Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
“Perhaps this was the most terrible moment of the direful morning; another instant and the best of kings would have received from his rebellious subjects indignities too horrid to mention – indignities that would have been to him more insupportable than death. Such was the feeling expressed on his countenance. Turning towards me, he looked at me steadily, as if to ask my advice. Alas! it was impossible for me to give any, and I only answered by silence; but as he continued this fixed look of inquiry I replied, ‘Sir, in this new insult I only see another trait of resemblance between your Majesty and the Saviour who is about to recompense you.’ At these words he raised his eyes to heaven with an expression that can never be described. ‘You are right,’ he said, ‘nothing less than His example should make me submit to such a degradation.’ Then, turning to the guards, he added: ‘Do what you will. I will drink of the cup even to the dregs.’ The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass. The king was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; so that my astonishment was extreme when, arrived at the last step, he suddenly let go my arm and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to him; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard at the Pont Tournant, pronounce distinctly these memorable words: ‘I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on France.’ He was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, waved his sword, and with a ferocious cry ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed to have re-animated themselves, and seizing with violence the most virtuous of kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head and showed it to the people, as he walked round the scaffold. He accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of ‘Vive la République!’ were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied, and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated, became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air.”
“It is remarkable,” writes Mr. Sneyd Edgeworth, the Abbé’s brother, “that in this account of the last moments of Louis XVI., the Abbé Edgeworth has omitted to relate that fine apostrophe, which everyone has heard, and which everyone believes that he addressed to his king at the moment of execution —
“‘Fils de St. Louis, montez au ciel!’
“The Abbé Edgeworth has been asked if he recollected to have made this exclamation. He replied that he could neither deny nor affirm that he had spoken the words. It was possible, he added, that he might have pronounced them without afterwards recollecting the fact, for that he retained no memory of anything which happened relative to himself at that awful instant. His not recollecting or recording the words is perhaps the best proof that they were spoken from the impulse of the moment.”
The Reign of Terror had now begun. Foreign armies were marching towards Paris in order to liberate the King from prison and replace him on his throne. The Republican Government replied by removing the head of the monarch whom it was prepared to restore.
During the Reign of Terror the Place de la Concorde, as it was afterwards to be called, might fitly have been named, not merely the Place of the Revolution, the title it bore, but the Place of Blood. In the terrible year of 1793 Charlotte Corday was guillotined on the 17th of July; Brissot, leader of the Girondists, with twenty-one of his followers, on the 2nd of October; Queen Marie Antoinette on the 16th of October; and Philippe Égalité, Duke of Orleans (father of Louis Philippe), on the 14th of November. Among the victims of the year 1794 may be mentioned Madame Élizabeth, sister of Louis XVI., who was guillotined on the 12th of May; Hébert and several of his most bloodthirsty associates, who, at the instigation of Robespierre and Danton, lost their heads on the 14th of March; Marat and members of his party, who followed a few days afterwards; Danton himself and a number of his adherents, with the heroic Camille Desmoulins among them, on the 8th of April; Chaumette and Anacharsis Cloots, together with the wives of some previous victims on April 16th; Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other members of the Committee of Public Safety, on July 28th; seventy members of the Commune who had acted under Robespierre’s direction on July 29th; and twelve other members of the same body the day afterwards.
One of the most eminent figures in the Girondist party, Lasource, exclaimed to his sanguinary judges, on receiving his sentence: “I die at a moment when the people have lost their reason; you will die the day they regain it.”
In reference to Saint-Just’s arrogance, Camille Desmoulins had said: “He carries his head with as much veneration as though he were bearing the Church Sacrament on his shoulders;” to which Saint-Just playfully replied: “And I will make him carry his head as St. Denis carried his.” St. Denis, the martyr, it will be remembered, is said, after decapitation, to have marched some distance with his head under his arm.
In the course of the two years over which the Reign of Terror extended (though its duration is variously estimated according to the political principles of the calculator) nearly 3,000 persons are declared to have perished on the Place de la Révolution; though this estimate would certainly be regarded by some as excessive, by others as inadequate.
In reference to the Reign of Terror, Victor Hugo calls upon the world “not to criticise too closely the bursting of the thunder-cloud which had been slowly gathering for eighteen centuries;” as though, from the earliest period, France had always been grossly misgoverned, to be suddenly governed in perfection from the time of the Revolution. It is the simple truth, however, that the Reign of Terror was the result, not of the natural development of the Revolutionary forces, but of threats from abroad, the presence, real and imaginary, of foreign agents in Paris, and the advance of the German armies with a view to the liberation of the king and the suppression of the Republic. It ought also in fairness to be remembered that if the Revolutionists made a free use of the guillotine, they abolished torture and the cruel methods of executions (such as beating to death with an iron bar) in use under the ancient monarchy until the moment of the outbreak. Nor can it be forgotten that at various periods of French history (the Massacre of St. Bartholomew is an instance) life has been sacrificed more copiously, more recklessly, and more wantonly, than during the worst excesses of the French Revolution. When many years afterwards it was proposed to erect a fountain on the spot where the scaffold of Louis XVI. had stood, Chateaubriand declared that all the water in the world would not suffice to remove the blood-stains which had sullied the Place.
Of those who suffered under the Revolution, many, such as Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, well deserved their fate, and none more so than the infamous Philippe Égalité, who, after playing the part of a democrat, and democratically voting for the death of his cousin the king, was himself, on democratic grounds, brought to the guillotine.
Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes four years after Louis Philippe’s election to the throne, Chateaubriand reproached the reigning king with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a punishment for that crime, it had become impossible to establish monarchy in France, Chateaubriand added: “Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow in spite of his victories; Charles X. in spite of his piety. To discredit the crown finally in the eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to be for one moment in the blood-stained bed of the murderer.” That Louis Philippe suffered this outburst to be published unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of his extreme tolerance in press matters.
Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention to words which by a large portion of his subjects would have been accepted as true. It has been said by the defenders of the “regicide” that Philippe Égalité did his best not to be present at the sitting of the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king; and that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination unless he voted with them for the “death of the tyrant.” However that may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal kinsman was to be decided; and when it came to his turn to deliver his opinion, he did so in these words: “Occupied solely with my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked or might afterwards attack the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of Louis.” Philippe Égalité had looked for general approval, and had voted in fear of that death which awaited him nevertheless, and which came to him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known, cries of indignation from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. A former soldier of the king’s body-guard, hearing of Philippe Égalité’s unnatural offence, resolved to kill him; but not being able to find him, killed another less guilty “regicide” in his place.
Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe Égalité in the breast of the king himself. “I don’t know by what chance,” says the Abbé Edgeworth in his “Relation sur les derniers Moments du Roi,” “the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well acquainted with his intrigues, and with the horrid part he had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness, and with pity rather than anger. ‘What have I done to my cousin,’ he exclaimed, ‘that he should so persecute me? What object could he have? Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.’”
Under the Directory, when the worst period of the Revolution was at an end, and the Republic itself was disappearing, the Place de la Révolution was called Place de la Concorde, and this name was preserved under the Consulate and the Empire.
At the time of the Restoration, when endeavours were made to revive in every form the associations of the old French monarchy, the name of Place de la Concorde was set aside for the original one of Place Louis XV., which, however, in obvious reference to the execution of Louis XV’s successor, was changed in 1826 to Place Louis XVI. It was at the same time decreed that a monument should be erected to the memory of the unfortunate monarch, but the decree was never acted upon.
Soon afterwards, in 1828, an order signed by Charles X. gave the place of many names to the town of Paris on condition that it should spend within five years, in completing the architectural and other decorations of the square, a sum of at least 2,230,000 francs.
After the Revolution of 1830 the name of Place de la Concorde was re-adopted; and the Municipality was proceeding as rapidly as possible with the works ordered under the previous reign, when the cholera broke out, causing to the town an expenditure which rendered it necessary to stop the completion of the improvements.
The sum to be applied to the purpose was afterwards reduced to 1,500,000 francs; and this sum was conscientiously spent, but without by any means finishing the design contemplated by the architects.
The fountains, with the Naiads and Tritons, and the eight statues representing in personification the principal sights of Paris, had been duly placed; and in 1836 the Obelisk of Luxor, a present from the Pasha of Egypt, was made the central ornament on the spot which had been successively occupied by the statue of Louis XVI. and the figure of Liberty.
It was not until 1852, under the Empire, that the objects which still on one side mark the limits of the Place were set up. A large number of bronze candelabra which were at the same time fixed in various parts of the square greatly increased at night its picturesqueness and its beauty. For the last forty years the Place de la Concorde has remained as it was under the Empire. The Republic of 1871 could scarcely think it necessary to return to the truly Republican name of Place de la Révolution, which had been preserved for some two or three years during the worst period of the Revolution; and to the embellishment of the Place there was nothing to add. It remains what our Trafalgar Square was once, with or without reason, declared to be – “the finest site in Europe;” less admirable, however, as a mere site, than for the admirable views of such varied kinds that it commands in every direction.
The history of the Place de la Concorde would not be complete without a record of the fact that it has been successively occupied by Russian and Prussian troops (1814); by English troops (1815); and again by Prussian troops (1871). It was the scene, too, in 1871 of a desperate struggle between the Communards and the troops advancing against them from Versailles.
CHAPTER XIV
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.
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.
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!”
