Word: napoleonomania
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...bored by him," Victor Hugo once remarked of Napoleon. But the French certainly do not share that feeling. Despite devaluation of the franc, France this week celebrates the 200th anniversary of Bonaparte's birth, gripped by an unprecedented outbreak of Napoleonomania. Traveling by ship and plane to Napoleon's Corsican hometown of Ajaccio (pop. 50,000), more than 200,000 tourists will enjoy fireworks and street dancing, hear President Georges Pompidou deliver the bicentennial address and watch 3,500 French légionnaires, dressed as the Emperor's grognards (grumpy veterans), parade through the spruced-up city...
Despite this Napoleonomania, Frenchmen are divided over this most famous Frenchman. Conservatives and Catholics admire Napoleon as the man who ended revolutionary chaos., transformed France into a modern state, reopened the churches, established the bourgeoisie as the ruling class. Communists praise him for destroying feudalism throughout Europe. On the other hand, royalists, socialists, schoolteachers and intellectuals despise him. Royalists regard the self-made Emperor as a "usurper." The others consider him the betrayer of the revolution, a bloodthirsty tyrant whose invasions of Spain and Russia decimated French youth...
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