Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the
nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to
various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the
gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been
carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and
rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.

Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind
them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to
the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons,
they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable
site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of
Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in
France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the
height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The
plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to
which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of
Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four
sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital
and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and
industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over
fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy--an extent which is about
that of the present Palace of the Trocadero. The whole of the plain of
Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be
transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de
Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the
Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St.
Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.

This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the
foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of
Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and
ammunition more than for palaces and parks. After the battle of
Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced
palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great--a quiet retreat
where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had
the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication
of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew,