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Battle_of_Krasnoi_1812On November 15 to 18, 1812, Napoleon, in retreat, gathered his remaining ragged forces in Russia and faced the Russians in a series of skirmishes that are collectively known as the Battle of Krasnoi. Because Napoleon was able to preserve these forces in retreat, he had the nucleus of an army to build upon and to carry him through the rest of the war. Marshal Ney‘s resistance to the fierce Russian attack earned him the name “Bravest of the Brave.” The fact that the Russian general, Kutusov, did not totally destroy the French army by continuing to pursue and engage them enraged Tsar Alexander I.

Battle of Krasnoi resulted in French losses numbering as many as 13,000 killed and wounded and up to 26,000 taken prisoner. These numbers paled in comparison to the nearly half a million French soldiers killed or captured in the whole Russian campaign.

Half a million.

Military experts credit Napoleon’s Russian campaign as one of the most lethal in history and as a turning point in the Napoleonic war. After this decimation of the French army, Austria and Prussia broke their alliance with France and joined the UK and its allies, leading to the defeat of Napoleon and his exile to Elba.

Almost 130 years later, in 1941, Hitler also invaded Russia in a campaign that resulted in even more horrific losses and failed as well. The Russians lost 27 million soldiers and civilians; the Germans lost over 3 million soldiers.

So…now that I’ve cheered you up with stories of devastation, how is your Monday going for you?

I have two new fashion books, both of which are awesome for different reasons. The first one is Napoleon and the Empire of Fashion, 1795-1815 by Cristina Barretto and Martin Lancaster (Skira) 2010. It was published for an Italian exhibition of period clothing. The translation into English is rocky at times, but this book has some of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen. There are close ups of the fabrics that are just luscious. There are frustrations, too, in that some pictures are just too small.

I tried reading the text but found it hard going and then downright strange. As mentioned, the translation is not very good, but some of the history struck me as not trustworthy and I’m still struggling to understand why there’s a picture of a bare-busted porn star. Yes, she has big tits, but she’s in a book on Empire and Directoire fashions, why?

I just rolled my eyes at the concluding remarks which more or less blamed the CIA for Modern Art. I blame Matisse, but that’s just me.

Anyway, the gowns in this book are beautiful and the book is worth it for the pictures. Incoherent political ramblings are just a side benefit. (Napoleon was amazing! The Best Dictator General Ever!!! He was Sicilian French!!! Vive La France) OK, so he had that little thing at Waterloo that didn’t work out so well, but LOOK! Here’s an amazing purple velvet royal cloak and . . . That cloak is amazing. It’s worth the price of the book.

You can flip through this book– I don’t recommend reading much, it will only give you a headache and make you hate American Cultural Imperialism (that’s an anagram for the C.I.A., did you notice that?] French, you know, was the language of diplomacy until some how English got free of the Norman Cultural Imperialism (which any student of irregular English verbs can tell you still haunts us today) and now everyone speaks English even though French is way better –and really get a sense of how idiosyncratic gowns could be.

One point made early in the book before I was sobbing in hot tears about how Jackson Pollock ruined art all because of the Marshall Plan (which idea the US stole from Napoleon) was that gowns were custom-made and therefore fit the wearer precisely. Then they said the female form was actually different and that somehow between Napoleon and the rise of the CIA, women’s boobs moved lower on the torso. And I kept waiting for them to clarify that they meant foundation garments gave the female shape a different form, but no. Then I flipped back to the porn star picture and her boobs didn’t look like they were lower on her chest, but there was silicon involved I think, plus she had her arms crossed underneath all that bounty so maybe she was pushing them up the way they did in the Regency.

Regency woman had porn star boobs I guess.

Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about all those Modern Artists like, Marcel Duchamps (Oops French! but Joyce Kilmer totally hated him for Nude Descending a Stair) and that Pablo Picasso guy (lived in PARIS!), that Ce n’est Pas Une Pipe dude, Magritte (FRENCH!) that I started getting distracted about art.

The other book is The Art of Dress, Clothes and Society 1500-1914, by Jane Ashelford. (Abrams 1996). It covers a much broader period, but there are good photographs of actual clothing along with description and explanation. I wish there were more pictures. Or at least a world view unaffected by anything like facts.

Napoleon vs. Chuck Norris. Call it folks. Who wins?

(The answer is Jet Li.)

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This is such a busy time of year. The shopping. The decorating. The socializing. The (((shudder))) baking (I am so-not-a-cook). So what do my husband and I do on the last Sunday/shopping day before Christmas?

We go sightseeing in Washington, DC.

Living in the DC suburbs almost guarantees that we rarely visit the museums and historic sites in the nation’s capital. You know how it is. The dh works downtown and that decreases his desire to spend weekends in the city. So naturally, when there are about a thousand things we needed to do, we instead decided we just HAD to visit the new American History museum. Here I am standing in front of a Revolutionary War uniform.

The American History museum was closed for an entire year to be renovated and remodeled. And it was a big deal for it to be re-opened TWO YEARS AGO. This was our first visit back.

I had my eye out for something Regency, which I tend to do wherever I go. This was not easy in the exhibits about the atomic age and slavery, both of which seem to take a prominent, but not admirable, place in our history.

But there was a special exhibit on pop-up books.

Here’s the explanation of the book:

The Falshood of external Appearnces
England, ca. 1790
The first movable books for children, developed in England in the 1700s, were called harlequinades, because they often featured the comic character Halrequin. Designed to teach a moral (such as: don’t be fooled by appearances), the tale unfolds as a series of flaps are opened.

(Well, 1790 is close to the Regency….)

I also found a carriage! (a toy one, that is)

And a puzzle toy featuring Regency era scenes.

And I even found Napoleon, although he is a little fuzzy in this photo!

But the very best part of the day was walking back to the car. We passed a homeless man, begging and shivering in the 20 degree weather. My husband stopped and turned back to give the man $20.

Making him my hero!

What have you been doing lately instead of getting ready for Christmas? Have you done something fun? Have you done something charitable?

Don’t forget! The Harlequin Historical Holiday Contest is ongoing until Dec 22. You can enter for daily prizes and I’m still taking entries for the grand prize of a Kindle.

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This week marks the 195th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, a battle that figures prominently in history and also in our Regency Historicals. The first book in my Three Soldiers Series, Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady, ends at Waterloo. Book number two, Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress, begins there, smack in the middle of the battle.

I wondered what the two men whose names are nearly synonymous with the battle were doing on June 14, 1815. Both, I discovered, were writing dispatches.


Napoleon’s was in the form a a proclamation to his troops.

“Soldiers: This day is the anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, which twice
decided the destiny of Europe. Then, as after the battles of Austerlitz and
Wagram, we were too generous. We believed in the protestations and oaths of
princes to whom we left their thrones. Now, however, leagued together, they
strike at the independence and sacred rights of France…After having swallowed up twelve millions of Poles, twelve millions of Italians, one million Saxons, and six
millions of Belgians, they now wish to devour the States of the second order
among the Germans. Madmen! one moment of prosperity has bewildered them. To
oppress and humble the people of France is out of their power; once entering our
territory, there they will find their doom. Soldiers: We have forced marches
before us, battles to fight, and dangers to encounter; but firm in resolution,
victory must be ours. The honor and happiness of our country are at stake! and,
in short, Frenchmen, the moment is arrived when we must conquer or die!”

Napoleon knew he was days away from engaging the Prussians and one can understand his need to inspire his troops. Still, his words are brimming with arrogance, of the certainty of his superiority.

Napoleon had the advantage. He knew he was on the attack. The Allies knew only that engagement was imminent; at this point, they did not know where or when Napoleon would meet them.

Because of this, Wellington’s dispatches of June 14, 1815, deal with more practical matters. On this day he wrote to other Allied leaders, including Prince Metternich. In his dispatch to Metternich, Wellington, like Napoleon, is looking forward in time and planning for the occupation of France. He proposes a plan that will increase the cooperation of the conquered people, ceding control to Louis XVIII. He also reiterates his characteristic policy of reimbursing the citizenry of any property the army may need to take from him.


Wellington writes:

…It tends to make partisans instead of enemies of those who shall have
given their property for the subsistence of the several armies. Every man who
shall have in his possession a voucher or receipt on the part of the officers of
Louis XVIII. will feel an interest in the success of the cause, in proportion as
he shall value the property taken from him.
…It will put an end to very disagreeable discussions between the Commanders of the several armies, myself particularly, and Louis XVIII. His Majesty…will naturally claim to take possession of the country which shall fall into the hands of the Allies… His Majesty Louis XVIII. and the Allies, will appoint officers to govern that country….By adopting this system, which is the most simple and, as I have above shown, the most beneficial to the allied armies, we should at the same time hold out something to France to which the public opinion might attach itself….We should avoid the evil of seizing the public treasures in France; an evil which it will be very difficult to avoid under any other system, and which will be fatal to the discipline and reputation of the allied armies, and will give but too much reason to the French people to believe that the Allies have forgotten, or have omitted to act upon, the system laid down in their public declarations and their
treaties.

It appears that Wellington had no intention for the Allies to “swallow up” France, but rather to restore the country to the monarchy.

Neither Napoleon nor Wellington could have known the outcome of the ultimate battle. Moreover, neither one could have known that this battle would take a prominent place in history as one of the greatest battles of all time.

My friends Kristine Hughes and Victoria Hinshaw are attending this year’s Waterloo reinactment and I’m so envious I could just…..something. Check out their activities on Number One London blog.

So…what are you writing today? Any dispatches or proclamations?

Don’t forget to visit me at Diane’s blog on Thursday when I’ll give away another signed copy of Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady. I’ll announce last week’s winner there tomorrow.

Blogging at DianeGaston.com

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May 7, 1821, 189 years ago, on the island of St. Helena, the great Napoleon Bonaparte died. An autopsy at the time declared that Le Empereur died of stomach cancer, as had his father. Case closed. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the island, unmarked because the English wanted the marker to say merely “Napoleon Bonaparte” and his faithful entourage refused to allow that.

But did he die of stomach cancer? An important man like that, just getting sick and dying? Who would believe that?

Bring on the conspiracy theorists!

In the 1950s the memoirs of Napoleon’s valet were discovered and it led one man to question whether Napoleon might have been poisoned. Technology even offered proof. An article in Nature in 1961 offered the evidence that high levels of arsenic was found in samples of Napoleon’s hair which had been taken as keepsakes upon his death.

Some even claimed to have discovered his murderer– an opportunist named Count de Monthelon. The plot thickens when it came to light de Montheon’s wife left St. Helena shortly before Napoleon’s death, after having given birth to an infant surmised to be Napoleon’s. A Love Triangle, perhaps? Or part of the plot to get Napoleon to put de Monthelon in the will?

Then others offered other reasons for high levels of arsenic– the pomade he used on his hair, the wallpaper at his estate on St. Helena.

In 2007, scientists took another look at the physicians’ descriptions of Napoleon’s autopsy and Bingo! The descriptions were consistent with stomach cancer…Most likely Napoleon died of what the officials said he died of 189 years ago.

But! Does that prove there wasn’t a conspiracy???

It was known that Napoleon, in his lifetime, occasionally used stand-ins. One of his stand-ins, Pierre Robeaud, disappeared in 1818. Robeaud purportedly had stomach cancer and traveled to St. Helena to switch places with Napoleon. This version has Napoleon flee to Verona and assume the name Revard. It even gives him a tragic, heroic end–Falling to his death in 1823 die trying to climb the walls of Castle Schonbrunn in Austria in an attempt to see his ill son.

Yeah. That’s a lot more credible than the great Napoleon merely dying of cancer….

So, tell me? Why do we so easily believe Conspiracy Theories? You know we do. We’re much more interested in intrigue, secrecy, drama, and conspiracy than common sense. Explain this to me, please!

(Don’t forget! I’m Blogging at Diane’s Blog on Thursday and giving away a signed copy of Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady to one lucky commenter)
Blogging at DianeGaston.com

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