Statue de Napoléon, Bronze statue in Brienne-le-Château, France
The Statue de Napoléon is a bronze sculpture by Louis Rochet, placed in front of the east facade of the town hall in Brienne-le-Château, in the Aube department. It is classified as a war memorial and work of art, and it shows the young Bonaparte in school uniform, right hand tucked into his vest, left hand holding a book.
The statue was created between 1855 and 1859, during the same period the town hall was built, and inaugurated on May 29, 1859, in a public ceremony. It was listed as a historic monument in 1995, giving it legal protection.
The statue shows Napoleon as a 15-year-old student in the uniform of the Brienne military school, holding a book in his left hand: Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. The pedestal carries a sentence Napoleon himself wrote about Brienne, saying the town was his homeland in his mind because it was where he first felt the impressions of becoming a man.
The statue stands directly in front of the town hall and is easy to spot while walking through the center of Brienne-le-Château. It is always accessible from the outside, and nearby there are other Napoleon-related sites that can be visited on the same trip.
Although the statue shows a young Napoleon, the original model by Louis Rochet was made in plaster and is now kept at the Malmaison castle. The bronze version in Brienne is therefore a copy, which makes it no less real as a record of what a 15-year-old future emperor looked like before anyone knew who he would become.
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