Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  In any case, love alone may not have been a sufficient reason for Monet to acquire a wife. After all, Camille Doncieux already was his mistress and showed no signs of straying. Still, despite his family’s disapproval, he married her on June 28, 1870, in the town hall of Paris’s eighth arrondissement, just as war fever was rising. The witnesses included Gustave Manet, Edouard’s young brother, and the painter Gustave Courbet.

  Monet and his small family now traveled to Trouville, where he painted the last carefree days of empire, with parasol-shaded ladies and dapper gentlemen strolling the seafront promenade. Before departing Bougival, and without a thought to war, he had taken care to deposit a number of his paintings with Pissarro, to keep them from falling into his creditors’ hands. As he would find out, leaving these paintings with his colleague would not protect them from other, more malicious, intruders.

  The French were thrilled with the prospect of war, and war was equally to Bismarck’s liking, providing the most direct means of completing German unification around a solid Prussian core.

  Louis-Napoleon, however, was once again ill and in great pain, leaving Eugenie as the real ruler of France. For several months before this, Emile Ollivier—bolstered by his fellow reformers’ hostility toward the empress—had insisted that Eugenie stop attending meetings of the Council of Ministers. But now, once again, she was present, most importantly when the decision was made to go to war. Determined to do her duty, she viewed war with Prussia as the only possible option, a necessary war that would uphold national honor, revive the glow of empire, and assure her son’s future, with herself by his side.

  As for the emperor, Eugenie insisted that he take personal command of the army and ride at the head of his troops. Yet by now, although few knew it, Louis-Napoleon was in such pain that he was unable for any length of time to sit on a horse. Still, he did his duty, and on July 28, he and the fourteen-year-old Prince Imperial left for the front—on a train.

  The emperor’s proclamation to the army rang with optimism and conviction: “Whatever road we may take beyond our frontiers,” he told his troops, “we shall find glorious traces of our fathers. We will prove ourselves worthy of them.” Unfortunately, despite the emperor’s fine words, the French army in no way measured up to these expectations and certainly was not comparable to the well-oiled machine that Bismarck had created in Prussia. Undermanned, disorganized, and short of just about everything, including even their outdated munitions, the French in addition were without allies and minus leaders of any quality. Bismarck, on the other hand, had well-trained troops equipped with arms far superior to those of the French. In addition, he made good use of France’s declaration of war on Prussia to unite the south German states into an alliance with the Prussia-dominated North German Confederation, giving him a clear numerical superiority.

  Not surprisingly, defeat followed defeat for the French, with a huge loss of French lives, while back in Paris, the empress—whom the emperor had appointed regent in his absence—formed a new Council of Ministers more to her liking and fiercely opposed any attempts to relieve the emperor of his duties at the front. When Ollivier resigned, some proposed bringing Haussmann back into the government, but Haussmann made his acceptance contingent upon the emperor’s return to Paris, which Eugenie stoutly resisted. Haussmann then remained in Paris and took his place in the Senate.

  By August 6, the Germans had stopped a brief French offensive, crossed the Rhine, and now were tearing their way into France, with enormous French losses. Louis-Napoleon telegrammed Eugenie of these reverses and urged her to prepare to defend Paris, but she told Prosper Mérimée, “We shall dispute every foot of ground. The Prussians do not know what they are in for.” Mérimée in turn wrote a friend far more realistically: “All may still be put right,” he remarked, “but it would need something like a miracle.”

  This miracle was not forthcoming. Certainly Louis-Napoleon, incapacitated as he was, could not bring it about. Badgered by Eugenie, he decided against returning to Paris; but then, under pressure from his Council of War to hand over command of the army, he argued that he must first consult with the regent, meaning Eugenie. At this point, his exasperated cousin, Prince Napoleon, furiously reminded him that he, Louis-Napoleon, was the sovereign. At this, Louis-Napoleon merely sighed, “I seem to have abdicated.”19

  On August 8, as news poured in of yet another major defeat, Frédéric Bazille enlisted in the 3rd Zouave Regiment. Manet would soon enlist as a volunteer gunner in the National Guard, and Renoir would be drafted. Georges Bizet, as a winner of the Prix de Rome, was entitled to escape military service, but he and fellow composer Jules Massenet nonetheless signed up. On the other hand, Claude Monet continued to paint holiday scenes, to all appearances as unconcerned about current events as the lighthearted holidaying crowd he depicted.

  Georges Clemenceau, in the meanwhile, had returned to Paris after an absence of several years and promptly dived into the politics of the time. After completing his medical studies, he had traveled with his father to England, where they met Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill. Clemenceau now crossed the Atlantic and traveled throughout America, writing on American politics for Le Temps. Fascinated by America, he refused to return to France when his father summoned him—leading to the end of his allowance. Strapped for cash, he then taught for a time at a girls’ finishing school in Connecticut. There, he met the beautiful eighteen-year-old Mary Plummer, whom he married and brought back to France with him, settling at his parents’ home in the Vendée and practicing medicine in the locality. Within a year, she presented him with their first child, a daughter. Two other children would follow.

  But Clemenceau was dissatisfied with his home life in the provinces, and in August 1870, in the midst of France’s ever-more-disastrous war with Prussia, he left his wife and child and returned to Paris. Here he settled in Montmartre and promptly became immersed in his city’s turbulent politics.

  While Parisians anxiously awaited news, the war—which already was going badly—suddenly became disastrous. Surrounded by German forces at the little town of Sedan, the badly battered main force of the French army surrendered on September 1, and Napoleon III, emperor of the French, was taken prisoner.

  Word did not reach Paris until late on September 3, by which time Louis-Napoleon had been taken into exile. Yet even two days earlier, enough news had trickled through to give a warning of what was to come. On September 1, Edmond de Goncourt, invited to dinner with Princess Mathilde, arrived to find the curtains taken down and the princess in a daze. “If anybody had told me on the first of August what was going to happen,” she told him, “I wouldn’t have believed him.” And the following day, coming out of the Louvre, Goncourt met the curator, who told him that he was about to leave for Brest, to escort a train filled with paintings from the Louvre that were being taken out of their frames, rolled up, and sent to safety.20

  Jules de Goncourt had died the previous June, and distraught with grief, Edmond had decided to stop keeping their hitherto joint journal. But after several weeks, he decided to pick up his pen again, beginning with his brother’s long decline and then, urged on by current events, continuing with the present. On the evening of September 3, he wrote of the impact that the news of French defeat and the emperor’s capture made on his fellow Parisians. “Who can describe the consternation written on every face,” he wrote, but he also noted “the menacing roar of the crowd, in which stupefaction has begun to give place to anger.” Already, great crowds were beginning to move along the boulevards, shouting: “Down with the Empire!”

  Would France perish, or would it save itself? Goncourt wondered, as the sounds of revolution filled the air. A major portion of the army had surrendered, and the emperor had vanished into German hands, but Paris had not given up. The heart of France was still beating, and Parisians were determined to resist to the last.

  The next day, Goncourt described the scene as the republican deputies, led by Léon Gambetta, made their way to the Hôtel
de Ville, where they proclaimed the Republic and formed a provisional government of national defense. Among the vast crowd outside, cheers went up. “There was shouting and cheering; hats were thrown into the air, . . . [and] all around one could hear people greeting each other with the excited words, ‘It’s happened!’” Throughout Paris, and especially at the Tuileries, memories of emperor and empire were quickly disappearing. Already, sheets of newspaper hid the gilt N’s, and wreaths of greens were being hung to replace missing eagles.21

  Eugenie, facing a hostile crowd that surged around the Tuileries, soon gave up on her idea of staying in Paris and agreed to escape, via a tunnel connecting the Tuileries to the Louvre. There, she and a loyal companion hailed a passing cab, which drove them to the house of Louis-Napoleon’s dentist, a longtime friend who gave them shelter for the night. Early the next morning, she and her companion left in the dentist’s own carriage, with passports describing her as an invalid being taken to England. Pounding their way to the coast, they made it to Deauville, where an Englishman provided transportation on his yacht to the Isle of Wight.

  The last vestiges of the Second Empire were rapidly disappearing. But Germany, under Bismarck, still threatened, and Paris, even though surrounded by the enemy, was holding out.

  Léon Gambetta leaving Place Saint-Pierre, Montmartre, by hot-air balloon on 7 October 1870, during the siege of Paris. Painting by Jules Didier and Jacques Guiaud. © Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France / G. Dagli Orti / De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman Images

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  An End and a Beginning

  (1870–1871)

  The morning after the Republic was declared, Victor Hugo appeared at the Brussels train station and requested a ticket to Paris. “I have been waiting for this moment for nineteen years,” he told the young journalist who was with him.1

  He crossed the border into France at four o’clock in the afternoon, and that evening he arrived at the Gare du Nord, where he was greeted by a huge cheering crowd. Never one to shy from an audience, Hugo pushed his way into a café, where he spoke from a balcony. “Citizens,” he told them, “I have come to do my duty.” He had come, he added, “to defend Paris, to protect Paris”—a sacred trust. After that, he climbed into an open carriage, from where he spoke again to the fervent crowd before making his way to the house of a friend, near Place Pigalle.

  There the young mayor of Montmartre, Georges Clemenceau, warmly welcomed him.

  Filled with republican ideas and ideals, Clemenceau had returned a month earlier to Paris, where he immediately became immersed in politics, with special attention to the emergence of a Republic. Given his many friends in the new government, it perhaps was no surprise when Clemenceau was appointed mayor of Montmartre.

  At that time, Montmartre consisted of its steep hill, or Butte, on the northern edge of Paris and was the second most populous arrondissement, or district, in the city. It also was the home for many of Paris’s poorest residents. Scarred by quarries on its southern slope and still open on top (this was before Sacré-Coeur), Montmartre in 1870 was steeply pitched and poverty-stricken, networked with unpaved narrow streets and a jumble of houses filled to brimming with many of those who had been expelled by Haussmann’s grands travaux from Paris’s center.

  Clemenceau’s left-wing politics and devotion to his constituents would win him widespread support during the difficult months ahead—especially from Louise Michel, with whom he worked to help the most destitute of Montmartre’s residents. Together they organized distribution centers for food and medicine and started up free schools for the children.

  He would soon open a dispensary where, for two days a week, he cared for Montmartre’s impoverished residents free of charge. But the appalling conditions he saw around him urged him to focus on his career in politics, where he thought he could bring about change. In time, his remarkable career as both a politician and journalist would culminate at the top, as prime minister of France, during the anguished years of yet another war with Germany.

  Baron Haussmann’s career, on the other hand, was over. Recognizing the dangers of remaining in Paris, he had prudently left for Bordeaux as the empire collapsed, fleeing with other officials of the Second Empire. But when it appeared that even Bordeaux might not be safe, he crossed the border into Italy, using an assumed name and false passport. Haussmann would remain there, in exile, until it seemed safe to return.

  Many others, including the Rothschilds, found their lives completely disrupted by the war and the collapse of empire. For the first time in their family history, the Rothschilds suffered a severe rupture: the Frankfurt branch wholeheartedly supported Prussia, while the Paris branch unequivocally defended the French, with two of its younger members serving in the Garde Mobile. This led to severe reprisals when the Prussians occupied the family château at Ferrières en route to Paris. Whether or not the Prussians actually looted and pillaged the place (this is in dispute), they certainly behaved badly, and Bismarck seems to have taken malicious pleasure in the fact that the château they occupied was Jewish-owned.

  Another whose life was upended was Sarah Bernhardt, whose flourishing theater career came to an abrupt halt as theaters closed and actors left for military duty. When the German army began to close in on Paris, she decided against leaving, although she managed to get her mother, sisters, and son to Le Havre and safety. She then decided that since the actresses at the Comédie-Française had turned part of their theater into a hospital for the wounded, she could do the same at the Odéon.

  Bernhardt pulled strings, got permission, and then hunted up supplies. Luckily, the handsome new prefect of police was charmed by her visit and was more than willing to round up the food and supplies she needed. Ten barrels of wine, thirty thousand eggs, and one hundred bags of coffee soon arrived at the Odéon, along with an unexpected five hundred pounds of chocolate, a gift from the Menier chocolate-makers. In response to her appeals, others presented her with a flood of supplies, including overcoats, slippers, and lint and linen for bandages.

  The wounded began to flood in as well, forcing her to set up beds in the theater’s auditorium, dressing rooms, foyer, and even the bar. The wounded were never-ending, even as the weather became colder and food became scarce.

  But the worst days were yet to come.

  Edouard Manet was ecstatic about the end of the Second Empire, but he recognized the perils that lay ahead. Skeptical of the new government’s claims that the Prussians would grant an armistice to the new Republic, he and many others prepared for a siege. Remaining in Paris as a volunteer gunner in the National Guard, Manet nonetheless was not about to subject his family to the dangers and deprivation of staying. Instead, he promptly sent his wife, his mother, and his wife’s son to safety in the south of France.

  Manet also sent his most precious pictures into hiding with his friend Théodore Duret, who had offered to keep them safe. These included Olympia, The Luncheon on the Grass, The Guitar Player, The Balcony, and others. Scrawled along the side of his note to Duret were the words: “In the event of my death, you can take your choice of Moonlight or Reader, or if you prefer, you can ask for the Boy with the soap bubbles.”2

  Writing to Eva Gonzalès on September 10, Manet told her that many were hastily exiting the city. “It’s a debacle,” he wrote, “and people are storming the railway stations.” Writing to his wife on September 11, he reported, “We’re expecting the Prussians any day now.” He continued to write her almost daily, even when on guard duty at the fortifications (the massive Thiers fortifications surrounding Paris). On September 20, he wrote, “There’s fighting everywhere, all round Paris.” By September 21, Prussian troops had surrounded Paris; soon after, he told her that “Paris is determined to defend itself to the last.” On guard at the ramparts, “we heard the guns going all night long. We’re getting quite used to the noise.”3

  Manet worried when he did not hear regularly from Suzanne and was “tormented by the thoug
ht that you’re without news of us”—a situation which became all the more common once the Prussians closed their siege around Paris. From then on, all communications in and out of the city had to be carried out by balloon and homing pigeon, a formidable task.

  At the war’s onset, Nadar and two others had formed the No. 1 Compagnie des aérostiers (No. 1 Balloonists’ Company) and proposed that they make tethered ascents from Montmartre to provide reconnaissance for the military. After the empire’s fall and the continuation of the war, Nadar volunteered to assist his city during the siege. Without waiting for official sanction, he and his colleagues established a base on top of Montmartre and began their first tethered ascents before the Prussians completely encircled the city. Clemenceau, as mayor of Montmartre, at first objected, but then changed his mind and provided the balloonists with tents and straw to keep them warm at night.

  The provisional government, which had escaped to Tours before the Prussian encirclement was complete, never read or acknowledged the observations Nadar and his colleagues made—marking French, Prussian, and unidentified troops on maps of the Paris region. But now, with Paris encircled, Nadar proposed that the balloons for the first time be untethered and float sacks of correspondence over the Prussian army toward Tours—in what amounted to the world’s first air mail.

  His idea was accepted, and on September 23, Le Neptune took off from Montmartre with more than two hundred and fifty pounds of mail and dispatches. Not only was the flight risky—the balloons were fragile, and the Prussians could easily use them for target practice—but the question remained, how to get news back? It was impossible to steer a balloon accurately enough to make a pinpoint landing in a besieged city.