Word: napoleons
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...Orchestra; Victor). A rare lapse of genius, the so-called "Battle Symphony," written in 1813 when the composer was at the height of his powers (he had just finished the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies), is a fascinating but vulgar and bombastic ode to Wellington's victory over Napoleon. Frankly composed to make money and originally intended for the panharmonicon, a sort of early stereo machine built by a German inventor in which nine different types of instruments were operated mechanically, the piece includes a rumbling God Save the King, an absurdly tinkling For He's a Jolly Good...
...maritime might of France had been destroyed in the egalitarian fury of the Revolution, when brilliant naval officers, no matter how patriotic, were guillotined merely because they were of noble birth. And egalitarianism (as any latterday weekend yachtsman knows) does not work afloat. Worse yet, Napoleon had no understanding of sea power-let alone naval strategy and tactics. He frayed the already frazzled nerves of his naval commander in chief, the vacillating Villeneuve, with whimsically changing orders. For two years his captains were reduced to an exasperating game of maritime hide-and-seek until Horatio Viscount Nelson, Vice Admiral...
...dozen streets in Mayfair. In a men's-club atmosphere of horsehair sofas, fireplaces, brass candelabras and rolltop desks, the shops breathe-as one historian noted appreciatively-"the fumes of privilege, of clubs, of Toryism." In keeping with the tradition that put a Savile Row uniform on Napoleon III when he mounted the throne of France, Hawes & Curtis recently finished a $900, gold-braided beauty for Thailand's King Bhumibol, as part of a 113-suit wardrobe. At Denman & Goddard's, cutters have been diligently remaking a drainpipe-trousered bohemian into the royal fashionplate that is Antony...
...many causes of the French Revolution was the royal tax on brandy, which the victors hastened to repeal. Napoleon reinstated the tax in 1806, but he generously allowed any Frenchman with his own vineyard or orchard to distill tax-free up to ten liters of pure alcohol a year (equal to more than five gallons of 100-proof brandy). Since then, through two empires, two monarchies and five republics. French peasants have guarded their home stills like so many Kentucky moonshiners-and French politicians have cherished the bouilleurs de cru (distillers of the countryside) as zealously as U.S. politicians protect...
...ought to be used to terrible-tempered Jim Carey's language by now. During the 1958 contract reopener, Carey kept the air blue, and G.E. negotiators walked out. Before the talks began this time, Carey confided to reporters: "People say I have a Napoleonic complex, but Napoleon was a softy compared to Carey...