January 13, 2022 Page 7
Travel from front page
judgment on our mortal affairs to serving as
just another propaganda tool for propping up
the French imperial regime.
Rueil-Malmaison, France.
The Château de Malmaison is one of the
most beautiful palaces in France, a delicate
symphony in blond sandstone amid forests,
meadows, orangeries, and exquisitely scented
rose gardens. Joséphine de Beauharnais
bought the property and nearly bankrupted
her husband while turning it into a luxurious
haven away from the noise of Parisian
politics. Napoléon gave Joséphine the estate
in their divorce, then retreated here himself
after the final defeat to nurse his regrets and
await the judgment of his enemies.
Waterloo, Belgium.
Napoléon nearly always faced armies far
larger than his. His other contribution to the
art of war was to split those enemies and
out-maneuver and attack each component
before they could combine. The strategy
worked brilliantly, until the Duke of Wellington
adapted Napoléon’s own artillery
tactics at Waterloo to hold out and await the
arrival of his Prussian allies. The greatest
cavalry commander of the age, Maréchal
Michel Ney, led one lunatic charge after
another at the British guns, but failed to die
the heroic death he so desperately desired.
By the end of the day, the famous French
martial élan—the spirit that had burst out of
France in revolution and then sustained an
Empire for the ages—was utterly crushed.
And on the Silver Screen...
Eleven years of nonstop warfare sent the
exhausted Emperor into permanent exile on
the British island of Saint Helena in the South
Atlantic. As much as the world had respected
and, in many cases, loved the man, the sighs
of relief could be heard from one capital to
another, including in Paris. This is the point
in time where the four-part 2002 mini-series
“Napoléon” takes up the story, with the
deposed Emperor casting his thoughts back
through the public and private extremes of
his life. No one movie can entirely explain
the Napoleonic phenomenon, but if you’re
looking for a pre-travel introduction to the
man and the country and continent he so
dominated, you could do much worse.
Next up: Pasta, Amore e Fantasia.
Ben & Glinda Shipley, published writers
and photographers, share their expertise and
experience of their many world travels. If
you have any questions or interest in a particular
subject, please email them at web@
heraldpublications.com. •
Ambition in Paris—third-floor walk-up and a junior officer’s
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results. The port had gone over to the
Royalists and the British, and the French
Revolutionaries were little more than an
ineffective, if energetic, rabble. From the
heights above the city, you can easily picture
how Napoléon’s leadership and re-invention
of the role of artillery sent the traitors and
foreigners packing and made him a French
national hero.
Colle del Gran San Bernardo,
Switzerland.
At 8,100 feet above sea level, the Great St.
Bernard Pass through the alps of southern
Switzerland has become the standard for vicious
weather, stranded travelers, and large,
fluffy rescue dogs with casks of brandy tied
around their necks. With superb organization
and immense personal courage, Napoléon
personally shoved 40,000 troops through a
gauntlet we’d never dream of driving offseason.
The Austrians were just as shocked
when he pounced on their armies on the
Italian plain of Marengo, just north of Genoa.
Palais des Tuileries,
Paris, France.
From the beginning, Napoléon scorned
Versailles and everything it stood for at the
heart of the despised and fossilized Ancien
Régime. Every one of his major political
acts was approved by a plebiscite, however
sketchy. So when he took power, his favorite
palace sat right in the center of the noisy Paris
Mob, between the Louvre and the Tuileries
Gardens. In the Commune of 1870—the revolution
that started Karl Marx on his lifelong
quest for disruption—Napoléon’s old palace
was deliberately burned to the foundations.
Austerlitz, Czech Republic.
If you hope for grand, lasting monuments
to your military triumphs, don’t pile up your
victories in enemy territory. Napoléon’s two
greatest battles, here and at Jena-Auerstedt in
Germany, are barely marked on the ground,
yet figure in any textbook on military strategy.
Before Napoléon, armies would meet,
too many soldiers would die, and the loser
would vacate the field of battle with his forces
more or less intact. Napoléon changed all
that when he made it his objective to pursue
enemy armies to utter destruction.
Notre Dame de Paris, France.
When Napoléon took the imperial crown
out of Pope Pius VII’s hands and placed it
on his own head and then on Josephine’s, he
ended the relationship between the Roman
Catholic Church and imperial power that had
existed since the Middle Ages. The church
went from infallibly pronouncing God’s
Emperor in Paris—Arc de Triomphe, with the victories and the
Maréchaux who won them.
Downfall at Waterloo—blasted into history by the Iron Duke’s British cannoneers. Triumph at Austerlitz—commercial cement silos for a memorial, with a hidden plinth or two.
“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better,
I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to.
Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”
– Anthony Bourdain