Word: napoleons
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...most wanted men, trailing from country to country, spying, mounting fantastic plots and making sporadic forays into his homeland. In London, where he was rapturously welcomed, Orsini let his vanity drive him to his last, most hare-brained exploit-an attempt on the life of France's Emperor Napoleon III. It was a crazy choice, because the Emperor had declared himself ready to fight for the cause of Italian independence. But, Orsini argued, if only Napoleon were removed, all other thrones in Europe would topple...
...Paume (literally, game of palm) was a royal indoor tennis court built by Napoleon III in 1862. The game, known as jeu de courte paume, derived from a sort of handball to which racquets were added, was for centuries the rage in France. In the 1890s the game lost popularity to English lawn tennis...
...within his code, a gentle man, beloved by officers and crew. His sailors were "brave fellows" and a "band of brothers." Nelson set a good table and a stern example. That he lived to save Europe from Napoleon is something of a miracle, and British Biographer Warner (a naval buff from the time he sat at Caius College, Cambridge, beneath a portrait of Nelson's father) has shown a hagiographer's diligence in turning over the records of England's seagoing lay saint...
Copy for Tolstoy. Ségur was seldom far from the Emperor's side during the five fearful months that it took to unravel Napoleon's grand design. He was close enough to hear Napoleon exclaim as he came within sight of the Muscovite capital of logs and gilded domes: "So here at last is that famous city! It was high time!" The remark was used by Tolstoy in War and Peace; probably one of the original French editions of Ségur's journal (first in 1824) was before Tolstoy as he wrote his masterpiece...
...gigantic thunderstorm destroyed, among other things, 10,000 horses. Worst of all, there were no Russians to defeat. Ségur describes in familiar scenes how the Grande Armée advanced into silent wastes; the aristocrats burned their houses and took their serfs with them to the East. Napoleon snapped: "Do you think I have come all this way just to conquer these huts?" The Russians were inspired-not by liberty-but by what was literally a holy horror of the French; they would not even eat from a plate a Frenchman had touched. When they were brought...