How the US split Europe to invade Iraq at any cost in 2003
Napoléon's brief but significant stay in Vilnius marked the beginning of what local historians call the "French period" – tragically followed by the retreat from Russia and the resulting carnage. In the Vilnius region alone, nearly 37,000 soldiers and officers of the Grande Armée died from cold, hunger or disease during the winter.
It then took a little more than two centuries for France to regain the favor of Lithuanians, according to Zygimantas Pavilionis, a 53-year-old MP and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Parliament of the small Baltic republic. Over coffee, Pavilionis recounted the episode of Napoléon on the balcony, and set the date of France's return to grace at 2020, when President Emmanuel Macron visited Vilnius and met with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband is imprisoned in neighboring Belarus for attempting to run in the presidential election. "At last," he said with satisfaction, "France, with this gesture, reconnected with its revolutionary calling, after having swallowed so many bitter pills."
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