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The Pyramid of Austerlitz is a 36-metre-high pyramid of earth, built in 1804 by Napoleon's soldiers on one of the highest points of the Utrecht Hill Ridge, in the municipality of Woudenberg, the Netherlands. [1] Atop the pyramid is a stone obelisk from 1894.
In 1804, the French General Auguste de Marmont established an army camp (le Camp d'Utrecht) in this central location in the Batavian Republic, the present Netherlands, where over a period of several months he forged together various battalions into a large, well-trained army, capable of beating the British enemy should there be any repetition of the invasion of 1799. In the autumn of 1804, satisfied with the military power of the new army, and to occupy his bored soldiers, Marmont had his soldiers build an earth and turf monument inspired by the Great Pyramid of Giza, which Marmont had seen in 1798 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Even the erosion-exposed stepped surface was imitated. Construction lasted 27 days. The pyramid hill was 36 metres (118 ft) high, and surmounted by a 13-metre (43 ft) wooden obelisk. It was named "Mont Marmont" or "Marmontberg".
In the summer of 1805, Marmont departed with his army to southern Germany to fight in the War of the Third Coalition, which culminated in the Battle of Austerlitz (now Slavkov u Brna), the battle in which Napoleon decisively defeated the Russians and Austrians.
In 1806, despite protests from Marmont, Louis Bonaparte, the new king of Holland, renamed the hill the Pyramid of Austerlitz, and gave the same name to the trading post at the nearby camp of Bois-en-Ville.
After leaving the Netherlands in 1805, Marmont gave the monument and the use of the nearby homestead Henschoten to three soldiers, Louis Faivre, Jean Baptiste La Rouche and Barend Philpsz, who were also to maintain the pyramid. Nevertheless, the wooden obelisk soon deteriorated, and was demolished in 1808. In 1816 the Marmont pyramid and its associated land were sold to the future mayor of Utrecht, Hubert MAJ van Asch van Wijk.
In 1894, Johannes Bernardus de Beaufort, who both owned the Henschoten estate on which the pyramid stood and was mayor of Woudenberg, had the current stone obelisk built on the pyramid. This also began to collapse.
In view of its 200th anniversary in 2004, the highly dilapidated pyramid was restored between 2001 and 2004. This was done on the initiative of the province of Utrecht, the Den Treek-Henschoten estate and the municipality of Woudenberg, which had previously set up the Austerlitz Pyramid Foundation.
The very dry summer of 2003, followed by heavy rain in 2004, caused further subsidence, and restoration was resumed in 2007. The pyramid was reopened to visitors in 2008, along with a new visitor centre interpreting the period of French rule in the Netherlands. Further piling was carried out in 2010 and 2012 to stabilise the mound.
The Pyramid of Austerlitz is an inspiration for the larger Lion of Waterloo, the pyramid built by King William I as a monument to the Battle of Waterloo where Napoleon was defeated. The mound marks the spot where his son William II was injured.
The Pyramid is a national monument, monument number 39543.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal von Blücher. The battle was contemporaneously known as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France or La Belle Alliance in Prussia.
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important and decisive engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire. The decisive victory of Napoleon's Grande Armée at Austerlitz brought the War of the Third Coalition to a rapid end, with the Treaty of Pressburg signed by the Austrians later in the month. The battle is often cited as a tactical masterpiece, in the same league as other historic engagements like Cannae or Gaugamela.
Woudenberg is a town and municipality in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. In 2021, it had a population of 13,639.
War of the Third Coalition was a European conflict spanning 1805 to 1806. During the war, France and its client states under Napoleon I opposed an alliance, the Third Coalition, which was made up of the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, Naples, Sicily, and Sweden. Prussia remained neutral during the war.
The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory. The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, establishing the French Consulate, and ends during the Hundred Days and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. The Congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French Revolution days. Napoleon brought political stability to a land torn by revolution and war. He made peace with the Roman Catholic Church and reversed the most radical religious policies of the Convention. In 1804 Napoleon promulgated the Civil Code, a revised body of civil law, which also helped stabilize French society. The Civil Code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men and established a merit-based society in which individuals advanced in education and employment because of talent rather than birth or social standing. The Civil Code confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary policies of the National Assembly but retracted measures passed by the more radical Convention. The code restored patriarchal authority in the family, for example, by making women and children subservient to male heads of households.
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Adolphe Édouard Casimir Joseph Mortier, Duke of Treviso, was a French military commander and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon I, who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He served as Minister of War and Prime Minister of France from 1834 to 1835. He was one of 18 people killed in 1835 during Giuseppe Marco Fieschi's assassination attempt on King Louis Philippe I.
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General Dominique-Joseph René Vandamme, Count of Unseburg was a French military officer, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He was a dedicated career soldier with a reputation as an excellent division and corps commander. However he had a nasty disposition that alienated his colleagues, and would publicly criticize Napoleon, who never appointed him marshal.
The Lion's Mound is a large conical artificial hill in the municipality of Braine-l'Alleud, Walloon Brabant, Belgium. King William I of the Netherlands ordered its construction in 1820, and it was completed in 1826. It commemorates the location on the battlefield of Waterloo where a musket ball hit the shoulder of King William II of the Netherlands and knocked him from his horse during the battle. It is also a memorial of the Battle of Quatre Bras, which had been fought two days earlier, on 16 June 1815.
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