Under the succeeding reign of Louis XV. the beautifying of Paris took another flight. On the place which first bore the name of the monarch himself, but which is to-day known as the Place de la Concorde, were erected a pair of richly decorated monuments which quite rivalled in achievement the superb colonnaded Louvre of the previous reign, the Champs Elysées were replanted, the École Militaire, the École de Droit, and the Hôtel de la Monnaie were erected, and still other additional boulevards and magnificent streets were planned out.
A new church came into being with St. Genevieve, which afterward became the Panthéon.
The reign following saw the final achievement of all these splendid undertakings; then came the Revolution, that political terror which would have upset all established institutions; and if Paris, the city of splendid houses, did not become merely a cemetery of tombs, it was not because maniacal fanaticism and fury were lacking.
Religious, civic, and military establishments were razed, demolished, or burnt, regardless of their past associations or present artistic worth.
In a way, however, these sacrilegious demolitions gave cause to much energetic rebuilding and laying out of the old city anew, in the years immediately succeeding the period of the Revolution, which as an historical event has no place in this book other than mere mention, as it may have been referred to by Dumas.
It was Napoleon who undertook the rehabilitation of Paris, with an energy and foresight only equalled by his prowess as a master of men.
He occupied himself above all with what the French themselves would call those monuments et decorations utiles, as might be expected of his abilities as an organizer. The canal from the river Ourcq through La Villette to the Seine was, at the Fosses de la Bastille, cleared and emptied of its long stagnant waters; abattoirs were constructed in convenient places, in order to do away with the vast herds of cattle which for centuries had been paraded through the most luxurious of the city’s streets; new markets were opened, and numerous fountains and watering-troughs were erected in various parts of the city; four new and ornate bridges were thrown across the Seine, the magnificent Rues Castiglione and de la Paix, extending from the Tuileries to the interior boulevards, were opened up; the Place Vendome was then endowed with its bronze column, which stands to-day; the splendid and utile Rue de Rivoli was made beside the garden of the Tuileries (it has since been prolonged to the Hôtel de Ville).
Napoleon also founded the Palais de la Bourse (1808), and caused to be erected a superb iron grille which should separate the Place du Carrousel from the Tuileries.
Under the Restoration little happened with regard to the beautifying and aggrandizing of the city, though certain improvements of a purely economic and social nature made their own way.
The literature and art of Dumas and his compeers were making such sturdy progress as to give Paris that preëminence in these finer elements of life, which, before or since, has not been equalled elsewhere.