Pyramid of Austerlitz

In 1804, the French General Auguste de Marmont established an army camp (le Camp d'Utrecht) in this central location in the Batavian Republic, the present Netherlands, where over a period of several months he forged 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.

In the autumn of 1804, satisfied with the military power of the new army, and to occupy his bored soldiers, Marmont had his soldiers build an earth and turf monument inspired by the Great Pyramid of Giza, which Marmont had seen in 1798 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign.

In 1806, despite protests from Marmont, Louis Bonaparte, 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.

This was done on the initiative of the province of Utrecht, the Den Treek-Henschoten estate and the municipality of Woudenberg, which had previously set up the Austerlitz Pyramid Foundation.