the brief Austrian restoration, this new statue was also knocked down by the French, who this time melted it down, turned it into coins, and planted a "Liberty tree" on its site. This tree was itself felled in 1814, during the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. 19th and 20th centuries In the following centuries, official ceremonies and political demonstrations were occasionally held on the square. Cavalcades were organised there in honour of Napoleon in 1810. It is still there that was celebrated the inauguration of William I as ruler of the Netherlands on 21 September 1815. During the Belgian Revolution in 1830, a barricade was erected across the eastern exit of the square next to the current BELvue Museum, facing Brussels Park, with two cannon positioned on it. On 21 July 1831, King Leopold I took the oath as the first King of the Belgians before members of Congress on a platform in front of the Church of St. James on Coudenberg. The funerals of King Leopold III and Prince Charles, prince-regent between 1944 and 1950, also took place on the square. Remaining empty for several decades, from 1848, the centre of the square was once again occupied by a monument (still present today); an equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon, built at a time when the young Belgian State was in search of patriotic landmarks. The blue stone posts connected by iron chains that originally lined the square disappeared in the middle of the 19th century and were replaced by sidewalks. By the turn of the 20th century, the square increasingly became a hub of intense traffic, first with the addition of a horse-drawn tramway (later electrified), then through the rise of the automobile; the statue having roundabout function, from 1921, for north–south and east–west traffic. Present day and future Nowadays, in the north-western corner of the Place Royale lies an archaeological area. Under the paving stones of the square, excavated between 1995 and 2000 and then covered by a concrete slab, are the remains levelled at the end of the 18th century during the development of the square, as well as of the ; the great hall of the former Coudenberg Palace. Classified as a historical monument, these remains are part of a larger ensemble accessible from the BELvue Museum. Below the square also lies the so-called / ("Isabella Street"), a former street that connected the Palace to