Epilogue: The Reign of Terror Meets its Own End

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The French people of 1793 did not immediately share Charlotte’s views regarding her sacrifice.  They did not see her as a martyr; nor did they take Marat for a madman. It was Marat’s body, not Corday’s, that received a hero’s funeral.  His body was placed in a proper coffin, paraded through the streets of Paris to the sound of weeping citizens, and buried at the Pantheon.

Charlotte’s headless remains, in contrast, were tossed among those of the other victims of the Revolution into an open, pestilent, public grave.

What’s more, Charlotte’s murder of Marat cast a long shadow of doubt over the remaining Girondin delegates to the National Convention. Already in trouble for standing against the king’s execution, they were believed by Robespierre and the other Jacobins to have been in cahoots with young Corday, even though she repeatedly insisted that they were not. Indeed, their presumed collaboration was never proven. However, all 21 Girondin delegates were put to death, just as Marat had wanted, on 29 October 1793.

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, would beat the 21 Girondins to the guillotine by a mere two weeks.

Not quite six months after losing her husband on 21 January 1793, she also lost her son, eight-year-old Louis Charles, heir apparent to the French throne. Exiled Royalists had declared the boy King Louis XVII upon his father’s death, so the revolutionaries took him from the bereaved wife and mother and placed him in solitary confinement to keep him from being rescued.  He died in captivity at the age of ten.

In the early hours of 2 August 1793, just two weeks after the death of young Charlotte Corday, Marie Antoinette was removed from her sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, and her daughter, Marie Thérèse, then aged 15.  The queen bade farewell to her first born, instructing her to obey her Aunt as she would a mother.

Marie Antoinette was then spirited away through the sleeping Paris streets to the Conciergerie Prison, with no crowds to hamper the progress of the carriage, and no witnesses.

On 14 and 15 October 1793, the Queen of France stood before the Revolutionary Tribunal as ‘Prisoner no. 280’, aged well beyond her almost 38 years.  She was accused of treason, aiding the enemy, and inciting a civil war.

The very next day, 16 October 1793, Charles Henri Sanson arrived at work early to cut the queen’s hair and bind her hands behind her back. She was loaded onto a tumbrel, made to sit with her back to the horses, and paraded through the streets of Paris before reaching the Place de la Revolution.

The day was fine and warm for the season. Huge crowds lined the route to Madame La Guillotine. Shouting “Long Live the Republic”, they spat on the queen’s cortège.  Marie Antoinette rode to her death calm, composed, and courageous.

Her head was cut clean at 12:15 and unceremoniously dumped, along with her body, into a common grave.  She had endured more than two months incarceration in the humid and airless Conciergerie, where she lacked all privacy - guarded both night and day - even for the most private of ministrations.

Two weeks after the fall of the Girondins, on 6 November 1793, cousin Philippe-Egalité also met his end at executioner Sanson’s blade. As many as 20,000 people, many innocent of any real crime, lost their lives during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. 

* * *

By 1795, the French people were tired of the bloodshed.  They realized, like Charlotte, that the promise of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity that the Revolution once represented had long since been lost.  The most radical revolutionaries now began to turn on each other.  One-by-one, they, too, found their place at the base of Madame La Guillotine.

•   Camille Desmoulins: Executed, 5 April 1794

•   Georges Danton: Executed, 5 April 1794

•   Maximilien Robespierre: Executed, 28 July 1794

•   Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville:  Executed, 7 May 1795

With no one, neither Royalist nor Republican, left to run the country, power now shifted to the French Army and, in particular, to a promising young general who had already distinguished himself in battle against the Austrian and Prussian Empires. He was a young Corsican lad, who went by the name of...

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Images:

Unknown. Bust of Marat, 18th c. Crédit photographique: Musée de la Révolution Françaises, Vizille, France, http://www.domaine-vizille.fr, Inv. MRF 1988-112.

Unknown. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (1755-1793) in Prison. Photographic reproduction of original [LC-USZ62-116784], courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Unknown. Trial of Marie Antoinette of Austria, 18th c. Crédit photographique: Musée de la Révolution Françaises, Vizille, France, http://www.domaine- vizille.fr, Inv. MRF 1983-323.

David, Jacques Louis (1748-1825). Napoleon I crossing the Alps at St. Bernard. Photomechanical print reproduction of original [LC-USZC4-7159], courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

Countdown to App Release: Chapter 12 - Oct March of Women

Chapter Twelve...

The women march.

October 5: A mob of angry Parisian women assembled at the Palais Royal. From here, they began a full day’s march to Versailles, on foot.  I read that Louis-Philippe Joseph II, Duc d’Orleans, the king’s cousin, marched among them, dressed as a woman!

They went to Versailles to demand that King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette come to Paris to witness their hunger and poverty. They pleaded with Marie Antoinette to give them bread to help them feed their children. A rumor spread that when the queen was told the women had no bread, she replied, “Then, let them eat cake!” This made the women very angry. 

The women stood waiting well into the night. In the pre-dawn hours, they broke into the palace.  They made for the queen’s bedchamber.  But she escaped through the servants’ passageways within the palace walls.  They sacked Marie Antoinette’s rooms, breaking or stealing its precious contents. 

The National Guard joined the women, beheading anyone who blocked the furies’ path. The women refused to leave Versailles unless the Royal family left with them. By morning, they were victorious.

On October 6, the king and queen, their two living children, and the king’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, were prisoners of the mob, en route in a crowded carriage to Paris.  Their 12 hour parade to the Tuileries Palace left a trail of blood as the women held the heads of the king’s troops on pikes. They waved green tree branches as a symbol of the revolution. The royal family would never see Versailles again.

Chapter Thirteen...

The royal family attempts escape.

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Image:

Unknown. Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People, 18th c. Crédit photographique: Musée de la Révolution Françaises, Vizille, France, http://www.domaine-vizille.fr, Inv. MRF 1990-46-128.

Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-George, 1745-1799

In honor of Black History Month in the US and Canada, I wish to introduce you to a little known Frenchman named Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-George, aka the “Black Mozart”.

Joseph was born in Guadeloupe to a black slave woman named Nanon and her former master, George Boulogne de Saint-George. George loved Nanon so when, in 1747, he was accused of murder for mortally wounding a man in a fencing duel, he fled to France, taking Nanon and three-year-old Joseph with him to keep them from being sold. Though George was eventually pardoned and allowed to return to his Guadeloupe plantations, he would install Joseph in France to receive a nobleman’s education.

Joseph was an exceptional student. He excelled in literature, horseback riding and most notably fencing. He was an expert marksman, thus earning the title of Chevalier. In addition, Joseph became a master of the harpsichord, a violin virtuoso and a prolific composer.

But it was no easy task to have dark skin in late 18^th century France. Le Code Noir, issued in the 17^th century to protect the interests of slave owners and traders, legalized racial segregation. White popular opinion, that Africans and their descendants were genetically inferior to white Europeans, held sway even amongst such notable thinkers as Voltaire. Despite his friendships with Mozart and Haydn; despite his friendly relations with the royal family, including Marie-Antoinette; despite the huge crowds that amassed to hear his operas and concertos; despite, as well, his position as the first black colonel of the French Army, Joseph was still obliged as a person of color to register his comings and goings with the government.

When Joseph was selected, under Louis XVI, to become Director of the Royal Opera, three divas thwarted the appointment in the grounds that “their honor and their delicate conscience could never allow them to submit to the orders of a mulatto.”

Joseph Boulogne died in 1799. During his short life of 54 years, he wrote 25 concertos for violin and orchestra, numerous string quartets, sonatas and symphonies as well as at least five, possibly six, operas.  In the ensuing 200 years, however, he fell into obscurity. Critics contend that Boulogne’s fellow countrymen minimized his importance on the basis of his ethnic background.

So, I'd like to send a shout out to Lesa Cline-Ransome, author, and James E. Ransome, illustrator, for their new children's title: Before There was Mozart: The Story of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George.

Special thanks, too, to my friends Lee Wade and Anne Schwartz at Schwartz & Wade Books for helping to allow Joseph and his talents to shine once again!

Happy Black History Month!



The October March of Women, 1789

" In the wee hours of October 6, 1789, a mob of peasant women broke into the Palace of Versailles. They had been encamped outside the chateau since the previous evening, awaiting an audience with my King, Louis XVI (16^th), and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

The women had come from Paris and they were starving. Their children and their aged, as well, were starving. A terrible storm had wiped out France’s wheat crop that summer. Now the common folk had no bread, their main – and sometimes only – source of food. I followed them from Paris as they struggled to make the 20 kilometer journey on foot, afraid for my King, afraid of the power of the mob. As the women marched, their numbers grew. All along the route, I observed as more women dropped their washing and their brooms and left their children to join the fray. They arrived at Versailles in the thousands, demanding that King Louis and Marie Antoinette save them from their misery. Their hunger had driven them to madness. Waiting through the night for a response from the King had transformed their desperation to fury.

Before dawn, they stormed the Palace through a servants’ entrance. I pushed in amongst them, hoping to reach the King first, to warn him or hide him, I knew not what. But the scene was one of total mayhem. Frantic women rushed in all directions. They ran down gilded corridors, flew up marble staircases, burst through passageways reserved for servants. 'If they refuse to come out', was heard the mob’s collective cry, 'we’ll drag them out!' They searched for the King and Queen, their rage now whipped to a savage frenzy. They killed anyone who got in their way.
Before dawn, the King and Queen were found with their two children and the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, huddled like mice before a gang of hungry cats, still in their bedclothes in the King’s private apartments. They were forced to dress quickly and pressed into waiting carriages bound for Paris, driven there by the mob so that they might bear witness to the misery of their subjects.
They would never see Versailles again.

Some among the women accompanied the king and queen with the severed heads of royal guards held high upon pikes, like tattered, bloody flags. Others stayed behind and shouting, Down with the Monarchy! Down with the King!, they hurried about the chateau, smashing statuary and precious antiques, pilfering what could be carried, seizing foodstuffs from the immense Versailles kitchen: fresh pheasant and duck, salted pork, baskets of vegetables, and bread still baking in the ovens for that morning’s royal meal.

I do not recall the moment I became conscious that I was powerless to save my King. But I do remember being gripped with the urgent imperative to save the King’s Garden. In a flash I knew, without thinking, that I, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu – the fourth member of my family to bear the title, Botanist-in-Chief to the King – was obliged to confront the mob to save the legacy of two centuries of adventurers and natural scientists, even if it meant my death.
The mob’s force was not diminished by its destruction of the chateau interior. The women’s anger only expanded with their ferocity, like a volcano whose vigor has been pent up for too long. And indeed, it did not take long for them to spill out into the Royal Gardens, intent on further rampage.
I was waiting for them. The botanists, master-gardeners, and under-gardeners of the Palace of Versailles were all waiting for them. We faced the mob armed only with the tools of our labors: shovels, spades, sickles and shears meant for pruning dead or dying leaves and branches from flowers and trees. We assembled to defend with our lives our life’s work: the plants and trees which for two hundred years had travelled to us from the far corners of the earth, and which we had so tenderly coaxed to adapt and thrive in the French soil and climate.
A woman with wrath in her eyes stepped out of the crowd. 'Move aside,' she bellowed. 'These gardens belong to the people, now.'
'Madam,' I said, taking a step forward as well. 'These gardens have always belonged to the people. They provide beauty for our pleasure as well as nourishment and medicine for our health. For 120 years, the products of the Versailles gardens have graced the King’s table and cured his ills. Destroy them and you destroy the means by which we may now help you to feed and care for your hungry children.'
An eerie hush fell upon the crowd. All that could be heard was the whisper of the pre-dawn winds through the trees and bushes of the vast gardens of Versailles. I gripped my ax; my heart raced as blood rushed to my pounding temples. It was the longest moment of my life. Finally, I heard hope rise from deep within the crowd. I heard the words that I knew would save the gardens, the words that would allow me to breathe again. I heard the words that would mean salvation for the botanical wonders of the Versailles Palace.
'Long Live the King’s Garden!' someone shouted. 'Long Live the Garden of Plants!' cried another, changing the name of the garden to make it acceptable to the people. And then it grew, little by little until it was a resounding chorus: 'Vive le Jardin des Plantes! Long Live the Garden of Plants!'

And all at once, the chant shifted again. 'To Paris!' the women cried. And as they retreated, the gardens were flooded with the first light of a new dawn. The inheritance of two centuries of the blood and sweat of French plant hunters, botanists, and gardeners was saved, and it glowed in gratitude to those of us who had defended it."

*****
Excerpted from the Time Traveler Paris Tours: Long Live the King's Garden, by Sarah B. Towle (copyright 2009), expected launch date: March 2010.

Images:
Versailles, the Chateau, exterior facade, views from southwest, Google Earth, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People, from http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/230/.

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, nephew of the de Jussieu brothers, Galerie des naturalistes de J. Pizzetta, Ed. Hennuyer, 1893, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

August in Paris: Parc de St. Cloud

Our final August in Paris, 2009, adventure took us to the 460-hectare (1136.68 acre) park of St. Cloud [san cloo], situated 10 kms (6 miles) southwest of Paris. The park, once punctuated by a glorious royal château, is perched atop a steep escarpment overlooking the River Seine. It offers magnificent views of the French capitol - a fitting location, indeed, for a place that loomed large over the political landscape of France for centuries.

The Château de Saint-Cloud dates back to 1572. Until the 18^th century, it was largely the country palace of the cadet branch of the royal family (i.e. the descendents of the younger brothers to the king). Louis XIV’s younger brother, Philippe duc d’Orléans, made perhaps the biggest mark on the estate when he acquired it 1658: He hired the same landscape-designer to renovate the gardens – André Le Notre – who would undertake his brother’s Versailles masterpiece just three years later.

In 1785, four years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, the property became royal once again when King Louis XVI bought it from his cousin Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans. It was an extravagant expenditure at a time when French peasants were starving and the royal coffers were running dry. But the future King of France, young Louis-Joseph-Xavier-François, had been a sickly child and Queen Marie Antoinette was convinced that the air in St. Cloud would be healthier for him than that of Versailles. She, too, set about to upgrade the grounds, renovating the chateau and gardens with the help of Richard Mique who was just then adding the finishing touches to her Hameau (hamlet) at Versailles.

Alas, she and the children would never spend much time in St. Cloud. The future monarch died on 4 June 1789 and the Revolution broke out only weeks later. By October, the royal family was living under house arrest at the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

Following the Revolution, French governance fell for a short time to a corrupt arm called The Directory. In 1799, a coup d’état, aided by General Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrew the Directory. Guess where? That’s right, at the Château de St. Cloud!

Napoleon I climbed quickly from member of the tripartite Consul to Consul for Life to Emperor of France. The Château de St. Cloud became a favored home. Just as it would be preferred by Napoleon III, France’s second Emperor and Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew.

Napoleon III declared war on Prussia from the Château de St. Cloud on 28 July 1870. Ironically, it was the same spot from which the Prussians laid siege to Paris in the torturous months that followed.

As Parisians struggled to stay alive - feasting off cats and dogs and zoo animals once the meat of sheep, pigs, and cows ran out - the Prussians shelled them relentlessly from the elevated St. Cloud park grounds. On 13 October counter-fire from within the city hit the chateau. It caught fire and burned to the ground.

Today, the domaine de St. Cloud is owned and maintained by the French state. Among the daily joggers, dog-walkers, sunbathers, and picknickers, one can still detect many remnants of its illustrious past. That is, if you know what to look for:

• Outbuildings and a small museum near the chateau ruins provide clues to the estate’s 16^th century beginnings;
• Le Nôtre’s high-baroque cascade is one of ten fountains dating to his 17^th century renovations;
• Marie Antoinette's 18^th century flower garden today cultivates roses for exclusive use by the state;
• La Lanterne, so named because a lantern was lit there whenever Napoléon I was in residence, remains a favorite viewpoint of Paris among visitors;
• An English garden, the Jardin de Trocadero, has been blooming at St. Cloud since its planting in the 1820s, during France’s short-lived attempt to restore the Bourbon Monarchy.

*****

And now the lazy days of August are over. The sand of Paris Plage has been swept away and the Seine expressway hums with vehicles carrying passengers back to work. The leaves are turning brown and beginning to blanket the Allée of the Ile des Cygnes. Yesterday, sun-kissed vacationers faced hours of stressful traffic delays along the nation's auto-routes as they fought their way home for La Rentrée (The Return). Time to join the queues to buy books and pens and paper again. Starting today for the next 11 months we'll have to share Paris, and all her sleepy corners, once again!

Images:

Chateau and fountain at St. Cloud, around 1845. Engraving by Chamouin after a daguerrotype, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Napoleon Bonaparte in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud, by François Bouchot (1800-1842), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Adolphe Braun (1811-1877), "Ruines du chateau de St. Cloud", Paris, 1871, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Saint-Cloud Chateau c1845.jpg

The Diamond Necklace Affair

The Diamond Necklace Affair was an 18th century sting. It took place in 1785, four years before the events that sparked the French Revolution. Though the Queen was a victim in the affair, it greatly damaged her already compromised reputation in the eyes of the French public. What happened was this:

A lady claiming to be the Comtesse de Lamotte Valois convinced Cardinal de Rohan, who was desparate to win the Queen's favor, that Marie Antoinette desired a celebrated necklace consisting of 647 diamonds and numerous high quality gemstones, but that she lacked the funds to purchase it. Simultaneously, the Comtesse convinced the Crown Jeweler and designer of said necklace, M. Boehmer, that it would indeed be purchased by the Queen of France using Cardinal de Rohan as an intermediary.

Boehmer was at first surprised by this news as he had been pestering the Queen to buy his masterpiece for some time. Repeatedly, Marie Antoinette had refused, saying the 2 Million francs would better serve the Navy. She never actually wanted the garish, many-looped necklace. For one, she didn’t like the look of it. But also, she recognized the foolishness of indulging in such extravagance with the nation in financial turmoil. Unfortunately for Boehmer, no other European royal wanted the necklace either, so he was delighted to learn of the Queen's alleged change of heart. The Comtesse urged that the transaction go forward with the utmost discretion.

Cardinal de Rohan, for his part, wanted nothing more than to be acknowledged by the Queen. She had not spoken to him, publicly or privately, for eight years. Recognizing this vulnerability, the Comtesse made him believe that the Queen secretly wanted the necklace. So de Rohan negotiated with Boehmer to purchase it for 1.6 Million francs in staged payments. With Comtesse's help, he delivered the necklace, as of yet unpaid, to the Queen under cover of night in a quiet corner of the Versailles gardens. He could therefore not understand why the Queen never wore the jewels nor why his status at Court remained unchanged.

As it turns out, the letters received by de Rohan, presumably signed by Marie Antoinette, were forged, and the woman to whom the jewels were given was a prostitute bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Queen. She appeared before him in the shadows of the trees, elegantly veiled, and communicated only by the Queen's characteristic nod of the head. Boehmer was appeased as long as the scheduled payments of de Rohan continued. But when they stopped coming and the victims finally became aware of the hoax, the jewels were long gone. The necklace had been broken up and the gems sold off separately in London.

By the time the truth came out, the Queen was already embroiled in a public controversy with de Rohan, believing him a conspirator and a forger. The Paris pamphleteers went to town, expounding the fiction that the Queen was conniving, self-serving, and naïve. It was easier for her subjects to accept that she was a liar rather than the victim of a criminal conspiracy. She was guilty in their eyes because they wanted her to be.

The Diamond Necklace Affair provided fodder for the lack of trust the people felt toward their King and Queen as the events of 1789 began to unfold. Four years after the Affair...

...French peasants are spending an entire month's wages on bread alone.

...The King re-installs Jacques Necker, who is very popular with the people, as Finance Minister. Necker states that it is the duty of the French government to ensure that every citizen has enough bread and grain. The population is hopeful once again.

...Necker urges the King to convene the Estates General to help find a resolution to the country's financial dilemma. But the Third Estate are almost immediately locked out of the meeting!

...In their own meeting, he delegates of the Third Estate form the National Assembly, calling it “the true government of the People”. They vow to write France's first constitution.

...Third Estate delegate, Maximilien Robespierre, leads the charge for the nobility and aristocracy to start paying their fair share in taxes.

...July 9: the National Assembly turns itself into a Constituent National Assembly, giving itself the power to make laws.

...July 10: 30,000 Royal troops surround the city of Paris on the orders of the King.

...July 11: Louis XVI sacks the most popular man in his government – Jacques Necker - and has him spirited out of the country!

Only three more days to Quatorze Juillet. Stay tuned for daily updates as the hungry people grow ever more alarmed at the guns pointing at them!

Images:
Painting of Cardinal de Rohan, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Boehmer's infamous diamond necklace. Print courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Drawing of Marie Antointte in the Versailles gardens by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, c. 1783, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This is what the impersonator might have looked like to de Rohan.
Painting of Maximilien Robespierre, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Paris Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine, in development.

Queen Marie Antoinette: Madame Deficit

Why was Queen Marie Antoinette so reviled by her subjects?

Marie Antoinette, née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen, the fifteenth and penultimate child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, came to Versailles at the tender age of 14 to marry the 15-year-old Dauphin, or future king, Louis-Auguste, grandson to King Louis XV. The two future monarchs had grown up so pampered that when Louis XV died of smallpox in 1775, just five years after their royal nuptials, even they knew they were not ready for the responsibility before them.

“Dear God,” prayed Louis XVI, falling to his knees, “guide us and protect us. We are too young to reign”.

As you read here, Louis XVI inherited a France burdened by debt and crippling poverty. He was unprepared to cope with the looming crisis that faced his country. Marie Antoinette was not permitted a political role, nor did she want one. As Queen of France, she had one main job: to produce a male heir.

Yet the King was as adept in the bedroom as he was on the throne. Seven years passed before he and Marie Antoinette produced a child, and 11 long years before the Queen gave birth to a boy, the first Dauphin, Louis Joseph, in 1781.

In the meantime, Marie Antoinette became the target of libel and gossip, both in and outside Court. Her interests during these years included fashion, gambling, opera, the staging of plays in which she often played a role, and the creation of a vast private pleasure garden at the Petit Trianon. These pastimes were costly at a time when French peasants were surviving largely on bread.

The Queen made things worse for herself by alienating important members at Court when she retreated to the Petit Trianon and refused to invite them for visits!

Simultaneously, the King saw an opportunity to get back at Britain for his grandfather’s humiliating loss in the Seven Years War. He agreed to send troops and aid totaling 2,000 million livres to support the American revolutionaries. In the 1770s this sum could have fed and housed 7 million French citizens for a year. With France already teetering on financial collapse, this expenditure was seen by many as irresponsible. Indeed, it would have a calamitous effect on the French economy.

Yet, it was the Queen who was blamed. The people dubbed her, “Madame Deficit”. Though she had given her adopted country four children, including two potential heirs to the throne, she would never live down in the eyes of her subjects the reputation that tainted her from her early years at Versailles.

Things went from bad to worse for the Queen during the Diamond Necklace Affair. More on that tomorrow.

Images:
Painting of 12 year old Marie Antoinette, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Painting of the new King of France, Louis XVI, 1775, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Painting of Marie Antoinette with her eldest children, Madame Royal and the Dauphin, Louis Joseph, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Petit Trianon of Versailles by Colocho, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.
The French Revolution. The History Channel, 2008.
Towle, Sarah B. Time Traveler Tours: Beware Madame La Guillotine. In progress.

The French Revolution Marches Forward

Today is Independence Day in the States. The French equivalent is just 10 days away - Quatorze Juillet (July 14th).

In early July back in 1789, things are really beginning to heat up here in Paris! (See previous posts for explanation of preceding events. Start here.)

Versailles:
Having achieved the support of the King Louis XVI's Finance Minister, Jacques Necker, the National Assembly grows ever more emboldened. The eloquent delegate from Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles, the Comte de Mirabeau, declares, "We are here by the will of the people, we shall only go away by the force of bayonets."

While a moderate who favored political reform by constitutional monarchy, on the British model, Mirabeau's sentiments spark a flurry of political pamphleteering at the Palais Royal.

At the Palais Royal:
Pamphlets cause extremists to grow emboldened too. They cry for the immediate dissolution of both the Monarchy and the Church, favoring total control of the French government by the Third Estate.

King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette are increasingly vilified. The treatment given to the Queen, derisively nicknamed The Austrian Woman, is particularly crushing. Groundless prints and publications give rise to the myth that Marie Antoinette is out of touch with her people, interested only in herself, and a hindrance to the governance of France. She is featured as a winged creature with webbed feet and a spiked tail, or in a flurry of drunken orgies with both men and women. (In fact, at this point she is a known teetotaler and completely devoted to the King and her children.)

Between Paris and Versailles:
Louis XVI continues to send troops to surround Paris, ostensibly to defend the city against the possible recurrence of riots such as that which took place three months before: On 28 April 1789, workers at The Réveillon Walpaper Factory in the St. Antoine district of Paris, fearing pay cuts, destroyed the factory as well as the home of its owner Jean-Baptiste Réveillon.

The Reveillon Factory fire would turn out to be the first of many violent acts still yet to come. Stay tuned.

Images:

Painting of Comte de Mirabeau, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Print of Marie-Antoinette as a serpent, courtesy of http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/.

Painting of the Reveillon wallpaper factory riot, 28 April 1789, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:

Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.

Horne, Alistair. Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City. London: Pan Books, 2003.

Jones, Colin. Paris: Biography of a City. London: Penguin Books, 2004

Human Flight in Paris, Past and Present

When I look out the windows of my Paris apartment, I see a jumble of rooftops, our neighborhood church and park, the spire of the Eiffel Tower, and an antique clock atop the Hopital Saint Perrine. Also in my direct line of sight is a 6,000 cubic meter (211,860 ft3) balloon. White by day, fluorescent-green by night, the 32-meter-tall (105 ft) balloon floats up and down all day long, tethered by a cable that lets it out, like a kite, to a height of 150 meters (482 ft). Amid the classic beauty of my corner of Paris, it’s a kitschy reminder that hot-air balloons figure prominently in French history and culture:

From the height of a hot-air balloon, the earliest French photographers gave us aerial documentation of the 1889 and 1900 World’s Fairs. A few decades earlier, from July 1870 to May 1871, Parisians used hot-air balloons to break the siege of their city during the Franco-Prussian War. And almost a century before that, in 1783, the first recorded episode of human flight took place in Paris, in a hot-air balloon developed by the French Montgolfier brothers.

It all started one cold evening in 1782. Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, the impractical dreamer of a family of 16 children, sat mesmerized by a fire burning in a fireplace. He wondered what “force” could be causing sparks and smoke to rise up from the flames. With the help of his brother, Jacques-Etienne, he fashioned a small, oval bag out of silk, turned it upside down, and lit a fire under the opening. The bag rose into the air, hitting the ceiling above the two brothers. They hypothesized that fire created gas, which they dubbed “Montgolfier gas”.

What actually happened was that the heated air inside the small “balloon” became lighter than the surrounding air, causing it to become buoyant and rise upward.

The brothers set to work, building bigger and bigger balloons and experimenting with different materials until on June 4, 1783, they held their first public demonstration of un-manned flight. Near their home in Annonay, in the Rhône-Alpes region of southern France, they sent a balloon of 790 cubic meters (27,894 ft3) to an estimated altitude of 1,600-2,000 meters (5,200-6,600 ft). The balloon weighed 225 kilograms (500 lbs) and was constructed of four large pieces of cloth held together by 1,800 buttons and reinforced by interior netting. The voyage lasted 10 minutes and covered 2 kilometers (1.2 miles).

Their next launch was to take place on August 27 in Paris over the Champs de Mars. This time the balloon, made of sky-blue taffeta decorated with gold suns and zodiac signs, was half again as big. Unfortunately a downpour stopped the show. But a subsequent test, on September 11, compelled King Louis XVI to suggest that the brothers select two criminals to test the effects of atmospheric travel on living creatures.

Joseph and Etienne thought it best to send animals aloft first! On September 19, they sent a duck, a rooster, and a sheep called Montauciel (Climb-to-the-sky) into the skies of Versailles before a huge crowd, including the King and Queen Marie-Antoinette. The flight lasted roughly eight minutes and covered 3.3 kilometers (2 miles), obtaining an altitude of 462 meters (1500 ft). The animals survived the trip unharmed; indeed, Montauciel was found nibbling unperturbed on the straw used to fuel the fire that lifted the balloon.

The next step was to release humans into the clouds. For this, Joseph and Etienne doubled the size of the balloon again. It was 23 meters tall (75 ft) and able to hold 1,698 cubic meters (60,000 ft3) of air. On November 21, 1783, a physician, Pilâtre de Rozier, and an army officer, the Marquis d’Arlandes, set off from the Bois de Boulogne. They stayed aloft for 25 minutes at a height of 100 meters (328 ft), traveling 9 kms (5.59 mls) over the rooftops of Paris until they touched down amongst the windmills of the Butte-au-Cailles (now in the 13th arrondissement).

The balloon we see from our apartment windows is a feature of the Parc André Citroën, a 14 hectare (35 acre) public space located on the banks of the river Seine in the southern 15th arrondissement. The park occupies the site of the former Citroën car factory, which operated from 1915 until the 1970s. A 1980s urban renewal project leveled the former factory to create housing as well as a public recreation area now famed for its modern landscape design.

The balloon ride over the Parc André Citroën offers views of the Champs de Mars, the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, Sacré Cœur Basilica, and Cathedral of Notre Dame. For years now the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo) has been begging me for a ride. But after our hair-raising voyage up La Tour Eiffel, I’ve resisted. Though Loo, being lucky, is the one-and-only person I would ever consider taking a balloon trip with, for the moment - pour l’instant - I prefer to watch it rise and fall from my apartment windows.

Sources:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/hot-air-balloon.htm
http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/montgolfier_brother.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon

 

 

Images:

Self-portrait of Félix Nadar, French Photographer, 1820-1910, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Photographic reproductions of engravings of Montgolfier balloons, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Phrases & Expressions - Then Let Them Eat Cake!

You’ve probably heard the story about how Marie-Antoinette, when told that her subjects were starving for lack of bread, replied, “Then let them eat cake.” Right?

Don’t believe it. It’s a mis-attribution, if it was ever uttered at all.

Some historians attribute this phrase to Maria Teresa, the Spanish Infanta who married Louis XIV more than 100 years before. Others say it was never spoken, but written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in book six of his 12-volume autobiographical work, Confessions. He writes:

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, ‘Then let them eat pastry!’

Of course, Rousseau may have been thinking of Maria Teresa, he didn't say. But since Marie-Antoinette arrived at the Palace of Versailles in 1770, three years after Rousseau had published the above passage, whoever the "great princess" was that he recollected, it was certainly not Marie-Antoinette.

History has always seen its share of spin-doctoring. Either this phrase was falsely attributed to Marie-Antoinette during the French Revolution expressly to make her look bad. Or it made her look bad after-the-fact in its English translation. Let me explain:

The French phrase was: "qu'ils mangent de la brioche”, and could just as well have meant, “Then let them buy brioche for the same price as bread.” This would have allowed the poor to enjoy what would otherwise have been unaffordable. A sensible solution during a bread shortage, Non?

Sources:
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. London: Phoenix Paperbacks, 2001.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/

Image:
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (16 April 1755 - 30 March 1842) is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the 18th century. She was a personal favorite of Marie-Antoinette and painted many images of the Queen.