It was in the Orangery of Saint-Cloud that the Council of Five Hundred was dispersed at bayonet point, on 19 Brumaire Year VIII. The palace where the Consulate was born became one of the Emperor's favourite residences — before vanishing in 1870.

Historical context

On 18 Brumaire, on the pretext of a Jacobin plot, the Councils were moved out of Paris to Saint-Cloud, where they would be easier to control. The next day Bonaparte faced the Five Hundred in the Orangery: he stammered, cries of "outlaw" went up, deputies jostled him. The day was saved by his brother Lucien, who chaired the session, went out to harangue the grenadiers and convinced them the general had been attacked. Murat came in at the head of the troops. The Directory died that evening.

As consular then imperial palace, Saint-Cloud kept its role as the place where constitutional decisions were taken. It was there that in May 1804 the senatus-consultum proclaiming the Empire was brought to the First Consul; there that a still-new court assembled, under an etiquette drawn up by Ségur and borrowed from the Ancien Régime.

On 1 April 1810, in the Apollo gallery, Napoleon married Marie Louise in a civil ceremony; the religious one took place the next day at the Louvre. With its park laid out by Le Nôtre and its view over Paris, the palace was the spring residence, the place for working stays away from the Tuileries.

Nothing of it remains. Occupied by the Prussian staff in 1870, the palace was set ablaze in October by French artillery firing from Mont-Valérien, then demolished in 1891. The birthplace of the Napoleonic regime is now a lawn: only the park and terraces suggest its scale.