Word: napoleons
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...work in agriculture. The agricultural pie has been sliced up time and again, until a good-sized farm in France hardly exceeds 50 acres. Such small-farming (although a land reformer's dream) does not make much economic sense and exists largely because of government subsidy-e.g., Napoleon subsidized sugar-beet growers during the British blockade, and they are still subsidized. The eldest son of a farmer can stay around and hope to earn a living from the small acreage, but usually the other children must clear out. Some try to get jobs in the local village...
...since the days of Napoleon has France changed its fundamental educational goals. The secondary schools are still so rigidly academic that only about one in every four children gets into them. Those who do must face the dreaded baccalauréat (bachot) exam to graduate. Many must memorize stacks of Greek and Latin verbs, know how to translate Seneca and Tacitus, analyze (in English) the works of De Quincey, Ruskin and George Eliot, be familiar with everything from the Pensées of Pascal to the characters of Corneille...
...idea grew on Manet. He painted it big (7 ft. by 9 ft.) and proudly submitted it to the official Salon, which refused it. But the Emperor Napoleon III ordered a special exhibition that year of works the Salon had turned down, and Litnch, exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, made Manet notorious-as an eccentric. "A commonplace woman of the demimonde, as naked as can be, shamelessly lolls between two dandies dressed to the teeth," exclaimed one critic. "I search in vain for the meaning of this unbecoming rebus." "Is this drawing? Is this painting?" cried another...
Winning Ways. Now he changed his tactics, decided to win his place "constitutionally." Rightly confident that there was voters' magic in the name Napoleon, Louis ran for the French presidency in 1848, won by comfortable millions. After swearing to uphold the Republic and constitution, he proceeded to ditch both, and in 1852 declared himself Emperor Napoleon...
...course of French history can only be traced with a seismograph. It is never more in need of one than through the 81 years which began with the French Revolution (1789) and ended, with another revolution, in the unseating of Napoleon III (1870). In the course of those years, France was twice a republic, twice an empire, thrice a kingdom (Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis Philippe). Napoleon III, creator of the Second Empire, spent 18 years trying to impose on France an order resembling that created by his notorious uncle...