France is planning a theme park dedicated to the tyrant and would-be ruler of the world, Napoleon Bonaparte.
It'll make a great companion to Germany's Hitler Park, Italy's Mussolini World, Russia's Stalinarama, Red China's The Mao Experience and Cambodia's Pol Pot Superfun Happy Place.
3 comments:
Well, as far as I know, the French still regard their Glorious Revolution as, well, not something to be deeply ashamed of. Frogs' legs and foi gras almost seem to be in good taste, by comparison.
Imagine the Disneyesque tunnel rides.
The Suppression of the Paris Uprising; See Napoleon give "a whiff of grapeshot" to fellow Frenchmen- and then overthrow the government he was supposed to be protecting from its own citizens. You can say one thing for him, he was even-handed; he had no problem with killing anybody who wasn't "on his side".
The Battle of San Giuliano; see Desaix shot from his horse over and over again, while Napoleon stands dumbfounded at Marengo.
Battle of the Pyramids; See the French Army massacred by British and Egyptian troops- while Napoleon steals away in the night in a sloop to avoid the Royal Navy, while ruminating over the exact measurements of the Great Pyramid and his "bad smell" map of the Nile Valley.
The Iberian Peninsula; Thrill to the French and their sometimes Spanish allies being shot to pieces by the British and their sometimes Spanish allies- while Napoleon sits in Paris scowling over Josephine's wardrobe budget, while avoiding trying to explain why he sent the army into Spain to begin with. (I suspect even he was never sure about that one.)
The Retreat From Moscow; Feel the chill as French soldiers die in the trackless wastes of a Russian winter- while Napoleon beats it back through Austria to Paris, there to remonstrate with his Academy of Sciences over the concept of "What do you mean, it's cold up there?"
And the grand finales, Trafalgar and Waterloo; Where you can watch Napoleon's admirals get their ships shot out from under them by a much-better commanded and more skilled Royal Navy, and finally see the Emperor's Hundred Days end at a battle no sensible general would have accepted to begin with. (Don't believe me?- I didn't say it, the Duke of Wellington did.)
It's not just that Napoleon was a megalomaniac. He was a tactical and strategic idiot into the bargain, who probably killed more Frenchmen through his thundering incompetence than the Terror did with Madame Guillotine'.
He seems to have had a compulsion to launch grand strategic campaigns with little or no planning, and then when things went south promptly scarper, leaving the poilus' in the lurch while he saved his own backside.
His early successes were more due to luck and his opponents' lack of expertise than anything else, plus the (almost nonexistent) C3I of the day. Imagine him trying his campaigns after the invention of the telegraph, as in the American Civil War. Never mind Sherman or Grant; Meade would have eaten him alive. (He would probably even have lost to McClellan, and that's saying something.)
Maybe the French would, in the interest of fair shares, want to build a theme park called "The Terror Experience", dedicated to Marat and Robespierre, as well? It would make about as much sense. I.e., none at all.
cheers
eon
The only think I can think of in this context is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTGJyu7uZc0&feature=player_embedded
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