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.

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.