On 18 February 1806, two months after Austerlitz, a decree ordered a triumphal arch to the glory of the French armies. The phrase from the proclamation to the soldiers has stuck: you will return to your homes only under triumphal arches. There was hesitation between the Bastille and the Étoile; the Étoile toll gate, at the top of the Champs-Élysées, won. Chalgrin drew the plans.
The works were slower than the Empire. The foundations alone took two years in unstable ground. In 1810, for Marie Louise's ceremonial entry into Paris, the arch was still only a base: a full-size mock-up of timber and painted canvas was put up in a few weeks for the procession to pass under. Chalgrin died in 1811; work stopped in 1814.
Louis-Philippe resumed it and the arch was inaugurated in 1836, thirty years after the decree. It carries the names of six hundred and sixty generals and a hundred and twenty-eight battles, and four sculpted groups including François Rude's Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, better known as La Marseillaise. It was the July Monarchy that finished the imperial monument, filing it into a broader national history.
On 15 December 1840 the funeral car of the Return of the Ashes passed under the arch on its way down the Champs-Élysées: the only time Napoleon went through his own triumphal arch. Since 1921 the tomb of the Unknown Soldier has occupied the ground beneath the vault. Not to be confused with the smaller Carrousel arch, which was completed under the Empire in 1808.
