The Order of the Reunion (french: link=no, Ordre de la Réunion) was an
order of merit
The Order of Merit (french: link=no, Ordre du Mérite) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms, recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by K ...
of the
First French Empire
The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire (; Latin: ) after 1809, also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Eu ...
, set up to be awarded to Frenchmen and foreigners to reward services in the civil service, magistracy and army, particularly those from areas newly annexed to France, such as the
Kingdom of Holland
The Kingdom of Holland ( nl, Holland (contemporary), (modern); french: Royaume de Hollande) was created by Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrowing the Batavian Republic in March 1806 in order to better control the Netherlands. Since becoming Emperor ...
. It was established in 1811 and abolished in 1815. There were similar orders in the other states annexed by France, such as the
Palatinate,
Papal States
The Papal States ( ; it, Stato Pontificio, ), officially the State of the Church ( it, Stato della Chiesa, ; la, Status Ecclesiasticus;), were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope fro ...
,
Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; it, Toscana ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of about 3.8 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence (''Firenze'').
Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, art ...
and
Piedmont
it, Piemontese
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, including the
Order of the Lion of Bavaria, the
Order of the Golden Spur
The Order of the Golden Spur ( it, Ordine dello Speron d'Oro, french: Ordre de l'Éperon d'or), officially known also as the Order of the Golden Militia ( la, Ordo Militia Aurata, it, Milizia Aurata), is a papal order of knighthood conferre ...
, the
Order of St John Lateran, the
Order of Saint Stephen
The Order of Saint Stephen (Official: Sacro Militare Ordine di Santo Stefano Papa e Martire, "Holy Military Order of St. Stephen Pope and Martyr") is a Roman Catholic Tuscan dynastic military order founded in 1561. The order was created by C ...
, the
Order of the Most Holy Annunciation
The Order of the Most Holy AnnunciationIn Italian: ''Ordine della Santissima Annunziata'' ( la, Ordo Sanctissimae Annuntiationis), also known as the Turchine or Blue Nuns, as well as the Celestine Nuns, is a Roman Catholic religious order of co ...
and the
Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
The Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus ( it, Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro) (abbreviated OSSML) is a Roman Catholic dynastic order of knighthood bestowed by the royal House of Savoy. It is the second-oldest order of knighthood in the wo ...
.
History
It was set up on 18 October 1811 by
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
,
on his first visit to the
Paleis op de Dam in Amsterdam after his 1810 annexation of the
Kingdom of Holland
The Kingdom of Holland ( nl, Holland (contemporary), (modern); french: Royaume de Hollande) was created by Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrowing the Batavian Republic in March 1806 in order to better control the Netherlands. Since becoming Emperor ...
to France. It was set up as an order of merit to replace
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (born Luigi Buonaparte; 2 September 1778 – 25 July 1846) was a younger brother of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. He was a monarch in his own right from 1806 to 1810, ruling over the Kingdom of Holland (a French cl ...
's
Order of the Union
The Order of the Union ( nl, Orde van de Unie) was a chivalric order established in 1806 by Louis Bonaparte, younger brother of Napoleon I, for the Kingdom of Holland. The order was abolished in 1811 when the French Empire absorbed the Kingdom ...
. It had three ranks and Napoleon himself was its Grand Master. The knights of the order were authorised to wear their old decorations until 1 April or exchange them for ones of the new order. Within the
First French Empire
The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire (; Latin: ) after 1809, also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Eu ...
's hierarchy of orders it was second only to the
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...
, with the
Order of the Iron Crown
The Order of the Iron Crown ( it, link=no, Ordine della Corona Ferrea) was an order of merit that was established on 5 June 1805 in the Kingdom of Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte under his title of Napoleon I, King of Italy.
The order took its name ...
being the third in rank. Napoleon disliked the idea of a poor nobility and so assigned 500,000 francs annually to provide pensions to the order's members.
In a letter to
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès
Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, Duke of Parma (, 18 October 17538 March 1824), was a French nobleman, lawyer, freemason and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire. He is best remembered as one of the authors of the N ...
, Napoleon wrote that an order with the motto "Bien faire et laisser dire" ("Do well and let say"), the motto of the Order of the Union, was not suited to a great empire, saying "We must look for a motto which gives a sense of the advantages of the union of the Baltic, Mediterranean, Adriatic and the
tlanticOcean. This great event that truly characterises the Empire, could be called the Order of the Union." Napoleon eventually occupied large territories in north-west Germany and the Illyrian provinces on the Dalmatian coast - the name of the order he founded referred to the fact that (for the first time since the Roman Empire) all access points to the sea were under the same authority.
Napoleon reserved himself the exclusive right to exclude someone from the order or nominate them to it – Napoleon felt his brother Louis had been too generous in giving out medals. The order was headed by the Frenchman
Jean-Baptiste de Nompère de Champagny Jean-Baptiste de Nompère de Champagny, 1st Duc de Cadore (4 August 1756 – 3 July 1834) was a French admiral and politician.
He was born in Roanne, Loire. Entering the French royal navy in 1774, he fought through the war in America and resigned ...
as Grand Chancellor and the Dutchman
Maarten van der Goes van Dirxland
Maarten, Baron van der Goes van Dirxland (3 January 1751, The Hague - 10 July 1826, The Hague) was a Dutch politician who served as government minister. He was a moderate within the Patriots faction that came to govern the Batavian Republic. His ...
as Grand Treasurer and they and the order had a joint base in the
Hôtel du Châtelet
The hôtel du Châtelet is a '' hôtel particulier'', a kind of large townhouse of France, at 127, rue de Grenelle, in the 7th arrondissement, Paris. The building is now the home of the Ministry of Labour and the minister’s official residence.
...
at Paris. The knights of the Order of the Reunion had the right to bear the title "Knight" and, when they enjoyed an annual income of 3,000 francs, could also receive letters of nobility making them and their descendants Knights of the Empire.
Charles-François Lebrun
Charles-François Lebrun, 1st duc de Plaisance (, 19 March 1739 – 16 June 1824), was a French statesman who served as Third Consul of the French Republic and was later created Arch-Treasurer and Prince of the Empire by Napoleon I.
Biog ...
,
duc de Plaisance {{Unreferenced, date=June 2019, bot=noref (GreenC bot)
The French title of duc de Plaisance (English: Duke of Piacenza) was created on 24 April 1808 by Napoleon I for Charles-François Lebrun, Arch-Treasurer of the Empire and former Consul. The tit ...
and Napoleon's representative in Amsterdam as "''
Prins-stadhouder''", oversaw the order and its membership numbers.
Louis continued to wear ‘his’ Order of the Union throughout his life and old-established nobles did not receive the Order of the Reunion. The Dutch statesmen
Godert van der Capellen
Godert Alexander Gerard Philip, Baron van der Capellen (December 15, 1778 – April 10, 1848) was a Dutch statesman from Utrecht (city), Utrecht.
History
Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, Van der Capellen was the son of a cavalry colonel Alexander Ph ...
,
Anton Reinhard Falck
Anton Reinhard Falck (19 March 1777 in Utrecht16 March 1843 in Brussels) was a Dutch statesman.
He studied at the University of Leiden, and entered the Dutch diplomat service, being appointed to the legation at Madrid, Spain. Under King Louis ...
and
Vischer Vischer is a surname, and my refer to:
* Vischer family of Nuremberg, a family of sculptors active in Nuremberg between 1453 and 1549
**Hermann Vischer, the Elder (died 1487)
**Peter Vischer the Elder (1455–1529)
** Hermann Vischer, the Younger ...
did not accept the Order of the Reunion, thinking it humiliating to the Netherlands. Van Capellen noted that "the
rder'soath was of such a nature to me that I forever refused it, with better opportunities to cooperate in restoring our independence. All the other Grand Crosses, Commanders and Knights of the Dutch Order of the Union thought the new Order was just
he Order of the Unionunder a different name and signed up to it."
Knights of the new Order were appointed right up to the end of the First Empire in 1814. On their initial restoration in 1814 the Bourbons neither abolished nor awarded the Order of the Reunion and Napoleon awarded it during the
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days (french: les Cent-Jours ), also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on20 March 1815 and the second restoration ...
. On 28 July 1815
Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in ...
of France abolished it, asking its knights to return their gold and silver badges to the chancellery of the Legion d’Honneur. Those returned included few from the Netherlands since the cross was the replacement for the Order of the Union and the Dutch – having seen their country looted and drained of manpower for so long by the French – were unwilling to send their gold and silver awards back to Paris.
Numbers
The target number of members for the order was at least 10,000 knights, 2,000 commanders and 500 grand cross members, though in the end it only reached 527 (59 from Holland), 90 (21 from Holland) and 64 (29 from Holland) respectively. According to a statement by Van der Goes Dirxland, 11 grand crosses, 36 commanders’ crosses and 59 knights’ crosses were handed in and melted down. The French state replaced them, though it was usually paid for by the recipient himself, honouring the awards of the Order of the Reunion. An official statement said that by its end the order had been awarded 1,622 times, with 1,364 knights, 127 commanders and 131 grand crosses. 614 of these cases involved a foreigner, that is those who were not subjects of Napoleon. Since the order began as a replacement for the Order of the Union, 681 recipients had previously borne the Order of the Union, one third to one half of whom were Dutch.
Decorations
The medal of the Order of the Reunion was a gold enamelled twelve-pointed star with a ball on each point. Between each point was a bundle of golden spears. At its centre was a circle surrounded in gold and blue, encircled by a gold laurel wreath and bearing a gold ‘N’ on a gold ground. On the blue circle was written ‘A JAMAIS’ (forever).
The reverse is similar to the obverse but bears an empty throne instead of the imperial monogram. In front of the throne is the
Capitoline Wolf
The Capitoline Wolf (Italian: ''Lupa Capitolina'') is a bronze sculpture depicting a scene from the legend of the founding of Rome. The sculpture shows a she-wolf suckling the mythical twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. According to the ...
suckling Romulus and Remus. The throne is also surrounded by symbols of the lands annexed by France – a Florentine lily, a Dutch lion with a sheaf of nine arrows (symbol of the old
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, also known as the (Seven) United Provinces, officially as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: ''Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden''), and commonly referred to in historiography ...
) supporting the throne, a Piedmontese coat of arms and two tridents symbolizing the ports of Hamburg and Genoa. On the surrounding circlet is ‘TOUT POUR L’EMPIRE’ (all for the Empire). On the front the medal was suspended from a closed crown and on the back by a diadem and blue ring bearing the words ‘FONDATEUR’ (founder) and ‘NAPOLEON’. These were both attached to a
moiré-effect blue ribbon. There were two models of the Grand Cross star – a star bearing an embroidered Napoleonic crowned eagle on an oval with a shield and the empty throne, and a massive sterling silver plaque in the shape of the medal.
The
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire (; officially the French Empire, ), was the 18-year Empire, Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 14 January 1852 to 27 October 1870, between the French Second Republic, Second and the French Third Republic ...
saw high demand for souvenirs from the First Empire and so new medals of the Orders of the Union and Reunion were produced. These are hard to distinguish from the originals, though the silver star is probably a mid-19th-century invention, since in 1811 the star was almost always worn in an embroidered form.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Order Of The Reunion
*
1811 establishments in France
Reunion
Reunion may refer to:
* Class reunion
* Family reunion
Reunion, Réunion, Re-union, Reunions or The Reunion may also refer to:
Places
* Réunion, a French overseas department and island in the Indian Ocean
* Reunion, Commerce City, Colorado, U ...
Awards established in 1811