Retour des Cendres

261, Lot: 492. Estimate $100. Sold for $240. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

FRANCE, Premier Empire. Napoléon Bonaparte. 1804-1814. Gilt Æ Medal (53mm, 58.96 g, 12h). Jean Pierre Montagny, engraver. Struck by the Pourrat Brothers, Paris, 1840. Dated 1830. HIST. DE LA REVOLUTION, DE L’EMPIRE DE LA RESTAURATION ET DE LA MON. DE 1830., laureate head of Napoléon right / The bearing of Napoléon’s body to Les Invalides: three pall bearers carrying the casket up a short flight of stairs toward a crowned Marriane, holding palm and olive branches and long garland; to left, Thanatos extinguishing torch and holding tablet inscribed with a large N on a column; behind to right, a ship firing a salute, to left, the Chapel of Saint-Louis des Invalides; above, Napoléon holding sword and riding eagle into a cloud and glory of rays. Collignon 1233. EF, a few hairlines.

The great emperor Napoléon died in British-imposed exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. Prior to his demise, he had petitioned the government to allow his body to be brought back to France for burial. Yet the recently restored Bourbons feared an uprising, and refused the request, pending a calmer political situation. Ten years after an abortive 1830 petition to place his ashes in the Colonne Vendôme, the emperor’s burial request was finally granted.

By October 1840, three ships lay anchored off St. Helena, ready to return Napoléon to Paris. Tension filled the air as the British garrison ceremoniously exhumed the remains and handed it to the French. Back on the continent, the relationship between the two powers was strained. France had angered most of Europe by supporting Muhammed Ali in an uprising against the Ottomans in Egypt and many feared the British would retaliate militarily. Accordingly, the ship bearing the remains made directly for France, while the other two lagged behind.

Yet the concern was for naught, and the tension back home soon diffused. Napoléon’s coffin finally arrived in Paris on December 15. Here it was borne in an elaborate procession to Les Invalides, amidst the celebration of the crowds. The coffin was housed in the Chapel of Saint-Jérôme until the monumental sarcophagus was completed in 1861.

The Retour des cendres was intended as political theater to bolster the image of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. It instead glorified and restored image of the former emperor. Far from supporting the monarchy, this procession marked the revival of the myth of Napoléon and contributed to the rise of the Second Empire.