Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Paris seemed to have escaped from the murderous grip of its foe only to commit suicide. But the deeds of the Commune, however shocking, were not altogether without precedent in the history of France; and, were it now worth while to seek them, excuses might almost be found for the desperation of those days.

The “pyromania” by which the fanatical incendiaries of the Commune may well be said to have been inspired had shown itself before in French history; so, too, had the panic by which the pyromania of 1871 was naturally followed. In the sixteenth century, on the 23rd of May, 1524, the town of Troyes was burnt down; men in disguise had, it was said, excited children to kindle the flames. As soon as the news reached Paris, people lost their heads. Some terrible plot was supposed to have been formed, the object of which was to destroy the whole of Paris. Accordingly, just as happened three centuries and a half later under the Commune, the citizens came out to guard their own houses, and began by stopping up the holes opening into their cellars. Under the Commune it was said that slowly burning sulphur matches were thrown into all the cellars, and every woman who was seen carrying a basket or a milk-can was called a pétroleuse. In 1524 it was forbidden by public proclamation to light the customary bonfires on the feast of St. John; and during the Commune it was imprudent for several days to light a lucifer in the streets.

During the reign of Louis XIV., an English traveller remarked that no people were more industrious than the Parisians, nor gave less money, because he said they hastened to spend all they earned in food, drink and clothes. The vanity of dress, the love of ornaments, and, above all, of decorations in the official sense of the word, has always tormented the Parisians. The passion for equality still shows itself in France by everyone wishing to wear a gold stripe on his trousers or a feather in his cap. No such brilliant display of fantastic uniforms was ever seen as during the Commune. The officers of Dombrowski’s and Bergeret’s staff, bumping on their horses as they pranced along the boulevards, did credit to the imagination of the costumiers; and after the suppression of the Commune, one of the first orders issued by Marshal MacMahon dealt with this strange abuse—indulgence in unauthorised uniforms—which were condemned collectively as fancy dresses, costumes de fantaisie. At the beginning of the First Revolution the same phenomenon had been seen.

The women were no less ridiculous than the men, as they preceded or followed the battalions in military jackets laden with the most grotesque ornaments. These viragoes were the lineal descendants of the “tricoteuses” of the First Revolution, and of Théroigne de Méricourt. “The wife of a colonel walks about with a red cap on her head,” writes the author of a book on the events of the Reign of Terror, entitled “Un Témoin de la Révolution.” “She carries pistols in her belt, and boasts publicly of the number of persons she killed during the massacres of August and September.” There was apparent novelty in the permission given by the Commune to tenants not to pay their rent; but this eminently popular measure had been anticipated by the Council of Union in the days of the League.

If there was nothing new in the excesses of the Commune, neither is there in the accusations, often groundless, made against the luxury and immorality of the Parisians. Everything that has been said about the demoralisation of France under the Second Empire had been said about the demoralisation of France under Louis Philippe, not to speak of the 17th and 18th centuries, whose morals and manners are only too abundantly described in a whole series of memoirs.

“The industrial and commercial activity of this epoch, the stimulus it gave to all material appetites, brought about,” says M. Lavallée in his “History of Paris,” “a competition without limits, the most hideous speculation, a more shameless, more barefaced love of money than in the time of the Regency or of the Directory.” M. Lavallée, however, is here writing not of the Paris of Napoleon III., but of the Paris of Louis Philippe.

“The more civilisation is developed,” says M. Maxime Ducamp,[H] “the more reproaches of this kind will be made, and apparently in all sincerity. The discovery of the precious metals, which have gradually become abundant, has given to the world excessive wealth; wealth has created wants, and some of these wants have become habitual. Every effort is made to satisfy them. To demand from a rich nation a life of abnegation and poverty, is to [{362}]demand from the human being more than his nature permits. A man will without murmuring live on oatmeal and horseflesh when he is constrained to do so by necessity, but in the ordinary course of life he prefers wheaten bread and beef-steak. People are said to have been very virtuous at Sparta. But the Spartans honoured theft: a proof of extreme poverty or of inconceivable idleness.”

[H] “Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie.”

This wealth and this luxury which moralists, severe upon other people, condemn with violence, have not been without influence in softening manners, and they have brought about, to take only a hygienic view, a notable prolongation of human life. In lieu of rookeries in which whole families used to rot, in hovels without sun or air, Paris now possesses broad streets with healthy houses which are flooded with light and oxygen, to say nothing of an abundant water supply. This wealth does not afford immoral pleasures alone. It has trebled the productive power of Parisian workmen by substituting for their black bread of other days a substantial reinvigorating diet. The consumption of meat, unmistakable sign of general prosperity, increases every year. Charitable institutions provide attendance for indigent persons at their own homes, and vast hospitals, at which the first physicians of the day think it an honour to serve, receive the sick in numbers and under conditions never dreamed of in the good old time.

The general health of Paris cannot but profit by the intelligent and beneficent care of the indigent sick, and, were not Paris a wealthy city, the ameliorations introduced into her hospitals would have been impossible. Without the riches produced by so much solicitude for material interests, could the Prefecture of the Seine have assigned 30,000,000 francs for primary education in Paris?