abbey came to be regarded at last mainly as the mausoleum of French
royalty, and is still too often so regarded by tourists.

But tho the exquisite Renaissance tombs of the House of Valois would well
deserve a visit on their own account, they are, at St. Denis, but
accessories to the great Basilica. Besides the actual tombs, too, many
monuments were erected here, in the 13th century (by St. Louis) and
afterward, to earlier kings buried elsewhere, some relic of whom, however,
the abbey possest and thus honored. Hence several of the existing tombs
are of far later date than the kings they commemorate; those of the Valois
almost alone are truly contemporary.

At the Revolution, the Basilica suffered irreparable losses. The very
sacred reliquary containing the severed head of St. Denis was destroyed,
and the remains of the martyr and his companions desecrated. The royal
bones and bodies were also disinterred and flung into trenches
indiscriminately. The tombs of the kings were condemned to destruction,
and many (chiefly in metal) were destroyed or melted down, but not a few
were saved with difficulty by the exertions of antiquaries, and were
placed in the Museum of Monuments at Paris (now the Ecole des Beaux-Arts),
of which Alexandre Lenoir was curator. Here, they were greatly hacked
about and mutilated, in order to fit them to their new situations.

At the Restoration, however, they were sent back to St. Denis, together
with many other monuments which had no real place there; but, being housed
in the crypt, they were further clipt to suit their fresh surroundings.
Finally, when the Basilica was restored under Viollet-le-Duc, the tombs
were replaced as nearly as possible in their old positions; but several
intruders from elsewhere are still interspersed among them. Louis XVIII.
brought back the mingled bones of his ancestors from the common trench and