ABSTRACT
On their way home from India on the eve of what would be a year of revolution, Napier and his family stopped for a time in Nice, which after 1814 was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. There they spent the Christmas of 1847. George Napier was there, too. The English community of the city gave Charles a grand ball, and with his ‘great nose and eagle eyes, and immense beard and mustachios’ he was the star of the New Year’s receptions and the Governor’s conversazione (Figure 21.1). 1
Danger loomed. After violence erupted in Paris in the new year, Charles Napier – still in Nice – wrote to John Kennedy:
Great events have been succeeding each other like f lashes of lightning. Tyranny has got such a shake as has taught our Rulers in this world that the people they have misgoverned will bear these things no longer. I am delighted at this tolerably broad hint. I think our own constitution can bear the momentary strain upon it without snapping and will be improved.
