Honors returned to the memory of Napoleon

Honors returned to the memory of Napoleon

The statue of the Vendôme place

Immediately after the revolution of 1830, one hastened to restore his statue on the column of the Place Vendôme. The new statue represents Napoleon dressed up with modern with his frock coat, its boots, hat with three horns at the head.

The return of ashes

The devoted formula “return of ashes” - the term “ashes” being taken not with the clean direction but with the illustrated direction of “remainders mortals of a person” - indicates the repatriation in France, 1840, on the initiative of Adolphe Thiers and of the king Louis-Philippe, of the mortal remains of Napoleon and its burial with the Invalides.

While dying, had indeed expressed the desire to be buried “on the edges of the the Seine, in the middle of these French people which he had loved so much”.

When the Emperor died, the count Bertrand asked for the English government the authorization of take along its mortal remains to Europe, but it did not obtain it. In the continuation, he addressed for the same object to the ministers of Louis XVIII. He did not accept an absolute refusal, only one made him hear that the arrival in France of ashes of Napoleon would be undoubtedly the cause or the pretext of political disturbances which he was prudence of the government to prevent and prevent, but that as soon as that the state of the spirits would allow it, one would grant his request.

After the Glorious Three, a petition requiring the transfer of ashes of Napoleon under the Colonne Vendôme was pushed back by the House of Commons the October 2nd 1830. But ten years later, Adolphe Thiers, new President of the Council of Louis-Philippe, and historian of the Consulate and the Empire, imagined a great political “blow”: to obtain the return of the mortal remains of Napoleon. For itself, with personal capacity, it was definitively to complete the company of rehabilitation of the Revolution and the Empire which it had engaged with its Histoire of the French revolution and its Histoire of the Consulate and the Empire . He hoped moreover to flatter the dreams of glory of the left and to regild the blazon of the Monarchie of July.

It was moreover the policy of Louis-Philippe to try to be attached to “all glories of France”, to which it had dedicated the Château of Versailles transformed into museum of the French history. However, the king was made draw the ear, ends up letting himself convince unwillingly and, the May 10th 1840, François Guizot, then ambassador in London, made, with its defending body, an official request with the British government, which was approved at once, in accordance with the promise made in 1822.

The May 12th, during the discussion of a bill on sugars, the Minister of Interior Department, Charles de Rémusat, went up to the platform of the House of Commons:

“Sirs,

“the King has just ordered with His Royal Highness Monseigneur Prince de Joinville (movement of attention and curiosity) to go with a frigate to the island of Grey waxbill (new movement) to collect there the remainders mortals of the emperor Napoleon (explosion of applause in all the parts of the Parliament). We come to ask for the means to you of of receiving them with dignity on the ground of France and of raising in Napoleon his last tomb (acclamations, applause). The frigate charged with the remainders mortals of Napoleon will be presented to the return to the mouth of the Seine, another building will bring back them to Paris. They will be deposited with the Invalids. A solemn ceremony, a large religious pump and soldier will inaugurate the tomb which must keep it forever. He was Empereur and King, he was the legitimate sovereign of our country. For this reason, it could be buried in Saint-Denis, but one should not Napoleon the ordinary burial of the Kings. It is necessary that it still reigns and orders in the enclosure where will put back the soldiers of the fatherland, and where always will be inspired those which are called to defend it. Art will raise under the dome, in the middle of the temple devoted to the god of the armies, a worthy tomb, if it may be, name who must be engraved there. We do not doubt, Sirs, whom the Room joins a patriotic emotion the royal thought only us has just expressed in front of it. From now on, France, and France alone will have all that remains of Napoleon. Its tomb, like its memory, will not belong to anybody but with his country. The monarchy of 1830 is, indeed, the single one and legitimates heiress of all the sovereigns of which France enorgueillit. It undoubtedly belonged to him, with this monarchy, which it first, rejoined all the forces and reconciled all the wishes of the French revolution, to raise and honor without fear the statue and fall it from a popular hero, because there is a thing, only one, which does not fear the comparison with glory: it is freedom! (triple salvo of applause, acclamations on the left and in the center, long movement)”

The minister came to file in a bill which opened “a credit of a million for the translation of the remainders mortals of the Napoleon Emperor to the Église of the Invalids and for the construction of his tomb. ” The advertisement created sensation. One started to discuss firm in the press, where one made all kinds of objections to the principle, as with its application. The town of Saint-Denis claimed, by a petition of the May 17th, that the Emperor was buried in the necropolis of the kings de France.

The May 26th, the bill was discussed with the Room. The rapporteur was the marshal Clauzel, old soldier of the Empire which the monarchy of July had reminded and raised the dignity of the maréchalat. In the name of the commission, it approved the choice of the Invalids, not without to have exposed the other solutions which had been suggested - in addition to Saint-Denis, it had been question of the Triumphal arch of the Star, the Colonne Vendôme, the the Pantheon, and even of the Madeleine -, proposed to carry to two million the credit requested by the government, asked that the skin was brought back to France by a Escadre, and not by an isolated ship, and finally that nobody of other would be, in the future, buried with the Invalids, who were to remain reserved for Napoleon. The room voted a million, not two, by 280 votes “for” and 65 votes “against”, after speeches of the republican Glais-Bizoin, who fustigated the Empire, of Odilon Barrot, future president of the Council of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in 1848, which defended the project, and especially of Lamartine, which found measurement dangerous and made a dazzling speech:

“Though admiror of this great man, I do not have an enthusiasm without remembering and without precaution. I prostrate step in front of this memory; I am not this Napoleonean religion, of this worship of the force which one wants, for some time, to substitute in the spirit of the Nation for the serious religion of freedom. I believe not that it is good of déifier thus unceasingly the war, to over-excite these boilings already too impetuous blood French, that one represents us like impatient running after a twenty-five years truce, like if the peace, which is the happiness and the glory of the world, could be the shame of the nations. We who take freedom with serious, put measure to our demonstrations. Let us not allure so much the opinion of people which include/understand well better what dazzles it than what serves it. Let us not erase all, do not reduce so much our monarchy of reason, our new, representative, peaceful monarchy. It would end up disappearing with the eyes of the people. it is well, Sirs; I do not oppose it, I not applauded there: but made attention with these encouragements with the genius at all costs. I fear them for the future. I do not love these men who have as official doctrines freedom, legality and progress, and for symbol a saber and the despotism. ”

By concluding, Lamartine invited France to show that “it not to cause this ash, neither the war, neither tyranny, neither legitimacies, neither applicants, nor even of the imitateurs”. By hearing this peroration which aimed it implicitly, Thiers appeared as embanked on its bench.

However, the opinion was, in its majority, largely favorable. The Napoleonean myth had already reached full sound development, and awaited nothing any more but this crowning. Casimir Delavigne, become the official poet of the monarchy of July, sang the event:

“France, you re-examined it! your cry of joy, O France,

Cover the noise of your gun;

Your people, whole people which on your edges spring,

Tend arms with Napoleon. ”

The June 6th, the general Bertrand was accepted by Louis-Philippe, to whom it gave the weapons of the Emperor, which were placed in the treasure:

“It is with Your Majesty, with its solemn and patriotic step which we owe the achievement of the last desires of the Emperor, desires that it had particularly expressed me with his bed of died with circumstances which cannot be erased of my mémoire.

“Lord, paying homage to the memorable act of national justice that you liberally undertook, animated of a feeling of gratitude and confidence, I come to deposit between the hands of Your Majesty these glorious weapons, which for a long time I was tiny room to be concealed at the day and which I hope soon to place on the coffin of the large Captain, on the famous tomb intended for to fix the glances of Univers.

“That the sword of the hero becomes the palladium of the Fatherland. ”

Louis-Philippe answered by a measured with compasses speech:

“I receive, in the name of France, the weapons of the Napoleon emperor whose its last wills had entrusted the invaluable deposit to you; they will accurately be kept until the moment when I will be able to place them on the mausoleum which prepares to him the national munificence.

“I estimate myself happy that it was reserved to me to return to the ground of France the remainders mortals of that which added such an amount of glory to our records and to discharge the debt of our common Fatherland by surrounding its coffin of all the honors which him its due.

“I am well touched of all the feelings which you have just expressed me. ”

After this ceremony, which was worth to him the lightnings of Joseph and Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Bertrand went to the town hall, and offered to the president of the Municipal council the necessary one to vermeil which the Emperor had bequeathed to the capital, and which is today with the Musée Carnavalet.

The arrival with Sainte-Hélène

The July 17th 1840, at six hours and half of the afternoon, the frigate the Beautiful Hen installed with Toulon, escorted corvette Favorite the . Ordered by the Prince de Joinville, wire junior by the king, who had the responsibility for forwarding, the frigate carried on its board Philippe of Rohan-Chub, police chief appointed by the king to govern the operations of exhumation, the generals Bertrand and Gourgaud, the count Emmanuel de Las Boxes, appointed Finistere, wire of the author of the Mémorial of Grey waxbill , and five servants who had been used Napoleon for Sainte-Hélène: Saint-Denis, Noverraz, Pierron, Archambault and Coursot. The corvette, ordered by the Gayet captain, transported Louis Marchand, first manservant of the Emperor, who was with him in Sainte-Hélène. Also made to part of the voyage the abbot Felix Coquereau, chaplain of the navy, Charner, lieutenant of prince de Joinville, Hernoux, its assistance-of-camp, the Touchard ensign, the young person Arthur Bertrand, wire of the general, Emmanuel de Las Boxes, wire of the author of the Mémorial .

As of the vote of the law, the frigate had been arranged to receive the coffin of the Emperor; in the tween deck, one had built a burning chapel, draped embroidered black velvet of money bees, in the center of which a catafalque kept by four gilded wood eagles was drawn up.

The voyage outward journey lasted four twenty-three days. Prince de Joinville, who did not want to miss a beautiful occasion to visit exotic regions, made slacken two days with Madeira and four days with Ténériffe, where one however furrowed the island in all directions that the crew assisted with a representation of the black Domino of Auber, unfortunately in Spanish language. With Bahia, they were fifteen days of balls and festivals. Lastly, the two ships arrived to Sainte-Hélène the October 8th and found in the roads the brig French Oreste , ordered by Doret, become Lieutenant commander: it was one of the signs of vessel which, with the island of Aix, had formed the daring plan to make escape Napoleon on a fish-wagon, and which came to return the last duties to him.

The mission unloaded the following day and, after a station with the castle of Jamestown, went to Plantation House where the governor of the island awaited it, general major Middlemore. After a long interview with prince de Joinville, the governor appeared in front of the remainder of the mission, which was impatientait in the living room, and announced: “Sirs, the remainders mortals of the Emperor will be given between your hands, on Thursday, October 15. ”

The mission recovered on the way in direction from Longwood and went down initially in the “valley of the tomb”, known as also “of the Géranium”. The tomb of Napoleon, located in this solitary place, was covered with three flagstones in Tuf, brought England, placed at the level of the ground. The monument, very simple, was surrounded by an iron grid, firmly fixed on its base and shaded by two weeping willows, of which one had died. The whole was surrounded by a netting out of wooden; near, and apart from this enclosure a fountain was Napoleon liked whose fresh and limpid water.

At the door of the enclosure, prince de Joinville put foot at ground, was discovered, and approached the iron grid, followed by the remainder of the mission. In a deep silence, they contemplated fall to it naked and severe. At the end of half an hour, the prince went back to horse, and everyone returned on board. Lady Torbet, owner of places, which had installed a guinguette there where it output coolings with the rare pilgrims, was extremely dissatisfied because the exhumation was going to dry up its small benefit.

A few days later, one went in pilgrimage in Longwood which was in a great state of decay. A farmer made there feed his animals. The sailors of Oreste threw themselves on billiards, which had been saved by the goats and the sheep, and tore off from them the tapestry and all that they could carry, under the vociferations of the farmer who rounded his income while making visit the place and claimed with great cries an allowance.

The exhumation

The October 14th at midnight, the members of the mission returned to the valley of the tomb. Prince de Joinville was remained on his board because, all the operations until the arrival of the imperial coffin instead of the loading having to be led by foreign soldiers and not by the French sailors, it estimated to be able to witness work which it could not direct.

French side, one found, around the count of Rohan-Chub, the Bertrand generals and Gourgaud, Emmanuel de Las Boxes, the former servants of the Emperor, the abbot Felix Coquereau, chaplain of the Belle Hen , with two children of chorus, the Gayet captains, Charner and Doret, Doctor Guillard, army surgeon of the Belle Hen , finally a workman plumber, the sior Leroux; English side: Misters William Wilde, Horson and Scale, members of the colonial council of Grey waxbill, the Trelawney lieutenant-colonel, ordering the artillery of the island, the lieutenant Littlehales, finally Mr. Darling, who had been tapestry maker with Longwood of the time of the captivity.

With the gleam of the torches, the English soldiers are reflected with the work. They deposited grid, then stones which formed edge of tomb, which one had as a preliminary withdrawn the topsoil and the flowers which had pushed there, that the French shared. One raised then the three flagstones which closed the pit. Long efforts were necessary to come to end from the masonry which contained the coffin. At nine hours and half, the last flagstone was withdrawn and the coffin appeared. The Coquereau abbot the aspergea of spring water where Napoleon had liked to drink, which it had bénite, and recited the De profundis . The coffin was raised and transported under a large striped tent blue and white which one had drawn up the day before. The abbot completed the rites of the exhumation, then one proceeded to the opening of beer, in a complete silence. The first coffin of mahogany tree had to be sawn with the two ends to extract the second coffin from it, of lead, which one placed in the ancient ebony coffin of form which had been brought of France.

The operations stopped up to one hour of the afternoon, pending the arrival of the Middlemore general and lieutenant Touchard, aide-de-camp of the prince. When they were presented, one proceeded to the dessoudage of the lead coffin. The following coffin, of mahogany tree, was remarkably preserved. The screws were easily removed by it. One could then open, with infinite precautions, the last coffin, of tinplate.

When one had removed the lid of it, one saw appearing a form white, undecided, which appeared to float as in a dream. The white satin capiton of which was furnished the upper part of the lid had been detached and recovered the body like a shroud. Doctor Guillard delicately rolled this envelope, since the feet to the head. The Emperor appeared then. Its green uniform with scarlet facings of colonel of the hunters of the guard was preserved perfectly. The chest was still barred red cord of the Legion of honor but, on the dress, decorations and the buttons were slightly tarnished. It was observed that the body had preserved an easy position, the head rested on a cushion, and the front armlever and the left hand on the thigh. The face was serene, only the wings of the nose were faded. The entirely closed eyelids still presented some lashes. A slightly retracted gum let shine, as at the moment death, three very white incisors. The chin was piqueté of a little bluish barb which, by a phenomenon running, had pushed even after death. The hands were in a perfect state of conservation. The fingers had long, adherent nails and very white. The seams of the boots, only, had cracked and showed the possibility for the four fingers lower by each foot. The small hat was placed transversely on the thighs.

All the spectators were under the shock. Gourgaud, Mow Boxes, Philippe de Rohan, Merchant, all the servants cried. Bertrand like was embanked by the emotion. At the end of two minutes of examination, Guillard proposed to continue the examination of the body and to open the vases containing the heart and the stomach. Gourgaud, repressing its sobs, was put in anger and ordered that the coffin at once was closed again. The doctor will obtempéra, gave satin places from there that it aspergea of a little creosote, then one positioned back the lid of tinplate, but without resoldering it, the lid of the coffin of mahogany tree, then the lead coffin was resoldered, and one closed finally the lock with complications of the ebony coffin brought of France. The unit was placed in a sixth coffin, in oak, intended to protect that from ebony, and this mass of 4.200 kilograms was hoisted by 43 artillerists on a solid hearse draped of black and bearing, with each of its angles, four plumes of black feathers, which painfully drew four horses caparaçonnés from black. The young ladies of the island offered to the French police chief the Tricolours which were to be used for the ceremony, and which they had made their hands, as well as the imperial house which was to float on the frigate the Beautiful-Hen .

The transfer on the Beautiful Hen

At three hours and half, under a beating rain, while the citadel and the Belle Hen fired alternatively the gun, the procession shook slowly under the command of the governor of the island. The count Bertrand, the baron Gourgaud, the baron of Las Boxes wire, and Merchant, carried the corners of cloth. A detachment of militia, follow-up of a crowd of people, closed the walk, during which the forts fired the gun from minute in minute. Arrived in Jamestown, the convoy ravelled between two hedges of soldiers of the garrison, having their reversed weapons. The French vessels reflect their boats major with the sea. That of the Belle Hen was decorated gilded eagles, and carried prince de Joinville.

At five hours and half, the funeral convoy stopped at the beginning of the pier. General major Middlemore, very old, strong patient, advanced painfully towards prince de Joinville, while endeavouring to smile; the young prince kept the severe face which was appropriate, believed it, at its age and its position. This short meeting, deprived of sentences, marked the handing-over of the body of Napoleon between the hands of his fatherland. The French ships, which raised the signs of mourning up to that point, hoisted their colors at once. With infinite precautions, the heavy coffin was deposited in the launch. As soon as this delicate operation was finished, the three French vessels, drew each one with three recoveries, hundred blows of gun, however that the trumpets sounded With the fields! without stopping. On the Beautiful-Hen , 60 men were under the weapons, the drums beat with the fields and the music made hear national airs.

The coffin was hoisted on the bridge and was removed from its envelope of oak. The Coquereau abbot gave exonerated. Napoleon was of return in French territory. At six hours and half, the coffin was deposited in a burning chapel, decorated military trophies, which one had drawn up with the back of the building. At ten hours the next morning, the mass was known as on the bridge, then the coffin descended in the burning chapel from the tween deck, while the music of the frigate played, says one, the great outdoors of Robert the Devil of Meyerbeer, detail of a particularly doubtful taste. This completed operation, each officer accepted a commemorative medal, while the sailors shared the coffin of oak and the dead willow which one had torn off from the valley of the tomb.

The return of Grey waxbill

Sunday October 18th, at eight hours of the morning, the Beautiful Hen , Favorite the and Oreste installed. Oreste went to join the division of Raising, while the two ships sailed towards France. No remarkable accident announced, during the first five days the walk of the Beautiful-Hen and Favorite the ; but they met, the October 31st, a tradind ship, Hamburg , whose captain made share with prince de Joinville of the news of Europe, which made fear a nearest rupture between England and France.

These noises of war were confirmed by the Dutch building Egmont , which travelled for Batavia. Prince de Joinville hastened to form a council of war where the officers of were called the Beautiful-Hen and of Favorite the ; it was a question of stopping the necessary measures to prevent that the invaluable cargo is not put in danger in the event of meeting with English ships. Joinville made prepare the Beautiful Hen for a possible combat, which was a childishness, but it especially ordered with Favorite the to move away at once and to gain the first French port. The prince was not unaware of that an English ship would not have attacked the funerary vessel, but that Favorite the had not profited from the same magnanimity and it feared with reason to have to carry help to him if it were to be taken in the lines of an enemy vessel, with the risk to lose the frigate and its loading there.

The November 27th, the Beautiful-Hen was not any more but with hundred miles of the coasts of France; it had not met any English cruising; but it did not persist about it less in the precautions which order prudence in time of war.

The arrival in France

During this time, in France, a ministry nominally chaired by the marshal Soult, but whose Guizot was the true head, had succeeded in October 1840 the cabinet Thiers to try to solve the caused crisis, with England, by the businesses of the East. This news gives did not fail to cause, in the press, of the hostile comments from the point of view of the ceremony of the return of ashes:

“That which will receive the remainders of the Emperor is a man of the Restoration, one of these conspirators of living room who were going to take by the hand the king of Ghent, behind the English lines, while our old soldiers were made kill for the defense of the territory, in the plains of Waterloo. The ministers who will take the head of the procession were imposed to us by the foreigner. Mourning will be carried out by the general major French in Waterloo, will be brought back to the capacity by the support of Lord British Palmerston of the Foreign affairs and giving the hand to the defector of Ghent. ”

The government, fearing to be overflowed by its initiative, but not being able more to give up it, decided to be sharp with the things: “It was in a hurry to finish some”, commented on Victor Hugo. “That the preparations are ready (sic) or not, the funeral ceremony will take place the 15, some time that it makes or that it arrives”, affirmed the Minister of Interior Department, the count Duchâtel.

It was necessary to requisition all that Paris and the suburbs counted of arm to complete with haste the preparations and to draw up, of the bridge of Neuilly to the Invalids, the paste board scaffolding which would look at passing the hearse, that one completed to smear only late in the night preceding the ceremony. In order to avoid any revolutionary contagion, the government - which had already insisted that the Emperor was buried with the Invalids, with military glories of France - ordered that the ceremony would be strictly soldier, drawing aside from the procession the constitutional body, with the great fury of the students of right and medicine, which claimed the honor to follow the coffin of the Emperor. The diplomatic corps, joined together with the embassy of England, decided to abstain from appearing with the ceremony.

The November 30th, the Beautiful-Hen entered the roads of Cherbourg, and the remainders were transferred on the steamer Normandy . After having gained Le Havre, the coffin was placed at the Valley-of-the-Hague, close to Rouen, on the boat the Sea-bream to go up the the Seine, on the banks of which the population paid homage to the Emperor. The December 14th, the Sea-bream moored with the quay of Courbevoie.

The burial

The burial had been fixed at the December 15th. Victor Hugo evokes this day in the Rays and the Shades :

“frozen Sky! pure sun! Oh! shine in the history!

Of the funeral triumph, imperial torch!

That the people forever keep you in his memory

beautiful Jour like glory,

Froid like the tomb. ”

In spite of a constant cold of 10 degrees, the crowd of the spectators since the Pont of Neuilly until the Invalides was extraordinary. There were houses whose roofs were covered with it. The respect and curiosity overrode the irritation and the penetrating cold completed to freeze inclinations of agitation of crowd. Under the pale sun which had succeeded snow, the statues of plaster and the ornaments of gilded paperboard produced an ambiguous effect: “the petty one equipping the imposing one”:

“Suddenly, the gun bursts at the same time at three points different from the horizon. This triple simultaneous noise locks up the ear in a kind of formidable triangle and superbe.

Of the distant drums beats with the fields. The tank of the emperor apparaît.

the sun veiled until this moment, reappears at the same time. The effect is prodigieux.

One sees with far, in the vapor and the sun, on the gray and russet-red bottom of the trees of the Fields-Élysées, through large white statues which resemble phantoms, to be slowly driven a species of gold mountain. One does not distinguish from it yet only a kind of luminous flutter which sometimes makes étinceler on all the surface of the tank of stars, sometimes of the flashes. An immense rumor wraps this apparition.

One would say that this tank trails after him the acclamation of all the city like a torch trails its smoke.

the procession restarts. The tank advances slowly. One starts to distinguish the form from it.

the unit has size. It is an enormous mass, entirely gilded, whose stages are pyramidant above the four large gilded wheels which carry it. The true coffin is invisible. One deposited it in the cellar of the base, which decreases the emotion. It is there the serious defect of this tank. It hides what one would like to see, which France claimed, which the people await, which all the eyes seek, the coffin of Napoleon. ”

The procession arrived at the Invalides around one hour and half; at two hours it reached the grid of honor; the king and all the large body of the State waited in the church of the Dome. The Prince de Joinville was to make a small speech, but one had forgotten of to prevent it: it was satisfied to greet saber, and the king of marmonner some inintelligibles words. the Monitor arranged the scene after a fashion:

“- Lord, said prince de Joinville, by lowering his sword to ground, I present to you the body of the emperor Napoléon.

- I receive it in the name of France, answered the king of a strong voice. ”

The general Atthalin advanced, bearing on a cushion the sword of Austerlitz and Marengo, that it presented to Louis-Philippe; the king had a curious movement of retreat, and turned to Bertrand:

“- General, I charge you with placing the glorious sword of the Emperor on his coffin. ”

Bertrand, too moved, could not fill this ultimate duty; Gourgaud precipitated and seizes weapon. The king turned then to him:

“- General Gourgaud, place on the coffin the hat of the Emperor. ”

The funeral ceremony, during which the best singers of the opera, under the direction of Habeneck, gave the Requiem of Mozart, more fashionable than was collected. The deputies, in particular, were held strong evil: “Of the schoolboys of seventh would be buttocks if they had in a solemn place the behavior, the setting and the manners of these Sirs. Thus three different receptions were made with the emperor. He was received by the people with the Fields-Élysées, piously; by the middle-class men on the estrades of the Esplanade Invalids, coldly; by the deputies under the dome of the Invalids, insolently. ”. The attitude of the old man marshal Moncey, governor of the Invalids, repurchased the impertinence of the court and the room. For fifteen days, it had been with the anguish, pressing its doctor to make it live until the fatal ceremony. The finished religious service, it was made carry to the catafalque, took the rose, threw water bénite and launched the word of the end:

“- And now, let us return to die. ”

16 until the December 24th, the church of the Invalids lit like the day of the ceremony, remained open to the public. In the people, which, a long time, had not believed in not died of the Emperor, the noise ran which its tomb was only one cenotaph. It was said that in Sainte-Hélène, the commission had found only one coffin empty. It was affirmed that the English had secretly repatriated the body in London to make the autopsy of it. Later, it will be affirmed that in 1870, the mortal remains of the Emperor had been removed Invalids to withdraw it from the foreign armies, and was never replaced there. In his good sense, the people had not been mistaken; one had veiled Napoleon to him, it felt stolen, it would have one day his revenge:

“All this ceremony, analyzed Victor Hugo, had a singular character of retraction. The government seemed to be afraid of the phantom that it evoked. One seemed all at the same time to show and hide Napoleon. One left in the shade all that had been too large or too touching. One concealed reality and the imposing one under more or less splendid envelopes, one retracted the imperial procession in the military procession, one retracted the army in the national guard, one retracted the rooms in the Invalids, one retracted the coffin in the cenotaph. Napoleon had on the contrary to be taken frankly, to be made honor, to royally treat it of it and popularly as an emperor, and then one had found force where one failed to stagger. ”

The monument

According to a decision taken by the government, the remainders of Napoleon rest in a splendid monument which rises in the middle of the dome of the Invalids. Conceived by the architect Louis Visconti, this tomb was completed only in 1861.

In a circular excavation dug under the dome, left opened crypt, is placed “a large sarcophagus (...) of red porphyry - in fact of the Quartzite aventurine of Finland, near to the Porphyre -, posed on a green granite base of the Vosges”. The black marble base comes from the Holy-Luce marble career of (Isere). The transport of this 5,5 meters length block, 1,20 meter broad and 0,65 meter thickness, was not done without sorrow.

The transfer of the coffin since the Saint-Jerome vault, where it rested since 1840, gave place only to one intimate ceremony, to which assisted, the April 2nd 1861, the emperor Napoleon III, the empress Eugenie, the imperial Prince and Princes of the family, the Government and Large officers of the Crown.

Napoleonean museums and places of memory

Starting from 1854, the emperor Napoleon III negotiated with the British government the purchase of Longwood House and the valley of the Tomb (island Sainte-Hélène), which became properties French in 1858 and managed since by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

See too

Sources

Guy Antonetti, Louis-Philippe , Paris, Bookstore Arthème Beech, 2002 - ISBN 2-213-59222-7
E.M. Laumann, the return of ashes , Paris, Daragon, 1904, in 4°
Gilbert Martineau, the return of ashes , Paris, Tallandier, 1990

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