Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Music #92 - Napoleon

(1769–1821)

La Marseillaise, l'hymme national français

a brief story of the national anthem  ("Song of war for the Rhine's army")    
la marseillaise 

Histoire des chants et marches militaires de France 
- French military songs & marches

Napoleon in Egypt   
Jean-Léon Gérôme  (1824–1904, French)
- oil on panel (36 x 25 cm) 1863
- Princeton University Art Museum (New Jersey)

- The Song of Onion - Military March of the Republic & the 1st Empire

La Marche du Sacre de Napoléon 1er -1804 
- his coronation (N crowned himself and his queen consort Josephine, marginalizing the Pope's role)
Le chant du départ / Song of the Departure 
 the official anthem of the First Empire (1804-1815)

La vieille garde / The Old Guard 

La victoire est à nous ! / Victory is Ours!

Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow (1812)
 (1/2 hr) 

Among those who knew him well, Napoleon inspired little personal loyalty: almost all his courtiers turned against him after his defeats in 1814 and 1815, and in both years they forced him to abdicate. (His generals switched their loyalty to Louis XVIII.)


Napoleon made a speech before departing for Elba - slightly simplified for the Waterloo  (1970 movie). 
 

Napoleon was a great orator
- The speech is followed by La Marche des Eclopés

He was in disguise during the ride to the pier, as he had previously witnessed an angry mob humiliating Louis XVI and brutally killed his Swiss guards. Even that, royalist mobs stoned N's couch, and hanged him in effigy. 

On 20 April 1814 Napoleon was put on board a British frigate for the island of Elba.
departing for Elba
'ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA'
a palindrome by Napoleon

The new prince of Elba was allow to keep his emperor title and bring to Elba 1000 of his old royal guards selected from the farewell ceremony.

“Louis XVIII (a gout-ridden brother of the guillotined Louis XVI) ascended the French throne (by the invitation of the French Senate) after N's exile to Elba in 1814. One of his first objects was to cause to be effaced all the busts and statues of N.”

The nobles and the clergymen in exile during the revolution now returned and reclaimed their former assets, that were confiscated under the revolutionary name of national goods, and rewarded to the new nobles. Further, Louis XVIII refused to pay N the annual pension according to the peace treaty. Encouraged by his mother who said, “Better die with sword in hand, than in an unworthy retirement,” N believed it was time to recover power in France.

N escapes from Elba after 10 months

“On the return of N in 1815, it was discovered that, in the palace of the Louvre, the bust of N was very happily transformed into the bust of Louis VIII by the addition of a wig of plaster.”


La marche de la garde à Waterloo

 

After losing the Battle of Waterloo, N was exiled to the island of St Helena, where he died in 1821.

Printed on a very much thumbed page of the Fables of La Fontaine, that Napoleon owned at St. Helena:
"The Lion, sovereign dread of forest throng,
Grown old and weeping sore, his strength then past,
By faithless subjects was attacked at last;
Their courage waxing, with his weakness, strong…"

Retour des cendres : the return of the mortal remains of Napoleon I of France from the island of St Helena to France and their burial in the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris in 1840, which was 19 years after his death.
La marche funèbre de Napoléon
Adolphe Adam (1803–1856, French)

“In 1840, Louis Philippe I (King of France, 1773-1830-1848-1850) obtained permission from the British government to return Napoleon's remains to France. His casket was opened to confirm that it still contained the former emperor. Despite being dead for nearly two decades, Napoleon had been very well preserved and not decomposed at all. 
        “On 15 December 1840, a state funeral was held. The horse-drawn hearse proceeded from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysées, across the Place de la Concorde to the Esplanade des Invalides and then to the cupola in St Jérôme's Chapel, where it remained until the tomb designed by Louis Visconti was completed.
        “In 1861, Napoleon's remains were entombed in a porphyry stone sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.”

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