Free Republic

In his conquest of Europe Napoleon encounters and abolishes the Inquisition and its ongoing atrocities in France, Spain and northern Italy. But with Napoleon's fall from power the Inquisition returns with vengeance. Despite causing substantial public relations damage to the Catholic Church in the modern era it is not substantially curtained until the Church is conquered by the newly unified nation of Italy.

That Napoleon Bonaparte, he simply can’t leave well enough alone. He already conquered Malta. Most of the Maltese were even okay with it. But then he started disassembling the Maltese nobility and restricting the church. This displeased Dun Mikiel Xerri, and it was on this date in 1799 that Xerri was shot dead for spearheading a Maltese revolt against the French. Born on September 29, 1737 in Zebbug, Malta, Xerri studied as a young man at various universities throughout Europe. Learned, he becme a Roman Catholic priest and dabbled in both philosophy and mathematics, living warmly under the rule of...

During a discussion on military plans over the ages on his platform, X (previously Twitter), tech entrepreneur Elon Musk insisted on never invading Russia. Musk argued in a post on Thursday that Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, a British naval commander in the 18th and early 19th centuries, was “incredible.” He also complimented Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, who was one of the military leaders who destroyed Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. “Wellington is frequently underappreciated. “Not on Napoleon’s level, but still, in my opinion, one of the best generals in history,” SpaceX and Tesla CEO...

Rising above the 7th Arrondissement of Paris is the gold dome of Les Invalides, a landmark that serves as both a French military museum and the final resting place of the nation’s greatest general, Napoleon Bonaparte. The engravings surrounding his sarcophagus depict him as one of the ancients, adorned with laurels and togas next to tablets listing his vast accomplishments. Napoleon’s legacy as both a military mastermind and a statesman is hard to summarize — and complicated to assess. Similarly, there’s just too much to the man to capture in a single film. Still, the tagline of celebrated director Ridley...

If, at 85, Ridley Scott has reached the final season of his filmmaking career, Napoleon is the ideal work of wintry grandeur to mark it. Scott’s 28th feature is a magnificently hewn slab of dad cinema with a chill wind whistling over its battlefields and round its bones: its palette is so cold, even the red in the tricolore is often the shade of dried blood. Spanning 32 years, from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to its title character’s death on St Helena in 1821, it casts Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise, reign and downfall as both a prickly...

Ridley Scott has been typically dismissive of critics taking issue with his forthcoming movie Napoleon, particularly French ones. While his big-screen epic, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the embattled French emperor with Vanessa Kirby as his wife Josephine, has earned the veteran director plaudits in the UK, French critics have been less gushing, with Le Figaro saying the film could have been called “Barbie and Ken under the Empire,” French GQ calling the film “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally clumsy” and Le Point magazine quoting biographer Patrice Gueniffey calling the film “very anti-French and pro-British.” “When you start to go ‘oh...

From Our Own Correspondent. PARIS, Friday, Aug. 21, 1863. It is perfectly evident at this moment that the Empire programme, which has been carried out in Mexico, was conceived at a time when the dissolution of the Union was believed to be a certainty, and that this programme was based upon that belief. This programme once adopted, it became the interest and the constant desire of the French Government to aid and render certain in every way possible the dissolution of the Union, and thus we understand the different at tempts at mediation, and the shameless and unprincipled manner in...

He came from nothing. He conquered everything. From acclaimed director Ridley Scott, #Napoleon is exclusively in movie theaters this Thanksgiving. Watch the official trailer now.

he old, sloping Jewish cemetery in Haditch, Ukraine, is one of those rare windows into the past. Look out from the hilltop, as I did recently, and a vista nearly unchanged in two centuries opens up below. During the winter you’ll see a frozen, grassy clearing dotted with barren birch trees descending to the banks of the placid Psel River. There, at the bottom and to the right, sits the original red brick mausoleum of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), the Alter Rebbe. The founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, Rabbi Schneur Zalman lived and taught in White Russia...

Pope Leo XIII was born in 1810. At that time James Madison was president of the United States and Napoleon was master of Europe. This remarkable film was shot in 1896.

The French Revolution and the American-Catholic Today I’m 98% sure my history text book in Catholic grade school portrayed the French Revolution as a good thing. We learned the aristocrats were against “fraternity, equality and liberty” and that is apparently all we needed to know as 7th graders in a Catholic grade school in Denver.  But the reality is that the French Revolution was a mass martyrdom of Catholics. Though done in the name of dis-empowering aristocrats (only 30 of the 1400 executed in the initial “Terror” in Paris were aristocrats) this bloody revolution was nothing short of a revolt...

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt greatly alarmed the Orthodox Christian church. Many in the church saw the invasion as a fulfillment of Daniel 11:42, where the Antichrist is prophesied to invade and take Egypt. Daniel 11:42: “He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape.” The Orthodox church was also alarmed by the attempt made by Napoleon to create a Jewish state in Palestine. This regathering of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel would fulfill many Biblical prophecies that Jews spread out to the four corners of the world would once...

Napoleon had also raised alarm throughout the Christian church all over Europe by his broad appeal to the followers of the dominant religions of the world. It has been believed by the church throughout the centuries that the antichrist would be “all things to all people”, and Napoleon’s use of religion for political purposes seemed to eerily resemble that. In his 1798 Egyptian campaign, Napoleon attempted to win over the Muslims throughout the middle east by announcing his faith in the religion of Islam: “People of Egypt! You will be told by our enemies that I am come to destroy...

French historians have demanded the return of Napoleon III in the wake of Brexit, whose remains lie in a tomb in Hampshire. The emperor, who was the final monarch to rule France before he died in exile in 1873, was laid to rest in a church in Farnborough. But historians in France are hoping to have his remains repatriated as part of a post-Brexit trade deal.

In 1794, British Admiral Horatio Nelson lost his right eye capturing Corsica and his right arm attacking the Canary Islands in 1797. He captured six and destroyed seven of Napoleon's ships at the Battle of the Nile, trapping Napoleon in Muslim Egypt. Admiral Nelson assaulted Copenhagen. Horatio Nelson is best remembered for winning one of the greatest naval battles in history, the Battle of Trafalgar, OCTOBER 21, 1805. The daring 47-year-old Nelson defeated 36-year-old Napoleon's combined French and Spanish fleets, consisting of 33 ships with 2,640 guns off the coast of Spain. On reason for the victory was the speed...

September 7 is the anniversary of the battle of Borodino in 1812, at which Napoleon's Grande Armée grappled bitterly with massed Russian forces defending Moscow under Marshal Mikhail Kutusov during Napoleon's invasion of Russia. Kutusov suffered significant losses, and the French occupied Moscow a week later, but in a month, Napoleon's disastrous retreat toward the west had begun. As Tolstoy noted in War and Peace, "The cudgel of the people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic might, and caring nothing for good taste and procedure, with dull-witted simplicity but sound judgment, it rose and fell, making no...

After his education, he was commissioned in the French military in 1785, and quickly advanced. Napoleon's expertise in the use of mobile artillery and the military tactics of "envelopment" and "divide and conquer" resulted in him becoming one of the greatest military commanders of all time. Beginning in 1792, France experienced a Reign of Terror. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were were beheaded in 1793. When the French Revolution began, Napoleon was an artillery officer. In April of 1795, Napoleon was ordered to help smash a counter-revolution of Catholic royalists in War in the Vendée. Napoleon claimed to...

The Stanley Kubrick exhibition at London’s Design Museum examines the making of every one of the extraordinary director’s films. But its opening section is devoted to a film he didn’t make: a biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte. As odd as that might seem, Kubrick fans are almost as fixated on Napoleon – to use its working title – as they are on anything else in his awe-inspiring canon. Critics regularly hail it as the greatest and most tantalising unfinished film of all. Besides, the story of how Napoleon was nearly-but-not-quite made exemplifies Kubrick’s sky-high ambition, his ravenous intellectual curiosity and his...

An excavation in a peculiar place — under the foundation of a dance floor in Russia — has uncovered the remains of one of Napoleon Bonaparte's favorite generals: a one-legged man who was killed by a cannonball more than 200 years ago, news sources report. Gen. Charles Etienne Gudin fought with Napoleon during the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812. On July 6 of this year, an international team of French and Russian archaeologists discovered what are believed to be his remains, in Smolensk, a city about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Moscow, according to Reuters. After his...

Full title: 5000 people reenacted the battle of Waterloo in front of 60 000 spectators for its 200th anniversary, making it the greatest war reconstitution of all time. It took place exactly where it happened in 1815. Pictures by Olivier Papegnies. Link