Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

Before Louis Philippe’s reign ended there were some eleven hundred streets within the city limits, and the extension and improvement of the lighting system increased their safety, while they were made beautiful by many fountains. Of these the best known is that in memory of Molière. It is erected opposite the house in which the great dramatist died, and was made possible by one of those public subscriptions by which the French more than any other people express the gratitude of the masses for a genius which has given them pleasure.

The water service for domestic use was poor, water-carriers bringing water in barrels to subscribers and selling it in the street.

The present fountains of the Place de la Concorde are also of this period, and the obelisk of Luxor which the pacha of Egypt presented to the king of France, was brought from its place before the great temple of ancient Thebes where it had stood for three thousand years to make the central ornament of the same huge square.

The present fortifications of Paris date from this reign. Thiers built them during his ministry and some thirty-odd years later he had the satisfaction of knowing that it was through his efforts that the city was able to hold out for nearly five months against the Prussians.

Of new works for the embellishment of the city Louis Philippe began but few. The one church of interest was twin-spired Sainte Clotilde, an accurate reproduction of thirteenth and fourteenth century Gothic. Though initiating little the king finished several important undertakings of his predecessors. One of these was the Palais des Beaux Arts where many American students now study art; another was the church of the Madeleine, and still another the Arc de Triumphe de l’Étoile. Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle were carefully restored to their original beauty by the skillful architect and antiquarian, Viollet-le-Duc, and the Palais de Justice was enlarged. A further example of the preservation of old buildings for the benefit of the people was the conversion of the Hôtel Cluny into a museum of medieval domestic life, and of the adjoining Thermes of the Roman palace into a repository of Gallo-Roman relics.

With bridges and railroads increasing the public comfort, a vigorous body of writers adding to the literary reputation of Paris, and the discovery of Daguerre introducing to the world photography whose developments have revolutionized many occupations and made possible many others, the eighteen years of Louis’ reign was a rich period. It was increasingly turbulent, however, as each riot provoked severe rulings in an effort to prevent further trouble, and each access of severity enraged the mob more than ever. The proletariat had no vote, and the suffrage advances across the Channel served only to irritate and make the French poor feel poorer than ever both in property and in political rights.

The crisis came (in 1848) as often happens, over a comparatively small matter. The king forbade a banquet of his opponents, and the mob seized upon the refusal as an excuse to fight. The National Guards should have served as a buffer between the royal garrison and the rabble, but the rabble stole their guns and the worthy bourgeois of the Guards were of small service to anybody. There was fighting here and there all over the city, but chiefly in the neighborhood of the boulevard of the Temple. There seems to have been no especial reason in these skirmishes; the coatless fought the wearers of coats without stopping to inquire their political belief. Huge crowds collected along the rue de Rivoli and along the quay, hemming into the Place du Carrousel another throng packed almost to inmovability. His wife and daughters watching him anxiously from the windows, the king, now a man of seventy-five, came from the Tuileries, mounted a horse and moved slowly through the press. Only an occasional voice cried “Long live the king,” and he soon returned to the palace. In a few minutes word flew from mouth to mouth that Louis Philippe had abdicated. It was true. An hour and a half later he left the Tuileries never to return.

With him went his family, leaving behind them all their personal belongings. At once a horde of roughs took possession of the palace, slashing pictures, breaking furniture, breakfasting in the royal dining room, and sending out to buy a better quality than the king’s coffee which they drank in exquisite Sèvres cups taken out through the broken glass of a locked cabinet. The royal cellars were emptied promptly. The princesses’ dresses adorned the sweethearts of the most persistent fighters. Again, as in 1830, the throne went up in smoke after every rascal in town had had a chance to test the softness of its cushions.

At the Hôtel de Ville the second Republic was proclaimed, the poet Lamartine at its head for the money there was in it, it is said. A minor actor who was in a general’s costume at a dress rehearsal and who put his head out of a theater window to see the cause of the uproar in the street, was haled forth, set upon a horse, escorted to the City Hall and introduced to the nondescript and self-appointed members of the provisional government there gathered as “governor of the Hôtel de Ville.” They accepted him without question and Lamartine confirmed him in his office the next day!

A republican government pure and simple, however, did not satisfy a large part of the citizens of Paris who were extreme socialists and demanded that the state provide work for everybody. So insistent were they that Lamartine established National Workshops and the actual development of the theory proved more convincing than any possible argument. Thousands of people were soon enrolled. Many proved idlers, many were ignorant, much of the output was poor; yet, such as it was, it seriously disorganized trade and so flooded the market that prices went down and wages were forced to follow. The men who received $1.00 a day at first were reduced in a few months to $1.20 a week, while the government was saddled with a debt of $3,000,000 and with hundreds of citizens less than ever able to take care of themselves after this period of what was practically living on charity. The solid citizens demanded an immediate change, the government insisted that a larger number of the beneficiaries should either seek other work or go into the army. Again Paris was a battlefield during three days when many of the streets were literally ankle-deep in blood. The Parisians could build a barricade right dexterously by this time and bourgeois and rabble killed each other heartily in the most pitiable sort of civil war. Archbishop Affre, who went in person to the faubourg Saint Antoine to use his influence with the fighters, was mortally wounded. His torn and blood-stained garments are preserved in the sacristy of Notre Dame.