THE TOMBS OF THE BONAPARTES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 60, 20 June 1874, Page 13

THE TOMBS OF THE BONAPARTES.

Napoleon in the plenitude of hit power could nor think of having his family sepulture in Ajaccio. He determined to build a mausoleum in the Church of St. Denis, where a dozen dynasties sleep in the grave. He had a splendid vault built in the old Cathedral, under which linger associations of Dagobert, St. Louis, Charlemagne, and Joan of Are. Be gave out by Imperial decree that " St. Denis was to be the place of sepulture of the Napoleon dynasty," and, as was his energetic wont, set about repairing the place, after the ravages of the Revolutionists, who, at the instigation of the amiable Barrere, had smashed the monument a and tombs of the kings, and made bullets out of their coffins. But the stately old resting-place would have none of the Corsican parvenu. The roof fell in and smashed the Bonaparte vault with a stern crash of remonstrance, and although the indomitable Little Corporal set his face, as was his wont in such circumstances, to thwart the repugnance of St. Denis, other crushes came, which toppled down, not a vault this time, but himself and his dynasty. His dust, after iti long exile under the willow tree of St. Helena, rests no«r in the Invalides ; and the Commune, if it dragged down the Yendome Column, at least contrived to hold its hand from desecrating the tomb of the man who iron the victories which that monument commemorated. Josephine lies among the orange trees of Malmaison, and that ill-fated youth, whom fortune mocked by the title of King of Borne, but whom such of the world as cared to know anything of him at all knew better as tbe Duke of Beichstadt, lies in the vaults of Schonbrun. Of Joseph, of Lucien, of Charles, of Jerome, the brothers whom no persistent efforts on Napoleon's part could coax or bustle into standing alone as Royal or Napoleonic personages, who cares to know the rest-ing-places! Suffice it to say that when Napoleon the Third shot and intrigued his way to Imperial power in 1851-52, the " Napoleonic dynasty remained still without a place of sepulture." Like his uncle, be, too, tried to make one for it within the walls of the Cathedral of St. Denis, but again the conservative old place revolted against the attempt, and sent a piece of its roof tumbling down upon tha stone masons. St. Denis it was clear would have none of dead Bonapartism.

But, long prior to this second failure, the ashes of some of the Bonapartists, in un informal and quite an unimperialistic manner, had come to live under the same roof. About six miles due north of Montmorency, there rises the church spire of Napoleon St. Leu. On the slope above the village there once stood a chateau, now demolished. About the year 1804, there came hither to reside, first at intervals, afterwards permanently till 18 15, a lady whose maiden name had been Hortense Beauharnais, and who had been wedded, as it waa said, unwillingly, by Louis Bonaparte, a younger brother of the great Bonaparte. Her husband had been made King of Holland — with aa much reluctance, it was said, as he had taken Hortense to wife. But Hortense seldom accompanied her spouse on such flying visits as he made to Holland, and preferred to remain in or about Paris, living now at the Tuileries, now at St. Leu, now at Foutainebleu, now at Malmaison.

It was at St. Leu that her eldest boy, Napoleon Charles, died in 1807, a year before his brother, Napoleon the Third, was born. Napoleon Charles, the little Prince Royal of Holland, was buried in a mausoleum in the Park of the Chateau of St. Leu. Thither, too, King Louis had fetched from Montpelier, where the old follower of Paoli had died in 1785, the body of his father, old Charles Marie Napoleon, of Corsica, the father of the whole stock. After the second restoration, the Chateau of St. Leu passed into the hands of the Duke of Bourbon, who grudged house-room in his Park to the relatives of l.im at whose instance tbe Duke D'Eughein was shot. So he bundled the coffins outside, and pulled down the mausoleum, but charitably interposed no obstacle in the way of the Cure of St. Leu, when that worthy man would find a refuge for the outcasts in the vaults of his church — vaults not unworthy of any ashes, for they were the burialplace of the Montmoreucies. The two Bonapartes dead already in St. Leu were joined later by two more. Louis Phillippe, although be would not tolerate iv France the living firebrand, Louis Napoleon, did not object to the interment in St. Lou of the dead Napoleon Louis, his elder brother.-when that ai-dent young Republican died at Forli in 1831, after the abortive risiug in the Papal States, in which the two brothers took part. Nor was sepulture with his father and children denied to ex-King Louis, who died at Leghorn, in 1846.

Thus, when St. Denis refused for the second time to tolerate within it a Bonaparlist vault, the remains of four members of the family already lay in the Church of St. Leu. So the late Emperor, accomodatiog himself to circumstances, determined to adopt St. Leu as ihe family restiug-place. He altered the name of the village to Napoleon St. Leu, rebuilt and enlarged tbe church at great expense, And had constructed a special vault in the chancel, which was handselled by I lie removal into it of the coffins containing the remains of the four members of the familj who were already in occupation. He issued, too, in his turn, a decree that this vault was henceforth to be regarded as the burying-place of the dynasty. The pillars, roof, and walls of tlie church are studded thickly with Imperial bees, and in the recess behind the altar is an imposing monument of white marble, surmounted by a painting of St. Napoleon in rather an uncomfortable position on a cloud. The monument is crowned by a life statue of exiting Louis, and below, in parallel niches, aro the busts of the other three occupants- of the vault, with a brief biographical inscription in gold letters below.

There ran be no doubt that the remains of the late Emperor will ultimately be placed in the vault of the Church of Napoleon St. Lue, iv the sepulture which he himeslf chose and erected. It would be a magnauiinous act on the part of the President of the Assembly of the French Republic to convey an intimation to the Bonaparte family of their willing sauclion that the remains should be at once consigned to their pc manent resting-place there, aud to proffer a free permission to the whole of the members of the exiled family to visit France ou the last errand of devotion to its late head.