“He who saves his country does not violate any law,” Donald Trump posted on social-media platform X in February. It was an interesting choice of words, not least because those words have been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor, who, as The Guardian noted at the time, also “rode roughshod” over his country’s constitution.
But it does perhaps help to explain the US president’s, some would say, unhealthy interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark for the United States. And as for Canada, it was only on 27 May that Trump was reminding Canadians they would pay “zero dollars” to be covered by his proposed “Golden Dome” missile defence shield if only they would “become our cherished 51st state”. Otherwise, their share of the bill would come to $61 billion, according to the man in the White House.
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Making America great
On 6 June, Trump got an opportunity to inspect an important historical artefact from that transaction up close when Sotheby’s in New York unveiled the green leather portfolio that is believed to have held the paperwork that transferred 800,000 square miles to the fledgling US. The land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains not only comprises the state of Louisiana today, but much of the territory of another 14 states and, as Trump may be interested to note, chunks of modern-day Canada. In return, the US paid France $15 million – a bargain at four cents an acre.
The portfolio displays in gold lettering the name of Francois Barbé-Marbois, the man who led the negotiations on behalf of Napoleon in order to, in the words of his boss, “prevent [the British from] ruling America as they rule Asia”. The papers it contained are today kept in the Washington Archives.
Sotheby’s put the portfolio on display to drum up interest in other Napoleonic relics from the collection of Pierre-Jean Chalençon (a French television personality and collector) that are appearing in its sale on 25 June in Paris. They include Napoleon’s hand-written codicil that distributed his “modest” possessions to his followers, which the deposed emperor wrote “in a moment of illness, paranoia and isolation” while in exile in Saint Helena, says Sotheby’s.
That is expected to fetch up to €500,000. There is also the ceremonial “sword and stick” used in his coronation in 1804, which has been given a pre-sale estimate of up to €400,000, and the grand portrait of the emperor in his robes, from the studio of François-Pascal-Simon Baron Gérard and estimated to sell for up to €300,000. But perhaps Trump, a fan of statement headwear, would be most interested in the headline lot – Napoleon’s bicorne hat, which the emperor wore en bataille, that is with the wings parallel to his shoulders to ensure he stood out in the public eye as well as on the battlefield. It is valued at up to €800,000.
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