by Susie Kelly
Very soon, though, we reached the new chic Bohemian area for artists and musicians. Centred around the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad and the Villette Basin, it’s where three canals – the St Denis, the St Martin, and the Ourcq converge. We cycled beside the Ourcq canal along a tree-lined quay, past apartment blocks and moored leisure craft. A few walkers hunched against the cold nodded as we bounced by on the cobbles. From the City of Music and the French National Conservatory of Music on the opposite bank stray notes danced in the air and floated across the water, and a group of black-clad people practised the exaggeratedly slow movements of Tai Chi on a lawn. Small clouds in a sky of bright blue reflected from the metallic surface of the stunningly beautiful hemispherical Géode, which houses the Cité des Sciences.
A dredger chugged slowly past La Villette’s leisure park, the largest green area in Paris, made up of a number of themed gardens and futuristic sculptures, and you either love it, or hate it.
I hated it, not for what it is now, but for what it had been until almost 50 years ago, when it was known as the City of Blood. It was here that the nine individual slaughterhouses which had until then served Paris were united into a centralised abattoir; for more than a hundred years, every year, two million animals arrived here by train at the market halls, and went from there directly to slaughter. The thought of the smells, the sounds, the sights and the mess that would have engulfed this area turned my stomach. In the latter part of the 19th century, Parisians even came here to drink blood as it was drained from the animals, in the belief that it served as a tonic.
It may be impossible for carnivores to appreciate quite how vegetarians feel about the whole process that brings meat to the plate, so I won’t try to explain it. But I firmly believe that there will come a day, if the world lasts long enough, when people will look back on the killing of animals for food with disbelief and horror, on a par with cannibalism. Leonardo da Vinci said much the same thing 500 years ago. The age-old argument as to whether or not animals have a soul was addressed by Pope John Paul II in 1990, when he declared that “animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren.” As far as I know, nobody has ever seen a soul, so there isn’t any proof that any of us have one, but what I know for certain is that animals are capable of a variety of emotions, including fear and pain, which was in abundance here for decades. No amount of buildings, nor grass, nor benches, nor flowerbeds, nor entertainments can extinguish that for me, and I was anxious to cycle out of this area as fast as we possibly could. I hadn’t even mentioned to Terry the history of La Villette, because I was quite sure he would have refused to cycle through it.
It should not be difficult to follow a canal, which is a big thing. But somehow we managed to lose it, possibly due to the cement factory that swallowed up the towpath and diverted us onto a small lane, which issued into a busy road in the midst of the bustling industrial suburb of Pantin. The largest cemetery in Paris is here, the final residence of a million dead people, among them a very much larger than life character called Jules Védrines. A pioneering aviator with a fierce expression and imposing moustache, he was the winner – in fact the only finisher – of the first Paris to Madrid air race in 19ll, an event which got off to an unfortunate start when one spectator, the then French Minister of War, walked into a propeller and cut himself into slices. During the war Védrines flew secret agents to and from behind German lines, and in 1919 he thrilled Paris by landing his Caudron G3 biplane on the rooftop of the Galeries Lafayette. Sadly his luck ran out a few months later when he crashed and died on a flight to Rome, leaving him permanently grounded in Pantin.
Through the noisy, cosmopolitan streets, fragrant with spices and populated by colourfully costumed people and honking traffic, we wove our way back to the canal, and crossed over a bridge to Bondy, an extensive no-go area of bandit-ridden forest until the end of the 19th century, when wealthier Parisians began moving there in search of cleaner country air.
With the development of train and tram links to the capital Bondy became a popular suburb, attracting more residents, and immigrants – firstly other Europeans, and later North Africans seeking higher wages and a better life than in their own countries. Bondy achieved notoriety in the autumn of 2006 when the predominantly immigrant residents rioted for several days to express their disappointment that the Republican ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality did not seem to have extended to the banlieus. The then Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy referring to the rioters as racaille – scum, hadn’t done much to defuse the situation.
Before the arrival of motor transport, for anybody travelling east from Paris Bondy was the first staging post where coaches halted for a change of horses. In the early hours of the morning on 21st June 1791 an enormous, lumbering carriage arrived at Bondy, where it was harnessed to a fresh team of horses. Aboard were “Madame de Korff,” accompanied by her two daughters, their governess “Madame Rochet,” and steward “M. Durand”. In reality, the passengers were Marie-Antoinette and Louis, their children – the Dauphin dressed as a little girl – and the King’s sister Elizabeth. All in disguise, they were fleeing from the capital in the hope of reaching safety and the support of a loyal army at Montmédy, close to the Belgian border.
When you read about their escape plans, that they had even managed to reach this far seems miraculous.
After their violent removal from Versailles, the royal family were installed in Tuileries palace in Paris. Their captors did their best to make this dismal and dilapidated building fitting and comfortable for its new residents. Luxurious furnishings were brought from Versailles, and there was a substantial household of servants. Away from the rigid formality of court, the royal family made the most of their changed circumstances and were able to enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle.
Among the works of art brought from Versailles was a painting by Van Dyck of the English king, Charles I. It should have served as an ominous reminder to Louis that a crown offered no protection against a sharpened blade travelling at high speed towards the back of the neck, and that it might be a sensible idea to take heed of urgent warnings from those with more foresight than him, and to disappear while he still could. Sadly he did not seem to pick up this message.
He and his queen took their meals together and spent time with their two surviving children. They entertained those loyal friends who had chosen to remain with them at the Tuileries, amused themselves playing billiards, and were able to travel when they wished to the royal residence at St Cloud where the King hunted. If he had taken the prudent advice of well-wishers and people more astute than himself, he could have made a successful escape from there. Plans were made for the Queen and their children to flee in light, fast carriages, and the King to join them on horseback. But Louis didn’t act. It would have been quite out of character for him to do anything decisive while there was still time to do so. Better sit tight, make the best of your situation, and see if things improved in time. In the meantime – tally ho!
For eighteen months life continued uneventfully for the residents of the Tuileries, but as the Revolutionary movement gained momentum the family’s liberty became increasingly restricted. By the time they realized the extent of their peril, they had become closely guarded prisoners. When they were physically prevented from travelling to St Cloud on Easter Monday of 1791 the King finally recognized that the only way they were going to achieve freedom was by their own efforts, and he left it to his wife to make the arrangements for their escape. She did this with the help of her devoted admirer, Axel Fersen. It was he who raised the necessary finance for the operation through personal loans and by mortgaging his own property; who negotiated with those who supported the royals, and smuggled correspondence to and from them past watchful guards.
The plan was for the family to escape from the Tuileries by night and flee to Montmédy. The fugitives would need disguises; Fersen smuggled these to them piece by piece. When it came to the question of transport, Marie-Antoi
nette demonstrated her blondeness by spurning the suggestion of a light, fast vehicle; it would be both undignified and uncomfortable for such a long journey as they were undertaking. Instead she insisted on a stately carriage, the building of which was organised by the faithful Fersen. This vehicle, described by Stefan Zweig as ‘a sort of little warship on four wheels’, was equipped with a well-stocked wine cellar, a silver dinner service, a clothes press, a cupboard full of food and a portable toilet. Beautifully upholstered and splendidly painted, it could not fail to attract attention. The royal retinue included the children’s governess and the Queen’s hairdresser, that creator of creations, Monsieur Léonard, who in the event contributed nothing apart from confusion to the whole project. Although it sounds as if he was something of a buffoon, it was essential for Marie-Antoinette to believe that she would reach freedom, and when she did so she did not intend to arrive looking a wreck. For the same reason, she had entrusted Madame Campan with the job of ordering a wardrobe of fine clothes for her arrival in Belgium, and these were also stowed in trunks in the carriage.
To escape from the Tuileries the King had to creep out of his bedroom without disturbing his valet, who slept attached to his royal master by a string tied to his wrist. Louis’ sister Elisabeth, Marie-Antoinette and the two children had to be spirited out of the Tuileries without being seen by the National Guard; and they had to cross Paris unnoticed. After months of meticulous planning, they had to change the date for the escape at the last minute because the Queen was suspicious about the loyalty of one of her ladies of the bedchamber. Finally the time arrived for them to make their move.
Valuable time was lost in Paris due to various misunderstandings and wrong turnings being taken, so that by the time the royal entourage arrived at Bondy they were already two and a half hours behind schedule, but at least they were now clear of the city. Fersen would travel on ahead and wait for them in Montmédy. With the first and most difficult part of their escape plan behind them, they must have been feeling optimistic at this point.
During the next 24 hours Louis, Marie-Antoinette and their children were out of the public eye for the first and last time in their lives. Travelling as they were, incognito, secretly, urgently, the details of this part of their journey are very slim, and the only eyewitness account is found in the memoires of the King and Queen’s daughter, the Princess Marie-Thérèse, thirteen at the time, and the sole member of the immediate family who would survive the Revolution. Not until Varennes, more than one hundred and twenty miles to the east, would they become public property again.
Ten minutes from Bondy the noise of traffic changed to birdsong, and the busy suburbs to fields of wild flowers. Apart from bridges spanning the canal, when the towpath climbed steeply up and down the embankments, the landscape had a timeless appearance. It had probably looked much the same when the royal runaways lumbered past here in their unsuitable carriage while Louis traced their route on a map. Their journey was giving him an opportunity to see something of the realm over which he had reigned so unsatisfactorily for seventeen years.
It was by design, not accident, that the majority of places we would visit were at intervals of about 20 miles from each other, as they had started life as staging posts along the road, the distance that a team of horses could be expected to travel before they needed to be changed. In contrast to the previous day, our cycling was effortless and peaceful and we were really enjoying ourselves by the time we reached the neat and quiet town of Claye-Souilly, the second staging post on the route from Paris. Louis took advantage of the halt to round off his breakfast with a nice piece of Brie while a new team of horses was harnessed to their carriage.
By the time we arrived at 2.00 pm it was too late for a seat at the first two restaurants, but in the third the very kind lady said that although they were closed, she could see we were cold, tired and hungry, and she’d be happy to cook something for us as long as we didn’t want anything fancy. She had two nice pieces of fish left if that would suit us. Although we are vegetarians, we do sometimes eat a little fish, so that was fine. There was nowhere in sight where we could safely leave our bikes, and as this would be our first experience of being separated from them without them being under lock and key, Terry was anxious. Our hostess suggested that we should park them on the narrow pavement outside the restaurant. This meant that every passing pedestrian had to step around them and into the road.
Opposite the restaurant was a small supermarket, where a delivery vehicle was parked outside unloading stacks of cartons. For twenty-five minutes, in an unhurried manner, the driver climbed onto the tailgate, pushed a button which raised him up, loaded cartons into a wire trolley, pushed the button to go down, wheeled the trolley to the door of the shop, unloaded it, wheeled it back, onto the tailgate, up ….. Unable to squeeze past the wide van, traffic built up. Drivers switched off their engines. Up and in and out and down went the unloading man, until the pavement was entirely blocked with cartons. Pedestrians were forced into the road on that side, too. It reminded me of a M. Hulot film. People leaned out of windows to watch. The Clayois seemed to be very tolerant folk and nobody showed the least sign of impatience or irritation.
During the First World War, Claye-Souilly was home to an American veterinary hospital. Vast numbers of equines were engaged in the war effort, and each of the armies had to provide treatment facilities for the horses, mules and camels whose misfortune it was to find themselves a part of the conflict. At one time animals wounded in battle would either have been destroyed or retired, but such was the scale of the Great War that every beast was a valuable commodity that had to be patched up and returned to the field to be used and used again until there was no use left in it. Statistics showed that during the four years of the war, on average each equine in the French army would have been ill or injured seven times, and the mortality rate was 80%. If the appalling conditions suffered by the men makes harrowing reading, it doesn’t come anywhere near to the nightmare existence of those animals requisitioned, or imported in their tens of thousands from North Africa and the United States, whose suffering was beyond description. With mechanised warfare still in its infancy, horses were needed in huge numbers as cavalry mounts or to haul artillery and machinery. Like the men alongside them, they shared the mud, mustard gas, mange, artillery wounds, fear, deprivation of food and water. The upper lips of mules were mutilated to prevent them from making a noise. Scabies and glanders (a highly infectious respiratory disease) were rife. Considering the logistical difficulties of supplying rations to the animals – the daily ration per horse was defined as 15lbs. of oats and 13lbs. of hay, plus four and a half gallons of water – it isn’t surprising that they were quickly reduced to skeletons.
Ironically those animals unable to make it to the hospitals for treatment under their own steam were taken by motorised equine ambulances that collected and transported them from the battlefield. There was no anaesthesia for the patients. Those considered untreatable, or unfit for action, were sold for meat. Those that died of their injuries on the field were injected with a serum to prevent decay, and sold to dealers. When the war ended, the animals who had survived were sold off as meat or for labour. That was the fate of the equine slaves in the First World War. Their suffering added to that of the men beside them who witnessed their misery. I learned a great deal more than I wanted to know about an aspect of the war that I had not previously considered.
We’d have been happy to stay in Claye-Souilly overnight, but there was no campsite so we had to push on to Meaux for the night. Strangely, although we cycled for several hours through the lush, flowery pastures, trees and water that is the ancient Brie region, home to the King of Cheeses, we saw not a single cow all day long.
Just as the Comte de Paris had suspected, the rain caught us by mid-afternoon, and we were very wet by the time we reached the outskirts of Meaux. If cycling around the Arc de Triomphe had seemed daunting, it was nothing compared to Meaux at 5.00 pm on this sodden Friday evening. We
found ourselves unwittingly, also unwillingly, swept into the frenzied excitement of motorists on the way in and out of the town at the start of the Pentecostal weekend. We were carried along by the traffic on a tide of bedlam, aggravated because we had no idea in which direction lay the campsite.
There was a man standing beside a pile of old furniture on the pavement and Terry shouted at me to GO AND ASK HIM, so I did, only realising just as I opened my mouth that it would be a fruitless venture, because he was plainly either drunk or the victim of some neurological disorder. His eyes were unfocussed and uncoordinated; like a chameleon, he seemed able to point them simultaneously in different directions, independent of each other. I said very slowly, and clearly, that we were looking for ‘le camping’, and he interpreted this as an invitation to recite the story of his life in Meaux, detailing all the different addresses he had lived at over three decades, and the reason he had had to keep moving. Terry was very irritable, because he was getting hungry. Clearly the chameleon-eyed man was never going to tell us where the campsite was, but it seemed rude and uncaring not to listen to his tale of woe. Terry climbed onto his bike and rode away, shouting something over his shoulder, and leaving me listening to an episode that was something to do with a neighbour and cats.
A young man walked past and I latched on to him. He said that the nearest campsite to Meaux was a few miles down the road at Le Trilport. There was a choice of routes to get there – either through the traffic-ridden town centre, or by a longer but quieter route that he strongly recommended. Terry, reappearing from the opposite direction, irrationally tried to insist we cycled through the town. We had a furious row on the pavement, which I won by playing my trump card – a fit of hysterics – before pedalling off along the longer-but-quieter route to the site. By the time we reached there, instead of the thirty miles we had estimated for the day’s journey, our cycling computers showed we’d covered forty-five.