July 10, 2002
France and Empire
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| Invalides. 07 Juillet. |
That's not really for lack of it; they had a lot in North Africa (Algerian maladies linger on), influence in the Middle East, and, if you remember, they were the first post-colonial losers in Vietnam.
In particular the tenor is always sort of anti-Hitler. The French do not like Vichy-sympathizers, though Americans like to paint all the French as such. De Gaulle certainly wasn't and he was the French Republic after the war.
But even at Invalides, which you may have wondered about if you ever visited Paris, has a funny sort of dynamic. You look at a Paris map and there's this huge quadrant of land labelled simply as the "Hotel des Invalides". Fine. You go up the Eiffel Tower and that beautiful gold-painted dome is at the Invalides. Fine.
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| Napoleon. 07 Juillet. |
You go to the Invalides itself--it is a military museum, the former hospital and re-training center for war veterans, built perhaps by Louis Le Grand.
And then you realize what's going on. That huge gold-painted dome is--yes, a church, but also--the tomb of Napoleon. They bundle access to the tomb with the museum entry, so it looks like you're just touring the French martial past. Are you there to see defeated WW2 weapons? I don't think so.
When you get there, it turns out, you are there to see Napoleon, the greatest French general--the man to wear the imperial crown of Charlemagne, only the third general after Hannibal and Charlemagne himself to lead an army across the Alps into Italy and conquer it, etc etc. The tomb of Napoleon is the roccocco to Westminster Abbey's baroque. The French love Napoleon, their little emperor. And Invalides is his enormous, fabulous monument at the center of Paris.
Posted by amol at July 10, 2002 10:43 AM