King Napoleon Quotes

We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost.

The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,

Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I'm not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day. The art museum is called the Louvre and it's shaped like a pyramid and the Mona Lisa lives there along with that statue of the women missing her arms. And there are cafes and bistros or whatever they call them on every street corner. And mimes. The food is supposed to be good, and the people drink a lot of wine and smoke a lot of cigarettes. I've heard they don't like Americans, and they don't like white sneakers.

in this life we are either kings or pawns emperors and fools

Question: If you put a psychologist in a room with a man who thinks he’s Napoleon and leave them there for a year (or ten or twenty), will you end up with two Skinner men or two guys with their hands in their shirts? Answer: Insufficient data.

The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts," said Mr. Wilde. "You are speaking of the King in Yellow," I groaned, with a shudder. "He is a king whom emperors have served." "I am content to serve him," I replied.

Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny for a nation to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when that nation is France and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man! To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge; to make you feel that when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow in a single man, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?" "To be free," said Combeferre.

The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.

Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great sword point upwards, the red raiment of his office flapping around him like the red wings of an archangel. And the King saw, he knew not how, something new and overwhelming. The great green trees and the great red robes swung together in the wind. The preposterous masquerade, born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature, and he himself, with his rationality, and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident - a blot of black upon a world of crimson and gold.

The King’s Ministers had long treasured a plan to send the enemies of Britain bad dreams. The Foreign Secretary had first proposed it in January 1808 and for over a year Mr Norrell had industriously sent the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte a bad dream each night, as a result of which nothing had happened.

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever.

Every day since I met you I have loved you a thousand times more... -Napoleon the Great

Religion, with its metaphysical error of absolute guilt, dominated the broadest, the cosmic realm. From there, it infiltrated the subordinate realms of biological, social and moral existence with its errors of the absolute and inherited guilt. Humanity, split up into millions of factions, groups, nations and states, lacerated itself with mutual accusations. "The Greeks are to blame," the Romans said, and "The Romans are to blame," the Greeks said. So they warred against one another. "The ancient Jewish priests are to blame," the early Christians shouted. "The Christians have preached the wrong Messiah," the Jews shouted and crucified the harmless Jesus. "The Muslims and Turks and Huns are guilty," the crusaders screamed. "The witches and heretics are to blame," the later Christians howled for centuries, murdering, hanging, torturing and burning heretics. It remains to investigate the sources from which the Jesus legend derives its grandeur, emotional power and perseverance. Let us continue to stay outside this St. Vitus dance. The longer we look around, the crazier it seems. Hundreds of minor patriarchs, self-proclaimed kings and princes, accused one another of this or that sin and made war, scorched the land, brought famine and epidemics to the populations. Later, this became known as "history." And the historians did not doubt the rationality of this history. Gradually the common people appeared on the scene. "The Queen is to blame," the people's representatives shouted, and beheaded the Queen. Howling, the populace danced around the guillotine. From the ranks of the people arose Napoleon. "The Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians are to blame," it was now said. "Napoleon is to blame," came the reply. "The machines are to blame!" the weavers screamed, and "The lumpenproletariat is to blame," sounded back. "The Monarchy is to blame, long live the Constitution!" the burgers shouted. "The middle classes and the Constitution are to blame; wipe them out; long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the proletarian dictators shout, and "The Russians are to blame," is hurled back. "Germany is to blame," the Japanese and the Italians shouted in 1915. "England is to blame," the fathers of the proletarians shouted in 1939. And "Germany is to blame," the self-same fathers shouted in 1942. "Italy, Germany and Japan are to blame," it was said in 1940. It is only by keeping strictly outside this inferno that one can be amazed that the human animal continues to shriek "Guilty!" without doubting its own sanity, without even once asking about the origin of this guilt. Such mass psychoses have an origin and a function. Only human beings who are forced to hide something catastrophic are capable of erring so consistently and punishing so relentlessly any attempt at clarifying such errors.

They took it, too, like Napoleon’s soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.’s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

They took it, too, like Napoleon’s soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M.M.’s saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. *

Domanda: se si chiude uno psichiatra in una stanza insieme a un uomo che crede di essere Napoleone, e ce lo si lascia per un anno (o dieci, o venti), alla fine chi esce da quella stanza? Due pazzi, o due psichiatri? Risposta: Dati insufficienti.

Yet Hardenberg was kept on in secret government service by King Frederick William and his fiercely anti-Napoleonic wife, the beautiful and independent-minded Queen Louise, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg, not least in order to keep diplomatic channels open to Russia.

Might does not make right,” Talleyrand reminded. Has not Europe, he added, suffered enough from that doctrine, and paid for it “with so much blood and so many tears”? The golden age of peace could be right around the corner, if only every peacemaker would follow this course of action.

If Europe had been blessed with more rulers with the human heart and the traits of honesty of ex-king Edward, for the past century, that unfortunate hemisphere now seething with greed, hate, lust, political connivance, and threats of war, would have a different and a better story to tell. A story in which Love and not Hate would rule. In

Speech is the pen and the sword of humankind and it is the foundation of their kingdom. Wherever the flag of speech waves, the most powerful armies are. defeated and scattered. In the arenas in which speech shouts out, the sounds of cannon balls become like the buzzing of bees. from behind the battlements on which the banner of speech has been raised, the sound of its drums are heard. In the precincts where its march reverberates, kings shake in their boots. The Master of Speech smashed to pieces many insurmountable walls, in the face of which Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and many others despaired or retread; and the pen of Speech, imparting and compliance, was saluted and praised.

[Their marriage] will not be all cakes and ale.... They are too much alike to be the ideal match. Patty is thick-skinned and passionate, too ready to be hurt to the heart by the mere little pinpricks and mosquito bites of life; and Paul is proud and crotchety, and, like the great Napoleon, given to kick the fire with his boots when he is put out. There will be many little gusts of temper, little clouds of misunderstanding, disappointments, and bereavements, and sickness of mind and body; but with all this, they will find their lot so blessed, by reason of the mutual love and sympathy tat, through all the vicissitudes, will surely grow deeper and stronger every day they live together, that they will not know how to conceive a better one.

France aspired, in other words, to create a situation whereby “every ambition and unjust enterprise [would] find both its condemnation and a perpetual obstacle.” This might sound like a grand, unattainable ideal, he said, but Europe really had no choice. Without such principles in place, held firm and rigorously guarded, international affairs would soon degenerate into a reckless pursuit of self-interest and power—just as that reckless scramble had plunged the Continent into that “long and deadly horror” of the last quarter century. Now that Napoleon was defeated, Europe must take this opportunity to crown justice as the “chief virtue” of international affairs. Leaders of states must pledge that they would never act nor acquiesce in any deed that could not be considered just, “whatever consideration [that] may arise,” because only justice, he said, can produce a true state of harmony and stability. Anything short of that would create a misleading and meaningless false order, destined to collapse when the first powerful state decided to take advantage of its superior strength.

History has seen many who claim to be deliverer and saviour of the people. They might come with force and violence and parade their might and splendour as conquerors. The pharaohs of Egypt, Sennacherib king of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Darius of Persia, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Napoleon, Clive of India, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin. The story and scene is always the same. They claim to deliver the people from bondage and to establish justice, freedom and peace. They come in might, riding in splendour, dragging prisoners.

A revolution is a military thing; it has all the military virtues; one of which is that it comes to an end. Two parties fight with deadly weapons, but under certain rules of arbitrary honor; the party that wins becomes the government and proceeds to govern. The aim of civil war, like the aim of all war, is peace… They do not create revolution; what they do create is anarchy; and the difference between these is not a question of violence, but a question of fruitfulness and finality. Revolution of its nature produces government; anarchy only produces more anarchy. Men may have what opinions they please about the beheading of King Charles or King Louis, but they cannot deny that Bradshaw and Cromwell ruled, that Carnot and Napoleon governed. Someone conquered; something occurred. You can only knock off the King’s head once. But you can knock off the King’s hat any number of times. Destruction is finite, obstruction is infinite: so long as rebellion takes the form of mere disorder (instead of an attempt to enforce a new order) there is no logical end to it; it can feed on itself and renew itself forever.

Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. “The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.” A king is history’s slave. History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes. Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples [To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples]—as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him—he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life—that is to say, for history—whatever had to be performed.

In September 1936, Britain's former prime minister, David Lloyd George, spent two weeks in Germany as his guest. He admiringly wrote in the Daily Express how Hitler had united Catholic and Protestant, employer and artisan, rich and poor into one people – Ein Volk, in fact. (The British press magnate Cecil King wrote in his diary four years later, ‘Lloyd George mentioned meeting Hitler and spoke of him as the greatest figure in Europe since Napoleon and possibly greater than him. He said we had not had to deal with an austere ascetic like Hitler since the days of Attila and his Huns.’)

reality after he won the battle of Pedicoste in 1763. The man the Corsicans nicknamed Il Babbù (Daddy) quickly set about reforming the island’s financial, legal and educational systems, built roads, started a printing press and brought something approaching harmony between the island’s competing clans of powerful families. The young Napoleon grew up revering Paoli as a lawgiver, reformer and genuinely benevolent dictator. Genoa had no appetite for the fight that she knew would be required to reassert her authority over Corsica, and reluctantly sold the island to King Louis XV of France for 40 million francs in January 1768.

Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man. He had such and such mistresses, and such and such ministers, and he governed France badly. The heirs of Louis XIV were also weak men, and also governed France badly. They also had such and such favourites and such and such mistresses. Besides which, certain persons were at this time writing books. By the end of the eighteenth century there gathered in Paris two dozen or so persons who started saying that all men were free and equal. Because of this in the whole of France people began to slaughter and drown each other. These people killed the king and a good many others. At this time there was a man of genius in France – Napoleon. He conquered everyone everywhere, i.e. killed a great many people because he was a great genius; and, for some reason, he went off to kill Africans, and killed them so well, and was so clever and cunning, that, having arrived in France, he ordered everyone to obey him, which they did. Having made himself Emperor he again went to kill masses of people in Italy, Austria and Prussia. And there too he killed a great many. Now in Russia there was the Emperor Alexander, who decided to reestablish order in Europe, and therefore fought wars with Napoleon. But in the year ’07 he suddenly made friends with him, and in the year ’11 quarrelled with him again, and they both again began to kill a great many people. And Napoleon brought six hundred thousand men to Russia and conquered Moscow. But then he suddenly ran away from Moscow, and then the Emperor Alexander, aided by the advice of Stein and others, united Europe to raise an army against the disturber of her peace. All Napoleon’s allies suddenly became his enemies; and this army marched against Napoleon, who had gathered new forces. The allies conquered Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to renounce the throne, and sent him to the island of Elba, without, however, depriving him of the title of Emperor, and showing him all respect, in spite of the fact that five years before, and a year after, everyone considered him a brigand and beyond the law. Thereupon Louis XVIII, who until then had been an object of mere ridicule to both Frenchmen and the allies, began to reign. As for Napoleon, after shedding tears before the Old Guard, he gave up his throne, and went into exile. Then astute statesmen and diplomats, in particular Talleyrand, who had managed to sit down before anyone else in the famous armchair1 and thereby to extend the frontiers of France, talked in Vienna, and by means of such talk made peoples happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomats and monarchs almost came to blows. They were almost ready to order their troops once again to kill each other; but at this moment Napoleon arrived in France with a battalion, and the French, who hated him, all immediately submitted to him. But this annoyed the allied monarchs very much and they again went to war with the French. And the genius Napoleon was defeated and taken to the island of St Helena, having suddenly been discovered to be an outlaw. Whereupon the exile, parted from his dear ones and his beloved France, died a slow death on a rock, and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. As for Europe, a reaction occurred there, and all the princes began to treat their peoples badly once again.

[Tolstoy] denounced [many historians'] lamentable tendency to simplify. The experts stumble onto a battlefield, into a parliament or public square, and demand, "Where is he? Where is he?" "Where is who?" "The hero, of course! The leader, the creator, the great man!" And having found him, they promptly ignore all his peers and troops and advisors. They close their eyes and abstract their Napoleon from the mud and the smoke and the masses on either side, and marvel at how such a figure could possibly have prevailed in so many battles and commanded the destiny of an entire continent. "There was an eye to see in this man," wrote Thomas Carlyle about Napoleon in 1840, "a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be the King. All men saw that he was such." But Tolstoy saw differently. "Kings are the slaves of history," he declared. "The unconscious swarmlike life of mankind uses every moment of a king's life as an instrument for its purposes." Kings and commanders and presidents did not interest Tolstoy. History, his history, looks elsewhere: it is the study of infinitely incremental, imperceptible change from one state of being (peace) to another (war). The experts claimed that the decisions of exceptional men could explain all of history's great events. For the novelist, this belief was evidence of their failure to grasp the reality of an incremental change brought about by the multitude's infinitely small actions.

Talleyrand took quill in hand and penned one of the more remarkable documents of the Vienna Congress. This paper, a letter addressed to Metternich dated the nineteenth of December, was an elegant combination of philosophy and policy that affirmed the importance of justice and the rights of states in the face of aggression in international affairs. The French foreign minister first reminded Metternich that his country asked nothing for itself. France was satisfied with its borders and had no desire whatsoever for additional territory. What his embassy hoped instead was to persuade its fellow peacemakers to agree to one guiding principle, namely, “that everywhere and forever the spirit of revolt be quenched, that every legitimate right be made sacred.

Europe is haunted by the shadow of the Emperor. One senses his absence just as vividly as in former times one sensed his presence. Because the emptiness of the wound speaks, that which we miss knows how to make us sense it. Napoleon, eye-witness to the French Revolution, understood the direction which Europe had taken—the direction towards the complete destruction of hierarchy. And he sensed the shadow of the Emperor. He knew what had to be restored in Europe, which was not the royal throne of France—because kings cannot exist for long without the Emperor—but rather the imperial throne of Europe. So he decided to fill the gap himself. He made himself Emperor and he made his brothers kings. But it was to the sword that he took recourse. Instead of ruling by the sceptre—the globe bearing the cross—he made the decision to rule by the sword. But, “all who take up the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew xxvi, 52). Hitler also had the delirium of desire to occupy the empty place of the Emperor. He believed he could establish the “thousand-year empire” of tyranny by means of the sword. But again—“all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword”. No, the post of the Emperor does not belong any longer either to those who desire it or to the choice of the people. It is reserved to the choice of heaven alone. It has become occult. And the crown, the sceptre, the throne, the coat-of-arms of the Emperor are to be found in the catacombs…in the catacombs—this means to say: under absolute protection.

There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum’s could field three—not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal “Peter the Eater” was incarcerated here, as were “Sasha the Slasher” and “Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner.” But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet “Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman.” Deirdre Blott tried to top Max’s clear superiority by changing her name so as to become “Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon,” but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off.

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Voltaire’s History of Charles XII, which Napoleon read while in Moscow, described the Russian winter as so cold that birds froze in mid-air, falling from the skies as if shot.54 The Emperor also read the three-volume Military History of Charles XII by the king’s chamberlain, Gustavus Adlerfeld, published in 1741, which concludes with the disaster of Poltava.55 Adlerfeld attributed the King of Sweden’s defeat to stubborn Russian resistance and the ‘very piercing’ cold of the winter. ‘In one of these marches two thousand men fell down dead with the cold,’ reads a passage in the third volume, and in another Swedish troopers ‘were reduced to warm themselves with the skins of beasts as well they could; they often wanted even bread; they were obliged to sink almost all their cannon in morasses and rivers, for want of horses to draw them.

Given the benefit of hindsight, it’s difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the “general will.” The paranoid Jacobin mentality made the revolutionaries more savage and cruel than the king they replaced. Some fifty thousand people ultimately died in the Terror, many in political show trials that Simon Schama describes as the “founding charter of totalitarian justice.” Robespierre summed up the totalitarian logic of the Revolution: “There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man…[W]e must exterminate all our enemies.

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and complex causes. We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us. Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance. There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for him. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. ‘The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.’ A king is history’s slave.

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolf Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person… or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did… and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies.

The Swedish royal family’s legitimacy is even more tenuous. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended neither from noble Viking blood nor even from one of their sixteenth-century warrior kings, but from some random French bloke. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, the then king, Gustav IV Adolf—by all accounts as mad as a hamburger—left for exile. To fill his throne and, it is thought, as a sop to Napoleon whose help Sweden hoped to secure against Russia in reclaiming Finland, the finger of fate ended up pointing at a French marshal by the name of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (who also happened to be the husband of Napoleon’s beloved Desirée). Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the fact that Bernadotte had actually once fought against the Swedes in Germany was quickly forgotten, as was his name, which was changed to Charles XIV John. This, though, is where the assimilation ended: the notoriously short-tempered Charles XIV John attempted to speak Swedish to his new subjects just the once, meeting with such deafening laughter that he never bothered again (there is an echo of this in the apparently endless delight afforded the Danes by the thickly accented attempts at their language by their current queen’s consort, the portly French aristocrat Henri de Monpezat). On the subject of his new country, the forefather of Sweden’s current royal family was withering: “The wine is terrible, the people without temperament, and even the sun radiates no warmth,” the arriviste king is alleged to have said. The current king is generally considered to be a bit bumbling, but he can at least speak Swedish, usually stands where he is told, and waves enthusiastically. At least, that was the perception until 2010, when the long-whispered rumors of his rampant philandering were finally exposed in a book, Den motvillige monarken (The Reluctant Monarch). Sweden’s tabloids salivated over gory details of the king’s relationships with numerous exotic women, his visits to strip clubs, and his fraternizing with members of the underworld. Hardly appropriate behavior for the chairman of the World Scout Foundation. (The exposé followed allegations that the father of the king’s German-Brazilian wife, Queen Silvia, was a member of the Nazi party. Awkward.) These days, whenever I see Carl Gustaf performing his official duties I can’t shake the feeling that he would much prefer to be trussed up in a dominatrix’s cellar. The

III. Buddhism The Man Who Woke Up Buddhism begins with a man. In his later years, when India was afire with his message and kings themselves were bowing before him, people came to him even as they were to come to Jesus asking what he was.1 How many people have provoked this question—not “Who are you?” with respect to name, origin, or ancestry, but “What are you? What order of being do you belong to? What species do you represent?” Not Caesar, certainly. Not Napoleon, or even Socrates. Only two: Jesus and Buddha. When the people carried their puzzlement to the Buddha himself, the answer he gave provided an identity for his entire message. “Are you a god?” they asked. “No.” “An angel?” “No.” “A saint?” “No.” “Then what are you?” Buddha answered, “I am awake.” His answer became his title, for this is what Buddha means. The Sanskrit root budh denotes both to wake up and to know. Buddha, then, means the “Enlightened One,” or the “Awakened One.” While the rest of the world was wrapped in the womb of sleep, dreaming a dream known as the waking state of human life, one of their number roused himself. Buddhism begins with a man who shook off the daze, the doze, the dream-like vagaries of ordinary awareness. It begins with a man who woke up. His

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolf Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person… or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did… and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies. The man who cremated William Holden. The man who encased the body of Alexander the Great in gold so it would not rot. The men who mummified the Pharaohs. Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

Here are some people who have written books, telling what they did and why they did those things: John Dean. Henry Kissinger. Adolph Hitler. Caryl Chessman. Jeb Magruder. Napoleon. Talleyrand. Disraeli. Robert Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan. Locke. Charlton Heston. Errol Flynn. The Ayatollah Khomeini. Gandhi. Charles Olson. Charles Colson. A Victorian Gentleman. Dr. X. Most people also believe that God has written a Book, or Books, telling what He did and why—at least to a degree—He did those things, and since most of these people also believe that humans were made in the image of God, then He also may be regarded as a person . . . or, more properly, as a Person. Here are some people who have not written books, telling what they did . . . and what they saw: The man who buried Hitler. The man who performed the autopsy on John Wilkes Booth. The man who embalmed Elvis Presley. The man who embalmed—badly, most undertakers say—Pope John XXIII. The twoscore undertakers who cleaned up Jonestown, carrying body bags, spearing paper cups with those spikes custodians carry in city parks, waving away the flies. The man who cremated William Holden. The man who encased the body of Alexander the Great in gold so it would not rot. The men who mummified the Pharaohs. Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.

The lives of thousands of young Frenchmen were ready for this literary bath of blood and sentiment in the 1830's. Their fathers and grandfathers had had their romanticism in the raw: the drama of the French Revolution, the glamour of the Napoleonic campaigns in Europe and in Africa had filled their lives with colour; now the young people, listening with envy to reminiscence and tradition, knew they were living in a world that had become flat and dull. For the unshackling of the Revolution and the pageantry and devotion of the Empire had been succeeded by two colourless Bourbon kings, who had learned nothing from the times and were so stupid as to insist on absolutism without providing any splendour to justify it; and when their line was expelled in a minor revolution in 1830 they were replaced by their even more colourless cousin, Louis Philippe of Orleans, a constitutional monarch whose virtue was that he was more bourgeois than the bourgeois and whom the newspapers caricatured unendingly, strolling with his family past the shops he owned, carrying an umbrella under his arm. In placing him on the throne the French bourgeoisie consolidated the gains it had begun to make forty years before, and his prime minister gave the watchword of the day when he urged his fellow-citizens to make as much money as they possibly could. The French bourgeois — the revolutionaries of 1789, the conquerors of Europe under Napoleon — became rich, smug, tenacious, and fearful of change; and their children and grandchildren, the young men of Flaubert's generation, were raised in an atmosphere of careful, commercial materialism, of complete lack of interest in literature and the arts, and of complete distrust of impulse and imagination.

Every bit of evidence would suggest that the will to be moving is as old as mankind. Take the people in the Old Testament. They were always on the move. First, it's Adam and Eve moving out of Eden. Then it's Cain condemned to be a restless wanderer, Noah drifting on the waters of the Flood, and Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt toward the Promised Land. Some of these figures were out of the Lord's favor and some of them were in it, but all of them were on the move. And as far as the New Testament goes, Our Lord Jesus Christ was what they call a peripatetic--someone who's always going from place to place--whether on foot, on the back of a donkey, or on the wings of angels. But the proof of the will to move is hardly limited to the pages of the Good Book. Any child of ten can tell you that getting-up-and-going is topic number one in the record of man's endeavors. Take that big red book that Billy is always lugging around. It's got twenty-six stories in it that have come down through the ages and almost every one of them is about some man going somewhere. Napoleon heading off on one of his conquests, or King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail. Some of the men in the book are figures from history and some from fancy, but whether real or imagined, almost every one of them is on his way to someplace different from where he started. So, if the will to move is as old as mankind and every child can tell you so, what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked in the hallway of his mind that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put? It isn't due to a loss of vigor. For the transformation doesn't come when men like my father are growing old and infirm. It comes when they are hale, hearty, and at the peak of their vitality. If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, and make an honest living. They'll speak with pride of their ties to the community through the church and the Rotary and the chamber of commerce, and all other manner of stay-puttery. But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man's virtues but from his vices. After all, aren't gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying put? Don't they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you've built up around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man's home may be his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.

“I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it,” Larry Ellison said, walking the grounds of his new Woodside property in spring 2000 with his best friend, Steve Jobs. “I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime.” Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying with Larry about who was history’s greatest person. The Apple co-founder placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead. Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Larry joked that had Leonardo not been gay, he would have been “a perfect fit for the Bush administration.” Jobs, who had studied in India, cited Gandhi’s doctrine of nonviolent revolution as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change. Larry’s choice could not have been more different from Gandhi: the Corsican-born military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. “Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon achieved liberal ends through conservative means,” Larry argued. " - The Billionaire and the Mechanic

The idyll of individual independence was for the opponents of economic reform the most fearsome of prospects. For Turgot’s principal adversary in the Lit de Justice, the advocate-general Antoine-Louis Séguier, to abolish regulations would be to “abandon the certainty of the present for an uncertain future.” It would be to threaten both commerce and the way people think about themselves: “Every manufacturer, every artisan, every worker will regard himself as an isolated being, dependent on himself alone, and free to wander in all the discrepancies of an often disordered imagination; all subordination will be destroyed.” “This sort of freedom is nothing other than a true independence,” Séguier said, and “independence is a vice in the political constitution”; “this freedom would soon transform itself into license . . . this principle of wealth would become a principle of destruction, a source of disorder.”79 As J.-E.-M. Portalis, Napoleon’s minister of religion, wrote in a eulogy to Séguier, the period of Turgot’s reforms was an epoch in which traders had “a great idea of their independence and their strength,” and in which “industry was great, but disquiet was greater still.” “The spirit of discussion and criticism” had “incredible effects,” and “there was nothing constant except the perpetual change in everything.”80 In the Lit de Justice, the last poignant words were the king’s: “My intention is in no way to confound the conditions of men; I wish to reign only by justice and laws.”81

No king establishes a kingdom without pouring blood of a nation.

If you want to win, go to business, to the office, to the conference, or to the public meeting, brim full of vitality and people will realize without any act on your part that a king is in their midst.

He did not simply flutter the pages of his books, but was an attentive reader. There is extant a whole series of copybooks containing Napoleon's notes, penned in an almost illegible handwriting. The contents of these, reprinted, occupies four hundred pages. Here we find a map of the Saxon heptarchy with a list of the kings for three centuries; item, the varieties of foot-race in ancient Crete; item, lists of the Hellenic fortresses in Asia Minor; item, the dates of twenty-seven caliphs, with a note of the strength of their cavalry, and an account of the misconduct of their wives.

Success in life, no matter what one may call success, is very largely a matter of adaptation to environment in such a manner that there is harmony between the individual and his environment. The palace of a king becomes as a hovel of a peasant if harmony does not abound within its walls. Conversely stated, the hut of a peasant may be made to yield more happiness than that of the mansion of the rich man, if harmony obtains in the former and not in the latter.

The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts,” said Mr. Wilde. “You are speaking of the King in Yellow,” I groaned, with a shudder. “He

LOVE is the only bow on life’s dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for Music is the voice of Love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of the wondrous flower-the heart-and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven and we are gods

History is filled with evidences that Leadership by Force cannot endure. The downfall and disappearance of “Dictators” and kings is significant. It means that people will not follow forced leadership indefinitely.

Everything is just as it was before—we have a king and we are once more a nation of superstitions and subjugation. The only thing that is different is that we have two million fewer Frenchmen, all of whom died for what they believed was liberty.

Aunts, I have learned, never admit defeat. In the face of overwhelming forces, or incontestable facts, they simply change tack. Had Napoleon been an aunt, he would never have done anything so vulgar as to ‘retreat’ from Moscow. Rather, he would have framed his return to Paris casually as a question of clothing and etiquette, noting it was unseasonably cold for October and declaring that–like fish and family–armies of invasion go off after three days.

Napoleon, the King, Spiderman, Donald and Joey, Che Guevara, Eva Braun.

But was this really gambling from his point of view? We know from Nicholas’s private writings that he took confidence from comparisons with 1812. He constantly referred to his older brother’s war against Napoleon as a reason why it was possible for Russia to fight alone against the world. ‘If Europe forces me to go to war,’ he wrote in February, ‘I will follow the example of my brother Alexander in 1812, I will venture into uncompromising war against it, I will retreat if necessary to behind the Urals, and will not put down arms as long as the feet of foreign forces trample anywhere on Russian land.’43 This was not a reasoned argument. It was not based on any calculation of the armed forces at his disposal or any careful thought about the practical difficulties the Russians would face in fighting against the superior forces of the European powers, difficulties often pointed out by Menshikov and his other senior commanders, who had warned him several times not to provoke war with Turkey and the Western powers by invading the Danubian principalities. It was a purely emotional reaction, based on the Tsar’s pride and arrogance, on his inflated sense of Russian power and prestige, and perhaps above all on his deeply held belief that he was engaged in a religious war to complete Russia’s providential mission in the world. In all sincerity Nicholas believed that he had been called by God to wage a holy war for the liberation of the Orthodox from Muslim rule, and nothing would divert him from this ‘divine cause’. As he explained to Frederick William, the Prussian king, in March 1854, he was prepared to fight this war alone, against the Western powers, if they sided with the Turks:

A few days after returning to Italy, and two weeks after he and Spalding had launched their enterprise, La Guardia found an order from General Pershing authorizing it. He also received an invitation to lunch with Italian general Armando Diaz. The supreme commander of the Italian Army was so pleased with La Guardia's exploit that he took him to see King Victor Emmanuel. Observers of the meeting between the grandson of a former Garibaldi redshirt and the king were amused to hear La Guardia call the monarch "Manny." They were shocked when he told His Majesty that "the days of monarchies are numbered.

Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I'm not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day. The art museum is called the Louvre and it's shaped like a pyramid and the Mona Lisa lives there along with that statue of the woman missing her arms. And there are cafes or bistros or whatever they call them on every street corner. And mimes. The food is supposed to be good, and the people drink a lot of wine and smoke a lot of cigarettes.

Tyranny, you understand, has been achieved thanks to universal suffrage! The scoundrel has carried out an authoritarian coup d’état by appealing to the ignorant mob! This is a warning to us about the democracy of tomorrow.” “Quite right,” thought Simonini. “This Napoleon is a man for our times. He understands how to keep a grip on people who only seventy years ago were getting excited about the idea of cutting off a king’s head.

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain experienced a period of prosperity and the banks were sufficiently carried away that they invested in widely speculative ventures in Latin America, including the country of Poyais that turned out not to exist.

The cheek of the human race,” he exclaimed, “is something to knock you footless. Begin with the unthinkable universe; narrow down to the minute sun inside it; pass to the satellite of the sun which we are pleased to call the Earth; glance at the myriad algae, or whatever the things are called, of the sea, and at the uncountable microbes, going backwards to a minus infinity, which populate ourselves. Drop an eye on those quarter million other species which I have mentioned, and upon the unmentionable expanses of time through which they have lived. Then look at man, an upstart whose eyes, speaking from the point of view of nature, are scarcely open further than the puppy’s. There he is, the—the gollywog—” He was becoming so excited that he had no time to think of suitable epithets. “There he is, dubbing himself Homo sapiens, forsooth, proclaiming himself the lord of creation, like that ass Napoleon putting on his own crown! There he is, condescending to the other animals: even condescending, God bless my soul and body, to his ancestors! It is the Great Victorian Hubris, the amazing, ineffable presumption of the nineteenth century

Mystery men with strange persuasive powers, sometimes good but more often evil, are described and discussed in many books with no UFO or religious orientation. A dark gentleman in a cloak and hood is supposed to have handed Thomas Jefferson the design for the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States (you will find this on a dollar bill). Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and many others are supposed to have had enigmatic meetings with these odd personages. These stories turn up in such unexpected places as Madame Du Barry’s memoirs. She claimed repeated encounters with a strange young man who would approach her suddenly on the street and give her startling prophecies about herself. He pointedly told her that the last time she would see him would serve as an omen for a sudden reversal of her fortunes. Sure enough, on April 27, 1774, as she and her ailing lover, King Louis XV, were heading for the palace of Versailles, the youthful mystery man appeared one final time. “I mechanically directed my eyes toward the iron gate leading to the garden,” she wrote. “I felt my face drained of blood as a cry of horror escaped my lips. For, leaning against the gate was that singular being.” The coach was halted, and three men searched the area thoroughly but could find no trace of him. He had vanished into thin air. Soon afterward Madame Du Barry’s illustrious career in the royal courts ended, and she went into exile. Malcolm X, the late leader of a black militant group, reported a classic experience with a paraphysical “man in black” in his autobiography. He was serving a prison sentence at the time, and the entity materialized in his prison cell: "As I lay on my bed, I suddenly became aware of a man sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit, I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn’t black, and he wasn’t white. He was light-brown-skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair. I looked right into his face. I didn’t get frightened. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I couldn’t move, I didn’t speak, and he didn’t. I couldn’t place him racially—other than I knew he was a non-European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat there. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone.

On the evening before the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon and a few of his officers were riding past a pyramid. A man wrapped in a red cloak stepped out of the pyramid and motioned to Napoleon to come forth. Napoleon obliged, telling his officers to wait outside as he stepped into the pyramid with this red-mantled stranger. After an hour of uneasiness, the officers were ready to enter and ensure Napoleon’s safety, but Napoleon stepped out of the pyramid. With a satisfied smile, he demanded they prepare for battle with the Egyptians. The officers were confused, given his previous reluctance, but they followed his orders, leading to their victory in the Battle of the Pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza The year after his invasion, Napoleon returned to Egypt, to the Great Pyramid of Giza. After discovering the Rosetta Stone—an ancient stone that helped scientists to understand how to read hieroglyphics—Napoleon began to believe that the pyramids held great mystique and spirituality. He spent the night inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, inside the king’s chamber that was about 32 feet long and 16 feet wide. For seven hours, he sat in the dark room, not emerging until sunrise. However, when he stepped out of the pyramid, his face was pale. Visibly shaken and terrified, he refused to tell anyone what he’d experienced, saying, “If I told you the truth, you would not believe me.” Even years later, when one of Napoleon’s men asked about the experience, Napoleon considered telling him but then decided against it, saying, “No, never mind” (Shkuro, 2019, para. 2). Considering Napoleon admired Alexander the Great, who had also spent the night in the king’s chambers and had an experience, some believe he may have been trying to claim a piece of Alexander’s legacy in that respect. He’s even been said to have created stories about himself that aligned with Alexander. Though, even his officers said he was clearly disturbed by whatever he saw.

Coffee has long been a subject of controversy for humanity. King Charles II of England, Murad IV of the Ottoman Empire, and even Henry Ford have sought to banish coffee from their empires and enterprises, while Pope Clement VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, and President John Adams championed the beverage.

He had to so sublime an extent that great quality of royalty—an almost imbecile unconsciousness of everybody, that people went after him as they do after kings—to see what would be the first thing or person he would take notice of.

The Major Attributes of Leadership. The following are important factors of leadership:— 1.   Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2.   Self-control. The man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3.   A keen sense of justice. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4.   Definiteness of decision. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself, cannot lead others successfully. 5.   Definiteness of plans. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6.   The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7.   A pleasing personality. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a pleasing personality. 8. Sympathy and understanding. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. Mastery of detail. Successful leadership calls for mastery of the details of the leader’s position. 10. Willingness to assume full responsibility. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. Cooperation. The successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power, and power calls for cooperation. There are two forms of leadership. The first, and by far the most effective, is leadership by consent of, and with the sympathy of the followers. The second is leadership by force, without the consent and sympathy of the followers. History is filled with evidences that leadership by force cannot endure. The downfall and disappearance of dictators and kings is significant. It means that people will not follow forced leadership indefinitely. Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, were examples of leadership by force. Their leadership passed. Leadership-by-consent of the followers is the only brand which can endure! Men may follow the forced leadership temporarily, but they will not do so willingly.

It went on to purport that Constantine – then based in the later Empire’s eastern seat in what would become Constantinople – had decided to site himself there because it would not be right for him to be located in the city where the head of the Christian faith reigned. The supposed donation was not revealed publicly until the mid-700s when it was used in 754 by Pope Stephen to negotiate with Frankish King Pepin about the division of lands between the two rival authorities. It was wheeled out again in 1054 when Leo IX was in dispute with the patriarch of Constantinople over the rights and powers of Roman rule. It became an essential document in later years as popes reacted to challenges against their authority in the growing post-Dark Age Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries. It was, though, entirely fictitious. Thought now to have been concocted by the papal chancery to provide retrospective authority for the increasingly strained church, it was not until the 15th century, nearly 700 years after its appearance, that scholars began openly questioning its veracity. It was finally debunked in 1518. It should have been easy. One of the giveaways to the forgery was Constantine’s apparent bequeathing of his own city to papal spiritual control. Although supposedly written in 315, Constantine did not in fact found Constantinople until 326, 11 years after his apparent donation.

Leonardo began painting Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, working occasionally on the piece for four years, before moving to France. He worked intermittently on the painting for another three years, finishing it shortly before he died in 1519. Most likely through the heirs of Leonardo’s assistant Salai, the king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Château Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV, who moved it to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was relocated to the Louvre. Napoleon I had the portrait moved to his personal bedroom in the Tuileries Palace, but it was later returned to the Louvre.

Germany was then a collection of states that had been bundled together in a union called the German Confederation in 1815 after Napoleon was defeated. (The country would not exist as one nation until 1871.) Some of the states had sided with France in the Napoleonic Wars, but the largest and most powerful—Prussia—was allied with England. One small state, Hanover, was, oddly, ruled from London by the English kings, who were Hanoverian by heritage.

Everyday since I have met you I have loved you a thousand times more. (Napolean Bonaparte)

The [Crimean War] victory was bitter sweet for the Ottomans, their weak Islamic realm saved by Christian soldiers. To show his gratitude and keep the West at bay, Sultan Abdulmecid was forced, in measures known as Tanzimat--reform--to centralize his administration, decree absolute equality for all minorities regardless of religion, and allow the Europeans all manner of once-inconceivable liberties. He presented St. Anne's, the Crusader church that had become Saladin's madrassa, to Napoleon III. In March 1855, the Duke of Brabant, the future King Leopold II of Belgium, exploiter of the Congo, was the first European allowed to visit the Temple Mount: its guards--club-wielding Sudanese from Darfur--had to be locked in their quarters for fear they would attack the infidel. In June, Archduke Maximilian, the heir to the Habsburg empire--and ill-fated future Emperor of Mexico--arrived with the officers of his flagship. The Europeans started to build hulking imperial-style Christian edifices in a Jerusalem building boom. Ottoman statesmen were unsettled and there would be a violent Muslim backlash, but, after the Crimean War, the West had invested too much to leave Jerusalem alone.

Louis Napoleon, another of the Emperor’s brothers, was King of Holland, and all those men were nonentities while Soult, who knew his own high worth, was a mere duke and it was not enough.