Hat With History - Bonaparte's Hat For Sale

[DJH]

Napoleon Bonaparte's hat is up for auction.

Hmm, seems it is expected to sell for over $600,000. Would be pretty cool though!

 

[Lotsahats]

"Jean-Pierre Osenat, head of the auction house in Fontainbleau, said 19 of Napoleon’s 120 hats have survived." So Napoleon was a collector!

 

[fedoracentric]

If I remember right, he was something like 5 foot 7, above average height for Frenchmen of his day, and with that many hats he rose above the rest in more ways than height.

 

[hatophile]

He probably would have been a member here.

 

[hatophile]

If I remember right, he was something like 5 foot 7, above average height for Frenchmen of his day, and with that many hats he rose above the rest in more ways than height.

I would have been tall 200 years ago.

 

[GregNYC]

120 hats! Nice to know!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Lean'n'mean]

120 hats! Nice to know!

Yep & some of them still had heads in....

 

[Lean'n'mean]

If I remember right, he was something like 5 foot 7, .

He was in was in fact 1.68m tall which roughly converts to 5' 5" ......& he was considered on the short side even then & was known to have had a complex about his stature.

 

[Joao Encarnado]

I would love to flat that brim!

 

[fedoracentric]

He was in was in fact 1.68m tall which roughly converts to 5' 5" ......& he was considered on the short side even then & was known to have had a complex about his stature.

That is 5 foot 6, not five-five and, no, that wasn't short for the time. I just looked it up and according to Google...

"The average height of Frenchmen between 1800 and 1820 was only 5ft 4½in (1.64m); Napoleon was thus 2½in taller than his rival Horatio Nelson, who was only 5ft 4in (1.62m). Greek."

 

[hatsRme]

I would love to flat that brim!

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

[Guttersnipe]

The main reason for the confusion regarding Napoleon's height relates to units of measurement. In period sources, Napoleon's height is typically given in the French Royal System of measurement. Like the (English) Imperial systems of measurement we Americans use, there were 12 inches ("pouces") per-foot ("pied du roi"). However the Royal pouce converts to 1.067 Imperial inches. As a young man, in Imperial units, General Bonaparte was just shy of 5'7", which was tall(ish) for a Frenchman of the time. At the time of his death, after his body being ravaged by stomach cancer, the Emperor was approximately 5'5".

The other reason for the myth of Napoleon's shortness is that he was usually seen in public standing near members of his Imperial Guard, and particularly the Old Guard, which had a minimum height requirement. A guy who's shy of 5'7" is going to look tiny when standing next to someone that 6'+ and wearing a gigantic bearskin hat!

 

[hatsRme]

Thanks for posting this one, David!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Cicely Courtneidge -- If I Had Napoleon's Hat (1933)
featured in the film Aunt Sally

[video=youtube;Yeg5tGns_gg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yeg5tGns_gg[/video]

 

[Lean'n'mean]

That is 5 foot 6, not five-five and, no, that wasn't short for the time. I just looked it up and according to Google...

"The average height of Frenchmen between 1800 and 1820 was only 5ft 4½in (1.64m); Napoleon was thus 2½in taller than his rival Horatio Nelson, who was only 5ft 4in (1.62m). Greek."

I stand corrected ......having done a little googling on the French side, this myth about Boney being vertically challenged appears to stem from a number of mis conceptions......firstly the feet & inches ( pieds et pouces)used by the French at the time were different to those used by the English, secondly he was often accompanied by his guards who were considerably taller than him which made him appear smaller to onlookers & then of course there were his political enemies who didn't hesitate to tarnish his persona by exaggerating his 'petite taille'.......the English too chipped in with propaganda shortening the chap even more....
One also has to be wary of comparing him to the average heights at the time since the vast majority of folk were rural, mostly poor, & so to some extent, mal nourished.........if we could compare his stature to the rich & powerful people he frequented at the time, we might have a better idea of how this rumour started in the first place.

Getting back to hats, his hatter apparently made him 4 hats a year & he always had 12 hats to hand where ever he went......you don't get to be a brilliant strategist without a little obsessiveness.

EDIT; Guttersnipe beat me to it...

 

[Guttersnipe]

One also has to be wary of comparing him to the average heights at the time since the vast majority of folk were rural, mostly poor, & so to some extent, malnourished.........if we could compare his stature to the rich & powerful people he frequented at the time, we might have a better idea of how this rumor started in the first place.

Getting back to hats, his hatter apparently made him 4 hats a year & he always had 12 hats to hand where ever he went......you don't get to be a brilliant strategist without a little obsessiveness.

EDIT; Guttersnipe beat me to it...

A French friend of mine clued me in about this. Good point about the issues of comparing average heights without considering relative the relatively commonness of malnutrition among the poor in the 18th and 19th centuries. I've seen secondary sources, which cite period army medical records, that state the average height of enlisted British soldiers during the period was about 5'6". Since the enlisted men of the British army were almost exclusively poor people, I'd say that's a pretty good representation of the overall population. Of course people's height can be all over the place . . .

. . . Lord Horatio Nelson is variously cited as having been between 5'3" and 5'6", however period sources frequently refer to him as "little" so I've away been inclined to believe the former. Lord Nelson came from a humble, but not impoverished, background. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington -- who came from a very affluent family -- was 5'10" in his youth and about 5'8" as an old man (he lived into his 80s and developed a very pronounced hunch). Marshal Michel Ney, "The Bravest of the Brave" on the other hand, the son of a humble tradesman, was very tall at 6'3" or 4".

Regarding hats, I suspect Napoleon always traveled with so many so that he had the correct hat to match whatever uniform he wore that day. We are used to seeing him portrayed in either his blue Grenadiers-à-Pied de la Garde Impériale uniform or his green Chasseurs à Cheval de la Garde Impériale uniform, but Napoleon actually rotated through uniforms of regiments.

 

[fedoracentric]

According to what I was seeing, American Revolutionary War soldiers were quite a bit taller than Britain's Lobsterbacks and taller than most Europeans at the time. Americans stayed taller all the way until the last 20 years when Swedes surpassed us. Again, it all has to do with diet and availability of foodstuffs. Americans have been well fed since the beginning.

 

[KingAndrew]

It's true. New Englanders in the 18th century were typically a few inches taller and lived a couple of decades(!) longer than their counterparts in "old" England. Better food, more exercise, healthier general lifestyle made a big difference.

 

[hatophile]

It's true. New Englanders in the 18th century were typically a few inches taller and lived a couple of decades(!) longer than their counterparts in "old" England. Better food, more exercise, healthier general lifestyle made a big difference.

And plenty of good whiskey.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Rum and cider were the drinks back then. Cider was considered a healthy drink, and the populations of cider making regions were considered exceptionally healthy and long lived.

However, I doubt they lived " a couple of decades" longer.