29 - The Napoleonic Wars and Realms of Memory in Europe

Summary

‘Napoleonic remembering’ did not wait for the end of the great enterprise linked to his name but emerged in the very years in which Napoleon was the prime actor, and Napoleon himself fostered it with deliberate awareness. From the very beginning, therefore, this remembering was linked to the events as they actually took place, not only the battles themselves but also the constructions that, emerging from military glory, became civil glories. Remembering and history intertwine, activating a hugely effective communicative mechanism that fixes the event in the memory while at the same time projecting towards events yet to happen. In the figurative arts, David’s Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard Pass immediately springs to mind, as does his even more famous painting of the Coronation and Consecration or Sacre, and above all the actual ‘campaign’ of memorial communication as revealed in the competition rules laid down for a painting of the terrible Battle of Eylau, which inspired the no less famous Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau by Antoine-Jean Gros.