On the 5th of April 1127, the newly elected Count William of Flanders arrived in Bruges not as a conqueror, but as a party to a formal truce. The canons of Saint Donatian met him at twilight carrying relics of saints, and the event was less a celebration of power and more a negotiation of rights. In the presence of the king and the assembled citizens, the charter of the liberty of the church and the privileges of Saint Donatian were read aloud before all. The king and count took an oath on the relics of saints, binding themselves to accept the conditions set by the city. This Joyous Advent was a political bargain where the ruler's presence legitimated the city's ancient liberties, creating a reciprocal bond of loyalty and fealty that defined the earliest stage of the royal entry. The ceremony was a parley between the territorial magnate and the walled city, where the reiteration of the city's rights was the central purpose, far removed from the fawning triumphalism that would later disguise the ritual.
The Theater of Power
By the 14th century, the simple exchange of oaths had evolved into a massive theatrical production designed to glorify the absolute monarch. Cities began to stage elaborate dramas re-enacting battles or legends, and the procession paused repeatedly for allegorical figures to address the prince. These tableaux, initially religious, gradually developed into a repertory of arches and street-theatres presenting a remarkably consistent visual vocabulary. Fortune with her wheel, the seven virtues, and the Nine Worthies became standard motifs, and the honoree was counted among them. The procession might halt to admire a genealogical tree or pass under a temporary classical-style triumphal arch with posed actors standing in for statuary. By the mid-17th century, these entertainments were as spectacular as the staged naval battles and operas that courts staged for themselves. The court now often had a major role in both designing and financing entries, which increasingly devoted themselves to the glorification of the ruler as hero, leaving the old emphasis on his obligations behind.
The Classical Revival
The revival of classical learning in the 15th and 16th centuries transformed the royal entry into a display of conspicuous learning and imperial ambition. Educated folk of the Middle Ages had close at hand an example of an allegorical series of entries at a wedding in Martianus Capella's On the Wedding of Philology and Mercury, but the true inspiration came from the literary descriptions of the Roman triumph found in Livy, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio. Alfonso V of Aragon entered Naples in 1443 seated on a triumphal car under a baldachin, a scene preserved in a surviving bas-relief that became the earliest triumphal entry all'antica in Europe. Mantegna's great mural of the Triumphs of Caesar became the standard source for details borrowed by Habsburg rulers, who claimed the Imperial legacy of Rome. Elaborate triumphal carts, often pulled by unicorns or disguised oxen, replaced the earlier canopy held over the prince on horseback. The woodcuts and text of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499 and Petrarch's I Trionfi were also well-known sources, infusing the entertainments with matter from the abstruse worlds of Renaissance emblems and hermeticism.
Although the essence of an entry was supposed to be a peaceful, festive occasion, several entries actually followed military action by the town against their ruler, and were very tense affairs. In 1507, the population of Genoa revolted against the French who had conquered them in 1499, and Louis XII of France defeated the Genoan army outside the city. The city agreed to a capitulation that included an entry followed by the execution of the Doge and other leaders of the revolt. Louis entered in full armour, holding a naked sword, which he struck against the portal as he entered the city, saying, Proud Genoa! I have won you with my sword in my hand. Similarly, Charles V entered Rome in splendour less than three years after his army had sacked the city. The famously troublesome citizens of Ghent revolted against Philip the Good in 1453 and Charles V in 1539, after which Charles arrived with a large army and was greeted with an entry. A few weeks later he dictated the programme of a deliberately humiliating anti-festival, with the burghers coming barefoot with nooses round their necks to beg forgiveness from him.
The Art of the Ephemeral
To the occasional irritation of modern art historians, many of the great artists of the time spent a good deal of time on the ephemeral decorations for entries and other festivities. Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Holbein, Andrea del Sarto, Perino del Vaga, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Rubens all contributed to these vanished themes. For some court artists, such as Inigo Jones or Jacques Bellange, it seems to have been their major occupation, and both Giulio Romano and Giorgio Vasari were very heavily engaged in such work. Composers from Lassus and Monteverdi to John Dowland, and writers such as Tasso, Ronsard, Ben Jonson, and Dryden also contributed. The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, went a step further, commissioning enormous virtual triumphs that existed solely in the form of print. The Triumphal Arch, the largest print ever made, was produced in an edition of seven hundred copies for distribution to friendly cities and princes. It was intended to be hand-coloured and then pasted to a wall, serving as a permanent record of a fleeting moment.
The Silent City
During the 17th century the scale of entries began to decline, and there was a clear trend, led from Medici Florence, to transfer festivities involving the monarch into the private world of the court. The intermezzi developed in Florence, the ballet de cour that spread from Paris, the English masque, and even elaborate equestrian ballets all increased as entries declined. The cultural atmosphere of Protestantism was less favourable to the royal entry. In the new Dutch Republic entries ceased altogether. In England, the entry of James I into London in 1604 was the last until the Restoration of his grandson in 1660, after the English Civil War. The court of Charles I intensified the scale of private masques and other entertainments, but the cities, increasingly at odds with the monarchy, would no longer play along. In France, the concentration of power in royal hands, begun by Richelieu, left city elites distrustful of the monarchy, and once Louis XIV succeeded to the throne, royal progresses stopped completely for over fifty years.
The Last Triumph
Changes in the intellectual climate meant the old allegories no longer resonated with the population. The assassinations of both Henry III and Henry IV of France, of William the Silent and other prominent figures, and the spread of guns, made rulers more cautious about appearing in slow-moving processions planned and publicised long in advance. At grand occasions for fireworks and illuminations, rulers now characteristically did no more than show themselves at a ceremonial window or balcony. The visit of Louis XVI to inspect the naval harbour works at Cherbourg in 1786 seems, amazingly, to have been the first French entry of a king designed as a public event since the early years of Louis XIV well over a century before. Though considered a great success, this was certainly too little and too late to avoid the catastrophe awaiting the French monarchy. Ideologues of the French Revolution took the semi-private fête of the former court and made it public once more, in events like the Fête de la Raison, but the old allegorical power was gone.
The Modern Echo
Today, though many parades and processions have quite separate, independent origins, civic or republican equivalents of the entry continue. They include Victory parades, New York's traditional ticker-tape parades and the Lord Mayor's Show in London, dating back to 1215 and still preserving the Renaissance car, or float model. It is not frivolous to add that the specific occasion of the contemporary American Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Santa Claus parade is the triumphal entry into the city of Santa Claus in his sleigh. The specific occasion of the contemporary American Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Santa Claus parade is the triumphal entry into the city of Santa Claus in his sleigh. While ceremonial acts remained meaningful, overt allegories never regained the old prominence, and the decorations receded into festive, but simply decorative affairs of flags, flowers and bunting, the last remnant of the medieval show of rich textiles along the processional route.