Nelson and Napoleon.(Report from Europe)(Napoleon Bonaparte and Admiral Horatio Nelson)(Brief article)

The rivalry between France and Britain that raged for many centuries reached fever pitch at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries when Napoleon Bonaparte had designs not only on his own country but also on the rest of Europe. Napoleon suffered two major defeats by the British--the first at the naval Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and the second at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

The two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar is being celebrated with an exhibition entitled Nelson and Napoleon on view at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich from July 7 until November 13. Among the varied objects it includes is the original score of Ludwig van Beethoven's Third Symphony (1803), which was originally dedicated to Napoleon. When Beethoven heard Napoleon had declared himself the emperor of France, he changed the name of the symphony to the Eroica. The original score of Franz Joseph Haydn's Missa in angustiis (1798; Mass for times of distress) is also in ...