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

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.

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.