Word: napoleonism
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...their mutual friend, Dictator Franco of Spain whom Pétain had once taught the art of war, Adolf Hitler's reply was: drop your arms or be killed. He sent for Benito Mussolini to meet him in Munich to discuss matters on June 18 (125th anniversary of Napoleon's downfall at Waterloo). Surrender, not with honor but unconditional, was reported to be the German's ultimatum to France. Meantime, the war "for which France asked" would continue...
...defend Paris, however, was a task made surpassingly difficult by the plan of the city. Following six decades of revolution and rioting during which its streets were barricaded on some six occasions, Napoleon III commissioned Baron Eugene Georges Haussmann in 1853 to beautify the city and in doing so to eliminate the tangled mass of crooked streets so ideal for riots and street fighting. The wide boulevards and strategically located focal points such as the Etoile thus came into being. Haussmann figured that barricades could not be easily erected across wide boulevards, nor could the favorite technique of shooting...
...capture of Napoleon III at Sedan on Sept. 2,1870, ended the Second Empire, but not the Franco-Prussian War. Invested by the German Armies, cut off from the rest of France, without defenders at the front, Paris organized its own resistance under fiery, one-eyed Interior Minister Leon Gambetta. The city held out for four desperate months. Then Bismarck laid down his harsh peace terms to the provisional Government of Adolphe Thiers at Versailles. Radical Parisians, still armed for the siege and fearing a restoration of the monarchy, set up a revolutionary Commune on March 18, 1871. The city...
Corsica, which produced Napoleon, who Mussolini insists was Italian, is an objective Italy should have little difficulty achieving. Malta, which belonged to the Knights of St. John before Napoleon took it in 1798, is solid rock and should come harder. Last week she let Corsica wait like a ripe plum, bombed Malta 25 times and laid mine barrages stretching both sides of it to bisect the Mediterranean and divide the enemy warships...
...Ferdinand Magellan, extended the horizons of the world, Portugal became the great European mart for silks, spices, precious metals and gems from the Indies. Reaching her zenith by 1580, she began rapidly to decline, fell under Spanish rule for 60 years until a revolution in 1640 restored her independence. Napoleon drove her ruler to Brazil in 1807 and in 1822 that country declared its independence. Her possessions plucked away by oncoming nations, she saw her great empire shrink and her prestige wane. Her last king, an indoor sport who gave up all for Actress Gaby Deslys, was deposed...