Emperor Napoléon and the Invalides

We visited Les Invalides, and spent quite a while walking the cloister to read in English a series of posters outlining the tortuous path to peace in the midst of the Great War. I have had no  idea about the multiple treaty attempts from 1916 onwards, and in the end how many armistice and peace treaties were signed.

We visited the austere military Église Saint Louis, and the part of the Army Museum dedicated to history from Louis XIV 1643 to Napoléon III 1870. The chronological arrangement might leave an innocent to think that the point of kingdoms was to have wars. Certainly in those 227 years one would have been fortunate to find a year or two of peaceful interval.

The pièce de résistance is the Dome of the église, entered separately and overwhelmed by the gigantic tomb of Napoléon. His corpse was transferred here in 1840. We expected an imperial presentation, and it certainly is, but in the circle around the tomb Napoléon is depicted in a set of huge marble friezes, not as warrior, but a Roman emperor. In 1840 the French saw him as outshining Justinian -  his simple code of law has done better for France  than all the mass of laws that preceded it, the inscription says. His imperial stance might now be called Putinesque.