Remembering Napoleon I’s intention with regard to the Louvre the emperor completed the long delayed project of joining the Tuileries and the older palace. On the side of the Seine he built the entrance to the Place du Carrousel, the connecting link between Henry IV’s unfinished gallery and Catherine de Medicis’; on the north side he swept away the remaining tangle of small streets adjoining the rue de Rivoli, thereby enlarging the Place du Carrousel to its present size and permitting the building of three quadrangles to match the three on the south,[9] which are partly of his construction. The architecture is massive, elaborate, over-decorated, yet, taken all in all, superb. Its heavy magnificence lessens our regret at the loss of the Tuileries which completed the rectangle at the west, for those who remember it say that the smaller palace was overpowered by the imposing “New Louvre.”
Several new churches added to the adornment of the city under the empire. One of these, Trinity, renaissance in style, is approached by a “rampe” somewhat recalling that of Saint Vincent-de-Paul. Another church, dedicated to Saint Augustin, is in the Byzantine style, and is ingeniously though not always acceptably adapted to the limitations of a small triangular space.
Among the improvements were the buildings of the present Halles Centrales on the age-old spot where markets have served Paris. An early morning visit to the Halles is an object lesson on the distribution of food for a large city. The crowd is terrific, the volubility ear-splitting. Certain characteristic stalls interest the traveler, as, for example, that where broken food from hotels and restaurants is sold for two sous a plate.
To this time belongs the new building—on the Cité now—for the Tribunal of Commerce; enlargements of the National Library and of the Bank of France; the construction of two theaters on the Place du Châtelet, one leased now by Sarah Bernhardt, and of the Opéra. This is huge and elaborate in renaissance style, a building much criticized but also much admired, especially for its staircase and for its decorative frescos and bronzes. It is the home of the National Academy of Music.
The fountain showing the valiant figure of Saint Michel facing the bridge at the corner of the boulevard Saint Michel, has a position like that of the Molière fountain, making a graceful and harmonious decoration for the end of a house lying in the acute angle between two meeting streets.
The extension of the city’s water supply was the more appreciated because it was belated. Twelve thousand gas lamps made a much-needed illumination. Two railway stations added a convenient public service.
Just outside the fortifications is the Bois de Boulogne, originally a forest, but now developed as a park, retaining its naturalness and charm with the addition of good roads, and attractive tea-houses.
Finally, the lovely Parc Monceau was laid out to please the prosperous inhabitants of the recently developed quarter near the Arc de l’Étoile, and an old quarry was ingeniously converted into a thing of seemingly natural beauty for the benefit of the poorer people of Belleville in the north-eastern part of the city. In 1861 the population of Paris was 1,667,841.
Yet even all these public works and the brilliancy of the not at all exclusive court which Napoleon and his wife, Eugénie (whom he had married with magnificent ceremony at Notre Dame in 1853), held at the Tuileries, could not entirely calm the restless and not yet satisfied Parisians. To the poorer classes “empire” did not ring as true as “republic.” Napoleon boldly laid the question of the empire before the people of France once more, and once more they returned a handsome vote in his support, but Paris was unconvinced. She cast 184,000 Nos against 139,000 Yeses.
As must always happen in connection with foreign affairs the emperor’s attitude provoked hostility as well as approval. There were opponents of the Crimean War as well as advocates; there were adverse critics of the treaty with Austria which closed the war which France undertook in behalf of Italy. Long-continued friction with Germany had brought about a general wish for war. Napoleon planned to secure his own popularity by entering upon a struggle which he knew would be approved by the majority of his subjects. Paris was wildly enthusiastic, crying “On to Berlin!” regardless of the fact that the army was almost entirely unprepared.
A trivial incident furnished the excuse and the emperor in person invaded Germany, but the list of encounters was almost entirely a list of defeats and the Prussian army pressed the French forces back into their own country. Paris was so furious at the realization of what this invasion might mean that it is said that Napoleon never would have passed through the city alive if he had returned then.
The battle of Sédan, fought on the first of September, 1870, not only was an overwhelming defeat, but there the emperor was taken prisoner. Never again did he see the city he had worked so hard to beautify. After he was released (in 1871) he went to England where he died in 1873.
News of the battle reached Paris on the fourth of September and produced such utter consternation that the mob was frightened into comparative quiet. A great crowd, however, eager and determined, entered the Legislature where the deputies were in session and demanded the abolition of the empire. Jules Favre, Gambetta, Jules Simon and several other deputies of the “opposition” party, led the crowd to the City Hall, formed a provisional government, and declared the Third Republic.
The empress, meanwhile, who had only too good reason to fear the possible temper of the Paris mob, had heard the news in the Tuileries and took instant flight. Accompanied only by one lady and by the Austrian and Italian ambassadors, she traversed the whole length of the Louvre to its eastern end. As she came out on the street facing the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois she was recognized by a small boy who called her name. This recognition so terrified the ambassadors that they did not stop to find the carriage that was waiting for them, but pushed the empress and her companion into an ordinary cab, and called to the cabman no more definite direction than “To Boulevard Haussmann.” The two frightened women had not even a handbag with them and not so much as their cab fare. Fortunately the empress happened to think of her dentist, an American named Evans. They drove to his house and through his help managed to leave the city and to escape to England. There Eugénie still lives.
The new government represented to the Prussians that the war had been the emperor’s affair, and that Prussia had declared that she was fighting the imperial idea. The enemy refused to grant peace, however, and Paris was besieged from September 19, 1870 to January 30, 1871. Several battles around the city resulted in defeat for the French and the loss of some towns. Marshal Bazaine surrendered the “army of Metz” without a struggle. The king of Prussia made the palace at Versailles his headquarters and from it directed the bombardment.
Within Paris suffering increased sadly during the four months and a half of the siege. Outside supplies of fuel and food were cut off and the city’s stores ran very low, though reports of peace were apt to bring out collections which were being kept in hiding to secure high prices when the great pinch should come. The trees in the parks were cut down for fuel and warmth. Bombproof cellars were at premium.
Just as during the siege of Henry IV, animals not usually eaten were now slaughtered for food.
Horace Vernet, the famous artist, mournfully complained to a friend, “They have taken away my saddle horse to eat him—and I’ve had him twenty years!” From which it is a fair assumption that the steaks which he provided were not all tenderloin. Indeed, it is said that while dishes made from the smaller animals were rather fancied so that when the siege was over dogs and cats were scarce, there were left thirty thousand horses, which would seem to prove that even the starving do not like tough meat. Etiquette forbade inquiry of one’s hostess as to the nature of any dish served at a dinner, but it was entirely de rigueur to compliment it after partaking. Rat pies came to be considered a real delicacy. Toward the end the animals in the Zoölogical Gardens fell victims to the town’s necessities. A camel was sold for $800 and netted a good deal more than that for the restaurant proprietor who bought him.
A final brave sortie met with such complete defeat that it was clear that the city must surrender. The provisional government yielded, promising to give up all Alsace and half of Lorraine, to pay an indemnity of a billion dollars and, crown of bitterness for Paris, to permit the hostile army to take possession of the city.
On the first of March the Prussians entered from the west. They found massed before the Triumphal Arch of the Star two thousand school boys. Their spokesman, a lad of twelve, approached the commander.
“Sir,” he said, bringing his hand to his cap in salute, “we ask that you will not lead your men under our arch. If you do,” he added firmly, “it will be over our bodies.”
The troops made a circuit.
It was only three days that the Prussians remained in Paris, but during that time the city mourned openly. All the shops were closed, all business was discontinued. When the enemy left everything they had touched was treated as if defiled. It is said that because a Prussian soldier had been seen to leap over one of the chains which swing from post to post to keep a space clear around the Arch of the Star a new chain was substituted.
The pride of Paris was humbled grievously.
WHEN the siege of Paris came to an end and the German troops were withdrawn the provisional government which had been making its headquarters at Bordeaux removed to Versailles. The violent element in Paris which had given Louis Philippe so much trouble had increased both in numbers and in strength of feeling during the third quarter of the century. Now these radicals asserted that Thiers, the head of the provisional government, had betrayed France to the enemy, and they won to their way of thinking the Central Committee of the usually conservative National Guard. From the City Hall they directed the election of a new city government, the Commune of Paris, which held itself independent of the Assembly at Versailles and defied it.
Just a month after the hated Prussians had left Paris the communists made a sortie toward Versailles. As a natural reaction the Versailles government invested the city, and Frenchmen were pitted against Frenchmen as in the days when Henry IV was besieging his own capital town. Nor was the conflict merely between the people inside and the people outside—within Paris there was a constant struggle between the conservatives and the communists and even among the communists themselves. The conservatives disapproved of the drastic social changes made by the new government in closing the churches, and dispersing some of the religious orders, as well as of their confiscations of property on slight warrant and their onslaught upon monuments of sentimental and artistic value, such as the Vendôme Column. The communists, on the other hand, were torn by internal dissensions and their constant quarrels brought about the usual weakness resulting from poor team work.
Ferocity never failed them, however. Constructive measures were postponed; revenge, never. No sufficient excuse ever has been offered for their massacres of hostages, good Archbishop Darboy among them; none for the senseless orgy of destruction with which, after a two months’ struggle, they recognized their defeat by the government troops under Marshal MacMahon. When the soldiers entered Paris their first work was the extinguishing of the fires which the communists had set in a hundred places. Men and women, urged by hatred and fanaticism, piled kegs of gunpowder into
churches, even into Notre Dame, relic and record of centuries, and poured petroleum upon the flames devouring the Palace of Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, the library of the Louvre, the Luxembourg palace, the Palais Royal. The houses on the rue Royale were a mass of broken brick. The Ministry of Finance on the rue de Rivoli was so injured that it was torn down, to be replaced by a hotel. Three hundred years of historical association did not avail to save the palace of the Tuileries whose ruins were considered not sufficient to be restored. The Hôtel de Ville was a mere shell and required practically entire rebuilding. Property amounting to a hundred millions of dollars was destroyed, while the historical and sentimental value of many of the buildings cannot be computed.
The communists were as reckless with their own lives as with the buildings. Some two thousand persons—women and children as well as men—fell in the contest with the government. The last struggle was in the cemetery of Père Lachaise whose tombs could serve only as temporary protection against shell and shot from the rash fighters who were soon to need a final resting-place. It was only after the execution of many of the insurgent leaders that Marshal MacMahon brought about a semblance of peace.
With returning quiet all France turned its attention to securing the payment of the war indemnity of a billion dollars due to Prussia. Until that indebtedness was cleared off the hated uniform of the army of occupation was omnipresent. So eager were the French to rid themselves of this sight that every peasant went into his “stocking” or tapped his mattress bank until the necessary amount was subscribed many times over. Two years and a half after the capitulation of Paris not a German soldier was left in the country. There could be no stronger testimony to the national thrift fostered by the pinch of the pre-Revolutionary days and so alive to-day that the French are looked upon as the readiest financiers in Europe, prepared to invest in anything from a Panama Canal to a New York gratte-ciel (skyscraper).
The terms of the peace with Germany required the surrender of one-half of the border province of Lorraine and the whole of Alsace. It was a bitter day not only for these districts but for the whole country when the Germans took possession of the ceded territory. Fifty thousand people left their property behind and went over into France rather than lose the name of Frenchmen. Many came to America. Now, forty years later, the memory of the loss is not dulled, and the statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde wears perpetual mourning.
Many have been the problems faced by France since the Franco-Prussian war. Political adjustment has been of first importance, of course, but Paris has had her own questions to answer, and, because of her cosmopolitanism, her solutions have been of interest to the whole world. Much time and thought have been spent on the repairs required by the excesses of the communists. The rebuilding of the City Hall on the same spot on which it had stood for five hundred years and in the style which Francis I initiated three centuries before, was a task on which Paris lavished thought and money. The exterior is a finely harmonious example of renaissance. The mural paintings of the interior are a record of the work of the best French artists of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They are enhanced by heavily handsome gildings and by chandeliers of glittering crystal.
As a whole, however, the city has put more expenditure into the perfecting of public utilities, the beautifying of streets and the construction of parks—works of use to the many—than into the erection of buildings of less general service. The panorama which make the frontispiece of this volume shows the care with which pavements and curbs and tree-guards are ordered. A small tricycle sweeper is 1912’s latest device for removing any last reproach of Lutetia’s mud—a reproach formulated to-day only by Parisians made fastidious by a century of cleanliness.
The panorama shows also the arrangement of the quays and the orderliness which makes them possible in the very center of the city, even when there is discharged upon them huge loads of freight brought from the sea by the strings of barges (seen in the picture of the Eiffel Tower opposite page 360) which are moved by a tug and a chain-towing device.
In some parts of this city of three million inhabitants the quays disclose scenes that are almost rural. Under the fluttering leaves of a slender tree a rotund housewife is making over a mattress, exchanging witticisms with a near-by vender of little cakes. Not far off the owner of a poodle is engaging his attention while a professional dog clipper is decorating him with an outfit of collar and cuffs calculated to rouse envy in the breasts of less favored caniches.
When the hero of an old English novel orders his servant to call a “fly” we wonder whether the misnamed vehicle which responds has been christened from the verb or the noun. There is no doubt in Paris as to the origin of the “fly boats” on the Seine. These busy little travelers are of insect origin—they are bateaux mouches.
What these boats are on the river the fiacres have been on land. These small open carriages
are now being replaced by motor taxis. The use of the meters on the horse-propelled vehicles as well as on the machines has deprived the tourist of one of the daily excitements of his visit—the heated argument with the driver concerning his charge. Another change which has been consummated since 1913 began is the passing of the horse-drawn omnibus with its “imperial” or roof seats, from whose inexpensive vantage many travelers have considered that they secured their best view of the city streets. The two subway systems have many excellent points, not least of which is a method of ventilation which makes a summer’s day trip below ground a relief rather than a seeming excursion on the crust of the infernal regions.
The Champs Élysées is thought to offer the finest metropolitan vista in the world, when the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile is seen across the Place de la Concorde from the Tuileries gardens, over two miles away.
Such vistas are frequent in Paris, offering a “point of view” in which a handsome building or monument finds its beauty enhanced. The regularity of the skyline adds to this effect. By a municipal regulation no façade may be higher than the width of the street and the consequent uniformity provides a not unpleasing monotony.
Paris parks are world famous, not only for the beauty of such great expanses as the Bois de Boulogne, just outside the fortifications, with its forest and lake and stream, its good roads and its alluring restaurants, but for the intelligent utilization of small open spaces in crowded parts of the city. Wherever any readjustment of lines or purposes gives opportunity, there a bit of grass rests the eye and a tree casts its share of shade. If there is space enough a piece of statuary educates the taste or the bust of some hero of history or of art makes familiar the features of great men. The demolition of the old clo’ booths of the Temple gave such a chance, and amid tall tenements and commonplace shops mothers sew and babies doze and one-legged veterans read the newspapers beneath the statue of the people’s poet, Béranger.
At one end of this square rises the Mairie of the Third Arrondissement (ward). These Mairies, of which there are twenty, are decorated with paintings, often by artists of repute, and always symbolic of the Family, of Labor or of the Fatherland. The Hall of Marriages in which the Mayor of the arrondissement performs the civil ceremony required by law, receives especial attention and usually is a room handsomely appointed and adorned.
The French imagination likes to express itself
in symbols. Throughout the city there are many large groups, such as the Triumph of the Republic, unveiled in 1899, which dominates the Place de la Nation—a figure representative of the Republic attended by Liberty, Labor, Abundance and Justice. Even statues or busts or reliefs of authors, musicians or statesmen frequently are supported by allegorical figures. Such is the monument to Chopin which includes a figure of Night and one of Harmony, and such is the monument of Coligny whose portrait statue stands between Fatherland and Religion. In the Fountain of the Observatory seahorses, dolphins and tortoises surround allegorical figures of the four quarters of the globe. The young women lawyers who, in cap and gown, pace seriously through the great hall of the ancient Palace of Justice, are living symbols of twentieth century progress.
Haussmann’s plan of laying out broad streets radiating from a center served the further purpose of adding to the city’s beauty by providing wide open spaces and of wiping out narrow streets and insanitary houses. The Third Republic has continued to act on this scheme and has succeeded wonderfully well in achieving the desired improvement with but a small sacrifice of buildings of eminent historic value. On the Cité a web of memories clung to the tangle of streets swept away to secure a site for the new Hôtel Dieu on the north of Notre Dame which replaced the ancient hospital which has stood since Saint Louis’ day on the south side of the island.
The completion in 1912 of the new home of the National Printing Press near the Eiffel Tower brings to mind a Parisian habit indicative of thrift and of a respect for historical associations. The Press has been housed for many years in the eighteenth century hôtel of the Dukes of Rohan built when the Marais was still fashionable. Anything more unsuitable for a printing establishment it would be hard to find. The rooms of a private house become a crowded fire trap when converted to industrial purposes. This use of the house has tided over a crisis, however, and once the last vestige of printer’s ink has been removed the old building probably will be restored to the beauty which the still existing decorations of some of the rooms show, and will be used for some more suitable purpose. One proposal is that it be used as an addition to the National Archives, since its grounds adjoin those of the Hôtels Clisson and Soubise, their present home. The Hôtel Carnavalet houses the Historical Museum of Paris, and part of the Louvre is used for government offices—two other instances of Paris wisdom.
There have been three Expositions in Paris under the Third Republic. Each has left behind a permanent memorial. The Palace of the Trocadéro, dating from 1878, is a huge concert hall where government-trained actors and singers often give for a strangely modest sum the same performances which cost more in the regular theaters with more elaborate accessories. The architecture of the Trocadéro is not beautiful but the situation is imposing and the general effect impressive when seen across the river from the south bank where the Eiffel Tower has raised its huge iron spider web since the World’s Fair of 1889.
The tower is a little world in itself with a restaurant and a theater, a government weather observatory and a wireless station. Since aviation has become fashionable the frequent purr of an engine tells the tourist sipping his tea “in English fashion” on the first stage that yet another aviator is taking his afternoon spin “around the Tour Eiffel.”
The latest exposition, that of 1900, gave to Paris the handsome bridge named after Czar Alexander III, the Grand Palais, where the world’s best pictures and sculptures are exhibited every spring, and the Petit Palais which holds several general collections and also the paintings and sculpture bought by the city from the Salons of the last thirty-five years. Such public art galleries are found throughout France, a development of Napoleon’s idea of bringing art to the people. Like Paris the provinces take advantage of the Salons to add to the treasures of their galleries.
Near the two palaces is the exquisite chapel of Our Lady of Consolation. It is built on the site of a building destroyed during the progress of a fashionable bazaar by a fire which wiped out one hundred thirty-two lives. The architectural details are of the classic style popular in the reign of Louis XVI.
Already rich in beautiful churches Paris has been further graced in recent years by the majestic basilica of the Sacred Heart gleaming mysteriously through the delicate haze that always enwraps Montmartre. The style is Romanesque-Byzantine, and the structure is topped by a large dome flanked by smaller ones. The interior lacks the colorful warmth of most of the city churches, but time will remedy that in part. Construction has been extremely slow for the same reason that the building of the Pantheon was a long process—the discovery that the summit of the hill was honeycombed by ancient quarries. It became necessary to sink shafts which were filled with masonry or concrete. Upon this strong sub-structure rises the splendid
work of expiation for the murder of Archbishop Darboy. The city owns the church.
To the tourist whose attention is not confined to the stock “sights” of Paris the city streets offer a wide field of interest. They show the stranger within the walls the neatness of the people and the orderliness which manifests itself in the automatic formation of a queue of would-be passengers on an omnibus or a bateau mouche. They disclose little that looks like slums to the eye of a Londoner or a New Yorker, for dirt and sadness rather than congestion make slums, and the poor Parisian looks clean and cheerful even when a hole in his “stocking” has let all his savings escape.
History lurks at every corner of these streets. It commands attention to the imposing pile of Notre Dame, it piques curiosity by the palpably ancient turrets of the rue Hautefeuille. The non-existent is recalled by the tablet on the site of the house where Coligny was assassinated, by the outline of Philip Augustus’s Louvre traced on the eastern courtyard of the palace, by the name of the street that passes over the mad king’s menagerie at the Hôtel Saint Paul. Étienne Marcel sits his horse beside the City Hall he bought for Paris; Desmoulins mounts his chair in the garden of the Palais Royal to make the passionate speech that wrought the destruction
Architects Who Directed the Building of the Louvre.
| 1. Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon 2. Chambiges 3. Philibert Delorme and Bullant 4 and 5. Ducerceau 6. Jacques Lemercier |
7 and 8. Louis Levau 9. Perrault 10, 11 and 12. Percier and Fontaine 13 and 14. Visconti and Lefuel |
of the Bastille. Even the boucheries chevalines, the markets that sell horse steaks and “ass and mule meat of the first quality,” bring back the days when Henry IV cut off supplies coming from the suburbs of Paris and when, three hundred years later, the Prussians used the same means to gain the same end. That the Parisians of to-day are willing to take chances on universal peace in the future seems attested by the recent vote (1913) of the Municipal Council to convert the fortifications and the land adjacent into parks. The people of the markets, at any rate, are not worrying about any possibilities of hunger for they continue as hard-working and as fluent as when they acted as Marie Antoinette’s escort on the occasion of the “Joyous Entry” from Versailles, though kinder now in heart and action.
Paris charms the stranger as the birdman of the Tuileries Gardens charms his feathered friends—making hostile gestures with one hand and popping bread crumbs into open beaks with the other. The great city of three million people, like all great cities, threatens to overcome the lonely traveler; then, at the seeming moment of destruction, she gives him the food he needs most—perhaps a glimpse of patriotic gayety in the street revels of the fourteenth of July, perhaps the cordial welcome that she has bestowed on students since Charlemagne’s day, perhaps the less personal appeal of the beauty of a wild dash of rain seen down the river against the western sky, perhaps the impulse to sympathy aroused by the passing of a first communion procession of little girls, wide-eyed from their new, soul-stirring experience.
In a quiet corner behind a convent chapel where nuns vowed to Perpetual Adoration unceasingly tend the altar, rests the body of America’s friend, Lafayette. If for no other reason than because of his friendship, Americans must always feel an interest in the city in which he did his part toward crystallizing the bourgeois rule which makes the French government one of the most interesting political experiments of Europe to-day. Yet Paris needs no intermediary. In her are centered taste, thought, the gayety and exaggeration of the past, light-heartedness in the stern present. The city is a record of the development of a people who have expressed themselves in words and in deeds, and by the more subtle methods of Art. The story is not ended, and as long as the writing goes on, vivid and alluring as the “Gallic spirit” can make it, so long there will be no lack of readers of all nations, our own among the most eager.