was not until April 1775, in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine's reign as governor-general of the Austrian Netherlands, that the States of Brabant; the representation of the three estates (nobility, clergy and commoners) to the court of the Duke of Brabant, proposed to erect a statue in his honour. Georg Adam von Starhemberg, minister plenipotentiary to Empress Maria Theresa, suggested placing it before the ruins that had been levelled for the occasion. In the process, he proposed enlarging the former square in front of the palace, lining it with regular buildings and redesigning the park. At the same time, the Viennese representative informed the Brussels' authorities of the governor's wish for the old park to be given a new shape "in order to increase the comfort of the public in this way and at the same time contribute to the embellishment of the capital and to make it by this means worthy of the stay of the Court and the curiosity of foreigners". The Empress granted conditional approval on 1 July 1775, provided that the City of Brussels would bear the costs. The city undertook the levelling of the ground for the construction of the park and the three adjacent roads; the Rue Royale/Koningsstraat, the Rue du Brabant/Brabantstraat (now the Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat) and the /, while the government took charge of the development of the park itself. The new park was designed and laid out between 1776 and 1783 in a neoclassical style by the French architect Gilles-Barnabé Guimard and the Austrian landscape architect , as part of an urban project including the Place Royale/Koningsplein. This park resolutely marked a break with the past, everything having been flattened and redone for the occasion; 1218 trees were felled to trace the new paths and another 3284 were planted. This marked the first major work of proactive urban planning carried out in Brussels to completely renew an entire district of the city. Later history The park witnessed many events unfold during its history. In 1793, French Revolutionaries known as the sans-culottes destroyed the sculptures and overthrew the busts of the Roman emperors that adorned it. The City of Brussels, which had managed the park since 1797 before becoming its owner by royal decree of 23 April 1817, took it upon itself to repair the damage and soon repopulated the park with its current statues