Europe 1 Studio SEASON 2020 - 202 107:30, August 31, 2021
Napoleon is very often represented on horseback wearing a felt hat and wearing a gray frock coat. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", in partnership with the Château de Fontainebleau where the exhibition "A palace for the Emperor, Napoleon I at Fontainebleau" will be held from September 15, Jean des Cars tells how this silhouette took part in the Napoleonic myth.
Although Napoleon liked to be represented as a Roman emperor crowned with laurel, it is nevertheless in his battle dress that he continues to mark the collective imagination. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars recounts the care that the emperor gave to his pageantry and explains how some of them contributed to his legend.
In popular culture, the silhouette of Napoleon on horseback with a lorgnette or on foot wearing a black felt cocked hat and his long gray frock coat, is definitely that of an Emperor on a battlefield. This is what evokes a window of the Napoleon I Museum in Fontainebleau. It presents the famous frock coat and the famous bicorn hat. It is this silhouette that is represented in multiple engravings, paintings, caricatures and since the twentieth century in cinema. All the actors who played the Emperor put on these clothes, slipped their hands into his waistcoat: Albert Dieudonné in Abel Gance's "Napoleon" in 1927, Raymond Pellegrin in Sacha Guitry's "Napoleon" in 1955, Marlon Brando in "Désirée" in 1954, Pierre Mondy in "Austerlitz" by Abel Gance in 1959,Vladislav Strzhelthik in Sergei Bondartchouk's "War of Peace" in 1966, to Rod Steiger in the same Bondartchouk's "Waterloo" in 1971. Some are probably forgotten, but these have remained memorable.
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We don't know how Napoleon would have liked to be remembered.
He forged his legend in Saint Helena by dictating his memories to Las Cases.
He never said that he preferred to be remembered in his uniform of the young General Bonaparte triumphant in the Italian campaign or of the First Consul so elegant in his crimson velvet frock coat, or even of the Emperor. triumphant and crowned with golden laurels on the day of the coronation or finally of the Napoleon of the Hundred Days, trying to change history in Waterloo, a battle he followed almost constantly on foot.
Napoleon and the Roman heritage
Perhaps it is this Emperor trying to reclaim his throne in his modest clothes that he would have preferred. However, throughout his reign as Emperor, Napoleon took care to promote and disseminate his official figure through sculpture as a Roman Emperor. The Colonne Vendôme is a perfect example. In order to celebrate his Italian victories and to honor his soldiers, Bonaparte wishes to erect a monument in Paris. He had first thought of bringing back to the capital the Trajan column erected in the year 112 by the Emperor Trajan in the Roman Forum. The white marble drums were carved with bas-reliefs evoking the military campaigns of the Roman Emperor.
Bonaparte appoints Daunou president of the Commission responsible for collecting works of art and books from museums, libraries and Roman palaces. He asks her to add Trajan's Column to the list, which already includes 500 boxes of loot. Daunou is opposed to it because the government of the French Republic had made a promise not to touch any public monument in Rome. So, no Trajan Column, but Bonaparte remains determined to raise a column to the glory of his armies. The Prefect of the Seine, Frochot, laid the first stone at Place Vendôme in July 1800. But the First Consul was not yet certain of the location of his column. A life-size model was then erected on the former Place Louis XV, that is to say our current Place de la Concorde. But this place is inappropriate,much too close to the place where Louis XVI had been guillotined… The First Consul works for the reconciliation of all the French and negotiates the Concordat with the Pope. We are therefore considering other places: instead of the statue of Henri IV on the Pont-Neuf, the place of the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité, the Champ-de-Mars, the Invalides, the gardens of the Tuileries. No place seems suitable. So we come back to Place Vendôme. On October 1, 1803, Bonaparte decides:No place seems suitable. So we come back to Place Vendôme. On October 1, 1803, Bonaparte decides:No place seems suitable. So we come back to Place Vendôme. On October 1, 1803, Bonaparte decides:
“It will be erected in Paris, in the center of the Place Vendôme, a column like the one erected in Rome in honor of Trajan. This column will be 2.73 m in diameter and 20.78 m high. shaft will be decorated in its spiral outline with 108 allegorical figures in bronze each having 0.97 meters in proportion and representing the departments of the Republic. The column will be surmounted by a pedestal finished in a semicircle, adorned with olive leaves and supporting the pedestrian statue of Charlemagne. "
The statue of the Vendôme column
Obviously, the proclamation of the Empire in 1804 will change everything. It is the new Emperor of the French who will replace Charlemagne at the top of the column. Work began at the end of 1805, shortly after Austerlitz. The bronze will be supplied by the arsenals of Vienna or taken from guns in poor condition. In total, there will be the bronze of one thousand two hundred guns. The construction of the column is placed under the responsibility of Vivant Denon and the architects Gondouin and Lepère. The work, which began in July 1806, was completed in August 1810. The initial height of the column was forty-four meters, more than double that which had been originally planned. The foundations partly repeat those of the old statue of Louis XIV, erected here by Giraudon in 1699.The pedestal is decorated with large bronze bas-reliefs, reproducing trophies taken from the enemy: cannons, weapons, helmets, uniforms and Austrian flags. At the corners, eagles frame the bas-reliefs. They hold garlands of laurels in their greenhouses. Inside the column, a spiral staircase of one hundred and seventy-six steps leads to the platform. A bronze spiral surrounds the monument.
The statue is the work of sculptor Antoine Denis Chaudet. Three and a half meters high, with a dome-shaped base decorated with oak leaves and laurels, it represents Napoleon as Roman Emperor crowned with laurels, leaning with his right hand on a sword and holding his left hand a globe surmounted by a winged victory. Napoleon wanted to be represented as a Roman Emperor.
The successive episodes of the statue which must overcome the Vendôme column are a summary of the history of France in the 19th century. In 1814, the statue of the Emperor descended from the column and sent to be melted down. The small winged victory, stolen during the kidnapping, escapes the melting. Louis XVIII replaces the Emperor with a huge flag with a giant fleur-de-lis. During the Hundred Days, a tricolor will replace the white flag. After the Trois Glorieuses, Louis-Philippe, who became King of the French, was very concerned about national reconciliation. He did not like the fleur-de-lis in Place Vendôme and seven years before the return of the Emperor's ashes, he decided, in 1833, to place a statue of Napoleon in a frock coat and cocked hat at the top of the column.He had instinctively felt that it was the image of the Emperor that the French had appropriated. It is the sculptor Charles-Marie Seurre who realizes the bronze statue of three meters fifty. The Emperor, wearing his legendary hat, wears his frock coat, over his Chasers de la Garde uniform, his right hand passed through his waistcoat, in a very familiar pose.
Thirty years later, in 1863, Napoleon III wanted to place a new statue of his uncle as a Roman emperor on the column. The statue is due to the sculptor Augustin Alexandre Dumont. The small winged victory, which had escaped the melting of the first statue, finds its place. The statue desired by Louis-Philippe was taken down and placed at the Courbevoie roundabout. Thrown into the Seine in 1870, it was fished out in 1871, relegated to a depot before being installed in 1911 in the courtyard of the Invalides ...
We know that during the Commune, at the beginning of 1871, the Vendôme column was shot down.
It was raised in 1874. The Third Republic replaced Napoleon as Roman Emperor at the top, as at the beginning.
Parisians therefore have the choice of seeing Napoleon, either as a Roman emperor in Place Vendôme, or in a cocked hat and frock coat in the courtyard of the Invalides.
Napoleon's cocked hat: a legendary pageantry
How and why did Napoleon choose to wear this black cocked hat? During the Italian campaign, General Bonaparte wears a cocked hat adorned with a golden braid, placed a little askew but the point forward. This is how the painter David represents him at the Col du Grand Saint-Bernard in 1801. Traditionally, in the French army, the bicorne is worn in a column, that is to say pointing forward. From the first years of the Consulate, Bonaparte chose to frequently cover himself with this very simple felt model, which differs from the hats edged with braid and completed by feathers worn by high-ranking soldiers. The First Consul differs from his men by wearing this hat "in battle", that is to say the wings parallel to the shoulders, unlike the troops who wear it "in column",perpendicular to the shoulders. This hat is made of black felt on which stands out, on the right, a tricolor cockade inserted in a silk braid, closed at its base by a button. This model, called the “French beaver hat” was then sold for sixty francs by the house of Poupard and Delaunay in their shop called “Au temple du gout”, located in the galleries of the royal palace.
Become Emperor, Napoleon kept the habit of wearing this hat which contributes to his legend.
We are talking about one hundred and seventy hats delivered to the imperial wardrobe by Poupard.
About twenty have been authenticated today, including, of course, that of the Fontainebleau museum.
The Emperor's gray military frock coat
To complete the image of the Emperor's silhouette, we must now talk about his frock coat. According to his contemporaries, Napoleon preferred military uniforms to court clothes or bourgeois clothes. For reasons of economy (he knew perfectly well the price of his stockings and his shoes), and to acquire simple and comfortable clothes, Napoleon had enacted regulations applied to his wardrobe. The annual sum fixed for His Majesty's toilet was 20,000 Francs. Napoleon went into great anger the year of the coronation because the sum was greatly exceeded. Constant, his valet, says:
"When I was a second lieutenant, I didn't spend that." This word kept coming back in the Emperor's warnings to people of his familiarity and "when I had the honor of being a second lieutenant" was often in his mouth and always to make exhortations or comparisons of savings. . "
Napoleon often wore the uniform of the mounted chasseurs of the guard in green cloth or that of the foot grenadiers, in blue cloth. This is the reason which led the Emperor to adopt the gray frock coat, a neutral color. This coat, used by officers of the troops on foot under the Ancien Régime, is worn by infantry officers under the Consulate and then under the Empire. Its shape corresponds to that of the English frock coat, the "riding coat" but with larger dimensions to be worn over military clothing. In light gray woolen cloth, with a wide collar, the sides cross and are closed with two rows of buttons covered with gray silk trimmings. The coat is split at the back, the sleeves have cuff buttons, the inside is lined with gray silk at the bust,with a wool cloth wallet pocket.
The budget of the imperial wardrobe of August 19, 1811 fixes its composition and its renewal. He foresees that two frock coats, one gray and the other green or blue, will be provided on October 1 of each year for three-year use, although the Emperor appreciates the worn clothes in which he feels at home. easy. The frock coat is made from a fine woolen cloth woven in Normandy, a region renowned for its fine woolen cloths. Its supplier is the Lejeune tailor. This one will deliver his last gray frock coat in June 1815. Taken to Saint Helena by the deposed sovereign, it appears in the inventory of the personal effects of the Emperor drawn up after his death in 1821 by Marchand, the valet de chambre who replaced Constant in 1814.
In Saint Helena, Napoleon is generally dressed in white, his frock coat is white or ivory in light fabric, adapted to the hot and humid climate of the island.
He shelters himself from the sun by wearing a light straw hat.
Yet it is in this outfit so different from the one he usually wore that he will forge his legend, through the "Memorial of Saint Helena", that of the Emperor in the black felt cocked hat and the gray frock coat.
A mythical silhouette.
Bibliographic resources:
Jean Tulard, from the Institute (Direction),
Dictionary Napoleon,
Fayard
, 1987
Jean Tulard, from the Institute (Direction),
La berline de Napoléon
,
Albin Michel
, 2012
"At the heart of History" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Director: Laurent Sirguy
Distribution and editing: Clémence Olivier and Salomé Journo
Graphics: Karelle Villais
This episode was produced in partnership with the Château de Fontainebleau. You will be able to discover the exhibition "A palace for the Emperor, Napoleon I at Fontainebleau" from September 15th.