Lot Essay
On 12 May 1840 the French Home Office announced to Parliament that King Louis-Philippe had ordered for Napoleon's ashes to be returned to France. Louis-Philippe sent his third son, the Prince de Joinville, to Saint Helena where Napoleon had died nineteen years earlier. The Prince reached the island in October. On 15 December 1840 the ashes entered Paris through the Arc de Triomphe. The funeral was celebrated in the Invalides that day. This drawing depicts the allegorical entry of the coffin into the Invalides.