The Coronation of Napoleon I

THE CORONATION OF NAPOLEON I

  By Steve Weinberg

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  Published by:

  Copyright © 2015 by Steve Weinberg

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  Notre-Dame is covered in snow, obscured by a curtain of heavy fog and fitful white mist. It is the morning of December 2, 1804. Coronation Day.

  Since 1250, Notre-Dame had been the tallest building in Paris. It is true that, in 1679, Louis XIV had built L’Hôtel national des Invalides, which he and his administration heralded as Paris’ new tallest building. But in the minds of Parisians, Notre-Dame was and always would be the tallest. For it was Notre-Dame which sat on Île de la Cité, and which had towered over the city since the Middle Ages. For all of those centuries, it had watched over the bridges, the river, the narrow side streets, the black sticky mud which was always everywhere, the barges and laundry boats, the churches and the Palais du Louvre, and the thousands of lampposts with their strong, smoky oil.

  But standing atop Montmartre in search of the Gothic cathedral on this snowy morning, one might miss it. The sky was grey, the white snow was swirling everywhere, and the cathedral was lost in the clouds, its silver-white spires and stony gargoyles buried by the storm. Immersed in a near-blizzard like this, Paris became indistinguishable from a hundred other cities. It could have been anywhere. From atop Montmartre, one could have been looking down on Bruges, Boston, Copenhagen, or Milan, were they subject to a similar or worse winter blast. Only the topography of Paris remained intact from this view. Of course, one clearly saw the river looping and curving through the region. But the arc of the river Seine alone was not enough to mark the city. There were the two great islands of Paris as well, the Île de la Cîté and the Île Saint-Louis. But, at least from this height and in this weather, a man really only noticed the contours of these islands. In this snowstorm, these shapes caused a man to think more of an archipelago than of the eternal abodes of the bronze equestrian statue of Henry IV and L’église Saint-Louis-en-l’Île. So the eye, with nothing manmade to focus on, was drawn again and again to the winding, twisting, serpentine river Seine, which continued to bend and curl long past the borders of the city—wherever those borders may be. The river traveled on and on, into distant suburbs of unfamiliar towns called Argenteuil, Savignies, and Chamarande. If one looked far enough though, even the river became lost, and one was left with the common sight of the horizon, that common sight where, quite simply, the land meets the sky, and not an inch further can be seen. Wherever this line was, it certainly was not Paris. It was much too far away for that. This city was not Paris, this kingdom was not France. This was snow-covered roofs and chimneys, long rows of black leafless trees, vast white forests of evergreens and firs, and dark faraway mountains, which seemed to be the only reminder that this panorama of villages, farms, and woodlands did not continue on endlessly. This was not Paris, in other words. This was snow.

  Indeed, in this blizzard, from this height, Paris would have been all but unrecognizable to those many people who considered themselves “Parisians.” Those petit bourgeois shopkeepers living in le Marais, they considered themselves bona fide Parisians simply because they donned a tricolor flag outside their store, or even better, had witnessed the beheading of a Jacobin. Would they even know what they were looking at from up here? This winter storm turned back the clock on the city, to a time before there was a Hôtel de Ville, and “revolutionary maypoles” and “liberty trees” on every corner.

  Yes, who could identify Paris through this blanket of fog? Not the sans-cullottes, but perhaps, instead, the generations of tribesmen and herdsmen who had surveyed this same landscape from atop Montmartre. Paris did not begin with King Clovis I or with the founding of the Sorbonne. For thousands of years, tribes of men approached these plains from the hills; they came and descended on the land. Century after century, these men came, setting up small communities, growing crops, hunting, fishing, and canoeing down the Seine. At some point, they would of course leave, and eventually another tribe would take the land, sometimes a year later, sometimes a hundred years later. From Montmartre, they would have gazed down upon the geological basin we now call Paris. They would have studied the islands, the hills, and the river, from on high. They would have known Paris from the width of the Seine, from the shapes of the forests, and by the slopes of the surrounding valleys. They would not have needed a church tower or a decorated bridge to know what they were looking at.

  But what was Paris to these men? Now, the name Paris has actually been around longer than most of our Parisians believe. It dates to ancient times, to the time of the Celtic tribe the Parisii, who established a bustling trade settlement out of the Île de la Cité in 250 BC. But to think of the Parisii as “ancient” would be to misunderstand history. Historians must learn that what is not prehistoric is modern. All things considered, the Parisii were as young as the Bonapartes. For millennia before 250 BC, houses of men swept through the land, men with their own myths, language, rites, and gods. To these forgotten houses, the land would have been known for its fertility and seaworthiness, and for little else. It may have had a name, but this name would grate and confuse the ears of our patriotic shopkeepers.

  Like these venerable dynasties which came and went, one day, too, the Bonapartist regime will fall. Of course, it will be followed by another empire, which will also collapse. For thousands of years most likely, the Continent will watch as kingdoms rise and fall on the land we now name France. It goes without saying, then, that there will come a time when Napoleon, ubiquitous and flamboyant as he may be today, will have become as unremembered and obscure as those untamed tribes who first cast their sight on Parisii from Montmartre. This expired age of tribesmen and herdsmen and half-beasts, the age before Clovis and Celts and the fleur-de-lys, this barren and monotone and wild period which likely stretched on for millennia beyond “Creation,” how familiar, well-worn, even friendly this milieu would appear to these rivers and hills. The land’s true denizens lived before history. The “citoyen” of this bewildering civilization which has only just appeared on these plains are strangers. Paris—I hesitate to even use the word, so misleading is it—is nothing more than a blip, an upstart, a fallacy, and an ill-fated newcomer.  

  Make no mistake—the “City of Light,” as it has most recently been dubbed by our omniscient philosophes, is not here to stay. It may take three hundred or three thousand or thirty thousand years, but a time will come when everything will be gone. Nothing will remain of Notre-Dame or the
Pont Neuf, but for a few stones. The great stories of Napoleon’s victories in Egypt and Italy, passed down for generations, copied down in tomes in all the languages of Europe, these, too, will have vanished like the breeze. But, as the recent science is telling us, and as is becoming more and more apparent, thirty thousand years is only a few minutes across the mighty span of time. There is so much more to come, and so much which has gone. As the centuries unfold, there may even come a day when, all human progress halted and erased, a tribe once again ponderously ascends the heights of Montmarte in search of a lush clearing to begin a community. As they look on from Montmartre, their eyes will delight on the land before them, appearing identical as it did to those first men on horseback. Or perhaps, instead, there will be no return to our nomadic heritage. Perhaps, as the millennia come and go like the rising and setting sun, as they flow into each other like tributaries into the river, as each one passes like an acorn falling from an oak, the great homo sapien will eventually have become absent to this earth. Paris, and the