Finding Napoleon in

Finding Napoleon in Paris State of a teenaged Napoleon (Valence) As a teenager, Napoleon was sent to Paris to train at the École Militaire, which still stands at the opposite end of the Champs de Mars from the Eiffel Tower. He left hurriedly just a year later, having graduated 48th in a class of 56 and returned to Corsica to help his family in the aftermath of his father’s death. At that point no-one – not even he, though he had a high opinion of himself – had any idea of the enormous influence he would go on to have on the city of Paris. Today there are many places you can visit to piece his story together says Marion Jones… Following his military successes in the 1790s, Napoleon was voted Consul for Life in 1802, and his self-belief reached epic proportions. His coronation as emperor in December 1804 in Notre Dame Cathedral can be seen in a painting by Jacques- Louis David, commissioned by the emperor himself, in the Louvre. Napoleon invited the pope to crown him but decided to show his superior authority by turning his back on the pontiff and placing the crown on his own head and then placing a crown on the head of his kneeling wife, his beloved Josephine. The enormous statue of Napoleon in the middle of Place Vendôme, near the Ritz Hotel was erected at Napoleon’s behest to celebrate his 1805 victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. There is nothing remotely modest about it. Napoleon stands dressed as a Roman Emperor atop a 40m high column. It is decorated with bronze reliefs portraying scenes from the battle, made from hundreds of canons captured from the defeated Russian and Austrian armies. Quite a message. The whole thing was briefly torn down in the 1870s, criticised during the Paris Commune as a ‘symbol of despotism’, but reinstated just a few years later. Two more monuments Napoleon commissioned in his own honour are the Arcs de Triomphe. The smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built in pink marble in 1806 stands at the Louvre end of the Jardin des Tuileries. The much larger and better-known 86 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 87