The Hotel de Sens Caught in the Crossfire, 1830

On 28 July 1830, the Hôtel de Sens, one of Paris' only remaining residences dating from the Middle Ages, was caught in the crossfire between barricaded revolutionaries and the troops of King Charles X.

Check out the cannon shot still embedded in the facade above the 1^st floor mullioned window:  a très cool souvenir from Les Trois Glorieuses of 27-29 July 1830.

Built more than 300 years before the Glorious Revolution (1474 to 1519), the Hôtel de Sens was once the home of the Archbishops of Sens. The architecture of the Hôtel boasts both late Gothic and early Renaissance features as well as many medieval defensive elements:

• surveillance turrets;
• a square tower used as the dungeon;
• an arched entryway with chutes from which defenders could pour scalding water or oil on would-be invaders.

In 1605, King Henri IV's ex-wife, Queen Margot, moved into the Hôtel de Sens. She was notorious for her many love affairs and is rumored to have collected the hair of her lovers to make her wigs.

From 1689-1743 the Hôtel de Sens became a stagecoach office. Sometime thereafter, it reverted once again to the Archbishops of Paris. 

That is, until the July Revolution of 1830.



Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix, 1830

This video, by smarthistoryvideos, unfortunately cuts out before it's supposed to end, but it still gives a good explanation of the 1830 Revolution on the streets of Paris as rendered by the painterly genius of Eugene Delacroix.

Les Trois Glorieuses - The Three Glorious July Days

The barricades were thrown up no less than eight times between 1827 and 1849 in Paris' Faubourg St. Antoine. In 1830, street battles between the people and the king's forces resulted in Les Trois Glorieuses (July 27-29), three days of insurrection that would send then King Charles X packing and bring down the Bourbon Monarchy forever...

Once Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled on St. Helena, in 1815, the monarchy held by the Bourbon family since 1553, and thought to have ended with the beheading of Louis XVI in 1793, was restored. The next eldest brother of Louis XVI came to the throne as Louis XVIII*.  Louis XVIII ruled as a constitutional monarch for 10 years, until 1824. When he died, the crown passed to his younger brother, the Comte d'Artois, who became King Charles X. The period of their combined rule (1814-1830) is known as the Bourbon Restoration.

Now Louis XVIII was fairly agreeable about ruling under a constitution. But his brother, the Comte d'Artois, was an "ultra-Royalist" and as soon as he became king, he began to roll back the civic gains of the preceding 40 years. He passed laws intended to increase the power of the nobility and clergy once again. On 6 July 1830 he sought to suspend the Constitution. And on 25 July he issued four ordinances powerful enough to launch French society back to its pre-Revolution days altogether: He repealed the freedom of the press as well as universal male suffrage. Under Charles X, whose ordinances also called for a September election that year, only wealthy land-owners would, once again, be allowed the vote.

The people erupted. Students, poor, working class, and petty bourgeois alike stood shoulder to shoulder as they heaved paving stones, felled trees, furniture, even tipped carriages, anything that would serve to barricade Paris' narrow eastern streets against the king's advancing troops. For three "glorious" days they fought nobly to defend the gains of their fore-fathers. At the end of the third day, Paris erupted again, but this time in cheers as Charles X abdicated and fled France forever.

The king left his native land with instructions to make his 10-year-old grandson king, and that his cousin Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orleans, should rule as regent until the king's 13th birthday. But Louis-Philippe ignored these wishes and on August 9 colluded with the Chamber of Deputies to become the next (and last) King of the French.

So in 1830 France still had a monarch, but rule had shifted from the Bourbon to the Orleans branch of the royal family, something the Orleans had long desired. Their power, however, would last only as long as the next revolution...

*Louis XVII, first son of Louis XVI, died in captivity in 1795 at the age of 11, a victim of the French Revolution.

Images:
Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique, King Charles X of France and of Navarre in Coronation Robes, 1829.

Delacroix, Eugene Ferdinand Victor, Liberty Leading her People, 1830.


Paris’ 19th Century Barricades

3 May 2010. The International School of Stuttgart visits Paris. The group of 45 teachers and students travel back in time with the Time Traveler Tours to the barricades of the 19^th century, first erected in 1830, then again in 1848, and one final time in 1870-71. It has been said that the French Revolution of 1789 actually took 100 years to resolve.

Learn about the rebellious 19^th century here and in subsequent FrancoFiles posts…

Paris in 1830 was a divided city. To the west, the bourgeoisie lived in lavish homes (Paris’ wealth had been shifting westward ever since Louis XIV had moved to Versailles in 1682). To the east, from the Marais outward was the Faubourg St. Antoine, a warren of decaying, medieval buildings on criss-crossing narrow, dark, muddy streets.

The smell of sewerage and smoke caught in the throats of the many poor and unemployed who made the Faubourg their home. It was a danger to walk the streets in the Faubourg St. Antoine: all too easy to be run over by a carriage traveling its traffic-clogged alleyways; or to slip into a deep pool caused by heavy rains and fouled by filth and pollution and never climb out again!

Houses were overcrowded. The people had no plumbing and lacked potable drinking water. Their waste, both human and otherwise, went out the windows and into the street. They could count only on the rains to wash the filth away, down, down into the river Seine. The Faubourg was appalling to the senses.

When diseases, like cholera, swept through Paris, this is where you found the majority of the dead. In 1830, the Faubourg was home to the highest death rate in France. And the Faubourg St. Antoine made Paris the filthiest, most pestilential and savagely overcrowded city in the world.

This is where where the barricades were thrown up no less than eight times between 1827-1849.

Image:

The Distribution of Barricades in Paris, 1848 from Harvey, David; Consciousness and the Urban Experience; Baltimore, MD; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985; http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/mapping-paris/City_Divided.html.



Napoleon Bonaparte's Civic Legacy

Today, I'd like to share a recent Q&A I had with a FrancoFiles Fan and her Studious Son who is writing an extended essay on the larger-than-life character of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The two were interested in Napoleon's civic achievements, not just his battles, both successful and disastrous, about which much has been written.

Hi Sarah,

I found your blog on Google. I have a "stumper" for you, which I cannot find the answer online. Anywhere! Here goes: Under the dome, at Les Invalides, Napoleon's coffin is surrounded by bas relief sculptures that represent his most significant civic achievements. What are those achievements?

Surrounding Napoleon's porphyry sarcophagus under the dome of the Chapel at Les Invalides are first a ring of 12 statues of angels, called the "Winged Victories". They symbolize Emperor Napoleon's victorious military campaigns - of which there were 40 or so battles. Inscribed in the mosaic floor at the Victories' feet are the names of his eight greatest victories: Austerlitz, Marenco, Pyramides, Iena, Friedland, Wagram, Moscova, and Rivoli. The Winged Victories stand guard over Napoleon's remains with laurel wreaths in hand, a symbol of victory dating back to Roman times.

On the circular wall just behind the Victories can be found 10 bas relief sculptural panels that commemorate and honor Napoleon's administrative and political achievements as well as his public works. The most significant of these achievements is the Napoleonic Code, which represented the final and perhaps most lasting break from France's former rule by Absolute Monarchy. It placed all French people, no matter their family background, rank, or ties with the church or nobility, under the same system of justice and law. After the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, promulgated during the Revolution, the Napoleonic Code is perhaps one of the most important political documents in the history of democracy. Even today it remains the basis of law in some 80 countries.

The various public works celebrated in the bas relief panels include canals that brought potable drinking water to Paris; bridges; grand streets and boulevards such as the rue de Rivoli; building projects such as the Louvre extension; and monuments like the Carousel du Louvre, all spear-headed by Napoleon. He is remembered for institutionalizing the stock exchange in Paris and building La Bourse, which continues to house the exchange today. He is credited for the idea of centralized government, having carved France up into a series of departments and created localized governments that answered to him. Napoleon is also to be thanked for modernizing the postal system by numbering houses consecutively along odd and even sides of streets to ease delivery of letters and packages.

Any study of Napoleon Bonaparte should consider his great achievements in addition to his elusive military campaign for "La Gloire" that led, finally, to his being sent into exile half way around the world. For even the Emperor is remembered for having said: ...more important than the winning of 40 battles is the civil code, which will live forever.

***

If you have a question about French history and culture, please don't hesitate to ask!

Images:
by the author

Beware Madame La Guillotine - Pilot Tour!

On Thursday, April 1, 2010, as part of their study of the French Revolution, the 8^th grade class at the International School of Paris took a walking tour of the era with Charlotte Corday. Charlotte is known for having assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, radical journalist and proponent of the Reign of Terror. She blamed Marat for destroying the true revolution. She felt that his death would bring an end to the fear and bloodshed tearing her country apart.

She decided to do it herself.

Her tour, Beware Madame La Guillotine, prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, recounts her journey to end Marat’s life, and her own. She narrates the last four days of her life, from July 11, 1793, when she left her Norman home, until her execution on July 17th.

ISP students followed her movements, from the Palais Royal, birthplace of the French Revolution and where she bought her weapon; to Marat’s home near the revolutionary hot spot, Le Café Procope, where she stabbed him through the heart as he soaked in the bath; to the Conciergerie, where she was imprisoned, tried, and labeled an “enemy of the revolution”. Charlotte was guillotined at the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde) six months after Louis XVI and two months before Marie-Antoinette.

“Very compelling [to view the Revolution] from the perspective of the characters” who lived it, reports one ISP 8^th grader. “I liked how we learn more specifically [about the Revolution]. And get to know the places that related to Charlotte,” said another.

Overall the students liked the experience: “Cool trip.” “Interesting and fun.” “GOOD JOB! And well done!”

Images by Julia Luu, Intern, ISP External Affairs.

Time Traveler Tours go to Bologna

On March 22, 2010, at the acclaimed Bologna Childrens' Book Fair in Italy, Sarah read from the prototype historical itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine, to rave reviews:

On the evening of 13 July 1793, I found Marat thus, in the bath at his apartment around the corner from his press. It was my third visit to his house that day. The first two times – once in the early morning, then at mid-day – I had been turned away by Simone. This time, however, I succeeded in gaining entry. I climbed the steps to Marat’s door, one heavy foot at a time, and plucked up the courage to knock yet again. I was confronted once more by a scowling and suspicious Simone, but before she could dismiss me a third time, I offered her, with a slightly trembling hand, a letter addressed to Monsieur Marat.  I had written the letter myself, in the heat of the afternoon after my second failed attempt to cross his threshold. The letter stated that I had come to name names; that I was prepared to give him information regarding the missing Girondin “Enemies of the Revolution” that he sought. 

Who would suspect a 24-year old girl?

Simone took the letter and shut the door with a slam, leaving me alone on that drab, inhospitable landing. I could have turned around right there and then. But Marat was just on the other side of that door. I took a long, deep breath, and held it. Would I again be turned away? If so, so be it. Or would I meet the monster Marat at last?

I met my enemy in a small, square room with a brick-tiled floor. A map of France hung upon worn wall-paper. His tub was the shape of a sabot, an old wooden shoe. A board lying across it served as a writing table so that Marat could work on his articles and conduct his interviews even while soaking. To keep warm, he sat upon a linen sheet, the dry ends covering his bare shoulders. A second sheet draped across the tub and writing table offered him a bit of privacy from his visitors.

Marat was strange and unpleasant, thin and feverish.  His head was wrapped in a filthy, vinegar-soaked handkerchief.  On his skin were open lesions that reeked of decaying, rotten flesh.  My eyes began to tear, struggling so against the fumes of death and medicine that I did not at first notice Marat motioning me to take the chair placed beside his bath. I sat as requested, my head turned toward the window, searching the still, hot summer air for what little breeze might chance to come my way.  And in the gloom of evening’s waning light, Marat took great pleasure in scribbling down one by one, his head bent over his writing table, the names of each of my beloved Girondin friends. 

Once finished he raised his head, his blood-shot eyes met mine for the first time. He proclaimed viciously, hate dripping from his lips, “We’ll soon have them all guillotined in Paris!” 

At that moment I knew I had justly come.  I pulled out my knife and stabbed Marat right through the heart.

One blow was all it took. I felt the knife penetrate flesh, bone, muscle. It was shocking how easy it was. 

Marat died almost instantly. 

Image:  Baudry, Paul-Jacques-Aimé. Charlotte Corday. 1860. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

Les Sans-culottes

Isn't this a great picture? Just this week, I received permission to use it in the prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine.

It is a hand-colored copper engraving by Braun & Schneider, Munich, c. 1880, that comes to me from the Collection KulturBuro Schodel, www.german-hosiery-museum.de. It pictures les citoyens sans-culottes of the French Revolution.

Who were the "sans-culottes"? This excerpt from Beware Madame La Guillotine explains all:

The term “sans-culottes” first appeared in the French lexicon in 1790 during the French Revolution. Initially, it described the poorer members of the Third Estate* who wore full-length trousers (pantaloons) rather than the knee-length culottes fashionable among the bourgeoisie and nobility. The expression quickly came to refer to the radical revolutionaries, both rich and poor, who styled themselves “citoyens sans-culottes”.

In addition to long trousers, the sans-culottes were also often seen wearing a conical red cap, known as the “Phrygian Cap” or cap of liberty. The same cap was worn in ancient times by both the Greeks and later the Romans. For them, as for the French revolutionaries, the Phrygian Cap symbolized freedom from tyranny.

During the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, the term sans-culottes referred as well to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary Army.

****

As for news on the likelihood of obtaining photos from the RMN (see Phrases & Expression: Sabotage), I managed to get through to the Paris reps who've bounced my case to their affiliate in New York. I'm hoping very much that this means progress! Cross your fingers for me.

****
*The Third Estate was that portion of the French population (approximately 96%) that was neither part of the Church nor to the Aristocracy in France of the Ancien Régime. For more on the Third Estate and the French Revolution, click here.



Phrases & Expressions: Sabotage

Did you know that the word sabotage originates from French? The story goes like this:

Back in the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution took off in France, laborers dropped their shovels and pick axes and left their ancestral fields for work in the growing numbers of factories and coal mines. They sought a better life; they hoped for a better economic future for their families.

But work was hard and conditions were unbearable. People were pushed to phyical extremes on bellies that remained empty day after day after day. They soon lost hope.

In those days, poor French laborers wore a type of wooden shoe or clog called a sabot. And when their hunger became unendurable and their hope forgotten they rose up as one to strike.

They used their wooden sabots to jam the machines of the factories all over France. With their sabots they stopped all means of production. They sabotaged the captains of industry.

Today, the strike (la grève) remains a powerful part of Fench culture, a way for workers to force their employers to sit up and take notice.

And it all started with a wooden shoe.

Welcome to the new website of the Time Traveler Tours!

I’ve moved my blog, FrancoFiles Fun Facts, to this location and I will be blogging here from now on.  In addition to comment boxes, which I always enjoy reading and responding to, I offer you following interactive features on this website:

• A Forum where you can ask questions, leave your own fun facts about French history and culture, or tell us about your experience using the Time Traveler Tours - I welcome your positive testimonials as well as your suggestions and critical feedback;
• A Discussion Room where you can hold conversations with me and other visitors to the Time Traveler Tours website; and
• A Picture Gallery (to come) of time travelers and their testimonials - please send them in!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Sarah B. Towle

Founder & Creative Director

Time Traveler Tours, LLC