Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3: France and the Netherlands, Part 1
France -- Description and travel; Netherlands -- Description and travel
A thousand engravings show us the Bastille as it was--as a
"fort-bastide"--built on the line of the city walls just to the south
of the Porte St. Antoine, surrounded by its own moat. It consisted of
eight round towers, each bearing a characteristic name, connected by
massive walls, ten feet thick, pierced with narrow slits by which the
cells were lighted. In the early times it had entrances on three sides,
but after 1580 only one, with a drawbridge over the moat on the side
toward the river, which led to outer courts and a second drawbridge,
and wound by a defended passage to an outer entrance opposite the Rue
des Tournelles.
Close beside the Bastille, to the north, rose the Porte St. Antoine,
approached over the city fosse by its own bridge, at the outer end of
which was a triumphal arch built on the return of Henri II. from Poland
in 1573. Both gate and arch were restored for the triumphal entry of
Louis XIV. in 1667; but the gate (before which Etienne Marcel was
killed, July, 1358), was pulled down in 1674.
The Bastille was taken by the people, July 14, 1789, and the National
Assembly decreed its demolition.... The massive circular pedestal upon
which the Colonne de Juillet now rests was intended by Napoleon I. to
support a gigantic fountain in the form of an elephant, instead of the
column which, after the destruction of the Bastille, the "tiers état"
of Paris had asked to erect "à Louis XVI., restaurateur de la liberté
publique." It is characteristic of the Parisians that on the very same
spot the throne of Louis Philippe was publicly burned, February 24,
1848. The model for the intended elephant existed here till the middle
of the reign of Louis Philippe, and is depicted by Victor Hugo as the
lodging of "Le petit Gavroche."
The Panthéon and St. Etienne-Du-Mont
By Grant Allen
[Footnote: From "Paris."]
The medieval church of Ste. Geneviève, having fallen into decay in the
middle of the eighteenth century, Louis XV. determined to replace it by
a sumptuous domed edifice in the style of the period. This building,
designed by Soufflot, was not completed till the Revolution, when it
was immediately secularized as the Panthéon, under circumstances to be
mentioned later. The remains of Ste. Geneviève, which had lain
temporarily meanwhile in a sumptuous chapel of St. Étienne-du-Mont (the
subsidiary church of the monastery) were taken out by the
Revolutionists; the medieval shrine, or reliquary (which replaced St.
Éloy's), was ruthlessly broken up; and the body of the patroness and
preserver of Paris was publicly burned in the Place de Grève.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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