THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MUSEUM
Wednesday April 20th, 1814.
Napoleon I knew he would be spending his last night
at Fontainebleau.
His Old Guard were there,
his loyal soldiers
who had been by his side for almost 20 years in Egypt,
Italy and all those famous battles.
Napoleon came down these stairs and looked at everyone.
He called them his veterans.
He couldn't speak to them,
so he kissed the French flag in front of them and said,
"May this kiss go straight to your hearts."
"Do not pity me," he said to them.
All of the Old Guard soldiers cried.
All in all, Napoleon I spent 170 nights
here at Fontainebleau Palace,
but he would forever leave his mark here.
Napoleon at Fontainebleau, coming up.
I'm meeting with Christophe Beyeler.
Hi, Christophe. - Hello, Eric.
We're currently in the only throne room in France.
There is no other. - The only one left.
In 1808, Napoleon decided to set up, in the kings' chambers
- of the Valois and then the Bourbons - his throne room.
Why a throne room?
Because an imperial palace
is where one can ostentatiously
display the sovereign's grandeur.
Is that a portrait of Louis XIII?
Under the Bourbons, there was a portrait of Louis XIII.
So, it was already a throne room. - No, it was the king's chambers.
CURATOR OF THE NAPOLEON MUSEUM
What did the Jacobeans do with Fontainebleau in 1793?
They tore down these portraits and burned them
in the White Horse Court.
And, obviously, under Napoleon, there was a portrait of the Emperor
by Lefèvre.
He takes over the monarchy,
he takes over this living legacy at Fontainebleau.
Here, Napoleon, perhaps more than in other places,
followed in his predecessors' footsteps and, as a usurper seeking legitimacy,
he wrote himself into Fontainebleau history.
He called it one of Europe's most convenient locations,
because it's not far from Paris, it's on the road to Italy,
as he was the Emperor of France and the King of Italy,
and, furthermore, it was a crown jewel,
and that meant he regained control.
Ladies and gents, this is the highlight.
Come in. You're going to have the chance to discover
Napoleon I's private apartments,
apartments that are not visited
unless a group puts in an official request for it.
Interestingly, they're in their original state.
This small lounge is cozy.
It's not huge like the state rooms. Nothing has been moved.
This is a rug which has been tread on by the Emperor.
This is unmoved furniture which was used by the Emperor
and I must say, it's pretty moving,
as there are few places like it in France.
We're going into the darker recesses.
Stop! This place here is very interesting.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Méneval's room.
Méneval was Napoleon's personal secretary.
So, he slept here.
Since Napoleon only slept for four hours,
he could wake up Méneval at any time
to dictate letters to him.
We're meeting with Alexandre Bouclon, a guide here.
Hi, Alexandre. - Hi, Eric.
Alexandre has been waiting for me in this place brimming with history.
I'm blown away by these apartments.
It's like Napoleon was here just yesterday.
From 1810, Napoleon was often in this room,
but he didn't just sleep here, as you're well aware of,
he worked really hard including at night.
He would get up at around 2 AM to work because he worked around the clock.
Sometimes daybreak took him by surprise,
and in those cases, Napoleon liked to have nice, hot baths.
They'd bring a tub to his room filled with hot water,
he'd get into the tub,
they would have a small board for him
and he would carry on working in his bath
and would go back to bed at around 5 AM
to then get up at around 7 AM.
He was particularly fond of these small apartments.
They were kind of old-school, like Versailles, with state apartments
and inner apartments with smaller rooms which are easier to heat.
More private, harder to access, farther away from the court.
Méneval, his secretary, didn't have much contact with the court.
So, it was more relaxed here.
There was no need for decor glorifying the empire.
The decor isn't very imperial because there was no point.
The folks here were imperialists
so there was no need for propaganda.
It wasn't for show.
That was on the first floor, particularly on a Sunday
with mass and everything. This wasn't a work setting.
This is the work library.
There are only reference books here.
What kind of books? Military works?
Geography, science, military science,
law, theology,
history, Russian geography.
Napoleon knew the history and geography of countries.
Probably not enough Russian geography.
He had to work on that.
EMPEROR'S CABINET LIBRARY
So, what's this beautiful bound book with...
The Empire's coat of arms. - Can I open this one?
This one here is an atlas.
Oh, right, it's an atlas.
This is Napoleon's passion for geography.
Amazing. A map of the world.
Australia is called New Holland.
Not completely identified yet. - Some of the southern coast is missing.
The interesting thing is that, in most of his large residences,
for example, at Saint-Cloud or Les Tuileries, there was always...
… a library with the same books arranged in the same way.
That way he could find them easily when he needed them.
But Les Tuileries and Saint-Cloud don't exist anymore,
so the only evidence of Napoleon's library is at Fontainebleau.
Nothing has been touched or added since 1814.
So, upstairs, on the garden level,
the large, inner apartments can be found
which lead to the state apartments.
Intimate down here, chic up there.
Let's go. Thanks, Alexandre. - Bye.
Welcome to the Emperor's large apartments.
It's spacious,
it must've been hard to heat up.
I suggest we go meet our expert on Napoleon I, Christophe.
Where are we? What's this room?
This is the Emperor's room.
The state bedroom where he slept depending on the ceremony.
The funny thing is, that in this place, which had been decorated under Louis XVI,
the decorative painter, Moench, was asked
to come and add victory figures,
as well as the Emperor's initials
and these side-on images of Mars and Athena.
Mars and Athena: brute force and strategy.
So, the decorators blended into Louis XVI's decor.
Exactly. - They just added to it.
It's the same person who worked under Louis XVI.
Amazing.
Was it done piece by piece
where they wanted to add things here and there,
so they could come back?
Decorators are like journalists: extremely corrupt.
So, we're currently in a room
brimming with historical events.
This is where Napoleon signed the act,
which may have been the most important ones of his life,
as he ended an era.
It was April 1814
and four of his followers forced his door open:
Oudinot, MacDonald, Lefebvre,
who'd married a brazen laundry woman.
The solid Lefebvre
and Ney, the Prince of Moscow.
He was the one who, heroically, in 1812,
almost single-handedly retreated with what was left
of the Grande Armée in the snow.
Ney also didn't want to fight anymore.
They forced the Emperor's door open and dragged him up
and presented him with his abdication notification.
Right here. The keyword was unconditional abdication.
NAPOLEON'S ABDICATION CERTIFICATE
It was signed on April 6th, 1814 right here at this table.
It was an unconditional abdication.
He signed it, but Ney, the Prince of Moscow,
the hero of 20 years of glory, what does he do?
He rushed it over to Tsar Alexander.
Napoleon had been abandoned.
Napoleon's fate was left in his hands.
He attempted suicide
and was saved by the loyal Caulaincourt,
who thumped him on the back, and gave him an enema to make him throw up.
He waited to get better and on April 20th, it was game over.
Ladies and gents, we're in none other than the Pope's apartment.
The Pope spent a year and a half here and was even imprisoned.
This is an extraordinary story. When Napoleon invaded Italy,
he also invaded the Papal States
and Pius VII, who was a fiery Pope, didn't like that
and he excommunicated Napoleon I.
What did Napoleon I do? He imprisoned the Pope.
In Savona, at first.
What did he do to the Papal States? He made them French departments.
Rome would become the prefecture of the Département du Tibre,
a bit like Mont-de-Marsan and the prefecture of Les Landes.
Napoleon soon decided that he would bring over
this prestigious prisoner from Paris
and imprison Pope Pius VII here at Fontainebleau
for a year and a half until January 1814.
Welcome to the Empress's small apartments.
I'm here to meet Marie-Noëlle, hello. - Hi.
Marie-Noëlle is a guide here. Behind us are the Emperor's apartments,
the small, intimate apartments which you saw at the start of the show,
and these are the Empress's ones and they're interconnected.
Exactly. They were connected by the door you just went through
and Josephine's final days were a little melancholic.
Napoleon had spent most of the summer at Schönbrunn
and there, he asked Josephine to meet up with him
and spend the fall at Fontainebleau.
She arrived between September 26th and 27th
and, much to her surprise, she ended up in this room,
which is the last room in her apartment, her study.
She opens the door and, the story goes,
that she came upon a brick wall.
To block access to the Emperor's side? - Yes.
She got the message right away, there was no need for discussion.
She waited for, unfortunately, the official announcement of divorce,
meaning that her last few days here were sad and she cried quite a bit.
Oh boy, this is a room fit for an Empress!
Exactly. - That bed!
That bed is called an oriental-style bed
and everything you see today that's gray
used to be a golden embroidered lapis lazuli blue.
Right. So, this was a blue that was... - Extremely bright. Very flashy.
And there was gold everywhere.
It's impressive because you're saying that all this has faded,
but that means that this is in its original state.
Absolutely.
You could say that 80% of the apartment
is exactly the way that Napoleon left it after his abdication.
So, Marie-Louise, mother of The Eaglet, used these chairs.
Absolutely. And these slightly odd chairs,
which are for a more imposing woman or two more slender ladies,
are called loveseats and they have slightly strange dimensions.
That's astonishing. - Right?
These are for the larger mothers-in-law, perhaps for their bottoms.
Where are we?
We're in a magical room because the room you see
is the Empress's little boudoir.
But it had a double purpose because it also served as a bathroom.
Here? - Yes.
But where's the bathtub? Where's the shower? Where's the spa?
The couch was pulled into the middle
and that's when Josephine would get out of her bath,
like a Roman lady.
The couch would serve as a screen and she would get out of her bath
and carry on her conversation with her companions.
The tank, the bathtub itself, where was it?
The bathtub was built into the wooden floor.
There you have it.
Good idea, right? A bathtub under the couch.
We're on the first floor.
Underneath, on the ground floor, are the intimate apartments,
the Empress's small apartments, and this is the Empress's room.
Interestingly, this room,
which was obviously occupied by Josephine,
was where all the French queens stayed.
From Marie de' Medici, Henry IV's wife,
every female sovereign of France stayed and slept in this room,
right up to Napoleon III's wife, Empress Eugénie.
I must talk about this bed made for Queen Marie Antoinette,
but she was guillotined before she was even able to stay here.
The first female sovereign to sleep here
was Empress Josephine.
And since we're on the topic of sovereigns,
we should take a look at hygiene.
Hygiene at Fontainebleau Palace in the 19th century
was entering a modern era.
Bathrooms and shower rooms were all the rage. Take a look.
The room you're in was used as a bathroom.
The basic guest apartments
included a lounge which is behind the bedroom,
just behind the wall, and a dressing room.
There was no running water at Fontainebleau Palace.
You could get it in the corridors or communal spaces,
HEAD CURATOR
where there were fountains and water tanks
and the staff would collect the buckets.
Under this regime, the tradition was to wash yourself with damp cloths
and from the 19th century onwards,
people started to wash with water.
There were hygienists who thought that water carried germs.
The objects in this toilet had specific functions.
The two water jugs were for pouring cold water in the basin
and the jug with a lid contained hot water.
The sponge container can be identified with this lid,
this openwork lid,
which allowed the sponges to dry and not get moldy.
Remember, it was a natural product, so it could have gone moldy.
Body hygiene was rounded off by washing your feet
in these buckets, which were foot baths.
People would soak their feet in them.
There was also this idea that feet had to be decongested
to improve blood flow.
In some rooms, at night,
if people didn't want to go to a public space,
they could enjoy the use of their own toilet.
This is a really nice slop pail. I'm going to open it.
On the side, there was room for a receptacle
for sponges or cloths to wipe yourself.
And here, you had the bucket itself
which served as a container for evacuations.
This piece of furniture in the room is typically from the First Empire.
It's the nightstand.
During the day, it served as a container
for the object that could be used at night,
in other words, the chamber pot.
Ladies and gents, we're in Louis XV's wing at Fontainebleau Palace
and on the first floor, the Museum of Napoleon I can be found.
I'm joined by Vincent Cochet, hello. - Hello.
You're a curator here
and we are standing in front of the cradle of The Eaglet,
the Emperor's son, who was born in 1811.
The birth of The Eaglet brought an amazing sense of hope
that the dynasty, and notably, the Empire, would continue.
Napoleon managed to get Josephine to swallow the bitter pill
that was divorce,
since Josephine, who was relatively old,
wasn't able to give Napoleon I a successor.
So, there was a whole negotiation process
CURATOR
so that Napoleon would be able to marry his ally,
a big European dynasty, the Habsburgs, to be precise.
So, in 1808, he married Marie-Louise of Austria,
the daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria
and in 1811, she gave birth to little Napoleon, to The Eaglet,
who would become the King of Rome.
Napoleon really established his authority
because he had someone to transfer the crown to.
Napoleon had multiple images made of The Eaglet
so as to galvanize the troops
and encourage the population
to believe in the longevity of the imperial regime.
He was three when he last saw his father.
The end of the empire came very quickly,
with the first abdication in 1814 and then the second.
The Eaglet left for Austria with his mother,
where he became the Duke of Reichstadt.
He came to a tragic end
because he died aged 21 in Vienna.
We're back with Christophe.
We're in a reconstruction of a tent from when Napoleon was in the countryside
and is this what it looked like?
Yes, Napoleon was someone who had studied to become a soldier,
a King's Fellow, and that affected him.
So, he lived modestly.
In the countryside, they used an iron bed,
which was perfectly portable.
You fold it, file it down, fold it again, turn it around
and inside it goes.
After yet another interrupted night, Constant, his valet, said,
"I'm going to get some sleep."
"Constant!" - "Yes, my lord?"
"Who's in service?" - "This person."
"Tell him to come." And the message was delivered.
As Constant was finally about to go back to sleep,
"Constant!" - "Yes, my lord..."
Only at daybreak did the Emperor get some sleep.
Poor Constant spent many years... - Not feeling very fresh.
His compensation was that he wasn't the only object of imperial affection.
When the Emperor was happy, he'd say, "My dear, Constant, what a great day!"
But he didn't stroke his ear like that, he'd pull it.
He said, "I wasn't the only one.
"The same special treatment was reserved for Roustam
"and Marshal Berthier, Prince of Neuchâtel."
You could say that Constant had the bedroom
and bathroom duties,
Roustam was the bodyguard
and, for military communication, it was Berthier.
Now, of course, being the Emperor's bodyguard
didn't fall on the shoulders of old Roustam,
this was entrusted to the Imperial Guard who protected the Emperor.
They were on enemy territory,
so could come across Cossacks,
but at a time when Germany was under the ferocious grip of Napoleon,
who was drawing blood, gold and revenue from them,
there were many attempted attacks.
A young, idealistic student
would have gladly snuffed the Emperor
and gone down in history as Bonaparte's Ravaillac.
Napoleon referred to Fontainebleau as the abode of kings,
the century's best-situated place in Europe.
In any case, we talked about Napoleon's Fontainebleau,
but it's much more than that:
it was Henry IV's palace, it was Francis I's palace,
it was seven centuries of French monarchy,
it's 1,530 rooms, it's 20,000 square feet of roofing
and 18,000 pieces of work.
And yet, there are 20 times fewer visitors to Fontainebleau
than to Versailles.
We've just righted this wrong,
because Fontainebleau is one of history's most fascinating palaces.
So, please visit or revisit Fontainebleau.
See you next week.
Subtitles: Babel Subtitling - babelSUB.be