Napoleon's Australia

Napoleon's Australia PDF Author: Terry Smyth
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143787292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
'A fascinating insight into French ambition and amity in Australia, bursting with joie de vivre' – David Hunt, bestselling author of Girt In the northern winter of 1814, a French armada set sail for New South Wales. The armada’s mission was the invasion of Sydney, and its inspiration and its fate were interwoven with one of history’s greatest love stories – that of Napoleon and Josephine. The Empress Josephine was fascinated by all things Australian. In the gardens of her grand estate, Malmaison, she kept kangaroos, emus, black swans and other Australian animals, along with hundreds of native plants brought back by French explorers in peacetime. And even when war raged between France and Britain, ships known to be carrying Australian flora and fauna for ‘Josephine’s Ark’ were given safe passage. Napoleon, too, had an abiding interest in Australia, but for quite different reasons. What Britain and its Australian colonies did not know was that French explorers visiting these shores, purporting to be naturalists on scientific expeditions, were in fact spies, gathering vital information on the colony’s defences. It was ripe for the picking. The conquest of Australia was on Bonaparte’s agenda for world domination, and detailed plans had been made for the invasion, and for how French Australia would be governed. How it all came together and how it fell apart is a remarkable tale – history with an element of the ‘What if?’ No less remarkable is how the tempestuous relationship between Napoleon and his empress affected the fate of the Great Southern Land.

Napoleon's Australia

Napoleon's Australia PDF Author: Terry Smyth
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143787292
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
'A fascinating insight into French ambition and amity in Australia, bursting with joie de vivre' – David Hunt, bestselling author of Girt In the northern winter of 1814, a French armada set sail for New South Wales. The armada’s mission was the invasion of Sydney, and its inspiration and its fate were interwoven with one of history’s greatest love stories – that of Napoleon and Josephine. The Empress Josephine was fascinated by all things Australian. In the gardens of her grand estate, Malmaison, she kept kangaroos, emus, black swans and other Australian animals, along with hundreds of native plants brought back by French explorers in peacetime. And even when war raged between France and Britain, ships known to be carrying Australian flora and fauna for ‘Josephine’s Ark’ were given safe passage. Napoleon, too, had an abiding interest in Australia, but for quite different reasons. What Britain and its Australian colonies did not know was that French explorers visiting these shores, purporting to be naturalists on scientific expeditions, were in fact spies, gathering vital information on the colony’s defences. It was ripe for the picking. The conquest of Australia was on Bonaparte’s agenda for world domination, and detailed plans had been made for the invasion, and for how French Australia would be governed. How it all came together and how it fell apart is a remarkable tale – history with an element of the ‘What if?’ No less remarkable is how the tempestuous relationship between Napoleon and his empress affected the fate of the Great Southern Land.

Napoleon’S History of Australia

Napoleon’S History of Australia PDF Author: D. Y. Gilbert
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1514446820
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
A foray into historical faction starting with a real-life English emigrant, Napoleon Gilbert, ancestor of Ms Gilbert, born in 1799 who immigrated with his family to Tasmania in the late 1820s.This family saga spans five generations, rags to riches and back again, farming and convict labour in Tasmania, butchering meat for Victorian goldminers, Darling Downs squattocracy, Ballarat and Melbourne Architect, genteel Melbourne society, the 1890 crash, Prussian farmers in Ipswich, the First World War, death and poverty in Port Pirie and scandalous unwed motherhood in Adelaide. The connecting thread is the fact that all the Gilbert sons had Napoleon as their middle name, ending the authors father, Melbourne Napoleon Gilbert. It is an entertaining and novel way of writing history, proving that fact is stranger than fiction. ***

Plunder

Plunder PDF Author: Cynthia Saltzman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374710392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May "A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal A captivatingstudy of Napoleon’s plundering of Europe’s art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from Venice Cynthia Saltzman’s Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563 during the Renaissance, the picture was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Veronese had filled the scene with some 130 figures, lavishing color on the canvas to build the illusion that the viewers’ space opened onto a biblical banquet taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. Once pulled from the wall, the Venetian canvas crossed the Mediterranean rolled on a cylinder; soon after, artworks commandeered from Venice and Rome were triumphantly brought into Paris. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution in the former palace of the French kings. As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon’s looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals the contradictions of his character: his thirst for greatness—to carry forward the finest aspects of civilization—and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. After Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington and the Allies forced the French to return many of the Louvre’s plundered paintings and sculptures. Nevertheless, The Wedding Feast at Cana remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly across from the Mona Lisa. Expertly researched and deftly told, Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history, one that sheds light on a seminal historical figure and the complex origins of one of the great museums of the world.

Napoleon's Last Island

Napoleon's Last Island PDF Author: Thomas Keneally
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1473625343
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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Book Description
On the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic ocean, Napoleon spends his last years in exile. It is a hotbed of gossip and secret liaisons, where a blind eye is turned to relations between colonials and slaves. The disgraced emperor is subjected to vicious and petty treatment by his captors, but he forges an unexpected ally: a rebellious British girl, Betsy, who lives on the island with her family and becomes his unlikely friend. Based on fact, Napoleon's Last Island is the surprising story of one of history's most enigmatic figures and a British family who dared to associate with him. It is a tale of vengeance, duplicity and loyalty, and of a man whose charisma made him dangerous to the end.

Napoleon

Napoleon PDF Author: Ted Gott
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780724103553
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This panoramic volume tells the story of French art, culture and life from the 1770s to the 1820s: the first French voyages of discovery to Australia, the stormy period of social change with the outbreak of the French Revolution, and the rise to power of the young Napoleon Bonaparte and his wife Josephine.

Napoleon's Commentaries on the Wars of Julius Caesar

Napoleon's Commentaries on the Wars of Julius Caesar PDF Author:
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526716291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
While in exile on St Helena, Napoleon dictated a commentary on the wars of Julius Caesar, later published in 1836. In each chapter he summarized the events of one campaign, then added comments from the standpoint of his own military knowledge. Over the nearly two millennia between Caesar and Napoleon some aspects of warfare had changed, notably the introduction of firearms. But much remained the same: the rate of movement of armies (at the foot pace of horse or man); human muscle power as the main source of energy for construction work; some military techniques, notably bridge construction; as well as the actual territory fought over by Caesar and later by Napoleon. Napoleons commentary thus provides a fascinating and highly authoritative insight into Caesars wars, as well as providing a window into Napoleons own thinking and attitudes. Napoleon in places detects mistakes on the part of Caesar and his enemies, and says what they should have done differently. Remarkably, this is thought to be the first full English translation of Napoleon's work.Napoleon Bonaparte was born to an obscure Corsican family but rose through the ranks of the French army to become Emperor of France, conqueror of most of Europe and acknowledged military genius. He wrote this book while in exile on St Helena.The translator. RA Maguire, is a former civil engineer with a long-standing interest in military and ancient history.

Napoleon's Wars

Napoleon's Wars PDF Author: Charles Esdaile
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101464372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 884

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Book Description
A glorious and conclusive chronicle of the wars waged by one of the most polarizing figures in military history Acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as a new standard on the subject, this sweeping, boldly written history of the Napoleonic era reveals its central protagonist as a man driven by an insatiable desire for fame, and determined to push matters to extremes. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, it offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. As it expertly moves through conflicts from Russia to Spain, Napoleon's Wars proves to be history writing equal to its subject—grand and ambitious—that will reframe the way this tumultuous era is understood.

Napoleon's Mercenaries

Napoleon's Mercenaries PDF Author: Guy Dempsey
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1784380199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This superb and comprehensive book details the foreign units which formed such an important part of Napoleon's forces. It examines each non-French unit in turn, giving an overview of the unit's origins, its organizational and combat history, its uniforms and standards, and details of the unit's eventual fate. Colourful accounts, taken from contemporary reports and memoirs, emphasize the qualities of the unit and throw light on what life was like for many of the foreign soldiers recruited into the Grande Armée. In total more than 100 different foreign units that served in the French Army are investigated in detail in this ambitious publication. Some foreign units fought and flourished throughout the Consulate and Empire, whilst others lasted for just a few months. Covers Polish, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, and other units in the French Army and presents a combat history and details uniforms for each regiment. Napoleon's Mercenaries is the best single-volume study of this aspect of Napoleon s army and a vital reference for every Napoleonic enthusiast. Little can be found on the foreign units that were an integral part of the French army ... For a long time a gap has existed, but now Napoleon s Mercenaries fills this gap. Robert Burnham, Napoleonic Series

Napoleon's Double

Napoleon's Double PDF Author: Antoni Jach
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 1920882235
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Seven conscripts from a village near Dijon set out to follow Napoleon on his campaign to conquer Egypt. Later, the survivors sail with Nicholas Baudin on his expedition to New Holland. They are threatened, by disease and starvation, yet like nothing better than to talk, to think, to dream.

Napoleon’s Beekeeper

Napoleon’s Beekeeper PDF Author: José Luis de Juan
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
ISBN: 1925818381
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
Winner of the prestigious ‘Premio Novela Breve Juan March Cencillo’ May 1814. On the island of Elba, the beekeeper Andrea Pasolini awaits the arrival of the defeated, exiled emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. Pasolini is a self-taught disciple of the Enlightenment, whose first love is reading books on philosophy and apiculture – a secret, illicit activity he undertakes in his cellar at night. The defeated emperor is likewise fascinated, with the swarming of bees and the beauty of honey. From a distance, an obsessive interest develops between the two men, as anticipation builds around a visit by the emperor to inspect Pasolini’s beehives. In his novella, José Luis de Juan meticulously interweaves historical sources with an imagining of the lives of two very different men, one a humble apiarist on an island, the other – also born on an island – who aspires to be the ruler of the universe. Amid an atmosphere of exchangeable identities, powerful dreams, furtive plots and deferred uprisings, in favour of Napoleon or against him, each man carries the conviction that the social organisation of bees holds the key to how the future will unfold.