Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays and history we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview.

Today (Aug. 15th) on Chauvin Day, we celebrate Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier who served under Napoleon and the ultimate fanboy. Chauvin was born in 1780, possibly in Rochefort, France, and enlisted in Napoleon’s army at the age of 18.

Chauvin idolized the charismatic French military leader and served him with the utmost loyalty and dedication. During his military career, Chauvin was wounded 17 times, leaving him severely maimed and disfigured. His devotion to Napoleon remained unshaken, however, and Napoleon presented him with the Saber of Honor and a pension of 200 francs as tokens of gratitude for his service.

After Napoleon’s exile and the restoration of the French monarchy, Chauvin became a target for mockery and ridicule. Playwrights even appropriated him as a character for their plays, using their poetic license to make him an even more exaggeratedly nationalistic figure.

Aside from his stint as a dramatic persona, Chauvin’s other legacy is the word “chauvinism,” derived from his last name. Initially associated with blindly zealous nationalism or blind enthusiasm for military glory, the word has come to mean biased devotion to any group, cause, or attitude, most notably in the term “male chauvinism.”

Poor Chauvin. We imagine he and Thomas Bowdler (for whom “bowdlerism” is named and whose holiday we celebrated on July 11th) would have a lot to talk about.

Daily TWiP appears Monday through Saturday courtesy of The Week in Preview. Read more of both at www.nashuatelegraph.com/columnists/weekinpreview.

– Teresa Santoski

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