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

After the days of October the Assembly followed the King to Paris; and the famous club was established, first in a large hall which served as library to the Dominican monks at the convent of the Rue Saint-Honoré, and afterwards, when this order had been dissolved, in the Convent Church. As the Dominicans were more generally spoken of as the Jacobins, the latter name was soon applied to the Friends of the Constitution, who willingly adopted it. The same thing, strangely enough, happened to the Cordeliers and the Feuillants; so that the principal Revolutionary parties got to be known throughout Europe by appellations formerly monastic.

What is still more curious is that the last of the Jacobin monks (in 1789 and 1790) took part in the meetings of which their convent was the scene, as, in like manner, did the last members of the Order of Cordeliers. The Jacobin Club possessed a large staff of officers, including a president, vice-president, four secretaries, twelve inspectors, four censors, eight commissaries, treasurer, and librarian, all appointed at quarterly elections. The privilege of membership was only granted under very strict conditions, and every newly-elected Jacobin had, before being formally admitted, to take the following oath: —

“I swear to live free or die; to remain faithful to the principles of the Constitution; to obey the laws; to cause them to be respected; to help with all my might to make them perfect; and to conform to the customs and regulations of the society.”

The sittings were held, first three, then four times a week. Little by little, however, the usual course in such assemblies was drifted into. The leaders went to extremes, and soon the most extravagant of them obtained the largest following. Then the moderate members retired to form counter-associations, until in time the hostile organisations made war upon one another, with the guillotine as their final weapon.

“The Jacobins,” says Michelet, “by their esprit de corps, which went on constantly increasing, by their hardened, uncompromising faith, by their harsh, inquisitorial ways, had something of a priestly character. They formed a sort of revolutionary clergy.”

Another great admirer of the Revolution, and especially of Robespierre, in whom the principle of Jacobinism was incarnate, sums up the Jacobin spirit in the following words: —

“Hatred of the conventional inequalities of former times, of unalterable beliefs, a sort of methodical fanaticism, intolerance of all that interfered with the development of the most daring innovations, and, fundamentally, a passion for regular forms; these, whatever may be said on the subject, were the components of the Jacobin spirit. The true Jacobin had something about him at once powerful, original and sombre. He stood midway between the agitator and the statesman; between the Protestant and the Monk; between the inquisitor and the tribune. Hence that ferocious vigilance transformed into a virtue: that spy system raised to the rank of a patriotic organisation: and that mania for denunciation, which made people at first laugh, and at last tremble.”

France, like England soon afterwards, had its Anti-Jacobin. Les Sabbats Jacobites was the title of the French publication, and the Jacobin “mania for denunciation” was thus satirised in its columns: —

Je dénonce l’Allemagne,Le Portugal et l’Espagne,Le Mexique et la Champagne,La Sardaigne et le Pérou.Je dénonce l’ltalie,L’Afrique et la Barbarie,L’Angleterre et la RussieSans même excepter Moscou.

In spite of these attacks and a thousand others, the importance of the Jacobin Club went on constantly increasing; and at the funeral of Mirabeau, who died in the first year of the Revolution, the President of the Jacobin Club marched side by side with the President of the National Assembly, and had precedence of the Ministers. After the death of Mirabeau the influence of the Lameths, the Duports, the Barnaves, etc., gave way to that of Robespierre, in whom, says Louis Blanc, “Jacobinism in its extremest points was personified.”

Chateaubriand, the Royalist, ought, however, to be heard on this subject as well as Louis Blanc, the Republican; and this is what the former writes in his “Essay on Revolutions,” published in 1797: —

“Much has been said about the Jacobins, but few people have known them. Nearly everyone rushes into declamations, and publishes the crimes of this society without enlightening us as to the general principle which directed its views. This principle consisted in a system of perfection towards which the first step to take was to restore the laws of Lycurgus. If, moreover, it be considered that France is indebted to the Jacobins for its numerous armies, courageous and disciplined; that it was the Jacobins who found the means of paying them, and of victualling a country without resources and surrounded by enemies; that it was they who created a navy as if by miracle, and who, through intrigues and money, ensured the neutrality of some of the powers; that under their reign the greatest discoveries in natural history were made, and great generals formed; that, in a word, they gave vigour to a warlike body, and, so to say, organised anarchy; one must then of necessity admit that these monsters, escaped from hell, had infernal talents.”

In 1791 the Jacobins were still Royalists, not from attachment to the Monarchy, but from a scrupulous regard for Constitutional legality. Nevertheless, after the flight to Varennes they departed from their former principles so far as to demand the abdication of the king. The next day, however, on the proposition of Robespierre, they returned to their customary prudence, pronounced against the Republic, and sent commissaries to the Champ de Mars to take back their demand.

In connection with most of the great revolutionary events their conduct was the same, though the aristocratic Jacobins of 1789 had now quitted the society, to be replaced by men of extreme views – journalists, orators, and members of the National Assembly, who desired to place themselves in direct contact with the outside world.

Among the questions put to candidates for election to the Jacobin Club were the following: “What were you in 1789? What have you done since? What was your fortune until 1789, and what is it now?” Every candidate was bound to answer all questions addressed to him, and he was to do this publicly in a loud voice. Anyone rejected by the Jacobin Club became at once an object of suspicion; and to be denounced by the Jacobin leaders was to receive a sentence of death. In this way perished the unfortunate Anacharsis Clootz, Fabre d’Églantine, and many others.

At the critical moment the Jacobins remained faithful to the fortune of their chief. On the news of his arrest they ordered permanent sittings and voted unanimously their approval of the insurrectionary attitude of the Paris Commune. They spoke of resistance. But, though men of action abounded in the Jacobin Club, the members, as a body, were pusillanimous and could do nothing.

Arthur Young in his “Travels in France” gives an interesting account of a meeting, which he attended, of the Jacobin Club at the time of the Revolution: —

“At night,” he says, writing in diary form, “M. Decretot and M. Blin carried me to the revolutionary club of the Jacobins; the room where they assemble is that in which the famous league was signed. There were above one hundred deputies present, with a president in the chair; I was handed to him and announced as the author of the Arithmétique Politique. The President, standing up, repeated my name to the company and demanded if there were any objections. None; and this was all the ceremony, not merely of an introduction, but election; for I was told that now I was free to be present when I pleased, being a foreigner. Ten or a dozen other elections were made. In this Club the business that is to be brought into the National Assembly is regularly debated; the motions are read that are intended to be made there, and rejected, or corrected and approved. When these have been fully agreed to, the whole party are engaged to support them. Plans of conduct are here determined; proper persons nominated to act on committees and as presidents of the Assembly named. And I may add that such is the majority of members that whatever passes in this Club is almost sure to pass in the Assembly.”

Arthur Young also gives a description of a debate in the National Assembly on the subject of the conduct of the Chamber of Vacation in the Parliament of Rennes.

M. l’Abbé Maury, a zealous royalist, “made a long and eloquent speech, which he delivered with great fluency and precision and without any notes, in defence of the Parliament; he replied to what had been urged by the Count de Mirabeau on a former day, and strongly censured his unjustifiable call on the people of Bretagne to a redoutable dénombrement. He said that it would better become the members of such an assembly to count their own principles and duties and the fruits of their attention to the privileges of the subject than to call for a dénombrement that would fill a province with fire and bloodshed. He was interrupted by the noise and confusion of the Assembly and of the audience six several times, but it had no effect on him; he waited calmly till it subsided, and then proceeded as if no interruption had occurred. The speech was a very able one and much relished by the Royalists; but the enragés condemned it as good for nothing. No other person spoke without notes; the Count de Clermont read a speech that had some brilliant passages, but was by no means an answer to the Abbé Maury, as, indeed, it would have been wonderful if it were, being prepared before he heard the Abbé’s oration… Disorder and every kind of confusion prevails now almost as much as when the Assembly sat at Versailles. The interruptions are frequent and long, and speakers who have no right by the rules to speak will attempt to hold forth. The Count de Mirabeau pressed to deliver his opinion after the Abbé Maury; the president put it to the vote whether he should be allowed to speak a second time, and the whole house rose up to negative it, so that the first orator of the Assembly has not the influence even to be heard to explain. We have no conception of such rules, and yet their great numbers must make this necessary. I forgot to observe that there is a gallery at each end of the saloon which is open to all the world, and side ones for admission of the friends of the members by tickets. The audience in these galleries are very noisy; they clap when anything pleases them, and they have been known to hiss, an indecorum which is utterly destructive of freedom of debate.”

With Robespierre the grand period of the Jacobins came to an end, and nearly a hundred and twenty of them perished on the scaffold. Their hall was now closed and the club forbidden to meet except as a “regenerated society.” At last the Committees of Public Safety and of General Security issued a decree which put an end to the Society of Jacobins.

In the year 1796 a new Jacobin club was formed in the Riding School of the Tuileries, which soon afterwards moved to the church in the Rue du Bac, and boldly announced that it meant to revive the Jacobin traditions. “Jacobins of the Riding School” this society was called, and, after some ridicule (for the French public had grown sick of the Revolution), it was suppressed by an order from the Directory (1799).

The Jacobin Club, however, as Arthur Young knew and described it, not only dictated the proceedings of the National Assembly, using this body as a sort of tool or cat’s-paw by which it practically governed France, but exerted such an influence on Parisian society that enthusiasm for Liberal ideas took possession even of the fair sex. “The present devotion to liberty,” he writes, “is a sort of rage. It absorbs every other passion and permits no other object to remain in view than what promises to confirm it. Dine with a large party at the Duke de La Rochefoucauld’s, ladies and gentlemen are all equally politicians.” Young adds, however, that one effect of the Revolution was to lessen the enormous influence of the gentler sex. Previously they had “mixed themselves in everything in order to govern everything,” and the men of the kingdom had been mere “puppets moved by their wives.” But now, “instead of giving the ton to questions of national debate, they must receive it and be content to move in the political sphere of some celebrated leader.” They were thus sinking into the position which, as Young considered, Nature had intended for them; and he maintained that the daughters of France would now become “more amiable and the nation better governed.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE PALAIS ROYAL

Richelieu’s Palace – The Regent of Orleans – The Duke of Orleans – Dissipation in the Palais Royal – The Palais National – The Birthplace of Revolutions.

THE whole history of Paris may be read along the line of the Boulevards, and the whole life of the capital observed there in concentrated form. The Palais Royal, however, with its theatres, its restaurants, its shops of all kinds, its galleries, and its gardens, is in scarcely a less degree an epitome of Paris. It was formerly known as the Palais Cardinal, in memory of Richelieu, by whom, in its original shape, it was constructed. Richelieu afterwards made such frequent additions to the building that it lost all symmetry. In one of the wings a theatre was constructed; though it was not here, but in a large drawing-room, that the Cardinal’s tragedies, Eutrope and Mirame, were played. The palace, with its lateral developments, assumed at last the form of a quadrangle with a large garden in the interior. It suffered from the irremediable fault of not having been constructed from the first on a definite plan. But the garden, the fountain, the jewellers’ shops, the booksellers’ stalls, give the place a physiognomy of its own, and cause the beholder to overlook all architectural defects.

Having completed his palace, and convinced himself that he had constructed an edifice worthy the acceptance of his sovereign, Richelieu presented it to Louis XIII. (1636), afterwards confirming the gift in his will (1642). Corneille, the recipient now of favours, now of slights from the great Cardinal, wrote, in an admiring mood, of the Cardinal’s palace the following lines: —

“Non, l’univers entier ne peut rien voir d’égalAux superbes dehors du Palais-Cardinal.Toute une ville entière, avec pompe bâtie,Semble d’un vieux fossé par miracle sortie,Et nous fait présumer, à ses superbes toits,Que tous ses habitants sont des dieux ou des rois.”2

In spite of Corneille’s praise, Louis XIII. seems to have thought but little of his minister’s gift. Nor could he in any case have turned it to much account, for he did not survive the astute counsellor for more than a year.

Louis XIV. passed some years of his childhood at the Palais-Cardinal, to which the name of Palais Royal was now given. Here the minister Mazarini, or Mazarin, resided during the troubles of the Fronde, and here it was that he heard the populace sing couplets about the Facchino Italiano. “They sing; they shall pay!” murmured the minister. But he was obliged all the same to take flight; and with the queen regent and the infant king he sought refuge at Saint-Germain. Never afterwards would the proud monarch inhabit the Palais Royal, which he assigned as a place of residence to Henrietta of France, Queen of England, and widow of Charles I. Afterwards, in 1692, Louis XIV. gave the Palais Royal as an absolute gift to his nephew, Philip of Orleans, Duke of Chartres, on the occasion of that prince’s marriage. The Palace had now been increased by the addition of the Hôtel Dauville in the adjacent Rue Richelieu, and of a gallery constructed by the celebrated architect Mansard.

The Regent of Orleans turned the theatre of Richelieu into an opera house, where he gave a number of masked balls which are remembered in history. Nor is the profligate life of which the Palais Royal now became the scene by any means forgotten. The theatre having been burnt down, the regent insisted on its being restored at the expense of the town; which was accordingly done. But the theatre was again destroyed by fire in 1781; and the Duke of Chartres, afterwards known during the Revolution as Philippe Égalité, the father of King Louis Philippe, instead of rebuilding it, constructed the three galleries surrounding the garden which still exist. The idea of three such galleries, communicating with the body of the palace, is said to have been entertained by Richelieu himself.

As prodigal as his grandfather, the regent, the Duke of Orleans, was obliged to have recourse to various expedients for replenishing his exhausted exchequer. It occurred to him to turn the galleries of the Palais Royal into long lines of shops. This involved the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, but the result was most remunerative. The new Palais Royal became a centre of attraction to all Paris. Around the garden the three galleries, together with the one still known as the Galerie d’Orléans, formed a sort of bazaar, where jewellery, fans, and ornaments of all kinds were offered for sale. The shops were varied by cafés and restaurants. In the garden the Café de la Régence was established, and the Richelieu Theatre being once more rebuilt, now formed the home of the Comédie Française. Towards the end of the Monarchical period the Palais Royal became a recognised place of dissipation. In contrast with the loose morality of the locality was the rigid exactitude with which, every day at noon, a cannon in the centre of the garden, fired by the rays of the sun through a powerful lens, announced the hour; and crowds of people used to assemble round it, watch in hand, towards twelve o’clock. Walking through the Palais Royal one day with the Duke of Orleans, the Abbé Delille was requested by the Prince to sum up in a few words his ideas of the place, and did so in the following quatrain: —

“Dans ce jardin tout se rencontre,Excepté l’ombrage et les fleurs.Si l’on y dérègle ses mœurs,Du moins on y règle sa montre.”3

After the execution of the Duke of Orleans, who, having had the infamy to vote for the death of his blameless relative Louis XVI., was himself, by a mild retribution, to perish on the scaffold, the Palais Royal was appropriated by the State, and the place was now invaded by all the ruffians and reprobates of Paris. Let us on this subject hear Mercier in his “Tableau de Paris.” “The Athenians,” he writes, “raised temples to their Phrynes; curs find them in this enclosure already built. Speculators and their correlatives go three times a day to the Palais Royal, the centre of political and every other kind of debauchery. Some are occupied with the rise and fall of the funds. Gaming-tables are kept in every café, and it is a sight to see the sudden change in the expression of the players’ faces as they lose or win. The Palais Royal is an elegant box of Pandora, beautifully carved, delicately worked, but containing what everyone knows it contains. All these followers of Sardanapalus or of Lucullus inhabit the Palais Royal, in apartments which the King of Assyria and the Roman Emperors would have envied.” Under the Directory the number of gambling houses was limited, first to four, afterwards to eight; and it was not until the reign of Louis Philippe that they were finally suppressed. The gambling house at Number 113 figures in the “Peau de Chagrin” of Balzac; also in Dumas’ “Femme au Collier de Velours.”

As for the “Palace” – the mansion inhabited by Mazarin and the infant Louis XIV., afterwards by Henrietta of England, and then by various members of the Orleans family – Napoleon established public offices in it. During the Hundred Days the palace was occupied by Lucien Bonaparte, and on the restoration of the Monarchy the whole place was bought back from the Government by the then Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe. Some changes were made in the direction of the galleries, the popularity of which remained as great as ever. Nor was this diminished by the foreign occupation, for the Palais Royal was thronged day and night by officers of the Allied Army. It was now that the Café Lemblin became the head-quarters of Bonapartist officers on half-pay, and the Café des Mille Colonnes that of the officers serving in the newly organised Royalist army; and between the two bodies of officers numerous duels were fought. An ingenious rhymed description of the Palais Royal in its best and worst days has been left by Désaugiers, the celebrated songwriter of the period before Béranger, of which we may quote the concluding lines, telling how the resort, from being the scene of political storms, came to be the general rendez-vous of pleasure-seekers of every kind and every nationality, from the Fleming to the Turk, and from the genius to the fool: —

“Si de maint politique orageLe Palais RoyalDevint le théâtre infernal,Du gai carnavalIl est aujourd’hui l’héritage:Jeu, spectacle, balY sont dans leur pays natal,Flamand, Provençal,Turc, Africain, Chinois, sauvage,Au moindre signalTout se trouve au Palais Royal.Bref, séjour banal,Du grand, du sot, du fou, du sage,Le Palais RoyalEst le rendez-vous général.”

Reformed in so many respects under the reign of Louis Philippe, the Palais Royal was destined at the same time to be overshadowed by the increasing importance of the Boulevards.

After the Revolution of 1848 the Palais Royal, now styled Palais National, was once more treated as State property. Under the Second Empire it became the residence of Prince Jerome, succeeded by his son, Prince Napoleon. On the ornamentation of the portico, some fleurs de lis dating from the time of Richelieu, which the Revolutionists of 1789 and of 1848 had forgotten to scrape off, were erased and replaced by Imperial eagles, themselves destined to disappear in the revolution of the 4th of September, 1871, when, at the same time, the Republican motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” was restored. Meanwhile, on the 23rd of May, 1871, while the expiring Commune was still struggling against the army of Versailles, the palace was invaded by the Communards and set in flames. The whole of the left wing, with part of the central pavilion, was burnt down. In the midst of the general incendiarism, the Théâtre Français, which may be regarded as an annexe of the Palais Royal, though it is entered from the Rue Richelieu, had itself a narrow escape from fire.

The Palais Royal was destined to be the birthplace of more than one revolution. It was here that the great movement of 1789, and the minor one of July, 1830, began. The revolution of July seems, in the first instance, to have been intended simply as a protest, an act of resistance against arbitrary measures – and in particular against the muzzling of the Press to such an extent as to render it impossible under modern conditions to publish a newspaper. The celebrated ordonnances had the immediate effect of throwing a multitude of journeyman printers out of work, and it was by these men that in one part of the city the insurrection was commenced. With them the question was not a political one in theory alone; it was a question whether they should get the hateful ordonnances repealed or remain without work: that is to say, starve.

The 26th of July passed off very calmly in Paris as a whole. At the Palais Royal, however, some young men were seen mounting chairs, as formerly Camille Desmoulins had done. “They read the Moniteur aloud,” says a witness of the scene, “appealed to the people against the infraction of the charter, and endeavoured by violent gesticulation and inflammatory harangues to excite in their hearers and in themselves a vague appetite for agitation. But dancing was going on in the environs of the capital; the people were engaged in labour or amusement. The bourgeoisie alone gave evidence of consternation. The ordonnances had dealt it a twofold blow: they had struck at its political power in the persons of its legislators, and at its moral power in those of its writers.”

At first there was nothing to be seen throughout the whole bourgeois portion of the population but one dull, uniform stupor. Bankers, traders, manufacturers, printers, lawyers, and journalists accosted each other with scared and astounded looks. There was in this sudden muzzling of the Press a sort of arrogant challenge that stunned men’s faculties. So much daring inferred proportionate strength.