by Susan Jaques
Denon arranged to borrow the extraordinary tapestry from Bayeux in Normandy for a two-month exhibition of the work at the Musée Napoléon. To make room for the medieval masterpiece, Denon removed several hundred framed Old Master drawings from the Apollo Gallery. On December 5, 1804, escorted by Denon and antiquities curator Visconti, the newly crowned Napoleon I attended the opening. Visconti penned a guide to the epic embroidery; excerpts were reprinted by the influential Paris newspaper, Le Moniteur.
The tapestry’s patron is thought to be Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, named Earl of Kent after the conquest. Though there’s no agreement on whether the work was stitched in England or France, Odo probably intended it for his bishopric of Bayeux in northwest France. The first written reference to the tapestry appears four centuries later, in 1476; it seems to have been displayed in various churches and castles throughout England and Normandy, including the nave of Bayeux Cathedral. Confiscated during the French Revolution, the tapestry was covering military wagons when a local lawyer rescued it and sent it to city administrators for safekeeping.
Napoleon and his advisers were aware of the connection between various scenes of the Bayeux Tapestry and Trajan’s Column in Rome. Early eighteenth-century French scholar Abbé Bernard de Montfaucon had identified the famous column as a reference for the tapestry creators. Like the ancient carved marble friezes of the Roman column, many of the tapestry’s fifty-plus embroidered scenes center on war preparations, shipbuilding, and battle scenes. Like the Bayeux Tapestry, Trajan’s Column presents both sides in the conflict as worthy opponents.
“Both the Column of Trajan and the Bayeux Tapestry show wars that are methodically prepared, carefully directed, and strategically executed,” writes Otto Werckmeister “. . . they unfold the visual record of a campaign in stages, including the technical and logistical preparations . . .”29 The ancient carved marble column and the medieval embroidered linen also have a shared purpose. As masterful propaganda vehicles, both works helped justify brutal military campaigns and glorify the commanders.
Now Napoleon put the celebrated tapestry to work again. By resurrecting France’s successful invasion of its ancient enemy, the Bayeux Tapestry helped justify his planned assault on Britain. When Denon returned the tapestry a year later, he wrote Bayeux’s sub-prefect: “The First Consul has seen with interest this precious monument of our history, he has applauded the care that the habitants of the city of Bayeux have brought for seven centuries and a half to its conservation. He has charged me to testify to them all his satisfaction and to entrust them with the deposit. Invite them to bring new care to the conservation of this fragile monument, which retraces one of the most memorable actions of the French Nation.”30
Among the matching scenes are the Dacians crossing the marsh and sinking, like the Normans crossing the quicksands of the river Cuesnon; a meeting of William and his scout like one between Trajan and two scouts on horseback; and woodcutters building Norman ships, a recurring motif on the column.31 As Carola Hicks explains, boat-building was the first step in the invasion conceived by William, who quickly assembled an eight-hundred-ship fleet. Napoleon ordered seven hundred transport barges built.32
But Napoleon’s dream of being a new William the Conqueror was dashed. The threat of a French invasion led to a new government in Britain, which strengthened the coastal defenses. From his chief admiral, Napoleon learned that only one hundred transport ships could leave the harbor on any one tide; their stability depended on good weather.33 The superiority of the Royal Navy and the memory of the French fleet’s destruction at Alexandria, Egypt, six years earlier consumed Napoleon. In August, he called off the invasion. Unlike Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror, Napoleon never crossed the English Channel.
Instead, Napoleon pivoted to continental Europe. By the end of September, he was leading his Grande Armée across the Rhine. Marching some thirty miles a day, foraging as they went, his soldiers were devoted to their commander. Wearing a simple coat and bicorn hat, Napoleon rode for ten hours at a stretch. When the army did stop to rest, he studied reports and issued orders.
Pius VII, who insisted on maintaining neutrality in the ongoing conflicts, had allowed the British to use ports on the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic. In October, French General Lamarois seized the papal port of Ancona, along with the Adriatic coast from Rimini to the border with Naples. In Ancona, French troops would have admired a well-preserved triumphal arch dedicated to Roman emperor Trajan. It was from Ancona that Trajan set off for war against Dacia (today’s Romania) in the early second century. Trajan enlarged the port at his own expense, making improvements to the wharfs and fortifications. In his honor, the Roman Senate erected the elegant arch made with marble from the storied Marmara quarries.
Pius considered the port’s seizure another instance of Napoleon’s complete disregard for papal rights. He demanded that the French evacuate. Not surprisingly, Napoleon dismissed his letter. “For the Pope’s purposes I am Charlemagne,” he wrote his uncle, Cardinal Fesch. “Like Charlemagne, I join the crown of France with the crown of the Lombards . . . I expect the Pope to accommodate his conduct to my requirements. If he behaves well, I shall make no outward changes; if not, I shall reduce him to the status of bishop of Rome . . .”34
Russia entered the fray, joining the Third Coalition against France. With his forces about to be outnumbered almost two to one, Napoleon decided to strike at the Austrians before the Russians arrived. On October 19, Napoleon forced the Austrians to surrender at Ulm. But the victory was quickly eclipsed. French Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve had positioned the fleet at Cadiz, a threat to British trading ships and Britain. On October 21, Admiral Lord Nelson caught a combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar. Nelson divided his twenty-seven ships into two divisions. In the ensuing battle, some 1,700 British sailors were killed, including Nelson. After five hours, Villeneuve surrendered. Nineteen of his thirty-three ships were destroyed.
Napoleon continued the ground assault. By November 14, he paraded through the streets of Vienna in triumph. Beethoven, who had dedicated his Third Symphony to the first consul, now denounced him as a tyrant. By month’s end, Napoleon learned that the Russian and Austrian armies had combined into a fighting force of ninety thousand; Prussia was threatening to declare war on France. Nearly one thousand miles from Paris, the 75,000-man Grande Armée was running dangerously low on supplies. Studying the battles of Prussia’s Frederick the Great, poring over maps, Napoleon decided to make a stand at the village of Austerlitz (today’s Slavkov, Czech Republic).
The Battle of Austerlitz came to be known as the Battle of the Three Emperors because of the presence of Napoleon I, Francis II, and Alexander I. The night before the battle, Napoleon enjoyed his favorite campaign dish, potatoes fried with onions. Waving flaming torches, his adoring soldiers shouted “Long live the emperor!” In a moment of reflection, Napoleon recalled the Egyptian campaign. Likening himself to sixth-century B.C.E. King Cyrus who created the Persian royal guard known as the immortals, and Alexander the Great who defeated the elite fighters at Issus (modern Turkey), Napoleon told his staff:
“If I had been able to take Acre, I would have put on a turban, I would have made my soldiers wear big Turkish trousers, and I would have exposed them to battle only in case of extreme necessity. I would have made them into a sacred battalion—my immortals. I would have finished the war against the Turks with Arabic, Greek, and Armenian troops. Instead of a battle in Moravia, I would have won a battle at Issus, I would have made myself emperor of the East, and I would have returned to Paris by way of Constantinople.”35
As day broke, fog blanketed the gently sloping hill. Hidden in the haze were Napoleon’s two divisions, some 17,000 soldiers. Napoleon ordered his men to advance and attack the Allies from behind. As the sun rose, French forces appeared out of nowhere, surprising the inexperienced twenty-eight-year-old Alexander I. An estimated 16,000 Austrian and Russian soldiers were killed and wou
nded; France lost nearly 1,300 men that day.36 After the battle, the first anniversary of his coronation, Napoleon told an aide, “This is the finest evening of my life.” The victory over Europe’s two imperial dynasties was his proudest moment, an answer to the naval disaster at Trafalgar. “Soldiers I am pleased with you,” he told his men. “You have decorated your eagles with an immortal glory.”
Alexander and his surviving soldiers retreated to Russia. With Austria’s morale shattered, Francis sued for peace. In addition to paying France an indemnity of forty million francs, the Austrian emperor lost some four million subjects and roughly a sixth of his empire, including territories in Italy and central and Eastern Europe. By year-end, Napoleon was in Munich, awaiting Austria’s ratification of the Treaty of Pressburg.
Tensions between France and the Kingdom of Naples were reaching a boiling point. Though Bourbon King Ferdinand IV and Queen Maria Carolina (Marie Antoinette’s sister) had pledged neutrality in the Napoleonic wars, the Neapolitan rulers allowed an Anglo-Russian force to land in the Bay of Naples.
The betrayal was the perfect excuse for Napoleon. He wrote to his brother Joseph, dispatching him to assume command of the Army of Naples.
PART FOUR
A NEW ROME
“Men are only as great as the monuments they leave behind.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1804
ONE
COLUMNS OF CONQUEST
In 97 C.E., to garner the support of Rome’s army, the uncharismatic Emperor Nerva adopted the military hero Trajan as his heir. When Nerva died after just sixteen months in power, he was succeeded by the popular forty-five-year-old. Hailing from the Roman province of Hispania (today’s Spain), Trajan was the first Roman emperor born outside of Italy. Perhaps because of this, Trajan went out of his way to tie himself to Rome’s first emperor, even wearing Augustus’s distinctive forked hairdo.
To protect Rome’s forty-five provinces, Trajan dispatched his army across the Empire. As Lino Rossi notes, it was the world’s greatest professional army until World War I. Trajan’s war machine numbered around 400,000 land forces—180,000 legionaries, 5,000 praetorians (guards), 6,000 police, and 200,000-plus auxiliaries.1
From north of the Danube (today’s Romania), the Dacians regularly raided the Roman Empire. In 101, Trajan pushed back, fortifying the border and invading with tens of thousands of troops. After nearly two years of battle, Dacian King Decebalus negotiated a treaty with Trajan, then promptly broke it. In 105, Trajan returned to finish the job. The back-to-back wars were the defining episode of Trajan’s nearly twenty-year reign. Trajan colonized his new province with Roman war veterans, leading to the country’s current name of Romania.2
Accompanying the Roman legions was a talented engineer named Apollodorus who had been summoned to Rome at age twenty from Damascus, Roman Syria. In addition to forts and camps, Apollodorus built an extraordinary bridge that enabled Trajan’s soldiers to cross the Danube and reinvade Dacia. Fortresses on both ends prevented the Dacians from using the bridge.
Roman historian Dio Cassius raved about the engineering feat: “. . . it has twenty piers of squared stone one hundred and fifty feet in height above the foundations and sixty in width, and these, standing at a distance of one hundred and seventy feet from one another, are connected by arches. How, then, could one fail to be astonished at the expenditure made upon them, or at the way in which each of them was placed in a river so deep, in water so full of eddies, and on a bottom so muddy?”3
When Trajan returned to Rome, it’s thought that he appointed Apollodorus his praefectus fabrum, or minister of works, supervising the capital’s fabri, engineers and artisans. The position was formerly held by Rabirius, starchitect under Domitian. In addition to Apollodorus’s innovative military projects, Trajan may have been aware of his earlier buildings in Syria.4
In contrast to the lavish private building projects of Nero and Domitian, Trajan focused on public architecture. He reworked the Circus Maximus to accommodate 250,000 spectators, fortifying the wood structure with concrete and brick. On top of Nero’s Golden House (razed by Vespasian), Trajan built his Baths. Fed by the Aqua Traiana, Trajan’s Baths were four times as large as the Baths of Titus. Apollodorus located the bathing block in the center and arranged the main rooms in axial relationships to one another. In addition to a swimming pool, the frigadorium, Apollodorus constructed a library, meeting hall, and a hemicycle with seating for performances.
In 108 C.E., rich with looted gold and silver from Dacia, Trajan decided to commemorate his victory with a vast complex linking the Republican Forum and the Campus Martius. To make room, Apollodorus removed 125 feet of the Quirinal Hill. Almost as large as Rome’s other imperial fora combined, Trajan’s Forum boasted a shopping mall, plaza, two libraries, and the immense white marble Basilica Ulpia (after Trajan’s family name, Ulpius). In a great rectangular courtyard lined with Carrara marble stood a heroic bronze equestrian statue of Trajan surrounded by Dacian captives.
Apollodorus saved the best for last. In the northernmost part of the Forum he built the soaring Trajan’s Column. Wrapping around the column in an upward spiral was a marble frieze carved with 155 scenes from Trajan’s Dacian campaigns. Twenty-nine blocks of solid marble were quarried at Carrara, shipped down the Tyrrhenian coast to Portus, and then taken by riverboat up the Tiber to Rome.5 It’s thought that these massive marble drums, roughly ten feet in diameter, were hollowed out to make room for a spiral staircase inside the column (185 stairs, lit by over forty slit windows).
As Lynne Lancaster explains, each drum was rolled by cart or sledge onto the base of a sophisticated lifting device featuring scaffolding and a pulley system, and lifted into the air with a series of capstans, each pushed by teams of men and horses. The highest drum had to be lifted 125 feet. To prevent damage from the blocks, Apollodorus reinforced the vault of the courtyard portico substructure with brick ribbing.6 The column rested on a pedestal made of eight marble blocks seventeen feet square, decorated with Dacian arms and armor held up by eagles. Above, between the pedestal and shaft, the base was formed by an oak wreath.
Apollodorus entrusted the carving of the marble drums to a frieze designer, or maestro. Though it is not known how many sculptors helped carve the nearly seven-hundred-foot frieze, the Hellenistic figures have led experts to conclude that Greek slaves worked alongside Roman craftsmen. There are a number of theories about the technique used and whether the carving was done in place or at a workshop. Some experts believe that after smoothing the marble surfaces, the sculptors copied art onto the marble drums using pointing instruments and puntelli. Alternatively, artisans may have transferred ideas directly to the stone with the help of chalk or painted guidelines. It’s also possible that masons used a cartoon design attached to a wooden drum wrapped around the marble.7
Casualties from the Dacian wars numbered in the tens of thousands. In addition, Trajan took an estimated ten thousand Dacians back to Rome as slaves—many fought in gladiatorial games; others were sent to work quarries and gold mines throughout the Empire. According to historian Dio Cassius, the head of Dacian king Decebalus was brought back to Rome, along with silver and gold that he had buried.8 Despite the carnage, less than a quarter of the column’s marble frieze depicts battle scenes.
Amidst hundreds of fallen Dacians, only two injured Romans are depicted. In Trajan’s fifty-eight appearances, he is never shown fighting. Instead, the emperor is portrayed on foot and on horseback, addressing his troops, performing sacrifices, and receiving prisoners of war. In a scene of adlocutio, the traditional military oration before a campaign or after a victory, Trajan is portrayed with his right hand raised, thanking his troops for their bravery and distributing awards.
According to Giuliana Calcani, episodes for Trajan’s Column were chosen to give the war a positive spin, rather than show its brutality. “The scenes sculpted on the Column repeatedly play on the theme that it was not a matter of Rome subduing Dacia, but of civilization triumphing
over non-civilization,” writes Calcani.9 In the propagandistic war monument, Dacians are portrayed as a worthy but barbaric opponent. In one scene for example, Dacian women are shown torturing Roman soldiers.
Running chronologically from bottom to top, the tableaux feature over 2,600 Romans and Dacians in two-thirds life size. The Dacians are identified by their long hair and caps. To make the scenes easier to read, the height of the figures was increased at the top. Halfway up the column, a winged image of Victory marks the end of the first Dacian War and the start of the second. The epic drama opens at a staging area on the Roman banks of the Danube (today’s Bulgaria), with soldiers unloading provisions from ships. As the troops cross a pontoon bridge, a huge half-length bearded river god, personification of the Danube, blesses them. One of the other three personifications of gods on the column is Jupiter who hurls a thunderbolt at the enemy.10
The second campaign depicts the Roman army’s hunt for Decebalus. In the final battle, after the Dacians set fire to their capital and abandon it, a group commits mass suicide by drinking poison. Legionnaires pay tribute to Trajan while Dacians surrender, Roman soldiers carry off booty, and Trajan receives the acclamation of his troops. In the final episode, javelin-throwing Romans chase Decabulus. Rather than be captured, the king kneels under an oak tree, poised to cut his throat with a curved knife.
Six years in the making, Trajan’s Column was dedicated by the Roman Senate in May 113 C.E. Four years after the dedication, an ailing Trajan left Syria and headed back to Rome. But too sick to continue, the sixty-three-year-old emperor stopped at Selinus in Cilicia (today’s southern Turkey) where he died.