Napoleon I - Tumblr Posts
Il neigeait. L'âpre hiver fondait en avalanche.
Après la plaine blanche une autre plaine blanche.
On ne connaissait plus les chefs ni le drapeau.
Hier la grande armée, et maintenant troupeau... ❄️
A drawing I made for a good friend of mine depicting Armand de Caulaincourt and emperor Napoleon during the tragic retreat of the Grande armée from Russia in the year 1812. 🇫🇷💔
Today I witnessed and participated in an amiable small-talk that can easily be considered “stuff of legends”. 😂
Me, looking through a lovely pre-revolutionary book about Napoleonic era, which was provided to me for a brief introduction, and reading out loud some lines occasionally: "It is said that when the French heard about the Frankfurt proposals, they complained and laughed interchangeably at the thought that the fate of modern Europe would be in the hands of some Habsburgs or Hohenzollerns, who were the embodiment of German feudalism."
*light chuckles intensifying*
*then more coherent conversation takes place*
— So, is it better to have French imperialism instead of German feudalism?)))
— Yes. Keep flipping through. 🗿
*chuckles instantly turn into homeric laughter*
❗️Friendly reminder: it was a simple joke, historical process is a much more complicated business as well as specific terms used in that purely comedic case. ✌️
Grandpa’s gift
There is an incredibly fascinating artistic detail that haunts me after some person posted their astute observations on the Internet and I would love to share it with you!
So, we have this illustration from a book “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte” by William Milligan Sloane (1896). Here we can see Napoleon visiting his son in a timeframe close to spring of 1813, when it became obvious that his larger political allies proved to be good for nothing and were probably going to leave him soon. Napoleon is shown deep in his thoughts holding a hand of his beloved son and looking at something far beyond our reach…
Or is he?
Speculations can be made that he actually has his attention on the toy soldiers present in a foreground of the picture.
While a cannon can be more than rightfully considered Napoleon’s own symbol, these toy soldiers do not represent any French troops. It’s possible to discern their tall hats but those are not bear hats of the Old guard, for sure.
They probably are the hats of Imperial (Austrian) grenadiers from the period of the Revolutionary wars. You can even notice red lining and cuffs being parts of their snowy-white coats.
Even if it was somewhat of a tradition to gift toy soldiers representing military units of relatively “old times”, an air of symbolism may also surround such a choice of troops. You know, that symbolism straight from those times when Imperial forces hadn’t yet suffered critical blows from the renewed French army and thought of themselves as fighters for truth and Habsburg’s justice.
So yeah. What a meaningful gift from a caring grandfather to his grandson it could be~ 🤭
(I’m also able to imagine how prince Schwarzenberg himself could have delivered this exact gift to Marie Louise, when he came to Paris as a diplomat once more and it literally gives me goose bumps. I love such small but significant imaginary plots with all my heart. ❤️)