5.6. FEAR, UNLIKELY PROMOTER OF URBAN GRANDEUR

MENU: 5.6. FEAR & URBAN GRANDEUR

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

-- L' Éducation sentimentale ( "Sentimental Education") by Gustave Stendhal, 1869

June's unprecedented working-class insurrection terrorized the privileged. It explains the arrival of the exceptionally autocratic Second Empire (1851-1870), which transformed the city in a way that made crushing future insurrection easier.

• The changes began in June 1853, when the Emperor replaced a timid administrator with the dynamic Baron Haussmann. He forced financing, planned arteries and determined compensation for properties to demolish.

Zoom

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

          

The Baron Haussmann and Émile Zola's novel The Kill (1871) ("la curée" is the remains of a hunted animal given to the dogs): "Aristide Rougon swept down on Paris, on the day after December 2 with the flair of birds of prey that smell battlefields from afar."

# # #

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

*Studies that do 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. 

The next pages show the priority

of repressing insurrection.

• Remaking the city

• Gifts of the repression

*     *     *

Next,

5.6.1.

Remaking the city

V.6.1. REMAKING THE CITY

MENU: 5.6.1. Remaking the city  

OBSERVING ITS CHANGES SHOWS THE PRIORITY OF REPRESSING REVOLT, AFTER THE INSURRECTION OF "BARBARIANS" IN JUNE

Claude Abron

An esplanade built to assemble troops.

In brief

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

• Open the town to the army and control the center

• Giant spaces to assemble troops

• A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism

• The new arteries' military purpose

• A canal is covered over 

• The grand open spaces of the blue-collar east

• A smaller site reveals the uprising's extent

• A empty void confirms the giant spaces' tie to power

• At Notre-Dame Cathedral, repression replaces eternity

• Planning Latin Quarter bombardment has happy results

• The hospital garden 

*    *    *

Next,
5.6.1.1.

"An ounce of prevention:" churches and a park

5.6.1.1. "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:

The "Falloux law" (passed a year before Napoleon III 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. For the transgressive context, please click and scroll down.

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 creates 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

                                                                                                                                                                    Vito

Those palliatives do not change

working conditions and salaries:

Elites foresee another insurrection.

*     *     * 

            

Next,

V.6.1.2.

Open the town to the army and control the center

V.6.1.2. OPEN THE TOWN TO THE ARMY AND CONTROL THE CENTER

AN ARTERY LETS TROOPS RUSHED FROM THE FRONTIERS MARCH THROUGH TOWN, WITHOUT SMALL STREETS' OBSTRUCTION

As well: "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

# # #

The wide, straight street lets troops move quickly from the Eastern Station to the heart of town. The Northern Station is a few steps away. 

Adapted from a Google aerial map 

 La rue du Chat qui Pêche, 5th (between Notre-Dame and Saint-Michel)

A medieval street that survived 

# # #

Demolition covered the entire territory east of rue Saint-Denis, where the June barricades clustered:

 Adapted from a document at the National Library / zoom

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

*Except the former Gare d'Orsay, built in 1898 across the river from the Louvre, 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 rebuilding of the former working-class quarters in the homogeneous style adapted to the new bourgeoisie. 

The Etienne Marcel crossroad

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

# # #

The metamorphosis continues until at least 1925... 

Piercing the boulevard Haussmann in 1925 / zoom

But most is done in the 15 years 

that follow the insurrection of June 1848. 

*    *    *

 

Next,

5.6.1.3.

Giant spaces to assemble troops

V.6.1.3. GIANT SPACES TO ASSEMBLE TROOPS

THE ARTERY LEADS TO A NETWORK THAT LINKS THREE VOIDS, LARGE ENOUGH TO RALLY TROOPS, HORSES AND CANNONS 

(AMONG THE FIRST TRANSFORMATIONS, IN 1852-1853)

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

Adapted from a Google map

# # #

At the river soldiers crossed a new bridge to the left bank, where they regrouped at hugely enlarged place 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, photographer unknown

There they might stay to confront residents of the turbulent neighborhood, or 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:

  Prise de l'Hôtel de Ville ("Taking City Hall"), cut, by Amédée Bourgeois, 1831 / zoom

 

Model at the Musée Carnavalet

In 1830

Drawn 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 a circulation that was infinitely more fluid 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,
5.6.1.4. 

A fountain where the Emperor crushes Socialism