France and the Republic: A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889Hurlbert, William Henry
History
France and the Republic: A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces During the 'Centennial' Year 1889
Hurlbert, William Henry
France -- Description and travel; France -- Politics and government -- 1870-1940; Republicanism -- France
During the orgies of 1793 the paintpot was busy with all the streets and
places of Chauny. The Rue de Premontre, so called because some property
there belonging to the famous abbey of the Praemonstratensians, became
the _cul-de-sac_ or 'bag-bottom of Fraternity;' the Rue des Moinets took
the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; while the Rue Ganton, the licensed
abode of the social evil of Chauny, received, with exquisite tact and
propriety, the name of the Roman hero Scaevola! The monastery of the Holy
Cross, founded by Mary of Cleves, Duchesse d'Orleans, about the end of
the fifteenth century, was confiscated, and made the headquarters of the
Republican Commission, the street on which it stood receiving the name
of the 'Bag-bottom of Vigilance,' from the banner which was borne upon
public occasions through the streets by this commission, on which was
depicted 'the Eye of Vigilance, a symbol of that exercised by it over
the enemies of the Republic and the people.'
Another street in Chauny, the Rue des Bons Enfans, preserves the memory
of the early foundation in the little city of public schools for the
children of the poor--'les bons enfans escholiers.'
Where now stands the communal school of Chauny stood, I am told, a
public college, founded here in the earliest years of the fourteenth
century. The buildings of this college were restored under the Regency
and Louis XV. They were confiscated, and the establishment swept away by
the worthy Revolutionists of 1793, at the same time that they gave a
public ball in the Church of Notre-Dame in honour of the Tree of
Liberty, which the young girls of the place were expected to attend 'in
dresses of white, symbolic of their innocence, and adorned only with
their virtues!'
Besides this public college, Chauny, before the beneficent epoch of the
Revolution, possessed a public school in each parish of the town. The
schoolmaster, besides his regular scholars, who paid for their
education, was expected to receive and educate eight poor children
nominated by the mayor and sworn magistrates. For this he received,
under Louis XIV., in 1706, forty setiers of wheat and fifty livres in
money. It is interesting, also, to learn that the principal of the
public college, when he happened to be a layman, received a salary,
under Louis XIV., of 400 livres in addition to his dwelling-house. When
he was a priest he received only 300 livres, but he might also receive
172 livres more as chaplain of the Hotel-Dieu. The well-to-do citizens
who sent their children to the college paid for each child forty sols a
year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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