Edwards Henry Sutherland
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
When, however, guilds and corporations were broken up and labour was throughout the country rendered free, the desirability soon became apparent of familiarising workmen with the best methods of work; and manufacturers of all kinds were brought together and invited to send specimens of their handicraft to a great Exhibition, of which Paris was to be the scene. The idea was conceived under the Directory, six years after the Revolution; and with a rapidity characteristic of the period it was at once carried out. Of some hundred exhibitors, nearly all belonged to Paris. But at a second exhibition held three years afterwards, thirty-eight departments, including some of the most distant ones, sent examples of their industry. These exhibitions were to be triennial; though their recurrence at fixed intervals was sometimes interfered with by political or military events.
The Industrial Exhibitions of France, however, increased in importance until, under the reign of Louis Philippe, they took a prodigious development. After the Revolution of 1848 workmen as well as manufacturers were for the first time encouraged to exhibit, and many of them gained prizes. Now, too, an exhibition was held at which agriculture as well as industry was represented, and among the products and manufactures were a good number sent from the newly-acquired Algeria. Then came the English Universal Exhibition of 1851, held in Hyde Park; adorned for the occasion with a building of new architecture, to which Douglas Jerrold, writing in Punch, gave the name of “Crystal Palace.”
In 1855 France, not to be outshone by England, opened in her turn a Universal Exhibition in the Champs Élysées, imitated in part from the glass structure designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, but less fairylike though, it may be, more substantial. Sixty years have passed since the opening of France’s first Industrial Exhibition; held at a time when, before the introduction of steamboats and railways, it would have been difficult, even if it had been thought desirable, for foreign manufacturers to compete with the manufacturers of France. The French Exhibition was held at the very height of the Crimean war; a sad reply to those who in the Universal Exhibition of 1851 saw a promise, if not a guarantee, of perpetual peace. Once more in 1867 the illusory nature of the belief that international commerce must put an end to international war was at least indicated by the important part played in the midst of the steel manufactures by Herr Krupp’s breech-loading cannons, which were seen to do such dreadful work in the campaign of 1870. Even while the Exhibition was being held the Luxemburg difficulty seemed on the point of bringing France and Prussia into the field.
The building erected for the first of France’s International Exhibitions having been found too small, the second and third, in 1867 and 1878, took new territory in the Champ de Mars; and in addition to the principal building a number of so-called annexes or supplementary buildings were established, chiefly for the display of machinery; while, besides the Champ de Mars, the fourth, held in 1889, took in the Avenue Suffren, the Quai d’Orsay, the terrace of the Invalides, the banks of the Seine, and the Garden of the Trocadéro.
The Champ de Mars in its old character had now entirely disappeared. The Minister of War had strongly objected to its utilisation for peace purposes when it was first proposed that a temporary building for machinery in connection with the Exhibition of 1867 should be erected on a plain which had hitherto been reserved for military exercises and manœuvres. Once invaded, the Champ de Mars was soon to be fully occupied, and the last and greatest of the Paris Universal Exhibitions swallowed up the Champ de Mars without even finding its vast space sufficient. The desert of former days had become the most frequented place in the world. More than that, it was now a spot where the whole world was represented – Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia, with their different human types, their animals, their plants, their minerals, their natural products, their industries, their sciences, and their fine arts. An immense number of buildings in every form, in every style, and of every period had been erected. Domes, steeples, towers, cupolas, minarets, and factory chimneys stood out against the clear sky of Paris; and in the midst of this confused architecture were seen the large green masses of the winter gardens.
The whole, beheld from afar in a bird’s-eye view, formed an enormous ellipsis, with the marvellous Eiffel Tower in the centre. M. Eiffel, a French engineer, whose name would seem to denote a German origin, proposed the tower with which his name is now for ever associated five years before the date fixed for the Universal Exhibition. He was already known by some important works, such as the great iron bridge at Bordeaux, and several other bridges in the south of France; also by the Douro Viaduct, and by the bridge over the Szegedin Road, in Hungary. He had been employed in connection with the Universal Exhibition of 1867, where he had charge of the machinery annex.
The Americans had proposed to commemorate the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1875 by a tower one thousand feet in height, equal to about 305 French metres. But they abandoned the project, which was to be realised by M. Eiffel, whose tower is within five metres of the height contemplated by the architects and engineers of Philadelphia. The calculations for the Eiffel Tower, formed entirely of iron trellis work, had been so carefully made that when the component parts, prepared separately, were brought to the workshops of the Champ de Mars to be verified and adjusted, they fitted to the greatest perfection. To give an idea of the dimensions of the Eiffel Tower it may be mentioned that the towers of Notre-Dame rise to a height of sixty-six metres above the level of the soil, while the Cathedral of Cologne, the loftiest in the world, does not exceed 159 metres. To go back to the remotest antiquity, the Eiffel Tower is half as high again as the notorious Tower of Babel, of which the altitude was 625 feet, otherwise 208 metres and a few centimetres. At its base the tower measures, on each of its four sides, 100 metres, and it slopes up to a platform at the summit which measures, on each side, ten metres.
The first platform, with immense rooms for different purposes, is sixty-six metres above the level of the soil; just eight metres less than the towers of Notre-Dame, and it presents a surface of 5,000 square metres. It may be reached either by a staircase of 350 steps, or by a lift. The second platform stands 115 metres above the level of the soil, and measures thirty metres on each side, the area of the floor being 1,400 square metres. Here the Paris Figaro established a printing office, whence issued the special edition of the Eiffel Figaro, in which were printed the names of all the visitors. The third platform, 276 metres in height, can only be reached by lift. It is surmounted by a campanile, or bell tower, in the Italian style, twenty-four metres in height, which is divided into apartments for scientific experiments, and which includes M. Eiffel’s reception rooms. At the very top of the structure is a light, of the power employed in the great French lighthouses. The view from the Eiffel Tower becomes naturally more and more vast as one ascends; and M. Eiffel has had maps drawn showing the points visible from the third, or highest platform, to the ordinary sight. This map is exhibited on the third platform.
On the north may be distinguished two villages in the department of the Somme, seventy kilometres from Paris (four kilometres = two-and-a-half miles); on the north-east the forest of Hallatte, at the back of Cenlis, distant seventy-five kilometres; on the east two hills in the direction of Château Thierry, eighty-two kilometres; on the south-east the environs of La Ferté-Bernard, in the department of the Marne, eighty-two kilometres; on the south, the other side of Étampes, sixty-two kilometres; on the south-west the Cathedral of Chartres and a hill at the back, eighty-three kilometres; on the west the Château of Versailles, the chapel of Dreux, and the environs of Dourdan, at a distance of fifty kilometres; and finally on the north-west the forest of Lyons, ninety kilometres.
Telescopic distances have not been published. It can be seen, however, that this loftiest of observatories would be of immense use to Paris in case of her being again approached by invading armies.
The Eiffel Tower was one of the greatest attractions of the Exhibition of 1889; and it remains a lasting memorial of that greatest of great exhibitions, which, on certain Sundays and holidays, attracted as many as 400,000 visitors. It has been calculated that it received altogether twenty-five million visitors – or, what is not quite the same thing, twenty-five million visits – which gives an average of 139,000 daily. Apart from the rich and varied interest belonging to the manufactures, the works of art, the products of all kinds, natural and artificial, that were on view, the Exhibition possessed a high significance in a political sense. It showed to Europe and to the world that France had more than recovered from the calamities of the war, and that she was once more in the very foremost rank of civilised powers. As in all exhibitions, the scientific departments attracted less attention, and were less frequented than the restaurants and the refreshment rooms; though here, also, there were opportunities for study, especially for those interested in ethnology.
Universal exhibitions have been compared to small towns, but they bear a greater resemblance to small worlds; and this was particularly the case with the Paris Exhibition of 1889, which was a microcosm on rather a large scale. There was no part of the world unrepresented in its varied departments, especially in the departments consecrated to eating and drinking, where national dishes and beverages were served by attendants in national costume. Here, side by side with an Algerian or Turkish coffee-house, where Mocha of guaranteed authenticity was provided, with narghilis, chiboucks, and Oriental cigarettes as appropriate accompaniments, stood a Dutch tavern purveying genuine curaçoa, or a Bavarian beerhouse. Vienna was in evidence by its so-called “cutlets” of chopped meat, and Austria generally, together with Hungary, by rare and characteristic wines. The Spanish Café was as remarkable for the black mantillas, with eyes to match, of the waitresses, as for its Malaga and its Xeres. The Danish Café was distinguished by its kümmel, and the Swedish Café by its punch, made in the Swedish style, and handed to the customer (also in the Swedish fashion) by fair-haired, fresh-complexioned Swedish maidens. The Russian traktir, taken in connection with specimens of Russian village huts, formed a compendium of Russian popular life, in a country where the popular and the aristocratic, often strangely opposed, are sometimes strangely intermingled. The wooden isbas, with their high roofs, curiously surmounted by semblances of horses’ heads, which have not only a picturesque, but a mystical significance – true examples of Russian rural architecture – showed such artistic carving above the portico, and at other points, that many a dull cynic declined to regard them as authentic, and held them to be mere fabrications, intended to astonish and delude the foreigner, even as Catherine II. is supposed to have been deluded by the village panoramas got up for her benefit in desert tracts by the ingenious Potemkin.
In England and other countries which are supposed to have attained the highest point of civilisation, the humbler classes know nothing of art work in connection with their daily life. But the Russian peasant, poor and uneducated, tasting meat once, perhaps, in a month, and living principally on black bread, salt cucumbers, dried mushrooms, and porridge, wears a costume full of colour, a red shirt, or a blue kaftan with a scarlet sash; and he adorns in his own rough but picturesque fashion the house he lives in, and every article of its modest furniture. The Russian peasant, like the peasant in other countries, makes none too frequent a use of the towel; but every towel that he possesses is ornamented with an embroidered fringe, worked by women who have never studied in any sort of art school, but who have acquired certain arts by tradition, and possibly through inherited aptitude. The Russian peasantry are still, for the most part, ignorant of reading and writing. But when the whole population of the Russian Empire is sent to school its native artistic faculties will, it is to be feared, disappear. At present the brain of the poor moujik must somehow occupy itself during his periods of leisure; and it works for the most part – and exclusively when he happens to be quite unlettered – through eye and hand.
At the Russian restaurant, or traktir, such national delicacies as caviar, dried salmon, pickled cucumbers, salt mushrooms, the ordinary components of the Russian zakouska or præprandium, were tasted by the visitor to the great Exhibition with less avidity than curiosity. These excellent comestibles (only one has got to know them first) were, if the Russian mode was followed, washed down with a glass of vodka; not, it must be admitted, the ordinary vodka of the Russian rural districts, but vodka of a more refined description, as swallowed (at least by the men) at the simple preparatory lunches given immediately before dinner at the houses of the great.
Those were wrong who, at the Russian restaurants of the Exhibition, confined themselves to making the acquaintance of the strange preparations offered at every well-ordered zakouska; for Russia has a cuisine of her own well worthy of practical study – a cuisine which, like Russian civilisation, consists partly of what is truly Russian, but largely of what has been adapted or simply borrowed from various foreign nations. The stchee, or cabbage soup, the borsch, or beetroot soup, the oukha, or fish soup, and the batvinia, or iced soup of Russia, are thoroughly national, and, except that the Poles have also an iced soup called cholodiec, are not to be found in any other country. The Russians have many solid dishes, too (such as boiled sucking-pig with horse-radish sauce) which are quite peculiar to Russia; but, on the other hand, they have adopted all kinds of entrées from the French, together with various dishes of German and of Viennese origin; while they have likewise, in the art of cookery, taken lessons from their eastern neighbours.
Roumania, Servia, and what remains of Turkey were represented by dishes, drinks, and graceful female figures, all intensely national. Even such unpicturesque countries as England and America had their characteristic refreshment places. The English bars, served by much admired English barmaids, practised in the wiles and stratagems of casual flirtation, had many frequenters; while the American bars, typical of a country where women and liquor are becomingly kept apart, attracted amateurs of all classes and from all countries. Nor must Italy be forgotten; the land which gave to France not only its music and its drama, but also its ices and its pastry. It is believed that in some of the cafés whose appearance was most strikingly foreign, France was secretly represented; for numbers of young women attired in garments of Oriental make, while perfectly ignorant of Eastern languages, talked fluently, and often very agreeably, in French.
“Trocadéro” is the name of one of the forts which the army of the Duke of Angoulême, operating in Spain, found it necessary to take before advancing upon Cadiz. The stronghold in question was constructed on an island of the same name, which, apart from walls, bastions, and batteries, was defended against assailants by a broad canal, in which, even at low tide, the water was four feet deep. The French approached the Trocadéro by regular siege works, and, after completing their second parallel, prepared to take the place by assault. The attack was made on the 15th of August, 1823, at three o’clock in the morning, just before daybreak, that is to say, when the Spanish garrison, trusting overmuch to the supposed efficiency of the water defences, were by no means on the alert. The French troops passed the water without firing a shot, scaled the walls, turned the guns and wall-pieces against the Spaniards, and, acting with great rapidity, were soon in possession of the fort.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HÔTEL DE VILLE AND CENTRAL PARIS
The Hôtel de Ville – Its History – In 1848 – The Communards.
IF the Place de la Concorde, with the line of the Champs Élysées leading from it in one direction, and that of the Rue Royale and the line of boulevards in another, may be regarded as one of the most central points of Paris, the administrative centre is to be found in the Hôtel de Ville on the east side of that Place de l’Hôtel de Ville which was the heart of ancient Paris, or at least of so much of ancient Paris as stood on the right bank of the Seine.
The Hôtel de Ville, burnt by the Communards in 1871 as part of their general plan of incendiarism, was historically, as well as architecturally, one of the most interesting buildings in Paris. In spite of the modifications and restorations which it had undergone during the last two centuries of its existence, it never lost its original character. The Hôtel de Ville was the palace of the burgesses and merchants of the city, and there was a certain significance in its situation, just opposite the palace of the kings, with whom the representatives of the city were often, so far as they dared, in conflict. It had witnessed, moreover, many interesting scenes. It was always the head-quarters of insurrection so long as the struggle took place only between the monarchy and the middle classes. It perished in a struggle between the middle classes and the working men.
The first important part played by the Hôtel de Ville in its communal character dates from the time of Étienne Marcel – most ambitious of Paris mayors – in the fourteenth century. Long, however, before the pretensions of Étienne Marcel, under the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, privileged corporations existed in Paris under the name of Nautæ Parisiaci, who did a nautical business on the banks of the Seine. The Maison aux Piliers, where Étienne Marcel presided over the Municipality of the period, stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Hôtel de Ville, of which the first stone was laid by Francis I. on the 15th of July, 1533. “While the stone was being laid,” says the annalist Du Breuil, “fifes, drums, trumpets, and clarions were sounded, together with artillery and fifty sack-butts of the town of Paris. At the same time were rung the chimes of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, of Saint-Esprit, and of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie. In the middle of the Grève wine was running, and tables were furnished with bread and wine for all comers, while cries were uttered in a loud voice by the common people: ‘Vive le Roy et messieurs de la ville!’” An account of the before-mentioned ceremony has been left by Boccadoro.
In spite of the pompous proceedings by which the laying of the foundation-stone was accompanied, the building of the Hôtel de Ville was proceeded with very slowly, and during various foreign and civil wars interrupted altogether. The south wing had been erected under Henri II. The north wing was not completed until the reign of Louis XIII. The building was finished during the reign of Henri IV., whose equestrian statue by Pierre Biard marked, until the Revolution, the principal entrance. After suffering various injuries during the wars of the Fronde, the figure of the once popular king was, in 1793, overturned and destroyed, to be afterwards replaced by a statue in bronze.
Early in the eighteenth century the Hôtel de Ville had been found too small; and in 1749 it was proposed to reconstruct it on the other side of the Seine, on the site of the Hôtel Conti, where now stands the Mint. This project, however, met with a lively opposition on the part of Parisians generally; and in 1770 it was decided to enlarge the existing structure. Funds, however, were not forthcoming; and when, nineteen years afterwards, the Revolution broke out, the Hospital, or rather Hospice of the Holy Ghost, and the Church of Saint-Jean, suppressed as religious establishments, were, as buildings, annexed to the Hôtel de Ville, which they adjoined.
After the Hôtel de Ville had been destroyed in 1871 by the incendiaries of the Commune, the statues of Charlemagne, of Francis I., and of Louis XIV. were found in the ashes. They had shared the fate of the equestrian figure of Henri IV. at the time of the Revolution; and they were afterwards replaced by groups of sculpture which have no sort of connection with the building.
The Hôtel de Ville has an interesting history of its own. In 1411 Charles VI. restored to the Paris municipality, in acknowledgment of the courage shown by the Parisians against the English, several privileges which had been abolished or had fallen into abeyance. Then, during the troubles of the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the Paris Municipality broke into two hostile factions; but at length, from hatred of the Armagnac party, the municipality accepted the English domination. After the return, however, of Charles VII. and during the whole of the second half of the fifteenth century the magistrates of the capital showed themselves thoroughly loyal and absolutely devoted to the interests of the monarchy.
Louis XII. and Francis I. respected and even augmented the privileges of the Hôtel de Ville. But during the religious wars the municipality again split up into two factions. It took part, as a whole, in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, believing that it was thus helping to suppress conspiracy directed against the life of the king; but it made every effort to stop bloodshed when it understood the true character of the infamous attack upon the Huguenots. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the municipal officers were chosen from among the most determined supporters of the Catholic League; in spite of which the Hôtel de Ville made every effort to bring Henri IV. to Paris. In his gratitude, this monarch made lavish promises to the burgesses; and he kept them. In 1589 Henri III. had revoked all the privileges granted by his predecessors to the burgesses of Paris. The day after his entry into the capital Henri IV. re-established the municipal body, and gave back to it the whole of its ancient liberties. Then it was that the municipality resolved to place the king’s statue before the principal gate of the Hôtel de Ville.
During the reign of Louis XIII. Richelieu abolished the principle of election which constituted the very basis of the municipal authority of Paris. Various important offices, instead of being elective, were now made permanent appointments under the control of the king; and from this epoch dates the decline of the Paris municipal body. Under the ancient régime Louis XIV. deprived the Town Council of all power; and communal liberty had disappeared in Paris when the great Revolution broke out. Then, however, the Hôtel de Ville became once more a centre of political activity; and it was at the Hôtel de Ville, on the eve of the taking of the Bastille, that the discussions were held which led immediately to the attack on the fortress-prison. The so-called “electors” of Paris, themselves chosen the moment before from among the Paris population, had assembled under the presidency of M. de Flesselles, provost of the merchants, when a report was spread that he had concealed several barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Hôtel de Ville. This was looked upon as a reactionary measure intended to prevent the meditated attack on the hated stronghold; and people rushed to the Hôtel de Ville to distribute the powder at once and with their own hands. The Bastille had scarcely been taken when the captors, returning to the Hôtel de Ville, called out, “Down with De Flesselles,” who, attacked in the Hall of Assembly, escaped by a convenient door. He had scarcely, however, got outside when he was recognised and shot dead. With the death of the Provost de Flesselles the ancient corporation of the burgesses of Paris, with their privileges of holding courts, commercial, civil, and even criminal, came to an end. On its ruins was raised the Commune of Paris, which played so terrible a part in the Revolution, and especially during the Reign of Terror. The Hôtel de Ville has been called the “palace of revolution,” and during the last hundred years, ever since the era of revolutions set in, it has well deserved its name. The Hôtel de Ville served as headquarters to the Commune of Paris, and to the Committee of Public Safety. The registers of the Commune are still preserved in the Archives, and furnish the only authentic materials relating to the history of the most sanguinary period of the French Revolution. Under the Consulate and the Empire the municipal power, like the legislative power, was abolished; and the Hôtel de Ville was now only known as the scene from time to time of public entertainments. Crowds were in the habit of assembling before the Hôtel de Ville to hear the victories of Napoleon proclaimed. On the occasion of the Emperor’s marriage to Marie Louise the City of Paris revived the entertainments which it had been in the habit of giving to the ancient kings. Napoleon expressed a desire to present his wife to the burgesses of Paris assembled in the rooms of the Hôtel de Ville, which from this time, as long as the Empire lasted, gave an annual ball on the 15th of August.
The Restoration did nothing for the Hôtel de Ville. In 1830, during the Revolution which placed Louis Philippe on the throne in lieu of Charles X., the Hôtel de Ville was the chief object of contention between the two parties; and it was in the Place de Grève, or Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, as it was afterwards to be called, that the most terrible conflict of the “three days” occurred. Taken and re-taken, the Hôtel de Ville at last remained in the power of the insurgents; and the tricolour flag, which for the previous fifteen years had been looked upon as an emblem of sedition, now floated once more above its walls. The provisional government, established there under the inspiration of La Fayette, offered a crown to Louis Philippe. “A throne surrounded by Republican institutions,” such, in a few words, was the celebrated “programme of the Hôtel de Ville.” The throne remained, but the Republican institutions disappeared; and Louis Philippe made no step towards re-establishing the very institution – the Municipal Council – which had made him king.
Eighteen years later another revolution was to take place; and after the flight of Louis Philippe a provisional government was again proclaimed – proclaimed itself, that is to say. Lamartine was at the head of it, and without showing any aptitude for exercising power, the celebrated writer, whose popularity had been much increased by his recently published “History of the Girondists,” delivered a number of remarkable speeches at the Hôtel de Ville. Hating all government, a portion of the populace forced its way into the passages and approached the room where Lamartine was engaged with laws and proclamations, when the hero of the hour laid down his pen, rushed towards the invading crowd and called upon it to retire. No less than seven times did he repeat his adjurations to the mob, till, at last, some “man of the people,” foreseeing that the republic about to be established would not be of the “red” hue desired by the extreme Revolutionists, called him a traitor and demanded his head.
“My head!” replied Lamartine. “Would to heaven that every one of you had it on his shoulders. You would then be calmer and more reasonable, and the Revolution would be accomplished with less difficulty.” The day had been won, but the battle was to begin again on the morrow; and now once more Lamartine stilled the troubled waters by a few eloquent phrases. The question had been raised whether the tricolour flag, or the red flag of the Reign of Terror, should be adopted. Lamartine traced the history of both; and the crowd, carried away by the warmth of his oratory, decided with acclamation that the flag of the new republic must be the flag of the early days of the great Revolution, the flag under which the great battles of the Consulate and the Empire had been gained. It will be remembered that when, in 1789, a leaf torn from a tree of the Palais Royal by Camille Desmoulins was made a sign of recognition, green was on the point of being adopted for the new national flag. It was rejected, however, when someone pointed out that green was the colour of the Artois family; and thereupon blue and red, the colours of the town of Paris, were assumed, to which, out of compliment to the monarchy, favourable in the first instance to the claims of the people, white, the colour of the French kings, was added. Thus the tricolour flag became the flag of the Revolution, as, during successive changes of government, it was equally the flag of the Consulate and the Empire. At the Restoration the Monarchy committed the grave fault of re-introducing the white flag of the ancient régime, which Louis Philippe had the good sense to replace by the Republican and Imperial tricolour.
When in June, 1848, the insurrection of unemployed workmen broke out, demanding, in the words of certain insurgents at Lyons, “bread or bullets,” the Hôtel de Ville became once more an object of contest between the opposing forces; but the supporters of the Democratic and Socialistic Republic were to be defeated, and the Hôtel de Ville did not, during the terrible days of June, change hands. As long as the Republic lasted – less than four years – the municipal institutions showed signs of vitality, which, however, were to disappear on the coup d’état of December 2nd, 1851; and throughout the second Empire the Hôtel de Ville was occupied, in lieu of an independent Municipal Council, by a sort of consultative commission without mandate and without authority, attached to the Prefect in order to verify his accounts with closed eyes. By way of compensation, however, the Hôtel de Ville was encouraged to give balls, to which the chief of the State accorded his gracious patronage. It was at the Hôtel de Ville that the Prefect of the Seine, M. Berger, entertained Queen Victoria, and that his successor, Baron Haussman, received in like manner the Emperor of Russia, while proposing to extend his hospitality to the Sultan. The reception of the Emperor Alexander II. did not pass off without an incident which caused a very painful impression at the time, and which the French would, now more than ever, gladly forget; for as the Tsar was about to enter the Hôtel de Ville he was saluted with cries of “Vive la Pologne!”
