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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
II. To Winter Wonderlands
The road through the Almond and Raisin Gate led Nutcracker and Marie to Rock Candy Mountain and the Christmas Woods, Bon-Bonville, Marzipan Castle, and Jamburg. Upon crossing Lemonade River, six monkeys in red vests began “playing the most beautiful Turkish military music,” while they walked “farther and farther on multicolored tiles, which, however, were nothing but nicely filled lozenges.” (more…)
Left: Antoine-Jean Gros, Premier Consul Bonaparte, ca. 1802; Right: Cover for E. T. A. Hoffmann and Alexandre Dumas’ The Nutcracker & the Mouse King
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
Like many of us this past season, I have had to endure far too many repetitions of the same 11 ”holiday” songs that fail to capture the essence of the season: the contemplative, dirge-y, or haunted side of winter, paired with the tasteful emotional warmth and childlike joy of Christmas. (more…)
William Blake, Mrs. Q, ca. 1815
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“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it.” — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The last article of mine that our editors at Counter–Currents kindly published was about the masculine topic of military history. To complement a foray into the Napoleonic Wars, I included a clip from the 1970 film Waterloo.[1] In the comments, a reader shared an observation about one of the few Waterloo scenes that did not take place on a battlefield. Instead, this particular scene immersed audiences in a Brussels high-society fête, where the Duchess of Richmond hosted the Duke of Wellington’s officers at her famous summer Ball of 1815. (more…)
Horace Vernet, Napoleon at Jena: “En Avant!”
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1. Homer, Iliad. W. C. Bryant, trans. Perth, Aus.: Imperium Press, 2019, 576 pp.: While everyone knows the story, few people today have actually read it. You can bet that almost every great military commander in Western history read it. Composed during the Greek “Dark Ages” and (probably) based on a real event, Iliad is an echo of the even earlier Bronze Age — of war’s power at its all-encompassing, glorious, and terrible pinnacle. (more…)
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1866)
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The dog days of summer are a slow time for movement activity and fundraising, but over the last week, our fundraiser still crept 1% closer to the goal. This year, Counter-Currents is raising $300,000. Since our fundraiser started on March 10th, we have raised $112,660.50, which is 38% of our goal. I want to thank all of those who have given so far. Full information on how to donate is below, but before you read that, I want to share a few words from Kathryn S. — Greg Johnson (more…)
Napoleon’s North African-attired Consular Guard: a hard look to pull off
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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
2. Rage Militaire: Franco-American Zouave-mania
“His parents taught him to be a cavalier, but the life of the Zou-zou he much did prefer.” — anonymous Confederate verse
“The city,” one Richmond, Virginia newspaperman enthused, “was yesterday thrown into a paroxysm of excitement by the arrival of the New Orleans Zouaves — a battalion of six hundred and thirty, as unique and picturesque looking Frenchmen as ever delighted the oculars of Napoleon the three.” (more…)
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The editors of Counter-Currents have recently shared their findings that, among other interesting facts, females make up about one-third of the readership here. There are apparently quite a few Dissident-Right women who swim in our waters, and therefore a need exists for some un-feminist, but “woman-positive” readings that mine our traditional canon and seek to shape the future of femininity.
I don’t usually write about “female things,” and that’s not really on purpose. I find history, war, and a mostly male cast of authors interesting, and I always have. (more…)
Mycenaean bust of a Bronze Age warrior wearing a boar’s-tusk helmet
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By the late spring of 1185 BC, something had gone terribly wrong in the palace-complex of Syrian Ugarit. The city’s leader, Amurabi, had just received a letter from the grand supervisor of Alashiya (Cyprus), asking Amurabi to send what men he could spare to help his beleaguered ally to the east. Cutthroats and bands of foreign invaders were menacing his Cypriot towns. Unfortunately, Amurabi had his own border problems. In a message whose words have lost none of their exasperation or sarcasm after 32 centuries, the ruler of Ugarit replied: (more…)
