ELBA, THE EXILE OF THE FRENCH EMPEROR NAPOLEON

Joseph de Ca'th Lon visits Portoferraio, Elba

Today, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and his friends have visited Elba, the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago where the French Emperor Napoleon was exiled, after his forced abdication following the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814).

Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, 10 kilometres from the coastal town of Piombino, and the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago. It is also part of the Arcipelago Toscano National Park, and the third largest island in Italy, after Sicily and Sardinia. It is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea about 50 kilometres east of the French island of Corsica.

The island is part of the province of Livorno and is divided into seven municipalities. The municipalities are Portoferraio, which is also the island's principal town, Campo nell'Elba, Capoliveri, Marciana, Marciana Marina, Porto Azzurro, and Rio.

More information: Visit Tuscany

Elba is the largest remaining stretch of land from the ancient tract that once connected the Italian peninsula to Corsica. The northern coast faces the Ligurian Sea, the eastern coast the Piombino Channel, the southern coast the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Corsica Channel divides the western tip of the island from neighbouring Corsica.

Visiting Elba, Tuscany

The island itself is made up of slices of rocks which once formed part of the ancient Tethyan seafloor. These rocks have been through at least two orogenies, the Alpine orogeny and the Apennine orogeny.

The second of these two events was associated with subduction of the Tethyan oceanic crust underneath Italy and the obduction of parts of the ancient seafloor onto the continents. Later extension within the stretched inner part of the Apennine mountains caused adiabatic melting and the intrusion of the Mount Capanne and the La Serra-Porto Azzuro granitoids.

These igneous bodies brought with them skarn fluids which dissolved and replaced some of the carbonate units, precipitating iron-rich minerals in their place. One of the iron-rich minerals, ilvaite, was first identified on the island and takes its name from the Latin word for Elba.

More information: Discover Tuscany

More recently, high-angle faults formed within the tectonic pile, allowing for the migration of iron-rich fluids through the crust. The deposits left behind by these fluids formed the island's rich seams of iron ore.

The terrain is quite varied, and is thus divided into several areas based on geomorphology. The mountainous and most recent part of the island can be found to the west, the centre of which is dominated by Mount Capanne (1,018 metres), also called the roof of the Tuscan Archipelago. The mountain is home to many animal species including the mouflon and wild boar, two species that flourish despite the continuous influx of tourists.

The central part of the island is a mostly flat section with the width being reduced to just four kilometres. It is where the major centres can be found: Portoferraio, Campo nell'Elba.

Jordi Santanyí visits Elba, Tuscany

To the east is the oldest part of the island, formed over 3 million years ago. In the hilly area, dominated by Monte Calamita, are the deposits of iron that made Elba famous.

The island was originally inhabited by Ligures Ilvates, who gave it the ancient name Ilva. It was well known from very ancient times for its iron resources and valued mines. The Greeks called it Aethalia, Αιθαλία, after the fumes of the metal producing furnaces.

Apollonius of Rhodes mentions it in his epic poem Argonautica, describing that the Argonauts rested here during their travels. He writes that signs of their visit were still visible in his day, including skin-coloured pebbles that they dried their hands on and large stones which they used at discus.

More information: My Travel in Tuscany

The island was invaded by the Etruscans and later, after 480 BC, by the Romans. In the middle ages, it was invaded by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards, and then it became a possession of the Republic of Pisa. After the battle of Meloria, the Republic of Genova took possession of Elba, but it was regained by Pisa in 1292. The island was retained for two centuries by the Appiani family, Lords of Piombino, when they sold Pisa to the house of Visconti of Milan in 1399.

In 1544, the Barbary pirates from North Africa devastated Elba and the coasts of Tuscany. In 1546, part of the island was handed over to Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who fortified Portoferraio and renamed it Cosmopoli, while the rest of the island was returned to the Appiani in 1577.

More information: The Culture Trip

In 1596, Philip II of Spain captured Porto Azzurro and had two fortresses built there. A part of Elba came into the power of the Kingdom of Naples through the State of the Presidi, including Porto Longone. 

Napoleon Bonaparte

In 1736, the whole of Elba, with the principality of Piombino, passed under the jurisdiction of Kingdom of Naples. The British landed on the Island of Elba in 1796, after the occupation of Livorno by the French Republican troops, to protect the 4,000 French royalists who had found asylum in Portoferraio two years earlier. In 1801, the Peace of Luneville gave Elba to the Kingdom of Etruria, and it was transferred to France in 1802 by the Peace of Amiens.

The French Emperor Napoleon was exiled to Elba, after his forced abdication following the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814), and he arrived at Portoferraio on 30 May 1814. He was allowed to keep a personal guard of 600 men and was nominally sovereign of Elba, although the nearby sea was patrolled by the French and British navies.

During the months that he stayed on the island, Napoleon carried out a series of economic and social reforms to improve the quality of life. After staying on for 300 days, he escaped to France, on 26 February 1815.

At the Congress of Vienna, Elba was restored to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In 1860, it became part of the new unified Kingdom of Italy.

The island was liberated from the Germans by the French 1er Corps d'Armée on 17 June 1944, in Opération Brassard. Faulty intelligence and strong defences made the battle more difficult than expected.

More recently, the island has become famed for its wine and is a noted tourist destination.

More information: Fondation Napoleon

If you wish to be a success in the world,

promise everything, deliver nothing.

Napoleon Bonaparte

THE BRANDENBURG GATE: A WONDERFUL SIGN OF PEACE

Brandenburg column and Parisian place, 1930

The Brandenburg Gate, Brandenburger Tor in German, is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, and one of the best-known landmarks of Germany. It is built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament, the Bundestag. The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs.

It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by architect Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791. 

More information: Berlin.de

The Brandenburg Gate was not part of the old fortifications, but one of 18 gates within the Berlin Customs Wall erected in the 1730s, including the old fortified city and many of its then suburbs. The gate consists of 12 Doric columns, six to each side, forming five passageways. Citizens originally were allowed to use only the outermost two on each side. Atop the gate is a Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses. 

Napoleon in Berlin by Charles Meynier

The gate's design is based upon the Propylaea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and is consistent with Berlin's history of architectural classicism, first, Baroque, and then neo-Palladian. The gate was the first Athens on the River Spree by architect Carl Gotthard von Langhans. The capital Quadriga was sculpted by Johann Gottfried Schadow.

The Brandenburg Gate has played different political roles in German history. After the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon was the first to use the Brandenburg Gate for a triumphal procession and took its Quadriga to Paris.

After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and the Prussian occupation of Paris by General Ernst von Pfuel, the Quadriga was restored to Berlin. It was now redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for the new role of the Brandenburg Gate as a Prussian triumphal arch; the goddess, now definitely Victoria, was equipped with the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross on her lance with a wreath of oak leaves.

More information: History.com

When a much larger Berlin was partitioned after World War II, the central borough of the city fell into the Soviet sector, adjoining the British sector at the Brandenburg Gate.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989

Following Germany's surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East Berlin and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. The holes were patched, but were visible for many years following the war.

Vehicles and pedestrians could travel freely through the gate, located in East Berlin, until the Berlin Wall was built, 13 August 1961. Then one of the eight Berlin Wall crossings was opened on the eastern side of the gate, usually not open for East Berliners and East Germans, who from then on needed a hard-to-obtain exit visa. On 14 August, West Berliners gathered on the western side of the gate to demonstrate against the Berlin Wall, among them West Berlin's governing Mayor Willy Brandt, who had spontaneously returned from a federal election campaigning tour in West Germany earlier on the same day.

More information: Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate

Under the pretext that Western demonstrations required it, the East closed the checkpoint at the Brandenburg Gate the same day, until further notice, a situation that was to last until 22 December 1989. The wall was erected as an arc just west of the gate, cutting off access from West Berlin. 

During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin Wall. The area around the gate was featured most prominently in the media coverage of the tearing down of the wall in 1989, and the subsequent German reunification in 1990.

Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

Ich habe es noch in diesem Sommer: Berlin wird leben, 

und die Mauer wird fallen.

I wrote it down again this summer: Berlin will live and the Wall will fall.

Former major of Berlin and chancellor or Germany Willy Brandt at the West Berlin city hall Rathaus Schöneberg, on November 10th 1989, one day after the first East-Berliners passed the border between East and West-Berlin.