Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

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 ARMYBY NAPOLEON THE GREATBEGUN 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. AUGMONUMENTUM BELLI GERMANICIANNO MDCCCVTRIMESTRI SPATIO DUCTU SUO PROFLIGATIEX ÆRE CAPTOGLORIÆ 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!”

Among the various illustrious persons buried at Saint-Roch may be mentioned Diderot, to whose interment in 1784, five years before the Revolution, the clergy seem to have made no objection. The statue of Mary Magdalene in the Calvary sculpture reproduces the features of the Countess de Feuquières, cut in white marble by Lemoine. This figure originally formed part of the tomb of the Countess’s father, Mignard, the celebrated painter, whose bust by Desjardins is preserved at Saint-Roch. Here may also be seen medallions of Marshal d’Asfeld, of the Duke de Les Aiguières and of Count d’Harcourt; the statue of the Duke de Créqui, and the monuments of Maupertuis, the philosopher, and of the benevolent Abbé de l’Épée.

On the high ground, at some little distance from the Church of Saint-Roch, is the Butte Saint-Roch, already referred to as the camping-ground of the Maid of Orleans when the king’s army was besieging Paris. Since Joan of Arc has been sung by great poets, impersonated by great actresses, and set to music by great composers, with Gounod and Verdi among them, all France has admired the warlike heroine; but while the Maid of Orleans was striving against the enemies of her country, the Parisians preferred the government of the English king to that of the lawful inheritor of the French Crown. Hating all the partisans of Charles VII., they detested Joan of Arc, who had restored the courage of his followers, and was in consequence looked upon in Paris as a doubtful sort of witch, whose prophecies were so many deceptions.

A Parisian writer quoted by Dulaure says, in relating the incidents of his time, that Joan of Arc was a vicious creature in the form of a woman; “called,” he ironically adds, “a maid, as she doubtless was.”

On the day of the Nativity of the Virgin, 1429, the Maid of Orleans and the king’s troops lay siege to Paris. The assault commenced at eleven o’clock in the day, between the gate of Saint-Honoré and that of Saint-Denis. The Maid advanced, planted her standard on the edge of the moat, and addressed these words to the Parisians: “Surrender in the name of Jesus; for if you do not give in before night we will enter by force whether you like it or not, and you will all be put to death without mercy.”

Insulting names were applied to her by one of the besieged, who at the same time fired an arrow which pierced her leg. Thereupon she took to flight, when her standard-bearer was also wounded in the leg. He stopped and raised the visor of his helmet in order to pull out the arrow. A second one was now shot at him, which struck him between the eyes and killed him. The prediction of the Maid was not fulfilled on this occasion, for Paris did not surrender.

Some time afterwards two women were arrested at Corbeil and thrown into prison at Paris. They were accused of believing and saying to everyone that the Maid of Orleans was sent from God; that Jesus often appeared to her, and that the last time she had seen Him He was clothed in a long white robe with a scarlet cloak above it. The elder of the two women refused to retract, and was consequently, on the 3rd of September, 1430, burnt alive.

Some time after the burning of the Maid herself at Rouen, an inquisitor of the Jacobin order, master in theology, preached at Paris in the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; and his sermon was nothing less than a violent satire against the courageous girl. He said in the pulpit that from the age of fourteen she had been in the habit of wearing men’s clothes; that her parents would have killed her had they not been afraid of wounding their conscience; that she quitted her family accompanied by the devil, and became a slayer of Christians; and that since that time she had committed an infinity of murders; that in prison she caused herself to be waited on like a lady, and the devils came to her in the form of St. Catherine, St. Marguerite, and St. Michael. He added that, having been frightened into quitting her man’s apparel to dress like a woman, the devil made her resume her customary dress, though he did not come to her succour at her execution as she had expected.

This monk said moreover in this remarkable sermon that there were four Maids: namely, the two taken at Corbeil, one of whom was burnt at Paris; Jeanne d’Arc, burnt at Rouen; and the fourth, called Cathérine de la Rochelle, who followed the army of Charles VII., and who had visions like Joan of Arc.

Ten years after the execution of Joan of Arc another Maid appeared, and the people firmly believed that this was the same one who had been burnt at Rouen, and who had miraculously risen from the dead. Another version was that someone had been executed in her place.

“What appears strange,” says Dulaure in the “Singularités Historiques,” “and what perhaps suggested the idea put forth in our century that Joan of Arc was not burnt, and that she even left descendants, is that the inhabitants of Orleans who saw this Maid took her for Joan of Arc, and in consequence paid her much honour.”

The University and the Parliament of Paris, who ten years before had condemned the veritable Maid, wished now to deceive the people. They brought the false Maid by force to Paris, exhibited her publicly in the principal court of the Palace of Justice, and made her stand up on the famous marble slab and there pronounce a biographical confession, in which she declared that she was not a Maid; that she had been married to a knight by whom she had had two sons; that in a moment of anger against one of her neighbours, instead of striking one of the women she quarrelled with she struck her mother who was holding her back; that she had also struck priests or clerks in defence of her own honour, and that to obtain absolution for her crime she had been to Rome, and in order to make the journey in safety had put on man’s clothes; finally, that she had served as a soldier in the army of the Pope, and while so serving had committed two homicides. The speech and the ceremony being finished, the Maid left Paris and returned to the war.

CHAPTER XV

THE JACOBIN CLUB

The Jacobins – Chateaubriand’s Opinion of Them – Arthur Young’s Descriptions – The New Club.

BETWEEN the Church of St. Roch and the Place Vendôme is the Rue du Marché and the Marché, or market, itself; chiefly interesting at the present day as occupying the ground on which stood the ancient Monastery of the Jacobins, where from 1791 to 1794 – from before the beginning until the very end of the Reign of Terror – the meetings of the famous Jacobin Club were held.

The name of Jacobin soon became familiar in England, and, as in France itself when the fury of the Revolution was quite at an end, was often applied as a term of reproach to all persons of Liberal ideas. The word, however, is now chiefly known among us from the Anti-Jacobin of Canning and Frere, and latterly from the excellent, but short-lived, weekly newspaper of the same name edited by Mr. Frederick Greenwood.

Under the Restoration, everyone in France who was not an ardent supporter of the ancient monarchy was called a Jacobin. But though towards the end of the Revolution Jacobinism became something hateful indeed, the principles which first brought the Jacobins together were such as neither lovers of liberty nor lovers of order could object to.

In 1789 a number of popular associations were rapidly organised; this being the natural result of the reactionary feeling against a system which had subjected books, newspapers, and even conversation in public places (such as cafés) to a rigid censorship supported by officials and by spies. A passion suddenly arose throughout France for public speaking, and in a thousand different assemblies orators were formed. The States-General had just met; and, not content with the formal sittings, the deputies loved to address in a direct manner the outside public. With this view, the deputies from Brittany established a club called the Breton Club, which was joined by other deputies, and which presently changed its title to “Society of the Friends of the Constitution.” This association included men of all shades of politics, who were afterwards to make war upon one another. Among the most famous may be mentioned Sieyès, Volney, Barnave, Pétion, Barrère, Lameth, Robespierre, the Duke of Orleans (Philippe Égalité), the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, Boissy d’Anglas, Talleyrand, La Fayette, and Mirabeau. The Society had its head-quarters at Versailles, in a building called Le Reposoir, which, later on, became a Protestant church.