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TWO HANDWRITTEN AMENDMENTS to Napoleon’s will that the late French emperor had drawn up because he feared the British would destroy the original will be auctioned in Paris.
Artemisia Auctions, which is handling the sale, expects the manuscripts to fetch up to €120,000 when they are auctioned off on 6 November at the Drouot auction house.
The codicils, or amendments, were penned in 1821 by Napoleon’s field assistant, the Count of Montholon, when the former French emperor was in exile on the British island of Saint Helena.
“I want my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine among the French people I loved so much,” says one of the amendments, written on 16 April 1821.
Napoleon died just a few weeks later on 5 May.
In another amendment, he lists his possessions in Saint Helena, including furniture, jewellery, silverware, porcelain, weapons and books to be divided among his closest aides and his “good and dear mother”.
Napoleon personally wrote his own last testament, which is on display in the National Archives in Paris, but he had several copies made in case the British destroyed the original.
The codicils were in the possession of the Montholon family, who have now decided to put them up for sale.
Pierre-Jean Chalencon, the head of the Cercle France Napoleon group which aims to preserve the memory of the famous French leader, told AFP that Montholon had “used the same paper, the same ink and the same quill as Napoleon”.
He said Napoleon had been right in not trusting the British as they kept the original “for decades” before returning it to France.
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Napoleon was actually average height for a man of his height. It was British propaganda that falsly alleged he was short.
He was probably an average age for a man of his age too!
Heard that the other day when abusing a mate.. Really took the fun out of it.. Ha
Lord Nelson was a short arse though.
*man of his time. Oops.
How different would the world be if Napoleon had won and defeated the Rothschild dynasty.
Rothschild still one of the biggest players in the world.
Derek, blaming the worlds problems on one family?
Over more than two centuries, the Rothschild family has frequently been the subject of conspiracy theories. These theories take differing forms, such as claiming that the family controls the world’s wealth and financial institutions, or encouraged or discouraged wars between governments. Discussing this and similar views, the historian Niall Ferguson wrote, “As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory. By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. Now having made their money, they stood to lose more than they gained from conflict. The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind Britain. Now they would sit on the sidelines.”
Napoleon Dynamite good film
That hashtag is fantastic #smallmanswill
Thank you Paddy – I was proud of that one :)
A butcher, defeated by an Irishman.
He unwillingly left his willy to a Corsican priest and it now belongs to a lady in New Jersey who wants over $100,000 for it.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1988719_1988728_1988695,00.html
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