Napoleon's farewell

This is a year of anniversaries. Later many will mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. But this year is also the 200th anniversary of the first fall of Napoleon. As the year began, he tried to defend France from an invasion by the combined forces of Austria, Russia and Prussia. By now Napoleon's armies had been devastated by decades of combat - he had lost one vast army in Russia in 1812 and another in the 1813 battles in Germany that brought his enemies to the borders of France. By 1814 he was commanding an army largely composed of press-ganged 17 year olds and was terribly outnumbered, facing half a million enemy troops with something like 75,000 men.

Despite this, Napoleon almost managed to turn things around. With his back against the wall, he seemed to recover his old poise. In February he raced his army around and won a series of battles against the dispersed enemy forces. For a brief moment it seemed that the allies would abandon their attempt to seize Paris, but their nerve held and they continued their advance. Napoleon tried to lure the allies away from the capital, but they pressed on and seized it on the 31st of March.

Napoleon then proposed to lead his army against the occupiers of Paris, but his war-weary marshals mutinied, refusing to lead the army against France's capital. The revolt of the marshals eventually convinced Napoleon that the game was up. He entered into negotiations with the allies and unconditionally abdicated on the 12th of April. He then attempted suicide, but the vial of poison he had been carrying since 1812 was no longer lethal; though he became very ill, he survived.

The allies decided that they would exile Napoleon on the Mediterranean island of Elba. There he would retain the title of Emperor and exercise sovereignty over the island, and would also receive a substantial annual subsidy.

On the 20th of April, Napoleon bade farewell to the Imperial Guard before departing for exile. He addressed his men:

"Soldiers of my Old Guard, I bid you goodbye. For twenty years I have found you uninterruptedly on the path of honour and glory. Lately no less than when things went well you have continuously been models of courage and loyalty. With men like you our cause was not lost; but the war could not be ended: it would have been civil war, and that would only have brought France more misfortune. So I have sacrificed our interests for those of the Patrie. I am leaving you, my friends, are going to go on serving France. France's happiness was my one thought; and it will always be what I wish for most. Don't be sorry for me; if I have chosen to go on living, I have done so in order to go on serving your glory. I want to write about the great things we have done together! …. Goodbye, my children! I should like to press you all to my heart, but at least I shall kiss your flag!"

It is reported that many of Napoleon's veterans wept as their master delivered this address, as did the representatives of Britain, Prussia and Austria who were present (the Russians were unmoved).

Napoleon then left his army and departed for Elba, expecting to never see France again.
Image source (Wikipedia: an account of the 1814 campaign whose neutrality is disputed; it is the least 'Wikipedia' article I have ever seen on that website, which might explain why it reads so well, particularly the account of Napoleon's farewell to the Guard)

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[Live] Songs of Lily and Willy: an evening of erotic songs and stories

My beloved and one of her visiting singing friends were going to this event, which was part of the Five Lamps Festival. It was suggested that I could come to. Initially I thought this was crazy talk, but the event sounded so bizarre that I thought, what the hell, I am broadminded and willing to give anything a go. So I went. The venue (the In-spire Galerie on Lower Gardiner Street) was rather hard to find but I got there in the end.

The event was presented by a man and a woman, Andrew Ilsey and Fiona Dowling. She told the stories and he sang the songs (with Ms Dowling assisting on some of them). The stories varied between ones that were genuinely a bit saucy to ones that were more notable for having sexual content but being more based on humour or bizarre situations. Of the latter category there was an interesting tale of the Lakota Indians about the recurring legendary character Iktomi. In this one he finds himself in a village of women and has to teach them the arts of male-female copulation, but rather than being a tale of one man who can't believe his luck, the one-man-many-women situation leads to Iktomi fleeing lest the arduous women wear him out. Another French story featured a knight who, in an unlikely sequence of events, becomes able to talk to the vaginas of women (or any animal that has one) and have them answer him back. Apart from talking vaginas this story features almost no smutty content.

The songs were pretty much of the fnarr fnarr school of double or single entendre folk tunes. They feature many women having their meadows ploughed by obliging farm hands and so forth. The funniest was perhaps the first, because the singer kept forgetting his lines, just as it was reaching the saucy bits, making him a bit of a song tease. With the tunes generally I was curious as to whether any I recognised would show up, with the 'Bonny Black Hare' being an obvious candidate. In the end, the only song I knew was 'Gently Johnny', in the version set to music by Paul Giovanni in The Wicker Man.

My overall view of this event - well it was a bit strange. The erotic is something we are conditioned to experience in private. Or perhaps in semi-private public spaces, like darkened cinemas. Society has something of a taboo against public sexual arousal, so at an event like this there is a strong social pressure to swim against the erotic tide of the performers' material and make it something that is interesting or amusing but as unerotic as possible. Which is kind of missing the point. Or maybe this dialectic is the point.

It turned out that there were a lot of my beloved's Georgian singing friends at this event. After it was over they milled around and I suddenly realised that they were about to have one of their impromptu "polyphonic sing-songs", which would leave me feeling like a bit of a spare wheel. So I made my excuses and left, walking home in the rain.

rabbits

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My Important Project

Noticing that this year would be the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, I started thinking about doing blog posts on the anniversary of key Great War events. Then the idea grew legs and I started thinking about doing more and more posts, ending up that my plan now is to set up a dedicated real time First World War blog to try and pass myself off as some kind of expert in that conflict. The basic inspiration for this would have to be the wonderful @RealTimeWWII on Twitter, only not as comprehensive (it is important to know your limitations) and based more around slightly longer but less frequent blog posts. To this end I have started reading more about the First World War, with a current particular focus on the July Crisis. The plan is to start a dedicated real time Great War blog, set to auto-post to a dedicated Twitter account, which will start from roughly Franz Ferdinand's assassination and them, like the real war, peter out.

I have started developing slight cold feet about all this recently, for a number of reasons. The most pressing of these is the realisation that, obviously, other people are going to be doing the same thing. There is already a @RealTimeWW1 on Twitter, live tweeting events in the run up to the big event (recently mentioning the bizarre event in which the wife of a leading French politician shot and killed the editor of Le Figaro, an event whose non-occurrence could have prevented the war). As someone prone to self-doubt and all that, the realisation that I would obviously be one of many people doing something broadly similar makes me concerned that my efforts would be less interesting than theirs, making my Important Project effectively a waste of time. The realisation as to how the Important Project has grown legs and turned into a Very Big Project has also made me increasingly conscious of what a big commitment it all is. But I am not going to stop now. Maybe a year into my Important Project if it turns out that basically no one is reading it I will give up, but for now I will soldier on.

I had some ambitious plans to travel to Sarajevo, either for the anniversary of Franz Ferdinand's assassination or, more likely, earlier in order to take photographs that could accompany a post on the assassination. As I became more and more ambitious I started thinking about perhaps starting off in Belgrade and travelling overland to Sarajevo, like Gavrilo Princip and his colleagues, and then taking the train from Sarajevo to Vienna to see Franz Ferdinand's last uniform in that city's war museum (and then take the train home, because I wuv trains). But sadly it looks increasingly unlikely that any of this will be happening. We have received notice here in Panda Mansions that our lease is not being renewed, so over the next while we will be looking for somewhere new and getting ready to move into it. There have always been a good few things wrong with this particular Panda Mansions and in many ways I have not warmed to it and I do not dread the prospect of living somewhere else. But house-hunting and moving are terribly time consuming and depressing business and I fear that I will need to dedicate so much time to all this that there will be no opportunities for continental or foreign jaunts for quite some time. And if rents are really sky-rocketing as much as they are reported to be then it looks like even after moving I will not be able to afford to travel anywhere.

Before moving I need to get rid of a lot of superfluous stuff, so the charity shops of Dublin may soon be being flooded with CDs by obscure artists no one is going to be that pushed about buying. I will probably get rid of some books as well, possibly even some boardgames. And I may even accept that I will never be playing some of those roleplaying games I have and get rid of them as well. All of this makes me sad. But my misfortunes are minor compared to those of the millions who fought and died in the First World War.

Links:

@RealTimeWWII (I cannot praise this one highly enough)

@RealTimeWW1

Gavrilo Princip

Franz Ferdinand

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Jesse the Cat's Eight Year Sabbatical

In May 2006 Jesse the cat was being brought by his owner Lesley Corbett on a routine visit to the vet. Jesse however had other plans. He threw himself violently against the door of his cat box until the door came off. Then he jumped out and ran away as fast as he could. Ms Corbett and her family tried to lure Jesse out of hiding by rattling his food container, but to no avail. Although they kept looking for him, they resigned themselves to the possibility of never seeing Jesse again, though they never gave up hope of his eventual return.

But then on the 28th of February last Ms Corbett received an unexpected phone call from the very veterinary practice to which she had been bringing Jesse in 2006. A stray cat loitering in the area had been brought in and then identified as Jesse from its microchip.

Jesse appears to have been well-fed during his eight years away, but now that he is home he is apparently being spoiled rotten. He is also proving very vocal, informing Ms Corbett's other cats of all the exciting adventures he enjoyed while on his travels.

more (BBC)

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Vladimir Putin has a feeling for animals

Russian president Vladimir Putin is no friend of Ukrainians or the gays. However, he is known for his ability to mix easily in the animal kingdom and for his interest in wildlife. The BBC reports that in the past he has been seen tagging whales and intervening to save people from an enraged tiger. He has also flown in a microlight aircraft to help cranes migrate.

Before the Sochi Olympics, President Putin took journalists and Olympic officials to visit a nearby sanctuary for Persian leopards. The president is keen to restore these spotted predators to southern Russia, where they had become extinct by the 1970s. But the visit provided another opportunity for him to demonstrate his rapport with non-human life. When one of the leopard cubs in the sanctuary became agitated, attacking two journalists, Putin stepped in and calmed the animal down.

"I like animals," commented the Russian president. "It seems I have a feeling for them. We like each other."

More:

Russia President Putin encounters Sochi leopard cubs (image source, BBC)

Vladimir Putin helps bird migration

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Recent awesome posts

In case you missed them, here are links to some of the amazing things I wrote about recently for issue 138 of Frank's APA.

I sang with the Unthanks

[theatre] The Drowned Man

[film] The Missing Picture

[theatre] The Threepenny Opera

[theatre] Assassins

[film] Epic of Everest

[record review] Tom Glazer A Treasury of Civil War Songs

[record review] World of Twist Quality Street

[record review] Eleni Karaindrou Medea

[Live Music] Rocket From The Crypt

[live music] A trip to Cafe Oto

[record review] Neutral Milk Hotel In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

[live music] Julia Holter

Thoughtful Panda image source

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Murderer caught after parrot sings like a bird

In a gruesome slaying, Neelam Sharma and her pet dog were stabbed to death in their home on the 20th of February last. The only survivor was Ms Sharma's parrot Neera. The parrot seems initially to have gone into shock after witnessing the terrible crime. However, Ms Sharma's husband, Vijay Sharma, noticed that Neera became agitated when his nephew, Ashutosh Goswami visited. This aroused his suspicions, which he shared with the police. They arrested Mr Goswami; he admitted under interrogation to having gone to the Sharmas' home to rob it, but was surprised by Ms Sharma and so murdered her (and the dog).

That is the outline version of this story appearing on the website of the Times of India. The Daily Telegraph reports further details. Apparently Mr Sharma read out the names of a number of possible suspects to Neera, and then when Mr Goswami's was mentioned, the parrot exclaimed "He's the killer! He's the killer!"

Local police chief Superintendent Satyarth Anirudh has however denied that it was the parrot's evidence that led to the murderer's apprehension. "We interrogated all the suspects," he said, "and the nephew of the victim confessed to the crime. We don’t know where the parrot came into it.”

More (Times of India)

Even more (Daily Telegraph)

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Wild beavers return to England

Beavers used to live wild in England, but they were exterminated in the 16th century. In more recent years, some have been reintroduced into the wild in Scotland, but there have been no organised reintroduction programmes in England and Wales. However, there now appears to be a wild beaver community in Devon.

After reports of sightings and signs of gnawed trees, retired environmental scientist Tom Buckley set up motion sensor cameras along the River Otter in east Devon. The cameras captured an image of two beavers playing together while a third gnaws at a tree in the background. The image is fascinating, suggesting that now there might be a breeding community of beavers living wild in England.

Quite where the beavers came from is something of a mystery. There are beavers living in a securely fenced compound run by the Devon Wildlife Trust, but they have all been accounted for and have not busted loose to set up home along the River Otter. The wild beavers may have escaped from some other site where they were being held in captivity. Or perhaps some mysterious person or group set them free deliberately. In England it is currently an offence to set beavers free, but there have been calls for their wider reintroduction as a way of combatting floods.

Scientists have called for the River Otter beavers to be left alone and carefully monitored to see how their colony develops. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said however that it was looking into the case and deciding what action would be taken; the DEFRA spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the beavers would end up being left alone, moved or killed.

Image source (Guardian)

"Bring back beavers to control flooding, environment secretary told"

[live music] Julia Holter

I saw Ms Holter and her musicians play in the Unitarian Church. She sings! She plays music! And it all has a fascinating air of being both austere modern composition and tremendously accessible fun music at the same tyme. I liked it. I liked it all so much that I bought one of her records at random. It is called Tragedy and is based on some play by Euripides, though not so you would notice. And it sounded quite different to the music she played at the concert, though not in a bad way.


more insightful music comment coming soon!

An inuit panda production; this post appeared in issue 138 of Frank's APA.

Dancing Bear Cubs

Valtteri Mulkahainen was travelling in the forests of Finland when he saw a magical sight: some bear cubs playing together, looking like they were dancing or playing a game of ring-a-ring-a-rosies.
Their mother kept a close watch to make sure nothing untoward happened.
More on this important story (Huffington Post; with more dancing bear cubs)

Valtteri Mulkahainen (more bears, and other photographs)

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