Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
History
Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2
Edwards, H. Sutherland (Henry Sutherland)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
[Illustration: SCHOOL OF DRAWING, RUE DE L’ÉCOLE DE MÉDECINE.]
Out of 161 members present, 128 voted death, 17 transportation, while 5
members abstained from voting. Amongst the peers who pronounced for
capital punishment may be mentioned Châteaubriand, the Duc de Valmy, the
Duc de Bellune, Lauriston, General Monnier, and the Comtes Dupont, de
Beauharnais, de Tascher, de Sèze, Séguier, Lamoignon, and d’Aguesseau.
From the prison of the Luxemburg, his place of confinement, the marshal
was taken at an early hour of the morning to the avenue of the
Observatory, and was, as before mentioned, placed against the wall.
Protesting his innocence, and appealing to God and to posterity, he
died, pierced to the heart by half-a-dozen bullets. The Duke of
Wellington was accused at the time of not lifting a finger to save Ney
from the consequences of his treason. It has since been shown by the
evidence of the duke’s own words that he approached the king on the
subject. But he met with such a reception that it was impossible for him
to persist.
On the critical day, when Napoleon’s envoys appealed to him, and when
his troops were longing, to a man, to swell the numbers of Napoleon’s
forces, the marshal, it is argued, could scarcely have acted otherwise
than as he did. Of the 128 peers who voted for the marshal’s execution,
a considerable number were of Napoleonic creation.
After the Revolution of 1848 a tablet was affixed to the fatal wall in
memory of Ney, and a sum of money voted for the erection of a statue. It
was reserved, however, for Napoleon III. to commemorate, on the spot
where he had fallen by the bullets of his own countrymen, the heroism of
the marshal. The monument was inaugurated on the 7th of December, 1853,
the anniversary of the marshal’s death, the ceremony being presided over
by Comte de Persigny, Minister of the Interior, and Ney’s grandson by
marriage. The monument consists of a pedestal in white marble, resting
on a foundation of red granite, and supporting the statue of the
marshal, modelled by Rude. Sabre in hand, Ney appears to be leading his
troops to a charge or to an assault.
We have seen that the Rue d’Enfer, thanks to the power of the monks over
the fiend who once made night hideous by his unearthly screams, has long
had the reputation of being the quietest street in Paris. Here numbers
of artists have made their abode, sure, in the midst of monasteries and
asylums, of the tranquillity so necessary to their labours.
Among the remarkable institutions in this neighbourhood may be mentioned
the free school of drawing in the Rue de l’École de Médecine. A special
school for girls, founded in 1803 in the Petit Rue de Touraine (now Rue
Dupuytren), was afterwards transferred to No. 7 Rue de Seine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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