Handel’s anthem “Zadok the Priest” has been sung at every coronation since that of King George II in 1727:
Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king. And all the people rejoiced and said: God save the King! Long live the King! God save the King! May the King live for ever. Amen. Hallelujah.
While the anthem is regarded by the English as a great patriotic song, it is as well to remember that Zadok, anthemically or antiphonically, has long been a central theme of European coronations.
On 2 December 1804 Napoleon – not the greatest friend the English ever had – was anointed with “Unxerunt Salomonem Sadoc Sacerdos” in the background. In translation:
Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king in Gihon, and they went away rejoicing, saying, ‘May the king live forever.’ Alleluia
The story that Napoleon seized the crown from Pope Pius VII is generally regarded as false. He asked the pope and the pope gave now objection.
But even in its bowdlerized form, the story says something about Napoleon’s sense of destiny. It was in his hands and no-one else’s. On 2 December the following year, he won Austerlitz, the battle of the three emperors. Pitt the younger referred to a map of Europe, “Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.”
So much for the destiny of kings and emperors. The 19th century existed also for the destiny of republics. On 2 December 1823, President James Munroe stated what has become known as the Monroe Doctrine:
It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord.
Those “allied powers” were the powers who had defeated Napoleon 8 years earlier at Waterloo.
On 2 December 1845, President Polk gave his first address, an articulation of manifest destiny with a justification in President Monroe’s earlier words:
In the existing circumstances of the world the present is deemed a proper occasion to reiterate and reaffirm the principle avowed by Mr Monroe and to state my cordial concurrence in its wisdom and sound policy. The reassertion of this principle, especially in reference to North America, is at this day but the promulgation of a policy which no European power should cherish the disposition to resist. Existing rights of every European nation should be respected, but it is due alike to our safety and our interests that the efficient protection of our laws should be extended over our whole territorial limits, and that it should be distinctly announced to the world as our settled policy that no future European colony or dominion shall with our consent be planted or established on any part of the North American continent.
So there. Of course, empires and republics can overlap. Napoleon’s nephew Louis-Napoleon was the first president of France before he managed an autocoup and followed his uncle as Emperor of the French. His coronation as Napoleon III took place on 2 December 1852.
