EXECUTION OF THE KING--PARIS UNDER THE FIRST REPUBLIC--THE
TERROR--NAPOLEON--REVOLUTIONARY AND MODERN PARIS
An inscription opposite No. 230 Rue de Rivoli indicates the site of the
old Salle du Manége, or Riding School, of the Tuileries, where the
destinies of modern France were debated. Three Assemblies--the
Constituent, the Legislative and the prodigious National
Convention--filled its long, poorly-furnished amphitheatre, decorated
with the tattered flags captured from the Prussians and Austrians, from
7th November 1789 to 9th May 1795.
There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of
Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting
opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the evening
did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called, to ascend
the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long winter's night,
and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a king trembled in
the balance as the judgment, death--banishment: banishment--death, with
awful alternation echoed through the hall. Amid the speeches of the
deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable women in the boxes,
pricking with pins on cards the votes for and against death, and eating
ices and oranges brought to them by friendly deputies. Above, in the
public tribunes, sat women of the people, greeting the words of the
deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on outside. At every entrance
cries hoarse and shrill were heard of hawkers selling "The Trial of
Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalité, Duke of Orleans, voted _la
mort_, but failed to save his skin. An Englishman was there--Thomas
Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and deputy for Calais. His voice
was raised for clemency, for temporary detention, and banishment after
the peace. "My vote is that of Paine," cried a member, "his authority is
final for me." One deputy was carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote
in the scale of mercy; others slumbering on the benches were awakened
and gave their votes of death between two yawns. At length, by eight
o'clock on the evening of the 17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the
voting began, the President rose to read the result. "A silence most
august and terrible reigns in the Assembly as President Vergniaud rises
and pronounces the sentence 'Death' in the name of the French nation."
The details of the voting as given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th
January 1793, are as follows: "Of the 745 members one had died, six were
sick, two absent without cause, eleven absent on commission, four
abstained from voting. The absolute majority was therefore 361. Three
hundred and sixty-six voted for death, three hundred and nineteen for
detention and banishment, two for the galleys, twenty-four for death
with various reservations, eight for death with stay of execution until
after the peace, two for delay with power of commutation." Three
Protestant ministers and eighteen Catholic priests voted for death.
Louis' defenders were there and asked to be heard: they were admitted to
the honours of the sitting. At eleven o'clock the weary business of
thirty-seven hours was ended, only, however, to be resumed the next
morning, for yet another vote must decide between delay or summary
execution. Again the voice of Paine was heard pleading for mercy, but
without avail. At three o'clock on Sunday morning the final voting was
over. Six hundred and ninety members were present, of whom three hundred
and eighty voted for death within twenty-four hours.
[Illustration: EIFFEL TOWER.]
To the guillotine on the fatal Place de la Révolution, formerly Place
Louis XV., the very scene of a terrible panic at his wedding festivities
which cost the lives of hundreds of sightseers, the sixteenth Louis of
France was led on the morning of 21st January 1793. As he turned to
address the people, Santerre ordered the drums to beat--it was the
echo of the drums reverberating through history which had smothered the
cries of the Protestant martyrs sent to the scaffold by the fourteenth
Louis a century before. This was the beginning of that _année terrible_,
into which was crowded the most stupendous struggle in modern history.
Threatened by the monarchies of Europe, who were united in an unholy
crusade to crush the Revolution, France, in the tremendous words of
Danton, flung to the coalesced kings the head of a king as gage of
battle. A colossal energy, an unquenchable devotion were evoked by the
supreme crisis, and directed by a committee of nine inexperienced young
civilians, sitting in a room of the Tuileries at Paris, to whom later
Carnot, an engineer officer, was added. "The whole Republic," they
proclaimed, "is a great besieged city: let France be a vast camp. Every
age is called to defend the liberty of the Fatherland. The young men
will fight: the married will forge arms. Women will make clothes and
tents: children will tear old linen for lint. Old men shall be carried
to the market-place to inflame the courage of all." In twenty-four hours
60,000 men were enrolled; in two months fourteen armies organised.
Saltpetre for powder failed; it was torn from the bowels of the earth.
Steel, too, and bronze were lacking: iron railings were transmuted into
swords, and church bells and royal statues into cannon. Paris became a
vast armourer's shop. Smithy fires in hundreds roared and anvils clanged
in the open places--one hundred and forty at the Invalides, fifty-four
at the Luxembourg. The women sang as they worked:--
"Cousons, filons, cousons bien,
V'là des habits de notre fabrique
Pour l'hiver qui vient.
Soldats de la Patrie
Vous ne manquerez de rien."[163]
The smiths chanted to the rhythm of their strokes:--
"Forgeons, forgeons, forgeons bien!"
On the new standards waving in the breeze ran the legend: "The French
people risen against Tyrants." Toulon was in the hands of the English;
Lyons in revolt. With enemies in her camp, with one arm tied by the
insurrection in La Vendée, the Revolution hurled her ragged and despised
_sans-culottes_, shod in pasteboard or straw bands, mantled in a piece
of matting skewered above their shoulders, against her enemies. How vain
is the wisdom of the great! Burke thought that the Revolution had
expunged France in a political sense out of the system of Europe, and
his opinion was shared by every statesman in Europe, but before the year
closed the proud and magnificently accoutred armies of kings were
scattered over the borders, civil war was crushed at home, the
Revolution triumphant. The Convention fixed the day of victory. It
ordered its generals to end the war of La Vendée by 20th October: by the
17th four defeats had been inflicted on the insurgents, and 60,000 men,
women and children were driven over the Loire. Soon the "dwarfish,
ragged _sans-culottes_, the small, black-looking Marseillaise dressed in
rags of every colour," whom Goethe saw tramping out of Mayence "as if
the goblin king had opened his mountains and sent forth his lively host
of dwarfs," had forced Prussia, the arch-champion of monarchy, to make
peace and leave its Rhine provinces in the hands of regicides. Meanwhile
terror reigned in Paris. In the frenzy of mortal strife the Revolution
struck out blindly and cut down friend as well as foe; the innocent with
the guilty. At least the guillotine fell swiftly and mercifully. Gone
were the days of the wheel, the rack, the boiling lead and the stake.
Under the _ancien régime_ the torture of _accused_ persons was one of
the sights shown to foreigners in Paris. Evelyn, when visiting the city
in 1651, was taken to see the torture of an _alleged_ thief in the
Châtelet, who was "wracked in an extraordinary manner, so that they
severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort." Then, failing to extort
a confession, "they increased the extension and torture, and then
placing a horne in his mouth, such as they drench horses with, poured
two buckets of water down, so that it prodigiously swelled him." There
was another "malefactor" to be dealt with, but the traveller had seen
enough, and he leaves reflecting that it represented to him "the
intolerable sufferings which our Blessed Saviour must needs undergo when
His body was hanging with all its weight upon the nailes of the Crosse."
Too much prominence has been given by historians to the dramatic and
violent activities of the men of '93, to the exclusion of acts of
peaceful and constructive statesmanship. Among the 11,210 decrees issued
by the National Convention in Paris from September '92 to October '95,
the following are cited by Louis Blanc:--
That _maisons nationales_ be opened where children should be fed,
housed and taught gratuitously.
That primary schools be established throughout the Republic, and
that three progressive stages of education be established embracing
all that a man and a citizen should know.
That each Department should possess a Central School.
That a Normal School at Paris should teach the art of teaching.
That special schools be established for the study of the sciences,
Oriental languages, the veterinary art, rural economy and
antiquities.
It appointed a Commission to examine and report upon works relating to
the moral and physical education of children and opened a competition
for the composing of elementary books.
It systematised the teaching of the French language.
It ordered an inventory to be taken of collections of works of art.
It fulminated against the degradation of public monuments.
It founded national rewards for great discoveries.
It gave lavish help to artists and savants.
It offered a prize for the perfecting of the art of spinning.
It ordered the publication of a translation of Bacon's works found among
the papers of one of the condemned on the 9th of Thermidor.
It decided that scientific voyages should be organised at the expense of
the State, and that the Republic be charged with the maintenance of
artists sent to Rome.
It decreed the adoption, began the discussion, and voted the most
important articles of the civil code.
It inaugurated the telegraph and the decimal system, established the
uniformity of weights and measures, the bureau of longitudes, reformed
the calendar, instituted the Grand Livre, increased and completed the
Museum of Natural History, opened the Museum of the Louvre, created the
Conservatoire of the Arts and Crafts, the Conservatoire of Music, the
Polytechnic School and the Institute.
The truly great work of education initiated by the Convention can only
be appreciated by recalling its previous condition. The old colleges
were utterly neglected. In such as survived, little more than Latin (and
that inefficiently) and a few scraps of history were taught. The natural
sciences were wholly neglected; the children of the noblesse were
educated by private tutors, and only in showy accomplishments. Madame
Campan relates that the Princess Louise had not even mastered the
alphabet at twelve years of age.
The Convention abolished negro slavery in the French colonies, and
Wilberforce reminded a hostile House of Commons that infidel and
anarchic France had given example to Christian England in the work of
emancipation. In 1793 it was reported to the Convention that the aged
Goldoni had been in receipt of a pension from the _ancien régime_ and
was now dependent on the slender resources of a compassionate nephew:
the Convention at once decreed as an act of justice and beneficence that
the pension of 4000 livres should be renewed, and all arrears paid up.
This is but one of many acts of grace and succour among the records of
the Convention. The same day, 7th February, an artist of Toulouse was
awarded 3000 livres. It is curious to read in the journals of early '93
how fully assured the revolutionists were of the sympathy of England,
"that proud and generous nation, whose name alone, like that of Rome,
evokes ideas of liberty and independence," their appeals to the English
nation, whose example they had followed, not to allow the quarrels of
kings to embroil them in a conflict fatal to humanity. At the meetings
of the Jacobins, flags of England, America and France were unfurled,
with cries of "_Vivent les trois peuples libres_."
The closing months of '95 were sped with those whiffs of grape shot from
the Pont Royal and the Rue St. Honoré, that shattered the last attempt,
this time by the Royalists, at government by insurrection. The
Convention closed its stupendous career, and five Directors of the
Republic met in a room furnished with an old table, a sheet of paper and
an ink-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal and
progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous interference
with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth indeed. A nation
of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of monarchy and habituated
to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a French general before an
engagement when provisions were wanting to afford a meal for his troops,
"we will breakfast after the victory." But militarism invariably ends in
autocracy. The author of those whiffs of grape shot was appointed in
1796 Commander-in-Chief of the army of Italy, and a new and sinister
complexion was given to the policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries
Napoleon, "you are half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes
you much but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you
honour, but win for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you
into the most fertile plains of the world; you will find there great
cities and rich provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches.
Soldiers of Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the
baser motives that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal
ambition, was the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the
wealth of Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the
Directory:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma
and Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from
Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors,
"to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of
priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn the galleries
of Paris. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in
Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_. The
chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien Bonaparte,
is to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for Paris. No less
than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the Allies in 1815,
and returned to their former owners.
In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles of
monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of Rheims
anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the crown
with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned
himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court
came strutting back to their places:--Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors,
Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the
Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mère and a
bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. Only one thing
was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked--the million of men who were
slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing
transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who
wrought it was possessed of a soaring, visionary imagination, of a
mental instrument of incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will,
a prodigious intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the
conditions of material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the
same degree in one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician
Florentine blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of
Fiesole--
"In cui riviva la sementa santa
Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando
Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[164]
He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his
personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into Lombardy
awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more senses
than one, says Mr Bolton King, the historian of Italian unity, Napoleon
was the founder of modern Italy.
The reason of Napoleon's success in France is not far to seek. Two
streams of effort are clearly traceable through the Revolution. The
earlier thinkers, such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot and
the Encyclopedists, whose admiration for England was unbounded, aimed at
reforming the rotten state of France on the basis of the English
parliamentary and monarchical system. It was a middle-class movement for
the assertion of its interests in the state and for political freedom.
The aim of the Jacobin minority, inspired by the doctrines of the
_Contrat Social_ of Rousseau, was to found a democratic state based on
the principle of the sovereignty of the people. If the French crown and
the monarchies of Europe had allowed the peaceful evolution of national
tendencies, the Constitutional reformers would have triumphed, but in
their folly they tried to sweep back the tide, with the result we have
seen. For when everything is put to the touch, when victory is the
price of self-sacrifice, it is the idealist who comes to the front. As
the nineteenth century prophet Mazzini taught, men will lay down their
lives for principles but not for interests.
Let us not forget that it was the Jacobin minority which saved the
people of France. Led astray by their old guides, abandoned in a dark
and trackless waste, their heads girt with horror, menaced by
destruction on every side, they groped, wandering hither and thither
seeking an outlet in vain. At length a voice was heard, confident,
thrilling as a trumpet call: "Lo this is the way! follow, and ye shall
emerge and conquer!" It may not have been the best way, but it was a way
and they followed.
[Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE--PLACE DU CARROUSEL.]
It is easy enough to pour scorn on the _Contrat Social_ as a political
philosophy, but an ideal, a faith, a dogma are necessary to evoke
enthusiasm, the contempt of material things and of death itself. These
the _Contrat Social_ gave. Its consuming passion for social justice, its
ideal of a state founded on the sovereignty of the people became the
gospel of the time. Men and women conned its pages by heart and slept
with the book under their pillows. Napoleon himself in his early Jacobin
days was saturated with its doctrines, and in later times astutely used
its phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that
terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and
their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and
a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The
masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith; the
middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who
proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a
champion of the Revolution who made impossible the return of the evil
days of the _ancien régime_ and guaranteed them the possession of the
confiscated _émigré_ and ecclesiastical lands; the army idolised the
great captain who promised them glory and profit; the Church rallied to
an autocrat who restored the hierarchy. Moreover, the brilliancy of
Napoleon's military genius was balanced by an all-embracing political
sagacity. The chief administrative decrees of the Convention, especially
those relating to education and the civil and penal codes, were welded
into form by ceaseless energy. Everything he touched was indeed degraded
from the Republican ideal, but he drove things through and imposed his
own superhuman activity into his subordinates, and became one of the
chief builders of modern France. "The gigantic entered into our very
habits of thought," said one of his ministers. But his efforts to
maintain the stupendous twenty years' duel with the combined forces of
England and the continental monarchies, and his own over-weening
ambition, broke him at length, and he fell to fret away his life caged
in a lonely island in mid-Atlantic.
The new ideas were none the less revolutionary of social life. The
salon, that eminently French institution, soon felt their power. The
charming irresponsible gaiety and frivolity of the old _régime_ gave
place to more serious preoccupation with political movements. The fusing
power of Rousseau's genius had melted all hearts; the solvent wit of
Voltaire and the precise science of the Encyclopedists were a potent
force even among the courtiers themselves. The centre of social life
shifted from Versailles to Paris and the salons gained what the court
lost. Fine ladies had the latest pamphlet of Siéyès read to them at
their toilette, and maids caught up the new phrases from their
mistresses' lips. Did a young gallant enter a salon excusing himself for
being late by saying, "I have just been proposing a motion at the club,"
every fair eye sparkled with interest. A deputy was a social lion, and a
box for the National Assembly exchanged for one at the opera at a
premium of six livres. Speeches were rehearsed at the salons and action
determined. Chief of the hostesses was Madame[165] Necker: at her
crowded receptions might be seen Abbé Siéyès, the architect of
Constitutions; Condorcet, the philosopher; Talleyrand, the patriotic
bishop; Madame de Stäel, with her strong, coarse face and masculine
voice and gestures. More intimate were the Tuesday suppers at which a
dozen chosen guests held earnest communion. Madame de Beauharnais was
noted for her excellent table, and her Tuesday and Thursday dinners: at
her rooms the masters of literature and music had been wont to meet. Now
came Buffon the naturalist; Bailly of Tennis Court oath fame; Clootz,
the friend of humanity. The widow of Helvetius, with her many memories
of Franklin, welcomed Volney, author of the _Ruins of Empires_, and
Chamfort, the candid critic of Academicians. At the salon of Madame
Pancroute, Barrère, the glib orator of the Revolution, was the chief
figure.
Julie Talma was famed for her literary and artistic circle. Here Marie
Joseph Chenier, the revolutionary dramatic poet of the Comédie
Française, declaimed his couplets. Here came Vergniaud, the eloquent
chief of the ill-fated Gironde; Greuze, the painter; Roland, the stern
and minatory minister, who spoke bitter words, composed by his wife, to
the king; Lavoisier, the chemist, who begged that the axe might be
stayed while he completed some experiments, and was told that the
Republic had no need of chemists. Madame du Deffand, whose hotel in the
Rue des Quatre Fils still exists, welcomed Voltaire, D'Alembert,
Montesquieu and the Encyclopedists.
In the street, the great open-air salon of the people, was a feverish
going to and fro. Here were the tub-thumpers of the Revolution holding
forth at every public place; the strident voices of ballad-singers at
the street corners; hawkers of the latest pamphlets hot from the Quai
des Augustins; the sellers of journals crying the _Père Duchesne_,
_L'Ami du Peuple_, the _Jean Bart_, the _Vieux Cordelier_. Crowds
gathered round Bassett's famous shop for caricature at the corner of the
Rue St. Jacques and the Rue des Mathurins. The walls of Paris were a
mass of variegated placards and proclamations. The charming signs of
the old _régime_ the Pomme rouge, the Rose Blanche, the Ami du Coeur,
the Gracieuse, the Trois Fleurs-de-lys couronnées gave place to the
"Necker," the "National Assembly," the "Tiers," the
"Constitution"--these, too, soon to be effaced by more Republican
appellations. For on the abolition of the monarchy and the inauguration
of the Religion of Nature, the words "royal" and "saint" disappear from
the revolutionary vocabulary. A new calendar is promulgated: streets and
squares are renamed: rues des Droits de l'Homme, de la Revolution, des
Piques de la Lois, efface the old landmarks. We must now say Rue Honoré,
not St. Honoré, and Mont Marat for Montmartre. Naturalists had written
of the queen bee: away with the hated word! She is now named of all good
patriots the _abeille pondeuse_, the egg-laying bee. No more emblems on
playing cards of king, queen, and knave: allegorical figures of Genius,
Liberty and Equality take their places, and since Law alone is above
them all, Patriotism, as it flings down its biggest card, shall cry no
longer, "Ace of trumps," but "Law of trumps," and "Genius of trumps."
Furniture is of Spartan simplicity. The people lie down on patriotic
beds and eat and drink from patriotic mugs and platters. Silver buckles
are needed by the national war chest: shoes shall now be clasped by
patriotic buckles of copper. The monarchial "_vous_" (you) shall give
place to "_toi_" (thou); and "monsieur" and "madame" to "_citoyen_" and
"_citoyenne_." The formal subscriptions to letters, "Your humble
servant," "Your obedient servant," shall no more recall the old days of
class subjection; we write now "Your fellow citizen," "Your friend,"
"Your equal." Every house bears an inscription, giving the names and
ages of the occupants, decorated with patriotic colours of red, white
and blue, with figures of the Gallic cock and the _bonnet rouge_. Over
every public building runs the legend, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or
Death"--it is even seen over the cages of the wild beasts at the Jardin
des Plantes.
Nowhere did the revolutionary ploughshare cut deeper than among the
clergy and the religious orders. Nearly forty monasteries and convents
were suppressed in Paris, and strange scenes were those when the troops
of monks and friars issued forth to secular life, some crying, "_Vive
Jesus le Roi et la Revolution_," for the new ideas had penetrated even
the cloister. The barbers' shops were invaded, and strange figures were
seen smoking their pipes along the Boulevards. Some went to the wars;
others, especially the Benedictines, appealed for teaching appointments;
many, faithful to their vows, went forth to poverty, misery and death.
The nuns and sisters gave more trouble, and the scenes that attended
their expulsion and that of the non-juring clergy burned deep into the
memories of the pious. "What do they take from me?" cried the _curé_ of
St. Marguerite in his farewell sermon. "My cure? All that I have is
yours, and it is you they despoil. My life? I am eighty-four years of
age, and what of life remains to me is not worth the sacrifice of my
principles." Descending the pulpit the venerable priest passed through a
sobbing congregation to a garret in one of the Faubourgs. There were but
few, however, who imitated the dignified protest of the _curé_ of St.
Marguerite. Many a pulpit rang with fiery denunciations, which recalled
the savage fanaticism of the league. Some of the younger clergy and a
few of the bishops were on the side of the early Revolutionists. The
Abbé Fouchet was the Peter the Hermit of the crusade for Liberty, and so
popular were his sermons in Notre Dame that a seat there fetched
twenty-four sous. But the corruption and apostasy of the hierarchy as a
whole, and their betrayal of the people, had borne its acrid fruit of
popular contempt and hostility, resulting in the monstrous profanation
of Notre Dame and other churches of Paris by the fanatics of the worship
of Nature and the puerile Deistic theatricalities of Robespierre's
Feasts of the Supreme Being. Compromise became impossible and the
Revolutionists found arrayed against them the most universal and the
deepest of human sentiments, the strongest cementing force in civil
life. Less than eight years after Robespierre's solemn comedy of the
_Etre Suprème_ all the hierarchy of the old religion returned--sixty
archbishops and bishops, and an army of priests. A gorgeous Easter Mass
in Notre Dame celebrated the re-establishment of the Catholic faith by
Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution.
It is not within the scope of the present work to deal with the later
annals of France. Superficial students of her modern history have freely
charged her with political irresponsibility and fickleness; no charge
could be less warranted by facts. For a thousand years her people were
loyal and faithful subjects of a monarchy, and endured for a century and
a half an infliction of misgovernment, oppression and grinding taxation
such as probably no other European people would have tolerated. With
touching fidelity and indomitable steadfastness the French people have
cherished the principles of the Great Revolution, in whose name they
swept the shams and wrongs of the _ancien régime_ away. There is a
profounder truth than perhaps Alphonse Karr imagined in his famous
epigram, _Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose_. Every political
upheaval of the nineteenth century in Paris has been at bottom an effort
to realise the revolutionary ideals of political freedom and social
equality in the face of external violence or internal corruption and
treachery. Twice the hated Bourbons were re-imposed on the people of
Paris by the bayonets of the foreigner; twice they rose and chased them
away. A compromise followed--that of a citizen king, Louis Philippe of
Orleans, once a Jacobin doorkeeper and a soldier of the Revolution, who
had fought valiantly at Valmy and Jemappes. But he too identified
himself with reactionary ministers, and became a fugitive to England,
the bourne of deposed kings. The Second Republic which followed grew
distrustful of the people and disfranchised at one stroke 3,000,000
citizens: one of the causes of the success of the _coup d'état_ of
Napoleon III. was an astute edict which restored universal suffrage.
During the negation of political rectitude and decency which
characterised the period of the Second Empire a little band of
Republicans refused to bow the knee to the new pinchbeck Cæsar, and,
inspired by Victor Hugo, their fiery poet and seer, whose _Châtiments_
have the passionate intensity of an Isaiah, braved exile, poverty,
calumny and flattery. They "stooped into a dark, tremendous sea of
doubt, pressed God's lamp to their breasts and emerged" to witness a sad
and bitter day of reckoning, when the corruption and vice of the Second
Empire were swallowed up in shame and disaster at Sedan. The Third
Republic, with admirable energy and patriotism, rose to save the
self-respect of France. The first and Imperial war, up to Sedan, was
over in a month; the second national and popular war endured for five
months.
[Illustration: THE LOUVRE--EASTERN ENTRANCE.]
Dynastic and ecclesiastical ambition die hard, and the new Republic has
had to weather many a storm in her career of a third of a century.
Carducci in a fine poem has imagined Letizia, mother of the Bonapartes,
a wandering shade haunting the desolate house at Ajaccio and recalling
the tragic fate of her children:--a Corsican Niobe standing on her
threshold and fiercely stretching forth her arms to the savage Ocean,
calling, calling, that from America, from Britain, from burning Africa,
some one of her tragic progeny may come to find a haven in her breast.
But the assegais of South African savages laid low the last hope of the
Imperialists, and it may reasonably be predicted that neither the shades
nor the living descendants of Bonaparte or Bourbon will ever trouble
again the internal peace of France nor her people be ruled by one
"regnant by right divine and luck o' the pillow." Throughout the whole
land a profound desire of peace possesses men's minds[166] and a firm
determination to effect a material and moral recuperation from the
disasters of the Empire. Two facts in modern France have impressed the
present writer in his travels since 1870--the extraordinary number of
new schools that have been raised and staffed throughout the length and
breadth of the land and the wonderful activity of the Catholic church as
shown by new churches and foundations.
The beneficent results of the Great Revolution have leavened the whole
world. In no small degree may it be said of France that by her stripes
we have been healed. With true insight the Revolutionists perceived that
liberty is the one essential element of national progress--
"When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go,
Nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last."
But the great work is yet incomplete. Political liberty and equality
have been won. A more tremendous task awaits the peoples of the old and
new worlds alike--to achieve industrial emancipation and inaugurate a
reign of social justice. And we know that Paris will have no small part
in the solution of this problem.
* * * * *
It now remains to consider the impress which this stormy period left on
the architecture of Paris. We have seen that the Convention assigned the
royal Palace of the Louvre for the home of a national museum. The
neglect of the fabric, however, continued. Already Marat had
appropriated four of the royal presses and their accessories for the
_Ami du Peuple_, and the types founded for Louis XIV. were used to print
the diatribes of the fiercest advocate of the Terror. All along the
south façade, print and cook shops were seen, and small huckstering went
on unheeded. In 1794 the ground floor of the Petite Galerie was used as
a Bourse. On the Place du Carrousel, and the site of the Squares du
Louvre were a mass of mean houses which remained even to comparatively
recent times. In 1805 the masterful will and all-embracing activity of
Napoleon were directed to the improvement of Paris, which he determined
to make the most beautiful capital in the world. His architects, Percier
and Fontaine, were set to work on the Louvre, and yet another vast plan
was elaborated for completing the Palace. A northern wing, corresponding
to Henry IV.'s south wing, was to be built eastwards along the new Rue
de Rivoli, from the Pavilion de Marsan at the north end of the
Tuileries; the Carrousel was to be traversed by a building, separating
the two palaces, designed to house the National Library, the learned
Societies and other bodies. Of this ambitious plan, however, all that
was carried out was a portion of the Rue de Rivoli façade, from the
Pavilion de Marsan to the Pavilion de Rohan, which latter was finished
under the Restoration. Some external decorative work was carried out on
the south façade. Perrault's Colonnade was restored, the four façades of
the quadrangle were completed, and a new bridge to lead to the "Palace
of the Arts" was built. Little or nothing was done to further Napoleon's
plan until the Republic of 1848 decreed the completion of the north
façade, which was actually achieved under the Second Empire by Visconti
in 1857, who built other structures, each with three courts, inside the
great space enclosed by the north and south wings to correct their want
of parallelism. Later (1862-1868), Henry the Fourth's long gallery and
the Pavilions de Flore and Lesdiguières were rebuilt, and smaller
galleries were added to those giving on the Cour des Tuileries. After
the disastrous fire which destroyed the Tuileries in 1871, the Third
Republic restored the Pavilions de Flore and de Marsan.
But the vicissitudes of this wonderful pile of architecture are not yet
ended. The discovery of Perrault's base at the east and of Lemercier's
at the north, will inevitably lead to their proximate disclosure. Ample
space remains at the east for the excavation of a wide and deep fosse,
which would expose the wing to view as Perrault intended it; but on the
Rue de Rivoli side the problem is more difficult, and probably a narrow
fosse, or _saut de loup_, will be all that space will allow there.
Napoleon I.'s new streets near the Tuileries and the Louvre soon became
the fashionable quarter of Paris. The Italian arcades and every street
name recalled a former victory of the Consulate in Italy and Egypt. The
military glories of a revolutionary empire, which at one time
transcended the limits of that of Charlemagne; which crashed through the
shams of the old world and toppled in the dust their imposing but hollow
state, were wrought in bronze on the Vendôme Column, cast from the
cannon captured from every nation in Europe. The Triumphal Arch of the
Carrousel, crowned by the bronze horses from St. Mark's at Venice; the
majestic Triumphal Arch of the Etoile--a partially achieved project--all
paraded the Emperor's fame. Of more practical utility were the quays
built along the south bank of the Seine; the bridges of Austerlitz and
Jena, which latter Blücher would have blown up had Wellington permitted
it.
The erection of the new church of the Madeleine, begun in 1764, had been
interrupted by the Revolution, and in 1806, Napoleon ordered that it
should be completed as a Temple of Glory. The Restoration transformed it
to a Catholic church, which was finally completed under Louis Philippe
in 1842. It is now the most fashionable place of worship in Paris.
Napoleon drove sixty new streets through Paris, cleared away the posts
that marked off the footways, began the raised pavements and kerbs, and
ordered the drainage to be diverted from the gutters in the centre of
the roadway.
The Restoration erected two basilicas--Notre Dame de Lorette and St.
Vincent de Paul--the latter made famous by Flandrin's masterly frescoes,
painted on a gold ground around the nave and choir. The Expiatory Chapel
raised to the memory of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette on the site of
the old cemetery of the Madeleine--where they lay, until transferred to
St. Denis, in one red burial with the brave Swiss Guards who vainly
spent their lives for them--is now threatened with demolition. Three new
bridges--of the Invalids, the Archevêché and Arcole--were added, and
fifty-five new streets.
Under the citizen king, Napoleon's Arch of Triumph of the Etoile was
completed, and the Columns of Luxor, on the Place de la Concorde, and of
July on the Place de la Bastille, were raised. It was the period of the
admirable architectural restorations of Viollet le Duc. The great
architect has described how his passion for Gothic was stirred when,
taken as a boy to Notre Dame, the rose window of the south seized upon
his imagination. While gazing at it the organ began to play, and he
thought that the music came from the window--the shrill, high notes from
the light colours, the solemn, bass notes from the dark and more subdued
hues. It was a reverent and admiring spirit such as this which inspired
the famous architect's loving treatment of the Gothic restoration in
Paris and all over France. To him more than to any other artist we owe
the preservation of such masterpieces as Notre Dame and the Sainte
Chapelle.
But the great changes which have made modern Paris were effected under
the Second Empire. In 1854, when the Haussemannisation of the city
began, the Paris of the First Empire and of the Restoration remained
essentially unaltered. It was a city of a few grand streets and of many
mean ones. Pavements were still rare, and drainage was imperfect. In a
few years the whole aspect was changed. Twenty-two new boulevards and
avenues were created. Streets of appalling uniformity and directness
were ploughed through Paris in all directions. "Nothing is more brutal
than a straight line," says Victor Hugo, and there is little of interest
in the monotonous miles of dreary coincidence which constitute the
architectural legacy of the Second Empire.
[Illustration: RUE DROUET AND SACRÉ COEUR.]
[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE FROM RIVER.]
The sad task of the Third Republic has been to heal the wounds and
cover up the destruction wrought by the Civil War of 1871. The chief
architectural creations of the Third Republic are the Hôtel de Ville,
the new Sorbonne, the Trocadero, and the completion of the magnificent
and colossal temple, rich with precious marble and stone of every kind,
which, at a cost of £10,000,000 sterling, has been raised to the Muses
at the end of the Avenue de l'Opéra. The Church, too, has lavished her
millions on the mighty basilica of the Sacré Coeur, which dominates
Paris from the heights of Montmartre. But some of the glory of past ages
remains hidden away in corners of the city; some has been recovered from
the vandalism of iconoclastic eighteenth-century architects, canons,
revolutionists and nineteenth-century prefects.
Let us now wander awhile about the great city and refresh our memories
of her dramatic past by beholding somewhat of the interest and beauty
which have been preserved to us; for "to be in Paris itself, amid the
full, delightful fragrance of those dainty visible things which
Huguenots despised--that, surely, were the sum of good fortune!"