Perfidious Albion: Napoleon and his British nemesis
France24
03 May 2021, 22:37 GMT+10
Napoleon Bonaparte's Anglophobia stretched back to his days as an obscure young Corsican at French military academies. After his stupendous rise to Emperor, it was the British who smashed his navy at Trafalgar and exiled him to St Helena after the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo. FRANCE 24 looks back on Napoleon's antagonism against the country he cast as "perfidious Albion".
Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire was crumbling in 1813 after his disastrous invasion of Russia. The Sixth Coalition - of Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain and Portugal - was ranged against him. He ordered the French people to refer to Britain as "perfidious Albion", making this ancient insult common currency.