Pyramid of Austerlitz

The Pyramid of Austerlitz is a 36 metre high pyramid of earth, built in 1804 by Napoleon's soldiers on one of the highest points of the Utrecht ridge, in the municipality of Woudenberg. Atop the pyramid is a stone obelisk from 1894.

In 1804 the French General Auguste de Marmont established an army camp in this central location in the Batavian Republic, the present Netherlands, (le Camp d'Utrecht) where over a period of several months he managed to forge together various battalions into a large, well-trained army, capable of beating the British enemy should there be any repetition of the invasion of 1799. Satisfied with the military power of the new army, and to occupy his bored soldiers, in the autumn of 1804 Marmont had his soldiers build an earth and turf monument inspired by the pyramid of Giza, which Marmont had seen in 1798 during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Even the erosion-exposed stepped surface was imitated. Construction lasted 27 days. The pyramid hill was 36 metres high and was surmounted by a 13 metre high wooden obelisk. It was named "Mont Marmont" or "Marmontberg".

In the summer of 1805 Marmont departed with his army to southern Germany to fight in the War of the Third Coalition which culminated in the Battle of Austerlitz (now Slavkov u Brna), the battle in which Napoleon decisively defeated the Russians and Austrians.

In 1806, despite protests from Marmont, Louis Napoleon, the new king of Holland, renamed the hill the Pyramid of Austerlitz, and gave the same name to the trading post at the nearby camp of Bois-en-Ville.

After leaving the Netherlands in 1805, Marmont gave the monument and the use of the nearby homestead Henschoten to three soldiers, Louis Faivre, Jean Baptiste La Rouche and Barend Philpsz, who were also to maintain the pyramid. Nevertheless, the wooden obelisk soon deteriorated, and was demolished in 1808. In 1816 the Marmont pyramid and its associated land were sold to the future mayor of Utrecht, Hubert MAJ van Asch van Wijk.

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