The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  In contrast to Marshals Berthier, Davout, and Augereau in their splendid gold-embroidered uniforms and ornate hats, Napoleon wore a plain gray overcoat and black felt bicorn hat that day. “Not everyone has the right to dress simply,” he said. Rather than wear his bicorn with the corners pointing forward and back, Napoleon turned his hat sideways. Unlike his generals whose bicorns sported elaborate braiding and feathers, the emperor ordered eight plain bicorns annually from the Parisian hat maker Poupard, and had them broken in by his valets.8

  About the Grande Armée’s entry into Berlin, imperial guard Captain Jean-Roch Coignet wrote: “. . . it was a curious sight to see the worst-dressed man the master of such a splendid army. The people were gazing out of the windows as the Parisians did on the day we came back from Austerlitz. . . . We drew up in line of battle in front of the [Charlottenburg] palace, which is isolated by beautiful squares in front and at the back of it, and a handsome square filled with trees, where the great Frederick stands on a pedestal with his little gaiters on.”9

  Napoleon was “the worst-dressed man” by careful calculation, choosing to stand out from his officers and generals on the battlefield. From Berlin, Denon wrote François Gérard about a new commission, instructing the painter to “. . . put a great deal of magnificence in the costume of the officers who surround the Emperor, since this contrasts with the simplicity which he affects, which makes him suddenly distinguished among them.”10 Napoleon’s unique sartorial style became a potent symbol and led his enemies to call him “The Bat.” For the upcoming 1807 campaign, Napoleon donned a bicorn lined in olive-brown silk with an interior circumference over twenty-three inches—relatively large for his five-foot-six-inch stature.11

  Napoleon did own an ornate ceremonial breastplate, a gift from the arms makers of Paris. Designed by Denon, the chiseled brass and steel cuirass likened Napoleon to Mars, the Roman god of war. Wearing a breastplate, boots, and a helmet, the figure of Mars holds a shield with two winged griffins in his left hand and adjusts his helmet with his right. His skirt is carved with various animal heads including lions, rams, and eagles. As Anne Forray-Carlier notes, the two nude spirits around Mars evoke depictions of angels surrounding Christ in the Ascension.12

  Over six hundred fragments of cuirassed statues survive from the Greco-Roman world.13 Arguably the most famous example is the Prima Porta Augustus (circa 15 C.E.), a six-foot-tall Parian marble sculpture of Rome’s first emperor discovered in 1863 at an imperial villa north of Rome. Made to imitate the bronze battle costume, Augustus’s elaborately decorated cuirass combined mythological and contemporary events.

  The afternoon that Napoleon occupied Berlin, he directed Denon to remove the quadriga on top of the Brandenburg Gate and ship it to Paris. Commissioned by Frederick William II and modeled on the Propylaia or gate of the Acropolis in Athens, the Brandenburg Gate was inaugurated in 1791 to celebrate the Prussian army’s victories. Denon visited the quadriga designer, sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow, to discuss logistics for its removal. “Denon is most certainly one of the most lively phenomenons [sic] of our era, and it will be a mistake to let him go without seeing him,” the sculptor wrote. The chased copper statue of Victory and her four-horse chariot were disassembled and packed into a dozen enormous crates. By December, the sculpture was on its way to Paris.

  Frederick William left Berlin’s royal palace Charlottenburg empty. For almost a month, Napoleon occupied Frederick the Great’s former office. Just as he had done with Charlemagne in Aachen, Napoleon collected memorabilia relating to Frederick the Great. In November, he ordered a marble bust of the Prussian king transferred from Berlin to Paris, adding an inscription regarding its capture. At the same time, he pilfered a bronze model of a statue of Frederick’s ancestor, the Great Elector. From Sanssouci, Napoleon took Frederick’s large silver watch.14

  Corresponding with his arch-chancellor Cambacérès, Napoleon directed that Frederick the Great’s flags, sword, and decorations be installed in a May 1807 ceremony in Paris at Les Invalides, a retirement home for veterans.15 Napoleon dedicated Frederick’s sword to the resident veterans—some nine hundred of whom had fought in the Seven Years’ War.16

  Like his military heroes, Napoleon understood that his power and authority depended on the support of his army. He went to great lengths to cement a lasting bond with his soldiers. In this regard, he was following the lead of Julius Caesar, whose soldiers trusted him unconditionally.17 On his deathbed in 211 in York, Roman emperor Septimius Severus reportedly told his feuding sons: “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.” France’s own hero General Turenne was also beloved by his soldiers as was Frederick the Great.

  “Bonaparte’s reception by the troops was nothing short of rapturous,” recalled Claire de Rémusat. “It was well worth seeing how he talked to the soldiers—how he questioned them one after the other respecting their campaigns or their wounds, taking particular interest in the men who had accompanied him to Egypt. I have heard Madame Bonaparte say that her husband was in the constant habit of poring over the list of what are called the cadres of the army at night before he slept. He would go to sleep repeating the names of the corps, and even those of some of the individuals who composed them; he kept these names in a corner of his memory, and this habit came to his aid when he wanted to recognize a soldier and to give him the pleasure of a cheering word from his general. He spoke to the subalterns in a tone of good fellowship, which delighted them all, as he reminded them of their common feats of arms.

  “Afterwards when his armies became so numerous and his battles so deadly, he disdained to exercise this kind of fascination. Besides, death had extinguished so many remembrances that in a few years it became difficult for him to find any great number of the companies of his early exploits; and when he addressed his soldiers before leading them into battle, it was as a perpetually renewed posterity to which the preceding and destroyed army had bequeathed its glory. But even this somber style of encouragement availed for a long time with a nation which believed itself to be fulfilling its destiny while sending its sons year after year to die for Bonaparte.”18

  The Grande Armée’s latest round of victories in northern Germany supplied more treasures for the Musée Napoléon. Between November 1806 and June 1807, Denon scoured the palaces, galleries, and museums of Cassel, Brunswick, Schwerin, Berlin, Potsdam, Danzig, and Warsaw. In the hunt, he was assisted by artist Benjamin Zix who often acted as his translator. Ultimately, Denon filled 250 cases with several thousand paintings, sculptures, and drawings. Unlike in Italy, there were no treaties including art.

  From art-loving Frederick the Great’s prized gallery at Sanssouci, Vivant Denon hand-picked 123 pictures and fifty-six antique busts and reliefs, along with a treasure chest of antique medals from the king’s coin cabinet.19 Among the painted masterworks was Correggio’s Leda and the Swan, part of the artist’s series for the Duke of Mantua. Before its arrival at Sanssouci, the picture had belonged to many renowned collections, including that of France’s Duke of Orléans.

  After the victory at Jena, Napoleon deposed the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, William I (who had declared himself neutral in the conflict), adding the domain to the Kingdom of Westphalia. At William I’s residence in Cassel, Denon discovered 1,600 paintings. He reportedly told the gallery keeper, painter J. H. Tischbein, that he had never had such a difficult choice “because these are all pearls and jewels.”20

  The quality of the art surprised the discerning Denon. “I have just come from Cassel, where I have made an ample harvest of superb things,” he wrote. “In all, I shall have gathered a crop that cannot be compared to that of Italy, but which is far above what I had hoped for from Germany.”21 Among Denon’s “crop” of 299 paintings were eight Rembrandts, three Rubenses, five Claude Lorrains, and one Titian. Four dozen of the pictures wound up at Malmaison after being discovered packed and hidden in a vault (these would later be acquired from Joséphine’s son by Russia’s Alexander I). 22

/>   Nearby in Brunswick, Denon grabbed another forty-two sculptures, eighty-five paintings, and 174 enameled Limoges objects. From the cathedral in Danzig, Denon plucked Hans Memling’s early altarpiece, the Last Judgement. Painted between 1467 and 1471 for Angelo Tani, the Medici’s representative in Bruge, the triptych measured over seven feet tall and nearly ten feet wide.23

  On December 11, 1806, the Treaty of Posen brought Saxony into the Confederation of the Rhine. Napoleon named the Saxon elector Frederick Augustus I king of Saxony, enlarging the realm with territory seized from Prussia, his former ally. In Berlin, Denon tried to persuade Napoleon to include an article in the treaty for masterpieces from the Dresden gallery, considered the greatest German art museum. After learning about Denon’s scheme, Frederick Augustus insisted on meeting Denon in Berlin. Saxony’s quick alliance with Napoleon spared the gallery.

  Austria and Prussia had surrendered, but Russia remained a threat. Before leaving the Prussian capital on November 21, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree, forbidding the import of British goods into European countries allied with France. From Berlin, Napoleon marched his army into Poland. In Warsaw, Napoleon issued an imperial decree for a bridge in Paris overlooking the military school to be named the Pont d’Iéna or Jena Bridge after his recent victory (today the bridge links the Eiffel Tower and Trocadéro). The tympana along the sides of the five arch bridge would be adorned with imperial eagles designed by François-Frédéric Lemot and sculpted by Jean-François Mouret.

  While in Warsaw, Napoleon learned of a surprise Russian attack. On February 7 in a blinding snowstorm at Eylau, 130 miles from the Russian border, he struck back. On June 14, the Grande Armée fought the Russian army in Friedland (today’s Kaliningrad). The carnage on both sides was terrible—seventy thousand French and Russian soldiers killed or wounded. On June 25, Alexander I traveled to Tilsit on the western border of Russia to negotiate peace. To symbolize their equal status, Alexander met Napoleon on a raft in the center of the Niemen River, the boundary between Russia and Europe. Alexander told Napoleon in French: “Sir, I hate the English as much as you do.” To which Napoleon replied, “So we have made peace.”24

  Napoleon did not demand territory. In return, Russia became France’s ally and joined the Continental System, Napoleon’s blockade against Britain. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw was created from Prussia’s Polish provinces. French troops would occupy Prussia until it paid a war indemnity of 140 million francs. Over the next two weeks, Alexander and Napoleon enjoyed a bromance, inspecting each other’s armies and awarding medals to soldiers on both sides. Charmed by Catherine the Great’s beloved grandson, Napoleon described him as “especially handsome, like a hero with all the graces of an amiable Parisian.”

  In December 1807, Napoleon named his brother Jérôme King of Westphalia, a new kingdom created in northern Germany from Prussian real estate and land seized from Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick, and southern Hanover. Mecklenburg and several other small principalities also joined the Confederation of the Rhine. By 1808, Napoleon’s buffer state boasted thirty-nine members.

  Napoleon’s obsession with monumental architecture continued. After his 1804 coronation, suggestions had been made to turn Paris’s unfinished Church of the Madeleine into either a parish church or one dedicated to Pius VII.

  The history of the Place de la Madeleine dated back seven centuries. The site was consecrated to the biblical figure Mary Magdalene in the tweflth century, when a cult linked to her relics emerged. According to tradition, after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene traveled from the Holy Land to Provence where she converted the French to Christianity.

  Louis XV decided to replace the old parish Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de la Ville l’Évêque with a more stately building. The goal was to close the view along the rue Royale looking north from the Place Louis XV, the largest of Paris’s three royal squares (today’s Place de la Concorde).25 Plagued by criticism, architect Pierre Constant d’Ivry made numerous changes to his design, modeled after the domed Baroque church at Les Invalides. After d’Ivry’s death in 1777, his successor Guillaume-Martin Couture le Jeune demolished the unfinished building and started a new church based on the Panthéon. Couture’s plan also proved unpopular.

  After the Revolution, there were a number of ideas for secularizing the unfinished church, including a festival hall, national assembly, and national library. More proposals followed during the Consulate, among them a tribunal and a Temple of Concord.26 In February 1806, Napoleon announced a plan for a business district at the site, consisting of the Stock Exchange, Bank of France, and the Court of Commerce.

  But Paris’s bankers pushed back on the idea, disliking the less than central location (in 1808, the Bank acquired the count of Toulouse’s former mansion in the rue de la Vrillière for its headquarters). Pierre Fontaine also weighed in, suggesting a national assembly or opera house.27

  On December 2, 1806, from his military camp in Posen, Poland, Napoleon ended the long-running debate. An imperial decree turned the Church of the Madeleine into a “Temple to the Glory of the Great Army” after the Athenian Acropolis. “I have in mind a monument like many were in Athens and of which there is none in Paris.”28

  Napoleon provided detailed instructions. In addition to displaying enemy flags and trophies, the temple was to have marble tablets inscribed with the names of soldiers from the battles of Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena, and bas-reliefs and marble statues of his colonels and marshals. Between preparations for the battle of Friedland, Napoleon wrote Interior Minister Champagny instructing him to organize a contest for the design of the temple.

  From some eighty anonymous submissions, a jury of judges awarded first prize to architect Claude-Etienne de Beaumont in spring 1807. Beaumont’s design featured a vast commemorative program composed of ornaments and sculpture that met Napoleon’s requirements including statues of marshals and the names of war casualties engraved on silver or gold tables. But after receiving the top four entries at his camp in Finkelstein, Napoleon replied to Champagny that Beaumont’s plan had been the first he rejected.

  As he often did, Napoleon overruled the jury’s decision, awarding the commission to Pierre-Alexandre Vignon, protégé of neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Vignon’s proposal most closely resembled Napoleon’s vision for a monumental neoclassical temple. “It is the only one that fulfills my intention,” wrote Napoleon. “It is a temple that I asked for and not a church. What could be done in the style of the churches which was in the case of fighting with St. Genevieve, even with Notre Dame and especially with St. Peter’s in Rome?”29

  Napoleon ordered that the quadriga from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate be placed outside the new temple. But the quadriga arrived in Paris in June 1807 damaged from the journey. Vivant Denon wrote his rival Fontaine asking for permission to use the Orangery at the Musée Napoléon for three months to make the necessary repairs. Believing the quadriga would be dwarfed by the monumental temple, Denon suggested it be placed instead on a fountain or statue on the Pont Neuf facing the Place Dauphine (where a statue of Henri IV stands today). The fountain was never built; the quadriga was forgotten at Versailles’s Dépôt des Menus Plaisirs.

  Following ten months of war, Napoleon returned to France in August 1807, regrouping for two weeks at Saint-Cloud. On his birthday, Napoleon staged a triumphal entry into the capital worthy of the Caesars. With ten thousand soldiers of the Imperial Guard, the procession passed through a temporary Arc de Triomphe, before proceeding down the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries and the new Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Along the Champs-Élysées, tables were set for a banquet in honor of the Imperial Guard; a tent was installed at the Rond Point for the general staff. Toasts were raised to Napoleon, Paris, and the Grande Armée.

  Marshal Bessières led the rest of the Grande Armée into the city through the Porte de la Villette, beneath an unfinished triumphal arch. The day’s festivities ended with balloon flights and fireworks displays. Poems compared members of France’s Imp
erial Guard to the “ten thousand immortals”—the elite infantry unit of Persia’s Achaemenid Empire. As Matthew Zarzeczny writes, “. . . if his [Napoleon’s] soldiers were the great warriors, modern immortals, then he was their great commander, a modern Trajan or Caesar.”30

  Meanwhile, little progress had been made on Napoleon’s “Temple to the Glory of the Grande Armée.” In July 1808, over a year behind schedule, Pierre Vignon razed what remained of the 1790 church and began work. Though Napoleon wanted a temple like the Acropolis, Vignon found his inspiration closer to home. Along with the temple of Augustus and Livia in Vienne, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes (today’s Provence) remains one of the world’s best preserved Roman temples.

  After Caesar’s decade-long conquest of Gaul, the Romans organized the region into four provinces, including Gallia Narbonensis in the south in 122 B.C.E. During the Celtic era, the Narbonne region had been occupied by the Volcae tribe, which founded Nîmes and made it their capital. They called it Nemausus, after the god of the nearby sacred spring. Around 120 B.C.E., the Romans established control of Nemausus, founding a colony here sometime in the late first century B.C.E., one of many in Provence.

  Under Augustus, the city developed into an important center of Gaul, along with Marseille and Lyons. In 16–15 B.C.E., as part of a major urban program across Gaul and Spain, Augustus funded gates and walls for Nemausus. A forum was constructed at the intersection of the north to south road known as the cardo and the east to west road, the decumanus. On the forum’s south side, in the middle of a flat, colonnaded court stood the elegant temple, later known as the Maison Carrée or Square House.