III.3. HAVE THE KINGS BECOME SUBVERSIVE?

3.3. Have the kings become subversive?

THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES, APOGEE OF THE GRAND AXIS, 

COULD PROPEL A SUBLIME MODERNITY  

But globalized commerce has taken over "the world's most beautiful avenue"and changed its message:

     Automobile centenary / Claude Abron

In brief

• The Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

• A new society creeps in

• Goddesses hover over the city

• Kings and globalization

*     *     *

Next,

The Champs-Élysées, challenged majesty

THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES, CHALLENGED MAJESTY

THE "GREAT WHEEL OF PARIS," NOW DEFUNCT, HERALDED 

A GENERAL EVOLUTION

Installed at place de la Concorde from the 1980's to 2018

in itself it was spectacular...

...but the booths at its foot blocked Louis XIV's groundbreaking perspective...

...while the theme song on its web site was so triumphantly insignificant — "les CHAMPS!!! Élysées" — that it insulted the Avenue's grandeur. 

# # #

In 2014 the City refused to renew the lease. A bland composition 

replaced the pop tune. 

Joyful music from the Sun King's court

would have emphasized the avenue's grandeur.

Instead the authorities allowed the insipid.

Were those changes a compromise,

refusing the small stalls

but not confronting the multinationals

whose wares dominate the avenue now?   

*     *     *

Next,

A new society creeps in

A NEW SOCIETY CREEPS IN

MIXING CULTURE WITH COMMERCE WOULD HAVE SEEMED VULGAR A GENERATION AGO. BUT NOW... 

As seen, brands take over Palais-Royal, the medieval rampart under the Louvre vanishes under an installation that leads to a McDonald's, a tablet to rent replaces Marie-Antoinette's cell, chain stores or shops without personality replace businesses that had a soul, as here and here.

Added:

• A brand takes over Napoleon's tomb:

Claude Abron

In museums and monuments, merch can be impossible to avoid... 

• A barrier at the Conciergerie forces visitors to pass the boutique when they leave:

 

• At the Opéra, visitors must pass through three levels of shops before reaching the exit:

• At the Louvre, to view Raft and Liberty one must first pass this room...

GENERAL PHOTO

 

...while another boutique covers the wall of the exit to the wing: 

PHOTO

 # # #

Triviality, consumerism and erasing the past —  is there a connection ?

*     *     * 

 

Next

Goddesses hover over the city 

GODDESSES HOVER OVER THE CITY

COINCIDING WITH THOSE CHANGES, GIANT ADS LOOM OVER TOWN

(FIRST REMARKED IN 2011)

Richard Nahem

Notices announce that the ads help finance renovations.

They do not say what percentage

 goes for that purpose.

*     *     * 

Next, Kings and globalization

 

KINGS AND GLOBALIZATION

THE CRACKS AROUND THIS PAINTING WERE FINALLY REPAIRED... 

(IN 2023)

Louis XIII bows before a crucifix, church of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, 4th

...but though people stop there to meditate or light candles, I have never seen anyone contemplate the painting of homage to the king, in a church meant to honor monarchy.

That past has been forgotten.

# # #

Compare that work with images like this one: The gorgeous, colossal, invincible queen does not say what she is selling, still less why it should be bought...

Ad on the summit of the Hôtel Lutétia, 6th

She looms over the public like Big Brother, in hommage not to a product but to a brand, whose purchase is an order.

To fall for such bait a public must be submissive, credulous and have no conflicting frame of reference: The monarchs' majesty

stands in the way of such annihilation.

As well, they have left a legacy 

of artistic and architectural grandeur

that makes consumption-ism insignificant.

One does not reject it — one ignores it.

Pamela Spurdon

Louis XIV in the courtyard of the Louvre

The kings re-enter history when we notice
 the majesty they transmit.

End of Part III.

*      *      * 

The other great reason for Paris's beauty,
the fear that insurrections inspired,
is as suppressed as are the kings.

Part IV addresses that gap.

 IV.
The city of revolt and massacre

IV. THE CITY OF REVOLT AND MASSACRE

 4. MENU: The city of revolt and massacre

PARIS IS CALLED "THE CITY OF LOVE," BUT ITS UPRISINGS TELL ANOTHER STORY 

Ad on the Louvre

Painting gone from the web

Mainstream accounts mention the as little as possible. These pages address that gap.

In brief

• "Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts?  

• Fear, promoter of urban grandeur

• Modern Europe's first great massacre

• Remaking the city

• La Commune

*      *      * 

Next,
4.1.

"Objective history sticks to the facts:" Which facts?

IV. 1. "OBJECTIVE HISTORY STICKS TO THE FACTS:" WHICH FACTS?

 MENU: 4.1. History: which facts?

ALL VIEWS ARE SUBJECTIVE BECAUSE ONE MUST CHOOSE WHAT FACTS TO INCLUDE OR LEAVE OUT  

Typical choices emphasize identity (Washington crossing the Delaware, Bonaparte at the bridge of Arcole), kinds of society (Lenin mobilizing the Proletariat, Washington at Mount Vernon) or drama (The Execution of Robespierre).  

This section concerns the contrast between listing political facts with no or little tie to tangible interests, and stressing underlying economic forces.

It uses the French upheavals of 1789-1830 as examples.

        Liberty Guides the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1831 / zoom

Many people think the most famous work created in France concerns the French Revolution. In fact it celebrates the Revolution of 1830, its often overlooked conclusion.

In brief

• "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing   

• The Revolution of 1830: capitalism's forgotten triumph 

• Boring history, a political weapon

*    *    *

Next:

"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" lets capitalism take wing

"LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY" LETS CAPTALISM TAKE WING

IN PRACTICE...

• Liberty means free enterprise. 

• Equality brings the end the nobles' privileges that limit business growth. 

• Fraternity calls up the rank and file to blow those privileges away.

Zoom

Middle-class leader, underclass striking force

Background:

• When the explorations and discoveries of roughly 1500 bring unprecedented expansion of chains of production, new entrepreneurs  — producers of supplies, cloth, ships, sails, nails, raisers of horses and mules — threaten the ruling class of hereditary landowners, the nobles. 

That evolution leads in France to stronger monarchy, which contains the new interests; to associating nobles with the gods of mythology; to "Wars of Religion," that pit popular masses against entrepreneurs who challenge traditional protections.  

• Nobles' legal privileges and control of the State hamper but do not stop the growth of those interests. By the 1780's establishments employing hundreds of workers have grown up around Paris:

   Pillage of la Folie-Titon [Réveillon] on Fbg. Saint-Antoine, April 28 1789, anonymous, end 18th century / zoom

A riot at Réveillon, with 200 employees, took place two months before the taking of the Bastille. By reacting against a rumored reduction of salaries rather than the cost of bread, insurgents announced the struggle between capital and labor. 

Similar establishments: A company with 300 employees in what is now the 13th; several north of the Saint-Denis gate, one of which employed over 800 workers; manufactories in Orleans and Rouen...

-- In the 13th:

Elements for a History of the Commune in the 13th Dstrict by Gérard Conte, 1981 (in French)

-- In the north:

The Crowd in the French Revolution by George Rudé, 1982

-- In Orleans and Rouen:

The Monarchy's Last Fires by Charles-Eloi Vial, ch. 1, 2016 (in French)

• Those entrepreneurs resent the nobles' privileges that block their expansion, and want political power that corresponds to their economic clout. Nobles, whose revenues come from peasant dues that inflation reduces and whose values and upbringing make them ill-equipped for business, resist. 

The street will provide the force that leads to them to hide, flee or be guillotined: "What had been pretension became tragedy."

-- Adolphe Thiers, History of the French Revolution,1834 (in French)

      Illustration in The Great French  Revolution by Georges Soria (ed. Bordas) in French, 1988

# # #

Marx's summary:

 "The dykes to capitalism had to be broken. 

They were broken." 

But not quite.

*     *     *

Next,

The 1830 Revolution: capitalists' forgotten triumph

THE REVOLUTION OF 1830, CAPITALISTS' FORGOTTEN TRIUMPH

MOST FOREIGNERS HAVE NOT HEARD OF IT AND MOST

FRENCH PEOPLE BARELY RECALL IT 

This schoolbook of 1966 presents a list of political facts that have no link with underlying issues.* 

* A translation appears at the end of the page.

Why should elections bring a "hostile majority?" What pressures lead the king to dissolve the Chamber, change voting laws and suppress the press? 

Instead of a struggle between emerging capitalists and nobles that the economic evolution weakens, teens learn the term "Four Ordinances" — and to reject history as a whole. 

Recent textbooks split the same facts into themes that though easier to remember are as incomprehensible. The economy is described in another chapter, which is unconnected.

# # #

Now try this:

The conflict between nascent capitalists and hereditary landowners just described, which has been gathering steam since the 16th century and explains the Revolution itself, takes place over five years of drama (1789-1794). They greatly reduce nobles' power by abolishing their privileges and confiscating the lands of those who have fled.

Capitalists win. But Napoleon's wars absorb capital and energies (from roughly 1800 to 1815). Then the victorious foreign monarchies impose the Restauration, which tries to bring back nobles' power.

Those developments slow growth but do not stop it.

• The Saint Martin canal, started in 1805 and stopped in 1809, is rebooted with peace in 1815 and finished in 1824: The industrialization of northern Paris, and the fortunes to be made from it, begin.  

Postcard, end of the 19th century / zoom

• The cemetery of the Holy Innocents undergoes a similar evolution. The plan to make it a full-time marketplace, launched just before the Revolution, is completed in the early 1820's.

• Developers build the maze of covered passages at the same time. "Vero-Dodat," is named after the two butchers who financed it:

Zoom

Faced with elections that go against him, the king "throws the monarchy from the towers of Notre Dame"* by the measures just mentioned. Street fighting breaks out. Believing that the Virgin Mary has promised her help, he plays cards until his famished troops are pushed back and thousands of Parisians threaten to attack him in his chateau across the river (Saint-Cloud). He abdicates.

*Chateaubriand

Combat Before City Hall on July 28, 1830 by Jean-Victor Schnetz, official commission, 1830  / zoom  

Bankers offer the throne to Louis-Philippe, head of the Bourbon monarchy's junior branch. 

Louis-Philippe Leaves Palais-Royal for the Tuileries on July 31 by Horace Vernet / zoom

Without the legitimacy of heredity or election and son of the execrated regicide Equality Philip, the new king depends on them.

The Industrial Revolution takes off.

# # #

Compare the overthrown ruler and the victorious elite: 

• The Death of Charles X: Leaders of the Old Regime welcome him to Heaven.

• Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, newspaper editor and pillar of the new regime: The armchair underscores power and the fingers look like claws.

By Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1832 / zoom

Calling the insurgency "The Three Glorious Days"

shows capitalists' jubilation at taking power at last.  

# # #

The schoolbook text:

"Did Polignac have to retire?The Charter did not oblige the king to choose his ministers among the Chamber's majority. Rather than cede, Charles X preferred dissolution, but the electors returned a hostile majority. Then the king, by the Four Ordinances pronounced the dissolution of the new Chamber, modified the electoral regime and the regime of the press by his own authority. It was a veritable coup d'état: the Charter did not allow the king to make up the law (July 25, 1830).

Pushed by secret societies where young republicans were numerous, by journalists, by patrons exciting their workers, the people of Paris revolted against the ordinances. The rebels flew the tricolor. After three days of street fighting (the "Three Glorious Days," July 27,28, 29 1830) in which the royal guard was engaged — the rest of the army abstained from fighting — the capital was lost for Charles X."

*    *    *

Next,

 History, a political tool