The Arc de Triomphe was only one of many Napoleonic monuments- both finished and unfinished- that dotted France during the Bourbon restorations. These physical reminders of Napoleonic rule and the Empire posed a set of problems for the Bourbons. While some in the ultra party wanted to erase every aspect of the imperial and republican regimes from France, such a complete break in monumental tradition was quite difficult. Outside of a few extremists on both Napoleonic and ultra ends, the restoration regimes elite blended the older new nobility of the Napoleonic era with the returning Bourbon elites. Moreover, the memory of imperial power and prestige was very potent in the post-1815 world. Every nineteenth-century French ruler after Napoleon recognized the symbolic and nationalistic importance of Napoleon's victories in Europe. This does not mean that the Borubons and the later Orleanists did not simply perpetuate the Empire's monumental culture, but rather sought to appropriate them for their own ends.

Some aspects of Napoleonic monuments were easy to replace. The first two restorations made it a point to remove Napoleon's busts and the various "N"s from public and state buildings. But not all removal was simply destruction of the parvenu's monuments. One strategy common in the early restoration years was to use creative destruction to give this removal symbolic meaning. For example, the Bourbons removed Napoleon's statue atop the Vendôme column and Column of the Grande Armée. The state then melted down Napoleon's statues and used the metal for François-Frédéric Lemot's statue of Henri IV, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty. While the symbolic narrative of recasting the usurper's statue to replace an ancien regime equestrian statue removed by the Revolution is obvious, the retention of the column also sent a political message. Captured enemy cannons were the source of the bronze bas reliefs of the Vendôme column and to destroy those would denigrate the efforts of French soldiers to gain glory for France. Instead, the Bourbon and Orleanist governments placed their own state symbols atop the column such as the fleurs de lys. The message of the commemorative strategy was clear: while the imperial political regime was not legitimate, the victories of French arms was congruent with the new regimes.

While creative destruction and selective retention was one commemorative strategy for Napoleonic monuments, it was not the only one available to the restoration governments. Another stratagem was to use preexisting or unfinished monuments to celebrate the current or past achievements of the Bourbons. This was what lay behind Louis XVIII's renewed interest into the unfinished Arc in 1823. The state restarted construction of the Arc to celebrate the Bourbon regime's invasion of Spain to restore the Spanish King Ferdinand VII to his throne. While veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns like Marshal Oudinot headed the Army of the Pyrenees, the renewed Arc was to celebrate their emigre and royal subordinates, especially Louis XVIII's nephew, the Duke of Angoulême. The Duke's father, Charles X continued Louis XVIII's interest in the Arc when he succeeded the throne and tinkered with the Arc's design to have it better reflect Bourbon political motifs. But the very size of the Arc as well as friction between the Arc's designers and their Bourbon patrons meant little was accomplished on the unfinished monument.

The back and forth between Charles X and his artists over the Arc's friezes and statues showcased the political tension implicit in recasting Napoleonic monuments for the Bourbons. Charles X favored more traditional motifs as well as commemorating his family's own accomplishments in Spain while a good many French architects and artists were influenced by the more distant Napoleonic past. Squaring this circle was quite difficult for the Bourbons to stomach fully, yet the Orleanists of the July Monarchy had no such problems in harmonizing commemorating Napoleonic gloire with their own politics. The Orleanists recognized that the Napoleonic period was a potent integrative symbol for France and the celebrating martial glory was no threat to the existing political order. Formerly proscribed imperial and republican symbols such as the tricoleur reappeared during the July Monarchy as did images of the Emperor. Most famously, the Louis-Phillipe not only sponsored the creation of an elaborate tomb for Napoleon, but also allowed his remains to go through the newly-completed Arc in 1840.

Although the Orleanists did have to contend with an oppositional Bonapartist party under the leadership of Louis Napoleon, the July Monarchy marked a major shift in the state's treatment of the Emperor. While prior restoration regimes had treated the Napoleonic legacy quite gingerly, reappropriating some aspects of the Napoleonic legend while destroying others, the Orleanists realized that Napoleon was too potent a symbol to be left to go to seed. It became much safer in the 1830s to lay claim to the Emperor's memory as veterans aged and the surviving Napoleonic elite became part of the French establishment than it had been in 1816. Moreover, martial glory of the Napoleonic period was a much more controllable and conservative symbol for the state than other aspects of the Revolutionary and Imperial periods. While the restoration governments increasingly saw a utility in commemorating the Napoleonic Wars, the events of the Revolution became a hole in French commemoration in first half of the nineteenth century. Unlike the Arc, the Bourbons did not plan on completing or modifying Napoleon's plan for a colossal elephant on the site of the Bastille. Louise-Phillipe's column on the Bastille, the Colonne de Juillet explicitly commemorated the July Revolution, not the events of 1789. The monuments of Place de la Concord, the site of mass guillotines during the Terror, remained quite apolitical with no direct references to the Revolution. While the Luxor obelisk and Fontaines de la Concorde are excellent examples of the neoclassicalism of the Orleanist style, they make no overt references to the Revolution. It was not until the Third Republic that the Revolution received its due in French commemorative culture. Ultimately, celebrating military victories was more controllable past for France's post-Napoleonic monarchies than the Pandora's box of the Revolution.

Sources

Boime, Albert. Art in an Age of Counterrevolution, 1815-1848. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Goldstein, Robert Justin, and Andrew Nedd. Political Censorship of the Visual Arts in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Arresting Images. New York: Palgrave, 2015.