Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

If he had had any hope of being made a member of the government at this time, he soon saw that he was not yet popular enough to carry a sudden change, and that, indeed, it behooved him, as he himself said, to “keep his glory warm.” To that end he set about arousing public sentiment against England. He concluded, however, that an invasion was not expedient at that time, and set sail for Egypt, taking with him the flower of the French army not only for their usefulness to himself, but that their lack might embarrass the government if need for them should arise in his absence.

A curious bit of testimony to the non-religious temper of the time is the bit of information that though Bonaparte included in his traveling library the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas, they were catalogued under the head of “Politics.”

In the next year and a half Napoleon met with both successes and reverses. He learned that, as he had foreseen, the Directory was involved in a war with Italy which threatened its financial credit and its stability, while at home its tyrannical rule was adding daily to its enemies. Bonaparte saw his chance and determined to leave Egypt, to put himself at the head of the Italian armies and then to go to Paris, fresh from the victories which he was sure to win, and to present himself to the people as their liberator. Leaving his army and setting sail with a few friends he touched at Corsica where he learned that France was even riper for his coming than he had supposed, and accordingly abandoned the Italian plan and went directly home. So hopefully did the people look to him for relief from their troubles that his whole journey from Lyons to Paris was one long ovation, while his reception by the Parisians was of an enthusiasm which betrayed much of their feeling toward the government and promised much to the man who would bring about a change.

Napoleon was only too glad to accommodate them. He tested the opinion of the chiefs of the Directory and skillfully put each man into a position where he felt forced to support the general. Josephine played her part in the political intrigue; Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected President of the Five Hundred by way of compliment to his brother, played his. According to pre-arrangement the Council of the Ancients sitting in the Tuileries decreed that both houses should adjourn at once to Saint Cloud that they might be undisturbed by the unrest of Paris, and that Bonaparte be appointed to the command of the Guard of the Directory, of the National Guard, and of the garrison of Paris, that he might secure the safety of the Legislature.

Napoleon, who was waiting for the order at his house (not far north of the present Opéra) rode to the Tuileries and accepted his commission. The next day, at Saint Cloud, he utilized his popularity with the soldiers to force the dissolution of the Directory. The result was gained by trickery but it was nevertheless satisfactory to the people who went quietly about their affairs in Paris while the excitement was on at Saint Cloud and expressed themselves afterwards as amply pleased with the coup d’état. A new constitution was adopted. The government was vested in three consuls, Napoleon, on December 15, 1799, being made First Consul for ten years. All three consuls were given apartments in the Tuileries but one of the others had the foresight never to occupy a building from which he might be ejected by the one who said to his secretary when he entered it, “Well, Bourienne, here we are at the Tuileries. Now we must stay here.”

Stay there he did, and the palace saw a more brilliant court than ever it had sheltered under royalty. Josephine was a woman of taste and tact, and the building which Marie Antoinette found bare even of necessary furnishings at the end of her enforced journey from Versailles, the wife of the First Consul arrayed in elegance and used as a social-political battle field in which she was as competent as was her husband in the open. “I win battles,” Napoleon said, “but Josephine wins hearts.” Dress became elegant once more and not only women but men were as richly attired as if the Revolution with its plain democratic apparel had not intervened. Once more men wore knee breeches and silk stockings, and it was only the aristocrats whose property had been confiscated who advertised their poverty by wearing trousers, “citizen fashion.”

“Citizen,” as a title, fell into disuse, and once again “Monsieur” and “Madame” were used as terms of address. At first the consuls were addressed as “Citoyen premier consul,” “Citoyen second consul,” and “Citoyen troisième consul.” The clumsiness of these titles induced M. de Talleyrand to propose as abbreviations “Hic, Haec, Hoc.” “These would perfectly fit the three consuls,” he added; “Hic for the masculine, Bonaparte; haec for the feminine, Cambacérès, who was a lady’s man, and hoc, the neutral Lebrun, who was a figurehead.”

Napoleon’s acquaintance with other capitals spurred him to emulate their beauties and his knowledge of engineering helped him to bring them into being in his own. He opened no fewer than sixty new streets, often combining in the result civic elegance with the better sanitation whose desirability he had learned from his care of the health of his armies. He swept away masses of old houses on the Cité, he tore down the noisome prisons of the Châtelet and the tower of the Temple and laid out squares on their sites, he built sidewalks, condemned sewage to sewers instead of allowing it to flow in streams down the center of the streets, introduced gas for lighting, and completed the numbering of houses, an undertaking which had been hanging on for seventy-five years.

He added to the convenience of the Parisians by building new bridges, two commemorating the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and one, the only foot-bridge across the river, called the “Arts” because it leads to the School of Fine Arts and the Institute which houses the Academy of Fine Arts. He made living easier by opening abattoirs and increasing the number of markets. He helped business enterprises by constructing quays along the Seine and by establishing the Halle aux Vins where wine may be stored in bond until required by the merchants. This market also relieved such congestion as had turned the old Roman Thermes into a storehouse for wine casks. New cemeteries on the outskirts, one of them the famous Père Lachaise, the names upon whose tombs read like a roster of the nineteenth century’s great, lessened the crowding of the graveyards and the resulting danger in the thickly settled parts of the city.

The First Consul’s methods of reducing to order the disorder of France grew more and more stifling, his basic principle more and more that of centralization. Independence of thought as it found expression in politics, he silenced as he silenced the newspapers and censored all literary output. He set in action the modern machinery of the University of France, and he supervised the planning of the entire elementary school system, so centralized, that it is possible to know in Paris to-day, as he did, “What every child of France is doing at this moment.”