December 15

One hundred and sixty-nine years ago today, on December 15, 1840, a historic state funeral was held. Despite a bitter winter snowstorm, the hearse carrying Napoleon the First’s coffin proceeded from the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Elysées, across the Place de la Concorde to the Esplanade and finally to the Invalides.

After its long journey from the British colony of St. Helena, not far from the coast of what is now Namibia, it was placed in Saint Jerome’s Chapel, one of the small chapels surrounding the large circular crypt, until the tomb was completed. On April 3, 1861, it was, and Napoleon the First came to his final rest in the monumental porphyry sarcophagus beneath the gilded dome. The repatriation of Napoleon was made possible by King Louis Philippe, after the successful conclusion of long negotiations with the British government, and was greeted with universal acclaim.

Sixty-nine years ago today, on December 15, 1940, a hundred years later, the copper coffin containing the remains of Napoleon the Second, Napoleon’s only legitimate son, the King of Rome, the Duke of Reichstadt, were placed in the same Chapelle Saint Jérome. He had died in Vienna in 1832 at the age of twenty-one. Once again, it was bitterly cold. It was hoped that this event would do for the man who arranged this transfer what the home-coming of his father had done for King Louis Philippe.

It dramatically failed to do that.

In December 1940 Adolf Hitler was the master of Europe. His troops had goosestepped down the Champs Elysées. In October he had promised the aged Marshall Pétain at a meeting in Montoire near Tours, in the Führer’s armored train, that France could play a leading role in the creation of a new order in Europe. Otto Abetz, the man who was to become his ambassador in Paris, suggested the idea to him that the importation of Napoleon’s son would be regarded as a “generous gesture” to symbolize the new German-French friendship. He did not have to spell out to Hitler that the idea of a united Europe had, after all, been Napoleon’s dream, too. What could be more meaningful then than this posthumous father-son reunion? Never mind that the father had known the son for only three years.

Pétain was predisposed to ceremonies of this sort but somehow it did not seem to be entirely fitting to him, the victor of Verdun in the WWI, that he should publicly accept the body of the Great Frenchman’s son from the conqueror of France. However, if Hitler turned up at the ceremony, that was another matter – Pétain could be persuaded to attend. The vain old man thought it might perhaps do him good to be seen at the side of the most powerful man in Europe.

In the afternoon of December 13 he was warned that Hitler might force him to sign an unacceptable treaty, and that if he refused he would be kidnapped. Hitler, he was told, would install his pro-Nazi minister Pierre Laval as his successor. So instead of going to Paris, he had Laval arrested that very night. Only swift German intervention effected his quick release. Pétain would never have him back as his minister.

In the end neither Hitler nor Pétain attended, only some die-hard collaborators and a few members of the Bonaparte family. The French public was not interested – it could not be bought by this sordid transaction. If ever there was a remote chance for anything vaguely resembling French-German friendship, December 15, 1940, marked the end of it.

It was a measure of Hitler’s power that he could order the removal of the duke’s body from the Kapuzinergruft where so many of his Habsburg ancestors were buried. (His mother Marie Luise was the daughter of Emperor Franz I of Austria.) While Emperor Franz Joseph was still alive – he died in 1916 after being on the throne for sixty-eight years – there had been a number of requests for the transfer, one of them from Napoleon III but the emperor would not hear of it. The Kapuzinergruft was the state property of Austria.

This may be the only gift Hitler gave France that is unlikely to be returned to the original owner.