The funeral solemnities of Louis XVIII. seemed to the people a mortuary
triumph of Royalty over the Revolution and the Empire. The profanations
of 1793 were expiated. Napoleon was left with the willow of Saint
Helena; the descendant of Saint Louis and of Louis XIV. had the
basilica of his ancestors as a place of sepulture, and the links of
time's chain were again joined. The obsequies of Louis XVIII. suggested
a multitude of reflections. It was the first time since the death of
Louis XV. in 1774, that such a ceremony had taken place. As was said by
the Moniteur:--
"This solemnity, absolutely novel for the greater number of the present
generation, offered an aspect at once mournful and imposing. A monarch
so justly regretted, a king so truly Christian, coming to take his
place among the glorious remains of the martyrs of his race and the
bones of his ancestors,--profaned, scattered by the revolutionary
tempest, but which he had been able again to gather,--was a grave
subject of reflection, a spectacle touching in its purpose and majestic
in the pomp with which it was surrounded."
Through what vicissitudes had passed these royal tombs, to which the
coffin of Louis XVIII. was borne! Read in the work of M. Georges
d'Heylli, Les Tombes royales de Saint-Denis, the story of these
profanations and restorations.
The Moniteur of the 6th of February, 1793, published in its literary
miscellany, a so-called patriotic ode, by the poet Lebrun, containing
the following strophe:--
"Purgeons le sol des patriotes,
Par des rois encore infectes.
La terre de la liberte
Rejette les os des despotes.
De ces monstres divinises
Que tous lea cercueils soient brises!
Que leur memoirs soit fletrie!
Et qu'avec leurs manes errants
Sortent du sein de la patrie
Les cadavres de ses tyrants!"
[Footnote: Let us purge the patriot soil--By kings still infected.--The
land of liberty--Rejects the bones of despots.--Of these monsters
deified--Let all the coffins be destroyed!--Let their memory
perish!--And with their wandering manes--Let issue from the bosom of
the fatherland--The bodies of its tyrants!]
These verses were the prelude to the discussion, some months later, in
the National Convention, of the proposition to destroy the monuments of
the Kings at Saint-Denis, to burn their remains, and to send to the
bullet foundry the bronze and lead off their tombs and coffins. In the
session of July 31, 1793, Barrere, the "Anacreon of the guillotine,"
read to the convention in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, a
report, which said:--
"To celebrate the day of August 10, which overthrew the throne, the
pompous mausoleums must be destroyed upon its anniversary. Under the
Monarchy, the very tombs were taught to flatter kings. Royal pride and
luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the
bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on
humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The
strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty
epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the
frightful memory of kings."
The project was voted by acclamation. The tombs were demolished between
the 6th and 8th of August, 1793, and the announcement was made for the
anniversary of the 10th of August, 1792, of "that grand, just, and
retributive destruction, required in order that the coffins should be
opened, and the remains of the tyrants be thrown into a ditch filled
with quick-time, where they may be forever destroyed. This operation
will shortly take place."
This was done in the following October. For some days there was carried
on a profanation even more sacrilegious than the demolition of the
tombs. The coffins containing the remains of kings and queens, princes
and princesses, were violated. On Wednesday, the 16th of October, 1798,
at the very hour that Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold,--she who
had so wept for her son, the first Dauphin, who died the 4th of June,
1789, at the beginning of the Revolution,--the disinterrers of kings
violated the grave of this child and threw his bones on the refuse
heap. Iconoclasts, jealous of death, disputed its prey, and they
profaned among others the sepulchres of Madame Henrietta of England, of
the Princess Palatine, of the Regent, and of Louis XV.
In the midst of these devastations, some men, less insensate than the
others, sought at least to rescue from the hands of the destroyers what
might be preserved in the interest of art. Of this number was an
artist, Alexandre Lenoir, who had supervised the demolition of the
tombs of Saint-Denis. He could not keep from the foundry, by the terms
of the decree, the tombs of lead, copper, and bronze; but he saved the
others from complete destruction--those that may be seen to-day in the
church of Saint-Denis. He had them placed first in the cemetery of the
Valois, near the ditches filled with quicklime, where had been cast the
remains of the great ones of the earth, robbed of their sepulchres.
Later, a decree of the Minister of the Interior, Benezech, dated 19
Germinal, An IV., authorizing the citizen Lenoir to have the tombs thus
saved from destruction taken to the Museum of French Monuments, of
which he was the conservator, and which had been installed at Paris,
Rue des Petits Augustins. From thence they were destined to be returned
to the Church of Saint-Denis, under the reign of Louis XVIII.
At the height of his power, Napoleon dreamed of providing for himself
the same sepulture as that of the kings, his predecessors. He had
decided that he would be interred in the Church of Saint-Denis, and had
arranged for himself a cortege of emperors about the site that he had
chosen for the vault of his dynasty. He directed the construction of a
grand monument dedicated to Charlemagne, which was to rise in the
"imperialized" church. The great Carlovingian emperor was to have been
represented, erect, upon a column of marble, at the back of which
statues in stone of the emperors who succeeded him were to have been
placed. But at the time of Napoleon's fall, the monument had not been
finished. There had been completed only the statues, which have taken
their rank in the crypt. They represent Charlemagne, Louis le
Debonnaire, Charles le Chauve, Louis le Begue, Charles le Gros, and
even Louis d'Outremer, who, nevertheless, was only a king.
Like the Pharaohs of whom Bossuet speaks, Napoleon was not to enjoy his
sepulture. To be interred with pomp at Saint-Denis, while Napoleon, at
Saint Helena, rested under a simple stone on which not even his name
was inscribed, was the last triumph for Louis XVIII.,--a triumph in
death. The re-entrance of Louis XVIII. had been not only the
restoration of the throne, but that of the tombs. The 21st of January,
1815, twenty-two years, to the very day, after the death of Louis XVI.,
the remains of the unhappy King and those of his Queen, Marie
Antoinette, were transferred to the Church of Saint-Denis, where their
solemn obsequies were celebrated. Chateaubriand cried:--
"What hand has reconstructed the roof of these vaults and prepared
these empty tombs? The hand of him who was seated on the throne of the
Bourbons. O Providence! He believed that he was preparing the
sepulchres of his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis XVI.
Injustice reigns but for a moment; it is virtue only that can count its
ancestors and leave a posterity. See, at the same moment, the master of
the earth falls, Louis XVIII. regains the sceptre, Louis XVI. finds
again the sepulture of his fathers."
At the beginning of the Second Restoration, the King determined, by a
decree of the 4th of April, 1816, that search should be made in the
cemetery of the Valois, about the Church of Saint-Denis, in order to
recover the remains of his ancestors that might have escaped the action
of the bed of quicklime, in which they had been buried under the
Terror. The same decree declared that the remains recovered should be
solemnly replaced in the Church of Saint-Denis.
Excavations were made in January, 1817, in the cemetery of the Valois,
and the bones thus discovered were transferred to the necropolis of the
kings.
"It was night," says Alexandre Lenoir, in his Histoire des Arts en
France par les Monuments. "The moon shone on the towers; the torches
borne by the attendants were reflected from the walls of the edifice.
What a spectacle! The remains of kings and queens, princes and
princesses, of the most ancient of monarchies, sought with pious care,
with sacred respect, in the ditches dug by impious arms in the evil
days. The bones of the Valois and the Bourbons found pele-mele outside
the walls of the church, and brought again, after a long exile, to
their ancient burial place."
In a little vault on the left were deposited the coffins containing the
bones of earlier date than the Bourbons, and a marble tablet was placed
upon it, with the inscription: "Here rest the mortal remains of
eighteen kings, from Dagobert to Henry III.; ten queens, from Nantilde,
wife of Dagobert, to Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henry IV.;
twenty-four dauphins, princes, and princesses, children and
grandchildren of France; eleven divers personages (Hugues-le-grand,
four abbes of Saint-Denis, three chamberlains, two constables, and
Sedille de Sainte-Croix, wife of the Counsellor Jean Pastourelle). Torn
from their violated sepulchres the 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
October, 1793, and 18 January, 1794; restored to their tombs the 19
January, 1817."
On the right were placed the coffins enclosing the remains of the
princes and princesses of the house of Bourbon, the list of which is
given by a second marble plaque: "Here rest the mortal remains of seven
kings, from Charles V. to Louis XV.; seven queens, from Jeanne de
Bourbon, wife of Charles V., to Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV.;
dauphins and dauphinesses, princes and princesses, children and
grandchildren of France, to the number of forty-seven, from the second
son of Henry IV. to the Dauphin, eldest son of Louis XVI. Torn from
their violated sepulchres the 12, 14, 15, and 16 October, 1793;
restored to their tombs the 19 January, 1817."
Besides these vaults, there is one that bears the title of the "Royal
Vault of the Bourbons," though but a small number of princes and
princesses of this family are there deposited. There is where Louis
XVIII. was to rest. In 1815, there had been placed in this vault the
coffins of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, recovered on the site of
the former cemetery of the Madeleine. On the coffin of the King was
carved: "Here is the body of the very high, very puissant, and very
excellent Prince, Louis, 16th of the name, by the grace of God King of
France and Navarre." A like inscription on the coffin of the Queen
recited her titles.
In 1817, there had been put by the side of these two coffins those of
Madame Adelaide and of Madame Victorine, daughter of Louis XV., who
died at Trieste, one in 1799, the other in 1800, and whose remains had
just been brought from that city to Saint-Denis. There had also been
placed in the same vault a coffin containing the body of Louis VII.--a
king coming now for the first time, as Alexandre Lenoir remarks, to
take a place in the vault of these vanished princes, whose ranks are no
longer crowded, and which crime has been more prompt to scatter than
has Death been to fill them; also the coffin of Louise de Vaudemont,
wife of Henry III., the queen who was buried in the Church of the
Capucins, Place Vendome, and whose remains escaped profanation in 1793.
In this same vault were also two little coffins, those of a daughter
and a son of the Duke and Duchess of Berry, who died, one in 1817, the
other in 1818, immediately after birth, and the coffin of their father,
assassinated the 13th of February, 1820, on leaving the Opera. Such
were the companions in burial of Louis XVIII.