Napoleon vs the Rabbits

On July 7, 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte signed the first of the Treaties of Tilsit. This was with Emperor Alexander I of Russia, which established an alliance between the French Empire and Imperial Russia that would endure forever, or for the next five years, whichever came first. The second Treaty of Tilsit was signed on July 9 on behalf of the King of Prussia. Prussia had already signed an armistice with France a couple weeks earlier, but the purpose of this treaty was to demand territory from Prussia. From this territory, Napoleon set up the puppet states of the Kingdom of Westphalia, the Free City of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), and the Duchy of Warsaw. Prussia was stripped of about half of its territory, and was forced to reduce its army significantly. Russia entered into war with Great Britain and Sweden when it aligned itself with France, which was great news for France. France was shaping up like a military juggernaut in Europe; no continental power seemed strong enough to stand up to them.

A medallion celebrating the first Treaty of Tislit. Emperor Napoleon (right) and Emperor Alexander (left) embrace each other rather warmly.

Naturally, Napoleon and the French army was feeling pretty good about themselves as they returned to Paris. Hoping to profit from the emperor’s good mood, Napoleon’s chief of staff, Marshall Alexandre Berthier, invited him and all the officers to his estate at Grosbois. He promised them a hunting expedition, since the land had plenty of game on it. Berthier was hoping for a great rabbit hunt, but his staff told him that there weren’t many rabbits on the land lately. He remedied this by ordering a thousand rabbits be brought to Grosbois and released for the pleasure of the hunters.

When they arrived, the hunting party headed out to the grounds, loaded for rabbit. As Napoleon, Berthier, and the rest of the hunting party approached, they suddenly found themselves on the defensive. A swarm of rabbits was rushing toward them, coming from all directions. The party quailed at the sight of them, and realized that they had to escape. The finest specimens that the French military had to offer was able to figure out how to maneuver around a horde of rabbits, but it was not easy. Reports state that Napoleon himself was visibly shaken by the rabbit attack. What they had for dinner that evening is not recorded, but hopefully there was something in the larder chez Berthier, because they weren’t having rabbit that evening.

Eventually someone figured out what went wrong. When Berthier stocked his lands with live game, he chose domestic rabbits, figuring that he would guarantee a success on the hunt, since they would be easier to catch than wild rabbits. Wild rabbits would just run and hide. What Berthier hadn’t counted on was the fact that domestic rabbits are used to counting on human beings for food. The imperial hunting party were probably the first humans the domestic rabbits had seen in a few days, and they were probably hungry. Maybe it wasn’t an attack, but it certainly wasn’t what anyone was expecting. When Napoleon said, “An army marches on its stomach,” this is probably not what he meant.

Le capitaine dînera, by Louis Albert Guislain Bacler d’Albe (c. 1820).

How the Lemon was Invented

Lemons How do you make a lemon? Silly question, isn’t it? You just take the seeds out of one and plant them, and wait for the tree to come up, right? That’s true, but it hasn’t always been that easy. Lemons today are a widely cultivated citrus fruit, with a flavor used in cuisines of countries where no lemon tree would ever grow. You might think that it was just a matter of ancient peoples finding the trees, enjoying their fruit and growing more of them, but that’s not true. The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old. The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma. (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar . I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.) The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years. The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits. One f...

Origins of the Word Hoser, eh?

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as cultural icons Bob and Doug McKenzie These days we often hear Canadians referred to as “Hosers”. It’s a strange word, and it sounds a little insulting, but it’s sometimes used more with affection than malice. Any such word is difficult to use correctly, especially if you don’t belong to the group the word describes. I can’t say I feel comfortable throwing the word around, myself, but I can offer a little information about it that might shed some light on what it means. First off: is it an insult? Yes… and no. The word hoser can be used as an insult or as a term of endearment; the variation hosehead , is certainly an insult. It’s a mild insult, meaning something like jerk or idiot or loser . Its origin is unclear, and there are several debatable etymologies of the word. One claims that it comes from the days before the zamboni was invented, when the losing team of an outdoor ice hockey game...

The Whoopie Cap

What can you do with your father’s old hats? If you were born after, say, 1955, the answer is probably “Not much.” Men were still wearing fedoras in the 1970s and 1980s, but by 1990, fashion had turned to the point where unless you were Indiana Jones, the hat didn’t look right. Some blame Jack Kennedy for starting it all, strutting around perfectly coiffed and bare-headed in the early 1960s. In 1953, Harry Truman, a haberdasher by trade, stepped out of office, and just eight years later we had a president who didn’t care for hats? The times, they were a-changin’. If you set the WABAC machine to the 1920s or 1930s (when Indiana Jones was supposed to have lived), you would see the fedora was still very much in style. Men just didn’t leave the house without a hat of some kind, and for what remained of the middle class, the fedora was the topper of choice. But like any other piece of clothing, hats wear out, too. When that happened, you’d ju...

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