Sunday, March 25, 2012

Spartan Gold: Corsica and more

pg 102

"A Corsican by birth, Napoleon..."
Corsica (French: Corse) is a French island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia.

Corsica is one of the 27 régions of France, although strictly speaking Corsica is designated as a territorial collectivity (collectivité territoriale) by law. As a territorial collectivity, it enjoys greater powers than other French régions, but for the most part its status is quite similar. Corsica is referred to as a "région" in common speech, and is almost always listed among the other régions of France. Although the island is separated from the continental mainland by the Ligurian Sea and is closer to Italy than to the French mainland, politically Corsica is part of Metropolitan France. It was once briefly an independent Corsican Republic, until being incorporated into France in 1769. Its culture has French and Italian elements blended into it.

Napoléon Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, where his ancestral home, Casa Buonaparte, is also located. Corsica is also the birthplace of the singers Tino Rossi and Alizée.

"He married the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, Marie Louise, who managed to produce a son."
Marie Louise of Austria (Maria Ludovica Leopoldina Franziska Therese Josepha Lucia von Habsburg-Lothringen; 12 December 1791 – 17 December 1847) was the second wife of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French and later Duchess of Parma. As such, she was Empress of the French from 1810 to 1814, and subsequently ruler of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla from 1814 until her death.

As the eldest child of Habsburg Emperor Francis I of Austria and his second wife, Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicily, Marie Louise grew up during a period of continuous conflict between Austria and revolutionary France.

A series of military defeats at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte had inflicted a heavy human toll on Austria and led Francis to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire. The end of the War of the Fifth Coalition resulted in the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1810, which ushered in a brief period of peace and friendship between Austria and the French Empire.

Marie Louise dutifully agreed to the marriage despite being raised to despise France. She was an obedient wife and was adored by Napoleon, who had been eager to marry a member of one of Europe's leading royal houses to cement his relatively young Empire. She bore Napoleon a son, styled the King of Rome at birth, later Duke of Reichstadt, who briefly succeeded him as Napoleon II.

Napoleon's fortunes began to change dramatically in 1812 after his failed invasion of Russia. The European powers, including Austria, resumed hostilities towards France in the War of the Sixth Coalition, which ended with the abdication of Napoleon and his exile to Elba. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau handed over the Duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to Empress Marie Louise. She ruled the duchies until her death.

Marie Louise married morganatically twice after Napoleon's death in 1821. Her second husband was Count Adam Albert von Neipperg (married 1821), an equerry she met in 1814. She and Neipperg had three children. After Neipperg's death, she married Count Charles René de Bombelles, her chamberlain, in 1834. Marie Louise died in Parma in 1847.

Not quite 3 months later, in June, Napoleon is routed by the British and Prussians at the Battle of Waterloo.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. An Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon was defeated by combined armies of the Seventh Coalition, an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. It was the culminating battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last.

The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days return from exile.

Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilise armies. Two large forces under Wellington and Blücher assembled close to the north-eastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition. The decisive engagement of this three-day Waterloo Campaign (16–19 June 1815) occurred at the Battle of Waterloo. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon on 18 June to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, Wellington's Anglo-Allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing coalition forces entered France and restored King Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

The battlefield is in present-day Belgium, about 8 miles (13 km) south by south-east of Brussels, and about 1 mile (1.6 km) from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield is today dominated by a large monument, the Lion Mound. As this mound was constructed from earth taken from the battlefield itself, the contemporary topography of the part of the battlefield around the mound has not been preserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment