NAPOLEON'S TRIUMPHS,

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

NAPOLEON'S TRIUMPHS,

TWO GREAT ARCHES.

TRANSIENT GLORIES CELEBRATED.

PARIS KEEPS MEMORY VIVDD,

For a year or so now they have been dusting off the little Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel —that other triumphal arch at the lower end of one of the world's most magnificent vistas. The rose marble columns are once again bright and shiny; the bas-reliefs in which the rains of more that a century have picked holes are restored; Baron Bosio's bronze, horses up on top are as well groomed as when Louis Phillippe had them put there, and even the inscriptions along.the .tympans are:gilded so that they can again be easily read—in spite of everything, says a Paris correspondent of the "New York Times."

Napoleon himself, if one could resurrect him from his magnificent porphyry tomb in the Invalides would have to admit, if rather ruefully, that one should say, "in spite of everything." For if he were to stand there one of these winter nights and read those proud boasts again, it is only too certain that he would feel like the ghost of Shelley's Ozymandias revisiting his statue. There is the chief inscription, for instance, which is a reminder that the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was primarily to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz in August, 1805, and the great triumph that came to the Emperor at the Peace of Pressburg in December. The inscription reads: At the Voice of the Victor of Austerlitz The German Empire Falls The Confederation of the Rhine Begins The Kingdoms of Bavaria and Wuerttemberg Are Created Venice is Reunited to the Iron Crown Entire Italy Ranges Herself Under the Laws of Her Liberator. " Vanity of Vanities." Not one of those statements was true for more than a few years. Since that time the German Empire rose, invaded France and fell again; the Confederation of the Rhine is no more; Bavaria, and Wurttemberg are part of a German Republic; Venice ia no longer ruled by one who wears the Iron Crown of the old Lombard kings, but by the son of a blacksmith acting in the name of a Sayoyard; and Italy is no longer guided by the laws of Napoleon. I.

Such being the case, the American who paid for the arch's restoration might well have suggested the addition of a new line—"Vanity of Vanities."

But if the ghost of Napoleon, out for a stroll on a winter night in the year 1933, were to turn his back on the Carrousel arch and look across the'Tuileries Gardens, past the Place de la Concorde, and up the Champs Elysees to that other greater Arc de Triomphe on top of the hill at the Etoile, one could hardly blame him if some of his complacency were restored. As long as Paris remains Paris this loveliest of vistas will evoke the memory of Napoleon. From the top of the Etoile, from the Rond-Point des Champs Elysees,-from the heart of the Tuileries Gardens, wherever one looks, the things that ono sees recall that emperor who had the Continent at his feet for a few glorious years.

Suppose we were to follow tliia ghost of Napoleon on an evening's stroll from one arcli to the other. It would be easy to see then that we were treading in the, footsteps of one who was walking on ground that was his own. These Tuileries Gardens, for instance —they were the gardens of Napoleon's own palace, part of which still stands, over on the left. It is now joined to the Louvre, where still remain so many of the treasures the Emperor took by right of conquest* from the countries which originally produced them. And along the gardens, on the right, is the Rue de Rivoli—pleasant reminder of one of the ghost's most famous victories. As -we stroll down the Grand Allee, a glance to the right at the proper moment and there is the Rue de Castiglione, another reminder of that great campaign, and at its end, just a few blocks down, that column in the Place Vendome, modeled on Trajan's, made of the iron of melted cannons captured from Germans and Austrians, on top of which stands Napoleon himself, somewhat disguised as a Roman Emperor. Avenues of Splendour. It was in the same year that Napoleon started to build the Arc de Triomplie du Carrousel that the other and greater arch was also begun—the "annus mirabilis," in 1800, a year of triumph indeed. Well might the ghost of Napoleon gaze proudly around him at that spot, where twelve magnificent avenues, (almost all bearing Napoleonic or Revolutionary names, radiate to every part of Paris. The history of the great arch is briefly told in the inscription painted inside, high up in the room which is now a little museum: I This Monument—begun in 180G in Honour of the Grande Arinee— Interrupted for a Long Time— Continued in 1823 With a New ' Dedication, Wag Completed in 1830 by King Louis Philippe I, Who Consecrated It to the Glory of the French Armies.