Liberté, égalité, sororité

It was founded by Napoleon to look after his soldiers' orphans. Two centuries later, France's most prestigious girls' school seems barely to have changed, writes Lara Marlowe

The most prestigious girls' school in France was born at the Battle of Austerlitz, in December 1805. Napoleon Bonaparte's troops triumphed over the combined armies of Russia and Austria at the cost of 9,000 French lives. Henceforth, Napoleon declared, his soldiers' orphans would be his children. Less than two weeks later Napoleon signed the decree creating the Maisons d'Éducation de la Légion d'Honneur. Three girls' schools would be founded: in the chateau at Écouen; in the ancient royal abbey at Saint-Denis, north of Paris; and in the forest at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to the west of the capital. Écouen is today a museum. The boarding school at Saint-Denis is home to 510 girls aged between 15 and 18, in the three final years before the baccalauréat. Younger girls board at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

In 1807 Napoleon appointed the first superintendent, or principal, of the girls' schools. She was Henriette Campan, former reader to the daughters of Louis XV and former first lady in waiting to Marie-Antoinette. The link between the ancien régime and the future was assured. Napoleon had engaged Campan to educate his sisters, as well as Empress Josephine's daughter Hortense de Beauharnais. "At least Mme Campan will know how to teach them manners," he said.

Huguette Peirs, the 19th superintendent of the School of the Legion of Honour, invites me for tea in her sumptuous residence within the walled complex. Portraits of her predecessors line the walls. Later this year, to celebrate the arrival of the first students at the maison d'éducation, she will hold an exhibition dedicated to past superintendents. "I share Mme Campan's opinions on many things," Peirs says, pouring tea from a Limoges teapot. A clock chimes the half-hour. "She is straightforward, impassioned by her work, a true educator," Peirs continues, evoking her forerunner as if she were living. "Yes, I speak of her in the present tense," she explains, "because her principles hold true today."

To step through the stone portico at 5 Rue de la Légion d'Honneur is to travel back in time. "The school is a bubble where history is omnipresent," Peirs says. "We are at the heart of memory." Only one in three applications is successful. Girls must be the daughters or granddaughters of recipients of the Legion of Honour, France's most prestigious order, established by Napoleon in 1802, or the Order of Merit, created by Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s.

Fees are about €1,700 a year. This is a public school, subsidised by the French government, but, uniquely, it falls under the authority of the Chancery of the Legion of Honour and the Ministry of Justice, not the Ministry of Education. The student-to-teacher ratio of 10 to one is among the best in the country. The day I visit, French teachers are on strike, but not at the Legion of Honour; strikes are unknown here.

The royal abbey, which contains the largest cloisters in France, was renovated in the early 18th century. Today young maidens - the students of Saint-Denis are known as demoiselles - glide silently through the cloisters, like the monks before them. Dozens of antique pianos are lined up in a gallery. All girls study musical theory, and there are 17 music teachers - more than for any other discipline.

In the refectory the girls are far more boisterous than the monks were. It is difficult to talk above the din at mealtime, and the multicolores - girls in their final year, named after the multicoloured ribbon sashes they wear, harness style or diagonally across the chest - sometimes break into song. (Girls in their penultimate year wear white sashes; those in the equivalent of Junior Cert year wear red ones.)

Uniforms, boarding school and no boys are the cardinal rules of the School of the Legion of Honour. "The wearing of the uniform answers to strict rules, dictated by the charter," warns the school brochure. "Faced with disrespect practised by certain students (non-conformity, negligence, even uncleanliness), the staff of the maison will henceforth be more intransigent."

During an English poetry contest, organised by Nicholas Chriss, an American language teacher, Piers marks girls down for ostentatious ear rings and inappropriate shoes. Body-piercing, make-up, smoking, swearing, pullovers that hide the uniform and brightly coloured hair ornaments, scarves or socks are forbidden. The "maidens" curtsey each time they encounter the superintendent. They are allowed to watch television only once a week, on Tuesday evening, and the programme must be approved beforehand.

The basics of the uniform - navy smock, white blouse, coloured sash - have not changed since Napoleon's time. Girls who receive high marks participate in ceremonies at the presidential palace, the Arc de Triomphe, the Académie Française and Napoleon's tomb. On these occasions they wear white gloves and white knee-high socks.

The founding father is omnipresent. Although the school is meant to be secular, it holds Mass every May 5th to mark the anniversary of the emperor's death. As we enter Peirs's drawingroom she nods towards his portrait, reverently murmuring "the founder". Napoleon watches over the staircase leading to the dormitories. He glares down the length of the refectory and watches from the stage in the music pavilion. Here the Napoleonic motto Honneur et Patrie (Honour and Country) replaces the revolutionary words Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité emblazoned on the walls of all other French lycées.

Elements of modernity have crept into the two-century-old routine. In 1985, as president, François Mitterrand inaugurated a high-tech glass classroom complex tucked behind the hillocks of the 17-hectare grounds. Iron beds dating from Napoleon's time were too short for today's students. They were replaced with bunk beds when the dormitories were refurbished over the past decade. Peirs has installed 10 computers in the internet room.

But the pull of history is stronger. For two centuries meals have been served on the same oak and marble tables, in the same dishes. Art classes are held in the monks' chapter room. Library books are stamped with the image of a bee, Napoleon's symbol.

In a letter from Finkenstein, in Poland, in 1807, Napoleon laid down curious guidelines for a school that purports to be secular. "Religion is an important affair in a public institution for maidens," the emperor wrote. "Whatever is said, religion is the safest guarantee for mothers and their husbands. Raise believers and not women of reason . . . I want to make of these girls useful women."

Chriss asks students what they'll be in 20 years. Physical therapist, international lawyer, veterinarian, architect, actress, auctioneer come the replies. "I'll be the rich and famous chief executive officer of a big company," says Sophia, who is 15. "There are not very many women CEOs in France," Chriss reflects. "So I'll be the exception," says Sophia.

Girls undertake up to 35 hours of coursework a week. There are two-hour study periods before lights-out every night and more classwork on Saturday morning. The result: all of Peirs's charges received their baccalauréat in 2006, 80 per cent of them with honours - a record countrywide.

The maidens of the Legion of Honour have been taught that they are different. "When we leave this school we have a certain rank to uphold," says Sophia. "All of us are here because someone in the family got a medal; you have to deserve it. We have a duty to behave well."

"My grandfather was a fighter pilot in the Algerian war," says Emmanuelle, who is 16. "My grandfather fought in Algeria and Indo-China; he's a general," says Morgane, who is 17. The grandfather of 15-year-old Chloé fought with the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation and spent 18 months imprisoned at Buchenwald.

A substantial minority of students are descendants of soldiers and dignitaries from former French colonies in Africa and Asia. Before the French Revolution 46 kings, 32 queens and 63 princes and princesses were buried in the basilica next to the school. In 1793 revolutionaries ransacked the tombs, desecrated the royal remains and threw them into mass graves.

The sense of hordes at the gate persists to this day. Since the late 19th century Saint-Denis has been heavily industrialised and left-wing. More recently the city built housing estates for immigrant families arriving from the Maghreb countries and elsewhere in Africa. During the November 2005 race riots the banlieue surrounding France's most exclusive girls' school exploded. Mounted police have since established a small post within the safe haven of the school grounds.

On Wednesday afternoons the maidens of the Legion of Honour venture into the real world of Saint-Denis, in civilian clothing. They've been robbed of mobile phones and portable computers and taunted by the city's disadvantaged inhabitants as "daddy's girls".

"The students aren't vigilant enough," says Peirs. "The motive is usually theft. Otherwise it's because they were asking for it - wearing shorts up to here," she says, marking her thigh with her hand. So every Wednesday a supervisor watches the girls file out through the porter's lodge. "Those unsuitably dressed - in miniskirts, shorts, big boots - are sent to me," Peirs says. "Usually they're on the way to Paris to see their boyfriends." "Her" girls usually make what Peirs calls "good matches" with young men from the military academy at Saint-Cyr or from the École Polytechnique. They attend each others' balls, and, Peirs notes, "the girls are pretty and have class."

It would be easy to be misled by the angelic faces and saccharine wholesomeness. Pranks are part of school life here, as elsewhere. Peirs has no illusions. "The weekends are 150 per cent boys. I had to close the infirmary on Monday mornings; otherwise they went there to sleep." There have been no pregnancies on her watch, thanks to "a good information campaign". Teenage sex is tolerated as long as it occurs outside the ivory tower.

Of greater concern to Peirs are anorexia, bulimia, substance abuse and students who need psychological help. "One finds the same problems as in society as a whole: separated parents, families that go away for the weekend and leave the girls to their own devices . . ."

A few days after my visit I receive a letter postmarked Saint-Denis, from Peirs, Chriss and the girls in his English class, thanking me for my visit. It was a sweet, old-fashioned gesture, with all the charm of a handwritten missive from the emperor's orphans.