Posts Tagged ‘French history’
In memoriam…
From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.
– Napoleon, on the invasions of Russia (10 December 1812),as recorded by Abbé du Pradt
“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.
With its reenactments (including a water show re-staging of Trafalgar), a ski run through a battlefield “surrounded by the frozen bodies of soldiers and horses,” and a recreation of Louis XVI being guillotined during the revolution, “it’s going to be fun for the family,” Mr Jégo promises.
Read the whole story in The Telegraph.
As we contact our travel agents, we might compose a birthday verse in dactylic hexameter for Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, AKA Juvenal; the author of the Satires was (at least insofar as tradition has it; the records are scant-to-the-point-of-nonexistent) born on this date in 55 CE.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who will watch the watchmen?)
– Satires, 6.347-48
Frontispiece of Dryden’s translation of Satires (source)
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