#talleyrand

[sanya-is-not-me]

The First Consul and his foreign Minister

[jrkyy]

Lineup remake

[ciderbird]

pour one out for Caulaincourt, the child of divorce

[microcosme11]

He was young once

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand by Louis-Marie Sicard (n.d.)

[braucherei]

Just finished seeing Napoleon (2023) for the first time! I liked it more than I thought I would. The comedy bits were funny and the core relationship of Napoleon and Josephine was engaging even if all the other characters were pretty flat.

I don’t know much about Napoleon post-emperor but the history at least before that was unsurprisingly pretty all over the place.

SPOILERS (this is a bullet pointed list of moments mostly from the first quarter of the movie set during the French Revolution/Directoire) (EDIT: I just saw the movie for a second time so I added amendments/clarifications in red)

the movie opens with a text scroll summarizing in very vague terms what led to the French Revolution

The first real scene is Marie-Antoinette being guillotined while Ça ira is sung. Her execution is then immediately followed by Robespierre giving his “Terror and Virtue” speech very menacingly

Didn’t care for the guy casted as Robespierre didn’t really look like him and was too old. He just comes off as a generic “power hungry” politician in a powdered wig

When Napoleon first charges at the siege of Toulon a cannon hits his horse right in the chest and Barras has to awkwardly help Napoleon off the ground

The next day Napoleon is awarded for taking Toulon and for some reason the gored horse is still there. Napoleon reached his hand inside the horse and grabs the cannon ball

A scene or two after Toulon they show Thermidor where the whole convention turns on aspiring dictator Robespierre

Barras is in the balcony of the Convention and specifically yells that Robespierre wants to be “judge, jury and executioner”

This Robespierre runs away as a crowd of deputies chase him up the stairs. Someone in a chair that might have been an 18th century wheel chair falls over but the scene happens so fast I wasn’t sure

I believe it was just a regular chair tossed over during Thermidor but I’m still not entirely sure since there is some kind of either design or mechanism on the side of the chair

Robespierre pulls a gun on the mob of deputies chasing him but the gun jams so he pulls out a second gun and shoots himself

Barras says “you missed” and then fingers his jaw wound to I guess parallel Napoleon and the horse

A little later Napoleon is at the Victim’s ball and Josephine is seen there next to Barras.

Thérésa Cabarrus is also in the cast list but she is never named in the movie so I assume she will be in the Director’s cut

Josephine and a woman hug while leaving prison so that’s probably Cabarrus but her name is never said

There’s also a scene that starts with Barras and Napoleon goofing around together and throwing nuts at a wall which is sweet I guess

Weirdly Barras is the only male character Napoleon seems to be genuinely friendly with

I was wrong it was his brother Lucien not Barras that Napoleon was goofing around and throwing nuts with which makes more sense. I must have gotten their mullets confused

Napoleon returns from Egypt in this movie because he hears Josephine is cheating on him

the newspapers he gets from the English aren’t stories on how the Directoire is unpopular/corrupt but instead cartoons of him being cucked

(This is foreshadowing for the worst part of the movie)

The only real Fouché scene is when Napoleon is sitting with the Directors telling them how he’s going to coup them and it’s going around the table getting their reactions as Napoleon calls their names

Then Napoleon says Fouché and it cuts to a guy standing in the corner of the room

Talleyrand is a more important part of the movie and is given some of historical Fouché’s moments (I liked his actor a lot actually and he’s the best character besides the core two)

Barras also stops being a character after he agrees to resign as director but he continues to show up in the background throughout the movie

This is SPOILERS AGAIN for the end of the movie but I have to mention this because it was an insane decision

———————————————————————

While Napoleon is in Elba the Tsar of Russia rolls up to Josephine’s manor in a carriage and is “entertained” by her

Napoleon sees a cartoon of him being cucked again in the newspaper and that is why the Hundred Days happens

[eunikia]

M. de Remusat witnessed in 1806 a scene of almost hysterical and insurmountable emotion when Napoleon embraced Talleyrand and Josephine, declaring that it was hard to part from the two people that one loved the most; and, utterly unable to control himself, fell into strong convulsions. This was no comedy. There was nothing to gain. It was the sudden and passionate assertion of his heart.

NAPOLEON: THE LAST PHASE by Lord Rosebery p.259

That’s so weird I still can’t believe my eyes...

[citizen-card]

tv tropes is funny sometimes

[aedesluminis]

Went to my local library and I love the fact that these books got put exactly next to each other LMAO

Quite appropriate.

I want to buy them, buttttt I already have too many books to read 😭😭

Help, what should I do?

[klara-1838]

“We have a note from an anonymous Bremen townsman: "Murat seemed a friend of good cuisine, and after Talleyrand, for whose household many eggs had to be delivered, his table was particularly full.”

Found this interesting bit in a text about french army in Brno, food shortages during the war and about the overall impact of Austerlitz

Something for @joachimnapoleon 😉

[empirearchives]

Madame de Rémusat on Marie Walewska:

This extraordinary wooing did not, however, prevent the young Polish lady [Marie] from becoming attached to the Emperor, for their liaison was prolonged during several campaigns. Afterwards the fair Pole came to Paris, where a son was born, who became the object of the hopes of Poland, the rallying point of Polish dreams of independence.

I saw his mother when she was presented at the Imperial Court, where she at first excited the jealousy of Madame Bonaparte; but after the divorce she became the intimate friend of the repudiated Empress at Malmaison, whither she often brought her son. It is said that she was faithful to the Emperor in his misfortunes, and that she visited him more than once at the Isle of Elba. He found her again in France, when he made his last and fatal appearance there. But, after his second fall (I do not know at what time she became a widow), she married again, and she died in Paris this year (1818). I had these details from M. de Talleyrand.

Source: Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat vol. i. p. 20-21

[sanya-is-not-me]

Found a quote from Émile Dard’s «Napoleon and Talleyrand» about January 28, 1809 when Napoleon said that Talleyrand «Deserves to be broken by him like a glass» and took the shit way too seriously

[joachimnapoleon]

At sixty years old, Monsieur de Talleyrand was showing signs of age. His blue eyes which, over a long career, had watched a thousand deceits, were not so much cold as habituated to an expressionless glitter. The naturally fair flesh of his face was pale, sagging and dead. It fell in folds around a supercilious mouth which suggested at one and the same time satiated self-indulgence and utter disdain. Many thought of him as reptilian.

—Excerpt from Napoleon and the Hundred Days, by Stephen Coote.

[ciderbird]

The Treaty of Paris, 1814

[sollannaart]

Books about Napoleonic era (and Polish history) - 3

Good day, dear all, and let me share with you some books I've read recently.

And because today is the birthday of Tadeusz Kościuszko I'll start with a biography of him The Peasant Prince, by the American historian Alex Storozynski:

2. One more position about the Polish history, in English, I'd like to recommend you is Richard Butterwick's The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame, dedicated to the reigns of Polish-Lithuanian two last kings, Augustus III Wettin and Stanisław August Poniatowski:

From the topic of Polish history let's switch to the French one.

3. One more addition to my collection of Talleyrand's biographies was this one, written by Robin Harris:

4-5. Then, there were two books about Napoleon's private life, by Octave Aubry and Sigrid-Maria Größing:

6-7. A study on the topic of French revolutionary and imperial generals, by Georges Six, and George Nafziger's Imperial Bayonets. (These were books with lots of military details, so I can't say I've enjoyed them thoroughly, rather not belonging to their target audience))

8. And this is a book I really liked, The anatomy of Glory by Henry Lachouque! And though its subtitle (Napoleon and his Guards) kinda states the book will be focused on the Imperial Guards, in fact its topics turned out much more wider, including information on Napoleon himself, France and even some details of the usual life of that times:

9. The book majority of you have already read, The Iron Marshal, a biography of Louis Nicolas Davout by John Gallaher:

10-11. And the last but not the least - two books on Murat. The first is a book by the French historian Jean Tulard and the second is an impressive work of Sarah Hammel @joachimnapoleon.

Thanks a lot, Sarah, for letting as see Joachim Murat through his letters, from his own point of view!

[privateandshamefulvices]

How various people from 1790s France handle the BBC show The Traitors, an incomplete list:

Robespierre - getting this out of the way immediately: terrible. Could not hack being a traitor, is suspicious of basically everyone as a faithful. Is also suspicious to everyone because it's The Traitors and any kind of nd trait is picked up on and mob punished at the round table. Banished for being a Suspicious Autist by ep 4.

Marie Antoinette - bordering on Maddy->Aaron levels of paranoia towards Philippe Égalité, eventhough he's not doing any of the shit she's accusing him of. Gets murdered mid way through.

Louis XVI - flies under the radar for a bit by just agreeing with whatever the last person who spoke said. Barely contributes to round table discussions, comes back to bite him because they think he's being sneaky. Alyssa vibes.

Lafayette - alienates everyone by sticking by his own opinions and ignoring the fact that it's turning everyone off. Maddycore. 50/50 as to whether he's banished before he's murdered but he's not winning.

Marat - Murdered wayyy early for having too much influence over the roundtable.

Fouquier-Tinville - incomprehensibly, lasts longer than expected. The definition of flying under the radar.

Barras - Kierancore. Thinks he's in on the conspiracy. Isn't. Gets banished as a human sacrifice.

Talleyrand - Amanda vibes. Incredible for 4/5s of the show, sneakiness leads to an 11th hour double-cross from within.

Fouché - CRUSHES IT.

Danton - gets banished because people think arsehole = traitor despite all evidence to the contrary and historical precedent.

Saint-Just - keeps the Robespierre portrait like Andrea with Amos after he's banished. Is murdered super early if Camille is a traitor. If they're both faithful they're too wrapped up in beefing each other to work everything out. Gets banished after his allies leave/fall away.

Camille - deeply terrible at sussing out traitors whatever he thinks, but occasionally lands a hit so they don't feel comfortable murdering him. Gets banished bc you live and die by the way others perceive you and he not pretending to be your best mate whether he's a traitor or not.

[cyber-feline]

Saw Napoleon, not really impressed, but there was one good point: