3,400 words

Part 1

I’m sure many readers are familiar with the French comic, Astérix le Gaulois. Ever since a fun day in high-school French, I have followed the adventures of its eponymous character and its tongue-in-cheek depiction of the Gauls and their Roman antagonists during what was a serious and brutal episode in ancient European history.[1] The Gallic men all had names ending in “-ix,” and they wore those long, iconic mustaches. Gallic women, meanwhile, braided their hair in pairs of red or blonde plaits. As for the Romans, they were clean-shaven and usually balding. Their grandiloquent and villainous names included: Noxius-Vapus, Maximus Perfidius, Caius Pusillanimus, Tremendelirius, Egganlettuce, Marcus Ginantonicus, Caligula Minus, etc.

The main character’s inspiration was the French national icon Vercingetorix, a Gallic commander who managed to unite, then lead various Gaulish tribes to victory against Julius Caesar’s invasion. That is, until the Roman general defeated him at the 52 BC Battle of Alesia (in the Asterix stories, Gauls pretended never to have heard of Alesia – “WHAT DO YOU MEAN ALESIA? I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE ALESIA IS! NOBODY KNOWS WHERE ALESIA IS!”).[2] Afterwards, Vercingetorix rode alone into the enemy camp. There, he attempted the classic “take me instead” gambit. The proud chieftain threw down his arms at Caesar’s feet, hoping to allay Rome’s wrath and save as many of his men as he could. Caesar had him publicly strangled during his Triumph of 46 BC.

But according to Asterix, not all was lost after that black day of surrender. Due to a magic elixir concocted by the local Druid, Getafix, the Gauls of Asterix’s town possessed superhuman strength. This advantage enabled them to resist all Roman endeavors to subdue that “one small village of indomitable Gauls.”[3] Among other things, this “indomitable” spirit manifested in perpetual feasting and toasting, for in true legendary fashion, the town’s residents never missed an opportunity to hold a raucous banquet. In fact, the town’s leader, Chief Vitalstatistix, often found himself suffering from stomach-aches and hangovers after having indulged too much at the prior night’s festivities. But would he exercise any civilized restraint at the next party? Ha! No chance.

The installment I’ve most recently read was Asterix and the Banquet (Le Tour de Gaule d’Astérix). In this episode, the protagonist and his best friend Obelix (a jovial, fat sidekick, always carrying menhirs on his back) defied the nearby garrison by promising to break out of the stockade that “Inspector-General” Overanxius had erected around the tiny settlement. Asterix made a wager with the Roman official. Not only would he and Obelix escape the enclosure, but they would embark on a grand tour of Gaul, bringing back regional delicacies from every notable Gallic town. All the while, they’d make fools of the imperial soldiers and bounty-hunters sent to track them down. Asterix intended the feat to invert the Roman triumph ritual: “Gaul is our country, O Roman, and we’ll go where we like in it,” he thundered.[4] If, upon their return, they arrived laden with the culinary specialties of ancient France, Overanxius would have to attend the ensuing feast. There, he would literally eat generous slices of humble pie before returning to Caesar and telling him of Rome’s continued failure to subdue the last Gaulish holdout.

Indeed, Asterix and Obelix dodged arrogant Roman magistrates and a few treacherous countrymen who sought to drug them at dinner or betray them to the Romans while feigning hospitality (Uptotrix and Unpatriotix). They arrived back at their town with a sack filled with food and loot: “Ham from Lutetia . . . Durocortorum wine, sausage from Tolosa and Lugdonum, salad from Nicae, fish stew from Massilia, oysters and wine from Burdigala.”[5] But there was something missing, Asterix hummed innocently. “Do you know what cut of meat is our own speciality?” he asked Overanxius. “The uppercut!”^[6] Bolstered with success, food, and magic elixir, the plucky Gaul punched Overanxius up and out of the village and presumably all the way back to Rome.

In a light-hearted way, Asterix and the Banquet explored the sometimes high-stakes tradition of throwing and attending dinner parties. In this genre, everything about the feast was strategized, or staged: the Romans agreed to the challenge beforehand, and Asterix and Obelix mapped out their culinary route with string, pebbles, and chalk. Various baddies along the way schemed their demise as they set up ambushes, or offered the heroes drugged meat and wine. Of course, Overanxius got his final, if not fatal, comeuppance at the concluding Gallic dinner-scene – just as Asterix had planned.

This brings me to the subject of this essay. Dinners are indeed planned – premeditated. A few of the questions would-be hosts must ask themselves are: Who should sit where? What food should I serve? How should I time the courses? What sort of entertainment should I provide? Must I invite that obnoxious (or Obnoxius) nephew, Harold? These gatherings thus share similarities with less innocent plots and premeditated crimes. It should come as no surprise that our historical and literary traditions have often linked dining and danger. Just as the schemes of murderous intrigue can miscarry, as it did for poor Overanxius, so much can go wrong when everyone is seated round the table. On the surface, a dinner-party might seem like an opportunity to relax, enjoy, savor meals and conversations – and often they are. But they can also be a setting where one must be most on his guard, most watchful once he realizes that few fellow guests have come for the food. No, the food is the excuse, the bait, or even the distraction from a party’s real purpose. All are there to observe.

At dinner parties there are so many ways to give oneself away, or lull one’s enemies into a false sense of security. A kind of equality reigns over all diners sitting at the table. And yet, signs of hierarchy are all around them. From the arrangement of place-settings, guests can tell who is in favor and who is on the outs. There may be slaves fanning them, or servants scuttling around with pitchers and trays. At a dinner party, one is not “in public,” but neither is one “in private,” a limbo that can make interactions uncomfortable, and sometimes perilous. Beware too many glasses of sherry, lest you slip into clumsiness and commit some unforgivable faux pas. Don’t hesitate too long when offered a dish, or when answering questions about the quality of the Christmas pudding. Be engaging and interesting without veering into indiscretion. Be personable without being personal. Never forget that everyone is watching everyone else. After all, most Renaissance depictions of the Last Supper (and there are a lot of them) focus the viewer’s attention, not on the all-important bread and wine, but on the men eyeing one another with shock and distrust. In this way, the dinner table is more like a stage.

Of course, a stage is something to behold, and when combined with a collective meal, the action at table becomes dinner-theater, and the audience become participants. While “the gaze” has a powerful resonance in Oriental cultures, that arch-ensnarer, “taste,” is the most dangerous sense in the Western tradition. The gaze is sight alone, but taste – to taste is to partake of and thus makes use of all our senses. It lures, then invites us to devour what it is that we crave. Taste in Western stories is about our appetite consuming us, rather than our appetite consuming the thing literally eaten. It is no great sin to gaze on Helios’ cattle, to look at the apple hanging from the Tree of Knowledge, or to “accidentally” catch sight of a woman bathing – ungallant or unwise, but not often worthy of eternal curses. But to partake of these? The good news is that in this essay, we’re invited to watch, but not succumb, to some of the most entertaining and demented dinner parties ever thrown. What happens, dear readers, when checking the RSVP box backfires?

• Eating with the Enemy

 [A]t five o’clock the [British] Admiral announced that dinner was on the table. It is well known that Napoleon was scarcely ever more than fifteen minutes at dinner; here the two courses alone took up nearly an hour and a half. This was a serious annoyance to him, though his features and manner always evinced perfect equanimity – Napoleon Bonaparte on his way to exile, Memoirs

Napoleon vs. Alexander (1804-1821)

To several generations of young Britons, he was “Napoleon, the child-eater,” but the French emperor’s real diet was less interesting. He was not what we’d call a gourmand. According to the Imperial Magistrate, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755 – 1826), Napoleon “was irregular in his meals and ate quickly and poorly” – a milder way, perhaps, of saying that his master was a bit of a slob. For Napoleon, meals were like a daily tax from a state that he couldn’t conquer and therefore couldn’t get out of literally forking over its fee. Not that he used forks very often. He preferred to scarf it all down while working on other matters (although he did have a weakness for macaroni, chocolate, and coffee) – a far cry from the Gauls of Asterix’s day. It’s ironic then, that during his reign French haute-cuisine achieved a level of renown and excellence that France still enjoys. Despite this lack of enthusiasm for the actual dinner-food, Napoleon was enthusiastic about the power of dinner-parties. He was not averse to throwing the occasional lavish spread. After all, what is an emperor without his banquets? His dinner service, known as the Quartiers Généraux, included 72 plates that featured imagery from his campaigns in Italy, Austria, Prussia, Poland, and Egypt. At the time, each plate’s worth was 425 F (about $2,000 in today’s currency) – the costliest of its kind.[7] These were less for serving food and more for commemorative display – more for the purpose of projecting his victorious majesty and impressing any rivals who might show up for supper.

The most interesting Napoleonic rivalry was his frenemy-ship with Alexander I of Russia. Alexander was prone to pontification, and Napoleon was his favorite target. In what became known as the 1804 “Cadoudal Affair”[8] (wonderful how earlier eras had so many “affairs”), a Bourbon nobleman, the Duc d’Enghien, became implicated in a plot to assassinate Napoleon. He fled France to the sanctuary of Baden, a German electorate under the control of Tsar Alexander’s father-in-law. Undeterred, Napoleon seized d’Enghien anyway, then had him executed. Most of Europe recoiled with a scandalized gasp. Alexander’s reaction was especially dramatic. He denounced Napoleon’s so-called breach of the aristocratic code in pompous terms – only to regret it. The French emperor reminded the world of Alexander’s own murdered father, and the fact that the current Russian monarch had given the killers his tacit approval – at least. All of the alleged conspirators continued to hold high office, or had advanced their positions at court. With his trademark ability to deflate any and all egos with the slash of a sentence or two, Napoleon suggested that Alexander should avoid pronouncing on any extra-legal murders until he brought his father’s assassins to justice. Alexander’s hatred for Napoleon increased by ten orders of magnitude.

For the next several years, the old European monarchies of Europe joined forces in hopes of defeating France, but Napoleon embarrassed them at almost every turn. Alexander suffered a particularly humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz (1806), where he undermined his own military commander, Mikhail Kutuzov, so that he could direct Russian forces himself. If a Corsican upstart could do it, surely a magnificent tsar, born to lead millions of subjects, could work even greater wonders on the field. “Where are you taking your division?” Kutuzov had asked Alexander during battle. In one of the most preposterous responses in military history, the Tsar turned to the general of his army and retorted: “None of your business,” then rode off. By day’s end, he’d lost 30,000 men and the battle.

After the Jena-Auerstedt and Eylau Campaigns of 1806-7, Alexander and the Prussian king, Frederick William III, agreed to sue for peace. Napoleon realized that now was the time to direct equal amounts of charm and intimidation at his beaten enemies. What better setting for this tête-à-tête than a luncheon held on an ostentatious raft that floated its guests serenely down the Nieman River? 150 French carpenters set to work building a “floating house,” or maisonette that would shelter the monarchs while they ate and conducted their peace talks. According to a mediating dignitary, the structure came together in less than two days. It “was exceedingly well furnished and included a large finely decorated ‘salon’ with two facing doors, beyond which stood two antechambers.” Decorators ornamented the walls with “garlands of flowers and foliage, and on the roof [they placed] two weathercocks, one with a Russian eagle and the other with a French eagle.”[9]

In order to flatter Alexander’s ego, Napoleon made it an “emperors-only” event, and left Frederick William out.[10] The poor Prussian king could only sit astride his horse in the shallows and stew. At the sounding of trumpets, the imperial parties got into their small boats, then sailed toward the maisonette. Accompanied by their royal guards, the entourages arrived and boarded the floating stage. “I hate the English as much as you do, and will second all your actions against them,” Alexander said by way of a greeting. “In that case,” Napoleon replied, “peace is made.”[11] The two leaders shared a ceremonial embrace, then retreated behind the curtain for their “working lunch.”Alexander was more than a little star-struck and fell under the power of French hospitality. He later said that “[he] never had more prejudices against anyone than against [Napoleon], but after three-quarters of an hour” in his presence, “they all disappeared like a dream.”[12] Napoleon’s response, meanwhile, was that of a generous, but condescending host – a perfect blend of compliment and shade. To Empress Josephine, he wrote of the endearingly youthful Tsar: “If Alexander were a woman, I would make him my mistress.”[13]

But how had Napoleon won over this most “prejudiced” of enemies? According to his contemporaries, “the fascination of [Napoleon’s] large grey eyes . . . all-seeing, all-knowing, and yet almost expressionless . . . was irresistible.” Even men like the no-nonsense General Dominique Vandamme confessed to falling for the man’s spell: “So it is that I, who fear neither God nor Devil, am ready to tremble like a child when I approach him.” Moreover, Napoleon was aware of his hypnotizing power and used it to “enslave a man if he felt the effort was worthwhile.” Years later, the British officers and crewmen who were tasked with transporting their prisoner to St. Helena found themselves “completely won over.” Indeed, “he could have any man or woman eating out of his hand if he so desired”[14] – a revealing metaphor that sometimes became literal. After their pledges of friendship, Napoleon bestowed on his new Russian admirer a “full Olympic Dinner Service,” valued at 55,000 F (roughly $250,000 today). Little did Alexander realize that within a few years, his one-time ally would be dining in Moscow – without him.

Although the Olympic Dinner Service was meant to be a lasting reminder of rapprochement, the mealtime-theater at Tilsit was, like all performances, ephemeral. The finest plates are easily shattered. Once escaped from the intoxicating ambit of Napoleon’s charm, Alexander began having second thoughts. The closing articles of the Tilsit agreement stipulated that “the two Courts of the Tuileries [France] and Petersburg [Russia] . . . shall be placed on the footing of complete equality and reciprocity.”[15] Because a small number of people (to say nothing of the two grandest leaders of continental Europe) have ever really wanted the equality on paper to become equality in fact, the love-fest curdled. After lobbing veiled insults at one another for five years, the two emperors had a falling-out that we might euphemistically call “The 1812 Affair.”

A clever Scot immortalized this contest over fine-dining diplomacy and rougher meetings on the field with his (just this side of intelligible) song: “The Twa Emperors, or, Sandy and Nap.”

Twa emperors ance had a bit o’ a spree

I dinna ken what was the meanin’ o’t;

I believe they keest oot ’cause they couldna agree,

So it maitters na what was the beginnin’ o’t.

The one was a general o’muckle renown

His name it was Bony, he weer the French crown,

He swore he wad eat’s geese at Petersburgh town,

Quo’ Sandy. “Ye’s keu o’ the winnin’ o’t.”

Bony tooted his horn to gather his clan.

Till his wizzen was sair wi’ the blawin’ o’t;

He had four hundred thousand men under command,

Sae wasna that a gay beginnin’ o’t? . . .

 

Quoth [Sandy],”Neebour Bony, take this counsel I’ll gie,

For strife it’s nae mous to be tiggin’ wi’t;

And dinna be shakin’ your pikestaff at me,

For fear ye be dung wi’ the riggin’ wi’t. . . .

 

So [Bony] boldly pursued him fre hillock to howe . . .

Till at last they arrived at the walls o’ Moscow . . .

 

Says Bony to’s men,” You’re baith hungry and dry

But you’re no very far fae the slakin’ o’t;

There’s plenty o’ biscuits and brandy forebye

And ye’s get ia a’ for the takin’ o’t . . .[16]

It is also fitting that in the last years of his life on St. Helena, the old conqueror of kingdoms and supper tables indulged in a bit of pique over some dishware. Townsfolk and “followers of Napoleon . . . [came] up every morning to assist in transcribing” the great man’s stories about his campaigns and other scenes of derring-do, which “pleased him.” An obliging British colonel sent the Emperor his personal tent, and had it “spread out [over a] pavilion,” so that Napoleon’s rapt audience could stay for dinner. A luxurious “table linen was taken from the trunks, the plate was set forth, and the first [meal] after these new arrangements was a sort of fête.” The Emperor was again in his element and holding court. During one of these evenings, however, his “all-seeing” eyes recognized the utensils along with “one of the dishes of his own campaign-service.” All were engraved with “the arms of the [British] King.” He exclaimed, “How they have spoiled that!”[17] – that is, “spoiled” the plate, the meal, and thus the entire occasion. George III had acted in “great haste to take possession of the Imperial plate, which certainly did not belong to him,” Napoleon said archly. One suspects premeditation. All is fair, he should have known, in love, war, and silverware.

Notes

[1] According to Plutarch, Rome killed or enslaved two million Gauls (mostly men) during the wars of “pacification”; q.v. Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).

[2] René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield (Hodder Dargaud, 1967), 12.

[3] Goscinny and Uderzo, Asterix the Gaul (Hodder and Straughton, 1961), 3.

[4] Goscinny and Uderzo, Asterix and the Banquet (Hodder Dargaud, 1979), 8.

[5] The modern equivalents of these Roman-Gallic towns are respectively: Paris, Rheims Toulouse, Lyon, Nice, Marseilles, and Bordeaux.

[6] Asterix and the Banquet, 48.

[7] See “Personal Table Service of the Emperor,” Foundation Napoléon, 2024.

[8] Also known as the “Pichegru Conspiracy,” the episode involved two Bourbon supporters who planned to kill Napoleon, take over the army and capitol, then await the arrival of the rather uninspiring Louis XVIII (who eventually did restore the Bourbon monarchy in 1814-15). Apart from its two main conspirators, the Cadoudal Affair also involved another Bourbon exile, Louis Antoine, Duc d’Enghien – at least, according to Napoleon and his agents.

[9] Extract of a journal entry written by Ernst Ludwig Siehr, the Councillor of the Commission of Justice at Tilsit, and published in the brochure 200 years’ treaty of Tilsit, Bartheldruck, ed. (Arnstadt, 2007).

[10] Over the following days, Napoleon dined several times with both the Prussian king and Russian tsar, and always at his private headquarters in the town of Tilsit.

[11] J. Holland Rose, The Life of Napoleon, vol. II (London: George Bell & Sons, 1903), 128.

[12] Ibid., 128.

[13] Napoléon Bonaparte, Lettres D’Amour à Joséphine, Jean Tulard, ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 313.

[14] David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York: Scribner, 1966), 56.

[15] Treaty Between France and Russia, Tilsit, 7 July, 1807, Article XXVIII.

[16] William Lillie, “The Twa Emperors,” ca. 1812

[17] Napoleon Bonaparte, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, vol. I, Col. R. W. Phipps, ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891).