Rouen (France) -- Description and travel; Rouen (France) -- History
The great Napoleon first saw Rouen in its capacity as a trading
centre. Its industry very soon recovered after the Revolution, and an
actual "Exposition" was organised in the Tribunal de Commerce, which
was inspected by Josephine and the First Consul Bonaparte. He returned
as Emperor, and in 1840 the city solemnly received him for the last
time, when his body was brought back from St. Helena and passed
beneath the first bridge across the Seine at Rouen.
The kings who had been deposed with so much bloodshed and fanfaronade,
reappeared as if nothing had happened when Louis Philippe laid the
first stone for the pedestal of Corneille's statue carved by David
d'Angers. In 1871 that statue was all draped in black. The streets of
Rouen, hung with funereal emblems, were all in the deepest mourning,
every shop was closed and every window shuttered. Upon the plain of
Sotteville a great army was manoeuvring to and fro to the sound of
words of command in a strange tongue. General Manteuffel, the Duke of
Mecklenburgh, and "Prince Fritz" had led the German army of invasion
into Rouen, and from December till July they occupied the town and its
surrounding villages. For the last time Rouen was in the hands of
foreigners. But the traces of this catastrophe have absolutely
disappeared. The ruin of the Revolution and the iconoclasm of the
religious struggles have left far deeper marks; and Rouen, sacked by
the English, and occupied by the Germans, suffered more injury at the
hands of her own citizens, than either from Time or from any foreign
foe.
In the last half of the eighteenth century it was that Rouen lost most
of her mediaeval characteristics, under the levelling regime of
Intendant de Crosne, whose one good work was the building of the
boulevards. Hardly as much change was wrought when the great new
streets of 1859 were cut that swept away the old infected quarters of
the fifteenth century. The Revolution, that is responsible for the
debasement of St. Laurent and St. Ouen, among many other atrocities,
did most injury in abolishing those picturesque local bodies, like the
"Cinquantaine" and the "Arquebusiers," and substituting for them a
meaningless "Garde Nationale." Its efforts at "national" nomenclature
were fortunately in most cases abortive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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