Talisman of two emperors
QUESTION Napoleon is said to have possessed the talisman of Charlemagne. What was this and where is it now?
LEGEND has it that the talisman of Charlemagne belonged to the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, crowned in AD800. Also King of the Franks, he created an empire by conquering and Christianising the Saxons, Lombards and Avars, and restoring areas of Italy to Pope Leo III.
In gold filigree and epoussé, the talisman is seven centimetres high and adorned with precious stones. On its front a glass cabochon magnifies a cross made of two fragments meant to be from the True Cross and on the back is a translucent sapphire.
One year after his coronation, as a present from the Pope for chasing the Lombards out of Italy, Charlemagne was given the talisman by either Haroun al-Rashid or Empress Irene of Athens. He is said to have worn it in battle and have around his neck when buried in the choir of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen Cathedral, Germany.
The burial vault was opened numerous times over the years and each time bits of Charlemagne’s remains and relics were stolen, some taken to be put into beautiful reliquaries in the city of Aachen.
It was there in the summer of 1804, when the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Joséphine de Beauharnais, had gone to take the waters at Aachen that she was given the talisman (which is itself a reliquary) by a monsignor appointed by Napoleon.
After standing in reflection before the tomb of Charlemagne, Napoleon let Joséphine keep the talisman for the rest of her life, which she left to her daughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, in 1814.
Hortense treasured talismans – she wore Charlemagne’s as a pendant in one of her portraits – and also liked to give them to those she loved, so upon her death in 1837 she bequeathed it to her son, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III), who passed it on to his wife, Empress Eugénie.
Eugénie held on to it until her old age when she intended to give the talisman back to Aachen, feeling it really belonged there. But after the First World War, upset with the Germans for the shelling of the Cathedral of Reims in France (which was seen as a deliberate act of vandalism and attack on French culture) she instead donated it to the cathedral in 1919.
The talisman of Charlemagne became one of the treasures of the Tau Palace in Reims, where it stays today. Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wiltshire.
QUESTION How did Atmospheric Road in Dalkey, south Dublin, get its name?
THIS road in Dalkey is named after the atmospheric railway worked by pneumatic air, that linked Dalkey and what is now Dún Laoghaire, between July 1844 and April 1854.
The line ran for a distance of 2,800 metres and the trains were powered by a piston, laid on the railway track, which was driven by air pumped into a 38-centimetre diameter pipe. The pressurised air used in this locomotive action was produced by a huge air pump worked by a steam engine; the engine house stood on what is now Atmospheric Road.
This engine house had a tall chimney and a huge fly wheel, but this has long since been demolished. A house called The Bungalow now stands on the site.
It’s usual for trains to be pulled by an engine, but the atmospheric railway didn’t have an engine; the power of the high pressure air ‘sucked’ the train up the hill to Dalkey. The pipe ended 100m before the railway reached Dalkey station and the trains reached the station under the power of their own momentum.
On the return journey, from Dalkey to what was then Kingstown station (Dún Laoghaire), the train travelled downhill under gravity. The train came down the hill without any means of propulsion, but quite often, if it didn’t have enough momentum to reach Kingstown railway station, thirdclass passengers had to get out and push. First- and second-class passengers were exempt from this obligation!
The unique railway system prospered, despite lingering technical problems. A complex flap and valve system let the piston arm pass the length of the cast-iron pipe in the centre of the track, but one of the problems was that the flaps underneath the trains had to be greased to keep a tight seal. This grease attracted local rats in droves, while in summer, the grease melted and in winter, the leather flaps froze.
Despite these drawbacks, the atmospheric trains could travel quite fast, up to around 50kph uphill and slightly less downhill, which compared very favourably with conventional railways. The line itself was operated by the Dublin and Kingstown Railway Company, which also ran the railway system linking Kingstown to Dublin Westland Row – Ireland’s first railway, which opened in 1834.
The idea of the pneumatic railway came from Isambard King- dom Brunel, the great English railway pioneer. Once the railway to Dalkey was operational, it created a huge amount of interest, both in Ireland and overseas. The new invention received lots of very favourable international press coverage.
But in 1854, it was decided to close the atmospheric railway down, partly to facilitate the expansion of the railway system south from Kingstown, going in the direction of Wexford.
Much of the line of the atmospheric railway was identical with the track of the modern rail track that goes south immediately after Dún Laoghaire station. The old granite bridge at Castlepark Road in Dalkey is the only reminder left of the old railway, apart from a couple of names.
The name of this remarkable railway is perpetuated in the name of Atmospheric Road, which adjoins the cutting from Castlepark Road to Barnhill Road. What was once the track of the old line is still known locally as ‘the Metals’.
Only two other similar railways were built, one in south Devon in England, the other in Paris, although in recent years, the technology has been revived in Brazil and Indonesia. Paul Greene, Dalkey, Co. Dublin.
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