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An extremely rare ‘bicorne,’ or 2-pointed hat, that was worn by Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo was sold at auction in France for $325,000 on Monday. The hat went under the hammer for €280,000 ($325,052) at Lyon-based auction house De Baecque. The bicorne had a pre-sale estimate of €30,000 to €40,000 ($34,881 to $46,441). De Baecque told Fox News that the hat was bought by a private European collector who is "passionate" about the period of the First French Empire. The bloody battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815, saw Napoleon’s forces defeated by a British-led allied army....

On today's "Coffee and Markets" podcast historian David Pietrusza discusses the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo with host Brad Jackson.

The Duke of Wellington famously described his first and last battlefield confrontation with Napoleon as a “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” He was referring, of course, to the Battle of Waterloo, a bloody, furious one-day engagement in and around a village in northern Belgium of that name, fought 200 years ago today between France’s Army of the North and an allied army of British, Prussian, and Dutch troops under Wellington’s overall command.

This is kinda interesting, seeing the English repel repeated assaults,  then the Prussians came-in from the east and hit the French flank: 'Every puppy has his day, everybody has to pay...' (click pic to play Stonewall Jackson) BritishBattles.com   Reddit   YouTube

I fear that the French are wasting their time. The problem is that every time they look at Waterloo they say that Napoleon won on points. Napoleon’s army was the best he had commanded since he advanced into Russia – an army of veterans, 200,000 strong. Wellington referred to his force as “an infamous army”. My predecessor, David Chandler, who wrote the definitive account of Napoleon’s campaigns, said that the Emperor’s idea had been to get between the Prussians and the British. “I will defeat the British and the Prussians, then the Austrians, then the Russians, and Europe will be...

This Day In History | General Interest NAPOLEON DEFEATED AT WATERLOO: June 18, 1815 At Waterloo in Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte suffers defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington, bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history. Beginning in 1812, Napoleon began to encounter the first significant defeats of his military career, suffering through a disastrous invasion of Russia, losing Spain to the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War, and enduring total defeat against an allied force by 1814. Exiled to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, he escaped to France in early 1815 and...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Napoleon Bonaparte was the most prominent statesman and military leader to result from the French Revolution. He built an empire from these ashes, and his campaigns are still studied by military schools worldwide. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top...

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...

French bureaucrats gathering information for the national census may need to go back to history class after they sent a letter to Napoleon.Official census body Insee addressed a letter to the late French emperor – and were told to forward their request to Saint Peter.Insee is now facing questions about the accuracy of their work as Napoleon has been dead for nearly 200 years. (edit)

Forth In A Series Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Unlike any leader before him, Napoleon Bonaparte engineered his rise to power, almost out of nowhere, not only through military prowess — but also through his mastery of propaganda to stir the public. "What strikes one almost immediately is the depth to which Bonaparte understood the art of propaganda and the degree to which he was personally involved in its creation," wrote historian Wayne Hanley in "The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda, 1796-1799." That's what led to Napoleon — almost a foreigner — to reach the heights of power and secure...

A French theme park is being planned in honour of Napoleon Bonaparte, almost 200 years after his death. “Napoleonland”, the brainchild of former French minister and history buff Yves Jégo, is being touted as a rival to Disneyland – assuming, that is, it can gather the £180 million needed to leave the drawing board. The plan is to build the unlikely amusement park on the site of the brilliant but doomed French leader’s final victory against the Austrians in the Battle of Montereau in 1814 just south of Paris. The 1815 Battle of Waterloo, in which the Duke of Wellington...

> Elba has been inhabited since the Iron Age. Ligurian tribes were followed by Etruscans and then Greeks. A rotating cast of residents, refugees and pirates made appearances in subsequent centuries including the Pax Romana, bands of North African raiders, the Spanish and Cosimo I de' Medici, who in the mid-16th Century founded and fortified the port town of Cosmopolis, today's Portoferraio. But none of these occupants did more in so little time as France’s all time greatest military mastermind and badboy, Napoleon Bonaparte. Though the Emperor escaped less than a year after being “banished” to Elba (the penal equivalent...

> Even as the Russians retreated before him in disarray, Napoleon found his army disappearing, his frantic doctors powerless to explain what had struck down a hundred thousand soldiers. The emperor’s vaunted military brilliance suddenly seemed useless, and when the Russians put their own occupied capital to the torch, the campaign became a desperate race through the frozen landscape as troops continued to die by the thousands. Through it all, with tragic heroism, Napoleon’s disease-ravaged, freezing, starving men somehow rallied, again and again, to cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” >