The Place de la Concorde, the finest of the many fine squares and open spaces in Paris, covers an area of 400 yards in length, by 235 yards in width. It is bounded on the south by the Seine, on the west by the Champs Élysées, on the north by the Rue de Rivoli (at right angles with the Rue Royale), and on the east by the Tuileries Gardens. From the centre of the Place may be seen the Madeleine at the further end of the Rue Royale; the Palace of the Chamber of Deputies just across the river, which is here traversed by the Pont de la Concorde; the Louvre on the one hand, and on the other, at the end of the Champs Élysées, the Triumphal Arch (Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile).
At night the views from the Place de la Concorde are more striking even than by day; the Avenue of the Champs Élysées, more than a mile in length, leading in a straight line from the Place de la Concorde to the Triumphal Arch, presenting, with its seemingly interminable rows of lamps, a fairy-like spectacle.
The history of the Place de la Concorde is quite modern. Its present name dates only from the Revolution; its creation from no further back than the year 1748.
Louis XV., called le bien-aimé, had fallen ill at Metz, and the people regarding him, after the ruinously extravagant reign of his predecessor, Louis XIV., as a merciful sovereign, hurried in crowds to the churches, imploring heaven for the King’s recovery. “What have I done to be thus beloved?” asked the young monarch, with astonishment; and his eyes moistened with tears—“the only ones,” says an apparently well-informed historian, “he ever let fall.”
Louis XV. recovered and came back to Paris; and it was then that the Town Council voted with enthusiasm an equestrian statue to the sovereign whom it had pleased heaven to spare. The King, on his side, presented to the city a large open piece of ground at the end of the Tuileries Gardens, and in the centre of this plain the first stone was laid of the monument which was to celebrate the virtues of Louis the Well-beloved. This statue, according to the fashion of the time, represented the King in Roman costume with a crown of laurels on his head; and, among other devices, personifications of Strength, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace were made to figure at the corners of the pedestal, which gave rise to the following epigram:—
“Oh! la belle statue! oh! le beau piédestal!
Les vertus sont à pied, le vice est à cheval;”
which may be thus turned into English:—
“Fit statue, fitter pedestal! with laughter burst your sides,
The virtues all below on foot, while vice triumphant rides!”
Another satirist wrote:—
“Il est ici comme à Versailles;
Il est sans cœur et sans entrailles.”