Order of the Reunion

Order of the Reunion Ordre de la Réunion
Insignia of the Order
Awarded by First French Empire
Type	Order of merit
Status	Abolished in 1815
Statistics
Established	October 1811
Precedence
Next (higher)	Legion d'Honneur
Next (lower)	Order of the Iron Crown
Ribbon of the Order

The Order of the Reunion (French: Ordre de la Réunion) was an order of merit of the First French Empire, set up to be awarded to Frenchmen and foreigners to reward services in the civil service, magistracy and army, particularly those from areas newly annexed to France, such as the Kingdom of Holland. It was established in 1811 and abolished in 1815. There were similar orders in the other states annexed by France, such as the Palatinate, Papal States, Tuscany and Piedmont, including the Order of the Lion of the Palatinate, the Order of the Golden Spur, the Cross of St John Lateran, the Cross of St Stephen, the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation and the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.

It was set up on 11 or 18 October 1811 by Napoleon I, on his first visit to the Paleis op de Dam in Amsterdam after his 1810 annexation of the Kingdom of Holland to France. It was set up as an order of merit to replace Louis Bonaparte's Order of the Union. It had three ranks and Napoleon himself was its Grand Master. The knights of the order were authorised to bear their old decorations until 1 April or exchange them for ones of the new order. Within the First French Empire's hierarchy of orders it was second only to the Légion d'honneur, with the Order of the Iron Crown being the third in rank. Napoleon disliked the idea of a poor nobility and so assigned 500,000 francs annually to provide pensions to the order's members.

In a letter to Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoleon wrote that an order with the motto "Bien faire et laisser dire" ("Do well and let say"), the motto of the Order of the Union, was not suited to a great empire, saying "We must look for a motto which gives a sense of the advantages of the union of the Baltic, Mediterranean, Adriatic and the [Atlantic] Ocean. This great event that truly characterises the Empire, could be called the Order of the Union.". Napoleon eventually occupied large territories in north-west Germany and the Illyrian provinces on the Dalmatian coast - the name of the order he founded referred to the fact that (for the first time since the Roman Empire) all access points to the sea were under the same authority.