The personality of Marshal Davout in the Russian Campaign of 1812 on the basis of his memoires and documents of personal nature: an analysis of the electronic resources on the topic

Louis Nicolas Davout is still one of the most famous and admired marshals of the First French Empire. His qualities as a great commander and brilliant tactician have been the subject of many historiographical works amongst researchers from all over the world. The aim of this work is to examine the personality of Davout according to electronic documents of personal nature and the historiography about the Russian Campaign of 1812. Specific attention deserve several online documents of Russian works analyzed in the article, which have never been translated from Russian, and whose point of view revealed very interesting information, both concordant and discordant, to cross with that of many European analogues. Historical research requires further translation and analysis of the many and still unknown Russian sources on the topic.

L’ITALIANO DEI FRANCESI NEI PRIMI ANNI DELL’OTTOCENTO

During the 19th Century, many French literary works exhibit the fascination and appeal of Italy and contain numerous insertions written in Italian. On the other hand, during their stay in Italy, French writers and intellectuals often contributed to local periodicals or were welcomed into Italian Academies. Among these authors, Giovanni Salvatore De Coureil and Aimé Guillon, who are the object of this study, are famous mainly for their controversies with Monti and Foscolo. However, they also published interesting works the different linguistic and aesthetical, (both Italian and French), codes, examined with reference to the various political events relating to both Countries, from the First French Empire to Bourbon Restauration. A brief analysis of these writings illustrates their thematic variety that deals with literary and dramatic criticism as well as translation issues, in which heteroglossia phenomena intertwine with interculturalism.

The Napoleonic Regimes

The Napoleonic regimes, the Consulate of 1799–1804, and then the First French Empire from 1804 to 1815, have always proved baffling. Napoleon was anything but a convenient stereotype, and it stands to reason that his political creation soon comes apart in the hands of those who think in neat categories. This is not to say that close scrutiny cannot shed light on them, or even produce a reasonable definition of “Napoleonism” It is to say, however, that the path is not straight. Nevertheless, the fundamental role played by the Consulate and Empire in shaping modern Europe makes it all the more desirable to attempt to define them, if possible. True to this convoluted spirit of enquiry, any examination of the nature of Napoleonic rule, whether in the context of defining the Ancien Régime or not, must be undertaken with a cardinal caveat always in mind: The choice of the plural—Napoleonic regimes—is not pedantic. Napoleonic rule was ever evolving during its short life—hence its slippery nature.

NAPOLEON AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE EMPIRE

ABSTRACTHistorians generally discount the advent of the First French Empire as the result of Napoleon's personal ambition. Napoleon, however, could not have brought about the transition from republic to empire without wide support, not only among the political and military elite, but also among the French people. This article re-examines the reasons why, a little more than ten years after the execution of Louis XVI, moderate-conservative elements in the political elite opted for a monarchical-style political system, and why it was so widely accepted by ordinary people across France. It does so by examining the arguments in favour of empire in three ‘sites of ideas’: the neo-monarchists in Napoleon's entourage; the political elite, preoccupied with many of the same concerns that had plagued France since 1789; and the wider political nation, which expressed a manifest adhesion to Napoleon as emperor that was marked by an affective bond. The push to empire, it is argued, was an expression of a dominant set of political beliefs and values. Napoleon, on the other hand, only reluctantly came to accept the notion of heredity.