ABSTRACT
In 1837 King Louis Philippe (r. 1830-48) opened the Palace of Versailles to the French public. In the midst of the tumultuous July Monarchy, the king wished to foster a sense of national reconciliation and cultivate his populist image by repurposing the royal palace-perhaps the most visible monument to the grandiose conservative policies of his predecessors-as a national museum dedicated to the past glories of France. By reminding the public of carefully selected moments of French greatness, many of which featured the intervention of strong kings, Louis Philippe also hoped to convince the French citizenry of the benefits to their sense of national pride of maintaining a monarch. In response to the museum increasing in size and popularity over the next decade, the king ordered the renovation of a group of rooms prominently located on the palace’s first floor, inaugurating the Salles des Croisades in 1843. The new gallery was a monument to French crusading history, containing approximately 150 paintings and 300 drawings by the finest artists of the day, as well as the family crests of those able to prove a crusader among their ancestors.1 Given the plethora of royal and national symbols at his disposal, it is significant that the king relied on the medieval institution of crusading to help assuage the feeling of political disunity that had plagued France since 1789.
