Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
History
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
At the Butte Saint-Roch, now remembered chiefly by the church of the
same name, the Maid of Orleans was wounded during the siege of Paris,
then in the hands of the English. Joan of Arc was not at this time--not,
at least, with the Parisians--the popular heroine she has since become.
Detesting Charles VII. and all his supporters, they could not love the
inspired girl whose example had restored the courage of the king's
troops. A Parisian of that day, who had witnessed the siege, describes
her as a "fiend in woman's guise."
The bell may still be heard of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois; the very
bell, it is asserted, that called the faithful to the massacre of St.
Bartholomew. Near the church from which the tragic signal rang forth
stands the palace from whose windows Charles IX. fired upon the unhappy
Huguenots as they sought safety by swimming across the Seine; and close
at hand used to be pointed out another window from which money was
thrown to an agitated crowd in order to keep it from attending Molière's
funeral, at which the mob proposed, not to honour the remains of the
illustrious dramatist, but to insult them.
It was in the old Rue du Temple that the Duke of Burgundy fell by the
hand of his assassin, the Duke of Orleans, only brother of Charles
VI., who, though a madman and an idiot, was suffered to remain on the
throne; and it was in this same Rue du Temple that Louis XVI. and
Marie-Antoinette were confined before being taken to the guillotine.
What scenes has not the Place de Grève witnessed! from the burning of
witches to the torture of Damiens, and from the atrocious cruelties
inflicted upon this would-be regicide to the first executions under the
Revolution, when the cry of "A la lanterne!" (to the lamp-post, that is
to say, of the Place de Grève) was so frequently heard.
But the most revolutionary spot in this, the most revolutionary
capital in the world, is to be found in the gardens of the Palais
Royal; those gardens from whose trees Camille Desmoulins plucked
the leaves which the besiegers of the Bastille were to have worn in
their hats as rallying signals. Here, too, assembled the journeymen
printers, who, their newspapers having been suppressed by Charles
X., determined, under the guidance of the journalists--their natural
leaders on such an occasion--to reply by force to the armed censorship
of the Government. Again, in 1848, the Palais Royal Gardens witnessed
the first manifestations of discontent, though it was a pistol-shot
fired on a fashionable part of the boulevard that precipitated the
collision between the insurgents and the troops. The next morning, at
breakfast, Louis-Philippe was told that he had better abdicate; and an
hour afterwards an old gentleman, with a portfolio under his arm, was
seen to take a cab on the Place de la Concorde, and drive off in the
direction of Saint-Cloud, whence he reached the coast of Normandy, and
in due time the shores of England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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