(sold for $46.0)

1840, France. "The Return of Napoleon's Body to France" Small Bronze Medal.

Mint Year: 1840
Mint Place: Paris
Medallist: Montagny
Reference: Bramsen 1988.
Condition: A nice AU-UNC!
Denomination: Medal- Return Napoleon's Body to France and its Burial in Paris.
Diameter: 26mm
Material: Bronze
Weight: 9.82gm

Obverse: Laureate bust of Napoleon I. righlt, engraver´s mark below
Legend: NAPOLEON EMPEREUR
Exergue: JE DÉSIREQUE MES CENDRES REPOSENT SUR LES RIVES DE LA SEINE AU MILIEU DE CEPEUPLE QUE J'AITANT AIMÉ

Reverse: The bearing of Napoléon's body to Les Invalides: three pall bearers carrying the casket up a short flight of stairs toward a crowned Marriane, holding palm and olive branches and long garland; to left, Thanatos extinguishing torch and holding tablet inscribed with a large N on a column; behind to right, a ship firing a salute, to left, the Chapel of Saint-Louis des Invalides; above, Napoléon holding sword and riding eagle into a cloud and glory of rays.
Exergue: 1840 / MONTAGNY. F. /

The great emperor Napoléon died in British-imposed exile on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. Prior to his demise, he had petitioned the government to allow his body to be brought back to France for burial. Yet the recently restored Bourbons feared an uprising, and refused the request, pending a calmer political situation. Ten years after an abortive 1830 petition to place his ashes in the Colonne Vendôme, the emperor's burial request was finally granted.

By October 1840, three ships lay anchored off St. Helena, ready to return Napoléon to Paris. Tension filled the air as the British garrison ceremoniously exhumed the remains and handed it to the French. Back on the continent, the relationship between the two powers was strained. France had angered most of Europe by supporting Muhammed Ali in an uprising against the Ottomans in Egypt and many feared the British would retaliate militarily. Accordingly, the ship bearing the remains made directly for France, while the other two lagged behind.

Yet the concern was for naught, and the tension back home soon diffused. Napoléon's coffin finally arrived in Paris on December 15. Here it was borne in an elaborate procession to Les Invalides, amidst the celebration of the crowds. The coffin was housed in the Chapel of Saint-Jérôme until the monumental sarcophagus was completed in 1861.

The Retour des cendres was intended as political theater to bolster the image of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. It instead glorified and restored image of the former emperor. Far from supporting the monarchy, this procession marked the revival of the myth of Napoléon and contributed to the rise of the Second Empire.

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Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French military and political leader who had a significant impact on the history of Europe. He was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as First Consul of the French Republic and Emperor of the First French Empire.

Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, he rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, Napoleon staged a coup d'état and installed himself as First Consul; five years later he crowned himself Emperor of the French. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, he turned the armies of France against every major European power and dominated continental Europe through a series of military victories - epitomised in battles such as Austerlitz and Friedland. He maintained France's sphere of influence by the formation of extensive alliances and the appointment of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French client states.

The French invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point in Napoleon's fortunes. His Grande Armée was wrecked in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig, invaded France and exiled him to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he returned and was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last six years of his life under British supervision on the island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer though Sten Forshufvud and other scientists in the 1960s conjectured that he had been poisoned with arsenic.

Napoleon developed few military innovations, drew his tactics from different sources and scored major victories with a modernised French army. His campaigns are studied at military academies the world over and he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest commanders. While considered a tyrant by his opponents, he is remembered for the establishment of the Napoleonic code, which laid the administrative foundations for much of Western Europe.

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