It was to be Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest adventure; an invasion of Russia with an army of more than 650,000 men, the largest the world had yet seen. The Emperor's irresistible progress into the vast Russian interior saw many brutal conflicts including the Battle of Borodino, one of the bloodiest day's fighting in military history. Napoleon would not be defeated in battle but by Russian guile and the savages of winter snows. To this day the infamous retreat from Moscow epitomises the suffering of ordinary soldiers.
This documentary is a powerful record of one of history's greatest military disasters, and features period imagery, dramatised "eye-witness" accounts, expert analysis, and extensive footage from the Oscar-winning Russian film "War and Peace".
The pride of Napoleon's victories, the Arc de Triomphe, whose first stone was laid in 1806 at the top of the Champs-Élysées, is, along with the Eiffel Tower, one of the most visited monuments in the French capital.
The remote island of St. Helena, a British possession located in the south Atlantic, is perhaps best known as where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled/imprisoned for the final six years of his life and where he died in 1821.
The documentary tells how Bonaparte's passion - sometimes Bonaparte's obsession - for art and knowledge, has changed the face of modern culture: from the birth of schools, libraries and public museums (including Brera and the Louvre) to foundation of Egyptology thanks to the Egyptian campaign, from the extraordinary archaeological discoveries to the looting of works of art, up to the paintings and sculptures dedicated to him.
In David Grubin's NAPOLEON watch Napoleon's rise from obscurity to victories that made him a hero to the French people and convinced him he was destined for greatness.
It was during this siege that young Napoleon Bonaparte first won fame and promotion when his plan, involving the capture of fortifications above the harbour, was credited with forcing the city to capitulate and the Anglo-Spanish fleet to withdraw.
A neighborhood boy might have the solution to his problems, though. For two silver candlesticks, he promises to give Conrad a rare, vicious, growling and cunning animal with supernatural abilities, which supposedly was coveted in the past by Egyptian pharaohs, Borneo pirates and even Napoleon Bonaparte himself.
In a 19th-century European village, a young man about to be married is whisked away to the underworld and wed to a mysterious corpse bride, while his real bride waits bereft in the land of the living.
A girl from a peaceful, Edo-era Japanese village seeks revenge for the death of a disgraced elder with the help of her sister and a lethal lady ninja nun.
"The Prodigy" tells the story of small-time enforcer Truman Fisher's vicious conflict with a sadistic assassin who has chosen the unwilling Truman to be his successor.
