h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821 - A2842076
Author: Orcus - U94957

OK, talk about finding a hole in the Guide! I saw a fascinating documentary on this guy through last week on UK TV history and had a look to see what h2g2 had to say on the man.
Result? Not a sausage. Hopefully now this will be fixed.

The entry is divided into two parts, this charting the rise of Napoleon and another will chart the fall. The second half will be submitted later today when I've finished doing all the links in it.

Enjoy and be critical, I'm no Napoleonic expert and so please feel free to correct any factual errors if you see them.

Bye for now,

Orcus

The second half PR thread can be found here F48874?thread=451226

Hi Orcus - wow, what a tour de force! On first read, well done indeed!

Small comments below:-

"little corporal" - This is explained later on but might be taken up the wrong way. You mention later that he was made a Brig. General at the age of 24, and then subsequently became a General. This is very unlike Hitler, who remained at the rank of corporal until his death.

"italian republic" - Italian republic. Bonaparte was not of French origin at all. His dad fought the French when they tried to invade Corsica a few years before the sale.

"His formative years were quiet on a world domination scale of reference" - I'm not sure how well this reads. He was sent into a French military school at an early age, and although he was a bright and able student, few people would have singled him out as a future world-leader.

"priviledges" - privileges

The royalist put-down where he trained his cannons on a mob in Paris is seen as his real break into power. Until then he was relatively unknown.

"and treated independently with Austria" - ?? Signed a treaty with Austria?

"Coup de Brumaire" - you might note that the Revolutionaries had changed the calendar. Brumaire was the new name given to a month.

roman catholicism - Roman Catholicism

Following the defear of the Second Coalition - defeat

Great stuff!

Woodpigeon

Thanks, I've added a couple of footnotes with regard to the comments you made and have made some minor corrections.

Orcus

Hi Orcus, looks good indeed!

Perhaps just a slight quibble about your description of the revolution: you suggest that a few months after the fall of the Bastille the King was dead... but in fact he not only survived until January 1793, he was actually looking like making it as a constitional monarch along British lines until the flight to Varennes.

perhaps a slight change to that para might avoid the misunderstanding.

more soon
spiff

Fair enough, I wondered a little if that looked right. It was seeing a mob humiliating the king through his bedroom window when Napoleon was in Paris that inspired his Whiff of Grapeshot later on I believe. So yeah he was around for a while, I'll tinker with it tomorrow at some point as I'm a little busy atm.

W**k

*finds the time*

OK, I've changed that, is it better now? I've also used this opportunity to at least partially explain who the Jacobins were. I used the word several times before without any real explanation so I'm a bit happier now generally

Hi Orcus,

hmm, sorry to be difficult, but whilst the changes you've made do improve things, I'm still not sure you've been entirely accurate...

Of course, I fully understand that putting the revolution in a nutshell is quite a challenge!

This paragraph:

<>

is not really accurate.

How about:

In 1789 a National Assembly in Paris had defied the King and the representatives of the nobility and the church to demand far-reaching reform of an unfair administration. In the summer, the citizens of Paris rose and famously stormed the Bastille prison, beginning a chain of events that would see King Louis imprisoned and eventually executed, and in 1792 France declared a Republic by a radical revolutionary government.

well, just my thoughts to date. more to come...
spiff

hmm, then there's:

<>

I'm not sure the leadership of the army had suffered quite that much. Wasn't the the chap who won at Valmy quite an old hand... er... forgotten his name, but he did quite well under the revolutionary govts for a while at least. Was in the Comite de Salut Public, etc.

more on that... I really should be doing else-what, so back later.

spiff

Well with regards to the second post there I got that stuff on most of the good generals being dead from the documentary I watched. They did not say that *all* of them were dead by this point and neither did I. Certainly they did do some fairly serious damage to the military leadership as happened with Stalin's regime before the Nazi invasion. Purges are not good things if you suddenly find you need to fight enemies at your door.
That is the point I want to make and would rather leave that alone. I am perfectly aware that the war of the first coalition had many more campaigns than those involving Napoleon but I have to focus or I end up writing volumes.

With regard to your first post, that sounds good but I would like to leave in the three aims of liberte, egalite and fraternite as I return briefly to one or two of these later on. I'll give that bit a wee rewrite along your lines. I don't want to dwell on the revolution too much though as that is the subject of another article

OK, I've rejigged the section on the revolution and have toned down the sentences regarding purges of generals. I remember reading somewhere that one French general defected to the Austrians after losing a battle in this perious rather than face the Guillotine so I've put in a word or two to hint at that.

How does it look now?

haven't got time to look at the changes this pm, but will do soon.

if you're planning to get something done on the Rev itself, perhaps you'd be interested on collaborating with me in getting my work in progress to a finished state...

cya
spiff

Ummm, wasn't planning on it really I'm afraid, sorry.

Spookily there was a news story on Napoleon only yesterday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3913213.stm

I'll have to let Verc know about these entries, so we can link to them in the Sharpe entry we're writing.

Hullo. Good work. Certainly fit to hold that hole in the Guide.

Just two quibbles and I'll move on to part two - you refer to him as Nepleon once, and say that Mack surrended, instead of surrendered.

Changes made

*hopes this gets picked soon since the other half has already been recommended*

Waits for Scout...