Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
In the early days of Paris the churches were at Christmas-time made the scene of ceremonies and diversions recalling the Saturnalia of the Romans, from whom such civilisation as the French then possessed was for the most part inherited. Clerks and members of the inferior clergy took the place in churches and cathedrals of high ecclesiastical dignitaries when services were performed in which, with religious ceremonies, acts of buffoonery and even indecency were mingled. The Festival of the Fools, the Festival of the Ass, the Festival of the Innocents and of the Sub-deacons, were some of the names of these burlesque celebrations. At Paris, in the church of Notre Dame, the Festival of the Sub-deacons was also called the Festival of the Drunken Deacons. Begun on Christmas Day, it was kept up until Twelfth Day, the chief celebration being reserved for New Year’s Day.
In the first place, from among the sub-deacons of the cathedral a bishop, archbishop, and sometimes a pope was elected. The mitre, the crook, and the cross, were carried before the mock pontiff, and he was then required to give his solemn blessing to the people. The entry of the pope, archbishop, or bishop into the church was announced by the ringing of the bells. Then the sham prelate was placed in the episcopal chair, and mass was begun. All the clergy who took part in the mass had their faces painted black, or wore hideous and ridiculous masks. They were dressed as acrobats or as women, danced in the middle of the choir, and sang improper songs. Then the deacons and sub-deacons advanced to the altar and ate black puddings and sausages before the celebrant. They played at cards or at dice, and placed in the incense box pieces of old shoes, the odour of which was by no means agreeable. When the mass was at an end the sub-deacons, in their madness or their intoxication, profaned the church still more, running, dancing, and leaping like lunatics, exciting one another to new extravagances, singing the most dissolute songs, and sometimes stripping themselves of their clothes.
The Church as a body was far from approving these shameful practices, and it condemned them in several Councils; but for a considerable time the spirit of insubordination, together with the dissolute tendencies of a section of the priesthood, rendered all such condemnations nugatory. The clerical Saturnalia were continued up to the middle of the fifteenth century. Forbidden by the Pope’s Legate at Paris, and by the Archbishop of Paris, they remained popular until 1445, in which year a letter was addressed by the Theological Faculty of Paris to all the prelates and chapters exhorting them to abolish customs so unworthy of religion. Sixteen years afterwards, in 1460, these burlesque celebrations were still spoken of at the Council of Sens as an abuse which must be destroyed. So difficult are popular customs to extirpate!
CHAPTER XXI
THE CHAMP DE MARS AND PARIS EXHIBITIONS
The Royal Military School of Louis XV. – The National Assembly – The Patriotic Altar – The Festival of the Supreme Being – Other Festivals – Industrial Exhibitions – The Eiffel Tower – The Trocadéro.
A WHOLE chapter might be devoted to the café concerts, the swings, the merry-go-rounds, and other entertainments of a constantly varying kind, which are to be witnessed and, according to taste, enjoyed from morning to night in the Champs Élysées. But against the frivolity of these popular diversions may well be placed the great international exhibitions of which the Champs Élysées have from time to time during the last thirty-six years been the scene.
With each of the exhibitions of 1867, 1878, and 1889 the Champ de Mars has been connected; and its permanent association with these peaceful celebrations is now marked by the famous Eiffel Tower, which stands in the warlike field.
Although it lies on the south side of the river, the Champ de Mars is so closely connected with the Champs Élysées that it may almost be regarded as belonging thereto.
If the universal exhibitions of Paris were held in the Elysian Fields, they have, on each of the last three occasions, had an annex in the field of Mars. It is by the way of the Champs Élysées, moreover, that the troops march when the army of Paris is exercised and inspected in the great review-ground.
The Champ de Mars was originally a simple field of exercise for the pupils of the Royal Military School. Established by Louis XV. in 1751 for five hundred sons of officers, this school came into existence half a century before the Polytechnic School and the School of St. Cyr, and formed, during the last years of the Monarchy, a great number of excellent officers, the most celebrated of all being Napoleon Bonaparte, who on the 22nd of October, 1784, entered the company of gentlemen cadets. On the 1st of the following September, having come out brilliantly in an examination, he was appointed second lieutenant in the artillery regiment of La Fayette. He had then passed by only fourteen days his sixteenth birthday. The School of Gentlemen Cadets, the military cradle of the future Emperor, was not precisely the school which Louis XV. had founded. His grandson had perceived that to admit, as a matter of right, children from eight to thirteen years of age would fill the military school with youths who had no fitness for the military career. He solved the problem by establishing in various country towns twelve colleges, where those qualified for admission could study up to the age of fifteen, after which a selection was made with a view to the Military School of Paris. One of these colleges was at Brienne, where the young Napoleon studied before being passed for the Military School.
Until 1789 no one was admitted to the Military School but sons of officers and noblemen. In the first year of the Revolution the Constitutional Ministers of Louis XVI. procured a decree from the Council which abolished the qualification of nobility. This was not so great an innovation as it may appear, since Louis XV. had by a decree of the year 1750 granted privileges of nobility to officers; the children, therefore, of all officers were admissible to the Military School. The institution was all the same of doubtful origin; and not knowing what else to do with it the Convention abolished it in June, 1793, took possession of its funds, and changed the building into a flour magazine and a cavalry depôt.
Soon afterwards, with a mutability characteristic of the time, the Revolutionary Government came to the conclusion that a Royal Military School, however detestable as of royal origin, would become admirable if the title of Republican were applied to it. It was accordingly decided in June, 1794, that each district of the Republic should send to Paris “six young citizens under the name of pupils of the School of Mars, aged from sixteen to seventeen years, in order to receive a Revolutionary education with all the knowledge, sentiments, and ideas of a Republican soldier.” The project was voted for on a report of Barère, who had drawn a droll parallel between the students of the Royal Military School (descended from “some feudal brigand, some privileged rogue, some ridiculous marquis, some modern baron, or some court flunkey”) and what the students of the School of Mars would be – “the offspring of Republican families, of parents of restricted means, or of useful inhabitants of the country. What,” Barère went on to say, “has ever come out of the Military School? What has this brilliant college produced? No able officer, not a general, not an administrator, not one celebrated warrior.”
It had produced, all the same, General Bonaparte, who was even then preparing the plans of his Italian campaign. The very next year the young cadet of the Royal Military School reentered the École Militaire to establish his headquarters there as general commanding in chief the army of Paris. When he became emperor he inscribed on the portico of the school these words: “Napoleon’s headquarters”; which only disappeared in 1815, when a regiment of the Imperial Guard was replaced in the building by the Royal Guard.
Since it has ceased to be a school the so-called École Militaire has been used as a cavalry and artillery barrack.
The Champ de Mars, in front of the École Militaire, has a very varied history. Here in the ninth century the Normans were defeated by Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, Count of Paris; who called the scene of his exploit, not Champ de Mars, but more explicitly, Champ de la Victoire. Then for many centuries the Field of Victory, or of Mars, seems to have witnessed nothing in particular until, at last, under the reign of Louis XV., it became the scene of a grand review in which the students of the Royal Military School took part. While the review was going on a young officer, nephew of Orry, controller of finance, who had suffered from the persecution of the king’s favourite, was brought before a court-martial on an accusation of treason, suggested by the defeat of the French army in Germany. He was about to be condemned, when the king was informed by express, that not only was young Orry no traitor, but that the whole army, compromised by a serious mistake on the part of its commander, Marshal Maillebois, owed its safety to Orry’s presence of mind, and to a vigorous charge of cavalry directed by him. Louis XV. gave the young man a new commission, thus marking the opening of the Champ de Mars by an act of justice.
During the early days of the Revolution the Champ de Mars played an important part; and through the course of the Revolution it was the scene of all the most important national celebrations. Nor under the Empire did it lose the character it had thus acquired. In July, 1790, the year after the taking of the Bastille, the general federation of the nation was celebrated; and a quarter of a century later, after Napoleon’s return from Elba, and immediately before the Waterloo campaign, the emperor assembled in the Champ de Mars the authorities and representative bodies of the country in order to swear fidelity to the new Constitution which he had just promulgated, even as Louis XVI. had sworn fidelity to the Constitution adopted by the National Assembly.
On the 5th of June all military and naval bodies, national or foreign, were invited to send a number of delegates, according to the forces represented, to an assembly which was to be held in the Champ de Mars on the 14th of the month following. The details of the celebration were regulated by special decree; and artists of all kinds were invited to make suggestions towards the arrangement and decoration of the plain. It was determined in the first instance to convert this plain into a sort of basin or amphitheatre with sloping sides and a hollow in the middle. Many thousands of labourers were employed in this work, and they were ultimately joined by the whole population of Paris, just as two years afterwards all classes and conditions of people took part in the preparations for the festival of the Altar to the Country.
On the day appointed deputations arrived from all parts of France, the visitors being hospitably entertained by private citizens, or received by innkeepers at reduced charges. Special seats were reserved for them at the meeting of the National Assembly; and they, in their turn, were full of enthusiasm for the Assembly, for the people of Paris, but above all for King Louis XVI. On the 13th, the day before the festival, the king reviewed the troops, the deputations, and a good portion of the Paris National Guard, on the Place Louis XV., and in the Champs Élysées.
At five o’clock in the morning the National Guard and the entire population were on foot. Many had passed the night in the Champs Élysées, and several regiments of National Guards had marched there at midnight in order to be in good time for the approaching celebration. The deputies from the provinces assembled at the Bastille, where eighty-three white flags bearing the names of their respective departments were distributed among them. At seven o’clock the march began, headed by a body of cavalry belonging to the National Guard of Paris, which was followed by a body of infantry, the electors of Paris, the Paris Commune, and the National Assembly, preceded by a regiment of children, and followed by a regiment of old men with the flags of the sixty battalions of Paris around them. Then came the representatives of the federated departments, preceded by two marshals of France with a numerous staff, and followed by a number of officers of various corps, including the King’s Body Guard. The procession passed through the town amid the acclamations of the people and to the sound of artillery, approaching the Champ de Mars by way of the Champs Élysées, and crossing the river by a bridge of boats constructed the night before just opposite the village of Chaillot.
At the entrance to the Champ de Mars, now transformed into a vast circus, had been raised a triumphal arch bearing a number of inscriptions, among which may be cited the following: —
The rights of man were ignored for centuries; they have been re-established for the whole of humanity.
You love that liberty which you now possess; prove your gratitude by preserving it.
In the Champ de Mars 300,000 persons had assembled, men, women, and children, on the slopes of the newly-made amphitheatre, all wearing the national colours. The hillsides of Chaillot and of Passy were equally filled; as further on were the amphitheatres of Meudon and St. Cloud, of Mont Valérien and Montmartre. In front of the Military School were ascending rows of seats, covered with blue and gold drapery, for the king, the court, the National Assembly, the various constituted bodies and the most distinguished guests. In the centre of the Champ de Mars, on a raised piece of ground, was a monumental altar to the country with four immense staircases on the four sides. This altar was itself two years later made the object of a festival.
The king had for this day only been named Chief of the National Guards of France. He appointed La Fayette to perform the duties of the post.
Pending the commencement of the ceremony, 1,200 musicians played various pieces of music, including the national dances of Brittany, Auvergne, and Provence. French music of this period was, with the notable exceptions of the “Marseillaise” and of the “Chant du Départ,” by no means impressive in itself, though hymns that are sung by thousands of voices can scarcely fail, from the volume of sound and the unanimity of feeling, to produce a certain effect. Patriotic hymns were in any case sung, and they excited general enthusiasm.
At half-past three a salvo of artillery announced the beginning of the festival. The king was seated in his tribune, having on his right the President of the National Assembly at the same level as himself. La Fayette came forward to take the king’s orders, and the ceremony commenced with a solemn mass, celebrated, according to general tradition, by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, afterwards to be known under every kind of government in France, including the Empire, the Restoration, and the Monarchy of Louis Philippe, as Talleyrand the Minister. According, however, to credible accounts, it was not Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, but Montmorency, Grand Almoner of France, who performed mass on this solemn occasion. The prelate was in any case assisted by two hundred priests, who, wearing tricolour sashes, surrounded the altar; then the oriflamme symbol of the federation was blessed, together with the banners given to the deputations from the provinces. Finally La Fayette ascended the staircase, radiant, but full of emotion, and placing the point of his sword on the Altar of the Country, pronounced in a loud firm voice this sacred oath: “We swear to be for ever faithful to the nation, to the law, and to the king; to maintain with all our power the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king; to protect the persons and property of all, and to remain united to all Frenchmen by the indissoluble bonds of fraternity.”
The general excitement seemed now to have reached its highest pitch. But it was raised still higher when the king in his turn swore fidelity to the Constitution. Many, however, complained at the time that he took the oath, not from the altar, but from the tribune, where he was sitting; and this was generally looked upon as of bad augury. From that time, throughout the Revolution, the Champ de Mars was known as the Champ de la Fédération, and the anniversary of the 14th of July was celebrated until the time of the Consulate.
Some two years later the altar on which the Mass of the Federation had been celebrated was itself to be made the object of a festival. Enlarged and newly decorated, it became the Altar of Patriotism or autel à la patrie, and once more the whole population took part in the preparations, when, to judge by a letter on the subject left by an actress of the Théâtre Français, the work of the day was varied by a certain amount of pleasantry. “Every gentleman,” says the actress, “chose a lady to whom he offered a very light spade decorated with ribands; then, headed by a band, the lovers of liberty hastened to the general rendezvous.”
In the centre of the Champ de Mars was at last constructed a colossal altar, at which the deputies from the National Guards of France and from the various army corps assembled, and swore allegiance to the Republic. Patriotic altars or autels à la patrie had already been raised in various parts of France, when, by a decree of July, 1792, it was ordered that in every commune a patriotic altar should be erected, to which children should be brought, where young people should get married, and on which should be registered births, marriages, and deaths. Above all it was thought necessary that round the altars solemn deliberations should be held concerning the fate of the country, which was threatened by the whole continent of Europe.
After the flight of the king a petition was laid on the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars demanding the monarch’s formal dethronement. At the Jacobin Club the question of the fall of the monarchy had been boldly put forward; and after a long debate the petition just referred to was drawn up and forwarded for general acceptation to the patriotic altar of the Champ de Mars. The document set forth that the nation would no more acknowledge Louis XVI. or any other king. That very evening, however, the Jacobins were themselves alarmed by the revolutionary turn of affairs, and withdrew their petition, declaring it to be illegal in form.
General La Fayette, at the head of the army and the National Guards, was meanwhile determined under all circumstances to keep order, and it soon became necessary for his troops to act. Two wretched men had concealed themselves beneath the staircase of the patriotic altar; and some insults said to have been addressed by them to women ascending the stairs led to their being attacked – trivial origin of a sanguinary massacre – by a number of washerwomen from the neighbourhood. The practical jokers in hiding beneath the staircase had with them a barrel of water, which popular indignation converted into a barrel of gunpowder intended to blow up the altar, together with the faithful assembled on its steps. The patriotic altar was at that time an object of religious veneration, and the conduct of the two men beneath the staircase was looked upon as nothing less than sacrilegious. Some fanatics fell upon them and put them to death; and the incident, commented upon from the most different points of view, was in the end represented as an onslaught by reactionists on the sworn friends of liberty.
Meanwhile the crowd in the Champ de Mars was constantly increasing; and soon it was summoned by beat of drum, and with all the usual formalities, to disperse. Nothing came of this demand except a shower of stones hurled at the National Guard. The regular troops, composed principally of Royal Guards, replied by firing wildly at all around them. The patriotic altar was soon covered with blood and surrounded by corpses.
The crowd fled as rapidly as its numbers would permit, but it was now charged by cavalry, and afterwards fired into by artillery. To stop the carnage La Fayette rode up to the guns, himself exposed to their shots. The number of persons killed has, of course, been differently – very differently – estimated; but according to a moderate computation, at least 1,500 persons were slain.
General La Fayette, and Bailly, Mayor of Paris, had given a general order to repel force by force, and the responsibility of the massacre was accepted by Bailly. It was for this reason, indeed, that in November, 1793, he was sentenced to death, his execution taking place on the very scene of the massacre.
When armies were being hastily formed for repelling the invasion of the German sovereigns the recruiting office was in the Champ de Mars, where amphitheatres were erected with flags bearing this inscription, “Our country is in danger.” On a table, supported by two drums, the officers of the Municipality inscribed the names of those who wished to enlist, and the enthusiasm, now wide-spreading, gave to France fourteen armies, which, untrained as bodies, (though they contained numbers of trained men disbanded from the royal army) proved themselves valiant, and indeed invincible, in the field.
The next great festival which was held in the Champ de Mars was that of the Supreme Being. All that was done during the Revolution against religion was aimed particularly at the clergy and the monks, the Inquisition and the stake. The celebration of the Festival of the Supreme Being had been fixed, according to the Revolutionary calendar, for the 20th Prairial, and the famous painter David had been charged with the elaboration of the programme. The day which Robespierre had chosen for the celebration coincided precisely this year with one of the great Catholic festivals – that of Whitsuntide.
Robespierre had been elected President of the Assembly. At eight o’clock in the morning the beginning of the Festival was announced by a discharge of artillery from the Tuileries. Flowers had been brought to Paris from thirty miles round, and every house in the City had its garland, while all the women carried bouquets and all the men branches of oak. A vast amphitheatre constructed in the National Garden (the garden of the Tuileries, that is to say) held the members of the Convention, each of whom carried in his hand a bouquet of flowers and of ears of corn.
Robespierre, detained by his duties at the Revolutionary Tribunal, arrived late, at which there was some amusement. Dressed in the blue coat worn by the representatives of the people, and holding in his hand a bouquet of flowers and wheat, he exclaimed: “O Nature, how delightful, how sublime is thy power! How tyrants must tremble and grow pale at the idea of such a Festival!”
After the founder of the new religion had, in accordance with the programme, delivered his discourse, whence a few words have been cited, he walked down from the amphitheatre in company with his fellow-members of the Convention. At the entrance to the Palace had been erected a pyramid consisting of dolls representing atheism, ambition, egotism, and false simplicity; then came the rags of misery, through which could be seen the decorations and splendour of the slaves of Royalty. Robespierre went forward with a torch and set fire to these impostures. When wretchedness and vice had been consumed, the statue of Wisdom was discovered unfortunately a little scorched by the flames in which its opposites had perished.
The whole procession next moved towards the Champ de la Réunion, as the Champ de Mars was now called. The Convention marched in a body surrounded by a tricolour ribbon, which was carried by children, young men, middle-aged men, and old men, all crowned with oak and myrtle. No arms were worn, but every deputy exhibited in token of his mission a tricolour sash, and carried a feather in his hat. In the centre of the procession eight oxen with gilded horns drew an antique car bearing, as tributes, instruments of art. When the Convention established itself on a symbolical mountain, it was surrounded by the fathers and mothers sent officially by the sections; also by their young daughters, crowned with roses, and older children adorned with violets. Everyone, moreover, in the procession wore national colours.
Then there was a fresh discourse from Robespierre, after which hymns by Chénier and Désorgues, with music by Gaveaux, were sung. The music of the hymns, from one or two specimens preserved, seems to have been poor, but given forth by thousands of voices it was doubtless impressive. After an invocation to the Eternal, the young girls strewed their flowers on the ground, mothers raised their children in their arms, and old men stretched out their hands to bless the young ones, who swore to die for their country and their liberty. Revolutionary in its origin, the Festival of the Supreme Being, celebrated throughout France, helped everywhere to raise the Catholic party; which was not precisely what its founders had aimed at.
Another solemn festival was held in the Champ de Mars, to celebrate the capture of Toulon from the English, as brought about by a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose name was being repeated from mouth to mouth by admirers as yet unable to foresee that the object of their admiration would before many years be the ruler of France; for, “born of the Republic,” he was, in the energetic words of Chateaubriand, “to kill his own mother.”
On the 3rd of December, 1804, the day after the coronation of the Emperor at Notre-Dame, the Champ de Mars was to be the scene of yet another festival – the distribution of eagles among the different regiments of the French Army.
It was in the Champ de Mars that Napoleon, after his return from Elba, gave a banquet to some 15,000 soldiers and National Guards; and again in the Champ de Mars that he assembled deputations from all the army-corps and all the State bodies convoked to hear the promulgation of the “additional Act” which gave new character to the old Napoleonic Constitution. This was the assembly known as that of the Champ de Mai, so called from the month in which it was held.
Under the Restoration the Champ de Mars became the scene of a military representation in which the Duke of Angoulême, at the head of the army which had fought, or rather had executed a military promenade, in Spain, attacked some battalions playing the part of the Spanish army, which at the proper moment retreated. Then the high ground since known as the Trocadéro was stormed, as the Trocadéro of Spain had been stormed in the war just terminated; and it was now that the idea was conceived of treating the Arc de Triomphe as a triumphal arch erected to the glory of the army of Louis XVIII.
Under the reign of Louis Philippe, the military representation of which under Louis XVIII.’s reign the Trocadéro had been made the scene was repeated, with the replacement of the Trocadéro by Antwerp. This display, on a very grand scale, was attended with a crush, a panic, and almost as many accidents as were caused by the celebrated fireworks on the Place Louis XV., on the occasion of Marie Antoinette’s marriage.
It was under the Restoration that the Champ de Mars was used as a course for the first races, or at least the first races of a popular character, established in France. They were, after some years, as already mentioned, transferred to Longchamps. Under the Second Empire, or rather when the Second Empire was about to be proclaimed, the Champ de Mars witnessed a magnificent review and distribution of eagles – the prelude, in fact, to the establishment of the imperial form of government. “Take back these eagles,” said the prince president on this occasion, “not as a symbol of threats against the foreigner, but as a recollection of an heroic epoch, as a sign of nobility for each regiment in the service. Take back these eagles which so often led your fathers to victory, and swear, if necessary, to die in their defence.” This was the last of the many political scenes of which the Champ de Mars has been the theatre. In 1867 it furnished a site for the annex or supplementary building where, in connection with the Universal Exhibition of that year, the machinery was displayed.
If the Champs Élysées became during the first half of the century a portion of Paris, this was also to happen during the second half to the more distant Bois de Boulogne; and as Paris is still constantly growing the time may come when Sèvres and Saint-Cloud, whither the Bois de Boulogne leads, will no longer be regarded as suburbs, but as integral parts of the French metropolis, from which they are now distant (counting from the Place de la Concorde) some six miles.
No account, whether of the Champs Élysées or of the Champ de Mars, would be complete without some mention of the Universal Exhibitions of which the Elysian Fields and the Field of Mars have both been the scene. The first Universal Exhibition was held in England during the summer of 1851, but the first Industrial Exhibition on a large scale, without assistance or competition from the foreigner, took place in France immediately after the Revolution, of which it was one of the natural consequences.
Before 1789 the industrial system of France, as of other countries, was made up of corporations and guilds rigidly bound by rules and traditions; and many industrial processes were so many secrets into which apprentices, duly articled, were initiated, but which were jealously guarded from the knowledge of the outer world. A general exhibition of arts, manufactures, and machinery would, under the ancient régime, have been in direct opposition to the spirit of the time; it would have been impossible, that is to say.
