Posted on 08/18/2019 7:33:20 PM PDT by Perseverando
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 be in poor health and so did not participate in the butchery of an estimated 300,000.
France had an alliance with the Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire, begun in 1536 between King Francis I and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.
The treaty was considered a blasphemous scandal by the rest of Christian Europe, nevertheless, it continued for most of two and a half centuries.
In early fall of 1795, Napoleon was ordered to go to the Ottoman capital in Constantinople, to upgrade the military with his artillery expertise. Napoleon refused.
One wonders how different history would have been had Napoleon's artillery expertise been in the service of the Turkish Sultan.
In Paris, a crowd of royalist counter-revolutionaries gathered in the streets. On October 5, 1795, Napoleon ordered cannons to be fired at them.
1,400 royalists died and the rest fled.
Napoleon reportedly commented that he had cleared the streets with "a whiff of grapeshot."
The new French government, called the Directory, quickly promoted Napoleon.
Meanwhile, at the same time as the French Revolution, a slave revolt erupted on the French island of Haiti (Saint-Domingue).
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Yes, this seems to sum him up quite well. About his only "success" was the Louisian Purchase to the US. For that the French should never forgive him. Their loss, our gain.
He showed genius, of that there is no doubt, but his reach certainly exceeded his grasp.
He also had the grave misfortune of having to face Nelson at sea, and Wellington on land.
For later
The period press would’ve mocked President Trump for suggesting such a federal purchase of land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Millett
Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist...
Millett was a leading figure in the women's movement,[6] or second-wave feminism, of the 1960s and 1970s.[19] In 1966, Millett became a committee member of National Organization for Women[13] and subsequently joined the New York Radical Women,[12] Radicalesbians, and Downtown Radical Women organizations.[15]
She contributed the piece "Sexual politics (in literature)" to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.[20]
She became a spokesperson for the feminist movement following the success of the book Sexual Politics (1970), but struggled with conflicting perceptions of her as arrogant and elitist, and the expectations of others to speak for them, which she covered in her 1974 book, Flying.[6]
Millett was one of the first writers to describe the modern concept of patriarchy as the society-wide subjugation of women.[21] Biographer Gayle Graham Yates said that "Millett articulated a theory of patriarchy and conceptualized the gender and sexual oppression of women in terms that demanded a sex role revolution with radical changes of personal and family lifestyles". Betty Friedan's focus, by comparison, was to improve leadership opportunities socially and politically and economic independence for women.
...Mental illness affected Millett's personal and professional life from 1973,[23][37] when she lived with her husband in California and was an activist and teacher at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoshimura and Sally, Kate's eldest sister, became concerned about Kate's extreme emotions.[18] Her family claimed that she went for as many as five consecutive nights without sleep and could talk nonsensically for hours. During a screening of one of her films at University of California, Berkeley, Millett "began talking incoherently". According to her sister, Mallory Millett-Danaher, "There were pained looks of confusion in the audience, then people whispered and slowly got up to leave."[37] Sally, who was a law student in Nebraska, signed papers to have her younger sister committed. Millett was forcefully taken and held in psychiatric facilities for ten days. She signed herself out using a release form intended for voluntary admissions. During a visit to St. Paul, Minnesota, a couple of weeks later, her mother asked Kate to visit a psychiatrist and, based upon the psychiatrist's suggestion, signed commitment papers for Kate. She was released within three days,[18] having won a sanity trial,[50] due to the efforts of her friends and a pro bono attorney...
In 1980, with support of two friends and photojournalist Sophie Keir, Millett stopped taking lithium to improve her mental clarity, relieve diarrhea and hand tremors, and better uphold her philosophies about mental health and treatment. She began to feel alienated and was "snappish" as Keir watched for behavioral changes.[18] Her behavior was that of psychiatric drug withdrawal, including "mile-a-minute" speech, which turned her peaceful art colony to "a quarrelsome dystopia."[46] Mallory Millett, having talked to Keir, tried to get her committed but was unsuccessful due to New York's laws concerning involuntary commitments.[18]
Millett visited Ireland in the fall of 1980 as an activist. Upon her intended return to the United States, there was a delay at the airport and she extended her stay in Ireland. She was involuntarily committed in Ireland after airport security "determined from someone in New York" that she had a "mental illness" and had stopped taking lithium.[18] While confined, she was heavily drugged. To combat the aggressive pharmaceutical program of "the worst bin of all", she counteracted the effects of Thorazine and lithium by eating a lot of oranges or hid the pills in her mouth for later disposal. She said of the times when she was committed, "To remain sane in a bin is to defy its definition," she said.
I guess that to be a military dictator one needs a mix of genius and madness.
My respect for him, however minimal, is tied more to the fact that he ended the Christian persecutions that Robespierre and his ilk started, largely left them alone. It’s for that reason alone I have any respect for him, certainly far moreso than Robespierre and his ilk. And make no mistake, he’s a military genius compared to Robespierre and his ilk.
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