After his proclamation as Emperor, Napoleon III made the château one of the official residences of the imperial court and a place of government. The Second Empire saw Saint-Cloud return to its former glory. As a result Saint-Cloud was the scene of many significant political and personal Napoleonic events, notably: the proclamation of the empire in 1804 in the Galerie d'Apollon the baptism of Louis-Napoleon by Pope Pius VII in 1805 the civil marriage of Napoleon and Marie-Louise in 1810 the celebrations for the baptism of the King of Rome in 1811… The palace, in its rearranged and refurbished state, became the official centre of consular and subsequently imperial power.
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In October 1801, the First Consul emitted a decree ordering the reappointment of the château. Bonaparte's soldiers then invaded the Orangerie, driving out the députés and confirming the establishment of a power which put an end to the moribund Directory and gave birth to the Consulate. On the pretext of fear of a conspiracy, the two national assemblies were transferred to the château – the Conseil des Anciens to the Galerie d'Apollon and the Cinq-Cents to the Orangerie. The coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799) took place at Saint-Cloud (more precisely) on 19 Brumaire. Saint-Cloud was however to escape the dismantling suffered by all the other royal properties when in 1793 the Convention passed a decree stipulating that ‘the park and château should be preserved and maintained at the expense of the Republic for the pleasure of the people'. Richard Mique, the architect of the Queen's ‘hameau' at Versailles, refurbished the château, but with the onset of the Revolution most of this furniture was dispersed. The house was occupied by the d'Orléans family for the whole of the 18th century, but in 1785 it was purchased by Louis XVI who gave it to Marie-Antoinette. In the period from 1660-1690, the house was made into a château by Antoine Le Pautre and Jules-Hardoin-Mansart, whilst Le Nôtre laid a park of 460 hectares of which the principal ornament (still-existing today) is the Grand Cascade, one of the most remarkable feats of hydraulic engineering of the 17th century. In 1658, Louis XIV bought the house as a country villa for his brother Philippe, the future Duc d'Orléans. In the 16th century, the Gondi family built a residence, surrounded by 12 hectares of gardens and terraces, at Saint-Cloud on a slope overlooking the Seine and Paris.
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Three months later, the Empire in tatters, the château went up in flames. On 2 December 1852, the Prince-President Louis-Napoleon was named Emperor and on 17 July 1870 the declaration of war against Prussia was signed. In 1830, Charles X was to sign here the Ordonnances which were to lead to his downfall. It was again at Saint-Cloud that the capitulation of Paris was signed, 3 July 1815. Bonaparte seized power there in his coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire, and the Empire was proclaimed from here in a Sénatus-Consulte of. The Château de Saint-Cloud was the scene of some of the significant moments in French 19th century history, and most notably in Napoleonic history in that it saw the rise and fall of both the First and Second Empires.