Column of the Grande Armée: Difference between revisions

The column was intended to commemorate a successful [[Napoleon's invasion of England|invasion of England]] (an invasion that never occurred), but it now commemorates the first distribution of the [[First French Empire|Imperial]] [[Légion d'honneur#The Empire|Légion d'honneur]] at the "camp de Boulogne", by [[Napoleon I of France|Napoleon]] to the soldiers of the [[Army of England]]. In September [[Marshal Soult]] informed the emperor of the army's wish to erect such a column and for its site the town of Boulogne bought the estate of the old royalist, the widow Delahodde-Fourcroy, who reluctantly ceded her field for a monument to the man she called "the usurper". The commission created for its construction took on the architect [[Étienne Éloi Labarre|Étienne-Éloi Labarre]], the bronze-caster [[Houdon]] and [[Jean Guillaume Moitte]] for the bas-reliefs, and the army, flotilla, soldiers, sailors and sous-officiers all gave a half-day's pay to the project (with the officers giving a full day's pay) once a month.

:"rushed to give the name of Napoleon to his careerquarry and to the marble which it had led him to"<ref>[{{Cite web|url=http://www.geologie-info.com/articles.php?Article=Marbres |title=Articles sur la géologie, les minéraux, les fossiles, les volcans<!,...|website=www.geologie-- Bot generated title -->]info.com}}</ref>

Work restarted in 1819 when the minister of the interior allocated it 30,000 francs, with additional credits granted in 1820. The platform on the top was put in place in 1821 and a royal globe crowned with [[fleur de lys|fleurs de lys]] and a royal crown placed on top of that in 1823. After the regime change of the [[July Revolution]], in 1831 the column was voted 10,000 francs for maintenance, the crown was removed and the fleurs de lys replaced by stars.

In 1831 the column was first named the Column of the Grande Armée and (also that year) it was climbed by [[Hortense de Beauharnais|queen Hortense]] and her son Louis-Napoléon (later [[Napoleon III of France|Napoleon III]]). In 1838 it was decided to complete the works - [[François Joseph Bosio]] was charged with casting a new statue of the emperor and Lemaire and [[Théophile Bra]] new bas-reliefs - and in June that year marshal Soult was officially received at the column by the Boulogne [[National Guard (France)|National Guard]], having not seen the column since 1805. In a failed coup of 1840 Louis-Napoleon landed a small body of his supporters at Boulogne, and ended up taking refuge in the park around the column and raising the imperial flag atop it, before fleeing to the beach, where he was arrested.

In the meantime Bosio's statue of Napoleon in his coronation costume<ref>A costume also seen in Ingres's ''[[Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne]]''</ref> (costing 60,000 francs and weighing 7,500 kilos) was completed in time for the [[Napoleon I of France#Death|return of Napoleon's ashes]] to Paris on 15 December 1840 and exhibited on the banks of the Seine, leaving Paris for Wimille on 21 July 1841. It arrived at the Column amidst great celebration on 26 July - old soldiers were seen to weep and touch the statue's hands - and placed on its top by the future Napoleon III on 15 August in the presence of 50,000 people, with a special medallion being cast for the occasion (though the bas-reliefs were not added until 1843).<ref>[{{Cite web|url=http://www.archive.org/streamdetails/napoleoniiiagrea002678mbp/napoleoniiiagrea002678mbp_djvu.txt |title=Napoleon III - A Great Life inIn Brief]|date=August 10, 1955|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' on 28 August 1841 noted that the new statue had "been turned, by design or accident, with its back to England" and commented:<ref>[{{Cite web|url=http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/4/9/2/14925/14925.htm |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120217093935/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/4/9/2/14925/14925.htm|url-status=dead|title=Punch, 28 August 1841]|archivedate=February 17, 2012}}</ref>

Napoleon III and his empress arrived at Boulogne on 27 September 1853 and he immediately gave orders to build an avenue leading up to the column (though this was demolished in the 1970s). In anticipation of the [[Crimean War]] he gathered 10,000 troops on the Boulogne coast and held a major troop review in the famous Terlincthun valley and plain on 30 September 1854 before the newly- restored stela or "pierre napoléone" of the monument to the Légion d'honneur (inaugurated by Boulogne's société d'agriculture et des arts on 3 December 1809, vandalised by ultra-royalists in 1815 and reinaugurated on 24 October 1830).

The column was declared a ''[[monument historique]]'' on 31 March 1905 and survived the First World War intact. The column and the 1841 statue were seriously damaged by bombing in 1944, with the park around the column being turned into a German naval cemetery (with burials including that of [[Klaus Dönitz]], son of admiral [[Karl Dönitz]], in 1944). The original statue was replaced by a 4.75m high statue of Napoleon in [[chasseur]] uniform by [[Pierre Stenne]]).<ref>[http{{Cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15246/15246-h/15246-h.htm|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Tragedy ofOf St. Helena], by Sir Walter Runciman, Bart.|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref> The new statue and the completed restoration works were inaugurated on 24 June 1962, in the presence of [[Charles de Gaulle]], a troop detachment and a large crowd. The column's top was struck by lightning on 19 November 1999 (causing very severe cracks and the fall of some blocks of marble, though the statue survived) and again 2002. (causingThe some of the stone at the top to explode), and so a restoration project is stillnow in progress,complete making it presentlypossible once impossibleagain to climb the Column.

==SourceSources==

*''This page is a translation of [[:fr:Colonne de la grande Armée|Colonne de la grande Armée]] on [[:fr:Accueil|French Wikipedia]]''

*[http://lesapn.forumactif.fr/les-monuments-civils-en-province-f35/62-pas-de-calais-t320.htm 62-Pas-de-Calais]

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