A TRIP TO PARIS: Page Two
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
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Paris, Thursday, April 19, 2001.
Morning. The mission for the day is Napoleon's Tomb.
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The Paris Metro works splendidly, and usually the street musicians are amusing. Alas this violinist knew only about 2/3 of each of the gypsy violin pieces he played, and no two strings of his violin were tuned alike. Roberta, who once played violin and still owns one, endured the concert as best she could although if I had known enough French I would have offered the man money to be silent for two stops... The Metro stations are nice. Outside the station entrances are marked. Alas, the sign pointing to Les Invalides, which is where we need to go, points instead to the Seine and it took us a bit of time to figure out where to go. Not that you can miss Napoleon's Tomb once you can see it, but it's not visible from every place.
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The Eiffel Tower is visible from all over, and makes for a good way to orient the map. Looking in the direction we were supposed to go didn't show anything but a park with people playing bocca ball, but we followed the map, and pretty soon it was obvious...
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The Invalides includes a working military academy, an old soldiers' hospital, churches, a museum, and administrative offices. It was originally built by Louis XIV the Sun King in the time of Marlborough and Queen Anne. The big golden dome in the background was built to be a Royal chapel and perhaps tomb for royals, but it wasn't used that way until Louis Phillipe's time. There are two churches, one a working Catholic church still in ordinary use, the other the big Dome church used only for state occasions. Joseph, Jerome, and Napoleon Bonaparte are buried here along with Vauban and others of that era. The latest occupant seems to be Marshal Foch from WWI. I half expected to find De Gaulle here but apparently not. A search of guide books doesn't disclose where they buried him, but his state funeral was in the Cathedral de Notre Dame.
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If you like cannon this is the place to be. Many of the cannon have handles shaped like fish. If you have read Tim Powers' novel DECLARE you will know why I was tempted to say "O fish, are you constant to the ancient covenant?" You'll also know why I didn't. Anyway there are cannon everywhere. This leads to the military museum, which begins with medieval and then goes to ancient... That last is a Roman centurion's burial monument.
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The earliest firearms. There's also armor in all sizes. I doubt the swords go with the child's armor there. In Gratz, Austria, there is a museum which is the old armory: literally one day the militia marched in and stacked arms, and the armory was maintained ever since. The next time the militia was needed the old weapons were obsolete. But there it's not all under glass, and if you put on oil-soaked gloves you can even handle the old flintlocks and swords, or at least they let me do it. In the Invalides military museum it's all behind glass.
You go outside and around to the Dome which is Napoleon's Tomb. There are plenty of guide book photographs.
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There's impressive statuary everywhere. Napoleon is honored not only as a military figure but as a lawgiver. His sarcophagus is in seven nested layers, and below in an open-topped crypt. You approach that through a narrow passage, and there you are. None of this was his design, although I doubt he'd be offended by any of it. Off the crypt are various depictions of his exploits, paintings of the coronation, battle scene, and so forth.
This statue is made from the famous portrait of Napoleon's coronation in the Temple of Reason, formerly and afterwards known as the Cathedral de Notre Dame. The Paris revolutionaries had named it the Temple of Reason and enthroned a Paris prostitute as the Goddess of Reason. This after they freed the seven prisoners from the Bastille: four forgers, three madmen, and a young aristocrat who had challenged the best swordsman in Paris to a duel, and whose father had contrived to have him locked up in the Bastille to avoid the duel. The garrison of the Bastille were invalides: retired old soldiers mostly missing limbs, and posted there in honor of their previous service. They were all slaughtered, of course. The four forgers vanished. The three madmen were locked in common madhouses. The young aristocrat joined the Revolution and was eventually beheaded in one of the Revolution's twists and turns before Napoleon rose to power. The culmination of The Revolution is in this statue...
It's hard not to be impressed. When I was young I read Henrik Van Loon's Story of Mankind. Van Loon said of Napoleon that he didn't doubt that if the Emperor were alive and to ride through the streets of The Hague, he, Van Loon, would turn out to follow him as millions did. It wasn't a rational response. It just was. He also said that if you want to understand Napoleon, get a good artist to sing The Two Grenadiers. I have been fascinated by the phenomenon of Napoleon's leadership and the compulsion to follow him ever since.
This is the last year of the Franc, which is giving way to the Euro. Everywhere, European sovereignty is giving way to the European Union. Ancient nations disappear as we watch. Napoleon would have approved. It will even include Britain, and it has not been carried on the bayonets of French grenadiers...
End of Page Two, Part One of a Paris Trip Report
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