Word: emperor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...outbreak of Napoleonomania. Traveling by ship and plane to Napoleon's Corsican hometown of Ajaccio (pop. 50,000), more than 200,000 tourists will enjoy fireworks and street dancing, hear President Georges Pompidou deliver the bicentennial address and watch 3,500 French légionnaires, dressed as the Emperor's grognards (grumpy veterans), parade through the spruced-up city...
...every day in 1969 is a Nappy birthday, marked by Napoleonic exhibitions, costume parades, festivals, commemorative ceremonies, solemn Masses or pilgrimages. In one recent week, six major Napoleonic art shows opened in Paris and the suburbs alone. French TV has scheduled no fewer than 80 programs about the Emperor. Some 100 books on Napoleon will be published during the year. Paul Ferrandi, director of Corsica House in Paris, says: "Next to Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte is the most written-about subject in the world...
...vases, bumper stickers, two-foot-square postcards, cuff links and assorted junk. A cheese manufacturer is distributing 10 million color pictures of Grande Armée heroes. Paris hairdressers decreed the N line: a lock dangling over the forehead. For three dollars, one may acquire a replica of the Emperor's will on pseudo parchment with an imitation red seal. Says an official of the Bonapartist political party that has ruled Ajaccio for over a century: "When we Corsicans put our right hand inside our coat like the Emperor, it's on our heart. Others are feeling...
...candles in the form of the imperial eagle. The Spanish are forging Napoleon's "battle sword" at Toledo-for sale in France, since he was never very popular in Spain. The British fabricate "Napoleon soap," with a color reproduction inside of David's famous painting of the Emperor on a horse. The soap shrinks, of course, but the portrait of Napoleon stays. "Imagine being able to wash your hands with Napoleon," exults Xavier Moreschi, the chief Corsican commercializer of the bicentennial in Paris, who is already actively preparing the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Napoleon...
...admire Napoleon as the man who ended revolutionary chaos., transformed France into a modern state, reopened the churches, established the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Communists praise him for destroying feudalism throughout Europe. On the other hand, royalists, socialists, schoolteachers and intellectuals despise him. Royalists regard the self-made Emperor as a "usurper." The others consider him the betrayer of the revolution, a bloodthirsty tyrant whose invasions of Spain and Russia decimated French youth...