Napoleon at the sacking of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792 in Maurice Réalier-Dumas's painting

Napoleon during the sacking of the Tuileries on 10 August 1792. Painting by Maurice Réalier-Dumas. In time Napoleon would come to be ashamed of the horrors he witnessed and took part in. From the wall, Louis XVI gazes down at the then lieutenant Buonaparte, in a recent portrait of 1779 by Antoine-François Callet. Stendhal would quote Napoleon, who once summed up his career in these words: “I found a wreath in the gutter, wiped off the mud that covered it and set it upon my own head.” Who knows, perhaps that crown came from this very room of the Tuileries