Word: napoleonism
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Sweden, which used to boss the Baltic and lick the Russians pretty regularly until Napoleon persuaded Denmark and Russia to gang up on her in 1808, joined Finland in mining the Gulf of Bothnia to keep the Red Navy out and Finland's supply lines open. Forty thousand more men were mobilized, bringing Sweden's armed forces to 150,000. The fortress of Boden, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, was reinforced with reserves. Here was the greatest Russian threat to Sweden, marked by the steady progress of a Russian column across Finland toward Tornio...
...village restaurant. In deference to them he went without his usual midday Scotch & splash, drank wine with the meal (oysters, roast chicken, potatoes, peas, duck pâté, salad, ices, fruit). Another day he lunched in a corporals' mess room, another in a chateau used by Napoleon before, and by Wellington after, Waterloo. The King's comment to an artillery officer was quoted as his cheering verdict to all ranks: "As long as we keep on the way we are going now, we won't need to worry about the outcome...
...Napoleon's Clisson et Eugénie, written shortly before the 26-year-old artillery officer, shabby, suffering from itch and malaria-appreciated only by a few of his colleagues-made his name by smashing a royalist coup in Paris on Oct. 4, 1795. Until now this fragmentary (13-page) romance was known only to bibliophiles through a sketch published by a Polish scholar...
Inspiration of Clisson et Eugénie was Napoleon's love affair with Désirée Clary, who later married his Marshal, Bernadotte, and became Queen of Sweden. A self-portrait opens the amazingly foresighted story: "Clisson was born for war. . . . He was meditating on the principles of the military art at a time when those of his age were at school and chasing after girls. . . ." Brooding because his greatness of soul escaped general notice, he sometimes "passed whole hours meditating in the depths of the woods . . . deep in reverie, by the light of the silver star...
...popular music and politics. He concludes: "The music made use of by mankind, though it marches slowly and haltingly, quite decisively attaches itself to the political hegemony of the epoch. The royal minuet held sway while France was supreme; the waltz became the undisputed monarch of the ballroom when Napoleon was overthrown with the help of the Germans. One hundred years later the German-Austrian waltz died out when the victorious troops of America streamed across the ocean to the battlefields of Europe...