The Duke of Wellington, Napoleon's nemesis, famously said, "Being born in a stable does not make one a horse." Wellington was a phlegmatic Englishman who insisted that being born in Dublin, Ireland in 1769 did not make him an Irish "anchor" baby.
Wellington's maxim applies equally to Napoleon himself who was born the same year on the island of Corsica. From 1559 right up until the year before Napoleon's birth -- 1768 -- this mountainous island belonged to the Republic of Genoa. It was then purchased from Genoa and annexed to the kingdom of France.
Napoleon Bust
Grand Curtius Museum, Liege, BE
Napoleon's parents, Carlo Buonaparte and Maria Letizia Ramolino. were both born in Genoese controlled Ajaccio.
They gave him the name "Napoleone Buonaparte" which might be Google translated into "Lion of Naples Good Parts" which hardly sounds French.
San Miniato, Italy
Napoleon boasted of his Italian heritage. He said, "I am of the race that founds empires." He also once said, “I am more Italian or Tuscan than Corsican” (“Io sono Italiano o Toscano, piutosto che Corso”). The ancestral home of the Bonaparte family is in San Miniato in Tuscany. A visitor to San Miniato will find a piazza Buonaparte and other reminders of the Buonaparte clan.
General Napoleon fought and won many battles on behalf of Revolutionary France in Italy such as Rivoli (1797) and Marengo (1800). This in itself does not make him Italian any more than winning the battle of Waterloo made Wellington Belgian.
Italian Guard
Musee de L'Armee, Paris, FR
On May 26, 1805 Napoleon was crowned king of Italy with the iron crown of Lombardy inside the cathedral in Milan. Over 165,000 Italians, representing two percent of their total population, fought for Napoleon’s empire from 1802 to 1815 on battlefields from Madrid to Moscow. Napoleon had a healthy respect for his Italian soldiers, writing in 1809: “The troops of the Kingdom of Italy covered themselves with glory...since the Romans, no period has been so glorious for Italian arms.”
Bust of Julius Caesar
Arles Archaeological Museum, FR
From his youth Napoleon studied the life and writings of Julius Caesar. He was a lifelong admirer of Caesar and often emulated the Roman general. Napoleon adopted the eagle as the rallying symbol for his troops just as the Romans had done centuries before. You could even say that Napoleon had a bit of a Caesar complex.
Not all invaders are male!
Years after his exile and death on St. Helena Napoleon continued to exert an influence on the Italian peninsula. In 1859 Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III, would dispatch a French army to fight on behalf of a unified Italy against the Austrians at battles such as Solferino and Magenta. Some have suggested that he was prompted by his beautiful Italian mistress, the Countess of Castiglione, who was also Cavour's cousin.
Napoleon passed through Levico Terme in 1796, Trentino, IT
Was Napoleon Italian? Well, Napoleon, although he adopted and loved France, was Italian in pretty much the same way that the world's most famous Argentine, Pope Francis, is also Italian.
Many years ago I was in a classroom at University where our philosophy professor discussed the problem of the Cat and the Stove to elucidate the concept of induction.
One day a cat walks into the kitchen. He leaps up onto the stove but his mistress has been brewing a pot of tea and it is very hot. The cat leaps off of the stove and never goes near it again.
The cat has learned its lesson and will not be burned again. The cat has induced from his painful experience that stoves mean pain. But this also means that the cat will never go near the stove again and will miss out on many opportunities to recline on the stove when it is cool and has NOT been in use. Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.
Destruction of the Temple of Bel
Palmyra, Syria
It occurs to me that the current appalling situation in Syria and the Middle East bears some resemblance to the cat's dilemma. The Syrian refugee crisis is the worst since World War II and spilling across Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in a brutal civil war. Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people in order to maintain his grip on power. Putin's Russia cynically sells arms to Assad and hopes for a secure port on the Mediterranean. And Isis has meanwhile metastasized into a major threat to life, liberty and now, with the destruction of Palmyra, even to history itself. Now they have destroyed the Arch of Palmyra http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34440759).
The West, however, burnt its paws in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now unwilling to re-approach that menacing stove. The idea of taking forceful action against a threat seems to have been repudiated. We fret the cost of going to war (admittedly great) and NOT about the appalling consequences of our inaction. We worry that we would simply be perpetuating the cycle of violence in the Middle East. We have a million excuses for why nothing should be done. And so we dither and the mayhem continues.
Syrian baby
Syrian lives matter
Those of us on the right are wrong to simply call this a failing of the Obama administration. It is, much worse than that. It is, in fact, a failing of the West as a whole. The entire political spectrum in the West from Hollande's socialist regime in France to Merkel's center / right government in Germany deserves their share of the blame. But the USA is a Superpower and, by far, world's greatest military power. We have, by far the greatest capacity for decisive and sustained action. It has been over four years since the start of the Syrian civil war. Yet we refuse to act. The power of Isis grows. And the suffering and killings continue. A Jordanian pilot is burned to death. More men are beheaded and more babies drown. But because we touched the stove in Iraq and Afghanistan we remain paralyzed. Incapable of decisive action.
We feel powerless and unable to influence matters in any kind of a positive direction.
What should we do? Are we stuck in a loop, where it is always 1938 and we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? What can we do when confronted with the hydra-headed villains of today's middle east? Does history provide us with any kind of a guide?
I believe that it does.
Winston Churchill
In World War II the Western Allies joined forces with Stalin's Soviet Union in order to defeat Hitler. Winston Churchill despised Communism but he also said, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Churchill did far more than make favorable references to Stalin -- vast quantities of war materiel were shipped to Soviet ports. The USA provided the Red Army with 13 million pair of winter boots. Four out of five German soldiers were killed on the Eastern front while the Western Allies bombed the German homeland with round the clock bombing. America and her allies launched a series of invasions that also proved to be liberations in North Africa, Italy, France, Holland and, finally, Germany itself. The Nazis were decisively defeated and the process of de-nazification could begin.
At the Tehran conference, "FDR mixed martinis for Churchill and Stalin. FDR asked Stalin how he liked his drink. Stalin answered that it was OK but cold on his stomach." (Source: America Invades, www.americainvades.com)
www.americainvades.com
Not only did America Invade but, critically, America also remained militarily involved with Europe and remains so to this day. The NATO alliance was formed. We, for example, established bases in the Azores to combat the U-boat menace that are still there to this day. In 2015 Europe, a continent scarred by incessant wars over many centuries, celebrated VE day which marked the 70th anniversary of a general peace on the continent with the exception of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Our invasions and our military involvement made an enormous contribution to winning a lasting peace.
It takes more than just invasion and decisive military victory to win a lasting peace. It requires economic aid (a Marshall plan for the Middle East?) and support for the development of democratic institutions. It requires sustained political commitment over decades. Do we in the West have the intestinal fortitude for this?
Spirit of American Youth
Omaha Beach, FR
We remember the toll of invasions. There were about 10,000 American casualties sustained on a single day on June 6, 1944 (http://www.christianpost.com/news/d-day-remembered-a-historical-perspective-140048/). Wars are expensive and young men die. But we must also remember the liberation of the diabolical death camps that followed. We must also remember that the world would have been a much darker place had it not been for those invasions.
We must now join forces with Assad in order to exterminate Isis. Putin's Russia is already attempting to do so. We should welcome his efforts.
We Americans are not really powerless; we have the strongest air force and navy in the world. These can apply devastating pressure on Isis if and only if the political will exists in the West. US Airpower and Western financial might together with mostly Syrian boots on the ground can crush Isis if they are ordered to do so.
The Big Three of WW2
We in the West must shake hands with this 21st century version of Stalin in order to destroy the 21st century version of Hitler that Isis represents.
Lest we forget
9/11 pool, NYC
And after Isis has been crushed we must remain involved in the middle east. The painful lesson of 9/11 was that we made a fatal mistake in turning our backs on Afghanistan after the Russians were expelled with our help by the Mujahideen. Invasion must be succeeded by sustained military involvement just as it was after World War II. There are about 11,000 American military in Italy in 2015, seventy-two years after we invaded Sicily. The most painful lesson of America's mistake -ridden experience in Iraq has been the rise of Isis that followed our precipitate withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.
Moreover, Putin and Obama need desperately to reach a fundamental understanding. After Isis has been defeated there needs to be a unwritten gentleman's agreement that Assad, after a decent interval, must go. He and his family should be offered a secure and comfortable exile. Perhaps to a mansion on the Black sea? Anywhere out of Syria. Forever.
Obama should be mixing a martini for Putin. But then again I must be dreaming because Putin and Obama don't really get along, do they?
Readers may be forgiven for believing that the Italian Air Force is simply a line of clothing created by the rag trade (http://www.aeronauticamilitareofficialstore.it/en/?redirect=1). In fact, Italians took to the air with the dawn of aviation and Italian military aviation has had a remarkable history.
Just consider the following...
Caproni Ca.20 Monoplane
World's first fighter plane
Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA
The very first bombing raid from a plane was launched by the Royal Italian Air Force (Reggio Aeronautica) in 1911 in Libya. And on January 6, 1912 an Italian monoplane bombarded an Arab encampment in Libya with proclamations that fluttered in the sunlight "like so many flakes of toy snow." (Source: The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clark, www.amzn.com/0061146668). The world's first fighter plane was also Italian (see photo of Ca.20 above).
American airmen, led by the future mayor of New York Captain Firello LaGuardia, trained on Italian planes in Foggia Italy during World War I. (Source: Dear Bert, Edward Lewis Davis, www.amzn.com/8887621209).
In 1940 the Reggio Aeronautica launched the longest bombing raid in history up to that point in time. an Italian raid from an airbase on the island of Rhodes attacked oil fields in Saudi Arabia and changed the world forever (see video above and Saudi Arabia chapter of America Invades...www.americainvades.com).
Fiat CR.42
RAF Museum, Hendon, UK
"In September 1940, the Italian Air Corps was sent to Belgium to take part in the Luftwaffe’s Battle of Britain, which was Hitler’s attempt to make an invasion of Britain possible. During October and November of that year, bombers and fighters of the CAI (Corpo Aero Italiano) carried out a number of raids on ports in southeast England, including Harwich, Felixstowe, and Ramsgate. The slow-flying CR.42 biplanes of the Italian Air Force were no match for the RAF’s Hurricanes and Spitfires. A Beaufighter pilot later reported that CR.42s “just disintegrated” when hit." (Source: Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World, Kelly/Laycock, 2015, www.italyinvades.com).
Macchi Fighter
USAF Museum, Dayton, OH
"The Macchi fighters that were deployed after the Battle of Britain were a distinct improvement, though underarmed compared to the German Messerschmitt, the Me 109." (Source: Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World, Kelly/Laycock, 2015, www.italyinvades.com).
Eurofighter Typhoon
In our forthcoming work Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World we also note that the Italian Air Force (renamed Aeronautica Militare in 1946) continues to see action in the 21st century. In the Latvia chapter we wrote, for example, that "in January 2015, Italian Air Force planes took over NATO’s Air Policing mission in the Baltic States. Italian Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets had already visited the region to prepare for the mission." (Source: Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World, Kelly/Laycock, 2015, www.italyinvades.com).
You can now order your copy of Italy Invades: How Italians Conquered the World here...
The French have a proud military tradition which long precedes Napoleon. Clovis was a King of the Franks who triumphed at the battle of Soisson in 486 and converted to Christianity.
Charlemagne
Liege Belgium
Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on one of history's most memorable dates -- Christmas Day 800. This museum guides the visitor through this rich history from knights in shining armor to the World Wars of the 20th century.
Comte de Rochambeau
A visit to this museum reminds us that France too has invaded many countries over its long history. It has projected its influence over much of the world to a surprising extent. The French fleet and army intervened decisively in the American Revolution aiding Washington at the siege of Yorktown. In America Invades we noted, "The direct intervention of the French began with Rochambeau landing a force of about six thousand French soldiers in Providence, Rhode Island. These forces and, critically, the French Navy led by the Comte de Grasse helped secure the surrender of Lord Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown."
Napoleon I
Fans of Napoleon will certainly appreciate this deep collection of militaria from the first Empire.
Vizir
A horse fit for an Emperor
You will even find Vizir, one of Napoleon's horses, stuffed and mounted and, seemingly, ready to ride.
French Revolutionary Flag
The Napoleonic period including the Revolution was the zenith of French military glory.
Franco-Prussian War
La Patrie en danger
Napoleon III eventually succeeded his uncle and led France into the disastrous Franco-Prussian war in 1870. The provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were lost to Germany until the treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. Napoleon III fled to England where he begged shelter from his London wine merchant -- Berry Brothers (http://www.bbr.com/). They have a Napoleon cellar to this day.
Madagascar
In the age of imperialism France planted its flag in colonies around the world. The French and British empires would briefly collide at Fashoda in what is now South Sudan in 1898.
French artillery, WWI
But in 1914 the British and French would fight alongside each other in the Great War. Their Russian ally would eventually collapse into a bloody revolution after suffering humiliating defeats such as the battle of Tannenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tannenberg).
WWI Trench warfare
The Western Front would become a wasteland as both sides dug deeper trenches and pounded each other with artillery. Infantry assaults would be ground up by machine guns and barbed wire. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, asked, "Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?"
The First World War would devastate France. Over 1.3 million soldiers of France and its empire would be killed as a result of the First World War.
Victory Parade 1918
Eventually, with the aid of American doughboys, the Allies would prevail. The bitter peace that was negotiated at Versailles, however, assured that war would be renewed in Europe. Marshal Foch stated, "This is an armistice for twenty years."
Hitler in Paris, 1940
In 1939, following the invasion of Poland, France would find itself at war again with Germany. In 1940 the German blitzkrieg stormed through the Ardennes forests in Belgium outflanking the Maginot line and France fell. France was occupied and Hitler toured Paris.
Free French WW2 Poster
All French forces did not, however, surrender. Many in Africa rallied to the cause of Free France and many would fight at places such as Bir Hakeim and El Alamein.
De Gaulle broadcasts from London
They were inspired by the words of General Charles de Gaulle, a 6' 5" veteran of World War I who refused to acknowledge defeat. He would lead France to victory.
Charles de Gaulle
In America Invades we wrote, "on August 25, 1944, the French 2nd Armored Division, led by General Leclerc, was allowed the honor of being the first Allied force to liberate Paris. Ernest Hemingway personally led a group of irregulars that liberated the Ritz Hotel drinking seventy-three martinis that night in its bar. General Charles de Gaulle spoke from a balcony at the Hotel de Ville, “Paris outraged! Paris broken! Paris martyred! But Paris liberated! Liberated by itself, liberated by its people, with the help of the whole of France!”
USA vs. Scotland, September 27
Rugby World Cup 2015, Leeds, UK
Have American forces ever invaded Scotland? Well, not exactly. An American OSS raid on Nazi-occupied Norway originated from air bases in Scotland but that's not quite the same thing. And Americans have, of course, been militarily involved with Scotland serving alongside Brits at bases in Scotland.
One Scot (or Scottish American), however, did play a vital role in American military history though. John Paul Jones was born in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.
Some Americans invaded Leeds
September 27, 2015
Jones, the son of a Scottish gardner, led the raid on Whitehaven during the American Revolution. In the United Kingdom chapter of America Invades we wrote...
"In April of 1778, Captain John Paul Jones, the founding father of the American navy, and the crew of the Ranger, an 18-gun sloop, arrived in Britain and, unlike many Americans today, they weren’t there to visit Westminster Abbey or have a taste of fish and chips.
Captain John Paul Jones
Spiking the guns, Whitehaven, UK
Jones selected the English fishing village of Whitehaven on the Irish Sea as his target; Whitehaven was Britain’s third busiest seaport at that time. He would attempt to destroy its shipping and to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk. The harbor of Whitehaven was protected by two small forts. In the early hours of April 23, 1778, he and about forty volunteers from his crew scaled the fortress wall. They kicked in the door of the guardhouse. The sleeping guards surrendered without a shot. Jones’s men proceeded to spike about thirty-six guns of the battery with nails driven into the cannon’s touchholes. About half of his crew then broke into a local tavern and proceeded to get drunk. This caused a commotion and roused the local townspeople. Jones beat a hasty retreat and set fire to a merchant ship, a collier (that’s a coal ship and nothing to do with Lassie) named Thompson.
Jones climbed these stairs on April 23, 1778
Whitehaven, UK
Soon after, the Ranger sailed about twenty miles to enter the bay off St. Mary’s Isle. Jones took about a dozen men armed with cutlasses and muskets to a Georgian manor house owned by the Fourth Earl of Selkirk. Jones soon discovered that the earl was not in residence and could not be kidnapped. Instead, he demanded the silver plate be delivered up. The loot was hauled back to the Ranger. Shortly after, the 18-gun Ranger fought and captured the 20-gun Drake of the Royal Navy in an action that Jones described as “warm, close and obstinate.”
Jones’s raid on Whitehaven had succeeded in bringing the American Revolution “home to their own doors,” as he put it. The English press was incensed. The London Public Advertiser asked, “When such ravages are committed all along the coast, by one small privateer, what credit must it reflect on the First Lord of the Admiralty?” No one was killed or even injured in the Whitehaven raid, but insurance rates doubled. The Whitehaven raid lasted about two and a half hours and was an even shorter invasion than the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. Jones had second thoughts about the silver he stole from the Earl of Selkirk and later returned most of the loot.
John Paul Jones Pub
Whitehaven, UK
Herman Melville described John Paul Jones as “a mixture of gentleman and wolf.” At a critical moment in his later sea battle with the Serapis, when called upon to surrender, Jones uttered the immortal words, “I have not yet begun to fight.” Jones is buried with full honors at the US Naval Academy chapel in Annapolis."
USA vs. Scotland
Leeds, UK
All honors went to Scotland who defeated USA by a score of 36 to 16 in the Ruby World cup match played on September 27, 2015 in Leeds. The USA led at the half by 13 to 3 but the Scots dominated the second half. USA Rugby now knows what it feel like to be crucified on the cross of St. Andrew!
USA vs. Scotland
Leeds, UK
Commentators reminded the viewing audience that the USA actually has a surprisingly proud rugby tradition.
Go Team USA!
Rugby has not been played at the Olympics for a while, but Rugby Sevens will be played in 2016 at the games in Rio. And the Rugby gold medal defending champions are...the USA! In 1924 an American team defeated the Romanians and French to win rugby gold at the Paris Olympics. They also won gold in 1920 after beating France -- their only rival in the Antwerp games.
