays. It is reported to have drowned many Indians and washed a brigantine or brig to the upper end of a creek (Bergantine Creek) that flows into St. Charles Bay, supposedly indicating that the flood was as high, or higher than, the 1919 flood in that bay. … The normal heights of hurricane floods and their plain weather signs must have been well known to the Indians. The drowning of large numbers of Indians indicates an unexpectedly high flood for a hurricane and probably a wide breach. (3)

It’s no wonder Narcisse Rigaud, who survived the 1818 Texas hurricane, tells General Humbert, “this island promises nothing but difficulties,” when he again finds himself stranded on Galveston in Napoleon in America.

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William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (Orlando, 2005), p. 352.
C. D., Le Champ d’Asile au Texas (Paris, 1820), pp. 103-105.
W. Armstrong Price, North Beach Study for the City of Corpus Christi (Corpus Christi, TX, 1956), p. 67.

In the Battle of Dresden, fought on August 26-27, 1813, French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte defeated a much larger Austrian, Prussian and Russian force commanded by Austrian Field Marshal Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg. The battle took place on the outskirts of Dresden, then capital of the Kingdom of Saxony in what is today Germany.

Battle of Dresden, 26 August 1813, by Carle Vernet and Jacques François Swebach

After Napoleon’s defeat in the Russian Campaign of 1812, members of the Sixth Coalition tried to liberate the German states from French domination. Dresden was occupied by a French garrison of fewer than 20,000 men. When Napoleon learned that Schwarzenberg’s army was advancing on the city, he rapidly sent reinforcements, giving the French 70,000 troops on the first day of the battle. They effectively pushed back 158,000 coalition troops, causing Schwarzenberg to lose ground. That night, a heavy rain fell. When the battle resumed on August 27, Napoleon had approximately 120,000 troops at his command, thanks to the arrival of two additional corps. He went on the offensive against the coalition force, which now numbered some 200,000.

All three of the allied monarchs were present at the Battle of Dresden: Emperor Francis I of Austria, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and King Frederick William III of Prussia. Jean-Victor-Marie Moreau was also at the battle, giving advice to the Tsar. Moreau was a French general who helped Napoleon come to power but then became his rival and was banished from France. He had recently returned to Europe from the United States, where he had been living since 1805.

Captain Jean-Roch Coignet, a grenadier in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, takes up the tale.

The rain fell in torrents; but the enthusiasm of our soldiers was unabated. The Emperor directed all our movements. His guard was in a street to our left, and could not go out of the city without being riddled by a redoubt defended by eight hundred men and four pieces of cannon.

There was no time to lose. Their shells were falling in the midst of the city. The Emperor called up a captain of fusiliers of the guard named Gagnard (of Avallon). This brave soldier presented himself to the Emperor with his face a little askew.

‘What have you in your cheek?’

‘My quid, sire.’

‘Ah! You chew tobacco?’

‘Yes, sire.’

‘Take your company, and go and take that redoubt which is holding me up.’

‘It shall be done.’

‘March along the palisades by the flank, then charge right on it. Let it be carried at once!’

My good comrade set off at a double by the right flank. Within a hundred feet of the barrier of the redoubt his company halted; he ran to the barrier. The officer who held the bar of the two gates, seeing him alone, thought that he was going to surrender, and so did not move. My jolly soldier ran his sabre through his body and opened the barrier. His company made two leaps into the redoubt, and forced them to surrender. The Emperor, who had watched the whole affair, said, ‘The redoubt is taken.’ …

I hastened to my comrade…, I embraced him, and taking him by the arm, I led him to the Emperor, who had made a sign to Gagnard to come to him. ‘Well, I am well pleased with you. You shall be put with my old grousers: your first lieutenant shall be made captain; your second lieutenant, lieutenant; and your sergeant-major, second lieutenant. Go and look to your prisoners.’ The rain was falling so heavily that the Emperor’s plumes drooped upon his shoulders.

As soon as the redoubt was taken, the old guard went out of the city and formed a line of battle. All our troops were in line in the low grounds, and our right wing rested on the road to France. The Emperor sent us off in squads of three, to carry orders for the attack all along the line. I was sent to the division of cuirassiers. On my return from my mission, I went back to the Emperor. He had in his redoubt a very long field-glass on a pivot, and he looked through it every moment. His generals also looked through it, while he, with his small glass in his hand, watched the general movements. Our right wing gained some ground; our soldiers became masters of the road to France; and the Emperor took his pinch of snuff from his waistcoat pocket.

Suddenly, casting his eye towards the heights, he shouted, ‘There is Moreau! That is he with a green coat on, at the head of a column with the emperors. Gunners to your pieces! Marksmen, look through the large glass! Be quick! When they are half-way up the hill, they will be within range.’ The redoubt was mounted with sixteen guns of the guard. Their salvo made the very earth shake, and the Emperor, looking through his small glass, said, ‘Moreau has fallen!’

A charge of the cuirassiers put the column to rout, and brought back the general’s escort, and we learned that Moreau was dead. [Moreau died on September 2 as a result of wounds sustained at the Battle of Dresden.] A colonel, who was made prisoner during the charge, was questioned by our Napoleon in the presence of Prince Berthier and Count Monthyon. He said that the emperors had offered to give the command to Moreau, and he had refused it in these words: ‘I do not wish to take up arms against my country. But you will never overcome them in mass. You must divide your forces into seven columns; they will not be able to hold out against them all; if they overthrow one, the others can then advance.’

At three o’clock in the afternoon the enemy made a hasty retreat through the cross-roads and narrow, almost impracticable, byways. This was a memorable victory; but our generals had had enough of it. I had my place among the staff, and I heard all sorts of things said in conversation. They cursed the Emperor: ‘He is a —, they said, ‘who will have us all killed.’ I was dumb with astonishment. I said to myself, ‘We are lost.’ The next day after this conversation, I made bold to say to my general, ‘I think our place is no longer here; we ought to go on to the Rhine by forced marches.’ ‘I agree with you; but the Emperor is obstinate: no one can make him listen to reason.’

The Emperor pursued the enemy’s army as far as Pirna; but just as he was about to enter the town, he was seized with vomiting, caused by fatigue. He was obliged to return to Dresden, where a little rest soon re-established him. General Vandamme, upon whom the Emperor relied to keep in check the remnant of the enemy’s army, risked an engagement in the valleys of Toeplitz, and was defeated on the 30th of August [at the Battle of Kulm]. This defeat, those of Macdonald on the Katzbach and Oudinot in the plain of Grossbeeren, destroyed the fruits of the victory of Dresden. (1)

Prussian writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann was also in Dresden during the battle.

He had experience of a bombardment; one of the shells exploding before the house in which Hoffmann and Keller, the comedian, with bumpers in their hands to keep up their spirits, watched the progress of the attack from an upper window. The explosion killed three persons; Keller let his glass fall. Hoffmann had more philosophy; he tossed off his bumper and moralized: ‘What is life!’ said he, ‘and how frail the human frame that cannot withstand a splinter of heated iron!’ He saw the field of battle when they were cramming with naked corpses the immense fosses which form the soldier’s grave; the field covered with the dead and wounded, with horses and men; powder-waggons which had exploded, broken weapons, shakos, sabres, cartridge-boxes, and all the relics of a desperate fight. He saw, too, Napoleon in the midst of his triumph, and heard him ejaculate to an adjutant, with the look and the deep voice of the lion, the single word, ‘Voyons.’ (2)

Napoleon later described the Battle of Dresden as the best action of the campaign. In Napoleon in America, he commends Narcisse Rigaud, who served at the Battle of Dresden as his father’s aide-de-camp.

The Battle of Dresden was Napoleon’s last major victory on German soil. In October 1813, after his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig, Napoleon began to retreat into France. In March 1814, coalition troops entered Paris. Napoleon was forced to abdicate the French throne and was exiled to Elba.

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Narcisse & Antonia Rigaud: Survivors of the Champ d’Asile

Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue (New York, 1929), pp. 249-252.
Walter Scott, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1841), p. 28.

Although cancer was known to the ancients – the oldest known description of the disease is in an Egyptian papyrus from around 1600 B.C. – cancer treatment in the 19th century had not advanced much beyond the methods used during the time of Hippocrates (circa 460-370 BC). These consisted of diet, bloodletting and laxatives. Surgery was also used to treat cancer, but since general anaesthesia was not available until the 1840s, and antiseptics were not broadly introduced until the 1860s, operations were extremely painful and had a poor prognosis. Like today, unusual cures for cancer were often proclaimed, each with their advocates and testimonials.

Cancer Treatment in the 19th Century: A surgical operation to remove a malignant tumour from a man's left breast and armpit in a Dublin drawing room, 1817. Source: Wellcome Images https://wellcomeimages.org/

A surgical operation to remove a malignant tumour from a man’s left breast and armpit in a Dublin drawing room, 1817. Source: Wellcome Images https://wellcomeimages.org/

Dock root

Yellow dock is a herb traditionally used as a medicine by Native Americans. Its root is recommended by herbalists as a general health tonic, as a remedy for mild anemia and various skin conditions, and as a laxative. In the early 1800s, dock root was one of many plant-based concoctions claimed to be successful in treating cancer.

Take the narrow-leafed dock root and boil it in water till it be quite soft, then bathe the part affected in the decoction as hot as can be borne, three or four times a day; the root must then be mashed and applied as a poultice.

This root has proved an effectual cure in many instances; it was first introduced by an Indian woman who came to the house of a person in the country who was much afflicted with a cancer in her mouth…. The Indian went out and soon returned with a root, which she boiled and applied as above, and in a short time a cure was effected….

Daniel Brown’s father having had a cancer in his head, had it cut out and apparently healed; but some of the roots remaining, it again broke out; his doctor then informed him that nothing more could be done, except burning it out with hot irons, this being too harsh a remedy to submit to, he was much discouraged. The dock root was soon after recommended and it cured him in a short time. (1)

Turkish figs

Figs were another recommended cancer treatment, both (one assumes) because of their laxative effect, and because a fig poultice was thought to have healing properties – something that is mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah 38:21).

The following recipe for the cure of cancer is recommended upon very respectable authority, as an easy, cheap, and simple remedy. Boil the finest Turkey figs in new milk, which they will thicken by being boiled in it. When they are tender, split and apply them as warm as they can be borne to the part affected, whether it be broken or whole, and the part must be washed every time the poultice is changed with some of the milk. Remember always to use a fresh poultice night and morning, and at least once more in the day. And drink a quart or a pint of the milk that the figs are boiled in, twice in the twenty-four hours, if the stomach will bear it. This course must be steadily observed for three or four months at least. The cure of the old man who died at the age of one hundred and five was effected with about six pounds of figs only. The cancer, which began at a corner of his mouth, had eaten through his jaw, cheek and halfway down his throat; yet was so perfectly cured as never to show any tendency to return. But on any such appearance, the figs should be again applied. (2)

Dough and hog’s lard

Monsieur Ruelle published in the papers a receipt of a far less painful and more speedy cure of cancer in three days and without surgical operation. ‘This remedy,’ says he, ‘consists simply in a piece of dough, about the size of a small hen’s egg, and a lump of hog’s lard, the older the better, of the same dimensions. These substances thoroughly mixed, so as to form a kind of salve, must be spread on a piece of white leather and applied to the diseased part.’ In confirmation of the efficacy of this remedy, M. Ruelle cites Mademoiselle Chaumero, mother to the bookseller of that name, in the Palais Royal, who was about to under the usual operation [of excision], when a woman who had been cured by his application informed her of it. She joyfully availed herself of this remedy, and, as the Journal de Paris asserts, was completely cured in the space of three days. (3)

Lead and brimstone

Although poisonous, lead was used as a medicine for some 2000 years. Combined with brimstone (sulphur) and injected into the tumour, it was touted as a cancer treatment in the 19th century.

Melt as much lead as would make a large rifle bullet, and while boiling over the fire stir brimstone in it until it becomes a fine flour, and the lead disappears; then scarify the top of the cancer, so that the powder, thus formed by the lead and brimstone, can get at the roots of the cancer; then cover it with a linen rag, and keep it dry, apply it once or twice a day, as occasion may require, until the cancer is cured.

With the above remedy I have cured many persons, and have never failed in a single instance, and have full confidence in recommending it to my fellow-citizens, throughout the union. Editors of papers, friendly to the cause of humanity, will give this an insertion in their respective journals. (4)

The red-hot iron

Napoleon’s famous battlefield surgeon, Dominique Jean Larrey, also applied his skill to the treatment of cancer. One suspects the following operation was more painful than reported (see Frances Burney’s account of her mastectomy conducted by Larrey).

Mr. Larrey, the celebrated French surgeon, has recently performed an extraordinary cure of a cancer in the lower jaw of a girl of 12 years of age, which occupied nearly the whole extent of the right lateral part of the bone. Such a case had been long regarded as absolutely beyond the reach of the surgical art. Amputation has been tried in such cases, and failed. Mr. Larrey, after making an excision of the fungous portion of the bone, had recourse to fire, which he has employed with good effect in very many desperate cases. It was the actual cautery which he used, and which was attended with complete success; affording every reason to hope that it may be repeated in similar cases with similar effect. The young patient was obliged to undergo the application of the red-hot iron 40 or 50 times; but these applications were far less painful that might be at first imagined. The child came on foot, accompanied by her mother, to Mr. Larrey’s house, and commonly returned in the same manner. She uttered not a single cry during the operation, and confessed that she suffered very little from it. She is now perfectly cured. (5)

Mesmerism

Mesmerism, also known as animal magnetism, was a popular 19th century therapy that involved the rebalancing within the body of an invisible force or fluid that was said to permeate the universe. Mesmerism combined aspects of hypnotism and healing touch.

The case of cure of a true cancer of the female breast with mesmerism…is one of the most important papers ever published in the annals of medical science, demonstrating as it does that the curative powers of mesmerism exceed those of any other therapeutic agent with which mankind has as yet become acquainted. ‘The disease cured was,’ says Dr. Elliotson, ‘malignant and structural, and such as the art of medicine has never been known to cure, nor the powers of nature to shake off.’ The patient, Miss Barber, is a dress-maker…. She first applied to Dr. Elliotson on the 6th of March, 1843, and at that time was labouring under decided cancer in a state of schirrus. Dr. Elliotson proposed mesmerism to her, with a view of rendering her insensible to the pain of the surgical operation for the removal of the part, and accordingly she placed herself under his care. … [Dr. Elliotson] took her in hand himself, and produced a state of sleep-waking, and by the constant, and assiduous, and scientific application of mesmerism, for upwards of five years, succeeded in dissipating painlessly and imperceptibly, but perfectly and completely, the diseased mass, thus for the first time, in the history of the medical profession, curing cancer. (6)

Electricity

By the 1870s, electricity was being applied to tumours.

A New York paper gives an account of the removal of a large erectile tumor from the neck of General Kilpatrick by means of electricity…. ‘The General having been placed completely under the influence of ether, four large darning needles were inserted in the tumor, which was almost perfectly solid, and the full force of a powerful electric battery was applied. In thirty minutes the swelling began to disappear, and in two hours, during which the General was perfectly unconscious, it was entirely removed. The operation was completely prostrating, but perfectly satisfactory to the General and his friends; and the surgeons have no doubt of his speedy recovery. The electricity thrown into Gen. Kilpatrick’s system during the time the battery was applied was sufficient to burn a piece of coal the size of a marble.’…

Last February we published an account of the cure of a cancer by the use of electricity, by Dr. Rae, now in Empire. The circumstances were related to us by the patient, Judge T.T. Davis, of Syracuse, New York. After having the cancer removed three times by the knife without permanent cure, Mr. Davis applied to a Russian electrician in New York. This electrician thrust several needles into the cancer, and applied the electrodes of a galvanic battery. Under this treatment the cancer disappeared, but as the operation was a painful one, he desisted a while and returned home. He then met Dr. Rae, who at once applied electricity in a new way. He constructed electrodes, we believe from coins, attached to the poles of the battery, wrapped these in moist clothes, and applied to parts of the body in such a manner that the electrical current must pass through the cancer. A daily application for several days resulted in dispersing the cancer across the center thus cutting it in two. The electrodes [were] then applied differently so as to cause the currents to pass through the tumor in different directions until it had entirely disappeared. It for some time continued to reappear on different parts of his body, but when any enlargement of muscle appeared electricity was immediately applied, until all indications of cancer disappeared. (7)

How many patients were cured?

Despite reports of individual recoveries or remissions, most cancer patients did not fare well. In 1854, the Cancer Hospital in London reported that

out of 650 cases to the end of last year, something like 90 of the out-patients have had their disease arrested or relieved; and of the in-patients about 56. It also appears that but a few cases have been successfully operated on. (8)

This did not stop people from getting rich peddling cures. In 1885, an American paper complained.

The discovery of ‘cancer-cures’ began in the last century and has been pursued with unremitting industry to the present day. Pretenders to the possession of a specific can even now get wealthy by liberally advertising in religious weeklies; but fifty and 100 years ago they got fame and honor also. The cancer-curers have been the most numerous of all quacks. …

In the history of cancer therapeutics for the present century we find a long and curious list of drugs and other measures that have been put forward as specifics. Sarsaparilla, foucus helmin thocorton, juice of mancenillier, thuya occidentalis (arbor vitae), smilax, ergotin, tar, house-leek, pipsissewa, cundurango, Chian turpentine are among the vegetable remedies recommended for internal and external use. Arsenic, aluminium, iodine, the bromides, sulphur, iron, corrosive sublimate; acetic, citric and carbolic acids; choral chromic acid, the zinc salts and caustic potash have all had their virtues extolled. …

Despite all, we are no nearer curing cancer than we were 100 years ago. We can postpone death, relieve suffering, and make life more tolerable. In a small percent of cases the use of the knife removes the disease permanently; and to the knife belongs, so far, the chief triumph in the therapeutics of carcinoma. …

The best hopes for the future lie in discovering the causes of the development of the dread disease, and in preventing its appearance. Meanwhile cancer quacks will thrive, because man wants to live, because hope will not die and because the diagnosis of cancerine from other tumors is not always easy. Most cases of ulcerating ‘cancers’ cured by quacks have been cases of syphilis, while the other ‘cures’ are cases of non-malignant tumor. (9)

Napoleon’s cancer treatment

Napoleon Bonaparte died of stomach cancer on May 5, 1821, at the age of 51. (10) During the last four months of his life, Napoleon’s symptoms were treated with enemas, hot baths, valerian, iron, quinine, orange flower water, bloodletting, Cheltenham salts, licorice water, emetics, soup and semolina, hot towels, purgatives, barley water, tincture of opium and ether, jelly and warm wine, sulphate of magnesia, gentian, subcarbonate of potash, ether, calomel, and stomach plasters. Napoleon was not subjected to surgery or more exotic treatments, in large part because his physician, Dr. François Carlo Antommarchi, did not accurately diagnose his patient’s illness. Antommarchi thought Napoleon was suffering from chronic hepatitis. British Army surgeon Dr. Archibald Arnott did not make a correct diagnosis either.

Which raises the question

So how could Napoleon survive his fictional rescue from St. Helena and live beyond May 1821 in Napoleon in America, given that he was dying of cancer at the time? While I do not subscribe to the theory that Napoleon died of arsenic poisoning (see footnote 10 below), I took advantage of it when writing the novel by assuming that if Napoleon had been spared the final doses, he might have recovered. Such are the joys of fiction.

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“A Safe and Efficacious Remedy for the Cancer,” Maryland Gazette (Annapolis, MD), Feb. 5, 1801.
“Cure for the Cancer,” The Lancaster Gazette, and General Advertiser (Lancaster, UK), Dec. 28, 1811.
“Cure for the Cancer (From the Liverpool Courier),” Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer (Annapolis, MD), Aug. 24, 1815.
Daniel Dillon, “Cure for a Cancer (From the Ohio Galaxy),” Maryland Gazette and Political Intelligencer, Aug. 1, 1822.
“Cure of Cancer,” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London, UK), Issue 238, Sept. 17, 1826, p. 293.
“Cancer Cured by Mesmerism,” Woolmer’s Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (Exeter, UK), Oct. 21, 1848.
Daily Central City Register (Central City, CO), Oct. 18, 1870.
“Hospital for Cancer,” Cambridge Independent Press (Cambridge, UK), June 24, 1854.
“Cancer-Cure and Cancer-Curers (From the Medical Record),” Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco, CA), May 9, 1885.
The claim that Napoleon was killed by arsenic poisoning has been convincingly refuted in a number of scientific studies. See, for example, William J. Broad in the New York Times and Ted Chamberlain on the National Geographic website. For more about Napoleon’s stomach cancer, see UT Southwestern Medical Center, “Napoleon’s Mysterious Death Unmasked,” Science Daily, 16 January 2007, sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070116131630.htm and Alessandro Lugli et al., “Napoleon Bonaparte’s gastric cancer: a clinicopathologic approach to staging, pathogenesis, and etiology,” Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Vol. 4 (2007), pp. 52-57. http://www.nature.com/nrgastro/journal/v4/n1/full/ncpgasthep0684.html See also J. Thomas Hindmarsh and John Savory, “The Death of Napoleon, Cancer or Arsenic?” Clinical Chemistry, Vol. 54, No. 12 (December 2008), pp. 2092-2093. http://www.clinchem.org/content/54/12/2092.full For a study of Napoleon’s case presented as a modern clinicopathologic conference, see Robert E. Gosselin, “Exhuming Bonaparte,” Dartmouth Medicine, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Spring 2003), pp. 38-47, 61.

In the early 19th century, fashionable and would-be fashionable residents of London considered it desirable to leave the city for at least part of the summer, “when there is nobody of any consequence in town, excepting a few mad dogs.” (1) If one couldn’t get out of London, it was important to pretend to.

An unfortunate Marchioness and two Countesses were yesterday ascertained to be in town by ‘White’s men.’ Expulsion from Almack’s next season will most certainly be the consequence. An unhappy and inexperienced housemaid was dismissed on Saturday by Dowager Lady —, for having incautiously thrown open the drawing-room window shutters, and thus indicated residence and occupancy by the noble owner. A clownish footman was in the same way last week deservedly cashiered by his Lord, for having with a broom removed the symptoms of vegetation in front of his Lordship’s house in Grosvenor Square, and so destroyed the unerring proof of being long ‘out of town.’ The Marquis of — is said to have been detected entering by Hyde Park corner last night: we trust the rumour is unfounded. (2)

Green Park, London, by George Sidney Shepherd, circa 1830

Endure the heat

The motivation to escape London in the summer was due in no small part to the “parching, roasting, grilling” weather.

[H]ackney-coachmen broil their beef-steaks upon the trottoir, journeymen-taylors sup on lobster-salads, and the Duke of Wellington’s porter, looking like Jack Manners in a livery, stands at his Grace’s gate with his hands in his laced waistcoat pockets, the self-appointed receiver-general of the western dust. (3)

In June of 1820, Napoleon in America character Dorothea Lieven complained to Clemens von Metternich (who is also in the novel) that she was “melting in the heat.”

Without any warning, we have been transported to the tropics. Only in Kensington Gardens can one breathe. But for some years that lovely garden has been annexed as a middle-class rendezvous, and good society no longer goes there, except to drown itself. Last year they took from its lake the body of a very beautiful woman, expensively dressed, who had probably been a whole week in the water. (4)

It was less torrid outside London, though that did not prove attractive to American writer James Kirke Paulding.

To me [who loves] the sunshine like a terrapin, there is something chilly and ungenial in the English summer, and it offends me hugely to hear a fat, puffing, beer-drinking fellow, bawling out to his neighbour, ‘A fine day,’ when the sun looks as if it might verify the theory of one of the old Greeks, that it was nothing more than a great round ball of copper. Whether this melancholy character in the climate, or the practice of drinking beer in such enormous quantities, or both combined, have given that peculiar cast of bluff and gruff stupidity observable in the common people of England, I cannot say; but certainly, if ‘a man who drinks beer thinks beer,’ the question is decided at once. (5)

Ignore the noise

The heat in the city was accompanied by sounds, described by English writer Charles Molloy Westmacott in “Miseries of a London Summer Morning.”

Who has not wak’d to list the busy sounds
Of Summer’s Morning in the sultry smoke
Of noisy London? On the pavement
The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face,
And tatter’d cov’ring, shrilly bawls his trade,
Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door
The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell
Proclaims the dustman’s office, while the street
Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins
The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts;
While tinmen’s shops, and noisy trunk-makers,
Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters,
Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries
Of vegetable venders, fill the air…. (6)

Go to the opera

For those who were stuck in London during the summer, there were entertainments, including the panorama, Vauxhall Gardens and the opera.

This theatre [the English Opera House] commenced its summer campaign last night, under very favourable auspices. The play bills announced the first appearance of a young lady on the London boards; and the re-appearance of Mr. Philips, after an absence of eleven years, spent chiefly among the Americans. The piece selected was the comic opera of the Barber of Seville, which, as a vehicle of music is well enough, even were some excellent touches of low humour not scintillated over it; but unfortunately it came forth with considerable ‘alterations and additions,’ two phrases which, with operas, sound rather ungratefully in our ears. Some of Rossini’s music was introduced; and whether it was done out of compliment to the star of the Italian Opera, or to the young lady, we cannot say; but it had the effect of extending the piece to a most undue length….

A new comic pantomime entitled the Monkey Island, or Harlequin and the Loadstone Rock, followed the opera. It is really one of the worst of the kind which it has ever been our lot to witness. The first scene introduces us to a barrel cast ashore by the wild waters, which some wicked fairy has put in a roar. From this casket out steps a mariner; but the luckless wight is encountered by two snakes; one of which he slays, and out of the other a beautiful fairy is produced, who transports the destroyer to the Monkey Island, where Columbine has been planted. We are then introduced into a huge posse of monkeys and orangutans, with huge black tails and most frightful visages. (7)

Dance at Almack’s

A summer option in London in the 19th century - Tom and Jerry ‘Sporting a Toe’ among the Corinthians at Almack's, by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank, 1821. Image source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased 1956. This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest.

Highest Life in London. Tom and Jerry ‘Sporting a Toe’ among the Corinthians at Almack’s in the West, by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and George Cruikshank, 1821. Image source: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Purchased 1956. This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest.

Almack’s was a prominent upper-class London social club that held weekly balls. Its summer season extended to mid-July.

The Assembly was on Wednesday night one of peculiar brilliancy, although not crowded. The most pleasing novelty, and what gave additional effect to the distinguished throng, presented itself in the presence of the Ladies who composed on the night of the Caledonian Ball [held at Almack’s the preceding Friday] the Quadrilles of the White and Red Rose, in the same beautiful dresses worn by them on that occasion; they thus formed what are termed, Quadrilles Costumées. Dancing commenced with a Polonaise, and in this graceful and beautiful figure, all the rank, youth, and beauty of the room joined. (8)

Dine at a tavern

London’s taverns were popular places to eat, drink and meet with friends.

In the evening of a very hot summer day, a foppish young gentleman was lolling in one of the boxes of a London tavern, waiting in a kind of a languid listlessness, for his dinner to be served up. At last the waiter made his appearance, and having placed a chicken and wine, &c., on the table, was about to withdraw. ‘Waiter,’ said the young gentleman with a feeble voice, ‘cut up that chicken – it’s a labour I can’t endure. The fatigue even of eating is a bore scarcely to be suffered.’ The waiter obeyed, presently he was ordered to fill a glass of wine, and hand it to the lips of the fop, who received it in an elegant reclining composture. This scene diverted an Irish gentleman, who sat in the opposite box, feasting on roast beef. ‘Hallo,’ said he, ‘you waiter come here.’ The waiter came bowing. ‘Cut up that roast beef,’ (said the gentleman). ‘Tis a great bore to be hewing at roast beef in hot weather.’ The waiter obeyed. ‘Now stick it on a fork, and reach it to my mouth.’ Twas done. ‘Now my dear honey wag my jaw, tis a horrid bore to wag one’s own jaw on a summer day. (9)

Make some ice

Commercial ice-making machines were not invented until 1854. Before that, people could try making ice using this recipe.

Take eleven drachms of muriate of ammonia, ten of nitrate of potash, and sixteen of sulphate of soda. They should be recently crystallized, and contain as much as possible of the water of crystallization without being damp. Reduce each of these salts separately to a fine powder, and then mix them gradually in a vessel made of fine tin plate with five ounces of water; as the salts dissolve, a degree of cold will be produced sufficient to bring the thermometer below the freezing point. If a little water in a test tube be immersed in this mixture as the solution is going on, in about ten minutes it will be frozen. The vessel in which the mixture is made should be just large enough to contain it. Any thing, such as wine-bottles, jars containing conserves and fruits, lemonade for sick people, &c. immersed in this mixture, or moistened with it, and exposed to the action of a brisk current of air, may be rendered cold in the hottest day. (10)

Watch out for thieves

Whatever people did, they had to watch their belongings. Around three-quarters of recorded crime in London in the 1800s involved petty theft, including this example.

A fellow walking down Snow Hill, London, on a sultry summer evening, observed an old gentleman without his hat panting and leaning on a post, and courteously asked him what was the matter. Sir, (said the old man,) an impudent rascal has just snatched my hat off, and run away with it. I have run after him until I have quite lost my breath, and cannot, if my life depended on it, go a step further. ‘What, not a step,’ says the fellow. ‘Not a single step,’ returned the other. ‘Why then, by Jupiter, I must have your wig;’ and snatching off his fine flowing caxon, he was out of sight in a minute. (11)

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“A Puddle in a Storm,” The Morning Chronicle (London), Sept. 18, 1824.
“[Extract from the London Morning Chronicle],” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), Oct. 20, 1824.
John Bull (London), July 19, 1824.
Peter Quennell, ed. The Private Letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich, 1820-1826 (New York, 1938), p. 44.
James Kirke Paulding, A Sketch of Old England by a New England Man, Vol. I (New York, 1822), p. 13.
Charles Molloy Westmacott, Points of Misery, or Fables for Mankind: Prose and Verse, Chiefly Original (London, 1823), p. 67.
“Opening of the English Opera House,” The Sunday Times (London), July 4, 1824, p. 4.
“Almack’s Grand Ball,” The Morning Post (London), July 2, 1824.
Louisville Public Advertiser (Louisville, KY), August 15, 1821.
“To Make Ice in Summer,” The Morning Post (London), July 14, 1824.
The Supporter and Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, Ohio), June 13, 1821.

Feel like being transported to Paris in the summer of 1820? Louis XVIII was the King of France, Napoleon Bonaparte was in exile on St. Helena, and a plot to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy (in which Napoleon in America character Charles Fabvier was implicated) had just been uncovered. Here is a letter written by a visitor to Paris on August 25, 1820.

View of the Market and Fontaine des Innocents, Paris, by John James Chalon, 1822

It is the fête of St. Louis, and the white flag flutters with grotesque simplicity from St. Denis to Bellevue, amidst troops of whiskered guards and gay crowds of Paris, hurried out on the boulevards and into the Champs Élysées, to partake of the bounties of their monarch, lavished with a bountiful hand and not decreased by the discovered conspiracy. You pass through streets sufficiently broad for nearly four carriages to go abreast, and clean to a degree that is cheerful and surprising; for nothing can be more perversely false than the assertion that they are dark, narrow, and filthy. … [T]he unclouded clear blue sky that overhangs this beautiful city forbids any part of it to wear the aspect of gloom for a moment; for even when rain descends, it is not preceded by looming clouds, nor are the nerves distracted by the variations of climate – now light, now dense; the shower descends in heavy drops when it comes, but is forgot the moment it is over. The [drainage] channel is in the middle of the street – so that the trouble of a second gutter is saved to the pedestrian; and as to the danger of walking the streets, it is an idle assertion. There is a rule for driving in France as well as in England, and it is simply this – to keep to the right side of the way, leaving the left to those encountering you. …

From the marshal to the mendicant, good manners distinguish every individual you see – the drivers politely salute each other en passant, holding their whip and reins in one hand, while courtesy doffs the chapeau with the other. Here are little flower-girls enforcing your purchase of bouquets at a sous each, with a grace that art has not given – and there behold two stately sable personages which at first sight you may take for Othellos in mourning; tall, gaunt, and serious, they shake their heads most significantly under broad-brimmed Spanish hats, and you are not a little amused by the gold ear-rings that so relievingly scintillate amidst so much shade. They are simply charcoal men; but their gravity and demeanor would do honour to the Hidalgos of Madrid – so it is throughout – the poorest people in Paris are clean, with the exception of such personages as those I have mentioned, whose ‘occupation’ is to be attired ‘in a solemn garb of woe.’ So much for appearance. As to intelligence, they absolutely astonish you: I care not what class you address. They learn the arts, and have the names of masters of painting and sculpture at their fingers’ ends. …

But to the fête of St. Louis. Along the Champs Élysées…are erected spacious wooden booths for the distribution of provisions to the good people of Paris. Imagine the road from the Phoenix Park-gate thronged with thousands of pedestrians, looking right and left to the stage where the play is exhibited, and alone forgot when the hundreds of fowls and loaves are flung from the booths I have mentioned, while hog-heads of wine flow even more freely than in the most prosperous times has run the malt of the successful M.P. in gratitude to his electors. Fire works are also prepared along this road to heighten the effect of this combination of a hundred fonts of Camacho [a wealthy character in Don Quixote]; and the song and the dance give a spirit and gaiety to the entire, which is most enlivening.

Everywhere, however, you see the Gendarmerie on the watch, wearing the eye not fearful, nor secure: active and silent, nothing escapes their glance. Their appearance even adds to the cheerfulness of the scene, as they are in general very fine young men, in a becoming uniform of blue and white. In fact, if Frederick the Great rendered Prussia a huge barrack, assuredly the Ex-Emperor has made France a military college: everywhere the spectator marks the skill of the scholar – and from the Caserne to the Carrousel, every thing is classic. But war is their idol. It is evident wherever you move – even the games of children are little lessons in military evolution. A fellow today, with a scarlet tunic and plumed hat, attracted universal admiration by the steady discipline evinced by four little boys, gaudily dressed like himself, each carrying a stick shaped like a caliver, or little gun, and mounted on stilts! The General of this division himself shouldered his caliver, raised about two feet from the ground by his wooden props, and gave the word of command to his little Braves, the oldest about eleven, and the youngest about five, marching in quick time, and facing to the right about with a dexterity that would have done them credit on terra firma, and not airborne, exalted above common boys. From ‘rifles light as air’ like these, to the substantial bon-bons of the passive Louis, and the out-heroding Herod performances of the Champs Élysées-Corps-Dramatique, this extraordinary people derive incessant entertainment. …

Directing then our servant to return by the Barriere de l’Étoile (the Barrier of the Star) we order our coach by the Place Vendôme, towards the Rue de Richelieu, and thence to the Palais Royale. At the Barrier I have mentioned, you see the unfinished triumphal arch, begun to the glory of the French army in 1805; as yet it is but 60 feet high, but when completed it will be 135. It is the finest entrance into Paris, and even the massive beginning of this arch of victory, huge and ponderous as it is already, conveys an excellent idea of the grasping mind of the French; and is beheld with admiration, even in the uncouth appearance it now wears. Passing on, therefore, with tempered speed, for a trot is the fastest pace allowed in the streets of Paris, we approach the Place Vendôme…[where I] pause in homage to the column of Austerlitz. …

I have seen this column by the day; I have seen it illuminated for the fête of St. Louis, and coldly indeed waved the white flag of the lily over this record of France’s triumphs. I never saw such a combination of beautiful colouring in any public building as the column of Austerlitz then afforded me. The lamps entwined around it dispensed a mild and tranquil light, and brought out the sappy green of the pillar with admirable effect, while above, the fair banner fluttered to the night breeze, relieved by a sky of clear deep blue, set with stars twinkling with the most brilliant lustre. The time, the place, and the occasion – the standard of Louis surmounting the column of Napoleon – the eye resting on circle after circle of his victories, while the silence was broke by the burden of Henri Quatre, warbled by some reveller at the Champs Élysées Feast, all this contributed to form a mental picture of no common cast, but which the moralist will ever delight to record. This is out of its place, for I intended to introduce you to Very’s [a restaurant] and then the Italian Opera to see Agnese; that, however, I may defer for the present; that I anticipate no common entertainment from the French state, a material object of my attention, you will readily believe, when I tell you that already I have bought Macbeth turned into a pantomime, and that the charms of the Weird Sisters are acted on the stage in a right new reading way…. (1)

Napoleon died the following spring, on May 5, 1821. Louis XVIII died on September 16, 1824. He was succeeded by his brother, the Count of Artois, who became Charles X of France.

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“Letters from Paris, and Other Parts of France, in the Summer of 1820, to a Friend in Dublin,” The Morning Post (London, England), September 28, 1820.

Do you find it hard to get a good night’s sleep in the summer? Pity the residents of New York City in the summer of 1822.

A View of New York City in the early 1800s: City Hall and Park Row by John William Hill, 1830

New York City Hall and Park Row by John William Hill, 1830

In London it is well known that a considerable portion of the inhabitants, particularly the most depraved, sleep all day, and walk all night; hence, at no period of the twenty-four hours are the streets deserted. We, in New York, are quite a sober set, particularly in the winter. The streets, of a frosty night, are actually desolate; and even the watchmen, those vigilant sentinels of the dark, house themselves comfortably, and take their nap beneath some porch or penthouse, well sheltered from the storm.

In the summer, however, things wear a different appearance, and there are many who sleep through the heat of the day, and walk through the cool of the night. The weary traveller or the industrious citizen steals but a hasty dose in these noisy times, and enjoys his balmy sleep by snatches.

About 2 o’clock on Saturday morning, the neighbors in the vicinity of Washington Hall [located at the corner of Broadway and Reade Streets] were aroused from their slumbers by a clamour in the street of no inconsiderable violence. A lady had detected the infidelity of her husband, which, like a kind considerate wife, she was endeavoring to conceal by having him taken to the watch house.

The noise made by these connubial rioters awoke all the bachelors in the neighborhood, who, shaking the poppies from their brows, popped their white night night-caps and heads from their windows to take a lesson in the line of conjugal affection.

‘O you thief – you varlet – you infidel,’ said the lady, with the utmost mildness and having a smack of the brogue, ‘have I cotch’d ye? How dare ye go after another man’s wife, you villain?’

‘Now, my dear,’ said the husband, ‘consider where we are.’

‘Don’t talk to me; ye wretch, you consider everything but your poor wife; but I suspected ye, faith – and sure, I dogg’d ye, and I cotch’d ye, you villain as you are, with another woman.’

‘Now you are wrong, my love,’ said the poor devil – ‘you are wrong; I was sitting up with a dead man.’

‘A dead man? Och, what a lie,’ said the lady. ‘Twas a living woman. I say – here, watch, watch – off wid him. I’ll appair against him tomorrow.’

Our watchmen are, in general, very civil creatures, having, at best, little energy, but a great deal of curiosity. They are so fond of hearing particulars, and trying a case in the streets.

In this instance, after hearing patiently the volubility of the lady, and her vehement, if not affectionate solicitations to carry her husband to the watch-house, the trusty guardians of the public peace, not feeling at liberty to discharge the man, nor fully competent to decide whether the public peace had been disturbed, concluded that it was best to carry them both off.

Order being restored, and folks returned to their comfortable mattresses, a dull half hour crawled on, interrupted only by some early carriage coming in or going out of town, or the clatter of feet tripping it over the pavement. Presently an amateur of music, thinly clad, came sauntering along, and fixing himself under the window of a house occupied by a very handsome lady, took the disjointed pieces of a clarinet from his pocket, which he screwed together, and, as Hamlet says, he ‘gave it breath with his mouth,’ and it discoursed not the most eloquent music; on the contrary, it produced screams as harsh, discordant, and violent as a peacock, or the nightly braying of a Spanish jack-ass. If this was not disturbing the peace, and offending good taste, and, as such, deserving municipal correction, I know not what is an offence at common law. Those who are accustomed to have their slumbers gently disturbed by music stealing over the senses, wafted with skill and harmony over the nightly breeze, can well imagine the effect produced by a squeaking squalling instrument ‘piercing the night’s dull ear.’

Occasionally, we have some mad poet swinging himself along by the light of the moon, and bellowing forth passages from Shakespeare or Byron. Sometimes a song or ballad is minced forth in a dolorous style; and, as morn blushes from the east, the heavy butcher’s cart, the light wagon of the milkman, the musical tones of the sweep, and the hum of business, which at early day commences, finished the languid drowsy night, and leaves us unrefreshed, uninvigorated. Such are the charms of a city life: such is a night, a summer night in New York. (1)

It’s just as well that Napoleon – who visits New York City in the summer in Napoleon in America – was not a great sleeper.

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“A Summer Night in New York (From the National Advocate),” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), June 14, 1822.

Before leading the French army to victory at the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte rallied his troops by pointing to the distant pyramids and saying, “Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you.” (1) Napoleon’s encounter with the pyramids during his Egyptian campaign led to at least three myths about him.

Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids by François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, 1798-99. In reality, the battle took place so far from the pyramids that the latter were barely visible on the horizon. They were probably obscured by smoke once the fighting got underway.

The Battle of the Pyramids by François-Louis-Joseph Watteau, 1798-99. In reality, the battle took place so far from the pyramids that the latter were barely visible on the horizon. They were probably obscured by smoke once the fighting got underway.

Napoleon and the imams

The first myth is that Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid of Giza (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops) and converted to Islam. This rumour actually originated with Napoleon or his staff, since it first appeared in the army’s Order of the Day for August 26, 1798. The order included the supposed transcript of a long “Conversation of Bonaparte in the Grand Pyramid with several imams and muftis,” including three named Soliman, Mohamed and Ibrahim. At one point Napoleon reportedly said:

Glory to Allah! There is no other God but God; Mohammed is His prophet, and I am one of his friends. …. The Koran delights my mind…. I love the prophet and intend to visit and honour his tomb in the sacred city. But my mission is first to exterminate the Mamelukes. (2)

This conversation was reprinted in a book called Life of Buonaparte, First Consul of France, from his birth to the Peace of Luneville, translated from the French in 1802. There it was embellished with a description of how Napoleon reached the room within the Great Pyramid where the meeting took place.

He…penetrated into the interior, where he found a passage a hundred feet long and three feet broad, which conducted him by a rapid descent towards the apartments that served as a tomb for Pharaoh, who erected this monument. A second passage, much injured, and leading towards the summit of the pyramid, carried him successively over two platforms and thence to a vaulted gallery, in one of the walls of which the place of a mummy was seen, which was believed to have been the spouse of one of the Pharaohs. (3)

The story was repeated in several early biographies of Napoleon, including those by Willem Lodewyk Van-Ess (1809), Sir Walter Scott (1827) and William Henry Ireland (1828).

Napoleon and the Red Man

The second myth has to do with a phantom called the Red Man.

The Red Man…appeared for the first time to General Buonaparte, then in Egypt, the evening before the battle of the Pyramids. Napoleon, attended by several officers, was riding past one of those monuments of antiquity, when a man wrapped in a red mantle came out of the pyramid, and motioned him to alight and follow him. Buonaparte complied, and they went together into the interior of the pyramid. After an hour had elapsed, the officers became uneasy at the long absence of their commander: they were just on the point of entering the monument in quest of him, when he came forth with a look of evident satisfaction. Before this interview with the Red Man, he had steadfastly refused to give battle: but now he issued orders to prepare immediately for attack, and the following day he gained the victory of the Pyramids. (4)

For more about the Red Man, see Was Napoleon superstitious?

Napoleon and the mystery

The third myth appears to be of more recent vintage. Napoleon is said to have spent some time alone in the Great Pyramid, from which he emerged visibly shaken by some experience that he refused to divulge to anyone else. (5)

Napoleon stayed outside

The problem with these legends is that no one who was with Napoleon in Egypt reports that he ever entered a pyramid. According to Napoleon’s private secretary, Bourrienne:

On the 14th of July Bonaparte left Cairo for the pyramids. He intended spending three or four days in examining the ruins of the ancient Necropolis of Memphis; but he was suddenly obliged to alter his plan. This journey to the pyramids, occasioned by the course of war, has given an opportunity for the invention of a little piece of romance. Some ingenious people have related that Bonaparte gave audiences to the mufti and ulemas, and that, on entering one of the great pyramids he cried out, ‘Glory to Allah! God only is God, and Mahomet is his prophet!’ Now, the fact is, that Bonaparte never even entered the great pyramid. He never had any thought of entering it. I certainly should have accompanied him had he done so, for I never quitted his side a single moment in the desert. He caused some persons to enter into one of the great pyramids while he remained outside, and received from them, on their return, an account of what they had seen. In other words, they informed him there was nothing to be seen! (6)

Instead, Napoleon amused himself by encouraging his companions to climb a pyramid under the hot Egyptian sun. “Who will get to the top first?” he asked. (7) The winner was the oldest of the contestants: 53-year-old mathematician Gaspard Monge. Monge had with him a gourd of brandy, from which he offered each of the others a generous sip as they reached the summit.

Napoleon’s chief of staff Louis-Alexandre Berthier also made the attempt. Halfway up, he pleaded exhaustion, asking, “Is it really necessary to go all the way to the bitter end?” He decided to abandon the attempt. “We will tell them in Paris that we have climbed to the peak of this great pyramid, and they will believe it.” However, as Berthier descended, Napoleon called to him, “Are you coming back to us already?” Napoleon then referred to Berthier’s Italian mistress, Countess Visconti, for whom the chief of staff was pining. “She is not at the summit of the pyramid, my poor Berthier, but she is not down here either.” Thus egged on, Berthier resumed the climb and made it all the way to the top, with the encouragement of Monge, who saved some brandy for him. (8)

After his men descended, Napoleon reportedly told them he had calculated that with the stones of the pyramids, one could build a wall 10 feet (3 metres) high around all of France. Monge later redid the calculation and found it was correct. (9)

Napoleon and the Sphinx

Bonaparte Before The Sphinx by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1867-68

Another myth says that Napoleon was responsible for the destruction of the Sphinx’s nose, having ordered his troops to use it for cannon target practice. In fact, the Sphinx’s nose was gone long before Napoleon and his troops arrived in Egypt. See “Did Napoleon’s troops shoot the nose off the Sphinx?” by Tom Holmberg on The Napoleon Series.

Napoleon did not shoot a pyramid

Napoleon’s troops did not fire cannons at the pyramids, as depicted in the trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon film. If you like imagining things about Napoleon, check out Napoleon in America.

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Napoleon Bonaparte, Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, Vol. IV (Paris, 1860), p. 340.
A. Bingham, A Selection from the Letters and Despatches of the First Napoleon, Volume I (London, 1884), p. 222.
As excerpted in The New England Quarterly Magazine, No. II (Boston, 1802), p. 139.
The Atheneum; Or, Spirit of the English Magazines, Volume I (April to September 1817), pp. 731-732.
See, for example, Allen Drury, Egypt: The Eternal Smile (New York, 1980), p. 254.
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, During the Periods of the Directory, The Consulate, and the Empire, Vol. I (Philadelphia, 1831), p. 208.
Étienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Lettres Écrites d’Égypte (Paris, 1901), p. 236.
Ibid., pp. 236-237.
Olympe Audouard, Les mystères de l’Égypte dévoilés (Paris, 1865), p. 335.

From the age of 50 until two years before his death at age 80, sixth US President John Quincy Adams went swimming almost every summer in the Potomac River in Washington, DC. Sometimes he swam with one of his sons, or with his valet Antoine Giusta (a former Napoleonic soldier from Piedmont), or with whatever acquaintance he could rope into the activity. Often he would swim on his own. John Quincy Adams swam for exercise and for enjoyment. Despite the protests of his wife and friends, he refused to give up swimming, even after he nearly drowned.

The Swimming Hole, Thomas Eakins, 1885

In black cap and green goggles

Though John Quincy Adams learned how to swim as a child, he was not an obvious athlete. He was bookish, and spent most of his time reading, writing and in meetings. Adams was, however, concerned about his health. In 1817, after years as an American diplomat in Europe, Adams returned to the United States to become Secretary of State in President James Monroe’s administration (the position he holds in Napoleon in America). European dining had left him rather portly, so he began an exercise regimen. This involved walking and jogging in cool weather, and swimming when it was hot.

In the summer of 1818, John Quincy Adams habitually rose between 4 and 5 in the morning, walked two miles to the Potomac, bathed in the river, and then walked back. The whole ritual took about two hours, with about half an hour of that in the river. He continued the habit the following summer, finding it “conducive to health, cleanliness and comfort.” (1)

Like other river bathers, Adams swam in the nude, though he was not entirely uncovered. Stratford Canning, the British Ambassador to Washington (and cousin of British Foreign Secretary George Canning), noted in 1821:

The Secretary of State was seen one morning at an early hour floating down the Potomac, with a black cap on his head and a pair of green goggles on his eyes. (2)

In August 1822, at the age of 55, Adams began the experiment of seeing how long he could swim without touching the ground.

For safety I avoid going beyond my depth and swim in about five feet of water up and down the river, near the borders of the shore. (3)

In a matter of a month, he increased his stamina from 20 minutes to 50 minutes. Pleased with himself, he remarked in his diary, “I should have begun this habit earlier in life.” (4) That winter, Congressman Charles Jared Ingersoll wrote:

Mr. Adams ascribes his uninterrupted health during the several sickly seasons he has lived in Washington to swimming. He walks a mile to the Potomac for 8 successive mornings from 4 to 7 o clock according as the tide serves, and swims from 15 to 40 minutes then walks home again. For the 6 mornings of low tide he abstains, swimming 8 days out of 14. I have no doubt that it is an excellent system. (He is extremely thin.) (5)

A risky pursuit

With confidence in his endurance, the following summer Adams swam for even longer and ventured beyond his usual area. He soon recognized the risks.

July 8, 1823 – Swam with Antoine in the Potomac to the bridge – one hour in the water. While we were swimming there sprang up a fresh breeze, which made a surf, and much increased the difficulty of swimming, especially against it and the current. This is one of the varieties of instruction for the school. It sometimes occurs to me that this exercise and amusement, as I am now indulging myself in it, is with the constant risk of life. Perhaps that is the reason why so few persons ever learn to swim; and perhaps it should now teach me discretion. (6)

July 10, 1823 – Swam with Antoine to and from the bridge, but, as the tide was strongly rising, we were full three-quarters of an hour in going to it, and not more than twenty minutes in returning. This was one of my swimming lessons, and a serious admonition to caution. (7)

July 11, 1823 [John Quincy Adams’ 56th birthday] – Swam with Antoine an hour in the Potomac. We started for the bridge, but, after swimming about half an hour, I perceived by reference to a house upon the shore, beyond which we were to pass, that we had ascended very little above where we had left our clothes, and that the current of the tide was insensibly carrying us into the middle of the river. We continued struggling against the tide about twenty minutes longer, without apparently gaining a foot upon the tide. I then turned back, and in fifteen minutes landed at the rock where I had left my clothes, upon which, in the interval, the tide had so much encroached that it began to wet them, and in another half-hour would have soaked them through or floated them away. We had been an hour and five minutes in the water, without touching ground, and before turning back I began to find myself weary. (8)

July 19, 1823 – Swam in the Potomac with Antoine about three quarters of an hour: we went with great ease to the bridge; but the tide was going out, and ran so rapidly there that I found great difficulty in stemming it, and came into shallow water as soon as possible. The struggle against the tide was so fatiguing that I soon gave it up, and touched the ground. I have now the take on both ways, and know experimentally the danger of attempting to swim against a current. (9)

On August 9, Adams spent almost two hours in the water: an hour and a half swimming to the bridge against the tide, and 20 minutes returning. As a precaution, Antoine accompanied him in a canoe. Two days later, Adams tried to go beyond the bridge, but found it too hard against the tide and a brisk southwest wind.

Adams was not the only one alert to the dangers of his morning ritual. His wife Louisa, his doctor and others were advising him to cut back. In the summer of 1824, Adams speculated that “the remonstrances of my friends against the continuance of this practice will induce me to abandon it, perhaps altogether.” (10)

But John Quincy Adams did not abandon swimming. In fact, he set himself the new challenge of swimming across the river, something he accomplished on August 25, 1824.

Swam across the Potomac with John [Adams’ son]; Antoine crossing at the same time in a boat close at hand, to take us in had we met any insuperable difficulty. I was exactly an hour and a half from shore to shore. John was ten minutes less. We passed through thick grass in several places, but the tide was a spring tide at its full, and the water so high that we got through. We returned in the boat. Antoine swam about half the way back, but got so entangled in the weeds that he was obliged to get into the boat; but the water was not over his head. I landed, returning at the point at the mouth of the Tiber. We had been from home nearly four hours. The distance across the Potomac is upwards of a mile. (11)

City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke, 1833. The White House is to the left, depicted larger than scale to balance the Capitol building. The Potomac River is on the far left.

The President nearly drowned

On June 13, 1825, John Quincy Adams – who had been sworn in as president in March – had his most dangerous swimming escapade.

I attempted to cross the river with Antoine in a small canoe, with a view to swim across it to come back. He took a boat in which we had crossed it last summer without accident. The boat was at the shore near Van Ness’s poplars; but in crossing the Tiber to the point, my son John, who was with us, thought the boat dangerous, and, instead of going with us, went and undressed at the rock, to swim and meet us in mid-way of the river as we should be returning. I thought the boat safe enough, or rather persisted carelessly in going without paying due attention to its condition; gave my watch to my son; made a bundle of my coat and waistcoat to take in the boat with me; put off my shoes, and was paddled by Antoine, who had stripped himself entirely naked.

Before we had got half across the river, the boat had leaked itself half full, and then we found there was nothing on board to scoop up the water and throw it over. Just at that critical moment a fresh breeze from the northwest blew down the river as from the nose of a bellows. In five minutes’ time it made a little tempest, and set the boat to dancing till the river came in at the sides. I jumped overboard, and Antoine did the same, and lost hold of the boat, which filled with water and drifted away. We were as near as possible to the middle of the river, and swam to the opposite shore. Antoine, who was naked, reached it with little difficulty. I had much more, and while struggling for life and gasping for breath, had ample leisure to reflect upon my own discretion. My principal difficulty was in the loose sleeves of my shirt, which filled with water and hung like two fifty-six pound weights upon my arms. I had also my hat, which I soon gave, however, to Antoine. After reaching the shore, I took off my shirt and pantaloons, wrung them out, and gave them to Antoine to go and look out for our clothes, or for a person to send to the house for others, and for the carriage to come and fetch me. Soon after he had gone, my son John joined me, having swum wholly across the river, expecting to meet us returning with the boat. Antoine crossed the bridge, sent a man to my house for the carriage, made some search for the drifted boat and bundles, and found his own hat with his shirt and braces in it, and one of my shoes. He also brought over the bridge my son’s clothes, with my watch and umbrella, which I had left with him.

While Antoine was gone, John and I were wading and swimming up and down on the other shore, or sitting naked basking on the bank at the margin of the river. John walked over the bridge home. The carriage came, and took me and Antoine home half dressed. I lost an old summer coat, white waistcoat, two napkins, two white handkerchiefs, and one shoe. Antoine lost his watch, jacket, waistcoat, pantaloons, and shoes. The boat was also lost. By the mercy of God our lives were spared, and no injury befell our persons. We reached home about a quarter before nine, having been out nearly five hours. I had been about three hours in the water, but suffered no inconvenience from it. This incident gave me a humiliating lesson and solemn warning not to trifle with danger. The reasons upon which I justify to myself my daily swimming in the river did not apply to this adventure. It is neither necessary for my health, nor even for pleasure, that I should swim across the river, and, having once swum across it, I could not even want it as an experiment of practicability. Among my motives for swimming, that of showing what I can do must be discarded as spurious, and I must strictly confine myself to the purposes of health, exercise, and salutary labor. (12)

As observers spread the news that the President had perished, Louisa wrote to their son George to reassure him.

As it is possible my dear George that you may hear a rumour that your father was drowned I hasten to write you a few lines to assure you that he is safe although he did run some risk this morning in one of his swimming expeditions. … The affair is altogether ridiculous as it turned out but might have been fatal to your Mothers future peace. (13)

The dead body

A little over a month later, on July 22, 1825, John Quincy Adams had another surprise in the river.

I walked as usual to my ordinary bathing-place, and came to the rock where I leave my clothes a few minutes before sunrise. I found several persons there, besides three or four who were bathing; and at the shore under the tree a boat with four men in it, and a drag-net. … I enquired if any one had been drowned, and the man told me it was old Mr. Shoemaker, a clerk in the post-office, a man upwards of sixty years of age, who last evening, between five and six o’clock, went in to bathe with four other persons; that he was drowned in full sight of them, and without a suspicion by them that he was even in danger. They had observed him struggling in the water, but, as he was an excellent swimmer, had supposed he was merely diving, until after coming out they found he was missing. They then commenced an ineffectual search for him, which was continued late into the night. The man said to me that he had never seen a more distressed person than Mrs. Shoemaker last evening. … I stripped and went into the river. I had not been more than ten minutes swimming, when the drag-boat started, and they were not five minutes from the shore when the body floated immediately opposite the rock, less than one hundred yards from the shore, at the very edge of the channel, and where there could not be seven feet deep of water. I returned immediately to the shore and dressed. …

The only part of the body which had the appearance of stiffness was the arms, both of which were raised at the shoulder-joints and crooked towards each other at the elbows, as if they had been fixed by a spasm at the very moment when they were to expand to keep the head above water. There was a dark flush of settled blood over the face, like one excessively heated, and a few drops of thin blood and water issued from one ear. There was nothing terrible or offensive in the sight, but I returned home musing in sympathy with the distressed lady, and enquiring uncertainly whether I ought to renounce altogether my practice of swimming in the river. My conclusion was that I ought not – deeming it in this climate indispensable to my health; so that whatever danger there may be in the exercise – and that there is much danger, this incident offers melancholy and cumulative proof – there would be yet greater danger in abstaining from it, or in substituting any other effective exercise in its place. We are, and always must be, in the hands of God, and to Him are indebted for every breath we draw. (14)

Poor Louisa Adams wrote to George:

The greatest cause of uneasiness which I at present suffer, is your Fathers passion for Swimming; which keeps me in hourly terror of some horrible calamity—The day before yesterday poor old Mr Shoemaker was drowned. He is said to have been one of the best Swimmers in the Country. God preserve us all my Dear Son from this distress prays your most affectionate Mother. (15)

Even John Quincy Adams had second thoughts about continuing to swim. On July 28 he wrote:

I have had for several days a soreness and pain on the right side, the cause of which was dubious; and withal a debility, nervous irritability, and dejection of spirits far beyond anything I had ever experienced, and uncontrollable by reason. I have wished to impute it altogether to the unexampled intensity and continuance of the heat. More than one of my friends ascribe it to my morning baths and swimming. All my experience heretofore has been otherwise; but in the uncertainty of tracing effects to their cause, and the undoubted effect now, my perfect confidence in the salubrity of my practice is somewhat shaken. I swam this morning nearly an hour, but the pain in my side became so severe and so aggravated by the movement of my arms and shoulder that I determined at least to intermit both the swimming and the bath for some days. (16)

For a few days he substituted walking for his morning swim, but ultimately he could not resist the lure of the water.

An irresistible impulse

Daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams in 1843, at age 76. Adams continued swimming even past this age.

John Quincy Adams continued to swim during the following summers, but for shorter periods. Beyond the fear of drowning, his stamina was not what it had been.

July 27, 1828 – With my son John, my nephew, and Antoine, I crossed the river in our canoe, and swam a quarter of an hour on the other side; but the shore is so deceptive that after diving from the boat, as I supposed, within a ten minutes’ swim of the shore, before reaching half the distance I found myself so fatigued that I called the boat to me, and clung to her till she was rowed to the shore. We had crossed nearly opposite the Tiber point, and were annoyed with leeches and ticks at the landing. The decline of my health is in nothing so closely brought to my conviction as in my inability to swim more than fifteen or twenty minutes without tiring. (17)

In 1837, when Congressman John Quincy Adams visited newly-installed President Martin Van Buren at the White House for the first time, they did not discuss politics or matters of national interest, but rather “the inconvenience of a summer residence in the city, and [Adams’] custom, heretofore, when under that necessity, of bathing and swimming every morning in the Potomac.” (18)

On July 10, 1838 (the day before his 71st birthday), Adams wrote:

About sunrise I rode to the Potomac, to my old bathing-place beneath the bluff, between the mouth of the Tiber and the bridge, where I bathed and swam about a quarter of an hour. It was the first river-bath that I have been able to take this season, and seemed to give me new life. There were, as used formerly to be, a number of other bathers there, and some with horses; all young men except myself. (19)

Although they happened much less frequently, Adams continued to relish his river swims well into his old age.

June 27, 1844 – This day, set in the extreme heat of the summer, the trial of the climate to my constitution. A burning sun; the thermometers in my chamber at ninety, and a light breeze from the southwest – a fan delicious to the face, but parching instead of cooling the skin. I have been a full month longing for a river bath without daring to take it. This morning, at five, I went in the barouche to my old favorite spot, found the tide unusually high; all my station rocks occupied by young men, except one, and that surrounded by the tide, already upon the ebb. I had some difficulty to undress and dress, but got my bath, swam about five minutes, and came out washed and refreshed. It was my exercise for the day. After returning home I did not again pass the sill of the street door. (20)

June 29, 1844 – The summer heat and its enervating spell continue. I walked this morning to my old bathing station upon the strand of the Potomac River, and bathed and swam for about ten minutes, and then walked home. From the practice of personal ablution and the exercise of swimming I cannot totally abstain, for I believe they have promoted my health and prolonged my life many years. And yet the experience of late years has compelled me gradually to disuse them. But my great anxiety now is having much to do, and to be doing nothing. (21)

September 17, 1845 – My habitual practice of summer sea and river bathing and swimming began much later, and I have of late years been obliged to abandon them altogether. The shower-bath was my last resource; and I must now give up that. The jar is too racking, and I cannot recover the composure of the hand through the day. (22)

But John Quincy Adams was not finished with swimming. On July 13, 1846, two days after his 79th birthday, he wrote:

I rose this morning with the dawn and drawn by an irresistible impulse walked over the lower Tiber bridge to my old bathing-spot on the margin of the Potomac and where, under the shelter of the high bluff yet remaining, I bathed and swam from five to ten minutes, came out, dressed myself and walked home. As I went down the hill to the edge of the water, I found three young men, neither of whom I knew, already in the river, and heard one of them say, ‘There is John Quincy Adams.’ They had their clothes at one of my old standard rocks; but, without noticing or disturbing them, I found another rock a few rods higher, towards the Potomac bridge, where I left my clothes. The tide was low and the time not convenient for entering the river but I succeeded in obtaining the bath for which I panted. The time consumed was as in former days about one hour and a half, half an hour going to the river, half an hour to bathe, swim and dress, and half an hour to return. The thermometer was at eighty-four, the water warm, the atmosphere calm, and the sun clear. (23)

John Quincy Adams died of a stroke on February 23, 1848 at the age of 80. To read about his death, see Last Words of Famous People.

The oft-repeated tale that journalist Anne Royall scored an interview with Adams by confiscating his clothes while he was swimming has been successfully debunked by Howard Dorre on Plodding through the Presidents.

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John Quincy Adams’ Report Upon Weights and Measures

John Quincy Adams and the White House Billiard Table

The John Quincy Adams Portrait by Gilbert Stuart & Thomas Sully

The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

When John Quincy Adams met Madame de Staël

When Louisa Adams met Joseph Bonaparte

Exercise for Women in the early 19th Century

John Quincy Adams diary 31, 1 January 1819 – 20 March 1821, 10 November 1824 – 6 December 1824, page 136 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2004. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries
Stanley Lane-Poole, The Life of the Right Honourable Stratford Canning, Vol. I (London, 1888), p. 321.
John Quincy Adams diary 32, 21 March 1821 – 30 November 1822 (with gaps), page 357 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries
Ibid., p. 373.
William M. Meigs, The Life of Charles Jared Ingersoll (Philadelphia, 1900), p. 122.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI (Philadelphia, 1875), p. 161.
Ibid., p. 162.
Ibid., p. 162.
John Quincy Adams diary 34, 1 January 1823 – 14 June 1824, page 103 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI, p. 406.
Ibid., p. 412.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VII (Philadelphia, 1875), pp. 28-29.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to George Washington Adams, 13 June 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4533.
Ibid., pp. 35-36.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to George Washington Adams, 23 July 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4552.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VII, p. 37.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VIII (Philadelphia, 1876), pp. 64-65.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IX (Philadelphia, 1876), p. 356.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. X (Philadelphia, 1876), p. 31.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. XII (Philadelphia, 1877), p. 64.
Ibid., pp. 64-65.
Ibid., p. 213.
Ibid., pp. 268-269.

After Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was exiled to St. Helena, a remote British island in the South Atlantic. Napoleon had a number of admirers in Britain, including Lord and Lady Holland, who regularly sent books and other gifts to him. In the summer of 1816, they sent Napoleon an ice machine.

John Bull and his family at an ice café in Paris, 1815

The ice machine was delivered to Napoleon’s residence of Longwood House on August 16, 1816. It was a pneumatic device, invented in 1810 by Scottish mathematician and physicist John Leslie. Leslie had observed that concentrated sulphuric acid, which absorbs water, could accelerate the evaporation of water in a container to such a degree as to freeze the remaining water. (1)

John Leslie’s apparatus for cooling and freezing. Napoleon’s ice machine was a version of this.

As soon as the ice machine was set up, Dr. Barry O’Meara went to inform Napoleon.

He asked several questions about the process, and it was evident that he was perfectly acquainted with the principles upon which air-pumps are formed. He expressed great admiration for the science of chemistry, spoke of the great improvements which had latterly been made in it, and observed that he had always promoted and encouraged it to the best of his power. (2)

Meanwhile, in the room containing the ice machine, British Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm found Napoleon’s companions looking at the contraption with great interest. Andrew Darling, a local upholsterer “who understood the process,” attempted to make ice. (3) O’Meara noted:

In a few minutes Napoleon, accompanied by Count Montholon, came in and accosted the admiral in a very pleasant manner, seemingly gratified to see him. A cup full of water was then frozen in his presence in about fifteen minutes, and he waited for upwards of half an hour to see if the same quantity of lemonade would freeze, which did not succeed. Milk was then tried but it would not answer. Napoleon took in his hand the piece of ice produced from the water, and observed to me what a gratification that would have been in Egypt. (4)

Napoleon was pleased with the results.

He remarked it appeared so simple he was surprised it had not been invented sooner. He said he had encouraged the study of chemistry in France; that the English had some clever men in that science, but it was not so general a study. The Admiral mentioned Sir Humphry Davy, and Bonaparte observed he had seen him at Paris. From his questions Bonaparte did not appear to be himself a chemist, nor did he understand it. General [Gaspard] Gourgaud seemed to be best informed on these subjects. A small thermometer was put into one of the freezing-cups, to show the changes of the temperature of the water, and became frozen; Bonaparte, endeavouring to put it out by force, broke it, and seeing his awkwardness, he exclaimed, laughing, ‘That is worthy of me.’ (5)

Napoleon put General Gourgaud in charge of the ice machine, which was duly installed in the general’s quarters so he could conduct further experiments. Unfortunately, the only liquid the machine was able to freeze was water. (6) For the residents of St. Helena, the miracle of ice was enough. O’Meara wrote:

The first ice ever seen in St. Helena was made by this machine, and was viewed with no small degree of surprise by the yam stocks [the natives of the island]; some of whom could with difficulty be persuaded that the solid lump in their hands was really composed of water, and were not fully convinced until they had witnessed its liquefaction. (7)

Though Napoleon did not have any ice cream on St. Helena, he does get to enjoy some in Napoleon in America.

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Napoleon and Longwood House

Drinking Cold Water & other 19th-Century Causes of Death

Visiting Niagara Falls in the early 19th Century

“The most elegant and instructive mode of effecting artificial congelation is to perform the process under the transferrer of an air-pump. A thick but clear glass cup being selected, of about two or three inches in diameter, has its lips ground flat, and covered occasionally, though not absolutely shut, with a broad circular lid of plate glass, which is suspended horizontally from a rod passing through a collar of leather. This cup is nearly filled with fresh distilled water, and supported by a slender metallic ring, with glass feet, about an inch above the surface of a body of sulphuric acid, perhaps three quarters of an inch in thickness and occupying the bottom of a deep glass basin that has a diameter of nearly seven inches. In this state the receiver being adapted, and the lid pressed down to cover the mouth of the cup, the transferrer is screwed to the air-pump, and the rarefaction, under those circumstances, pushed so far as to leave only about the hundred and fiftieth part of a residuum; and the cock being turned to secure that exhaustion, the compound apparatus is then detached from the pump and removed to some convenient apartment. As long as the cup is covered, the water will remain quite unaltered; but on drawing up the rod half an inch or more, to admit the play of a rare medium, a bundle of specular ice will, after the lapse of perhaps five minutes, dart suddenly through the whole of the liquid mass; and the consolidation will afterwards descend regularly, thickening the horizontal stratum by insensible gradations, and forming in its progress a beautiful transparent cake.” John Leslie, Treatises on Various Subjects of Natural and Chemical Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1838), pp. 368-369.
Barry O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from St. Helena, Vol. I (Philadelphia, 1822), p. 58.
Clementina E. Malcolm, A Diary of St. Helena (1816, 1817): the Journal of Lady Malcolm, edited by Sir Arthur Wilson (London, 1899), p. 50.
O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. I, pp. 58-59.
Malcolm, A Diary of St. Helena, p. 50.
Napoleon’s valet, Louis-Joseph Marchand, corroborates the lack of success with lemonade and milk. See Louis-Joseph Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow (San Francisco, 1998), pp. 428-429.
O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. I, p. 59.

Fifty years before Confederation, the land we now call “Canada” consisted of the colonies of British North America: Upper Canada (southern Ontario), Lower Canada (southern Quebec), New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. British North America also included Rupert’s Land, which was nominally owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company and encompassed what is today northern Quebec, northern and western Ontario, all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, south and central Alberta, and parts of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Through the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company, the British also had a permanent presence in what is now British Columbia. In practice, vast tracts of Canada were populated solely or mainly by aboriginal peoples. Here are some glimpses of Canada in 1817.

British Dominions in North America by J. (John) Russell, 1814. Source: University of British Columbia Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Andrew McCormick Maps and Prints

Newfoundland’s deplorable condition

Newfoundland had a terrible year. There had been massive Irish immigration to the colony between 1811 and 1816, due to Newfoundland’s prosperity during the Napoleonic Wars. Then, in 1815, the cod fishery collapsed, and in 1816, the harvest failed. As noted in a letter written in St. John’s on April 5, 1817:

Our condition in this island, generally, is deplorable: the consequence must be serious, if relief is not received from some quarter soon. All the stores here are completely empty. The surplus of provisions that were in the navy store is exhausted, and we have but a few tierces of flour to receive from the commissariat stores. Families of the first respectability are drained of the provisions they laid in for their own support. There are 2500 people supported by the charitable institutions, 1000 others by the inhabitants, in messes, where they get a dinner every day: biscuit is baked from the flour we receive from the king’s stores, and sold by small quantities, to such as are able to purchase. The whole of our stock is not sufficient to support us 3 weeks. (1)

To make matters worse, on November 7 and November 21, 1817, fire swept through St. John’s, destroying some 300 homes and businesses. The following was written by a St. John’s resident a week after the first blaze.

The news of the almost total destruction of our town by fire will no doubt have reached you before the arrival of this….

The real state and character of Newfoundland have been but little considered, and not at all appreciated in Great Britain, except by a few who have been immediately concerned in its trade. The barren rocks, the uncultivated inland, and the rigours of a long winter, with its produce only in the contemptible article of salt fish, have given an idea in England that such a place is hardly worth the notice of the mother country…. But never did any impression go upon a more false principle: for notwithstanding all the seeming disadvantages of climate and soil, Newfoundland, with its fish produce, together with oil and fur, stands forth as the emporium of British North America; and in the fall of St. John’s, the colonies have lost their metropolis. Halifax and Quebec, with their appended provinces, cannot supply the deficiency, nor answer for the loss to the British Empire. The Canadas, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island have each an independent regular government: these provinces contain a population of about 300,000; the population of Newfoundland is about 80,000, and for these no regular government is provided, although the state of society in St. John’s, and some of the out harbours, is such as to demand all the assistance of a well-digested legislation, and a vigorous police. In the different ranks of society, shocking scenes of vice, intemperance, and excess have been witnessed, which have threatened ten thousand times over the most awful consequences….

It is now (15th Nov.) eight days since the dreadful catastrophe, and no measures have been taken by government to bring a vigorous system to bear against the horrors of the fast coming winter. We had but a short stock of provisions in store before the fire: much, very much of this is destroyed. St. John’s is full of people; and thousands must be fed by charity…..

It is a fact well known that this country is almost peopled by Roman Catholics, chiefly of the lower orders from Ireland. The depredations committed during the fire by these unhappy people were enormous; and were it not for the activity and vigilance of the priests, little of this plunder would be restored. But then what a sad reflection! … The Christian priesthood rallying round their standard a banditti of plunderers, and administering the ordinances of religion to a herd of vagabonds and incendiaries. It is this influence which the priests have over their people, which renders their services so valuable in the eyes of the Magistrates; for the priests are our police officers, rather than are the appointed agents of Government; and we are taught to believe that we are more indebted to the Catholic Priests for our safety and comfort, than to any other class of men in the island. (2)

Rustic Lower Canada

Esplanade Park in Quebec City circa 1818

Lieutenant Francis Hall, a member of Britain’s 14th Regiment of Light Dragoons, travelled from Albany to Montreal in the winter of 1816-1817. Upon arriving in Lower Canada, he wrote:

Nothing could be more Siberian than the aspect of the Canadian frontier: a narrow road, choked with snow, led through a wood, in which patches were occasionally cleared, on either side, to admit the construction of a few log-huts, round which a brood of ragged children, a starved pig, and a few half-broken rustic implements, formed an accompaniment more suited to an Irish landscape than to the thriving scenes we had just quitted. The Canadian peasant is still the same unsophisticated animal whom we may suppose to have been imported by Jacques Cartier…. Now, too, the frequent cross by the road side, thick-studded with all the implements of crucifixional torture, begins to indicate a Catholic country: distorted virgins and ghastly saints decorate each inn room, while the light spires of the parish church, covered with plates of tin, glitter across the snowy plain. … We found the inns neat and the people attentive; French politesse began to be contrasted with American bluntness. … [T]he most prominent trait in the character of this people, is an attachment to whatever is established: far different in this respect from the American, the Canadian will submit to any privation rather than quit the spot his forefathers tilled, or remove from the sound of his parish bells. (3)

Pierre François Réal and his secretary Pichon provide Napoleon with a similar opinion of Lower Canada in Napoleon in America.

Hall continued on to Quebec City.

It would be acting unfairly to Quebec to describe it as I found it on my arrival, choked with ice and snow, which one day flooded the streets with a profusion of dirty kennels, and the next, cased them with a sheet of glass. Cloth or carpet boots, galoshes, with spikes to their heels, iron-pointed walking-sticks, are the defensive weapons perpetually in employ on these occasions. The direction of the streets too, which are most of them built up a precipice, greatly facilitates any inclination one may entertain for tumbling, or neck-breaking. (4)

James Wilson, an Irish Methodist preacher who sailed from Dublin to Quebec in the spring of 1817, wrote of Montreal:

In taking a view of this extensive city, I found it far superior in appearance to Quebec; the markets well supplied with beef, mutton, fowl, &c. selling at a moderate price. In this place I first took notice of the Indian tribe, who were very numerous, selling at market maple sugar, wild pigeons, and wrought baskets of every kind. Their curious dress and appearance excited my attention much; many of them were very grand in their way, and are called Mohawks: the women…wear large trinkets in their ears, large breast-plates composed, I suppose, of silver, made after the form of our military officers, with long fine blue cloaks down to their feet. …

This city is a place of great business, and likely to become very extensive, as building is carried on with much spirit. The houses are large, some composed of wood, and others of stone. The French here, as in Quebec, have a very splendid church, and are very numerous.” (5)

Joseph Sansom, a member of the American Philosophical Society from Philadelphia, toured Lower Canada in July 1817.

Montreal shows from the water like an old country sea port, with long ranges of high walls, and stone houses, overtopped here and there by churches and convents; with something that resembles a continued quay, though it is nothing more than a high bank, to which large vessels can lie close enough for the purposes of loading and unloading; in consequence of the unusual depth of water at the very edge of the current. … [I]t is only on the banks of its rivers that Canada pretends to any population, or improvement, whatever. (6)

Rough-mannered Upper Canada

Naval dockyard at Point Frederick in Kingston, 1815

C. Stuart, a retired Captain of the East India Company, lived in Upper Canada from 1817 to 1819, during which time he was a justice of the peace for the Western district of the province. He observed:

The state of society in Upper Canada, especially to a European, is not attractive…. Canadian society has rather roughness than simplicity of manners; and scarcely presents a trace of that truly refined, that nobly cultivated, and that spiritually improved tone of conversation and deportment, which, even in the most highly polished circles, and amidst all the inflations of real or imagined superiority, is so rarely to be found.

Yet the state of society in Upper Canada is not without its advantages. It is adapted to the condition of the country, and is consistent with the circumstances of which it forms a part.

Its general characteristics may be said to be, in the higher classes, a similar etiquette to that established at home, with a minor redundancy of polish, and minor extravagance; and in the lower, a somewhat coarser simplicity. As far as I have seen the people, they appear to me fully as moral as any other that I know, with as much mutual kindness amongst themselves, and more than commonly hospitable to strangers. They seem to me rather inclined to seriousness than to levity, and to need only the advantages of pious instruction and of pious example to become, under grace, one of the most valuable people upon the earth.

Their habits are in general moderately industrious, frugal, and benevolent. Their amusements, of course, are unhappily like those of the world. Horse-racing, betting shooting; and where leisure abounds, idle conversation, balls, cards, and the theatre, &c. Yet I have observed with pleasure, a somewhat more domestic tone amongst their women; and it has amply compensated to me, for the absence of the greater degree of polish, which at once adorns and disgraces the general mass of our European ladies. …

There are few towns or villages in Upper Canada, and those few are small. Kingston, the most considerable of them, being less extensive than the generality of the common country towns in Great Britain and Ireland. Agriculturalists, such as are almost universally the people of Upper Canada, scatter themselves over their farms, not crowd together, as do the votaries of commerce. …

The conveyances, where there are any (and such of any description are by no means universal), are generally poor; the surface rough, the bridges wretched, and attendance at the inns as defective, as must necessarily be the case where there is too great a tone of general equality and familiarity, amidst a scattered, independent, and uncultivated people. But greater kindness and fellow-feeling often exist here than are to be found in the more accomplished receptacles of politer people. Mixed with their equality, there are, in my opinion, generally speaking, a greater degree of spontaneous attention, and a more disinterested desire to serve, than we meet amidst all the elegant accommodations of the British roads. (7)

James Wilson became a traveling preacher in the Kingston area. He wrote:

The people here have many privileges: in the spring they make sugar by piercing the maple tree, which produces a sweet sap, and when well boiled, makes remarkably good sugar. Another advantage is most families make their own soap, by saving the ashes of the firewood: the people in general live well; there are here no poor, comparatively speaking; they have from the produce of their gardens, melons, cucumbers, and all kinds of vegetables, and of these they make preserves; and as each house has in general a cellar, they store their garden roots, potatoes, &c in these secure places, to protect them from frost.

The women here in general weave their own clothing, consisting of linen and woollen, diaper and fancy bed quilts and floor carpets; many of them are also well skilled in making both men and women’s clothing: this saves much expense, as tailoring is extremely high. Provisions are cheap, in general…. Cider is much in use here, and made by many families. (8)

War in the West

Summer view in the environs of Fort Douglas on the Red River by Peter Rindisbacher, 1822

From that narrow stripe of territory situated along the St. Lawrence, to which we give the name of Upper and Lower Canada, a plain of illimitable extent stretches to the north and north-west, as far as the frozen regions. If the whole population of this vast expanse were collected together, it would not perhaps equal that of one of our moderate-sized English counties. In the absence of man, however, the track is covered with elks, deer, beavers, otters, martens, &c. &c. in swarms of which it is impossible for us to form any conception. This abundance of the most valuable fur-bearing animals has become the foundation of an extensive trade, carried on by a company established at Montreal called the North-West Company. The exertions made, and privations endured, by their agents, appear truly astonishing. It is said, that the track by which their goods are transported, occupies an extent of from three to four thousand miles, through upwards of sixty large lakes, without any means of transport but slight canoes of bark. In persons engaged in so rough a trade, so far out of the pale of civilized society, and having to deal with the most savage of the human race, it would be vain to expect a deportment always quite regular and peaceable. If any illegal act is committed, there is no redress but from the tribunals at Montreal, placed at the distance of several thousand miles, and to be reached only by a voyage more toilsome and dangerous than that across the Atlantic. In such a case, the remedy most prompt, most convenient, and every way suited to their inclination, is to take the law into their own hands.

The introduction of spirits among the Indians is the source of a thousand disorders and vices; and yet it seems difficult to say how we could prevent it. What cordon of excise officers could guard a frontier of four thousand miles? Could the traders be sent, without spirits for their own use, into a climate where the thermometer is sometimes forty degrees below zero? And when the spirits were there, how [to] prevent their being used in traffic? Would a permit or justice’s warrant be of any avail at Saskatchewina carrying place, or on the river of the Assiniboils? If the attempt were made to stop the trade altogether, it might perhaps meet a partial success; but if the object be, to make its agents assume the deportment of orderly and civilized persons, it will, we fear, prove altogether abortive. (9)

In 1817, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company (allied with the Métis) were in the midst of the Pemmican War, a series of armed confrontations between the two companies focused on the Red River Colony, situated in what is today Manitoba. The colony was founded in 1812 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, a majority shareholder of the Hudson Bay Company. On August 19, 1817, Mr. Shaw, an agent of the North West Company, arrived in Montreal with news from the colony.

Mr. Shaw reached the Red River most opportunely, as the stock of provisions had been in a manner abandoned by the people who had it in charge. On Mr. Shaw making the Forks, he was immediately joined by a large band of the natives, who offered him their services, not only to protect the provisions, but to assist in driving away what they term, the bad dogs, from the land. Mr. Shaw visited Lord Selkirk at Fort Douglas, who expressed great satisfaction at seeing him, and told him that himself and followers, about 160 in all, were almost in a state of starvation, having been obliged chiefly to subsist on cat-fish for the last month, and that he now looked to the provisions of the North West Company for the subsistence of his people. Mr. Shaw objected to this, for the reason of not diminishing his own supplies. His Lordship said he had the means to enforce compliance with his request, and endeavoured to prevail on Mr. Shaw to resign a part without compulsion. Mr. Shaw refused the supply, and ultimately maintained his point.

Col. Coltman then arrived, and made known to both parties the instructions he had received from Government relating to their disputes, which were to enforce ‘the cessation of all hostility both in Canada and the Indian country, and the mutual restoration of all property captured during their disputes, the freedom of trade and intercourse with the Indians, until the trials now pending can be brought to a judicial decision, and the great question at issue with respect to the rights of the two companies shall be definitively settled.’ (10)

The two companies merged in 1821.

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The National Advocate (Washington, DC), May 22, 1817.
Northampton Mercury (Northampton, England), December 20, 1817.
Francis Hall, Travels in Canada and the United States in 1816 and 1817, 2^nd edition (London, 1819), pp. 49-51, 74.
Ibid., p. 54.
James Wilson, Narrative of a Voyage from Dublin to Quebec, in North America (Dublin, 1822), p. 24.
Joseph Sansom, Sketches of Lower Canada, Historical and Descriptive (New York, 1817), pp. 48, 54.
C. Stuart, The Emigrant’s Guide to Upper Canada, or, Sketches of the Present State of that Province, collected from a residence therein during the years 1817, 1818, 1819 (London, 1820), pp. 120-122, 142, 160-161.
Wilson, Narrative of a Voyage from Dublin to Quebec, in North America, p. 35.
The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany: A New Series of the Scots Magazine, May 1, 1817, pp. 370-371.
The Times, London, October 1, 1817.

Gustave Aimard

In doing research for Napoleon in America, I read several novels set in Texas in the mid-19th century. One of the authors of such works was Gustave Aimard, a French adventurer who wrote over 70 popular novels about the New World. Aimard was the illegitimate son of the wife of René Savary, Napoleon’s police minister and one of the characters in Napoleon in America. Through his Corsican father, Aimard may have been distantly related to Napoleon himself.

Love child

Gustave Aimard was born Olivier Aimard in Paris on September 13, 1818. Aimard’s mother, Marie-Charlotte-Félicité de Faudoas-Barbazan de Segnanville, a member of the old French aristocracy, was married to René Savary, the Duke of Rovigo, who had once been Napoleon’s Minister of Police. Savary had been living in exile from France since Napoleon’s 1815 defeat. Neither spouse was faithful. Félicité’s lover was Horace François Bastien Sébastiani de la Porta, a Corsican-born Napoleonic general and diplomat who was probably a distant relative of the Bonapartes. Sébastiani became a politician during the Bourbon Restoration and later served as French Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was most likely Gustave Aimard’s father.

When Aimard was born, Félicité already had seven children, ranging in age from two to 16. She gave the baby to a family by the name of Gloux, and paid them to raise him. By the time he was 12, Aimard had fled to sea as a cabin boy aboard a merchant vessel. In 1835, at 17, he joined the French Navy. A few years later, he deserted during a stopover in South America (either in Mexico or Chile – sources differ).

Adventurer

Gustave Aimard spent approximately a decade in the Americas. He visited Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico. He hunted unsuccessfully for gold in California. He spent time as a trapper in New Mexico and Texas. He later claimed to have been adopted into a Comanche tribe. He also claimed to have visited Spain, Turkey and the Caucasus.

By 1847, Aimard was back in France. That year his half-sister Fanny (Françoise, the Duchess of Choiseul-Praslin, Sébastiani’s daughter with his first wife) was brutally murdered by – it is thought – her husband, who committed suicide a week later. These events contributed to the start of the French Revolution of 1848, in which Aimard served with the garde mobile, a force of young working-class men who remained loyal to the Second Republic during the uprising in Paris in June.

In the early 1850s, Aimard returned to North America as part of a mercenary expedition under Count Raousset-Boulbon. The force tried to secure the independence of Sonora from Mexico. After the expedition was defeated, Aimard went back to France.

Prolific writer

In August 1854, Gustave Aimard married Adèle Lucie Damoreau, a “lyrical artist.” They had at least one child, a daughter. Aimard started writing adventure stories based on his experiences. He produced novels at an impressive pace. He wrote at least 78 of them, many of which first appeared as newspaper serials. His books – early versions of the “Western” genre – were translated into English and other languages and became extremely popular. European readers had an appetite for tales about the New World.

He knew of Indian life and Indian customs first-hand; and his comments upon America, though not profound, evidently met with the approval of the many Frenchmen who read his stories. … [S]ome of the heroes of Aimard are actual persons, and his scenes are drawn from his own experiences on prairie and desert. … Under the name of Valentine Guillois, the author himself appears in many of his romances; and a number of other characters were probably drawn from direct personal observation. With some startling exceptions, the author is substantially true to the geography, the flora, and the fauna of the countries he uses as backgrounds. He takes endless pains to explain all the old customs, rites, and ceremonies introduced, and asserts in footnotes that he had witnessed certain horrible scenes he uses, such as one man’s cutting out the tongue of another. …

If the reader wants Indian fights, he can find them in every novel. If he is interested in highwaymen, pirates, spies, he will find an abundance of them. Wars of the whites are there. So are duels with knives, single combats with revolvers or with rifles; combats against apparently insuperable odds; sleeping draughts, abductions, scores of them; white women in the power of Indians; fathers banishing their sons; lynch law; a mother trying to sell her daughter, whom she does not recognize, into prostitution; an insulted father throwing a young man’s present to his daughter, consisting of $150,000 in gold, to the beggars outside his window; the ‘wake’ of a four-year-old child put on a chair in his best clothes with a crown of flowers on his head, and surrounded by drunken men and women; horrific secret societies, such as the revolutionary Dark Hearts of Chile, with passwords, solemn meetings, and oaths resembling those of the Ku Klux or a college fraternity; a maiden buried alive in the lowest vault of a convent in Mexico; a man buried up to his armpits…and left to starve on the desert; terrible avalanches that block the way of travelers over the Andes and leave them suspended over gorges of unknown depth; mountain storms in the Rockies that convert the country into a raging sea; prairie fires; battles with cougars by day and night – these are only samples of the thrills provided by Aimard. (1)

The books were criticized for their repetitiveness, as well as for a lack of realistic characters.

His novels presented a curious and, when his mind was fresh, a picturesque mixture of the styles of Eugène Sue and Fenimore Cooper. But as he wrote too fast to observe carefully the world in which we live, and to reflect upon it; he entirely depended upon mere impressions and his imagination. Novel after novel was turned off in rapid succession. There was never any time for the mind to lie fallow. Those qualities with which he was liberally gifted became impoverished. The intellect ran in unchanging channels, and there was a terrible sameness in about fifty of the…works of fiction that he wrote. (2)

Among Aimard’s most popular books were The Trappers of Arkansas (1858) and The Gypsies of the Sea (1865). His series about the Texas war of independence consisted of The Border Rifles (1861), The Freebooters (1861) and The White Scalper (1861). Gustave Aimard opened The Border Rifles with a lament on the plight of Native Americans.

The immense virgin forests which once covered the soil of North America are more and more disappearing before the busy axes of the squatters and pioneers, whose insatiable activity removes the desert frontier further and further to the west….

Is this constant disafforesting and clearing of the American continent a misfortune? Certainly not: on the contrary, the progress which marches with a giant’s step, and tends, before a century, to transform the soil of the New World, possesses all our sympathy; still we cannot refrain from a feeling of pained commiseration for that unfortunate race which is brutally placed beyond the pale of the law, and pitilessly tracked in all directions; which is daily diminishing, and is fatally condemned soon to disappear from the earth whose immense territory it covered less than four centuries ago with innumerable tribes.

Perhaps if the people chosen by God to effect the changes to which we allude had understood their mission, they might have converted a work of blood and carnage into one of peace and paternity, and arming themselves with the divine precepts of the Gospel, instead of seizing rifles, torches, and scalping-knives, they might, in a given time, have produced a fusion of the white and red races, and have attained a result more profitable to progress, civilization, and before all, to that great fraternity of nations which no one is permitted to despise, and for which those who forget its divine and sacred precepts will have a terrible account some day to render. (3)

Fighter

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Gustave Aimard fought in the Battle of Le Bourget, in which the French first retook, and then lost, a town just outside of Paris.

He had a deal of Corsican energy, which, unfortunately for him, was associated with a thin skin and aristocratic nerves. In the siege he organised a corps of journalistic francs-tireurs. They had no experience of firearms beyond what they had acquired in salles d’armes and duels. Aimard led this band of riflemen to Le Bourget, which village they received credit for taking. It was one of the episodes of the siege which was the most glorified, et pour cause. Captain Pen and Captain Sword were rolled into one, and the former puffed the latter in the newspapers. Aimard was courageous and manly. If his corps had been worthy of its captain, it would have performed feats of collective valour and acted up to the reputation which it gave itself. The Le Bourget triumph was quickly followed by a sharp reverse, and the free-shooters of the Press were obliged to retire hastily from the village from which they claimed they had helped to drive out the Prussians, to the more congenial Boulevards. Aimard, who had been all his life dreaming of military adventures, and creating heroes after his own image, was quite worthy in the sortie that he made of the children of his brain. But he was disgusted at the Falstaffian boastfulness, and care for a whole skin of some renowned men of his band. (4)

Aimard wrote about the lost war, but his readership was not interested in something so close to home. Moreover, naturalism in literature was beginning to come into fashion.

Zola’s human piggeries, and Guy de Maupassant’s Holywell-streetisms left no place for Aimard in the book-market. (5)

Sick man

In 1879, Gustave Aimard made a voyage to Brazil, where the literary community of Rio de Janeiro greeted him as a hero. After returning to France, Aimard became afflicted with both physical and mental illness. The latter was characterized as “folie des grandeurs.”

The breakdown in his health was shown in erysipelas. As the skin healed, the brain became disordered. He raved about his high ancestry, and the injustice of the law, wrote letters to his ‘cousin’ (the Emperor Napoleon) and his nephews, the De Choiseul family, and prepared a brief for a lawyer who was to establish a claim to the sovereignty of the island of Corsica and to the Byzantine Empire. This Empire he claimed through the Sebastianis and Commenas, from whom Madame Junot was also descended. Aimard had heard, when he was a boy, that Sebastiani, when he went as Ambassador to Constantinople, was instructed to find out whether it would be possible, with the help of Russia, or against her, if necessary, to set up again the Lower Empire. If it could be restored, he was to have been the Emperor. (6)

The fact Aimard had never been acknowledged by his biological family did not deter him from holding these pretensions.

Gustave Aimard died on June 20, 1883, at Sainte-Anne Psychiatric Hospital in Paris at the age of 64. Despite his literary success, he was not a rich man, having assigned the copyrights of all his books to his publisher for a modest life pension of £140 a year, the equivalent of roughly £16,000 today. (7)

You can read many of Gustave Aimard’s books for free on the Internet Archive.

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Virgil L. Jones, “Gustave Aimard,” Southwest Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer, 1930), pp. 452-455.
Truth, Vol. 13, No. 339 (London, June 28, 1883), p. 907.
Gustave Aimard, The Border Rifles: A Tale of the Texan War, translated by Frederic Lascelles Wraxall (London, 1861), pp. 1-2.
Truth, Vol. 13, No. 339 (London, June 28, 1883), p. 907.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Daily News (London), June 27, 1883.

When one imagines a party in London during the Regency era – like the soiree at which the Duke of Wellington learns of Napoleon’s escape in Napoleon in America – one tends to think of lavish rooms, pretty gowns, and fancy dancing. Less thought is given to the work the hostess had to do to get her house ready for the party. This was considerable, even if she did have servants to help her.

Quae Genus gives a grand party, by Thomas Rowlandson, 1822

Types of parties

Regency evening parties came in various guises, which “differ[ed] from each other rather in the amusements than in the manner of conducting them.”

They consist of balls, at which…dancing alone is the amusement: – routs, which comprehend a crowd of persons in full dress assembled to pay their respects to the lady of the house, and to converse, occasionally, with such of their acquaintance as they may chance to encounter in the throng; – conversaziones, in which, as the term implies, conversation has the lead, but the tedium which this might occasion to some of the guests, by its unvaried continuance, is prevented by the occasional introduction of music and dancing: and card parties, which should be composed solely of those who take an interest in the only amusement they afford. (1)

Party preparations

Regardless of the type of party, a lot had to be done to get the house ready.

Early in the day, the sofas, chairs, and tables should be removed, as well as every other piece of furniture which is likely either to be in the way or to be injured: forms [benches] should be placed around the walls of the room, as occupying less space than chairs, and accommodating more persons with seats. A ball room should be brilliantly lighted, and this is done in the best style by a chandelier suspended from the centre of the ceiling, which besides adds much to the elegant appearance of the room. Lustres placed on the mantelpiece, and branches on tripods in the corners of the room, are also extremely ornamental. (2)

If there was going to be dancing, the carpet had to be removed and (ideally) the floor decorated with a design in chalk. This prevented people from slipping; it also disguised an old or ill-coloured floor. The house had to be decorated with plants and flowers; music had to be arranged; a “retiring room” put in readiness “for ladies who may wish to disburthen themselves of shawls and cloaks.” Refreshments had to be prepared, including – in the case of a ball – a supper, “to be announced at half-past twelve or at one o’clock, never later.” Dinner parties had their own separate requirements. If conversation was the focus of the party, “the tables should be spread with the newest publications, prints, and drawings: shells, fossils, and other natural productions should also be introduced to excite attention and promote remark.” If games were to be played, tables had to be furnished with cards and counters. (3)

Behind the scenes

Lady Morgan provides a peek at what went on in one London house just before a big Regency party.

It is no joke [to give a party] even in London, where every thing is to be hired, from the chairs to the company; where ‘society to let,’ has been a sign set up by more than one leader of ton, ready to fill the house of any Mrs. Thompson, or Mrs. Johnson, upon the understood terms of no meddling on the part of the hostess, and no obligation to make a due return on the part of the guests. What is strange in all this toil of pleasure is that not only the good sort of people have a great deal to do, in getting up a party, but that the great themselves (such of the great as do not live in the ‘houses’ modelled on a French hotel), have nearly as much trouble to make ‘ample room and verge enough’ to suffocate their friends commodiously, as the twaddles in Bloomsbury, the tabbies of Finsbury, or the dwellers in any other terra-incognita of Mr. Croker’s topographical map of fashion.

I once caught a certain ‘bonnie duchess’ up to her eyes in lamps and loungers, garlands and wax lights, and the rest of the materiel for a party, an hour before the throwing open of her rooms to that ‘world,’ which her talent and pleasantry so long governed and cheered. As I was a Missy, her good-natured grace had bid me come very early, that she might see how I was dressed: for she took a kind interest in me, for no other reason that I know of, except that I stood in need of it. Early, therefore, I went, but so early, that all the behind-the-scenes bustle was still in its fullest activity.

The Duchess of — then resided in Lord A—st’s house, which afforded quarters much too circumscribed to hold her legions of fashion; and all her ingenuity was applied in order to make crushing room for five hundred particular friends. What a hurry-scurry! Footmen, still in their jackets, running about with lights to place and replace, like the clerical scene shifters in Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, on a Christmas eve, – the porter, half-liveried, the page half bedizened, and the French femme-de-chambre, with her hands in the pocket of her silk apron, chattering to every body, and helping nobody!

All this was very striking, but very comfortless; so I sauntered out of one room into another, and had just drawn near to the only fire I met with in the suite, when a loud hammering behind me induced me to look back; and there, mounted on a step-ladder, stood a bulky, elderly lady, in a dimity wrapper, and a round-eared cap, knocking up a garland of laurel over the picture of some great captain of that day, military or political (I forget which), while an argand lamp burned brightly before it, – a votive offering to the idol of the moment!

As I took the elderly lady for a housekeeper, I asked her if the duchess was still in her dressing-room? ‘No child,’ said the elderly lady, ‘the duchess is here, telle que vous la voyez, doing that which she can get none of her awkward squad to do for her:’ and down sprang the active lady of seventy, with a deep inspiration of fatigue, ejaculating, ‘Gude God, but this pleasure is a toilsome thing.’

So saying, she bustled off, and in less time than could be imagined, re-appeared in the brightest spirits and the brightest diamonds, – I had almost said the brightest looks that illumined her own brilliant circle. Hers was what Horace Walpole calls ‘the true huckaback of human nature;’ and to the last it showed the strength and beauty of the web. (4)

According to Lady Morgan, the party turned into “one of the most agreeable” she ever attended. But if a party didn’t turn out as well as one hoped, there was apparently no need to worry.

Few expect any gratification from the rout itself; but the whole pleasure consists in the anticipation of the following days’ gossip, which the faintings, tearing of dresses, and elbowings which have occurred, are likely to afford. (5)

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William Parkes, Domestic Duties; or, Instructions to Young Married Ladies, on the Management of their Households, and the Regulation of their Conduct in the Various Relations and Duties of Married Life (London, 1825), p. 81.
Ibid., p. 82.
Ibid., pp. 83-88.
Sydney, Lady Morgan, The Book of the Boudoir, Vol. I (London, 1829), pp. 170-173.
Domestic Duties, p. 87.

Lest you think fake news is a recent problem, here are a few samples from the Napoleonic era.

King of Rome not Napoleon’s son

Substituted at birth? Napoleon I, Marie Louise and the King of Rome by Alexandre Menjaud, 1812

Napoleon’s only legitimate child, the King of Rome, was born on March 20, 1811 in a particularly perilous delivery. This led to reports that he was not Napoleon’s son.

The Times Newspaper, June 13, 1815, has taken an extract from a French work of notoriety…entitled ‘Notes to M. Lafont D’Aussonne’s Poeties Fugitives,’ wherein he endeavors to prove that the son of Napoleon is only an imposture and not from the body of Maria Louisa; stating that Buonaparte, suspecting his wife would not produce him an heir to his throne, therefore, previous to her delivery, had provided a male child ready in an adjoining apartment, should she fail as he suspected.

As the author states, ‘the delivery of the Empress was extremely difficult, although the greatest precautions were taken; and there was a moment when she was supposed to be lost.’ With the permission of her ‘august spouse,’ they made use of instruments, and this skilful operation effected the delivery. The mother was saved, but the little girl which she brought into the world was dead before its birth; its body was entirely mutilated, &c. &c. (1)

Napoleon killed by Cossacks

On February 21, 1814, with the armies of the Sixth Coalition pushing into France, news arrived in Dover that France had been defeated, Napoleon had been killed by a party of Cossacks, the Allies were in Paris, and the Napoleonic Wars were over.

A most criminal imposition was practiced upon the public, evidently with a view to enhance the prices of the funds, and particularly of Omnium [a government bond]. About 11 o’clock, an express arrived from Dover communicating information that an officer, apparently of the French staff, had landed early in the morning at that part from France, who announced, in the most positive terms, the death of Buonaparte, that the Allied Armies were in Paris, &c.; but they stated that the French officer, after communicating the substance of his dispatches to Port Admiral Foley, in order to be communicated by telegraph to the Admiralty, as soon as it was daylight had proceeded on his way to London with dispatches for Government on the subject.

The Stock Exchange was instantly in a bustle. Omnium, which opened at 27½, rapidly rose to 33. Vast sums were sold in the course of the day. One broker disposed of the enormous sum of 650,000£ for his employers, which transaction, it is estimated, on a moderate calculation, produced a net profit of 16,000£. The whole account of the transfers exceeded a million and a half. At length, after some hours had elapsed, the non-arrival of the pretended French officer began to throw discredit on the tale. Omnium gradually declined, and finally closed at 28½. (2)

The next day Omnium fell back to 26½, leaving many investors with losses. The hoax became known as the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814. Lord Thomas Cochrane, a member of Parliament and naval hero, was arrested, tried and imprisoned, along with his uncle and his financial adviser. Cochrane always maintained his innocence and was eventually pardoned.

Napoleon escaped from St. Helena

Napoleon on St. Helena by François-Joseph Sandmann. There were many fake news stories about Napoleon's escape.

Did he get away? Napoleon on St. Helena by François-Joseph Sandmann

Throughout Napoleon’s captivity on St. Helena, there were periodically reports that he had escaped. Here’s one from 1820, which – even as it printed it – the London Morning Post recognized as fake news.

We copy the following ridiculous article from a New York Paper, and believe we may venture to pronounce the silly story as not having the slightest foundation in fact.

Extract of a letter from St. Thomas’s, Sept. 18: I hasten to communicate to you that information has just reached us that the crew of the French frigate Junon, when off the Island of Ascension, headed by several of the officers, rose upon the captain and confined him below. They immediately proceeded to St. Helena, and arrived when the 74, with the sloop of war and guard ship, were cruising at some distance from the island. The Junon having the British colours flying, was mistaken for an English frigate, and permitted to anchor on the left of the water batteries. Having chosen an excellent position for raking the two lower batteries, she commenced an enfilading fire, which being as sudden as unexpected, did immense execution, and threw the garrison into confusion. Before troops were stationed and order restored, it was visible form the frigate that several officers of the garrison were killed or wounded, all which increased the confusion arising from the sudden attack.

Napoleon not having been deceived as to the character of the frigate, when at a considerable distance (it being the same in which he returned from Egypt) and confirmed in the opinion by the Commander, made the best use of his time. He induced one of the guards to accompany him. In a soldier’s uniform he passed the guard-house, reached the shore, and in the confusion seized a boat which was chained to the rock, and put off for the Junon; as soon as the boat was perceived by the frigate, she cut her cable, made directly for and took in Napoleon, two attendants and the soldier, and put to sea. This occurred upon the third or fourth day after the brig Archer left St. Helena. The guard ship, a 74 and sloop chased at a great distance til dark; the Junon threw out false lights, and changing her course, escaped, and arrived here early this morning. There is the greatest bustle here, all anxious to see Napoleon, though few, I think will be gratified. He remains on board; his drafts on Rothschild are offered in payment for supplies. It is understood she will sail in a day or two for the United States. There is some doubt on the subject of his reception there. (3)

If you’re curious about what might have happened if Napoleon had actually arrived in the United States, read Napoleon in America.

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Annual Gleanings of Wit and Humour in Prose & Verse: Consisting of a Selection of Anecdotes, Bon Mots, Epigrams, Enigmas, & Epitaphs, Vol I – Part I (London, 1816), pp. 156-157.
Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, Vol. 84 (London, March 1814), p. 295.
“Reported Escape of Bonaparte,” The Morning Post (London), November 2, 1820.

Louis XVIII climbing the mât de cocagne by George Cruikshank, 1815. “The Mât de Cocagne is a long pole, well soaped, on the top of which are hung upon Publick occasions various prizes which he who climbs to the top gets.” Louis XVIII is propped up by the Duke of Wellington and his sword.

Though Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, is usually associated with Napoleon Bonaparte, he had an equally large impact on Napoleon’s successor, King Louis XVIII. It was thanks to Wellington’s and Prussian Field Marshal von Blücher’s victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that Louis XVIII, a member of the House of Bourbon, regained the throne of France. While Louis had a pronounced fondness for the British field marshal, Wellington thought rather less of the French king.

Wellington and the First Restoration

The Duke of Wellington played a role in Louis XVIII’s fate even before the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke’s victory in the Peninsular War contributed to Napoleon’s first abdication of the French throne in April 1814. As a result, Louis XVIII became king of France.

During the First Restoration, Wellington served as Britain’s ambassador in Paris. For the embassy, he purchased the Hôtel de Charost from Napoleon’s sister Pauline. Before he was called away to be the British representative at the Congress of Vienna, Wellington had many encounters with the royal family. He hunted with them, and attended dinners, concerts, plays and other gatherings frequented by Louis and his court.

Louis XVIII was favourably impressed with Wellington. When the latter left for Vienna in January 1815, the King wrote to Foreign Minister Talleyrand: “I could not have been better pleased with [the Duke of Wellington] and I think he has gone away not ill satisfied with me. The Duke also has a character to sustain, that, not of a king-maker, but of a king-restorer, which is better.” (1) In later letters, he described Wellington as “an honorable man…whose zeal in my service I cannot possibly overpraise.” (2)

Wellington and the Second Restoration

After Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France in March 1815, Wellington hurried to Belgium to play his famous role in the Emperor’s final defeat. Emerging victorious at Waterloo, Wellington urged Louis XVIII to return quickly to Paris. The King’s restoration to the throne was by no means guaranteed, and Wellington considered it essential for France’s stability. At his headquarters in Neuilly, Wellington conducted negotiations for the King’s return and the formation of a new government before the other allied leaders could arrive.

I knew, on my arrival in Paris, that the Allies were by no means unanimous in the king’s favour; that they did not particularly desire the restoration; that the army and the Chambers were opposed to it; that there were four provinces in a state of rebellion; and that the rest, including Paris, were perfectly indifferent. It was very evident to me that, unless I gained over Fouché to the cause of the restoration, his Majesty would be obliged to remain at St. Denis, at all events till the sovereigns should arrive, which must have been, in any case, hurtful to his authority and his dignity. I recommended his Majesty to take Fouché into his service; and I am perfectly certain that to this advice his Majesty is indebted for his quiet restoration. (3)

Louis XVIII entered Paris on July 8, 1815. That night, British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh wrote:

The King sent for the Duke and me, this evening, to the Tuileries…. We found him in a state of great emotion and exultation at the reception he had met with from his subjects…. Indeed, during the long audience to which we were admitted, it was almost impossible to converse, so loud were the shouts of the people in the Tuileries gardens, which were full of people, though it was then dark.

Previous to the King’s dismissing us, he carried the Duke and me to the open window. Candles were then brought, which enabled the people to see the king, with the Duke by his side. They ran from all parts of the garden, and formed a solid mass, of an immense extent, rending the air with acclamations. (4)

During the Second Restoration, the Duke of Wellington served as commander-in-chief of the allied occupation army, which remained in France until 1818. He deepened his acquaintance with royal family during this period, and helped Louis solidify his reign. The King expressed his gratitude by presenting Wellington with a 102-piece dinner service of Sèvres porcelain, and the comment: “Do little gifts – keep friendship alive.” (5) The china, originally commissioned for Napoleon’s wife Josephine and decorated with images of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, can be seen at the Duke’s residence of Apsley House in London.

Louis also made Wellington a Knight of the Order of St. Esprit. Wellington wears the badge in Napoleon in America.

Wellington’s opinion of Louis XVIII

Though he considered King Louis the best available option for France at the time, Wellington later admitted that he had “a very bad opinion of Louis XVIII.” (6) He described the King as “a perfect walking sore – not a part of his body was sound – even his head let out a sort of humour.” (7) He also called him “selfish and false in the highest degree.” (8)

Wellington actually had a higher opinion of Louis XVIII’s brother and successor, Charles X (previously the Count of Artois). He described him as “a man of great strength and activity,” and “a cleverer man, as far as knowledge of the world went, though Louis XVIII was much better informed.” (9)

I was surprised…about Charles the Tenth. I knew indeed that Louis was the man of most education and information – the best bookman; but I always thought that as a man of the world – for action – Charles the Tenth was his superior. (10)

Among other things, Wellington admired Charles’ stamina and skill at hunting.

In 1825, the last time I was Paris, I went out shooting with Charles X in the forest of St. Germains. I had shot with him before at Versailles and the other royal domains. He was then a very old man, yet he walked from half-past nine till half-past three – a measured distance of 15 or 16 miles. He is a very good shot; in the first 160 times that he fired, I saw that he did not miss once. (11)

Perhaps there was something about the splendour of the French court that attracted Wellington. At dinner at Apsley House in 1840, Wellington’s eyes fixed on a pair of full-length portraits of Louis XVIII and Charles X in their royal robes. “How much better after all,” he said, laughing, “these two look with their fleurs-de-lis and Saint-Esprits, than the two corporals behind, or the fancy dress between!” The “corporals” were portraits of Tsar Alexander I of Russia and King Frederick William III of Prussia, and the “fancy dress” was a painting of King George IV of Britain in a Highland kilt and bonnet. (12)

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G. Pallain, ed., The Correspondence of Prince Talleyrand and King Louis XVIII During the Congress of Vienna (New York, 1881), p. 154.
Ibid., pp. 181, 234.
Alexis Henri Brialmont, History of the Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, translated and edited by G.R. Glieg, Vol. II (London, 1858), p. 509.
Robert Stewart Castlereagh, Correspondence, Despatches, and Other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh, edited by Charles William Vane, Vol. II (London, 1853), p. 420.
Supplementary Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur Duke of Wellington, Vol. 12 (London, 1865), p. 430.
Earl Philip Henry Stanhope, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, 1831-1851 (London, 1889), p. 36.
Ibid., p. 32.
Ibid., p. 36.
Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 94; and Charles C. F. Greville, The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, edited by Henry Reeve, Vol. II, (London, 1874), p. 305.
Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 32.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 218.

In 1821, a delegation of Great Plains Indians travelled to Washington, DC, where they met President James Monroe. The trip was organized by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and Indian agent Benjamin O’Fallon. The aim was to impress the tribal leaders with the strength and wealth of the United States, and to persuade them to keep the peace.

Young Omaha, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees by Charles Bird King, 1821

A cheap mode of conquest

The hosting of Indian delegations had been an important part of white men’s relations with Native Americans ever since Europeans first settled in North America. The Spaniards, French and English escorted Indian leaders to their main settlements to awe them and gain their friendship. The Americans continued this practice. It was a relatively inexpensive way of convincing tribal leaders of the futility of resisting the authority of the United States. As Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas L. McKenney wrote in 1828:

This mode of conquering these people is merciful, and it is cheap, in comparison to what a war with them would cost, to say nothing of the loss of human life. (1)

When John C. Calhoun became Secretary of War in 1817 (the position he holds in Napoleon in America), he also assumed responsibility for the management of Indian affairs. Calhoun wanted to reform relations with Native Americans. He thought that contact with white civilization was changing Indian culture for the worse. In his view, Indians needed to be protected and civilized. In December 1818, he reported to Congress:

They neither are, in fact, nor ought to be, considered as independent nations. Our views of their interest, and not their own, ought to govern them. By a proper combination of force and persuasion, of punishments and rewards, they ought to be brought within the pales of law and civilization. Left to themselves, they will never reach that desirable condition. Before the slow operation of reason and experience can convince them of its superior advantages, they must be overwhelmed by the mighty torrent of our population. … Our laws and manners ought to supersede their present savage manners and customs. Beginning with those most advanced in civilization, and surrounded by our people, they ought to be made to contract their settlements within reasonable bounds, with a distinct understanding that the United States intend to make no further acquisition of land from them, and that the settlements reserved are intended for their permanent home. The land ought to be divided among families; and the idea of individual property in the soil carefully inculcated. Their annuities would constitute an ample school fund; and education…ought not to be left discretionary with the parents. Those who might not choose to submit ought to be permitted and aided in forming new settlements at a distance from ours. … It is only by causing our opinion of their interest to prevail that they can be civilized and saved from extinction. (2)

In 1821, skirmishes with and among Indians in the Upper Missouri region was taking a toll in lives and money, and hindering the westward expansion of the United States. The area was occupied by some 14 Native American tribes. The small US military presence at Fort Atkinson was inadequate to protect American traders and trappers who were encroaching on Indian territory. As Benjamin O’Fallon, the Indian agent at Council Bluffs, explained to Calhoun in April 1821, the Indians were “disposed to underrate our strength, to believe that the detachment of troops on the Missouri is not a part, but the whole of our Army.” (3) After a Pawnee war party attacked nine fur traders near the Arkansas River, killing several of them and escaping with trade goods, guns and ammunition, Calhoun agreed to O’Fallon’s request to bring the tribal leaders to Washington, where they could be given a warning about their behaviour.

Exciting much interest

Petalesharo (Generous Chief), a Pawnee Brave, by Charles Bird King, 1822

O’Fallon, accompanied by two interpreters, 16 chiefs and warriors of the Kansas, Missouri, Omaha, Otoe and Pawnee tribes, and one Otoe chief’s wife, left Council Bluffs in early October 1821. The government paid for the group’s travel, room and board. After passing through St. Louis, Louisville, Wheeling and Hagerstown, the delegation arrived at Washington, DC on November 29 and 30, in two contingents. They immediately called on President James Monroe.

Their object is to visit their Great Father, and learn something of that civilization of which they have hitherto remained in total ignorance. They are from the most remote tribes with which we have intercourse, and they are believed to be the first of those tribes that have ever been in the midst of our settlements. The Pawnees are said to be the most warlike tribe we have any knowledge of – not so numerous as some others, but more formidable, because united and accustomed to war. These red men of the forest who now visit us are completely in a state of nature. (4)

Leaving two chiefs and one interpreter in Washington, O’Fallon took the rest of the delegation to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, where they arrived on December 11. They were back in Washington by December 27. The government commissioned artist Charles Bird King to paint portraits of each of the chiefs.

A friend of British traveller William Faux, residing at Washington, described the delegation as follows:

All of them are men of large stature, very muscular, having fine open countenances, with the real noble Roman nose, dignified in their manners, and peaceful and quiet in their habits. There was no instance of drunkenness among them during their stay here. … These Indians excited so much interest from their dignified personal appearance, and from their peaceful manner, that they received a great number of rich presents, sufficient to fill six large boxes in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington…. There was a notice in the papers that the Indians would dance and display their feats in front of the President’s house on a certain day, which they did to at least 6,000 persons. They showed their manner of sitting in council, their dances, their war whoop, with the noises, gesticulations, &c. of the sentinels on the sight of an approaching enemy. They were in a state of perfect nudity, except a piece of red flannel round the waist and passing between the legs. They afterwards performed at the house of his Excellency M. Hyde de Neuville. They were painted horribly, and exhibited the operation of scalping and tomahawking in fine style.

The Otta half-chief and his squaw have taken tea with us and frequently visited us. She was a very good natured, mild woman, and he showed great readiness in acquiring our language, being inquisitive, retaining anything that he was once informed, and imitating admirably the tones of every word. … Our children were full of play with them, and the squaw nursed the younger ones. … The calumet of peace (the tomahawk pipe and their own sumach tobacco) frequently went round, and they expressed a wish to see us again. …

They count by tens as we do…. They hold polygamy as honourable; one wife, no good; three, good; four, very good. In their talks with the residents they show no wish to adopt our habits. (5)

One of the Pawnees, Petalesharo, became a celebrity when a story of how he had once saved a Comanche girl from being burned at the stake appeared in the local newspapers. Students at Miss White’s Select Female Seminary in Washington raised funds to have a medal created for Petalesharo to commemorate his act. The writer James Fenimore Cooper, who encountered the delegation, used Petalesharo as the model for the main Indian character in his novel The Prairie.

Meeting with the President

Sharitahrish (Wicked Chief) by Charles Bird King, 1822

On February 4, 1822, the delegation met with President Monroe at the White House.

They were shown into the antechamber to the right of the drawing room. When I entered, I found the whole thirteen, that is twelve men and one woman, seated round the room, and Major O’Fallon, the officer who has charge of them, with four or five other gentlemen, standing at the fireplace. They were all dressed in blue cloth surtouts, with red cuffs and capes, blue pantaloons and boots – in short, in complete American costume, except that they wore on their heads a sort of coronet bedizened with red and blue foil, and stuck all round with feathers of the gayest colours. Their faces, too, were painted, though in a less fantastic style than usual. The squaw sat on a sofa near her husband, dressed in scarlet pantaloons, and wrapped in a green camblet cloak, without any ornament on her long black hair. They consisted, as I was told, of the Pawnees, Kansas, Ottoes, Mahas, and Missouries. The five chiefs were distinguished by two silver epaulettes, & the two half-chiefs by one. They were evidently not easy in their new habiliments – their coats seemed to pinch them about the shoulders; now and then they would take off their uneasy head dresses, and one sought a temporary relief by pulling off his boots.

Upon Major O’Fallon suggesting that they left the presents they intended for the President, the young men were immediately dispatched by their chiefs, and the squaw by her husband, for their intended tokens of friendship and good will. They returned in a few minutes with buffalo skins, pipes, moccasins, and feather head dresses. The President entered, with the Secretary of War, and taking his seat, delivered to them, through the interpreters, an extempore address, from notes held in his hand – and, as they used two distinct languages, it was necessary that every sentence should be twice interpreted. The President told them he was glad to see them – that, when he had met them before, he was too much engaged in receiving his great council to show them the attention he wished – and that now he had more leisure, and he was as pleased to see them in the dress of their white brethren as he had been before in that of their own country. He adverted to the visit they had made to our large towns – to our arsenals, navy yards, and the like, and told them that as much as they had seen, it could give them but a faint idea of our numbers and strength – as the deer and the buffalo they might chance to meet in passing through their forests bore a small proportion to those they did not see. That they had met with few of our warriors, because they were not wanted at the seat of our government, and because we were at peace with all the world – but if we were in a state of war, all our citizens would take arms into their hands and become brave warriors. He enjoined them to preserve peace with one another, and to listen to no voice which should persuade them to distrust the friendship of the United States. They were told that they should receive some presents, and be conducted safely back to their wives and children by Major O’Fallon, whose advice they were told to consider as the advice of their great father, the President, and were earnestly recommended to pursue. (6)

Each of the chiefs responded in turn, beginning with Petalesharo.

My Great Father – Some of your good chiefs, or, as they are called, Missionaries, have proposed to send of their good people among us to change our habits, to make us work, and live like the white people. I will not tell a lie, I am going to tell the truth. You love your country; you love your people; you love the manner in which they live, and you think your people brave. I am like you, my Great Father, I love my country; I love my people; I love the manner in which we live, and think myself and warriors brave; spare me then, my Father, let me enjoy my country, and pursue the buffalo, and the beaver, and the other wild animals of our wilderness, and I will trade the skins with your people. I have grown up and lived thus long without work; I am in hopes you will suffer me to die without it. We have yet plenty of buffalo, beaver, deer, and other wild animals; we have also an abundance of horses. We have every thing we want. We have plenty of land, if you will keep your people off of it.

My Father [O’Fallon] has a piece on which he lives [Council Bluffs] and we wish him to enjoy it. We have enough without it; but we wish him to live near us to give us good counsel; to keep our ears and eyes open, that we may continue to pursue the right road; the road to happiness. He settles all differences between us and the whites, and between the red skins themselves. … We keep our eye constantly upon him, and since we have heard your words, we will listen more attentively to his.

It is too soon, my Great Father, to send those good men among us. We are not starving yet. We wish you to permit us to enjoy the chase, until the game of our country is exhausted; until the wild animals become extinct. Let us exhaust our present resources, before you make us toil, and interrupt our happiness. Let me continue to live as I have done, and after I have passed to the Good or Evil Spirit from the wilderness of my present life, the subsistence of my children may become so precarious as to need and embrace the offered assistance of these good people. (7)

After each had spoken, “they partook of wine, cake, and other refreshments, of which they were no wise sparing; and then lighting their pipes, filled with wild tobacco, they smoked awhile and presented their several pipes to the President, Chief Justice, and others, to take a whiff, in token of peace and amity.” (8)

An American who was present at the meeting commented:

It is impossible to see these people, and believe, as I do, that they are destined, in no very long lapse of time, to disappear from the face of the earth, without feeling for them great interests. With some vices, and much grossness, they possess many fine traits of character; and we never can forget that they were the native lords of that soil which they are gradually yielding to their invaders. Yes, I firmly believe that all our liberal and humane attempts to civilize them will prove hopeless and unavailing. Whether it is that they acquire our bad habits before our good ones, or that their course of life has, by its long continuance, so modified the nature of their race that it cannot thrive under the restraints of civilization, I know not; but it is certain that all the tribes which have remained among us have gradually dwindled to insignificance or become entirely extinct. … Considering the race to be thus transient, I have often wished that more pains were bestowed, and by more competent persons, in recording what is most remarkable and peculiar among them, now that those peculiarities are fresh and unchanged by their connection with us. (9)

The delegation left Washington in late February. Their visit cost the government over $6,000. It was considered worthwhile. The Washington Gazette editorialized:

The object of their interesting mission, we believe, has been fully accomplished: these aborigines are deeply impressed with the power of the long-knives, that for the future the tomahawk will not be raised with their consent, against their white brethren. (10)

The tribes from which the delegates came remained relatively peaceful as white settlers swept across the headwaters of the Missouri.

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Herman J. Viola, Diplomats in Buckskins: A History of Indian Delegations in Washington City (Bluffton, SC, 1995), p. 24.
Richard K. Crallé, ed., The Works of John C. Calhoun, Vol. V: Reports and Public Letters (New York, 1855), pp. 18-19.
Diplomats in Buckskins, p. 25.
Niles Weekly Register (Baltimore), December 15, 1821.
William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States (London, 1823), pp. 378-382.
Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), February 11, 1822.
Jedidiah Morse, A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs (New Haven, 1822), pp. 244-245.
Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), February 11, 1822.
Ibid.
Diplomats in Buckskins, p. 25.

Have you ever wanted to watch a king get up and get dressed? If so, you would have enjoyed the grand lever, the traditional rising ceremony of French monarchs. It was a moment when people could speak to the king without having to request a formal audience. The grand lever may have started with Charlemagne, who invited friends into his bedchamber when he was dressing. If a dispute was brought to his attention, he adjudicated the matter. Seven centuries later, Henri II entertained a range of courtiers at his grand lever. They stood in a circle around the royal bed while the highest-ranking prince handed Henri his shirt and the king got dressed. Henri talked with each person in turn, “which pleased them greatly.” (1) He then knelt before an altar and said his prayers, after which everyone left.

The grand & petit levers of Louis XIV

In the bedchamber of Louis XIV by Paul Philippoteaux

Louis XIV divided the lever into two parts and turned each into an elaborate ceremony, governed by rules of etiquette. The petit lever happened in the king’s chamber, where a small group of favoured courtiers watched the king get out of bed and get dressed. “Every other day we saw him shave himself; and he had a little short wig in which he always appeared, even in bed and on medicine days. He often spoke of the chase and sometimes said a word to somebody.” (2) This was followed by the grand lever, which was attended by nobles, cardinals, archbishops, ambassadors, dukes, peers, governors of provinces, marshals of France, etc. Admission to the grand lever was considered a great favour. During this ceremony, Louis XIV finished putting on his clothes, ate a light breakfast, and said his prayers. Even if the king had gotten up early to do some hunting, he would return to bed for the start of the lever.

Napoleon’s lever

Napoleon adopted the tradition of the lever, but did away with people watching him get up and get dressed. Instead, he simply received people in his salon at nine a.m. First came the high officials of his household and the crown. Then it was the turn of princes and princesses, cardinals, great officers of the Empire, presidents of the bodies of State, and the chief authorities of Paris. Napoleon used the lever as an occasion to give orders.

No little stories are told, no good things repeated, no familiarity slips in, no kind expressions find a place. They are in attendance to receive orders and to hand in their reports…. The lever does not last long, as might be supposed, for there is no idle talk; and if the Emperor has a wish to get to the bottom of a question, or if some great functionary has doubtful points to submit to him, it will be at a private audience. (3)

The grand lever of Louis XVIII

Louis XVIII in the Tuileries Palace, by Michel Marigny after François Gérard, circa 1820

Napoleon’s successor, Louis XVIII, revived the grand lever in its traditional form. Here is a description of how the ceremony was conducted.

The king lay, not in his great bed, but in a smaller and very low one which was prepared for him and removed every morning. The king fixed every night the hour of his rising, and orders were given to the valet-de-chambre on duty to awake his majesty in case he should be asleep at the time appointed. But the first valet-de-chambre on duty had previously gone into the king’s room with the footmen to extinguish the light called mortier, to kindle a fire if it was winter-time, and take in the night collation, consisting of a jug of wine, another of pure water, bread, a fowl, some fruit, a goblet of silver gilt, and several napkins.

The king being awake, the grand chamberlain and the first gentleman of the bed-chamber were informed that they might enter, whilst a valet went to direct the officers of the kitchen and buttery to prepare his majesty’s breakfast. At the same time an usher took possession of the door of the chamber, that only such persons as had a right to come and pay their respects to him might be suffered to pass. His majesty chose this time to tell the first valet to admit the grande entrée.

The grande entrée consists of the great officers of the household and the crown, persons of quality, certain marshals of France, and some privileged ladies, who share this favour with the cravatier, the tailor, the slipper-bearer, the barber in ordinary, the two barber-assistants, the clock-maker, and the apothecaries.

While all these persons are making their way into the chamber, the first valet pours upon his majesty’s hands a bottle of spirit of wine into a silver-gilt bowl; the napkin is presented by the grand chamberlain or the first gentleman, or the grand-master of the wardrobe, or even by the premier. The vessel of holy water is then presented, and the king, having made the sign of the cross, repeats or is supposed to repeat some prayer before he rises from bed. Louis XVIII put on his slippers himself; it was a service which his courtiers would not have disdained; but the king made them amends by granting them the honour of holding his morning-gown while he put it on. This done, he went to the arm-chair in which he was to dress himself.

The king then asked for his chamber, that is, those who were not yet there. The usher on duty took hold of the door, and his colleagues went and whispered in the ear of the first gentleman the names of the princes, ambassadors, cardinals, bishops, dukes and peers, marshals of France, lieutenant-generals, first presidents, attorney-generals, peers and deputies, who might be present; and the first gentleman repeated their names to the king.

The officers of the household passed unquestioned: but the moment an unknown face presented itself among the others, the owner was stopped by the usher, who asked his name, and decided in his wisdom whether he could permit him to enter without referring to the first gentleman. All who came thither were obliged to conform without a murmur to these customs; it was likewise requisite for them to know that they were to scratch and not to knock; and lastly that a closed door was to be opened only by the usher or by the officer on duty at it.

The moment for the king to dress being arrived, two pages of the chamber stationed themselves so as to shift his majesty’s slippers when required. His shirt was brought covered with white taffeta: to present it to the king was an eminent distinction, coveted by the highest noblemen of the realm. The king put it on in the presence of the multitude, but, for decency’s sake, two valets-de-chambre held his morning gown extended before him. This done, and the small-clothes as well as the waistcoat being placed by the master of the wardrobe, the sword, bleu riband, and cross of St. Louis were brought, and afterwards the coat. It was the rule that the king should empty with his own hands the pockets of the clothes which he wore the preceding day, and that he should tie his cravat himself; three pocket handkerchiefs were handed to him in a dish of silver gilt; etiquette permitted him to take one, two, or even all three.

A valet held a mirror before the king during the whole time of dressing, and two others lighted him with flambeaux, or were supposed to do so. The various orders being given for the day, the king frequently granted audience to the nuncio or to the ambassadors. (4)

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Noel Williams, Henri II: His Court and Times (New York, 1910), p. 302.
Louis de Rouvroy, The Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon on the Reign of Louis XIV and the Regency, Vol. III, translated by Bayle St. John (London, 1891), p. 21.
Masson, Frédéric, Napoleon at Home: The Daily Life of the Emperor at the Tuileries, translated by James E. Matthew (London, 1894), pp. 136, 142.
Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, Private Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII, Volume I (London, 1830), pp. 345-348.

Punishment for spitting on the deck: carrying a spittoon for the crew. Drawing from the first half of the 19th century. Source: Library of Congress

When Emily Hopkinson complains to Napoleon Bonaparte about the habits of young American men in Napoleon in America, she says, “If a young lady should happen to accost one of those elegant figures, it is a considerable time ere she can be answered, as the gentleman must first dispose of the mouthful of delicious juice he has been extracting from a deposit secreted in one of his cheeks.” (1) The “deposit” to which Emily refers is chewing tobacco. Disposal of the juice involves spitting – a practice early 19th-century Americans lustily engaged in, often without benefit of a spittoon. British visitors to the United States were appalled.

Some practices…among the Americans are to Englishmen excessively disgusting, and some of their usages shocking to our delicacy. The custom of hawking and spitting, and squirting tobacco-juice on the carpets and walls of their drawing-rooms, is of this number. (2)

The most offensive peculiarity

English merchant Adam Hodgson, who visited America in 1819, observed:

The next American habit on which I will remark, which always offended me extremely, is the almost universal one of spitting, without regard to time, place or circumstances. You must excuse my alluding to such a topic; but I could not in candour omit it, since it is the most offensive peculiarity in American manners. Many, who are really gentlemen in other respects, offend in this; and I regretted to observe the practice even in the diplomatic parties at Washington. Indeed, in the capitol itself, the dignity of the Senate is let down by this annoying habit. I was there the first session after it was rebuilt, and as the magnificent and beautiful halls had been provided with splendid carpets, some of the senators appeared at first a little daunted; but after looking about in distress, and disposing of their diluted tobacco at first with timidity, and by stealth, they gathered by degrees the courage common to corporate bodies; and before I left Washington had relieved themselves pretty well from the dazzling brightness of the brilliant colours under their feet! It was mortifying to me, to observe all this in an assembly, whose proceedings are conducted with so much order and propriety, and in chambers so truly beautiful as the Senate and House of Representatives – the latter the most beautiful hall I ever saw. (3)

Frances Trollope, who spent 1827-1830 in the United States, wrote caustically of “that plague-spot of spitting which rendered male colloquy so difficult to endure.”

I hardly know any annoyance so deeply repugnant to English feelings as the incessant, remorseless spitting of Americans.

Observing from the visitors’ gallery of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Trollope, like Hodgson, found it

really mortifying to see this splendid hall, fitted up in so stately and sumptuous a manner, filled with men sitting in the most unseemly attitudes, a large majority with their hats on, and nearly all spitting to an excess that decency forbids me to describe. (4)

Even at the White House, “[c]onversation, tea, ice, music, chewing tobacco, and excessive spitting afford[ed] employment for the evening,” according to Henry Bradshaw Fearon, who toured America in 1817-1818. To Fearon’s regret, the practice was not confined to the nation’s capital.

I disapprove most decidedly of the obsequious servility of many London shopkeepers, but I am not prepared to go the length of those in New York, who stand with their hats on, or sit or lie along their counters, smoking segars [cigars], and spitting in every direction, to a degree offensive to any man of decent feelings.

Fearon also complained about the taverns in Louisville, Kentucky, where “there is not a man who appears to have a single earthly object in view, except spitting and smoking segars.” (5) British farmer William Faux was equally “well pleased” to turn his back “on all the spitting, gouging, dirking, duelling, swearing, and staring of old Kentucky.” (6)

In Philadelphia, Scottish politician James Stuart lodged in a very good hotel, to which he would have returned, “but for the smoking and chewing of tobacco, which never ceased in the reading-rooms. The chewing and spitting were carried to such a height, that it was difficult to escape from their effects.” (7)

Well-bred men in well-dressed rooms

An advertisement for chewing tobacco, circa 1870-1900. Source: Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth

As indicated by Emily Hopkinson’s remark, there were Americans who disapproved of the custom. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, co-founder of Harvard Medical School and saviour of John Quincy Adams’ portrait, took the view that a well-bred man “refrained from spitting in company, and in well-dressed rooms.” Dr. Waterhouse warned of the health consequences of spitting.

The first effect of tobacco on those who have…already commenced the offensive custom of chewing or smoking, is either a waste or vitiation of the saliva.

The saliva or spittle is secreted by a complex glandular apparatus from the most refined arterial blood, and constantly distils into the mouth in health; and from the mouth into the stomach at the rate of twelve ounces a day. It very much resembles the gastric juice in the stomach; and its importance in digestion may be imagined after listening to the words of the great Boerhaave. ‘Whenever the saliva is lavishly spit away, we remove one of the strongest causes of hunger and digestion. The chyle prepared without this fluid is depraved, and the blood is vitiated for want of it. I once tried,’ says this great philosopher and consummate physician, ‘an experiment on myself, by spitting out all my saliva; the consequence was that I lost my appetite.’ Hence we see the pernicious effects of chewing and smoking tobacco. (8)

Mason Locke Weems, in his biography of Benjamin Franklin, said bluntly:

O you time-wasting, brain-starving young men, who can never be at ease unless you have a cigar or a plug of tobacco in your mouths, go on with your puffing and champing – go on with your filthy smoking, and your still more filthy spitting, keeping the cleanly house-wives in constant terror for their nicely waxed floors, and their shining carpets – go on, I say; but remember it was not in this way that our little Ben became the great Dr. Franklin. (9)

You might also enjoy:

The John Quincy Adams Portrait by Gilbert Stuart & Thomas Sully

Drinking cold water & other 19th century causes of death

Celebrating with Light: Illuminations & Transparencies

How the 20 Questions game came to America

This bit of dialogue, which appears on p. 76 in the novel, is taken directly from a humorous letter Emily Hopkinson wrote for The Port Folio, Vol. II (Philadelphia, April 3, 1802), p. 98, under the pseudonym of “Beatrice.”
The Monthly Review, or Literary Journal, Vol. 105, 1824, p. 250.
Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, Vol. I (London, 1824), pp. 35-36.
Frances Milton Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London, 1832), pp. 108, 34, 183.
Henry Bradshaw Fearon, Sketches of America (London, 1819), pp. 291, 12, 249.
William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States (London, 1823), p. 203.
James Stuart, Three Years in North America, Vol. I (Edinburgh, 1833), p. 398.
Benjamin Waterhouse, Cautions to Young Persons Concerning Health (Cambridge, 1822), pp. vii, 33-34.
Mason Locke Weems, The Life of Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, 1835), p. 23.

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821 at the age of 51 on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena. His tomb is in the Dôme des Invalides, but that is not where Napoleon was first laid to rest. How did his remains end up in Paris? And why are there reports of Napoleon’s penis being in the United States? Here’s what happened to Napoleon’s body after he died.

The opening of Napoleon’s casket on St. Helena in October 1840, by Nicolas-Eustache Maurin

The autopsy

Napoleon died at 5:49 p.m. on May 5, 1821. At midnight, his servants removed him from the bed on which he had died, washed his body using cologne mixed with water, shaved him, and then returned him to the freshly made up bed. On the afternoon of May 6, an autopsy was conducted by Napoleon’s physician Dr. François Antommarchi, assisted by seven British doctors, including army surgeon Dr. Archibald Arnott. Nine other witnesses were present – six Frenchmen from Napoleon’s suite, and three British officers. The doctors concluded that Napoleon died from a cancerous growth in his stomach.

In addition to the stomach, Antommarchi removed Napoleon’s heart, intending to comply with Napoleon’s wish that it be sent to his wife Marie Louise. The stomach and the heart were placed in separate silver vessels filled with wine. One of the witnesses, Napoleon’s valet, Louis-Joseph Marchand, wrote:

The inside of the body was wiped and washed with an aromatic fluid. As Sir Hudson Lowe had declared his government opposed to any kind of embalming, needle stitching by Dr. Antommarchi restored everything to its original state. (1)

Napoleon’s second valet, Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis, who was also present, observed:

Before sewing up the body, Antommarchi, taking advantage of a moment when the eyes of the English were not fixed on the body, had taken two little pieces from a rib which he had given to M. Vignaly [Napoleon’s priest] and Coursot [Napoleon’s butler]. (2)

Marchand and Saint-Denis dressed Napoleon’s body in his uniform of the mounted chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. The body was then returned to the bed for mourners to come and pay their last respects. Dr. Arnott was assigned to keep watch over Napoleon’s body and to guard the vessels containing his heart and stomach. British governor Hudson Lowe insisted that these be buried with Napoleon.

These two silver vases filled with wine spirits were hermetically closed and soldered by a British plumber, and entrusted to Dr. Arnott’s keeping. He felt he had fulfilled his assignment only when they were put in the casket. (3)

On May 7, Napoleon’s hair was shaved off and entrusted to Marchand, to be given to Napoleon’s family. A plaster cast of Napoleon’s head was taken by English surgeon Dr. Francis Burton, aided by Antommarchi (see the controversy over Napoleon’s death masks). Then Napoleon’s body and the vases containing his heart and stomach were placed in a tin casket lined with white quilted satin. This was soldered shot. The tin casket was placed inside a mahogany casket, which was screwed shut. This in turn was set inside a lead casket, which was soldered shut. At dawn on May 9, the whole works were put into a fourth casket, made of mahogany and sealed with silver-headed iron screws.

Burial on St. Helena

In a codicil to his will dated April 16, 1821, Napoleon requested that his body be buried “on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I loved so well.” (4) One of Napoleon’s companions on St. Helena, General Henri Bertrand, expanded on this.

By the banks of the Seine, he meant, of course, somewhere in France.

He thought that the Bourbons would raise no objection to this. He would prefer above all to be buried in the Cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris, where his body could be placed between the graves of Masséna and General Lefebvre, and in the center of their small memorial, a column might be put up to him. He would much prefer that to being buried at St. Denis among all the Bourbon kings. … Or else, let his body be buried on an island formed by the junction of the Rhône and Saône rivers near Lyons. Or lastly, let them bury him at Ajaccio in Corsica, which was still a part of France. In that case, let him be buried in the Cathedral of Ajaccio, by the side of his ancestors, where he had had his uncle Lucien interred.

The Emperor did not think that his body would be left at St. Helena. He thought that provision had been made for such an eventuality. But should it happen, he preferred to be buried, not at Plantation House [the governor’s residence], but near the fountain which had provided him with water throughout his sojourn. (5)

On May 9, following a mass and a service for the dead, Napoleon was buried in the requested spot – Geranium Valley – at the foot of some willows, near a spring of cool water. The grave, approximately 10 feet deep, was lined with brick. Inside was a tomb made of slabs of stone. After Napoleon’s casket was lowered by means of pulleys, the tomb was sealed with another enormous stone. This was topped with bricks, cement, clay and more stones. There Napoleon’s body remained for 19 years.

Return of the remains (retour des cendres)

Although Britain regarded its custody of Napoleon’s body as temporary, French King Louis XVIII and his successor, Charles X, had no desire to revive Bonapartist sentiments by bringing the Emperor’s remains to France. Even after 1830, when Charles X was overthrown and Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, became King of the French, there was little official appetite for Napoleon’s return. It took the pressure of historian Adolphe Thiers, who in 1840 was serving as French prime minister and foreign minister, to convince a reluctant Louis Philippe to support the repatriation of Napoleon’s remains. Thiers was writing a 20-volume history of the Consulate and Empire. He regarded the “retour des cendres” as an opportunity to rehabilitate the period’s reputation, unite the French people, and increase the government’s popularity. (See “The Death of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Retour des Cendres: French and British Perspectives” by Fiona Parr on Napoleon.org for the political considerations involved in the return of Napoleon’s remains.)

On October 8, 1840, the frigate La Belle Poule, painted black and escorted by the corvette Favorite, arrived at St. Helena. The expedition was led by King Louis Philippe’s son, the Prince of Joinville. It included a number of people who had been with Napoleon on St. Helena: Marchand, Saint-Denis, Bertrand and his son Arthur, General Gourgaud, the young Emmanuel de Las Cases, and the servants Pierron, Noverraz, Coursot and Achille Archambault.

On October 15, Napoleon’s grave was opened in the presence of witnesses who had been present at the original burial. Excavators worked through the night to break through the layers of stone, cement and brick. On October 16, the coffin was lifted out. Each of the four caskets was opened. The official report noted:

The cover of the third coffin having been removed, a tin ornament, slightly rusted, was seen, which was removed, and a white satin sheet was perceived, which was detached with the greatest precaution by the doctor, and Napoleon’s body was exposed to view. His features were so little changed that his face was recognized by those who had known him when alive. The different articles which had been deposited in the coffin were found exactly as they had been placed. The hands were singularly well preserved. The uniform, the orders, the hat, were very little changed. His entire person presented the appearance of one lately preserved. The body was not exposed to the external air longer than two minutes at most, which were necessary for the surgeon to take measures to prevent any alteration. (6)

Dr. Remi Julien Guillard, surgeon of La Belle Poule, provided the following account of the state of Napoleon’s body.

The body of the Emperor had an easy position, the same as when he was placed in the coffin; the superior members were stretched out, the lower part of the arm and the left hand resting on the corresponding thigh; the inferior members somewhat depressed. The head, a little raised, rested on a cushion; his skull, of ample volume, and his high and broad forehead, were covered with yellowish teguments, hard and very adherent. The orbs of the eyes offered the same appearance, and the upper part was lined with eyelids; the balls of the eyes were entire, but had lost some of their volume and shape. The eyelids, completely closed, adhered to the under parts, and were hard; the bones of the nose, and the teguments which covered them, were well preserved; the tube and the sides alone had suffered. The cheeks were full. The teguments of that portion of the face were remarkable for their soft supple feel and their whitish colour; those of the chin were slightly bluish, and derived that colour from the beard, which appeared to have grown after death. The chin itself was not in the least altered, and still preserved the character peculiar to Napoleon’s countenance. The lips were thinned and asunder, and three of the front teeth, extremely white, were seen under the upper lip, which was slightly raised to the left. The hands were perfect, and did not exhibit any sort of alteration; if the articulations had lost their motion, the skin appeared to have preserved the colour of life; and the fingers bore long, adherent, and very white nails; the legs were enclosed in boots, but in consequence of the threads of the latter being worn, the four last toes were visible on both sides. The skin of those toes was of a dull white, and the nails were still adherent. The front region of the thorax was strongly depressed in the middle; the coats of the abdomen hard, and fallen in; the members appeared to have preserved their shape under the clothes which covered them. I pressed the left arm, it was hard, and had lost somewhat of its volume. (7)

After this confirmation that Napoleon’s body was still there, the tin and wood caskets were closed, the lead casket was closed and resoldered, and all were placed in a new lead casket, sent from Paris, which was also soldered shut. These were all placed inside a new ebony casket, which was locked and put in an oak case, to protect the ebony. The whole thing weighed 1,200 kilograms.

On October 18, La Belle Poule left St. Helena with Napoleon’s body. On November 30, the ship reached Cherbourg in France, where the casket was transferred to La Normandie, which took it to Val-de-la-Haye, near Rouen. Here the casket was transferred to the steamer La Dorade, to be carried up the Seine. On December 14, La Dorade moored at Courbevoie, a village just northwest of Paris. On December 15, 1840, Napoleon’s body was transferred to an enormous funeral carriage drawn by 16 black horses. It proceeded in a funeral procession across the Neuilly bridge to the Arc de Triomphe, and from there along the Champs-Élysées and across the Pont de la Concorde to a funeral service at the Invalides. For details, see my post on “Napoleon’s Funeral in Paris in 1840.”

Napoleon’s body remained in the Chapel of Saint-Jérôme at the Invalides for over 20 years. The well-known tomb beneath the dome of the Invalides – a sarcophagus of red quartzite, designed by Louis Visconti – was not completed until 1861. On April 2 of that year, Napoleon’s body (still in all the caskets) was transferred to the new tomb in a private ceremony attended by Emperor Napoleon III (Napoleon’s nephew), his immediate family, government ministers and senior officials.

Napoleon’s intestine?

In 1841, the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London acquired two pieces of what was alleged to be Napoleon’s intestine. They came from surgeon Dr. Astley Cooper, who had acquired them from Dr. Barry O’Meara, Napoleon’s physician on St. Helena from 1815 to 1818.

They are two small pieces of the human bowel suspended in sealed bottles filled with alcohol. A superficial observer might easily believe that he is looking at two small oblong tags of dusky skin, each with a curious wart-like raised patch in its centre. (8)

The authenticity of these relics was called into question by pathologist Dr. James Paget in 1883. He noted the differences in appearance between the specimens and the description of the corresponding body part in Antommarchi’s report on Napoleon’s autopsy. He observed that O’Meara had left St. Helena nearly three years before Napoleon’s death. He also said “the steps taken by Napoleon’s personal attendants to prevent the abstraction of the heart and stomach also show the improbability of these specimens having had the source ascribed to them.” (9) However, others continued to argue in favour of the specimens’ authenticity, even after they were destroyed in an air raid during World War II.

Napoleon’s penis?

In 1927, an object described as a “mummified tendon taken from Napoleon’s body during the post-mortem” was displayed at the Museum of French Art in New York.

Maudlin sentimentalizers sniffled; shallow women giggled and pointed. In a glass case they saw something looking like a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shriveled eel. (10)

The “tendon,” purported to be Napoleon’s penis, was allegedly cut off by Antommarchi during Napolon’s autopsy and given to the priest, Ange-Paul Vignali. Vignali brought it back to Corsica along with other effects from St. Helena. After Vignali’s death, it was passed down through his family until sold, as part of a Napoleonic collection, to the British rare books firm Maggs Bros. in 1916. In 1924, the collection was acquired by Dr. Abraham S.W. Rosenbach and kept in Philadelphia. After passing through a few more owners, the tendon was sold in 1977 for $3,000 to American urologist Dr. John K. Lattimer. Upon Lattimer’s death, his son inherited the object.

A catalogue put out by the Rosenbach Company in 1924 claimed:

The authenticity of this remarkable relic has lately been confirmed by the publication in the Revue des Deux Mondes of a posthumous memoir by St. Denis, in which he expressly states that he and Vignali took away small pieces of Napoleon’s corpse during the autopsy. (11)

As noted above, the English translation (1922) of Saint-Denis’s memoir claims that Vignali was given a little piece from a rib. The French version of that passage in the Revue des Deux Mondes (1921) says Antommarchi “avait extrait d’une côte deux petits morceaux,” which he gave to Vignali and Coursot. (12) “Une côte” is a rib. Nowhere in the memoir does Saint-Denis say that Napoleon’s penis was removed. It is hard to believe that such a significant part of Napoleon’s anatomy could have been cut off without any of the other people present at the autopsy noticing and eventually remarking on it.

If you would like to try imagining that some part of Napoleon wound up in the United States, read Napoleon in America, which is clearly fiction.

You might also enjoy:

Vignettes of Napoleon’s Final Months

How was Napoleon’s death reported in the newspapers?

Assassination Attempts on Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon’s Hair and its Many Locks

When Napoleon Attempted Suicide

Cancer Treatment in the 19th Century

What did Napoleon like to wear?

Louis-Joseph Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow (San Francisco, 1998), p. 692.
Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, translated by Frank Hunter Potter (New York and London, 1922), p. 280.
Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow, p. 697.
Charles de La Bédoyère, Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. II (London, 1827), p. 1034.
Henri Bertrand, Napoleon at St. Helena: The Journals of General Bertrand, January-May 1821, deciphered and annotated by Paul Fleuriot de Langle, translated by Francis Hume (Garden City, 1952), p. 164.
Laurent de l’Ardeche, History of Napoleon, Vol. II (London, 1841), Appendix, p. 18.
Ibid., Appendix, pp. 19-20.
Arthur Keith and S.G. Shattock, “An Address on the History and Nature of Certain Specimens Alleged to have been Obtained at the Post-Mortem Examination of Napoleon the Great,” The British Medical Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2715 (January 11, 1913), p. 53.
Ibid., p. 53.
“Napoleon’s Things,” Time, February 14, 1927, p. 18.
Description of the Vignali Collection of Relics of Napoleon (Philadelphia and New York, 1924), p. 5.
“Souvenirs de Saint-Denis dit ali Second Mameluck de l’Empereur; V – La Mort et les Funérailles de l’Empereur,” Revue Des Deux Mondes, Vol. 65, No. 5 (September-October 1921), p. 40.

Napoleon was not known for his sportsmanship (see my post on interesting Napoleon facts). Billiards was one of the most popular games in late 18th-early 19th century France. How was Napoleon at billiards?

Game of Billiards by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1807. One can guess why Captain Coignet tried to see what he could whenever Marie Louise stretched herself across the billiard table.

Billiards in France

The first recorded reference to a billiard table is found in a late 15th century inventory of the possessions of King Louis XI of France. By the Napoleonic era, billiards was popular among all classes of people in France.

“Billiards are played at almost every house in every street,” an anonymous visitor to Paris observed in 1816. (1) Another visitor commented:

[N]o book ever degrades the silken luxury of a French salon; very rarely is a room set apart for such guests in the metropolis; and in the country, a billiard table is the usual occupant of the apartment which, in England, is reserved for the library. We know a village situated just 12½ miles from Paris, containing six families whose yearly income would average about 2500£, equivalent to 4000£ in England; and of 850 meaner inhabitants. In all the wealthy houses taken together, two thousand volumes could not be mustered: but, in each of them is a billiard table: and there are moreover five public billiard tables in the village, for the amusement of the 850 poorer inhabitants. In a radius of three miles are six or eight more villages; and, in nearly all these, the ratio of books and billiard tables is nearly the same. As we recede from Paris, the ratio of books diminishes, in a much more rapid progression, than that of billiard tables. But, in the village alluded to, there is one billiard table to about 182 volumes. We are afraid to aver that the average of entire France would be one billiard table to one hundred volumes. (2)

In Napoleon in America, Frenchmen are playing billiards even as one of the characters is about to be executed.

Napoleon and billiards

Napoleon’s private secretary Baron de Méneval tells us about a game of billiards Napoleon played with General Lannes when Napoleon was First Consul of France.

One day the First Consul had ordered some Arab horses, which had been given to him, to be brought into the courtyard of the castle at La Malmaison. Lannes proposed to the First Consul to play him a match at billiards for one of the horses. Napoleon consented. He wanted to lose, and had to lose, and his adversary won the match with great ease. ‘I have beaten thee,’ he said to the First Consul whom he was in the habit of addressing in the second person singular, ‘and so I have the right to choose.’ And without waiting for the permission, which he did not ask, he runs up and examines the horses one after the other, and choosing the handsomest, has it saddled, and jumping into the saddle says: ‘Good-bye, Bonaparte. I sha’n’t dine here. I’m off, because if I stayed thou wouldst be capable of taking thy horse back again. (3)

Though Méneval implies that Napoleon lost on purpose, it is not clear he could have won even if he tried. According to Sophie Durand, lady-in-waiting to Napoleon’s second wife Marie Louise:

Napoleon played billiards very badly, without any attention, and ran about the whole time: he chose that time to give vent to his anger, or to scold, if he had anything to complain of. (4)

Napoleon probably didn’t fare well in his matches against Marie Louise, unless she let him win. Captain Jean-Roch Coignet, a grenadier of Napoleon’s guard, writes:

Marie Louise was a first-rate billiard-player. She beat all the men; but she was not afraid to stretch herself out across the billiard-table, as the men did, when she wanted to make a stroke, with me always on the watch to see what I could. She was frequently applauded. (5)

Napoleon’s first wife Josephine also enjoyed a game of billiards, according to Napoleon’s valet Constant.

She loved to sit up late, and when almost everybody else had retired, to play a game of billiards, or more often of backgammon. It happened on one occasion that, having dismissed every one else, and not yet being sleepy, she asked if I knew how to play billiards, and upon my replying in the affirmative, requested me with charming grace to play with her; and I had often afterwards the honor of doing so. Although I had some skill, I always managed to let her beat me, which pleased her exceedingly. (6)

Billiards in exile

When he was in exile on Elba in 1814-15, Napoleon occasionally played billiards at his mother’s house. During Napoleon’s final exile on St. Helena, the British sent a large mahogany billiard table from London for his use. It was installed at Napoleon’s residence of Longwood House in July 1816. Napoleon tried it for the first time on July 24. He apparently did not use it very often. One of his companions, Count de Las Cases, wrote on September 3, 1816:

[T]he Emperor took a turn on the lawn…but, finding the wind very violent, he soon returned to the house and played at billiards, a thing which he very seldom thought of doing. (7)

In February 1817, Napoleon taught Betsy Balcombe, the teenage daughter of an East India Company superintendent on St. Helena, how to play the game.

Billiards was a game much played by Napoleon and his suite. I had the honour of being instructed in its mysteries by him; but when tired of my lesson, my amusement consisted in aiming the balls at his fingers, and I was never more pleased than when I succeeded in making him cry out. One day our pass from Sir Hudson Lowe only specified a visit to General Bertrand, but my anxiety to see Napoleon caused me to break through the rule laid down, and the consequences of my imprudence were nearly proving very serious, as my father all but lost the appointment he then held under government. I had caught sight of the emperor in his favourite billiard-room, and not being able to resist having a game with him, I listened to no remonstrance, but bounded off, leaving my father in dismay at the consequences likely to ensure. I was requested to read a book by Dr. Warden, the surgeon of the Northumberland, that had just come out. It was in English, and I had the task of wading through several chapters, and making it as intelligible as my ungrammatical French permitted. Napoleon was much pleased with Dr. Warden’s book, and said ‘his work was a very true one.’ I finished reading it to him whilst we remained with Madame Bertrand. (8)

After that, Napoleon apparently lost interest in the game. His valet on St. Helena, Louis-Joseph Marchand, tells us:

The Emperor did not play billiards, but when walking by he would amuse himself by rolling the balls around. (9)

Napoleon used one of the rosewood billiard cues when superintending work in his garden, as both “a stick and a measure.” (10) When dictating his memoirs, he would spread out maps on the billiard table. Napoleon eventually made a gift of the billiard table to his servants, having noticed that they liked to play the game when he was outside.

Visiting St. Helena in 1908, Lord Curzon found the table in an unused room at the back of Plantation House, the governor’s residence. It had been employed by one governor as a carpenter’s bench and by another as a screen across a door leading into the back yard. (11) You can see a photo of the table in the billiard room at Longwood House on my friend Margaret Rodenberg’s Finding Napoleon site.

Napoleon’s billiard legacy

Though Napoleon didn’t care much for billiards, he may deserve some credit for the game’s continued popularity in France. Some 30 years after Napoleon’s death, British writer Angus Reach wrote:

In this [French] village…dreary as it was, I found a café and a billiard-table. Where, indeed, in France will you not? Except in the merest jumble of hovels, you can hardly traverse a hamlet without seeing the crossed cues and balls figuring on a gaily painted house. You may not be able to purchase the most ordinary articles a traveller requires, but you can always have a game at pool. I have frequently found billiard-rooms in filthy little hamlets, inhabited entirely by persons of the rank of English agricultural labourers. At home, we associate the game with great towns, and, perhaps, with the more dissipated portion of the life of great towns. Here, even with the thoroughly rustic portion of the population, the game seems a necessity of life. And there are, too – contrary to what might have been expected – few or no make-shift-looking, trumpery tables.

The cafés in the Palais Royal, or in the fashionable boulevards, contain no pieces of furniture of this description more massive or more elaborately carved and adorned than many I have met with in places hardly aspiring to the rank of villages. It has often struck me that the billiard-table must have cost at least as much as the house in which it was erected; but the thing seemed indispensable, and there it was in busy use all day long. A correct return of the number of billiard-tables in France would give some very significant statistics relative to the social customs and lives of our merry neighbours. It would be an odd indication of the habits of the people, should there be found to be five times as many billiard-tables in France as there are mangles; and I for one firmly believe that such would be the result of an impartial perquisition. …

I like – no man likes better – to see the toilers of the world released from their labours, and enjoying themselves; but after all there is something, to English ways of thinking, desperately idle in the scene of a couple of big, burly working men, sitting in the glare of the sun-light the best part of the day, wrangling over a greasy pack of cards, or rattling dominoes upon the little marble tables. I once remarked this to an old French gentleman.

‘True – too true,’ he replied; ‘it was Bonaparte did the mischief. He made – you know how great a proportion of the country youth of France – soldiers. When they returned – those who did return – they had garrison tastes and barrack habits; and those tastes and habits it was which have brought matters to the pass, that you can hardly travel a league, even in rural France, without hearing the click of the billiard balls.’ (12)

You might also enjoy:

John Quincy Adams and the White House Billiard Table

How the 20 Questions Game came to America

Anonymous, A Picturesque Tour Through France, Switzerland on the Banks of the Rhine and through Part of the Netherlands in the year 1816 (London, 1817), p. 48.
The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 34 (November 1820), p. 417.
Claude-François de Méneval, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Napoleon I from 1802 to 1815, Vol. II (New York, 1894), p. 388.
Sophie Cohondet Durand, Napoleon and Marie-Louise, 1810-1814: A Memoir (London, 1886), p. 221.
Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue, (New York, 1929), p. 197.
Louis Constant Wairy, Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon, translated by Walter Clark, Vol. I (New York, 1895), p. 73. Constant also noted that Josephine often played a game of billiards before breakfast (p. 331).
Emmanuel-August-Dieudonné de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. III (London, 1823), p. 71.
Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe Abell, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, during the First Three Years of His Captivity on the Island of St. Helena (London, 1844), pp. 158-159.
Louis-Joseph Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow (San Francisco, 1998), p. 413.
Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, translated by Frank Hunter Potter (New York and London, 1922), p. 174.
George Nathaniel Curzon, Tales of Travel (London, 1923), p. 168.
Angus B. Reach, Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone (New York, 1853), pp. 176-177.

The packet ship Albion, sailing from New York to Liverpool, was wrecked on the coast of Ireland on April 22, 1822. Of the 54 people on board, only 9 survived. Napoleonic General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who appears in Napoleon in America, was among the dead. As this was the first loss suffered by a North Atlantic packet line, the disaster horrified people on both sides of the ocean. Survivors left harrowing accounts of the Albion’s final hours.

Loss of the Packet Ship Albion, hand-coloured engraving after a print by Thomas Birch

Packet ships

Packet ships were small 19th-century vessels that carried mail, cargo and passengers. Most importantly, they departed from port according to a regular schedule. This was a novelty at the time. Most ships didn’t sail until they had enough cargo to justify a voyage, leaving passengers waiting for days or weeks until the holds were full.

The Black Ball Line was the first company to offer scheduled packet service across the Atlantic. Its vessels began sailing between New York and Liverpool in 1818. A ship left New York on the first of every month. The Black Ball Line started out with four ships. The Albion, under Captain John Williams, was the line’s fifth ship, added in 1819. It had a capacity of 447 tons. The ships took an average of 23 days to sail to Liverpool and 40 days to make the return journey to New York. (1)

The Albion’s fatal voyage

The packet ship Albion sailed from New York on April 1, 1822, with a crew of 25 and 29 passengers (23 in the cabin and 6 in steerage). The ship carried a cargo of cotton, turpentine, rice and beeswax, as well as a considerable sum of specie (gold and silver). Captain Williams was an experienced seaman and the first 20 days of the voyage passed uneventfully.

On the afternoon of Sunday, April 21, passing the south coast of Ireland, the Albion encountered a tremendous gale. Around 8:30 in the evening, a heavy sea struck the ship. It swept overboard six of the crew and one passenger (Alexander Converse); carried away the masts, boats, bulwarks and everything on deck; and drove in the hatches, so that every wave that passed over the ship ran into the hold. According to one of the survivors, William Everhart of Chester, Pennsylvania:

When the ship was thrown on her beam ends, a prodigious destruction took place below; the doors of the state rooms, the tables bound with iron, the furniture, were all destroyed and thrown into heaps. Many of the passengers were severely injured. Gen. Lefebvre-Desnouettes had one of his arms broken; Col. Prevost was wounded in the face. (2)

The Albion was then about 20 miles from shore. Captain Williams maintained his calm and steadily gave orders.

He cheered the officers and the crew with the hope that the wind would shift, and before morning blow off shore. … All who could do no good on deck retired below; but the water was knee deep in the cabin, and the furniture floating about rendered the situation dangerous and dreadful. (3)

Henry Cammyer, the first mate, who also survived, noted:

The ship being unmanageable, and the sea making a complete breach over her, we were obliged to lash ourselves to the pumps, and being in total darkness, without correct compasses, could not tell how the ship’s head lay. The axes being swept away, [we] had no means of clearing the wreck. (4)

A number of the passengers assisted at the pumps, including Anne Powell, daughter of the chief justice of Upper Canada.

Though things looked dire, Williams concealed the imminent danger from the passengers, thus saving them from much distress in the hours preceding the ship’s destruction. The crew, however, knew what was coming.

The sailors at an early period were in a state of insubordination: many would not obey orders, and got drunk. (5)

All night the wind blew onshore, towards which the Albion was drifting at the rate of three miles an hour. Williams was familiar with the steep and rocky coast, with its sharp reefs.

He must have seen, in despair and horror, throughout the night, the certainty of their fate. At length, the ocean dashing and roaring upon the precipice of rock near the lee of the ship, told them that their hour was come. (6)

About 10 minutes before 3 o’clock in the morning on April 22, Williams summoned everyone on deck and told them the ship would soon strike the rocks. He ordered everyone to move forward. Everhart, who had suffered from seasickness through most of the voyage and was very weak, was the last to leave the cabin, crawling. One passenger, Professor Alexander Fisher, who had been injured in the fall of the masts, remained in his berth. He had taken a broken compass and was trying to repair it. (7) When Everhart asked Fisher if he would come on deck, he said no. (8)

Some, particularly the females, expressed their horror in wild shrieks. Major Gough, of the British army, remarked that ‘Death, come as he would, was an unwelcome messenger; but they must meet him as they could.’ Very little was said by others, the men awaiting the expected shock in silence. General Lefebvre Desnouettes, during the voyage, had evidently wished to remain without particular observation; and to prevent his being known, besides taking passage under a feigned name, had suffered his beard to grow during the whole voyage; he had the misfortune before the ship struck to be much bruised, and one of his arms was broken, which disabled him from exertion, if it could have been availing.

It is barely possible to conceive the horror of their situation. The deadly and relentless blast impelling them to destruction – the ship a wreck – the raging of the billows against the precipice on which they were driving, sending back from the rocks the hoarse and melancholy warnings of death – dark, cold, and wet: in such a situation the stoutest heart must have quaked with utter despair. (9)

The final hour

About 3 o’clock, the Albion struck on some rocks jutting out of the water and then came to a reef where she lost her bottom. About half an hour later, the ship broke apart in the middle. The quarter deck drifted onto a ledge of rock, immediately under the cliffs, where huge waves swept over the passengers. Cammyer reported:

Up to the period of her parting, nearly twenty persons were clinging to the wreck, among whom were two females, Mrs. Pye and Miss Powell. Captain Williams had, with several others, been swept away soon after she struck; a circumstance which may be attributed to the very extraordinary exertions which he used, to the last moment, for the preservation of the lives of the unfortunate passengers and crew. (10)

Here is Everhart’s account.

In this situation every wave making a breach over her, many were drowned on deck. A woman, Mr. Everhart could not distinguish who, fell near him and cried for help; he left his hold and raised her up, another wave came and she was too far exhausted to sustain herself, and sunk on the deck; 15 or 16 corpses at one time, Mr. Everhart thought, lay near the bows of the ship.

Perceiving now that the stern was higher out of water, and the sea had less power in its sweep over it, Mr. Everhart went aft; he then perceived that the bottom had been broken out of the ship; the heavy articles must have sunk, and the cotton and lighter articles were floating around, dashed by every wave against the rocks; presently the ship broke in two, and all those who remained near the bow were lost. Several from the stern of the ship had got on the side of the precipice and were hanging by the crags as they could.

Though weakened by previous sickness and present suffering, he made an effort and got upon the rock and stood on one foot, the only one he could obtain; he saw several around him, and among them were Col. Prevost, who observed on seeing him take his station, ‘Here is another poor fellow;’ but the waves rolled heavily against them, and often dashed its spray 50 feet over their heads, gradually got those who had taken refuge one by one away, and one poor fellow, losing his hold, as he fell caught the leg of Mr. Everhart and nearly pulled him from his place. Weak and sick as he was, Mr. Everhart stood several hours on one foot on a little crag, the waves dashing over him, and he benumbed with cold. (11)

Among the last people Everhart saw alive on the ship were George Hyde Clarke and his wife, in her husband’s arms.

[A]t this period the swells entirely covered the forecastle, and drowned all who were there. Colonel Prevost by great exertions reached the rock which Mr. Everhart had gained, but was washed off. (12)

The view from shore

The Albion struck Ireland off Garretstown, near the Old Head of Kinsale. John Purcell, a local eyewitness, provided the following account.

At some time before four o’clock this morning, I was informed that a ship was cast on the rocks…to which place I immediately repaired; and…found a vessel on the rocks, under a very high cliff. At this time, as it blew a dreadful gale, with spring-tide and approaching high water, the sea ran mountains high; however, I descended with some men as far down the cliff as the dashing of the sea would permit us to go with safety, and there had the horrid spectacle of viewing five dead bodies stretched on the deck, and four other fellow-creatures distractedly calling for assistance, which we were unable to afford them, as certain death would have attended the attempt. Of those in this perilous situation, one was a female, whom, though it was impossible from the wind and the roaring of the sea to hear her, yet from her gestures and the stretching out of her hands, we judged to be calling for and imploring our assistance. At this time the greater part of the vessel lay on a rock, and part of the stern, where this poor woman lay, projected over a narrow creek, that divides this rock from another. Here the sea ran over her with the greatest fury, yet she kept a firm hold, which it much astonished me that she could do; but we soon perceived that the vessel was broke across, where she projected over the rock, and after many waves dashing against her, this part of the vessel rolled in the waves, and we had the heart-rending scene of seeing the woman perish. The three men lay towards the stern of the vessel, one of whom stuck to a mast, which projected towards the cliff, to whom, after many attempts, we succeeded in throwing a rope, and brought him safe ashore. Another we also saved; but the constant dashing of the waves put an end to the sufferings of the others. (13)

The living

As soon as it was light enough and the tide ebbed, some of the locals descended the rocks as far as they could and dropped William Everhart a rope, which he fastened around his body so he could be drawn to safety. Everhart was the only cabin passenger to escape the wreck. Stephen Chase, a steerage passenger from Canada, was also saved. Henry Cammyer, the first mate, described how he survived.

after gaining a rock in a very exhausted state, I was washed off, but by the assistance of Providence, was enabled, before the return of the sea, to regain it; and before I could attempt to climb the cliff, which was nearly perpendicular, I was obliged to lie down, to regain a little strength, after the severe bruises and contusions I had received on the body and feet. (14)

The other survivors were crew members William Hynt (or Hyate) (boatswain), John Simson, John Richards, Francis Bloom, Ebenezer Warner and Hierom Raymond.

The dead

(An asterix * denotes those whose bodies were found, identified and interred. Four bodies that could not be recognized were also interred.)

Napoleonic General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes (sailing under the name of Gravez), age 48, was returning to France after six years of exile in the United States. He was looking forward to joining his wife Stéphanie and the daughter he had never seen. See my article about Lefebvre-Desnouettes.

Professor Alexander Metcalf Fisher, age 28, was head of the Mathematics Department at Yale College (now University) in New Haven, Connecticut. His fiancée, Catharine Beecher (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe), took the money Fisher bequeathed her and founded the Hartford Female Seminary. She also wrote Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt-Book, one of the 19th century’s most successful cookbooks.

*Anne Powell, age 35, the daughter of William Dummer Powell, the chief justice of Upper Canada, came from one of the most prestigious families in York (Toronto). She had been sailing to England in dogged pursuit of the man she loved. See the Dictionary of Canadian Biography for the sordid details.

Major William Gough, age 44, a member of Britain’s 68th light infantry regiment, had fought under the Duke of Wellington at the Battles of Salamanca and Vitoria in Spain, where he was severely wounded by grapeshot in the leg.

*Lieutenant-Colonel John Augustine Prevost, age 52, of Cooperstown, NY, was the son of Augustine Prevost Jr. and the grandson of Augustine Prevost Sr., both of whom fought on the Loyalist side in the America Revolution.

*George Hyde Clarke, of Albany, NY, was the eldest son of George Clarke (1768-1835). The latter was the descendant of a prominent colonial New York family and the owner of Hyde Hall in Cooperstown, NY. George Hyde Clarke’s brother, who lived in England, was married to Colonel Prevost’s sister. Assuming that George Hyde Clarke was born after his parents’ marriage, he was no older than 29 years.

*Mrs. George Hyde Clarke, wife of the above, described by Everhart as “young,” also perished in the wreck.

The other cabin passengers who died were: Alexander B. Converse, age 24, of Troy, New York, the son of Hon. John Converse; *Nelson D. Ross, age 20, of Troy, New York, Converse’s brother-in-law (Converse’s wife Julia had died in November 1821 at the age of 22); *Rev. G.R.G. Hill, lately of Jamaica (he was returning home to England); *William H. Dwight, Boston; Mr. G.W. Beynon, London; Mr. William Proctor, New York; *Mrs. Mary Pye, New York; *Mrs. Gardiner (or Garnier), Paris; Mrs. Gardiner’s son, about 8 years old; *Victor Millicent, Paris; Mr. Chabut, said to be the nephew of Lefebvre-Desnouettes, Paris; Mr. Lemercier, New Orleans; Philotime Depla, Bordeaux; John Gore, North Carolina; Mr. Bending.

The steerage passengers who lost their lives were: James Baldwin, cotton spinner, Yorkshire; Dr. Carver, veterinary surgeon; Mr. Harrison, carpenter; *Mrs. Mary Hunt; *Mrs. Mary Brereton (or Brewster).

The deceased crew were: Captain John Williams, age 37 (he left a wife and seven children); Edward Smith, second mate; Alexander Adams, carpenter; Harman Nelson; Harman Richardson; Henry Whittrell; William Trisserly; James Wiley; Robert McLellan; Thomas Goodman; Samuel Wilson, boy; William Snow, boy; *William Dockwood; Lloyd Potter, steward (black); Samuel Penny, steward (black); Francis Isaac, boy (black); *Thomas Hill, cook (black); *Adam Johnson, cook (black). (15)

The aftermath

Everhart and Cammyer both spoke highly of the local population. The residents of Garretstown and Kinsale offered every kindness to the living, prepared coffins for the dead, and salvaged what they could of the vessel and its cargo. Jacob Mark, the US Consul at Kinsale, James Gibbons, the agent for Lloyd’s at Kinsale, Mr. Pratt, surveyor of Kinsale, and John Purcell, the steward of a local landowner, were singled out for praise. The bodies were buried at Templetrine churchyard, about four miles from Kinsale and one mile from the site of the shipwreck. Some were later moved.

Sadly, there was a subsequent tragedy related to the wreck of the packet ship Albion. A few days later, a boat trying to salvage a piece of the Albion capsized, drowning seven of the eight men on board. (16)

It was feared that the Albion’s fate would, for a time, make packet ships “somewhat unpopular.”

There are two lines of them from New York to Liverpool – and they must be content for a short time to come to discard the spirit of competition, and to consult their safety instead of expedition. (17)

The wreck of the packet ship Albion was lamented in poetry and in song.

The morning smiles, the ocean billow sleeps,
But where’s the tall ship that late ploughed its breast,
The gallant ALBION? Pity, shuddering weeps;
No more, – only on the dark wave’s crest
That night, at times, were dimly seen, ’tis said,
Some forms of misery, whose hands in vain
Were lift imploring, – they sank with the dead,
And piteous cries and shrieks were heard, – ’twas still again. (18)

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General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes: Unhappy in Alabama

The Wreck of the Schooner Lively

The Scene at Cádiz after the Battle of Trafalgar

Robert Fulton & the First Steam Warship

A Guillotine Execution in Napoleonic Times

Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, Vol. II (London, 1824), p. 345.
“The Albion Packet,” The Times (London), September 7, 1822, p. 3 (a communication from survivor William Everhart).
“Ship Wreck of the Albion Packet,” The Times (London), October 12, 1822, p. 3 (an interview with survivor William Everhart).
“Loss of the Albion,” The National Advocate (New York), July 30, 1822 (survivor Henry Cammyer’s account of the wreck).
“The Albion Packet.”
“Ship Wreck of the Albion Packet.”
Charles Edward Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston, 1891), p. 24.
Mary Grey Lundie Duncan, Memoirs of the Life and Character of the Rev. Matthias Bruen (New York, 1831) p. 138.
“Ship Wreck of the Albion Packet.”
“Loss of the Albion.”
“Ship Wreck of the Albion Packet.”
“The Albion Packet.”
“Melancholy Shipwrecks,” The Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser (Lancaster, England), May 4, 1822.
“Loss of the Albion.”
These names are based primarily on Cammyer’s “correct list of the crew and passengers” in “Loss of the Albion.” However, since Cammyer’s cabin passenger list falls short of the 23 he says were on board, and includes four unnamed “French gentlemen,” I have supplemented it with passenger names included in other newspaper accounts. No single account lists all of the 54 people said to be on the Albion. The final determination is complicated by the fact that different spellings of the names are used in different accounts of the wreck.
“Melancholy Shipwrecks.”
Louisville Public Advertiser (Louisville, KY), July 6, 1822.
William B. Tappan, The Poems of William B. Tappan (Philadelphia, 1834), p. 60.

The Sun upon an Easter Day, The Atchinson Daily Globe (Kansas), March 31, 1888

Will you be going to church for Easter? Decorating Easter eggs? Eating hot cross buns? These are old Easter traditions that are still common today. But how about watching the sun dance? Heaving someone into the air? Rolling down a hill? Here are five Easter traditions that have generally been abandoned.

1. Watching the sun dance

The Bath Chronicle reported in 1832:

On the Easter-morn it was formerly a custom for the people to rise early and walk into the fields to see the sun dance, a superstition then firmly believed in, and which, by looking at it steadfastly for a time, it might be fancied to do. (1)

According to a late 19th century Milwaukee paper, this Easter tradition also existed in the United States.

Who can forget the story learned at mother’s knee of the dance of the sun on Easter morn? And how many can remember the excursion to a neighboring hill to verify the tale? Somehow the conditions were never just right – you were just a little late, the sun rose in a mist, or you were negligent at the precise moment when all attention should have been given – and so far as your experience goes the question of the dancing sun is still an unsolved problem. You will think of it this Easter, and the memories it revives will do you good. (2)

In England, the custom survived into the 20th century. London’s Daily Mail reported in 1919:

There are even now peasantry in Derbyshire and Yorkshire who go to watch the sun dance on certain hills there, where the tradition still holds strong. (3)

2. Lifting or heaving

The custom called ‘Lifting,’ and in some counties ‘Heaving,’ was one of the sports formerly in use at Easter, and is not yet laid aside in some of our distant provinces. At Warrington, Bolton and Manchester, on Easter-Monday the women, forming parties of six or eight each, still continue to surround such of the opposite sex as they meet, and either with or without their consent, lift them thrice above their heads into the air, with loud shouts at each elevation. On Easter-Tuesday the men in similar parties do the same to the women. By both parties it is converted into a pretence for fining or extorting a small sum of money. (4)

This Easter tradition, which had died out by the early 20th century, has been revived by the Blackheath Morris in Greenwich, London.

3. Taking off shoes and buckles

If lifting sounds too energetic, you can try this Easter tradition instead.

In Yorkshire, on Easter Sunday, it is said to be a custom for the young men in the villages…to take off the young girls’ buckles, and on Easter Monday the young men’s shoes and buckles are taken off by the young women. On the Wednesday they are redeemed by little pecuniary forfeits, out of which an entertainment, called a tansy cake, is made, and the jollity concluded with dancing. At Rippon, some years ago, where this custom prevailed, it is reported no traveller could pass the town without being stopped, and if a horseman, having his spurs taken away, unless redeemed by a little money, which was the only means to get them returned. (5)

4. Rolling down the hill

Speaking of lower extremities, the tradition of rolling down Greenwich hill on Easter Monday prevailed in the 18th century. The Times in 1790 suggested why this was popular.

The diversion of the day has not varied for many years – the young people rolling down the hill, and the girls consequently showing their legs, which made the company laugh. (6)

5. Egg dancing

The Egg Dance by Pieter Aertson, 1552

There were many variants of the egg dance, in which the goal was to dance among eggs while damaging as few as possible. You can still sometimes see Morris dancers doing an egg dance blindfolded. If you would like to attempt an Easter egg dance, here are instructions from the late 19th century.

The egg dance is an old Easter game. To prepare for this particular frolic, take 13 eggs, blow the contents from the shells, color eight shells red, gilt four and leave one white. Hard-boiled eggs can, of course, be used, if one first takes the precaution to cover the carpet with linen crash.

Now, for the dance, place the 13 eggs on the floor, in two circles, one within the other. The outer circle, formed of the red eggs, placed at equal distance apart, should measure about eight feet in diameter, the inner circle, formed of the gilded eggs, should be four feet in diameter, and the white egg must be placed in the center of the inner circle.

The eggs having been arranged, the company is divided into couples and each in turn try the dance.

The first couple take position within the outer circle, that is, between the red eggs and the gilded ones, and to waltz music they dance around the circle three times, keeping within the space between the two circles. Entering the inner circle, they waltz three times around the central egg, and all this must be done without breaking or greatly disturbing any of the shells.

When an egg is broken or knocked more than 12 inches from its position, the dancers give place to the next couple. The broken eggs are not replaced, but the displaced ones are set in order. When each couple has had a turn and none has accomplished the feat of dancing without breaking any eggs, all change partners and the trial begins again.

The first couple who go through the dance without breaking or disturbing the eggs win a first prize, possibly a dainty bon-bon box, shaped like an egg; the second successful couple receiving second prizes, and the third are rewarded with coloured eggs. (7)

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A Sailor’s Easter in California in 1835

Foot Washing by a Habsburg Empress

Valentine’s Day in early 19th century America

Celebrating July 4th in early 19th century New Orleans

Celebrating a 19th Century Christmas

Celebrating with Light: Illuminations and Transparencies

The Bath Chronicle (Bath, England), April 26, 1832, p. 4.
Yenowine’s Illustrated News (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), April 1, 1893, p. 6.
Daily Mail (London, England), April 17, 1919, p. 4.
The Bath Chronicle, April 26, 1832, p. 4.
The Sunday Times (London, England), March 30, 1823, p. 1.
The Times (London, England), April 6, 1790, p. 3.
Eleanor Lexington, “Easter Frolics,” Morning Oregonian (Portland, Oregon), April 5, 1896, p. 12.

One of the things I try to bring out in Napoleon in America is how Europeans in the early 19th century tended to regard Native Americans and other indigenous people as exotic savages. Such views are illustrated by the tragic visit of the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to England in 1824. King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu travelled to London hoping to meet King George IV. The trip cost them their lives.

King Kamehameha II (Liholiho), Queen Kamamalu and their party from the Sandwich Islands attending a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on June 4, 1824, by J.W. Gear

Kamehameha II

King Kamehameha II of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) attributed to John Hayter, 1824

The Sandwich Islands was the name given to the Hawaiian Islands by Captain James Cook in 1778. King Kamehameha II, also known as Liholiho, inherited the throne of the Sandwich Islands in 1819, when he was 22 years old. Three years later, Britain’s King George IV sent a schooner called Prince Regent to Kamehameha II as a gift.

Kamehameha, who was looking for ways to modernize his kingdom, wrote a thank you letter in which he expressed his desire to place the Sandwich Islands under the protection of the British crown. He requested George IV’s counsel and advice. When a year passed with no reply, Kamehameha decided to sail to England to consult the British monarch in person. He commissioned a British whaling ship, L’Aigle, under Captain Valentine Starbuck, to make the voyage.

Accompanied by Queen Kamamalu (his half-sister and the favourite of his five wives) and a suite of eight persons, King Kamehameha left the Sandwich Islands on November 27, 1823. After a lengthy stop at Rio de Janeiro, the royal party landed at Portsmouth, England on May 17, 1824.

The Sandwich Islanders proceeded to London and took up residence at the fashionable Osborn’s Hotel in the Adelphi district, near the River Thames. The Times reported rather churlishly:

Their Majesties’ chief object in making this very long voyage, so unusual with crowned heads, is said to be that of putting the islands under the protection of Great Britain, in consequence of an attempt by the Russians to form a settlement there, to which the natives were extremely averse, but were not strong enough to resist openly. Another project of his Majesty is announced to be that of studying the English constitution, which he understands is peculiarly suited to islands, with a view of bestowing so excellent a form of government on his own subjects. Both purposes, it is probable, might have been equally well answered had ‘their Majesties’ remained in their own dominions. (1)

Turbans, whist and cigars

Queen Kamamalu, portrait based on an 1824 lithograph by John Hayter

The British press and public were fascinated by the royal visitors’ appearance and habits.

A person who visited them yesterday found their Majesties amusing themselves with a game at whist, the Queen having for her partner her female attendant, who is a daughter of one of the chief men of the island, and his Majesty’s partner was the Governor of the island where the seat of government was held. The ladies were dressed in loose robes de chambre, of straw colour, tied with rose-coloured strings, and on their heads they wore turbans of feathers of scarlet, blue and yellow. The two males appeared in European costume, wearing plain black coats, silk stockings, and shoes. These islanders are of a very large size. The men appear to be above six feet, and exceedingly stout. The females are equally fat and coarse made, and proportionably taller than the men. The whole party are of the darkest copper colour, very nearly approaching to black. (2)

The King is a man of pleasing countenance and gentlemanly deportment; he is tall and well formed…. The Queen is a large woman, and appears fond of dress, which she changes three or four times a day. Her Majesty is somewhat indisposed, and frequently retires to rest during the day; she and her sister smoke their segars [cigars] with as much gout as some of our modern dandies, and constantly amuse themselves in playing cards. A gratifying treat was yesterday afforded them by the performances of the celebrated Mr. Punch and his family, whose merits they acknowledged by an ample reward; they were also highly delighted by an exhibition of the Fantoccini. (3)

Crowds gathered outside the hotel, where the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands “gathered attention by exhibiting themselves at the windows.” (4) The owner of Osborn’s had to apply to the local magistrate’s office for protection against

the crowds of idlers who throng the front of his house from morning to night, for the sake of getting a peep at their Sandwichean Majesties. … [N]o coach could approach the door of the hotel but it was instantly surrounded on all sides by a rabble of the open-mouthed curious, all trampling and scrambling over each other, and poking their prying noses into its windows, in search of copper-coloured Royalty – to the very great annoyance of the customers of the house, the injury of its business, and the scandal of the whole neighborhood. (5)

The savages fell flat

While Kamehameha waited for an audience with George IV, British Foreign Minister George Canning put the Sandwich Islanders under the charge of Frederick “Poodle” Byng. Byng escorted them around London, ensuring that their social activities were appropriate for their status. Canning launched the process by throwing a grand party for the royal visitors at his residence of Gloucester Lodge on May 28. Over 200 guests “of the first rank and fashion” attended, including the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (George IV’s sister), Prince Leopold (George IV’s son-in-law), the Duke of Wellington and most of the Cabinet, and the bulk of the diplomatic corps. The King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands and their suite arrived about eleven o’clock. The King “was dressed after the European fashion; the Queen’s attire was partly English and partly in native costume.” (6)

Upon their arrival they were received by Mr. Canning who eyed the graceful movements of her Majesty with the keenness of a master; and, it is said, whispered to the ‘Waterloo Hero’ that had she been a British queen, she would have been the life, grace and ornament of society. (7)

The band of the Life Guards were stationed in the garden and continued playing during the whole time. The company walked in the grounds attached to Gloucester Lodge, and their Majesties seemed much delighted with the music. When they returned into the refreshment room, they drank the health of the company. The rooms were all thrown open. At half past twelve they took their leave and the company then separated. (8)

Dorothea Lieven, the wife of the Russian ambassador, was less complimentary. In a letter to Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich, she confided:

We have the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands here. Mr. Canning tried to please Their Majesties; but it was not a success. He invited them to a reception. The King’s sisters were there. Everyone stared in the most unparalleled way; only the English can stare so. A few people, led by me, ventured to laugh; and the savages fell flat. I fancy there will be no more talk of them except at Covent Garden or Astley’s Circus. (9)

A Favorite Poodle Hatching Poultry!! – or A Present of Feather Breeches from the Sandwich Isles, caricature by Isaac Cruikshank, June 1824. Frederick (“Poodle”) Byng, wearing a feathered kilt, sits on a pile of eggs facing the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands and another Sandwich Islander.

Quackery?

King Kamehameha and Queen Kamamalu went to the theatre, the opera, an assembly hosted by Countess Bathurst (wife of the Secretary of State for the Colonies), and the Royal Military Asylum. Still, there was no meeting with George IV. The papers suggested that Kamehameha did not yet have suitable clothing for an audience with the King, but Kamehameha dressed elegantly and adhered to British customs in his social interactions. Captain George Byron – cousin of the poet – wrote:

It was impossible for any persons to be more tractable or adapt themselves with more good temper to the usages of this country than the whole party. The decorum of their behaviour was admirable during their residence in the hotel. Not one instance occurred of their overstepping the bounds of decency or civility in their intercourse with the different persons appointed to wait on them; not a suspicion that any one of the chiefs had offered the slightest insult to any woman; nor was there any of that gluttony and drunkenness with which those Islanders, and especially the king, have been wantonly charged by some who ought to have known better. It is true that, unaccustomed to our habits, they little regarded regular hours for meals, and that they liked to eat frequently, though not to excess. Their greatest luxury was oysters, of which they were particularly fond; and one day, some of the chiefs having been out to a walk, and seeing a grey mullet, instantly seized it, and carried it home, to the great delight of the whole party, who, on recognizing the native fish of their own seas, could scarcely believe that it had not swam hither on purpose for them, or be persuaded to wait till it was cooked before they ate it. Once, and only once, they drank a considerable quantity of wine…. This event gave them all the highest satisfaction, and they sat carousing all night; but even then they only consumed twenty bottles of wine, and that was not much among so many.

Their moderation in every thing was quite remarkable, when we consider the nature and habits of half-civilized men. (10)

This last phrase is telling. There was disagreement over the propriety of receiving the King of the Sandwich Islands at Court. The newspaper John Bull expressed the negative side of the argument.

The COURIER last week published a paragraph explaining that the King of the Sandwich Islands has got five brigs in his navy, instead of five canoes; and told us, moreover, that his territories exceed in size all our West Indian Colonies; that they are civilized, accomplished, &c. &c. &c.

What the object of all this puffing may be, we really are at a loss to understand; but the effect produced by the quackery of treating these people as European monarchs are treated may be perceived by an extract from some evening paper, which is copied into Saturday’s CHRONICLE. With respect to the man being a King at all, we deny the fact – there is no King of the Sandwich Islands – it is a matter of history and matter of fact that ‘the islands are not united under one sovereign’ – this person is therefore a chief, to whom we should afford the rights of hospitality, but to whom we should not show a respect and deference which are not due to him, and which applied to such a person become absurd and ridiculous.

Her Majesty, it is said, committed an extraordinary solecism at a party some few evenings since – and ‘it was well it was no worse’ was the general observation upon it – but at present their Majesties have gotten the measles, which will detain them within doors. (11)

A tragic termination

Measles did more than detain their Majesties; the disease – which was then non-existent in the Sandwich Islands – killed them. The Queen died first, on July 8, 1824, at the age of 22. She was, to the last,

quite sensible and composed. The King took his last farewell about 10 o’clock in the morning, previously to which she informed him that she was sensible she was dying, and was quite resigned. Their separation was truly affecting. (12)

Dorothea Lieven wrote to Metternich:

All the talent of the English doctors was of no avail with a constitution that belonged to another hemisphere. The King is prostrate with grief, because his four other wives are not with him, and in the whole of Europe he cannot find a substitute for a Sandwich woman. This one, the smallest of the five, was taller and stronger than the most enormous man. In that country, they choose them by weight and size. (13)

John Bull opined as follows:

We certainly did not anticipate so tragical a termination to the absurd farce which has been acted, in which these poor creatures have been the principal performers – and yet the smallest consideration would have prepared us for the event. A group of savages are suddenly transported from their huts in their native climate, to a pent-up hotel in the dense smoke of London – their limbs, for decency’s sake, straitened and confined in European clothing, their hours of rising and sleeping wholly changed, their food suddenly altered from yams and plantains to rich soups and fricandeaux, and all the melancholy attempts at cookery of which the kitchen of the hotel in which they have been confined is susceptible – the pure limpid stream, their wonted beverage, supplanted by the mixture of Buxton, or Whithbead, or Calvert, or some other such Whig-washery, in which, together with wines and spirits, the poor creatures have been of course allowed to revel with unlimited and savage profusion – the consequence is, the poor female dies first, and in all probability will shortly be followed by the male. (14)

The paper was right. King Kamehameha II of the Sandwich Islands died on Wednesday, July 14, 1824, at the age of 27. To give him more privacy and a view of the river, he had been moved from Osborn’s Hotel to the more secluded Caledonian Hotel, at the end of Aldelphi Terrace, a few days before his death.

On Tuesday morning he was considered somewhat better, and he passed a tranquil night, but in the afternoon he became worse, and at night it was found necessary to send for Dr. Ley from his house in Mount Street. On the arrival of that gentleman, he found that the King was in a very low state and death appeared to be approaching fast. The King, on seeing Dr. Ley, caught him by the hand and said in his own language, ‘I am dying, I know I am dying.’ He continued very sensible and knew all around him. Madame Poki [Boki], the [Sandwich Islands] Governor’s Lady, was particularly attentive to him; she supported his head from one o’clock till the time the vital spark had fled; Poki the Governor and the rest of the suite were supporting their royal master’s legs at the foot of the bed. At two o’clock he became alarmingly worse, and he seemed then not to know any person: the Admiral was brought into the room and was affected to tears. The King took no notice of him, nor any other person about him. From that time till four o’clock he kept continually saying, ‘I shall lose my tongue, I shall lose my tongue;’ and just before he breathed his last, he faintly said, ‘Farewell to you all, I am dead, I am happy.’ After uttering these words, he expired in the arms of Madame Poki. (15)

The King’s remains were embalmed and laid in state in an apartment on the ground floor of the hotel. Members of his suite decorated the room and the coffin, as they had done with the Queen’s. Both coffins were temporarily placed in the crypt at the Church of St. Martin’s in the Fields.

There was sadness in Britain at this turn of events. The Morning Post commented:

Indeed the circumstances are particularly painful. The King and Queen of a people which little more than half a century ago were unknown to Europeans and who lived in a state of barbarism, had visited the country which first made them known to the world, and proved in their own persons the blessings of civilization. Mild and amiable in their dispositions, they adopted our costume, and were anxious to copy our manners as much as possible, and had they lived to return home, would no doubt have introduced many of our customs; their own knowledge and example would have enabled them to facilitate the march of civilization; while the hospitable receptions they met with would have filled the inhabitants of the islands with joy and gratitude. (16)

King George IV expressed his wish to meet the remaining Sandwich Islanders before they departed from England,

as there had been no opportunity of granting [the King and Queen] the personal interview, which was the chief object of their visit to Britain; and which he desired as a proof of courtesy to stranger sovereigns who, entered so lately within the pale of civilization, had come so far to throw themselves at his feet, and to acknowledge his superiority. Besides, the commercial interests of England in the Pacific are likely to be greatly injured in case the Sandwich Islands should fall into the hands of the Russians or Americans, and it was of some importance to grant the protection the king had come to seek, for our own sake as well as for his. (17)

On September 11, the Sandwich Islanders, led by Governor Boki, were presented to the King at Windsor Castle. George IV received them courteously, expressed his sorrow at their monarchs’ passing, and promised the Sandwich Islands protection against foreign encroachment. On September 29, the frigate HMS Blonde, commanded by Captain Byron, left Portsmouth to convey the Sandwich Islanders and the remains of their late King and Queen back to Oahu.

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The Times (London), May 19, 1824, p. 3.
The Times, May 20, 1824, p. 2.
The Morning Chronicle (London), May 21, 1824, p. 3. “Mr. Punch” refers to the puppet show “Punch and Judy.” The Fantoccini was another type of puppet show.
The Morning Chronicle, May 22, 1824, p. 3.
The English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post (London), May 25-27, 1824, p. 2.
The Morning Post (London), May 31, 1824.
The Sunday Times (London), May 30, 1824, p. 4.
The Morning Post, May 31, 1824.
Peter Quennell, ed., The Private Letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich, 1820-1826 (New York, 1938), p. 319.
George Anson Byron, Voyage of H.M.S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands in the Years 1824-1825 (London, 1826), pp. 59-60.
John Bull (London), June 28, 1824, p. 212.
The Times, July 10, 1824, p. 3.
The Private Letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich, 1820-1826, p. 321.
John Bull, July 12, 1824, p. 228.
The Times, July 15, 1824, p. 2.
The Morning Post, July 15, 1824, p. 3.
Byron, Voyage of H.M.S. Blonde to the Sandwich Islands in the Years 1824-1825, p. 72.

During the time in which Napoleon in America is set, Washington DC exhibited “more streets than houses.” (1) Visitors commented on the dirt roads, the distance between buildings, and the generally unimpressive appearance of America’s national capital. They also noted Washington DC’s beautiful setting, its potential for grandeur, and the city’s social life, which revolved around Congressional sittings.

City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke, 1833. View of Washington DC from across the Anacostia River. The United States Capitol and the Washington Navy Yard are to the right. The White House is to the left, depicted larger than scale to balance the Capitol building. The Potomac River is on the far left.

Constructing a federal city

The United States Congress authorized the creation of a federal capital in 1790. President George Washington selected the location, which was formed from land donated by Maryland and Virginia. The area included two existing settlements: Georgetown and Alexandria. In 1791, French engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant drew up a plan for a city east of Georgetown, on the north bank of the Potomac River. The plan was amended by American surveyor Andrew Ellicott. The cornerstone of the President’s house (later known as the White House) was laid in 1792. Construction finished in 1800. That same year the Senate wing of the Capitol building was completed, followed by the House of Representatives wing in 1811. During the War of 1812, British forces raided Washington DC, setting fire to the President’s house, the Capitol and other public buildings on August 24, 1814. By 1820, these had been rebuilt, but the city as a whole still looked unfinished.

Plan of the City of Washington DC, 1792, by Andrew Ellicott, revised from Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s plan

Plan of the City of Washington, 1792, by Andrew Ellicott, revised from Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s plan

A scattered box of toys

English merchant Adam Hodgson visited Washington DC in 1819. He observed:

Washington may be said to be rather the site of a city that is to be than an actual city. It is laid out on an extensive scale, but the streets are for the most part unbuilt, or chequered with houses of the shabbiest description. Still, however, it has some magnificent features, while the romantic scenery which surrounds it, and which is visible from almost every part of it, redeems much of the deformity of its scattered and uncomfortable aspect.

The principal street, Pennsylvania Avenue, has a noble appearance and is a mile long, with one wide and two narrower avenues of poplars, which conceal from the view the ill assorted houses on each side. On a lofty eminence, at one end, stands the capitol, and at the other, on a commanding, though less elevated position, the President’s house. (2)

The following year, Scottish writer Frances Wright remarked:

Those who, in visiting Washington, expect to find a city, will be somewhat surprised when they first enter its precincts, and look round in vain for the appearance of a house.

The plan marked out for this metropolis of the empire is gigantic, and the public buildings, whether in progress or design, bear all the stamp of grandeur. How many centuries shall pass away ere the clusters of little villages, now scattered over this plain, shall assume the form and magnificence of an imperial city? … Which of her patriots can anticipate, without anxiety, the period when the road to the senate-house shall lead through streets adorned with temples and palaces? And when the rulers of the republic, who now take their way on foot to the council chamber, in the fresh hour of morning, shall roll in chariots at mid-noon or perhaps mid-night, through a sumptuous metropolis, rich in arts and bankrupt in virtue? (3)

Visiting Washington DC in 1825, Prince Carl Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach expressed his disappointment.

I had not formed a great idea of Washington city, but what I saw was inferior to my expectation. The capitol stands upon an elevation, and is to be considered as the centre of the future city. Up to this time it is surrounded but by inconsiderable houses and fields, through which small houses are also scattered. From the capitol, several avenues, planted with trees, extend in different directions. We rode into the Pennsylvania avenue, and eventually came to the houses, which are built so far apart that this part of the city has the appearance of a newly-established watering place. The adjacent country is very fine, and there are several fine views upon the broad Potomac. We passed by the President’s house; it is a plain building, of white marble, situated in a small garden. …

The plan of Washington is colossal, and will hardly ever be executed. According to the plan, it could contain a population of one million of inhabitants, whilst it is said at present to have but thirteen thousand. To be the capital of such a large country, Washington lies much too near the sea. This inconvenience was particularly felt during the last war. (4)

Arriving in December 1827, Captain Basil Hall observed:

[T]his singular capital…is so much scattered that scarcely any of the ordinary appearances of a city strike the eye. Here and there ranges of buildings are starting up, but by far the greater number of the houses are detached from one another. The streets, where streets there are, have been made so unusually wide, that the connexion is quite loose; and the whole affair, to use the quaint simile of a friend at Washington, looks as if some giant had scattered a box of his child’s toys at random on the ground. On paper all this irregularity is reduced to wide formal avenues, a mile in length, running from the Capitol – a large stone building well placed on a high ground – to the President’s house, and the public offices near it. (5)

Washington DC in 1821 by Anne-Marguerite Hyde de Neuville. The White House is in the middle. You can see more of Anne-Marguerite’s work in my post about her husband, Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville, French ambassador to the United States from 1816 to 1822.

Sightseeing

Upon closer inspection, Bernhard admitted he was impressed with the Capitol building.

The capitol is a really imposing building. When it is once surrounded by handsome buildings, it will produce a fine effect. It is built of white marble, and has three domes; the largest is over the rotunda, and the two smaller over the wings. The capitol stands on an acclivity, and in front is three stories high, and on the back, which is opposite the president’s mansion, four stories high. In front is the entrance, with a portal of Corinthian columns; on the back part there is a large balcony, decorated with columns. The entrance under the portal is a little too low. (6)

Bernhard visited President John Quincy Adams at the White House.

In the interior there is a large hall with columns. We were received in a handsomely furnished apartment. Beautiful bronzes ornamented the mantels, and a full length portrait of President Washington hung upon the wall. (7)

He also called at the War and Navy Departments.

The four offices are all built alike, very plain, with wooden staircases; their interior resembles a school-house. There are no sentinels nor porters; in the building for the war department a woman kept a fruit shop. Even the president himself has usually no sentries, and only during the night the marines from the navy-yard keep guard before his house. (8)

As for the Washington Navy Yard, established in 1799:

In this navy-yard ships are only built and refitted; after that they descend the Potomac into the Chesapeake Bay, and go to Norfolk, where they are armed. At the time of our visit there were but two frigates in the yard, called forty-four gun ships, but mounting sixty-four pieces: the Congress, an old ship, which was repairing, and the Potomac, an entirely new ship, which has been launched, but subsequently hauled up and placed under a roof. (9)

Bernhard rode to Georgetown.

This small town is amphitheatrically situated on the Potomac, whose right bank, covered with wood and partly cultivated, presents a pleasant view. Georgetown is separated from Washington, or rather from the ground on which it is to stand, by a small river called Rocky Creek, which empties into the Potomac, over which there is a bad wooden bridge. (10)

There was another bridge extending across the Potomac to what is now Virginia.

Over the Potomac there is a long wooden bridge, built upon ordinary cross-beams. I measured it, and found it to be fifteen paces broad, and one thousand nine hundred long. … It required nineteen minutes to walk from one end to the other. Every foot-passenger pays six cents. This bridge astonishes by its length, but not at all in its execution, for it is clumsy and coarse. Many of the planks are rotten, and it is in want of repair; it has two sidewalks, one of them is separated from the road by a rail. It is lighted by night with lanterns. It is provided with two drawbridges, in order to let vessels pass. It grew dark before I returned home, and was surprised at the stillness of the streets, as I scarcely met an individual. (11)

Much dissipation

Washington’s social life was dominated by politicians and diplomats. According to Hodgson:

Scarcely any of the members reside here, except while Congress is sitting, and then they are in lodgings. The ladies, who accompany their fathers and husbands to see a little of the world, are situated very much as they would be at Harrowgate or Cheltenham, and there are usually many strangers in pursuit of entertainment. It is the residence also of the foreign Ministers, and the heads of the departments of government. All this, you will readily believe, gives rise to much dissipation. On some of the evenings, there are routs at the houses of one or other of the ministers of the Corps diplomatique, and the rest are generally anticipated by two or three invitations.

All, however, complain, that this routine becomes very dull before the session closes, as they meet almost the same persons every evening, and the sober ones will seldom go out above two or three times a week. Families who are acquainted with each other often board together at the large taverns, and the members who are bachelors for the time being, form messes at the private boarding-houses, where they are often in very close, and sometimes very shabby quarters. I think quite the majority of the members go to the capitol in hackney coaches; and as the ground has been covered with snow, I have several times seen a sledge and four, with eight or ten Senators from Georgetown, in the neighbourhood. (12)

Frances Wright wrote:

This skeleton city affords few of the amusements of a metropolis. It seems however to possess the advantage of very choice society; the resident families are of course few, but the unceasing influx and reflux of strangers from all parts of the country affords an ample supply of new faces to the evening drawing rooms. To this continual intermixture with strangers and foreigners is perhaps to be ascribed the peculiar courtesy and easy politeness which characterize the manners of the city. (13)

Captain Hall also enjoyed Washington society.

The society is very agreeable, and is interesting, in many respects, from being composed of persons assembled from every part of the Union, and, I may add, from every part of Europe – for the Corps Diplomatique form a considerable party of themselves. The same kindness and hospitality were shown to us here, as elsewhere; and the hours for evening parties being always early, it was possible to go a good deal into company without much fatigue; although the smallness of the rooms made the heat and crowd sometimes not very pleasant. (14)

The breath of an oven

Hall visited Washington DC in the winter. British farmer William Faux’s description of “a common hot day at Washington” in June 1820 provides a less attractive picture of the city.

The wind southerly, like the breath of an oven; the thermometer vacillating between 90 and 100; the sky blue and cloudless; the sun shedding a blazing light; the face of the land, and everything upon it, save trees, withered, dusty, baked, and continually heated, insomuch that water would almost hiss on it; the atmosphere swarming with noxious insects, flies, bugs, mosquitoes, and grasshoppers, and withal so drying, that all animal and vegetable life is exposed to a continual process of exhaustion. The breezes, if any, are perfumed by nuisances of all sorts, emptied into the streets, rotting carcasses, and the exhalations of dismal swamps, made vocal and alive with toads, lizards, and bellowing bull-frogs. Few people are stirring, except negroes; all faces, save those of blacks, pale, languid, and lengthened with lassitude, expressive of anything but ease and happiness. Now and then an emigrant or two fall dead at the cold spring, or fountain; others are lying on the floor, flat on their backs; all, whether idle or employed, are comfortless, being in an everlasting steam-bath, and feeling offensive to themselves and others. At table, pleased with nothing, because both vegetable and animal food is generally withered, toughened, and tainted; the beverage, tea or coffee, contains dead flies; the beds and bedrooms, at night, present a smothering unaltering warmth, the walls being thoroughly heated, and being within side like the outside of an oven in continual use. Hard is the lot of him who bears the heat and burthen of this day, and pitiable the fate of the poor emigrant sighing in vain for comforts, cool breezes, wholesome diet, and the old friends of his native land. At midnight, the lightning-bugs and bull-frogs become luminous and melodious. The flies seem an Egyptian plague, and get mortised into the oily butter, which holds them like bird-lime. (15)

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Carl Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach, Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1828), p. 171.
Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America, Vol. I (London, 1824), p. 10.
Frances Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America (London, 1821), p. 504.
Bernhard, Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826, Vol. 1, p. 170.
Basil Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, Vol. III (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 1.
Bernhard, Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826, Vol. 1, p. 176.
Ibid., p. 171.
Ibid., p. 171.
Ibid., p. 172.
Ibid., p. 170.
Ibid., p. 173.
Hodgson, Letters from North America, I, pp. 8-9.
Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America, pp. 513-514.
Hall, Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, III, p. 2.
William Faux, Memorable Days in America: Being a Journal of a Tour to the United States (London, 1823), pp. 438-439.

Dashing on the battlefield, less so on the dance floor. Napoleon Bonaparte on the bridge at Arcola, by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1796

Further to “10 Interesting Facts About Napoleon Bonaparte,” here are 10 more fun Napoleon facts you may not have come across.

1. Napoleon was a bad dancer.

Though Napoleon took dancing lessons in his youth, he did not shine as a dancer. When he danced at the balls his wife Josephine gave at her country home of Malmaison, “he confused the figures, and always called for La Monaco, as the easiest and the air to which he danced least badly.” (1)

2. Napoleon didn’t like women to wear black.

According to Pons de l’Hérault, who managed the iron mines on Elba, where Napoleon spent his first exile, Napoleon had a “profound antipathy” to black garments. When Pons’s wife presented herself in mourning clothes at dinner, Napoleon “became sombre and did not cheer up for a moment while he remained at the table. … General Drouot assured me that the Emperor had to make a great effort to remain for one hour beside a woman in black.” (2)

Napoleon’s private secretary Bourrienne also observed that Napoleon “detested coloured dresses, and especially dark ones.” (3)

3. Napoleon was hard to shave.

Napoleon’s valet Constant tells us that while Napoleon was being shaved,

he frequently talked, read the papers, moved round on his chair, turned suddenly, and I was obliged to use the greatest precaution to avoid wounding him. … When by chance he did not talk, he remained immovable and stiff as a statue, and one could not make him lower, raise, or bend his head, as would have been necessary in order to accomplish the task more easily. He had also one singular mania, which was to have only one side of his face lathered and shaved at a time. He would never let me pass to the other side until the first was finished. (4)

Bourrienne, who read newspaper articles to Napoleon during this ritual, notes:

I was often surprised that his valet did not cut him while I was reading; for whenever he heard anything interesting, he turned quickly round towards me. (5)

4. Napoleon liked to eat with his fingers.

It’s no exaggeration when Napoleon dips his fingers into the sugar bowl in Napoleon in America. According to Constant:

The Emperor by no means ate in a cleanly manner. He preferred to use his fingers instead of a fork, or even a spoon; we were careful to put the dish he liked best within his reach. He drew it to him…dipping his bread in the sauce and the gravy, which did not prevent the dish from circulating…. (6)

For more about Napoleon’s dining habits, see “What did Napoleon like to eat and drink?”

5. Napoleon spoke French with a Corsican accent.

Napoleon was born in Corsica, where people spoke an Italian dialect closely related to Tuscan. He was teased about his accent when he was at military school in France. Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who served as interior minister under Napoleon, writes:

His native language was Corsican, which is an Italian dialect, and when he spoke French, one could easily see he was a foreigner. (7)

Though the accent stayed with him all his life, Napoleon regarded French as his first language. When he was in exile on St. Helena, he told Irish surgeon Barry O’Meara:

It has been said…that I understand Italian better than French, which is not true. Though I speak the Italian very fluently, it is not pure. Non parlo Toscana [I do not speak Tuscan], nor am I capable of writing a book in Italian, nor do I ever speak it in preference to the French. (8)

6. Napoleon had terrible handwriting.

Count de Las Cases, one of Napoleon’s companions on St. Helena, reports:

The Emperor left a great deal for the copyists to do; he was their torment: his handwriting actually formed hieroglyphics; he often could not decipher it himself. My son was one day reading to him a chapter of the Campaign of Italy: on a sudden he stopped short, unable to make out the writing. … The Emperor took the manuscript, tried a long while to read it, and at last threw it down, saying, ‘He is right: I cannot tell myself what is written.’ (9)

Napoleon told Dr. O’Meara that his handwriting actually improved on St. Helena.

He observed that formerly he was frequently in the habit of writing only half or three quarters of each word, and running them into each other, which was not attended with much inconvenience, as the secretaries had become so well accustomed to it that they could read it with nearly as much facility as if it were written plainly; that, however, no person, except one accustomed to his manner of writing, could read it. Latterly, he said, he had begun to write a little more legibly, in consequence of not being so much hurried as on former occasions. (10)

7. Napoleon liked to give people nicknames.

Las Cases also observes:

In his common intercourse of life, and his familiar conversation, the Emperor mutilated the names most familiar to him, even ours; yet I do not think that this would have happened to him on a public occasion. … He would frequently create names of persons according to his fancy; and, when he had once adopted them, they remained fixed in his mind, although we pronounced them as they should be, a hundred times in the day, within his hearing; but he would have been struck if we had used them as he had altered them. (11)

8. Napoleon arranged his head like a tidy closet.

Here’s another gem from Las Cases:

The Emperor accounted for the clearness of his ideas, and the faculty of extremely protracted application which he possessed, by saying that the different affairs were arranged in his head as in a closet. ‘When I wish to turn from any business,’ said he, ‘I close the drawer which contains it, and I open that which contains another. They do not mix together, and do not fatigue me or inconvenience me.’ He had never been kept awake, he said, by an involuntary pre-occupation of mind. ‘If I wish to sleep, I shut up all the drawers, and I am soon asleep.’ (12)

9. Napoleon didn’t sleep much.

Louis-Joseph Marchand, Napoleon’s valet after Constant, tells us:

The Emperor slept little…. He rose several times during the night. He was so well organized he could sleep when he wanted. Six hours’ sleep was enough, taken all together or in several naps. (13)

Napoleon’s second valet, Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, notes that on St. Helena:

When the Emperor went to bed late the valet on duty was almost sure to pass a good night, but if he went to bed early one might expect him to ring toward one or two o’clock, ask for a light, and begin to work. Sometimes at that hour he would order a bath, which he would take or not, or might not take till daybreak. When he wanted to go to bed again after working he was often obliging enough to put out the light himself in order not to disturb the valet de chambre. (14)

10. Napoleon liked his rooms hot.

Constant writes:

It was necessary to have fire in all his apartments nearly all the year; he was habitually very sensitive to cold. (15)

On St. Helena, Napoleon complained that the British didn’t allow him enough fuel. Governor Hudson Lowe reported:

The number of fires at Plantation House [the governor’s residence] daily in winter are from nine to eleven; at Longwood [Napoleon’s residence], when the calculation was made, in May, fourteen. They must burn a fire in every room to make up the rest, whilst the English, living in the same house, and the offices with their families at the camp, use no fires at all. (16)

For more Napoleon facts, see 10 Interesting Facts about Napoleon Bonaparte.

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Antoine Claire Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat, 1799 à 1804 (Paris, 1827), p. 18.
André Pons de L’Hérault, Souvenirs et Anecdotes de l’Île d’Elbe (Paris, 1897), pp. 260-261.
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. I (London, 1836), p. 284.
Louis Constant Wairy, Memoirs of Constant on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin (New York, 1907), Vol. I, p. 153.
Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Vol. I, p. 279.
Constant, Memoirs of Constant on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court, Vol. I, pp. 320-321.
Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon (Paris, 1893), pp. 351-352.
Barry O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile; or, A Voice from St. Helena, Vol. II (London, 1822), pp. 10-11.
Emmanuel-August-Dieudonné de Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. III (New York, 1855), pp. 343-344.
O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile, Vol. II, pp. 15-16.
Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. III, p. 345.
Ibid., p. 346.
Louis-Joseph Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow (San Francisco, 1998), p. 88.
Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, translated by Frank Hunter Potter (New York and London, 1922), p. 181.
Constant, Memoirs of Constant on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court, Vol. I, p. 333.
William Forsyth, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena from the Letters and Journals of the Late Lieut-Gen. Sir Hudson Lowe, Vol. II (London, 1853), p. 207.

Two books vie for the honour of being the first Texas novel, and both were written by Frenchmen. One of the books has a connection with Napoleon and includes several of the characters in Napoleon in America. The other – set during the Texas Revolution – was written by a disaffected Catholic priest who played a role in the early church in the United States.

L’Héroïne du Texas

An idealized depiction of the Champ d’Asile (setting of the first Texas novel) by Joseph Claude Pomel, 1823

An idealized depiction of the Champ d’Asile by Joseph Claude Pomel, 1823

Though Texas was described in non-fiction books as early as 1542, with the publication of La relación of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, it was not until 1819 that the first novel set in Texas appeared. It was published in Paris under the title of L’Héroïne du Texas: ou, Voyage de madame * * * aux États-Unis et au Mexique. The author was identified as Monsieur “G…n F……n.” Although it claims to be a true story, L’Héroïne du Texas is a fictionalized account of the ill-fated 1818 attempt by Napoleonic exiles to establish an armed colony in Texas called the Champ d’Asile.

The heroine referred to in the title is Ernestine Dormeuil, a virtuous young beauty who marries Edmond, a 28-year-old French army officer. The first half of the book is taken up with their meeting and falling in love in Paris. After Napoleon’s defeat, the newlyweds emigrate to the United States. There they join other French exiles who plan to start a colony in Texas, which was then part of Spanish-ruled Mexico. The group sails to Galveston Island, home of Jean Laffite. After a month and a half on Galveston, they set out to cross the bay and go up the Trinity River. They are caught in a storm. Ernestine revives a colonist who nearly drowns. Once at the site of the colony (near present-day Liberty, Texas), Edmond builds a house. Ernestine decorates it and cultivates a garden. A deer follows her around, eating out of her hand. She befriends the local Indians and inspires everyone with her benevolence and good humour. The colony’s leaders – Generals Charles Lallemand and Antoine Rigaud – extol her as a model to follow.

After a few idyllic months, Spaniards compel the colonists to evacuate Champ d’Asile. Sadly, the colonists return to Galveston, but not before two Frenchmen are killed in a battle with some Indians. At Galveston they are visited by a hurricane (this part is true), in which Ernestine saves some lives. Finally they arrive safely in New Orleans, where Ernestine’s parents and brother join them from France.

Any possible excitement in the tale is overwhelmed by the monotony of almost constant commentary about Ernestine’s goodness and Edmond’s and others’ adoration of her.

Ernestine was cherished and revered by the whole colony, she was, so to speak, the guardian angel; everyone consulted her, followed her advice, took her as a model, offered her as an example to follow. (1)

In 1937, L’Héroïne du Texas was published in English as The Story of Champ d’Asile, translated by Donald Joseph and edited with an introduction by Fannie E. Ratchford. A reviewer panned it as a “lavenderish novel” and “saccharine tale,” “the primary part of the story being a pressed-flower sentimental romance occurring in Paris.” He concluded:

We doubt seriously that ‘The Heroine of Texas’ deserves immortality in English translation printed in any type, on any paper, whatsoever. (2)

The characters of Edmond and Ernestine were inspired by two of the colonists at Champ d’Asile: Dr. François Viole and Léontine Desportes. They probably met in America. They were married in 1817 or 1818 at the French “Vine and Olive” colony in Demopolis, Alabama, which they helped found. Neither of them were youngsters. Léontine was born around 1777. She had been a maid to General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes’ wife Stéphanie, who was related to Napoleon’s mother. When Léontine first arrived in the United States from France, she was suspected of carrying papers related to a plot to rescue Napoleon from Saint Helena. (3)

Whether the author was himself at Champ d’Asile, or wrote L’Héroïne du Texas based on idealized reports of the colony that were published at the time, the French settlement depicted in the novel bears little resemblance to the actual Bonapartist colony. The author claims there were around 400 colonists, many of them women and children; in fact, there were fewer than half that number, including four women and four children. The novel presents Champ d’Asile as an agricultural settlement, whereas in fact it was a military colony. There is nothing in the book about the conflict between Lallemand and Rigaud and their respective followers (see Narcisse & Antonia Rigaud: Survivors of the Champ d’Asile). According to Professor Alexandra Wettlaufer, “the noble and idealistic heroine of this account of Champ d’Asile stands as an allegory for the colonialist myth of La France itself, bringing enlightenment and ‘life’ to the empty lands of the uncivilized world.” (4)

Mexico Versus Texas, A Descriptive Novel

The Battle of San Jacinto by Henry Arthur McArdle, 1895

The first English-language Texas novel was titled Mexico Versus Texas, A Descriptive Novel, Most of the Characters of Which Consist of Living Persons. It was written “by a Texian” and published in Philadelphia in 1838. Four years later, the book was reissued with some minor changes under the title of Ambrosio de Letinez, The First Texian Novel, A Description of the Countries Bordering on the Rio Bravo, with Incidents of the War of Independence. This time the author was given as A.T. Myrthe, which is assumed to be a pseudonym for Anthony Ganilh, whose name appears after the title page in the registration of copyright. Ganihl was a Catholic priest who was born in France and came to the United States in the early 1800s.

The novel appeared two years after Texas succeeded in winning its independence from Mexico. In an opening dedication to Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas, Ganilh sets the tone for the book.

Nothing is so well adapted as literature to develop the genius of a new country, and the struggle of Texas against Mexico affords a noble subject for a work of imagination, in which the utmost power of description may be taxed, without fear of sinning against probability. The Texians may be considered as leading a crusade in behalf of modern civilization against the antiquated prejudices and narrow policy of the middle ages, which still govern the Mexican Republic. The eyes of the world are upon them. The north of Mexico expects its deliverance at their hands, and if Texas be faithful to the call of Providence, power, glory, and immense wealth await her among the nations of the earth. (5)

Ganihl continues this theme in the preface, where he lays out his reason for writing the novel.

It is this contest and moral strife between the imperfect civilization of the fifteenth century, which still sways the land of Anahuac, and that of modern times, which has already effected an entrance into the country that we have, in the present work, undertaken to depict. As the collision between the two opposite systems became more strongly developed during the last campaign against Texas, we have thought that, by connecting the information we could communicate on the subject with the adventures of an officer who highly distinguished himself during that sanguinary struggle, we should render our work more entertaining. (6)

Like L’Héroïne du Texas – but much more successfully – the novel sets a romantic plot against the backdrop of historical events. The book opens during the Mexican War of Independence from Spain. The hero, Ambrosio de Letinez, is born in Mexico to an American father and Mexican mother. His mother dies in childbirth and his father returns to the United States, leaving the baby to be raised as a Catholic by a kindly parish priest. However, the hero’s maternal grandfather, the Count of Letinez, sends his brother – another priest – to retrieve the boy.

Eighteen years later, Ambrosio is a tall, handsome cavalry commander in the Mexican army. Serving under General Urrea, he is off to fight the “insidious colonists of Texas” who have declared themselves independent. After engaging with the Texians at Mier, Captain Letinez rescues a young American lady named Sophia Linton who had been taken captive by Comanches. He sends her with an escort to Matamoros, so she can catch a ship to New Orleans and be reunited with her father in Texas. Letinez visits Miss Linton several times in Matamoros, declares his love for her and proposes marriage. Miss Linton protests that she cannot accept while she is under his protection; moreover, it would not be appropriate as long he is pledged to fight against her father’s cause. She sails to New Orleans but is shipwrecked and winds up in St. Patricio on the banks of the River Nueces. When she is taken by villains, Letinez rescues her. He then tries to reunite her with her father, Major Linton, whom he encounters at La Bahía (Goliad). While Letinez marches off with his company, Miss Linton arrives at Goliad at the start of the massacre. She sees her father among the prisoners and vows to die with him, which convinces the Mexicans to spare Major Linton’s life.

After the Battle of San Jacinto, Letinez is taken prisoner. This gives him a chance to study the Anglo-American way of life.

He saw in the Texian yeomanry a bold, undaunted race, of an outward bearing bordering on the profane…yet, at bottom, humane, hospitable, and generous.

He concludes that the Anglo-Americans enjoy a “more advanced state of civilization…whether political, moral, economical or religious. (7)

Letinez escapes with the aid of a slave and crosses the Texas wilderness. Reaching Matamoros, he is reunited with Miss Linton, who finally agrees to marry him, with her father’s blessing. But Mexican law throws up obstacles: they need to get their original baptismal certificates; they have to prove they have never been married; they need special dispensation from the Pope or the Bishop of Monterrey because she is a Protestant. Or they can just bribe a priest. Another wrinkle involves the imprisonment of Letinez for agreeing to fight a duel to defend his bride’s honour. Finally he and his betrothed learn that they are, in fact, cousins. But it all works out. Reunited with his father and his great-uncle, Letinez learns he will inherit a considerable fortune. All the necessary paperwork and dispensations are received and the lovebirds finally tie the knot.

There is a fair amount of ecclesiastical commentary in the novel, often critical of Catholic abuses in Mexico. An American tells our Mexican hero:

[W]e are pure in morals, at least, far more so than your people. There are no highway robberies amongst us, nor thefts, except what proceeds from negroes. Whenever we feel tempted to wrong our fellow-citizens, we go about it in a mild, peaceable manner, under cover of law! The party attacked is in no bodily fear: he can foresee and take his measures! In point of chastity, also, the most important and influential qualification of Northern nations, we are infinitely superior to you. Lust is, with us, hateful and shameful: with you, it is a matter of indifference. This is the chief curse of the South: the leprosy which unnerves both body and mind. It is what caused the Roman empire to sink under the assaults of the Northern barbarians…. The Southern races must be renewed, and the United States are the officina gentium for the New Continent. Your country cannot withstand the shock, nor your people resist. How could they? Who is there to rouse them and direct them? Your priests? Are they not sunk into gross immorality and ignorance? What will a sacrilegious priesthood, loaded with concubines and bastards, do for you? Are they not polluted to their heart’s core? Have they not introduced a pestilent distinction between morality and religion? It is not so with Protestantism. Christianity is, with us, one and the same thing with morality, or, at least, we never attempt to separate them. There are, undoubtedly, hypocrites amongst us also; but, I would say, comparatively few; and they know that they are cheats and condemned. They cannot trust in outward rites as possessing any value of themselves, in order lay a deceitful ‘unction’ to their souls. (8)

These are strong words coming from a French Catholic priest. Why would Father Anthony Ganihl favour the Anglo-Protestant cause?

Who was Anthony Ganihl?

Anthony Ganihl was born in France sometime in the late 18th century. He came to the United States as a deacon, entered the seminary of St. Thomas in Bardstown, Kentucky around 1817, and was ordained shortly thereafter. In 1819, Father Ganihl became a priest at the Holy Cross congregation in Bardstown. A man “of excellent mental gifts and of great learning,” it was thought he might deliver the sermon at the consecration of the Cathedral of St. Joseph on August 8, 1819, but he was rejected owing to the fact that being French, “the language of the country did not ‘come trippingly’ off [his] tongue” and his “style of eloquence was too staid and sober a character to be altogether acceptable to the people on an occasion that called especially for rejoicing and gratulation.” (9)

In early times in Kentucky it was not an unusual thing for missionary priests to receive challenges from sectarian ministers to debate with them points of religious doctrine. Most generally these challenges were respectfully declined, but occasionally they were accepted, and the debate followed. While Father Ganihl was serving the Holy Cross congregation, a challenge of this nature was sent to him by a Baptist minister known throughout the country as Elder Elkins. The subject proposed was ‘the correct mode of administering Christian baptism.’ Father Ganihl only knew of his challenger that he was a man of gigantic stature, with a voice of corresponding compass. He concluded to accept the challenge, however, and at the proper time he was on hand with a few members of his own congregation. The debate had been advertised from mouth to ear throughout the district, and an immense crowd had gathered to hear the discussion, which was to be held out of doors, some standing, some sitting on improvised seats, and some lolling on the grass in comfortable expectancy of a wordy fight from which they would be able to extract amusement at least. The elder was complaisant, and he politely asked Father Ganihl to mount the stand and give his reasons for adhering to the Catholic mode of administering baptism. The priest thank him for his courtesy, and at once began his discourse. He first stated the doctrine of the Church in reference to baptism, and then urged its necessity and the obligation which rested upon men to receive it. He then defined the mode of its administration adopted by the Church. He quoted largely from the Bible, from church history and the Fathers, and he showed his learning by frequent references to Greek and Latin authorities on the subject. He concluded by declaring that the vast majority of those who had borne the Christian name from the beginning, had been brought into the fold through the administration of the sacrament as it is now prescribed by the Catholic Church. He here signed to his opponent, who was standing within the inner circle of auditors, immediately fronting him, that he was ready to exchange places with him. But that individual, as it appeared from the sequel, had no notion of exhibiting his ignorance in that company. From the beginning of Father Ganihl’s address, he had shown symptoms of restlessness, and now that it was his time to speak, he stood for a moment as if transfixed. Suddenly, and without a word of explanation or apology, he turned in his tracks, elbowed his way through the crowd, mounted his horse and sped away as if a legion of devils were at his heels. At first the crowd appeared bewildered; but a moment later a shout arose from it that could have been heard a mile. Among the priest’s friends who were present that day was Walter Burch. … Mounting the vacated stand, he cried out: ‘Well done, Elder Elkins! I tell you what boys,’ he added, turning to the crowd, ‘the elder has proved himself this day to be a man of sense; the wind has been knocked out of him, and he has gone to recover it.’ (10)

In 1822, when Edward Fenwick was consecrated as Cincinnati’s first bishop, Ganihl offered his services to that diocese. In 1830, Fenwick made a will that named Ganilh and two other clergymen (Father Nicholas Young and Father Frederick Rese) as his executors and listed property that was to be held in trust until turned over to his successor.

After Bishop Fenwick died in September 1832, Ganilh took the diocesan legal papers with him to Bardstown, Kentucky, where he had taken up a post as professor of modern languages in the college of St. Joseph at Bardstown. When Fenwick’s successor, John Baptist Purcell, assumed direction of the Cincinnati diocese in 1833, he requested that the papers be returned. Ganilh refused to send them. Bishop Purcell wrote in his journal:

Ganilh did not come to Cincinnati knowing how anxious I must have felt to have the estate settled up, he still remained at Bardstown where he teaches in the college. My lawyer advised me to go to him & insist on having all the papers, bonds, notes deeds, mortgages which he most unwarrantably abstracted from the state and diocese. The journey was dull & the weather very cold. … [I] had to argue Mr. Ganilh into a surrender of the Muniments. (11)

Ganihl was convinced that Father Rese had misused and embezzled funds left by Bishop Fenwick. He refused to give up his executorship until the funds were accounted for, and he started a lawsuit against Purcell for the property deeded to the Cincinnati bishop in Fenwick’s will. The court decided in Purcell’s favour, giving him title to the church property in the diocese. On April 10, 1835, Purcell wrote:

Revd. Mr. Ganilh came to this city on H. Thursday & left it on Easter-Sunday, on his way to Louisville, without coming near the Church to see God, say Mass, or speak to me! (12)

This experience must have soured Ganilh on the Catholic Church. In 1835 he left the college at Bardstown and presumably went to Mexico or Texas, as he writes with intimate knowledge of the country depicted in his novel. It is not clear what happened to him after that. According to a history of the Catholic Church in Kentucky, Ganihl’s “name does not appear in the Catholic Directory after 1841, and it is supposed he returned to France some time during that year.” The same source notes that Ganihl “was generally regarded by his associates of the clergy as somewhat erratic and shiftless.” (13) According to another source, Ganilh served as an officer in General Zachary Taylor’s army during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. (14)

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General Charles Lallemand: Invader of Texas

Narcisse & Antonia Rigaud: Survivors of the Champ d’Asile

General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes: Unhappy in Alabama

Jean Laffite: Mexican Gulf pirate and privateer

G…n F……n, L’Héroïne du Texas: ou, Voyage de madame * * * aux États-Unis et au Mexique (Paris, 1819), p. 73.
Lon Tinkle, “Review: THE STORY OF CHAMP D’ASILE by Donald Joseph, Fannie E. Ratchford,” Southwest Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (April, 1938), pp. 358-359.
Kent Gardien, “Take Pity on our Glory: Men of Champ d’Asile,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Jan. 1984), p. 250.
Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, “French Travelers in Texas: Identity, Myth, and Meaning from Joutel to Butor,” in François Lagarde, ed., The French in Texas (Austin, 2003), p. 265.
Anthony Ganihl, Ambrosio de Letinez, The First Texian Novel (New York, 1842), p. iii. The first edition includes only one sentence from this passage, namely: “Texas may be considered as leading a crusade in behalf of modern civilization against the antiquated prejudices and narrow policy of the middle ages, which still govern the Mexican Republic.” Anthony Ganihl, Mexico Versus Texas, A Descriptive Novel (Philadelphia, 1838), p. iii.
Ganihl, Mexico Versus Texas, A Descriptive Novel, p. v.
Ibid., pp. 208-209.
Ibid., pp. 205-206.
Ben J. Webb, The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky (Louisville, 1884), p. 270.
Ibid., pp. 34-35.
Mary Agnes McCann, “Bishop Purcell’s Journal, 1833-1836,” The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 5, No. 2/3 (July-Oct. 1919), pp. 240-241.
Ibid., p. 255.
Webb, The Centenary of Catholicity in Kentucky, 34-452.
Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (Oxford, 1988), p. 185.

John Quincy Adams portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1825, and Thomas Sully, 1829-30, Harvard University Portrait Collection, Bequest of Ward Nicholas Boylston to Harvard College, 1828

John Quincy Adams by Gilbert Stuart, 1825, and Thomas Sully, 1829-30, Harvard University Portrait Collection, Bequest of Ward Nicholas Boylston to Harvard College, 1828

In researching John Quincy Adams for Napoleon in America, I came across a portrait in which Adams’ head was painted by Gilbert Stuart and his body by Thomas Sully. The story of how that painting came about is an interesting one, involving two of America’s great artists, the perseverance of Adams’ cousin Ward Nicholas Boylston, and the intervention of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, the first doctor to test the smallpox vaccine in the United States. It also tells us something about John Quincy Adams’ dress sense.

Spendthrift Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart, one of America’s foremost portrait painters, was born in Saunderstown, Rhode Island on December 3, 1755. In 1775 he moved to England, where he studied art under Benjamin West. Though Stuart exhibited at the Royal Academy and commanded high prices for his paintings, he spent beyond his means. In 1787, he fled to Ireland to escape his creditors. In 1793, he returned to the United States, leaving a pile of debts behind him.

Stuart became famous for his portraits of George Washington, one of which appears on the American one dollar bill. In 1818, when Stuart was living in Boston, he painted a bust-length portrait of John Quincy Adams, who was then US Secretary of State. Adams noted in his diary on September 19 of that year:

I sat to [Stuart] before and after breakfast, and found his conversation, as it had been at every sitting, very entertaining. His own figure is highly picturesque, with his dress always disordered, and taking snuff from a large, round tin wafer-box, holding, perhaps, half a pound, which he must use up in a day. He considers himself, beyond all question, the first portrait-painter of the age, and tells numbers of anecdotes concerning himself to prove it, with the utmost simplicity and unconsciousness of ridicule. His conclusion is not very wide of the truth. (1)

Boylston’s warmest wish

John Adams by John Singleton Copley, 1783, Harvard University Portrait Collection, Bequest of Ward Nicholas Boylston to Harvard College, 1828

John Quincy Adams’ cousin Ward Nicholas Boylston – a wealthy Boston merchant and philanthropist – hoped to engage Stuart to paint a full-length portrait of Adams. In January 1822 Boylston wrote to Adams:

Dear Sir may recollect that I mentioned both to the President as well as to yourself, it was my wish to have your portrait as a companion to [the portrait of JQA’s father John Adams by John Singleton Copley, which the Adams family had loaned to Boylston], to be taken by the most eminent American artist, and at some future day placed in the hall of the Anatomical Museum & Library [which] I am preparing funds to build at Cambridge [Harvard], & are yearly accumulating to which I mean to add some of the best of my family pictures by Copley, not from my family pride or ostentatious view—but solely as evidences of the genius of a native American artist, who arrived at that high degree of merit in his profession by the strength of his own unassisted natural genius without the benefit of a master or the opportunity of example by visiting the regions of ancient science or deriving from the works others any ideas for the improvement of his own. (2)

As Adams replied that this was something he would consider, Boylston set aside $600 for the painting. Three years later, when John Quincy Adams became America’s 6th president, Boylston reminded him of his desire for a portrait.

There is…one thing which I crave as a favour, and heretofore repeatedly express’d the warmest wishes of my heart to see accomplished, and thought, or fancied had your assent, namely that you would sit for your portraiture to be the companion to that of my dearly beloved and venerated friend your father which you bestowed on me. The period has now arrived when of all others is the fittest to commence the design without the additional reason, that I am too far in advance of years to speculate on time. You will therefore my dear friend permit me to indulge the hope, that when you revisit Boston you will allow as much time as your leisure will admit to the completion of my wishes. In anticipation I invited Mr. [Gilbert Stuart] to view the portrait of your father, as to size the drawing of the attitude and costume to your direction. (3)

In October 1825, Adams posed for his portrait, much to Boylston’s delight.

A letter I rec’d yesterday from Mr. I.P. Davis informed me he had had an opportunity of seeing you at Mr. Quincys in company with Mr. Stuart, and that you had consented to sit to him for your full length portrait four days this week, for which you cannot conceive half the pleasure it convey’d to me, or the obligations I owe you for this condescension to my long and fervent petitions for this object of my wishes, and do hope that Mr. S will go on with diligent and unremitting labour to finish it before the end of the year. I shall haunt him as the evil spirit did Saul, and employ the energies of Mr. I.P. Davis who has great influence with him to get it out of his hands into mine with as few put offs as possible. (4)

The prerogative of genius

Boylston knew that Stuart often took a long time to finish his paintings. Stuart didn’t do sketches. He worked directly on the canvas, completing the head during the initial sittings. He then – in need of money – moved on to start the next commission. In 1825, a visitor noted that she saw in Stuart’s room “a portrait of Webster, Mr. Quincy, President Adams and lady, Bishop Griswold, Mr. Taylor &c. They were all unfinished.” (5) Like Copley, Stuart had once received a commission to paint a full-length portrait of John Adams. John Quincy Adams wrote to Copley in 1811: “in pursuance of this engagement he actually took a likeness of the face. But Mr. Stuart thinks it the prerogative of genius to disdain the performance of his engagements, and he did disdain the performance of that.” (6)

Among Stuart’s unfinished works was a portrait of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon’s brother Jérôme. According to Stuart’s daughter Jane:

Jerome Bonaparte, the husband of Madame Bonaparte, was anxious to have her portrait completed, it having been in an unfinished state for some time; but as sitters were crowding in upon my father, this request could not be immediately complied with. Bonaparte deemed it an insult to be so neglected, and when the two came together – Bonaparte and Stuart – the painter thought that the remarks addressed to him were impertinent: the result was Bonaparte could not get possession of his own or his wife’s portrait on any terms. He sent his friends to offer any price, but these offers made no impression on Stuart.

In time, Mr. Patterson, Mrs. Bonaparte’s father, came to Boston and sat for his portrait. In the course of conversation with Stuart, this picture was mentioned, when the painter had it brought down from the garret. Mr. Patterson was delighted with it, and my father presented it to him, which he could ill afford to do, to convince the world that he did not value his work as much as he did his position as an artist. (7)

You can see another one of Stuart’s half-finished works in my article about Charles and Delia Stewart’s awful marriage.

President hornpipe dancer?

A delay in finishing John Quincy Adams’ portrait may have been caused by a dispute over what Adams should wear. Boylston wanted Adams to be painted in the formal attire that he wore as American Minister to the Court of St. James’s in London. He would thus match the garb in which his father appeared in the Copley portrait. Adams preferred a more everyday outfit. Boylston complained to John Adams:

[T]he intention of the pantaloons I shudder at. What? To convey the idea of the very first character in the nation as a sailor or hornpipe dancer is too intolerable to be admitted. (8)

John Quincy Adams refused to yield.

I have confirmed myself in the opinion that the portrait should be painted in plain black pantaloons and boots under them. A round hat should be also introduced, whether in one hand or on a table is immaterial. (9)

Boylston continued his objections.

The pantaloons…appear to meet universal disapprobation in Boston, and likewise in the circle at Quincy, particularly by my ever-beloved friend your father, who declares war against them, insomuch he says if he can procure a painters brush, & he lives to see it finished, in the manner you have directed, he will deface them and desires me to give you his opinion. (10)

Two months after the October sitting, there was still no progress on the painting. Boylston wrote to the President:

I spent an hour of admiration, in examining [the portrait], and really think Mr. Stuart never has, in any thing I’ve yet seen, equalled this splendid spirit of his great talents—but alas! I have an uphill labour to induce him to go on; he says his room is not large enough to finish items, but that he has an expectation Mr. Alston will oblige him by giving up his large room for that purpose; when that will be obtained is impossible for me to say. I have however some hopes, that in these hard & money pressing times, I shall starve him into action. (11)

But there was no further work on the portrait. In August of 1826, Boylston wrote to Adams that he was going to offer Stuart $100 in addition to the $600 “which has lain idle a year distinctly appropriated for that purpose and apart from any other fund. If he should die before he finishes…I see some difficulties that may arise to prostrate all my hopes.” (12)

Speculation is awake

Boylston was the first to die, on January 7, 1828. Stuart died six months later, on July 9. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, the co-founder of Harvard Medical School, took up Boylston’s cause. He wrote to John Quincy Adams:

My old friend Gilbert Stewart died about ten days past; and yesterday I called upon the widow and children…. In the course of the visit we talked about the fine head he had painted of yourself…. I took pains to ascertain Mrs. Stewart’s ideas and feelings about it, knowing she had been assailed by some ‘speculators’ on that head.

She seemed resolved that no artist should paint a body to it if she could prevent it; for I perceived she had imbibed to the full all those high notions of her husband’s superiority to all other painters; and she spoke as if determined not to swerve from what she knew was Mr. Stewart’s sentiments. …

Mrs. Stewart told me that she was fixed in her wish that none but yourself should possess the head in question; but I drew from her this idea, that she was not willing that anyone should have the whole canvas, lest they should paint a body to it; and it is this which induces me to write at this time, to obtain your ideas and directions on the subject…. [S]peculation is awake, with a view, I suspect, of obtaining a popular picture for exhibition.

If in the regular course of probate business this picture should be exposed to sale by auction, how much above two hundred dollars would you wish any friend of yours to bid for yourself? Or rather, and with more propriety, will you express your ideas and wishes to me on the subject….

The widow expresses a reliance on my judgement and friendship: she shall have it, provided you obtain that head, and the canvas entire as it now is: for I fear if any one should make a bargain with her for the head, she would cut the canvas to a kit-kat size. I find she is disposed to adhere pertinaciously to the extravagant whims of her heteroclite husband. Neither solicitation nor argument, — nor honour, nor justice could move, at times, that strange man, Gilbert Stewart, who was about as (strange) selfish a man as ever lived. (13)

John Quincy Adams expressed interest in the painting, though he noted that “as it has been once paid for by Mr. Boylston, I should certainly not be inclined to pay for it again. In no event would I take it in any other condition than that in which it was left by Mr. Stewart, or with any condition other than that I should dispose of it as I might think proper.” (14)

Thomas Sully in harness

John Quincy Adams portrait by Thomas Sully, drawing 1824, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fletcher Fund, 1938)

John Quincy Adams by Thomas Sully, drawing 1824, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fletcher Fund, 1938)

The portrait – which Boylston had bequeathed to Harvard University – was acquired from Stuart’s estate. Thomas Sully was engaged to finish it.

Born in Britain on June 19, 1783, Sully emigrated to the United States with his family in 1792. He learned the art of miniature painting from his brother-in-law, John Belzons. In 1807, Sully spent three weeks studying portrait painting under Gilbert Stuart in Boston. He also went to England and studied with Benjamin West. Upon his return, Sully settled in Philadelphia and cornered the portrait market there. In December 1824, based on three sittings, he painted a full-length watercolour study of John Quincy Adams seated at a table, an oil study, and a bust-length portrait, before completing the final oil portrait. He was a logical choice to finish the Stuart portrait.

In August 1829, Adams sat for Sully, who made a study in chalk. Sully started work on Stuart’s unfinished canvas in December. He charged $350 to complete the painting. Adams saw the finished portrait at an exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum in September 1831.

My own portrait by Stuart and Sully was also there. Except the interest naturally felt in the portraits by those to whom the originals, many of them now deceased were known, there was not much to attract notice in this exhibition. (15)

Two years later, when asked for a picture to be used by the New York Mirror for a plate showing the first seven presidents, Adams wrote:

If you wish to have anything bearing a resemblance to me, the head of Stuart’s Portrait at Cambridge is the only one that can serve as an original for it…. No engraving from any other Pictures will, as a likeness be worth a five cent piece. (16)

The head was praised by others, including William Dunlap, who wrote:

If we judge by the portrait of the Hon. John Quincy Adams, the last head he [Stuart] painted, his powers of mind were undiminished to the last, and his eye free from the dimness of age. This picture was begun as a full-length, but death arrested the hand of the artist after he had completed the likeness of the face; and proved that, at the age of seventy four, he painted better than in the meridian of life. This picture has been finished; that is, the person and accessories painted, by that eminent and highly gifted artist, Mr. Thos. Sully; who, as he has said, would have thought it little less than sacrilege to have touched the head. (17)

The body of the portrait did not receive the same praise. Sculptor Horatio Greenough wrote:

I suffered grief at seeing Stuart’s Head of Mr. Adams filled up by somebody else and were it mine so help me God I would give a thousand dollars to restore the blank canvas as Stuart left it. Not that I think the artist who finished that picture incapable of producing a masterpiece but because the 2 minds do not work well in double harness. (18)

The John Quincy Adams portrait by Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully remains part of the Harvard University Portrait Collection.

You might also enjoy:

John Quincy Adams’ Report Upon Weights and Measures

When John Quincy Adams met Madame de Staël

John Quincy Adams and the White House Billiard Table

The New Year’s Day Reflections of John Quincy Adams

Assassination Attempts on the Duke of Wellington

Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IV (Philadelphia, 1875), p. 130.
“From Ward Nicholas Boylston to John Quincy Adams, 14 January 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-3996. Boylston’s mother was a first cousin of John Quincy Adams’ grandmother.
“From Ward Nicholas Boylston to John Quincy Adams, 15 March 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4508.
“From Ward Nicholas Boylston to John Quincy Adams, 4 October 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4571.
Mary Tyler Peabody Mann to Miss Rawlins Pickman, January 27, 1825, quoted in Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles, Gilbert Stuart (New York, 2004), p. 318.
George C. Mason, The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart (New York, 1894), pp. 144-145.
Martha Babcock Amery, The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley (Boston, 1882), p. 90
“To John Adams from Ward Nicholas Boylston, 27 March 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4515.
“From John Quincy Adams to Ward Nicholas Boylston, 8 November 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4580.
“From Ward Nicholas Boylston to John Quincy Adams, 22 December 1825,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4594.
Ibid.
“From Ward Nicholas Boylston to John Quincy Adams, 15 August 1826,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4723.
Quoted in Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 125-126.
Ibid., p. 126.
John Quincy Adams Diary 38, 1 October 1830 – 24 March 1832, pp. 261-262 [electronic edition]. The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection. Boston, Mass.: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2004. http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries
Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife, p. 132.
William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, Vol. I (New York, 1834), p. 209.
Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife, p. 133.

Napoleon Bonaparte faced between 20 and 30 attempts to assassinate him during his reign over France. (1) Here’s a look at the best-known assassination attempts on Napoleon.

The explosion of the infernal machine on Christmas Eve 1800, one of many assassination attempts on Napoleon Bonaparte. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

The explosion of the infernal machine, an assassination attempt on Napoleon Bonaparte on Christmas Eve 1800. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Napoleon feared assassination

Napoleon took precautions against assassination. His friend Betsy Balcombe asked him about this when he was in exile on St. Helena.

I told him I had heard that he wore armour under his dress, to render him invulnerable, as he was continually in dread of assassination, and that he never slept two nights together in the same bedroom. He told us all these things were fabrications; but he adopted one rule – never to make public his intention whither he meant to go, five minutes before he actually took his departure, and he doubted not many conspirators were thus foiled, as they were ignorant where he was at any time to be found. (2)

Coup of 18th-19th Brumaire, 1799

Napoleon began his rule over France by complaining of an assassination attempt that probably didn’t happen. On November 10, 1799, during the coup d’état that brought him to power, Napoleon illegally barged into the Council of Five Hundred (the lower house of the French legislature), interrupting the debate. The legislators yelled at and man-handled the intruder until he was rescued by his soldiers. Napoleon claimed that his life had been at stake.

I offered myself to the Chamber of Five Hundred, alone, unarmed, my head uncovered…. Instantly the daggers which menaced the deputies were raised against their defender. Twenty assassins rushed upon me, aiming at my breast. The grenadiers of the Legislative Body, whom I had left at the door of the chamber, hastily interposed between the assassins and myself. One of these brave grenadiers…received a thrust from a dagger, which pierced his clothes. They carried me off. (3)

Though it is highly unlikely a dagger was raised against Napoleon or anyone else, the supposed assassination attempt became a justification for the coup. (4)

Assassination attempts on Napoleon at Malmaison, 1800

After Napoleon became First Consul, Malmaison – an estate west of Paris, owned by Napoleon’s wife Josephine – became the site of several alleged assassination attempts on Napoleon. According to Napoleon’s valet Constant, this included an attempt to assassinate Napoleon by poisoning him.

Sundry alterations and repairs had to be made in the chimney-piece of the First Consul’s apartments at La Malmaison. The person superintending this work sent certain stone-cutters, some of whom were in league with the conspirators. … [J]ust as the First Consul was about to take up his residence in the newly-prepared apartments, upon a desk at which he sat a snuff-box was found, precisely similar to one which he was in the habit of using. At first they supposed that it actually belonged to him, and that it had been left there by his valet-de-chambre. But the suspicions aroused by the strange appearance of some of the workmen took deeper root. The snuff was taken out and analysed. It was poisoned.

Constant – not the most reliable memoirist – goes on to claim:

The perpetrators of this dastardly outrage were at that time in league…with other conspirators, who intended to resort to other means in order to get rid of the First Consul. They thought of attacking the Malmaison guards, and of forcibly abducting the head of the Government. For this purpose they had uniforms made exactly like those of the Guides Consulaires, who, night and day, were in attendance on the First Consul. In this disguise, and with the help of their confederates, the sham stone-cutters, they might easily have mixed with the guards who were lodged and boarded at the castle. They could even have got at the First Consul and carried him off. This first scheme, however, was abandoned as too risky, and the conspirators flattered themselves that they would gain their ends in a surer, less perilous way, viz., by taking advantage of the General’s frequent journeys to Paris. In such disguise they could join the escort, unnoticed, and murder him on the highway. Their meeting-place was to be the Nanterre quarries. But their plot was again discovered, and, as in the Malmaison park there was a rather deep quarry, it was feared that they might hide here and do the General some injury when he walked out by himself. So the entrance to this place was closed with an iron gate. (5)

Constant may have been referring to an alleged plot by a man named Juvenot, a former aide-de-camp to the executed Jacobin leader François Hanriot. According to Napoleon’s Minister of Police Joseph Fouché, Juvenot was conspiring in mid-1800 with “some twenty zealots” to attack and murder Napoleon near Malmaison. (6) The plan was to block the road to Malmaison with carts and bundles of firewood. When Napoleon’s carriage was forced to stop, the conspirators would shoot him. They also thought of setting fire to cottages near Malmaison. They expected that Napoleon’s staff would run to put out the flames, leaving the First Consul unguarded. Fouché had Juvenot and his accomplices arrested, but was unable to extract a confession. (7)

Daggers conspiracy (Conspiration des poignards), 1800

In September 1800, Napoleon’s private secretary Bourrienne was contacted by an out-of-work soldier named Harrel. The latter said he had been approached to take part in a plot against Napoleon’s life. Bourrienne took the matter to Napoleon, who directed the police to supply Harrel with money so the guilty parties could carry on and be caught in the act. The conspirators planned to approach Napoleon at the opera in Paris and stab him to death. The date fixed for the assassination attempt was October 10, 1800, at the premiere of Les Horaces (music by Bernardo Porta, text by Nicolas-François Guillard). According to Bourrienne:

On the evening of the 10th of October, the consuls…assembled in the cabinet of their colleague. Bonaparte asked them, in my presence, whether they thought he ought to go to the opera? They observed that as every precaution was taken, no danger could be apprehended; and that it was desirable to show the futility of attempts against the First Consul’s life. After dinner Bonaparte put on a great coat over his green uniform, and got into his carriage, accompanied by me and Duroc. He seated himself in front of his box, which at that time was on the left of the theatre, between the two columns which separated the front and side boxes. When we had been in the theatre about half an hour, the First Consul directed me to go and see what was doing in the lobby. Scarcely had I left the box than I heard a great uproar, and soon discovered that a number of persons, whose names I could not learn, had been arrested. I informed the First Consul of what I had heard, and we immediately returned to the Tuileries. (8)

According to Fouché, the would-be assassins were Jacobin extremists. The accused, however, blamed Harrel and other agents provocateurs.

The conspirators wished, without the least doubt, the death of the First Consul, but they were incapable of striking him with their own hands…. None of them had had the courage, nor perhaps even any decided intention, to assist in the execution of the plot. The police agents, sent in as spies amongst them, and to whom they gave daggers, urged them on to a degree of guilt, which before, perhaps, they had not contemplated…. [T]hey did not make their appearance at the place fixed for the execution of the plot; and Ceracchi, the only one apprehended in the Opera-house, was not even armed with one of the daggers which had been distributed among them. (9)

Four of the men arrested –painter François Topio-Lebrun, sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi, adjutant Joseph Antoine Aréna and Dominique Demerville, a former clerk to the committee of public safety – were executed on January 30, 1801.

Plot of the rue Saint-Nicaise (Infernal machine), 1800

The best-known assassination attempt on Napoleon occurred in Paris on the evening of December 24, 1800. Napoleon was heading to the opera to see Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation when a cart exploded in the street shortly after his carriage had passed.

Map of central Paris showing the route of Napoleon’s carriage and the location of the infernal machine explosion in rue Saint-Nicaise

The attack was carried out by royalists linked to the Chouan leader Georges Cadoudal, who was in the pay of the British government. The conspirators bought a horse and cart from a Parisian grain dealer. They attached a large wine cask to the cart, and loaded the cask with shrapnel and gunpowder. They drove this “infernal machine” to Rue Saint-Nicaise (which no longer exists), near the intersection with Rue Saint-Honoré, on Napoleon’s route to the opera. One of the plotters paid 14-year-old Marianne Peusol, whose mother sold buns nearby, twelve sous to hold the horse and guard the cart while the would-be assassin stood at some distance with the fuse.

The conspirators expected Napoleon’s carriage to be preceded by a cavalry escort. The escort’s appearance would be the signal to light the powder. However, Napoleon’s coachman was driving very fast (some accounts say he was drunk), and the carriage appeared without warning. As noted in evidence at the subsequent trial:

The person who was to have executed the plan, not being properly instructed, was not aware of the arrival of the carriage of the First Consul until he saw it. It was not, as he had been told, preceded by an advanced guard; however he prepared to execute his plan. At that moment the horse of a grenadier drove him against the wall and deranged him. He returned, and set fire to the machine; but the powder not being good, its effect was two or three seconds too late. Otherwise the First Consult must inevitably have perished. (10)

The explosion killed the horse, young Marianne, and as many as a dozen bystanders. Some 40 others were wounded. Several buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Napoleon’s wife Josephine, her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais, and Napoleon’s sister Caroline Murat (pregnant with Achille) were travelling in a carriage behind Napoleon’s. They might have been killed had they not been delayed by fiddling with Josephine’s shawl, as described by General Jean Rapp, who accompanied the ladies.

The police had intimated to Napoleon that an attempt would be made against his life, and cautioned him not to go out. Madame Bonaparte, Mademoiselle Beauharnais, Madame Murat, Lannes, Bessières, the aide-de-camp on duty, and lieutenant Lebrun, now duke of Placenza, were all assembled in the saloon, while the First consul was writing in his closet. Haydn’s Oratorio was to be performed that evening: the ladies were anxious to hear the music, and we also expressed a wish to that effect. The Escort piquet was ordered out; and Lannes requested that Napoleon would join the party. He consented; his carriage was ready, and he took along with him Bessières and the aide-de-camp on duty. I was directed to attend the ladies.

Josephine had received a magnificent shawl from Constantinople, and she that evening wore it for the first time. ‘Allow me to observe, Madame,’ said I, ‘that your shawl is not thrown on with your usual elegance.’ She good humouredly begged that I would fold it after the fashion of the Egyptian ladies. While I was engaged in this operation, we heard Napoleon depart. ‘Come, sister,’ said Madame Murat, who was impatient to get to the theatre; ‘Bonaparte is going.’

We stepped into the carriage: the First Consul’s equipage had already reached the middle of the Place Carrousel. We drove after it; but we had scarcely entered the Place when the machine exploded. Napoleon escaped by a singular chance. Saint-Regent [one of the conspirators], or his French servant, had stationed himself in the middle of the Rue Nicaise. A grenadier of the escort, supposing he was really what he appeared to be, a water-carrier, gave him a few blows with the flat of his sabre, and drove him off. The cart was turned round, and the machine exploded between the carriages of Napoleon and Josephine.

The ladies shrieked on hearing the report; the carriage windows were broken, and Mademoiselle Beauharnais received a slight hurt on her hand. I alighted and crossed the Rue Nicaise, which was strewed with the bodies of those who had been thrown down, and the fragments of the walls that had been shattered by the explosion. Neither the Consul nor any individual of his suite sustained any serious injury. When I entered the theatre Napoleon was seated in his box, calm and composed, and looking at the audience through his opera-glass. Fouché was beside him. ‘Josephine,’ said he, as soon as he observed me. She entered at that moment, and he did not finish his question. ‘The rascals,’ said he, very coolly, ‘wanted to blow me up. Bring me a book of the Oratorio.’ (11)

Though Police Minister Fouché believed that royalists were behind the attack, Napoleon was initially convinced that his Jacobin enemies were responsible. He used the explosion as an excuse to exile 130 Jacobins from France. Meanwhile, police assembled the remains of the cart and horse and tried to find the owner. This led them to François Carbon, the man who made the bomb. Carbon confessed the names of fellow conspirators Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régent and Joseph de Limoëlan, as well as others. Carbon and Saint-Régent were executed on April 20, 1801. Limoëlan fled to the United States, where he became a priest. He died in Charleston in 1826.

Cadoudal affair (Pichegru conspiracy), 1804

Georges Cadoudal, the Breton Chouan leader who was financed by the British government, wanted to overthrow Napoleon and put the Bourbon heir Louis XVIII on the French throne. He was supported by Jean Pichegru, a general of the Revolutionary Wars who had been exiled from France. The Count of Artois (Louis XVIII’s brother and the future Charles X of France) also gave his blessing to the plan. In August 1803, Cadoudal and other conspirators left London. They landed near Dieppe and travelled to Paris. Their aim was to assassinate Napoleon and pave the way for a Bourbon restoration. Though Pichegru claimed he had the full support of General Jean Moreau (a military rival of Napoleon), when the two met secretly in January of 1804, it became clear that Moreau, a republican, would not support the Bourbons on the throne.

Around the same time, the French arrested a British secret agent who had participated in Cadoudal’s landing. He revealed some details of the plot, including the involvement of Cadoudal and the two generals. Napoleon ordered their arrest. Moreau was picked up on February 15, Pichegru on February 26, and Cadoudal on March 9. Napoleon thought a minor Bourbon prince, the Duke of Enghien, was in league with the conspirators. He had him arrested on March 20 and executed early the next morning. On April 5, Pichegru was found strangled by his own tie in his prison cell. According to the police, it was a case of suicide.

Cadoudal, Moreau and the other conspirators were brought to trial at the end of May. Cadoudal and 11 accomplices were executed on June 25, 1804. Moreau – for whom there was great popular sympathy – was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Napoleon changed the sentence to exile in the United States. Moreau later returned to Europe to join the forces allied against Napoleon. He was fatally wounded in the Battle of Dresden in 1813.

Assassination attempt on Napoleon by “Madman” Staps, 1809

Napoleon interrogates his would-be assassin Friedrich Staps

In 1809, Napoleon and his troops occupied Vienna. On October 12 of that year, a German university student named Friedrich Staps attempted to assassinate Napoleon during a military parade at Schönbrunn Palace. Staps approached Napoleon on the pretence of presenting him with a petition. General Rapp became suspicious of the young man, whose right hand was thrust into a pocket under his coat. Staps was arrested. He was found to be carrying a large carving knife. When Rapp asked whether he had planned to assassinate Napoleon, Staps answered in the affirmative.

Napoleon wanted to speak to Staps directly. The prisoner was brought to the Emperor’s office with his hands tied behind his back. Using Rapp as an interpreter, Napoleon asked Staps a series of questions.

‘Where were you born?’ – ‘In Naumburgh.’

‘What is your father?’ – ‘A Protestant minister.’

‘How old are you?’ – ‘I am eighteen years of age.’

‘What did you intend to do with the knife?’ – ‘To kill you.’

‘You are mad, young man; you are an illuminato.’ – ‘I am not mad; and I know not what is meant by an illuminato.’

‘You are sick, then.’ – ‘I am not sick; on the contrary, I am in good health.’

‘Why did you wish to assassinate me?’ – ‘Because you have caused the misfortunes of my country.’

‘Have I done you any harm?’ – ‘You have done harm to me as well as to all Germans.’

‘By whom were you sent? Who instigated you to this crime?’ – ‘Nobody. I determined to take your life from the conviction that I should thereby render the highest service to my country and to Europe.’ …

‘I tell you, you are either mad or sick.’ – ‘Neither the one nor the other.’ (12)

After a doctor examined Staps and pronounced him in good health, Napoleon offered the young man a chance for clemency.

‘You are a wild enthusiast,’ said he; ‘you will ruin your family. I am willing to grant your life, if you ask pardon for the crime which you intended to commit, and for which you ought to be sorry.’ – ‘I want no pardon,’ replied Staps, ‘I feel the deepest regret for not having executed my design.’ ‘You seem to think very lightly of the commission of a crime!’ – ‘To kill you would not have been a crime but a duty.’ … ‘Would you not be grateful were I to pardon you?’ – ‘I would notwithstanding seize the first opportunity of taking your life.’ (13)

Staps was executed by a firing squad on October 17, 1809. His last words were: “Liberty forever! Germany forever! Death to the tyrant!” (14) Napoleon refers to this assassination attempt when he visits his former police chief Pierre-François Réal in Napoleon in America.

Thanks to Randy Ford for suggesting the topic of assassination attempts on Napoleon.

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When Napoleon Attempted Suicide

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Philip Dwyer, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power (New Haven & London, 2013), p. 54. In comparison, Dwyer notes that about 50 assassination plots were uncovered against French kings between 1680 and 1750 (p. 56).
Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe Abell, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, during the First Three Years of His Captivity on the Island of St. Helena (London, 1844), pp. 224-225.
Gaspard Gourgaud, Memoirs of the History of France During the Reign of Napoleon, Dictated by the Emperor at St. Helena, Vol. I (London, 1823), pp. 103-104.
“Was a dagger ever actually pulled on Napoleon in the Orangery, as the supporters of the coup alleged? In the large number of conflicting and highly politically motivated accounts of what happened, it is impossible to say for certain, but it is extremely unlikely, partly because no blood – Napoleon’s or anyone else’s – was shed that day.” Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (New York, 2014), p. 225.
Louis Constant Wairy, Memoirs of the Private Life of Napoleon, His Family and His Court, translated by Percy Pinkerton, Vol. I (London, 1896) pp. 36-38.
Joseph Fouché, Memoirs of Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto, Vol. I (London, 1825), p. 168.
Gaffarel, “L’opposition républicaine sous le Consulat,” La Révolution française revue historique, Vol. 7, No. 6 (December 14, 1887), p. 549.
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, edited by R.W. Phipps, Vol. II, (New York, 1890), p. 42.
Adolphe Thiers, History of the Consulate and the Empire of France Under Napoleon, translated by D. Forbes Campbell, Vol. I (London, 1845), pp. 113, 184-185.
“Criminal Tribunal, Paris,” The Morning Post and Gazetteer (London, UK), April 13, 1801.
Jean Rapp, Memoirs of General Count Rapp (London, 1823), pp. 19-21.
Ibid., pp. 143-144.
Ibid., p. 145.
Ibid., p. 147.

Portrait of the King of Rome, circa 1815, by Jean-Baptiste Isabey

Napoleon’s only legitimate son, Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte, also known as the King of Rome, was born on March 20, 1811. By all accounts he was a cute, strong-willed and kind-hearted little boy. He was also greatly spoiled. Here are some anecdotes of the King of Rome as a young child.

The King of Rome destroys a soldier’s plume

This anecdote comes from Captain Jean-Roch Coignet, a grenadier of Napoleon’s guard. The incident probably happened within the first year of the child’s life.

The precious child was always accompanied by the governor of the palace, whenever he went out to take the air, with his handsome nurse, and a lady who carried him. One day when I was at the palace of St. Cloud, Marshal Duroc, who was with me, signalled to me to approach, and the dear child held out his little hands for my plume. I stooped, and he began to pull at my plumes. The marshal said, ‘Let him do it.’ The child laughed with delight; but my plume was sacrificed. I looked a little upset. The marshal said to me, ‘Give it to him. I will give you another.’ The maid of honour and the nurse were much amused.

The marshal said to the maid of honour, ‘Give the prince to this sergeant, and let him take him in his arms.’ Good Lord! How eagerly I stretched out my arms to receive that precious burden! Every one surrounded me. ‘Well,’ said M. Duroc to me, ‘is he heavy?’ – ‘Yes, general.’ – ‘Come, walk him about; you are strong enough to carry him.’ I walked about with him awhile on the terrace. The child pulled away at my plumes and paid no attention to me. His robes hung down very low, and I was afraid of stumbling; but I was proud to carry such a baby. I handed him back to the maid of honour, who thanked me, and the marshal said to me, ‘Come to my office an hour later.’ Accordingly, I appeared before the marshal, who gave me an order upon a merchant for a handsome plume. ‘Is this the only one you have?’ said he. – ‘Yes, general.’ – ‘I will give you an order for two.’ – ‘Thank you, general.’ – ‘You can go, my brave fellow; now you will have one for Sundays.’ (1)

The little King desires it

This anecdote was related by a palace usher to Laure Junot, the Duchess of Abrantès (not the most reliable memoirist). Madame de Montesquiou was the King of Rome’s governess.

The King of Rome one morning ran to the state apartments and reached the door of the Emperor’s cabinet alone, for Madame de Montesquiou was unable to follow him. The child raised his beautiful face to the usher and said, ‘Open the door for me; I wish to see papa.’

‘Sire,’ replied the man. ‘I cannot let your Majesty in.’

‘Why not? I am the little king.’

‘But your Majesty is alone.’

The Emperor had given orders that his son should not be allowed to enter his cabinet unless accompanied by his governess. This order was issued for the purpose of giving the young Prince, whose disposition was somewhat inclined to waywardness, a high idea of his governess’s authority. On receiving this denial from the usher the Prince’s eyes became suffused with tears, but he said not a word. He waited till Madame de Montesquiou came up, which was in less than a minute afterwards. Then he seized her hand, and looking proudly at the usher, he said, ‘Open the door; the little King desires it.’ The usher then opened the door of the cabinet and announced, ‘His Majesty the King of Rome.’ (2)

The King of Rome is wicked

This anecdote appeared in the memoirs of the Count de Las Cases, who accompanied Napoleon into exile on St. Helena.

The apartments of the young Prince were on the ground floor, and looked out on the court of the Tuileries. At almost every hour in the day, numbers of people were looking in at the windows, in the hope of seeing him. One day when he was in a violent fit of passion, and rebelling furiously against the authority of Madame de Montesquiou, she immediately ordered all the shutters to be closed. The child, surprised at the sudden darkness, asked Maman Quiou, as he used to call her, what it all meant?

‘I love you too well,’ she replied, ‘not to hide your anger from the crowd in the court-yard. You perhaps will one day be called to govern all those people, and what would they say if they saw you in such a fit of rage? Do you think they would ever obey you, if they knew you to be so wicked?’ Upon which, the child asked her pardon, and promised never again to give way to such fits of anger. (3)

The King of Rome grants a pension

Here’s another anecdote from Madame Junot.

Young Napoleon was an amiable child, and he became more so as he advanced in age. I know many affecting stories of him, which indicate the goodness of his heart. When he was at Saint Cloud he liked to be placed at the window in order that he might see the people passing by. One day he perceived at some distance a young woman in mourning, apparently in great grief, holding by the hand a little boy about his own age. The child held in his hand a paper, which he raised towards the window at which young Napoleon stood. ‘Why is he dressed in black?’ inquired the young King of his governess. ‘Because, no doubt, he has lost his father. Do you wish to know what he wants?’

The Emperor had given orders that his son should always be accessible to those in misfortune who wished to make any application to him by petition. The petitioners were immediately introduced, and they proved to be a young widow and her son. Her husband had died about three months previously of wounds received in Spain, and his widow solicited a pension. Madame de Montesquiou, thinking that this conformity of age between the little orphan and the young King might move the feelings of the latter, placed the petition in his hands. She was not deceived in her expectations. His heart was touched at the sight of the young petitioner. The Emperor was then on a hunting-party, and the petition could not be presented to him until next morning at breakfast. Young Napoleon passed the whole of the day in thoughtfulness, and when the appointed hour arrived, he left his apartment to pay his respects to his father. He took care to present the petition apart from all the rest he carried, and this of his own accord.

‘Here is a petition, papa,’ said he, ‘from a little boy. He is dressed all in black. His papa has been killed in your service, and his mamma wants a pension, because she is poor and has much to vex her.’ ‘Ah! Ah!’ said the Emperor, taking his son in his arms; ‘you already grant pensions do you? Diable! You have begun betimes. Come, let us see who this protégé of yours is.’ The widow had sufficient grounds for her claim; but in all probability they would not have been attended to for a year or two, had it not been for the King of Rome’s intercession. The brevet of the pension was made out that very day, and a years’ arrears added to the order. (4)

The King of Rome wants to stay in Paris

On January 24, 1814, the King of Rome saw his father for the last time. Napoleon left to campaign in Germany, in a failing attempt to prevent his enemies from entering France. On March 28, as the allies closed in on Paris, Napoleon wrote to insist that his wife Marie Louise and their son leave the city. Marie-Marguerite Broquet, the mother of Napoleon’s valet Louis-Joseph Marchand, was a nurse to the King of Rome. She told Marchand how the boy resisted leaving the Tuileries Palace.

The King of Rome…grabbed onto each piece of furniture so as not to go to Rambouillet, which he deemed too ugly. Made impatient by the force used on him – and force had to be used to get him into his carriage – he said in anger: ‘I don’t want to leave Paris, Papa is not here, I am the master here.’ (5)

When Napoleon was exiled to Elba, Marie Louise took the King of Rome to Vienna. He spent the rest of his life there, in the court of his grandfather, Emperor Francis I of Austria, who gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt. That is where Napoleon wants to retrieve him from in Napoleon in America.

For more about Napoleon’s son, see:

The Palace of the King of Rome

The Death of Napoleon’s Son, the Duke of Reichstadt

Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue (New York, 1929), pp. 200-201.
Laure Junot, Memoirs of Napoleon, His Court and Family, Vol. 2 (London, 1836), p. 334.
Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné de Las Cases, The Military and Political Life, Character, and Anecdotes of Napoleon Bonaparte (Hartford, 1823), pp. 340-341.
Laure Junot Abrantès, Memoirs of Napoleon, His Court and Family, Vol. 2, pp. 335-336.
Louis-Joseph Marchand, In Napoleon’s Shadow: Being the First English Language Edition of the Complete Memoirs of Louis-Joseph Marchand, Valet and Friend of the Emperor, 1811-1821, edited by Proctor Jones (San Francisco, 1998), pp. 81-82.

View of the relatively uncrowded Graben in Vienna around 1800. From the collections of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San José State University

Pity the poor pedestrian in Vienna during the time in which Napoleon in America is set. Here’s what an English visitor had to say about the dangers of walking in Austria’s capital in the early 1820s.

‘The Art of walking the streets’ in London is an easy problem compared with the art of walking them in Vienna. In the former, there is some order and distinction, even in the crowd; two-legged and four-legged animals have their allotted places, and are compelled to keep them; in the latter, all this is otherwise. It is true, that in the principal streets a few feet on each side are paved with stones somewhat larger than those in the centre, and these side slips are intended for pedestrians; but the pedestrians have no exclusive right; the level of the street is uniform; there is nothing to prevent horses and carriages from encroaching on the domain, and, accordingly they are perpetually trespassing. The streets, even those in which there is the greatest bustle, the Karntherstrasse, for example, are generally narrow; carriages, hackney-coaches, and loaded wagons, observing no order, cross each other in all directions; and while they hurry past each other, or fill the street by coming from opposite quarters, the pedestrian is every moment in danger of being run up against the wall.

A provoking circumstance is that frequently a third part, or even a half of the street, is rendered useless by heaps of wood, the fuel of the inhabitants. The wood is brought into the city in large pieces, from three to four feet long. A wagon-load of these logs is laid down on the street, at the door of the purchaser, to be sawed and split into smaller pieces, before being deposited in his cellar. When this occurs, as it often does, at every third or fourth door, the street just loses so much of its breadth. Nothing remains but the centre, and that is constantly swarming with carriages, and carts, and barrows. The pedestrian must either wind himself through among their wheels, or clamber over successive piles of wood, or patiently wait till the centre of the street becomes passable for a few yards. To think of doubling the wooden promontory without this precaution is far from being safe. You have scarcely, by a sudden spring, saved your shoulders from the pole of a carriage, when a wheel-barrow makes a similar attack on your legs. You make spring, the second, and in all probability, your head comes in contact with the uplifted hatchet of a wood-cutter. The wheel-barrows seem to be best off. They fill such a middle rank between bipeds and quadrupeds that they lay claim to the privileges of both, and hold on their way rejoicing, commanding respect equally from men and horses.

To guide a carriage through these crowded, encumbered, disorderly, narrow streets, without either occasioning or sustaining damage is, perhaps, the highest achievement of the coach-driving art. Our own knights of the whip, with all their scientific and systematic excellencies, must here yield the palm to the practical superiority of their Austrian brethren. Nothing can equal the dexterity with which a Vienna coachman winds himself, and winds himself rapidly, through every little aperture, and, above all, at the sharp turns of the streets. People on foot, indeed, must look about them; and, from necessity, they have learned to look about them so well that accidents are wonderfully rare; and very seldom, indeed, does it happen that the Jehus [drivers] do not keep clear of each other’s wheels. The hackney-coachmen form as peculiar a corps as they do in London, with as much esprit de corps, but more humour, full of jokes and extortion. It is said that the most skilful coachman from any other country cannot drive in Vienna without a regular education. A few years ago a Hungarian nobleman brought out a coachman from London; but Tom was under the necessity of resigning the box, after a day’s driving pregnant with danger to his master’s limbs and carriage. (1)

The final illness of the Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon’s son), who lived in Vienna from 1814 until his untimely death in 1832, worsened after a wheel of his carriage came off during an excursion to the Prater. He fell in the street on his walk home.

You might also enjoy:

The Death of Napoleon’s Son, the Duke of Reichstadt

Francis I of Austria: Napoleon’s Father-in-Law

Clemens von Metternich: The Man who Outwitted Napoleon?

Of Sealing Wax and Emperor Francis

John Russell, A Tour in Germany, and Some of the Southern Provinces of the Austrian Empire, in the Years 1820, 1821, 1822 (Boston, 1825), pp. 363-365.

In Napoleon in America, Louisa Adams – the English-born wife of then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams – listens with interest as Elizabeth Hopkinson talks about travelling with Napoleon and his older brother Joseph to upstate New York. That vignette is set in April of 1822. In real life, Louisa Adams met Joseph Bonaparte in September of that year. Joseph was a ladies’ man who had already fathered two illegitimate children in the United States. Louisa was an elegant woman, comfortable in the courts of Europe, who liked to charm and be charmed. Here’s how the two of them got along.

Louisa Adams by Gilbert Stuart, circa 1821-1826

Behaving like a fool

After spending the summer of 1822 in Philadelphia nursing her sick brother, Louisa Adams accepted an invitation to visit her friends, Joseph and Emily Hopkinson, in nearby Bordentown, New Jersey. The Hopkinsons were friends and neighbours of Joseph Bonaparte, who had fled to the United States after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815. Joseph owned a large estate, called Point Breeze, on Crosswicks Creek near the Delaware River.

Louisa arrived in Bordentown on September 16, 1822. She met Joseph – who had once been King of Naples, and then King of Spain, but now called himself the Count of Survilliers – the next day.

[A]fter dinner we set out to walk to the spring. We had got about half way when we met the Count Survillier, who stopped and spoke to the Ladies, and was introduced to me: when he politely asked us to walk with him through his grounds to which I assented. I however as usual behaved very much like a fool on the occasion: for their Kings and no Kings place us in a very awkward situation; between the fear of wounding their feelings, and the natural antipathy which I have to courting, what the world call great folks, and of appearing to arrogate upon my own elevated station; which though, it may be transient, is while I possess it thought much of by others. I spoke sometime to him in English, but at last addressed him in French. He showed me two very fine paintings, and displayed all the beauties of his grounds with much attention, offering us flowers which he cut himself, and peaches which he selected and presented to each. As the evening was rapidly setting in, I was anxious to get home; but he was so urgent for me to see his daughter [Charlotte Bonaparte] that I consented to walk in, and was introduced to her little Ladyship, who I thought a very pleasing and well bred young woman. She is not handsome; though I think her countenance very expressive, and the style and character of her face pleased me, although in general it produces a contrary effect. She was urgent in her invitation to me, to stay; and expressed a desire to become more acquainted; to all of which I answered suitably declining her civility, on the plea of leaving Borden Town immediately.

The Count has a charming countenance, the form of the face very much like Napoleon’s, but the expression entirely different. He is friendly and unceremonious in his manners; in his person very much like the Emperor when I saw him, large and heavy, though he moves about with a good deal of activity. He performs the civilities he offers like a man who has been used to do so by proxy; and seems when he wishes to mark attention, to look round him, rather with a view of ordering it to be done, than with readiness to do it himself. But there is so much easy good humour about him, and he looks so much like a good fat substantial farmer, that were we not pre-acquainted with his history, no one would suspect he had ever filled a throne. In this little village he is adored; for he has made ‘the Widows heart to sing with joy,’ and has been [‘a father to the fatherless’ and tho’ a King has showered blessings around him, thus proving himself far more than a King—a good man!! General l’Almand [Henri Lallemand] accompanied him. He was riding in a common Jersey Waggon with two Horses. We returned home and I was lectured by the Ladies for my impoliteness in not having spoken French in the first instance, and not having been more courteous to his Majesty, whose peaches I refused upon the plea of ill health. I acknowledged my fault, and promised to behave better the first opportunity. (1)

Joseph Bonaparte by Charles Willson Peale, 1820

Laughing heartily

That opportunity arose three days later, on September 20, at a party at Point Breeze.

The Count and Countess [Charlotte] received us in a very friendly and sociable way, and we chatted on various subjects, until we were called to what he terms Tea; that is a dinner in all its forms with the addition of tea and coffee.…

I had some conversation with the Count…. He told me he knew Mrs. Crawford; and was very inquisitive about Washington, which he said he heard was very brilliant in winter, and a pleasant residence.…

When we rose from the table he showed me his fine pictures, and regretted that I had not seen them by day light, entreating me to come again; and politely saying he would take no denial: after which we seated ourselves round a table, and examined his daughter’s drawings, and some curious paintings on copper of natural history, from all the known parts of the globe. We then talked of the Theatre, and he asked me if I had seen Talma; and I took the opportunity of hinting how much I should be gratified if he would read a tragedy to us, as I had heard that he piques himself upon his talent, having studied with La Rive, who he told me he had taken to Naples with him, and made him director of the French Theatre there. He seemed much pleased at the request, and immediately sent for his book, and chose the Tragedy of Andromaque. I was almost sorry for the choice as I could not help thinking that in the fate of Marie Louise, there was a little similitude; for both her Son and herself became hostages to Austria, though under different circumstances. He desired his daughter to read with him, and she took the parts of Andromaque, and Hermione, and it is long very long since I have had such a treat….

The Countess reads elegantly, and they have both the style and manner of Talma, with a little less energy; which he told me was more the manner of La Rive. To me however this was an improvement as I do not love to see the passions ‘torn to rags and tatters;’ and do by no means think ranting an embellishment, or an expression of true feelings. I am not connoisseur enough to say any thing more of the paintings, than that they are many of them in the finest style…. There is a Titian that is exquisite; some Vernets and Teniers and Murillos that are beautiful….

[The Count] told me that he had restored the fashion of bull fights in Spain, for which he had often condemned himself; but it was to court popularity with the people. Naples he cannot speak of without regret; but if he grieves for the change in his situation, it does not appear; for he looks the picture of happiness and content. We all laughed heartily when we got home; for intending to invite Miss Mease who is not handsome, but a most charming woman to stay the night; in English; he said ‘will you sleep with me.’ You may suppose this occasioned a complete squall among us we were all so diverted. (2)

Charlotte Bonaparte

Labouring hard to amuse

The following evening the Hopkinsons returned the favour by having Joseph and Charlotte over. Louisa wrote to her husband, who remained in Washington:

We laboured hard to amuse them, and I fear did not achieve the enterprize; as I am sure I was devoured by ennui…. The Countess does not understand much English, and Joseph speaks it very little; and the Ladies of this family will not speak French. You may therefore imagine our difficulty; added to which the young Lady [Charlotte] looks for amusement from every body, without making the least exertion to amuse herself….

They left us at eleven o–clock, and we all felt relieved, as [Joseph] appeared in very bad spirits; there is a great deal of bonhomie about him, but his address is altogether awkward, though he makes every possible exertion to be gallant. (3)

Louisa was, nonetheless, flattered by Joseph’s attention. In the same letter, she added:

[M]ethinks I hear you say? ‘I hope my dear your head is not quite turned by all the fine things you meet?’ I answer I hope not, but almost fear to ask myself the question. (4)

Louisa and the Hopkinsons accepted an invitation to breakfast at Point Breeze the next day (September 22, 1822). After breakfast, they walked in the gardens and viewed paintings. They also went boating on Crosswicks Creek, where Joseph “ordered fishing tackle to be prepared and every thing made ready for that amusement, as he understood that it was [Louisa’s] favorite diversion.” Louisa preferred not to fish and asked to land instead. (5)

Point Breeze, Joseph Bonaparte’s estate in Bordentown, New Jersey

On September 23, Louisa went over to say goodbye, as she intended to leave Bordentown the next day.

I asked for the Lady [Charlotte] intimating my wish to take leave—but she was taking her drawing lesson or rather sitting for her portrait, and I would not disturb her. She however made her appearance just as her father had invited us to see a Venus of Titian…which he keeps close to his bed; I could not affect modesty as I had said, that I had seen a number of fine pictures in Europe, and he put his hands over his eyes, as if very much shocked making grimaces, and hanging his head, saying that all the American Ladies were so distressed, and ashamed, that he was obliged to hide them. He showed me two beautiful miniatures of his mother, one of his wife, and one of his daughter; a number of superb guns: a manufactory of which he had established at Naples of a very light and beautiful kind: 1 of which he sent to Alexander; another to the King of Bavaria; and 1 to Napoleon. He is fond of shooting and an excellent shot. He likewise brought out some fine old books, with illuminated plates and some beautiful modern editions, and a number of knickknacks such as the French delight so much in—and a fine likeness of Napoleon. (6)

Extending her stay

Joseph prevailed upon Louisa to stay longer in Bordentown. She dined at Point Breeze again on the 24th. On the 25th, they all took a boat to Bristol in Pennsylvania to visit acquaintances, and on the 26th and 27th Joseph and Charlotte visited at the Hopkinsons. On the 29th, Louisa saw Joseph for the last time.

At four o’clock we went to Point Breeze, and immediately after a consultation took place to decide how we should amuse ourselves; and it was determined that the barge should be prepared, and that we should row down the creek for an hour or two previous to dinner. We walked into the grounds, and went to see some pictures in a house belonging to him, in which the strangers are lodged who visit him; and here one of the Miss Monges exhibited a scene which I confess astonished me a little. When he asked me to walk up stairs, he desired Miss Monges to see if her apartment was in a state to be seen; expressing his doubts upon the subject—and giving her time to make arrangements. On our entering the apartment which is very handsome, he observed that one of the window curtains was closed, and obscured the prospect; and went directly to it took the pin out of the curtain, and pulled out two gowns, and a dirty flannel petticoat, which Miss Cora had thus concealed, and gave them to her sister; when Miss Cora walked in, and on his speaking to her about her slutishness, she seized him by the collar of his coat and held her finger in his face, shaking it in a threatening attitude; so disgusting, that we could scarcely forbear expressing our indignation at her ill manners, and her vulgarity….

He avoids every thing like distinction, and says he wishes to be considered as an American gentleman only. We had a charming dinner and afterwards the Tragedy of Iphigenie of Racine, which he read in a fine style assisted by his daughter, Miss Monges, and Capt Sarry. Mr Hopkinson says he is a fine scholar; and he appears to me to be a man of taste and judgement, without parade and ostentation…. On parting I thanked him for his polite attention, as well as his daughters; and expressed a hope that I might be enabled to make some slight return at some future day—to which they replied they only wished that my stay could be prolonged among them, and that they regretted very much the necessity of my departure—Walked home with Gen [Lallemand]. (7)

Louisa returned to Philadelphia. A few days later, Joseph’s servant arrived with a small painting from Charlotte, “begging my acceptance of it as a remembrance, it being done by herself. I wrote my thanks and took the same opportunity of expressing my sense of her father’s attention.” (8)

On October 6, Louisa wrote to her son Charles, who was at Harvard with Joseph’s nephew Jerome Bonaparte.

I have passed a couple of weeks at Borden Town with Mrs. Hopkinson’s family and became acquainted with Joseph Bonaparte who was most kind and attentive to me during my stay. He told me that his nephew young Bonaparte was in college and I understood was your classmate. He is said to be a very fine young man and it would give me great pleasure if by your civilities to him you would in some measure repay my debt to his uncle to whom I fear I shall have no opportunity of returning the civilities which he literally showered upon me during my stay in his delightful neighbourhood. (9)

You might also enjoy:

Charlotte Bonaparte, Napoleon’s Artistic Niece

Joseph Hopkinson, Joseph Bonaparte’s Great Friend

Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s American Nephew

When Basil Hall Met Napoleon

“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 16 September 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4164.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 19 September 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4165.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 21 September 1822 to 23 September 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4169.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 27 September 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4175.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to John Quincy Adams, 2 October 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4178.
“From Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams to Charles Francis Adams, 6 October 1822,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified December 28, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-4181.

In view of all the alternate history about Napoleon, of which Napoleon in America is an example, it is worth noting that a prolific speculator about Napoleonic “what-ifs” was Bonaparte himself. Napoleon often posited counterfactuals, particularly when he was in exile on St. Helena. Here are some of Napoleon’s alternate history scenarios.

Napoleon at the burning of Moscow in 1812. What if the fire hadn’t happened?

If his father had not died young

Napoleon’s father, Carlo Maria Buonaparte (Charles Bonaparte), died of stomach cancer in February 1785, when Napoleon was 15 years old.

If my father, who died before he attained the age of forty, had survived some time longer, he would have been appointed deputy from the Corsican nobility to the Constituent Assembly. He was much attached to the nobility and the aristocracy; on the other hand, he was a warm partisan of generous and liberal ideas. He would, therefore, have been entirely on the right side, or at least in the minority of the nobility. At any rate, whatever might have been my own personal opinions, I should have followed my father’s footsteps, and thus my career would have been entirely deranged and lost. (1)

If his invasion force had reached England

Between 1803 and 1805 Napoleon gathered an army of 200,000 men on the north coast of France and built a flotilla of barges with the intention of invading England. He called the invasion off when his plan to gain temporary control of the English Channel failed.

Had I succeeded in effecting a landing, I have very little doubt that I should have accomplished my views. Three thousand boats, each to carry twenty men and one horse, with a proportion of artillery were ready. Your [the British] fleet having been decoyed away…would have left me master of the Channel…. Four days would have brought me to London. In a country like England, abounding in plains, defence is very difficult. I have no doubt that your troops would have done their duty, but one battle lost, the capital would have been in my power. You could not have collected a force sufficiently strong to beat me in a pitched battle. Your ideas of burning and destroying the towns, and the capital itself, are very plausible in argument, but impracticable in their accomplishment. You would have fought a battle and lost it. …

I would have offered you a constitution of your own choice, and have said ‘Assemble in London deputies from the people to fix upon a constitution.’ I would have called upon Burdett and other popular leaders to organize one according to the wishes of the people. I would have declared the [king] fallen from the [throne], abolished the nobility, proclaimed liberty, freedom, and equality.

Think you, that in order to keep the house of [Hanover] on the [throne] your rich citizens, merchants, and others of London, would have consented to sacrifice their riches, their houses, their families, and all their dearest interests, especially when I had made them comprehend that I only came to [send the king] away, and to give them liberty? No, it is contrary to history and to human nature…. Your principal people have too much to lose by resistance, and your canaille too much to gain by a change. If…they supposed that I wanted to render England a province of France, then indeed l’esprit national would do wonders. But I would have formed a republic according to your own wishes, required a moderate contribution, barely sufficient to have paid the troops, and perhaps not even that. Your canaille would have been for me knowing…that I am the man of the people, that I spring from the populace myself, and that whenever a man had merit or talent, I elevated him without asking how many degrees of nobility he had; knowing, that by joining me, they would be relieved from the yoke of the aristocracy under which they labour. (2)

If he had known warships could transport a lot of water

Napoleon also contemplated invading India.

[Admiral Plampin] says that a seventy-four gun ship will take about eighty tons more water by means of the tanks. Had I known this in 1806 or 1808, I would have sent an army of thirty-thousand men to invade India. I had made several calculations about the possibility of sending so large a body of men to India, but always found that they would have been short of water for a month. …

In Brest, I had at one time as many as fifty-six sail of the line, and often forty-six. In forty of these line-of-battle ships, I intended to have dispersed thirty thousand soldiers, eight hundred in each, and only four hundred sailors. There were to have been a proportionate number of frigates and other smaller vessels. Ten of the line-of-battle ships would have been old and of little value. They were also to take on board six or eight hundred dismounted cavalry, and a portion of artillery, with everything necessary for an army to take the field, and be provisioned for four months. They were to make the best of their way to the Isle of France, where they would have watered and provisioned afresh, landed their sick, and taken on board some other troops to replace them, with three thousand blacks to form colonial regiments. From thence they were to have proceeded to India, and to have disembarked in the nearest possible place, so as to have allowed the Mahrattas, with whom I had an understanding to join them. They were to form the cavalry of the army. A few of the French were also to be mounted, and all the horses they could procure purchased. After landing, they were to have burnt the ten old ships, and divided their crews amongst the rest, who would have been thus full manned. They would then proceed in different directions, and do you all possible mischief in your settlements. …

All this plan, however, was frustrated by the calculations I had made, which showed me that the ships must fall short of water by a month. Had I known of those tanks, I certainly would have made the attempt. (3)

If Moscow had not been burnt

In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. He made it as far as Moscow, only to find that the Russians had evacuated the city. Fires set by Russian saboteurs then destroyed most of Moscow. Napoleon retreated without having attained a decisive victory. The failure of the Russian campaign is considered one of the reasons for Napoleon’s downfall.

[If Moscow had not been burnt] I should then have held up the singular spectacle of an army wintering in the midst of a hostile nation. … On the first appearance of fine weather, I should have marched against the enemy: I should have beaten them; I should have been master of their empire. [Russian Tsar] Alexander, be assured, would not have suffered me to proceed so far. He would have agreed to all the conditions which I might have dictated, and France would then have begun to enjoy all her advantages. And, truly, my success depended upon a mere trifle. For I had undertaken the expedition to fight against armed men, not against nature in the violence of her wrath….

Peace, concluded at Moscow, would have fulfilled and wound up my hostile expeditions. It would have been with respect to the grand cause, the term of casualties and the commencement of security. A new horizon, new undertakings, would have unfolded themselves, adapted, in every respect, to the well-being and prosperity of all. The foundation of the European system would have been laid, and my only remaining task would have been its organization.

Satisfied on these grand points, and everywhere at peace, I should have also had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. These are plans which were filched from me. In that assembly of all the sovereigns, we should have discussed our interest in a family way, and settled our accounts with the people, as a clerk does with his master. …

On my return to France…I would have proclaimed the immutability of boundaries; all future wars as purely defensive, all new aggrandizement as anti-national. I would have associated my son with me in the empire; my dictatorship would have terminated and his constitutional reign commenced.

Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy of nations! … My leisure and my old age would have been devoted, in company with the Empress, and, during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to visiting slowly and with our own horses, like a plain country couple, every corner of the empire; to receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, founding monuments, and doing good everywhere and by every means! (4)

If things had gone differently at the Battle of Waterloo

On June 18, 1815, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by a coalition of British, German, Dutch-Belgian and Prussian forces led by the Duke of Wellington and Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher. I have already written about Napoleon’s general thoughts on the battle. Here are a few of his alternate history speculations.

If Marshal Blucher had not arrived at eight with his first and second corps, the [French] march on Brussels with two columns, during the battle of the 17th, would have been attended with several advantages. The left would have pressed upon and kept in check the Anglo-Dutch army; the right, under the command of Marshal Grouchy, would have pursued and restrained the operations of the Prusso-Saxon army; and in the evening the whole of the French army would have effected its junction on a line of less than five leagues from Mont Saint Jean to Wavres, with its advanced posts on the edge of the forest. …

The horse grenadiers and dragoons of the guard, under the command of General Guyot, engaged without orders. Thus at five in the afternoon, the army found itself without a reserve of cavalry. If, at half past eight, that reserve had existed, the storm which swept all before it on the field of battle would have been dispersed, the enemy’s charges of cavalry driven back, and the two armies would have slept on the field, notwithstanding the successive arrivals of General Bulow and Marshal Blucher: the advantage would also have been in favour of the French army, as Marshal Grouchy’s 34,000 men, with 108 pieces of cannon, were fresh troops and bivouacked on the field of battle. The enemy’s two armies would have placed themselves in the night under cover of the forest of Soignes. …

If Marshal Grouchy had encamped in front of Wavres in the night between the 17th and 18th, no detachment could have been sent by the Prussians to save the English army, which must have been completely beaten by the 69,000 French opposed to it. (5)

If he had made his brother governor of Corsica

When Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France in 1815, his brother Joseph advised him to appoint their younger brother Lucien as governor of Corsica, which is where Napoleon and his family came from. Lucien would thus have been in that position when Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo.

If Lucien had gone to Corsica, he would still have remained master of the Island, and what resources would it not have presented to our persecuted patriots? To how many unfortunate families would not Corsica have afforded an asylum? [Napoleon] repeated that he had perhaps committed a fault, at the time of his abdication, in not reserving to himself the sovereignty of Corsica, together with the possession of some millions of the civil list; and in not having conveyed all his valuables to Toulon, whence nothing could have impeded his passage. In Corsica, he would have found himself at home; the whole population would have been, as it were, his own family. He might have disposed of every arm and every heart. Thirty thousand or even 50,000 allied troops could not have subdued him. (6)

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Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. II (New York, 1855), p. 132.
Barry O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile, or, A Voice from St. Helena, Vol. II (London, 1822), pp. 378-380. O’Meara notes, “Napoleon frequently used the word canaille, not in a degrading sense, but as the people, distinct from the nobles.”
Ibid., pp. 197-198.
Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. III (New York, 1855), pp. 164-166.
Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. II, pp. 186, 187, 192.
Ibid., p. 215.

A game of charades in Vanity Fair

Have you ever played charades? Charades began in France in the late 18th century as a type of riddle. In a charade, each syllable of the answer (a word or short phrase) was described enigmatically as a separate word, then the answer as a whole was described in similar cryptic fashion. A charade could be given in prose or in verse. Here are some examples.

My first I hope you are; my second I see you are; and my whole I know you are. (Welcome)

My first is equally friendly to the thief and the lover: my second is light’s opposite; yet they are frequently seen hand in hand, and their union, if judicious, gives much pleasure. My whole is tempting to the touch, grateful to the sight, but fatal to the taste. (Nightshade)

My first is something rather lean;
My second is your wife:
My whole is on your table seen,
Beneath the carving-knife. (Spare-rib)

My first is the lot that is destin’d by fate
For my second to meet with in every state;
My whole is by many philosophers reckon’d
To bring very often my first to my second. (Woman)

My first brave Nelson yielded, midst the jar
Of angry battle, and the din of war;
My second, when from labour we retreat,
Far from polite, yet offers us a seat:
My whole is but my second more complete. (Armchair) (1)

Acting charades

In the early 19th century, people began to act out charades as a parlour game.

The players divide themselves into two parties, who take it in turn to act and to guess the word…. The actors go out of the room and choose a word of two or more syllables, each syllable or division of the word having a separate meaning. For instance: Improbability, Imp-Rob-Ability, Rail-Way, Ram-pant, Miss-Fortune. After having arranged the part that every person is to take, they return to the company, and represent each syllable in its turn, and lastly the entire word. (2)

Props and costumes were common, actors were allowed to speak (as long they didn’t mention the answer), and the scenes could be quite elaborate. Becky Sharp acted out this type of charade for the Prince Regent in Chapter 51 of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848).

The Duke of Wellington plays charades

Napoleon reportedly played charades with his wife Josephine and others at her home of Malmaison. While we have no specific account of such a game, we do have a description of a game of charades played by the Duke of Wellington in January 1821. The players included fellow Napoleon in America character Dorothea Lieven, as well as Harriet Leveson-Gower (Countess Granville), Granville Leveson-Gower, Charles Greville, George Agar-Ellis, Edward Montagu (later Baron Rokeby), Philipp von Neumann, the Marquess of Worcester, and Georgiana, Lady Worcester (Wellington’s favourite niece, who died a few months later). The description appears in a letter written by Countess Granville.

Yesterday we acted charades and you have no idea how amusing it is. I will give you an idea of it. The society divides itself into two parts. Granville, Agar, myself and Mr. Montagu, as audience, had to guess the following which we did. First they put a row of cushions to represent a river, over which Charles Greville handed Madame de Lieven, in a hat and pelisse, with great difficult. Next came the Duke, happier than when he won his battles, with Lady Worcester equipped like Madame de Lieven, in his arms to carry her across. Next hobbled Neumann and fell, Worcester then, rubbing him dry and wringing his clothes.

This was gué [ford].

Next they came in dressed like Turks with turbans, and Neumann with a muff on his head, and they sit in a circle cross-legged.

This is riz [rice].

Then Madame de Lieven, sick, in a bedgown, is led to one couch, Worcester with a swelled face in agonies with the toothache to another. Charles comes in, feels her pulse and gives her pills and a draught. He then goes to Worcester and in the most masterly manner draws his tooth. They both jump up from the immediate effect of his remedies and dance about.

Guéris [cured]. (3)

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Humour in the 19th Century: 200-Year-Old Jokes

W. Jones, Riddles, Charades, and Conundrums (London, 1822), pp. 117, 133, 139, 142.
Julia Charlotte Maitland, Historical Charades (London, 1847), p. 2.
Edward Frederick Leveson-Gower (ed.), Letters of Harriet Countess Granville, 1810-1845, Vol. I (London, 1894), pp. 202-203.

America’s sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was inaugurated on March 4, 1825, at the age of 57 years and 7 months. Adams was Secretary of State in the outgoing administration of President James Monroe. He had finished behind Andrew Jackson in the number of popular votes and electoral votes received in the 1824 presidential election. However, since no candidate reached the 131 electoral vote majority necessary to win, the election was decided by the House of Representatives, which voted in favor of John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams by Charles Robert Leslie

Adams was aware of his relative lack of popularity. Comments like this were appearing in the press.

We did not think it possible that the representatives of the people would undertake to act in direct opposition to the expressed will of their constituents, but it turns out we were mistaken. The friends of Mr. Adams have claimed for him the character of one of the greatest diplomatists of the age, and the result of this election shows that he is fully entitled to it. Let him enjoy all the honor and comfort that an elevation so attained can confer.

Had the number of electoral votes given to General Jackson and Mr. Adams put the former fifteen votes lower than the latter named candidate, we should have been truly sorry to see Gen. Jackson elected by Congress; and had he been so elected, his past life demonstrates that he would have declined the situation. Should he not have declined it, he would have forfeited, in the eyes of the American people, the reputation he has earned. How Mr. Adams is to be affected in this respect, time will show; but if he has not a boisterous administration of it, we know nothing about public opinion and feeling. (1)

Sleepless nights

Adams spent two sleepless nights before his inauguration, “occasioned by the unceasing excitement of many past days; the pressure of business in the Department of State, always heavy at the close of a session of Congress, now redoubled at the close of my own service of eight years in the office of Secretary; the bustle of preparation for the new condition upon which I was to enter; the multitudes of visitors, upon great varieties of business, or for curiosity; the anxieties of an approaching crisis, and, above all the failing and threatening state of my wife’s health.” (2)

Louisa Adams – the first foreign-born First Lady of the United States – was “very ill.” The evening of March 3, she “was seized with a violent fever,” for which she was bled in an attempt to provide relief. Before daybreak, Louisa’s fever was joined by “a long and alarming fainting fit.” (3)

A lively and animated scene

Friday, March 4th dawned cloudy in Washington. A tired John Quincy Adams “entered upon this day with a supplication to Heaven, first, for my country; secondly, for myself and for those connected with my good name and fortunes, that the last results of its events may be auspicious and blessed.” (4)

A Washington newspaper described the activity around the Capitol.

At an early hour…the avenues to the Capitol presented a lively and animated scene. Groups of citizens hastening to the great theatre of expectation were to be seen in all directions; carriages were rolling to and fro, and ever and anon the sound of the drum and trumpet, at a distance, gave notice that the military were in motion and repairing to their different parade grounds. The crowd at the doors of the Capitol began to accumulate about nine o’clock, and, although ladies were allowed the privilege of their sex in being admitted to seats reserved for them in the lobbies of the House of Representatives, they had to attain the envied station at no small sacrifice, and the gentlemen who led and guarded them were obliged in some instances almost literally to fight their way to the doors.

Towards 12 o’clock, the military, consisting of General and Staff Officers and the Volunteer Companies of the 1st and 2d Legion, received the President at his residence, with his predecessor, and several officers of the Government. The cavalry led the way, and the procession moved in very handsome array, with the music of several corps, to the Capitol, attended by thousands of citizens. The President was attended on horseback by the Marshal, with his assistants for the day, distinguished by blue badges, &c. On arriving at the Capitol, the President, with his escort, was received by the Marine corps…whose excellent band of music saluted the Presidents on their entrance into the Capitol.

Within the Hall, the sofas between the columns, the entire space of the circular lobby without, the bar, the spacious promenade in the rear of the Speaker’s chair, and the three outer rows of the member’s seats, were all occupied with a splendid array of beauty and fashion. On the left, the Diplomatic Corps, in the costume of their respective courts, occupied the places assigned them…. The officers of our own Army and Navy were seen dispersed among the groups of ladies, exhibiting that most appropriate and interesting of associations, valor guarding beauty. Chairs were placed in front of the Clerk’s table, on the semicircle within the member’s seats, for the Judges of the Supreme Court. The hour of twelve arrived and expectation was on tiptoe – the march of the troops, announced by the band of the marine corps, was heard without, and many a waving plume and graceful head within beat time to the martial sounds. The galleries, though filled to overflowing, were remarkable for the stillness and decorum which (with a very few exceptions) prevailed.

At 20 minutes past twelve, the Marshals made their appearances in blue scarves, succeeded by the officers of both Houses of Congress, who introduced the President Elect. He was followed by the venerable Ex-President and family, by the Judges of the Supreme Court, in their robes of office, and the Members of the Senate, preceded by the Vice President, with a number of Members of the House of Representatives. Mr. Adams, in a plain suit of black, ascended the steps to the Speaker’s chair and took his seat. (5)

John Quincy Adams was the first president to wear full-length trousers (rather than knee breeches) to his inauguration.

A mass of intellectual strength

Although there was no suggestion of a security threat, one journalist observed:

Within that little space was concentrated a mass of intellectual strength, calculated, when called into energetic action, to shake this continent from one end to the other, and to cause its motion to be felt throughout the civilized world. There, within a few feet of each other, stood Adams, and Monroe, and Clay, and Marshall, and Jackson, and Cheves, and Calhoun, and Webster, and Story, and Emmet, and Tazewell, and Wirt. The explosion of a single shell would have created a chasm such as this country would have felt for a century. (6)

The inaugural address

Once seated in the Speaker’s chair, John Quincy Adams read his inaugural address, which took about half an hour and was rather dull, but received a long applause. In it, he tried to heal electoral divisions.

Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feeling of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this government; and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.…

There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the nation, who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other; of embracing, as countrymen and friends; and of yielding to talents and virtue alone, that confidence which, in times of contention for principle, was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.…

Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances of the recent election, which have resulted in affording me the opportunity of addressing you at this time. You have heard the exposition of the principles which will direct me in the fulfilment of the high and solemn trust imposed upon me in this station. Less possessed of your confidence, in advance, than any of my predecessors, I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener in need of your indulgence. Intentions, upright and pure; a heart devoted to the welfare of our country, and the unceasing application of all the faculties allotted to me, to her service, are all the pledges that I can give for the faithful performance of the arduous duties I am to undertake.

To the guidance of the legislative councils; to the assistance of the executive and subordinate departments; to the friendly co-operation of the respective state governments; to the candid and liberal support of the people, so far as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service: and knowing that, except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain, with fervent supplications for his favor, to his overruling Providence, I commit, with humble but fearless confidence, my own fate, and the future destinies of my country. (7)

The oath of office

Then, placing his hand on a volume of the laws of the United States, held up to him by Chief Justice John Marshall, John Quincy Adams read the oath of office of President of the United States.

The congratulations which then poured in from every side occupied the hands, and could not but reach the heart of the President. The meeting between him and his venerated predecessor had in it something peculiarly affecting. General Jackson, we were pleased to observe, was among the earliest of those who took the hand of the President; and their looks and deportment toward each other were a rebuke to that littleness of party spirit, which can see no merit in a rival, and feel no joy in the honor of a competitor. Shortly after one o’clock, the procession commenced leaving the Hall; but it was nearly an hour before the clustering groups which had crowded every seat and avenue completely retired.

The President was then escorted back as he came, and, on his arrival at his residence, received the compliments and respects of a great number of gentlemen and ladies who called upon him, who also generally paid their respects at the Mansion occupied by the Ex-President. (8)

Adams noted in his diary:

I found at my house a crowd of visitors, which continued about two hours, and received their felicitations. Before the throng had subsided, I went myself to the President’s house, and joined with the multitude of visitors to Mr. Monroe there. I then returned home to dine, and in the evening attended the ball, which was also crowded, at Carusi’s Hall. (9)

The inaugural ball

Throughout the day Louisa Adams continued to feel extremely ill. She received visitors in the drawing room before dinner, but was not well enough to go out in the rain to the inaugural ball.

The ball at the City Assembly Rooms in honor of the inauguration of the President and Vice-President…was more numerously attended, and exhibited, perhaps, a greater display of beauty and respectability, than has ever been witnessed on a similar occasion in this city.

The President of the United States, the Ex-President, and the Vice-President, with their families; most of the representatives of the foreign Courts, and nearly all the members of the Senate and House of Representatives who still remained in the city; many officers of the Army and Navy, and visitors of distinction from different parts of the Union; and a large number of our own citizens, were present, making altogether an assemblage of nearly a thousand persons.

In the ball room, which was most tastefully decorated, the dancing continued without interruption until past the midnight hour. About ten o’clock, the supper tables in the room below were filled by as many of the company as could be seated at once. At the head of the centre table the President took his seat under a canopy, which had been prepared for him and some of the most distinguished guests…neither expense nor exertion appear to have been spared to render the supper superior to any which has ever been given in this city. (10)

Adams did not stay for the whole thing.

Immediately after supper I withdrew, and came home. I closed the day as it had begun, with thanksgiving to God for all His mercies and favors past, and with prayers for the continuance of them to my country, and to myself and mine. (11)

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Louisville Public Advertiser (Louisville, Kentucky), March 2, 1825.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI (Philadelphia, 1875), pp. 516-517.
John Quincy Adams Diary, March 3 & 4, 1825 [electronic edition], The Diaries of John Quincy Adams: A Digital Collection, Vol. 33, p. 103, Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/php/doc?id=jqad33_103. Accessed January 19, 2017.
“The Inauguration,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), March 5, 1825.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI, p. 518.
Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), March 17, 1825.
Niles’ Weekly Register (Baltimore, MD), March 5, 1825.
“The Inauguration,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), March 5, 1825.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI, p. 519.
Daily National Journal (Washington, DC), March 7, 1825.
Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VI, p. 519.

Madame de Genlis by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1790

Madame de Genlis was a popular and prolific writer of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her works were widely read throughout Europe, as well as in her native France. As governor to the children of the Orléans branch of the royal family – a rare position for a woman – Madame de Genlis became known for her innovative approach to education. After losing her husband and fortune in the French Revolution, Madame de Genlis turned to Napoleon Bonaparte for support. In return, Napoleon required her to write him regular letters. This led to suspicions that she was Napoleon’s spy.

Musical prodigy

Stéphanie Félicité du Crest was born into a family of minor nobility on January 25, 1746 at Champcéry near Autun in Burgundy. Félicité’s parents – constantly in debt – were not particularly attentive to her education. Her musical skill and taste for literature developed when she and her mother were compelled to stay with relatives in Paris while her father tried to make some money in Saint-Domingue. By the age of 15 she was considered a virtuoso on the harp.

When she was 17, Félicité married Charles-Alexis Brûlart, the Comte de Genlis (later the Marquis of Sillery). Genlis was an aristocratic colonel of grenadiers who had been imprisoned in England with Félicité’s father. The new Madame de Genlis made up for the gaps in her education by adopting a rigorous schedule of learning: she took up drawing and painting; she practiced music; she read avidly; and she began to write a diary. She also gave birth to two daughters, Caroline (b. 1765) and Pulchérie (b. 1767), and a son, Casimir (b. 1768), who died of measles at the age of five.

Educational innovator

In 1770, at the age of 24, Madame de Genlis became a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Chartres. The Duchess and her husband – the future Duke of Orléans, also known as Philippe-Egalité – were members of France’s ruling Bourbon dynasty. The Duke entered into a brief affair with Madame de Genlis, and contemporaries believed that the couple had an illegitimate daughter.

In 1777, the Duke and Duchess made Madame de Genlis governess of their newborn twin daughters. In 1782, the Duke extended her position to include governorship of the couple’s three sons. This caused a scandal. Women in France did not typically oversee the education of adolescent aristocratic boys, let alone princes. The eldest son later became the Duke of Orléans, who poses a threat to the ruling Bourbons in Napoleon in America. In 1830, he became King Louis Philippe of France.

At a time when French education consisted mainly of instruction in traditional disciplines like classics, history and mythology, Madame de Genlis taught her charges natural history, geography, physics, anatomy, modern languages (Italian, English and German instead of Latin and Greek), and manual trades. She took them on field trips. She instructed them in religion, music and theatre. She also wrote prodigiously. In 1779, she published Théâtre à l’usage des jeunes personnes, a book of plays for children.

These dramas are mere treatises of morality put into action, and it is hoped the Young may find them not devoid of interesting and persuasive lessons: besides, from learning by heart, and representing these Plays, many advantages will result; excellent principles will be graven on the minds of the Performers, their memory will be exercised, their pronunciation formed, and they will acquire grace and a pleasing deportment. (1)

This was followed by more volumes of plays, along with numerous pedagogical tracts, pamphlets and articles. In 1782, Madame de Genlis published a long epistolary novel, Adèle et Théodore ou Lettres sur l’éducation, which became popular across Europe.

The French Revolution parted Madame de Genlis from her pupils, and took the life of both her husband and her employer. She went into exile, first in England, then in Switzerland and Germany. Madame de Genlis supported herself by writing and painting. Among other things, she published a bilingual guidebook (in French and in German – later expanded to include English, Italian, Spanish and Russian) that provided phrases helpful for travel at the time. For example, here is some suggested dialogue in the event of “a warrior in an enemy’s country and asking victuals in a private house.”

[The warrior:] My friends, don’t be afraid, we will do you no harm. We want victuals without any delay. Give us bread, wine, brandy, beer and potatoes. Make haste. We must have them and don’t force us to search your house violently….

[The resident of the house:] Brave warrior, may you be blessed by God as you are blessed by your enemy! (2)

Madame de Genlis returned to France in 1800. As her husband’s assets had been dispersed, she continued to live by her pen, writing on education, morals and religion. Though she remained a supporter of monarchy, she did not write about politics, and (unlike her counterpart Madame de Staël) she did not criticize Napoleon Bonaparte. Instead, Madame de Genlis sought Napoleon’s favour.

Napoleon’s spy?

In 1802, Napoleon provided Madame de Genlis with an apartment in the Arsenal Library. After becoming Emperor in 1804, he granted her a pension of 6,000 francs a year. In return, Napoleon required that Madame de Genlis write him regular letters. Some thought this was a pretext for her to act as Napoleon’s spy among partisans of the ancien régime. French Foreign Minister Talleyrand (not always a reliable source) recounted how, on the evening of the Battle of Austerlitz, he read to Napoleon the “report” of Madame de Genlis.

It was long, and written entirely in her own hand. She spoke of the spirit of Paris, and quoted a few offensive conversations held, she said, in those houses which were then called Faubourg Saint-Germain; she named five or six families, which, never, she added, would rally to the government of the emperor. Some rather biting expressions which Mme. de Genlis reported set Napoleon in an inconceivable state of fury; he swore and stormed against the Faubourg Saint-Germain. (3)

However, according to Napoleon’s private secretary Baron Méneval, the letters were simply intended to make Madame de Genlis feel that she was not living on imperial charity.

Madame de Genlis…on her return from exile, had found herself like many other honourable exiles, in a state of destitution. The Minister of the Interior, M. Chaptal, gave her an apartment in the buildings of the Arsenal library. Madame de Genlis lived there on the income produced by her numerous books, and some assistance which she received from the funds reserved for literary people. When Napoleon became Emperor he ordered Lavalette to pay her five hundred francs a month, and, in order to spare her feelings, had told her that he wished her to write to him every fortnight on matters of literature and morality. The help which Madame de Genlis received from Napoleon’s generosity, the help which was afterwards extended to her by Queen Julia of Naples, and the resources procured from the sale of her works, did not prevent her from being invariably in embarrassed circumstances. She used to apply to me when she wanted some advance on the income allowed her by the Emperor…. (4)

Napoleon never met with Madame de Genlis. Their relations were confined to letter writing. While the letters do not appear to have survived, Madame de Genlis jotted down some of the “Subjects of Notes for the Emperor.” These included:

On injustice in general. The thing it is most difficult to endure.
On Magnetism.
On the sorceresses of Paris – Mlle. Normand.
On dreams, etc.
On the house of M. de Choiseul.
On the newspapers. (Keep this clear of politics.)
On the inns of Spain
On the occult sciences. (5)

She also described her relations with the Orléans family, related accounts of Court in the pre-revolutionary days, and provided Napoleon with advice on the primary education of girls. In 1812, Napoleon appointed Madame de Genlis inspectress of the schools in her district of Paris. He did not, however, sufficiently trust her to educate his nieces, Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte.

M. Sabatier…had introduced Madame de Genlis to the virtuous Julie Bonaparte [wife of Napoleon’s brother Joseph], at that time Queen of Naples, and had advised his friend at the same time to ask to be allowed to take charge of the education of the Queen’s daughters. Madame de Genlis, who thought herself born with the vocation for teaching and guiding her neighbour by inculcating her opinions and principles, had jumped at this idea. She wrote in consequence to the Emperor to obtain his consent in the matter. This application was contained in her fortnightly paper, and was accompanied by protestations of gratitude and the expression of her wish to show her gratitude for the kindness of the august head of the family, by assiduous attention in carrying out the duties which such a post would impose. But this letter was not answered, and Napoleon, on the contrary, told his sister-in-law that such a choice would displease him. The Queen on her side had far too much tact to wish to put her neck in such a yoke. She also knew that King Joseph would be very reluctant to give his consent. This consideration would have sufficed to hold the Queen back, even if she could have made up her mind to entrust the education of her daughters to a woman of admitted talents, no doubt, but who was totally unfitted for such a post by associations and prejudices which were incompatible with the new imperial government. To console Madame de Genlis for the Emperor’s refusal, Queen Julia, with that feeling of goodness and generosity which characterized her, accorded her a pension of three thousand francs from her private purse. No allusion, as far as I know, to this act of kindness, is contained in the memoirs of the woman who benefited by it. (6)

When Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome, was born, Madame de Genlis composed a song for the baby.

The notes of this lullaby were represented by little roses, which had been delicately drawn and illuminated by her hand. This little composition altogether was carried out with the neatness and elegance which Madame de Genlis displayed in her manual work. (7)

Madame de Genlis also established a correspondence with Napoleon’s sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Among other things, Elisa consulted Madame de Genlis on the choice of a governess for her daughter Napoléone. Madame de Genlis recommended her niece, Henriette de Sercey, Baroness de Finguerlin, who took up the post in early 1812 and held it until Napoleon’s first abdication in 1814. Meanwhile, Madame de Genlis and Elisa kept up a regular correspondence. Madame de Genlis wrote and illustrated at least two instructive notebooks for young Napoléone. She also wrote a book for Elisa on court etiquette during the ancien régime, which Elisa used as a guide in administering her own court.

When the Bourbons returned to power in 1814, Madame de Genlis offered her services to King Louis XVIII. In 1816, the Irish novelist Lady Morgan visited her and asked about the Napoleon letters.

I had been told in Paris that Madame de Genlis had carried on a secret correspondence with the late emperor, which is another term for the higher walks of espionage. I ventured one day to talk to her on the subject; and she entered on it with great promptitude and frankness. ‘Buonaparte,’ she said, ‘was extremely liberal to literary people – a pension of four thousand francs, per annum, was assigned to all authors and gens-de-lettres, whose circumstances admitted of their acceptance of such a gratuity. He gave me, however, six thousand, and a suite of apartments at the Arsenal. As I had never spoken to him, never had any intercourse with him whatever, I was struck with this liberality, and asked him what he expected I should do to merit it? When the question was put to Napoleon, he replied carelessly, ‘Let Madame de Genlis write me a letter once a month.’ As no subject was dictated, I chose literature, but I always abstained from politics. Madame de Genlis added that though she never had any interview with him, yet on her recommendation he had pensioned five indigent persons of literary talent. (8)

Final years

Madame de Genlis continued to write right up until her death. In 1825, she published her memoirs. Dorothea Lieven expressed her opinion of them to Clemens von Metternich:

Madame de Genlis’s fourth volume is detestable. Her style is watery and feeble. It hasn’t an idea in it; in short, she bores me. The first two volumes interested me in spite of their puerility, or possibly because of it; for they give one an idea of the careless happiness the French enjoyed before, and almost up to the very moment of their bloody revolution. (9)

After living long enough to see her former pupil, the Duke of Orléans, become King Louis Philippe, Madame de Genlis died in her sleep on December 31, 1830 at the age of 84. Her remains were transferred to Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1839.

Madame de Genlis authored over 100 books, many of which are available for free on the Internet Archive.

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Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, The Theatre of Education, a New Translation from the French, Vol. I, (London, 1807), p. viii.
Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis, The Traveller’s Companion for Conversation, being a Collection of Such Expressions as Occur Most Frequently in Travelling and in the Different Situations of Life, Fifth Edition (Florence, 1821), pp. 440-442.
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand, Vol. 1, edited by Albert de Broglie, translated by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort (London, 1891), p. 226.
Claude-François de Méneval, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Napoleon I from 1802 to 1815, Vol. II, edited by Napoleon Joseph de Méneval (New York, 1894), pp. 436-437.
Jean Harmond, A Keeper of Royal Secrets: Being the Private and Political Life of Madame de Genlis (London, 1913), pp. 324-325.
Méneval, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Napoleon I from 1802 to 1815, Vol. II, pp. 437-438.
Ibid., p. 393.
Sydney, Lady Morgan, France (Philadelphia, 1817), p. 360.
Peter Quennell, ed. The Private Letters of Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich, 1820-1826 (New York, 1938), pp. 351-352.

The Karankawa Indians were a group of tribes who lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is today Texas. Archaeologists have traced the Karankawas back at least 2,000 years. The tribes were nomadic, ranging from Galveston Bay to Corpus Christi Bay and as far as 100 miles (160 km) inland. During much of the 18th century, the Karankawas were at war with the Spaniards in Texas. They then fought unsuccessfully to stay on their land after it was opened to Anglo-American settlement in the 1800s. By the 1860s, the Karankawas were thought to be extinct, although some probably still existed.

Karankawa Indians of the Gulf Coast. Watercolour by Lino Sánchez y Tapia

The Karankawa tribes

The Karankawa Indians were made up of five main tribes, related by language and culture: the Carancaguases (the Karankawa proper), Cocos, Cujanes, Guapites and Copanes. They depended on fishing, hunting and gathering for their food, particularly the fish and shellfish found in the shallow bays and lagoons of the central Texas coast. Their dugout canoes were not designed for travel in the open Gulf of Mexico. The Karankawas lived in wigwams – circular pole frames covered with mats or hides. They did not have a complex political organization. The Karankawas were unusually large for Native Americans. The men grew as tall as six feet and were noted for their strength.

Contact with white men

The first white men to encounter Karankawas were probably survivors of the Spanish Narváez expedition in 1528. Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his men received mixed treatment from the Indians along the Texas coast.

When French explorer Sieur de La Salle settled at Matagorda Bay in 1685, the number of Karankawa was estimated at about 400 men. One of the settlers, Henri Joutel, wrote that the Karankawas “came frequently in the night to range about us, howling like wolves and dogs; but two or three musket shots put them to flight.” (1) In 1688, after bad relations and killings on both sides, the Karankawas attacked the 20 or so remaining French colonists, massacring all but five children. They tattooed the children and held them captive until 1690-91, when Spanish authorities succeeded in bargaining for the children’s release. In 1698, two of the survivors, Jean Baptiste and Pierre Talon, were interrogated in France about their experience.

As for trade among [the Karankawas], nothing appeared easier, for they communicate voluntarily with the Europeans, whom they call the Sons of the Sun. They consider this celestial body, as well as the moon, to be some sort of divinity, without, however, their rendering them any worship; they do not think that they ever showed veneration for them. M. de la Salle would never have had war with the Clamcoëhs [Karankawas] if on arriving he had not high-handedly taken their canoes and refused them some little article of use that they asked him in return for them and for other services that they were ready to render to him. Nothing is easier than winning their friendship: a hatchet, a knife, a pair of scissors, a pin, a needle, a necklace or a bracelet or glass, wampum, or some other such trinkets being ordinarily the price, because they love passionately all sorts of knickknacks and baubles that are useful or ornamental. But also, as they give voluntarily of what they have, they do not like to be refused. And, while they are never aggressors, neither do they ever forget the pride of honor in their vengeance. But one need not fear their numbers, no matter how great. They never dare attack from the front Europeans armed with muskets and other firearms. There is nothing to fear from them but surprise attacks…. An unfailing means…that the Europeans still have of winning their friendship… is to take part in the wars that they often wage against others. They believe themselves unconquerable when they unite with Europeans and spread terror and fright everywhere among their enemies by the noise and effects of firearms, which they have never used and which they have always looked upon as inconceivable marvels. (2)

Karankawa relations with the Spaniards

In 1722, the Spanish colonial government established Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo and its attendant Presidio La Bahía near the site of La Salle’s former fort, in an attempt to convert and civilize the Karankawas. The Spaniards were unsuccessful in persuading the Indians to stay at the mission. A fresh attempt to convert the Karankawas by establishing Nuestra Señora del Rosario mission in 1754 also met with minimal success. By the 1780s, fighting between the Karankawas and the Spaniards in Texas had become chronic. The founding of Nuestra Señora del Refugio mission in 1793 was the last effort to convert the Karankawas. By 1824, 224 Indians were living at the mission. But attacks by Comanches and hostile Karankawas, as well as an unstable food supply, led to gradual abandonment of the Refugio Mission. It was closed in 1824.

Karankawa relations with American colonists

By this time Mexico had achieved its independence from Spain and Anglo-Americans were moving into Texas. During his first trip to Texas in 1821, Stephen Austin developed a dim view of the Karankawas, despite a peaceful encounter with the Cocos.

Started early and continued a SE course along the Lake. At the lower end the Indian war whoop was raised… and I immediately descried an Indian coming towards me, who beckoned me to stop & made signs of friendship. He advanced towards me into the prairie and was followed at a short distance by 14 warriors. I advanced about 20 yards ahead of my company directing them to be prepared for battle if necessary. Chief asked me in Spanish where I was from and where going. I informed him, he said they were Coacos, who I knew lived with the Karankawas. This induced me to watch them closely and refused to go to their camp or to permit them to go up to the men, until one of the chiefs laid down his arms and five squaws and a boy came up to me from their camp. This satisfied me they believed us to be too strong for them and therefore that they would not attack us (of their disposition to do so I had no doubt, if they thought they could have succeeded). Some of the warriors then went up to the men and appeared friendly. I gave the chief some tobacco and a frying pan that we did not want and parted apparently good friends. There was 15 warriors in the group. The chief informed me that they were going to encamp on the road to trade with the Spaniards and Americans. He said we could not reach the mouth of the river with horses owing to the thickets. He also said that there was a large body of Karankawas at the mouth.

These Indians were well formed and apparently very active and athletic men. Their bows were about 5 1/2 to 6 feet long, their arrows 2 to 3 well pointed with iron or steel. Some of the young squaws were handsome and one of them quite pretty. They had panther skins around their waist painted which extended down to the knee and calf of the leg. Above the waist though they were naked. Their breasts were marked or tattooed in circles of black beginning with a small circle at the nipple and enlarging as the breast swelled.

These Indians and the Karankawas may be called universal enemies to man – they killed of all nations that came in their power, and frequently feast on the bodies of their victims. The approach of an American population will be the signal of their extermination for there will be no way of subduing them but extermination. (3)

The colonists’ view of the Karankawas as ferocious savages was not helped by the failure of the latter to distinguish between the settlers’ livestock and the feral cattle they were used to hunting. The Karankawas also helped themselves to provisions that the settlers stockpiled along the shore. In 1823, the Karankawas killed two settlers and injured two others. The settlers retaliated by murdering nearly two dozen Karankawas. More killings followed. Colonist John H. Moore later recalled:

The Carankawaes were a tribe of large, sluggish Indians, who fed mostly on fish and alligators, and occasionally, by way of feast, on human flesh. They went always without moccasins, striding through briars unharmed, making such tracks as would hardly be attributable to a human being. Each man was required to have a bow the length of himself. The fight was an entire surprise. We all felt it was an act of justice and self-preservation. We were too weak to furnish food for Carankawaes, and had to be let alone to get bread for ourselves. Ungainly and repugnant, their cannibalism being beyond question, they were obnoxious to whites, whose patience resisted with difficulty their frequent attacks upon the scanty population of the colonies, and when it passed endurance they went to their chastisement with alacrity. (4)

It is in this context that Napoleon Bonaparte and his men come to the aid of Austin’s colonists against the Karankawas in Napoleon in America.

In late 1824, the Karankawas sued for peace with Austin’s colony. In return for an end to the colonists’ attacks, the Karankawas agreed to abandon their use of the lower Brazos, lower Colorado and lower Lavaca rivers and remain west of the Guadalupe River. This proved difficult, as other Native American tribes were already using that area. In September 1825, Austin accused the Karankawas of breaking the treaty. He gave orders to his militia to pursue and kill any Karankawa Indians found east of the Guadalupe.

The road to extinction

In 1827, the official campaign of extermination ended with a new treaty between Austin’s colony and the Karankawas. But the killings, along with disease, had taken a toll. When French naturalist Jean-Louis Berlandier visited Texas in 1828, there were about 100 Karankawa families left. Berlandier described them as follows.

The Carancahueses have many pirogues, and one can see their little fleets moving from one island to the next in search of food. Fishing is their principal occupation and their main diet is fish, augmented with tortoises and alligators which they hunt in the rivers. These island people, since many of them live on the Bay islands, have a reputation as the most skilled of all savages with the bow and arrow. I have seen them attract fish in the bays and inlets by flailing the water around their pirogues, then use their bows and arrows to shoot the fish that came to the surface. …

The people of all these coast tribes are extremely brave and all are excellent swimmers. They have a musky odor about them, which the Spanish call amizle, which they doubtless acquire from eating alligator. Most of the Carancahueses used to live at the Refugio Mission near the Bahia del Espiritu Santo. Father Muro kept them busy at agriculture there, but when the revolution came they were scattered.

The Carancahueses are a big people, with robust, well formed, athletic bodies. They wear their hair loose to the shoulders but cut in front to the level of the eyebrows, like the Mexicans. They wear cock feathers behind their ears and a wreath of Indian grass or palm leaves on their heads. They paint lines of vermilion around their eyes and often smear their brown bodies with white or black or red paint. They never wear teguas [buckskin footgear], their peregoso [breechclout] is white, and their favorite weapons are the bow and dagger. This does not mean that they underrate the gun, which they highly appreciate. It is just that they are usually too poor to buy one. (5)

During the Texas Revolution of 1835-36, the Karankawas switched sides several times. By then, the Karankawas had been pushed off their traditional lands. They tried to rebuild their lives on the plain between the Lavaca and Nueces rivers, but the disproportionate loss of men made it hard to survive. Some worked as day laborers for ranchers. When British writer William Bollaert looked for surviving Karankawas on the Gulf Coast in 1842-43, he learned of “only some dozen individuals of the Karonks at Corpus Christi and another small remnant at Matagorda.” (6)

In 1858, a rumour circulated that the last of the Karankawas were killed in an attack led by the outlaw Juan Nepomuceno Cortina. Whether or not the rumour was true, by the 1860s the Karankawas were considered extinct. Some probably went to Mexico, or integrated into colonial society, or joined other tribes. In 1891, the ethnologist Albert Gatschet published a guide to Karankawa culture and language. (7) He found no actual Karankawas, but obtained the Karankawa vocabulary from an elderly white woman named Alice Williams Oliver who claimed to have lived near the last Karankawa band during her childhood.

In the 21st century, a group known as the Karankawa Kadla (mixed Karankawa) formed to gather and organize people who identify as being partially Karankawa.

Were the Karankawas cannibals?

You will note from the above that white people believed the Karankawas were cannibals. Lurid tales circulated, such as this story told to John R. Fenn by his grandfather David Fitzgerald, a settler in Austin’s colony.

During the early settlement of the country a tribe of Coast Indians called Craankaways made a raid on some of the colonists below, killed some of the people, and carried off a little girl captive. After proceeding some distance, they camped, killed the child, and proceeded to eat her, first splitting open the body, then quartering it, and placing the parts on sharp sticks and cooking them. They had just commenced this cannibal feast when a band of settlers dashed upon them, having been on their trail. The Indians were so completely absorbed in their diabolical and hellish orgie as to be oblivious to their surroundings and taken by surprise. In the fight which ensued all were killed except a squaw and two small children. (8)

Reports like this are unsubstantiated and may have been concocted to legitimize the extermination campaign. According to historian David La Vere, there is little direct evidence to support the claim that the Karankawas were cannibalistic.

No reliable eyewitness accounts of such behavior exist; nor has archaeology turned up shattered or scraped bones to support it. Most of what has been said is hearsay or came from the mouths of their enemies. To be sure, many American Indians, including Caddos and Atakapas, practiced a form of ritual cannibalism, in which bits of one’s enemies were eaten to gain spiritual power, but eating humans for sustenance on a regular basis just does not seem to be the case. (9)

The Karankawas expressed shock at the survival cannibalism they witnessed among the starving members of the Cabeza de Vaca expedition in the 16th century. If the Karankawas practiced cannibalism, it is likely to have been the ritual variety.

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Caddo Indian Chief Dehahuit

Cherokee Indian Chief Bowles (Duwali) and his Tragic Quest for Land

Indian Interpreter Gaspard Philibert

Stephen F. Austin, the Founder of Anglo-American Texas

The Wreck of the Schooner Lively

When the Great Plains Indians met President Monroe

F. French, Historical Collections of Louisiana, Part 1 (New York, 1846), p. 111.
Pierre and Jean-Baptiste Talon, “La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents,” in Alan Gallay, ed., Voices of the Old South: Eyewitness Accounts, 1628-1861 (Athens, GA, 1994), pp. 32-33.
“Journal of Stephen F. Austin on His First Trip to Texas, 1821,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Vol. 7, No. 4 (April 1904), pp. 304-305.
“Reminiscences of Capt. Jesse Burnam,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Vol. V, No. 1 (July 1901), pp. 15-16.
Jean Louis Berlandier, The Indians of Texas in 1830, edited by John C. Ewers, translated by Patricia Reading Leclercq (Washington, 1969), pp. 147-149.
Eugene Holon and Ruth Lapham Butler, eds., William Bollaert’s Texas (Chicago, 1956), p. 174.
Albert S. Gatschet, The Karankawa Indians, The Coast People of Texas (Cambridge, MA, 1891).
Andrew Jackson Sowell, History of Fort Bend County (Houston, 1904), p. 91.
David La Vere, The Texas Indians (College Station, TX, 2004), p. 62.

Of all the characters who appear in Napoleon in America, John Quincy Adams wins the prize for most diligent diarist. Besides giving readers a first-hand look at 19th-century American politics and diplomacy, Adams’ diaries reveal the habits and mindset of America’s sixth president. Every New Year’s Day, John Quincy Adams was prone to offering his reflections on the year that had just passed and his wishes for the future. To help ring in the New Year, here is a sample of his New Year’s Day musings.

John Quincy Adams by George Peter Alexander Healy

Little different from the last month, and no better (1810)

In 1809, John Quincy Adams became the first United States Minister to Russia. He wrote this on New Year’s Day in 1810.

Day. Little different from the last month, and no better.

I close the year with sentiments of gratitude to Heaven, for the blessings and preservations which my family and myself have experienced in its course. It has witnessed another great change in my condition – brought me to face new trials, dangers, and temptations, relieving me from many of those in which I was before involved. It has changed also the nature of my obligations and duties, and required the exertion of other virtues and the suppression of other passions. From this new conflict may the favor of Heaven continue its assistance, to issue pure and victorious, as from the past. May it enable me better to discharge all my social duties, and to serve my country, and my fellow-men, with zeal, fidelity, and effect. Imploring the blessing of God upon my family present and absent, upon my wife and children, my parents, my kindred, friends, and country, I look with trembling hope at the mingled light and shade of futurity, and pass to a new year with the fervent prayer for firmness to perform as well as prudence to discern my duty, and for temper and fortitude to meet every possible variety of events. (1)

The most memorable year of my life (1815)

In 1814, John Quincy Adams was appointed head of the American delegation to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain in Ghent, Belgium. He left for Ghent in April, while his wife Louisa and their youngest son remained in St. Petersburg. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, thus ending the War of 1812, although word of it reached North America too late to prevent the Battle of New Orleans. On January 1, 1815, Adams wrote:

I have risen during the month almost always before six, and without exception before daylight. Make my fire, read five chapters in the Bible, and write until between nine and ten. Breakfast in my chamber alone. Write, read papers, receive visits, and attend mission meetings until three, afternoon. Walk from one to two hours, dine at half-past four, and sit at table until six. Go to the theatre, concert, or party at a friend’s house, or write in my chamber until eight in the evening. Spend one or two hours at Mr. Smith’s lodgings, and about ten at night return home and retire to bed. This mode of life will henceforth be varied by a new change in my situation. The last ten days have been overburdened by business. Thus ends the most memorable year of my life. I close the record of it with a fervent tribute of gratitude to Divine Providence for the signal favor granted to my country by the conclusion of a treaty of peace; also for the blessings it has continued to me of a domestic nature, to my parents, wife, and children, for the increased proportion of health I have enjoyed, and for the comforts of a quiet conscience. And I implore a continuance of the favor of Heaven upon my country, family, friends, and myself; and, above all, the strength and the will to discharge all my duties to my fellow-creatures and my God. (2)

Elevation to the summit of worldly ambition (1826)

In 1825, John Quincy Adams became president of the United States, after the contentious election of 1824, in which no candidate secured a majority of the electoral vote. Adams reflected on his first year as president in his New Year’s Day entry for 1826.

The life that I lead is more regular than it has perhaps been at any other period. It is established by custom that the President of the United States goes not abroad into any private companies; and to this usage I conform. I am, therefore, compelled to take my exercise, if at all, in the morning before breakfast. I rise usually between five and six – that is, at this time of the year, from an hour and a half to two hours before the sun. I walk by the light of moon or stars, or none, about four miles, usually returning home in time to see the sun rise from the eastern chamber of the House. I then make my fire, and read three chapters of the Bible, with Scott’s and Hewlett’s Commentaries. Read papers till nine. Breakfast, and from ten till five P.M. receive a succession of visitors, sometimes without intermission – very seldom with an interval of half an hour – never such as to enable me to undertake any business requiring attention. From five to half-past six we dine; after which I pass about four hours in my chamber alone, writing in this diary, or reading papers upon some public business – excepting when occasionally interrupted by a visitor. Between eleven and twelve I retire to bed, to rise again at five or six the next morning.

The year has been the most momentous of those that have passed over my head, inasmuch as it has witnessed my elevation at the age of fifty-eight, to the Chief Magistry of my country; to the summit of laudable, or at least blameless, worldly ambition; not, however, in a manner satisfactory to pride or to just desire; not by the unequivocal suffrages of a majority of the people; with perhaps two-thirds of the whole people adverse to the actual result. Nearly one year of this service has already passed, with little change of the public opinions or feelings; without disaster to the country; with an unusual degree of prosperity, public and private. (3)

Am I too old to learn? (1838)

The presidency of John Quincy Adams ended in 1829, after Adams lost the 1828 election to Andrew Jackson. In 1830, Adams won a seat in the US House of Representatives. He wrote this on January 1, 1838. Martin Van Buren was president.

The new year began with one of the most beautiful days that the course of the seasons ever brought round – a clear sky, a bright sun, a calm atmosphere, and all physical nature moving in harmony and peace. The President’s House was open, as usual, from eleven in the morning to eight in the afternoon, and was crowded with visitors innumerable. I was not among them. I have found it necessary to assume a position in public towards him and his Administration which forbids me from any public exhibition of personal courtesy which would import a friendly feeling. Mr. Clay, whose public position, not precisely the same as mine, differs little from it, went and escorted Mrs. Bell, of Tennessee, wife of the late Speaker of the House, who was also there. They afterwards came here, as did about three hundred ladies and gentlemen of those who had been at the President’s house….

I snatched a quarter of an hour before noon to call on Mrs. Madison, who also received many visitors. Just before reaching her house, I met Lewis Williams, and Mr. Graham, and Joseph L. Williams, of Tennessee, and thought they were going to my house; but, from a feeling of awkwardness at asking them the question and the fear of losing my chance to visit Mrs. Madison, I passed by them with a slight salutation. Upon what slight shades of difference depends propriety of conduct in social intercourse! These three men intended me a civility. There are no three men more entitled to a kind and courteous return. Yet they must have felt themselves slighted, and I might have returned their kindness in a manner which would have gratified them. Am I too old to learn? (4)

Tomorrow recommences the struggle (1844)

Still in Congress at the age of 76, John Quincy Adams wrote this on New Year’s Day in 1844.

I begin the new year, as I closed the old one, with praise and prayer to God – with grateful thanksgiving for the past, with humble supplication for the future. Physical nature never was more kindly adapted to the enjoyment of man in commencing the year, than it was this day at this place. The close of the last year was serene, mild, and beautiful. The entrance of the new annual portion of everlasting ages was yet more auspicious and cheering. The morning, noon, and night of it was delightful. I rose an hour and a half later than my time, but closed before breakfast the diary of the departed year.

From ten till three o’clock, an uninterrupted stream of visitors absorbed the time and exhausted my patience. It is generally meant in kindness – always in civility – and for a succession of fifteen years, since I left the President’s house, has greeted me in still increasing numbers. Among the visitors of this day were some of the bitterest political enemies, North and South, that I have in the world. Holmes and Campbell, of South Carolina, Burke and Hale, of New Hampshire, were of the number, and Charles Jared Ingersoll, the cunningest and most treacherous cat of them all. …

Immediately after I got disengaged from the throng, about three, I walked to Mrs. Madison’s house and paid her a visit…. I have piles of letters unanswered, and which I never shall find time to answer. Tomorrow recommences the struggle, which, for me, can terminate only with my life. May the Spirit from above in life and death sustain me! (5)

A stout heart and a clear conscience and never despair (1848)

On January 1, 1848, John Quincy Adams wrote a New Year’s letter to his only surviving child, Charles Francis Adams. This was his last New Year’s Day reflection. He died seven weeks later, on February 23, 1848, at the age of 80 (click here to read his last words).

“My Dear Son – On this commencement of a new year my thought intensely turn to you, to the partner of your life, to your children, and to the Giver of all good, in thanksgiving for all the blessings which you have been and still are to me, and in fervent supplication for the favors of Divine Providence upon you one and all; especially that you may be sustained in your incorruptible integrity through all the trials that may be reserved for you upon earth, and that whatever may be their ultimate issue here, of which I abate not a jot of heart and hope, you will at least be sure of the approbation of your Maker.

A stout heart and a clear conscience, and never despair.

Your ever affectionate father,
John Quincy Adams (6)

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John Quincy Adams’ Report Upon Weights and Measures

John Quincy Adams and the White House Billiard Table

The John Quincy Adams Portrait by Gilbert Stuart & Thomas Sully

New Year Wishes from the 19th Century

New Year’s Day in 19th-Century New York

Napoleon’s First New Year’s Day on St. Helena

Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1874), p. 92.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. III (Philadelphia, 1874), p. 136.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VII (Philadelphia, 1875), pp. 97-98.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IX (Philadelphia, 1876), p. 462.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. XI (Philadelphia, 1876), pp. 466-467.
Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. XII (Philadelphia, 1877), p. 281.

A Merry 19th Century Christmas Here’s a selection of newspaper extracts to give you the flavour of an early 19th century Christmas, including some puzzles to amuse you during the holidays.

Christmas reflections

“Whatever may be said of the dissipation of Christmas, we think its recurrence is attended with many excellent effects. In a commercial country like England, where the merchant during the entire year is glued to his desk, and wholly intent on his selfish schemes, his feelings are apt to be frozen over by the palsying power of interest. In counting over his gains, he forgets that others, connected with him, and his equals in rank, and character, may claim a right to share his coffers or his society; and hence the impulse of avarice too often disserves the links in the chain of the family bond, and which go far to injure the strength and durability of the greater chain of society.

“But when all the members of the family once assemble under the same roof – to commemorate the Nativity of Him who came to destroy all fictitious distinctions, and to partake anew of that festive mirth which delighted their early years, there is a mingling of affection, and a re-union of sympathy, the effect of which is to render men better when they emerge anew into the troubled waters of busy life.” (1)

Christmas customs – US style

“The twenty-fifth of December is the reputed birth-day of our religion (for there are doubts among the chronologers) and should receive that degree of reverence which its grave nature demands. Religion, however, not consisting only in the punctual attention to times and outward observances, but in the purity of the heart, and propriety of the conduct, this day is observed in many sections of our country with different degrees of reverence and attention. Christmas day in the south presents the appearance of a Sunday, while Boston is as full of life and activity as any other day. The customs of our Puritan ancestors have survived in New England…. Every observance that had the remotest resemblance to the pomp of the Romish religion was indignantly banished from their calendar, while the feasts of the English Episcopal Church were cherished in the many of the middle and southern states, and continue at the present day to form a distinctive mark between those different sections of the country.” (2)

Christmas presents – UK style

“It were idle to tell our readers that at this merry and joyous season of the year, when the spirits are all on the wing, and when the imagination is caught be every glittering appearance, it is the customs of reviving and refreshing friendships by some trivial yet suitable offerings. Children receive their wooden horses, their penny trumpets, and Dutch dolls – the charming fair-one luxuriates over her ‘Forget me Not,’ and her ‘Hommage aux Dames’ – and grave and potent Signiors procure their works of edification and instruction. Of what these latter consist it may not be unprofitable to inquire; and as we have been favoured with a list of the presents which are in course of preparation for some of the ennobled of the land, we shall devote a small portion of our columns for conveying this very seasonable piece of information:”

His Most Gracious Majesty [George IV] receives an Imperial Edition of the Holy Scriptures, with notes critical and explanatory on the Seventh and Tenth Commandments, by William Hone, Esquire.’

The Marquis of Conyngham [husband of the King’s mistress] receives West’s superb picture of the spaniel having its ears cropped, and bearing the marks of the lash on its sides.’

His Noble Marchioness [the King’s mistress] receives the last edition of Horne’s Art of Love; printed on Crown paper, 1820. (3)

Christmas cake – New York style

“To make a cake or a comedy is equally an arduous task. To be intimately acquainted with the consistence of flour, the fragrance of fruit, and the intensity of fire, is as necessary for the first purpose as to know the human heart, the colouring of the feelings, or the shafts of wit or ridicule, is necessary for the second. Again the successful writer of comedy receives the praise of critics and the admiration of pretty blue stockings; and there is no reason in nature that the victorious hero in flour, fruit, and firing, should not be crowned with laurel, or powdered from Richmond brand.

“Good cake-makers are more scarce than comedy writers; and whenever a Napoleon among the confectioners appears, we should smack our lips in approbation as the delicious morsel from his oven slides in between them. What are kisses, or nuts, or sugared almonds, or corianders crusted over with the juice of the cane, compared with a mammoth Christmas cake, containing 63 pounds of flour from Utica, 270 pounds of currants from the weeping Grecian isles, 750 eggs from the cackling fowls of Duchess county, besides citron from the east, sugar from the west, and a confectioner of splendid talents and unrivalled genius to blend the productions of different climates together, and from the apparent confusion make the celebrated La Fayette Cake, of 530 pounds, avoirdupois, start into existence.

“In these tranquil times of peace, we are glad to put on the records of history a celebrated action, whether in cake or comedy, in flour or feeling. New York, thy celebrity is great among thy sisters in this western Republic. In this distinguished spot are to be found the fleetest horses, the swiftest boats, the longest canals, the wittiest editors, and the largest Christmas cakes.” (4)

Christmas Day in Paris

“We are requested to state (from authority) that there will be Divine Service and Sacrament tomorrow (Christmas Day), at his Excellency’s the British Ambassador’s, at the usual hour of half-past eleven; and, in consequence of the present limited accommodation, there will also be a Sacrament on the day following. Divine Service will be celebrated at the Oratoire at three o’clock on Christmas Day, and the Sacrament administered at ten o’clock on the same morning….

“[A] grand Mass in Music of the composition of M. Desvignes will be performed with full orchestra at the Cathedral of Notre Dame at ten o’clock in the morning. The Archbishop of Paris will officiate pontifically.

“[T]he Exchange and other Public Establishments will be shut. All the theatres likewise will be closed, except Franconi’s Circus, where equestrian exercises will be performed; and the Theatre of M. Comte, Passage des Panoramas, whose performances are peculiarly adapted to the juvenile branch of society, who always reckon upon amusement at the present season.” (5)

Christmas fooleries

“If we except the great twelfth-night cake, there is no part of the Christmas festivities more attractive than the pantomimes. The relish for plum-pudding is soon gone, and the mistle-toe kiss is forgotten; nay, the last fragment of the cake itself is very seldom placed below the pillow; but the trickery of Columbine and Harlequin, with the buffoonery and grimace of the Clown, form the theme of half a year’s talk among the holyday folk, and are always remembered with pleasure. The managers of our theatres have piously resolved not to abridge this amusement, and old Drury, in the plenitude of his loving kindness, has actually been rehearsing his part ever since he opened his doors. The Enchanted Courser and the Fire Worshippers were but preludes to the Christmas pantomime; and although both of them were booted from the stage (horses, men, and scenery together), yet this disaster was viewed with great complacency, from the expected glory which was to attend their successor. We are sorry to say that the means have not exactly quadrated with the end; for the pantomime of Monday evening was one piece of dullness and stupidity from beginning to end, and was heard to the close merely through the aid of the tiny voices and the clapping of little hands in the gallery. Notwithstanding, however, its utter insignificance, use and wont compel us to give it a brief notice. It is called Harlequin and the Talking Birds; or, the Singing Trees and Golden Waters, and owes its birth to that fruitful source of romance, the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.” (6)

Christmas caution

“Ladies, let us entreat ye not to forget the damp and cold nights of this season. Beware of balls and midnight parties – or rather, of the manner in which you quit them. ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ Cover your throat, ears, legs, and feet well, before you tempt the keen blast or cold shower of two o’clock in the morning. Don’t be ashamed to draw a pair of worsted hose over your silk ones, nor blush to wrap yourself up in a great coat, should your shawl be too flimsy – nay, spurn not a drop o’ brandy when the cock warns you of your departure from the merry meeting. These things – if you fear death or Doctor’s bill.” (7)

Christmas advertising

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year are generally the congratulations at this festive season, and every auxiliary is eagerly sought for the embellishment of the person; the most prominent trait of beauty in either sex is a fine head of hair; its beautiful arrangement is aided and assisted by the wonderful energetic powers of Rowland’s Macassar Oil, which has, by its superior excellence, in promoting the elegance and durability of that grand ornament, gained the admiration of the whole world. Parents and Guardians cannot offer to those under their care a more acceptable present, as that useful adornment attended to in youth is of the highest importance. Conductors of Seminaries will find Rowland’s Macassar Oil indispensably necessary.” (8)

Christmas puzzles

The following 19th century Christmas puzzles appeared in the Liverpool Mercury on December 27, 1816.

What question in the English language cannot be answered by any other word than ‘Yes’?
Why is the letter S like a furnace for making red hot balls in a battery?
Why is the letter T like an island?
Inscription over the Ten Commandments in Amlwch Church, North Wales. By the repetition of one vowel, the letters will make two lines in verse.
P r s v r y p r f c t m n
V r k p t h s p r c p t s t n
A riddle:
Before creating nature will’d
That atoms into form should jar,
By me the boundless space was fill’d
On me was built the first made star;
For me the saint will break his word;
By the proud atheist I’m revered;
At me the coward draws his sword;
And by the hero I am fear’d;
Own’d by the meek and gentle mind,
Yet ever by the vain possest;
Heard by the deaf, seen by the blind,
And to the troubled conscience rest;
Than wisdom’s sacred self I’m wiser,
And yet by every blockhead known;
I’m freely given by the miser;
Kept by the prodigal alone.
As vice deform’d, as virtue fair,
The statesman’s loss, the patriot’s gains,
The poet’s purse, the coxcomb’s care;
Read – and you’ll have me for your pains.
It will be found not a little puzzling to repeat the words ‘Good blood, bad blood’ half a dozen times in quick succession.

Answers to Christmas puzzles

What word do the letters Y E S form?
Because it makes hot shot; that is, makes the word hot into the word shot.
Because it is in the middle of WATER.
Add the single vowel e, and it will read:
‘Persevere, ye perfect men,
Ever keep the precepts ten.’
Nothing (9)

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

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The Sunday Times (London), December 26, 1824.
The National Advocate (New York), December 25, 1824.
The Sunday Times (London), December 26, 1824.
The National Advocate (New York), December 28, 1824.
Galignani’s Messenger (Paris), December 24 & 25, 1824.
The Sunday Times (London), January 2, 1825.
The Morning Post (London), December 25, 1824.
Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle (London), January 2, 1825.
Liverpool Mercury (Liverpool), January 3, 1817.

Napoleon Bonaparte did not say, “Able was I ere I saw Elba,” although the phrase is often attributed to him. This well-known palindrome – a word or phrase that reads the same backward and forward – first appeared in 1848, 27 years after Napoleon’s death. Someone named “J.T.R.” came up with the Elba line, along with “Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns.” (1)

Napoleon on Elba. He did not say "Able was I ere I saw Elba."

Napoleon on Elba by Horace Vernet

According to a periodical published in 1821, the year Napoleon died, there was at the time only one known palindrome phrase in English. Even that was “only procured by a quaintness of spelling in one word, and the substitution of a figure for another: Lewd did I live, & evil I did dwel.” (2)

Anagrams were more common. These are words or phrases formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. In centuries past, anagrams were sometimes thought to have mystical significance. By the 19th century, they were primarily a form of word play. As folklorist H.B. Wheatley wrote, “though anagrams and all kinds of play upon words are in themselves trivial, there is no doubt that, on the presumption of recreation being necessary in a life of toil, the mind will at times find amusement and delight in trifles….” (3)

Georgians and Victorians particularly enjoyed cognate anagrams, in which the anagram is related in some way to the original word or phrase.

Napoleonic anagrams

A number of anagrams were made from well-known names of the Napoleonic Wars.

Napoleon Bonaparte – Bona rapta pone leno (Robber lay down thy stolen goods)

Napoleon Bonaparte, sera-t-il consul à vie? (Will he be consul for life?) – Le peuple bon reconnaissant votera oui (Recognizing good, the people will vote yes.)

Napoleon, Empereur des Français – Un pape serf a sacré le noir demon (A serf pope has crowned the black demon.)

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington – Let well foil’d Gaul secure thy renown

Arthur Wellesley – Truly he’ll see war

Field Marshal the Duke – The Duke shall arm the field

His Grace the Duke of Wellington – Well fought, K[night]! No disgrace in thee

Horatio Nelson – Honor est a Nilo (Honour is from the Nile)

Prince Regent – G.R. in pretence

Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales – P.C., her august race is lost! O, fatal news

Patriotism – O, ’tis a Mr. Pit (William Pitt the Younger was a British Prime Minister during the Napoleonic Wars)

Opposition – O poison Pit

French Revolution – Violence run forth

“If we take the letters of the word veto (which was the precursor of the revolution) from La Revolution Française, we shall find that the remaining letters, when transposed, will form the sentence Un corse la finira.” (A Corsican will end it)

La Sainte Alliance (the Holy Alliance) – La Sainte Canaille (the Holy Rabble) (4)

Other 19th-century anagrams

Alterations – Neat tailors

Astronomers – Moon-starers, or no more stars

Breakfast – Fat bakers

Catalogues – Got as a clue

Charades – Hard case

Constitution – It cut onion last

Democratical – Comical trade

Determination – I mean to rend it

Elegant – Neat leg

Gallantries – all great sins

Hysterics – His set cry

Ireland – Erin lad

Lawyers – Sly ware

Masquerade – Queer as mad

Matrimony – Into my arm

Melodrama – Made moral

Midshipman – Mind his map

Misanthrope – Spare him not

Mourning – O, grim nun

Old England – Golden Land

Paradise lost – Reap sad toils

Paradise regained – Dead respire again

Parishioners – I hire parsons

Parliament – Partial men

Penitentiary – Nay, I repent it

Potentates – Ten tea pots

Prerogative – Rover eat pig

Punishment – Nine thumps

Soldiers – Lo! I dress

Solemnity – Yes, Milton

Sovereignty – ’Tis ye govern

Sweetheart – There we sat

Telegraph – Great help

Understanding – Red nuts and gin (5)

Napoleon’s puns

Napoleon wasn’t much given to word play, though he did enjoy naming Claude Victor Perrin (“beau soleil”) the Duke of Belluno. One of Napoleon’s companions in exile on St. Helena related the following anecdote.

It was stated by one of our people that the owner of one of the houses…on the island…said, ‘It is reported that you complain up yonder and consider yourselves unhappy (he spoke of Longwood), but we are at a loss to make it out; for it is said that you have beef every day, while we cannot get it but three or four times a year, and even then we pay for it at the rate of fifteen or twenty pence a pound.’ The Emperor, who laughed heartily…observed, ‘You ought to have assured him that it cost us several crowns.’ Crowns in English, and in several languages of the continent, means also a piece of money.

I observed latterly that it was the only pun I had till then heard from the Emperor’s mouth, but the person to whom I made the remark said he had heard of his having made a similar one, and on the same subject in the isle of Elba. A mason employed in some buildings which were to be constructed by the Emperor’s order had fallen and hurt himself; the Emperor wishing to encourage him assured him that it would be of no consequence. ‘I have had,’ said he, ‘a much worse fall than yours; but look at me, I am on my legs, and in good health.’ (6)

This resilience stands him in good stead in Napoleon in America.

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Pauline Bonaparte on Elba

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The Gazette of the Union, Golden Rule and Odd-Fellows’ Family Companion, Vol. IX (New York, 1848), p. 30.
“On Palindromes,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Vol. II (London, 1821), pp. 171-172.
H. B. Wheatley, Of Anagrams (London, 1862), p. 142.
Ibid., pp. 86, 96-97, 135-137.
Ibid., pp. 140-141.
Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases, The Life, Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. II (London, 1835), pp. 164-165.

The desire to peek into royal lives goes back a long way. In France, people could indulge their curiosity at the “grand couvert,” a ritual in which the king and queen ate their dinner in front of members of the public. The tradition is usually associated with Louis XIV, who dined au grand couvert at Versailles almost every evening, surrounded by his family and a crowd of courtiers. Louis XV disliked the ceremony, which was governed by elaborate rules of etiquette. He took more of his meals in private. By the end of their reign, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette dined au grand couvert only on Sundays.

Le ci-devant grand couvert de Gargantua modern en famille (How the modern Gargantua and his family once dined), 1791, French satirical print showing Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, the future Louis XVIII and Charles X, and other members of the Bourbon family au grand couvert. Source: French Revolution Digital Archive, Stanford University Libraries & the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Le ci-devant grand couvert de Gargantua modern en famille (How the modern Gargantua and his family once dined), French satirical print from 1791 showing Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, the future Louis XVIII and Charles X, and other members of the Bourbon family au grand couvert. Source: French Revolution Digital Archive, Stanford University Libraries & the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Napoleon and the grand couvert

When Napoleon became Emperor of the French, he re-introduced the grand couvert.

When their majesties dined en grand couvert, their table was placed under a canopy on a platform elevated one step, and with two armchairs, one on the right for the emperor, the other on the left for Josephine, the former wearing a hat with plumes, and his consort a diadem. Their majesties were informed by the grand marshal when the preparations were completed, and entered the room in the following order: Pages, assistant master of the ceremonies, prefects of the palace, first prefect and a master of the ceremonies, the grand marshal and grand master of the ceremonies; the empress, attended by her first equerry and first chamberlain; the emperor, colonel-general of the guard, grand chamberlain, and grand equerry; the grand almoner, who blessed the meal, and retired, leaving their majesties to a solitary board, unless when guests of kingly rank were present, or humbler ones sat down there by invitation. (1)

Speaking when he was in exile on St. Helena, Napoleon expressed reservations about the ritual.

The Emperor had hesitated for some time, he said, about re-establishing the grand couvert of the kings of France, that is, the dining in public, every Sunday, of the whole Imperial family. He asked our opinion of it. We differed. Some approved of it, represented this family spectacle as beneficial to public morals, and fitted to produce the best effects on public spirit; besides, they said, it afforded means for every individual to see his Sovereign. Others opposed it, objecting that this ceremony involved something of divine right and feudality, of ignorance and servility, which had no place in our habits or the modern dignity of them. They might go to see the Sovereign at the church or the theatre: there they joined at least in the performance of his religious duties, or took part in his pleasures; but to go to see him eat was only to bring ridicule on both parties. The sovereignty having now become, as the Emperor had so well said, a magistracy, should only be seen in full activity; conferring favours, redressing injuries, transacting business, reviewing armies, and above all, divested of the infirmities and the wants of human nature, &c….

‘Well,’ said the Emperor, ‘it may be true that the circumstances of the time should have limited this ceremony to the Imperial heir, and only during his youth; for he was the child of the whole nation; he ought to become thenceforth the object of the sentiments and the sight of all.’ (2)

Louis XVIII and the grand couvert

Louis XVIII ate au grand couvert about every three weeks, a ceremony his court maintained even when he was in exile in England. Here is a description of “the first dinner in the Tuileries at which the public was admitted to admire royalty at table – a sight dear to the Parisians,” after Napoleon’s exile to Elba in 1814.

The table was arranged in the form of a horse-shoe; it was splendidly garnished with the king’s plate; and the celebrated nef was not forgotten. The nef is a piece of plate, of silver gilt, representing in shape the hull of a ship without masts and rigging.… In this vessel, beneath cushions wetted with perfumed water, are kept the napkins for the king’s use…. [T]he usher of the hall, having received orders from the grand-master of the household, went to the door of the hall of the gardes-du-corps, and struck it with a cane, saying at the same time: ‘Gentlemen, to lay the king’s table!’ A guard followed him; they went together to the buttery, where each officer of the place took a piece of plate, and headed by the nef, all proceeded towards the gallery of Diana, where the table was set out, the gardes-du-corps marching beside the nef, and the usher pompously carrying two table-cloths.

The bread, the wine, water, and toothpicks destined for the king’s use were tried: the napkin was laid half hanging down, upon it was placed the plate, and the salver, on which were bread, spoon, knife and fork. The same was done for every thing that the royal family was to use; and the usher, returning to the hall of the guards, again struck the door with his cane, saying: ‘Gentlemen, to the king’s dinner.’ Three guards and a brigadier with shouldered carbines, immediately repaired to the kitchen to escort the king’s dinner; it was brought with not less pomp….

[T]he dishes arrived and were tasted, and the first maître d’hôtel, and the wine-taster…preceded by the usher of the hall, went to apprize the king that dinner was on the table. His majesty, accompanied by his family, walked to the gallery of Diana, to the sound of music performed by the band of the chapel and of the opera….

I fell to studying the figure made by the duchesses who were present, seated on their blessed stools. The old and the new regime were there confronted and reciprocally examining one another…. I had then leisure to enjoy the magnificence of the sight, the splendour of the illumination, and the stupefied look of the good citizens of Paris, put in possession again, after the lapse of so many years, of the right of being present at the king’s dinner. (3)

Charles X and the grand couvert

Louis XVIII’s brother and successor, Charles X (the Count of Artois in Napoleon in America), also kept up the practice of the grand couvert. An American, Nathaniel Carter, witnessed the ceremony on January 1, 1827.

A report had gone forth that whosoever would put on small-clothes, with the usual accompaniments of a full dress, might be admitted into the presence of majesty, and attend the regal banquet. … [A]t 5 o’clock we set out for the Tuileries…. None but the carriages of the nobility were permitted to drive into the court, and the whole plebeian multitude of both sexes were compelled to dash through mud and water, in the same shoes which were destined to trample on royal carpets. On arriving at the door, we found the arcades thronged with ladies and gentlemen from all nations, and jabbering in all languages…. The gates on either side were closed, and there was neither ingress nor egress; otherwise a hasty retreat would have been effected.

In this condition the crowd remained for an hour or more, when the doors were thrown open, and the long processions marched up the grand stair-case, guarded by a line of soldiers, into the chambers of the Tuileries. At the portal, an officer sung out, ‘a bas chapeau!’ – off hats! The ladies were dismantled of their shawls, and directed to drop the arms of their companions, to walk single-file into the presence of his majesty….

The slowness of our march toward head-quarters afforded us a favourable opportunity for examining the king’s apartments at the Tuileries, which were brilliantly illuminated by a full blaze of chandeliers, exhibiting the lofty fresco ceilings, spacious saloons, Gobelin tapestry, Savonniere carpets, silken couches and other splendid furniture up to the throne itself, to the best possible advantage….

We at length reached the dining-room, which is spacious, but was filled to overflowing, even to the windows, with ladies and gentlemen who had been presented at court, and were therefore privileged to remain during the whole banquet – a prerogative which I felt little anxiety to enjoy. Temporary boxes had been erected round the hall, overlooking the table. These were filled with ladies in full dresses, who sat the whole evening, patiently watching all the important movements at the festive board….

The table was in a semi-circular form, on the outer side of which, near the centre, the King was seated, with the Duke d’Angoulême on his right, the Duchess d’Angoulême on his left, and the Duchess de Berry on the extreme right. They all sat at respectable distances, looking cold and unsocial enough, staring at the crowd, and the crowd staring at them. His majesty is a genteel man in his appearance with rather a thin face, and a gray head, with no marks of decrepitude, though now at the age of sixty-nine. There was nothing peculiar in his dress. He seemed less embarrassed by his awkward situation than the rest of the royal group, who sat like statues over their plates, while he handled his knife and fork with a good deal of ease and dexterity….

Our observations were limited in time to a few minutes, occupied in passing through the room, close by the table…. On the whole this was the greatest farce I ever attended. It is converting the palace into a menagerie, and the royal family into so many lions, for the amusement of the multitude. Intelligent Frenchmen consider the show, which recurs annually, in the same light I have done. It is a relic of royalty, at least two centuries behind the age, which the mere progress of reason has rendered ridiculous. (4)

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John S. Memes, Memoirs of the Empress Josephine (New York, 1832), p. 316.
Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. I (New York, 1855), pp. 385-386.
Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, Private Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII, Volume I (London, 1830), pp. 363-368.
Nathaniel Hazeltine Carter, Letters from Europe, Comprising the Journal of a Tour through Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Italy and Switzerland, in the Years 1825, ’26 and ’27, Vol. I (New York, 1827), pp. 458-461.

The coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor of the French took place on December 2, 1804 at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Things did not go smoothly.

Coronation of Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of Empress Josephine in Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris, December 2, 1804, by Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget, 1805-1807

Why was there a coronation of Napoleon?

Napoleon was a victorious general who had become leader of France through a coup d’état, rather than through inheritance or election. He wanted to establish the legitimacy of his regime. He also needed to show – in the wake of plots against his life – that even if he was killed, his dynasty would live on. Making his rule hereditary would reassure those who had acquired land and other benefits from the French Revolution that their gains were secure.

On May 18, 1804, Napoleon’s hand-picked Senate proclaimed him the hereditary “Emperor of the French.” A national plebiscite was held to confirm this change in status. The doctored results – announced on November 6 – showed 3.6 million people (99.93%) in favour and 2,569 against. Half of the potential voters abstained. By this time, preparations for a lavish coronation were well underway. Napoleon, however, ran into a few problems.

Reluctant Pope

French monarchs claimed to rule by divine right. The most important part of the traditional French coronation ceremony was the consecration (sacre), or anointing of the king with holy oil, performed by the archbishop of Reims in his cathedral. Aware of the symbolic value of associating his rule with divine providence, Napoleon invited the Pope to officiate at his coronation. Pius VII was wary of Napoleon and reluctant to go to France in the absence of some concessions for the Catholic church, which had been decimated during the French Revolution. Napoleon begged, threatened and bargained, using his uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch as an intermediary. The Pope finally agreed.

Jealous sisters

The Bonaparte family disliked Napoleon’s wife Josephine and objected to her being crowned Empress. No French queen had been honoured with such a ceremony for centuries. When Napoleon told his sisters Elisa, Pauline and Caroline that he expected them to carry Josephine’s massive velvet train in the coronation ceremony, they made a scene and refused. Napoleon’s brother Joseph sided with his sisters and protested to Napoleon on their behalf. Napoleon was furious and threatened them all with loss of titles and wealth. The sisters fell into line. But they sulked during the ceremony and at one point may have pulled back on the train, preventing Josephine from moving forward (see below).

Absent mother

Detail of David’s Coronation of Napoleon showing Madame Mère, who wasn’t actually there

Instead of remaining in Paris for the coronation, Napoleon’s mother Letizia headed off to Rome to be with Napoleon’s brother Lucien, whom Napoleon had exiled for marrying against his wishes. In addition to pointedly supporting Lucien in that dispute, Letizia was also showing her dislike for the imperial title Napoleon had bestowed upon her (Madame Mère). Napoleon instructed Jacques-Louis David to put Letizia in his painting of the coronation anyhow.

Bad weather

Sunday, December 2, 1804, was a cold and wintry day. It snowed through the night and continued to snow until 8 a.m. Workers were quickly found to shovel the snow and lay sand along the procession route. The sun reportedly came out from behind the clouds just as Napoleon’s coach arrived at Notre Dame, which the Emperor took as a good omen.

Sleeping Masters of Ceremonies

Though detachments of six battalions of Grenadiers and Chasseurs of the Guard took up their positions at the cathedral at 5:00 a.m., no one showed up to organize the large crowd that had formed.

Around Notre Dame and inside the church the confusion was terrible…. At six o’clock [a.m.] the doors were opened, and a large number of those invited, whose impatient curiosity had led them thither before daybreak, had managed to push in through the doorways on handing their tickets to the ninety-two ticket-collectors, who were each paid nine francs. As soon as they entered they walked about all over the stands and hindered the workpeople who were still busy; and for more than an hour and a half the greatest disorder reigned in the church. It was with the greatest difficulty that [the architect] Fontaine managed to induce the military authorities to take the place of the lie-abed Masters of the Ceremonies and to establish order at the entrance. (1)

A long wait

Before daybreak on the 2nd of December, all Paris was alive and in motion; indeed hundreds of persons had remained up the whole of the night. Many ladies had the courage to get their hair dressed at two o’clock in the morning, and then sat quietly in their chairs until the time arrived for arranging the other parts of their toilette. We were all very much hurried, for it was necessary to be at our posts before the procession moved from the Tuileries, for which nine o’clock was the appointed hour. … (2)

At 7:00 the senators set out for Notre Dame. At 8:00, members of the Legislative Body, the State Council, the Tribunate and Court of Appeals headed for the church. At 9:00, it was the turn of the diplomatic corps, which included James Monroe, but no representatives from Great Britain, Russia or Austria. Also at 9:00, the Pope began his ride to the church, escorted by four squadrons of dragoons and followed by six carriages full of cardinals and assorted clergy. Then came the secular carriages, led by Marshal Joachim Murat, military governor of Paris and husband of Napoleon’s sister Caroline.

At 10:00 Napoleon and Josephine left the Tuileries Palace, accompanied by artillery salvos. Security was tight, with troops three rows deep on either side of the street, amounting to some 80,000 men. There were several delays along the route, as they had not counted on “the confusion that would be caused by the immense size of the processions, shut in between hedges of foot-soldiers, delayed by the eagerness of the populace, and checked by certain petty accidents.” (3) It wasn’t until 11:45 that Napoleon was ready to enter the church.

The grand coronation procession of Napoleone the 1st, Emperor of France, from the Church of Notre-Dame, Decr. 2d. 1804. Caricature by James Gillray showing Napoleon’s coronation procession, starting with Louis Bonaparte and Pauline, Hortense (Josephine’s daughter & wife of Louis) and Julie (Joseph’s wife), followed by Talleyrand and his wife, and a dejected Pope Pius VII. Napoleon and Josephine are in the centre. Napoleon’s train is supported by Spain, Prussia and Holland.

The ceremony

The ceremony proceeded according to the etiquette which had been adopted after long discussion. The onlookers were cold and hungry, although some tradesmen had slipped into the church with rolls and sausages. No one saw anything of the ceremony which went on in the choir except those in the choir-stands, on the grand level, or the first tier. Luckily there was the music, the Mass and the Te Deum on a twofold arrangement composed expressly by Paësiello…. 17,738 pages of music had been [hand] copied and brought out for the different parts of the orchestra. (4)

Pius VII began the mass. He anointed Napoleon’s head, arms and hands in accordance with the ancient tradition. Napoleon then took the crown and put it on his own head. This was not spontaneous gesture, or a snub of the Pope. It had been planned and discussed with the pontiff at great length. Napoleon also crowned Josephine, who began to cry. They then proceeded up some steps to the throne.

A stumble

The Empress mounted the first five steps, and then the weight of her mantle, no longer upheld by the Princesses, who remained at the bottom of the steps, brought her up with a jerk, and almost made her fall backwards. She had to put forth all her strength to recover herself and continue the ascent. Had her train-bearers plotted this vengeance? It was believed so. But a proof of their innocence is the fact that the same thing happened to the Emperor. He staggered himself, was seen to make a slight movement backwards, recovered himself with an effort, and briskly mounted the steps. When, after the enthronement, the Pope kissed the Emperor on the cheek, and pronounced the Vivat Imperator in aeternum [May the Emperor live forever], few of the onlookers understood, and scarcely any one shouted. (5)

Afterwards

After the mass, the civilian authorities administered the imperial oath. Shortly before 3:00, the imperial party began the return to the Tuileries, arriving there after dark. Napoleon dined alone with Josephine.

He was delighted with his day, and complimented the ladies of the Court… He displayed no penetrating emotion, no awe at having evoked the mystery of kingship, no distrust with regard to the future, only a somewhat shallow satisfaction that the pomp should have been so magnificent, and that every one should have played his part so well. (6)

The police estimated that some 2 million people were present in Paris. Hundreds of church bells rang out, followed by illuminations, fireworks, formal balls, and dancing in the streets. These and other festivities continued for the next two weeks. The cost of the whole affair was 8.5 million francs, paid for by crown and state treasuries.

Napoleon insisted on keeping his title of Emperor of the French even after his abdication and exile to St. Helena. He retains it in Napoleon in America.

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Watching French Royals Eat: the Grand Couvert

The Tuileries Palace under Napoleon I and Louis XVIII

Frédéric Masson, Napoleon and His Coronation, translated by Frederic Cobb (Philadelphia, 1911), pp. 219-220.
Laure Junot Abrantès, Memoirs of Napoleon, his Court and Family, Vol. II (London, 1836), p. 53.
Napoleon and His Coronation, p. 227.
Ibid., p. 234.
Ibid., pp. 234-235.
Ibid., p. 241.

Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday in the United States until 1863. In the early 19th century, Thanksgiving was celebrated on a state by state basis, with each state scheduling its own holiday on dates that could range from October to January. What began as a New England tradition gradually spread to other states, although not without resistance.

Thanksgiving – The Emporia Daily Gazette (Emporia, Kansas), November 25, 1897

Thanksgiving a Yankee custom

A Philadelphia newspaper noted in 1841:

Thanksgiving was held in New York and New Jersey yesterday. It has been celebrated all over New England. Even Savannah, this year, held this public festival. We do not understand why Pennsylvania should decline this religious and social holiday. Surely the people have the same causes for gratitude, and the motives for its exercise exist with the same force here as elsewhere. In fact, there is such an infusion of eastern population into every profession and employment and order of society here, that it is matter of surprise the custom should not have secured a foothold long since in Pennsylvania.

The Journal of Commerce, in alluding to the anniversary, remarks: ‘This time-honoured festival is now observed by nearly half the population of the United States. If it were possible to overcome the repugnance of Pennsylvania to every thing of Yankee origin, we might soon hope to see the whole nation, after the ingathering of the harvest, bringing their annual tribute of Thanksgiving to the Giver, by a public and solemn act.’ (1)

You will not find Napoleon celebrating Thanksgiving when he lands in New Orleans in Napoleon in America, as Louisiana did not observe Thanksgiving until 1846.

Church-going and gluttony

Regardless of where and when Thanksgiving was celebrated, the primary holiday traditions in the 1800s were going to church and eating a big meal.

This is the day on which the saints and sinners of this great division of the Union are called on by the Governor to rest from their labors, feed on roast turkey, and doze away an hour in the house of God. We believe this is the only case in which the civil authorities intermeddle with that which belongs only to the priesthood – the religious observances of the people. We regard this – but after all what’s the use of discussing the point? So to your knees, ye saints – it will go hard with many of you, to offer as acceptable incense, as they who only stand afar off from the temple, and hardly venture to raise their eyes to heaven. That brief exclamation of the publican – ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!’ availed, when the long prayers, amid all the pomp and circumstance of the altar, brought down only reproof and indignation.

Faith – charity – the love of truth – and love of man – let these animate you, and every day will be one of thanksgiving and joy, as much as is permitted us in this uncelestial world. (2)

A long line of turkeys

In 1858, a clever statistician “after filling himself with turkey on Thanksgiving day, amused himself by estimating the devastation of the day in the twenty-three States that celebrated it, as follows”:

One million turkeys, 12,000,000 chickens, 30,000,000 pounds of pork, 30,000,000 pounds of beef, 6,000,000 pounds of raisins, 30,000,000 pounds of flour, 30,000,000 pounds of sugar, &c. The turkeys placed three feet apart in a straight line would reach from Massachusetts to Indiana. The chickens, one foot apart, would reach from New York to California. The pies, side by side, would reach across the Atlantic Ocean. It would require 25,000 cattle and 50,000 swine to furnish the beef and pork. The raisins would cost nearly a million of dollars, and the flour quite that sum. The sugar would cost about three millions, and the whole value of the items we have named would exceed $18,000,000! Our estimate gives one turkey to three families, four chickens to each family, also ten pies, ten pounds each of pork and beef, two pounds of raisins, ten pounds of flour and ten of sugar. The eggs, spices, lard, butter and ‘fixins’ generally, of which we have made no account, would raise the sum total to nearly twenty-five millions of dollars. (3)

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Celebrating with Light: Illuminations and Transparencies

The North American and Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia, PA), December 10, 1841.
The New York Herald, December 14, 1843.
Lowell Daily Citizen and News (Lowell, MA), December 4, 1858.

Panoramas were extremely popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A panorama was a large circular painting that aimed to give the viewer the experience of being physically present in the scene being depicted, whether that was a landscape, a city, a battle or other historical event. Panoramas served as mass entertainment, popular education and propaganda. Visiting them was more like going to the theatre or the opera than to an art gallery. At their best, panoramas provided convincing illusions of the real, transporting the audience to another place and time.

Panoramic view of London. Aquatint by Henry Aston Barker, after Robert Barker, 1792

An entirely new contrivance

The word panorama – from the Greek pan (all) and horama (view) – was first used by Robert Barker, an Irish-born painter living in Edinburgh. In 1787, Barker was granted a patent for his invention of “an entirely new contrivance or apparatus…for the purpose of displaying views of nature at large, by oil-painting, fresco, water-colours, crayons, or any other mode of painting or drawing.” (1)

My invention, called La nature à coup d’oeil [nature at a glance], is intended, by drawing and painting, and a proper disposition of the whole, to perfect an entire view of any country or situation, as it appears to an observer turning quite round; to produce which effect, the painter or drawer must fix his station, and delineate correctly and connectedly every object which presents itself to his view as he turns round, concluding his drawing by a connection with where he began. He must observe the lights and shadows, how they fall, and perfect his piece to the best of his abilities. (2)

The goal was to make “observers, [in] whatever situation [the painter] may wish they should imagine themselves, feel as if really on the very spot.” (3)

According to the patent, Barker’s invention included a cylindrical painting, a circular building designed to exhibit the painting, a viewing platform in the centre of the building, and “interceptions” placed so that observers could not see above or below the painting. More than just a large painting, the panorama was a carefully controlled experience. The platform placed spectators at a height, angle and distance calculated to maximize the three-dimensional illusion.

In 1788 Barker exhibited the world’s first full-circle panorama, a view of Edinburgh from the top of Calton Hill. Although the painting was shown in rooms not designed for the purpose, it was hailed by reviewers as something completely new.

The judicious observe that Mr. Barker’s improvement in painting, which his exhibition of Edinburgh in the Haymarket explains, must prove particularly interesting to their Majesties, the Heir Apparent, and several of the Royal Family, who rarely go abroad. To them views of distant countries will be brought not like descriptions from the pen of the traveller, geographer, or poet, which, while they inform, leave an anxious wish, a natural desire to behold the scene ungratified. This Artist brings the wished for scene before them, one entire uninterrupted circle, placing them in the centre, where they can see the same as those who travel; they can perfectly understand and be gratified with a thorough knowledge of the local situation of whatever country they desire, and having seen it personally, they can retain it perfectly in idea, the same as nature could impress….

The ideas which are entertained of Mr. Barker’s sketch being a model, transparent painting, or scenery, are erroneous; it is not to be understood till seen, being a scientific improvement and emancipation of the art of painting from restraint; the effect of which is easier felt than described, and meets the warmest approbation of the first nobility and connoisseurs. (4)

The Leicester Square panorama

Cross-section of the rotunda in Leicester Square in which panoramas were exhibited. Aquatint by Robert Mitchell, 1801

Barker’s second panorama, a “View of the Cities of London and Westminster,” was also a hit. He displayed it in a purpose-built wooden structure in his back garden. Based on this success, Barker was able to raise the funds to build a brick panorama viewing rotunda in London, like the one described in his patent.

The Leicester Square panorama – located in Cranbourn Street, just off the north side of the square – opened on May 25, 1793. The rotunda contained two viewing chambers: a large circle at the bottom, able to display panoramas of 10,000 square feet; and a smaller one directly above, which could accommodate panoramas of 2,700 square feet. A partly glass roof provided light to both displays (an experiment with lamps for night-time viewing didn’t work and posed the risk of fire). Spectators stood on a raised platform in the centre of each circle. The admission charge was one shilling per painting. Visitors were given “descriptive sheets” (later pamphlets) that described the panorama they had come to see and included a diagram on which the main features were labelled. These saved on staff costs and served as souvenirs.

One visitor was the American engineer, inventor and artist Robert Fulton, who spied a money-making opportunity and subsequently took out a French patent on the panorama in 1799.

When Barker’s patent expired in 1802, other artists started painting panoramas. Louis Daguerre was working on panoramas when he launched the diorama in Paris in 1822. Exhibitors started putting props and fake terrain in front of their images, to add to the simulation of reality. Veterans offered guided tours of battle panoramas, and musicians played martial music. An industry grew up as the panoramas toured from place to place. Most European cities had more than one purpose-built structure for hosting panoramas. Panoramas also became popular in Canada and the United States, where – later in the 19th century – they were called cycloramas.

Though other panorama rotundas were built, the one in Leicester Square was thought to provide the most realistic displays. The building was designed to disorient people as they passed from the actual to the virtual world. Spectators had to walk down a long dark hallway and climb shadowy stairs before emerging onto the viewing platform. Some people felt sick as a result. More felt delighted, like this visitor to a panorama of Pompeii in 1824.

Panoramas are among the happiest contrivances for saving time and expense in this age of contrivances. What cost a couple of hundred pounds and half a year half a century ago, now costs a shilling and a quarter of an hour. Throwing out of the old account the innumerable miseries of travel, the insolence of public functionaries, the roguery of innkeepers, the visitations of banditti, charged to the muzzle with sabre, pistol, and scapulary, and the rascality of the custom-house officers, who plunder, passport in hand, the indescribable desagremens of Italian cookery, and the insufferable annoyances of that epitome of abomination, an Italian bed.

Now the affair is settled in a summary manner. The mountain or the sea, the classic vale or the ancient city, is transported to us on the wings of the wind. … We have seen Vesuvius in full roar and torrent, within a hundred yards of a hackney-coach stand with all its cattle, human and bestial, unmoved by the phenomenon. Constantinople, with its bearded and turbaned multitudes, quietly pitched beside a Christian thoroughfare, and offering neither persecution nor proselytism. Switzerland, with its lakes covered with sunset, and mountains capped and robed in storms…and now Pompeii, reposing in its slumber of two thousand years, in the very buzz of the Strand. There is no exaggeration in talking of those things as really existing…. The scene is absolutely alive, vivid, and true; we feel all but the breeze, and hear all but the dashing of the wave. (5)

Napoleonic War panoramas

Scenes from the Napoleonic Wars were a staple of early 19th century panoramas, including the Siege of Badajoz, the Battle of Trafalgar, and the Battle of Paris. Here is one observer’s account of the impression made upon her by the panorama of the Battle of Vitoria, which appeared in 1814-1815 in Leicester Square. The battle – fought in Spain on June 21, 1813 – is the one that Napoleon, in Napoleon in America, blames his brother Joseph for losing because he slept too long.

I went to see a panorama of Vittoria. It gave too faithful a representation of a scene of battle; and a stranger, a gentlemanlike looking person, who was there, with his arm in a sling; and had been at Vittoria the day after the battle was fought, said it was most exactly portrayed. The dead and the dying were lying strewn about; and yet, even in gazing at the representation, I sympathised with the enthusiasm of the living, and the glory of the conquerors, more than with the sufferings of the fallen. … The view, too, of Lord Wellington and the other generals, coolly gazing around and reconnoitring the evolution of thousands, although involved in smoke and dust and danger, gave a grand idea of the qualities necessary to a commander, and raised the scale of intellectual glory ten thousand times above that of mere personal valour. (6)

A “View of the Island of Elba and the Town of Porto-Ferrajo” opened in the large circle at Leicester Square in May 1815, just months after Napoleon’s escape from the island. That panorama was followed by a “View of the Battle of Waterloo,” which hung from March 1816 to May 1818, and again from October 1820 to May 1821. It was so popular that Barker had to construct an additional elevated stage so that the spectators in back could look over the heads of those in front.

The Leicester Square panorama closed in 1863. Its rotunda now forms part of the Church of Notre Dame de France. Though none of Barker’s panoramas survive, you can still visit some 19th-century panoramas (listed here, along with some 20th-century examples). The panorama of the Battle of Waterloo that hangs in the rotunda near the site of the actual battle in Belgium was completed in 1912.

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The Repertory of Arts and Manufactures, Vol. IV (London, 1796), p. 165.
Ibid., pp. 165-166.
Ibid., p. 167.
Times (London), April 24, 1789, p. 4.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 15, April 1824, pp. 472-473.
Charlotte Bury, Diary Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth, Vol. II (Paris, 1838), p. 6.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington by Thomas Lawrence

While Napoleon took a dim view of the Duke of Wellington, his wife Marie Louise was more forgiving. Wellington met Marie Louise at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and again at the Congress of Verona in 1822. By this time, Marie Louise was the Duchess of Parma and married to Count von Neipperg (Napoleon had died in 1821). As Wellington tells Dorothea Lieven in Napoleon in America, he played cards with Marie Louise and paid in gold Napoléon coins. Marie Louise’s warmth towards Wellington at Verona inspired Lord Byron to write a poem.

The service he did her

Wellington talked about his encounters with Napoleon’s wife in conversation with his friend Lord Mahon.

Rambling from subject to subject, we came at length to the ex-Empress Maria Louisa. I mentioned Lord Strangford having told me that during the Congress of Verona he had often seen the Duke and the widow of Napoleon playing at écarté together, and the word “Napoleon” frequently passing between them in payments for the game. The Duke assented. He said that she had been very civil to him during the Congress, and that he had the honour of dining with her. She had the same cook that he had once – a man who had been formerly in Napoleon’s service – entered the Duke’s after Waterloo, but left it on the breaking up of his establishment, when the allied army was withdrawn from France – and then sought employment in Italy from his ancient mistress. On his report of the Duke’s usual fare, she accosted him thus the day the Duke dined with her: I am very sorry indeed that I could not get any roast mutton for you.

The Duke said that the first time he had seen her was during the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when he went to pay his respects to her at Schönbrunn; but owing to the state of things in France, he did not often, of course, find himself in her society. It is a very curious thing, he added, that she afterwards said to some one: The Duke of Wellington little knows the service he has done me by winning the battle of Waterloo! The fact is, she was then with child by Neipperg – whom she afterwards married; and if Napoleon had prevailed she would have had to return to him in that state. (1)

Mahon is wrong on that last point. Although Marie Louise had three children with Neipperg before their marriage, the first was conceived in 1816, when Napoleon was safely imprisoned on St. Helena.

According to the French representative at the 1822 Congress of Verona, Marie Louise was “in excellent spirits” there.

The world had taken upon itself the task of remembering Napoleon; therefore Maria Louisa thought she need not trouble herself to think of him. We informed her that we had met her troops at Placentia, and remarked that she once possessed a much more numerous army. She replied: ‘I never think of that.’ (2)

Appearing on his arm

Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma by Isacco Gioacchino Levi

On November 18, 1822, Wellington was present at the opera in Verona when Marie Louise arrived.

The first act was nearly over when the Arch Duchess Maria Louisa entered her box, attended by two Maids of Honour and her grand Chamberlain, Count Neipperg. When she first presented herself, she was wrapped up in a large kerseymere cloak trimmed with ermine, the night being rather cold, and on throwing it aside, she appeared dressed in a white satin slip, with a border of deep lace round the bosom. Her neck and bosom, which are very fine, were left quite exposed and she wore no ornaments. Her head dress consisted of a small white beaver hat, with a plume of ostrich feather to correspond, fastened at the side in a rosette of white ribbon. She looked extremely interesting and the more so from the eventful scenes with which her bloom of life has been associated.

Immediately after the Opera, she went to attend a musical party at the Duke of Wellington’s, where Lady Burghersh presided upon the occasion. On her arrival, the Duke of Wellington was in waiting to receive her Imperial Highness, and he led her leaning on his arm to the Grand Salon. What must have been her sensations at that moment! What must she have felt while thus taking the arm that had hurled both her husband and herself from the greatest Throne in the universe. Apparently, however, she betrayed not the slightest emotion, and on entering the room she went up to Lady Burghersh and shook her by the hand with an air of affectionate cordiality. (3)

Lady Burghersh was Wellington’s niece, Priscilla Wellesley-Pole. She and Marie Louise had become friends in Italy (Priscilla’s husband was the British ambassador to Tuscany).

Some found it unseemly for Marie Louise to appear on the arm of the man who had defeated her former husband. One writer tried to excuse her behaviour by blaming it on her father, Francis I of Austria.

It does not throw any discredit on the assertion respecting Maria Louisa’s desire to join her husband in his banishment that she played a rather ostentatious part in the congress of Promise-breakers and Ungratefuls at Verona, and actually took the Duke of Wellington’s arms at a grand public entertainment. Affection, and constancy in adversity, are two distinct qualities. Besides, there is no knowing what sort of secret influence may have been used on the part of the Austrian father, to compel this display. (4)

Byron disapproved

Lord Byron, an ardent supporter of Napoleon, was unforgiving. He wrote in Canto XVII of “The Age of Bronze”:

Enough of this – a sight more mournful woos
The averted eye of the reluctant muse.
The imperial daughter, the imperial bride,
The imperial victim – sacrifice to pride;
The mother of the hero’s hope, the boy,
The young Astyanax of modern Troy;
The still pale shadow of the loftiest queen
That earth has yet to see, or e’er hath seen;
She flits amid the phantoms of the hour,
The theme of pity, and the wreck of power.
Oh, cruel mockery! Could not Austria spare
A daughter? What did France’s widow there?
Her fitter place was by St. Helen’s wave,
Her only throne is in Napoleon’s grave.
But no, — she still must hold a petty reign,
Flank’d by her formidable chamberlain;
The martial Argus, whose not hundred eyes
Must watch her through these paltry pageantries.
What though she share no more, and shared in vain,
A sway surpassing that of Charlemagne,
Which swept from Moscow to the southern seas
Yet still she rules the pastoral realm of cheese,
Where Parma views the traveller resort
To note the trappings of her mimic court.
But she appears! Verona sees her shorn
Of all her beams – while nations gaze and mourn –
Ere yet her husband’s ashes have had time
To chill in their inhospitable clime;
(If e’er those awful ashes can grow cold;
But no, – their embers soon will burst the mould;)
She comes! – the Andromache (but not Racine’s,
Nor Homer’s) Lo! on Pyrrhus’ arm she leans!
Yes! the right arm, yet red from Waterloo,
Which cut her lord’s half shattered sceptre through,
Is offered and accepted! Could a slave
Do more? or less? – and he in his new grave!
Her eye, her cheek, betray no inward strife,
And the Ex-empress grows as Ex a wife!
So much for human ties in royal breasts!
Why spare men’s feelings, when their own are jests? (5)

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When Princess Caroline Met Empress Marie Louise

Adam Albert von Neipperg, Lover of Napoleon’s Wife

The 1823 French Invasion of Spain (on the diplomacy at the Congress of Verona)

The Duke of Wellington and Children

What did the Duke of Wellington think of Louis XVIII?

Earl Philip Henry Stanhope, Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, 1831-1851 (London, 1889), pp. 232-233.
François-René de Chateaubriand, The Congress of Verona, Vol. 1 (London, 1838), p. 74.
Galignani’s Messenger, No. 2419, Paris, December 3, 1822.
Leigh Hunt, ed., The Literary Examiner (London, August 9, 1823), p. 94.
George Gordon Byron, The Works of Lord Byron; In Verse and Prose (New York, 1835), p. 452.

The United States presidential election of 1824 was decided by the House of Representatives after none of the candidates won a majority of the electoral vote. The House voted in favor of John Quincy Adams on the first ballot. This was one of only two times the House has chosen the winner of the presidential race. The other was in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson won on the 36th ballot.

The Presidential Candidates of 1824

A Foot-Race. Caricature of the Presidential election of 1824 by David Claypoole Johnston. Cheering citizens watch as John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Andrew Jackson stride toward the finish. Henry Clay stands on the far right, hand on head, saying, “D–n it I cant save my distance – so I may as well ‘draw up.’”

The presidential election of 1824 would determine the successor to President James Monroe, who was finishing his second term. There were five candidates. Three of them – Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House of Representatives – appear in Napoleon in America. The other two candidates were General Andrew Jackson and Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford.

Since the Federalist Party had ceased to exist, all candidates were members of the Republican Party. The party split into factions behind the candidates. A newspaper article summed up the contenders’ qualities as follows.

Andrew Jackson. An early and even precocious pupil of the school of 76 – at the age of 15, a soldier of liberty by inclination – at a mature age a civilian by habit. It is a remarkable fact, not sufficiently known, that he was from youth to maturity the most industrious student of practical knowledge that our age has produced. The distinguished traits of his character are quickness of perception, (perhaps quickness of temper also) rapid ratiocination; decision of purpose; indefatigable perseverance; and generosity, even to the point of chivalry; courage and integrity we need not infer; they grow spontaneously in such a soil.

John Quincy Adams. A politician by education, who grasped the diplomatic quill as private secretary to a foreign embassy, at about the same age that Jackson shouldered his musket – a man of inherent talent for business, of great acquirements, of undoubted patriotism, but of cynical irascibility, which the court discipline of forty years has not quite subdued. He is a good theorist on the subject of ‘Etiquette,’ but the most indifferent man in the world as to the practice. He is neither so good as friends, nor so bad as his enemies, would make him appear. His faults will be remembered and exaggerated of course; but it is our duty not to forget his merits.

Henry Clay. One of our choice spirits – an integer, and no trifling one, in our sum of talent. He is one of the striking instances of the versatility of character peculiar to our nation, and one of the strongest securities of the moral force which binds our confederacy. Ardent, eloquent, and sagacious; assiduous or convivial, according to circumstances – with great practical knowledge of social life, and the most glowing affection to the cause of universal freedom. No man can gather up the robe of dignity with more readiness, or relax it with more grade.

John C. Calhoun. Modestly, but conspicuously in the background of the group. He could not, if he would, be otherwise than conspicuous. In the darkest corner his intrinsic light, like that of the diamond, would lead the eye towards him. At the age of 22, he could shine equally in the drawing room, in the library, or in a consultation among the veterans of science. He, if his life is spared, will be one of our Presidents. He combines in his character the fire and zeal of Patrick Henry, with the calm and innate virtues of Jefferson.

William H. Crawford. A man raised from the ground by the warmth of the most laudable ambition, actuating great industry; but consumed at his medium height by excess of the very same heat that caused his buoyancy. We have nothing to do with the gnawing of conscience which are supposed by some to predict future debility, further than to admit the probability of such an effect, in such a case, upon a nervous system with such a temperament. If he should ever be President of the United States, his ability will be competent to the office in times of tranquility; and his temper, we hope, chastened by the severe animadversions which his mistaken friends have wrung from those who were willing to love and respect him. (1)

The 1824 campaign

Campaigning played a greater role than it had in previous elections.

Electioneering, unknown in the earlier days, grew rapidly in vogue during the period following 1819. Stump speaking came to be an art, and cajolery a profession, while whiskey flowed freely at the hustings. The politicians could most easily attain their objectives by appealing to the prejudices of the masses…the ignorant were asked to elect the ignorant because enlightenment and intelligence were not democratic. (2)

Although there were differences among the candidates on issues such as the tariff, internal improvements and slavery, the election was also a personality contest.

The bitterest charges and counter-charges were made by the partisans of all the candidates. Adams was accused of a whole category of sins, ranging from slavery-hating to slovenliness. The Crawfordites attacked Calhoun’s record as Secretary of War and sought to drive him in disgrace from public life, while the latter’s followers retorted in kind upon the Secretary of the Treasury. Jackson was branded a tyrant, a sinister figure, full of unbridled passions. Clay was denounced in the most violent manner. (3)

Unable to gain enough support, Calhoun withdrew from the presidential race before the election. He stood for vice president instead. Though Crawford suffered a paralytic stroke in 1823, he remained a presidential candidate. His backers tried to prevent knowledge of his condition from becoming widespread.

In general, Adams was supported by the Northeast section of the country; Jackson by the South, West and mid-Atlantic; Clay by parts of the West; and Crawford by parts of the East.

The results

Voting was held from October 26 to December 2, 1824. Voter turnout was low. Jackson received 99 electoral votes. He benefited from the three-fifths rule, which enhanced a state’s voting power if it held slaves, even though slaves could not vote. Adams received 84 electoral votes, Crawford received 41 and Clay got 37.

As no candidate reached the 131 vote majority necessary to win the election, the names of the top three candidates were submitted to the House of Representatives, in accordance with the 12th Amendment to the Constitution. Clay – the Speaker of the House – threw his support behind Adams. On February 9, 1825, the House elected John Quincy Adams as president with the support of 13 states. Seven states supported Jackson and 4 supported Crawford.

Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State in the new administration. Clay was accused of making a “corrupt bargain” with Adams. Both men denied the charge. Adams was inaugurated on March 4, 1825 (see my post on the inauguration).

Ballot rather than sword

The Congressional election in Maryland was held on October 4, just before the presidential election of 1824. Reflecting on this, Baltimore newspaper publisher Hezekiah Niles wrote:

On Monday…all was dissension and confusion, for parties, in respect to most of the candidates, were very nearly balanced, and our people are not of those who electioneer ‘by halves;’ and when so many points of collision were offered, it is perhaps to the credit of our people that so few acts of personal violence were committed, though there were enough of them in several of the wards. But the returns from the ballot boxes have settled us down and we are all at peace; the inns very much pleased and the outs more or less mortified at the results; which, in some cases, were not to have been at all expected. However, so it is – and we all feel that it is better to decide our differences of opinion by an appeal to the ballot than an appeal to the sword.

But the ‘fruit of liberty’ is this – we that were so ardently contending one against the other only four days ago, and doing all that we could to defeat and confound one another are now all agreed! Lafayette has come [on his tour of the United States], and every heart is delighted; and as if one man possessed every heart in Baltimore, it is tendered to him, warm and unalloyed by recollections of late differences – manifesting the glorious truth, that opposing opinions may not rest on opposing principles, and that persons may equally love their country and its benefactors, no matter what individuals they support at the polls; a state of things that cannot exist in any other than a free and enlightened nation, in which each man jealous of his own rights, is willing to yield an exercise of the same rights to his fellow. This is the purity of the republican system, the safety of the state, the pride of its citizens – and should be cherished as the life’s blood of all liberal institutions. (4)

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Henry Clay, a Perfect Original

John Quincy Adams and the White House Billiard Table

Davy Crockett on How to Get Elected

“Crayon Sketches of Presidential Candidates. From the Baltimore Morning Chronicle,” Aurora General Advertiser, Philadelphia, October 7, 1824.
Thomas Abernethy, “Andrew Jackson and the Rise of South-Western Democracy, The American Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (October, 1927), p. 70.
Glyndon Van Deuson, The Life of Henry Clay (Boston, 1937), pp. 171-172.
Niles’ Weekly Register, Baltimore, October 9, 1824.

Napoleon’s ghost pops up from time to time

Given the huge influence that Napoleon Bonaparte had during his lifetime, it’s not surprising that his ghost has popped up from time to time since his death. The Museum of The Black Watch has a letter describing a British soldier’s encounter with Napoleon’s ghost during the removal of Napoleon’s remains from St. Helena to France in 1840. Albert Dieudonné, who played Napoleon in Abel Gance’s 1927 film of that name, talked about spooking a night watchman at the Château de Fontainebleau who claimed to be visited by Napoleon’s ghost. The following story about Napoleon’s ghost first appeared in British newspapers in January 1832.

The Ghost of Napoleon

At the Mansion House on Saturday, M. Pierre de Blois, a French gentleman who resides in chambers in Leadenhall Street, was summoned before the Lord Mayor for beating Rafael Spaglietti, an image seller, and breaking a very fine bust of Napoleon Buonaparte.

It appeared that the Italian went upstairs to the defendant’s room door, at the top of which there was a glass; he raised up the head of the image, which was made of pale clay, to the glass and said softly, ‘buy my ghost of Napoleon.’ M. de Blois, who had known the Emperor, thought he saw his ghost, and exclaiming ‘Oh, Christ, save us!’ fell on the floor in a fit. The Italian, seeing no chance of a sale that day, went away and returned the next. M. de Blois, in the meantime, had recovered from his fit, and hearing how his terror had been excited, felt so indignant that the moment he saw Spaglietti at his door the next day, he flew at him and tumbled him and the Emperor downstairs together.

It happened that a confectioner’s man was that moment coming upstairs with a giblet pie to a Mr. Wilson, who resided in the chambers, and the Emperor and the Italian, in their descent, alighted on his tray, which broke their fall and saved the Italian’s head, but could not save Napoleon’s, which was totally destroyed – the giblet pie also suffered so much from the collision that Mr. Wilson refused to have anything to do with it. After a good deal of explanation by the parties, and a good deal of laughter amongst the auditors, M. de Blois agreed to pay for the pie, and Mr. Wilson generously paid for the loss of the Emperor. (1)

Did Napoleon believe in ghosts?

For the answer, see my post about whether Napoleon was superstitious. Charlotte Brontë seemed to think so. She wrote a short story called “Napoleon and the Spectre” (published in The Green Dwarf, 1833), which you can read for free on Project Gutenberg.

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How was Napoleon’s death reported?

Providence Patriot (Providence, Rhode Island), March 28, 1832. British papers carried a longer account.

Death’s Dispensary, cartoon by George Pinwell in FUN Magazine, August 18, 1866

Given the rudimentary nature of medical care in the early 19th century, Napoleon is probably right when he complains to Dr. Formento in Napoleon in America that “you kill more men than you save.” Disease was thought to be caused by imbalances within the body. There was little understanding of how infections began and spread, or of the importance of hygiene. Treatments included bloodletting and mercury. Many people died young, and some causes of death were unusual.

Causes of death in American cities in 1820

In 1820, there were a total of 9,617 deaths reported in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston. (1) These were the four largest cities in the United States, with a combined population of 293,544. (2) Approximately half of those who died (4,762) were under 20 years old. Of these, fully half (2,436) were children under the age of one.

The largest single causes of death were:

Consumption (tuberculosis) – 1,619 deaths (17%)
Stillbirth – 561 (6%)
Cholera – 480 (5%)
Dysentery – 439 (5%)
Typhus fever – 368 (4%).

The remaining deaths were ascribed to a great variety of causes, hinting at rather discretionary methods of investigation and categorization: e.g., affection of the stomach & head (2 deaths), indigestion (1 death), hydrophobia (1 death), hysteria (1 death). Forty-six deaths were pinned on “teething.” Ninety-seven were simply classified as “sudden.” The 106 deaths attributed to “unknown” causes presumably had less inventive reporters. What really stands out, though, are the 16 deaths blamed on “drinking cold water.”

How drinking cold water could kill you

Dr. Benjamin Rush was the first to write about the phenomenon of people in Philadelphia “being diseased by drinking cold water.”

This mortality falls chiefly upon the labouring part of the community, who seek to allay their thirst by drinking water from the pumps in the streets, and who are too impatient, or too ignorant, to use the necessary precautions for preventing its morbid or deadly effects upon them. These accidents seldom happen except when the mercury rises above 85° in Fahrenheit’s thermometer.

Three circumstances generally concur to produce disease or death from drinking cold water. 1. The patient is extremely warm. 2. The water is extremely cold. And 3. A large quantity of it is suddenly taken into the body. The danger from drinking the cold water is always in proportion to the degrees of combination which occur in the three circumstances that have been mentioned. The following symptoms generally follow….

In a few minutes after the patient has swallowed the water, he is affected by a dimness of sight; he staggers in attempting to walk, and, unless supported, falls to the ground; he breathes with difficulty; a rattling is heard in his throat; his nostrils and cheeks expand and contract in every act of respiration; his face appears suffused with blood, and of a livid colour; his extremities become cold, and his pulse imperceptible; and unless relief be speedily obtained, the disease terminates in death, in four or five minutes. …

More frequently, patients are seized with acute spasms in the breast and stomach. These spasms are so painful as to produce syncope, and even asphyxia. They are sometimes of the tonic, but more frequently of the clonic kind. In the intervals of the spasms, the patient appears to be perfectly well. The intervals between each spasm become longer or shorter, according as the disease tends to life or death.

It may not be improper to take notice that punch, beer and even toddy, when drunken under the same circumstances as cold water, have all been known to produce the same morbid and fatal effects. (3)

Rush’s “one certain remedy” for the disease was liquid laudanum (tincture of opium). He also advised taking the following precautions before drinking a large quantity of cold liquid when one was overheated.

1. Grasp the vessel out of which you are about to drink for a minute or longer, with both your hands. This will abstract a portion of heat from the body, and impart it at the same time to the cold liquor, provided the vessel be made of metal, glass, or earth….

2. If you are not furnished with a cup, and are obliged to drink by bringing your mouth in contact with the stream which issues from a pump, or a spring, always wash your hands and face, previously to your drinking, with a little of the cold water. By receiving the shock of the water first upon those parts of the body, a portion of its heat is conveyed away, and the vital parts are thereby defended from the action of the cold.

By the use of these preventives, inculcated by advertisements pasted upon pumps by the Humane Society, death from drinking cold water has become a rare occurrence for many years past in Philadelphia. (4)

Dr. R. Tolifree later expanded Rush’s prescription.

Some maintain there is but one certain remedy, laudanum. This view is too contracted; for if laudanum be not at hand, we should give alcohol, essence of peppermint, &c. in doses much larger than usual. (5)

The drunkards’ disease?

Some people apparently took to using alcohol as a preventive measure, which “A. Physician” affiliated with the Temperance Union frowned upon.

I have observed, within a few days past, a number of deaths have been reported from ‘drinking cold water,’ accompanied in some of the newspapers by earnest cautions against drinking cold water when heated, as though this alone were the cause of death. These reports and cautions, there is reason to fear, have had a tendency to influence many to use ardent spirits in the water they drink in the present warm weather, more than one instance of which have fallen under my observation. And with the view of preventing such imprudence, it is fit that the facts of the case should be understood.

The instances of sudden death from drinking cold water almost universally occur among intemperate foreigners, or others who indulge habitually in the use of spirituous liquors. Such persons, after creating a thirst by the use of ardent spirits, which rum will not allay, go to a pump or spring of water and drink to satiate this morbid thirst, which is more owing to their intemperance than to labour and heat combined.

The effect of cold water, thus suddenly applied to the stomach, is supposed to be a paralysis, extending from that organ to the heart. That such examples of paralysis from drinking water, however cold, or however much the individual may be heated, ever did occur, except when the stomach had previously been impaired by intemperance or otherwise, remains to be proved. Hence such accidents proverbially occur among drunkards, to an extent which should serve as a warning to the intemperate and a salutary lesson to the sober.

Such persons, however, may avoid the mischief they dread in a much better way than by mixing aspiritous liquors with the water they drink. Let them wash the hands and face with cold water before drinking, or hold their mouths full a few moments before swallowing it, and they may then safely satiate their thirst, even with iced water, without harm. (6)

Perhaps one of the saddest cases of death from drinking cold water was this one, in 1834.

Very many deaths have happened from drinking cold water, but at New York, one of the sextons, becoming heated when digging a grave for a person that had so died, drank plentifully of cold water, and so died himself. (7)

So what was going on?

An article published in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology in 1999 notes a case of sudden cardiac death in a 12-year-old boy after rapid ingestion of a frozen slurry drink. After observing that ingestion of cold liquids has been associated with syncope (fainting), the authors conclude that “ingestion of cold liquids should be considered a potential trigger for fatal cardiac arrhythmias in patients with underlying heart disease.” (8)

Maybe this was behind some of the deaths caused by drinking cold water in the 19th century.

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Eclectic Repertory and Analytical Review, Medical and Philosophical, Vol. XI (Philadelphia, 1821), pp. 133-140.
“Population of the 61 Urban Places: 1820,” United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab05.txt, accessed October 14, 2016.
Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations, Vol. 1, Second Edition (Philadelphia, 1805), pp. 183-185.
Ibid., pp. 186-187.
R. Tolifree, “Observations on Death from Drinking Cold Water when the Body is Heated,” Baltimore Medical and Surgical Journal and Review, edited by E. Geddings, Vol. 1 (Baltimore, 1833), p. 295.
A. Physician, “Deaths from Cold Water,” Journal of the American Temperance Union, Vol. 2, No. 8 (Philadelphia, August 1838), p. 116.
Niles’ Weekly Register, Vol. 46 (Baltimore, August 2, 1834), p. 379.
P. Burke, M.N. Afzal, D.S. Barnett, R. Virmani, “Sudden death after a cold drink: case report,” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, Vol. 20, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 37-39.

When the inhabitants of New Orleans hold a banquet in Napoleon’s honour in Napoleon in America, the site of the festivities is decorated with coloured lamps and transparencies. Illuminations, in the form of fireworks, bonfires and lanterns, had been part of public celebrations in France since at least the reign of Louis XIV. Citizens contributed to illuminations by placing candles in street-facing windows, often at the order of municipal authorities. In the late 18th century, transparencies began to enhance illuminations. Transparencies were scenes or inscriptions painted on a translucent substance, typically paper or lightweight cloth, such as silk, linen, calico or muslin. “[B]y means of artificial and brilliant lights placed behind them, they have a very gay and sprightly effect.” (1)

Exhibition of a Democratic Transparency, with its Effect upon Patriotic Feelings. Caricature of transparencies by James Gillray, 1799. Source: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Exhibition of a Democratic Transparency, with its Effect upon Patriotic Feelings. Caricature by James Gillray, 1799. Source: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

DIY transparencies

London bookseller Rudolph Ackermann published 109 transparent etchings between 1796 and 1802, along with a book entitled Instructions for Painting Transparencies (1799). British engraver and publisher Edward Orme encouraged the fad for transparencies in both England and France with his bilingual manual, An Essay on Transparent Prints and on Transparencies in General (1807). Orme provided detailed instructions on how to turn an etching or engraving into a transparency. This involved painting large areas of color on the back of the print (corresponding with the outlines of the illustration), and then adding varnish to specific areas to give the paper a see-through effect when held up to light. Scraping or cutting away small sections of the surface was another way to enhance the transparency.

The effect of this kind of drawing (though by no means a modern invention) is very pleasing, if managed with judgement, particularly in [pictures featuring] fire, and moonlights; where brilliancy of light, and strength of shade, are so very desirable.

The very great expense attending the purchase of stained-glass, and the risk of keeping it secure from accident, almost precludes the use of it ornamenting rooms; but transparencies form a substitute nearly equal, and at a very small expense. (2)

The do-it-yourself method became popular in home decoration. Practical applications included lamp and candle shades, fire screens, fans and window blinds. Transparencies became an extension of the sketching and painting that genteel women were encouraged to undertake. Jane Austen, in Mansfield Park, refers to transparencies among the Bertram sisters’ handicrafts.

[The East room’s] greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia’s work, too ill-done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlit lake in Cumberland.… (3)

Large transparencies were exhibited at night, with a number of lamps behind them.

Transparencies were one of the most important forms of popular art to emerge in the late eighteenth century; until at least the mid-nineteenth century, they were ubiquitous at pleasure gardens, balls, assemblies, hustings, dinners, astronomical lectures, theatres, fairs and – most prominently – at civic celebrations of all kinds. The most elaborate large-scale transparencies for public exhibition were usually produced by professional scene-painters, drawing masters or even esteemed Royal Academicians, yet their prevalence stemmed from the fashionable status attached to the production of small paper and ornamental versions by amateurs. Transparencies proliferated because they could be executed in a multiplicity of formats, sizes and materials appropriate to whatever artistic or practical skill was possessed by their creator; these were then exhibited in a corresponding variety of public, civic and domestic spaces. (4)

Illuminations and transparencies at Napoleon’s wedding

For an example of transparencies on a grand scale, here’s a partial description of how Paris was illuminated for the marriage of Napoleon and his second wife Marie Louise in 1810.

On Monday evening [April 2], the city of Paris presented such a spectacle that one might have thought himself in an enchanted place. I have never seen such brilliant illuminations. It was a succession of all magical decorations. Houses, hotels, palaces, churches, all were dazzling, even to the church towers, which seemed like stars or comets hung in air. The residences of the great dignitaries of the Empire, the ministers, the ambassadors of Austria and Russia, and that of the Duc d’Abrantes, vied with each other in splendor and good taste. Place Louis XV presented an admirable spectacle. From the middle of this Place, surrounded by orange trees of flame, the eyes rolled alternately to the magnificent decoration of the Champs-Elysées, the Garde-Meuble, the temple of Glory, the Tuileries, and the Corps Législatif. The latter palace represented the temple of Hymen. The transparency of the pediment represented Peace uniting the august spouses. On either side of them were genii carrying bucklers on which were displayed the armorial bearings of the two empires; behind this group came magistrates, warriors, and the people, presenting them with crowns. At the two extremities of the transparency were the Seine and the Danube, surrounded with children, – an image of fecundity. The twelve columns of the peristyle, and the flight of the steps leading to it, were illuminated. (5)

American transparencies

The enthusiasm for transparencies crossed the Atlantic. Here’s a description of some of the transparencies on display to celebrate Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory at the Battle of Lake Erie (September 10, 1813) during the War of 1812.

Last night, in conformity to the recommendation of the Intendant and Wardens, this city [Charleston, SC] was most splendidly illuminated, in honor of the late glorious victory obtained over the enemy’s fleet on Lake Erie by the gallant Commodore Perry. On this occasion some very elegant and appropriate transparencies were exhibited, with suitable devices and patriotic mottos. Among the most conspicuous were those exhibited at the houses of Major Geddes, J.B. White, Esq. and John Everingham, Esq. Major Geddes’ was a large transparency, executed with great taste and happiness of design, describing the action of Erie, just at the critical and important moment that Commodore Perry was passing in his boat from his own crippled vessel, the Lawrence, which had borne the fire of the whole British force for two hours… On the upper part of the picture was inscribed ‘The Almighty has granted another glorious victory’; on the left over the prostrate symbols of royalty was the motto, ‘LIBERTY TRIUMPHANT.’

Mr. White’s were five in number…. The centre transparency…describes the deeply interesting period when Perry, the intrepid hero of the lake, swept through the line of the enemy, spreading destruction among their shipping…just above this soared the American Eagle, grasping a trident, which he poises over the scene, to be disposed of according as the event of the conflict may determine, which he seemed to be watching over with parental fondness. The all-seeing eye of fate overlooked the whole, scattering the rays of truth in all directions. At the base, the appropriate words of Perry’s communication: ‘It hath PLEASED THE ALMIGHTY.’ In the west window – The genius of America, in bold and brilliant colors, trampling a lion under her feet. Motto, ‘crush the monster.’ In the east window – A female figure, representing industry, and plenty, scattering her fruits. Motto, ‘plenty shall abound.’ In the windows of the upper story were two cherubs, wrapt in light clouds, supporting escutcheons, with the names of Lawrence, Ludlow, Burrows, and Sigourney. Motto, ‘There’s a sweet little Cherub that sits up aloft, To take care of the life of poor Jack.’

Mr. Everingham’s transparency (which we understand was executed by Mr. Wightman jun.) was highly appropriate: we will attempt to describe it. On the right, a marble monument erected on a rock, on the base, ‘departed heroes,’ – on the top, an urn, from which was suspended by a wreath of laurels, the names of Lawrence, Ludlow and Burrows – over the monument, an eagle, in her talons the shield of hope with an anchor – also, a trumpet; and in her bill the motto, ‘Free trade and sailor’s rights.’ On the left, a naval column, rising from the ocean, with the names of ‘Rodgers, Decatur, Hall, Bainbridge, Jones, Chauncey and Porter, [etc.].’

The effect of these several pieces was very great and attracted a vast concourse of people to the respective places; so much so, that a passage through the crowd was effected with difficulty. (6)

If you’d like to try making your own transparent paper lanterns, writer Anna M. Thane provides excellent instructions on her Regency Explorer blog.

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Charles Taylor, The Artist’s Repository and Drawing Magazine, exhibiting the Principles of the Polite Arts in their various Branches, Vol. IV (London, 1790), p. 137.
Colin Mackenzie, One Thousand Experiments in Chemistry (London, 1822), p. 476.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park: A Novel, Vol. 1, 2nd edition (London, 1816), p. 318.
John Plunkett, “Light work: Feminine Leisure and the Making of Transparencies,” Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski, eds., Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain (New York, 2016), pp. 43-44.
Louis Constant Wairy, Memoirs of Constant, First Valet de Chambre of the Emperor, on the Private Life of Napoleon, His Family and His Court, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, Vol. 3 (New York, 1895), pp. 150-151.
“The late Illuminations,” Niles Weekly Register, Vol. 5 (Baltimore, Oct. 30, 1813), p. 145.

In 1808, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the greatest German literary figure of the modern era. Each man admired the other, although Napoleon’s motives were not solely to greet the author of one of his favourite books.

Napoleon’s meeting with Goethe at Erfurt. Photogravure from a painting by Eugène Ernest Hillemacher

The Congress of Erfurt

Born in Frankfurt on August 28, 1749, Goethe was 20 years older than Napoleon. His fame as a writer was already well-established by the time Napoleon came to power in France. The young conqueror read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther multiple times, and carried it in his campaign library.

In 1806, Napoleon conquered Prussia. French troops occupied and sacked Weimar, where Goethe had lived since 1775. They broke into Goethe’s house; many of his friends lost everything. Still, Goethe reconciled himself to Napoleon’s empire, which he regarded as a legitimate successor to the Holy Roman Empire.

Two years later, Napoleon organized a grand congress at Erfurt, a short distance from Weimar. It was a summit meeting between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I of Russia, intended to strengthen their alliance. The congress was also a theatrical display of French power. “I want to astound Germany with my magnificence,” said Napoleon. (1) The attendees paying court included most of the kings and princes of Germany, and notables from across Europe. Napoleon brought his favourite actor, François-Joseph Talma, and the best actors and actresses of the Comédie-Française. They presented 16 French plays, chosen by Napoleon himself.

Napoleon wanted to co-opt the German cultural elite and enhance his reputation as a friend of the arts and literature. To this end, the great Goethe was invited to an interview.

Goethe’s account of the meeting

Napoleon met Goethe on October 2, 1808 in the Governor’s Palace at Erfurt.

I have been summoned to the Emperor for eleven o’clock in the morning. A fat chamberlain, Monsieur Pole, tells me to wait. The crowd disappears. I am introduced to Savary and Talleyrand. I am called into the Emperor’s study. At the same time, Daru has his presence announced. He is immediately brought in. This makes me hesitate. I am summoned a second time. I enter. The Emperor is seated at a large round table. He is eating breakfast. On his right, at some distance from the table, is Talleyrand; on his left, Daru, with whom he discusses taxes. The Emperor signals to me to approach. I remain standing in front of him at a suitable distance. After looking at me for a moment, he says to me: ‘You are a man.’ I bow my head. He says: ‘How old are you?’

‘Sixty years.’

‘You are well preserved. You have written some tragedies.’

I replied the bare essentials. Daru began to speak…. He added that I had translated some French works and, for example, Voltaire’s Mahomet. The Emperor said: ‘That is not a good work,’ and went on in detail about how it was indecorous for the conqueror of the world to paint such an unfavourable picture of himself. He then brought the conversation to Werther, which he must have studied in detail. After several perfectly appropriate observations, he mentioned a specific part and said to me: ‘Why did you do that? It is not natural.’ And he spoke at length on this and with perfect accuracy.

I listened with a calm face, and I replied, with a smile of satisfaction, that I didn’t know whether anyone had ever made the same criticism, but that I found it perfectly justified, and that I agreed that one could find fault with this passage’s lack of authenticity. ‘But,’ I added, ‘a poet can perhaps be excused for taking refuge in an artifice which is hard to spot, when he wants to produce certain effects that could not be created simply and naturally.’

The Emperor seemed to agree with me; he returned to drama and made some very sensible remarks, as a man who had observed the tragic stage with a great deal of attention, like a criminal judge, and who felt very deeply how far French theatre had strayed from nature and truth.

He went on to talk about fatalistic plays, of which he disapproved. They belonged to the dark ages. ‘Why, today, do they keep giving us destiny?’ he said. ‘Destiny is politics.’

He turned again to Daru and spoke to him about taxes…. Marshal Soult was announced….

The Emperor rose, came straight towards me and, by a sort of manoeuvre, separated me from the other people in the line in which I found myself. He turned his back to those people and spoke to me, lowering his voice. He asked me whether I was married, whether I had children, and other personal matters.

He also questioned me on my relations with the house of the princes, on the Duchess Amalia, on the prince, and on the princess. I replied in a natural manner. He seemed satisfied, and translated for himself these replies into his language, but in slightly more forceful terms than I had managed.

I must also note that, in the whole of our conversation, I had admired the variety of his affirmative replies and gestures, because he was rarely immobile when he listened. Sometimes he made a meditative gesture with his head and said: ‘Yes’ or ‘That’s right,’ or something similar; or, if he had stated some idea, he most often added: ‘And what would Monsieur Goethe say to that?’

I took the opportunity to make a sign to the chamberlain to see if I could retire, and, on his affirmative response, I immediately took my leave. (2)

Napoleon met Goethe again on October 6, this time at Weimar, in the company of fellow writer Christoph Martin Wieland. On October 14, Goethe and Wieland were each awarded the cross of the Legion of Honour. Goethe revealed no details about about his conversations with Napoleon until many years later.

In 1815, Napoleon was defeated and exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he died on May 5, 1821. In 1828, Goethe told his friend Johann Peter Eckermann:

Napoleon was the man! Always enlightened, always clear and decided, and endowed with sufficient energy to carry into effect whatever he considered advantageous and necessary. His life was the stride of a demi-god, from battle to battle, and from victory to victory. It might well be said of him, that he was found in a state of continual enlightenment. On this account, his destiny was more brilliant than any the world had seen before him, or perhaps will ever see after him. (3)

Goethe died on March 22, 1832, at the age of 82.

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Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, Mémoires du Prince de Talleyrand, Vol. I (Paris, 1891), p. 402.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Oeuvres de Goethe, X: Mélanges, translated by Jacques Porchat (Paris, 1874), pp. 307-309.
Johann Peter Eckermann and Frédéric Jacob Soret, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, translated by John Oxenford, Vol. II (London, 1850), p. 40.

Would you rather eat sweetbreads or sweetmeats? While sweetbreads might sound like sugary buns, they are actually a form of meat. They consist of the pancreas (“heart,” “chest” or “stomach” sweetbreads) or thymus glands (“throat” or “neck” sweetbreads) of an animal, usually a calf or a lamb. Dorothea Lieven offers George Canning some larded sweetbreads at her dinner party in Napoleon in America.

A plate of sweetmeats

The first known use of the word “sweetbreads” occurred in the 16th century. These bits of offal may have been called “sweet” because they were considered a delicacy, or because they tasted richer than the more savory muscle meat. The “bread” part of the name may have come from an Old English word for flesh or for roasted meat.

To further confuse things, actual sweets – candies, cakes, pastries, preserves – used to be called sweetmeats. This term, also from an Old English word, was first used in the 15th century and was still common in the 1800s. Some popular 19th-century British sweetmeats took their names from prominent figures of the Napoleonic Wars.

Bonaparte’s ribs

As mentioned in my article about Boney the bogeyman, “Bonaparte’s ribs” was a lollipop named after Napoleon. An 1845 guidebook to London observed:

[T]he little sweet-stuff shops in the little lanes and alleys abound in great profusion. Here, under the tantalizing denominations of hard-bake, almond-rock, brandy-balls, bulls’-eyes, elicampayne, sugar-plums, candied almonds, acid drops, Bonaparte’s ribs, peppermint, are saccharine juices in great variety and profusion; in the City, however, where children are taught to stuff as soon as they can crawl, these sweet-stuff shops rise to wholesale dignity, and supply not only little children, but the ‘trade.’ (1)

On a tour of a sweet shop in 1847, a writer for the London magazine Punch learned how this sweetmeat supposedly got its name.

We were next taken over the Bonaparte’s Ribs department, and received the instructive information that this sweetmeat dates as far back as the divorce of the Emperor from Josephine and his marriage with Marie-Louise, which suggested the idea of Bonaparte’s Ribs, and as the repudiation of his first partner was generally regarded as the commencement of his downfall, this popular lollipop was struck in commemoration of an event that promised so much for English interests. Bonaparte himself being in everybody’s mouth at that time, it was very naturally supposed that his ribs might get into the same position, and thus a large sale would be ensured for the new sweetmeat. The original inventor was not mistaken, for he retired on the ribs in less than three years from the time of their being first manufactured. (2)

Another magazine described how one proprietor of sweetmeats took advantage of the library on her premises to save on expenses associated with the sale of Bonaparte’s ribs.

Mrs. Boxer’s notions of the belles lettres are somewhat vague and restricted. She sells toffee, Bonaparte’s ribs, and other articles of rough confectionery, penn’orths [pennyworths] of which are occasionally seen to emerge from her miscellaneous stores wrapped in printed leaves of suspicious size, and still more suspicious literary significance. In short, I have a notion that Mrs. Boxer pulls out a stray leaf here and there to save the expense of paper in which to screw up toffee or Bonaparte’s ribs. (3)

Wellington pillars

In an 1851 description of the “Street Sale of Sweet-Stuff,” there is a tantalizing reference to a sweetmeat named after the Duke of Wellington.

Treacle and sugar are the ground-work of the manufacture of all kinds of sweet-stuff…. The flavoring – or ‘scent’ as I heard it called in the trade – now most in demand is peppermint. Gibraltar rock and Wellington pillars used to be flavored with ginger, but these ‘sweeties’ are exploded [i.e. fallen from favour]. (4)

Nelson’s balls

Admiral Nelson got his sugary tribute as well.

The old man…who supplied us with gingerbread and sugarplums, had availed himself of the advantage that the knowledge of the sweet, which was the favourite of his Lordship in his juvenile days, conferred upon him; for when the hero’s name had become enrolled in the annals of Fame, the circumstance of his former partiality returned so vividly to the cake-vender’s imagination, that he bent his whole attention to recollect the ingredients of which this sweet was composed, and so true to him was his memory, that the result of his lucubrations ended in the reproduction of the very same article, which henceforth appeared under the appellation of ‘Nelson’s balls;’ and as he took occasion, whenever he deemed it a matter of expediency, not only to dwell on the high merits of this deft mixture of sugar, treacle, et alia ejusdem generis, but also to expatiate largely on the reasons which, from personal knowledge, had induced him to assign such an appellation to this portion of his stock in trade, the sale of it was attended with no inconsiderable benefit to his purse. (5)

The Tyneside poet Robert Gilchrist honoured Nelson’s balls in verse in 1824.

The Itinerant Confectioner

I’ve travell’d up and down,
All the country over,
Seen every market town,
All the way to Dover,
What here I’ve got to sell,
Don’t be shy to ask it,
Or you I soon shall tell
To look into my Basket.

Now therein you will find,
What will please your fancy;
Mint drops to break the wind,
Or it will a chance be;
Here’s barley sugar sweet,
Gibby sticks and kisses,
If you will to please to treat,
Little boys or misses.

Nelson’s balls I’ll sell ye,
By the weight or dozens,
Candy, white or yellow,
Dog’s turd and pincushions,
Here’s lemon gingerbread,
Cream with ice congealed,
Ye’ll find them far exceed,
Sol’mons Balm of Gilead. (6)

A sweetmeat recipe

If the above has whet your appetite for a Napoleonic War-themed sweetmeat, try this recipe for Nelson’s balls from an 1866 cookbook. It’s not clear how much this biscuit/cookie resembles the treacly confection mentioned above.

Take three pounds of flour, half a pound of sifted sugar, the same of butter, and a little essence of lemon; mix this up very stiff with milk, put it in a cloth for half an hour, then break it smooth with a biscuit break or rolling pin; mould them into small balls about the size of a walnut with your fingers, bake in a rather quick oven, and put into the screen to dry. (7)

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The Restaurateur: Dining in Paris in the Early 19th Century

Celebrating with Light: Illuminations and Transparencies

John Fisher Murray, The World of London, Vol. I (London, 1845), pp. 190-191.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 13 (July-December, 1847), p. 222.
The Leisure Hour Monthly Library, Volume 5 (London, 1856), p. 507.
Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor, Vol. I, (New York, 1851), p. 205.
“The Naval Chaplain’s Note-book,” Colburn’s United Service Magazine (London, February 1845), p. 202.
Robert Gilchrist, A Collection of Original Local Songs (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1824), pp. 103-104.
John Massey & William John Massey, Massey and Son’s Biscuit, Ice & Compote book; or, The Essence of Modern Confectionary (London, 1866), p. 26.

Boney the bogeyman: caricature of Napoleon as the devil’s son. Copyright McGill University.

In the same way that early 19th century British caricaturists portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte as a devilish tyrant, British parents and teachers used Napoleon as a threat to scare children into good behaviour during the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, the word “bogeyman” is sometimes said to be derived from “Boney,” the popular British nickname for Napoleon, even though it actually comes from the Middle English bogge/bugge (hobgoblin).

Napoleon the scourge of English children

Betsy Balcombe, an English girl who befriended Napoleon when he was in exile on St. Helena, noted in her memoirs:

The earliest idea I had of Napoleon was that of a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming red eye in the middle of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured naughty little girls, especially those who did not know their lessons. (1)

English humorist Gilbert à Beckett described Napoleon’s malign effect on his life at a preparatory school near Kensington in 1815.

Bonaparte had just escaped from Elba, and Miss Frounce, like an admirable politician, took advantage of this important event to overawe the ‘young gentlemen from three to eight’ who were under her guidance. On all occasions, Bonaparte was held up as the great bugbear, and there was not a boy in the school who was not firmly convinced that Miss Frounce had Napoleon under her thumb – that, in fact, if any of ‘the young gentlemen’ should prove refractory, Miss Frounce had it in her power to send for Bony with as much facility as she could order the sweeps or the dustman. If a boy, when spelling, knocked an i out of the word annihilate, he was threatened with being handed over to the tender mercies of Bonaparte; and every one of the pupils of Miss Frounce felt assured that, if Napoleon invaded England, he would knock at the door of the ‘establishment for young gentleman from three to eight’ the very morning after his arrival.

Whatever might have been his feeling of hostility towards the Prince of Wales, or the members of the cabinet, my firm conviction was that Master Snodgrass, who had been turned back in grammar, had much more to apprehend from Napoleon than the Regent and the ministers. Sometimes have I contemplated the possibility of hiding in case of the dreaded visit; but then it has flashed upon my juvenile mind that Bonaparte was not to be baffled, and that he would inevitably look under all the beds in the house, rather than be foiled in the vengeance which the ‘young gentlemen from three to eight’ were convinced inspired him.

Never shall I forget the panic that seized on ‘all the boys’ when the fact was announced that a leg of mutton had been stolen from the larder. Who could be the thief? Why, of course, nobody but Bonaparte. Miss Frounce, wishing to enhance the intimidating reputation of her great bugbear, favoured the idea, and the whole of the ‘young gentlemen from three to eight’ were under the firm impression that Bonaparte had landed in England during the night, secured the leg of mutton, and retreated before daylight into the bosom of his own army.

Such impressions as those I have related are strange and absurd; but there are many now living who, if they happened, during the time of the Bonaparte panic, to be inmates of a preparatory school for ‘young gentlemen from three to eight,’ will recognize the fidelity of the feelings I have described.

I never ate the lollipop which went by the name of his ribs, without being awed by a sort of unaccountable fear that Bonaparte might yet break from his captivity, and pay me off personally for the indignity offered him in purchasing a hap’orth of his anatomy, and sucking it, like Tom Trot or Everton Toffee. (2)

Napoleon or Wellington?

Napoleon ready to dine on the children of England

This nursery rhyme (and variants thereof) is often cited as a popular lullaby in England during the Napoleonic Wars:

Baby, baby, naughty baby!
Hush! you squalling thing, I say;
Hush your squalling, or it may be
Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he’s a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple,
And he dines and sups, relie on ’t,
Every day on naughty people.

Baby, baby, he will hear you,
As he passes by the house,
And he, limb from limb, will tear you,
Just as pussy tears a mouse. (3)

The trouble is that I have not been able to find the verse in any pre-20th century source. What does appear in print in the 19th century is the same poem with “Wellington” in place of the word “Bonaparte.” Setting aside the issue of how the words would have to be rearranged to rhyme in French, this actually makes some sense. The vast majority of British children would never have seen Rouen’s steeple, whereas the comparison would presumably have meant something to French children. According to the introduction to the rhyme in the Wellington Anecdotes, published in 1852:

In time of war the name of Wellington used to be employed by the bonnes to subdue refractory infants. The following version of a nursery rhyme is said to have been familiar in France thirty or forty years ago.… (4)

And The Westminster Review (1848) noted:

Whatever may be the sins of the Jesuits, there can be no question but that their name has been, and is, often made use of as a mere word of fear to frighten grown children with – as the name of the Duke of Wellington, we are told, was, some years ago, among nurses in France; and many of the goblin tales concerning the order are probably about as true as the description of his Grace in the nursery song:

Tall he is, as a Rouen steeple,
And his teeth like iron saws,
Breakfasts, dines on naughty people,
Crunches babies in his jaws. (5)

So perhaps “Old Nosey” was as much the bogeyman to French children as Napoleon was to their English counterparts.

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Caricatures of Napoleon on St. Helena

Sweetbreads, Sweetmeats and Bonaparte’s Ribs

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Napoleon in French Canada

Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe Abell, Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, during the First Three Years of His Captivity on the Island of St. Helena(London, 1844), p. 12.
Gilbert A. à Beckett, “Bonaparte at Miss Frounce’s School,” in Douglas Jerrold (ed.), The Illuminated Magazine, Vol. 1 (London, May-October 1843), pp. 23-24.
M. Broadley, The Three Dorset Captains at Trafalgar (London, 1906), p. 148.
Wellington Anecdotes: A Collection of Sayings and Doings of the Great Duke, Vol. 5 (London, 1852), p. 41.
The Westminster Review, Vol. 48, No. 95 (London, January 1848), pp. 269-270.

Parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan have a connection to Napoleon that cannot be claimed by anywhere else in Canada: they were once under Napoleon’s rule.

The area covered by the Louisiana Purchase. Ever wonder about that little bit that extends into Canada? Map by William Morris

A question of boundaries

In 1803, short of funds for a planned invasion of England, Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana – France’s territory in mainland North America – to the United States for $15 million. James Monroe (who appears in Napoleon in America) negotiated the purchase.

When it came time to specify the boundaries, there was a slight problem. Most of the land in question had never been explored, surveyed or mapped by a white man. Treaties transferring Louisiana from France to Spain in 1763 and back to France in 1800 had not included a specific delineation of boundaries. Perpetuating this lack of definition, the French representatives agreed to cede to the United States

the colony or province of Louisiana, with the same extent it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states. (1)

When Napoleon was advised of the vagueness of the text, he replied “that if an obscurity did not already exist it would perhaps be good policy to put one there.” (2) He wanted a quick deal, and didn’t mind if the treaty led to conflict between the United States and its neighbours.

Everyone generally agreed that the territory was bordered on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and on the east by the Mississippi River (including New Orleans). The western border with Spain was much disputed. It was eventually fixed as the Sabine River in the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819.

As for the northern boundary with British North America, that was unclear. France had given up its claims to the area drained by Hudson Bay (Rupert’s Land, nominally owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company) in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, though the exact extent of the Hudson Bay land was not defined. When France ceded its colony of Canada to Britain in the Treaty of Paris (1763), the boundary between the Hudson Bay territory and Louisiana remained unspecified.

In October 1802, French Foreign Minister Talleyrand wrote this about the boundaries of Louisiana:

The farther north one goes, the more vague is the demarcation. Since that part of America is without European settlements and encloses only uninhabited forests or Indian tribes, the necessity of marking a line of demarcation has been less felt there. Neither has a line been drawn between Louisiana and Canada. Since both of these countries belonged to France before the treaty of 1763, there was little to be gained in separating exactly their boundaries, and that has not been done since…. (3)

The Missouri and its tributaries

Nonetheless, France believed Louisiana encompassed the watershed of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. According to François Barbé-Marbois, French negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase:

The charter given by Louis XIV to Crozat [the first owner of Louisiana] included all the countries watered by the rivers which empty directly or indirectly into the Mississippi. Within this description comes the Missouri, a river that has its sources and many of its tributary streams at a little distance from the Rocky Mountains. (4)

US President Thomas Jefferson also took this view. On July 11, 1803, he wrote to General Horatio Gates:

The territory acquired…includes all the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi…. (5)

A Cabinet decision of November 14, 1805, regarding the American stance on the western boundary of Louisiana also implied that the northern part of the territory included the tributaries of the Missouri River:

The boundary between the territories of Orleans & Louisiana on the one side & the domns. of Spain on the other shall be the river Colorado from its mouth to it’s source thence due N. the highlands inclosing the waters which run directly or indirectly into the Missouri or Misipi rivers, & along those highlands as far as they border on the Span domns. (6)

Napoleonic Alberta and Saskatchewan?

This is where Alberta and Saskatchewan come in. While most of the rivers and creeks in the southern part of these provinces flow toward Hudson Bay, some – the Milk River in Alberta and the Poplar River and Big Muddy Creek in Saskatchewan – flow south through the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The lands drained by these tributaries could thus be regarded as having been part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Missouri Territory formerly Louisiana, published by Matthew Carey in 1814. Source: Library of Congress

This can be seen on this 1814 map, which depicts the “Missouri Territory Formerly Louisiana.” In 1812, the state of Louisiana was carved out of the Louisiana Purchase area, and the remaining lands were called the Missouri Territory. The area below the “probable north boundary of the Missouri Territory” encompasses the land around the Missouri River tributaries, including the Milk River and Big Muddy Creek (Martha’s River).

Detail of the previous map, showing the “Probable North Boundary of the Missouri Territory”

The “probable north boundary” soon changed. In the Convention of 1818, Britain and the United States established that the 49th parallel would separate Canada and its southern neighbour from the Lake of the Woods westward to the Stony (Rocky) Mountains – something that the two sides’ negotiators had agreed on in 1807.

As for how long parts of present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan were – at least in theory – under Napoleonic rule, the answer is not long. Although France had secretly acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1800, Spain continued to administer the territory. To effect the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States, France took control of Louisiana on November 30, 1803. The French handed Louisiana over to the Americans just three weeks later, on December 20, 1803.

If you wonder what might have happened if Napoleon had tried to play a greater role in ruling parts of North America, read Napoleon in America.

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A Petition for the Emperor

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Canada Day in 1867

Louis Houck, The Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase: A Historical Study (St. Louis, 1901), p. 5.
François Barbé-Marbois, The History of Louisiana: Particularly of the Cession of that Colony to the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1830), p. 286.
James Alexander Robinson, Louisiana Under the Rule of Spain, France and the United States, 1785-1807, Vol. 2 (Cleveland, 1911), p. 141.
The History of Louisiana: Particularly of the Cession of that Colony to the United States of America, p. 290.
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. III (London, 1829), p. 518.
Paul Leicester Ford, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. X (New York and London, 1905), p. 180.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and subsequent imprisonment on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena (from which he escapes in Napoleon in America) provided opportunity for the last great blast of Napoleon caricatures. Most of them appeared in 1815, the year of Napoleon’s second and final abdication from the French throne. Relatively few appeared in the years up to his death in 1821. Further to my post about caricatures of Napoleon on Elba, here’s a look at some caricatures about Napoleon’s exile on St. Helena.

Caricatures of Napoleon’s departure for St. Helena

A rare acquisition to the royal menagerie: A present from Waterloo by Marshals Wellington & Blucher

A rare acquisition to the royal menagerie: A present from Waterloo by Marshalls Wellington & Blucher. Napoleon caricature by Thomas Rowlandson, July 28, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Napoleon, perched in a large birdcage (topped by a dead eagle), is surrounded by an angry mob. A newsboy says: “Just Caught a Ferocious Animal never Exhibited before in this Country commonly called the Corsican tyger or man destroyer to be seen for a short time for Two Pence a Piece.” Napoleon says: “Mort de ma vie. Dat be one Cossack in Petticoats she will soon skin and bone me.” A sailor says: “Once more my Dear Magg of Wapping We have got him under the Hatches and shiver my Timbers the only way to secure him is to send him to Dock Head.” Magg replies: “I’ll Dock Head and Dock Tail him. I’ll cut off his Ears I’ll cut off his ___. I’ll make a Singing Bird of him.” Caricature by Thomas Rowlandson, July 28, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Boney’s trial, sentence, and dying speech; or Europe’s injuries revenged

Boney's trial, sentence, and dying speech; or: Europe’s injuries revenged. Napoleon caricature by Thomas Rowlandson, July 28, 1815

Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher says: “You Nap Boneparte being found Guilty of all these Crimes it is fell to my lot to pronounce Sentence of Death on You—You are to be hung by the Neck for one hour till you are Dead, Dead, Dead, & your Body to be chained to a Mill Stone & sunk in the Sea at Torbay.” Napoleon replies: “Oh cruel Blucher, Oh! cruel Wellington it is you that have brought me to this End. Oh Magnanimous Emperors Kings & Princes intercede for me and spare my life; and give me time to atone for all my Sins. My Son Napoleon the Second will reward you for Mercy shewn me.” Napoleon’s offences are inscribed as follows: “NAPOLEAN BONAPARTE The first and last by the Wrath of Heaven Ex Emperor of the Jacobins & head Runner of Runaways, Stands indicted 1st for the Murder of Captain Wright in the Temple at Paris; 2d for the murder of the Duke Dangulem [d’Enghien] Pichegrew & Georges; 3 for the Murder of Palm Hoffer &c; & 4th for the murder of the 12 inhabitants of Moscow; 5th for innumerable Robberies committed on all Nations in Christendom & elsewhere; 6th for Bigamy; & lastly for returning from Transportation, and setting the World in an uproar.” Tsar Alexander of Russia is on the far left. Next to him is Britain’s Prince Regent. King Louis XVIII is on Blücher’s left. Caricature by Thomas Rowlandson, July 28, 1815. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr

Le départ du petit caporal

Le départ du petit caporal, French caricature, 1815. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr

Archchancellor of the Empire Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès says: “Sire, I play the follies of Spain, accompanied by the Russian, followed by a German, and I end with the English.” Napoleon says: “My last folly causes me to beat a return to the Isles.” Napoleon’s half-Austrian son chimes in: “Papa, we forget the waltz.” French caricature, 1815. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr

Buonaparte on the 17th of June / Buonaparte on the 17th of July – 1815

Buonaparte on the 17th of June / Buonaparte on the 17th of July – 1815. Napoleon caricature by George Cruikshank, August 1815. . Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

In the first panel, Napoleon shouts defiantly at John Bull, sitting on the other side of the English Channel: “Ha! ha! You Bull beast you Blackguard Islander. You see I’m come back again & now you shall see what I will do with you, you wretch! You thought I was done over did you?! You thought I was going to stay at Elba? D—n all Elbas & Abdications: Englishmen & their Allies—I’ll play Hell with them all.” John Bull emits a puff of smoke inscribed: “You may be D—d I’ll make a Tobacco Stopper of you.”

In the second panel, Napoleon (in the Bellerophon – the Royal Navy ship that transported him from France to the British coast) kneels beside papers inscribed “Petition,” “Letters to the Prince Regent,” and says: “O! good Mr Bull I wish you to know, / (Although you are my greatest foe) / That my Career is at an end: / And I wish you now to stand my Friend / For tho at the Battle of Waterloo, / I was by you beat black & blue / Yet you see I wish to live with you / For I’m sure what is said of your goodness is true / And now if in England you’ll let me remain / I ne’er will be guilty of bad Tricks again.” John Bull responds: “Let me see, first of all you sprung from the Island of Corsica—and when you was kick’d out of France & went to the Island of Elba you made another Spring into France again—And now when you are kick’d out of France a second time you want to come & live on my Island, but it won’t do Master Boney— you’ll be making another Spring into France again I suppose. So I tell you what, I’ll send you to the Island of St Helena & we’ll see what sort of a Spring you’ll make then.” Caricature by George Cruikshank, August 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Boney’s threatened invasion brought to bear or: taking a view of the English coast from ye poop of the Bellerophon

Boney’s threatened invasion brought to bear or: taking a view of the English coast from ye poop of the Bellerophon. Napoleon caricature by George Cruikshank, September 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Looking at England from the Bellerophon, General Henri Bertrand points to the gallows and says: “By gar! mon Emperor, dey have erect von prospect for you.” Napoleon says: “Me no like de D—m prospect.” A British sailor gives his opinion: “I thinks as how, Master Boney, that instead of sending you to Hell bay [Elba], they should have sent you to Hell at once.” Caricature by George Cruikshank, September 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Boney crossing the line

Boney crossing the line. Napoleon caricature by John Lewis Marks, circa September 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The title refers to a traditional shipboard ceremony for sailors who are crossing the equator for the first time. Napoleon “crossed the line” on September 23, 1815 as a prisoner on HMS Northumberland. As Napoleon (sitting blindfolded in a tub) is doused with soapy water, he says: “I no like de English Valet de Chambre, Have mercy.” Neptune (holding up a trident) says: “I command you’ll cleanse him from his Iniquity’s.” A black sailor (left) says: “Massa Boney no like to be got in a Line!!” Two French officers (right) say: “I wish de Dirty job was over!!” and “Be gar me no like de Shaving Shop!!!” A British sailor responds: “Have Patience Gentlemen and we’ll shave you directly and give you a good Lathering as Old Blucher did!!” Caricature by John Lewis Marks, circa September 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Napoleon’s trip from Elba to Paris, & from Paris to St. Helena

Napoleon's trip from Elba to Paris, & from Paris to St. Helena. Napoleon caricatures by George Cruikshank, September 1, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

In the first panel, Napoleon flees the battlefield of Waterloo. He says: “Sauve qui peut. The Devil take the hindmost. Run my boys, your Emperor leads the way. My dear Eagle only conduct me safe to Paris this time as you did from Moscow and Leipsig, and I’ll never trouble you again. Oh d—m that Wellington.” The eagle says: “My left wing has entirely disappeared.”

In the middle panel, Napoleon addresses John Bull from the Bellerophon: “My most powerful & most generous enemy, how do you do? I come like Themistocles to seat myself upon your hearth. I am very glad to see you.” (This is a reference to a letter Napoleon sent to Britain’s Prince Regent.) John Bull replies: “So am I glad to see you, Mr. Boney, but I’ll be d—d if you sit upon my hearth or any part of my house. It has cost me a pretty round sum to catch you, Mr. Themistocles, as you call yourself, but now I have got you I’ll take care of you.”

In the third panel, Napoleon is on St. Helena. One of his attendants (probably General Bertrand) sees a rat coming and says: “Ah! Mon dieu! Dere your Majesty, dere be de vilain rogues. Ah, Monsieur rat. Why you not pop your nose into de trap & let de august Emperor catch you?” A female attendant (probably Fanny Bertrand), with a slice of bacon, says: “Will your Majesty be please to try dis bit of bacon? Ah! De cunning rascal! Dere! Ma foi! He sniff at de bacon.” Napoleon says: “Alas! that I who caught Imperial flats, / Should now sit here to watch these scurvy rats. / I, who Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, took, / Am doom’d, with cheese, to bait a rusty hook! / Was it for this I tried to save my bacon, / To use it now for rats that won’t be taken? / Curse their wise souls! I had not half such trouble / Their European brethren to bubble. / When I, myself, was hail’d as Emperor Nap, / Emperors & Kings I had within my trap / And to this moment might have kept them there / Had I not gone to hunt the Russian bear.” Caricature by George Cruikshank, September 1, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Caricatures of Napoleon on St. Helena

Je Fume en Pleurant mes Péchés

Je Fume en Pleurant mes Péchés. Napoleon caricature by Louis, 1815

“I smoke and cry about my sins.” The word “fume” has a double meaning: Napoleon is smoking a pipe and fuming with anger. The paper in his hand says “Mes dernières Reflexions de 1815” (my last reflections of 1815). French caricature, September 16, 1815.

Boney’s meditations on the Island of St. Helena, or The Devil addressing the Sun

Boney’s meditations on the Island of St. Helena, or The Devil addressing the Sun. Napoleon Caricature by George Cruikshank, August 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Napoleon addresses Britain’s Prince Regent (the future King George IV): “To thee I call. But with no friendly voice, & add thy name, G—P—Rt! to tell thee how I hate thy beams, that bring to my remembrance from what state I fell &c.” The rays surrounding the Prince’s face are inscribed: “Alexander, Fredk William, Francis, William 1st of Orange, Wellington, Blucher, Hill, Beresford, Anglesea.” Caricature by George Cruikshank, August 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The inhabitants of St. Helena alarmed at the appearance of their new Governor

The inhabitants of St. Helena alarmed at the appearance of their new Governor. Napoleon caricature. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

St. Helena was notoriously swarming with rats. Napoleon’s residence of Longwood House, where the opening scene of Napoleon in America takes place, was plagued with them. Napoleon says: “Inhabitants of St. Helena, let’s be friends. I declare you a free people. I give you as a pledge this faithful servant whom I have with me.” The cat says: “Now I shall be compensated.” The leader of the overgrown rats says: “Gentlemen, we have not a moment to lose; let our Council assemble immediately to consult how we shall be able to expel these formidable invaders.” Others cry: “To arms! To arms! Our mortal enemy approaches.” British caricature, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The inhabitants of St. Helena addressing their new Governor

The inhabitants of St. Helena addressing their new Governor. Napoleon caricature Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

The rats say: “We the ancient Inhabitants of St. Helena beg leave to congratulate your Imperial Majesty on your safe arrival in this county, in order to take on yourself the Government thereof. We are unanimously of opinion that you are signally qualified to fulfil the mighty trust reposed in you, and therefore humbly crave your gracious acceptance thereof; on our part rest assured of our most zealous attachment & support.” Napoleon says: “Ancient Inhabitants of St. Helena, accept my acknowledgements for your loyal address and believe me nothing on my part shall be wanting to complete your happiness and independence. The first wishes of my heart were directed to your interest and the happiest hours of my existence were spent in anticipating your future greatness.” British caricature, 1815. Source: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Alte Liebe rostet nicht

Alte Liebe rostet nicht. German caricature by Johann Michael Voltz, 1815. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr

Rats were a popular theme: “Old habits die hard, or the great man’s pastimes on the small, rat-infested island of St. Helena.” German caricature by Johann Michael Voltz, 1815. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, gallica.bnf.fr

You might also enjoy:

What did Napoleon say about the Battle of Waterloo?

Why didn’t Napoleon escape to the United States?

Napoleon’s Arrival at St. Helena

Currency, Exchange Rates & Costs in the 19th Century

A dandy’s toilette, 1818. “Never lay out your money in dress before it is wanted, on the score of comfort and decency.”

When looking into the history of the 20 Questions game, I came across some splendid money-saving tips published in 1829. Although intended for young men, these “Twelve Golden Rules of Prudent Economy Necessary to be Studied in Early Youth, that they May be Practiced at Maturer Age” could usefully be heeded by anyone at any age, even today. They were written by William Fordyce Mavor (1758-1837), a Scottish teacher, priest and prolific author of educational books. Perhaps something to show the student in your life?

Rules of Prudent Economy

I. Whenever you feel yourself disposed to go to the tavern, club, or any place of public or private entertainment, stay at home; and put down under this head what you reasonably suppose it would have cost you, had you indulged your taste for pleasure or dissipation.

II. When business can be as well despatched by a letter as by a journey, calculate the difference in the expense, and consider it as clear gain.

III. If under the necessity of taking a journey, compare the expense of going on foot, on horseback, or in a carriage; and whatever you save by altering your usual mode of travelling is unquestionably so much put into your pocket.

IV. When invited to make one on a party of pleasure, near home, or to take a distant excursion, not only estimate the money it will cause you to expend, but how much you may save or earn by declining the allurement. Enter this on the credit side of your accounts.

V. When you see any fruit, tarts, trinkets, or toys, which tempt you to draw your purse, but which you can do very well without, pull out as much money as the present object of temptation would cost, and set it apart as so much gained.

VI. If you have more servants, horses, dogs, or carriages than are necessary, or suitable to your fortune and rank in life, retrench till you barely consult convenience; and in many cases the balance in your favour will be very considerable.

VII. When you ask a party of friends to dinner (for without some society life is insupportable) make out a bill of fare, equally remote from extravagance and meanness; and instead of pressing bumpers [a glass filled to the brim], have the good manners and good sense to let each drink as he likes; by which means your stock of wine will last the longer, and you will save yourself and company a head-ache, or a debauch; besides no inconsiderable charges it would cost you to obtain this poor gratification. N.B. This rule is to be applied to all superfluous domestic expenses.

VIII. If you have a taste for showy or useless improvements, in order to indulge yourself, you make or get an estimate made of what they would cost; but put the money by, for some more urgent occasion.

IX. When you see your neighbour or equal changing his furniture, or new hanging his rooms because the fashion has changed, do not be fool enough to copy him; but think how much he spends idly, and estimate what you save wisely.

X. Never lay out your money in dress before it is wanted, on the score of comfort and decency; nor fancy that you gain in consequence in proportion to the expensiveness of your apparel. Only women and beaux value finery; and all the world knows they are laughed at for their folly and extravagance.

XI. Should indolence endeavour to arrest you, rouse yourself manfully: and if you know any honest means of employing a few leisure hours to advantage, reckon how much you gain by opposing a favourite inclination.

XII. And to conclude: if you have any private expenses which may be retrenched, convert them to the service of the poor, or the benefit of your family, if you have one. Thus you will frequently save your pocket, your credit, and your constitution, three things on which a wise and good man still continues to fix some value, notwithstanding the vicious refinements of the age.

These rules, duly observed, mutatis mutandis, according to age, circumstances, and situation, will tend to make men rich and respectable, enable them to do good, and promote long life and happiness. (1)

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William Fordyce Mavor, Miscellanies in Two Parts (Oxford, 1829), pp. 155-156.

Felipe de la Garza

Felipe de la Garza was the most important military figure in Nuevo Santander (present-day Tamaulipas, Mexico) during the 1820s. He spent the early part of his military career in Texas. Although De la Garza remained on the royalist side during Mexico’s war for independence, he soon embraced revolutionary politics in the new nation. De la Garza led a failed revolt against Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. He later led Iturbide to his execution.

Commander in Texas

Felipe de la Garza was born in Soto la Marina in the province of Nuevo Santander in northeastern Mexico. His parents were Eusebio de la Garza and Tomasa Cisneros Guerra. The De la Garzas were descended from a Spanish captain who immigrated to New Spain in the 16th century. As wealthy hacienda owners, they were one of the most prominent families in the area.

Although several websites give Felipe de la Garza’s year of birth as 1798, he was undoubtedly born earlier. In 1810, he was given military command of the post of Santísma Trinidad de Salcedo in Texas – hardly a job for a 12-year-old. A look at the index of De la Garza’s correspondence with Texas Governor Manuel María de Salcedo reveals the range of problems he had to deal with. For example, in May 1812 De la Garza wrote about:

a horse and mare found by party sent out in search of a man escaping into Louisiana; on transmittal of military reports; on the attack by Indians on mail carriers; on the construction of a fort to protect the settlers in case of Indian attack; on the arrest of Arscencio Arreoloa, Indian interpreter, for stirring discontent among the Indians; and on arrangements to escort mail carriers because of Indian hostilities. (1)

A week later he wrote about the:

remittance of documents concerning an Anglo-American, a Negro and a Negro woman; on the return of horses to the Navidacho Indians; on the lack of troops, ammunition and arms, and request to send back Trinidad soldiers detached in other posts; on request for replacement for Blás José Perales who was sent to hospital in Béxar; on damages caused by a storm on military quarters and guardhouse; on the insubordination of José Ignacio Góngora; and on keeping one of the three axes sent with Góngora, for the construction of a defensive wall. (2)

As a royalist officer, De la Garza also had to contend with insurgents fighting for Mexico’s independence from Spain. He may have fought in the Battle of Medina in August 1813. A month later he was preparing for an attack on rebels at Refugio. In 1817, De la Garza was given the responsibility of defending Soto la Marina from an invasion of rebels led by Spanish adventurer Francisco Javier Mina.

A failed rebellion

By the time Mexico gained its independence in 1821, Felipe de la Garza was one of the most important men in Nuevo Santander. Thanks to his military service, his social standing and his last minute endorsement of the independence cause, he was appointed governor of the province.

In July 1822, General Agustín de Iturbide was crowned Emperor of Mexico. He faced considerable opposition, particularly from the Mexican Congress. On August 26, Iturbide responded to rumours of an anti-government conspiracy by arresting 66 people, including 19 congressional deputies. The prisoners named Felipe De la Garza as one of their co-conspirators. Iturbide sent a small detachment to Nuevo Santander to replace De la Garza and send him to Mexico City for interrogation. De la Garza made it known that he would oppose this mission by force.

On September 26, 1822, Felipe de la Garza issued a pronunciamiento. He demanded that the imprisoned deputies be released, that the congress be moved to a safe location, and that Iturbide honour his promises to respect the constitution, among other things. De la Garza did not declare himself a republican. Instead he claimed his revolt was designed to defend constitutional monarchy. Finding no support outside his own province, De la Garza soon negotiated his surrender. This disappointed his officers and soldiers, who had been prepared to defend their position with force. De la Garza was marched to Mexico City, where Iturbide pardoned him and restored him to his post in Nuevo Santander.

In March 1823, Iturbide was forced to abdicate and was exiled from Mexico. On April 5, 1823, Brigadier Felipe de la Garza was appointed Commander General of the Eastern Interior Provinces (Nuevo Santander, Nuevo León, Coahuila and Texas). Thus he is the Mexican military commander who has to deal with Napoleon’s arrival in Texas in Napoleon in America.

De la Garza’s reputation had been severely damaged by his revolt. He could no longer count on the support of Nuevo Santander’s militias. Rival political families took advantage of his damaged credibility. When Nuevo Santander (renamed Tamaulipas) unilaterally declared itself a state in June 1823, De la Garza was sidelined. He resigned as commander general of the eastern provinces in December. He kept his position as commander general of Tamaulipas.

Iturbide’s return

On July 14, 1824, Iturbide – who had moved to England – returned to Mexico with his wife and two of their children. Shortly after landing at Soto la Marina, the ex-Emperor was arrested by De la Garza. The latter informed Iturbide of a decree passed by Congress a few months earlier that declared him “outside the law” and thus liable to be killed if he set foot in Mexico. Iturbide was horrified and asked to have his chaplain sent from his ship.

“Considering the defenceless and submissive manner in which [Iturbide] presented himself to me,” De la Garza was reluctant to apply the decree himself. (3) He instead decided to march his prisoner to Padilla to consult the state legislature. In so doing, De la Garza delegated command of the military escort to the former Emperor. Thus Iturbide approached Padilla on the morning of July 19 at the head of a considerable number of soldiers. Explaining that there was no way Iturbide could have known about his proscription before leaving England, De la Garza pleaded with the panicked legislators to spare the prisoner’s life and instead allow him to leave Mexico with his family. The legislature, however, sentenced Iturbide to death. He was executed by a firing squad at 6 p.m. that day.

The execution of Agustín de Iturbide at Padilla, after his arrest by Felipe de la Garza

De la Garza later explained that he had handed over command of his soldiers because he wanted to make Iturbide feel comfortable enough to share information about his intentions. He was reportedly convinced that Iturbide had returned to help prevent Mexico from being reconquered by Spain. Colonel Charles de Beneski, who accompanied Iturbide from England, claimed that De la Garza was enthusiastic about Iturbide’s return.

[Felipe de la Garza] indignantly launched forth, in censuring the errors of government; bitterly condemned the faults and immorality of the General Congress; and portrayed in strong and angry terms the universal disgust and discord that reigned among the States…. [H]e dwelt upon the respect and friendship he entertained for Iturbide; and how anxiously he longed once more to behold him at the head of a people who sighed for his recall; adding, that such was the universal wish, even of those who had been adverse to his administration. He assured me, also, that he himself would have written to Iturbide had not the great risk of discovery deterred him; and he had deferred so doing till the present moment, solely, on that account. All this was spoken with an air and tone of the utmost sincerity and candour. He ended by observing: ‘when Iturbide established the independence of his country I was one of his most devoted friends; but from the hour that he accepted the crown, and caused several of the provincial deputies to be arrested, I abhorred him…. I was one of the first to take up arms against him: but from that moment when he granted me my life, having it in his power to have sacrificed me, I vowed him eternal gratitude.…

[M]ost assuredly, he may depend upon me…. [T]he high reputation I enjoy in this province, would in the space of fifteen days place me at the head of two thousand cavalry, and ten pieces of ordinance, all amply provided with munitions of war, and every reliance might be reposed in the troops.’ (4)

De la Garza was removed from military command of Tamaulipas. In 1827-28, he served as the federal deputy for the state. In 1829 he was again temporarily given the post of Commander General of the Eastern Interior Provinces. He helped defend Tampico against a Spanish invasion. In 1830 he was elected as a Mexican senator.

Felipe de la Garza died on March 29, 1832 of tuberculosis. He left an estimated 150,000 pesos in land, livestock and letters of credit to his widow, María Antonia de la Serna. Antonia, known as “la Generala,” was De la Garza’s second wife, married in 1823. His first was María Inés Arizpe, who died in 1812. Antonia remarried after De la Garza’s death and lived to the age of 90.

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The Bexar Archives Calendar, Rolls 44-53, General Manuscript Series, January 1810-June 1814, May 2, 1812, Frame 0172.
Ibid., May 10, 1812, Frame 0218.
Niles’ Weekly Register, September 4, 1824, p. 16.
Charles de Beneski, A Narrative of the Last Moments of the Life of Don Augustin de Iturbide, Ex-Emperor of Mexico (New York, 1825), pp. 5-7.

Have you ever played 20 Questions? This popular 19th-century parlour game became the basis for a number of 20th-century radio and television quiz shows. Though it has been said that the 20 Questions game was invented in the United States, it actually originated on the other side of the Atlantic. Twenty Questions was introduced to Americans through British Prime Minister George Canning, who appears in Napoleon in America. Let’s sit in on a game he played in 1823.

Perhaps it's time for a 20 Questions game. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org

Perhaps it’s time for a game of 20 Questions.
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images, images@wellcome.ac.uk, https://wellcomecollection.org

Misty origins

The idea that the 20 Questions game was invented in the United States can be traced to a book published in New York in 1882. Twenty Questions: A Short Treatise on the Game – essentially a rule book with some examples of the game for beginners – did not base its claim on strong evidence.

The origin of the game of Twenty Questions, like that of many other things, is lost in the mists of antiquity. Like everything else, it probably had a prototype among the upper Himalayas. The internal evidence, however, is strong from its purely intellectual nature, that in its present form it is a game of New England origin, and was probably invented by some intellectual Pequot, near the mouth of the beautiful river where has long been its chief dwelling point. (1)

In fact, the first references to 20 Questions appeared in Great Britain. In 1829, Scottish teacher William Fordyce Mavor recommended the “Game of Twenty” as a means of agreeably passing a long winter evening.

I will teach you the outlines of an amusing art, which you may fill up by practice, and vary with occasion. It is the art of telling what another thinks on, by appropriate questions and answers.

[Tutor]: Fix your thoughts on something familiar by use….
[Pupil]: I have fixed, Sir.
Q.1. Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral; or in other words, to which of the three kingdoms of nature does it belong?…

[I]f you do not discover in twenty questions what is thought on, you lose the game. Hence it has been called the Game of Twenty. I have known some few persons, who were such perfect adepts in the art, that the most abstruse word, single idea, or even historical fact that could be conceived, would have been solved by them, far within the limited number of interrogations. This proficiency, indeed, requires great strength of memory, a mind well stored with knowledge, and corrected by taste; but much humbler attainments will enable you to amuse and be amused. (2)

A 20 Questions game with Mr. Canning

American references to the 20 Questions game did not appear until 1845, when Richard Rush, a former US ambassador to Great Britain, published memoirs of his time in London. Rush described a dinner party he attended on July 20, 1823, with George Canning (who was then Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), some of Canning’s friends and colleagues, and a few diplomats.

Ten o’clock arriving, with little disposition to rise from the table, Mr. Canning proposed that we should play ‘Twenty Questions.’ This was new to me and the other members of the diplomatic corps present, though we had all been a good while in England. The game consisted in endeavours to find out your thoughts by asking twenty questions. The questions were to be put plainly, though in the alternative if desired; the answer to be also plain and direct. The objects of your thoughts not to be an abstract idea, or any thing so occult, or scientific, or technical, as not to be supposed to enter into the knowledge of the company; but something well known to the present day, or to general history. It might be any name of renown, ancient or modern, man or woman; or any work or memorial of art well known, but not a mere event, as a battle, for instance. These were mentioned as among the general rules of the game, serving to denote its character. It was agreed that Mr. Canning, assisted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who sat next to him, should put the questions; and that I, assisted by Lord Granville, who sat next to me, should give the answers. Lord Granville and myself were, consequently, to have the thought or secret in common; and it was well understood that the discovery of it, if made, was to be the fair result of mental inference from the questions and answers, not any signs passing, or hocus pocus of any description. With these as the preliminaries, and the parties sitting face to face, on opposite sides of the table, we began the battle.

First question (by Mr. Canning). – Does what you have thought of belong to the animal or vegetable kingdom?
Answer. – To the vegetable.
Second question. – Is it manufactured, or unmanufactured?
Manufactured.
Third. – Is it a solid or a liquid?
A solid.
[How could it be a liquid, said one of the company, slyly, unless vegetable soup!]
Fourth. – Is it a thing entire in itself, or in parts?
Entire.
Fifth. – Is it for private use or public?
Public.
Sixth. – Does it exist in England, or out of it?
In England.
Seventh. – Is it single, or are there others of the same kind?
Single.
Eighth. – Is it historical, or only existent at present?
Both.
Ninth. – For ornament or use?
Both.
Tenth. – Has it any connexion with the person of the King?
No.
Eleventh. – Is it carried, or does it support itself?
The former.
Twelfth. – Does it pass by succession?
[Neither Lord Granville nor myself being quite certain on this point, the question was not answered but, as it was thought that the very hesitation to answer might serve to shed light upon the secret, it was agreed that the question should be counted as one, in the progress of the game.]
Thirteenth. – Was it used at the coronation?
Yes.
Fourteenth. – In the Hall or Abbey?
Probably in both: certainly in the Hall.
Fifteenth. – Does it belong specially to the ceremony of the coronation, or is it used at other times?
It is used at other times.
Sixteenth. – Is it exclusively of a vegetable nature, or is it not, in some parts, a compound of a vegetable and a mineral?
Exclusively of a vegetable nature.
Seventeenth. – What is its shape?
[This question was objected to as too particular; and the company inclining to think so, it was withdrawn; but Mr. Canning saying it would be hard upon him to count it, as it was withdrawn; the decision was in his favour on that point, and it was not counted.]
Seventeenth (repeated). – Is it decorated, or simple?
[We made a stand against this question also, as too particular; but the company not inclining to sustain us this time, I had to answer it, and said that it was simple.]
Eighteenth. Is it used in the ordinary ceremonial of the House of Commons, or House of Lords?
No.
Nineteenth. Is it ever used by either House?
No.
Twentieth. Is it generally stationary or movable?
Movable.

The whole number of questions being now exhausted there was a dead pause. The interest had gone on increasing as the game advanced; until, coming to the last question, it grew to be like neck-and-neck at the close of a race. Mr. Canning was evidently under concern lest he should be foiled, as by the law of the game he would have been, if he had not now solved the enigma. He sat silent for a minute or two; then, rolling his rich eye about, and with a countenance a little anxious, and in an accent by no means over-confident, he exclaimed, “I think it must be the wand of the Lord High-Steward!” And it was….

The questions were not put in the rapid manner in which they will be read; but sometimes after considerable intervals, not of silence – for they were enlivened by occasional remarks thrown in by the company…. It lasted upwards of an hour, the wine ceasing to go round. On Mr. Canning’s success, for it was touch-and-go with him, there was a burst of approbation, we of the diplomatic corps saying, that we must be very careful not to let him ask us too many questions at the Foreign Office, lest he should find out every secret that we had! (3)

Rush’s account of this 20 Questions game was widely circulated in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic. Twenty Questions was promoted in the United States as a pleasant pastime for both adults and children. It continues to be played in the 21st century, both in traditional and electronic forms. If you want to give the 20 Questions game a try, click here for some tips on how to play.

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Mansfield Tracy Walsorth, Twenty Questions: A Short Treatise on the Game (New York, 1882), p. 7.
William Mavor, Miscellanies in Two Parts (Oxford, 1829), pp. 140-141.
Richard Rush, A Residence at the Court of London, Comprising Incidents, Official and Personal, from 1819 to 1825, Vol. II (London: Richard Bentley, 1845), pp. 16-21.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on Tuesday, August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica. France had acquired Corsica from the Italian city-state of Genoa the year before. Napoleon’s parents were Carlo and Letizia (Ramolino) Buonaparte. Their first surviving child, Giuseppe (Joseph), was 19 months old when Napoleon was born. Two older children, born in 1765 and 1767, had died in infancy.

The house in Ajaccio, Corsica, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was born.

August 15 marks the celebration of the Catholic Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady the Virgin Mary. Letizia was at mass in the Ajaccio cathedral when she felt severe labour pains. She left the service and walked the short distance to her house (now a museum called Maison Bonaparte), aided by Carlo’s sister Gertrude Paravicini.

Here, on a couch in the salon – for there was no time to reach her bedroom – with the assistance of Gertrude and a maid-servant, Mammucia Caterina, she was delivered of her fourth child – a boy, with a big head and a very intelligent face, who screamed loudly, and soon began sucking his thumb, which was considered a good augury among the peasants of Corsica. (1)

Nine days later, Letizia turned 19 years old.

Myths about Napoleon’s birth

Nobody recorded anything about Napoleon’s birth at the time, and Letizia did not leave detailed memoirs. It wasn’t until Napoleon became a famous general that people became interested in his origins. Many myths sprang up surrounding his birth. The account above is generally the received one, originally printed in a 19th century biography of Letizia by Félix Hippolyte Larrey (son of Napoleonic military surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey). However even this can be disputed. Napoleon’s brother Joseph told Charles Ingersoll, one of his friends in the United States, that Napoleon was not born in the salon.

It has been published that Napoleon’s mother, taken with the pains of child-birth in church, brought him forth in her parlor, before she could reach her chamber. That story Joseph denied to me. (2)

Another myth claims that Napoleon was born or laid on a carpet or tapestry on which were woven scenes from The Iliad and The Odyssey. In another version of the tale, the carpet portrayed the conquests of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Napoleon himself repeated the story of being born on a carpet when he was in exile on St. Helena.

[My mother] hastily turned back [from the church], got as far as her drawing-room, where she deposited me on an old carpet. (3)

When Letizia was asked about this in later life, she said:

It’s a fable, making [Napoleon] born on the head of Caesar! Did he need that? … Moreover, we didn’t have carpets in our houses in Corsica, even less in full summer than in winter. (4)

“Birth of Bonoparte.” Caricature of Napoleon’s birth, published October 20, 1813 in London by R. Ackermann. “The Devil having hatched for a considerable time, some foul eggs, to bring forth a Destructor of the finest Kingdom in Europe produced at last some Jacobins. ‘Pshaw’ says her Infernal Majesty, ‘You Bungler. Look here, I have hatched a Corsican.’ At this sight, the Devil was thunderstruck and remained silent. He: My children destroy Altars and Thrones. She: Mine does more, he destroys whole Nations.” Source: Gallica.bnf.fr/Bibliothèque nationale de France

Even Napoleon’s birth date was contested. Some people argued that Napoleon had been born in 1768, and that Joseph was the younger of the two. The record of Napoleon’s baptism on July 21, 1771, confirms his August 15, 1769 birth.

Napoleon’s comet

The Great Comet of 1769, which marked Napoleon's birth, as it appeared over Amsterdam.

The Great Comet of 1769 over Amsterdam.

The one element of Napoleon’s birth that might appear to be mythical but actually is not is the appearance of a comet in the sky over Europe. This was comet C/1769 P1, first observed by astronomer Charles Messier at the Naval Observatory in Paris on the evening of August 8, 1769. According to observers, the comet became brighter through the month of August, with a lengthening tail. It made its closest approach to earth on September 10. Messier himself later sought to associate his comet with Napoleon’s birth, hoping to receive the Emperor’s attention and monetary support. This was, perhaps, Napoleon’s original “lucky star,” for which he searches the sky in Napoleon in America. As the comet has an estimated orbital period of around 2090 years, it has not been seen since 1769.

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H. Noel Williams, The Women Bonapartes, Vol. 1 (New York, 1909), 24.
Charles J. Ingersoll, History of the Second War between the United States of America and Great Britain, Second Series, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1853), pp. 169-170.
Francesco Antommarchi, The Last Days of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. I (London, 1825), p. 257. Other St. Helena memoirs have Napoleon saying a version of this, e.g.: “On August 15, 1769, [my mother] was on her way home from church, when she felt the pains of labor, and had only time to get into the house, when I was born, not a bed, but on a heap of tapestry.” Gaspard Gourgaud, Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, translated by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, 2nd edition (Chicago, 1904), p. 37.
Félix Hippolyte Larrey, Madame mère (Napoleonis mater): essai historique, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1892), p. 54.

The guillotine scene in Napoleon in America required me to do some research on beheading in early 19th century France. Best known for its use during the French Revolution, the guillotine continued to be the primary method of judicial execution during Napoleon’s reign and during the Bourbon Restoration. In fact, the guillotine remained France’s standard means of carrying out the death penalty until capital punishment was abolished in 1981. The last guillotine execution in France took place at Marseilles on September 10, 1977.

The guillotine execution of King Louis XVI, 1793. German copperplate engraving by Georg Heinrich Sieveking

The execution by guillotine of King Louis XVI, 1793. German copperplate engraving by Georg Heinrich Sieveking

Guillotine not invented by Guillotin

Although named after Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814), the guillotine was not invented by him. Other decapitation devices – the Diele in medieval Germany, the mannaia in 16th C Italy, the “Maiden” in Scotland, the Halifax gibbet in England – had existed for centuries.

Dr. Guillotin actually opposed capital punishment and wanted to make executions more humane. In 1789, as a deputy to France’s National Assembly, Guillotin argued that all capital criminals should be killed in the same fashion, and as swiftly and painlessly as possible. At the time, commoners were hanged, burned at the stake, or broken on the wheel, while nobles had the luxury of having their head chopped off by a sword. Guillotin proposed that where the death penalty was imposed, the punishment should be decapitation by means of “a simple mechanism.” In 1791, the National Assembly adopted a change to the penal code in which every person condemned to death was to have their head cut off.

It was left to Dr. Antoine Louis, secretary of the Royal Academy of Surgeons, to design a machine that would make beheadings fast and simple. The first model of what was initially nicknamed the “petit louison” or “louisette” was built by a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt. He tested it out on sheep, calves and corpses. The first guillotine execution – of highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier – took place on April 25, 1792 at the Place de Grève in Paris.

The official executioner, Charles-Louis Sanson, said:

Today the machine invented for the purpose of decapitating criminals sentenced to death will be put to work for the first time. Relative to the methods of execution practised heretofore, this machine has several advantages. It is less repugnant: no man’s hands will be tainted with the blood of his fellow being, and the worst of the ordeal for the condemned man will be his own fear of death, a fear more painful to him than the stroke which deprives him of life. (1)

Both Dr. Louis (who died later that year) and Dr. Guillotin greatly regretted that their names were attached to the device.

In 1795, after the death of over 16,000 people during the Reign of Terror, the National Convention passed an act that promised abolition of the death penalty when “general peace” arrived in France. But peace didn’t come. The French Revolutionary Wars turned into the Napoleonic Wars. In 1810 Napoleon Bonaparte issued a new criminal code that eradicated the eventual abolition of the death penalty. The new code affirmed that anyone condemned to death should be decapitated.

Napoleon’s successors, the Bourbon Kings Louis XVIII and Charles X, also retained the guillotine, even though it had taken the lives of their brother King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette.

Description of a guillotine execution

What follows is a vivid description of a guillotine execution in Rome in 1813. At the time, the Papal States were annexed to France and Pope Pius VII was Napoleon’s prisoner. The account was written by Colonel Francis Maceroni, an aide-de-camp to Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat. The condemned man was a Roman merchant named Venturi, who was found guilty of murdering a friend’s servant.

The instrument of judicial execution of the sentence of death, is in France the guillotine. This machine was substituted for the gallows, in every country occupied by the French. I think, from the personal sensations I have experienced on such occasions, that the effect of an execution, on the spectators, is much stronger in the case of beheading than in hanging. However, I am an enemy to the punishment of death altogether, and cannot conceive how civilized beings can take such an atrocious pleasure in witnessing the dying agonies of their fellow creatures!

Notwithstanding my usual repugnance to such spectacles, which I never had intentionally attended, I felt a curiosity to see the death of this wretched criminal, so I applied to the commander of the gendarmes, who gave me a place close to the scaffold. For the information of those who have never seen a guillotine, or the use of one, I will just describe the instrument and the process in as few words as possible:

The base of the guillotine is a hollow cube of boards, about twelve feet square, supported on wheels, which are concealed by the planking, the top forming the floor of the scaffold, which is attained by steps and bannisters from the ground. On the edge of this platform, arise two vertical parallel spars of wood exactly similar to a pile-driving machine, and in grooves along the two inner surface of the spars runs the knife, as the driving weight does in the pile driver. The knife does not present its edge horizontally but diagonally, at an angle of forty-five degrees, from side to side; it is about a foot square, and the upper side or back is loaded with some twenty pounds of metal. On a level with the floor of the scaffold, is a solid block, which receives the knife, but the patient’s head is not placed upon that block, but fixed just above it, between two pieces of wood, which embrace the neck, exactly as the two parts of the common village ‘stocks’ confine the feet of the petty delinquent. The knife is drawn up to the top of the shafts by a rope, where it is retained by a kind of latch staple and a spring. Another cord on the other side, being pulled by the executioner, sets free the knife, which, passing with its diagonal edge, close to the surface of the stocks, that embrace the neck of the culprit, shaves off the head, and would do so without the slightest check, were half a dozen human necks placed one over the other. There are two ways of placing the culprit under the knife; one is to strap him to a board, which, pivoting on its centre, is brought to the perpendicular for that operation, and then turned with the man upon it, horizontally, so as to bring his neck into the lower half-hole of the stocks, the other half of which being instantly pushed down, confines the head as above stated. At Rome, this pivoting plank was not used, but the culprit being made to kneel on a step below the stocks, the neck was there secured. And this is a briefer method than the strapping to the plank.

A dark dismal cloudy day in January, 1813, was appointed for the execution of Venturi, – and at the same time was also executed a Roman gendarme, who, in a fit of jealousy, had killed with his sabre a beautiful girl, who served as a model to students in painting and sculpture. The fatal instrument was erected in the midst of a square, of which I forget the name, and hung round with black. Two decent coffins provided by the relatives of the sufferers were ready to receive them. Instead of the vast crowds, which in England are usually seen to attend such spectacles, there certainly were not a hundred persons present besides the guards and priests attendant on the ceremony, and the greater portion of those lookers-on were foreigners.

The deep solemn chanting of the Miserere was now heard, as from a distance the procession approached the silent square. Not a word was uttered, save a low murmuring sound when the two sufferers were seen advancing, each supported by a priest on either side, who recited prayers that were repeated by the dying man. The gendarme walked with a firm and quiet air, but Venturi was with difficulty supported by those who were endeavouring to console him. The former was executed first, and uttered not a word or gave the least sign of fear or agitation. Venturi kept screaming out ‘Gesu! Gesu! Gesu!’ until the falling knife cut short his last pious ejaculations. The head remains in a kind of wire receptacle, on a level with the neck hole in the ‘stocks.’ The executioner immediately seized it by the hair, and placing it on a wooden platter, containing saw dust and a large sponge, held it up in exhibition all round the scaffold. I distinctly saw the eyes make two violent rolling movements, – then fix for ever. The bodies, upon being deprived of the heads, made only one considerable motion, which was – from a kneeling bent down position, the legs and thighs stretch out behind, so as to place them in a straight line on their faces. The coffins being placed underneath the scaffold, the bodies were let down into them through a trap-door. The jet of blood was prevented from flying over the pavement by being caught in a receptacle, which conducted it into a vessel out of view. Thus ended the affair of Venturi…..

Not more than three or four other executions occurred at Rome, during the whole period of the French dominion. (2)

A Texas missionary

José Antonio Díaz de León was born in Mexico in late 1786 or early 1787. In 1811, he joined the Franciscan religious order. The following year, he began his theological studies at the College of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Zacatecas. Among other things, the College administered the Spanish missions in Texas, which was then part of Mexico.

Ordained as a priest in 1815, Father Díaz de León became a missionary in the province of Nuevo Santander (present-day Tamaulipas). In 1817, he was put in charge of the mission of Nuestra Señora del Refugio, located in what is now Refugio, Texas.

The Spanish missions in Texas were intended to “civilize” Indians by gathering the tribes into settlements, converting them to Christianity, and teaching them crafts and farming. In addition to a church, a mission included housing, mills, shops and storage buildings, all within strong walls. Outside the walls lay mission-owned land, where crops were grown and the mission’s cattle, sheep and horses were pastured.

Missions were typically located near a Spanish presidio (fort) for protection from hostile Indians and other potential attackers. Towns, known as pueblos, grew up around successful missions and presidios. A census conducted by Father Díaz de León in 1818 found 164 people living at the Refugio pueblo.

In 1820, Father Díaz de León moved to Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo near San Antonio de Béxar (present-day San Antonio). Appointed administrator of all the Texas missions, he assumed spiritual care of the Indian and Spanish settlers at the four missions in the San Antonio area. Thus we find him protecting the residents of Mission Espada in Napoleon in America.

Secularization

Since the missions were a drain on the Spanish purse, the government’s aim was to secularize them once the Indians were civilized. The church was to be turned over to the local bishop and administered by “secular” clergy (priests not belonging to a religious order). The land was to be turned over to the Christianized Indians. Díaz de León and other local friars opposed secularization, arguing that the Indians were not sufficiently educated and would be taken advantage of. Thus the Texas missions were only partly secularized by 1821, when Mexico achieved its independence.

In 1823, the cash-strapped Mexican government ordered the “full and complete secularization” of the remaining missions. Father José Antonio Díaz de León surrendered the San Antonio missions to the Diocese of Monterrey in Nuevo León. However, he petitioned for the continuance of Mission Refugio, which had been abandoned due to attacks by Comanche Indians. He hoped that all of the Karankawa Indians, and those Aranama and Acoma Indians still needing instruction, might congregate at Mission Refugio until they could be civilized.

Díaz de León also petitioned for the distribution of the lands of Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga at La Bahía (present-day Goliad) to the 12 Aranama families still living there. This was opposed by the local council, which included Anglo-American colonists who had come under attack from the Indians displaced from Refugio. They wanted to distribute the valuable mission lands among themselves.

It is the unanimous opinion of the ayuntamiento that we shall soon see both general and particular damage as a result of these lands being in the hands of men who are shiftless and lazy and who give no hope of becoming useful to the nation unless they are subjected rigorously to law and punishment. (1)

While waiting for a decision, Díaz de León moved to Mission Espíritu Santo. He joined the Aranamas working in the fields and breaking wild horses. Though he was able to slow the process of secularization until 1829, Díaz de León failed to get the government to agree to either of his requests. He expressed his disappointment.

If the missions under our charge be given to the ordinary clergy, that of Refugio will be destroyed forever; and if God does not decree otherwise, all of our plans of missionary activity will fall to pieces. (2)

He made one last appeal for the exemption of Refugio. He argued that transferring it to the secular clergy would result in the Indians reverting to a state of savagery. That, too, failed. In February 1830, Father Díaz de León surrendered the last remaining missions. To his regret, the mission lands were made available to colonists, rather than to the Indians.

Murder or suicide?

Father José Antonio Díaz de León was assigned to a parish post at Nacogdoches. He accepted the job despite an anonymous warning to the College in Zacatecas about the danger of sending Catholic missionaries to Anglo settlements beyond the Colorado River. Upon arrival in Nacogdoches, Díaz de León found that the church was being used as military barracks. He rented a small house as a temporary chapel and started raising funds to build a new church and a school. Díaz de León made pastoral visits to Indians, Hispanics and Anglos alike. He spoke poor English, however, and had little success with the Anglo colonists. Although immigrants were required to become Roman Catholics (Father Díaz de León baptized Sam Houston in 1833), many retained their Protestant faith.

In 1834, Mexico passed a law of religious tolerance. This left the Protestant colonists free to practice their religion. The Protestant settlers in Nacogdoches began to campaign against their Franciscan priest. Father Díaz de León received several death threats. In October 1834, he was asked to officiate at a wedding for Samuel C. Hirams at Ace, 90 miles south of Nacogdoches. He went reluctantly, as he had heard that one or more persons had been hired to kill him. After performing the ceremony, Díaz de León asked for an escort to accompany him back to Nacogdoches. Hirams hired Philip Miller, a 34-year-old Kentuckian, to go with the priest.

The two men left Ace around noon on November 2. They spent the night at the home of Henry Bordon Prentiss. While there, Díaz de León wrote a farewell letter.

This Sunday, Nov. 2, 1834, I returned to this house [of Prentiss], and as it seems to me to be the last day of my life (God knows why), I address my weak and anguishing words to my beloved parishioners of Nacogdoches, bidding them from the bottom of my heart an earnest farewell, A Dios, A Dios. Let them commend me to His Majesty in the state that I am in; saluting them as I salute them, with my heart in my eyes and in my tears…. And let it be clear and notorious by this, that I beg, as I do, pardon from each and all the persons whom I have offended, and likewise, prostrate in spirit on the ground, I pardon, with all my heart, all and every person who has offended me, be the offense what it may. I press all, without exception, to my hearts as my beloved children in the charity of our Lord Jesus Christ…. Farewell, farewell, farewell; Amen, Amen, Amen. (3)

The next night Díaz de León and Miller camped near Big Sandy Creek. Miller spread a blanket over a pole to make a tent for the priest and then went to sleep. The next morning – November 4, 1834 – Miller woke about an hour and half before daylight. Feeling chilly, he went to the fire and saw Díaz de León’s body with blood trickling from its mouth. A pistol that Miller had obtained at Díaz de León’s request was lying near the body. According to the doctor who performed the autopsy:

We found a gun…shot in the left breast, between the fourth and fifth ribs, about two inches from the medial line of the breast bone; an inclination upward had been given to the ball or balls so that in entering the chest it fractured the fourth rib…and from its apparent direction we should think opened the largest artery of the body…as it emerges from the heart in a manner sufficient to cause instant death. (4)

Father Díaz de León was buried in what is now the Alabama-Coushatta Indian reservation in Polk County. The investigation into his death lasted for months. A court of inquiry manned by Anglo colonists concluded that the missionary had grown so frightened of being killed that he committed suicide. Hispanics, however, believed that José Antonio Díaz de León was assassinated. Catholic historians regard him as a martyred priest.

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Paul H. Walters, “Secularization of the La Bahia Missions,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jan. 1951), p. 293.
Ibid., p. 297.
John Gilmary Shea, A History of the Catholic Church within the Limits of the United States, Vol. II (New York, 1890), pp. 712-713.
Lorraine G. Bonney, The Big Thicket Guidebook: Exploring the Backroads and History of Southeast Texas (Denton, TX, 2011), p. 545.

Napoleon’s only legitimate child, Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte, also known as the King of Rome, Napoleon II, or the Duke of Reichstadt, died of tuberculosis at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna on July 22, 1832. He was only 21 years old. You can read my articles about his perilous birth and his sad life. What follows is an account of Napoleon’s son’s death.

Napoleon’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt, on his deathbed, engraved by Franz Xavier Stöber

A scrofulous tendency

The Duke of Reichstadt, who appears as the boy Franz in Napoleon in America, was brought up in the court of his maternal grandfather, Emperor Francis I of Austria. Although Franz had been a healthy child, when he was 16 years old those around him noted that his chest did not seem to be developing at the same rate as the rest of his body. His doctor, a celebrated Viennese physician named Staudenheim, diagnosed a “scrofulous tendency.” (1) Dr. Staudenheim said the boy should not go out in wet or windy weather, and should avoid vigorous exercise.

After Staudenheim’s death in May 1830, Dr. Johann Malfatti – who had treated Beethoven, among others – became the Duke of Reichstadt’s physician. Though Malfatti suspected consumption (tuberculosis), he thought there was less danger from the boy’s lungs than from his liver. He ordered a strengthening diet of milk and seltzer water and prescribed a course of baths. He also cautioned against extremes of heat and cold, and anything that might produce great excitement.

The Duke of Reichstadt hated these restrictions. He desperately wanted to be a soldier. In August 1828, his grandfather had made him a captain in the Imperial Light Infantry. During the summer of 1829, Franz had taken part in manoeuvres, but was not considered ready for active military service on account of his health. Now he continued to ride, despite attempts to stop him. In July 1830 he was promoted to the rank of major. In November 1830 he became a lieutenant colonel.

In June 1831, the Duke of Reichstadt was finally given command of a battalion of 200 men of the 60th Imperial Regiment of Infantry. Malfatti, visiting the barracks, often found Franz in a state of exhaustion. His voice would give out when he was shouting commands to his men. Franz resisted the doctor’s orders to rest. At the beginning of August, however, he was struck with a fever and an inflammation of the mucous membrane. Malfatti succeeded in having the patient confined. Two months of rest reestablished Franz’s strength, but the improvement in health did not last long. In January 1832 the Duke of Reichstadt came down with another fever. He was sent back to the Hofburg Palace to recover.

Decline

The Duke of Reichstadt was allowed to take the air in a carriage or on horseback, in moderation. In mid-April 1832, he went for a long morning ride in cold, damp weather, and then in the evening went to the Prater. A wheel of his carriage gave way, so he started home on foot. Unfortunately, his strength failed him and he fell in the street. The next day he came down with pneumonia. Malfatti – returning to his duties after a five-week attack of gout – was struck by the rapid decline of his patient. The sickness was primarily in the chest, although the digestive functions were also affected. Franz had also gradually lost hearing in his left ear.

Hoping to cheer his grandson, Francis I made him a colonel of the 60th Imperial Regiment of Infantry. Franz was so weak that he couldn’t write to thank his grandfather, who was away from Vienna. On May 22, the Duke of Reichstadt was moved to Schönbrunn for the fresh air. He was given the suite of rooms that Napoleon had stayed in when he occupied Vienna in 1809.

On June 3, Franz’s fever and cough grew much worse. He was lethargic, and his pulse was rapid. Malfatti prescribed an application of leeches, along with medicine for his lungs and his liver, and some Marienbad water. At Malfatti’s request, three Viennese physicians were called in to consult. They agreed with the course of treatment, but thought the Duke’s state was precarious. He was so emaciated that he looked like an old man. On June 7, Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich wrote:

The Prince’s condition is in keeping with his malady. His weakness increases in proportion as his illness progresses, and I see no possibility of saving him. (2)

By this time rumours of the Duke of Reichstadt’s illness had spread. The fact that his mother, Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, was not at his side, did not impress the people of Vienna. She finally arrived on June 24. Colonel Hartmann, the Duke’s chief of staff wrote:

The meeting, as is only too explicable, was very affecting for both of them; but her Majesty felt calmer for having seen the Prince, and his Highness himself was more cheerful, so that everything pointed to the fact that it did him good to see his mother once more. (3)

Marie Louise could see there was no hope for her son.

The nights were sleepless, and sometimes he would be seized with such a violent bout of coughing that he seemed in danger of suffocation. His voice sounded hoarse, and his legs, which were white and bloodless, swelled increasingly. Now he would no longer go into the palace garden, where, up to the present time, he had been carried twice a day; the most emphatic arguments were necessary in order to induce him to go at least once a day. Forebodings of death now possessed him; since July 13 he had spoken quite plainly of his end. (4)

Even the optimistic Malfatti was forced to admit that no progress was being made. From July 19, the Duke of Reichstadt refused all nourishment. On July 21, breathing became agony for him. “I desire death,” he exclaimed, “only death.” (5)

The Duke of Reichstadt’s final hours

Marie Louise visited Franz occasionally during the day. Baron Moll attended to all of his personal needs.

I cannot describe in words how disagreeable was the operation of removing the secretions which clung to his mouth and tongue; each time this had to be done I felt upset and the Prince thanked me with a look which showed that he realized the full unpleasantness of the task. (6)

Moll read aloud from Les Rebelles sous Charles V by Charles-Victor Prévot to distract the patient. At midnight, Moll retired to the next room for a few hours of rest. The Duke was left alone with his valet, Lambert.

At about 4 A.M. (July 22) Lambert awoke Moll with the news that the Duke was at his last gasp. The Baron hastened to the sick-bed in time to catch the words: ‘I am sinking! I am sinking!’ They then raised the Prince, and the sudden movement seemed to relieve the suffocation, which returned, however, with renewed violence. In a weary and broken voice he cried: ‘Call my mother! Call my mother! Clear the table, I want nothing more!’ (7)

Moll thought the crisis would pass, so he delayed sending for Marie Louise, who was asleep.

Suddenly the Baron [Moll] felt the Duke clutch at his arm convulsively with one hand, while with the other he beat his breast and ejaculated with great effort: ‘Poultices, blisters!’ These were his last words. Hardly had he spoken them before his eyes grew fixed and glazed; the convulsive movements of his body relaxed, and he fell into a state of torpor. When the valet returned in haste with the cataplasms, Moll left the dying man to him and Nickert [a physician], while he went to announce to the mother, to the Archduke Francis Charles and the Court in general that the end had come. When he came back, the Prince was dying peacefully and without suffering; he breathed quietly but could no longer articulate. He was still perfectly conscious and recognized every one. When Marie Louise, led by Moll, entered the death chamber, she was trembling from head to foot and clung to the Baron’s arm for support. Reaching the bedside she remained standing there, incapable of uttering a word. The Prince recognised her, and made a slight motion of the head. Besides the Archduchess, Hartmann, Standeiski, Baron Marshall, Countess Scarampi and Dr. Malfatti were present. After the arrival of the Archduke Francis Charles, whose wife the Archduchess Sophia had not yet recovered from her confinement, Moll brought in the priest, who was waiting in the ante-room.… All knelt while the priest performed his office; Marie Louise leant against a chair, the Archduke Francis Charles at the foot of the bed, the others behind or at the side. After extreme unction had been administered, during which the dying man, his hands folded, followed with his eyes each ceremonial function, the priest asked the Duke if he should read or pray aloud. To the first question he shook his head, but made an affirmative sign in reply to the second. The Chaplain now began to pray half-aloud and laid his hand as though to mesmerise him, first on the forehead and then on the folded hands of the dying man. While this was taking place, Marie Louise was seized with faintness. When she recovered, she knelt down once more. At a few minutes past 5 A.M. the Prince, whose last hour was peaceful and easy, moved his head twice from side to side. Then his breathing ceased and his lips no longer moved. Malfatti and Moll then went to the bedside. Malfatti smoothed the lines from the Prince’s brow, remarking to Moll that the warmth of life was already extinguished. Marie Louise caught these half-whispered words. When she tried to rise, she slipped back again, weak and shaken, upon her knees. Hartmann and Marshall hastened to her assistance and led her from the death-chamber, in which the candles still burned in spite of the daylight, back to her own apartments. (8)

The grief-stricken members of the court, palace staff, and others crowded into the Duke of Reichstadt’s room to look at his body. They cut off almost all of his hair and carried away whatever other souvenirs they could find. During the post-mortem exam the next day, the six doctors present found that while the left lung was only slightly affected, the right one was almost completely destroyed by tuberculosis.

Metternich dispatched Moll with a letter from Marie Louise to Francis I, who was staying at Linz. Metternich wrote:

It is fortunate for your Majesty that the Duke, who could not have been saved, passed away before your return. Your Majesty has been spared a heartrending spectacle. I have recently visited him, and I do not remember ever to have seen a more terrible wreck. (9)

Francis I wept. He then replied to Metternich:

With his complaint, my grandson’s death was a blessing for himself, and perhaps also for my children and the world in general; he will be a loss to me. (10)

The funeral was held on July 24. The Duke of Reichstadt was buried in Vienna with full military honours. One of Franz’s tutors, Jean-Baptiste Foresti, wrote to Maurice Dietrichstein, the boy’s governor, a few days later.

I am quite of your opinion that it is far better for the poor Prince to have passed into a quieter world. His entire position was so artificial, so constrained, so unnatural, his character so perplexing and incomprehensible, his dangers so many, that contentment and true happiness were impossible for him in this life. On the other hand, the loss to the State is all the greater, as people are now beginning to realise. Such a guarantee against the wanton aggression of foreign Powers we are never likely to possess again. (11)

In 1940, the remains of the Duke of Reichstadt were transferred to Paris, a gift to France from Adolf Hitler. They rested for a while beside those of Napoleon in Les Invalides, before being moved to the lower church. The Duke of Reichstadt’s heart and intestines stayed in Vienna, where they reside respectively in urns at the Habsburg Heart Crypt (Hofburg Palace) and the Ducal Crypt (St. Stephen’s Cathedral).

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Edward de Wertheimer, The Duke of Reichstadt (London, 1906), p. “Children possessing what is called the scrofulous constitution are usually of small frame, with pale and delicate skin; the muscles imperfectly developed, the flesh being soft and flaccid. The edges of the eye lids are much disposed to become inflamed, and when the scrofulous tendency is strongly developed, the tarsi (under the edge of the eye lids) ‘are constantly red and tender.’ The digestive powers are feeble, the appetite variable, and the bowels seldom in a healthy condition. The patient is very sensitive to cold, and the temper generally irritable.” J.W. Comfort, The Practice of Medicine on Thomsonian Principles, Sixth Edition, (Philadelphia, 1859), p. 310.
Wertheimer, The Duke of Reichstadt, p. 413.
Ibid., p. 415.
Ibid., p. 416.
Ibid., p. 417.
Ibid., p. 417.
Ibid., p. 419.
Ibid., pp. 419-421.
Ibid., p. 424.
Ibid., p. 425.
Ibid., p. 438.

Louis-Victor Baillot, the last surviving veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, died in 1898 at the age of 104

Napoleon Bonaparte died when he was 51 years old. Though his life was cut short by stomach cancer, he lived a reasonable life span for someone who was born in 1769, when life expectancy at birth was no more than 40 years. Even factoring out infant mortality, the life expectancy for white men in the early 1800s was probably less than 60 years.

How to live a long life

Dr. Félix Formento, a Napoleonic Wars veteran and the character in Napoleon in America who lived the longest (non-fictional) life, was 98 when he died in 1881, a striking age for the time. Such remarkable cases of longevity were noted in the papers. People looked to the very old for clues about how to live a long life, just as they do today. For example, Niles’ Weekly Register reported in November 1823:

A man, named Robert Bowman, lately died near Carlisle England, in the 118th year of his age. It is said of him that he never was intoxicated but once; that he neither used tea or coffee; that his chief beverage was water or milk and water. He never had any sickness, except caused by the measles or whooping cough – he had the last after he was 100 years old. In his 108th year he walked sixteen miles in one day, and still worked in the field. One of his brothers died in 1810, aged 99 years. He did not marry until he was 50 years of age, and has left six sons, the youngest 50 years old. (1)

In 1829, Dr. Thomas John Graham published An Account of Persons Remarkable for their Health and Longevity; Exhibiting their Habits, Practices, and Opinions, in Reference to the Best Means of Preserving Health, Improving a Bad or Impaired Constitution, and Prolonging Life. Dr. Graham observed that there were some “natural indications” of long life, namely:

To be descended, at least on one side, from long-lived parents.
To be of a calm, contented and cheerful disposition.
To have “a just symmetry, or proper conformation of parts: a full chest, well formed joints and limbs, with a neck and head large rather than small in proportion to the size of the body.”
To be a long and sound sleeper.
To be female.
To be married. (2)

He also demonstrated “the uncommon and superior efficacy of a properly regulated diet and regimen both in curing disease and prolonging life.” (3)

Were they really that long-lived?

Though Dr. Graham cited some examples of individuals who had lived into their early 100s, most of his cases of remarkable longevity were in their 80s or 90s. This was prudent, given that historically the majority of claims of exceptional longevity have likely been false. As recently as 1980, the number of reported centenarians in many countries was thought to be inflated by a factor of two or more, with the ratio of fanciful to actual cases among supercentenarians (those over 110) being even higher. (4) Of 2,700 Americans who reportedly reached the age of 110 or older between 1980 and 1999, only 355 (13%) could be confirmed. (5)

Historical reports of men who lived beyond age 110 – including the afore-mentioned Robert Bowman – are particularly suspect. A Quebec bootmaker named Pierre Joubert, who was reportedly 113 years and 124 days when he died in 1814, was later found to have been a case of mistaken identity. The death dates of Joubert and his son, who both had the same name, were confused.

In 1873, William J. Thoms, Deputy Librarian of Britain’s House of Lords, published Human Longevity, Its Facts and Its Fictions, a book devoted to debunking a number of celebrated claims of remarkable longevity.

After reading, within a short period, of the death of Ebenezer Baillie at 103; of Captain MacPherson, at 100; of Betty Evans, at 102; of Mr. John Naylor, at 117; of Mrs. Sarah Edwards, at 104; of Mrs. Margaret Curtis, at 103; of Sarah Pay, at 104; of Sarah Jones, at 108; of Sarah Clarke, at 108; of Matthew Baden, at 106; of Richard Purser, at 112; and Jacob Fournais, at 135…and dozens of similar notices, it seems almost an impertinence to doubt the accuracy of any of these statements, though there is probably scarcely one per cent among these confident announcements which would bear the test of a thorough investigation. (6)

Thoms pointed out problems with the type of evidence on which cases of abnormal longevity tend to be based. Baptismal certificates could belong to someone else –an older sibling who had died in childhood, for example (parents often gave the same names to successive children), or (as in Joubert’s case) a parent or other relative. Tombstones could be inscribed with incorrect dates, “sometimes the result of mere carelessness or ignorance; sometimes they have been made deliberately for the gratification of personal vanity; sometimes for the baser purpose of falsifying pedigrees or bolstering up fraudulent claims to titles and estates.” (7) The memories of the person in question could be false.

Of the various kinds of evidence brought forward in proof of the great age of an alleged Centenarian, that which is founded on the supposed recollections of the old person is at once the most fallible, unsatisfactory, and difficult to deal with – more especially in those instances where these supposed recollections are brought forward in perfect good faith, and without any intention of deceiving, either on the part of the Centenarian or his friends. I believe the most conscientious self-examiner, when he comes to consider carefully what he believes to be his ‘earliest recollection,’ would find it very difficult to decide whether he really recollected such event, or having heard it much talked of in his youth, did not actually recollect it, but had it impressed upon his memory by what he had heard others say of it. (8)

Modern investigators of extreme longevity take a number of steps to validate a claim, including ensuring that all available documents contain or imply the same date of birth (and death, if the person is no longer alive); ensuring that the person’s life events (marriage, birth of children, schooling, etc.) are consistent with the alleged date of birth; and ensuring that the person who claims a particular identity (and corresponding date of birth) is not an imposter. (9) If the person is still alive, investigators consider the consistency between the documentary evidence and the person’s account of his or her life and family history.

The oldest veteran of the Napoleonic Wars?

Though Félix Formento lived to a ripe old age, he was not the longest-lived Napoleonic Wars soldier. That honour goes to Geert Adriaans Boomgaard. He was born in the Netherlands on September 21, 1788 and died on February 3, 1899, at the age of 110. Boomgaard, who served in the 33rd Light Infantry Regiment of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, is considered to be the first validated case of a supercentenarian.

Wikipedia provides a list of the last surviving veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. In an interesting coincidence, the last surviving veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, Louis-Victor Baillot, died exactly a year to the day before Boomgaard – on February 3, 1898, at the age of 104. It’s not clear to what extent the ages of the men on the Wikipedia list have been verified. Many men who claimed to be elderly survivors of the American Civil War turned out to be imposters. They lied about their age and/or their military service in a quest for personal glory or a pension. The same thing undoubtedly happened after the Napoleonic Wars, making Boomgaard’s case even more remarkable.

Brown University Library’s Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection has some wonderful photographs of members of Napoleon’s army taken when the veterans were well into their 70s and 80s. Visit Adventures in Historyland for photos of some of the last British survivors of the Battle of Waterloo.

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Niles Weekly Register (Baltimore), November 15, 1823, p. 170.
J. Graham, An Account of Persons Remarkable for their Health and Longevity; Exhibiting their Habits, Practices, and Opinions, in Reference to the Best Means of Preserving Health, Improving a Bad or Impaired Constitution, and Prolonging Life (London, 1829), pp. 1-2, 24.
Ibid., p. viii.
John Wilmoth, Axel Skytthe, Diana Friou, Bernard Jeune, “The Oldest Man Ever? A Case Study of Exceptional Longevity,” The Gerontologist, Vol. 36, No. 6 (1996), p. 786.
Robert D. Young, Bertrand Desjardins, Kirsten McLaughlin, Michel Poulain, Thomas T. Perls, “Typologies of Extreme Longevity Myths,” Current Gerontology and Geriatrics Research; 2010: 423087; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3062986/ Accessed June 17, 2016.
William J. Thoms, Human Longevity, Its Facts and Its Fictions (London, 1873), pp. 1-2.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 53.
“The motivations for such a switch of identity could be numerous: to marry before the legally sanctioned age, to avoid military service, to facilitate migration, to gain early retirement benefits, to claim an inheritance under false pretense, or to enjoy the celebrity status that often accompanies exceptional longevity.” “The Oldest Man Ever? A Case Study of Exceptional Longevity,” p. 784.

Somewhere in the range of 3.5 million to 6 million people died as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1803 to 1815. This includes both military and civilian casualties, and encompasses death from war-related diseases and other causes. Estimates of the number of soldiers killed in battle range from 500,000 to almost 2 million. What happened to all of those bodies? What did Napoleonic battlefield cleanup entail?

The Battle of Borodino, September 7, 1812, by Albrecht Adam

Scavenging

The depiction of post-battle scavenging in Napoleon in America is based on fact. Soldiers were typically the first to pick through the dead and wounded, taking weapons, clothing and valuables. There was little sentimentality involved. The victors looted from the fallen of both sides. It was a matter of survival, or profit. Camp followers – civilians and women who accompanied the men on campaign – also stole and salvaged from the battlefield. So did the local inhabitants, who had to deal with the mess the armies left behind. British General Robert Wilson described the scene after the Battle of Heilsberg (1807):

The ground between the wood and the Russian batteries, about a quarter of a mile, was a sheet of naked human bodies, which friends and foes had during the night mutually stripped, although numbers of these bodies still retained consciousness of their situation. It was a sight that the eye loathed, but from which it could not remove. (1)

French soldier Jean Baptiste de Marbot, wounded in the Battle of Eylau (1807), gave a sense of what it was like to be one of the bodies:

Stretched on the snow among the piles of dead and dying, unable to move in any way, I gradually and without pain lost consciousness…. I judge that my swoon lasted four hours, and when I came to my sense I found myself in this horrible position. I was completely naked, having nothing on but my hat and my right boot. A man of the transport corps, thinking me dead, had stripped me in the usual fashion, and wishing to pull off the only boot that remained, was dragging me by one leg with his foot against my body. The jerk which the man gave me no doubt had restored me to my senses. I succeeded in sitting up and spitting out the clots of blood from my throat. The shock caused by the wind of the ball had produced such an extravasation of blood, that my face, shoulders, and chest were black, while the rest of my body was stained red by the blood from my wound. My hat and my hair were full of bloodstained snow, and as I rolled my haggard eyes I must have been horrible to see. Anyhow, the transport man looked the other way, and went off with my property without my being able to say a single word to him, so utterly prostrate was I. (2)

One of the unusual things about the remains of a soldier unearthed in 2012 at the battlefield of Waterloo (1815) is that the man does not appear to have been robbed.

Tooth hunting

Dentures with Waterloo Teeth – Military Museum, Dresden, Germany

Some scavengers came with pliers. Teeth from dead soldiers were in great demand for the making of dentures. In Spain in 1814, the nephew of English surgeon Astley Cooper received a visit from a tooth hunter sent by his uncle.

Upon asking this Butler, who appeared to be in a state of great destitution, what might be his object, he said it was to get teeth…but when I came to question him upon the means by which he was to obtain these teeth, he said, ‘Oh Sir, only let there be a battle, and there’ll be no want of teeth. I’ll draw them as fast as the men are knocked down.’ …

Butler was not the first…to make the Peninsula the scene, or the Duke’s achievements the means, of such lucre; for Crouch and Harnett, two well-known Resurrectionists, had some time prior to his visit, supplied the wealthier classes of London with teeth from similar sources. (3)

The flood of teeth onto the market after the Battle of Waterloo was so large that dentures made from them were known as “Waterloo teeth.” They were proudly advertised as such, since it meant the teeth came from relatively healthy young men.

Burning, burial and decomposition

A pyre at Hougoumont after the Battle of Waterloo, by James Rouse, 1816

After they had been stripped, the bodies were either burned, buried, or left in the open to decompose, a process aided by vultures, wolves and other scavengers. Captain Jean-Roche Coignet wrote after the Battle of Marengo (1800):

We saw the battlefield covered with Austrian and French soldiers who were picking up the dead and placing them in piles and dragging them along with their musket straps. Men and horses were laid pell-mell in the same heap, and set on fire in order to preserve us from pestilence. The scattered bodies had a little earth thrown over them to cover them. (4)

Depending on the size of the losses, the weather, and the capacities of the army and the local population, battlefield cleanup could take some time. On March 2, 1807, three and a half weeks after the Battle of Eylau, the 64th Bulletin of Napoleon’s Grande Armée reported:

It required great labour to bury all the dead…. Let any one imagine to himself, upon the space of a square league, 9 or 10,000 dead bodies, 4 or 5,000 horses killed, whole lines of Russian knapsacks, broken pieces of muskets and sabres; the ground covered with cannon balls, howitzer shells, and ammunition; 24 pieces of cannon, near which were lying the bodies of their drivers, killed at the moment when they were striving to carry them off. All this was the more conspicuous upon a ground covered with snow. (5)

During Napoleon’s Russian campaign, remains lingered for months. French General Philippe de Ségur described the scene at Borodino (1812) during the retreat from Moscow, almost two months after the battle.

After passing the Kologa, we marched on, absorbed in thought, when some of us, raising our eyes, uttered a cry of horror. Each one instantly looked about him, and there lay stretched before us a plain trampled, bare, and devastated, all the trees cut down within a few feet from the surface, and farther off craggy hills, the highest of which appeared misshapen, and bore a striking resemblance to an extinguished volcano. The ground around us was everywhere covered with fragments of helmets and cuirasses, with broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters of uniforms, and standards dyed with blood.

On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses; while a pile of skeletons on the summit of one of the hills overlooked the whole. It seems as though death had here fixed his throne. (6)

Napoleon had ordered the Westphalian VIII Corps to stay and guard the battlefield, transport the wounded to hospitals, and bury the dead while the rest of the army continued on to Moscow. However, the corps could do little for the wounded, as the hospital system was rudimentary and no wagons or other means of transport could be found in the deserted villages.

The Westphalians remained on the battlefield surrounded by corpses and dying men, and they were forced to change position from time to time on account of the stench…. [S]oldiers, at the request of some of the wounded in extreme agony, shot them dead and turned the face away while shooting… When von Borcke was riding on horseback over the battle-field on the 5th day after the battle, he saw wounded soldiers lying alongside the cadaver of a horse, gnawing at its flesh. On September 12th the Westphalians moved to Moshaisk, which was deserted by all inhabitants, plundered and half in ashes…. Burnt bodies were lying in the ruins of the houses which had been burnt, the entrance of these places being almost blockaded by cadavers. The only church…contained several hundred wounded and as many corpses of men dead for a number of days…. Soldiers, Westphalians as well as Russian prisoners, were ordered to remove the corpses from the houses and the streets, and then a recleansing of the whole town was necessary before it could be occupied by the troops. (7)

Given these conditions, the Westphalians had managed only a rudimentary burial on the battlefield, as attested to by Sergeant Adrien Bourgogne, who came across the same sight as Ségur:

[A]fter passing over a little river, we arrived at the famous battlefield [Borodino], covered all over with the dead, and with debris of all kinds. Legs, arms, and heads lay on the ground. Most of the bodies were Russians, as ours had been buried, as far as possible; but, as everything had been very hastily done, the heavy rain had uncovered many of them. It was a sad spectacle, the dead bodies hardly retaining a human resemblance. The battle had been fought fifty-two days before. (8)

After the Battle of Waterloo, local peasants were hired to clean up the battlefield, supervised by medical staff. The allied dead were buried in pits. The French corpses were burned. Ten days after the battle, a visitor reported seeing the flames at Hougoumont.

The pyres had been burning for eight days and by then the fire was being fed solely by human fat. There were thighs, arms and legs piled up in a heap and some fifty workmen, with handkerchiefs over their noses, were raking the fire and the bones with long forks. (9)

Bones for fertilizer

Human remains could still be seen at Waterloo a year after the battle. A company was contracted to collect the visible bones and grind them up for fertilizer. Other Napoleonic battlefields were also reportedly scoured for this purpose. In November 1822 a British paper reported:

It is estimated that more than a million of bushels of human and inhuman bones were imported last year from the continent of Europe into the port of Hull. The neighbourhood of Leipsic, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and of all the places where, during the late bloody war, the principal battles were fought, have been swept alike of the bones of the hero and of the horse which he rode. Thus collected from every quarter, they have been shipped to the port of Hull, and thence forwarded to the Yorkshire bone grinders, who have erected steam-engines and powerful machinery, for the purpose of reducing them to a granulary state. In this condition they are sent chiefly to Doncaster, one of the largest agricultural markets in that part of the country, and are there sold to the farmers to manure their lands. The oily substance, gradually evolving as the bone calcines, makes a more substantial manure than almost any other substance, particularly human bones. It is now ascertained beyond a doubt, by actual experiment upon an extensive scale, that a dead soldier is a most valuable article of commerce; and, for ought known to the contrary, the good farmers of Yorkshire are, in a great measure, indebted to the bones of their children for their daily bread. It is certainly a singular fact, that Great Britain should have sent out such multitudes of soldiers to fight the battles of this country upon the continent of Europe, and should then import their bones as an article of commerce to fatten her soil! (10)

Souvenir hunters

After Napoleon’s final defeat, Britons hurried across the Channel to visit Waterloo, Paris and other sites associated with the French Emperor. The sightseers played a role in battlefield cleanup through their enthusiastic quest for souvenirs. In 1816, satirical poet Eaton Stannard Barrett wrote:

Every one now returns from abroad, either Beparised or Bewaterlooed…. I know one honest gentleman, who has brought home a real Waterloo thumb, nail and all, which he preserves in a bottle of gin. (11)

Scottish journalist John Scott, who visited Waterloo on August 9, 1815, seven weeks after the battle, found a 12-pound British shot, which he planned to bring home “with the cuirass and other spoils of battle which I have secured.” (12) Scott wrote:

The extraordinary love of relics shewn by the English was a subject of no less satisfaction to the cottagers who dwelt near the field, than of ridicule to our military friends…. Our own party did not pass over the field without following the example of our countrymen; each of us, I believe, making his own little collection of curiosities. The ground was strewed so completely with shreds of cartridge paper, pieces of leather, and hats, letters, songs, memorandum books, &c., as to resemble, in a great measure, the place where some vast fair had been held, and where several parties of gypsies had lighted fires at intervals, to cook their victuals. Several of these we picked up as we walked along; and I still have in my repositories, a letter evidently drenched with rain, dated April 3rd., which, from the portion still legible, must have been sent from Yorkshire; and also a leaf of a jest book, entitled ‘The Care Killer.’

At Hougoumont I purchased a bullet of grape shot, with which the wood in front of it had been furiously assailed, as was evinced by the marks visible on every tree.

The time which had elapsed since the date of the action had taken from the scene that degree of horror which it had recently presented; but the vast number of little hillocks, which were scattered about in all directions, – in some places mounds of greater extent, especially near the chausée above La Haye Sainte, and above all the desolate appearance of Hougoumont, where too the smell of the charnel house tainted the air to a sickening degree, gave sufficient tokens of the fearful storm which had swept over this now tranquil rural district. (13)

The demand for Waterloo relics soon outstripped the supply, though the locals continued for decades to hawk souvenirs that were claimed to be genuine battlefield artefacts.

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Robert Wilson, Brief Remarks on the Character and Composition of the Russian Army and a Sketch of the Campaigns in Poland in the Years 1806 and 1807 (London, 1810), p. 147.
Jean-Baptiste de Marbot, The Memoirs of Baron de Marbot, translated by Arthur John Butler, Vol. 1, (London, 1903), p. 216.
Bransby Blake Cooper, The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Vol. 1 (London, 1843), pp. 401-402.
Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue (New York, 1929), p. 81.
Jacques Peuchet, Campaigns of the Armies of France, in Prussia, Saxony, and Poland, translated by Samuel MacKay, Vol. 4 (Boston, 1808), p. 201.
Philippe de Ségur, History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812, Vol. II (New York, 1872), p. 119.
Achilles Rose, Napoleon’s Campaign in Russia Anno 1812: Medico –Historical (New York, 1913), pp. 32-34.
Adrien Bourgogne, Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne, 1812-1813, edited by Paul Cottin (New York, 1899), p. 60.
Bernard Cornwell, Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles (New York, 2015), p. 325.
The New Annual Register, or General Repository of History, Politics, Arts, Sciences and Literature for the Year 1822 (London, 1823), p. 132.
Eaton Stannard Barrett, The Talents Run Mad; or, Eighteen Hundred and Sixteen: A Satirical Poem (London, 1816), pp. 18-19.
Richard Henry Stoddard, ed., The Life, Letters and Table Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon (New York, 1876), p. 152
John Scott, Journal of a Tour to Waterloo and Paris, in company with Sir Walter Scott in 1815 (London, 1842), pp. 46-48.

Canada Day 1867: Reading the Proclamation of Confederation in Kingston, Ontario on July 1, 1867. Source: Queen’s University Archives

With the first dawn of this gladsome midsummer morn, we hail the birthday of a new nationality. A united British America, with its four millions of people, takes its place this day among the nations of the world. Stamped with a familiar name which in the past has borne a record sufficiently honourable to entitle it to be perpetuated with a more comprehensive import, the DOMINION OF CANADA on this First day of July, in the year of grace, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, enters a new career of national existence.

Thus began an editorial by journalist and politician George Brown in the Toronto Globe on Monday, July 1, 1867. That was the date on which the British North America Act came into effect. This act of the British Parliament, to which Queen Victoria gave her assent, united the colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into the Dominion of Canada. Upon confederation, the new dominion consisted of four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

‘From Halifax to Sarnia,’ said the New Brunswick Reporter (July 5) from Fredericton, ‘we are one people,– one in laws, one in government, one in interests.’ Summerside, Prince Edward Island, offered its congratulations to the new Dominion thus ‘launched upon the sea of history; and though we do not admire the build of the craft, we cannot find in our hearts to wish her other than a prosperous voyage.’ Even in Charlottetown some bunting appeared, as if to grace an occasion that most Islanders were glad to ignore. And it was an occasion. The Toronto Leader rested from its quarrels with the Globe to say, ‘This is the most important day for the Provinces of British North America on which the sun has yet risen … our public men … [must] rise to the height of our new destiny….’ ‘Our new destiny’ was the theme of many newspapers from Halifax to Sarnia, and even in Newfoundland and British Columbia the ‘memorable day for British North America’ did not pass unnoticed. Reports from the west coast had arrived of the unanimous resolution for Confederation; there was a swelling nationalism in eastern speeches and public demonstrations. The Northwest would soon belong, all of it, to the Dominion of Canada. The bright plumage of parade uniforms; the booming of guns in Halifax, Fredericton, Quebec, Toronto, and Ottawa; the swelling sails of the yachts in Halifax harbour and Toronto Bay; the brilliant summer day itself; who could fail to read the national barometer ‘set fair?’

There were some who failed to do so. In Fredericton on July 3 the Head Quarters said sombrely, ‘The future may be full of hope … but it is useless to shut one’s eyes to the fact that in New Brunswick there is discontent and indignation smouldering in many places, while in Nova Scotia these feelings are afire and in action.’ There was black crêpe in Yarmouth and Halifax; on July 1 the Acadian Recorder came out in black, and the Halifax Morning Chronicle published a bitter epitaph. ‘Here, alas!’ said the Examiner in Charlottetown that same day, ‘the great public of Prince Edward Island treat the thing with feelings akin to contempt.’ The very next day, July 2, plain George Cartier was sitting down to write his angry letter to Lord Monck on the K. missing from the C.B. The history of British North America between 1864 and 1867 can be written as a paean of triumphant nationality; it can also be written as a bitter comment on the machinations of Canadians and the ruthlessness of Downing Street. More than one bitter essay came from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick criticizing the selfishness of the Canadians. As the London Times had remarked, however, ‘Half the useful things that are done in the world are done from selfish motives under the cover of larger designs.’ Whether ‘useful’ could be applied to Confederation was a matter of debate; the British certainly thought so. (1)

A long and difficult maturity

Manitoba and the North-West Territory joined the Dominion of Canada in 1870; British Columbia in 1871; and Prince Edward Island in 1873. The Yukon Territory was created in 1898; Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905. Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. In 1999, part of the Northwest Territories became the territory of Nunavut.

Confederation! The Much-Fathered Youngster, by John Wilson Bengough, 1886. From left to right: George Brown, Sir Francis Hincks, William McDougall, Sir John A. Macdonald

July 1, 1867 was the beginning of a long and difficult maturity. The diversity of the colonies, from Newfoundland to British Columbia was as remarkable as the distance between them. The reality of 1867 was frightening. It showed how naïve the dreams of the colonists were: Newfoundland, its population clinging precariously to a living wrested from the Labrador current and a hard land; Prince Edward Island, complacent, defiant, parochial; Nova Scotia, afloat on seven oceans, proud of herself and jealous of Canada; New Brunswick, half-American in politics and attitude; Quebec, determined to get every jot and tittle of privilege with or without Ottawa; Ontario, sleek, bigoted, and stentorian; a thousand miles from Toronto, at Red River, 9,000 mixed settlers and the Hudson’s Bay Company trying to keep the northwest from the Americans; in distant British Columbia, a dying gold rush with two small and hostile towns holding the mortgage. This was the reverse of the glory arguments that resounded in the speeches of 1864. One was the stubborn and almost intractable reality: the other was a political dream of wonderful audacity….

[N]o one knew, not Cartier, not even Macdonald, what really was involved in the creation, administration, and maintenance of a transcontinental state. An empire of this size had been created before; it could be done – that was the great example the Americans provided. But it had been done by a rich and powerful nation of twenty millions. The contemplation of the same thing by a struggling group of still discordant provinces, with a population of four millions was surprising; perhaps it was absurd. The railway that might have given such a union a semblance of reality did not yet exist. Union of the colonies was achieved in 1867; but it was hardly more than a beginning. The railways at Rivière du Loup and Truro that stared into the empty miles between marked a cause not yet won, a nationality not yet realized. These still lay in the difficult years ahead. (2)

Happy Dominion Day! Happy Canada Day!

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B. Waite, The Life and Times of Confederation, 1864-1867: Politics, Newspapers, and the Union of British North America (Toronto, 1962), pp. 322-323.
Ibid., pp. 328-329.

Napoleon’s nephew Achille Murat was one of the more eccentric Bonapartes. After growing up as the Crown Prince of Naples, he became a colourful Florida pioneer known as the “Prince of Tallahassee.” Achille was independent-minded, restless and adventuresome, always seeking an elusive fortune. Though he claimed to be a democrat, he remained at heart an aristocrat. He pined for his family’s lost throne and wealth.

Prince Achille Murat

Crown Prince of Naples

Charles Louis Napoleon Achille Murat was born on January 21, 1801 in Paris. He was the eldest child of Napoleon’s sister Caroline Bonaparte and her husband Joachim Murat. Murat was a charismatic cavalry officer who later became one of Napoleon’s marshals. Achille had three siblings: Letizia (April 26, 1802-March 12, 1859), Lucien (May 16, 1803-April 10, 1878) and Louise (March 21, 1805-December 1, 1889).

Achille spent his early years in the splendour of the Elysée Palace in Paris. According to one anecdote, shortly after Napoleon’s coronation in 1804, Napoleon said to another young nephew, Napoleon Charles (the son of Napoleon’s brother Louis and Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense):

‘Do you know, child, that you may be king one day?’

‘And Achille?’ instantly said [Joachim] Murat, who was present.

‘Ah, Achille,’ replied Bonaparte, ‘he will make a good soldier.’ (1)

In 1808, Napoleon made Joachim and Caroline Murat the King and Queen of Naples. Achille became Prince Murat, heir presumptive to his parents’ throne. He grew up in Naples, imbibing his father’s taste for military bravado, his mother’s sense of entitlement, and both parents’ outsized egos.

Achille Murat, by Benjamin Roland, between 1808 and 1811

In 1814, the Murats betrayed Napoleon by allying with Austria. This enabled them to keep their kingdom when Napoleon was exiled to Elba. They lost it, however, when Murat tried to aid Napoleon during the Hundred Days. Joachim Murat was executed by a firing squad in October 1815. Caroline and the children were allowed to live in the castle of Frohsdorf, south of Vienna, under Austrian surveillance. Caroline took the name of the Countess of Lipona (an anagram of Napoli, or Naples).

A visitor to the family in November 1817 wrote:

[T]he oldest son, who is called Prince Achille, gives vent, even at the table and before his mother, who tolerates it, to a ridiculous rage against France.

This young man, scarcely sixteen, is already as tall and strong as a man of twenty-five. He says, ‘I am not French, and I will never be. I am an Italian, and I shall always be an Italian. My mother believed, if my father had died when he was with the army, that she would be queen, but as soon as the news had arrived I should have shut her up in the chateau of St. Elmo. She would have been all right there, and I would have proclaimed myself king.’

The tone of this young man is altogether coarse. He speaks without reflecting. It is said that his health is ruined by debauchery. He gets drunk in the bosom of the family. From all one can gather, he has plenty of courage. (2)

Achille nursed a huge resentment towards the reactionary monarchs of Europe. He particularly hated the Bourbons, who had taken his family’s throne and fortune. Upon becoming an adult, he petitioned for a passport to travel to the United States. This was granted, thanks to the intervention of Austrian Foreign Minister Clemens von Metternich, Caroline’s former lover. Achille had to promise to never return to Europe without the allies’ permission.

Achille Murat in America

In April 1823 Achille Murat sailed from Hamburg with two boxes of books and two bags of gold withdrawn from his mother’s account. He arrived in New York the following month. Achille visited his uncle Joseph Bonaparte in Bordentown, New Jersey. This is where we meet Achille in Napoleon in America. Just as happens in the novel, the Bonapartes briefly considered Achille as a potential husband for Joseph’s daughter Charlotte.

Joseph encouraged Achille to settle into a quiet life in America. Instead, having learned that the Spaniards were in revolt against their Bourbon king, Achille sailed back across the Atlantic. Notwithstanding his lack of military experience, he thought he could lead the Spanish and Portuguese liberals, establish a glorious reputation for himself, and vindicate the Murat name. By the time Achille reached Gibraltar, it was clear that the liberals would be defeated (see my post about the 1823 French invasion of Spain). Instead he published a pamphlet in Liverpool entitled “On the Revolution of Spain in its Relation to Revolution in General.” This attacked reactionary governments and praised revolutions as necessary for the advance of human progress.

Caroline was furious with her son for violating his oath to the allies. His behavior hampered her efforts to recover funds she claimed she was owed by the Bourbons. Other members of the Bonaparte family also disapproved of what Achille had done. Chastened, Achille returned to the United States in late 1823.

After a short visit with Joseph, Achille travelled along the Atlantic coast. In 1824 he decided to establish himself in Florida, having been influenced by Florida booster Richard K. Call, whom he had met in Washington. Achille bought land near St. Augustine, where he tried growing tobacco and raising cattle. In December 1824, he wrote to his friend Count Thibaudeau:

I had the foolishness to buy land too soon, of the sort that is almost sterile although in a delicious position. I am beside the sea, 10 miles south of St. Augustine. I have called my place Parthenope [the old Greek name for Naples]…. This name recalls to me my country if I could forget it…. I have a rather bad house but it will suffice: one room for eating and sleeping, another for my books and writing, that’s all that I have. 1200 arpents of rather inferior land; a sweet climate; 10 male and female negroes that I govern militarily…. I have bread, liberty and equality, the most absolute independence under a government that one does not feel, except to participate in it. I vote, I talk politics in the societies, I make motions, etc. and I can put myself forward to be very popular not only in our territory, but in all parts of the United States where I have been. You see also that I have the time to occupy myself with literary work; that’s what I count on doing and have already done…. My decision is already taken to fix myself here and become a citizen and forever renounce Europe. (3)

The Marquis de Lafayette, on his tour of the United States, met Achille in March of 1825.

We found at Savannah a young man whose name and destiny were calculated to inspire us with a lively interest; this was Achille Murat, son of Joachim Murat, ex-king of Naples. On the earliest news of the arrival of General Lafayette in Georgia, he precipitately quitted Florida, where he has become a planter, and came to add his homage and felicitations to those of the Americans, whom he now regarded as his countrymen. Two days passed in his company, excited an esteem for his character and understanding, not to be withheld by any who may have the same opportunity of knowing him. Scarcely twenty-four years of age, he has had sufficient energy of mind to derive great advantages from an event which many others, in his place, would have regarded as an irreparable fortune. Deprived of the hope of wearing the crown promised by his birth, he transported to the United States the trifling remains of his fortune, and sufficiently wise to appreciate the benefits of the liberty here enjoyed, he has become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Far from imitating so many fallen kings, who never learn how to console themselves for the loss of their former power, Achille Murat has become a cultivator, has preserved his name without any title, and by his frank, and altogether republican manners, has rapidly conciliated the regard of all who know him. He possesses a cultivated mind, and a heart filled with the most noble and generous emotions. For the memory of his father he cherishes a profound and melancholy veneration. (4)

After an unsuccessful year at Parthenope, Achille acquired a new plantation in partnership with Colonel James Gadsden. This was located on the Wacissa River, 15 miles east of the new state capital of Tallahassee. Slaves were set to work clearing land for cotton, a crop from which Achille hoped to make a fortune. In memory of Naples, he called the plantation Lipona. He built a one-room log house in which he slept on a moss mattress, raised from the floor at the head by a pine log.

Most trying

Catherine Daingerfield Willis Gray, Princess Achille Murat, 1837

On July 12, 1826, Achille Murat married Catherine (Kate) Daingerfield Willis Gray, a 23-year-old widow who had recently moved to Tallahassee from Virginia with her parents and siblings. Catherine was a great-granddaughter of Betty Washington Lewis, who was George Washington’s sister. Achille and Catherine had no children, though Achille may have had children with his Negro mistresses. At Parthenope he had impregnated one of his slaves, a 14-year-old mulatto named Mary. Under the influence of a malign priest, Mary strangled the baby at birth, and then died shortly afterwards herself. Achille reportedly commented, “Had she been white, I would have written a touching novel about her.” (5) In this and other respects, Achille does not sound like an easy man to live with.

His want of personal neatness was most trying to the delicate sensitivities of his wife, and but for the constant attention of his faithful ‘William’ (his valet), at times his presence would scarce have been endurable. He boasted of never removing his boots from the first use until worn out, and without some such stratagem as practised upon Domine Sampson, he would never have changed his clothing. On one occasion he fell into a boiler of warm syrup, during the season of making sugar; while bystanders feared he might be badly scalded, his only thought was, as he afterwards expressed it, ‘Kate will make me wash.’ His dislike to water was such that he never drank it, unless well diluted with brandy. ‘Water (he said) was only intended for beasts of the field.’ Col. Murat was a man of singular resource. On an occasion of guests arriving unexpectedly, and finding his larder rather empty, while, to increase the difficulty, Madame was from home, he ordered all the ears and tails cut from his hogs, of which he made a most savory dish, while their swineships still roamed at large. He thought it a pity hogs could not be all heads and tails. He boasted of having tried all the birds and most of the reptiles of Florida. He said, ‘Alligator tail soup would do, but the buzzard was not good.’ He was extremely fond of experiments in cookery, often annoying and puzzling Madame Murat and the cook by the strange mingling of sauces and condiments which he furtively introduced into food for the table. (6)

Catherine remained a devoted wife. Floridians often referred to the couple as the Prince and Princess of Tallahassee.

Achille took a keen interest in American politics. At a political rally in 1826, he called one of the candidates, his neighbour David Betton Macomb, a “turncoat” for supporting Henry Clay. Macomb and Achille fought a duel. Achille wrote:

He fired first and shot off half of the little finger of my right hand. That did not keep me from shooting, and my bullet went through his shirt and scared out the lice. (7)

Achille served as a lieutenant colonel in the Florida militia during the early years of the Seminole Wars. Hoping to embark on a political career, he bought some law books from a neighbour who was quitting his practice. Through voluminous reading, he taught himself law. In 1828, Achille was admitted to the bar. He had law offices in Tallahassee and at Lipona. This brought him some remuneration and modest recognition, but it did not give him the entrance to electoral politics he had hoped for. He lost his bid for a seat in the Legislative Council of Florida.

Back to Europe

In 1830 the July Revolution in Paris ousted the Bourbons under King Charles X, ushering in the reign of King Louis Philippe. Achille Murat saw this as an opportunity to regain his family fortune and title. He also dreamed of making his own reputation in the liberal unrest that was sweeping across Europe. After a farewell ball at the Planter’s Hotel in Tallahassee, Achille and Catherine sailed across the Atlantic. Denied entry to France, they landed in England in February 1831. Achille sent a friend to Paris to liaise with the Bonapartists there. They invited Achille to put himself at the head of a Bonapartist/republican coalition. He agreed, as long as they promised to “stop all negotiations with other members of my family, if any have started.” (8)

The Murats’ next stop was Belgium, where the new liberal King Leopold I (uncle of the future Queen Victoria) named Achille a colonel and invited him to establish a foreign legion to aid in Belgium’s defence. France, Austria and Prussia expressed their displeasure at this move, which they feared was cover for Achille to raise troops to restore his family to the thrones of France and Naples. Bowing to the allies’ pressure, Leopold recalled Achille’s commission and disbanded the regiment.

Catherine returned to Florida while Achille remained in London. In 1830 he had published a book on the United States for a European audience, called Lettres sur les États-Unis. He now expanded his thoughts into a second book on American society and American government: Esquisse Morale et Politique des Etats-Unis de l’Amerique du Nord (1832). The books were popular enough to be translated into English, German, Dutch and Swedish.

In London Achille met with Joseph Bonaparte and other members of the family, including his cousin Louis-Napoléon (the future Napoleon III), to discuss how to advance the Bonapartes’ interests. There was a falling out between Joseph and his nephews, whom Joseph considered hotheads, over who should speak for the Bonaparte family and the route they should take to get back into power. Joseph’s secretary, Louis Mailliard, noted in his diary on February 2, 1833:

Annoyances with the nephews Achille and Louis[-Napoleon]. These young people have strange ideas, they are of all countries depending on the circumstances. [Joseph] is reticent with them. The princess [Charlotte] suffers from all this and dares not speak to her father or to her cousins. (9)

Ruin

Achille Murat returned to Florida with neither wealth nor glory. Since he had mortgaged his plantation and slaves to finance the European trip, he and Catherine were in need of funds. In 1834, his friends ensured he was appointed to a judgeship in Jefferson County. Achille embarked on a couple of wildcat business ventures. These ended poorly. In 1835, the Murats moved to Louisiana. On the basis of charm and credit, Achille purchased a house on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, where he practiced law. In 1837, he bought a sugar plantation near Baton Rouge. The Great Panic of that year – which ushered in a five-year economic depression – coupled with his poor business judgement, ruined him. In 1838, Achille lost his Louisiana properties and the following year he lost Lipona. He and Catherine moved to a smaller plantation they named Econchatti, in what is now Jefferson County, Florida.

The death of Caroline Bonaparte Murat on May 8, 1839, occasioned another trip to Europe. Achille and his mother had not been close – they had not bothered to see each other during his earlier trip. However, Achille hoped to inherit something. On August 1, 1839, Achille set out from New York. Fellow passenger Vincent Nolte recounted:

Murat was a good-natured, jovial fellow, who had forgotten all about his princely youth and gave promise of being enormously fat. (10)

Achille received $15,000 from his mother’s estate. This was not enough to satisfy his demands. In 1840, he and his brother Lucien visited Joseph Bonaparte’s lawyer, Joseph Hopkinson, claiming that their uncle owed them a share of the six million francs (plus interest) Napoleon had given to Joseph in 1815, as well as other family funds. They threatened to file a lawsuit, but said they preferred to settle the claim privately to avoid scandal. Hopkinson wrote to Joseph (who was in England) that he was convinced the claim had no foundation in law.

After this, Achille apparently gave himself up to drink and sloth. Prince Achille Murat died on April 15, 1847 at the age of 46. When Louis-Napoleon became the French Emperor, he gave Catherine Murat all of the claims Achille had tried in vain to recover, including the title of princess. She lived comfortably on these French funds and died on August 6, 1867. Catherine and Achille Murat are buried beside each other in the old Episcopal cemetery in Tallahassee.

You might also enjoy:

Joseph Bonaparte, From King of Spain to New Jersey

Charlotte Bonaparte, Napoleon’s Artistic Niece

Caroline Bonaparte Murat, Napoleon’s Treasonous Sister

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, Napoleon’s American Sister-in-Law

Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s American Nephew

Living Descendants of Napoleon and the Bonapartes

Lafayette’s Visit to America in 1824-25

Joseph Turquan, The Sisters of Napoleon, translated and edited by W.R.H. Trowbridge (London, 1908), p. 228.
Théodore Iung, Lucien Bonaparte et Ses Mémoires, 1775-1840, Vol. 3 (Paris, 1883), p. 394.
Transcription of letter from Achille Murat to Count Thibaudeau, December 12, 1824, in the Achille Murat Letters, University of Florida Digital Collections, http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00086427/00002. Accessed May 20, 2016.
Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1829), pp. 63-64.
Alfred Jackson Hanna, A Prince in their Midst: The Adventurous Life of Achille Murat on the American Frontier (Norman, OK, 1946), p. 90.
Ellen Call Long, “Princess Achille Murat: A Biographical Sketch,” Publications of the Florida Historical Society, Vol. 2, No. 2 (July 1909), pp. 29-30.
A Prince in their Midst, p. 153.
Georges Weill, “Les Lettres d’Achille Murat,” Revue Historique, Vol. 92, No. 1 (1906), p. 75.
Peter Hicks, “Joseph Bonaparte and the ‘Réunion de famille’ of 1832-33,” La Revue,2/2010 (No. 8), p. 39.
Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres; or, Reminiscences of a Merchant’s Life (London, 1854), p. 436.

Stephen F. Austin

It’s hard to avoid the name of Stephen F. Austin in Texas. The state capital is named after him, as are Austin County, Austin College, Stephen F. Austin State University, Stephen F. Austin State Park and numerous schools, buildings and associations. He has been called the father of Texas and the founder of Texas. Austin led the Anglo-American colonization of Texas, paving the way for the state’s independence from Mexico, although this was not something he initially wanted.

Moses Austin’s plan

Stephen Fuller Austin was born in southwestern Virginia on November 3, 1793, the son of lead mine owner Moses Austin and his wife Mary Brown Austin. In 1798, after his business in Virginia faltered, Moses Austin moved his family to what is today Potosi, Missouri (it was then part of Spain’s Louisiana Territory). Moses started a new lead mining operation there. Stephen was sent to good schools in Connecticut and Kentucky. By the time he returned to Missouri in 1810, the family business was again in trouble. Moses tried putting Stephen in charge of the mine, but it didn’t help. The Austins were ruined in the financial Panic of 1819.

Stephen F. Austin moved to Arkansas, and then to Louisiana, intending to study law at New Orleans. Meanwhile, Moses Austin headed for Texas, in Spanish-ruled Mexico, to apply for a grant of land and permission to settle 300 families there. Though his request was approved, Moses was unable to carry out his plan. He died on June 10, 1821, shortly after returning to Missouri.

Settling the wilderness

In accordance with his father’s dying wishes, Stephen F. Austin took up the colonization project. He arrived in San Antonio in August 1821 and received permission from Texas Governor Antonio Martínez to start a colony on his father’s grant. Austin chose a tract of land between the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. He began advertising for colonists in newspapers along America’s western frontier. Austin had no trouble finding takers. At 12.5 cents per acre (paid to Austin, as a fee for his services), the land was one-tenth the cost of land in the United States. The first settlers arrived in late 1821. In the meantime, however, Mexico had achieved its independence from Spain. The new government wanted to regulate immigration through a general colonization law. It hesitated to acknowledge the Spanish land grant to Moses Austin.

As described in my post about Josiah Hughes Bell, in 1822 Austin travelled to Mexico City to lobby the Mexican government. This is where Austin is when Napoleon helps out his colonists in Napoleon in America.

In April 1823, Austin received a contract to introduce 300 families to Texas as an empresario. Subsequent colonization laws passed by Mexico and the new state of Coahuila and Texas continued the empresario system. By 1825 Austin had fulfilled his initial contract, having brought in 300 families (1,800 people, including 443 slaves). He obtained three more contracts – in 1825, 1827 and 1828 – to settle 900 additional families in the area. He also received a contract, in partnership with his secretary, to settle 800 families in western Texas. By August 1828, Austin’s colony contained about 8,000 inhabitants. The previous non-Indian population of Texas had never exceeded 4,000.

According to Stephen F. Austin, when he first arrived in Texas, it

was entire wilderness with the exception of the old Spanish posts of San Antonio de Bexar and La Bahia, and they were poor and inconsiderable villages reduced to wretchedness and misery by the arbitrary and cruel measures of the Spanish general in 1813 after the defeat of the Republicans on the Medina; and by the subsequent Indian war, with the Comanches and other savages. Between the Sabine [River] and San Antonio, a distance of 400 miles, there was not twenty souls of civilized inhabitants, and the country was occupied in every direction by wandering bands of the Comanches, Lipans, Tancawas, Wacos, Tawacanys, Karankaways, and other Indians. The government at this period (the winter of 1821-22) was unsettled, all Mexico was in revolution. The Spanish power was prostrated, but much doubt and uncertainty prevailed as to the final result – public opinion and parties vacillated between monarchy, aristocracy, and Republicanism; and it would seem that even these flattering hopes could have offered few inducements to enter Texas with families of women and children, under such circumstances. …

The alarming and exaggerated rumors that went abroad relative to the sufferings of the first settlers greatly impeded the progress of the new settlements, and increased [my] difficulties in procuring emigrants. True it is, the first adventurers suffered greatly. They did not taste bread for six months; their only hope for subsistence was the game of the forests until they raised a crop; and they were constantly harassed by Indian depredations. The vessels sent round from New Orleans…with provisions and supplies were lost on the coast and plundered by the Indians and many other casualties occurred; but great as the obstacles were that opposed their settlements in this wilderness, their fortitude and perseverance was still greater, and success has fully rewarded their toils. (1)

Making no fortune

In 1824, Austin founded San Felipe de Austin as the unofficial capital of his colony. Austin initially had complete civil and military authority over his colonists. He allowed them to elect militia officers and alcaldes (local mayors/justices of the peace). He drew up a civil and criminal code. He served as a lieutenant colonel of militia. He also surveyed land and allocated it to applicants, trying to keep conflicts among the colonists to a minimum. The Baron de Bastrop served as his initial land commissioner. Since any fees Austin was able to collect from the colonists were eaten up in public expenses, all of which he had to bear himself, he was unable to make much money. His wealth consisted in the 67,000 acres of land he was personally given for every 200 families he brought in. This was not necessarily of much value, given that settlers could essentially obtain Texas land for free through him or other empresarios, or could simply settle illegally in Texas. Unlike some of his peers, Austin was meticulously honest and did not engage in land speculation.

A fortune I have not made, on the contrary, except my land I am poor, but am satisfied, for I have fully succeeded in the main object. If speculation had been my object I should now have been dashing in wealth in Europe or where I pleased, worshipped by the thousands and despised by the two’s or three’s (two or three out of a 1000 is perhaps a low estimate of those who would be governed by principle alone when placed in opposition to wealth). Texas would have remained to this day what I found it, a wilderness and many of the capitalists of the U.S. and of England would have been gulled out of their money. (2)

Austin recognized that his colony’s success depended on the good will of Mexican officials. Under the terms of the grant, all settlers were required to profess the Roman Catholic faith and to respect the government and laws of Mexico. Austin insisted that his colonists become loyal Mexican citizens. He frequently reminded them of the benefits they received from Mexico’s liberal colonization policy. He hoped that Texas would develop into a prosperous Mexican state. Some people thought this pragmatic approach was too cautious. In February 1831 Austin wrote:

[In] my intercourse with this govt. I have followed a few fixed rules from which I have never deviated since 1821 when I first entered the country. In the first place I came with pure intentions. I bid an everlasting farewell to my native country, and adopted this, and in so doing I determined to fulfill rigidly all the duties and obligations of a Mexican citizen. I have endeavored to keep all the officers with whom I was in direct communication in good humor, and to make friends of them. I have excused and even invented plausible reasons to justify or explain away all the political errors of my adopted countrymen. I have been silent as to all their defects, and lavish of praise where there was the least pretext for bestowing it, but at the same time decisive and unbending where a constitutional or vested right of vital importance was direction attacked. Rights of minor consideration I have paid no attention to, for bad feeling might be engendered about trifles, that would jeopardize an important interest….

My native countrymen are blunt republicans, and do not always reflect sufficiently, and some of them have accused me of debility, want of firmness, temporising, etc. It was my duty to steer my precious bark (the Colony) through all the shoals and quicks[ands] regardless of the curses and ridicule of the passengers. I knew what I was about – they did not. (3)

Some of these “shoals” included hostile Indians, the issue of slavery (the colonists favoured it; Mexico didn’t), and the colonists’ increasing desire for self-government. In 1827, Austin helped put down the Fredonian Rebellion, an attempt by fellow empresario Haden Edwards and his settlers to secede from Mexico.

Stephen F. Austin & Texas independence

In 1833, Stephen F. Austin travelled to Mexico City in an unsuccessful attempt to petition the Mexican government to separate Texas from Coahuila and make it a Mexican state in its own right. He also sought other reforms, including the repeal of a law that attempted to halt immigration from the United States. On his way back home in January 1834, Austin was arrested in Saltillo on suspicion of trying to incite insurrection in Texas.

He wrote to his friend, Mexican senator Rafael Llanos:

I have been accused of having magnificent schemes for Texas, and I confess that I have had them…. To suppose that the Mexican nation in its present situation, immersed in clouds of prejudice, and backward in every thing, can advance rapidly of itself alone and reach the level of other nations without drawing learning, industry, and population from abroad is almost the same as to imagine that the Mexicans of the time of Cortés could have advanced to where they now are without knowing any other people or having had communication with any other nation in the world….

[Texas] is depopulated; I wish to people it. The population that is there is backward; I wish it to be advanced and improved by the introduction of industrious agricultural settlers, liberal republicans. I want the savage Indians subdued; the frontier protected; the lands cultivated; roads and canals opened; river navigation developed and the rivers covered with boats and barges carrying the produce of the interior to the coast for export in exchange for foreign products, thereby saving the precious metals which are now our only medium of exchange…. These are the magnificent, and as it now appears, visionary, plans which I have held for Texas, and for all this frontier; and if there is a Mexican who does not wish to see them realized, I must say that he does not love his country; neither wants to see her emerge from the darkness of the fifteenth century nor shake off the chains of superstition and monastic ignorance which she is still dragging along….

I entered Texas in 1821 an enthusiastic philanthropist and now at the age of forty I find myself on the verge of misanthropy, tired of men and their affairs, and convinced that I wished to finish in a few years the work of a century….

I was not born in a wilderness, and have not the patience of the Bexareños [the residents of San Antonio] and other inhabitants of this frontier who are daily enduring the same dangers and annoyances that their fathers and grandfathers and perhaps their great-grandfathers suffered, without advancing a single step or even thinking of advancing. Death is preferable to such stagnant existence, such stupid life. (4)

Austin was held as a prisoner in Mexico City until July 1835. This experience convinced him that negotiating with the central government was no longer the way to secure Texas’s well-being. He supported the organization of a local provisional government for Texas. When he learned that Mexican troops were advancing towards Texas, he told the colonists:

War is our only resource. There is no other remedy but to defend our rights, ourselves, and our country by force of arms. (5)

Despite his lack of military training and combat experience, Stephen F. Austin was elected the first commander of the Texans’ volunteer army. He successfully led them in the Siege of Béxar in late 1835. A regular Texas army was created, with Sam Houston as commander-in-chief. Texas declared its independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. On April 21, 1836, the Texian Army defeated Mexican forces at the Battle of San Jacinto, effectively ending the independence war.

Stephen F. Austin stood as a candidate in the election for president of the new Republic of Texas. In July 1836 he wrote:

I am nothing more than individual citizen of this country, but I feel a more lively interest for its welfare than can be expressed – one that is greatly superior to all pecuniary or personal views of any kind. The prosperity of Texas has been the object of my labors, the idol of my existence. It has assumed the character of a religion, for the guidance of my thoughts and actions, for fifteen years. (6)

Austin lost to Sam Houston, who was inaugurated on October 22, 1836. Houston appointed Austin as secretary of state. Austin served for only two months. He died of pneumonia on December 27, 1836 at the age of 43, in the new Texas capital of Columbia (now West Columbia). By then, the wilderness he had settled had been transformed into a relatively advanced and populous country, thanks in large part to his patient, hard work.

Stephen F. Austin never married, and he had no children. He was originally buried in Brazoria County, Texas. In 1910, his body was reinterred at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.

You might also enjoy:

Advice to Texas Settlers in the 1830s

Texas Pioneer Josiah Hughes Bell

The Charmingly Deceptive Baron de Bastrop

The Wreck of the Schooner Lively

Presidio Commander Francisco García

Eugene C. Barker, “Descriptions of Texas by Stephen F. Austin,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Oct. 1924), pp. 101-102.
Eugene C. Barker, ed., Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1922: Vol. II: The Austin Papers, Part 2 (Washington, 1928), pp. 678-679.
Ibid., pp. 600-601.
Ibid., pp. 1029-1031.
Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin (Nashville & Dallas, 1925), p. 481.
Ibid., p. 520.

Italian singer, teacher and composer Girolamo Crescentini was one of Napoleon’s favourite singers. (1) Crescentini was a castrato, thus he had the voice of a male soprano even as an adult.

Girolamo Crescentini

Rise to fame

Girolamo Crescentini was born on February 2, 1766 in Urbania, part of the Papal States. When Crescentini was 12 years old, his father sent him to Bologna to study music and singing with the singer and composer Lorenzo Gibelli. Crescentini made his debut five years later, in 1783. He played female characters in serious – as opposed to comic – operas at the theatre in Rome (women were not allowed to appear on the Roman stage). This was followed by engagements in Leghorn, Padua, Venice and Turin.

In 1785, Girolamo Crescentini appeared on stage in London.

Crescentini was thought so moderate a performer, and so little liked, that before the season was half over, he was superseded by Tenducci…an old man, who had never been very capital, and could now have scarcely any voice left…. It is but justice to Crescentini to add that when he was here he was very young, and had not attained that excellence which has since gained him the reputation of a first-rate singer. He never returned to this country. (2)

Poor reviews in England did not diminish Crescentini’s appeal to his countrymen. By 1796, when General Napoleon Bonaparte was leading the French army across northern Italy, Girolamo Crescentini was famous. Two operas were written with roles expressly for him: Gli Orazi e i Curiazi by Domenico Cimarosa, and Giulietta e Romeo by Niccolò Zingarelli. Crescentini himself composed an aria for the latter, “Ombra adorata aspetta.” This became known as Romeo’s prayer. One of Crescentini’s students, Giuseppina Grassini, who later became Napoleon’s lover, also appeared in Giulietta e Romeo.

It is claimed that immediately before the start of a performance of Gli Orazi e i Curiazi, Crescentini (playing Curiazio) observed that the costume of Orazio was more magnificent than his own. Enraged, he sent for the stage manager and insisted that the costume be given to him.

An exchange was therefore made, in spite of the remonstrances of the manager; and throughout the evening a Curiatius, six feet high, was seen wearing a little Roman costume, which looked as if it would burst at any moment, while a diminutive Horatius was attired in a long Alban tunic, with its skirt trailing on the ground. (3)

Crescentini spent four years in Lisbon, returning to Italy in 1803. He then went to Vienna, where he was a great favourite of Maria Theresa of Naples (wife of Francis I of Austria and mother of Napoleon’s future wife, Marie Louise). He became a regular participant in concerts at the Viennese court.

An Englishman who heard Crescentini perform in Vienna in October 1805 wrote:

Crescentini has a remarkable fine clear voice, of vast compass and great power; he manages it with great taste. There was something very disgusting and unpleasant on his first coming on the stage; my feelings were shocked by hearing such a high shrill voice come from such a large stout tall man; the recollection, too, of what he is, added to the disturbed association. It was some time before I could get over a sort of repulsive dislike to the man, but by shutting my eyes and listening to the exquisite tones he uttered, I was highly gratified. He is certainly the finest he-singer I ever heard; a woman, or a boy, or a man with a feigned voice, would answer the purpose just as well. And I am told it is not the fashion now, even in Italy, to resort to this brutal and inhuman practice for the sake of pleasing the ears of a refined audience. (4)

At the court of Napoleon

In November 1805, Napoleon occupied Vienna. He heard Girolamo Crescentini sing and decided that he wanted the castrato for his own court. In the words of Madame de Rémusat, whose husband proposed the arrangement to Crescentini on the French Emperor’s behalf:

By engaging Marchesi, Catalani, Crescentini, etc., Paris would soon possess the finest possible school of music. There is a very good company in Vienna just now, who may perhaps come to us as trophies of our conquest. I wish it may be so, for Italian music is all the fashion, and it would be a good opportunity for calling it French music. (5)

Crescentini moved to Paris in 1806. Napoleon’s valet Constant wrote:

I saw Crescentini make his début in Paris as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette. He came preceded by an immense reputation as the first singer of Italy. This fame he completely justified, in spite of all the obstacles he had to overcome, for I can well recollect the many hard things that were said of him before he appeared. According to certain wiseacres he was a bellower, devoid of taste or refinement, having no method, an executant of silly roulades, a cold, unintelligent actor, &c. When going upon the stage he was aware how ill-inclined were his judges to show him any signs of favour. Yet he was not in the least embarrassed, but his majestic bearing came as an agreeable surprise to those who expected to see an ungainly boor.

A murmur of approval greeted him, with such electrical effect upon himself that in the very first act the whole house was with him. Gestures full of grace and dignity, absolute mastery of the art of acting, a mobile face, expressing with amazing truth all the varying shades of passion and despair – all these rare and precious equipments did but deepen the magic of this great artist’s entrancing voice, the charm of which was inconceivable, at any rate for such as had never yet heard him. With each exciting scene the audience grew more and more enthusiastic. In the third act, however, the delight of the audience became positively frantic. It was in this act, played almost entirely by Crescentini, that this admirable singer touched the souls of his hearers by his movingly pathetic presentment of love and despair, as expressed in delicious melody. The Emperor was charmed, and caused a handsome fee to be paid to Crescentini, while expressing in most flattering terms the great pleasure it had been to hear him. (6)

Napoleon, who was said to be moved to tears by Crescentini’s performance of Romeo’s prayer, conferred upon the singer the Order of the Iron Crown. This did not go down well with Parisians. Napoleon commented on the episode when he was in exile on St. Helena.

‘In conformity with my system of amalgamating all kinds of merit, and of rendering one and the same reward universal, I had an idea of presenting the cross of the legion of honour to Talma; but I refrained from doing this, in consideration of our capricious manners and absurd prejudices. I wished to make a first experiment in an affair that was out of date and unimportant, and I accordingly gave the iron crown to Crescentini. The decoration was foreign, and so was the individual on whom it was conferred. This circumstance was less likely to attract public notice or to render my conduct the subject of discussion; at worst, it could only give rise to a few malicious jokes…. I believe my experiment with regard to Crescentini proved unsuccessful.’

‘It did, Sire,’ observed some one present. ‘The circumstance occasioned a great outcry in Paris; it drew forth a general anathema in all the drawing-rooms of the metropolis, and afforded ample scope for the expression of malignant feeling. However, at one of the evening parties of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, a bon-mot had the effect of completely stemming the torrent of indignation. A pompous orator was holding forth, in an eloquent strain, on the subject of the honour that had been conferred on Crescentini. He declared it to be a disgrace, a horror, a perfect profanation, and inquired what right Crescentini could have to such a distinction? On hearing this, the beautiful Madame [Grassini] who was present, rose majestically from her chair, and with a truly theatrical tone and gesture, exclaimed, ‘Et sa blessure, Monsieur! [And his wound!] Do you make no allowance for that?’ This produced a general burst of laughter and poor Madame Grassini was very much embarrassed by her success.’ (7)

Retirement

Girolamo Crescentini

Girolamo Crescentini served as a performer and teacher at the French Imperial court for six years. He was paid a large salary. In 1812, with his voice suffering from the climate, he with difficulty obtained permission to retire. Crescentini devoted himself to teaching singing at Bologna’s Liceo Musicale. He had a country house about two miles from Bologna, to which he made improvements costing over 100,000 francs. In the winter, he occupied apartments at the Palazzo Legnani. An Englishman who met him in Bologna in 1819 wrote:

His manners were highly pleasing, affable, and polite – those of a man accustomed to the best society. At this time, he had long retired from public performance. He was a man about five feet ten inches in height, somewhat corpulent – of very plain, or rather coarse features; and had lost many of his teeth. His voice, in speaking, was high-pitched and shrill….

[At the Liceo] the care and patient attention which he bestowed on the singers were admirable. He seemed all ears and eyes; now turning to one and now to another. Whenever he perceived the slightest inaccuracy in intonation – or change of the text by an improper appoggiatura, or otherwise – or any false expression – he stopped the whole, and made all begin again until he was satisfied. His unerring ear detected, instantly, in any single voice among all those voices, the slightest deviation from the correct reading and rendering of the music. He pointed to the delinquent, and called out, ‘Come sta!’ – ‘as it is written!’ – and, at last, all went as he desired. I never witnessed the training of a numerous body of singers so patiently and perfectly conducted. (8)

In 1825, Girolamo Crescentini moved to a teaching position in Naples. He died there on April 24, 1846, at the age of 80. By then castrati were out of fashion.

The young Italian composer, Gioachino Rossini, a sane, red-blooded genius, could find no place in his operas for sexless heroes. To him the virile personality and art of Manuel Garcia were worth a thousand male sopranos. It was Rossini’s scorn of the whole tribe that drove the castrato from the operatic stage. Henceforth the tenor was the King of Singers. (9)

A contemporary biographer wrote:

Crescentini is the last great singer that Italy produced…. Nothing could exceed the suavity of his tones, the force of his expression, the perfect taste of his ornaments, or the large style of his phrasing. (10)

Girolamo Crescentini wrote several ariettas for a soprano voice, as well as a number of chamber cantatas, airs with full orchestral accompaniments, and numerous solfeggi. You can download some of his scores from the Petrucci Music Library. Click here to listen to mezzo-soprano Marina Comparato perform Crescentini’s ariettas.

You might also enjoy:

Giuseppina Grassini, Mistress of Napoleon & Wellington

François-Joseph Talma, Napoleon’s Favourite Actor

“The Emperor’s favourite singers were Crescentini and Madame Grassini.” Louis Constant Wairy, Memoirs of Constant on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court, translated by Percy Pinkerton, Vol. 3 (London, 1896), p. 96.
Richard Edgcumbe, Musical Reminiscences, Containing an Account of the Italian Opera in England, From 1773 Continued to the Present Time, Fourth Edition (London, 1834), pp. 45-46.
George Grove, ed., A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450-1880), Vol. 1 (London, 1879), p. 416.
Henry Reeve, Journal of a Residence at Vienna and Berlin in the Eventful Winter 1805-6 (London, 1877), pp. 16-17.
Claire Élisabeth de Vergennes, A Selection from the Letters of Madame de Rémusat to Her Husband and Son, From 1804 to 1813, edited by Frances Cashel Hoey and John Lillie (London, 1881), p. 196.
Louis Constant Wairy, Memoirs of Constant on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court, translated by Percy Pinkerton, Vol. 3 (London, 1896), pp. 96-97.
Emmanuel-August-Dieudonné de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. III, Part 5 (London, 1823), pp. 276-278.
F. Graham, “The Singer Crescentini,” The Athenaeum Journal of Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts for the Year 1846, No. 979 (London, August 1, 1846), pp. 795-796.
Francis Rogers, “The Male Soprano,” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (July 1919), p. 422.
J. Fétis, Biographie Universelle des Musiciens et Bibliographie Générale de la Musique, Vol. 3 (Brussels, 1836), p. 216.

Captain Francisco García was the military commander of Presidio La Bahía (present-day Goliad, Texas) from 1821 to 1823. He is thus the commandant who parleys with Napoleon outside La Bahía in Napoleon in America. In 1821, American filibuster James Long captured La Bahía while García and his men slept.

Presidio La Bahía (Goliad, Texas), of which Francisco García was the commander in the early 1820s

Major Ross’s sweetheart

Francisco García arrived as a Spanish soldier at San Antonio de Béxar in February 1811. Sometime after 1813 he married a local woman, Gertrudis Barrera. She had been the sweetheart of American Major Reuben Ross, who briefly commanded the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, an early filibustering foray into Spanish Texas. On April 1, 1813, the filibusters succeeded in capturing San Antonio. On June 16, Spanish Colonel Ignacio Elizondo camped near San Antonio with a large force and demanded the surrender of the town.

Ross ordered the drums to be beat for parade but no Mexicans appeared; they all shut themselves up. This was a mystery to Ross. It was soon unraveled by the girl [Gertrudis] to whom he was attached, who came to him and told him that the Mexicans had all determined to join the enemy and make a massacre of all the Americans. She loved Ross and implored him to retreat; he told her he would do so. Whether thro’ treachery or through imprudence she communicated this intention to her father who was in Elisondo’s army. Ross on receiving these tidings from the girl, immediately called a council of officers and expressed his conviction that they were betrayed & would all be murdered; he advised a retreat; this was opposed by every man present in the council; they resolved they would not fly but remain & abide their fate. That night Ross himself left town and made safe his Retreat. The next morning the Americans elected another commander; they chose Col. [Henry] Perry. (1)

Francisco García and Gertrudis had one child, a daughter named Pilar.

Commandant of La Bahía

In May 1819, Antonio Martínez, the Spanish governor of Texas, sent Captain García to investigate accusations regarding Juan Manuel Zambrano. Zambrano was the military commander at La Bahía, a town of about 600 people located 100 miles southeast of San Antonio. He had been using his position to operate an extensive contraband operation that involved the exchange of livestock for goods.

Instead of uprooting the vices of the citizens of La Bahía, he led them into illicit trade, and…he abused his license to supply mules to the troops who were afoot by charging them a higher price than the animals were worth. (2)

In April 1821, García took over command of the Presidial Company of La Bahía. At the time there were only three presidial companies in Texas: two in San Antonio (about 136 soldiers), and the one in La Bahía (64 soldiers). Two years later, some Mexican commissioners reported that the condition of the men was “deplorable,” most “being naked and several among them unarmed.” (3)

In August 1821, Stephen Austin described La Bahía as follows.

This place is beautifully situated on an eminence, immediately on the bank of the St. Antonio River. The surrounding country is rolling prairie, land rather sandy but produces well, might all be watered from the River. Town in a state of ruin, owing to the shock it recd in the revolution and subsequent Indian depredations. The Inhabitants have a few cattle and horses & raise some corn. There is however a very considerable trade through this town from Natchitoches to the coast and money is tolerably plenty.

The Spaniards live poorly, have but little furniture or rather none at all in their houses – no knives, eat with forks and spoons and their fingers. (4)

Captain García’s correspondence with Governor Martínez reveals the sorts of things that concerned a commander on Mexico’s northern frontier: lack of supplies; lack of ammunition; the need for money to pay the troops; expeditions to neighbouring outposts; desertions; drought; Indian attacks; cargoes of pottery and pigs.

García was not the most diligent of commandants. He did not get along with La Bahía’s alcalde (mayor), whom he accused of usurping his authority and of refusing to provide support for the pursuit of Indians.

Asleep on the job

García got into trouble when American filibuster James Long captured La Bahía on October 4, 1821, with a force of only 52 men.

He found the task of easy execution; for the garrison was greatly exposed by the want of proper vigilance and discipline which had followed the relaxation of war. After a forced march during the night of thirty miles, [Long] arrived at La Bahia a little before the dawn of day. ‘Who comes there?’ cried the drowsy sentinel. The only reply was a strong hand upon his shoulder. The sentinel was made [an] easy and unresisting prisoner; and before any alarm could be given, the Americans rushed into the fort, put the garrison to flight and took quiet possession of their quarters. Not a gun was fired; and the only damage resulting was the breaking of the soldiers’ morning slumbers, and the transient alarm occasioned to the women and children. (5)

Four days later, a force from San Antonio retook the town. Long and his men were sent as prisoners to Monterrey and then to Mexico City. There Long was killed in mysterious circumstances, as described in my post about Ben Milam.

On November 2, 1821, Gaspar López, Commandant General of Mexico’s Eastern Interior Provinces, wrote to Governor Martínez:

Long and his adventurers having empowered themselves in a scandalous way, of a fortified post in that province, is an act which deserves the attention of Govnt. and as it does not appear from the documents referred to that Your E. has taken any measures for the formal investigation of that incident, it is of absolute necessity that the Military Commander of the Bahia, Dn. Fraco. Garcia, be removed from the Command, Your E. ordering that the corresponding summary be immediately formed alleging against him the corresponding charges which will notoriously result for his not having kept the coast covered by the detachment with which he was provided; and the state of abandonment in which the place was found the night of the surprise, for there is no proof of its having been guarded by one single sentinel. (6)

After the reprimand

Francisco García was fired from his post in December. One month later he was granted a pardon and resumed his duties. His job was not an enviable one. In the spring of 1822, Comanche Indians raided La Bahía. They stole the horses of the garrison cavalry and carried away five prisoners. That October, Karankawa Indians attacked four of Stephen Austin’s colonists who were guarding a cargo of supplies that had just been landed at the mouth of the Colorado River. The cargo was looted and only one of the guards escaped. Francisco García wrote to Commandant General López that he did not have sufficient force to punish this outrage; that the colonists badly needed the stolen supplies for survival; and that if this act went unpunished, it would encourage the Indians to take similar action in future.

On November 8, the Karankawas struck again, seizing two wagons carrying provisions and merchandise. According to García, the Indians were retaliating for an attack the American settlers had made against them. He told López:

This and several other such incidents are the cause of the Indian hostility in order to escape the threats of the Americans. In such a situation peace is impossible. (7)

Francisco García remained in command at La Bahía until the beginning of April 1823. He was dismissed because he and the La Bahía ayuntamiento (town council) proclaimed their undying loyalty to Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide, who had just been kicked out of office. The residents of La Bahía responded to this official slap in the face by electing García as their representative to the new junta gubernativa (governing council) at San Antonio. Garcia, who was opposed to Mexico’s liberal constitutionalists, asked to be excused from the post. José Antonio Navarro (nephew of José Francisco Ruiz) was chosen as his replacement.

Francisco García remained in the La Bahía area as a rancher. In 1829, La Bahía was renamed Goliad. The name is thought to be an anagram of Hidalgo (omitting the silent “H”), in honour of Miguel Hidalgo, the father of the Mexican War of Independence. Francisco García died of cholera in Goliad in 1834.

In 1835, after the start of the Texas Revolution, García’s wife Gertrudis, their daughter Pilar and Pilar’s husband Manuel Sabariego (they married in 1833) fled south and settled in Matamoros. Many years later, they tried through the courts to recover the land they had abandoned in Texas. In the 1860s they succeeded in regaining at least half of their property in Goliad. (8) In 1887, however, the US Supreme Court found against Pilar’s attempt to recover a tract of land in San Antonio that Francisco García had bought in 1819. (9) The defendant in that case was Mary Maverick, a prominent Texas pioneer and diarist.

You might also enjoy:

Stephen F. Austin, the Founder of Anglo-American Texas

The Charmingly Deceptive Baron de Bastrop

José Antonio Díaz de León, the Last Franciscan Missionary in Texas

Felipe de la Garza, the General who Captured Iturbide

San Antonio in the Early 1800s

Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Vol. 1 (Austin, 1920), p. 282. Perry defeated Elizondo’s troops, but on August 18, 1813, the filibusters and Mexican republicans were defeated by Spanish royalist forces at the Battle of Medina.
Virginia H. Taylor, translator and editor, “Calendar of the Letters of Antonio Martinez, Last Spanish Governor of Texas, 1817-1822,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 (April 1957), p. 536.
Gary Clayton Anderson, The Indian Southwest, 1580-1830: Ethnogenesis and Reinvention (Norman, OK, 1999), p. 256.
“Journal of Stephen F. Austin on his First Trip to Texas, 1821,” The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Vol. 7, No. 4 (April, 1904), p. 298.
Charles Adams Gulick, Jr., ed., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Vol. 2 (Austin, 1922), p. 115.
The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Vol. 1, pp. 51-52.
Joseph Carl McElhannon, “Imperial Mexico and Texas, 1821-1823,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 2 (October 1949), pp. 123-124.
George W. Paschal, Reports of Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, during the Tyler and Austin Sessions 1867 and part of the Galveston session, 1868, Vol. 30 (St. Louis, MO, 1882), pp. 549-563.
Stephen K. Williams, ed., Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1887, in 123, 124, 125, 126 US, Book 31 (Rochester, NY, 1887), pp. 430-445.

Yes, there are alternate history books by women.

Yes, women do write alternate history.

The BBC Radio 4 “Open Book” program recently characterized alternate history as “an exclusively male domain in terms of authorship.” While some exceptions were noted, including speculative fiction by Ursula Le Guin, Margaret Atwood and Marge Piercy, neither the presenter nor her guest appeared familiar with more recent alternate history books by women. Fortunately, female-authored alternate history is alive and well. To clear up the BBC’s misconception, and to introduce you to some novels you may not have come across, here’s a list of alternate history books written by women.

Alternate History Books by Women

This list is intended to be a starter, rather than exhaustive. With one exception (to show that women writing alternate history is nothing new), it includes a sample of novels published in English within the last decade or so. It thus does not include short stories, novellas and anthologies. It also leaves out the many alternate histories by women that fall into the science fiction, steampunk, fantasy or time travel categories, as well as books intended primarily for children and teenagers.

The Professor in Erin by Lily (Charlotte Elizabeth) McManus (1918)
What if Hugh O’Neill won the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, ending English rule in Ireland?
(This is the oldest alternate history book by a woman listed on Uchronia.)

The Romanitas Trilogy by Sophia McDougall (2005-2011)
What if the Roman Empire never fell?

The Small Change Series by Jo Walton (2006-2008)
What if Britain made peace with Adolf Hitler in 1941?

Eleanor vs. Ike by Robin Gerber (2008)
What if Eleanor Roosevelt replaced Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 election?

Clopton’s Short History of the Confederate States of America 1861-1925 by Carole Scott (2011)
What if the Confederacy won the American Civil War?

Margot by Jillian Cantor (2013)
What if Anne Frank’s sister Margot escaped the Nazis and went to the United States?

The Boleyn Trilogy/Tudor Legacy Series by Laura Anderson (2013-2016)
What if King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had a son?
What if Queen Elizabeth I and King Philip II of Spain had a daughter?

The Roma Nova Series by Alison Morton (2013-2017)
What if a small, female-ruled remnant of the Roman Empire survived into the modern era?

The Secret Daughter of the Tsar and The Tsarina’s Legacy by Jennifer Laam (2013, 2016)
What if a secret fifth daughter of the Romanov family continued the Russian royal lineage?

Napoleon in America by Shannon Selin (2014)
What if Napoleon escaped from St. Helena and wound up in the United States?

The Enemy Within by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (2014)
What if FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was murdered three months after John F. Kennedy’s assassination?

My Real Children by Jo Walton (2014)
What if John F. Kennedy was killed by a bomb in 1963? Or what if he chose not to run in 1964 after an escalated Cuban Missile Crisis led to the nuclear obliteration of Miami and Kiev?

A Set of Lies by Carolyn McCrae (2015)
What if the British Secret Service convinced Napoleon to work with them after his 1815 defeat, substituting a double for him on St. Helena?

Between Two Kings by Olivia Longueville (2015)
What if Anne Boleyn escaped execution?

False Lights by K.J. Whittaker (2017)
What if Napoleon crushed the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo, and his ex-wife Josephine presided over French-occupied England?

Kingdom of the Wicked Book One: Rules and Book Two: Order by Helen Dale (2017, 2018)
What if Jesus Christ had been around during the time of a Roman Empire that had experienced an industrial revolution?

I invite readers to add other alternate history books by women in the comments.

You might also enjoy:

Napoleon in Alternate History

What if Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo?

Alternate History by Napoleon

Alternate History Books by Canadians

Claude Victor Perrin, Duke of Belluno, Marshal of France, in an 1812 portrait by Antoine-Jean Gros commissioned by Napoleon for the Tuileries Palace

Claude Victor Perrin, the Duke of Belluno, makes a brief appearance in Napoleon in America as the man who delivers the welcome news to the Duke of Angoulême that French forces have resisted Colonel Charles Fabvier’s attempt to subvert them. Victor was Louis XVIII’s Minister of War. He had been one of Napoleon’s marshals, and was thus one of the few senior Napoleonic officers who continued to serve in a high position under the Bourbons.

Not specially dowered by fortune with talents for war, but possessed of a resolute character, a high sense of honour, great courage, and that intrepidity which Napoleon maintained was so absolutely essential for high command, the Duke of Belluno is a striking instance of how large a factor is character in the struggle of life which ends in the survival of the fittest. (1)

Napoleon’s beautiful moon

Claude Victor Perrin was born on December 7, 1764 at Lamarche, in the Vosges department of northeastern France. He was the son of a royal bailiff, Charles Perrin, and his wife Marie Anne Floriot. At the age of 17, Victor enlisted as a drummer in the artillery regiment of Grenoble. He gained the nickname “beau soleil” (beautiful sun) for his cheery disposition. (2)

In 1791, after 10 years of service, Victor applied for his discharge. In May of that year he married Jeanne Josephine Muguet. They went on to have four children: Victorine (born in 1792), Charles (1795), Napoléon Victor François (1796), and Napoléon Victor Eugène (1799). The newlyweds settled in Valence, where Victor became a grocer. Civilian life didn’t suit him. Seven months after leaving the army, Victor joined a battalion of volunteers. He soon became battalion chief.

In 1793, Victor took part in the siege of Toulon with Napoleon Bonaparte. For his bravery on that occasion, Victor was promoted to brigadier general. During the Italian campaign of 1796-97, he so distinguished himself that he became general of division. General Victor played an important role in Napoleon’s triumph at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800. However, since Victor had made no secret of his disapproval of Napoleon’s 1799 coup d’état, the First Consul decided it was best to keep the general busy outside of France.

Claude Victor Perrin became commander-in-chief of the Army of Holland. In 1802, he was briefly the governor of Louisiana, before Napoleon sold the territory to the United States. That year Victor divorced Jeanne. In June 1803 he married Julie Vosch van Avessat. They had one daughter, Stephanie-Josephine, born in 1805. Victor was then France’s ambassador to the Danish court.

General Victor returned to military duty in 1806, thanks to Marshal Lannes, who wanted him as chief of staff. Victor’s conduct at the Battles of Jena and Pultusk returned him to Napoleon’s favour. In command of the First Corps of the Grande Armée at the Battle of Friedland in 1807, Victor’s performance earned him a marshal’s baton and an appointment as the military governor of Berlin. In 1808, he was created Duke of Belluno. This was said to be Napoleon’s idea of a joke.

‘It will be pleasant,’ said the Emperor, for whom such jokes were not at all common, ‘to name Beau-Soleil Duke of Bellune [beautiful moon].’ (3)

From 1808 to 1811, Marshal Victor saw continuous service in the Peninsular War. In 1812, he commanded a corps in the invasion of Russia. He protected the retreating Grande Armée as it crossed the Berezina River. In 1813 he fought at the battles of Dresden and Leipzig. In 1814 he was entrusted with defence of the Vosges.

Disgrace at Montereau

In February 1814, Marshal Victor arrived at the Battle of Montereau later than Napoleon had ordered. The Emperor was furious. He deprived Victor of the command of his corps and told him to leave the army.

The Duke of Belluno, with deep mortification received the Emperor’s permission to quit the army. He repaired to Surville, and with powerful emotion appealed against this decision. Napoleon gave free vent to his indignation and overwhelmed the unfortunate Marshal with expressions of his displeasure. He reproached him for reluctance in the discharge of his duties, for withdrawing from the Imperial headquarters, and for even manifesting a certain degree of opposition, which was calculated to produce mischievous effects in a camp. The conduct of the Duchess of Belluno was also the subject of complaint: she was Lady of the Palace, and yet had withdrawn herself from the Empress, who indeed seemed to be quite forsaken by the new court.

The Duke in vain attempted to defend himself; Napoleon afforded him no opportunity of reply. At length, however, he gained a hearing. He made a protestation of his fidelity, and reminded Napoleon that he was one of his old comrades, and could not quit the army without dishonour. The recollections of Italy were not invoked in vain. The conversation took a milder turn. Napoleon now merely suggested to the Duke that he stood in need of a little respite from the exertions of a military life; that his ill health and numerous wounds now probably rendered him unable to encounter the fatigues of the advanced guard and the privations of the bivouac, and too frequently induced his quartering officers to halt wherever a bed could be procured.

But all Napoleon’s endeavours to prevail on the Marshal to retire were ineffectual. He insisted on remaining with the army, and he appeared to feel the Emperor’s reproaches, the more severely in proportion as they became more gentle. He attempted to justify his tardy advance on the preceding day; but tears interrupted his utterance: if he had committed a military fault, he had dearly paid for it by the fatal wound which his unfortunate son-in-law had received.

On hearing the name of General Chateau, Napoleon was deeply affected: he enquired whether there was any hope of saving his life, and sympathized sincerely in the grief of the Marshal. The Duke de Belluno resuming confidence, again protested that he would never quit the army. ‘I can shoulder a musket,’ said he; ‘I have not forgotten the business of a soldier. Victor will range himself in the ranks of the guard.’ These last words completely subdued Napoleon. ‘Well, Victor,’ said he, stretching forth his hand to him, ‘remain with me. I cannot restore to you the command of your corps, because I have appointed General Gerard to succeed you, but I give you the command of two divisions of the guard; and now let everything be forgotten between us. (4)

Marshal Victor didn’t have long to redeem himself. On March 7, 1814, he was severely wounded at the Battle of Craonne and forced to go home.

The Restoration

After Napoleon’s abdication in April 1814, Claude Victor Perrin swore allegiance to the Bourbons. He became commander of the Second Military Division at Mézières. When Napoleon escaped from exile on Elba, the Duke of Belluno did his utmost to prevent the defection of his troops to the Emperor. Failing at that, he retreated to Ghent with Louis XVIII.

During the Second Restoration, Claude Victor Perrin was created a peer of France and named one of four major-generals of the Royal Guard. He earned the hatred of many of his former comrades for the severity he displayed when he was part of the military commission “charged with examining the conduct of officers of all grades who served under the usurpation.” (5) The commission’s decisions resulted in the removal of most Napoleonic officers from active service (see my post about demi-soldes). In 1821, Prime Minister Joseph de Villèle invited Victor to join the cabinet as Minister of War.

On the eve of the 1823 French invasion of Spain, the French police seized some baggage addressed to an aide-de-camp of General Guilleminot, who had military command of the Army of the Pyrenees, under the King’s nephew, the Duke of Angoulême. It was found to be full of Bonapartist ensigns, buttons, tricolors, cockades and scarfs: all the paraphernalia of a military mutiny.

It struck a panic throughout the palace, and into the Cabinet. Victor himself, whose loyalty was not questioned, but whose sagacity and foresight were apparently at fault, was compelled to quit the War Office, and proceed in haste to Bayonne, to supersede General Guilleminot, inquire into his conduct, and undertake his duties of military minister to the Duc d’Angoulême. (6)

Victor arrived in Bayonne on March 20 with a royal decree that appointed him chief of staff of the Army of the Pyrenees. The Duke of Angoulême, however, had no desire to share the glory of his expedition with one of Napoleon’s marshals. He regarded the arrival of the war minister as a slur on his own competence. Expressing full confidence in Guilleminot, Angoulême reinstated the latter in his post, leaving Victor to return to Paris. This was not Angoulême’s only gripe with the Duke of Belluno.

When the Duke of Angoulême…arrived in Bayonne…, he was assailed by complaints and recriminations concerning the disorder and the inadequacy of the food supplies. And he was perhaps too ready to share the opinion that the whole responsibility rested directly on the shoulders of the war minister, the Marshal Duke of Bellune, in spite of the latter’s unimpeachable royalism. Bellune…apparently had not the administrative capacities required of a minister of war. (7)

To remedy the situation, Angoulême signed contracts with a charming war profiteer, Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard, who had conveniently appeared in Bayonne. The contracts gave Ouvrard a virtual monopoly on the army’s food supplies and their transport on exceedingly generous terms. When these terms became known in Paris, everyone could see there had been a huge waste of public funds. The Duke of Belluno was dismissed as war minister and given the post of ambassador to Vienna. Unfortunately, Austrian Emperor Francis I refused to recognize his title (Belluno was an Austrian possession). Victor went back to being a major-general of the royal guard.

When the July Revolution of 1830 overthrew the Bourbons, Victor retired to private life. In December 1831, he was rumoured to be involved in a plot to restore King Charles X to the throne.

Claude Victor Perrin, Duke of Belluno, died on March 1, 1841, at the age of 76. He is buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. His name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe.

You might also enjoy:

The Duke and Duchess of Angoulême

Charles Fabvier: Napoleonic Soldier and Greek Hero

General Louis Vallin, a Man for all Masters

Joseph de Villèle, the Least Unreasonable Ultra-Royalist

The 1823 French Invasion of Spain

Demi-Soldes, the Half-Pay Napoleonic War Veterans

R. P. Dunn-Pattison, Napoleon’s Marshals (Boston, 1909), p. 296.
Biographie des ministres Français: depuis juillet 1789 jusqu’à ce jour, (Brussels, 1826), p. 304.
Charles de Lacretelle, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, Vol. III (Paris, 1846), p. 325.
Agathon-Jean-François Fain, The Manuscript of 1814: A history of events which led to the abdication of Napoleon (London, 1823), pp. 116-119.
Napoleon’s Marshals, p. 296.
Eyre Evans Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, Vol. II (London, 1854), pp. 182-183.
André Nicolle, “Ouvrard and the French Expedition in Spain in 1823,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (September 1945), p. 196.

It’s like a set piece from a movie: the wives of two famous enemies meet, gossip about their estranged husbands, and have a lovely time, ending in the singing of a duet. Such was the scene in the Swiss city of Bern on September 23, 1814, when Princess Caroline of England visited Empress Marie Louise of France.

Caroline

Princess Caroline of Brunswick by James Lonsdale, 1820

Caroline was the lusty, eccentric 46-year-old wife of England’s Prince Regent, the future King George IV. George had reluctantly married Caroline – his German cousin – in 1795. He fathered a daughter (Charlotte) with Caroline. He then began living apart from her. For details of this unhappy union, see “The Strange Marriage of the Prince Regent and Princess Caroline of Brunswick” on Jane Austen’s World.

Marie Louise

Marie Louise of Austria by François Gérard

Marie Louise was the 22-year-old second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. At the time, Napoleon was in exile on Elba. Napoleon was hoping that Marie Louise and their three-year-old son, Napoleon II, would join him, but Marie Louise’s father, Emperor Francis I of Austria, would not allow it. Instead, Napoleon had just received a visit from his Polish mistress, Marie Walewska, and his illegitimate son Alexandre. Marie Louise didn’t know about the visit, but even if she had known, she may not have much cared. She was finishing up a holiday in the company of Count Adam Albert von Neipperg, her consort in Napoleon in America, who had just become her lover.

The meeting in Bern

Marie Louise arrived in Bern on September 20. Caroline, who was on her way to Rome, reached the city two days later. The two women had never met. Caroline sent her chamberlain, Lord Craven, to convey her respects to the dethroned French Empress. As England was one of the countries whose arms had ousted Napoleon, any recognition of the Regent’s wife by Marie Louise was unnecessary and not in the best of taste. Nonetheless, Marie Louise dispatched the Count de Bausset, former prefect of Napoleon’s palace, to invite Caroline for a visit. Bausset reports:

[Princess Caroline], so adventurous and so celebrated for [her] great vicissitudes…was of medium height, with regular and pronounced features, and a pleasant and expressive countenance. Her great spirit and character…didn’t fail to charm, although it was easy to see that she lacked the extreme fineness of form that is one of the most seductive attributes of a pretty figure. Her manners were easy, lively and natural, her regard penetrating and quick. She spoke French perfectly well, and without an accent. She wore a white muslin gown, and her head was enveloped in a large veil of the same fabric, which fell lightly over her shoulders and her bosom. A diadem of diamonds crowned this veil, and rendered her costume rather like those of the Greek priestesses who appeared in our operas. This ensemble…appeared to me extraordinary for a traveller who had only arrived a few hours earlier. (1)

When Caroline joined Marie Louise the next morning, she spoke “with biting directness” about the difficulties she had experienced in England.

‘Your Majesty will find it hard to believe,’ she said to Marie Louise, ‘that I was not admitted to the Queen’s drawing room during the visit of the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia to England, because it suited my royal husband to not find himself with me, either privately or in public.… I complained to the queen, and even wrote to [my husband] a beautiful letter which I signed, the most faithful and submissive of wives’ (in saying these last words, the princess smiled maliciously); ‘he didn’t bother to respond. But not believing that duty condemned me to absolute retirement, I went to all the places where the public was admitted for a fee. Once, when the sovereigns and my royal husband were in a box in the dress-circle at the opera, I was discovered at the end of a box in the second row, where I had gone in disguise. The people showed their good will toward me by such loud applause that these august spectators, thinking it impossible that such homage could be addressed to anyone other than themselves, thought it incumbent upon them to rise and bow to the audience. I quickly seized on this chance to avenge myself. Pretending to consider their mistake as an act of politeness toward me, I gravely made them three sweeping curtsies, which excited loud and ironic applause.’ (2)

Marie Louise asked about Princess Charlotte.

‘My daughter is as charming and as clever as one can be; but, after myself,’ she added, smiling, ‘I don’t know a more quarrelsome person.’ (3)

Marie Louise, who had recently learned of the death of her grandmother, Queen Maria Carolina, was dressed in black. After offering condolences, Caroline expressed the fear that she would soon be obliged to wear mourning for her husband, whose infirmities grew every day. The two hit it off so well that Marie Louise returned the visit that afternoon. She invited Caroline to join her for dinner.

The duet

The evening was reportedly a jolly one. Caroline spoke with enthusiasm about the pleasure she hoped to experience on her trip to Italy. She mentioned that she might go and visit Napoleon on Elba. Marie Louise asked Caroline to sing some Italian arias. The latter consented, but only if Marie Louise would sing with her.

The Empress wanted to hide herself in her timidity, which made her incapable of uttering a note before listeners. The princess encouraged her, saying that for her part, she never had fear, except on account of her friends. (4)

They sang the duet “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Marie Louise took the part of Zerlina, and Caroline that of Don Giovanni. Count Neipperg accompanied them on the piano.

Baron Méneval, present for the occasion, said Caroline “sang effectively with a voice of which I will say nothing, only that it proved indeed the courage of this princess.” He added:

Despite her clothing and appearance, which one could frankly call bizarre, the Princess of Wales had the air of an excellent woman, simple, frank and putting everyone at ease. (5)

Bausset wrote:

I am not enough of a connoisseur to pronounce an opinion on the accuracy and flexibility of the voice of Caroline of England; what struck me the most was her range…. Marie Louise’s voice had the sweetest and most naïve inflections, like her character… Those of the Princess of Wales were masculine, sonorous and strong, like her nature. It was easy to judge, in listening to them, that if the Princess Caroline had found herself to be Napoleon’s wife, she would have presented large obstacles to the success of the coalition by the stiffness, the persistence and the calibre of her soul. (6)

Caroline and Marie Louise never met again. Caroline died on August 7, 1821, at the age of 53, three months after the death of Napoleon. Marie Louise married Neipperg. She died on December 17, 1847, at the age of 56. Click here to see a photo of Marie Louise taken earlier that year.

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Adam Albert von Neipperg, Lover of Napoleon’s Wife

Louis François Joseph de Bausset, Mémoires anecdotiques sur l’intérieur du palais et sur quelques évenements de l’Empire, Vol. III (Paris, 1828), pp. 54-55.
Ibid., pp. 55-56.
Ibid., p. 56.
Claude François Méneval, Napoleon et Marie-Louise, Vol. II (Paris, 1845), p. 294.
Ibid., pp. 294, 295.
Mémoires anecdotiques sur l’intérieur du palais et sur quelques évenements de l’Empire, Vol. III, p. 58.

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821 as a prisoner on St. Helena, an isolated British island in the South Atlantic. On May 7, St. Helena’s governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, sent news of Napoleon’s death to London on the Royal Navy sloop Heron. On July 4, Captain William Crokat (who had replaced poor Engelbert Lutyens as orderly officer at Napoleon’s residence of Longwood) delivered Lowe’s message to Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Here’s what the newspapers had to say about Napoleon’s death – or, rather, about his life.

Death of Napoleon the Great, French engraving from 1828. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

London

On July 5, 1821, The Times reported:

Thus terminates in exile and in prison the most extraordinary life yet known to political history.… Buonaparte came into active life with as much (but we have no reason to think a larger share of) lax morality and pure selfishness as others of his age and calling. The public crisis into which he was thrown gave to profound selfishness the form of insatiable ambition. With talents and enterprise beyond all comparison greater than any against which he had to contend, he overthrew whatever opposed his progress…. How, then, was this pupil of a military school prepared to exercise the functions of sovereignty? An officer, as such, has no idea of divided power. His patriotism is simply love of his troops and his profession. He will obey commands – he will issue them – but in both cases those commands are absolute. Talk to him of deliberation, of debate, of freedom of action, of speech, nay of opinion, his feeling is that the body to which any of these privileges shall be accessible, must fall into confusion and be speedily destroyed. Whatever pretexts may have been resorted to by Buonaparte – whatever Jacobin yells he may have joined in to assist his own advance towards power – every subsequent act of his life assures us that the military prepossessions in which he was educated became those by which he was influenced as a statesman: and we are well persuaded of his conviction, that it was impossible for any country, above all for France, to be governed otherwise than by one sole authority – undivided and unlimited.

It may, we confess, be no satisfaction to the French, nor any great consolation to the rest of Europe, to know through what means it was, or by what vicious training, that Buonaparte was fitted, nay, predestined almost, to be a scourge and destroyer of the rights of nations, instead of employing a power…for the promotion of knowledge, peace and liberty throughout the world…. The factions which he was compelled to crush, and whose overthrow obtained for him the gratitude of his country, still threatened a resurrection…. Hence were pretexts furnished on behalf of despotism of which men more enlightened and better constituted than Buonaparte might not soon have discovered the fallacy. Raised to empire at home, his ambition sought for itself fresh aliment; and foreign conquest was at once tempting and easy…. [W]hat might not this extraordinary being have effected for the happiness of mankind and for his own everlasting fame and grandeur, had he used but a moiety of the force or perseverance in generous efforts to relieve the oppressed, which he wasted in rendering himself the monopolist and patron of oppression. But he had left himself no resource. He had extinguished liberty in France and had no hold upon his subjects but their love of military glory. Conquest therefore succeed to conquest, until nothing capable of subjugation was left to be subdued….

The sensation produced by the death of Buonaparte will be a good deal confined in this country to its effect as a partial relief to our finances, the expense of his custody at St. Helena being little short of 400,000£ per annum. In France the sentiment will be more deep and complex, and perhaps not altogether easy to define…. A pretext for suspicion and severity in the administration of affairs may be taken away by a Pretender’s death; but then a motive to moderation…is at the same time removed from the minds of reigning Princes. Buonaparte’s son still lives, it is true, but how far he may ever become an object of interest with any great party of the French nation, is a point on which we will not speculate.

Detail of “The Death of Napoleon” by Charles de Steuben

Paris

News of Napoleon’s death reached Paris on July 6. Le Constitutionnel, a liberal paper, noted on July 11:

Few conquerors have had a fame so extended as Napoleon Bonaparte. The noise of his name filled all Europe; it was heard to the extremities of Asia. Placed by the force of events at the head of a great nation, wearied by a long anarchy, the heir of a revolution that exalted every good and evil passion, he was elevated as much by the energy of his own will, as by the feebleness of parties, to the supreme power, placed France in a state of permanent war, substituted the illusion of glory for the real benefits of liberty and, identifying himself with national independence, drew from the fear of a foreign yoke the principal instrument of a boundless authority.

Napoleon had an entire faith in fortune. He believed that an insurmountable fatality governed his destiny. This error has been common to several eminent persons, and almost all those who have entertained it have experienced, after the most signal success, the greatest reverse. They left insufficient scope to the counsels of wisdom; the fruit of fifty victories could be destroyed in one unfortunate day; of this, Poltava and Waterloo are memorable instances….

Napoleon necessarily made a strong impression on the minds and imagination of mankind. A soldier who, by the force of genius alone, raises himself above his contemporaries; who gives tranquillity to a disturbed society, and dictates his laws to sovereigns, appears in the world as a wonderful person, and the earth is silent before him.

History, an impartial judge, will confess that Napoleon has rendered eminent services to the social order. The promulgation of the Codes by which we are today governed, notwithstanding the many imperfections of the penal code, is a benefit that will not be lost for generations to come…. We will not speak of that astonishing military glory which is admitted without dispute: the improvements in internal administration, the public works and the settlement of finances present more durable titles to admiration…. The truth must sit upon his tomb; and let us not be diffident in saying that the prisoner of St. Helena will be counted among the great men.

Washington

Americans learned of Napoleon’s death on August 6 from a passenger arriving in Boston on a ship from Cape Verde. He had heard of it from the former governor of the Isle of Bourbon, who had learned of Napoleon’s death when stopping at Ascension Island on May 20 on his way to Cape Verde. This news was confirmed a couple of weeks later by the arrival of papers from London. On August 24, the Daily National Intelligencer (Washington) reported:

The death of Napoleon Bonaparte, late Emperor of the French, is now ascertained beyond doubt….

No man ever lived whose personal agency had so immediate and so vast an influence on the concerns of the world. In the language of Phillips…‘crowns were his playthings, thrones his foot-stools.’ Such was the boldness of his ambition, the magnitude of his designs, and the splendor of his successes, that he seemed almost to have been endowed with the attribute of omnipotence, and made superior to the vicissitudes of morality. All Europe trembled at his nod; but all Europe would not have satiated his ambition. He was born to illustrate the uncertainty of human fortunes, and seems to have been permitted to reach the highest point of human grandeur, that his fall might be so signal as to send, through all time to come, a warning example to overreaching ambition. The institutions of Napoleon, and the benefits of the legislation of his reign, will descend to posterity in connection with his memory. But it is chiefly for his military deeds that his fame will be inscribed in living letters in the annals of the world. Durable as his fame will also be the condemnation which impartial history will pass upon the harsh decree which sentenced this illustrious captive to an almost literally Promethean fate.

New Orleans

Plaster cast of Napoleon’s death mask from the original owned by François Carlo Antommarchi

In New Orleans, where Napoleon lands in Napoleon in America, Napoleon was regarded favourably. On October 19, the Louisiana Courier announced Napoleon’s death by reprinting a July 8th article from the London Examiner.

The age has lost its greatest name – Napoleon Bonaparte…. The animal who encumbers his once magnificent throne, and all the vampires of legitimacy, will doubtless chuckle over the melancholy end of the man whose genius abashed them, even when in his remote prison; but there are hearts on which the news of his death strikes like a heavy blow. He was far away from our eyes and our thoughts, but we felt a pervading consciousness that he lived, and something like a feeling that he might again appear among us, as a soldier still unequalled, as a man taught wisdom by experience…. He rose amidst the storms of the revolution; he was, as he himself felt and said, the ‘sword arm of the republic,’ with which it chastised and humbled to the dust the accursed confederacy of despots, who had endeavored to rivet an old, worn-out, oppressive and rejected dynasty on 30 millions of Frenchmen…. By what right did the British government constitute herself a tribunal to judge and punish in the last resort delinquent European monarchs? Could it by any reasoning have made out a claim to that office, was it just or decent to make a victim of one, a man of unquestionable talent and greatness of soul, and at the same moment to compliment and make alliances with all the worse tyrants, the maudlin hypocrites, and the base violators of their word? Or did these moral Quixotes and immaculate judges only protest to do ‘justice’ upon one sinner ‘against the spirit of the age,’ and that one a fallen enemy?

Was Napoleon poisoned?

The autopsy findings on St. Helena indicated that Napoleon died from stomach cancer. As discussed in my article about Charles de Montholon, some people believe that Napoleon’s death was due to arsenic poisoning. While this theory has been convincingly refuted, it is interesting to note that rumours about Napoleon being poisoned surfaced shortly after his death. On July 17, 1821, The Times reported from Paris:

The Buonapartists here have put into circulation a report that Napoleon has been poisoned by a diamond pounded by an Italian priest. His death, it is said, had been resolved upon at the Congress of Laibach, by the Allied Sovereigns, frightened at the revolutions breaking out on all sides, and at the danger still threatening them, that on the least rupture between them, England would set him loose upon Europe. The English cabinet, it is added, consented to the proposal out of fear at the progress of the Radicals, and from a desire of saving the immense expenses incurred by supporting their illustrious prisoner. As a consistent sequel to this story, it is added that the son of Buonaparte is now unwell, and that his death must soon follow – a circumstance that should not excite the astonishment of men who understand political affairs.

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Louis Vallin (portrait in the city hall of Châlons-en-Champagne)

Louis Vallin was a competent and long-serving French cavalry officer whose career spanned the French Revolution, Napoleon’s Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, and the government of Louis-Philippe. Unlike many of his compatriots, he managed to distinguish himself under all of his various political masters. In 1823, Louis Vallin confronted Charles Fabvier’s band of insurrectionists at the Bidassoa River, both in real life and in Napoleon in America.

A postmaster’s son

Louis Vallin was born on August 16, 1770 in Dormans (Marne), France. He was the son of postmaster Joseph Edmond Vallin and his wife Marie Anne Labouret. Louis Vallin had just completed his law studies when he was conscripted into the French army thanks to the French Revolution. He started out with a National Guard regiment in Marne. Later, he was attached to the staff of General Jean Hardy. In 1794, Vallin participated in the Battle of Fleurus and the siege of Maastricht. (1)

Colonel of hussars

In 1807, Vallin became the colonel of a regiment of hussars. Vallin fought at the Battle of Piave River in May 1809. Marshal Jacques Macdonald mentions Vallin in his recollections of the campaign.

While our troops were halting, Colonel Vallin, of the Hussars, came and begged me to give him something to do. I told him not to stir without orders, and added that I would soon find work for him…. I gave orders to General Grouchy, who was in command of the cavalry at this point, and while he was conveying them to his men, I turned back to regain the centre. I saw Colonel Vallin and his squadron charging. I foresaw what must inevitably, and did, happen. The enemy’s cavalry hurriedly withdrew, and allowed the squadron to advance, thus exposing them to the hot fire of the masked infantry, which I alone had perceived when I commanded the halt. My intention had been to outflank it on the right, and such were my orders to Grouchy. The enemy’s cavalry, seeing Vallin’s regiment hesitate, charged, and from where I was I could see that we were not getting the best of it in the mêlée that ensued. I spurred my horse and came up with the unlucky leader, who was wounded in the hand, and fiercely reproached him for having disobeyed my positive orders. He replied that he had acted upon instructions from the Viceroy [of Italy, Napoleon’s stepson Eugène de Beauharnais], who galloped up and said unreflectingly:

‘Now then, hussars! Let me see you charge those blackguards!’

Vallin had answered that he would have done so already, had I not forbidden him to stir.

‘Never mind,’ answered the Prince; ‘charge all the same!’

And he did so. (2)

A couple of months later, Vallin fought with distinction in the Battle of Wagram. He was subsequently named a baron of the Empire.

On July 12, 1810 in Paris, Vallin married Saubade Garat (1769-1821), the daughter of Baron Martin Garat, director general of the Bank of France. They had three children, Angélique (born in 1812), Léonie (1815) and Marie Louise (1819).

Vallin distinguished himself in the Russian campaign of 1812. He was promoted to general of brigade and placed in command of the vanguard of troops led by Eugène de Beauharnais. In 1813, Vallin was named second in command of a regiment of the Guards of Honour. For more about the Guards of Honour, see my post about Louis Lauret.

The Hundred Days

After Napoleon’s 1814 abdication, Vallin commanded a cavalry brigade in the army of King Louis XVIII. When Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815, Vallin joined the Emperor’s Belgian campaign. He took over command of the 7th Cavalry Division when General Maurin was wounded at the Battle of Ligny. In this capacity, Vallin was with General Grouchy’s forces at the Battle of Wavre. Prior to the battle, Grouchy’s subordinate General Gérard suggested to Grouchy that they should instead march in the direction of the sound of distant cannon fire. Grouchy insisted on following the Prussian forces he was chasing.

As Grouchy was preparing to mount, Gérard risked a last attempt: ‘If you do not wish to advance towards the Forest of Soignes with all the troops, at least permit me to make this movement with my army corps and the cavalry of General Vallin. I am confident that I can reach the battlefield in time to be of assistance to the Emperor.’

‘No,’ replied Grouchy. ‘It would be committing an unpardonable military fault to divide my troops and cause them to operate upon both banks of the Dyle. I would expose both of these bodies, which would be unable to support each other, to the danger of being crushed by forces two or three times more numerous.’ (3)

The battle in which Vallin might have assisted was the Battle of Waterloo. After the French defeat, Vallin’s cavalry flanked the army in its retreat towards Paris, pursued by the Prussians. The French provisional government promoted Vallin to lieutenant general. On July 1, 1815, on the plain of Montrouge outside Paris, Vallin made one last attempt to defend the city.

The Bourbon Restoration

Louis Vallin initially resisted serving under the restored Bourbons, but he soon rallied to the new government. He was rewarded with the post of inspector general of cavalry and the title of viscount. In 1822-23, Vallin was one of the commanders of the army on France’s border with Spain. Initially an observation corps, this became the Army of the Pyrenees (see the 1823 French invasion of Spain). Vallin led the vanguard of the invading force. On April 6, 1823, at the Bidassoa River, he was confronted with a small band of insurgents led by Colonel Charles Fabvier. While Fabvier tried to convince the French soldiers to desert,

General Vallin galloped up to a piece of artillery in battery on the French abutment of the broken bridge, and, without parleying an instant with the refugees, ordered them to be immediately fired upon. A round shot was accordingly fired from across the river, but whether from accident or forbearance, it passed wide of the party. Fabvier and his men looking on the absence of a shower of grape shot as a signal of seditious complicity with them, waved their flag and cried ‘Vive l’Artillerie!’ But the only answer they got was a discharge of grape shot, by order of General Vallin, which brought down an officer and several of the refugees. The rest stood their ground, however, till a third discharge tore the tri-coloured flag, killed the bearer of it, and covered the Spanish bank of the river with killed and wounded. The fate of Spain, of France, and of Europe…depended on the resolution of the general, and the obedience of a few artillerymen. This first exchange of fire between the army of the King and the army of the revolution caused a long separation between the two causes. ‘General Vallin,’ said Louis XVIII, on seeing this brave soldier again after the campaign, ‘your cannon shot saved Europe!’ (4)

After entering Madrid, the Duke of Angoulême sent a detachment under Vallin in pursuit of the Spanish corps that had formed the garrison there. Vallin caught up with the Spanish corps outside Talavera and defeated them. The Spanish campaign resulted in Vallin becoming a grand officer of the Legion of Honour.

Louis Vallin continued to serve off and on as an inspector general of cavalry until 1828. After a period of inactivity, he served as an inspector general of gendarmerie in 1834-35. In 1839 he was placed on reserve. In 1848 he officially retired.

General Louis Vallin died on December 25, 1854 in Paris, at the age of 84. His name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

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This and other biographical information about Louis Vallin comes from Louis-Gabriel Michaud, Biographie Universelle Ancienne et Moderne, Nouvelle Édition, Vol. 42 (Paris, 1865), pp. 506-507.
Camille Rousset, ed., Recollections of Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, translated by Stephen Louis Simeon (New York, 1893), pp. 144-145.
Henry Houssaye, 1815 Waterloo, translated by S.R. Willis (Kansas City, Mo., 1905), pp. 156-157.
Alphonse de Lamartine, The History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France, Vol. 4 (London: 1854), p. 132.

Imagine in Paris, across the river from the Eiffel Tower, a palace as magnificent as the one at Versailles, with a park covering about half of the present 16th arrondissement. This was Napoleon’s vision. In 1811, work began on a great imperial dwelling on the hill that is today known as the Trocadéro, where the Palais de Chaillot (built in 1937) now stands. Intended as a residence for Napoleon’s infant son, the planned complex was known as the palace of the King of Rome.

The Palace of the King of Rome by Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine

Napoleon’s grand monument

In addition to bridges and other practical improvements to Paris’s infrastructure, Napoleon Bonaparte built a number of monuments intended to be a lasting testament to the glory of the imperial regime. The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was finished in 1808; the Vendôme column was completed in 1810; the foundations of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile were started in 1806. When Napoleon was in exile on St. Helena, he said:

It was the constant subject of my thoughts to render Paris the real capital of Europe. I sometimes wished it, for instance, to become a city with a population of two, three, or four millions, in short, something fabulous, colossal, unexampled until our days, and with public establishments suitable to its population…. Had Heaven but granted me twenty years, and a little more leisure, ancient Paris would have been sought for in vain; not a trace of it would have been left and I should have changed the face of France. (1)

Napoleon’s marriage in 1810 to Marie Louise, a Habsburg princess, strengthened his desire to rival the grandeur of other European courts. When Marie Louise became pregnant, Napoleon commissioned the architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine to design a palace for his unborn child. Percier and Fontaine had worked on Malmaison, the Louvre, the Tuileries Palace, Fontainebleau, the Château de Saint-Cloud, and many other projects for Napoleon. According to Percier and Fontaine:

Napoleon examined, in the presence of several great figures of his court, our plans relative to the new palace. Each one gave his advice and all, except Marshal Duroc, had repeated in almost the same terms what the master had said. ‘And you, Madame,’ said the Emperor, turning towards Empress Marie Louise, his new wife, ‘what do you think?’ ‘I do not know anything,’ the Empress responded modestly, excusing herself. ‘Do not be afraid,’ replied the Emperor. ‘Speak, they know even less than you and I have not committed to do or to believe anything they say. Your opinion is necessary to me; it concerns the palace where our son will live.’ The Empress examined the plans and made some judicious observations, which everyone hastened to applaud. The Empress was pregnant, and four months later she gave birth to the King of Rome. (2)

In January 1811, 20 million francs were allocated for the palace’s construction. When Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte, also known as the King of Rome, Napoleon II or the Duke of Reichstadt, was born on March 20, 1811, work had already begun.

The site of Chaillot

Map showing the planned location of the Palace of the King of Rome at Chaillot, opposite the Champs de Mars

In the early 1800s, the Trocadéro was the village of Chaillot, outside of Paris. The idea of situating the palace of the King of Rome there was apparently sparked by a remark by Fontaine.

It was mentioned the first time while discussing the palace of Lyons, which in order to present a handsome appearance M. Fontaine remarked should be situated on an elevation overlooking the city, as, for example, the heights of Chaillot overlooked Paris. The Emperor did not appear to notice M. Fontaine’s remark, and had two or three days previously given orders that the château of Meudon should be put in a condition to receive his son, when one morning he summoned the architect, and ordered him to present a plan for embellishing the Bois de Boulogne, by adding a country house on the summit of Chaillot. ‘What do you think of it?’ added he, smiling; ‘does the site appear well chosen?’ (3)

George Sand writes fondly of visiting her aunt and uncle at Chaillot in 1807, when she was a child.

[My uncle’s house] was then a real country house, Chaillot not having been built up as it is today. It was the most modest dwelling in the world… But at the age I was then, it was paradise. I could draw the plan of the building and the garden, they have remained so fresh in my mind. The garden was the foremost place of delight for me, because it was the only garden I knew…. There…I saw for the first time butterflies and big sunflowers, which appeared to me to be a hundred feet tall. (4)

George Sand’s uncle sold his small property to the French government, as it was on the site destined for the palace. Others had to sell as well. The hill had a convent on it, which was levelled to make way for the excavations.

Golden visions or bitter resentments seized on the inhabitants on and near Mount Chaillot as the preparations went forward, according as they did or did not desire a change of residence. One proprietor of a large house let in tenements, addressed, in more than one sense, a moving letter to M. le Comte Daru, the intendant of the Emperor’s household….: ‘I am proprietor of a vast house on the quay de Billy, No. 62; the commissioners of the palace for the King of Rome have pronounced its sentence, they have marked it with black chalk. The lodgers are aware of the fact, and are preparing to quit, as much through prudence as respect. The consequence is that if the emigration continues all the inhabitants left will be a few labourers and the swallows. You must be well aware, M. le Comte, that with such lodgers it will be difficult for a citizen to meet his demands…. My petition is therefore that the Emperor purchase my house, and recompense me like a just and liberal monarch, ordering payment to be made as promptly as possible, seeing that I am dogged by my creditors, and have engagements to fulfil.’ (5)

One enterprising resident held out a little too long.

The government…endeavoured to purchase all the houses situated upon the ground where [the palace of the King of Rome] was intended to be built. Upon the spot of ground, which, according to the plan that had been traced out, was to form the extreme right of the front of the palace, there was a small house belonging to a poor cooper named Bonvivant, which, including the ground upon which it stood was not, at the highest estimation, worth more than a thousand francs. The owner demanded ten thousand francs. It was referred to the emperor, who ordered that it should be purchased at that price. When the proper persons waited on the cooper to conclude the agreement, he said, that upon reflection, he should not sell it for less than thirty thousand francs. It was referred again to Napoleon, who directed that it should be given to him. When they came to conclude the business, the cooper increased his demand to forty thousand. The architect was greatly embarrassed, and did not know how to act, or in what manner he could again venture to annoy the emperor on the subject; at the same time he knew that it was impossible to conceal any thing from him. He therefore addressed him again on the subject. ‘Ce drôle là abuse,’ said he, ‘pourtant il n’y a pas d’autre moyen; allons il faut payer.’ [There is no other way; we will have to pay.] The architect returned to the cooper, who increased his price to fifty thousand francs. Napoleon indignant, when informed of it, said, ‘Cet homme là est un miserable, et bien je n’achèterai point la maison, et elle restera comme un monument de mon respect pour les loix.’ [I will not buy the house and it will remain as a monument to my respect for the laws.] (6)

Diminishing plans

The Palace of the King of Rome as it would have appeared from the Seine, by Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine

Percier and Fontaine repeatedly had to amend their plans for the palace of the King of Rome. In its grandest incarnation, three levels of terraces were to rise up to the palace from the Pont d’Iéna, culminating in a vast courtyard and a 500-metre-long colonnade. The main body of the palace was in the shape of a large parallelogram, the centre of which would be occupied by an immense salon, suitable for hosting large fêtes. Two small courtyards, ornamented with fountains, one on each side of the grand salon, would have highlighted the large staircases, the chapel, the theatre and the galleries leading to the rest of the palace. On the north side, flowerbeds and gardens would have extended to the Bois de Boulogne. The Canal de l’Ourcq was to be diverted to bring in water. Grand boulevards would flank the palace and gardens. A pheasantry and a menagerie were part of the plans. Besides the imperial court and a large staff, the palace would have accommodated 400 horses and 80 carriages.

In March 1812, Napoleon added the idea of constructing a palace of the arts, an imperial university, state archives and barracks on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the palace of the King of Rome.

Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia put an end to these dreams. In light of the dwindling resources of the government, work on the palace at Chaillot slowed. A smaller palace being built at Rambouillet was given the title of “palace of the King of Rome.” After the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, Percier and Fontaine were required to drastically cut back their plans.

Those who can imagine a palace as extensive as Versailles, occupying with its secondary buildings the slope and the summit of the mountain which dominates the most beautiful part of the capital, with the easiest means of access, will not hesitate to think that this edifice could have been the most vast and most extraordinary work of our century. They will excuse us for having been able to think, for several years, of the reality of such a beautiful dream, and as soon as they will have cast their eyes on our plans, and recognized the modifications to which, therefore, it was necessary to reduce them, they cannot help but complain we were condemned to change the nature of our work; they will see that were constrained to do a job that, in destroying our illusions, came just before the entire abandonment of the project that had so flattered us. (7)

Napoleon’s plans for Chaillot were reduced to one small square pavilion, “not a palace for the King of Rome, not a grand residence for a powerful sovereign, but a little Sans-Souci, a retreat for a convalescent.” (8)

By 1814, as the Allies approached Paris, only the foundations had been built. After his escape from Elba, Napoleon ordered Fontaine and Percier to resume work on the palace of the King of Rome. That ended after Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

On St. Helena, Napoleon claimed he regretted the project.

[N]othing is so expensive or so truly useless as this multitude of palaces; and if, notwithstanding, I undertook that of the King of Rome, it was because I had views peculiar to myself; and besides, in reality, I never thought of doing more than preparing the ground. There I should have stopped. (9)

Napoleon’s successor, King Louis XVIII, had the foundations filled in and planted over, with walkways. An 1822 visitor’s guide to Paris noted:

Facing the Champ de Mars, the spot may be seen on which the foundations of the Palace of the child some time known by the name of King of Rome were laid in 1810. These foundations were on the spot formerly occupied by an alms house, belonging to Chaillot. A great deal of adjacent land was purchased to enlarge it. The gardens and grounds were intended to extend to, and join the Bois de Boulogne, which would have become an appendage to this palace. To accomplish this it was intended to remove the barrier of Passy, and the intermediate barriers between that and the barrier de Neuilly, and to place them nearer to the Champs-Elisées. The plan was stupendous and well combined – but sic transit Gloria mundi! (10)

In the sequel to Napoleon in America, Napoleon revives his plans for a palace for his son, this time on another continent.

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Anecdotes of Napoleon’s Son, the King of Rome

The Death of Napoleon’s Son, the Duke of Reichstadt

The Tuileries Palace under Napoleon I and Louis XVIII

The Palace of Saint-Cloud

Battle of Borodino: Bloodiest Day of the Napoleonic Wars

Emmanuel de Las Cases, Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Vol. III (New York, 1855), p. 96.
Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine, “Napoléon Architecte,” Revue de Paris, Vol. 52, July 1833, pp. 39-40.
Louis Constant Wairy, Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon, translated by Walter Clark, Vol. III (New York and Boston, 1895), p. 154.
George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand, edited by Thelma Jurgrau (Albany, NY, 1991), p. 428.
“The Streets of Paris and Their Traditions,” Dublin University Magazine, A Literary and Political Journal, Vol. 67, No. 401, May 1866, p. 488.
Barry O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile, or A Voice from St. Helena, Vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1822), pp. 233-234.
“Napoléon Architecte,” p. 36.
Ibid., p. 36.
Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon at Saint Helena, Vol. 3, Part 5 (London, 1823), p. 157.
A. & W. Galignani, Galignani’s Paris Guide, or Stranger’s Companion through the French Metropolis (Paris, 1822), pp. 202-203.

Charles Fabvier

Charles Fabvier was a hotheaded French soldier who began his career under Napoleon Bonaparte. After Napoleon’s defeat, Fabvier tried working for King Louis XVIII. He was so outraged by ultra-royalist excesses that he wound up plotting against the crown. A disastrous attempt to subvert the French army at the Bidassoa River led to Fabvier being branded as a traitor. He salvaged his career by serving with distinction in the Greek War of Independence. Fabvier finished his days as a respected French politician and diplomat. He even gets a mention in War and Peace.

A Napoleonic soldier

Charles Nicolas Fabvier was born on December 10, 1782, at Pont-à-Mousson in northeastern France. His parents, Jean-Charles Fabvier and Anne Christine Richard, were devoted royalists. They suffered during the French Revolution.

After a stint at the École Polytechnique in Paris, Charles Fabvier studied at the artillery school in Metz. In 1804, he joined a French artillery regiment. He fought in the Ulm Campaign and was wounded at the Battle of Dürenstein.

In 1807, Fabvier was among the officers sent by Napoleon to help the Ottoman sultan defend Constantinople against a threatened British attack. Later that year, Fabvier joined a French diplomatic mission to Persia. The intent was to reduce British and Russian influence in the region. Fabvier was tasked with creating an artillery park and corps at Isfahan, despite the opposition of the inhabitants.

When that mission was withdrawn, Fabvier headed back to Europe. In 1809, he served as a volunteer with the Polish troops who were advancing into Austria. At Vienna, he rejoined his countrymen as a captain in the Imperial Guard. Two years later, Fabvier became an aide-de-camp to Marshal Auguste de Marmont in Spain. Marmont sent Fabvier with dispatches to Napoleon when the latter was invading Russia. Fabvier arrived at Napoleon’s headquarters on September 6, 1812, on the eve of the Battle of Borodino. Leo Tolstoy mentions the encounter in War and Peace:

[Napoleon] called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one thought – to be worthy of their Emperor – and but one fear – to fail to please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during Fabvier’s account, as if he had not expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence. (1)

Fabvier distinguished himself at the battle, in which a ball fractured his right foot. When a surgeon talked of cutting off his leg, Fabvier declared that he would rather die. (2)

Charles Fabvier’s conduct at the battles of Lützen and Bautzen in May 1813 resulted in his promotion to colonel. In October 1813, he fought at the Battle of Leipzig. As Napoleon’s empire crumbled, Colonel Fabvier retreated into France and participated in the defence of Paris under Marmont. On March 31, 1814, Fabvier signed the capitulation of Paris on Marmont’s behalf.

Marmont instructed Fabvier to report the situation in Paris to Napoleon, who was at Fontainebleau. They met on April 1.

[Colonel Fabvier] omitted nothing and did not hide the shameful scenes he had witnessed; he spoke of Frenchmen wearing white cockades and cheering foreigners. ‘You can name them for me,’ said the Emperor. ‘Sire,’ replied the noble soldier, ‘I would run my sabre through these individuals if I found myself face to face with them, but I will not name them to Your Majesty.’ … During the whole course of this conversation, the sovereign affected the greatest calm. The colonel confessed to him that the population of Paris spared him little in their remarks and their cries. ‘The Parisians are unhappy,’ [Napoleon] said simply, ‘and the unhappy are unjust.’ (3)

The Restoration

After Napoleon’s abdication, Charles Fabvier continued to serve in the French army. He remained with Marmont, who was named a commander in King Louis XVIII’s royal guard. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to the throne of France in 1815, the Emperor offered Fabvier a command in the forces that were heading to Belgium for the Waterloo campaign. Fabvier refused. At that point he was neither a supporter of Napoleon (whom he referred to as an “infernal scoundrel”) nor the King, but simply a Frenchman interested in fighting for his country. Thus he went to Lorraine, his home region in eastern France, to raise a corps of volunteers to resist the allied invaders. Fabvier fought alongside Colonel Pierre Viriot, among others.

In June 1815, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Though Fabvier’s parents urged him to return to Paris and resume his service under Louis XVIII, Fabvier was reluctant to do so. He wrote to his brother:

I refused the service the Emperor offered me. I didn’t want to make an oath of loyalty; however, when the miserable one was overthrown and everyone saw that the King would ascend the throne, I made a vigorous attack, and if I didn’t slay 800 men, it’s not my fault. All against the foreigner! However bad…the government, we all unite around it, no matter what the colour. I will not return to the King’s household for anything in the world. If the minister calls me to other functions in which I can be useful, I will accept, although with repugnance; otherwise, they can leave me on half-pay. I don’t want to find myself mixed in with foreigners, with the emigrés who return with their baggage… One must have the devil in oneself to want favours again after all that. (4)

In early September, Fabvier returned – at his parents’ insistence – to Paris. He was disgusted by the subservience of the Bourbons to the allied coalition. He also resented their failure to promote him for his loyalty. Fabvier was a big man, about six feet tall, with a reputation as a hothead. The Bourbons suspected him of being a Bonapartist. Marmont came to Fabvier’s defence and attached him to his staff.

In 1817, Marmont put Charles Fabvier in charge of investigating the conduct of the ultra-royalist mayor of Lyon, General Simon Canuel. Canuel had introduced extremely repressive measures to deal with unrest in the area, on the grounds that he was preventing a wider insurrection. Fabvier concluded that Canuel had fabricated the conspiracy in order to suppress moderate royalists and liberals. In 1818, he published a pamphlet on the affair, “Lyon en 1817.” Fabvier accused Canuel and the police of entrapment. Canuel charged Fabvier with calumny. Fabvier was suspended from his military duties.

Conspirator

Charles Fabvier became involved in a series of intrigues against the government. In September 1820, he was arrested and charged with participation in a plot (known as the conspiracy of August 19 or the conspiracy of the French Bazaar) to “overthrow the throne and the benign institutions that France owed to its king.” (5) The conspiracy was linked to Fabvier’s friend, the Marquis de Lafayette and to other liberal members of the Chamber of Deputies. Fearing that Fabvier might squeal if he were questioned, the defence succeeded in removing his name from the list of the accused. In 1822, Fabvier was arrested and tried for attempting to effect the escape of the four sergeants of La Rochelle. He was acquitted.

Fabvier turned his attention to Spain, where a constitutionalist government was trying to resist efforts to return Bourbon King Ferdinand VII to the throne (see my post about the 1823 French invasion of Spain). Fabvier and his fellow conspirators hoped to bring down the French Bourbons by undermining the resolve of the French army that was poised to invade Spain. They distributed leaflets and placards to soldiers in garrison and to troops on the march. They decried the policies of the government and ridiculed Louis XVIII and the Duke of Angoulême. They exhorted French soldiers to desert. They begged them not to enter Spain unless it was to join the Spanish liberals. They went so far as to claim that Napoleon was not dead; he awaited the French beyond the Pyrenees and would put himself at their head to march on Paris. The conspirators did not restrict themselves to the army on the Spanish border. They extended their propaganda to some regiments in the interior. (6)

Fabvier knew that soldiers were unlikely to revolt unless they received encouragement from their leaders. He thus directed efforts to winning over the officers. Some officers claimed to be ready to join the insurrection, but only after another regiment (or brigade or division) did so. They also wanted money: not just the equivalent of their salary, but a bonus proportional to their importance and the services expected of them.

The Affair at the Bidassoa

In December 1822, Fabvier left for Spain without advising Lafayette, whom he suspected of being indiscreet. The constitutionalist Spanish government received him with courtesy, but promised him nothing. Fabvier received little help from his friends in Paris. The conspirators disagreed about how to proceed, with Fabvier and Lafayette on opposing sides of the argument.

Fabvier quickly ascertained that Spanish liberalism was confined to a very small middle class. He thus thought the only chance of success was to subvert the French army before it crossed into Spain. Once French soldiers entered Spain, they would realize that the Spanish people were not disposed to resist them. Spain would capitulate and the army would return to France “with lilies and laurels.” (7)

In February 1823 Fabvier travelled to Irun, in northern Spain, across the border from where the French army was stationed. He spread leaflets, trying to incite the French troops. Why should they fight for monks and nobles? Why spill their blood for a cowardly king who would restore the Inquisition? Did they not fear that the crushing of liberty in Spain would be the prelude to a religious and political counter-revolution in France? Would the defeated of Waterloo slavishly execute the decrees of the Holy Alliance? Who would guarantee, once they crossed the Pyrenees, that an allied army would not cross the Rhine and dismember France?

Meanwhile, the French police were onto the plot. They dismissed suspect officers or moved them out of their regiments. In March, they stopped a coach that was carrying General Piat and others on their way to join Fabvier. The seized baggage included tricolour sashes and cockades, and a regimental eagle.

On the night of April 5, Fabvier learned that the Duke of Angoulême had ordered the first French corps to cross the Bidassoa (the river dividing France from Spain) on April 7. On the morning of April 6, 1823, Charles Fabvier led a group of 110 men, dressed in French uniforms and flying the tricolour, to the river. The event unfolded pretty much as it does in Napoleon in America. Fabvier didn’t have time to get his little troop across the Bidassoa, so he was unable to execute his original plan. Instead, he stood on the Spanish bank and yelled a speech across the river, exhorting the French to desert. His men sang “La Marseillaise” and shouted “Vive la liberté!” General Louis Vallin, commanding the French forces, gave the order to fire. Fabvier forbade his men to load their arms. Ten of his men were killed and eight were gravely wounded.

The French War Minister, the Duke of Belluno, reported on April 7:

Yesterday, towards midday, the Spanish Imperial Alexander Regiment was arranged in battle on the heights of Irun and appeared disposed to defend the crossing of the river. A pack of 100 men, recognized as French refugees, with a tricolour flag, descended near the Bidassoa and offered a drink to the soldiers of the 9th Regiment of Light Infantry. The defectors tried by all sorts of means to debauch our soldiers. These did not accept any of their offers and did not respond in any way to their provocations. General Vallin, finding himself present at this scene, advanced a piece of cannon and ordered it charged with grapeshot. While the cannoneers were executing this order, the defectors continually shouted: ‘Vivent nos brave cannoniers! Vivent nos amis de l’artillerie!’ Seeing General Vallin advance close to the river, they uttered terrible screams, crying: ‘Vive Napoléon!’ At the same time General Vallin responded to their insults with ‘Vive le roi!’, which was repeated by all of our soldiers, and ordered the artillery to fire. The first shot struck down 10 men, the second 3. The others soon dispersed and threw themselves into the mountains. A company…of the 9th Regiment hurried…to cross the Bidassoa and pursue these miserable provacateurs. But it couldn’t find them, neither could the Spanish Imperial Alexander Regiment. (8)

Fabvier and his friends were denounced in the French press as traitors. Fabvier wrote to his nephew, then a law student in Paris:

The only personal pain that I felt was to think that my mother might suffer because of me. She is untroubled, that made me able to bear the rest. You are wrong to think me unhappy. Know, my dear, that a good man is never unhappy when his conscience is at peace….. (9)

Fabvier in Greece

Charles Fabvier went to Lisbon (where he met with Charles Lallemand) and to London, trying to gather refugees to return to Spain. He considered starting a revolutionary diversion in the interior of France. Instead, he decided to go to Greece, which was fighting its war of independence against the Ottoman Empire.

Fabvier obtained a contract from the Greek government to establish an agricultural and industrial colony. He was to be given a concession of 3,000-4,000 acres of land. In return, he undertook to start a training program for the Greeks, helping them introduce modern agricultural techniques and establish manufacturing. He also agreed to provide a range of military assistance.

In 1824 Fabvier returned to Western Europe to obtain money from his supporters and to liaise with philhellenic societies. Fabvier arrived back in Greece in May 1825 with a few of his followers, mainly Napoleonic officers who had been purged from the French army. Meanwhile an Egyptian force had landed in Greece. Fabvier was asked to raise, train and command a small Greek regular army to combat it. According to a contemporary observer, a surgeon with the Greek fleet:

[A]rriving at the time when the alarming progress of Ibrahim Pasha had opened the eyes of the Government to the necessity of immediately raising regular troops, and being the only foreigner of any military rank or experience at hand, [Fabvier] was appointed to the command of the regiment then raising, with power to increase it. He devoted himself with ardour to the task, learned the language, and soon had by far the largest and best corps of disciplined troops, of any one that had yet been raised in Greece; for the very good reason that he had more extensive means put at his disposal.

[Fabvier] is an excellent solder, a strict disciplinarian, perfectly acquainted with all the minutiae of military science, brave, and hardy; but he is no general; his mind is not strong and capacious enough to conceive original, or embrace comprehensive ideas; and he is so thoroughly satisfied of the infallibility of his own judgement, so full of contempt for the military abilities of any one but his own, and those of Le Grand Napoleon, that he will not take advice. If counsel was given him by any one whom he was obliged to respect, he would listen with an impatient and haughty air, – and be sure to reject the plan because proposed by another; but if a person not above him should suggest any thing that ought to be done, he would interrupt them with , ‘Bah! C’est une bêtise cela vous ne connaissez pas les Grecs.’ This conduct, and his marked partiality to French officers, disgusted many foreigners, and placed on a very unpleasant footing those German, Swiss, and other officers who were then in the service, and whose Philhellenism was (generally speaking) much more pure than that of the Frenchmen who had come to Greece. (10)

Charles Fabvier became a respected and successful Greek commander. He participated in several battles, most notably the siege of the Acropolis in Athens in 1826-27. Fabvier also made up with Lafayette, who wrote to him often, expressing support for his military campaigns and introducing him to people who traveled to Greece to serve the revolutionary cause.

French statesman

The need for Fabvier’s corps declined with the arrival in Greece of a French expeditionary force in 1828. Charles Fabvier returned to France in 1829. He took part in the July Revolution in Paris in 1830. On August 4, he was named the military commander of Paris. He resigned in 1831. That year he married Marie des Neiges Martinez de Hervas, the widow of General Christophe Duroc and the daughter of a rich Spanish banker. Fabvier had long been in love with Marie, who was a friend of Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense de Beauharnais. Fabvier and Marie had one child, Louis Charles Eugène (1831-1918).

Charles Fabvier tried to embark on a parliamentary career but was unable to get elected. His wife bought the château of Razay near Tours, and for a few years Fabvier engaged in agricultural pursuits. In 1838 he returned to military service. The following year, he was promoted to lieutenant general. In 1845, Charles Fabvier became a peer of France. In 1848, he was sent as the French ambassador to Constantinople, and then to Denmark. Back in France, he was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of Meurthe. Charles Fabvier retired from public life on December 2, 1851. He died in Paris on September 14, 1855, at the age of 73.

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Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Raleigh, NC, 2007), p. 972.
Antonin Debidour, Le Général Fabvier, sa vie militaire et politique (Paris, 1904), p. 59.
Ibid., pp. 84-85.
Ibid., pp. 106-107.
Alan B. Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes: The French Carbonari against the Bourbon Restoration (Cambridge, MA, 1971), p. 39.
Le Général Fabvier, sa vie militaire et politique, pp. 221-222.
Ibid., pp. 213-214.
Ibid., pp. 240-241.
Ibid., p. 251.
Samuel G. Howe, An Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution (New York, 1828), p. 295.

A plaque commemorating Josiah Hughes Bell in West Columbia, Texas

Josiah Hughes Bell, the founder of East and West Columbia, Texas, was one of Stephen F. Austin’s original colonists and Austin’s trusted friend. Austin left Bell in charge of the colony when he had to go to Mexico City in 1822 to confirm his empresario grant with the new Mexican government. Thus Napoleon and his men meet with Bell, rather than Austin, when they arrive at the Brazos River in Napoleon in America. At the time, Bell was finding it hard to keep the colonists’ spirits up.

American businessman

Josiah Hughes Bell was born on August 22, 1791, in Chester District, South Carolina, the son of John and Elizabeth (Hughes) Bell. John died when Josiah was five years old. At the age of 11, Josiah Hughes Bell was sent to Nashville, Tennessee, to apprentice with two uncles who were hatters. Ten years later, he moved to the Missouri Territory and began his own hat manufacturing business. During the War of 1812, Bell fought against the Indian attacks instigated by the British.

In 1818, Bell sold his business and went to visit his mother, who was living in Kentucky. While there he met and married Mary Eveline McKenzie. They settled in Natchitoches, Louisiana, where Bell developed a prosperous business. Unfortunately, his business partner disappeared with all of the profits.

Austin colonist

Josiah Hughes Bell moved to Texas, which was then part of Mexico, and joined a Missouri friend, Stephen Austin. Austin’s father Moses had received permission from the Spanish government to settle three hundred Anglo-American families in Texas, but died before completing the task. Stephen Austin took over his father’s job.

On October 6, 1821, at Nacogdoches, Stephen Austin granted Josiah Hughes Bell permission to settle along the Brazos River.

He is to receive nine hundred and sixty acres as head of his family and in addition to that three hundred and twenty acres for his wife and one hundred and sixty acres for each child and slave, one half of which is to be taken in an oblong on the River and the other half back from the River. The said land must be inhabited and cultivated within one year and there must be paid me twelve dollars and fifty cents per hundred acres one half on the receipt of the title and the other half in twelve months which is to be in full for all surveying and other expenses. (1)

As Mexico had recently declared its independence, Austin was obliged to travel to Mexico City to seek the new government’s authority to give the settlers title to their land. Since Bell was one of his most trusted friends, Austin left him in charge of the small number of families who had already arrived, as well as the incoming colonists.

On January 17, 1822, Bell wrote to Austin:

I have only time to drop you a line in haste as the bearer is in a hurry. All things are going on well and people crowding on their way to the Brassos [Brazos] and Colorado [Rivers] and are all coming for your claim. You will find that they will all crowd for your settlement notwithstanding what the few may say that are opposed to your [interest]. We understand here that [James] Long is well received by the Government. He may have some influence hereafter and situated as things are at present you would do well to pay attention to that circumstance and as his good will may be of service an early attention will in my opinion be no disadvantage. My anxiety for your [interest] makes me take this liberty at present…. You may rest assured that old [James] Dill does and will do you all the injury you [he] can. (2)

Austin was gone for over a year and a half. Despite Bell’s efforts to keep spirits up, some of the settlers became demoralized by Austin’s long absence, the unclear status of their grants, a bad drought, and the hostility of the Indians. Austin wrote to Bell from Mexico City in July 1822: “I fear some of the settlers may have become a little discouraged at my long absences and at the uncertainty in which they have remained, but I assure you that I have been labouring hard the whole time for your good.” (3) He also promised that the government would send a body of troops “with whose aid I think the Comanches may be humbled.” (4)

The troops were never sent. Bell was left having to deal with the colony’s security, as well as matters of justice. In May 1823 he wrote to Texas Governor José Félix Trespalacios:

On the twenty first of March last there was a Frenchman who called his name Bt. Rashall a citizen of the United States of America passed through this neighbourhood. [H]e had in company with him a man he said was an Indian. Rashall had a small cavallard sixteen in number of horses and mules of different brands. [A]s they passed through the neighbourhood of the Colorado they stole thirteen head of horses from Mr. Buckner and Parker, came on to Martin Varner living on the road in the neighborhood of the Brazos and stole four head from him, and passed on across the Brazos intending to make their escape for the United States. We raised a party of men and followed them near the Trinity river and overtook them, and they having no passport we brought they back, and on examination found them guilty of theft. I detained the cavallyard and started the men on to [San] Antonio under a guard for your instruction. [A]t the Colorado, the Alcalde and Commandant stopped them, and directed the guard to return, saying they had instructions from your excellency not to send any guilty of such crimes on but to decide on the case ourselves. [T]heir doing so put it out of my power to send them on after they returned as we have not horses for that purpose and men could not leave their crops having lost so much time already. [B]eing convinced of the guilt of Rashall I took the property I found to be his, to pay the expense of apprehending them, and also to pay for the property they stole and did not return. There was one hundred and fifty dollars of the stolen property we could get nothing for, which was lost to the owners. … The manner in which I acted appeared from every evidence I could get on the subject to be as near justice as was in my power to come at and I wish your Excellency so soon as convenient to say whether the part I acted was right or not. We are much at a loss for instructions from that place, as we have never received one official line since the officers were elected. Be so good as to give us instructions when you can with convenience. (5)

Austin seemed pleased with Bell’s efforts. Upon his return to the colony in August 1823, he wrote to Bell:

I rely greatly on your prudence and judgment in preserving harmony and content amongst the settlers. It now depends altogether on my will to admit or reject who I please, and if there are any who are not worthy I must be informed of it that they may be ordered off, and if the order is not obeyed it will be enforced with rigor. (6)

In March 1824, Austin appointed Josiah Hughes Bell as lieutenant of the militia within the Brazos district.

The said Bell will adopt all necessary measures to protect the said settlements from the attacks of the Karankawas, Cokes, or any other Indians, and to chastise them for any depredations they may commit within said limits without waiting for orders from his superior officer, avoiding in all cases the shedding of blood where more gentle means are likely to produce the proper effect…. The said Bell will also watch over the public peace and the observance of the laws generally and forward on to the Alcalde of the District for trial all persons who violate them. He will also be attentive that no vagabond or fugitives from justice are harbored or protected within his command nor any persons who are avowedly enemies of the Mexican Nation, giving an account to me of all such and if necessary apprehending and forwarding them to the Alcalde for trial. He will be particular to give frequent statements to me in writing of all his official acts, as also of the arrival of any vessels or emigrants or any other remarkable occurrence. And I command all persons to obey the said Bell accordingly, under the pains and penalties prescribed by the law. (7)

Founder of East and West Columbia

Bell’s land grants were located on the west side of the lower Brazos. He built his home there and developed a sugar plantation. A town called Marion, or Bell’s Landing (now known as East Columbia), grew up around a river landing he constructed. It became the most important shipping point in the colony. In 1826, Bell laid out the town of Columbia (now called West Columbia), two miles west of Marion.

Josiah Hughes Bell became a prosperous colonist. He built a hotel in Columbia to accommodate the many travellers who came to visit him. He also constructed a school. Bell was loyal to the Texas cause during the Texas Revolution. Columbia served as the capital of the Republic of Texas from September to December 1836.

Josiah Hughes Bell died in Columbia on May 17, 1838, at the age of 46. He and Mary had eight children: Samuel (1819), Elizabeth Lucinda (1820), Thaddeus (1822), James Hall (1825), William (1828), John (1832), May (1834), and Amanda (1836). Mary Bell died in 1856, after being thrown from a carriage.

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Eugene C. Barker, ed., Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1919: Vol. II: The Austin Papers, Part 1 (Washington, 1924), p. 415.
Ibid., p. 466.
Ibid., p. 534.
Ibid., p. 535.
Ibid., pp. 636-37.
Ibid., p. 681.
Ibid., pp. 759-760.

Fancy a royal wedding? Napoleon Bonaparte and his second wife Marie Louise – the “good Louise” to whom he writes about their son in Napoleon in America – had three of them. They were married in a religious ceremony on March 11, 1810, though Napoleon was not present for the occasion. They then had a civil wedding on April 1 and another religious wedding on April 2. Here’s a look at the festivities.

The marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise, detail of a painting by Georges Rouget of the wedding held in the Louvre on April 2, 1810

Napoleon’s second wife

In December 1809 Napoleon ended his marriage to his first wife Josephine because she could not provide him with an heir. He had already started to look for a new, fertile wife among the royal houses of Europe. He expressed interest in Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, the youngest sister of Tsar Alexander I, but the Tsar and his mother opposed the marriage. Napoleon also considered Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony, but – at 27 – she was getting on in years. The French Emperor settled on Archduchess Marie Louise, the 18-year-old daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, head of the House of Habsburg.

Marie Louise was not keen on the idea. She had never met Napoleon, who was 22 years older than her and had recently been her country’s worst enemy. Also, her great-aunt Marie Antoinette had been guillotined when she was Queen of France. On January 10, 1810, Marie Louise wrote to a friend,

No one talks of anything but Napoleon’s divorce. I let them all talk and do not worry myself at all, only I pity the poor princess he chooses, for I am sure it will not be me who becomes the victim of politics. (1)

On learning that she had become that “poor princess,” Marie Louise submitted obediently to her father’s wishes (see my post about Francis I). Napoleon sent Marshal Berthier to Vienna to conclude the marriage on his behalf. On March 9, Berthier and Austrian Foreign Minister Clemens von Metternich signed the marriage contract, which was modeled after that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Marie Louise’s dowry, the equivalent of 500,000 francs, was presented to Berthier in rolls of gold ducats. Marie Louise formally renounced her right of succession to the Austrian crown.

Wedding in Vienna

Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise by proxy, Vienna, March 11, 1810, hand-coloured engraving by and after Johann Hieronymus Löschenkohl

On March 11, 1810, Marie Louise married Napoleon by proxy at the Augustinian church in Vienna. Her uncle Charles stood in for Napoleon.

The procession set out through the rooms of the Palace, which were ornamented with hangings, chandeliers, and candelabra. Grenadiers were drawn up in a double line as far as the church. … The Archduke Charles, representing the Emperor Napoleon, and the Archduchess Marie Louise knelt on the prie-Dieu in front of the grand altar. The Archbishop having blessed the wedding ring, which was presented to him in a cup, the Archduke Charles and the bride advanced towards the altar, where the marriage was solemnised in the German language according to the Viennese rite. After the exchange of rings, the bride took that which it was her duty to present to her husband. A Te Deum was then sung, all present kneeling. Six pages bore flaming torches. Salvoes of artillery thundered, and all the bells of the city informed the population that the marriage was accomplished. (2)

The absence of the bridegroom did not dampen the festivities. The French ambassador wrote:

The marriage of H.M. the Emperor with the Archduchess Marie Louise has been celebrated with unsurpassable magnificence, to which the preceding fêtes bore no comparison. The crowd of spectators from all parts of the Monarchy and abroad filled the church, and lobbies, and rooms of the Palace to such an extent that the Emperor of Austria, as well as the Empress, was put to inconvenience several times. The truly prodigious quantity of diamonds and pearls, the richness of the costumes and uniforms, the innumerable quantity of lustres which illuminated all parts of the Castle, and the joy of those present imparted to the fête a brilliancy worthy of the great and majestic solemnity…. [E]very eye was fixed…on that adored Princess who will soon make the happiness of our Sovereign. …

In reply to my congratulations she said that she would use every endeavour to please H.M. the Emperor Napoleon and to contribute to the happiness of the French nation, which, from that moment, had become her own. (3)

Francis I held a grand banquet at the court. Free performances were given at all the theatres and there were illuminations through the city. Marie Louise was celebrated as the “new Iphigenia,” sacrificing her happiness for the good of her people.

There might have been a few satirical, or abusive placards stealthily displayed, but the police had taken care to remove them. Unfortunately the weather was sadly against the illuminations, and scarcely one out of every ten lamps remained lighted. (4)

Two days later, Marie Louise left Vienna for Paris. She was accompanied by an Austrian entourage to the border between Austria and Bavaria. There, at Braunau am Inn, she was formally handed over to a French entourage that included Napoleon’s sister Caroline.

Napoleon was waiting impatiently for Marie Louise in Compiègne. When her party neared the city on March 27, he rode out to meet them. He spent the night with his bride and they continued together to Paris.

Wedding at Château de Saint-Cloud

Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise – the civil wedding ceremony held at Château de Saint-Cloud, April 1, 1810. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Though the ceremony in Vienna was sufficient “to render the marriage complete and irrevocable,” Marie Louise and Napoleon had two further wedding ceremonies in Paris, “a formality due to the nation over which the new sovereign came to reign.” (5)

On Sunday, April 1, 1810, there was a civil wedding in the Apollo Gallery of the Château de Saint-Cloud. Imperial Arch-Chancellor Cambacérès presided. The entire court was present, filling the gallery and the Salon de Mars. Marie Louise was in full court dress and wore a crown set with diamonds. After the grand procession into the room, Napoleon and Marie Louise took their seats at the end of the gallery on two armchairs on a dais, surmounted by a canopy. At the foot of the dais, to one side, was a table covered with a rich cloth, on which were set an inkstand and the civil register. The vows (for which the couple stood) were straightforward.

Sire, does your Imperial and Royal Majesty declare that you take in marriage her Imperial and Royal Highness Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, here present?

Napoleon answered,

I declare that I take in marriage her Imperial and Royal Highness Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, here present.

Marie Louise was posed the same question in respect of Napoleon, and gave the same response. Cambacérès said,

In the name of the Emperor and the Law, I declare that his Imperial and Royal Majesty Napoleon, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, and her Imperial and Royal Highness the Archduchess Marie Louise are united in marriage. (6)

The table was carried up to the royal couple so they could sign the register while seated. The marriage was announced with salvos of artillery at Saint-Cloud, repeated in Paris at the Invalides. After dinner, there was a theatre performance and the palace and park were illuminated.

Wedding in Paris

The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise by Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier

The next day, Monday, April 2, the imperial couple rode to Paris in a procession led by the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, followed by other horsemen and their bands, heralds of arms, and many carriages. Napoleon and Marie Louise were in his gilded coronation coach, drawn by eight horses. They paused for speeches at the Arc de Triomphe. The bases of the arch, still under construction, were only about 20 feet high, but a full wooden mock-up had been hastily assembled and dressed in canvas for the occasion.

The procession continued along the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries Palace, where wedding guests had been kept waiting for about five hours in the Louvre. A chapel, complete with a silver-gilt altar, had been constructed in the Salon Carré. The Louvre’s director, Vivant Denon, protested in vain against the removal of paintings to make room for the seating. Napoleon’s uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch presided over the religious ceremony.

Detail of the Wedding Procession of Napoleon and Marie-Louise of Austria through the Grande Galerie of the Louvre by Benjamin Zix

A member of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard wrote:

It is impossible to give any idea of all the grand preparations. In the great gallery of the Louvre, leading from the old Louvre to the chapel which is at the end of the pavilion of the Tuileries on the side next the Pont-Royal (the length of it is immense), there were three rows of benches to seat ladies and gentlemen. In the fourth row were fifty decorated non-commissioned officers placed at certain distances from each other with an iron rail in front, so as not to be pushed aside by the crowd. General Dorsenne…told the ladies that we were to serve as their knights, and have refreshments brought to them…. We each had to take charge of twenty-four on each side of us (forty-eight to each non-commissioned officer), and attend to all their wants. Large niches had been made in the thick wall to hold ninety-six canteens of all sorts of pleasant refreshments. These little movable cafés did a good business.

The dresses of the ladies were as follows: low behind, down to the middle of their backs, and low in front so that you could see half of their breasts; their shoulders and arms bare. And such necklaces and bracelets and ear-rings! They were covered with rubies and pearls and diamonds. You could see every variety of skin: oily skins, skins like mulattoes, yellow skins, and skins like satin. The old women carried boxes containing a supply of perfumes. I must say that I had never before seen the ladies of Paris, half naked, so near. I did not like it.

The men were dressed in French fashion, all wearing the same costume: black coat, short breeches, steel buttons cut in the shape of a diamond. The trimming of their coats cost eighteen hundred francs. They could not present themselves at court without this costume. Cabs being forbidden that day, it is impossible to imagine the number of splendid equipages in front of the Tuileries. The magnificent procession started from the château, and moved on to the Louvre, then mounted the grand stairway of the Louvre, and entered the chapel of the Tuileries. The ceremony was very imposing. The whole assembly remained standing, and the most solemn silence prevailed. The procession moved slowly. As soon as it had passed by. General Dorsenne called us together, marched us into the chapel, and formed us into a circle. We saw the Emperor on the right, kneeling upon a cushion decorated with bees, and his wife kneeling beside him to receive the benediction. After having placed the crown on his own head and on that of his wife, he rose, and sat down with her on a settee. Then the celebration of mass was begun….

The new Empress looked beautiful with her splendid diadem. The wives of our marshals [actually Napoleon’s sisters and sisters-in-law] carried the train of her robe, which dragged eight or ten feet upon the ground. She ought to have been proud to have such maids of honour in her suite. But it must be said that she was a beautiful sultana, that the Emperor looked very well pleased, and that her countenance was gracious. (7)

Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise – the religious wedding ceremony held at the Louvre, April 2, 1810, by Georges Rouget

Marie Louise wore the same crimson velvet cloak that Josephine had worn for Napoleon’s coronation ceremony in 1804. Her wedding gown was made of silver tulle netting, embroidered with pearls and lamé. Her white satin slippers, embroidered with silver, were too small for her and hurt her feet (for more details, see “Marie-Louise’s Wedding Outfit” on Napoleon.org). She also found the diamond crown uncomfortably heavy.

Afterwards, Napoleon, taking Marie Louise’s hand, stood with her on the balcony of the Pavilion de l’Horloge, to watch the march past of the Imperial Guard. A banquet was given in the theatre of the Tuileries. Napoleon, Marie Louise and the imperial family sat at a horseshoe-shaped table. The rest of the court stood and watched them eat, in the style of the ancien regime’s grand couvert. A concert was held beneath the windows of the palace. This was followed by fireworks that extended the length of the Champs-Élysées (for more about the light display, see my article on illuminations and transparencies). Throughout the day, music, games, acrobatics and other entertainments were offered in the public squares, along with barrels of wine. Festivities continued until late in the night.

For Napoleon, the sole blot on the proceedings was that 13 of France’s 27 cardinals failed to attend the wedding. Their prominent empty seats drew attention to the cardinals’ doubt regarding the validity of the marriage, since Pope Pius VII had not declared Napoleon’s first marriage invalid. Napoleon stripped the offending cardinals of their robes, offices and estates, and told them to resume their attire as simple priests. They thus became known as the black cardinals. When they proved resistant to Cardinal Fesch’s efforts to reform their views, Napoleon had them imprisoned until the Pope was able to secure their release in January 1813.

After so many weddings, one might wish the royal couple a long and happy married life. Sadly, this was not to be. Napoleon and Marie Louise spent four years together, then never saw each other again. For more on that, see my article about Adam Albert von Neipperg, lover of Napoleon’s wife.

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Correspondance de Marie Louise, 1799-1847 (Vienna, 1887), p. 143.
Imbert de Saint-Amand, The Memoirs of the Empress Marie Louise, 2nd Edition (London, 1886), pp. 143-145.
Ibid., pp. 145-147.
Ibid., p. 151.
Louis Adolphe Thiers, History of the Consulate and the Empire of France Under Napoleon, translated by D. Forbes Campbell and John Stebbing, Vol. VII (Philadelphia, 1894), p. 68.
Willem Lodewyk Van-Ess, The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Vol. VIII (London, 1813), p. 430.
Jean-Roch Coignet, The Note-Books of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire, edited by Jean Fortescue (New York, 1929), pp. 192-194.

During Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian campaign, the inhabitants of Verona revolted against the French forces stationed in the area. The bloody fighting started on April 17, 1797, Easter Monday, thus the rebellion became known as the Pasque Vernesi or Veronese Easter. It ended on April 25, with the capture of the town by French soldiers. The Veronese Easter gave Napoleon the excuse he had been looking for “to efface the Venetian name from the face of the globe.” (1)

The assassination of the French at Verona, in Italy, on 17 April 1797. Depiction of the Veronese Easter by J. Duplessi Bertaux. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

The assassination of the French at Verona by J. Duplessi Bertaux. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

The uprising

In March 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte – then a relatively unknown French general – was appointed commander of France’s Army of Italy. His orders were to invade northern Italy and occupy Lombardy, an Austrian possession. The French Directory thought this would compel Austria to move troops away from the Rhine, where France was fighting against Austria and its allies in the War of the First Coalition.

In June 1796, Napoleon’s army reached Verona. The town was part of the Republic of Venice, which had proclaimed its neutrality in the war. There was considerable friction between the inhabitants and the French soldiers, who behaved more like occupiers than guests. The devout Veronese opposed France’s Jacobin political ideology. The French fomented a number of incidents on Venetian territory, hoping to engineer the creation of a Jacobin government that would ally with France.

By March 1797, Napoleon was advancing into Austria. He wanted to keep his Italian conquests and had in mind offering Austria a dismembered Venice as compensation for her lost territory. He sent a spy to Verona to meet with the Jacobins there and attempt to overthrow the town’s government. On April 11, the plot was uncovered. Some of the conspirators were arrested.

On the night of April 16, Easter Sunday, a manifesto was pinned up in Verona, inciting the population to rebel against the French and their local collaborators. Though it appeared to be signed by a Veronese, it was actually the work of a French collaborator. The purpose was to provide an excuse for the French to definitively occupy the town. Venetian authorities had the copies taken down and replaced with a new manifesto, urging the population to remain calm. It was too late. On April 17, brawls broke out between French soldiers and the local inhabitants. The French discharged cannons into the crowd. The Veronese responded by raging through the streets, killing, wounding and capturing Frenchmen. As described by one of the French soldiers:

[P]easants, taking advantage of the [Easter] festival, crowded into the town and mixed with the townsfolk and the Slav soldiers who still garrisoned the town, clogging the streets and the squares. Around midday, all of a sudden, upon a signal given by whistle blasts, this mob fell upon the French, attacked our isolated outposts, and massacred the guards. Our sick and wounded, who filled our hospitals, had their throats slashed with daggers. The bodies of the murdered French were thrown into the Adige River. The murderers spared neither women nor children. Some of the French were able to reach the forts we occupied. Others sought shelter in the palace of the Venetian magistrate, who granted them asylum, no doubt to preserve the appearance of neutrality should the assault fail, for he did nothing to stop or calm the insurgents.

Once they were masters of the town, the insurgents assaulted the forts, using cannons in the attack, which proves that the Venetian soldiers were on their side. They captured one of our forts and murdered the garrison. The others repulsed them with a hail of bullets; they fired on the town as well. The general in command at Verona, though surrounded, was still able to warn General Kilmaine and ask for help.

We left for Verona with the Lombard legion. After a battle outside the town against the peasants and the Slavs, we scattered them and, as we pursued them, put them to the sword pitilessly. The town was burned. These Veronese people are as cowardly as they are savage. We entered the town unopposed. Our soldiers were furious. They killed everyone who showed any resistance. They wanted to sack the town. It was only with great difficulty that the pillage was stopped, but it was not possible to save the pawnshop. The magistrate and the Venetian authorities vanished.

The leaders of the revolt who had been captured were shot, and a heavy tax was imposed on Verona. [It amounted to] a month’s pay for the soldiers, plus a horse for the mounted officers. I received my horse, but I never obtained my month’s pay. Probably not everyone lost out. (2)

Napoleon’s secretary Bourrienne happened to pass through Verona the day before the rebellion. He wrote:

I arrived in the Venetian territory at the moment when the insurrection against the French was on the eve of breaking out. Thousands of peasants were instigated to rise under the pretext of appeasing the troubles of Bergamo and Brescia…. Easter Sunday was the day which the ministers of Jesus Christ selected for preaching, ‘that it was lawful and even meritorious to kill Jacobins.’ ‘Death to Frenchmen! Death to Jacobins!’ were their rallying cries. At the time I had not the slightest idea of this state of things. After stopping two hours at Verona, I proceeded on my journey without being aware of the massacre which threatened that city. When about a league from the town, I was however stopped by a party of insurgents, on their way thither, consisting, as I estimated of about two thousand men. They only desired me to cry ‘El viva Sento Marco,’ an order with which I speedily complied and passed on. What would have become of me had I been in Verona on the Monday! On that day the bells were rung, while the French were butchered in the hospitals. Every one met in the streets was put to death. The priests headed the assassins, and more than four hundred Frenchmen were thus sacrificed. The forts held out against the Venetians, though they attacked them with fury; but repossession of the town was not obtained until after ten days. On the very day of the insurrection of Verona, some Frenchmen were assassinated between that city and Vicenza, through which I passed on the day before without danger; and scarcely had I passed through Padua, when I learned that others had been massacred there. Thus the assassinations travelled as rapidly as the post. (3)

Repercussions

Eight of the rebel ringleaders were arrested, tried and put to death by firing squads. Another 50 or so were sent as prisoners to French Guyana. Verona had to pay massive reparations. The town was required to supply France with boots and clothing for 40,000 soldiers, a large amount of money, and a hoard of paintings and sculptures, which were shipped off to Paris. (4)

Napoleon referred to the uprising as the “Sicilian vespers,” referring to a rebellion against medieval French rule in Sicily that had been signalled by the ringing of vesper bells on an Easter Monday. (5) The Veronese Easter and other attacks against the French on Venetian territory gave him the excuse he needed to conquer Venice. Even before Napoleon knew about the Veronese Easter, he had signed (on April 18) the Treaty of Leoben with Austria. This included secret articles that ceded Lombardy to France and divided Venice between France and Austria. Since Venice was still a neutral, independent republic, Napoleon had to find a way to conquer it to fulfil his obligations under the Treaty. He wrote to the Directory on April 30:

I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to destroy this ferocious and sanguinary government. (6)

Napoleon ranged his heavy artillery around Venice and blockaded the harbour with his warships. On May 12, 1797, the Great Council of Venice voted to dissolve the thousand-year-old republic and surrender the city to Napoleon. Napoleon handed Venice to Austria in the Treaty of Campo Formio, but only after looting the city. Among the many treasures sent to Paris were the four bronze horses of St. Mark’s Basilica (returned to Venice after Napoleon’s 1815 defeat) and The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese, which remains in the Louvre.

The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese, fruit of Napoleon’s looting of Venice after the Veronese Easter

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Napoleon in a letter to the Directory, May 3, 1797, quoted in Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, during the periods of the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire, Volume 1 (Philadelphia, 1831), p. 58.
Jean-Nicolas-Auguste Noël, Souvenirs militaires d’un officier du premier Empire (1795-1832) (Paris, 1895), pp. 11-12.
Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, during the periods of the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire, Vol. 1, p. 57.
Philip Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power (New Haven & London, 2007), p. 294.
Barry E. O’Meara, Napoleon in Exile; or A Voice from St. Helena, Volume 2 (London, 1822), p. 355.
Private Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, during the periods of the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire, Vol. 1, p. 58.

Napoleon’s only legitimate child, Napoleon François Charles Joseph Bonaparte, also known as the King of Rome, Napoleon II or the Duke of Reichstadt, was born at the Tuileries Palace in Paris on March 20, 1811. You can read my post about his life here. His birth was a touch-and-go affair. The attending doctor, Antoine Dubois, feared that either Napoleon’s wife Marie Louise, or the baby, might die. Here’s how Napoleon described the King of Rome’s birth when he was in exile on St. Helena.

Napoleon on his son’s birth

Birth of Napoleon II, King of Rome. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

I gave Dubois a hundred thousand francs for his services as accoucheur at the birth of my son. It was on Corvisart’s recommendation that I employed him. I had better have taken the first accoucheur that came to hand. The day the child was born the Empress had walked some time with me. Her pains were coming on, but they did not think the birth would take place for four hours. I took my bath. While I was in it, Dubois rushed to me in great excitement, pale as death. I cried out, ‘Is she dead?’ – for as I have been long accustomed to hear of startling events, they do not take great effect on me when first announced to me. It is afterwards. Whatever might be told me I should feel nothing at first. An hour later I should feel the blow. Dubois assured me no – but that the child was not coming to the birth in the usual way. That was very unfortunate. It is a thing that does not happen once in two thousand cases.

I rushed at once to the Empress. She had to be moved onto another bed that they might use instruments. Madame de Montesquiou reassured the Empress, telling her that the same thing had happened twice to herself, and encouraged her to let the doctors do what they thought necessary. She screamed horribly. I am not naturally soft-hearted, yet I was much moved when I saw how she suffered. Dubois hardly knew what to do, and wanted to wait for Corvisart. The Duchesse de Montebello acted like a fool.

When the King of Rome was born it was at least a minute before he gave a cry. When I came in he was lying on a coverlet as if dead. Madame de Montebello wanted to follow out all the rules of court etiquette on the occasion. Corvisart sent her off at once. At last, after much rubbing, the child came to himself. He was only a little scratched about the head. The Empress had thought herself lost. She had persuaded herself that her life was to be sacrificed to save that of the child. But I had given orders quite to the contrary.

The chronicler of this recollection, Baron Gaspard Gourgaud, adds in a footnote:

Marie Louise, when her son was born, was convinced she was to be sacrificed to save her child. She cried: ‘I am the Empress; they do not care for me, but they want above all things to preserve the life of my son.’ The poor young girl was greatly to be pitied, separated as she was from all her family, and she thought herself lost. The emperor wanted to have the Grand Duke of Wurtzburg (a Bavarian Prince) admitted into her chamber to encourage her. She held the hands of her husband all the time. (1)

A very laborious birth

Birth of the King of Rome, precious fruit of an august union. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France

Napoleon’s private secretary, Baron Claude François de Méneval, provides a more detailed account of the King of Rome’s birth.

At last arrived the moment when the Empress was to be delivered, a moment waited for with such keen impatience by Napoleon, impatience shared, it may be said in all truth, by the whole of France…. The birth of a prince was to be saluted with one hundred and one cannon-shots, only twenty-one were to be fired if the child were a princess. One can hardly imagine with what anxiety the first cannon-shots were counted. Deep silence prevailed until the twenty-first. But when the twenty-second boomed forth an explosion of applause and of cheering burst out which was re-echoed simultaneously from every corner of Paris. The public enthusiasm was general, and no contemporary will deny this. The bearing of the child, however, on whom such great hopes were fixed, was to be a very laborious one.…

The first pains had been felt on the evening before – March 19th, 1811. They were endurable until daybreak, when they ceased altogether, and Marie Louise was able to get to sleep. Napoleon had spent the first part of the night by her bedside; then, seeing that she had gone to sleep, he went up to his rooms and took a bath. The members of the Imperial family, the grand dignitaries, the principal officers and ladies of the Court had been summoned to the place as soon as the first pains had been felt. But, towards five o’clock in the morning, the accoucheur, M. Dubois, being of opinion that the birth could not take place for another twenty-four hours, everybody had been sent away by the Emperor….

An hour after Napoleon had returned to his apartment, the Empress woke up in such pain that a speedy delivery was expected. Doctor Dubois, however, saw that the birth would be a very difficult one, and that this was one of the least frequent and most dangerous cases. The Emperor was in a state of perfect serenity when M. Dubois suddenly opened the door and, in a great state of dismay, announced that the first stages of the accouchement were giving him the greatest anxiety. Without waiting to listen to the explanations which the doctor began to give, Napoleon cried out, from the bottom of his heart: ‘Above all save the mother.’ Then springing from his bath he hastily wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and ran downstairs to the Empress’s room, followed by Dubois. He approached the bed and hiding his anxiety embraced her tenderly, and encouraged her with words of comfort….

[Dubois] had asked that some leading physicians should be called in for a consultation. The Emperor had refused, telling the doctor that he had chosen him because he trusted him, and that the Empress was to be treated just as if she were the wife of any ordinary man. Dubois commenced the painful operation with the skill and the sang-froid which he happily possessed. The labour did not proceed, the child presented itself legs foremost. The pains of the Empress increased in intensity. She was struck with terror, and cried out that they meant to sacrifice her. Dubois saw himself forced to use the forceps to free the child’s head.

Napoleon, a prey to silent agitation, watched this painful scene, encouraging all present by his brave attitude. At last, after many efforts, and in the midst of so much anguish, the so-impatiently-desired child came to light. It was a son, pale, motionless, and to all appearances lifeless. In spite of all the measures taken in such cases, the child remained seven minutes without giving any signs of life. The Emperor standing in front of him was following in silence and with an air of profound attention, every movement of the accoucheur, when at last he saw the child’s breast rise, the mouth open and a breath exhaled. He feared lest it might be the first and last, but a cry escaping from the child’s lungs tells him that his son has taken possession of life. All anxiety then ceases. In the effusion of his joy Napoleon bent over the child, seized it in his arms, with a spontaneous movement, carried it to the door of the drawing-room in which all the grandees of his Empire were assembled and presenting it to them said: ‘Here is the King of Rome.’ He then returned and placed the child back in M. Dubois’s hands saying: ‘I give you back your child.’ …

The Emperor, after he had recognized the congratulations of those present, insisted on going in person to announce the news of the birth of his son to the whole household. He was still under the influence of the painful sight of the Empress’s delivery, and said that he would have preferred being present at a battle. The news of this happy event had spread over Paris as by magic. When the big bell of Notre Dame, and the cannon made it public, a large crowd had already assembled in the garden under the windows of the palace. To restrain the crowd, and to prevent it from disturbing the repose of the august patient, a cord had been stretched along the whole length of this terrace…from the railing at the Pont Royal to the Pavillon de l’Horloge. This feeble barrier impressed the crowd more than a wall would have done. The spectators, whose number increased every minute, even kept themselves at a respectful distance from the cord. General silence, a proof of popular sympathy and interest, was observed. From the interior of his apartments, Napoleon contemplated with visible emotion this sight, so pleasant for him…. On the same evening the new-born child was baptized in the Tuileries chapel by the Cardinal Grand Almoner, with all the ceremonies in use at the old court of France. (2)

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Gaspard Gourgaud, Talks of Napoleon at St. Helena, translated by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, 2nd edition (Chicago, 1904), pp. 152-153.
Claude François de Méneval, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Napoleon I From 1802 to 1815, Vol. 2, (New York, 1894), pp. 382-386.

Monument to the Baron de Bastrop on the grounds of the courthouse in Bastrop, Texas.

The Baron de Bastrop (Felipe Enrique Neri) was a prominent resident of Texas in the early 19th century. Charismatic and enterprising, Bastrop brought some pioneers into northern Louisiana and encouraged the Anglo-American colonization of Texas when it was part of Mexico. He also lied about his past and left a trail of litigation involving questionable land titles that lasted for over 20 years after his death.

Dutch beginnings

The Baron de Bastrop was born on November 23, 1759 as Philip Hendrik Nering Bögel in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (Suriname). His father, Conraed Laurens Nering Bögel, was a member of the Court of Justice in Paramaribo. Around 1764, the family – which included Philip’s older brother and younger sister – returned to Holland. Philip’s mother, Maria Jacoba Kraayvanger, died shortly after they arrived. Philip’s father, who remarried, died nine years later, when Philip was 13.

In 1779, Philip enlisted in a Dutch cavalry unit. It’s unlikely he saw any action, and he was probably discharged before marrying Georgine Wolffeline Françoise Lijcklama à Nyeholt in 1782. Philip and Georgine had five children: Susanna (born in 1783), Christina (1785), Coenraad (1786, died in 1788), Martha (1788) and Augustina (1790). They lived in Leeuwarden, where Philip served as a tax collector for the province of Friesland.

In May 1793, Philip suddenly disappeared from his job. He and his family left Leeuwarden, leaving behind substantial debts and the suggestion of embezzlement. A hasty audit of the tax funds found a shortfall of some 250,000 guilders. A reward of 1,000 gold ducats was offered for the capture of Philip Hendrik Nering Bögel.

From Bögel to Bastrop

On September 25, 1793, one Philip Hendrik Bastrop arrived in Philadelphia on a ship from Hamburg, accompanied by five female Bastrops named Georgine Wolfeline Françoise Lijcklama, Susana, Cristina, Marta and Augustina. (1)

By April 1795, Philip was in Louisiana, where he represented himself as a Dutch nobleman with the title of Baron de Bastrop. Claiming he had come to the United States to escape the French invasion of Holland, Bastrop became friends with the governor of Louisiana, Baron de Carondelet.

Carondelet was concerned about the advance of American settlers into Spanish-ruled Louisiana. He wanted to create a buffer against this. In 1796, Carondelet signed a colonization agreement with the Baron de Bastrop for the settlement of European immigrants in an area of approximately 850,000 acres along the Ouachita River in northeast Louisiana. Bastrop promised to recruit 500 families. They would each receive 400 acres of land on which to grow wheat. Bastrop would build grist mills for the colony at his own expense. Carondelet promised to cover the settlers’ transportation expenses, provide six months’ worth of provisions, and supply seeds for the initial crop. Bastrop also gained a monopoly on milling and selling the colonists’ wheat.

In 1797, Bastrop brought in 99 settlers, recruited from Kentucky. They began to clear and plant land. Bastrop built a mill and a warehouse, and traded with the Indians. However, the project foundered when a Spanish official declared the government could not afford to subsidize the colony. Financial aid to the settlers was cut off and Bastrop was ordered to stop bringing in colonists. In 1799, Bastrop sold the property, only to have it deeded back to him when the purchaser learned that Bastrop’s grant had never been officially approved by the Spanish King. Bastrop turned to other business ventures in Louisiana and Kentucky, but found himself facing a rising number of lawsuits. When the United States took possession of Louisiana in December 1803, there were various competing ownership claims attached to the Bastrop tract, including those of the settlers.

A French traveller who visited Louisiana at the time wrote:

During the approximately three years that this establishment lasted, the Dutch baron was occupied from start to finish with building a mill for the future races of Ouachita where, when the weather permitted, he employed twenty to twenty-five workers for one piaster a day payed from Delisle-Serpi’s [a New Orleans merchant’s] funds. At the same time, he took vigilant care to ensure that nothing harmful to his trading privilege was imported to the post. Extending his surveillance much too far, he caused the inhabitants to lack everything and to pay dearly for the smallest things. His blind cupidity prevented him from noticing that he was the biggest victim; because, if he had contributed to generously provisioning this canton, he would thus have convinced a large number of colonists to come and establish themselves on his concession….

Few men inspired, on the outside, so much confidence and interest: a handsome physique, a pleasant and calm face, simple and relaxed manners, agreeable, if not brilliant, conversation; he was affable, with no apparent pretensions, always obliging, and the best of masters in his own house; his defects were vices of the mind rather than of the heart. Always seductive, without much knowledge or ability, he had…without enriching himself, ruined all who joined in his projects; all his steps were marked with disaster. In Louisiana, all of the governors and men of substance were captivated by him. He left the Ouachita without having earned a cent, and having done more damage than the wickedest of men…. (2)

Part of the Bastrop tract was eventually leased by Aaron Burr. Litigation over ownership continued for nearly half a century. In December 1850, the US Supreme Court finally ruled that the agreement between Bastrop and the Spanish government did not give him title to the land. The following March, the US Congress enacted legislation so that all settlers who could prove they had occupied and cultivated land in the Bastrop grant for 20 years would receive legal title to their holdings.

Felipe Enrique Neri: The Baron de Bastrop in Texas

Leaving his Louisiana interests in the hands of an agent, Bastrop arrived in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1805 with three slaves and a French servant. (3) By this time Bastrop’s family had returned to Holland. They do not appear to have ever joined him in Louisiana. A Philip Bastrop family appears in the 1800 US census as living in Frederick County, Maryland. (4) By November 1803, Georgine was back in the Netherlands, where she died in 1816. All four daughters were married in Holland between 1810 and 1817.

In 1806, Bastrop settled in San Antonio de Béxar. A plan to establish a colony between San Antonio and the Trinity River came to nothing. He entered into mercantile partnerships and started a business that involved freighting goods by mule. He went by the name of Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop. Bastrop’s charm and his fluency in English, Spanish, French and Dutch helped him become a leading member of the community. In 1810, he was appointed second alcalde (deputy mayor) of the ayuntamiento (municipal council). That same year, he petitioned to become a Spanish citizen.

In 1820, when Connecticut businessman Moses Austin came to San Antonio and proposed to settle 300 families in Texas, the Baron de Bastrop helped persuade the Texas governor to support Austin’s plan. Stephen Austin wrote:

In crossing the public square, [my father] accidentally met the Baron de Bastrop. They had seen each other once before in the United States, having met at a tavern when travelling, many years previous. He invited my father to his room, where he lived in great poverty, but his influence with the government was considerable, and was very great with the inhabitants of Bexar who loved him for the benevolence of his disposition. He was a man of education, talents, and experience, and thoroughly initiated into all the mysteries of the government house. (5)

In 1822, the Baron de Bastrop acted as an interpreter for the agreement between the Cherokee Indians and Texas Governor José Félix Trespalacios. In Napoleon in America, Bastrop helps Trespalacios take a stand against Napoleon.

In 1823, the Baron de Bastrop was appointed commissioner of colonization for the Austin colony, with the authority to issue land titles. The settlers elected Bastrop to the provincial deputation at San Antonio, which, in 1824, chose him to represent Texas in the legislature of Coahuila and Texas of the Mexican republic. During his time in Saltillo, the Baron de Bastrop supported legislation favourable to immigration. He also helped pass an act to establish a port at Galveston.

In a letter written in May 1823, one of Austin’s colonists said he found the Baron de Bastrop “intelligent good and much Service to this Province…” (6) However another of Austin’s correspondents hoped to dislodge Bastrop from his post of surveyor in Texas, “by several good reasons some of which are the following, that he is too old to give personal attention, that [he] probably knows nothing of the new mode of calculation by Lat. and depart. which is the only mode to do it correctly.” (7)

Another colonist offered the following recollection, which provides a hint of the myth Bastrop created about his past.

When the Baron first came to Austin colony D. thinks he was nearly eighty years of age, but very hale and active. He was, says Judge Duke, a native of Holland, but at an early age went into the service of Frederick the Great of Prussia. He soon distinguished himself and was ennobled by Frederick. At a later period he received from the King of Spain a large grant of land in Louisiana, but after the acquisition of that territory by the United States he could not sustain his claim. He thought that great injustice had been done him and always spoke in bitter terms of the United States government. He always signed his name ‘El Baron de Bastrop.’ Judge Duke never learned his family name. (8)

The Baron de Bastrop died on February 23, 1827 at the age of 67 in Saltillo, Mexico. There was not enough money in his estate to cover his burial expenses. Bastrop, Louisiana and Bastrop, Texas are named after him, as is Bastrop County in Texas.

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