Christine Caccipuoti

In the 1920s, a memoir written over a hundred years earlier by Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland, was published. Hortense’s life was the sort of thing made for movie screens, but she has been vastly overshadowed by the flashier characters of her family circle, after all she was Napoleon I’s stepdaughter, Josephine Bonaparte’s daughter, Louis Bonaparte’s wife, and Napoleon III’s mother. Recently I re-read The Memoirs of Queen Hortense while writing a play called Happin

Every year when December 2nd rolls around I smile, because in the 19th century it was a very significant date for my favorite imperial family: the Bonapartes. This date saw several Very Big Moments of Triumph for both Napoleon I and Napoleon III, and if there is one thing the Napoleons loved, it was Very Big Moments of Triumph. I suppose I enjoy them, too, because I got excited when I realized the air date for my final Bonaparte-related Footnoting History episode of the year

[Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769. This post is my way of marking it, so Happy Birthday, Napoleon!] When Napoleon Bonaparte ruled France he had many enemies, but did those enemies include a horde of unruly rabbits? That is what one enduring story proposes. In the almost two-hundred years since Napoleon’s death, the tale of his interesting encounter with a group of rabbits who didn’t respect his authority has morphed into something of an urban legend, with each v