Is it Napoleon's? Battlefield hat for sale at De Baecque et Associés in France

A two-cornered military dress hat said to belong to Napoleon and purportedly picked off the battlefield after his defeat at Waterloo will go under the hammer Monday at an auction in France. It is the latest sale looking to capitalise on the seemingly insatiable appetite for items belonging to the former French emperor, who remains a source of fascination nearly two hundred years after his death. Napoleon insisted on wearing the hats sideways — rather than with points at the front and back — so he could easily be spotted on the battlefield. During his 15 years in power he reportedly went through about 120 of the black felted beaver fur “bicorne” hats, most of them made by French hatmakers Poupard, though only a handful of confirmed examples still exist. “They must correspond in terms of dates, and the size of his head,” Etienne De Baecque, the auctioneer leading the sale in the eastern city of Lyon, told AFP. While the hat’s provenance cannot