Napoleon's Hat sells for 1.7 Million Pounds

Rare bicorne hat worn by Napoleon Bonaparte before his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo sells for £1.7m at auction in Paris

•  The historic hat was auctioned alongside more of his personal artefacts

One of the rare iconic bicorne hats worn by Napoleon Bonaparte before his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo has sold for £1.7million at an auction in Paris.

The black felt hat, valued between 600,000 and 800,000 euros (£525,000 and £700,000) went up for auction today.

The historic item was auctioned alongside more of his personal artefacts in Fontainebleau, outside Paris, from a collection of memorabilia.

Other history-laden items in the sale of industrialist Jean-Louis Noisiez's collection of Napoleonic items include a silver plate looted from Napoleon's carriage after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. 

It also includes a wooden vanity case he owned, with razors, a silver toothbrush, scissors and other personal belongings.

One of the rare iconic bicorne hats worn by Napoleon Bonaparte before his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo has sold for £1.7million at an auction in Paris

The black felt hat was valued between 600,000 and 800,000 euros (£525,000 and £700,000)

The historic hat was auctioned alongside more of his personal artefacts in Fontainebleau

But the faded black felt hat is the star piece. While other officers customarily wore their hats with the wings facing front to back, Napoleon wore his with the ends pointing toward his shoulders. 

That style – known as 'en bataille,' in battle, in French – made it easier for his troops to spot the military general and statesman in combat.

He owned about 120 bicorne hats over the years, but only 20 are known to remain. 

Jean-Pierre Osenat, head of the Osenat auction house, said: 'For people who are into Napoleonic souvenirs, it's the holy grail to have a hat.

'There's about 20 left that are authentic and about 15 of them are kept in museums, so there's about four or five that are in collectors' hands.'

The hat on sale was first recovered by Col. Pierre Baillon, a quartermaster under Napoleon and one of his comrades in arms in many battles, including Waterloo, according to the auctioneers. 

The hat made it easier for his troops to spot the military general and statesman in combat. Pictured: Digitally restored vector painting of Napoleon Bonaparte on his horse

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The hat then passed through many hands before Noisiez acquired it. The entrepreneur spent more than half a century assembling his collection of Napoleonic memorabilia, firearms, swords and coins before his death in 2022.

An engraving on a circular silver plate valued at 20,000 to 30,000 euros (£17,500 to £26,300) says it was taken from Napoleon's carriage at Waterloo.

The auctioneers say it was part of a haul of 400 pounds of silverware that was looted during the French retreat and shared among soldiers on the winning side.

Knife and fork used by Napoleon sold for 11,000 pounds. The cutlery was made by silversmith Martin-Guillaume Biennais in Paris in 1810

The cutlery is emblazoned with the General's initial 'N' in a laurel wreath

A mahogany vanity case bearing Napoleon's imperial coat of arms contains tools he would have needed to keep up appearances while campaigning, including a mirror, combs, tweezers, a shaving brush and other items. 

Its estimated sale price is 40,000 to 60,000 euros (£35,000 to £53,584).

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12767773/napoleon-bonaparte-signature-bicorne-hat-sell-paris-auction.html

Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a Corsican-born French military commander and political leader

Marie Antoinette was executed in 1793 after a trial in which she was accused of incest with her son. Later Napoleon came to power.

Napoleon

Napoleon was responsible for thousands of executions

Napoleon Bonaparte at the Moscow Kremlin, Russia, watching the great fire of Moscow

When the Russians refused to surrender, Napoleon and his starving men were forced to retreat West amidst the country's fierce winter

It was one of the greatest military catastrophes in history. Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 cost France more than 500,000 men and left the French emperor facing the beginning of the end of his reign. Above: A depiction of Napoleon at the head of the French army as it retreats from Moscow

Napoleon was defeated by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo in 1815

Men dressed as soldiers fight in a recreation of the battle of Waterloo

A portrait of Arthur Wellesley, the First Duke of Wellington, in military uniform. He served as Prime Minister twice, was a skilled horseman, spoke at least three languages and read avidly

More than two centuries after his death, the French still worship Napoleon. Parisian streets and stations are still named after his battles, while the Arc de Triomphe (pictured), built to celebrate his victory at Austerlitz, remains one of the great symbols of French patriotism.

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821 on the remote Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he had been in exile for six years following his surrender to the British navy

Jordan Coffee Shop serves "Holocaust Coffee", with burning Jewish marshmallows

Jordanian coffee shop sells 'Holocaust' drink with burning 'Jewish marshmallows'

The ad featured a hashtag reading "feel_the_Arabic_taste."

A coffee shop in Jordan called Gosta Coffee began selling a 'Holo-gosta' coffee (a portmanteau of the words "Holocaust" and the name of the shop) with burning Star of David marshmallows on top in recent days, according to ads published by the shop.

The first appearance was in a poster featuring the drink and a hand in a Palestinian flag glove holding a blowtorch. The ad featured the name of the drink and a hashtag reading "feel_the_Arabic_taste."

The ad sparked outrage on social media, with some wondering how Instagram and Facebook were allowing it to stay up.

The coffee shop expressed outrage at the complaints, claiming that its Instagram page had been disabled for several hours by "a campaign of attacks" launched "due to the Zionists' objection to the new drink."

Falling ratings

The shop added that its rating on Google Maps had fallen to less than two stars and also blamed this on a campaign against it. The Jerusalem Post could not confirm if the coffee shop's rating was any higher before the attack.

Gosta Coffee called on its supporters to express support for the page. "We will remain supportive of the Palestinian cause despite all these threats," it said.

Many of the hundreds of civilians massacred by Hamas on October 7 were burnt alive or after they were killed. Forensic pathologists have found cases of women and children tied together and immolated, as well as the corpses of infants that were immolated by Hamas terrorists.

This wasn't the first incident of an eatery in the region attacking Jews in light of the October 7 massacre.

Shortly after the attack, a pizzeria in Huwara in the West Bank published an online advertisement that depicted an elderly Israeli woman kidnapped by terrorists in Gaza. The pizzeria was demolished by the IDF after the advertisement was reported.

The photoshopped advert mocked an elderly woman kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during Hamas's attack on Israel, showing an image of her next to a photo of a pizza

An IDF bulldozer ramming into the pizzeria in Huwara and pulling it apart

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-773975

Poster tearing at American universities: today and in 1930s

Poster-tearing reminiscent of time when universities shook hands with Nazis

By Rafael Medoff

Controversy has erupted on American college campuses and elsewhere over anti-Israel extremists tearing down posters that feature photos of the Hamas hostages. 

At Columbia University, a pro-Hamas student assaulted a Jewish student who was putting up one of the posters. In addition to the college students who have torn down the posters, the vandals have included an attorney from the New York County public defender’s office, a Boston dentist, an employee of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a professor at the Michigan Ross School of Business.

It’s bad enough when seemingly respectable people, such as attorneys or professors, engage in such reprehensible behavior. But what about when a dean at a university is the one committing the vandalism?

An incident of this nature took place in Boston many years ago, but it sounds like something from today’s headlines – and the lessons from it are as relevant as ever.

During the 1930s, a number of prominent American universities cultivated friendly ties with Nazi Germany. Prof. Stephen Norwood described in his book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower how those schools invited Nazi representatives to speak on their campuses, participated in student exchange programs with Nazi-controlled universities, and sent delegates to Germany to take part in celebratory events at those institutions. 

Pro-Palestinian students take part in a protest in support of the Palestinians amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, at Columbia University in New York City, U.S., October 12, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/JEENAH MOON)

Ivy League schools and Nazi Germany

The fact that German universities had purged their Jewish faculty members and hosted book-burnings did not deter friendly overtures from schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1933, MIT president Karl Compton pressured Jewish students to refrain from sending a protest message to Adolf Hitler over the persecution of Jews in Germany. In 1937, Compton sent an MIT representative to participate in the bicentennial celebration of the Nazi-controlled University of Gottingen. When Compton was asked to hire a German Jewish refugee scholar for MIT’s mathematics department in 1942, he objected on the grounds that the department already had one Jewish professor, according to Prof. Laurel Leff, in her book Well Worth Saving. 

Compton told his colleagues there was “a tactical danger of having too large a proportion of the mathematical staff from the Jewish race [since] the appointment of an additional member of the Jewish race would increase the proportion of such men in the department far beyond the proportion of [Jews in the general] population.”

The poster-tearing incident took place in May 1934. That spring, the Roosevelt administration cooperated in the visit of the Nazi warship Karlsruhe to the United States, as part of President Roosevelt’s policy in the 1930s of maintaining friendly relations with Nazi Germany. The officers of the Karlsruhe were given tours of US Army and Navy stations at the ports where they docked. US Navy vessels even provided boats, personnel, and equipment to help the Karlsruhe carry out military exercises off the Los Angeles coast the following year.

When the Karlsruhe docked in the Boston harbor in 1934, its officers and crew were entertained at both Harvard and MIT. Local Jewish organizations and other opponents of Nazism called for a mass protest.

James A. Wechsler – who later became an editor at the New York Post for several decades – was an anti-Nazi activist at Columbia University at the time and closely followed what was happening at MIT. He wrote:

“The officialdom of MIT was… entertaining cadets from the ship with Dean [Harold] Lobdell as their personal supervisor. The dean was distraught. He scurried through the building tearing down posters announcing the anti-Nazi demonstration. When one student accosted him during this performance, the Dean explained that the sponsors of the protest were not a recognized group – although they had been even granted official permission by the [administration] to use the bulletin boards.”

Benjamin Netanyahu earned his bachelor’s degree and his master’s at MIT in the 1970s. The student body has changed a lot since then.

MIT students were among the first to cheer the Hamas pogrom. On October 8 – while over 1,200 dead bodies still lay strewn throughout towns in southern Israel – the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid declared that it “hold[s] the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence.” The statement endorsed the right of the pogromists “to resist oppression,” that is, to slaughter the Jewish infants who, apparently, were oppressing them.

Soon afterward, hundreds of MIT students staged a pro-Hamas rally on campus. Among other slogans, they shouted “One solution: Intifada Revolution,” an obvious endorsement of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israeli Jews.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth responded with an “even-handed” statement. Sure, the Hamas killings were “brutal,” she said, but “many innocent Palestinians” would also die. Yes, Jewish students say “they feel unsafe on our campus,” but “Palestinian students also fear being targeted.” And of course, antisemitism is “corrosive,” but so is “anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred.”

The spirit of indifference to Jewish suffering, exemplified by MIT Dean Lobdell tearing down Jewish anti-Nazi posters in 1934, lives on today – both among those who tear down posters of Jewish hostages and among university officials, at MIT and elsewhere, who seem incapable of unequivocally acknowledging the victimization of the Jews, without any ifs, ands, or buts.