Word: emperor
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...more than 180 tons of gold objects and 16,000 tons of silver had been pumped back to Spain from the mineral veins of its colonies, altering the political balance of Europe. "It is his Indian Golde," wrote Sir Walter Raleigh of the Emperor Charles V in 1596, "that indangereth and disturbeth all the nations of Europe, it purchaseth intelligence, creepeth into Councels." Indeed, the tonnage figure is conservative. Much more was taken than the clerks recorded. And for centuries, at home as well as abroad, all was destroyed. Until quite recently, Raleigh's "Indian Golde" was still being...
...novel itself is divided into four movements corresponding to the parts of Beethoven's Third Symphony, "The Eroica." (Beethoven originally dedicated "The Eroica " to Napoleon, but tore up the dedication after the First Consul of France crowned himself Emperor.) At times the Burgess Bonaparte resembles a cross between Charles de Gaulle and Douglas MacArthur. At times he is an 18th century Mafia capo trying to manage overextended holdings and control his greedy relatives. Burgess seeks to evoke the heaving spirit of the Napoleonic age by rouging (and noiring) the historical facts with catchy dialogue and fantasy. As he points...
...life. First comes indolent Josephine cuckolding her warrior-husband while he is off subjugating the Mamelukes in Egypt. Then his Empress-the mother of his only acknowledged son-homesick Marie-Louise, who stuffs herself with Austrian chocolate and drinks coffee in clear violation of the Emperor's trade-war embargo. Napoleon's mother, Madame Mere, casts a practical Corsican eye on ephemeral pomp and circumstance, while prudently stuffing gold in her socks. And of course Talleyrand appears, ceaselessly tacking for advantage and trimming his sails at the hint of rough weather...
...myth of Bonaparte that they do not even recognize him when he chooses to walk the streets as an ordinary citizen. Burgess also locates Napoleon's own blind spots. On drama, for example: "Tragedy must never have chairs on the stage. Tragic characters never sit down." And the Emperor's effort to abolish Europe's old aristocracy and nationalism, to create a unified Europe under the banner of French Enlightenment and Gallic law, failed to take into account the primitive, nearly mystical origins of national identities...
...drought has claimed an equally grim toll in parts of Ethiopia. Provincial bureaucrats kept the horrific dimensions of the catastrophe secret from Addis Ababa, fearing that bad news would anger and embarrass Emperor Haile Selassie and perhaps lead to their own dismissal. Finally, last spring, the number of deaths grew so great that the bureaucrats had to admit their existence and ask for international aid. At first the drought seemed confined to eastern Ethiopia. But a new government survey uncovered big pockets of famine to the south and southeast of the capital. In Bale province alone an estimated...