IV.2. FEAR, UNLIKELY PROMOTER OF URBAN GRANDEUR

MENU: 4.2. Fear: promoter of urban grandeur

AN OFFICIAL'S WIFE "TREMBLED EXTREMELY, FOR SHE HAD JUST HEARD, ON AN ORGAN, A POLKA THAT WAS AN INSURGENT'S SIGNAL"

-- Sentimental Education by Gustave Stendhal, 1869

June's unprecedented working-class insurrection terrorizes the privileged. It explains the arrival of the exceptionally autocratic Second Empire (1851-1870), whose first act is to forbid unions and that transforms the city in a way that facilitates crushing another insurrection.

From 1853 to 1869 Parisians put up with noise, dust and rubble.

Emperor Napoleon III gives the Baron Haussmann power over the outskirts of Paris (in 1859), Musée Carnavalet. The painting could as easily concern his appointment as ruthless overseer of the changes.

Coup d'état, December 1851; changes get seriously underway in June 1853, when the Emperor replaces a timid administrator with the Baron Haussmann and forces financing.

The metamorphosis begins 18 months after the coup d'état (of December 2 1851), the time to find a replacement (Haussmann) for a timid administrator, force financing, plan the new arteries and determine compensation for properties to destroy. 

Principal transformations

• Giant arteries and and homogeneous, imposing buildings replace tumultuous neighborhoods' narrow streets and small houses.

Background, Liberty Guides the People by Delacroix, 1831 / The Boulevard Montmartre in Spring by Pissaro, 1897

 

• Huge voids dot the center and east of the city, to assemble troops and isolate them from the public.

• The much higher rents force many of the poor to move to outskirts, which lets the government control the center.

• Speculation and corruption bring new magnates: "Aristide Rougon swept down on Paris, on the day after December 2 with the flair of birds of prey that smell battlefields from afar."

The Kill, 1871 (A "curée" is the portion of game fed to hunting dogs) 

# # #

Historians emphasize modernization, which was inevitable in a town that was still medieval. They mention the military aspect as one factor among others, or not at all.*

*Two studies that alude to it: Paris, Bivouac of Revolutions by Robert Tombs (1999) and The Invention of Paris by Éric Hazan (2001). But Tombs mentions it only in passing (p.56) and Hazan does not call it overriding. 

Observing how the mutation

shows that the priority

was repressing future insurrection.

• The metamorphosis seen up close

• Plans to crush bring gifts now

*     *     *

Next,

The metamorphosis seen up close

IV.2.1. THE METAMORPHOSIS SEEN UP CLOSE

MENU: 4.2.1. Metamorphosis seen up close

IMAGINE THE ELITES' IMMEDIATE CONCERN: PARIS'S  

MEDIEVAL INFRASTRUCTURE OR REVOLUTION BY WORKING-CLASS "BARBARIANS"?

Observing the changes shows the military priority 

Claude Abron

Why the colossal esplanade? 

Enigmas that repression explains

• "An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

• Open the town to the army

• Three huge spaces to assemble troops

• A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism

• The new arteries' military purpose

• A "masterly line" cuts through the working-class east

• Blue-collar neighborhoods' vast open spaces

• Huge "places" and power symbols

• The exception across the river  

• At Notre-Dame Cathedral, repression replaces eternity

• Planning Latin Quarter bombardment has happy results

• The hospital garden 

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Next,
"An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

"AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION:" CHURCHES AND A PARK

"ONE CAN DO ANYTHING WITH BAYONETS EXCEPT SIT DOWN ON THEM," SAYS NAPOLEON III 

So he promotes a faith that teaches the poor "useful resignation to the conditions of society" by...

-- Citation:  Adolphe Thiers in Valence, Thiers

•  Building churches:

Notre-Dame de la Gare in the poverty-stricken 13th (1847-59)

 

 Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle in the industrializing northeast (1858-61)

• Making public schools teach the catechism:

"New law on teaching: it's the teachers who get the cane."

The "Falloux law" (passed a year before Napoleon took power), was named after the arch-conservative Count de Falloux, who had led the opposition to the National Workshops.

• Promoting charity that condescends to recipients and honors sponsors:

Painting in an antique dealer's window

Society women have "their own" poor and give few alms after mass, so as not to compete for "clients."

-- Jean Renoir, My Father

"To be a good benefactress

Ladies, knit everything in the color of goose-droppings

so that at mass on Sundays

You can recognize your poor."

-- Song by Jacques Brel, Youtube
Written in 1960 to mock a mentality that had not changed
(Brel emphasizes the last words when he sings himself).

Results:

• Paris becomes a capital of neo-Gothic architecture.

• Visceral anti-clericalism, as shown by the cancan step "cathedral:"

Performance by Nadège Maruta, cancan historian and choreographer / photo Félix Sinpraseuth

The bloomers were pierced.

More reasons for that hostility

 

• Nuns' low prices for sewing reduce those of seamstresses.

• Registering babies born out of wedlock costs two days' pay (a fourth of working-class couples live in common-law unions). 

# # #

"The Socialist emperor"* does do something for the poor: He gives the poor a superb park in the working-class east.

(The Buttes-Chaumont, in 1867)

*Napoleon III had written The Extinction of Poverty and genuinely wished to help workers... without hampering employers.  

 Internet, source not said

Victor Locuratolo

Those palliatives do not change

working conditions and salaries:

Still trembling from June,

elites foresee another insurrection.

*     *     * 

            

Next,

Open the town to the army

OPEN THE TOWN TO THE ARMY

"...THESE GRAND STRATEGIC ARTERIES WILL PUSH BACK THE WORKERS AND ALSO HELP CONTAIN THEM..."

-- The Baron Haussmann,

 cited in The Atlas of Haussmannien Paris by Pierre Pinon, 2002, p. 93 (slightly abbreviated, in French)

The Empereur appoints Haussmann (upper part of a painting at the City Museum)

The metamorphosis continues until at least 1925... 

Piercing the boulevard Haussmann in 1925 / zoom

But most is done during the years that follow the insurrection of June 1848.

# # #

The artery that cuts through the city lets troops rushed from the frontiers march without obstacles to the center, without the obstacle of tiny streets:  

The Eastern Station. The Northern Station is a few steps away.  

Adapted from a Google map

          Rue du Chat qui pêche, 5th (between Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel)

A rare small street that was not destroyed. 

# # #

Destruction covered the entire territory east of rue Saint-Denis, where the barricades of June had been:

 Adapted from a document at the National Library / zoom

Avoiding workers' presence in the center is the reason why Parisian railway stations are on the outskirts, in contrast to London and New York.* 

*Except the Northern and Eastern stations, which predate the June insurrection, and the former Gare d'Orsay, built in 1898 when strikes had replaced revolts.

"In that way the workers were pushed back toward the outskirts; and as one easily understands, that change influenced in a positive way order and public safety." 

-- Général Moltke visiting Paris, cited in Atlas du Paris haussmannien, p. 93

# # #

Those demolitions explain the rarity of medieval remains, the dreariness of much of the center and the harmony due to demolishing and rebuilding in a homogeneous style... 

The Etienne Marcel crossroad

 1 Boulevard Poissonnière, 9th, Internet, photographer not named

Those are streets 

where barricades had stood. 

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Next,

Three huge spaces to assemble troops

THREE HUGE SPACES TO ASSEMMBLE TROOPS

THE ARTERY THAT WAS JUST DESCRIBED LEADS TO A NETWORK AROUND THREE VOIDS TO ASSEMBLE TROOPS, HORSES AND CANNONS 

(AMONG THE FIRST TRANSFORMATIONS, IN 1852-1853)

They are place Saint-Michel and the voids in front of Notre-Dame et City Hall:

Adapted from a Google map

# # #

On arriving at the river, soldiers crossed a new bridge to arrive on the left bank by hugely enlarged Saint-Michel:

 

"N:" originally pont [bridge] Napoleon III; after the Emperor's downfall, pont National

"Walls of Medieval Paris Discovered during Demolitions for Place Saint-Michel, engraving 1860 / zoom

Photo from the web, no photographer named

There they might take either the prolonged artery toward the working-class south, or widened streets toward the parvis of Notre-Dame Cathedral:

Boulevard Saint-Michel

 

View from a tower of Notre-Dame

At the end of the parvis they could take an enlarged street and a reinforced bridge to another greatly enlarged space, the esplanade in front of City Hall:

       "Taking City Hall" (cut) by Amédée Bourgeois, 1831 / zoom

 

Model at the Musée Carnavalet

In 1830

Drawn by T. J.H. Hoffbayer toward 1880 after archival records / zoom

In 1855 

# # #

It became the heart of a second network, at the center of the right bank:

• To the left is the relatively straight trade route that had been enlarged for tournaments and was the route that Louis XIV had taken for his cortège made building an artery toward the working-class east unnecessary:

The trade route (rue Saint-Antoine), wide and straight enough for marching troops. 

  

• To the right, as at Notre-Dame, an insignificant street lies alongside the expanse. 

• It leads to another wide, straight street (avenue Victoria) from which the army could reach Châtelet, the center of the right bank, five minutes away:

Behind City Hall were the Lobau barracks. More later.

# # #

 Of course such changes allowed 

infinitely more fluid circulation and let in light and air.

But the three huge voids, two of which are dead ends,

have no tie with those objectives.

They were for assembling soldiers, horses and cannons. 

*    *    *

  

Next,
 A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism