Column of the Grande Armée
Encyclopedia
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
- Colonne de la grande Armée or Colonne Napoléone) is a 53 metre high Doric order
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
triumphal column (modelled on Trajan's Column
Trajan's Column
Trajan's Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, which commemorates Roman emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. It was probably constructed under the supervision of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus at the order of the Roman Senate. It is located in Trajan's Forum, built near...
and other triumphal columns in Rome) on the Rue Napoleon in Wimille
Wimille
Wimille is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:Wimille is a farming and light industrial town situated some north of Boulogne, at the junction of the D233 and the D237 roads, on the banks of the river Wimereux. The river Slack forms the...
, near Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer
-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....
, France.
To 1815
The column was intended to commemorate a successful invasion of EnglandNapoleon's invasion of England
Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom at the start of the War of the Third Coalition, although never carried out, was a major influence on British naval strategy and the fortification of the coast of south-east England. French attempts to invade Ireland in order to destabilise the...
(an invasion that never occurred), but it now commemorates the first distribution of the Imperial
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
Légion d'honneur at the "camp de Boulogne", by Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
to the soldiers of the Army of England. In September 1804 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 Éloi Labarre
Éloi Labarre
Étienne Éloi Labarre was a French architect.He produced the plans for the Colonne de la grande Armée at Wimille, erected in 1804 on the order of Napoléon I...
, the bronze-caster Houdon and Jean Guillaume Moitte
Jean Guillaume Moitte
- Life :Moitte was the sculptor of Pigalle then Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. He won the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1768 with David carrying the head of Goliath in triumph...
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.
The first stone was put in place by Soult on 18 Brumaire
18 Brumaire
The coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
, year 13 (9 October 1804), amidst great festivities and awards of decorations. The stone was sourced from local Marquis marble. The descriptions by C.P. Brard (1808) of the marbles of the Département of the Pas-de-Calais includes the following quotation:
- "What gave [me] the chance to discover this marble was this column that the troops of the camp de Saint-Omer voted to be erected to the glory of the Emperor at Boulogne, on the sea edge, after a great victory; then they searched to find the right materials and after several searches, Monsieur Piron discovered this marble"
In the 1808 edition he adds that Monsieur Piron then
- "rushed to give the name of Napoleon to his career and to the marble which it had led him to"
After the invasion force became the Grande Armée on 16 August 1804 and left Boulogne, work on the column became slow and erratic. On 3 December 1811, with the statue and bas-reliefs still waiting in Paris and the column having reached only 20 of its planned 50 metres, the building site had to close since the project had run out of funds and was 140,000 francs in debt (1 million francs had already been used up, and another million would be spent before completion). Work stopped completely in 1814 on Napoleon's fall and the statues and bas-reliefs were broken up and melted down with the bronze of the Napoleon statue from the Place Vendôme column
Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...
for the Pont Neuf
Pont Neuf
The Pont Neuf is, despite its name, the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. Its name, which was given to distinguish it from older bridges that were lined on both sides with houses, has remained....
statue of Henry IV of France
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
.
1819-1853
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 fleurs de lysFleur de Lys
Fleur de Lys is a superheroine from Quebec and an ally of Northguard, created in 1984 by Mark Shainblum and Gabriel Morrissette. The name of the character is inspired by the heraldic symbol of the fleur de lys. It is the official emblem of Quebec and a prominent part of the Flag of Quebec...
and a royal crown placed on top of that in 1823. After the regime change of the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
, 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 queen Hortense
Hortense de Beauharnais
Hortense Eugénie Cécile Bonaparte , Queen Consort of Holland, was the stepdaughter of Emperor Napoleon I, being the daughter of his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. She later became the wife of the former's brother, Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and the mother of Napoleon III, Emperor of...
and her son Louis-Napoléon (later Napoleon III
Napoleon III of France
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
). In 1838 it was decided to complete the works - François Joseph Bosio
François Joseph Bosio
Baron François Joseph Bosio was a French sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.-Biography:...
was charged with casting a new statue of the emperor and Lemaire and Théophile Bra
Théophile Bra
Théophile François Marcel Bra was a French Romantic sculptor and exact contemporary of Eugène Delacroix. He was deeply involved in the Romantic era through his uncompromising personality and complex spirituality...
new bas-reliefs - and in June that year marshal Soult was officially received at the column by the Boulogne National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
, 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 (costing 60,000 francs and weighing 7,500 kilos) was completed in time for the 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). Punch
Punch (magazine)
Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...
on 28 August 1841 noted that the new statue had "been turned, by design or accident, with its back to England" and commented:
- Upon its lofty column's stand,
- Napoleon takes his place;
- His back still turned upon that land
- That never saw his face.
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
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).
1901-present
The column was declared a monument historiqueMonument historique
A monument historique is a National Heritage Site of France. It also refers to a state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their...
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
Klaus Dönitz
Klaus Dönitz was a German naval officer. He was the eldest of two sons of Admiral Karl Dönitz. When his younger brother Peter was killed in the sinking of U-954 on 19 May 1943, Klaus was allowed to withdraw from active service to begin training as a naval doctor...
, son of admiral Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz was a German naval commander during World War II. He started his career in the German Navy during World War I. In 1918, while he was in command of , the submarine was sunk by British forces and Dönitz was taken prisoner...
, in 1944). The original statue was replaced by a 4.75m high statue of Napoleon in chasseur
Chasseur
Chasseur [sha-sur; Fr. sha-sœr] is the designation given to certain regiments of French light infantry or light cavalry troops, trained for rapid action.-History:...
uniform by Pierre Stenne
Pierre Stenne
Pierre Stenne is a French sculptor. Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, his most notable works are the 1962 statue of Napoleon atop the Column of the Grande Armée in Boulogne, the crucified Christ in the Le Gros Moulin church south of Audinghen and the original design for reliefs of the Old Contemptibles...
). The new statue and the completed restoration works were inaugurated on 24 June 1962, in the presence of Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
, 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 2002 (causing some of the stone at the top to explode), and so a restoration project is still in progress, making it presently impossible to climb the Column.
Description
There is a pavilion to either side of the statue's base, and in the right-hand one is a free museum, housing the 1841 statue, now restored. The bas-relief on one side of the base, by Bra, shows the presentation of the plans for the column to Napoleon by Soult, with general BertrandHenri Gratien, Comte Bertrand
Henri-Gatien, Comte Bertrand , French general, was born at Châteauroux, Indre as a member of a well-to-do bourgeois family....
beside Soult and admiral Bruix
Étienne Eustache Bruix
Étienne Eustache Bruix was a French sailor.-Life:From a distinguished family originating from Béarn, he embarked as a volunteer on a slaving vessel commanded by captain Jean-François Landolphe...
behind Soult. The bas relief on the other side, by Lemaire, shows the first award of the Légion d'honneur on 16 August 1804, and also shows Soult, Lacépède, Louis Belmas
Louis Belmas
Louis Belmas was a French churchman and bishop.-Early life:Louis was born to a publicly-esteemed businessman in Languedoc and his wife, both of whom died within six weeks of each other when Louis was aged only 4½. They left behind Louis, seven other children and a very limited fortune...
(the archbishop of Cambrai) and Hugues-Robert-J.-Ch. De La Tour d'Auvergne Lauragais (the bishop of Arras) beside Napoleon. The base houses an archive room containing copies of the busts of Napoleon. Guarding the entrance to the base are two bronze lions sculpted by Jean-Guillaume Moitte, and the base is surrounded by railings decorated with the golden French Imperial eagle.
Source
- This page is a translation of Colonne de la grande Armée on French Wikipedia
External links
- http://www.schmitz.fr/wimille_ville_du_camp_de_boulogne_et_colonne_grande_armee.html
- http://wimille.monuments-nationaux.fr/fr/
- http://www.symbolesdefrance.fr/sejour-culturel-colonne-de-la-grande-armee.php
- http://lesapn.forumactif.fr/les-monuments-civils-en-province-f35/62-pas-de-calais-t320.htm