Return of the ashes

Since 1830 the July Monarchy had sought to appropriate imperial glory without reviving its threat: the Vendôme column was restored, the Arc de Triomphe completed in 1836, the Versailles museum dedicated "to all the glories of France". In May 1840 Thiers obtained London's permission to repatriate the body; the Chamber voted a million francs. The king saw it as a way of disarming Bonapartism; Lamartine, almost alone, warned against "the Napoleonic religion".

The frigate La Belle-Poule, painted black and commanded by the Prince de Joinville, the king's son, sailed from Toulon in July with the veterans of Saint Helena: Bertrand, Gourgaud, Marchand, the younger Las Cases. The exhumation took place on the night of 15 October; the body, remarkably preserved, was recognised by his companions before being placed in a series of nested coffins.

In a cold of minus ten degrees, the funeral car came up the Champs-Élysées between hundreds of thousands of Parisians, passed under the Arc de Triomphe and reached the Invalides, where Louis-Philippe received the coffin: "Sire, I present to you the body of the Emperor Napoleon."

The political calculation failed: instead of extinguishing the legend, the ceremony consecrated it. Eight years later an unknown nephew was elected president of the Republic; in 1852 he restored the Empire. The final tomb, beneath the dome, was not inaugurated until 1861.