THE ROSETTA STONE

The rise of Napoleon parallels the decline of the French monarchy. His father and mother (Laetitia) had fought against the French, when they conquered Corsica in the 18^th century. His father switched sides and became a solid supporter of the French regime, became a member of parliament and visited Paris and Versailles, with all its royal splendor. He realized that the future of his son was on the continent. He managed to obtain a scholarship for his son Maximillian. At the military academy he studied several years and his teachers saw him as promising. But not being an aristocrat made his chances for a military career small. In 1789 Paris erupted. In a wave of violence, revolutionary masses and terror, the monarchy was toppled. Louis the 16^th and his wife Marie-Antoinette, and with them tens of thousands of aristocrats were beheaded. The preferred way was the guillotine, designed by a French doctor to humanize the death penalty. French was in a state of civil war and many aristocrats, who served in the army, left the country. Napoleon was promoted and his first task was to drive out the English, who had conquered Toulon. He did this by charging a hill-fort and blowing the British fleet out of the water. Napoleon Bonaparte was an instant success and he was promoted to brigade-general. The French army had not been payed for several years and France was at war with England, Austria and Spain. He motivated his troops by looting Italy and pushing back the Austrians. After that he moved an army of 35.000 to Egypt. Napoleon wanted to break the naval power of England by occupying the land of the Pharaohs. Napoleon was accompanied by archeologists, historians and artists. The treasure and archeological richness of Egypt made them make this journey.

Napoleon crashed the “Mammalucs”, the elite-troops of the Ottoman Empire. His archeologists were busy like children in a candy-shop. One of them was named Champollion. He was specially interested in the hieroglyphics. A pictorial language nobody understood. But he got lucky. At Rosetta a stone was dug. On it were hieroglyphs, but also a translation in Aramaic, a form of writing he knew. This made it possible to make a start with the translation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. But why is this stone in London?

The ship, Napoleon used to transport his treasures to France, was captured by the famous English admiral Nelson, later Lord Nelson.

Napoleon was stuck in Egypt because the French fleet was destroyed or captured. But drinking tea and watching the camels go by, was not Napoleon's style. He left his troops behind, managed to escape from Nelson's fleet and landed in France as a victorious general. Heading for Empire.