New Year’s message from Victor-André Masséna, Prince d’Essling, president of the Fondation Napoléon
2025, onwards and upwards!
You might have thought that after the bicentenary in 2021, activity in the Napoleonic world would slow down. That was true in 2022. Less true in 2023. Not true at all in 2024. And 2025 will be no different: both Napoleons are still a source of interest, if not of passion.
The role of the Fondation Napoléon is both to support this interest-passion and, often, to arouse it. We will continue to do so in the coming months.
Our Board of Directors set out our heritage support programme at the beginning of last December: it will benefit publishing, museums and heritage, ‘youth’ activities (through NAPOLEON2026) and the general public, thanks for example to the aid granted to the regional delegations of the Souvenir Napoléonien.
Our Board has also launched our dedicated campaigns: a study day at the Banque de France in March, a symposium on women of the First Empire in November, the music days at the Château de Malmaison in June, and major loans of works to the ‘Monaco and the Napoleons’ exhibition in the Principality of Monaco in July and August. Our usual activities are also resuming at a steady pace: Napoleonica-Les Conférences (talks) and all the regular activities you know about and, I believe, appreciate, starting with our weekly newsletter, which now has over 15,300 subscribers.
2025 will also be a year of experimentation for our team, with work being carried out jointly with an Artificial Intelligence specialist from the University of Paris I: we couldn’t stay on the sidelines of this movement, but we will have to evolve in our own way, with care and motivated by scientific progress.
So together we’re going to have an interesting year, and you’ll be kept informed of all these developments through our Newsletter (in French) and our contributions via our social networks.
I’ll end on a less happy note. Ten years ago, I wrote to you a few days after the Islamist attack on the editorial offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. I expressed the emotion and determination of the Fondation Napoléon’s staff and fellow citizens to support ‘those who keep our democracy alive and those who defend our society’. This determination has not wavered. It must not because, sadly, the attack on 7 January 2015 was only the beginning.
As we remember that terrible moment, but also as we look to all that can give us hope, I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2025.
Victor-André Masséna, Prince d’Essling
President of the Fondation Napoléon
published 8 January 2025
