I. WHAT MAKES FRANCE DISTINCT?

 

• Setting the scene
• The players, legendary or unsung

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Next,

Setting the scene

I.1. SETTING THE SCENE

WIND, RIVER, TRADE ROUTES, RAMPARTS... AND A HILL

Prevailing winds push pollution east, which explains why wealthy districts are in the west, blue-collar in the east.*

*As for the whole northern hemisphere, unless sea winds or social factors intervene.

--  Map, Sophie Dressler, "A Bridge over Time," 2018 (in French); wind, Harald Wolff

Transferring production to places with cheap labor, car pollution and the grand construction of the 1980's (the City of Sciences, the Ministry of Finance, Opéra Bastille) attenuate the separation between east and west, but museums, monuments and luxury establishments are almost always in the west, while cultural dynamism is mainly in the east where rents are lower. 

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Add medieval trade routes and medieval and later ramparts, which the métro map reveals. Straight lines follow trade routes, curved lines ramparts: Both avoid house foundations.

Adapted from the map of the transport authority (the RATP)

Chatelet, the trade route junction where five local and three regional métro lines connect, is among the busiest métro stations in Europe.

The arrow indicates the oldest routes. 

 

The Tour Saint-Jacques (Saint-Jacques Tower) where the oldest trade routes met, is still the center of town. The arrow shows the trade and pilgrimage route south (rue Saint-Jacques, toward Saint-James of Compostela in Spain).

 

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Eleventh-century trade routes 

           Adapted from a plan in Un jour de plus à Paris / zoom (please scroll down)  

1. The east-west route dates from the Gauls. Supplying a caravan with its merchants, their wives, servants and animals with food, plus renewing carts, ropes, footwear and clothing and provisions and articles for the elites that grow up in response to the traders, explains why the right bank has always been more commercial than the left (except under the Romans, when the main route led to Rome). 

Following this route is the Grand Axis: by starting at the eastern end of the Louvre palace by merging with the horizon to symbolize power, it is one of the most influential urban designs of all time. The grandiose squares of the 19th century, built to let soldiers gather before confronting street rebellions in working-class eastern Paris, lie along that line.

2. The Romans' north / south route still cuts through the city (becoming rues Saint-Martin / Saint Jacques in the north and south respectively).  

3. When the minor route (rue Saint-Denis) that led to the distant British hinterland came to pass near relics and the royal graves, it surpassed it in importance.

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The ramparts that encircled the growing town explain why...

Simplification of an Internet map

Laurent Grandguillot

The last rampart is the superhighway that circles the city.

• Neighborhoods split into distinct segments along the medieval rue Saint-Denis. 

• Saint-Germain-des-Prés became one of the most intellectual neighborhoods on the planet.

• The "dance of the barriers" — the cancan — grew up in blue-collar outskirts just beyond toll-collecting ramparts.

• A conservative government armed and trained an underclass fighting force, whose presence led to La Commune.

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Hovering over all, a hill whose significance has been

religious, military and political: more later.

Piéta de Saint-Germain-des-Prés (detail), anonymous, 15th century / zoom

Those tangible factors explain the city's structure.

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Next,

II.

The players, legendary or unsung

I.2. THE PLAYERS, LEGENDARY OR UNSUNG

MENU: 1.2. Players: legendary or unsung

 

THE STARS ARE KINGS AND REBELS

 Portrait équestre de Louis XIV (cropped) by René-Antoine Houasse, toward 1670 / zoom

La Liberté guide le peuple (cropped) by Eugène Delacroix, 1831 / zoom

Women of the court, men of the Church, peasants who bought land the Revolution confiscated, foreign refugees and artists, imperialists and immigrants play grand secondary roles.

The curtain rises

• Kings, at the heart of French civilization

• Women of the court who bequeathed their refinement

• The Church, inseparable from the monarchy

• Small farms: ferocious repressions and "art de vivre"

• Rebels and their demand for social justice

• Exiles and expats

• The French language, imperialists' explosive gift

• Immigrants, source of new energies

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Next,

Kings, at the heart of French civilization

KINGS, AT THE HEART OF FRENCH CIVILIZATION

THE OLDEST AND MOST POWERFUL MONARCHY IN EUROPE IS THE BACKDROP TO FRENCH CULTURE

Its might came first from controlling a major trade-route junction and then from dominating nascent entrepreneurs.*

*History from Fresh Perspectives explains this. 

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Due to the court... 

• A code of respect, like saying "Bonjour, Monsieur or Madame" rather than just "hello." 

             Louis XIV octroie [grants] la Croix de Saint Louis à Versailles le 9 mai, 1693 by François Marot, 1709, zoom

• Appreciation for refined cuisine and wines: The meal is a royal event that courtiers attend standing up.

    Le Roi de Suède dine à Versailles, end of the 18th century / Internet, no further information

Lasting effects:

• An hors d'oeuvre* ("outside the main work") anticipates the main course. It is an expression of hierarchy that takes things step by step.

• Air France serves an apéritif and a correct wine in a glass bottle with the meal. Its American partner Delta offers no apéritif and serves a horrible wine in a plastic glass.  

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• Landscaping that brings order over unruly nature evokes the power of Sa Majesté over his realm, and fits coded behavior:

Court Life at Versailles by Étienne Allegrain, toward 1688 / zoom 

Adaptations: Amsterdam (the van Loon gardens) and Rome (the Villa Farnese)

The parc de Choisy, in Paris's 13th district *

From now on I will say simply "13th," or whatever the district number, as Parisians do.

• Ballet, a court dance: Aristocratic dancers governed their bodies as they did their emotions, which made them fit masters of subordinates and formed them to be members of a court from which spontaneity was banished.

Nos pontas

  For more, please click.

 Le Roi-Soleil danse by Maurice Leloir, 1931 

Dancing the role of Apollo when he was 15 gave Louis XIV the name "Sun King."

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The next pages say more 

about monarchy and the French identity

 though women of the court, the Church.

Later we come to monuments that are no longer understood

and to an urban design 

that has been adopted world-wide. 

 

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Next,

Women of the court who bequeathed their refinement

WOMEN OF THE COURT WHO BEQUEATHED THEIR REFINEMENT

THEY PROMOTED A CULTURE THAT APPRECIATES WOMEN

Francois I (1525-1547) wanted his court to reflect his growing authority, but nobles stayed in their castles, drank and brawled.

   François I by Jean Clouet, toward 1530 / zoom

So he extended a practice of the previous reign, inviting the nobles' daughters to the court. He lent the 300 young ladies sumptuous clothes and jewels and had them educated by the queen, hoping that they would attract and civilize the men.

They did. The court of most the 16th century is still known for its refinement...

Tapestry, publication of the Renaissance Museum

 Zoom

"Ball at the court of the Valois, SOLD OUT:" event at the musée des Armées

Until civil wars shattered it.

Le Festin [Feast] of the Generals, 1535 zoom

 

• When Henri IV, founder of the Bourbon dynasty and of stronger monarchy, came to power in the late 16th century the crassness of the court shocked his Florentine wife, Marie de Medici. A historical novelist captures her disgust with this imagined response: "There was a brute in each of the men, a prostitute in each of the women. Certain expressions, certain jokes made me close my eyes in confusion, even sometimes cover my ears with both hands.

--  La Galigaï  by Eva de Castro, 1987, p.198

• Henri as Rubens portrayed him:

   La Rencontre [Meeting] à Lyon, Marie de Medicis cycle, 1626, zoom

"Henri IV holds himself badly!" my eight-year-old cried on seeing this work.

The best military leader of his day, he spent 40 years in army camps. He never took a bath, rarely shaved and thought that stinking marked a viril gentleman accustomed to combat, far superior to the well-turned-out but tame bourgeois. 

When dining with the queen, he would spatter soup on her ruff. "Sorry, darling," he'd say, and spatter her again. Yet his love letters to his girlfriends — he is said to have fathered 53 bastards  — are masterpieces of style.

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Transformation came from salons where noblewomen met for refined conversation. There they invented the "Map of Love, which advised gentlemen that to reach the "Dangerous Sea" of passion they must advance from village to village, that is, step by step:

Zoom

That code encouraged urbanity, self-control and hierarchy, traits that the monarchy would take to extremes.  

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Queens' and favorites' complimentary roles:

• Queens' function was to give children to France. As well, by participating in ceremonies, visiting churches and giving alms, they seemed closer to the people than the king and humanized the monarchy.

The young women who surrounded them set the tone. But the queens themselves, as foreigners chosen for political reasons who might never speak French well or grasp the court's complicated ways, usually remained in the background. 

Yet three emerge from insignificance, as regents when kings died leaving sons to young to rule or by maintaining their influence over them.

Those anomalies:

Catherine de Medici, queen mother 1559-1580's / zoom

"Nobody likes their husband's whore," Catherine wrote, showing how queens were obliged to accept the favorites described below. Such servitude taught Catherine the observation and duplicity that served her later. "I never believed you ate little children," the queen of Navarre wrote to her, but "a great king," Henry IV would say. 

Stout, with globular eyes, dressed in widow's black, she was interested in power, not elegance. But the girls who encircled her to seduce and spy maintained the glamour of the court.

Marie de Médici, regent 1600-1616 / zoom

Anne of  Austria, regent and queen mother, 1643-1666 / zoom. 

Marie de Medici was as power-hungry. For her story, please click here and here.

Charming, sociable Anne of Austria left politics to a brilliant Prime Minister while expertly running the court.

• Favorites: Official royal mistresses. Beautiful, cultivated and elegant, they gave the court its éclat. 

Standing out:

       Diane de Poitiers (1535-1559, under Henri II)  

Marquise de Montespan (1667-1680's, under Louis XIV)

Diane de Poitiers, the power behind Henry II, upstaged Catherine de Medici for 20 years. 

The marquise de Montespan contributed to the court's prestige during Louis XIV's most glorious time (roughly 1670-1685). Her link with a serial-killing witch brought her fall.

Madame de Pompadour, 1744-1764 / zoom

Madame du Barry, 1768-1774 / zoom

The Marquise de Pompadour influenced culture brilliantly and foreign policy disastrously. The Countess du Barry is best known for crying, "Give me one more minute to live!" before she was guillotined.

Royal mistresses were necessary. They encouraged nobles to remain at the expensive and stifling court, hoping to receive the largesse that the kings distributed through them, or to intrigue so that their candidate would be be chosen next. As well, their extravagance made them lightning rods that drew popular fury away from the king.

Proof of their importance: During the Restauration the nobility welcomed the aged ruler's gift of a mansion to a female confidante, believing it a return to the role of favorites and so to the Ancien Regime.

• Marie-Antoinette's spending, elegance and leadership of fashion meant acting like a favorite more than as a queen, behavior that led to her fate:

     Zoom

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The 16th-century court, the salons and the matching roles of favorites and queens explain women's influence on French culture.

They encouraged the arts,

 demanded a courteous relationship between the genders

and turned luxury into taste.

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Next,

The Church, inseparable from the monarchy