der Goes Dirxland, 11 grand crosses, 36 commanders’ crosses and 59 knights’ crosses were handed in and melted down. The French state replaced them, though it was usually paid for by the recipient himself, honouring the awards of the Order of the Reunion. An official statement said that by its end the order had been awarded 1,622 times, with 1,364 knights, 127 commanders and 131 grand crosses. 614 of these cases involved a foreigner, that is those who were not subjects of Napoleon. Since the order began as a replacement for the Order of the Union, 681 recipients had previously borne the Order of the Union, one third to one half of whom were Dutch. Decorations The medal of the Order of the Reunion was a gold enamelled twelve-pointed star with a ball on each point. Between each point was a bundle of golden spears. At its centre was a circle surrounded in gold and blue, encircled by a gold laurel wreath and bearing a gold ‘N’ on a gold ground. On the blue circle was written ‘A JAMAIS’ (forever). The reverse is similar to the obverse but bears an empty throne instead of the imperial monogram. In front of the throne is the Capitoline Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. The throne is also surrounded by symbols of the lands annexed by France – a Florentine lily, a Dutch lion with a sheaf of nine arrows (symbol of the old Dutch Republic) supporting the throne, a Piedmontese coat of arms and two tridents symbolizing the ports of Hamburg and Genoa. On the surrounding circlet is ‘TOUT POUR L’EMPIRE’ (all for the Empire). On the front the medal was suspended from a closed crown and on the back by a diadem and blue ring bearing the words ‘FONDATEUR’ (founder) and ‘NAPOLEON’. These were both attached to a moiré-effect blue ribbon. There were two models of the Grand Cross star – a star bearing an embroidered Napoleonic crowned eagle on an oval with a shield and the empty throne, and a massive sterling silver plaque in the shape of the medal. The Second French Empire saw high demand for souvenirs from the First Empire and so new medals of the Orders of the Union and Reunion were produced. These are hard to distinguish from the originals, though the silver star is probably a mid-19th-century invention, since in 1811 the star was almost