Old and New Paris Part 18

The sum to be applied to the purpose was afterwards reduced to 1,500,000 francs; and this sum was conscientiously spent, but without by any means finishing the design contemplated by the architects.

The fountains, with the Naiads and Tritons, and the eight statues representing in personification the princ.i.p.al sights of Paris, had been duly placed; and in 1836 the Obelisk of Luxor, a present from the Pasha of Egypt, was made the central ornament on the spot which had been successively occupied by the statue of Louis XVI. and the figure of Liberty.

It was not until 1852, under the Empire, that the objects which still on one side mark the limits of the Place were set up. A large number of bronze candelabra which were at the same time fixed in various parts of the square greatly increased at night its picturesqueness and its beauty. For the last forty years the Place de la Concorde has remained as it was under the Empire. The Republic of 1871 could scarcely think it necessary to return to the truly Republican name of Place de la Revolution, which had been preserved for some two or three years during the worst period of the Revolution; and to the embellishment of the Place there was nothing to add. It remains what our Trafalgar Square was once, with or without reason, declared to be--"the finest site in Europe;" less admirable, however, as a mere site, than for the admirable views of such varied kinds that it commands in every direction.

The history of the Place de la Concorde would not be complete without a record of the fact that it has been successively occupied by Russian and Prussian troops (1814); by English troops (1815); and again by Prussian troops (1871). It was the scene, too, in 1871 of a desperate struggle between the Communards and the troops advancing against them from Versailles.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PLACE VENDoME.

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 Vendome, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOP OF THE VENDoME COLUMN.]

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-Honore was decreed "alike for the decoration of Paris and for facilitating communications in this quarter." Louvois, in the first place, purchased the Hotel de Vendome in the Rue Saint-Honore, at the end of the Rue Castiglione, which, together with an adjacent convent, was pulled down. The open s.p.a.ce 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 Vendome 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 facades 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 Vendome changed to Place des Piques. This eminently anarchical t.i.tle was preserved until the establishment of the Empire, when Napoleon conceived the idea of the column to which the Place Vendome 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 Vendome 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 ma.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ARMY BY NAPOLEON THE GREAT.

BEGUN XXV AUGUST, MDCCCVI, FINISHED XV AUGUST, MDCCCX, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF D. V. DENON, DIRECTOR-GENERAL, MM. J. B. LEPeRE AND L. GONDOIN, ARCHITECTS."

The base of the column bears this legend:--

"NEAPOLIO IMP. AUG.

MONUMENTUM BELLI GERMANICI ANNO MDCCCV.

TRIMESTRI SPATIO DUCTU SUO PROFLIGATI EX aeRE CAPTO GLORIae 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Semalle, 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 doc.u.ment, "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 pa.s.sed a resolution for crowning the Vendome Column once more with a statue of Napoleon. A compet.i.tion 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 Beranger's songs, the _Pet.i.t Caporal_ wearing his _redingote grise_, and standing in a characteristic att.i.tude, with one of his hands behind his back. Instead of the laurel wreath he wore on his head the traditional _pet.i.t chapeau_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PLACE VENDoME.]

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 p.r.o.nounced by General Bergeret.

After the suppression of the Commune the a.s.sembly of Versailles ordered the re-establishment of the Vendome 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 cla.s.sic 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 Hotel 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 Vendome is the Ministry of Justice. The Hotel du Rhin on the south side was the residence of Napoleon III. when he was a member of the National a.s.sembly 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 Hotel du Rhin, he apologised for proposing to entertain him at a "cabaret," a pleasantly contemptuous designation which the commodious and well-appointed Hotel du Rhin scarcely deserved.

The Hotel du Rhin played a certain strategic part towards the end of May, 1871, when on the 23rd the Versailles troops pa.s.sed through the hotel, and, attacking the insurgents in the rear, captured one of their princ.i.p.al barricades. The proprietor of the hotel, M. Marechal, is said, on the occasion of the Vendome 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 Vendome 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 t.i.tle, by the Rue Saint-Honore. Here, close to the Place Vendome, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Cure 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 Comedie Francaise. 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 Cure 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 Cure 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 Cure, perform the funeral service. The soldiers had been called out, but they were judiciously withdrawn: they were kept, that is to say, in an att.i.tude only of observation, while a crowd that was constantly increasing followed the corpse of Mlle. Raucourt to the cemetery of Pere-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 ill.u.s.trious 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 Feuquieres, 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 Aiguieres and of Count d'Harcourt; the statue of the Duke de Crequi, and the monuments of Maupertuis, the philosopher, and of the benevolent Abbe de l'epee.

On the high ground, at some little distance from the Church of Saint-Roch, is the b.u.t.te 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 a.s.sault commenced at eleven o'clock in the day, between the gate of Saint-Honore 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.