How history chooses to remember its victors is on par with how the collective conscience of France chose to remember Napoleon Bonaparte. I grapple with this Caesar-esque figure because I see in him the warped image of divine life and wretched death. He was a warlord in his conquests and a champion of civil freedom and education in his legislation. That’s the difficulty of perspective though, some bow in horror and others in honor.
Of all the corridors to marvel at in Versailles, I marveled at the Gallery of Battles. This is a portion of Versailles that Louis Philipe created as the last king of France. He reopened Versailles to the public as a way for the people (*cough* *cough*, the bourgeois) to reclaim Versailles as their collective history. In doing so, Louis Philipe installed the Gallery of Battles to shape the spectacular narrative of militant France. On my left, Clovis leads the Franks in the Battle of Tolbiac and Joan of Arc liberates Orléans. On my right are Napoleon's victorious campaigns at the battles of Wagram, Friedland, and Jena. He always holds a steady gaze. The awe for Bonaparte is palpable in this hall.
“All history is nothing but endless repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of Marengo is a copy of the battle of Pydna. Clovis’s Tolbiac and Napoleon’s Austerlitz are as like to each other as two drops of blood.”
It’s a funny thing, stumbling into Napoleon's image around Versailles. Louis XIV created Versailles as the royal court of France whereby he should rule the country without stepping foot into the Parisian streets. It was the nobility’s gated community. The gilding and grandeur of the palace and grounds is undeniable. The hall of mirrors, Neptune’s fountain, Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon–it’s all marvelous. It was also what the peasantry and working class undeniably lacked.
Versailles stood for everything that the Revolution hated and sought to bring down. To a critical degree, Versailles represented a system that Napoleon fought to dismantle as well. Louis Philippe tackled a tricky transformation of Versailles. Tricky, because the Emperor is celebrated in the halls where kings once idled. Tricky, because an erasure of the Hundred Days was Charles X’s due process during the Restoration.
“Whether one said ‘regicides’ or ‘voters’, ‘enemies’ or ‘allies’, ‘Napoleon’ or ‘Buonaparte’ - this could divide two men more than any abyss.”
Louis Phillipe elegantly manipulated the narrative of Napoleon Bonaparte in French history. He asked revolutionaries to forget about the coup d’etat of 1799. He asked royalists to forget about the Emperor usurper. He asked republicans to forget about tyrannical control. Above all else, Louis Philipe asked the people to remember Napoleon for the glory of France. On the chateau of Versailles is the text: “A toutes les gloires de la France.” To all the glories of France! A celebration! A hailing! Against the world, France has been victorious in ways that Louis Philipe believed history should preserve.
Whether this was entirely the social doing of Louis Philipe or many I do not know. The city inspires a deep reverence for Napoleon though: on the stone reliefs of the Arc de Triomphe and his monumental tomb in Les Invalides. These are the ways France remembers Napoleon.
