L' aigle et la synagogue

Discusses Napoléon's disregard for and suspicion of the Jews. Argues that Napoléon shared the anti-Jewish stereotypes of his time and was influenced by right-wing thinkers like Louis de Bonald. As France returned to being a Christian monarchy, between 1806-08, the Jews were rejected and the citizenship they had acquired in 1791 was implicitly withdrawn. Napoléon established a Sanhedrin in order to control the Jews, on whom he was about to impose discriminatory measures regarding marriage, conscription, freedom of movement, and settling in France. The "infamous decree", promulgated in 1808 at the instigation of the most reactionary fringe, went even further, imposing legal restrictions on Jews which went against common law. States that the decree expresses Napoléon's outright hostility toward the Jews, whom he characterized as "locusts" and "ravens". High administrative officials, however, opposed the decree. Discusses the Anchel Affair, resulting from Jewish historian Robert Anchel's thesis on Napoléon and the Jews, presented at the Sorbonne in 1928. Anchel was criticized by his supervisor, Albert Mathiez, and defended by Jewish historian Jacques Godechot. Deals, also, with the figure of Napoléon as the hero or "prince" of the antisemites since 1846. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)