Napoléonviken

Napoleon in Stockholm?

"The emperor departed from Saint-Petersburg and Russia in April 1813 and embarked for Stockholm. [...] Napoleon entered as victorious Emperor in this capital, and the tricolor flag floated alone on all the buildings, so that it was well known that Stockholm was filled by Napoleon. He thus fulfilled his destiny of treading on foot all the capitals of the world."

Did he? In fact, the text is from the book entitled Napoleon and the Conquest of the World 1812-1832 and writen by Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy-Château in 1836. This book is the first example of speculartive fiction ever writen, describing with great details what would have happened should Napoleon had subdued the Russians in 1812.

So, which Napoelon visited this small bay in Erstaviken?

In 1854, the French Emeror Napoleon III allied with England, brought war to the Baltic in Bomarsund, as part of the battles fought during the Crimean war aiming at limiting the expansion of the Russian empire. He was the son of the younger brother of Napoleon, born in 1808. He was elected the first president of the French Republic in 1848, but as he could not be reelected for a second mandate, he seized power in 1851 and became the Emperor Napoleon III. But he did not come to Sweden.

It is his son, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, born in 1856 who, while in exile in London, visited Stockholm in July 1878, made a stopover in the bay for a bath and gave his name to Napoleonviken. About Stockholm surrounding, he wrote to his mother: "There is nowhere else such a sudden transition between wilderness and the civilised world. As soon as you leave the gates of Stockholm you might think being on the shores of some unexplored lakes of America."

He was to die one year later in an ambush by Zulu fighters in South Africa where he was enrolled as Lieutenant in the Bristish army.