Paris to auction Napoleon’s handwriting
Paris is slated to auction a collection of Napoleonic artifacts including pieces of a notebook showing Bonaparte’s efforts to grasp the English language.
The ink stained fragments will go under hammer at the Paris-based auction house of Osenat, alongside some 350 other artifacts, Reuters reported.
Napoleon Bonaparte started learning English after he was defeated by the British at Waterloo and sent to the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena.
"Even learning English, he couldn’t shake off the soldier, the army man inside him. His doodles are of walls and designs of military fortifications," said Osenat chairman Jean-Pierre Osenat.
The auction house expects the paper scraps to fetch up to $13,660.
Mounted on three framed boards, the fragments bear Napoleon’s spidery handwriting which remind the time when the French emperor was taking his English lessons from a French count also in exile on Saint Helena.
Napoleon, who ruled France from 1804 to 1815, was defeated by the Duke of Wellington’s forces at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. He surrendered to British forces after attempting to flee to the United States a month later.
Bonaparte voiced his shame at never having learnt English only when he was being transferred to Saint Helena.
"It’s incredible to think that after fighting the English for his entire life, Napoleon only decided to learn English at the end. He could have thought of it before," said Osenat.
The French auction house will also offer a rare handwritten record of French monarch Louis XVI’s death sentence by the newly formed parliament or National Convention in 1793, which paved the way for Napoleon’s rise.
Source: presstv.ir
