France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

After the death of Talleyrand, only M. Thiers remained of the four great men who had assisted Louis Philippe to attain supreme power. M. Thiers was not insensible to the advantage it would be to his History of the Consulate and Empire, if he could add to it a last and brilliant chapter describing the restoration to France of the mortal remains of her great emperor. Therefore in the early part of 1840, before any disturbance of the entente cordiale, he made a request to the English Government for the body of Napoleon, then lying beneath a willow-tree at Longwood, on a desolate island that hardly seemed to be part of the civilized world. Lord Palmerston responded very cordially, and Louis Philippe's third son, the Prince de Joinville, in his frigate, the "Belle Poule," attended by other French war-ships, was despatched upon the errand. Napoleon had died May 5, 1821. For almost twenty years his body had reposed at St. Helena. With the Prince de Joinville went Bertrand and Gourgaud, who had been the Emperor's companions in captivity.

The coffin was raised and opened. The face was perfect. The beard, which had been shaved before the burial, had apparently a week's growth. The white satin which had lined the lid of the coffin had crumbled into dust, and lay like a mist over the body, which was dressed in a green uniform, with the cocked hat across its knees.

The corpse was transferred to another coffin brought from France, and was carried over the rough rocks of St. Helena by English soldiers. All the honors that in that remote island England could give to her former captive were respectfully offered; and early in December, 1840, news arrived in Paris that the "Belle Poule" had reached Havre.

This was sooner than her arrival had been looked for, and at once all Paris was in a scramble of preparation. Laborers and artists worked night and day. The weather was piercingly cold. Indeed, no less than three hundred English were said to have died of colds contracted on the day of the funeral procession.

The body was landed at Courbevoie from a flat-bottomed barge that had been constructed to bring it up the Seine. Courbevoie is about two miles from the Arch of Triumph, which is again nearly the same distance from the Place de la Concorde.

Between each gilded lamp-post, with its double burners, and beneath long rows of leafless trees, were colossal plaster statues of Victory, alternating with colossal vases burning incense by day, and inflammable materials for illumination by night. Thus the procession attending the body had about five miles to march from the place of disembarkation to the Invalides, on the left bank of the Seine. The spectators began to assemble before dawn. All along the route scaffoldings had been erected, containing rows upon rows of seats. All the trees, bare and leafless at that season, were filled with freezing gamins. All the wide pavements were occupied. Before long, rows of National Guards fringed the whole avenue. They were to fall in behind the procession as it passed, and accompany it to the Invalides.

The arrival of the funeral barge had been retarded while the authorities hastened the preparations for its reception. When the body of Napoleon was about to re-land on French soil, "cannon to right of it, cannon to left of it, volleyed and thundered." The coffin was received beneath what was called a votive monument,—a column one hundred feet in height, with an immense gilded globe upon the top, surmounted by a gilded eagle twenty feet high. Banners and tripods were there ad libitum, and a vast plaster bas-relief cast in the "Belle Poule's" honor.

The coffin, having been landed, was placed upon a catafalque, the cannon gave the signal to begin the march, and the procession started. The public was given to understand that in a sort of funeral casket blazing with gold and purple, on the top of the catafalque, twenty feet from the ground, was enclosed the coffin of the Emperor; but it was not so. The sailors of the "Belle Poule" protested that the catafalque was too frail, and the height too great. They dared not, they said, attempt to get the lead-lined coffin up to the place assigned for it, still less try to get it down again. It was consequently deposited, for fear of accident, on a low platform between the wheels.

First came the gendarmes, or mounted police, with glittering brazen breastplates, waving horse-hair crests, fine horses, and a band of trumpeters; then the mounted Garde Municipale; then Lancers; then the Lieutenant-General commanding the National Guard of Paris, surrounded by his staff, and all officers, of whatever grade, then on leave in the capital. These were followed by infantry, cavalry, sappers and miners, Lancers, and Cuirassiers, staff-officers, etc., with bands and banners. Then came a carriage containing the chaplain who had had charge of the body from the time it left St. Helena, following whom were a crowd of military and naval officers. Next appeared a led charger, son of a stallion ridden by Napoleon, and soon after came a bevy of the marshals of France. Then all the banners of the eighty-six departments, and at last the funeral catafalque.

As it passed under the Arch of Triumph, erected by Napoleon in commemoration of his victories, there were hundreds in the crowd who expected to see the Emperor come to life again.