École Militaire: Where Cadet Bonaparte Learned War
Why is it significant?
In front of you rises a long, elegant façade of pale stone, with a central pavilion, tall columns and a square dome above them. It looks more like a palace than a barracks, and that was entirely the point. This is the École Militaire, the Military School, founded by King Louis XV in 1751.
Key Facts
| Place | École Militaire: Where Cadet Bonaparte Learned War |
|---|---|
| Address | 1 Place Joffre, 75007 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.85270, 2.30220 |
| Part of Walk | Iron, Glory and Gold: The Eiffel Tower, Trocadéro & Les Invalides in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you rises a long, elegant façade of pale stone, with a central pavilion, tall columns and a square dome above them. It looks more like a palace than a barracks, and that was entirely the point.
This is the École Militaire, the Military School, founded by King Louis XV in 1751. The idea is usually credited to two unlikely partners: the king's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and the financier Joseph Pâris-Duverney. They wanted a school where the sons of poor noble families could be trained as officers for free. The architect was Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the same man who would later design Place de la Concorde. And because the royal treasury was empty, the money had to be found elsewhere, partly from a lottery and partly from a tax on playing cards. Every game of cards in France was helping to build this.
In October 1784 a fifteen-year-old cadet from Corsica arrived here, thin, proud, with a heavy accent that the other boys mocked. His name was Napoleone di Buonaparte. Most cadets needed two or three years. He finished in one, and left as a second lieutenant of artillery, ranked forty-second out of fifty-eight... not exactly a star pupil, in the official list.
A legend claims that one of his teachers wrote in his report that he would go far if circumstances favoured him. Historians doubt the line was ever written. But circumstances did favour him, spectacularly. Barely twenty years later, that same cadet was crowned emperor, and his tomb now lies under the golden dome you will reach at the end of this walk.
The building is still a military institution today, home to France's senior war college, so you will not get inside. In front of it, on the square, Marshal Joffre sits on his bronze horse, the general who stopped the German advance at the Marne in 1914. Now walk round the side of the school to the semicircular square behind it, where a very different kind of building speaks for peace.