Events of the campaign are pictured in relief on the bronze plates which wind in a spiral around the Vendôme column. On the top stood a statue of Napoleon dressed in a toga according to the classic fashion of the moment. At the Restoration in 1814 this statue was taken down and its metal used for the making of a new statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf, the former statue having been destroyed during the Revolution. For seventeen years the white flag of the Bourbons floated from the Vendôme column, and then Louis Philippe substituted a statue of Napoleon in campaign uniform. For thirty-two years this figure looked down the rue Castiglione to the Tuileries gardens, and then Napoleon III replaced it by a Napoleon once more in classic dress. He did not stand long, however, for in the troubles of 1871 the Communards pulled down the whole column. Four years later it was reërected and is now topped by Napoleon in his imperial robes.
The Place Vendôme in which the column stands, and the arcaded rue Castiglione which leads into it from the similarly arcaded rue de Rivoli, are, like the Place des Victoires, guarded against change by a municipal law. In the case of the squares, each laid out as a unit, it is easily seen that any change in the façades would do serious injury to the harmony of the whole. The arcades of the rue Castiglione have their ornamental value in furnishing an approach to the Place Vendôme. To a dispassionate eye, however, the chimney-pots and skylights of the rue de Rivoli so overbalance by their ugliness the symmetry of the arcades below that the impertinent traveler feels moved to ask for an amendment to the law as far as this street is concerned. The same ugly roofs mar the otherwise beautiful addition which Napoleon made to the Louvre.
In 1806 Napoleon reconstructed the German Empire and secured the dependence of Naples and the Netherlands upon himself by placing his brothers on their thrones, and of other sections of Italy by granting their government to nineteen dukes of his own creation. Then followed the battles of Jena, Eylau, and Friedland which humbled Prussia, and the festivals which welcomed the conqueror to Paris surpassed in brilliancy any that had gone before. Two of the triumphal arches which beautify Paris were raised to commemorate these victories. The Triumphal Arch of the Carrousel, a reduced copy of the arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, was built as an entrance to the Tuileries from the small square of the Carrousel. It must be remembered that in the early nineteenth century the whole of the north wing of the Louvre was non-existent, its site being occupied by a tangle of small streets and mean houses, whose destruction was merely entered upon when Napoleon I began to build the section of the palace running east from the rue de Rivoli end of the Tuileries toward the ancient quadrangle of the Louvre. Upon the top of the arch was placed the bronze Quadriga from Saint Mark’s in Venice which Bonaparte sent home after his first Italian campaign. After Napoleon’s fall the horses were sent back to Italy and replaced on the arch by a modern quadriga.
The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, a mammoth construction begun by Napoleon on the crest of a slope approached by twelve broad avenues, is adorned with historical groups and bas-reliefs which repay a close examination, but the impressiveness of the monument rests in its dominating position which makes it one of the focal points in a panoramic view of the city. It is a majestic finish to the vista of the Champs Élysées seen from the Place de la Concorde. Although many different forms of decoration have been suggested for the top of the arch, and some have even been tried by models, none has been found satisfactory, and the great mass remains incomplete.
Though France had returned from its Revolutionary wanderings and once again had an established religion, and though the Emperor went to mass as regularly as his army duties permitted, there was practically no building of new churches by Napoleon. It was a sufficient task to repair the mutilations of the Revolution. The church of Sainte Geneviève—the Pantheon—was consecrated in the early years of the Consulate. In 1806 the construction of the Madeleine, which had been begun some sixty years before, was renewed, not, however, as a church, but as a Temple of Glory. Before it was finished the Restoration had come and had turned it into a church again.
TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF THE CARROUSEL.
