Tea at Trianon: Napoleon and Lapérouse

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Napoleon and Lapérouse

From Quadrant Online:

Lapérouse sailed to the Pacific to establish trade connections, also being tasked with the establishment of French settlements. Lapérouse, a great admirer of James Cook, also intended to expand the maps Cook had made of the area. Quadrant has published two fine books by Margaret Cameron-Ash on the rivalry and imperial intrigue driving the great powers of the day’s race to Sydney....The story of Lapérouse’s expedition to the Pacific, however, is noteworthy for another reason.
In 1785, Napoleon Bonaparte applied to serve as a crew member on one of the ships. He was a 16-year-old from Corsica, fresh out of the École Militaire in Paris, and although short-listed he was not selected to join the expedition. One could say that the world would have been a very different place had he been welcomed aboard and perished with the other crew members.

There would have been no French Empire, no ill-fated invasion of Russia, no Waterloo, no Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, and no notoriously profligate Empress Joséphine. There would also have been no reason to make a movie about him – a film recently released to mixed but mostly poor reviews prompted in no small part by its often laughably inaccurate depictions of what really happened. Napoleon did not, as the final scenes present, lead a last and doomed cavalry charge, instead slipping away from the battlefield in his green coach. Thus did one of the most influential and divisive figures of the 19^th century meet his comeuppance.

After his application to serve on Lapérouse’s expedition was rejected, Napoleon instead joined an artillery regiment, gained rapid promotion, became the ruler of France and one of the most influential and divisive figures of the 19^th century.

In my opinion, one of the mistakes made by Napoleon was to crown himself Emperor of France on December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame de Paris. Although Napoleon’s imperial ambitions were approved by an 1804 constitutional referendum, his coronation did not greatly increase his political power because he was already First Consul. But vanity obviously prevailed. His arrogation of the imperial throne would undoubtedly have made the leaders of other European countries both jealous and wary. This would not have helped him create political alliances and conduct military campaigns. (Read more.)