Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  CHAPTER NINE

  Suddenly Larger

  (1860)

  On January 1, 1860, Paris suddenly became a vastly larger city. Overnight, its surface area more than doubled and its boundaries moved from the old Farmers-General tax wall to the more recent Thiers fortifications, located about a mile outside the tax wall. In the process, Paris enlarged its population by one-third, annexing the eleven whole and thirteen partial suburban communes surrounding it (the Thiers fortifications having sliced through these partial communes). The city now was divided into twenty rather than twelve arrondissements—ones that bore no resemblance, either in shape or numerical order, to the original twelve.

  Haussmann in fact would have preferred to extend Paris city limits even farther, to include the notorious Zone along the outer reaches of the Thiers fortifications, a no-man’s-land where building was not allowed and where ragpickers and other detritus from society washed up. It was in this forbidding wasteland that Napoleon III planned to build a wide ring road and a tree-lined promenade. Beyond this, the prefect and the emperor now had dreams of extending Paris to include the entire department of the Seine. But Haussmann’s growing number of enemies feared that further enlargement of the city would inevitably enlarge Haussmann’s own power, and they put a stop to expansion beyond the actual fortifications.

  Given the realities, Haussmann moved quickly to establish Paris city limits at the Thiers fortification line, demolishing the Farmers-General wall and launching the newly enlarged Paris.1 This included doubling the width of the military road that ran alongside the Thiers fortifications and turning it into the outermost ring of boulevards surrounding the city. These became the Boulevards des Maréchaux (Marshals’ Boulevards), bearing the names of military leaders of the First Empire. The destruction of the Farmers-General wall created yet another ring of boulevards, known as the Outer Boulevards, between the Boulevards des Maréchaux and the Grands Boulevards—a line of boulevards with a series of names such as Courcelles, Clichy, and Rochechouart that marked the dividing point between the old Paris and the new.

  Next on Haussmann’s agenda was elevation to full ministerial rank, as minister for Paris. But here, he would encounter stout opposition from his enemies.

  “This is no longer the Paris I used to know,” Théophile Gautier told the Goncourt brothers one evening in August. “It’s Philadelphia, St Petersburg, anything you like, but not Paris.”

  The Goncourt brothers mournfully agreed. “Our Paris,” they wrote that November, “the Paris in which we were born, the Paris of the manners of 1830 to 1848, is disappearing.” Indeed, they lamented, “these new boulevards . . . make one think of London or some Babylon of the future.” They added that it was difficult to live in a world of change—“the soul feels as uncomfortable as a man who moves into a new house before the plaster is dry.”2

  They of course were referring to changes in morals and manners as well as in streets and buildings, but the physical changes themselves were sufficient to upset those wed to the old order.

  Baron Haussmann was now embarked on his Second System, the money for which had just become available after considerable foot-dragging in the Legislature—the result of a small but growing legislative opposition to both the prefect himself and to the enormous expenses he was incurring. This opposition reflected public opinion, for while a preponderance of Parisians, especially among the bourgeoisie, had approved of Haussmann’s First System of grands travaux, viewing them as a much-needed improvement of the city, the magnitude of Haussmann’s Second System now struck many as unnecessary and dangerously expensive. It was thus against a background of wary approval that demolition and construction now began anew throughout the city, largely at the hands of private companies but propelled by the prefect of the Seine and his emperor.

  An early target was the Place de l’Etoile, on which Haussmann had been itching to get his hands ever since his run-in with Hittorff over the plans back in 1854. Despite a few disappointments, Haussmann’s plans had won out, and now he at long last had the opportunity of putting them into place. No sooner had the tollhouses and barriers of the Farmers-General wall gone down than the earth-movers got to work, creating the twelve-armed star and enormous circular space that the Place de l’Etoile (now Place Charles-de-Gaulle) soon became.

  Symmetry and straightness of line was at the heart of Haussmann’s vision here, as it was everywhere, with the size, faҫades, and placement of the town houses surrounding the Place tightly controlled. But as for the twelve roads themselves, he had a job of it, not only in updating the old roads that still rambled through the area but in creating new ones that linked up with the rest of his fledgling network, all the while obtaining the symmetrical arrangement he wanted. This involved building new roads and opening, extending, and straightening others until he had the star-like arrangement he had envisioned, radiating out from the Arc de Triomphe.

  While construction was tearing up large portions of Paris, the emperor—mindful of the importance of his support from the working classes—was insistent that lower-income areas receive their share of benefits, most especially in green spaces. The western and wealthier portion of the city had already received the Bois de Boulogne; legislation in 1860 now ceded the Bois de Vincennes to the city, to provide a public area for walks and enjoyment for residents of eastern Paris (with the stipulation that the city retain the area’s military installations, including the castle and fort of Vincennes). Haussmann did not share the emperor’s enthusiasm for green spaces for the hoi polloi, but mindful of his emperor’s desires, he pushed forward efforts to provide parks and gardens throughout the city. By the decade’s end, these would include the spectacular park of Buttes-Chaumont in the north and the lovely Parc Montsouris in the south, as well as other smaller parks or squares throughout the city, especially (such as the Square des Batignolles or the Square de la Place du Commerce) in the newly accessed arrondissements.

  Doubling the size of Paris and adding almost half a million new consumers also meant that Haussmann and Belgrand would have to rethink their strategy for supplying water to the city—especially as the new portions of Paris now included the heights of Montmartre and Belleville, which rose well above the highest points within the former city limits.

  This was a big topic of discussion among Parisians throughout the year, since Paris’s current water supply—from the Ourcq canal as well as from the ancient aqueducts of Belleville and Le Pré-Saint-Gervais to the northeast and the equally ancient one from Rungis to the south, along with the Seine’s murky contribution and some inadequate spurts from the artesian wells of Grenelle and Passy—did not come close to providing what was necessary. Proposals for pumping more water from the Seine or for diverting water from the Loire were roundly rejected, and to meet the immediate need, Haussmann decided to focus on diverting water from the River Dhuys, while studying the possibilities of channeling water from the Vanne as well as from the Somme-Soude. Belgrand and his men soon concluded that water from the Dhuys could be channeled to a new reservoir at Ménilmontant, from where it could be pumped up to Montmartre and Belleville and then allowed to flow downward to thirsty citizens by force of gravity. Within a remarkably short period, water from the Dhuys would begin to flow into Paris.

  Who would be in charge of this water was another question, but Haussmann did not hesitate to establish at the outset that the municipality’s responsibility was limited to channeling the river water to the city, creating separate distribution networks (for public and private use) after it arrived, and administering the water for public use, including sewers. Water for private use would be managed by a private company (the Compagnie Générale des Eaux), under the prefect’s control, with regulations (including a minimum daily volume, for which the company paid) that encouraged the company to make landlords bring water up to the highest floors.

  Haussmann did not intend that control over Paris’s water slip from his hands; he simply did not want the bother of having to administer it.
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  By this time, the Rothschilds, with their multinational business empire, had withstood the Pereire brothers’ challenge, not only in France but across Europe. By 1860, the Rothschilds were once more the foremost lenders to European governments, and in 1864, Baron Rothschild would benefit from the creation of a new bank, the Société Générale de Crédit Industriel et Commercial, which became France’s foremost deposit bank as well as a major commercial bank heavily involved in industrial investment, construction, and public works. Rothschild did not figure openly among the bank’s leaders (the same group that had formed the Réunion Financière), but his role in challenging the Pereires with this syndicate was understood. The Pereires, according to one biographer, had lost a major battle here.3

  But the Pereire brothers were far from down and out. Baron Rothschild may have been on better terms with the emperor now than he had been in the past, but the Pereires still had Georges Haussmann’s ear, especially when it came to negotiating the terms for new loans, where they proved willing and even eager to lower their commission to well below that demanded by Rothschild.

  And so the Pereires continued to make their mark on Paris, not only on the seventeenth arrondissement, where Boulevard Pereire remains a testament to their extensive activities on the Monceau Plain, but also in the nearby Opéra quarter, where they made massive purchases well before this quarter was developed—causing a certain amount of talk about their remarkable good luck in real estate investments. Indeed, some were quite willing to attribute this run of good fortune to insider information—and information from the highest levels at that.

  As early as 1858, soon after the assassination attempt on Louis-Napoleon at the entrance to the old opera house on Rue Le Peletier, Haussmann decided that a new opera house was necessary—one that would provide a more secure entrance for the emperor—and determined on the site, just north of the Boulevard des Capucines’s portion of the Grands Boulevards. But it was not until autumn of 1860 that the site of the new opera house was announced. With ill will mounting behind the scenes between rival architects, including Viollet-le-Duc (whom Empress Eugenie strongly favored), the minister for the arts sidestepped making a decision by opening a competition for architects to build this grand new opera house, one that would be a suitable jewel for the City of Light.

  The result would not be what anyone had expected.

  Affairs were developing unexpectedly in Italy as well. The citizens of Florence, Modena, Parma, and Bologna flat-out revolted against their rulers and voted to join Piedmont-Sardinia, even after Louis-Napoleon ordered Piedmont-Sardinia to give them up, and the four rebel city-states then decided to follow the banner of Giuseppe Garibaldi, whose republicanism alarmed the distinctly unrepublican French emperor.

  Louis-Napoleon, along with the British, now agreed to the expansion of Piedmont-Sardinia, under its monarch, Victor Emmanuel, rather than admit Garibaldi to the table. In return, Louis-Napoleon demanded Nice and Savoy, whose citizens cheerfully supported the takeover by voting overwhelmingly to join France. But affairs in the Italian peninsula were far from settled. Naples now revolted, followed by Sicily, drawing Garibaldi and his large army of red-shirted volunteers to their aid. Landing in Sicily, Garibaldi captured Palermo and ousted its king, then crossed the Strait of Messina, sending the king of Naples fleeing.

  Among those in Garibaldi’s army were Maxime Du Camp and Alexandre Dumas père, both of whom—like so many intellectuals and literary figures of the time—were immensely attracted by the charismatic general and his cause of Italian unification. Dumas, who had already made Garibaldi’s acquaintance and been won over, was sailing in his small schooner, the Emma, when he met up with Garibaldi in Sicily. Dumas, as Victor Hugo’s eldest son, Charles, observed, had never been shy about moving into the center of things whenever great deeds were under way: “Revolutions are his concern.” Charles added, “All nationalist parties are his party. . . . He offers, en passant, the advice of a much preoccupied man, implying that it had better be taken without delay, because he has twenty-five volumes to deliver before the end of the week.” Dumas entered this particular historical event with his usual enthusiasm, buying guns for the cause (1,000 rifles and 550 carbines) with money he had originally intended for a trip around the Mediterranean.

  Dumas by now was not a young man, but his energy amazed everyone, including his son. Upon the senior Dumas’s nighttime return from Italy to Paris after an eight-day journey, the son admonished him to get some rest. The father protested, “I tired?—why I’m as fresh as a daisy!” He then proceeded to visit his friend Théophile Gautier, whom he awoke out of a sound sleep, and the two talked until four o’clock in the morning. Dumas fils, who by this time was worn out, persuaded his father to walk home with him, during which his father talked constantly. They reached home at six o’clock, at which point Dumas père asked for a lamp. Whatever for? the son asked. “To light [it],” the father replied. “I’m going to settle down to work.”4

  Maxime Du Camp was similarly flabbergasted by the senior Dumas’s energy: “It seemed as if he could scarcely contain the life and energy ever ready to overflow all bounds.” Even “after ten or eleven hours of conversation—and what conversation it was—he was as fresh as at the beginning.”

  As Michelet once said of Dumas, “He is an element of Nature, one of her original forces.”5

  After Sicily and Naples, Garibaldi’s next step was to attack the Papal States from the south, which drew Piedmont-Sardinia into the fray. The Piedmontese forces now accomplished the double objective of blocking Garibaldi’s army and defeating the papal forces that had arrayed against them. This led to the absorption of Naples and Sicily into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.6

  Since settling affairs in Italy the previous year, Louis-Napoleon had chosen not to intervene in the Italian imbroglio, except to claim Nice and Savoy. But although French forces still protected the pope in Rome, French Catholics (not to mention the pope) were dismayed by what they viewed as the emperor’s double-dealing. Bologna, after all, had been part of the Papal States, but Louis-Napoleon merely published a pamphlet consoling the pope for his loss by proclaiming that “the smaller the territory the greater the sovereign.” French Catholics became increasingly uneasy, and the members of the Académie Franҫaise, a bastion of conservatism, expressed its concerns by electing Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, a Dominican theologian, preacher, and writer, to join them.

  Not only French Catholics were deserting their emperor. French industrialists, long accustomed to operating within the strong protectionist policies of the French state, were appalled by the emperor’s dramatic break with tradition in signing a trade agreement with Britain, which he announced to an astonished public in early 1860. Although not a complete free-trade agreement, it amounted to something of a revolution in that both sides now agreed to lower their trade barriers. Louis-Napoleon, who had long supported free trade, had decided that it was time to lower trade barriers as much as possible, in the interest of stimulating, or restimulating, the economic expansion that had so far accompanied his reign but was showing worrisome signs of fading. As it happened, further commercial agreements followed with other European nations, including Prussia. But factory closings and mass layoffs signaled trouble, especially in the textile industries, where a “cotton famine” caused by the American Civil War severely affected the entire industry.

  Now that Louis-Napoleon had alienated many Catholics as well as protectionists, he needed to cultivate other alliances. Under these circumstances, his half-brother, the Duke de Morny, advised him to make a major shift and liberalize his regime. Louis-Napoleon had already dipped a toe into the waters of reform the year before by granting amnesty to those convicted of political crimes (an amnesty that Victor Hugo proudly ignored, since “Napoleon the Little” was still on the throne). This was a small step, but late in 1860, the emperor took a larger one, restoring the “right of address” for the Legislature, thereby giving the deputies the right to respond to the emper
or’s speech at the opening session—a measure that involved changing the Constitution. For the first time, deputies at the start of each parliamentary session could now state their own views on that year’s legislative program. In addition, three cabinet ministers were given the job of defending and explaining government policies to the Legislature, while newspapers were allowed to publish full transcripts of parliamentary debates.

  Interestingly, Louis-Napoleon chose the moment to introduce these reforms at a time when Empress Eugenie was absent. For astonishingly, in mid-November, the empress suddenly disappeared.

  The empress, of course, was ardently Catholic and just as ardently conservative. In addition, she had tasted independence and power during her five-month regency the year before, while the emperor was leading his armies in Italy. Her interests, her persuasions, and her politics—far more Catholic and conservative than those of her husband—conflicted on many points with the direction he was taking. It was already a difficult time for her, as she was in deep mourning for her sister, who had unexpectedly died. But in addition, Eugenie may well have been sick of her husband’s relentless philandering, which he took little trouble to hide.

  The empress left suddenly and without explanation, traveling incognito as the Countess of Pierrefonds—although those on the lookout for her could not have missed the regal style in which she traveled, accompanied by a retinue of two ladies-in-waiting, two gentlemen courtiers, and ten servants. She left for London and then traveled to Scotland. She did not return for a month, but when she did, her husband was waiting for her at Boulogne.