It was at Compiègne that Napoleon met Marie Louise for the first time, on 27 March 1810 — three days before the civil wedding. The palace was also the great decorating project of the imperial furniture service.

Historical context

Gabriel's palace, left unfinished under Louis XVI, was put back in order from 1808 on Napoleon's orders. It was the largest decorating project of the Empire: Lyon silks, bronzes by Thomire, seat furniture by Jacob-Desmalter, a ballroom gallery painted by Girodet and Dubois. Compiègne became the showcase of the Empire style in its fullest version, the one that best survived the nineteenth century.

The marriage to Marie Louise had been celebrated by proxy in Vienna on 11 March 1810; the archduchess's procession then crossed Germany and France on a timed protocol. Napoleon could not bear it. On 27 March he took a carriage with Murat, intercepted the procession at Courcelles in pouring rain, climbed into the berline unannounced and embraced an eighteen-year-old woman he had never seen.

He took her straight to Compiègne, skipping the planned stages. That same evening, having had Cardinal Fesch confirm that the proxy marriage sufficed, he spent the night with her — three days before the civil ceremony at Saint-Cloud and four before the religious wedding at the Louvre. The impatience was as calculated as it was genuine: he needed an heir, and quickly.

The couple stayed at Compiègne until 30 March. Spared by revolutions and heavily reused under the Second Empire, the palace still holds the Emperor's and Empress's apartments in a rare state of completeness — with Fontainebleau, it is the best surviving witness to the everyday setting of imperial power.