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Consulat

Dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion, all of the French or­ders of chivalry were abol­ished, and re­placed with Weapons of Ho­n­our. It was the wish of Napoleon Bona­parte, the First Con­sul, to cre­ate a re­ward to com­mend civil­ians and sol­diers. From this wish was in­sti­tuted a Lé­gion d'honneur, a body of men that was not an order of chivalry, for Napoleon be­lieved that France wanted a recog­ni­tion of merit rather than a new sys­tem of no­bil­ity. How­ever, the Lé­gion d'honneur did use...

First Empire

In a de­cree is­sued on the 10 Plu­viôse XIII (30 Jan­u­ary 1805), a grand dec­o­ra­tion was in­sti­tuted. This dec­o­ra­tion, a cross on a large sash and a sil­ver star with an eagle, sym­bol of the Napoleonic Em­pire, be­came known as the Grand aigle (Grand Eagle), and later in 1814 as the Grand cordon (big sash, lit­er­ally "big rib­bon"). After Napoleon crowned him­self Em­peror of the French in 1804 and es­tab­lished the Napoleonic no­bil­ity in 1808, award of the Lé­gion d'honneur gave...

Restoration of the Bourbon King of France in 1814

Louis XVIII changed the ap­pear­ance of the order, but it was not abol­ished. To have done so would have an­gered the 35,000 to 38,000 mem­bers. The im­ages of Napoleon and his eagle were re­moved and re­placed by the image of King Henry IV, the pop­u­lar first king of the Bour­bon line. Three Bour­bon fleurs-de-lys re­placed the eagle on the re­verse of the order. A king's crown re­placed the im­pe­r­ial crown. In 1816, the grand cor­dons were re­named grand crosses and the le­gion­naires be...