Pondering the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, the Independent's John Lichfield finds that the French are deeply ambivalent about the great man's achievements. (Over at Samizdata, Brian Micklethwait has some thoughts on Bonaparte as military commander.)
Zut alors...The man playing the conqueror in the lavish, 4,000-strong reenactment of the battle is... an American. Seems Mark Schneider was chosen "firstly because he can ride, and secondly because he looks like Napoleon." Yet another blow to ailing French morale....
A new book will do little to burnish Napoleon's reputation as a humanitarian. But was his treatment of black rebels in the Caribbean really a precursor to the Final Solution? Le Monde thinks the talk of "genocide", "gas chambers" and "concentration camps" is grossly exaggerated.
First Lance Armstrong and now this....
Posted by: Jim | Thursday, December 01, 2005 at 11:55 PM