Then came more soldiers. The immediate escort of the Emperor now appeared. Sitting erect and stiff in their saddles, the Carabiniers rode up—the senior cavalry regiment of France—eight hundred picked horsemen uniformed in Imperial blue and crimson and gold, with helmets of burnished brass, over which nodded thick tufted crests of crimson wool. The officers, superb beings adorned with breastplates of gleaming brass, led the regiment. The Carabiniers claimed to be the only corps of the Napoleonic Army which could prove continuity with the Old Royal Army, if not indeed with the historic “Maison du Roi” itself, the Household Brigade of the Monarchy, owing to a curious oversight at the Revolution through which the regiment had escaped dispersal.
Then came the Man of the Hour.
THE IMPERIAL COACH APPEARS
Napoleon now appeared, in his brand-new Imperial State coach. Eight noble bays drew it—with harness and trappings of red morocco leather studded with golden bees. A marvellous vehicle to look at was Napoleon’s coach, gleaming all over with gilded carved work; its roof topped by a great golden crown, modelled “after that of Charlemagne,” as people told one another, upheld by four glistening gilded eagles. The State coach sparkled all over, looking as if encrusted with gold; a gleaming mass of carved and gilded decorations, representing allegorical emblems, heraldic designs, and coats of arms in colour.
Napoleon’s head coachman of the Consulate days, César, sat on the box, his fat form embedded in the centre of a luxurious hammer-cloth of scarlet velvet, spangled over with golden bees. Outriders in green and gold and walking footmen beside the horses added their part; also half a score of Pages of Honour, hanging on all round at the sides and back of the coach, in green velvet coats, gold laced down the seams, with green silk shoulder-knots, scarlet silk breeches and stockings, and white ostrich-plumes in their jaunty black velvet hats: most of the lads future officers of the Guard. At either side rode Equerries and Officiers d’Ordonnance, in white and gold or pale blue and silver.
To the crowds that lined the streets the State coach was a sight of the day—the coach, for some, as much as the Emperor. All Paris, of course, had not been able to find room round the Field of Mars, spacious as the accommodation there was. The pavements all along the streets from the Tuileries were packed with a dense crowd, which pressed everywhere close up behind the double rows of Gendarmes and Imperial Guardsmen keeping the processional route.
They shouted “Vive l’Empereur!” lustily, for all had a good view of Napoleon through the great glass windows of the coach; seated inside on the right, wearing his ostrich-feathered cap of semi-State, a gold embroidered purple velvet mantle, and the Grand Master’s collar of the Legion of Honour, sparkling with costly gems.
Josephine, a slender figure in ermine cloak and white silk dress, sat on Napoleon’s left, and on the front seats sat Joseph and Louis, side by side—the elder brother sleek and smiling, wrapped up in a poppy-red cloak as Grand Elector of the Empire; Louis Bonaparte wearing his blue velvet Constable’s mantle over the brass breastplate of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Carabiniers, to which rank Napoleon had specially promoted Louis, with the idea of maintaining an old tradition of the Monarchy that the titular Commander of the Carabiniers should always be a Prince of the Blood, “Frère du Roi.”
CHIEFS OF THE “MAISON MILITAIRE”
Napoleon’s Imperial Standard was borne immediately after the State coach; a crowned eagle heading the staff; the flag a silken tricolor, richly fringed with gold and bespangled with golden bees.