Saccard’s young second wife, cast into this life of excess, first heard the name of “Saccard” with “the brutal cadence of two rakes gathering up gold,” and Saccard has done exactly that, raking in his take from the emperor’s, and Haussmann’s, plan to transform Paris. Zola had his own views on Persigny and Haussmann’s theory of productive expenditure and those who took advantage of it. As one of Saccard’s guests remarks, at a suitably sumptuous dinner: “You see, everything is fine so long as you make money by it.” While another guest grandly observes: “Let those brawlers of the opposition say what they will; to plough up Paris is to make it productive.”25
Alexandre Dumas père had another view of Paris, and from the outset, he had filled his life with an endless series of mistresses, lovers, and one-night stands. Age did not slow him down. Although his appetites may not have reached the cosmic levels of his friend Victor Hugo, they nonetheless remained impressive, in tandem with his prodigious literary output. When Rodin, in his original monument honoring Hugo, placed the sexually explicit splayed legs and crotch of Iris, messenger of the gods, hovering above the head of the seated Hugo, he was pinpointing the source of Hugo’s creative energy. He might well have done the same for the senior Alexandre Dumas.
Dumas was the son of a flamboyant Napoleonic general, who in turn was the son of a minor French nobleman and a Haitian slave. After falling out of favor with Bonaparte, the general died young, leaving his family destitute. On the distaff side, Dumas’s mother was the daughter of a failed French inn-keeper. These were not the most promising of beginnings, but despite this, Alexandre Dumas managed to rise from abject poverty into fame and wealth as one of the century’s most successful playwrights and novelists.
His recipe for success included sheer persistence, nerve, and brutally hard work—added to eye-catching flamboyance, a vivid imagination, and the ability to give his audience the kind of entertainment it craved. Excitement, derring-do, and romance all poured from Dumas’s prolific pen, the very instrument that won him his first job in Paris as a lowly copy clerk. Most fortunately for him, his employer was the powerful Duke of Orléans, who would eventually become king.
Dumas made good use of this connection, as well as every other he could find, to realize his burning ambition to become a playwright. Working and maneuvering, he at last made his mark with an historical drama, Henri III and His Court, a romantic blockbuster that dared to break with the stultifying conventions of the time. Other successful plays followed, and then came his historical novels—just as the Paris press was beginning to publish new novels in serial form. The Three Musketeers first appeared in this serialized format in 1844, as did many of Dumas’s subsequent novels, including The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1845).
No one could have written as many plays and novels as Dumas did without assistance, especially in the days before word processors or typewriters: even though he was a notorious workaholic, Dumas unhesitatingly made use of collaborators. But it was Dumas himself, with his wit, rapid-fire dialogue, and unfailing ability to tell a good story, who wrote the final versions and gave these works their characteristic pizzazz. Readers loved them and could hardly wait for the next episode to appear.
Along the way, Dumas and Victor Hugo became friends, two literary giants who got along rather than colliding with one another. As an inside joke, Dumas even placed his extraordinary villainess, Lady de Winter, at no. 6 Place Royale (the name of the Place des Vosges during d’Artagnan’s time)—Victor Hugo’s own address.
Perhaps it was not surprising that Dumas père found Brussels empty after Hugo’s departure for the Channel Isles. But his considerable debts preoccupied him, and until he discharged them, he kept clear of Paris. Not until spring of 1853 did he manage to return to Paris (after settling with some 153 creditors), but he still had to keep publishing to survive and in the process managed to offend both the Church and Napoleon’s censors. When these powers stopped publication of the writer’s understandably provocative memoirs, Dumas simply sidestepped and founded his own daily newspaper, Le Mousquetaire, in which he planned to publish what he liked.
It was an enormous endeavor—run on a financial shoestring, unhampered by administration of any recognizable sort, and held together only by Dumas’s sheer energy and joy in climbing the next mountain. Although he quickly surrounded himself with his usual cadre of young collaborators, Dumas provided the core copy, and late in the year, after the first issues appeared, the plaudits began to roll in. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine, now retired from politics, told him: “You are superhuman. My opinion of you is an exclamation mark. There have been studies to determine the nature of perpetual motion. You have created perpetual astonishment!” The historian Jules Michelet wrote that he was “so impressed by your indomitable talent which bends and bends again before so many absurd obstacles, and not less by your heroic perseverance.” And early in the new year came the best of all, from Victor Hugo: “I read your newspaper,” he wrote Dumas. “You are giving us back Voltaire, a supreme comfort for the humiliated and silent France.”26
The Goncourt brothers, for their part, had already run afoul of the censors with their literary journal, L’Eclair, for which they were summoned to the police court in February. L’Eclair was being prosecuted for a December 1852 issue in which the Goncourts had described “in a whimsical fashion” some of the shops lying along their route from home to office, including a story of a particular nude artifact. “Behind this incredible, puerile pretext for the prosecution there were hidden reasons,” the brothers speculated in their journal for February 20. “There were underhand intrigues, secret instructions from the powers-that-be to the judges, the hand of the Ministry of Police,” and a welter of other factors that, “in a Byzantine Empire, bring the storm-clouds down on a decent man’s head.”
The storm clouds descended, and the Goncourts were summoned to appear in police court on February 2, in the particular chamber “whose complaisance had won it the honor of specializing in press trials and political convictions.” When the brothers presented themselves, they were directed to take their places on the bench, which was normally reserved for thieves and gendarmes. Never before had a journalist been required to sit on the bench. One of their friends, the writer Alphonse Karr, told them that they didn’t stand a chance of acquittal. “I know the presiding judge, too,” he added—“I’ve had the misfortune to sleep with his wife.”27
The Goncourts’ lawyer defended them ably, representing the brothers as a couple of decent young men, and cited as a commendable character trait the fact that they had employed the same elderly housekeeper for twenty years. This fact seemed to impress those in the courtroom, and the brothers began to have hope for a favorable verdict. But then the court postponed the case, swinging the tide back once again in favor of conviction.
Some years later, the Goncourts would learn that a former mistress of the Goncourt brother Jules had at one time, in her duties as a midwife, performed an abortion on this particular judge’s mistress, who was his wife’s chambermaid. This was the same judge, they noted, who had been trying them for offending public morals.
But irony aside, there were serious considerations at hand, and it was with considerable interest that, during the intervening week, the Goncourts learned of a change of judges. This new one happened to be a relative of a friend’s wife, who spoke to him on their behalf. Other friends did the same.
Still, when the Goncourts stood to hear the verdict, it was with surprise and relief that they learned that although admonished, they were acquitted.
No harm had been done—except that a literary journal was now closed forever and its editors would tread far more warily in the future.
At home, things were going well for Louis-Napoleon’s new empire. He had moved quickly to choose an empress, appoint a prefect, and set in motion all the financial and earth-moving requirements necessary to create the Paris of his dreams.
He had assured his people—and the world—that he was disinterest
ed in conquest and had promised that his empire would be an empire of peace. But soon Louis-Napoleon would be at war, and it would be a bloody one.
This particular war’s roots lay most improbably in the Holy Places of Jerusalem, which for centuries had been under the care of contending Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox monks. These proved unable to cohabit peacefully and instead argued over who should have the keys to which doors in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. For over a century, the Roman Catholic monks had received French protection, but this had waned during recent years—that is, until Louis-Napoleon decided to take the matter very seriously and, with the backing of the French Roman Catholic Church as well as his army, demanded full restoration of the Roman Catholic monks’ rights.
By this time, Palestine was part of the vast but decaying Ottoman Empire, which Czar Nicholas I memorably called “the sick man of Europe.” Like vultures, Russia and France began to circle around. Russia wanted Constantinople and a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, while Louis-Napoleon, despite his talk of peace, was deeply interested in extending French influence in the eastern Mediterranean, with dreams of a canal through the isthmus of Suez.
One thing quickly led to another, and by autumn of 1853, Russia and the Turks were at war. The French and even the British realized the dangers of a Russian presence in the eastern Mediterranean and by January 1854, combined British and French naval fleets were entering the Black Sea.
On March 30, 1854, Britain and France—upending centuries of mutual hostility—jointly declared war on Russia.
Old Paris. Rue des Marmousets, from Rue Saint-Landry. Photograph by Charles Marville. © Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images
CHAPTER FOUR
A Nonessential War
(1854)
At first the French greeted the Crimean War with enthusiasm. A patriotic tide swept the country—a tide that Louis-Napoleon was happy to ride. After all, despite his earlier promises of peace, what was a Bonaparte without a great victory in war to seal that close bond with his people? The army, too, was eager to join the fray, having for too long been denied the opportunity for glory.
Perhaps, as has been conjectured, Louis-Napoleon was playing the long game and looking to secure the support of Britain in breaking up the entente between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.1 But that may be giving too much credit to the emperor, who was known more for his charm than his subtlety. Going to war so early in his reign was a risky move, especially with the nation just emerging from a decade of economic doldrums. Now, under imperial rule, France was fully committed to economic expansion at home, and there certainly was no extra money to throw into foreign adventures.
Still, the opening months of the war looked promising, as the allied French and British forces soon pressed the Russians to withdraw from the Balkan principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia and retreat into their own lands. By now, public war fever had reached such a pitch that it was impossible to end the war with these victories, and France and Britain now chose to continue the war by invading the Crimea. Preparing to attack Russia’s formidable port and naval base at Sebastopol, they fought and won the Battle of the Alma—which, in a flood of patriotism back home, gave its name to a new stone bridge being erected across the Seine (Pont de l’Alma, dedicated in 1856).
But by winter, the war had deteriorated into a stalemate at Sebastopol, where the Allies placed the port city under siege. There, a brutal winter, coupled with outbreaks of cholera, led to the kind of misery that no one had anticipated. The heroic but futile charge of the British Light Brigade was only one of many bloody encounters that failed to end the mess. The war was rapidly turning into a disaster for both sides.
In the meantime, back in Paris, Haussmann followed his emperor’s wishes and proceeded to entertain Parisians with a series of sumptuous balls and festivities. In addition to the balls that the emperor began to hold on a weekly basis, the prefect opened the new year with a bash at the Hôtel de Ville for one thousand elegantly attired guests, who partook of a lavish array of food and drink accompanied by music and dancing. Similarly, on Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthday in August (which Louis-Napoleon faithfully observed), Haussmann marked the occasion with early morning cannon fire from the Invalides and an escort vessel in the Seine. He entertained Parisians throughout the day, starting with water tournaments along the Seine followed by free admission to all the theaters and a military show on the Champ de Mars before some 200,000 spectators.
The war was not forgotten, but it had not yet turned ugly. Late in the afternoon, Haussmann glorified what still could be depicted as a glorious war by sending up a huge balloon adorned with the gilded names of France’s allies in front of the Ecole Militaire. There were acrobatics and mime shows throughout town, and by early evening a band of two hundred musicians began to play in the gardens of the Tuileries. Bands also played in front of the Hôtel de Ville, while from the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde, and all along the Champs-Elysées to l’Etoile, stretched a triumphal route of arches decked in greenery lit by more than one thousand gas candelabras shimmering in the night.
Nightfall brought fireworks, with depictions of Napoleon I, War, and Peace. People went to bed that night filled with the comfortable expectation of victory and peace in far-off lands, for no one had any doubt but that affairs were going well for France in the Crimea.
While French troops were dying miserable deaths at Sebastopol, the emperor’s plans for Paris continued unabated, faithfully carried out by Georges Haussmann. “It is impossible to walk out without noticing some new change,” Bayle St. John noted. “Even old Parisians are obliged to study the map of their city anew.”2
Construction was now under way on the Rue de Rivoli from the Louvre to the Hôtel de Ville, while the legal provision for the street’s last extension, between the Hôtel de Ville and the Place de la Bastille, was signed that September. But problems already were emerging along the proposed route, which was to continue its arrow-straight journey eastward, bypassing Rue-Saint-Antoine. At that time, Rue Saint-Antoine was the ancient winding street that now bears the name Rue François-Miron; all along it, shopkeepers wanted to keep this as the main thoroughfare rather than substitute the straight one that Haussmann proposed, even if it meant widening the street. After all, business was at stake, and the new route threatened to drain business from the old one.
Yet Haussmann was deaf to their pleas and drove the Rue de Rivoli straight on from the Hôtel de Ville, as planned. He then renamed the original Rue Saint-Antoine as Rue François-Miron, while the new eastward extension of the Rue de Rivoli became Rue Saint-Antoine, all the way to the Place de la Bastille.
In the process, Haussmann built, on an enlarged Place Baudoyer, the town hall of what now is the fourth arrondissement—the largest of all the town halls that he built throughout Paris, since it was meant to serve as a kind of annex to the Hôtel de Ville, which functioned as the town hall for all of Paris.
The Right Bank’s east-west thoroughfare was now complete, or was about to be, linking the Place de la Concorde with the Place de la Bastille. In time, it would continue (along Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine) all the way to what now is the Place de la Nation, in eastern Paris.
Haussmann now turned to the north-south axis, which the Boulevard de Strasbourg had already opened from the Gare de l’Est as far as that section of the Grands Boulevards known as the Boulevard Saint-Denis. Louis-Napoleon had already decided that this broad north-south route should meet up with the Rue de Rivoli at the Tour Saint-Jacques and continue on to the Place du Châtelet, crossing the Seine to the Ile de la Cité. From there, it would proceed south to the Observatoire, which was located just beyond the southern tip of the Luxembourg Gardens, and then would continue on to what then was the Barrière de l’Enfer in the city walls (now Place Denfert-Rochereau).
Originally called the Boulevard du Centre, this major north-south axis would soon acquire a new name on its Right Bank, thanks to the outcome of t
he Crimean War. But that was yet to come. In the meantime, this route was strongly opposed by those who thought it should proceed along a widened Rue Saint-Denis or Rue Saint-Martin, both of which were ancient roadways going back to medieval and even Roman times.
Haussmann retorted that if he took either of these routes, it would require years to cut through the urban fabric that had grown up around them. This new route, unfolding between the ancient ones, could proceed relatively unimpeded through gardens, courtyards, and low-rise buildings, spreading to what then was an impressive width of ninety-eight feet. Nonetheless, “it ripped open Old Paris,” he later agreed, “with its riots and barricades, . . . piercing this almost impenetrable maze with a large central roadway.”3 Moreover, the resulting roadway would not only be wide, but it would be straight, unlike the narrow and somewhat meandering Rues Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis that flanked it. Haussmann could also do some chest-thumping by asserting that this route allowed him to spare buildings of historical merit, such as the abbey church of Saint-Martin des Champs.
Unfortunately, Haussmann could not get everything as ramrod straight as he liked, and as his north-south artery approached the Seine and the Ile de la Cité, the dome of the Sorbonne stood out in the distance, obstinately unaligned with the approaching boulevard. Given this dismaying prospect, Haussmann finally proposed placing a new building at the water’s edge, to house the commercial courts of Paris (the Tribunal de Commerce, formerly located in the Bourse). This rose across from the Palais de Justice, where it provided some visual heft and balance—including its own dome—to the southward perspective from across the Seine.
Haussmann was now embarked on a multitude of projects, including major roadways to and from Les Halles as well as three major crossroads (Rue Réaumur, Rue de Turbigo, and Rue Etienne Marcel) between Rue Saint-Denis and Rue Saint-Martin, in addition to starting to develop the Left Bank’s Saint-Marcel and Gare d’Orléans (now Gare Austerlitz) quarters. He also was taking initial steps to construct the future Boulevard Malesherbes from Place de la Madeleine northwest toward what now is Parc Monceau. While fully occupied with these projects, he took special interest in the new Left Bank east-west artery, which (to his relief) no longer focused on Rue des Ecoles and now would extend along what would become the Boulevard Saint-Germain.
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