Word: napoleonism
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There is fascination and topical interest in Napoleon's hodgepodge. Back of every chapter lies the self-portrait of a dictator who, like his successors of the present century, made the so-called "logic" of a situation his only criterion of right & wrong. His smug account of an episode during his conquest of Italy...
...Museum at Paris; being the first instance of the kind that occurs in modern history. Parma furnished twenty pictures chosen by the French Commissioners, amongst which was the famous Saint Jerome [by Correggio]. The duke offered two millions to be allowed to keep this picture." But Napoleon ruled that it would be "ornamental" to his capital...
...Blundering" British. In Napoleon's view, of course, it was the "logic" of France's condition, not his own ambition, that made him a dictator. "Lamentable weakness" on the part of their rulers had filled Frenchmen with such profound "uneasiness" that they inevitably picked him as the man who could "save [society] from destruction." The best chapter in the Memoirs is devoted to the cunning, diplomacy and brute force employed by Napoleon in making quite sure that the inevitable occurred...
...Napoleon remained a logician, in his fashion, to the bitter end. Searching the past from St. Helena, he found a marvelously neat reason for his defeat at Waterloo. He attributed it largely to the stupidity of the Duke of Wellington, who selected a battlefield from which it was impossible to effect a retreat. Hence, Wellington & Co. had no option but to go on holding the field even after they had lost it. "Oh, strange irony of human affairs!" murmurs the exiled logician as he looks back on the blundering British...
...years later, in 1802, Napoleon decided to provide Paris with another ornament: a colossal statue of himself done in classical style. Paris, as it turned out, had only a relatively short time to admire it. After Waterloo, the statue caught the sardonic eye of the Duke of Wellington. Presently the statue was installed in Apsley House, London residence of the duke, where it stands to this...