Monument for a Hero
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Monument for a Hero
Emperor Louis Napoleon III (1808-1873) for a time united Christendom in an attempt to halt Lincoln’s northern alliance and their hostilities against the Christian South. The model equestrian sculpture is based on the original at Parco Sempione in Milan, Italy.
This look at Napoleon III is from strictly a traditional Southern point of view. If the French fleet had smashed the blockade and European troops reinforced the South the War Between the States would have ended. Louis Napoleon would have been praised as a great hero. In the idiom of the day he would have been seen as a Christian soldier. That view would have endured.
Evoking more of a spectral case study than a “what if”; Louis Napoleon’s memory is yet another post script to the War and the European involvement in it. A remembrance of events that enabled the modernist worldview to proliferate its corrosive veneer.
David Reif
On The Web: http://www.dsreif.blogspot.com/2012/03/monument-for-hero.html