THE PLACE VENDÔME.
The Column of Austerlitz--The Various Statues of Napoleon Taken
Down--The Church of St.-Roch--Mlle. Raucourt--Joan of Arc.
At the point where the long line of boulevards, extending for three
miles from the Place de la Bastille to the Madeleine, comes to an end
the road bifurcates. The Rue Royale leads in one direction towards the
Place de la Concorde, the Rue Castiglione in another towards the Place
Vendôme, a square, or rather an octagon, in the middle of which stands
the famous column at which the typical French patriot, Le Colonel
Chauvin, used to gaze with such enthusiastic admiration.
[Illustration: TOP OF THE VENDÔME COLUMN.]
The Place was constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard. In 1686,
on the proposition of Louis XIV.'s minister, Louvois, the formation
of the Place in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré was decreed "alike for
the decoration of Paris and for facilitating communications in this
quarter." Louvois, in the first place, purchased the Hôtel de Vendôme in
the Rue Saint-Honoré, at the end of the Rue Castiglione, which, together
with an adjacent convent, was pulled down. The open space thus obtained
was for some time left unoccupied, the king's government being more
concerned with works of war than of peace. It was originally intended
to give the Place Vendôme the form of a square, with the king's library
on one side, and various Government offices, together with mansions for
the reception of special envoys, on the other. In carrying out his work
Mansard made eight façades instead of the four first contemplated, and
in the middle of the octagon he placed an equestrian statue of Louis
XIV., twenty-one feet high. The Grand Monarch was attired, according
to the sculptural fashion of the time, in Roman costume; and on the
pedestal of the statue, which was in white marble, might be read pompous
inscriptions in honour of his Majesty's victories.
This statue remained on its pedestal for nearly a century. But on the
10th of August, 1792, when the Revolutionary fury was reaching its acute
stage, the effigy was overturned by the people, and the name of Place
Vendôme changed to Place des Piques. This eminently anarchical title was
preserved until the establishment of the Empire, when Napoleon conceived
the idea of the column to which the Place Vendôme now owes its chief
importance.
The true name of the column in question is the Column of Austerlitz.
So, at least, it was designated by Napoleon; though the French people
have persisted in calling it after the place in which it stands. It is
a reproduction, as regards form, of the Trajan Column, which, however,
is in marble, whereas the Column of the Place Vendôme is in stone
covered with bronze castings. The column astonishes by its height,
and excites admiration by its harmonious proportions. Few, however,
notice the perfection of its details. The stone, of which the monument
substantially consists, is covered by 378 sheets of bronze, so perfectly
adjusted that the column appears to be one mass of solid metal. On an
interminable spiral of low reliefs, the soldiers of the Empire are
represented with the uniforms they wore, and the arms they carried. The
principal personages are portraits, and the scenes represented are all
from the campaign of 1805. The scrolls of bronze on which figure the
actors and incidents of the Austerlitz campaign would measure, in one
continuous line, more than 260 metres. The column is surmounted by the
statue of the man who, in his own honour, erected it, and the base of
the statue bears an inscription in these terms:--
"MONUMENT RAISED TO THE GLORY OF THE GRAND ARMY
BY NAPOLEON THE GREAT.
BEGUN XXV AUGUST, MDCCCVI,
FINISHED XV AUGUST, MDCCCX,
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF D. V. DENON,
DIRECTOR-GENERAL,
MM. J. B. LEPÈRE AND L. GONDOIN, ARCHITECTS."
The base of the column bears this legend:--
"NEAPOLIO IMP. AUG.
MONUMENTUM BELLI GERMANICI
ANNO MDCCCV.
TRIMESTRI SPATIO DUCTU SUO PROFLIGATI
EX ÆRE CAPTO
GLORIÆ EXERCITUS MAXIMI DICAVAT."
which may be translated as follows:--
"Napoleon, august Emperor, dedicates to the glory of the Grand
Army this monument made of bronze taken from the enemy, 1805, in
the German War, terminated in three months under his command."
This other very different translation from the same obscure original was
suggested by Alexandre Dumas the elder: "Nearchus Polion, General of
Augustus, dedicated this war tomb of Germanicus to the glory of the Army
of Maximus, in the year 1805, with the money stolen from the vanquished,
thanks to his conduct, during the space of three months."
The sheets of bronze employed in the construction of the column would,
it has been calculated, weigh 2,000,000 kilogrammes, about 4,000,000
pounds; and the metal was all obtained from the guns of the defeated
armies. In 1814, the day after the entry of the allied troops into
Paris, it was proposed to pull down the statue of Napoleon, costumed
and crowned like a Roman emperor, from its proud position at the top of
the Austerlitz Column; and with this view a cable was thrown round the
Emperor's neck, the lower part of his legs having been previously sawn
through so that he might fall with ease. The statue, however, stood
firm. The angle at which the engineers were operating did not enable
them to pull the statue sufficiently forward; and to tug at the cable
was only to hold it faster to its base.
A zealous royalist now came forward in the person of M. de Montbadon,
chief of staff to the Paris garrison. Empowered by MM. Polignac and
Semallé, commissaries of the Count of Artois, to take whatever measures
he might think necessary, M. de Montbadon applied to Launay, who had
made the castings for the column and had cast the statue itself. He who
had made could also unmake, argued M. de Montbadon. But he had reckoned
without Launay himself, who refused indignantly to do the work required
of him. Thereupon he was taken to the headquarters, where an order was
served upon him in these terms: "We command the said M. Launay, under
pain of military execution, to proceed at once to the operation in
question, which must be terminated by midnight on Wednesday, April 6th."
This order, according to the well-informed Larousse, is dated April 4th,
and signed Rochechouard, colonel aide-de-camp of H.M. the Emperor of
Russia commanding the garrison. M. Pasquier, Prefect of Police, wrote on
the document, "to be executed immediately." The National Guard was at
that time on duty around the monument. Whether from a feeling of shame
or of mistrust, the French National Guards were replaced by Russian
troops. Launay now raised the statue by means of wedges, and let it down
with pulleys. No sooner had the bronze figure touched the ground than it
was replaced on the summit of the column by the white flag of the old
monarchy. "Then," says Launay in an account he has left of the affair,
"cries were heard of 'Long live the King!' ' Long live Louis XVIII.!'"
This was on April 8th, at six in the evening, the operation having
lasted four days, at an expense to the nation of only 4,815 francs 46
centimes. Launay obtained permission to take away the statue and keep it
in his workshop as security for the payment of 80,000 francs still due
to him from the Government as founder of the column. On the return of
Napoleon from Elba Launay was forced by the Imperial police to give up
the statue; and when, after the Hundred Days, the monarchy was a second
time restored, the statue, a masterpiece of Chaudet, was melted down,
and the metal used by Lemot for a new equestrian statue of Henri IV.
Soon after the accession of Louis Philippe--a more popular sovereign
than the legitimate King Charles X., whom, at the end of the Revolution
of 1830, he succeeded--the Chambers passed a resolution for crowning
the Vendôme Column once more with a statue of Napoleon. A competition
was opened, and the model of a statue by M. Seurre was selected from
a great number sent in. It was cast in bronze, and inaugurated with
great show on the 28th of July, 1833, during the annual festivities in
celebration of the Revolution of 1830. The Army and the National Guard
were represented in force on this solemn occasion; and Louis Philippe,
on horseback, in the midst of his staff, removed with his own hands the
veil which concealed the statue from the eyes of the crowd. He then
saluted, in this bronze effigy, the conqueror of Continental Europe;
who, thanks in a great measure to the revived worship of Bonapartism,
was in less than twenty years to be succeeded by a new emperor of the
same dynasty.
The Napoleon who now took his place at the top of the column was more in
harmony with the details of the structure representing French generals
and French soldiers than the Roman Emperor so rudely dethroned in
1814 had been. The new Napoleon was the Napoleon of real life and of
Béranger's songs, the _Petit Caporal_ wearing his _redingote grise_, and
standing in a characteristic attitude, with one of his hands behind his
back. Instead of the laurel wreath he wore on his head the traditional
_petit chapeau_.
[Illustration: THE PLACE VENDÔME.]
It seemed, however, to Napoleon III. that his uncle's own design ought
to be respected; and in 1864 the statue of Napoleon "in his habit as he
lived" was replaced by a statue after the model of the original one,
representing the conqueror of Austerlitz in the conventional garb of a
Roman emperor. The more realistic statue was placed in the middle of the
rond-point of Courbevoie.
Under the Commune the statue and the column itself were pulled down.
The eminent painter, Courbet, had formed a project for replacing the
column, which was only a monument of the victories gained by France at
the expense of her plundered and humiliated neighbours, by one made out
of French and German cannon in honour of the Federation of Nations and
the Universal Republic. Courbet is said to have invited the Prussians
to join him in carrying out this idea, which could not in any respect
have suited their views. No period of French history, however, has been
more diversely narrated than that of the Commune. One thing is certain;
that the column fell, and in its descent went to pieces. The statue,
too, suffered greatly by the fall. One of the legs was broken, and the
head got separated from the body. A speech in honour of the Commune's
mechanical triumph over the Imperial "idea" was pronounced by General
Bergeret.
After the suppression of the Commune the Assembly of Versailles ordered
the re-establishment of the Vendôme column, which was duly set up in
1875. The interior construction of stone was entirely new. So also, as
regards form, was the bronze plating, the scrolls being recast from
the moulds preserved since the time of the first Empire. It had been
decreed that the column should be surmounted by a statue of France. But
this idea was not carried out, and, in conformity with another decree,
Dumont's statue, as set up by Napoleon III. in 1864, was, after being
repaired, put back in its former position.
The pedestal at the top of the column has turn by turn been surmounted
by the statue of Napoleon disguised as a Roman emperor; by the white
flag of the ancient monarchy; by the statue of Napoleon in his ordinary
military garb; by the statue of Napoleon once more costumed as a Roman
Emperor; by the red flag of the Commune; and finally once again by the
most recent statue in classic garb.
The French seem at last to understand as a nation that, apart from all
question of politics, the Napoleonic period was one of the most glorious
of their history.
At the corner of the Rue Castiglione stands the magnificent Hôtel
Continental; which, independently of its positive attractions, possesses
interest as occupying the site on which once stood the Ministry of
Finance--burnt to the ground under the Commune in obedience to the
famous, or infamous, telegraphic order: "_Flambez Finances_."
On the west side of the Place Vendôme is the Ministry of Justice. The
Hôtel du Rhin on the south side was the residence of Napoleon III. when
he was a member of the National Assembly in 1848, before his election
to the post of President, followed by his self-appointment (1851) to
the dignity, first of President for ten years and a year afterwards of
Emperor. In one of his letters of the 1848 period, inviting a friend to
dinner at the Hôtel du Rhin, he apologised for proposing to entertain
him at a "cabaret," a pleasantly contemptuous designation which the
commodious and well-appointed Hôtel du Rhin scarcely deserved.
The Hôtel du Rhin played a certain strategic part towards the end of
May, 1871, when on the 23rd the Versailles troops passed through the
hotel, and, attacking the insurgents in the rear, captured one of their
principal barricades. The proprietor of the hotel, M. Maréchal, is
said, on the occasion of the Vendôme column being threatened by the
Communists, to have offered them 500,000 francs if they would spare it.
"Give us a million and we will see!" was the answer; but the patriotic
hotel-keeper, though he had the misfortune to see the column knocked
down, lived to behold its restoration.
The Rue Castiglione, which on the other side of the Place Vendôme
continues southward towards the Rue de Rivoli and the Tuileries Gardens
under the name of Rue de la Paix, is crossed, at the point where it
changes its title, by the Rue Saint-Honoré. Here, close to the Place
Vendôme, stands the ancient and interesting Church of Saint-Roch.
The origin of this church was a chapel dedicated to the five wounds of
Jesus, which, in 1577, was rebuilt on a much larger scale under the name
of Saint-Roch, to be made, in 1633, the parochial church of the western
part of Paris. The building in its present form dates from 1653, and it
was not finished until 1736. Right and left of the principal entrance
will be observed two statues, representing the two St. Rochs: one of
them the pilgrim from Languedoc who cured the plague, accompanied by his
legendary dog; the other the Bishop of Autun, mitre on head and staff in
hand.
Saint-Roch has been described as "the first parish church in France."
It contains a number of statues and pictures by famous artists, such as
Falconnet, Pradier, and Constan; Vien, Doyen, Deveria, Boulanger, and
Abel de Pujol; also many interesting tombs, including that of the great
Corneille, who died on the 1st of October, 1684, in the Rue d'Argenteuil
at a house which not long ago was pulled down.
On the 1st of October, 1884, the Curé of Saint-Roch performed a funeral
service to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the poet's
death; to which were invited the managers and the whole company of
the Comédie Française. What a change did this mark in the views and
feelings of the French clergy since the time, scarcely more than fifty
years distant, when the Curé of Saint-Roch refused Christian burial to
a celebrated actress who had relinquished her profession, and since her
retirement had made abundant gifts through the clergy of Saint-Roch to
the poor of the parish.
"Mlle. Raucourt," says a writer on this subject, "had a better opinion
of the Restoration than had the Restoration of Mlle. Raucourt. The
clergy of the restored dynasty had shown itself in many ways intolerant;
and Mlle. Raucourt's funeral was the occasion of a riot which threatened
at one time to become formidable. The Curé of St.-Roch would not allow
the body to be brought into his church, though he is said to have
received again and again gifts from the actress, either for the church
or for the poor of his parish. Only a few days beforehand, on the first
day of the year, she had sent him an offering of five hundred francs.
Representations were made to the clergy, but without avail. At last an
indignant crowd broke open the church doors. Meanwhile, Louis XVIII.,
informed of what was taking place, had ordered one of his chaplains to
go to Saint-Roch, and there, replacing the Curé, perform the funeral
service. The soldiers had been called out, but they were judiciously
withdrawn: they were kept, that is to say, in an attitude only of
observation, while a crowd that was constantly increasing followed the
corpse of Mlle. Raucourt to the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise." While the
public excitement was at its height, one of the deceased actress's
friends remarked: "If poor Raucourt could only see from her heavenly
home what a scandal she is causing, how delighted she would be!"
Among the various illustrious persons buried at Saint-Roch may be
mentioned Diderot, to whose interment in 1784, five years before the
Revolution, the clergy seem to have made no objection. The statue of
Mary Magdalene in the Calvary sculpture reproduces the features of the
Countess de Feuquières, cut in white marble by Lemoine. This figure
originally formed part of the tomb of the Countess's father, Mignard,
the celebrated painter, whose bust by Desjardins is preserved at
Saint-Roch. Here may also be seen medallions of Marshal d'Asfeld, of the
Duke de Les Aiguières and of Count d'Harcourt; the statue of the Duke
de Créqui, and the monuments of Maupertuis, the philosopher, and of the
benevolent Abbé de l'Épée.
On the high ground, at some little distance from the Church of
Saint-Roch, is the Butte Saint-Roch, already referred to as the
camping-ground of the Maid of Orleans when the king's army was besieging
Paris. Since Joan of Arc has been sung by great poets, impersonated by
great actresses, and set to music by great composers, with Gounod and
Verdi among them, all France has admired the warlike heroine; but while
the Maid of Orleans was striving against the enemies of her country,
the Parisians preferred the government of the English king to that of
the lawful inheritor of the French Crown. Hating all the partisans of
Charles VII., they detested Joan of Arc, who had restored the courage of
his followers, and was in consequence looked upon in Paris as a doubtful
sort of witch, whose prophecies were so many deceptions.
A Parisian writer quoted by Dulaure says, in relating the incidents
of his time, that Joan of Arc was a vicious creature in the form of a
woman; "called," he ironically adds, "a maid, as she doubtless was."
On the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1429, the Maid of Orleans
and the king's troops lay siege to Paris. The assault commenced at
eleven o'clock in the day, between the gate of Saint-Honoré and that of
Saint-Denis. The Maid advanced, planted her standard on the edge of the
moat, and addressed these words to the Parisians: "Surrender in the name
of Jesus; for if you do not give in before night we will enter by force
whether you like it or not, and you will all be put to death without
mercy."
Insulting names were applied to her by one of the besieged, who at the
same time fired an arrow which pierced her leg. Thereupon she took to
flight, when her standard-bearer was also wounded in the leg. He stopped
and raised the visor of his helmet in order to pull out the arrow.
A second one was now shot at him, which struck him between the eyes
and killed him. The prediction of the Maid was not fulfilled on this
occasion, for Paris did not surrender.
Some time afterwards two women were arrested at Corbeil and thrown into
prison at Paris. They were accused of believing and saying to everyone
that the Maid of Orleans was sent from God; that Jesus often appeared to
her, and that the last time she had seen Him He was clothed in a long
white robe with a scarlet cloak above it. The elder of the two women
refused to retract, and was consequently, on the 3rd of September, 1430,
burnt alive.
Some time after the burning of the Maid herself at Rouen, an inquisitor
of the Jacobin order, master in theology, preached at Paris in the
Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; and his sermon was nothing less than
a violent satire against the courageous girl. He said in the pulpit that
from the age of fourteen she had been in the habit of wearing men's
clothes; that her parents would have killed her had they not been afraid
of wounding their conscience; that she quitted her family accompanied
by the devil, and became a slayer of Christians; and that since that
time she had committed an infinity of murders; that in prison she caused
herself to be waited on like a lady, and the devils came to her in the
form of St. Catherine, St. Marguerite, and St. Michael. He added that,
having been frightened into quitting her man's apparel to dress like a
woman, the devil made her resume her customary dress, though he did not
come to her succour at her execution as she had expected.
This monk said moreover in this remarkable sermon that there were four
Maids: namely, the two taken at Corbeil, one of whom was burnt at Paris;
Jeanne d'Arc, burnt at Rouen; and the fourth, called Cathérine de la
Rochelle, who followed the army of Charles VII., and who had visions
like Joan of Arc.
Ten years after the execution of Joan of Arc another Maid appeared, and
the people firmly believed that this was the same one who had been burnt
at Rouen, and who had miraculously risen from the dead. Another version
was that someone had been executed in her place.
[Illustration: RUE CASTIGLIONE.]
"What appears strange," says Dulaure in the "Singularités Historiques,"
"and what perhaps suggested the idea put forth in our century that Joan
of Arc was not burnt, and that she even left descendants, is that the
inhabitants of Orleans who saw this Maid took her for Joan of Arc, and
in consequence paid her much honour."
The University and the Parliament of Paris, who ten years before had
condemned the veritable Maid, wished now to deceive the people. They
brought the false Maid by force to Paris, exhibited her publicly in the
principal court of the Palace of Justice, and made her stand up on the
famous marble slab and there pronounce a biographical confession, in
which she declared that she was not a Maid; that she had been married
to a knight by whom she had had two sons; that in a moment of anger
against one of her neighbours, instead of striking one of the women she
quarrelled with she struck her mother who was holding her back; that she
had also struck priests or clerks in defence of her own honour, and that
to obtain absolution for her crime she had been to Rome, and in order to
make the journey in safety had put on man's clothes; finally, that she
had served as a soldier in the army of the Pope, and while so serving
had committed two homicides. The speech and the ceremony being finished,
the Maid left Paris and returned to the war.
[Illustration: A FIRST NIGHT AT THE COMÉDIE FRANÇAISE.--THE FOYER.]