The single line of Napoleon’s secret code told Paris of his desperate, last order against the Russians: “At three o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd I am going to blow up the Kremlin.”
By the time Paris received the letter three days later, the Russian czar’s seat of power was in flames and the diminished French army was in retreat. Its elegantly calligraphic ciphers show history’s famed general at one of his weakest moments.
“My cavalry is in tatters, many horses are dying,” said Napoleon, the once-feared leader showing the strain of his calamitous Russian invasion, which halved his army.
Photo: Reuters
The rare document — dated Oct. 20, 1812, signed “Nap” in the emperor’s hand and written in numeric code — is up for auction today at France’s Fontainebleau Auction House.
The Napoleon code, used only for top-secret letters when the French emperor was far from home, aimed to stop enemies from intercepting French army orders. The code was regularly changed to prevent it from being cracked.
Napoleon must have dispatched his strongest horses and riders to carry the news: It only took three days to reach France’s interior ministry —2,480km across Europe.
“This letter is unique. Not only is it all in code, but it’s the first time we see this different Napoleon. He went into Moscow in 1812 at the height of his power. He returned profoundly weakened. In Moscow, the Russians had fled days before and burnt down the city. There was no victory for Napoleon, nor were there any provisions for his starving, dying army,” Jean-Christophe Chataignier of the auction house says.
The only thing left for the weakened leader was to give the order to burn Russia’s government buildings — coded in the letter as “449, 514, 451, 1365.”
It is evidence of what historians call the beginning of the end of Napoleon’s glorious empire, which started in Russia and ended at Waterloo three years later.
In June 1812, Napoleon’s “Grand Army” — at 600,000 men one of the largest in human history — confidently entered Russia. However, they were woefully unprepared for the harsh weather, the strong Russian defense and the Russian scorched-earth tactics, which left nothing behind to sustain the hungry and freezing French troops.
“This letter is an incredible insight, we never see Napoleon emotively speaking in this way before,” Chataignier says. “Only in letters to [his wife] Josephine did he ever express anything near to emotion. Moscow knocked him.”
In the text — which announces that his commanders are evacuating Moscow — Napoleon laments his army’s plight, asking for assistance to replenish his forces and the ravaged cavalry, which saw thousands of horses die.
The 1812 victory over the French played an important role in Russia’s emergence as a major world power. Until World War I, Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the ensuing wars were the largest European military face-off in history.
The letter, which is accompanied by a second decoded sheet, is estimated to fetch up to 15,000 euros (US$19,480).
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS