In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city. Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons, they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy--an extent which is about that of the present Palace of the Trocadero. The whole of the plain of Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St. Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.