A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French.
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
Josephine, Empress, consort of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1763-1814; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
The works undertaken outside of Paris in France, and in the countries
under her rule in the time that Napoleon was in power were of a
variety and extent which would be incredible, if every traveller in
Europe did not have the evidence of them still before his eyes. The
mere enumeration of these works and of the industrial achievements of
Napoleon, made by Las Cases, reads like a fairy story. “You wish to
know the treasures of Napoleon? They are immense, it is true, but they
are all exposed to light. They are the noble harbors of Antwerp and
Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest fleets, and of
protecting them against the ice from the sea; the hydraulic works at
Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice; the immense harbor of Cherbourg; the
maritime works at Venice; the beautiful roads from Antwerp to
Amsterdam, from Mayence to Metz, from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes
of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mount Genèvre, of the Corniche,
which open a communication through the Alps in four different
directions, and which exceed in grandeur, in boldness, and in skill of
execution, all the works of the Romans (in that alone you will find
eight hundred millions); the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from
Parma to Spezia, from Savona to Piedmont; the bridges of Jena,
Austerlitz, Des Arts, Sèvres, Tours, Roanne, Lyons, Turin; of the
Isère, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, etc.; the canal which
connects the Rhine with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the
North Sea with the Mediterranean; the canal which joins the Scheldt
with the Somme, and thus joins Paris and Amsterdam; the canal which
unites the Rance to the Vilaine; the canal of Arles; that of Pavia,
and the canal of the Rhine; the draining of the marshes of Bourgoin,
of the Cotentin, of Rochefort; the rebuilding of the greater part of
the churches destroyed by the Revolution; the building of others: the
institution of numerous establishments of industry for the suppression
of mendicity; the gallery at the Louvre; the construction of public
warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq; the distribution
of water in the city of Paris; the numerous drains, the quays, the
embellishments, and the monuments of that large capital; the works for
the embellishment of Rome; the reëstablishment of the manufactures of
Lyons; the creation of many hundreds of manufactories of cotton, for
spinning and for weaving, which employ several millions of workmen;
funds accumulated to establish upwards of four hundred manufactories
of sugar from beet-root, for the consumption of part of France, and
which would have furnished sugar at the same price as the West Indies,
if they had continued to receive encouragement for only four years
longer; the substitution of woad for indigo, which would have been at
last brought to a state of perfection in France, and obtained as good
and as cheap as the indigo from the colonies; numerous manufactories
for all kinds of objects of art, etc.; fifty millions expended in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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