2023-11-22 08:00:00
“I would have loved to realise this dream,” he noted, “It would have brought me new glory.”
Among the grand schemes were building a submarine or sending a flotilla of pirates to liberate the former emperor. Dominique You, a New Orleans‒based privateer and frequent collaborator of famed pirate Jean Lafitte, was said to have organised a group that would cross the ocean on the yacht Seraphine – an expedition financed by Girod, who was believed to have offered his third-floor apartments to the exiled dictator. Before You might make the trip, Napoleon died in 1821 from stomach cancer.
The Napoleonic legacy in The Big Easy
Remnants of the Napoleonic past exist all around New Orleans. Leathem explained, “Pierre-Benjamin Buisson, a French surveyor who fought as an artillery captain under Napoleon, laid out the neighbourhood around a central street he called Napoleon Avenue. There are streets named Marengo, Milan, Jena, Austerlitz, following some of Napoleon’s great victories.”
The Historic New Orleans Collection has a number of objects related to Napoleon; as well as correspondence on the retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to Franceyou can also see miniature portraits of the emperor and his beloved wife, Josephine.
The Louisiana State Museum has an embroidered bee from Napoleon’s coronation gown, as well as a bronze death mask – one of nine cast from the original plaster – made by the dictator’s physician, Dr Francesco Antommarchi, and gifted to the city in 1834.
Louisiana State University‒Shreveport‘s collection contains hundreds of volumes on Napoleon and a large number of caricatures, including an almost complete portfolio by British political commentator George Cruikshank.
And there’s Napoleon House, a National Historic Landmark. Within its patinaed walls it preserves 200 years of history, from its French Creole beginnings to its early-1900s transformation into an Italian grocery and modern iteration as a restaurant and bar.
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