Bonaparte returned from Egypt to France on 23 August 1799, and seized control of the French government on 9 November 1799 in the coup of 18 Brumaire, replacing the Directory with the Consulate. He reorganized the French military and created a reserve army positioned to support campaigns either on the Rhine or in Italy.
At home, Napoleon preferred the title of First Consul
The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804. By extension, the term The Consulate also refers to this period of French history.
During this period, Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul had established himself as the head of a more conservative, authoritarian, autocratic, and centralized republican government in France while not declaring himself head of state. Nevertheless, due to the long-lasting institutions established during these years, Robert B. Holtman has called the Consulate "one of the most important periods of all French history.
he took in a lungful of air, settled his blue bicorne more firmly on his head
The bicorne or bicorn (two-cornered) is an archaic form of hat widely adopted in the 1790s as an item of uniform by European and American military and naval officers. It is now most readily associated with Napoléon Bonaparte but in practice most generals and staff officers of the Napoleonic period wore bicornes, and it survived as a widely worn full-dress headdress until at least 1914.
Descended from the tricorne, the black-coloured bicorne originally had a rather broad brim, with the front and the rear halves turned up and pinned together (in English the shorter front brim was called 'the cock' - hence 'cocked hat' - and the longer rear brim was termed 'the fan'), forming a semi-circular fan shape; there was usually a cockade in the national colours at the front. Later, the hat became more triangular in shape, its two ends became more pointed, and it was worn with the cockade at the right side. This kind of bicorne eventually became known in the English language as the cocked hat, although to this day it is still known in the French language as the bicorne.
The full-dress uniform of École Polytechnique of France comprises black trousers with a red stripe (a skirt for females), a coat with golden buttons and a belt, and a cocked hat (officially called a bicorne).Worn in the side-to-side "athwart" style during the 1790s, the bicorne was normally seen "fore-and-aft" in most armies and navies from about 1800 on. This change in style coincided with the flattening out of the pronounced front peak of the original headdress.
Some forms of bicorne were designed to be folded flat, so that they could be conveniently tucked under the arm when not being worn. A bicorne of this style is also known as a chapeau-bras or chapeau-de-bras.
The bicorne was widely worn until World War I as part of the full dress of officers of most of the world's navies. It survived to a more limited extent between the wars for wear by senior officers in the British, French, US, Japanese and other navies until World War II but has now almost disappeared in this context.
In addition to its military/naval uses, the bicorne was widely worn during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by civilian officials in European monarchies and Japan, when required to wear uniforms on formal occasions. This practice generally ceased after World War I but British colonial governors in temperate climates and governors general in some countries of the Commonwealth (notably Australia, Canada and New Zealand) continued to wear bicornes with ceremonial dress until the second half of the twentieth century.
General de Division, or Major-General, Arnaud Laurent...one of Napoleon's most trusted friends
I have been unable to find any mention of an Arnaud Laurent in Napoleon's army, let alone one of Napoleon's trusted friend.
________________
Spartan Gold, by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood.
This annotation from the paperback edition of Berkley Publishing, 2009, and from Wikipedia unless otherwise credited.
No comments:
Post a Comment