The Frog Blog ofLouis la Vache

New Home for The Frog Blog...and a New Blog for Recipes

2006-11-20T21:16:00.000+01:00

La fête des dieux - The Feast of the Gods - Ils ont mangé comme des vaches - They ate like cows
Louis la Vache moved his blog from the address at which you found this to HERE. So Louis invites you to come visit him at his new address!
Also, Louis started a separate blog just for his recipes, so Louis invites you also to visit him at Les Recettes de Louis la Vache.
Bienvenue et Bon appétit!

The Franco-Dutch War: Louis XIV Invades the Netherlands, le 29 avril 1672

2006-04-29T05:13:00.000+02:00

Louis XIV, all wigged out

The Dutch War (1672–1678) was a war fought between France and a quadruple alliance consisting of Brandenburg, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and the United Provinces. The war ended in 1678 with the Treaty of Nijmegen. The treaty granted France control of the Franche-Comte from Spain.

France led a coalition including Münster and England. Louis XIV was annoyed by the Dutch refusal to cooperate in the destruction and division of the Spanish Netherlands. As the Dutch army had been neglected since 1648, the French had no trouble after unexpectedly by-passing the fortress of Maastricht to march into the heart of the Republic, taking Utrecht. Prince William III of Orange is assumed to have had the leading Dutch politician Johan de Witt deposed and murdered, and was acclaimed stadtholder. As the French had promised the major Hollandic cities to the English they were in no hurry to capture them, but tried to extort sixteen million guilders from the Dutch in exchange for a separate peace. This outrageous demand stiffened Dutch resistance and the negotiations gave the Republic time to flood the countryside by deliberate inundations, the Dutch Water Line, blocking any further French advance. The bishop of Münster laid siege to Groningen but failed. An attempt was made to invade the Republic by sea, but this was thwarted by Admiral Michiel de Ruyter in four strategic victories against the combined Anglo-French fleet (these events are usually called the Third Anglo-Dutch War). England then abandoned the war in 1674.

Allies had joined the Dutch - the Elector of Brandenburg, the Emperor, and Charles II of Spain. Louis, despite the successful Siege of Maastricht in 1673, was forced to abandon his plans of conquering the Dutch and revert to a slow, cautious war of attrition around the French frontiers. By 1678, he had managed to break apart his opponents' coalition, and managed to gain considerable territories by the terms of the Treaty of Nijmegen. Most notably, the French acquired the Franche Comte and various territories in the Netherlands from the Spanish. Nevertheless the Dutch had thwarted the ambitions of two of the major royal dynasties of the time: the Stuarts and the Bourbons.

More Reading:

Louis XIV and the Origins of the Dutch War

Promenades de Paris - Les Halles

2006-04-27T17:20:00.000+02:00

Forum des Halles, l'église-Saint-Eustache is in the center-right background.

Promenades de Paris - la série:
• La Madeleieine
• l'Île-de-la-Cité
• le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries
• Le Palais-Royal
• La Place Vendôme

Until today in our Promenades de Paris, we have begun our tours where we last finished. Aujord'hui, today, we will backtrack a bit and take le Métro to a stop we took when we made our tour of Île-de-la-Cité, Métro Pont Neuf.
Aujord'hui nôtre promenade will take us through an area with some great specialty shops and where the Paris public market once was.

Exiting le Métro at Pont Neuf on the rive droit, right bank, we will walk first west along Quai du Louvre, pausing to look at the now-closed grand magasinla Samaritaine, one of the oldest department stores in Paris.

La Samaritaine is a beautiful belle epoque iron and glass building. The official reason given for its closure is that the building is in need of structural repair. Speculation abounds as to the "real" reason for the closure, the most common being that the owners found that as the simplest way to break the union. Were the store open, we could go to the top floor and take in the panoramic view, one of the best (though not the highest) in Paris.

La Samaritaine

The iron-and-glass belle epoque interior of the now-closed La Samaritaine. Note the detailing on the iron work.

La tour Eiffel as seen from the top of la Samaritaine

Now moving east, parallel to la Seine along Quai de la Mégisserie, we find ourselves to be in "pet shop central." These shops probably do a nice business - Parisians love their dogs, and their dogs love to leave their "calling cards" on the streets. We must toujours watch where we step while walking in Paris!

Now we'll turn left and north on rue des Lavandiéres Saint-Opportune. Lavandiéres means 'washer-women,' so the name means "the washer women of Saint-Opportune." Louis la Vache hasn't investigated why a street should be named after washer women, not that there is anything wrong with that. However, Louis will give you a bit of trivia about the verb laver, to wash. Laver shares it root with lavande, lavender. Many of you may be familiar with the lavande water that may be used in steam irons to add a nice lavender scent to laundry. Lavender for centuries has been used as a cleaning aid, thus the word and the plant lavande worked its way into our laundry routine enough to provide the latin root for the verb "to wash." Thus, les lavandiéres could well be lavender-scented washer-women by virtue of their using lavande in some manner while doing their washing. (Louis la Vache: always your number one source for trivia you'll never need to know!)

We'll continue up rue des Lavandiéres Saint-Opportune to Place-Sainte-Opportune. Laguiole, a world-famous knife shop is at #1. At the intersection with rue de la Ferronerie ("ironwork"), King Henri IV in 1610 was assassinated by a knife-wielding assailant while Henri's carriage was stuck in a traffic jam.

We will continue north past la Fontaine des Innocents, built as a memorial to children who both from natural and unnatural causes.

La fontaine des Innocents

Close at hand is Forum des Halles. Now a huge underground shopping center with a massive public transportation hub underneath the mall, the Paris public market occupied this site for centuries. "The belly of Paris," as Émile Zola called it, was moved to the southern banlieu, suburb, Rungis in 1970. The mall has become trashy, but the city recognized the need to remodel the mall and a design competition has been underway for the refurbishment of les Halles.

During the Haussmann remodeling of Paris in the 1850s - 1870s, the architect Baltard designed a splendid glass and iron building to replace the ancient market. Two pavillions of the Baltard structure were saved when les Halles was destroyed in 1970. The pity is that the entire structure wasn't saved, but the building was destroyed during a time when the modernists of architecture had free rein and atrocities such as le centre Pompidou, l'opéra Bastille and Daniel Buren's outrageous black and white striped columns which defile the courtyard of le Palais-Royal were visited on the city.

The Baltard-designed Forum des Halles of 1872

While Louis la Vache doesn't like the underground mall at les Halles, he does like the bookstore FNAC located there. FNAC is more than a bookstore, though this particular unit of FNAC is the largest librarie in France, it also sells cameras, video equipment, computers and has a huge music department with a fantastic classical music department.

While the mall is trashy and badly in need of the planned refurbishing, the ground-level park south and west of the mall is quite pleasant. We'll walk through it, making our way to allée Saint-John Perse. We'll pause here and note l'église Saint-Eustache, which dates from the XVI ème siecle, which seems to sail like an ocean liner over the sea of green that is the park. Saint-Eustache, like Saint-Sulpice, is as large as une cathédrale, but, because because there is no bishop attached to this parish, is not une cathédral, that distinction going to Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris.

The south side of Saint-Eustache as seen from allée Saint-John Perse

Inside Saint-Eustache is a sculpture, at once sad and delightful, of the last of the vendors leaving les Halles before the Baltard-designed building was torn down.

The exterior design of Saint-Eustache is an unsuccessful mix of gothic and neoclassical styles, but the interior is much more beautiful than you would lead you to expect. One of the more famous organs of Paris is housed in Saint-Eustache.

The pulpit, Saint-Eustache

From Saint-Eustache we'll walk the short distance to 18, rue de la Coquilliére, ("shell collection"), to Dehillerin, THE place to buy copper cookware, but any serious cook would find enough besides copper to occupy them for a full day in the store.

Leaving Dehillerin, we'll now turn right onto the chic rue du Jour, "street of the day," and then right again onto rue Montmarte and zig left onto rue Montorgueil, a market street since the XIV ème siecle, and still a lively pedestrian thouroughfare. We'll pause at numero 51 and treat ourselves to babas au rhum from Stohrer.

Now we'll take a little detour east down rue Tique-tonne, ("tick ton"), which leads to the elegant, high-ceiling passage du Grand Cerf. When we turn back onto rue Montorgueil, we'll note the Boucherie Chevaline at numero 9; the horse head indicates that this shop sells horse meat. Louis la Vache admits that the idea of eating horse meat seems rather obnoxious to you Yanks, but Louis has tried it and found it to taste better than beef. OK, go ahead and accuse Louis la Vache of trying to preserve his own species by encouraging the consumption of horse meat rather than beef....

Un ami français de Louis la Vache achéte cheval à le marché de Antony, sud de Paris

The Grappe d'Orgueil at numero 5 is a popular café with the locals. A left onto rue Réaumur leads us to le Métro at Sentier, where we will conclude today's promenade. When we next meet for une promenade, we'll explore the northern part of the 3 ème arrondissement.

More Reading

Paris Insideout City Guide Map

Paris by Bistro

Doisneau: Paris

Promenades de Paris - La Madeleine

2006-04-22T06:08:00.000+02:00
L'église-de-la-Madeleine Promenades de Paris - la série:
• l'Île-de-la-Cité
• le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries
• Le Palais-Royal
• La Place Vendôme

As has become our custom with these Promenades de Paris, we will begin today's tour where we finished our last tour. Thus we will take le Métro, ligne 1 to Concorde.

We will walk north on rue Royalle toward what is formally called l'église-Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, more commonly simply called la Madeleine. On our left at numero trois is the famous restaurant Maxim's.

The world-famous Maxim's..

Maxim's is decorated in the Belle époque style. The restaurant was founded in 1893 by Maxime Gaillard. Since 1981, the restaurant and its multinational spinoffs have been owned by Pierre Cardin.

The belle époque bar at Maxim's.

Next door to the resaurant, Maxim's has a store featuring their house wines and an array of packaged foods. As we walk north, we will pass porcelain, crystal and jewelry shops. At the end of rue Royale is place de la Madeleine. Those of you who were not with us when we visited the church, may want to take a peak inside. It is well worth the visit.

L'église-de-la-Madeleine is a popular venue for concerts of classical music

The rest of us are going across the street to the right to numero 6, place de la Madeleine to Maille, the famous mustard maker. In this shop we may also buy cornichons, huile d'olive, vinaigre and related items, all top-quality.

Moutards par Maille

In the northeast corner of the square is the luxury épicerie, Fauchon. Founded in the mid-XIX ème siecle, Fauchon always catered to the "carriage trade" until a few years ago, when they tried to become more mass-market. The attempt failed and Fauchon is now trying to take the tarnish off their image.

The displays of food in Fauchon's windows are truly works of art.

Fauchon, after a serious misstep by trying to become more mass-market is trying to regain its status as THE carriage-trade épecerie in Paris.

Now we will turn north onto rue Vignon, sprinkled with boutiques, many of them dedicated to food. At numero 21 is La Ferme Saint-Hubert, a well-known fromagerie, cheese shop, with an adjacent restaurant featuring, naturally, cheese dishes. Across the street at numero 24 is La Maison du Miel, which has been in business since 1898 selling over 30 kinds of honey, and, yes, tastings are allowed. Louis la Vache has brought friends in Californie cadeaux from this shop on occassion.

Now we will cross rue Tronchet onto rue des Mathurins and walk east to Square Louis XVI. Here we will find a small chapel, a rose garden and a little cimetière in the park. Now we'll turn south onto rue d'Anjou for a short distance, then we'll angle left onto boulevard Malesherbes back toward la Madeleine.

At numeros 3 - 5 boulevard Malesherbes is Résonances. The best way for Louis la Vache to describe Résonances to U.S. readers is that it is upscale and something of a combination of Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma.

On the west side of place de la Madeleine is another épecerie, Hédiard, another carriage-trade store dating, like their competitor, Fauchon, from the XIX ème siecle. Near the front door are open bins of spices that draw us in the door with their aroma. Inside we find pastries, tea, chocolates, foie gras, wines, and (unlike Fauchon) fresh produce. Upstairs is a restaurant.

Various views of Hédiard, below.

At numero 19 is Maison de la Truffe which serves lunch and dinner and at numero 17 is Caviar Kaspia, should you wish to fuel yourself with vodka and caviar. Now we'll head through galerie de la Madeleine, turn onto rue Boissy d'Anglas, past the famous Buddha Bar and board le Métro at Madeleine and head home.

Louis la Vache hopes that you are enjoying these promenades de Paris as much as he enjoys having you come along for them. We'll do another one soon and we'll visit les Halles then, d'accord?.

Promenades de Paris - La Place Vendôme

2006-04-15T17:37:00.000+02:00
Place Vendôme

Promenades de Paris - la série:

• l'Île-de-la-Cité
• le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries
• Le Palais-Royal

Today's promenade

As with the other promenades we've taken in Paris thus far, we'll use le Métro to arrive at the beginning point of our walk. Nous prenons ligne 1 du Métro à Palais-Royal-Musée du Louvre. We will begin where we last walked, at le Palais-Royal. Stepping out of the Métro station, we turn west-north-west onto rue Saint-Honoré.

Saint-Honoré is the patron saint of bakers. When Louis la Vache opens his boulangerie, it will be called Boulangerie-Saint-Honoré. As tradition goes, a young man named Honoré became the Bishop of Amiens in 554. During his service a number of miraculous events occurred, which spared farmers, millers, and bakers from natural disasters. Residents of France connected the miracles with évêque Honoré and in 1204 a Parisian boulanger built a chapel to commemorate him. Today, the chapel is no longer standing, but the name, Saint-Honoré, is etched in a gate leading to Faubourg and rue Saint-Honoré in the heart of Paris.

Saint-Honoré

As we saunter along rue Saint-Honoré, at numero 256 is Café Verlet. We are drawn to this cozy lunch spot by the pleasingly pungent aroma of freshly ground coffee. Crossing la rue, at numero 213 is the boutique Colette, named for the writer-actress who has une place named after her which we saw when we visited le Palais-Royal. Boutique Colette offers an eclectic assortment of clothes and accessories and is known as being the style mecca of Paris. In its basement is a water bar where customers sit at large, spartan tables and order from an extensive selection of bottled waters. Ne vous faites pas de bile - don't worry - there's food, too.

We'll turn right up rue du Marché-Saint-Honoré. At numero 10 is Le Rubis (the Ruby), a wine bar famous for how little it has changed. Here among dust-covered bouteilles du vin, we could satisfy our appetite with hearty lentils with ham hock, salami sandwiches and a nice, puckery tarte au citron.

Le Rubis

At the north end of la place du Marché-Saint-Honoré, we will find a branch of the famous Parisian boulanger, Poilâne. We could step in for a pastry, had we not had the tarte au citron at Le Rubis. At numero 33 is Philippe Model, famous for chapeaux, hats, as colorful as Easter eggs, delicately perched over the store.

Marché-Saint-Honoré

We'll pause for a moment and note the actual building of le Marché-Saint-Honoré. Louis la Vache is often very critical of modern architecture. Louis in particular hates le centre Georges Pompidou, a structure he feels would make sense (as a joke) in Legoland, but is horribly out of place in its location just north of Forum des Halles, not that Louis is fond of the current structure at les Halles. Louis is almost as critical of l'opéra Bastille. But, in Louis's opinion, le Marché-Saint-Honoré is modern architecture that works. It is a glass and steel structure that recalls the lamentably destroyed Forum des Halles, the former central market designed in 1872 by Baltard during the Haussmann renewal of Paris. It also, to a lesser degree, brings to mind another fine XIX ème siecle glass and steel structure, le Grand Palais. Le Marché-Saint-Honoré is a structure of grace and lightness. It is not truly a marché, but there is a fine furniture store, an Audi dealer and some offices for BNP Paribas in the structure. Louis thinks that perhaps in the past there was a market on the site, but he hasn't so far been able to verify that guess.

Now we'll step out of le Place du Marché-Saint-Honoré north onto rue d'Antin and then we'll veer onto l'avenue de l'Opéra, site of the beautiful Opéra Garnier.

L'opéra Garnier

Passing the opéra house, we'll turn left and south onto rue de la Paix and head toward la Place Vendôme. The world's most famous joaillers, jewelers, have set up shop along this street.

Entering la Place Vendôme, we might feel as though we've stepped into a vast and elegant outdoor salon. The façades surrounding us, serene and majestic, enclose the stately space almost completely, and their rhythmic regularity is so satisfying that even the traffic passing through does little to mar the place’s aristocratic allure. Instead of a chandelier, the great bronze candlestick of Napoléon’s column provides a central focus, and it’s easy to imagine the occasions when XVIII ème siecle aristocrates danced here to celebrate royal weddings.

Today, la Place Vendôme is still a magnet for Old—and New—Money, as doormen usher guests into the Ritz Hotel and as façades that once fronted private mansions glitter with the city’s densest concentration of diamonds. Shop windows of jewelers like Boucheron, Bulgari and Chaumet attract not only serious buyers with Swiss bank accounts, but strolling groups of recreational window shoppers.

If the whole ensemble resembles a Hollywood set, it’s not surprising. In fact, la Place Vendôme was just that: an empty stage lined by imposing façades with nothing behind them and, in 1957, "Love in the Afternoon," with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper was filmed here. Originally planned as the home of a royal library, scholarly academies and embassies, the place was launched in 1686, when Louis XIV authorized the construction of la Place des Conquêtes between a monastery on the rue de Castiglione and a convent on la rue de la Paix. Existing properties between them were expropriated (including the mansion of le Duc de Vendôme, whose title would eventually give the place its name), and work began the following year.

Under the direction of architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart construction continued for several years, but the project stalled in 1691 when money ran out. Finally the City of Paris, with the help of a group of speculators, took it up, renaming it la Place Louis-le-Grand, in 1699. The developers divided up most of the plots among themselves, and Hardouin-Mansart resumed work with another architect, changing the shape from the original rectangle to an octagon.

At this point, the façades looked much as they do today, with arched ground-floor windows, two floors of rectangular windows flanked by Corinthian pilasters and a top story of alternating rectangular and oval mansard windows. Projecting sections on the east and west sides matched the angled corner structures, and only two streets cut into the place, rue de la Paix to the north and rue de Castiglione to the south.

Behind those façades lay vacant lots, waiting for buyers to build what they pleased. Even today, an aerial view of la Place Vendôme shows an amazing hodge-podge of structures behind those matching fronts. And from the beginning, the whole ensemble was designed as a setting, not for a column but for a statue of the king.

Behind the orderly façades are a hodge-podge of buildings.

Unveiled in 1699, the statue, enclosed by an iron fence and standing on a white marble pedestal, resembled the one that stands in la Place des Victoires today. Over 20 feet high, it depicted the bewigged Louis XIV astride his horse, dressed as a Roman emperor, facing la rue Saint-Honoré with his arm extended to the right.

The value of the lots went up and down like shares on a nervous stock market, and the first building was not completed until 1702. Most went to financiers and fermiers-généraux (wealthy tax-collectors), giving rise to a popular jingle about royal statues: Henri IV was on the Pont Neuf with his people, Louis XIII in la Place des Vosges with his gentlemen and Louis XIV in la Place Vendôme with his financiers. By 1720, five years after the king’s death, all work was finished.

Shortly before its completion, all remaining lots were bought by an enterprising Scotsman who would have a huge impact on France’s economy. John Law, who’d studied banking in Amsterdam, had written a book called “Money and Trade Considered with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money.” Although the Scottish parliament rejected his proposal, Law received permission in 1716 to try his plan in France, heavily in debt as a result of Louis XIV’s extensive wars.

But in Law’s opinion, reduction of public debt was only an incidental result of his plan. He saw money as a creative force that would stimulate a larger national product and an increase in national power. The Mississippi Company he created acquired a trade monopoly on the French Louisiana territory, then bought out the French East India Company. His bank, which became the state bank, was soon pouring out paper money, and Law was made controller-general of France. A speculative frenzy ensued.

The plan worked well at first, and by 1719 Law, who lived with his family at 23 Place Vendôme, was the most courted man in France. But the “Mississippi Bubble” soon burst, the result of political intrigue and speculative complications. Although none of it was directly attributable to Law, he and many others in France were ruined. On le 17 juillet 1720, a mob attacked his mansion and he narrowly escaped lynching. He died nine years later in Venice, a poor man.

Law was only one of a colorful cast of characters in la Place Vendôme. Numero 16 was once the home of Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer, whose experiments gave us the word “mesmerize.” Mesmer was convinced that astrological forces influenced health by means of an invisible fluid, and that a person could transmit these forces to others through “animal magnetism.”

He became famous in Austria for therapeutic sessions resembling seances, during which patients sat around a liquid-filled vat, holding hands or grasping iron bars protruding from the solution, while Mesmer walked behind them, placing “healing” hands on them. Accused of practicing magic, he left Austria for Paris.

Moving into la Place Vendôme in 1778, he was soon attracting so many patients that he launched a two-tiered system: the rich got the doctor himself, the poor his valet. When the mansion became too small for his thousands of patients, he moved to le X ème arrondissement. He was eventually discredited; in 1784 an investigative commission including Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier found that any cures were the result of “individual imagination.” Mesmer retired rich but died forgotten in 1815.

La Place Vendôme remained la Place Louis-le-Grand until the Revolution, when a mob toppled the king’s statue and sent it to a foundry (only the huge left foot, now in le Louvre, survived). Renamed la Place des Piques (lances), the square in which the nobility once danced at royal weddings was soon displaying their guillotined heads.

In 1799 it was finally named la Place Vendôme, and when Napoléon wanted to commemorate the Battle of Austerlitz, he ordered that “there shall be erected ... a column [like that] erected at Rome in honor of Trajan. The column shall be surrounded by a pedestal adorned with an olive wreath, on which there shall be a statue of Charlemagne.” But it didn’t turn out that way. Raised in 1806, the stone column was covered with a spiraling bas-relief depicting the story of the battle, cast from the melted bronze of over a thousand Austrian cannons. Four years later it was topped by a statue, not of Charlemagne but of Napoléon, dressed as a Roman emperor.

From then on the column was subjected to the whims of successive regimes. After Napoléon’s 1814 defeat, the statue was replaced by a giant fleur-de-lis. In 1833 Louis-Philippe erected a new statue of Napoléon, this time in a long overcoat and little hat (now at the Invalides). Napoléon III replaced this with a copy of the original statue, which toppled, along with the entire column, in 1871 during the Commune, largely at the instigation of painter Gustave Courbet. In 1873 the column and its statue were restored and re-erected at the artist’s expense, leaving him ruined.

During the Commune of 1870 - 1871, the statue of Napoléon, like Humpty-Dumpty, had a great fall.

Some art critics claim that the mammoth column (132 feet) spoils the proportions of la Place Vendôme, which was designed to hold a smaller statue. But, as John Russell writes in his book “Paris,” “this is a case in which affection must be allowed to override aesthetics; most of us, I think, would be sorry to see the column pulled down.”

A walk around today’s Place Vendôme will gives us an opportunity not only to acquire (or admire) some of the world’s finest jewelry, but to stroll through history. Let’s start at numero 1: L'hôtel de Vendôme stands on the site of the private mansion that gave the place its name. Now a beautifully appointed boutique hotel, it once housed the embassy of the Republic of Texas, from its declaration of independence in 1836 to its admission to the Union in 1845.

Numero 7 houses the contemporary diamond designs of the jeweler Fred, and, in the adjoining courtyard, the discreet boutique called JAR (for Joel Arthur Rosenthal). By appointment only, select clients are admitted to this reclusive American-born jeweler’s atelier, where one-of-a-kind creations are displayed in a museum-like setting. For the rest of us, the window usually displays one exquisite item.

The Ministère de la Justice occupies numeros 11 et 13, where the Revolutionary leader Danton lived with his wife in 1792. At the time, he was Minister of Justice (a coincidence, since the building did not house that ministry until 1815). However, he lost power as the Reign of Terror gained momentum and was guillotined in 1794. An interesting Revolutionary relic remains on the building - a standard metre in marbre, marble, placed there in 1795 to familiarize Parisians with the new unit of measurement.

Le Ministère de Justice

Le Ministère is flanked by the Ritz Hotel, where the ghosts of Proust, Coco Chanel and Hemingway still haunt the halls. It’s hard to imagine now what a groundbreaking event its opening in 1898 was. César Ritz, the Swiss farm boy whose hard work and original ideas elevated him from waiter to hôtelier, was managing a luxury hôtel in London when he decided to create a small, intimate and exclusive Paris hôtel, equipped and decorated with the very best, regardless of expense. The first Paris hôtel to offer private baths and suites of rooms, and the first to bear his name, it was a work of art. And although Ritz’s obsessive attention to detail nearly led to a nervous breakdown, his hôtel was a success from the start. Today, having a drink at one of the hôtel’s three bars - the charming terrace Bar Vendôme, newly decorated Bar Cambon or atmospheric Hemingway Bar—is a great way to experience the undeniable Ritz allure.

An awning at numero 21 still carries the name of legendary couturier Elsa Schiaparelli, a reminder of the days when her elegant and witty fashions, some embroidered with designs by Jean Cocteau, were sold in her boutique at this address.

Where Law was nearly lynched, the Dubail and Cartier boutiques (numero 23) start an unbroken line of jewelers that encircles the rest of la Place. Parisian jewelers began settling here at the end of le XIX ème siecle, and it’s been the center of the trade ever since. One of the first was Boucheron (Numero 26), which opened here in 1893. Its neighbor, Van Cleef & Arpels, moved into numeros 22 et 24 in 1906, giving it an unrivaled eight windows on la Place. For those whose budget doesn’t stretch to serious stones, most shops have introduced affordable boutique lines; some even carry perfume and accessories like handbags and sunglasses.

We wander from window to window to admire the displays. Tucked into the corner at Numero 20 is legendary watchmaker Breguet. Napoléon and Wellington both wore Breguet watches at Waterloo, and he even supplied the imprisoned Marie Antoinette with a simple watch, perhaps to count her remaining hours.

Breguet’s neighbor, Mauboussin, a sixth-generation family firm known for surprising color combinations of precious stones, recently renovated its boutique, creating the most accessible and inviting shop on the Place. Jewelry and accessories are displayed in a luminous decor of soft apple green, turquoise and lavender, with Deco-inspired chairs and sculpted wood tables. Its most unique feature is the cave à diamants, where glass cases, equipped with an ingenious sliding jeweler’s loupe, display unset diamonds along with their quality ratings and price, ranging from a modest .19-carat stone at 240E to a 2.26-carat dazzler at 27,850E.

Continuing past Chanel and Piaget, wel find that Comme des Garçons and Swatch now occupy Dr. Mesmer’s former clinic at Numero 16, while Chaumet, at Numero 18, is housed in the building where Frédéric Chopin spent his last months and died in 1849. The Chaumet boutique is typical of these security-heavy shops, where we must ring for entry. Inside, at velvet-topped tables, prospective buyers admire sparkling necklaces and brooches carried out from back rooms on little trays. One of Paris’ most historic jewelers, Chaumet, founded in 1780, created Napoléon’s coronation crown and Josephine’s tiaras, as well as exquisite gems for everyone from Russian countesses to American actresses. The array of glittering windows continues through Bulgari, Patek Philippe, Mikimoto, Dior, Repossi and Buccellati, with Damiani closing the circle at la rue de Castiglione.

Although all the shops empty their windows at closing time, la Place Vendôme remains one of Paris’ loveliest spots at night, when facades are bathed in soft light and the central column glows with artful illumination. That’s when we think of another famous inhabitant, the Comtesse de Castiglione. As a young beauty, the “divina contessa,” mistress to Napoléon III, entertained all of fashionable Europe. In later years, no longer the toast of the town, she moved into an apartment at numero 26 where she lived alone, so distressed at the ruin of her looks that she covered all the mirrors, shrouded the walls in black and emerged only after dark, heavily veiled.

La Place Vendôme à nuit. Bijouterie Cartier au-dessous.

Perhaps it’s just as well that the madwoman of la Place Vendôme, as she came to be known, can’t see her former home today. Because la Place Vendôme, ageless and ever-fashionable, remains just as splendid today as it was when the Sun King had it built over three hundred years ago.

Having window-shopped les bijouteries and having absorbed a bit of the history of this pretty square, we now turn south on rue de Castiglione and continue on toward rue de Rivoli. Before reaching rue de Rivoli, we cross rue du Mont Thabor. On our right at Numero 36 is Le Soufflé, which specializes in just that. We could step into the pretty salon du thé, Angelina at 226, rue de Rivoli for a steaming and satisfying tasse du chocolat à l'ancien, or for the anglophones among us, we could stop into the British-owned W.H. Smith librarie at Numero 248 before boarding le Métro at Concorde for our trip home.

More Reading:

The Place Vendome: Architecture and Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Paris

Composer's Houses

Families of Fortune: Life in the Gilded Age

On this day: explorateur Sieur de la Salle claims Louisiana, le 9 Avril 1682

2006-04-09T22:16:00.000+02:00

René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle

René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle was born on le 22 novembre 1643 in Rouen, Normandie.

La Salle was a French explorer in North America, who led an expedition down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and on this day, le 9 avril in 1682, claimed all the region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries for Louis XIV, naming the region “Louisiana.” A few years later, in a luckless expedition seeking the mouth of the Mississippi, he was murdered by his men on le 19 mars 1687 near the Brazos River in Texas.

La Salle was educated at a Jesuit college. He first studied for the priesthood, but at the age of 22 he found himself more attracted to adventure and exploration and in 1666 set out for Canada to seek his fortune. With a grant of land at the western end of Île de Montréal, La Salle acquired at one stroke the status of a seigneur (i.e., landholder) and the opportunities of a frontiersman.

The young landlord farmed his land near the Lachine Rapids and, at the same time, set up a fur-trading outpost. Through contact with the Indians who came to sell their pelts, he learned various Indian dialects and heard stories of the lands beyond the settlements. He soon became obsessed with the idea of finding a way to the Orient through the rivers and lakes of the Western frontier.

If experience modified the visions of the dreamer, it enhanced the knowledge and skill of the pathfinder and trader. Having sold his land, La Salle set out in 1669 to explore the Ohio region. His discovery of the Ohio River, however, is not accepted by modern historians.

La Salle found a kindred spirit in the Count de Frontenac, the “Fighting Governor” of New France (the French possessions in Canada) from 1672 to 1682. Together, they pursued a policy of extending French military power by establishing a fort on Lake Ontario (Fort-Frontenac), holding the Iroquois in check, and intercepting the fur trade between the Upper Lakes and the Dutch and English coastal settlements.

Map of what is now Canada and the U.S. in La Salle's time

Their plans were strongly opposed by the Montreal merchants, who feared the loss of their trade, and by the missionaries (especially the Jesuits), who were afraid of losing their influence over the Indians of the interior. Nevertheless, Fort-Frontenac was built where Kingston now stands, and La Salle was installed there as seigneur in 1675 after a visit to the French court, as Frontenac's representative. The governor had recommended him as “a man of intelligence and ability, more capable than anybody else I know here to accomplish every kind of enterprise and discovery . . . .” Louis XIV was sufficiently impressed by him to grant him a title of nobility.

At Fort-Frontenac, La Salle had control of a large share of the fur trade, and his affairs prospered. But his restless ambition drove him to seek greater ends. On another visit to France in 1677 he obtained from the king authority to explore “the western parts of New France” and permission to build as many forts as he wished, as well as to hold a valuable monopoly of the trade in buffalo hides.

Since the project had to be carried out at his own expense, however, he borrowed large sums in both Paris and Montreal, and he began to be enmeshed in a tangle of debts that was to blight all of his later enterprises. La Salle's proposals also roused still further the enmity of the Jesuits, who resolutely opposed all his schemes.

When he returned to Canada in 1678, La Salle was accompanied by an Italian soldier of fortune, Henri de Tonty, who became his most loyal friend and ally. Early in the following year, he built the “Griffon,” the first commercial sailing vessel on Lake Erie, which he hoped would pay for an expedition into the interior as far as the Mississippi. From the Seneca Indians above the Niagara Falls he learned how to make long journeys overland, on foot in any season, subsisting on game and a small bag of corn. His trek from Niagara to Fort-Frontenac in the dead of winter won the admiration of a normally critical member of his expeditions, the friar Louis Hennepin.

La Salle's great scheme of carrying cargo in sailing vessels like the “Griffon” on the lakes and down the Mississippi was frustrated by the wreck of that ship and by the destruction and desertion of Fort-Crèvecoeur on the Illinois River, where a second ship was being built in 1680. Proud and unyielding by nature, La Salle tried to bend others to his will and often demanded too much of them, though he was no less hard on himself. After several disappointments, he at last reached the junction of the Illinois with the Mississippi and saw for the first time the river he had dreamed of for so long. But he had to deny himself the chance to explore it. Hearing that Tonty and his party were in danger, he turned back to aid them.

After many vicissitudes, La Salle and Tonty succeeded in canoeing down the Mississippi and reached the Gulf of Mexico. There, on le 9 avril 1682, the explorer proclaimed the whole Mississippi Basin for France and named it Louisiana. In name, at least, he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent.

La Salle with Indians on the Mississippi

The following year La Salle built Fort-Saint-Louis at Starved Rock on the Illinois River (now a state park), and here he organized a colony of several thousand Indians. To maintain the new colony he sought help from Quebec; but Frontenac had been replaced by a governor hostile to La Salle's interests, and La Salle received orders to surrender Fort-Saint-Louis. He refused and left North America to appeal directly to the king. Welcomed in Paris, La Salle was given an audience with Louis XIV, who favoured him by commanding the governor to make full restitution of La Salle's property.

The last phase of his extraordinary career centred on his proposal to fortify the mouth of the Mississippi and to invade and conquer part of the Spanish province of Mexico. He planned to accomplish all this with some 200 Frenchmen, aided by buccaneers and an army of 15,000 Indians—a venture that caused his detractors to question his sanity. But the king saw a chance to harass the Spaniards, with whom he was at war, and approved the project, giving La Salle men, ships, and money.

The expedition was doomed from the start. It had hardly left France when quarrels arose between La Salle and the naval commander. Vessels were lost by piracy and shipwreck, while sickness took a heavy toll of the colonists. Finally, a gross miscalculation brought the ships to Matagorda Bay in Texas, 500 miles west of their intended landfall. After several fruitless journeys in search of his lost Mississippi, La Salle met his death at the hands of mutineers near the Brazos River. His vision of a French empire died with him.

La Salle provoked much controversy both in his own lifetime and later. Those who knew him best praised his ability unsparingly. He was considered “one of the greatest men of the age” by Tonty, who, like Frontenac, was among the very few who were able to understand the proud spirit of the dour Norman. Henri Joutel, who served under La Salle through the tragic days of the Texas colony until his death, wrote both of his fine qualities and of his insufferable arrogance toward his subordinates. In Joutel's view, this arrogance was the true cause of La Salle's death.

Undoubtedly, La Salle was hampered by faults of character and lacked the qualities of leadership. On the other hand, he possessed prodigious vision, tenacity, and courage. His claim of Louisiana for France, though but a vain boast at the time, pointed the way to the French colonial empire that was eventually built by other men.

More Reading:

Salle: A Life of Boundless Adventure

National Geographic Voices from Colonial America: Louisiana 1682-1803

Promenades de Paris - Le Palais Royal

2006-04-05T04:41:00.000+02:00

The whimsical Métro station, Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre on rue de Rivoli appropriately enough, located near la Comédie Française.
Promenades de Paris - la Série
1. Promenades den Paris...le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries
2. Promenades de Paris...le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries

Aujord'hui nous faisons nôtre troisième promenade de Paris. Nous prenons le Métro à Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre. The Palais Royal is lovely - and amazingly hidden despite its location on rue Saint-Honoré one street over from le Louvre and les Jardins des Tuileries on rue de Rivoli. Alors, grab your plan de Paris, your carnet pour le Métro et allons-y!

Les Jardins du Palais Royal - Place Colette

When we step out of le Métro on rue de Rivoli, we cross one block north to rue Saint-Honoré and arrive at la Place du Palais Royal. We will cross la Place Colette, named for the scandalous writer and stage performer. Turning onto rue de Richelieu, we will pass the Boutique de la Comédie Française, which is full of reprints of costume sketches, old-fashioned puzzles, playing cards and other theatrical memorabilia.

Arcades of le Palais Royal.
Now tournez à droite, turn right, into le Palais Royal. We'll stroll the length of the arcades, taking in the eclectic array of shops and galleries and the goings-on in the central garden, where locals meet at dejeuner, lunch, to play pétanque. A popular spot for dejeuner is Muscade at 67, galerie de Montpensier, located in the northwest corner.
Restaurant Muscade, Palais Royal
Louis la Vache is of the opinion that the black and white-striped columns in la Cour d'Honneur dishonor la Cour d'Honneur. These columns were placed here about the same time several other architectural monstrosities were visited upon Paris: le centre Georges Pompidou and l'opéra Bastille.
Louis la Vache feels that these black and white-striped poles dishonor la Cour d'Honneur at le Palais Royal.
Louis, having gotten that rant off his chest, will now lead us to the lovely jardin des fleurs, a location that Louis has found to be a good spot to indulge in some people-watching. We'll check out le Prince Jardinier at 37, rue de Valois on the eastern side, to admire the French talent for display. Even the twine in this shop is beautifully packaged.
A display at le Prince Jardinier
Now we'll exit to the north onto rue Vivienne. About half-way up the block, we will turn into la galerie Vivienne, the most elegant of Paris's few remaining covered passages. Lined with myriad shops and cafés, la gallerie Vivienne is a real gem. We'll pause at A Priori Thé, a fine Parisian salon de thé, for tea. (The British have the reputation of having a huge thirst for tea, and rightly so. What few people realize is the French also drink a lot of thé, and many Parisian salons de thé are quite elegant.)
A Priori Thé, galerie Vivienne
Having refreshed ourselves at A Priori, we will exit galerie Vivienne, turn right, then left to la Place des Victoires. Now we turn right down rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs and left into la galerie Véro-Dodat for more window-shopping. Ladies, when you become rich and famous, you can treat yourself to the extravagantly-priced makeovers and cosmetics at By Terry Cosmetics.

Having safely passed By Terry Cosmetics with our wallets intact, we exit galerie Véro-Dodat onto rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, window-shop our way down rue de Rivoli and once again board le Métro at Louvre-Rivoli.
More Reading:

Historic Restaurants of Paris: A Guide to Century-Old Cafes, Bistros, and Gourmet Food Shops

Impressionists' Paris: Walking Tours of Their Studios, Homes and the Sites They Painted

Paris Walking Guide: Where to Go, Where to Eat, What to Do

Le Poisson d'Avril

2006-04-01T06:36:00.000+02:00

Le poisson d'avril (literally "April's fish"), attempting to attach a paper fish to the victim's back without being noticed, is la version française of the April Fool tradition.

Poisson d'avril pour blonde: Tu lui donnes un condom. Tu lui dis que c'est le nouveau moyen que le bureau a adopté contre les virus.

Well, that's one way to attach the fish....

...and, no fooling, le premier avril est l'anniversaire de Louis la Vache.

Canulars célèbre du premier avril

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi: The April 1998 newsletter of New Mexicans for Science and Reason contained an article claiming that the Alabama legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi to the "Biblical value" of 3.0.

Spaghetti trees: The BBC television programme Panorama ran a famous hoax in 1957, showing the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees.

Left Handed Whoppers: In 1998, Burger King ran an ad in USA Today, saying that people could get a Whopper for left-handed people whose condiments were designed to drip out the right side.

Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, Taco Bell took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times announcing that they had purchased the Liberty Bell to "reduce the country's debt" and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." When asked about the sale, White House press secretary Mike McCurry replied with tongue in cheek that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold and would henceforth be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

San Serriffe: The Guardian (UK) printed a supplement in 1977 praising this fictional resort, its two main islands (Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse), its capital (Bodoni), and its leader (General Pica). Intrigued readers were later disappointed to learn that sans serif did not exist except as references to typeface terminology.

Metric time: Repeated several times in various countries, this hoax involves claiming that the time system will be changed to a one where units of time vary by powers of 10.

Smell-o-vision: In 1965, the BBC purported to conduct a trial of a new technology allowing the transmission of odor over the airwaves to all viewers. Many viewers reportedly contacted the BBC to report the trial's success.

Tower of Pisa: The Dutch television news reported once in the 1950s that the Tower of Pisa had fallen. Many shocked and even mourning people contacted the station.

Wrapping Televisions in Foil: In another year, the Dutch television news reported that the government had new technology to detect unlicensed televisions (in many European countries, television license fees fund public broadcasting), but that wrapping a television in aluminium foil could prevent its detection. Within a few hours, aluminium foil was sold out throughout the country.

Plus blagues:

World's Greatest Practical Jokes

On this day: compositeur Claude Debussy died, le 25 Mars 1918

2006-03-25T03:36:00.000+01:00

Claude Debussy

French compositeur Achille-Claude Debussy was a contemporary of the painters of the impressionniste movement such as Monet, Manet, Morisot, Cézanne and Renoir. He developed the style commonly referred to as musique impressionniste, a term which he depised. Debussy was not only one of the most important French composers but was also one of the most important figures in music at the turn of the XX ème siecle. His music represents the transition from late-romantic music to XX ème siecle modernist music.

Debussy was born on le 22 août 1862. He began taking music instruction when he was nine years old. His talents soon became evident and at age ten Debussy enteredle Conservatoire de Paris. Debussy studied there with Ernest Guiraud, César Franck and others. As the winner of the Prix de Rome, he received a scholarship by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which included a four-year residence at the Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome to further his studies (1885-7). According to letters from this period, Debussy often was depressed and unable to compose, but he also met Franz Liszt, and finally composed four pieces, which were sent to the Academy. One of these four pieces was the cantata La damoiselle élue, which was criticized by the Academy as "bizarre" and in which some stylistic features of Debussy's later style emerged for the first time.

With his visits to Bayreuth in 1888 and 1889 Debussy was exposed to Wagnerian opéra, which was to have a lasting impact on his work. Later, in Paris, during l'Exposition Universelle (1889) Debussy heard Javanese music. Wagner's influence is evident in La damoiselle élue and les Cinq poèmes de Baudelaire (1889) but other songs of the period, notably the settings of Verlaine (Ariettes oubliées, Trois mélodies, Fêtes galantes, set 1) are in a more capricious style.

Beginning in the 1890s, Debussy developed his own musical language largely independent of Wagner's style and heavy emotionalism. In reaction to the enormous works of Wagner and other late-romantic composers, Debussy chose to write in smaller, more accessible forms. Debussy's "String Quartet in G minor" (1893) paved the way for his later, more daring harmonic exploration. In this work he utilized the Phrygian mode as well as less standard modes, such as the whole-tone scale, which creates a sense of floating, ethereal harmony.

Influenced by the contemporary symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé Debussy wrote one of his most famous works, the revolutionary Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. In contrast to the large late-romantic orchestra, Debussy wrote this piece for a smaller ensemble, emphasizing orchestral colours and timbres of the instruments. Even if Mallarmé himself and Debussy's colleague and friend Paul Dukas were impressed by this piece, the work caused controversy at its premiere; the composer Camille Saint-Saëns for example thought it "pretty" but lacking any "style". Nonetheless, this piece launched Debussy into the spotlight as one of the leading composers of the era.

In reaction to Wagner and his overblown late-romantic opéras, Debussy wrote the mellow, symbolist opéra Pelléas et Mélisande, which would be his only finished opéra. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, the opéra proved to be immensely influential to younger French composers, including Maurice Ravel. Pelléas, with its rule of understatement and deceptively simple declamation, also brought an entirely new tone to opéra. These works brought a fluidity of rhythm and colour quite new to Western music.

Among Debussy's major orchestral works are the three Nocturnes (1899), characteristic studies in veiled harmony and texture (Nuages), exuberant (Fêtes'), and whole-tone (Sirènes). La Mer (1903-1905) essays a more symphonic form, with a finale that works themes from the first movement, although the middle movement (Jeux de vagues) proceeds much less directly and with more variety of colour.

The three Images (1905-1911) are more loosely linked, and the largest, Ibéria is itself a triptych, a medley of Spanish allusions and fleeting impressions.

During this period Debussy wrote much piano music. The Suite bergamasque (1890) recalls, in Verlainian fashion, rococo decorousness with a modern cynicism and puzzlement. This suite contains Debussy's most popular piece Clair de Lune, "moonlight." The set of pieces entitled Pour le piano, (1901) utilises rich harmonies and textures which would prove influential to Jazz music. His first volume of Images pour piano (1904–1905), combine harmonic innovation with poetic suggestion. Reflets dans l'eau is a musical description of rippling water. Hommage à Rameau, the second piece, is a slow, mysterious court dance, but only remotely in the manner of Jean-Philippe Rameau. In his evocative Estampes for piano (1903), Debussy gives impressions of exotic locations, such as an Asian landscape in the pentatonic Pagodes, and of Spain in La soirée dans Grenade. Debussy wrote his famous "Children's Corner Suite" (1909) for his beloved daughter whom he nicknamed Chou-chou. These beautiful and poetic pieces recall classicism as well as a new wave of rag-time music. Debussy also pokes fun at Richard Wagner in the popular piece "Golliwogg's Cake-walk."

Debussy and his daughter whom he nicknamed "Chou-chou."

The first set of Preludes, twelve in total, proved to be his most successful set of pieces for piano, frequently compared to Chopin's famous set of preludes. These masterpieces of subtlety and description are filled with rich, unusual and daring harmonies. These pieces include the popular La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin and La Cathédrale Engloutie.

During this period and up until his death, Debussy worked on other opéra projects and left substantial sketches for two pieces after tales by Edgar Allan Poe (Le diable dans le beffroi and La chute de la maison Usher), but neither was completed.

The harmonies and chord progressions frequently exploit dissonances without any formal resolution. Unlike in his earlier work, Debussy no longer hides discords in lush harmonies. The forms are far more irregular and fragmented. The whole tone scale dominates much of his late music.

The music for Gabriele d'Annunzio's mystery play Le martyre de St. Sébastien (1911) a lush and dramatic work and written in only two months, is remarkable in sustaining a late antique modal atmosphere that otherwise was touched only in relatively short piano pieces.

The last orchestral work by Debussy, the ballet Jeux (1912) written for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, contains some of his strangest harmonies and textures in a form that moves freely over its own field of motivic connection. At first Jeux was overshadowed by Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring," composed in the same year as Jeux and premiered only two weeks later by the same ballet company. Decades later, composers such as Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué pointed out parallels to Anton Webern's serialism in this work. Other late stage works, including the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913) were left with the orchestration incomplete, and were later completed by Charles Koechlin and André Caplet, who also helped Debussy with the orchestration of Gigues (from Images pour orchestre) and Le martyre de St. Sébastien.

Debussy with Igor Stravinsky

The second set of Preludes pour piano (1913) features Debussy at his most avant-garde, sometimes utilising dissonant harmonies to evoke moods and images, especially in the mysterious Canope; the title refers to a burial urn which stood on Debussy working desk and evokes a distant past. The pianist Claudio Arrau considered the piece as one of Debussy's greatest preludes: "It's miraculous that he created, in so few notes, this kind of depth."

His two last volumes of works for the piano, les Études (1915) interprets similar varieties of style and texture purely as pianistic exercises and includes pieces that develop irregular form to an extreme as well as others influenced by the young Igor Stravinsky (a presence too in the suite En blanc et noir for two pianos, 1915). The rarefaction of these works is a feature of the last set of songs, les Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913), and of the "Sonata for flute, viola and harp" (1915), though the sonata and its companions also recapture the inquisitive Verlainian classicism.

With the sonatas of 1915-1917, there is a sudden shift in the style. These works recall Debussy's earlier music, in part, but also look forward, with leaner, simpler structures. Despite the thinner textures of the "Violin Sonata" (1917) there remains an undeniable richness in the chords themselves. This shift parallels the movement commonly known as neo-classicism which was to become popular after Debussy's death. Debussy planned a set of six sonatas, but this plan was cut short by his death in 1918.

Claude Debussy died in Paris on les 25 mars 1918 from rectal cancer, during the bombardment of Paris by airships and long-distance guns during the last German offensive of World War I. This was a time when the military situation of France was considered desperate by many, and these circumstances did not permit his being paid the honour of a public funeral, or ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets as shells from the German guns ripped into his beloved city. He was interred there in le Cimetière de Passy, and French culture has ever since celebrated Debussy as one of its most distinguished representatives.

Debussy at le Cimetière de Passy.

This post was sourced from Claude Debussy.org and other sources.

More Reading

Debussy Remembered

Debussy (The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers Series)

Debussy and His World

Listening to Debussy:

Debussy: La Mer, etc.

Debussy, Ravel: String Quartets

Debussy: Orchestral Music

Birthday Boy Bach Boogies to His321 ème anniversaire

2006-03-21T21:00:00.000+01:00

Johann Sebastian Bach. His last name means "brook." No Frogs are known to have occupied this brook, though he did incorporate French influences into his music.

As we occassionally do at The Frog Blog, today we will step across the eastern border of la belle France into Allemagne for a tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach.

It is said by some musicologists that "the high German Baroque of music began on le 21 mars 1685 when J.S. Bach was born and ended on le 28 juillet 1750 when he died."

Bach came from a long line of German musicians, and many of his surviving sons followed him with musical careers. The word "bach" in German means "brook" or "stream." Bach never left Germany, but he incorporated and improved upon French and Italian musical modes and wrote a stream of music that has flowed throughout the world.

Bach's youngest son, Johann Christian, became a good friend of and musical influence on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Another German, this one with a French connection via his birth in Alsace, Doctor Albert Schweitzer became a splendid interpreter of Bach's music on the organ and piano and wrote a fine two-volume biography of Bach. When living in Africa, in camp-like conditions, one of the few luxuries Schweitzer allowed himself was a piano so that he could continue to play the music of Bach.

Bach's music became the backbone of Lutheran church music, an influence that continues to this day. His music inspired the Swiss-German theologian Karl Barth (a contemporary of Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhöffer) to write something that Louis la Vache loves to quote:

Wenn der Herr Gott im Himmel sienen Engeln
When God in Heaven commands his Angels

Musik für ihr zu spielen, spielen sie immer B a c h.
to play music for him, they always play B a c h.

Aber wenn sie Musik für sich selbst spielen,
But when they play music just for themselves,

Spielen sie immer M o z a r t .
they always play M o z a r t .

Part of the utter genius of Bach's music is that each line of music can stand alone, yet when played with the other lines in the piece, that one line becomes an inseparable part of the fabric of the piece. This characteristic of Bach's music is also shared by jazz - so in that sense, Bach could be considered the "father of jazz."

Johann Sebastian Bach was the son of Johann Ambrosius, court trumpeter for the Duke of Eisenach and director of the musicians of the town of Eisenach in Thuringia. For more than 200 years, the Bach family had produced dozens of worthy performers and composers. The name "Bach" had come to be used as a synonym for "musician."

The family in the town of Eisenach, a community of some 6,000 people, lived in a reasonably spacious home just above the town center, with rooms for apprentice musicians. Here young Johann Sebastian was taught by his father to play the violin and the harpsichord. He was also initiated into the art of organ playing by his famous uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, who was then organist at the Georgenkirche in Eisenach. Sebastian was a very willing pupil and soon became extraordinarily proficient with these instruments.

When he was eight years old he went to the old Latin Grammar School, where Martin Luther had once been a pupil; he was taught reading and writing, Latin grammar, and a great deal of scripture, both in Latin and German. The boys of the school formed the choir of the St. Georgenkirche, which gave Johann Sebastian an opportunity to sing in the regular services, as well as in the nearby villages. He was described as having 'an uncommonly fine treble voice'. The Lutheran spirit would have been strong in Eisenach, for it was in the Wartburg Castle standing high above the town, that Martin Luther, in hiding from his Roman Catholic persecutors, translated the New Testament into German.

Roads were still unpaved in the smaller towns, sewage and refuse disposal poorly organized, and the existence of germs not yet scientifically discovered. Mortality rates were high as a result. At an early age Johann Sebastian lost a sister and later a brother. When he was only nine years old his mother died. Barely nine months later his father also died.

Johann Sebastian and one of his brothers, Johann Jakob, were taken into the home of their eldest brother, Johann Christoph (born in 1671) who had recently married and settled down at Ohrdruf, a small town thirty miles south-east of Eisenach. Johann Christoph, a former pupil of Pachelbel, was now well established as organist of the St. Michaeliskirche, Ohrdruf.

Johann Christoph was an excellent teacher - all of his five sons were to reach positions of some eminence in music, and he was a keen student of the latest keyboard compositions.

Johann Sebastian at once settled down happily in this household studying the organ and harpsichord with great interest under his brother, and he quickly mastered all the pieces he had been given. When a new organ was installed at the Ohrdruf church, Christoph allowed his young brother to watch its construction, a precursor to Johann Sebastian's lifelong professional activity as a consultant in the building and restoration of organs. Christoph also encouraged Johann Sebastian to study composition and set Sebastian to copying music by German organist composers such as Jakob Froberger, Johann Caspar Kerll and Pachelbel. An anecdote tells how Christoph punished his young brother when he discovered he had copied a forbidden musical manuscript by moonlight over a period of six months, and confiscated the precious copy.

During this period Johann Sebastian attended the Gymnasium (grammar school) of Ohrdruf, once a monastic foundation, which had become one of the most progressive schools in Germany. He made excellent progress in Latin, Greek and theology, and had reached the top form at a very early age. The scholars of the Gymnasium, as at Eisenach, were also employed as choir-boys, and their Cantor, Elias Herda, had a high opinion of Johann Sebastian's voice and musical capabilities.

It was his excellent treble voice that found Johann Sebastian a position in the choir of the wealthy Michaelis monastery at Lüneburg, which was known to provide a free place for boys who were poor but with musical talent. This was no doubt arranged by Elias Herda who had held a scholarship there himself.

In le printemps, spring, of 1700 Johann Sebastian set out with his schoolfriend, Georg Erdmann, who was also joining the choir, on the journey of a hundred and eighty miles north to Lüneburg. It is not known how they traveled; most probably the journey would have been undertaken largely on foot, relieved where possible with a lift on a river barge or farmer's cart. Doubtless the two boys would have been given free food and accommodation in the many monasteries along the route.

When Johann Sebastian reached this north German musical center, he was well received because of his uncommonly beautiful treble voice, and was immediately appointed to the select body of singers who formed the 'Mettenchor' (Matins Choir). Their obligations to sing were many, and Johann Sebastian thus had a unique chance to participate in choral and orchestral performances on a scale unknown in the poorer Thuringian towns of his homeland. He was also freely permitted to study the fine library of music in the Gymnasium, which included some of the best examples of German church music.

The growing boy soon lost his treble voice, but was able to make himself useful as a violinist in the orchestra, and as an accompanist at the harpsichord during choir rehearsals.

During this period he was fortunate in meeting Georg Böhm, organist of the Johanniskirche at Lüneburg, who himself had been a pupil of the famous organist Jan Adams Reinken in Hamburg, and was a friend of the Bach family in Ohrdruf. Böhm introduced Johann Sebastian to the great organ traditions of Hamburg, to which city he made several pilgrimages on foot. He also came under the influence of French instrumental music when, through his great proficiency on the violin, he played at the Court of Celle, 50 miles south of Lüneburg. Though distinctly German in its construction and outer appearance, Celle Castle was known as a 'miniature Versailles' for its rich interiors and then-current musical tastes.

When he was nearly eighteen, Johann Sebastian, considerably enriched by these musical experiences, decided he would try to find employment as an organist in his native Thuringia. He was greatly interested in an organ under construction in the new church of Arnstadt, and as members of his family had been professionally active in the district for generations, he felt he had a good chance of getting the post. So in 1702 he left Lüneburg and returned South.

Bach as a young man

While awaiting the completion of the organ at Arnstadt, Sebastian was offered, and accepted the post of violinist in the small chamber orchestra of Duke Johann Ernst, the younger brother of the Duke of Weimar. At Lüneburg he had already experienced church choir music, violin, continuo and organ playing, as well as musical composition and performance en le style français. Here at Weimar he now came into contact with Italian instrumental music, and acted as deputy to the aging Court Organist, Effler, an old friend of the Bach family, thus having a chance to keep his organ playing in practice. His stay here was short, but he was to return later.

In juillet 1703 the Arnstadt Town Council invited young Bach to try out the newly finished organ in the 'New Church', so called as it had been almost totally rebuilt having been seriously damaged by fire. He so impressed the people of Arnstadt with his brilliant playing at the dedication that he was immediately offered the post of organist on very favorable terms.

At the end of 1703, 18-year-old Sebastian took up his post at the small town of Arnstadt, no doubt thrilled at having his own relatively large organ of two manuals and 23 stops, and the responsibility of providing music for his own congregation.

In octobre 1705, the Church Council granted Bach leave to visit the north-German city of Lübeck to hear the great organist, Dietrich Buxtehude. In Lübeck he took every chance to hear Buxtehude play, and to attend the famous evening concerts in the Marienkirche when Buxtehude's church cantatas were performed. Bach was so fascinated by these concerts, and by his discussions on the arts with the great master, that he remained in Lübeck over le noël until the following février.

He returned to Arnstadt three months late, having also visited Reincken in Hamburg and Böhm in Lüneburg on the way, full of new ideas and enthusiasm which he immediately put into practice in his playing. The congregation however was completely surprised and bewildered by his new musical ideas: there was considerable confusion during the singing of the chorales, caused by his "surprising variations and irrelevant ornaments which obliterate the melody and confuse the congregation".

The Church Council resolved to reprimand Bach on his 'strange sounds' during the services, and they also asked him to explain the unauthorized extension of his leave in Lübeck. Bach did not attempt to justify himself before what must have seemed to him a group of narrow minded old gentlemen; yet the Council, knowing how skilled his playing was, decided to treat their young and impetuous organist with leniency.

However, new conflicts soon arose when Bach, citing a clause in his contract, refused to work any longer with the undisciplined boys' choir which he had been required to train for the sake of Council economy. For this the Council further reprimanded him and also added the complaint that he had been "entertaining a strange damsel" to music in organ loft of the church. The young lady was probably his cousin, Maria Barbara, whom he was later to marry.

Thus, what had been an exciting and promising start at Arnstadt, had now turned into recriminations and disputes; Bach no doubt decided it would be better to look around for somewhere new.

At the end of 1706, he heard that the organist to the town of Mühlhausen had died. Knowing that Mühlhausen had a long musical tradition, he applied for the post, and after yet another very successful audition at the imposing cathedral-like St Blasius Church on le dimanche de Pâques, Easter Sunday 1707, he was accepted, again on very favorable terms. So en juin 1707 he returned the keys of his office to the Arnstadt Council and left quietly with his few belongings for Mühlhausen.

Bach arrived at Mühlhausen, a small Thuringian town proud of its ancient foundation and independence, to take up the post of organist to the town. Unfortunately, a quarter of the whole town had recently been devastated by fire; it was difficult for him to find suitable dwellings, and he was thus forced to pay a high rent. Nevertheless, shortly after his arrival, he brought his cousin Maria Barbara from Arnstadt, and on le 17 octobre 1707 he married her at the small church in the picturesque little village of Dornheim. Maria Barbara came from a branch of the musical Bach family, her father being organist at Gehren.

By now Bach had high ideals for the church music of Germany, and to start with, he began organizing the rather poor facilities of Mühlhausen; he began by making a large collection of the best German music available, including some of his own, and set about training the choir and a newly created orchestra to play the music.

The first result of these efforts was his cantata "Gott ist mein König" (God is my King), BWV 71, given in hitherto unknown splendor in the spacious Marienkirche to celebrate the inauguration of the Town Council en février 1708. This success gave Bach the courage to put in a long and detailed report, proposing a complete renovation and improvement of the organ in the St. Blasiuskirche. The Council agreed to carry out the renovation and improvements, and Bach was given the task of supervising the work, for not only was he now a brilliant player, he had also become an expert on the construction of organs.

However, before the organ was completed, a religious controversy arose in Mühlhausen between the orthodox Lutherans, who were lovers of music, and the Pietists, who were strict puritans and distrusted art and music. Bach was apprehensive of the latter's growing influence, in addition to the fact that his immediate superior was a Pietist. Music in Mühlhausen seemed to be in a state of decay, and so once more he looked around for more promising possibilities.

Former contacts made in Weimar were now useful; the Duke of Weimar offered him a post among his Court chamber musicians, and on le 25 juin 1708, Bach sent in his letter of resignation to the authorities at Mühlhausen, stating very diplomatically that not only was he finding it difficult to keep a wife on the small salary agreed to on his arrival, but that he could see no chance of realizing his final aim, namely the establishment of a proper church music 'to the glory of God'. The Council had little option but to allow his departure. However, the situation was concluded quite amicably and Bach was asked that he should continue to supervise the rebuilding of the St Blasiuskirche organ. This he did, and some time in 1709 he came over to inaugurate its first performance.

Weimar was quite a small town with only 5000 inhabitants; yet Bach was to meet some very cultured people here. Not least was his employer, the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar, one of the most distinguished and cultured nobles of his time.

Bach's two-fold position as member of the chamber orchestra and as Organist to the Court offered him many opportunities for improvement.

The Court Orchestra consisted of about 22 players: a compact string ensemble, a bassoon player, 6 or 7 trumpeters and a timpanist. Bach's function in the orchestra was mainly as a violinist, however he also played the harpsichord and occasionally wrote or arranged some of the music. As was the custom in most Courts of le XVIII ème siecle, the musicians also spent some of their time employed in household and domestic duties.

In 1714 Bach became the leader of the orchestra, and was now second only to the old and frail Capellmeister Johann Samuel Drese, whose duties he was gradually taking over.

As Court Organist, Bach had succeeded Johann Effler, a musician of some standing. The organ was new and not quite as large as the one at Arnstadt. After a few years, Bach declared that it was inadequate and should be rebuilt. It was in fact rebuilt at great expense according to his plans: proof of the high regard the Court had for his capabilities as organist and expert on organ construction.

During this period he wrote profusely for the organ, and he was rapidly becoming known throughout the country as one of the greatest German organists. Organ pupils came to him from far and wide, and he was asked to test or dedicate many organs in various towns. His tests were extremely thorough and critical. He used to say for fun 'Above all I must know whether the organ has a good lung', and, pulling out all the stops he produced the largest sound possible, often making the organ builders go pale with fright. He would usually complete his trial by improvising a prelude and fugue: the prelude to test the organ's power, the fugue to test its clarity for counterpoint. Constantin Bellermann describes his playing (during a visit to Kassel) in these words; "His feet seemed to fly across the pedals as if they were winged, and mighty sounds filled the church." Mizler's 'Nekrolog' states: "His fingers were all of equal strength, all equally able to play with the finest precision. He had invented so comfortable a fingering that he could master the most difficult parts with perfect ease (using 5 fingers instead of the then normal 3). He was able to accomplish passages on the pedals with his feet which would have given trouble to the fingers of many a clever player on the keyboard."

On a visit to Halle in 1713, during which he gave a trial cantata (probably BWV 21), he was invited to become organist in succession to Zachau, a composer well-known, and celebrated as Handel's early teacher. However, the conditions and salary were not sufficient for his growing family, so he was obliged to refuse the post.

On a visit to Dresden, Bach was invited to compete in a contest with the visiting organiste français, Louis Marchand, considered to be one of the best in Europe. But, on the day appointed for the contest, Marchand decided to withdraw discreetly by taking the fastest coach available back to France. And so Bach gave an impressive solo performance before the assembled audience and referees, establishing himself as the finest organist of the day.

Bach made some very good friends at Weimar, among whom was the eminent philologist and scholar Johann Matthias Gesner, who expressed with great eloquence his admiration for the composer's genius. Bach was also a frequent visitor to the nearby 'Rote Schloß', the home of the former Duke's widow and her two music-loving sons. Here the interest was in the new Italian style of music which was then becoming the rage of Europe, one of the chief exponents being the Venetian composer Vivaldi. Bach and his cousin Johann Georg Walther transcribed some of the Italian instrumental concertos for keyboard instruments.

During 1717 a feud broke out between the Duke of Weimar at the 'Wilhelmsburg' household and his nephew Ernst August at the 'Rote Schloß'. Consequently musicians of the first household were forbidden to fraternize with those of the second. Bach did his best to ignore what was, after all, merely an extension of a private quarrel. But the atmosphere was no longer so pleasant. Added to this, the ancient Capellmeister then died, and Bach was passed over for the post in favor of the late Capellmeister's mediocre son. At this, Bach was bitterly disappointed, for he had lately been doing most of the Capellmeister's work, and had confidently expected to be given the post.

Through the help of Duke Ernst August, Bach was introduced to the Court of Anhalt-Cöthen, and as a result he was offered the post of Capellmeister, which he accepted. This infuriated the Duke of Weimar, so that when Bach put in a polite request for his release, he was arrested and put in the local jail. However, after a month, he was released and given reluctant permission to resign his office. During this enforced rest, Bach typically used his time productively, and prepared a cycle of organ chorale preludes for the whole year, published later as the 'Orgelbüchlein'.

Bach arrived at the small Court of Anhalt-Cöthen to hold the position of Capellmeister, the highest rank given to a musician during the baroque age. His master was the young prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, barely twenty-five years old, the son of a Calvinist. As the Calvinists were antagonistic to the splendors of the Lutheran liturgy, there was no church music at Cöthen; however, the young Prince's religious beliefs did not bar him from enjoying a cheerful and cultivated style of living complete with secular cantatas and instrumental music featuring the latest styles and fashions. Prince Leopold had already spent three years (1710-13) doing the Grand Tour of Europe, first to Holland and England, through Germany to Italy, returning by way of Vienna. So he would have been thoroughly familiar with the latest European fashions in music.

The young Prince stretched the limited budget of his miniature Court to provide an orchestra of eighteen players, all chosen for their high musical standards from all over the country, some from as far afield as Berlin. In fact it was during the Prince's Grand Tour in 1713 that news came to him of a golden opportunity: when Wilhelm I of Prussia came to power, he dismissed his father's Court Capelle, and Prince Leopold was able to tempt many of the best musicians from Berlin to Cöthen. He had well-developed musical tastes, having traveled widely, particularly to Italy, where he studied Italian secular music with great interest; he returned from Italy determined to raise the standard of German secular music to an equally high level.

Unlike most Princes of his time, he was a player of considerable proficiency on the harpsichord, the violin and the viola da gamba, and contrary to current Court etiquette he played quite freely and informally with his Court musicians, treating them entirely as his equals. He soon became very friendly with his new Capellmeister, having a high regard for him, and would often ask his advice on various matters.

Life at Cöthen was informal and easy-going; in this happy atmosphere Bach's days were completely devoted to music. During this period he wrote much of his chamber music; violin concertos, sonatas, and keyboard music.

When the Prince traveled, Bach and some of the Court musicians (together with instruments, including an ingenious folding-harpsichord) would accompany him on his extensive journeys. Twice they visited Carlsbad, the meeting place of the European aristocracy, in 1718 and in the summer of 1720. It was on returning from this second visit that Bach received a serious shock; his wife, Maria Barbara, whom he had left in perfect health three months earlier, had died and been buried in his absence, leaving four motherless children.

Two months later he visited Hamburg and expressed an interest in the newly vacant post of organist in the Jakobskirche. This church contained the famous Arp Schnitger organ with four manuals and sixty stops. However, Bach left Hamburg for Cöthen before the audition, presumably because the conditions there did not suit him.

Bach continued with his work at Cöthen. He was asked to compose and perform cantatas for the Prince's birthday and the New Year; two each time, one sacred and one secular. To perform these works there were singers under contract from nearby Courts, and one of these, Anna Magdalena, daughter of J.C. Wilcke, Court and Field-Trumpeter at Weißenfels, attracted Bach's attention with her fine soprano voice. In décember 1721, Anna Magdalena and Bach married, she at the age of 20, and he 36.

Anna Magdalena was very kind to Bach's children, a good housekeeper, and she took a lively interest in his work, often helping him by neatly copying out his manuscripts. In the twenty-eight years of happy marriage that followed, thirteen children were born to the Bach family, though few of them survived through childhood.

A week after Bach's wedding, the Prince also married. But for Bach this was to be an unfortunate event, as the new Princess was not in favor of her husband's musical activities and managed, by exerting constant pressure (as Bach wrote in a letter), to "Make the musical inclination of the said Prince somewhat luke-warm." Bach also wrote to his old school-friend, Erdmann, "There I had a gracious Prince as master, who knew music as well as he loved it, and I hoped to remain in his service until the end of my life."

But in any case, Bach was now having to consider his growing sons; he wished to give them a good education, and there was no university at Cöthen, nor the cultured atmosphere and facilities of a larger city.

So once more, Bach decided to look around for somewhere new. It may perhaps have been these circumstances which led Bach to revive an old invitation to produce what are now known as the Brandenburg Concerti, the six pieces of which became most famous job application in history. We know from the opening of this dedication, dated le 24 mars 1721, that Bach had already met the Margrave of Brandenburg, at which time Bach had been invited to provide some orchestral music.

"Your Royal Highness; As I had a couple of years ago the pleasure of appearing before Your Royal Highness, by virtue of Your Highness' commands, and as I noticed then that Your Highness took some pleasure in the small talents which Heaven has given me for Music, and as in taking leave of Your Royal Highness, Your Highness deigned to honor me with the command to send Your Highness some pieces of my Composition: I have then in accordance with Your Highness' most gracious orders taken the liberty of rendering my most humble duty to Your Royal Highness with the present Concertos, which I have adapted to several instruments.... For the rest, Sire, I beg Your Royal Highness very humbly to have the goodness to continue Your Highness' gracious favor toward me, and to be assured that nothing is so close to my heart as the wish that I may be employed on occasions more worthy of Your Royal Highness and of Your Highness' service...."

There is some internal evidence in the music itself that Bach was intending to visit Berlin in person for the first performance of these works. There are for example some musicological errors in the scores - hardly something Bach would permit were he seriously dedicating music to a dignitary, particularly with the hope of prospective employment. The most noteworthy indication however is the missing middle movement of the third concerto. Bach, so his contemporaries frequently noted, would not even permit his performers to put in their own trills and elaborations; he would certainly not have left an entire movement to the whim of some distant performer about whose capabilities Bach knew nothing.

History shows no record of Bach's having subsequently visited the Margrave at his Brandenburg Court. There could be many reasons for this. The Margrave was not easily accessible as he was more frequently to be found in residence at his estates at Malchow than in Berlin. Moreover the death of Johann Kuhnau, Cantor of the Thomasschule at Leipzig in juin 1722 opened the possibility of an appointment for Bach at Leipzig, perhaps more attractive to him than Berlin. Leipzig was situated in familiar territory where he already had many musical and courtly connections; in addition it had a famous university, and the three-times-yearly Trade Fair gave the city a distinctly cosmopolitan atmosphere.

The merits of various candidates to succeed Kuhnau were considered, and the Council eventually nominated Georg Philipp Telemann. However, the authorities at Hamburg would not release Telemann, and so the candidature was left pending. This position of Cantor at Leipzig had been favorably described to Bach, and as the town offered the necessary educational facilities for his sons, he applied for the post. The Council, after trying unsuccessfully to get a certain Christoph Graupner, old boy of the Thomasschule and Capellmeister at Darmstadt, eventually settled for Bach as a reasonable alternative.

Bach applied for his dismissal at Cöthen, and the Prince, regretting his departure but not wishing to stand in his way, quickly consented. And so Bach left with his family and belongings for Leipzig, where he was to remain for the rest of his life.

Leipzig, with a population of 30.000, was the second city of Saxony, the center of the German printing and publishing industries, an important European trading center, and site of a progressive and famous university. It was also one of the foremost centers of German cultural life, with magnificent private dwellings, streets well paved and illuminated at night, a recently opened municipal library, a majestic town hall, and a vibrant social life. Outside its massive town walls were elegant tree-lined promenades and extensive formal gardens. The old-established university drew scholars and men of distinction from far and wide, and the famous book trade contributed much to the cultural life of the city. One of Leipzig's most important features was its international commerce. When the Leipzig Trade Fair was in progress, the respectable town was transformed into a show-ground mixing business with pleasure, and was popular with members of the Royal Court of Dresden. Many connections were established between nations on these occasions, and this in turn had a beneficial effect on the civic economy and culture as well as the international variety of its music.

Bach moved to Leipzig on le 22 mai 1723, where for the remaining 27 years of his life he was to live and work as Cantor, or Directore Chori Musici Lipsiensis - Director of Choir and Music in Leipzig. He would have known the town from previous visits, as he had come, for instance, en décembre 1717 to test the large new organ (53 stops) in the University Church, the Paulinerkirche, just completed by the Leipzig organ builder Johann Scheibe. Despite the Leipzig Council's almost disrespectful reticence in appointing him, Bach's arrival was clearly a major event in the musical and social world, and one North German newspaper described it in great detail: "Last Saturday at noon, four carts laden with goods and chattels belonging to the former Capellmeister to the Court of Cöthen arrived in Leipzig and at two in the afternoon, he and his family arrived in two coaches and moved into their newly decorated lodgings in the school building". The Bach family at that time comprised his wife and four children, of eight, nine, twelve and fourteen years of age. Le 31 mai 1723 marked the inaugural ceremony for the new Capellmeister with the customary speeches and anthems, putting an end to six unsettled months for the city in filling the post.

The school of St. Thomas was situated on the western wall of the town, not far from the imposing Pleissenburg fortress with its large tower on the south-western corner of the town wall. The school had around 60 boarders, aged between 11 and early 20s, and provided the choirs for at least four city churches. These boarders were mainly from deprived backgrounds and were maintained at the school on a charitable basis, and they also occasionally had to sing outdoors at funerals and in the city streets for alms.

Bach's apartment in the school was divided between the ground floor and the next two floors. From the window of his study (Componierstube) on the first upper floor of the Thomasschule, Bach would look out west over the town wall, to a magnificent view of the surrounding gardens, fields and meadows, a view about which Göthe later wrote "When I first saw it, I believed I had come to the Elysian Fields". Adjacent to the Thomas Schule was the narrow St. Thomas gate (Thomaspförtchen) set in the town wall with a small bridge over the town's moat leading to a popular walk bordered with lime trees which followed the town wall between the moat and the Pleisse river. Along here were some of the eight Leipzig garden Coffee-houses situated outside the town, where much of the musical life of the city took place during the summer. Indeed the city was nicknamed 'Athens on the Pleisse', and offered many attractions for the summer holiday-makers in its well cared-for parks and pleasure gardens beside the river Pleisse and its idyllic surrounding countryside.

Though contemporary newspaper reports stated that the incoming Cantor's apartments were "newly renovated", the building itself, dating from 1553, was however, in a somewhat dilapidated condition; discipline was practically non-existent, the staff quarreled among themselves, and the living conditions were unhealthy. Parents were unwilling to send their children to a school where illness amongst the pupils was so prevalent, and consequently, there were only 54 scholars out of a possible 120.

The Cantor's duties were to organize the music in the four principal churches of Leipzig, and to form choirs for these churches from the pupils of the Thomasschule. He was also to instruct the more musically talented scholars in instrument playing so that they might be available for the church orchestra, and to teach the pupils Latin (which Bach quickly delegated to a junior colleague).

Out of the 54 boys at Bach's disposal for use in the different choirs, he stated, '17 are competent, 20 not yet fully, and 17 incapable'. The best singers were selected to form the choir which sang the Sunday cantata; one week at the Thomaskirche, the other week at the Nikolaikirche. A 'second' choir, of the same size but less ability, would sing at the church without the cantata. The 'third' choir of even less ability at the Petrikirche, the 'fourth' at the Neuekirche.

The orchestra used for the cantatas consisted of up to 20 players. The city had, for a century or more, maintained a Town Band (städtisches Orchester) consisting of four wind players and four string players. It may be assumed by the presence of the near-legendary Gottfried Reicha among them both as wind and string player, and after 1719 their "senior", that they were players of a high standard. Surprisingly perhaps to present-day readers, they were expected to be proficient in the violin, reed, flute and brass families. They were under the control of the Thomaskantor.

Bach would certainly have taken steps early on to ensure that the instruments used were in top condition. We know that the stringed instruments used were maintained during the 1730s, and several of them built, by the celebrated Leipzig instrument maker (and Court Lute-maker) J. C. Hoffmann (Hoffmann's instruments are still in possession of and played in the Thomaskirche today). Hoffmann incidentally also built a viola pomposa, a tenor of the violin family, to Bach's orders.

Music-making was a popular pastime, and the regular concerts at Zimmerman's Coffee House and other musical venues would indicate that there were no doubt musicians in the town who could be invited to attend in the gallery for church performances. Thus it may be assumed that Bach could count on a fairly professional orchestra. Bach's many arias featuring oboe obbligato attest to the presence of a good oboist among the town's wind players, possibly Reicha himself. Viola and violin obbligati Bach would normally play himself. It is highly unlikely that there was either a chamber organ or a harpsichord in the gallery - the main organ being used exclusively. The wealth and complexity of instrumentation in Bach's cantatas is evidence itself that musicianship of a high standard was not hard for him to obtain. His sons and pupils would also have participated, together with visiting musicians happy no doubt to have the honor of performing under the direction of the now famous Herr Bach.

In Leipzig there was none of the aristocratic ease of the Court of Cöthen, where Bach could make music as and when he liked; here he had to keep strictly to his duties within the organized life of church and school. Singing classes were held from 9 to 12 am on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Thursdays the Cantor was free, on Friday he taught in the morning. Rehearsals for the Sunday Cantatas took place on Saturday afternoons.

The Sunday services began at 7a.m, with a motet, hymns, and an organ voluntary. The cantata, usually lasting about 20 minutes, preceded the hour-long sermon, or if the cantata was in two parts, it came before and after the sermon. The main service finished at about mid-day, after which there followed a communion service.

There were also week-day services for Bach to superintend at the four churches, also in one of the ancient hospitals and in a 'house of correction'. Although these services were simple and required only a few hymns, the Cantor had to organize a group of about nine singers to work on a rota system. Apart from this, he had to attend and compose music for funerals and various other occasions. Bach also took a lively interest in the divine services at the University church, the Paulinerkirche. It was only after he had conducted eleven services up till le Noël de 1725, that he discovered that the Cantor of Leipzig was no longer officially director of music in the University church, this position being given to the moderately talented organist of the Nikolaikirche. A long dispute between Bach and the authorities arose over this, and it was only after he had appealed to the Elector of Saxony at Dresden that a compromise was reached.

Bach nonetheless performed his duties as required, pursuing during these early years his long-held objective of providing a complete set of cantatas for every Sunday corresponding to the liturgical year. This self-imposed task was largely completed during his first five years, after which he produced cantatas with less regularity.

It may sometimes appear to listeners enjoying Bach's cantatas today, that some of the arias are perhaps a little less imaginative than might be expected from such a great master. That this is in fact the case may be explained by recalling the educational customs of Bach's time. Much stress was placed on "learning by doing" - by copying or transcribing works of the masters, by copying part-scores for performances, by working out continuo parts and by composing simpler recitatives and arias for performance. It should also be recalled that any duties enumerated as part of a titular position were to be fulfilled, but not necessarily by the incumbent personally. Bach's position for example required him to provide instruction in Latin, which he did by delegation. Delegation was an accepted means of fulfilling obligations, and was also seen as means of instructing the more gifted pupils. While Bach did in fact delegate the composition of some recitatives and arias to his pupils, he would always set the tone by composing an opening chorus reflecting the scriptural theme of the week. In the case of more important occasions he would compose the entire cantata himself. The listener can usually be sure of Bach's personal authorship of a particular aria or recitative when it bears Bach's "signature" - accompaniment scored for strings, rather than simple figured bass.

Much is often made in current biographical notes, of Bach's disputes with the Council. When fuller, more detailed and more recent research is taken into account these records may perhaps give an unbalanced picture of Bach's life there at that time. There is no doubt whatsoever that he was widely respected as a composer, musician, teacher, organist, and specialist in organ construction. This respect was to grow steadily, as Bach's reputation widened, and as he gained the official title of Court Composer to the Dresden Court - the Elector of Saxony. This comfortable security of position combined with the fact that Bach had established, during his first six or seven years' tenure, a more than sufficient repertoire of cantatas (it has been suggested that he composed in total some 300), allowed him to widen his musical scope of activity.

Bach would now begin to devote more time to activities outside Leipzig; to examine for musical appointments, to advise on organ building, to lend support from time to time to such private establishments as at Cöthen and Weißenfels, where he was honorary Capellmeister from 1729-1736.

Bach developed a close working relationship with his contemporary, the celebrated Saxon organ-builder Gottfried Silbermann, who was also a personal friend of the Bach family and godfather to Carl Philipp Emmanuel. Bach may well have played any number of Silbermann's instruments, almost all of which were located in Saxony. In 1733 Bach petitioned the Elector of Saxony in Dresden for an official title, enclosing copies of the Kyrie and Gloria from the b-minor Mass; though unsuccessful, Bach tried again this time with the backing of his Dresden patron Count von Keyserlingk. Thereafter he received the title, and signed himself as Dresden Hofcompositeur. By way of acknowledgment Bach presented a two-hour recital on the new Silbermann organ in the Frauenkirche (tragically destroyed in the Second World War and now being actively rebuilt).

It is on record that the Council reprimanded Bach in août 1730 for leaving his teaching duties in the overworked hands of his junior colleague, Petzold; for not properly disciplining his choirs, and for his frequent unauthorized journeys away from Leipzig. Bach did not try to justify himself, which further annoyed the Council, and so they attempted to diminish his income. This drove Bach to write to his school-friend Erdmann in Danzig, asking him to find him a 'convenient post' where he could escape the 'trouble, envy and persecution' which he had perpetually to face in Leipzig.

The city would have lost Bach if his friend Gesner had not intervened on his behalf. Gesner had just taken over the post of headmaster at the Thomasschule after the death in 1729 of the former headmaster, and he used his influence to settle the situation between Bach and the authorities, and to secure him better working conditions. The 1730s was a great period of new building and urban improvement in Leipzig and between mai 1730 et juin 1732 alterations and improvements were made to the Thomasschule buildings, including the addition of two upper floors and some exterior "restyling". Bach's own accommodations were much improved in the process. The choral forces were much diminished during this period and so Bach produced a number of solo cantatas. The school buildings were reopened on le 5 juin 1732 with a dedicatory cantata BWV Anhang 18. At the opening speech, Gesner stressed the need for music within the foundation - which must have given Bach some hope for a brighter future in the school.

Unfortunately however, Gesner left Leipzig in 1733 to take up an appointment as professor at the University of Göttingen. His successor was Johann August Ernesti, 29 years old, a former senior member of the Thomasschule staff. Ernesti had entirely new ideas on education: Classics and Theology were out of date, and there must be more stress on subjects that would be useful in secular life. This led to disputes with Bach who particularly wanted more time to train his choirs and musicians.

This renewal of the old disputes with the school and church authorities must have been a considerable discouragement for Bach; in any case it is apparent that from then on he appeared less and less eager to provide the Council with church music. Salvation came however in the form of the Collegium Musicum; when Bach became its permanent director in 1729 he began to receive official recognition of the high regard in which he was generally held. It is worth examining the activities of this musical group in some detail as it gives a closeup view of everyday cultural life in the Leipzig of the 1730s.

In Bach's time, the city of Leipzig already had an established tradition of Collegia Musica - secular musical organizations, run mainly by the students of the city's famed university - dating back at least to the middle of the preceding century, if not its beginning. Many of Leipzig's most famous musicians were connected with the students' musical activities (among them several Thomaskantors) and contributed music of the highest quality. Various such groups came and went. At the beginning of the1700s, two new ones - which were to enjoy a comparatively long existence - were founded by two young men at the University who were eventually to number among the most celebrated composers of their time. One was established in 1702 by the redoubtable Georg Philipp Telemann; the other was begun six years later, by Johann Friedrich Fasch. Fasch's group ultimately fell to the direction of Johann Gottlieb Görner, the director of music at the University and a constant musical rival of Bach's. After Telemann left Leipzig the leadership of his Collegium was taken by Balthasar Schott, the Neukirche organist.

In the spring of 1729, Schott moved to a new position in Gotha, and Bach took over directorship of the Collegium.

The story of Bach's Collegium Musicum is closely bound to a Leipzig coffeeshop-proprietor named Gottfried Zimmermann. The concerts were given on Zimmermann's premises, probably under his auspices. During the winter, the group played every Friday night, from 6 to 8pm, in Zimmermann's coffee house on the Catherine Strasse, centrally placed close to the Marktplatz. In the warmer months, the music was moved outdoors, to Zimmermann's coffee garden "in front of the Grimma gate, on the Grimma stone road" - so the address is given in contemporary reports, with summer performances on Wednesdays, from 4 to 6pm.

That Gottfried Zimmerman was not only a restaurateur and impresario, but also a music-lover and quite possibly a competent musician, is indicated by the fact, as confirmed by several contemporary newspaper reports, that he frequently re-equipped his establishment with the latest musical instruments for use by the Collegium and other musical guests. One of his prize possessions in the late 1720s was "a clavcymbel of large size and range of expressivity" which was a Leipzig attraction in itself. It was replaced by an 'even finer instrument' in 1733. German harpsichords were larger and fuller in tone than their Italian and French contemporaries, offering a much wider range of sound. The new instrument would certainly have had two, possibly three manuals, and may have been the work of the famous Hamburg builder Hass similar to his 1740 instrument with three manuals and five choirs of strings (2', 4', 8', 8' and 16'). There may well have been a separate organ-type pedalboard.

Two types of concerts were given: ordinaire et extraordinaire. The former were the standard performances; the latter were for special celebrations (king's birthdays and the like), and were usually marked by elaborate festive cantatas, with trumpets and drums in full splendor. (Bach adapted many of these works into church pieces; the Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, for example, is made up largely of such adaptations). About the regular concerts we know less; the Leipzig newspapers, in general, only announced the extraordinaire events. Presumably, instrumental music was heard, ranging from clavier solos through sonatas to orchestral works. It was doubtless here that Bach's concerti for one or several harpsichords received their performances, many of these having been adapted from earlier (e.g. violin) concertos, or from concertos by other composers (eg Vivaldi). Occasionally, too, vocal music might be given; such an example is the Coffee Cantata, BWV 211, first presented in 1732. It is also on record that works of Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann, Locatelli, Albinoni and others were performed.

Admission was charged for the extraordinaire concerts, and also for those occasional "special concerts" (Sonder-konzerte) which featured distinguished visiting artists. The regular concerts were probably free.

These concerts were serious events, given outside of the regular coffee shop hours, and were thus not merely an ornament to the usual culinary attractions. The performances of the Collegium were, in fact, hardly different from what we consider to be normal concert procedure today. Indeed, the word "concert" began to be used expressly in connection with the Collegium during its later years.

The schedule of weekly performances, the composition of new works, rehearsing them, arranging programs, etc., reveals that the Collegium Musicum was no mere diversion for Bach. The fact is that this was, for much of his later life, his central artistic activity, the church becoming almost peripheral. In the years with the Collegium Bach satisfied a side of himself that certainly must have lain dormant since the happy and fruitful period at Cöthen. He remained its director from 1729 until the death of Gottfried Zimmermann in 1741.

Bach also enjoyed visits, often with his son Wilhelm Friedemann, to Dresden, where he would meet with friends in the Court Orchestra and perhaps visit l'Opéra. On one occasion he called upon his patron Count von Keyserlingk, whom he presented with the set of variations now known as the Goldberg variations after the count's harpsichordist.

During the latter years of his life Bach gradually withdrew inwards, producing some of the most profound statements of baroque musical form.

In his own much improved apartments of the newly rebuilt Thomasschule Bach would welcome visiting musicians from all over Germany and many other countries. His son Carl-Phillip Emanuel was to write that "no musician of any consequence passing through Leipzig would fail to call upon my father". No doubt they and some of his sons would enjoy a private concert in Bach's large music-room, perhaps featuring concertos for 2, 3 or 4 harpsichords, for Bach kept six claviers and many other instruments.

In 1747, on his way to visit his daughter-in-law in Berlin who was expecting her second child to his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel, Bach stopped at Potsdam after two weary days of traveling. Here he had been invited to attend at the Royal Palace of King Frederick the Great of Prussia, where his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel was also employed as Court Harpsichordist.

On Bach's arrival, Frederick was about to begin his evening concert, in which he himself played the flute with the orchestra, when he was given the list of people who had arrived at Court. Laying down his flute, he said to his orchestra, 'Gentlemen, old Bach is here'. He cancelled his evening concert and invited Bach straight up to try his new fortepianos built by Bach's organ-builder colleague and friend Gottfried Silbermann. The King owned several of these instruments, located in different rooms. After Bach had played on all the different instruments, moving with the King and musicians from room to room, Bach invited the King to give him a theme on which to improvise; Bach of course rose to the occasion, improvising at length and with amazing skill. On his return to Leipzig, to show his gratitude for the excellent reception he had received at Potsdam, Bach developed the King's theme into a sequence of complex contrapuntal movements, added a sonata for violin and flute (Frederick being a flute-player), entitled the whole 'A Musical Offering' and sent it to the Court with a letter of dedication. On the day following the musical evening, a royal procession made its way around Potsdam, as Bach was invited to play on all the city's organs.

The opening of the six-part fugue, The Musical Offering in Bach's own hand.

Bach then became a member of the Mitzler society, a learned society devoted to the promotion of musical science, whose members were expected on joining to display some token of their learning. Bach's opening contribution was a set of canonic variations on the Christmas hymn, 'Vom Himmel hoch'.

In these last years of his life, Bach's creative energy was conserved for the highest flights of musical expression: the Mass in b minor, the Canonic Variations, the Goldberg Variations, and of course the Musical Offering displaying the art of canon. His last great work is the complete summary of all his skill in counterpoint and fugue; methods which he perfected, and beyond which no composer has ever been able to pass. This work is known to us as 'Die Kunst der Fuge' ('The Art of the Fugue', BWV 1080).

Bach had overworked in poor light throughout his life, and his eyesight now began to fail him. The Leipzig Council started looking around as early asjuin 1749 for a successor. On the advice of friends, Bach put himself in the hands of a visiting celebrated English ophthalmic specialist, John Taylor and who happened to be passing through Leipzig. Two cataract operations were performed on his eyes, in mars et avril 1750, and their weakening effect was aggravated by a following infection which seriously undermined his health. (The same doctor blinded Handel.)

Bach spent the last months of his life in a darkened room, revising his great chorale fantasias (BWV 651-668) with the aid of Altnikol, his pupil and son-in-law. It was in these circumstances that he composed his last chorale fantasia, based fittingly on the chorale "Before Thy Throne O Lord I Stand". He was also working on a fugue featuring the subject B-A-C-H (B in German notation is B flat, while H in German notation = B natural). He had often been asked why he had not exploited this theme before, and had indicated that, despite its thematic possibilities, he would consider it arrogant to do so. Appropriately, perhaps intentionally, it was left unfinished at his death. (This incomplete fugue, normally appended to the Art of the Fugue in performances, has no discernible connection with the Art of the Fugue, though the Art of Fugue theme can be made to fit, as Gustav Nottebohm pointed out in 1880.) The last great Triple Fugue of the Art (Contrapunctus XI) may also have been written during his final days.

Then, on the morning of le 28 juillet 1750, he woke up to find he could bear strong light again, and see quite clearly. That same day he had a stroke, followed by a severe fever. He died "in the evening, after a quarter to nine, in the sixty-fifth year of his life, yielding up his blessed soul to his savior."

Bach was buried in St. John's Cemetery which stood one block outside the town's Grimma Gate in the early morning of le 31 juillet and in the absence of any tombstone his grave was soon forgotten.

When St. John's Church was rebuilt in 1894 a few Leipzig scholars and Bach admirers succeeded in having what were believed to be the composer's bones exhumed. Partial identification was established by a series of anatomical and other tests. The bones were laid to rest in a stone sarcophagus next to the poet Gellert in the vaults of the Johanniskirche, and many people went to pay homage to this tomb until the church was destroyed by bombs in le deuxième guerre mondiale. Once more his remains were rescued and in 1949 buried, this time in the altar-room of the Thomaskirche where they remain to this day.

St. Thomas Church, Leipzig

In his later years and after his death, Bach's reputation as a composer declined: his work was regarded as old-fashioned compared to the emerging classical style. He was far from forgotten, however: he was remembered as a player and teacher as well, of course, as composer. His best-appreciated compositions in this period were his keyboard works, in which field other composers continued to acknowledge his mastery. Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin were among his most prominent admirers. On a visit to the Thomasschule in Leipzig, Mozart heard a performance of one of the motets (BWV 225) and exclaimed, "Now, here is something one can learn from!" On being given the parts of the motets, "Mozart sat down, the parts all around him, held in both hands, on his knees, on the nearest chairs. Forgetting everything else, he did not stand up again until he had looked through all the music of Sebastian Bach."

Beethoven was a devotee, learning the Well-Tempered Clavier as a child and later calling Bach "Urvater der Harmonie" ("original father of harmony") and "nicht Bach, sondern Meer," "not a brook, but a sea", punning on the literal meaning of Bach's name. Chopin used to lock himself away before his concerts and play Bach's music.

The revival in the composer’s reputation among the wider public was prompted in part by Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s 1802 biography, which was read by Beethoven among others. Göthe became acquainted with Bach's works relatively late in life, through a series of performances of keyboard and choral works at Bad Berka in 1814 and 1815; in a letter of 1827 he compared the experience of listening to Bach's music to "eternal harmony in dialogue with itself". But it was Felix Mendelssohn who did the most to revive Bach's reputation with his 1829 Berlin performance of the St. Matthew Passion. Hegel, who attended the performance, later called Bach "grand, truly Protestant, robust and, so to speak, erudite genius which we have only recently learned again to appreciate at its full value." Mendelssohn's promotion of Bach, and the growth of the composer’s stature, continued in subsequent years. The Bach Gesellschaft (or Bach Society) was founded in 1850 to promote the works, and over the next half century it published a comprehensive edition of his surviving works. (We probably only have half of what he wrote. Louis la Vache has the complete set of recordings of Bach's surviving works - 175 CDs!)

Thereafter Bach’s reputation has remained consistently high. During le XX siecle the process of recognizing the musical as well as the pedagogic value of some of the works has continued, perhaps most notably in the promotion of the Cello Suites by Pablo Casals. Another development has been the growth of the authentic or period performance movement, which attempts to present the music as the composer intended it. Examples include the playing of keyboard works on the harpsichord rather than a modern grand piano, and the use of small choirs or single voices instead of the larger forces favoured by XIX ème and early XX ème siecle performers.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s contributions to music, or, to borrow a term popularised by his student Lorenz Christoph Mizler, "musical science" are frequently compared to the "original geniuses" of William Shakespeare in English literature and Isaac Newton in physics.

Scientist and author Lewis Thomas once suggested how the people of Earth should communicate with the universe: "I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later." Some composers have paid tribute to Bach by setting his name in musical notes—B-flat, A, C, B-natural (B-natural is H in German)—or its contrapuntal derivatives; for example, Liszt wrote both a praeludium and fugue on the BACH motif. Bach himself, as written above, set the precedent for this musical acronym in "The Art of Fugue." Whereas Bach conceived this cruciform melody as a compositional form of devotion to Christ and his cross, later composers have employed the BACH motif in homage to the composer himself. Bach’s obvious devotion to Christ in his liturgical oeuvre was given special credence with the 1934 discovery of the Calov Bible in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Bach in a cathedral window

This post was compiled from an article at Baroque Music.org and other sources.

More Reading:

J. S. Bach, Vol. 1

J. S. Bach, Vol. 2

Listening to Bach
Bach: Six Unaccompanied Cello Suites

Bach: Goldberg Variations

Bach: St. Matthew Passion

Paris walks...le Louvre et les Jardins des Tuileries

2006-03-20T20:21:00.000+01:00

Nôtre promenade pour aujord'hui va entre le musée du Louvre à les Jardins des Tuileries et nous finisons à la place de la Concorde.

Paris is une fête visuel, a visual feast, a city best savored à pied, on foot. Walking through Paris allows us to enjoy the real flavors and textures of the city. One of the best things about Paris is the sheer variety of its attractions and their proximity to one another. There is something to behold at every turn. Yesterday, we began our promenade dans le premier arrondissement. Today we will continue dans le premier and visit, as we did yesterday, a few places we've already seen as well as some new ones. Alors, pour la fête visuel pour ajourd'hui, if you have your comfortable walking shoes on and in hand your carnet pour le Métro, encore allons-y!

The best-known resident of le musée du Louvre invites you to join today's promenade.

Aujord'hui, we'll take ligne 1, the original line of le Métro, which opened in 1900. We'll get off le Métro at Louvre-Rivoli.

Pieces from the vast collections of le Louvre are on display in showcases on the passenger platform of the Louvre-Rivoli of le Métro.

When we come out of le Métro onto rue de Rivoli, we notice one of the Hector Guimard's fantastic art nouveau signs for le Métro.

Le Métro à Louvre-Rivoli with one of the famous signs designed by Hector Guimard.

For today, we resist the shopping tempations offered by rue de Rivoli which is one of the most famous streets in Paris, and turn instead onto rue de l'Amrial de Coligny, which is very near where we ended nôtre promenade hier, our walk yesterday à le pont Neuf. We walk south toward la Seine. On our left is the elegant wine bar, Le Fumoir. Next is l'église-de-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, once the royal parish church for the kings of France. It is known for its flamboyant Gothic porch, which was built in 1435.

L'église-de-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois

Now, we cross the street and turn into le Louvre, entering at Cour Carrée. This is one of the oldest parts of le Louvre, dating from the XVI ème siecle, although the very oldest parts (of which little remains) date from 1190.

Clock tower entrance to Cour Carée, musée du Louvre.
Note la Pyramide in the background.

We walk across le Cour Carrée toward la Pyramide, the entrance to le Louvre designed by Chinese-American abstract modernist architect I.M. Pei. La Pyramide was built as an entrance to relieve congestion caused by long lines of tourists wishing to visit le Louvre. It successfully acts as a skylight for the ticket-selling and reception area below, but the design was controversial when it was built at end of the 1980s and remains controversial today.

Designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, la Pyramide was controversial when it opened in 1989 and remains so today.

One cannot really do justice to le Louvre in so short a time as we have today, so we'll just descend into the building through la Pyramide and walk toward la Place du Carrousel, which is another entrance to le musée, and is home both to the museum's retail stores and to a small mall of upscale retailers anxious to lighten the load of Euros lining the pockets of visitors.

This painting on display in le Louvre could be captioned "Not tonight, honey, I have a terrible headache!"

We exit here and immediately notice what appears to be a small version of l'arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. Indeed, this is l' arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and like its larger sibling at the west end of l'avenue-des-Champs-Élysées, is a monument Napoléon I built to himself.

L'arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

L'arc de Triomphe-du-Carrousel was built between 1806 and 1808 following the model of the Arch of Constantine in Rome. The two arches conceived by Napoléon, l'arc de Triomphe-du-Carrousel et l'arc de Triomphe-de-l'Étoile, were erected to commemorate his victories, and the grand armies he had commanded. The bronze horses which originally perched on top of l'arc de Triomphe-du-Carrousel were taken from la cathédrale-de-Saint-Marc-de-Venise. These were later returned to Itallie after le deuxième guerre mondiale and replaced with horses of a similar design which were (ahem) not stolen from an invaded country.

La Voie Triomphale: looking west from l'arc-de-Triomphe-du-Carrousel à l'Obélisque de Luxor et l'arc-de-Triomphe-de-l'Étoile.

The monument is richly decorated in rose marble on the columns and the front paneling. It is part of the so-called Grand Axis of Paris, la Voie Triomphale, which consists of la Grande Arche-de-la-Défense to the west, l'arc de-Triomphe-de-l'Etoile à la place du Général Charles de Gaulle, l'avenue-ses-Champs-Élysées, l'Obélisque de Luxor à la Place de la Concorde, les Jardins des Tuileries, l'arc de-Triomphe-du-Carrousel, et le Palais du Louvre culminating at the eastern end.

L'arc-de-Triomphe-du-Carrousel is composed of three arches: a big one and two little ones. While the principal structure is 63 feet high, 75 feet wide, and 24 feet deep, the ceiling of the big arch is 21 feet high and 9 feet wide, and the two small arches are each 14 feet, 16 inches high and 9 feet wide. The arch , as written above, is surmounted by a group of men on horses underneath which one finds the names of the battles and treaties of Napoléon.

Stepping west through the arch, we are at the eastern end of les Jardins des Tuileries, which is the central-most park in Paris. Filled with sculptured gardens, statues, fountains, and shaped chestnut trees, it is a delightful place, stretching from the western end of le Louvre to la Place de la Concorde, bordered by la Seine on the south.

Les Jardins des Tuileries. Le Musée d'Orsay is in the background south of la Seine.

There was a palace here in what once was a sort of sheep pasture cum butcher's slop dump, which also had a couple of tile factories - tuileries - thus the name. In 1518, François I had a country house built here for his mother, Louise de Savoie. In 1564 the queen mother, Catherine de Médicis, decided to have a hôtel built for herself, to the west beyond le Louvre. That hôtel evolved into le palais des Tuileries, which reached its zenith in the work done to it under Louis XIV by the architects le Vau and d'Orbay. Those of you who have been making these travels in la belle France with Louis la Vache for a while probably will recall that le Vau designed Vaux-le-Vicomte and went on to transform the former hunting lodge at Versailles into the magnificent palais we know today.

Pierre Le Nôtre was the first to put a hand to les jardins that became the park we now see. His plantings were in an Italian style. There were trees in quinconces (alternate rows), mazes, a fountain, a grotto and enameled potteries by Bernard Palissy. Henri IV had mulberry bushes planted along the north side, for feeding silk worms. Pierre's son, Jean le Nôtre furthered the work of his father, but it was André Le Nôtre, the grandson of Pierre, who was commissioned in 1664 by Louis XIV, to make the garden as grand as le Vau and d'Orbay were making le palais des Tuileries.

These now-tranquil gardens have a bloody history. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were held prisoner in the palace, after being routed from Versailles during the French Revolution, and the siege at les Tuileries by the Parisian mob at the close of the revolution in 1893 left a thousand dead. In the revolution of 1848, Louis-Philippe and the queen hid in the palace until able to escape in an ordinary cab and then went into exile in Angleterre. Le Palais des Tuileries was looted and burned once again during the Paris Commune of 1871. After this torching, what was left of the palace was scrapped. The newspaper Le Figaro bought bricks from the demolition of the palace and gave them away as paperweight souvenirs advertising the paper, to say the least, an ignominious end to le palais.

Looking back toward le Louvre from les Jardins des Tuileries.

Walking through the west end of gardens, we bear south toward la Seine. Here we come to l'Orangerie, built as a hothouse to grow oranges, but now un musée for many paintings by les Impressionistes. It is here that we find Monet's famous les Nymphéas, "Water Lillies." What many people don't know is that Les Nymphéas are not one painting, as we might expect from their popularity as a poster. Rather, les Nymphéas are a series of huge panels that occupy vast areas of the walls of a special room built for them at l'Orangerie. Monet gave les Nymphéas to France at the end of la premiere guerre mondiale as a "bouquet to (his) country." From l'Orangerie, we walk north across the west end of the gardens. Before we exit onto la Place de la Concorde we come to le Jeu de Paume, built as an enclosed tennis court, now used for temporary art exhibits.

A panel from les Nymphéas, given by Monet to France as a "bouquet to (his) country."

Louis la Vache hopes that you've enjoyed today's promenade. Louis promises you that we'll soon visit les Jardins des Tuileries again and spent a little more time here. As we walk through la place de la Concorde, we enter the Concorde station of le Métro and once again board a train on ligne 1 for our trip home.

A peek at La Cour Carrée, le Louvre.

More Reading:

Treasures of the Louvre

The Louvre

Paris Insideout City Guide Map

Paris walks...l'Île-de-la-Cité

2006-03-19T23:50:00.000+01:00

Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris, the most famous of several famous landmarks on l'Île-de-la-Cité. A climb of 300 steps will take you to the top of the North tower for a breathtaking view of Paris - IF you have any breath left after that climb!
Aujord'hui, we will begin a new series: Paris Walks.What better place to begin this series than where Paris originated: l'Île-de-la-Cité? Appropriately enough, l'Île-de-la-Cité is in le premier arrondissement. We have already visted many of the stops on this tour, but we will make a few new stops and Louis will try to incorporate points about places we've already visited that we didn't see in our original visits.

So, grab your plan de Paris, map of Paris, and allons-y - let's go!

Métro-Maubert-Mutualité. Like many other Métro stations, the platform signs at Maubert-Mutualité are made from blue and white wall tiles.

Today's walk will begin on the rive gauche, the storied Left Bank. We've taken le Métro Ligne 10 to Maubert-Mutualité on le boulevard Saint-Germain in the V ème arrondissement. Maubert-Mutualité is named for la Place Maubert and la Maison de la Mutualité. Le boulevard Saint-Germain is one of the most famous streets in Paris, and is home to many swank shops. American retailer Nordstrom operates one of their Façonable boutiques on this street. (The Façonable label originated in Paris. Nordstrom became the exclusive U.S. retailer for the line and later bought the company.) Upscale boulevard Saint-Germain aside, we are in le quartier Latin near la Sorbonne, thus le quartier has many students. It is called "the Latin quarter" because from its founding until quite some time later, Latin was the language spoken and taught at la Sorbonne.

La Sorbonne was founded in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon as a college for theology students without money. La Sorbonne later became the University of Paris.

Part of the charm of the rive gauche is that Haussmann didn't rebuild much of le quartier Latin and it retains the feel of un temps perdu, a forgotten time, with its narrow streets and many curb-side market stalls.

Leaving the Métro station, we walk east on le boulevard Saint-Germain, resisting the temptation of the shops, until we come to rue de Bièvre, where we turn left. We will continue up this picturesque street to Quai de la Tournelle alongside la Seine.

Rue de Bièvre. Haussmann didn't remodel much of le quartier Latin, thus many streets are narrow and have the feeling of un temps perdu.

At le quai de la Tournelle, we come to le pont de l'Archevêché, one of the 32 bridges that cross la Seine as it winds through Paris. This bridge was built in record time:avril à novembre 1828. The name comes from the building adjacent to la cathédrale-de-Nôtre-Dame that housed the archbishopric. The archbishopric was demolished quite some time ago.

A portion of le pont de l'Archevêché viewed from le pont de la Tournelle.

Le pont de l'Archevêché is a small bridge: only 67 metres (220 feet) long and 11 metres (36 feet) wide. Despite its short length, it was constructed with 3 masonry arches each 15 metres (49 feet) wide. Due to its design, this bridge has a history of accidents. With a height of only 7.86 metres (26 feet) to the top of the low water level, it is the lowest bridge of this arm of la Seine, and poses serious problems for the boats and barges when the river rises. In 1910 plans were made to replace this three-arched bridge with a single span to ease navigation, but the plans never bore fruit.

Un bateau mouche sous le pont de l'Archevêché à nuit. The low clearance of the bridge over the boat is obvious even in this night view.

We will cross the bridge onto l'Île-de-la-Cité, the island found by the Romans in the III ème siecle BC to be inhabited by a small Celtic tribe, the Parisii. Now we will take the steps on our right to the serene and eerily quiet Mémorial des Martyrs et de la Déportation, dedicated to those who were deported by the Nazis and the Vichy government during la deuxième guerre mondial.

Mémorial des Martyrs et de la Déportation, interior view. The names of the known victims are inscribed on the walls.

Leaving le Mémorial des Martyrs et de la Déportation, we will turn east and take le quai de l'Archevêché , which faces l'Île-Saint-Louis, then turn north, facing le rive droit, the right bank, and walk westerly along le quai aux Fleurs. Now we will go down the steps to la rue des Ursins. At la rue de la Colombe we turn left, then right again, now left onto la rue d'Arcole. Although Baron Haussmann had most of the city's dense streets razed when he altered the layout of Paris in le XIX ème siecle, like much of le quartier Latin, this area was spared and shows what the entire island was once like.

La rue d'Arcole leads to la cathédrale-de-Nôtre-Dame-de-Paris. Because we've already visited la cathédrale, we won't go in today, unless some of you want to climb the 300 steps of the north tower for a fine view of the city.

Now we will head away from Nôtre-Dame on le quai des Orfèvres, then right onto la rue-de-la-Cité, now left onto la rue-de-Lutèce, past the marché aux fleurs. Lutèce was the Roman name for Paris. That splendid gothic gem, La Sainte-Chapelle, is visible just ahead. La Sainte-Chapelle is one of Louis la Vache's favorite places to visit in Paris, and because of that, we are going to go in again today despite having previously visited it.

The wrought-iron gates of le Palais de Justice. The scaffolding on the building (as on the side of the north tower of Nôtre-Dame in the first photo) is for cleaning and restoration work that is being done.

We will go in through the wrought iron gates of le Palais de Justice to get into la Sainte-Chapelle. Built in le XIII ème siecle, the upper chapel, with its intricate stained glass window walls sparkles like a jewel on sunny days. (For those of you who weren't along for our first visit, there is an upper and a lower chapel.) La Sainte-Chapelle is a popular venue for concerts of baroque music.

The stained glass walls of la Sainte-Chapelle sparkle like a jewel on a sunny day.

Leaving la Sainte-Chapelle, we walk north past le palais de Justice to la Conciergerie, a former prison brimming with revolutionary history. La Conciergerie is a sobering contrast to the dazzling beauty of la Sainte-Chapelle.

La Conciergerie, the former prison where Marie-Antoinette awaited her trip in the tumbrel to the guillotine at Place de la Concorde, here viewed from la rive droit.

Now we'll round the corner in front of la Conciergerie and head west alongside la Seine on le quai de l'Horloge. Once past la Conciergerie, we'll turn left onto rue de Harlay at the western end of l'Île-de-la-Cité to Place Dauphine, which dates to the XVII ème siecle.

Homes built in the VII ème siecle at Place Dauphine, here seen on a winter day.

Commissioned by Henri IV in 1607 as part of the city’s redevelopment, Place Dauphine was dedicated to his son and heir apparent, the future Louis XIII. In common with Place des Vosges (also one of Henri IV’s creations), it is symmetrical in design and surrounded by stone-built, red-brick buildings. Tucked away to the east of Pont-Neuf bridge, it’s a delightful and very peaceful spot. In good weather, we could watch people playing pétanque here or sit down on a bench and bury ourselves in a good book, something Louis la Vache loves to do.

Le vert galant, Henri IV, at place du Vert Galant on the very western tip of l'Île-de-la-Cité.

Now we'll wander out to the very western tip of l'Île-de-la-Cité and view the statue of le vert galant, "the green gallant," as Henri IV was sometimes called.

The entrance to Place Dauphine from le pont Neuf.

Now, having toured l'Île-de-la-Cité from side to side and tip to tip, we exit onto le rive droit by walking across le pont Neuf, Henri IV's "new bridge," now the oldest pont in Paris! After crossing le pont Neuf, we board ligne 7 du Métro for our trip home at the Pont Neuf station.

Louis la Vache hopes that you enjoyed this Paris walk as much as he enjoyed having you come along!

More walking in Paris:

Rick Steves' Paris 2006

Paris for Families

Frommer's Paris Day by Day

L'église-de-la-Madeleine

2006-03-17T05:29:00.000+01:00

L'église-de-la-Madeleine
L'église-de-la-Madeleine, or L'église-Sainte-Marie-Madeleine (or simply La Madeleine), is a church in le VIII ème arrondissement of Paris that was designed as a temple to the glory l'armée de Napoléon.

Two false starts were made on building a church on this site. The first design, commissioned in 1757 with construction begun in 1764, was by Pierre Contant d'Ivry, and was based on Mansart's Late Baroque church of Les Invalides, with a dome surmounting a Latin cross. In 1777 d'Ivry died and he was replaced by Guillaume-Martin Couture, who decided to start anew, razing the incomplete construction and basing his new design on the Roman Pantheon. At the start of the Revolution, however, only the foundations had been finished and work was discontinued, while debate simmered as to what purpose the building might serve in Revolutionary France: a library, a ballroom, and a marketplace were all suggested.

In 1806 Napoléon made his decision, commissioning Pierre-Alexandre Barthélémy Vignon (1763-1828) to build une Temple de la Gloire de la Grande Armée (Temple to the Glory of the Great Army), with Vignon basing his design on an antique temple. The then-existing foundations were razed and work begun anew. With completion of l' Arc de Triomphe in 1808, the original commemorative role for the temple was blunted. After the fall of Napoléon, with the Catholic reaction during the Restoration, King Louis XVIII determined that the structure would be used as a church. Vignon died in 1828 before completing the project and was replaced by Jacques-Marie Huvé. In 1837 it was briefly suggested that the building might best be utilized as a train station, but the building was finally consecrated as a church in 1842.

The nave of la Madeleine.

La Madeleine is built in the Neo-Classical style and was inspired by the Maison Carrée at Nîmes (in the south of France) the best-preserved of all Roman temples. Its 52 Corinthian columns, each 20 metres high, are carried around the entire exterior of the building. The pediment is adorned by a sculpture by Lemaire of the Last Judgement, and the church's bronze doors bear reliefs representing the Ten Commandments.

Marie-Madeleine is carried into heaven by two angels.

Inside, the church has a single nave with three domes, lavishly gilded in a decor inspired by Renaissance artists. At the rear of the church, above the high altar, stands a statue by Charles Marochetti depicting Saint Mary Magdalene being carried up to heaven by two angels. The half-dome above the altar is covered with a fresco by Jules-Claude Ziegler, entitled The History of Christianity, showing the key figures in the Christian religion with - perhaps inevitably - Napoléon occupying center stage.

La Madeleine is affiliated with a Benedictine abbey, and masses and the most fashionable weddings in Paris are still celebrated here.

L'orgue célèbré de la Madeleine The church has a famous pipe organ, built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899), which is widely regarded as one of the best in Paris. The composers Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré were both organists at la Madeleine, and the funerals of Frédéric Chopin, Saint-Saëns, and Fauré were held there.

To its south lies la Place de la Concorde, to the east is la Place Vendôme, and to the west L'église Saint-Augustin.

La Madeleine during a light show at dusk.

More Reading:

Frommer's Memorable Walks in Paris

City Walks: Paris

Female Assassin: Henriette Caillaux

2006-03-16T03:01:00.000+01:00

Henriette Caillaux used a Browning handgun.
Henriette Caillaux was a Parisian socialite and wife of the former Prime Minister of France who is remembered as an assassin. Born Henriette Raynouard in 1874, she was having an affair with Joseph Caillaux while he was still married but eventually he divorced and the two married. While serving as Minister of Finance, Joseph Caillaux came under bitter attack from his political foes and the editor of the newspaper, Le Figaro, Gaston Calmette had been a severe critic. Calmette had printed a love letter Caillaux had written Henriette while he was still married to his first wife, and threatened to print more. The letter seemed to suggest improprieties had been committed by Caillaux when in it he appears to admit to having orchestrated the rejection of a tax bill while publicly pretending to support its passage. Calmette proceeded to publish the letters at a time when Joseph Caillaux, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, was trying to get an income tax bill passed by the French Senate. The publication of his letter severely tarnished Joseph Caillaux's reputation and caused a great political upheaval.

Madame Caillaux believed that the only way for her husband to defend his reputation would be to challenge Calmette to a duel and that one way or another, it would destroy her and her husband's life. As such, Madame Caillaux made the decision to protect her beloved husband by sacrificing herself. On le 16 mars 1914, the elegant and sophisticated woman walked to the newspaper's offices where she confronted the editor. After a few words, she pulled out a pistol and fired several point-blank shots into the man's chest, killing him instantly.

A deposition from le Président de la République was an unheard of occurrence at a criminal proceeding almost anywhere and along with the fact that many of the participants were among the most powerful members of French society, Henriette Caillaux's trial dominated French public life. At a time when feminism was just beginning to impact French society, most republican and socialist men paid no more than lip service to the feminist cause. However, it was this male chauvinism that proved to be Henriette Caillaux's best friend during the proceedings. Defended by prominent attorney, Fernand-Gustave-Gaston Labori, he convinced the jury that her crime, which she did not deny, was not a premeditated act but that her uncontrollable female emotions resulted in a crime of passion. With male beliefs that women were not as strong emotionally as men, on le 28 juillet Madame Caillaux was acquitted. The case for days distracted French attention from the outbreak of World War I.

A 1985 made for French television movie called "L'Affaire Caillaux" and a 1992 book titled "The Trial of Madame Caillaux" by American history professor Edward Berenson, recounts the event.

Henriette Caillaux died on le 08 février 1943.

Joseph Caillaux Joseph Caillaux was born on le 30 mars 1863 and became a major French politician of the Third Republic. The leader of the Radicals, he favored a policy of conciliation with Germany during his premiership from 1911 to 1912, which led to the maintenance of the peace during the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911.

In 1914 he resigned as Minister of Finance after his wife Henriette shot Gaston Calmette. After her acquittal Caillaux became the leader of a peace party in l'Assemblée during World War I. This led to his arrest and trial for treason in 1918. Again rehabilitated after the war, Caillaux served at various times in the left wing governments of the 1920s.

Joseph Caillaux died on le 22 novembre 1944 and is interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

A contemporary Le Figaro
Le Figaro is one of the leading French morning daily newspapers. Its editorial line is critical of socialism and the political left. The Parisian paper was founded as a satirical weekly in 1826, taking its name and motto from Le Mariage de Figaro, a play by Pierre Beaumarchais, later made into an opéra by Mozart. (The motto, Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur translates as "Without the freedom to criticise, there is no true praise".) Le Figaro was published somewhat irregularly until 1854, when it was taken over by Hippolyte de Villemessant. By 1866 it had gained the greatest circulation of any newspaper in France. Émile Zola was among the paper's early contributors.

In 1922 Le Figaro was purchased by perfume millionaire François Coty. In 1975 Le Figaro was bought by Robert Hersant. In 1999 the Carlyle Group obtained a 40% stake in the paper, which it later sold in 2002. In 2004, Le Figaro came under the control of Serge Dassault, a conservative businessman and politician best known for running the aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation. Dassault remarked in an interview on the public radio station France Inter that "newspapers must promulgate healthy ideas", and that "left-wing ideas are not healthy ideas."

More Reading:

Trial of Madame Caillaux

Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Sihcle Paris

Paris, Capital of Modernity

Aviation Pioneer Louis Blériot - First to fly across la manche

2006-03-15T06:05:00.000+01:00

Louis Blériot

La traversée de la Manche

The first pilot to fly across la Manche, the English Channel, was Louis Blériot.

Blériot made his historic flight in this plane of his own design.

Louis Blériot, the 37-year old French inventor, aircraft designer, and self-trained pilot, flew across the treacherous English Channel, la Manche early on le 25 juillet 1909, in an aircraft he designed himself - the Bleriot XI. The flight from Les Barraques, France, to Dover, England, undertaken in bad weather, earned him the £1000 prize that the London Daily Mail had offered to the first aviator to cross the Channel in either direction. His accomplishment delighted the public and shocked many in the British military and political establishment - they realized they were now vulnerable to attack from the air.

Blériot was born in Cambrai, France, in 1872, and obtained a degree in Arts and Trades from École Centrale Paris. He invented automobile headlamps and established a very successful acetylene headlamp business, amassing a small fortune. He used the money from his business to experiment with towed gliders on la Seine, learning much about aircraft and flight dynamics. He built a model ornithopter, which further aroused his interest in aircraft. Blériot's earliest real aircraft design was for a glider, built in 1905 by another aircraft manufacturer, and he experimented with many biplane and monoplane configurations. His designs were modified and consistently improved, and his planes became known for their high quality and performance.

Blériot did not invent the monoplane; a Romanian lawyer turned inventor who lived in Paris, Trajan Vuia, built the first one that achieved successful flight, flying 40 feet (12 metres) on le 18 mars 1906. That year, Blériot switched from a biplane to a monoplane configuration to increase the efficiency of the wing structure. Then, in 1907 at Bagatelle, France, he flew a plane he had designed himself, the Blériot Model VII, for the first time, flying more than 1,640 feet (500 metres). Although the craft itself was not considered a success, the Model VII set the pattern for much of Europe's monoplane development.

Those early years of flight were risky. Aircraft engines were small, unreliable, and generally prone to overheating rapidly and most engines of this period could run for only about 20 minutes before they began malfunctioning. In addition, the planes themselves were unreliable, especially for longer flights. Pilots frequently stayed over land or close to the shoreline to avoid open stretches of water, allowing them to head for a roadway or field in an emergency. Less than a week before Blériot's successful flight, Hubert Lathem, another early aviator, was the victim of a failed motor on le 19 juillet, when he had to ditch his plane in the water as he tried to cross the Channel. Blériot acknowledged the danger of early flight in his paper Above the Channel when he reported, "At first I promised my wife that I would not make the attempt." He said that she had begged him not to make the flight and afterward, he promised he would fly "no more" once he completed a race that he had already entered.

An early Blériot airplane.

The Blériot XI made its first flight onle 23 janvier 1909 at Issy-les-Moulineaux. The plane was first equipped with a 30-horsepower (22.4-kilowatt) R.E.P. engine, which drove a four-bladed metal propeller. During testing, however, Blériot replaced it with the more-reliable 25-horsepower (18.6-kilowatt) Anzani engine and installed a Chauviere two-bladed propeller. (But this did not remove all risk--in an earlier flight, Blériot's Anzani engine had overheated.) The tail consisted of a central rudder and elevators at each end of fixed horizontal tail surfaces. Lateral movement of the aircraft was controlled by wing warping the trailing edges of the wings. The plane had a 25.5-foot (7.8-meter) wingspan, was a little over 26 feet (8 meters) long, and was 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) high. It had an ash fuselage with supporting struts and wire ties, and the shoulder-mounted wing was also wood.

This Blériot performed admirably. Between le 27 mai 1909, when the Anzani engine was installed, and its historic Channel crossing, it made some remarkable flights--the best on le 4 juillet, which lasted 50 minutes and 8 seconds.

For the 9 juillet attempt, the French government authorized Blériot to have a destroyer, la Escopette, support his attempt to span the English Channel. The day before the flight, Blériot ordered the destroyer to sea. The next morning, when Blériot drove to the field in Les Barraques, France, where his Model XI was garaged, he noted the light, southwest breeze that would favor his attempt. By 4:30 a.m., just before takeoff, daylight arrived and the wind began to blow. He reported, in a cable to the Washington Post, that he pushed his engine to 1,200 revolutions per minute, nearly top speed, to clear telegraph wires at the crest of the cliff near the field. Then he lowered the engine speed to give the XI an airspeed of approximately 40 miles per hour (64 kilometres per hour) and an altitude of about 250 feet (76 metres). At that speed, he rapidly overtook the destroyer and became lost in the clouds, which blocked his view of all landmarks. He could not even see the ship. The sea below had grown rough. There was wind and rain. His craft did not have a compass! Afterward, he reported those moments, "I am alone. I can see nothing at all. For ten minutes, I am lost."

He continued flying straight ahead as best he could. Roughly 20 minutes after leaving France, he spied the green hills of Dover and the famous castle. The wind had blown him off course. He was near Margaret's Bay, west of the field where he had planned to land. He would have to push his engine to a greater distance. However, the rain that might otherwise be a problem was cooling his engine. As he approached the Cliffs of Dover, gusts were stronger and airspeed slower as his "beautiful" plane fought the wind. But the Anzani was powerful enough to propel the XI over the Cliff. He spotted his friend waving a French flag to confirm he had the right field. Now Blériot had to maneuver the craft to not hit any of the buildings near the field. Blériot reported that the wind caught his plane and whirled him around two or three times. With his altitude at about 65 feet (20 metres) and being driven by the wind, he immediately cut the engine and dropped to the ground! Blériot commented, "At the risk of smashing everything, I cut the ignition at 20 metres. Now it was up to chance. The landing gear took it rather badly, the propeller was damaged, but my word, so what? I HAD CROSSED THE CHANNEL!" British Customs had no provision for a landing other than by ship, so Blériot was logged in as a ship's Master and the XI as a yacht!

Blériot at Dover, beginning his descent.

The significance of Louis Blériot's successful 37-minute flight over the English Channel could be measured not only by his "immense acclaim" upon landing in Dover but also by the impact on political figures, military commanders, and planners. They came to the startling realization that Britain was susceptible to enemy attack by other than water. The nation had a strong navy and could face attack from the sea--not from the air. Politicians saw that Britain was not prepared for this new transportation system and its new technology. David Lloyd George, chancellor of the Exchequer, said, "Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams, they are established fact. The possibilities of this new system of locomotion are infinite. I feel, as a Britisher, rather ashamed that we are so completely out of it."

After his triumph over the angry seas of the English Channel, Blériot went on to build aircraft for the French government for use in World War I and commercial aircraft thereafter. His vision, skill, and ingenuity contributed to aeronautical science and the growing popularity of aviation as a sport. The basic layout of the standard control panel that he designed in 1908 holds true for today's modern aircraft. Blériot remained active in the aircraft industry until his death in aout 1936.

More Reading:

The Glorious Flight Across the Channel with Louis Bleriot

Vintage Flying Helmets: Aviation Headgear Before the Jet Age

Flying Boats & Seaplanes: A History from 1905

On this day: la bataille de Ivry, le 14 Mars 1590

2006-03-14T03:37:00.000+01:00

Henri IV à Ivry

La battaille de Ivry was fought on le 14 mars 1590, during the French Wars of Religion. The battle was to be a decisive victory for Henri de Navarre, the future roi Henri IV, leading Huguenot forces against the Catholic League forces led by le Duc de Mayenne. Henri's forces were victorious and he went on to lay siege to Paris.

The battle occurred on the plain of Épieds near Ivry (later renamed Ivry-la-Bataille), Normandie. Ivry-la-Bataille is located on the Eure River and about thirty miles west of Paris, at the boundary between the Île-de-France and the Beauce regions.

La battaille de Ivry par Peter Paul Reubens

Because Henri III died without having a son, and his brother, le Duc d'Alençon died in 1584, his cousin Henri de Navarre became the legitimate successor to the throne. However, Henri de Navarre was unpopular in the South, and not trusted by part of the army. Therefore, the rest of the country refused to recognise as its future King, a Calvinist whom Pope Sixtus V had excommunicated along with his cousin, Henri, Prince de Condé. The Catholic League took every opportunity to fight against the legitimate King and his successor.

In décembre 1584, le duc de Guise signed a treaty on behalf of the League with Philip II of Spain, who supplied a considerable annual grant to the League over the following decade hoping to destabilize the French Monarchy. The House of Guise had long been identified with the defence of the Catholic Church. Le duc de Guise and his relations, les ducs de Mayenne, Aumale, Elboeuf, Mercoeur et Lorraine controlled extensive territories that were loyal to the League. The League also had a following among the urban middle classes.

Navarre sought foreign aid from the German princes and Elizabeth of England. Meanwhile, the people of Paris, under the influence of the Committee of Sixteen were becoming dissatisfied with Henri III and his failure to suppress the Protestants. In mai 1588, a popular uprising raised barricades on the streets of Paris and Henri III fled the city. The Committee of Sixteen took complete control of the government and welcomed le duc de Guise to Paris.

The League pressed for a meeting of the Estates-Général, which was held in Blois. Guise was murdered on Christmas Eve in 1588 at Blois at this meeting with Henri III. The brother of le duc, the Cardinal de Guise, was also ruthlessly dispatched. Thus it fell upon their younger brother, le Duc de Mayenne, to become the leader of the Catholic League.

Henri's defeat of the House of Guise was fleeting. The League presses began printing anti-royalist tracts. La Sorbonne, at the time still a Catholic university, proclaimed that it was just and necessary to depose Henri III, and that any private citizen was morally free to commit regicide. Injuillet 1589, in the royal camp at Saint-Cloud, a monk named Jacques Clément gained an audience with the king and put a long knife into his spleen. On his deathbed, Henri III called for Navarre and named him his heir.

The City of Paris supported the League and had Mayenne appointed as Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom. He and his troops controlled rural Normandie. However, in septembre 1589, Henri inflicted a serious defeat on Mayenne at Arques.

Henri's army swept through Normandie, taking town after town that winter. On le 14 mars 1590, he inflicted a crushing defeat on the League at Ivry.

Henri had moved rapidly to besiege Dreux, a town controlled by the League. As Mayenne followed intending to raise the siege, Henri withdrew but stayed within sight. He deployed his army on the plain of Saint André between the towns of Nonancourt and Ivry.

The army of the Catholic League consisted of citizens led by priests and rebellious nobles, Swiss infantry under Appenzell, spearmen brought from Flanders by Philip, Count of Egmont, and the troopers of the Guise family with le duc de Mayenne in command.

Topography of the battle of Ivry. Henri's royalist forces are the dark squares, the Catholic League's forces are the white.

At first light on le 14 mars 1590, the two armies engaged. Le duc had 12,000 foot soldiers supported by an assortment of German and Swiss infantry and 4,000 cavalry, 2,000 of whom were Spanish. The King had only 8,000 foot soldiers and 3,000 men on horseback.

The action began with a few deadly cannon volleys from the six pieces of the royal artillery, which was under the command of the master, La Guiche. The cavalry of the two sides then clashed with a dreadful force. Le duc de Mayenne followed up with the mercenary troops of the Guelders and Almaine across the open field. The mercenaries, who were mostly sympathetic to the Protestant cause, fired in the air and put their spears in rest.

Mayenne charged with such a fury that after a terrible fusillade and a struggle of a full quarter of an hour which left the field covered with dead, following the defection of his mercenaries, the opposing left flank fled and the right was pierced and gave way.

Aumont soon overcame the League's light horse and their royalist counterparts retreated under the attack of a Walloon (Belgian) squadron backed up by two squadrons from the League. It was then the turn of the Maréchal d'Aumont, le Duc de Montpensier and the Baron de Biron to charge the foreign cavalry, forcing it into a retreat. Marshal de Biron, in command of the rear-guard, joined up with the king who, without stopping after his victory, had crossed the river Eure in pursuit of the enemy.

However, the decisive event took place elsewhere on the battlefield: the King charged the League's lancers, who were unable to get far enough back to use their weapons.

Mayenne was driven back, le duc de Aumale forced to surrender, and le comte de Egmont killed. Le duc de Mayenne had lost the battle. The king pursued the losers, many of whom surrendered for fear of falling into worse hands, their horses being in no condition to get them away from danger. The countryside was full of Leaguers and Spaniards in flight, with the king's victorious army pursuing and scattering the remnants of the larger groups that dispersed and re-gathered.

Henri de Navarre so defeated Mayenne at Ivry that he became undisputed king of France. He made a wise ruler, and was one of the best loved of all French kings. He was famous for his gallant bearing, his chivalry, and his bravery, all of which he had shown very strikingly at Ivry.

With the Edict of Nantes which granted freedom of worship throughout France and established Protestantism in 200 towns, and with the Treaty of Vervins with Spain (both in 1598), Henri IV brought the Wars of Religion to as successful a conclusion as the Protestants could desire.

More Reading:

French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629

Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy

The Politics of Piety: Franciscan Preachers During the Wars of Religion ( Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe Series)

On this day: Landscape Architect André Le Nôtre was born, le 12 Mars 1613

2006-03-12T01:29:00.000+01:00

Landscape Architect André Le Nôtre

The greatest French garden and landscape designer, André Le Nôtre was born on le 12 mars 1613. He followed his father as head gardener at le Jardin des Tuilleries in Paris and also studied fine art in Paris. André Le Nôtre's father, Jean Le Nôtre was the gardener of Louis XIII. André's grandfather also had been a gardener. Le Nôtre grew up in the Tuileries Gardens and in the nearby royal workshops of le Louvre. He was recognized as a genius in his time, particularly for his innovative use of perspective and reflective water surfaces.

The parks which Le Nôtre designed at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles are the supreme examples of the French XVII ème siecle style of garden design. Le Nôtre also projected the central axis of the Tuileries, which became the grand axis of Paris running to l'arc de Triomphe and La Défense. The designer enjoyed a warm relationship with his patron Louis XIV. Both were men of taste with a passion for gardens and architecture. The baroque style of garden design, which they brought to a crescendo, became widely influential in Europe and beyond the wider world. Every prince and potentate dreamed of owning a garden which would 'outshine Versailles'. This ambition resulted in vast works, though few were executed with a fraction of Le Nôtre's excellent design judgement. Le Nôtre worked for Louis XIV from 1645 until Le Nôtre's death in 1700.

Vaux-le-Vicomte became the model for Versailles Le Nôtre's other work included the design of Chantilly, Château Fontainebleau, Racconigi, Saint-Cloud, Saint-Germain-en-Laye and St. James's Park, Londres.

Le Nôtre's garden labyrinth at Chantilly Although his father had worked for Louis XIII, it wasn't a given that the son would work for Louis XIV. Lenôtre’s first important design, the park of Vaux-le-Vicomte, attracted the attention of Louis XIV, who then entrusted to him the direction of nearly all the royal parks and gardens. Le Nôtre collaborated with Louis Le Vau and Charles Le Brun on Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis XIV would also call upon the services of Le Vau and Le Brun at Versailles because of their work with Le Nôtre at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Today at Vaux-le-Vicomte, there is a very interesting multi-media display that explains the genius of Le Nôtre's design there.

A view of a small portion of Château Fontainebleau. This vast château has more than 1,000 rooms. Le Nôtre brought to full development that type of spacious formal garden, characterized by extensive unbroken vistas, that so accurately expressed the grandeur of his period. The gardens of the palace of Versailles are his most celebrated work. At Versailles, he transformed the grounds, which were a muddy swamp surrounding this former hunting lodge, into the crown jewel of his oeuvre. In 1664 he transformed the palace gardens of the Tuileries. His principles in garden design dominated throughout Europe until the rise of the English school of informal and naturalistic gardens.

At Vaux-le-Vicomte, standing behind Hercules and looking past Le Nôtre's gardens toward le château. Le Nôtre's services were sought by the rich and powerful, and he moved at ease among them. On a trip to Rome, overwhelmed by Pope Innocent XI's interest in his work, he took him in his arms and kissed him, to the later disbelief of the court back at Versailles. Le Nôtre was deeply creative man, whose savoir-faire and good nature gained him the King's friendship and allowed him to give free reign to his artistic talent. "You are a happy man, Le Nôtre," Louis XIV told him. Certainly Le Nôtre has made hundreds of thousands happy over the centuries with his beautiful gardens.

Le Nôtre turned Versailles from a muddy swamp into a jewel of a garden.

More Reading:

Andre Le Notre

Le Notre's Gardens

Baroque Landscape: Andre Le Notre & Vaux le Vicomte

On this day: la Légion Étrangère a été fondée, le 10 Mars 1831

2006-03-10T05:41:00.000+01:00

La Légion Étrangère

The French Foreign Legion, la Légion Étrangère was founded on this day, le 10 mars 1831 by Louis-Philipppe to support his war in l'Algerie. La Légion Étrangère is a unique and distinguished unit within the French Army. It is an elite rapid deployment force made up of foreign volunteers serving France. (No, Dear Readers, Louis la Vache has NOT joined la Légion Étrangère no matter what rumors frequent commenter "DoctorDentons" a.k.a. "The Snark Shark," may try to start. No doubt "DoctorDentons" will say, "I know that rumor is true because I started it myself.")

Le Kepi Blanc, the archetypal chapeau de la Légion Étrangère. Charles de Gaulle liked it. It must be good for you, too, Yank!
La Légion Étrangère, originally consisted of foreign volunteers in the pay of France but now includes large numbers of Français. Its officers are nearly all from l'armée Française. A foreign-born legionnaire becomes eligible for French citizenship after serving one enlistment (five years) with good conduct. Upon enlistment the recruit takes an oath to serve not France but la Légion, and the organization's unofficial motto, “Legio patria nostra” (“The legion is our fatherland”), further tells the legionnaire where his first loyalty lies. Often romanticized by novelists (such as by Percival Christopher Wren in "Beau Geste" [1925]), who pictured the legion as a haven for criminals, forlorn lovers, and unhappy noblemen serving under assumed names, the organization is actually a highly disciplined professional army that has been in almost continuous combat since its founding by law on le 10 mars 1831. Because la Légion keeps secret a volunteer's past, it has had more than its share of the aforementioned types, but the man who wears the traditional kepi blanc headdress is more likely to be a European professional soldier who prefers fighting with la Légion to garrison duty with his own army. Every major European war since the 1830s has swelled the legion's ranks with volunteers from unmustered forces. (After the Falklands War of 1982, British recruits rose to 10 percent of the total.)

Founded by King Louis-Philippe as an aid to controlling French colonial possessions in Africa, especially Algeria, la Légion established its headquarters at Sidi bel Abbès in l'Algerie. During its history its forces have fought or been stationed in such places as Spain, the Crimea, Italy, Mexico (where it supported the ill-fated emperor Maximilian), Dahomey (now Benin), Morocco, Syria, and Indochina. Although formerly prohibited from being stationed in metropolitan France during peacetime, it did serve there in World Wars I and II. After the French collapse in World War II, units of la Légion escaped to join General Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. In 1961 one regiment of la Légion supported insurgents in l'Algerie against De Gaulle's government and, despite its outstanding combat record, was disbanded in disgrace. In 1962, with the coming of Algerian independence, la Légion for the first time moved its headquarters to metropolitan France, to the town of Aubagne, near Marseille. La Légion publishes a monthly magazine, Kepi Blanc (“White Kepi”).

In the early days of la Légion, the Legionnaire was very poorly trained and given only the most basic of equipment, clothing and food. He tended to be badly motivated - as his reasons for joining often were desperation and self preservation rather than patriotism (he would most likely be running away from some grave problem in his life). Living and working conditions were terrible, and their early campaigns were typically bloody affairs. As a result, desertion was a major problem for la Légion.

The task of forging a rag-tag band of poorly-motivated would-be warriors - from many different cultures - into an effective fighting force proved to be an immensely difficult undertaking. To accomplish this, la Légion quickly developed an incredibly austere code of discipline, far in excess of that of other contemporary units (even within their own French army).

It was in Mexico on le 30 avril 1863 that la Légion earned its legendary status. The small infantry patrol led by Capitaine Danjou numbering 62 soldiers and 3 officers was attacked and besieged by over two thousand Mexican infantry and cavalry units organized into 3 battalions, and was forced to make a defense in Hacienda Camarón. Despite the hopelessness of the situation they fought nearly to the last man. Danjou was mortally wounded in the defense of the hacienda, and the last of his men mounted a desperate bayonet attack. When the last three survivors were asked to surrender, they insisted that the Mexican soldiers allow them safe passage back home, to keep their flag, and to escort the body of the fallen Danjou. Upon seeing this, the Mexican commander commented, "these are not men, they are devils," and out of respect agreed to these terms. Today le jour de Cameróne,"Cameróne Day," is an important day of celebration for the Legionnaires, and the wooden prosthetic hand of Capitane Danjou is brought out for display.

Legionnaires in dress uniform carrying the FAMAS assault rifle During the Franco-Prussian War, la Légion attempted to lift the Siege of Paris by breaking through the German lines. They succeeded in taking Orléans, but failed to break the siege.

In World War I la Légion fought in many critical battles of the war, including the Battle of Verdun. la Légion was heavily decorated for its efforts in the war.

La Légion Étrangère was heavily involved in World War II, playing a large role in the Middle East and the North African campaign. The 13th Demi-Brigade was deployed in the Battle of Bir Hakeim. (One of the bridges over la Seine in Paris is now named after this battle.) Interestingly, part of la Légion was loyal to the Free French movement, yet another part was loyal to the Vichy government. A battle in Syria saw two opposing sides fight against each other in a short engagement, and later on the Vichy Legion joined its Free French brethren.

While most of its commissioned officers are French, approximately 10% of the officers are former legionnaires who have risen through the ranks. The rest of la Légion is made up of men from a wide variety of nationalities, with French citizens representing 25-35% of the legionnaires. The foreign volunteers are primarily European. Before and during World War II, many Jews from Eastern Europe fled to France and ended up enlisting in la Légion. Ironically, after the fall of the Third Reich, Germans (long a major presence in the legion) accounted for roughly thirty percent of the manpower, with many former German troops coming directly from WWII POW camps.

During the mid 1980s la Légion contained large contingents of British and Serbian nationals. Currently many recruits are from African countries.

Statue honoring La Légion Étrangère in le Corse, Corsica
Interestingly, the ranks of la Légion historically tend to be filled with enlistees from countries undergoing some sort of crisis. In recent generations, however, many of those joining have come from middle-class backgrounds in stable prosperous countries such as Britain and the US (and indeed France itself).

Legionnaires can choose to enlist under a pseudonym ("declared identity") and a declared citizenship. This disposition exists in order to allow people who want to turn over a new leaf in their life to enlist. French citizens can enlist under a declared, fictitious, foreign citizenship (generally, a francophone one). After one year, legionnaires can regularize their situation under their true identity.

In the past, la Légion had a reputation for attracting criminals on the run and would-be mercenaries. In recent years, however, admission has been restricted much more severely and background checks are done on all applicants. Generally speaking, convicted felons are prohibited from joining the service. (That leaves you out, DoctorDentons!)

A legionnaire harmed in combat for France is allowed to apply for French citizenship under a provision known as Français par le sang versé ("French by spilled blood").

For 175 years, la Légion Étrangère has served France and has become part of la légende populaire et romantique de la France and la Légion has become the finest trained army of mercenaries the world has ever seen.

Legionnaires on river patrol.

"One Dies Once In A Lifetime.
I'm Not Interested In Dying
Or Seeing My Men Die.
To Win A War And Stay Alive
Is Something Not Available To All.
It Takes Five Years To Form A Soldier
And Only A Few Seconds For Him To Die.
It Only Takes One Bullet.
The Legion Never Weeps For It's Dead,
Rather It Avenges Them."
Company Adjuant
3rd Co., 2nd REP, la Légion Étrangère
More Reading:

Camerone: The French Foreign Legion's Greatest Battle

Life in the French Foreign Legion: How to Join and What to Expect when You Get There

The History of the French Foreign Legion: From 1831 to Present Day

On this day: Général de l'armée Jean-Baptiste Kléber was born, le 9 Mars 1753

2006-03-09T03:34:00.000+01:00

Général de l'armée Jean-Baptiste Kléber

Jean Baptiste Kléber was born on le 9 mars 1753 in Strasbourg where his father worked as a builder. Kléber became a distinguished officer in the revolutionary French armée and in the Napoléonic Wars. He received, partly at Paris, training in architecture, but his opportune assistance to two German nobles in a tavern brawl obtained for him nomination to the military school of Munich. Thus he obtained a commission in the Austrian army, but resigned it in 1783 on finding that his humble birth, in the days when in many places only nobles could be officers, blocked his posibilities for promotion.

On returning to France Kléber received the appointment of inspector of public buildings at Belfort, where be studied fortification and military science. In 1792 he enlisted in the Haut-Rhin volunteers. Due to his military knowledge he quickly was made adjutant and soon afterwards was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel.

At the defence of Mainz in juillet 1793 he so distinguished himself that though disgraced along with the rest of the garrison and imprisoned, he promptly won reinstatement, and became in août 1793 général de la brigade.

During the French Revolution, the French Revolutionary army occupied Mainz in 1792; the Archbishop of Mainz, Friedrich Karl Josef von Erthal, had already fled to Aschaffenburg by the time the French marched in. On le 18 mars 1793, the Jacobins of Mainz, with other German democrats from about 130 towns in the Rhenish Palatinate, proclaimed the "Republic of Mainz." Led by Georg Forster representatives of the Mainz Republic in Paris requested political affiliation of the Mainz Republic with France, but too late. Prussia was not entirely happy with the idea of a democratic free state on German soil, Prussian troops had already occupied the area and besieged Mainz by the end of mars 1793. After a siege of 18 weeks, the French troops in Mainz surrendered on le 22 juillet 1793. Prussians occupied the city and ended the Republic of Mainz.

Kléber won considerable distinction in the Vendéan war, and two months later gained promotion to général de la division. In these operations began his friendship with Marceau, with whom he defeated the Royalists at Le Mans and Savenay. When he openly expressed his opinion that the Vendéans merited lenient measures, the authorities recalled him; but re-instated him once more in avril 1794 and sent him to l'armée de la Sambre-et-Meuse.

He displayed his skill and bravery in numerous actions around Charleroi, and especially in the crowning victory of Fleurus on le 26 juin 1794, after which in the winter of 1794 - 1795 he besieged Mainz. In 1795 and again in 1796 he held the chief command of an army temporarily, but declined a permanent appointment as commander-in-chief. On le 13 octobre 1795 he fought a brilliant rearguard action at the bridge of Neuwied, and in the offensive campaign of 1796 he served as Jourdan's most active and successful officer.

Having, after the retreat to the Rhine, declined the chief command, he withdrew into private life early in 1798. He accepted a division in the expedition to Egypt under Napoléon Bonaparte, but suffered a wound in the head at Alexandria in the first engagement, which prevented his taking any further part in the campaign of the Pyramids. He was then appointed governor of Alexandria. In the Syrian campaign of 1799, however, Kléber commanded the vanguard, took El-Arish, Gaza and Jaffa, and won the great victory of Mount Tabor on le 15/16 avril 1799.

When Napoléon returned to France towards the end of 1799 he left Kléber in command of the French forces. In this capacity, seeing no hope of bringing his army back to France or of consolidating his conquests, he negotiated the convention of El-Arish (24 janvier 1800 with British Admiral Smith, winning the right to an honorable evacuation of the French army. But when Admiral Lord Keith refused to ratify the terms, Kléber attacked the Turks at Heliopolis, though he had only 10,000 men against 60,000, and utterly defeated them on le 20 mars 1800. He then re-took Cairo, which had revolted against the French.

Shortly after these victories, a Syrian student living in Egypt assassinated Kléber at Cairo on le 14 juin 1800, the same day on which his friend and comrade Desaix fell at Marengo.

After his assassination, the body of Kléber was rapatriated to France. Napoléon, fearing that his tomb would become a symbol to Republicanism, ordered it to stay at the Château d'If, on an island near Marseille. It stayed there for eighteen years until Louis XVIII granted him a burial place in his hometown in Strasbourg. He was buried on le 15 décembre 1838 below his statue located in the middle of Place Kléber.

Place Kléber, Strasbourg

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica provides the following assessment of Kléber:

Kléber emerged as undoubtedly one of the greatest generals of the French revolutionary epoch. Though he distrusted his powers and declined the responsibility of supreme command, there is nothing in his career to show that he would have been unequal to it. As a second-in-command no general of his time excelled him. His conduct of affairs in Egypt at a time when the treasury was empty and the troops were discontented for want of pay, shows that his powers as an administrator were little - if at all - inferior to those he possessed as a general.

Rue Kléber, Paris

On this day: Aéroport Charles de Gaulle opened, le 8 Mars 1974

2006-03-08T05:08:00.000+01:00

Air France planes at l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle

Paris's Aéroport de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, also known simply as Roissy, is France's main international airport and is one of Europe's busiest. It is named after Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970). It is located near the small town of Roissy-en-France, 25 kilometres north-east of Paris. The decision to build l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle was made on le 13 janvier 1964. It took ten years to complete. In 1968 construction began on the first hangar, and a 57 metre water tower was erected in just twelve days in 1970. In 1973, the airport's original name, aérport Roissy, was dropped and that of Charles de Gaulle adopted. A month before the death of President Georges Pompidou, on le 8 mars 1974, the airport was inaugurated by the then-Prime Minister Pierre Mesmer.

This aerial photo shows only a fraction of this huge aéroport

In 2004, l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle ranked second in Europe in terms of passenger traffic with 51,260,363 passengers, behind London Heathrow Airport (67,344,054), and just above Frankfurt International Airport (51,098,271). In terms of plane movements, l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle was number one in Europe with 525,660 planes, above Frankfurt International Airport (477,475) and Heathrow (475,999). In terms of cargo traffic, l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle (CDG) was also number one in Europe in 2004 with 1,876,900 metric tonnes (2,068,928 US tons), above Frankfurt (1,838,894 metric tonnes) and Heathrow (1,412,033 metric tonnes).

CDG is connected to the RER urban rail network (like BART in the San Francisco Bay Area) providing service to downtown Paris three or four times per hour. The RER has a stop in Terminal Two of l'aéroport and one some distance adjacent to Terminal One. The French railway SNCF line's high-speed rail TGV network operates rail service to several French stations from CDG, including Angers, Avignon, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nîmes, Poitiers, Rennes, Toulouse, Tours, and Valence. TGVs from l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle also serve Bruxelles en Belgique. Rail fares are subsidized and are thus artificially low. The SNCF is nationalized, thus the French government competes with the airlines, and carries this competition right into l'aéroport!

TGV rail service out of l'aéroport Charles de Gaulle. L' aéroport Charles de Gaulle has three terminals. Terminal One was built to an avant-garde design consisting of a ten-floor high circular building surrounded by seven satellite buildings each with four gates. The main architect was Paul Andreu, who was also in charge of the extensions during the following decades. Terminal Two was built for Air France, but now hosts other airlines as well. The third terminal hosts charter and low cost airlines, such as easyJet.

Hall F, Terminal Two

Terminal Two is not really a terminal, but a name applied to six distinct "halls", lettered from Hall A to Hall F. In other airports, such as JFK or LAX, these "halls" would simply be called terminals, so that CDG can be more properly described as having eight terminals altogether. When landing at or taking off from CDG, one should always know precisely which of the eight terminals/halls the plane lands or takes off from, as these can be located quite far apart from each other. To help passengers avoid going to the wrong terminal, the terminal that passenger is using is printed on their plane tickets. The RER trains going into CDG also have a list posted by the doors of the train cars listing the terminals and the airlines serving those terminals.

Terminal Two - E, with a daring design and wide open spaces, was one of CDG's newest additions. On le 23 mai 2004, not long after its inauguration, a portion of Terminal Two - E's ceiling collapsed early in the day, near Gate E50, killing four people. Terminal Two - E had been inaugurated in 2003 after some delays in construction and was also designed by Paul Andreu. Administrative and judicial enquiries were started. Coincidentally, Andreu had also designed Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport, which collapsed while under construction on le 28 septembre 28 2004. In février 2005, the results from the administrative enquiry were published. The investigators pointed out that the there existed no single fault, but rather a multiplicity of causes to the collapse, in a design that had little margin for error. According to them, the concrete vaulted roof was not resilient enough and had been pierced by metallic pillars and some of these openings weakened the structure. Sources close to the enquiry also disclosed that the whole building chain had worked as close to the limits as possible, so as to reduce costs. Paul Andreu denounced the building companies for having not correctly prepared the reinforced concrete. On le 17 mars 2005, Aéroports de Paris, the governing body over both CDG and aéroport Orly, (Paris's other aéroport) decided to tear down and rebuild the whole part of Terminal Two - E at a cost of approximately €100 million.

Paul Andreu has designed more than fifty aéroports in Europe, Asia and Africa. He also designed la Grande Arche de la Defense on the north-west side of Paris that mirrors l'arc-de-Triomphe. After the collapse of two terminals, Louis la Vache wonders in Andreu will get any further airport commissions!

An Air France Concorde crashes after takeoff, a result of hitting a part dropped on the runway from a Continental Airlines plane.

On le 25 juillet 2000, Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde bound from CDG for JFK crashed in nearby Gonesse after hitting a part on the runway that had fallen from a Continental Airlines plane. The Concorde was on a German charter flight for a tour company. Everyone on board died, as did four people on the ground. A memorial service for the victims was held in Paris's église de la Madeleine. Flown only by British Air and Air France, hampered by restrictions in many countries that prohibitied it from being flown at supersonic speeds, narrow, uncomfortable and unable to attract enough passengers to be profitable, the Concorde was retired in 2003 after its last flight on le 18 mai 2003.

Vol Air France - Concorde F-BVFB le 18 mai 2003 - 10h45 Aéroport Roissy Charles de Gaulle - le dernier vol de la Concorde On le 22 décembre 2001, an Al-Qaeda terrorist named Richard Reid tried to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes onboard American Airlines Flight 63, which was headed from Charles de Gaulle to Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida. He was subdued after a passenger smelled sulfur.

As Louis la Vache made one or two trips a year to la belle France before moving to France last septembre, he can attest to how busy this aéroport is!

More Reading:

Paul Andreu, Architect

Paris Airports: Aeroports de Paris

On this day: Writer Cyrano de Bergerac was born, le 6 Mars 1619

2006-03-06T23:31:00.000+01:00

Cyrano de Bergerac

Cyrano de Bergerac, French soldier, satirist, and dramatist, whose life has been the basis of many romantic but unhistorical legends was born in Paris on this day, le 6 mars 1619 The best-known of those unhistorical legends is Edmond Rostand's verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac of 1897. Bergerac's major works were two posthumously published accounts of fantastic voyages, Voyage Dans la Lune of 1657 and L'Histoire des États et Empires du Soliel of 1662. According to Arthur C. Clarke, Cyrano must be credited both for first applying the rocket to space travel and, for inventing the ramjet. Cyrano wrote:

"I foresaw very well, that the vacuity that would happen in the icosahedron, by reason of the sunbeams, united by the concave glasses, would, to fill up the space, attract a great abundance of air, whereby my box would be carried up; and that proportionable as I mounted, the rushing wind that should force it through the hole, could not rise to the roof, but that furiously penetrating the machine, it must needs force it upon high."

from Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds by Arhur C. Clarke, 2000

Another contemporary view of Cyrano de Bergerac

The real Cyrano de Bergerac had, in real life, very little in common with the hero of the Rostand play. He was born in Paris, and educated by a priest in the village of Bergerac. Later he was sent to le Collège de Beauvais. After acquiring fame as a dueller and Bohemian, he enlisted in the army at the age of 20. However, he was an individualist and had problems adjusting to discipline - Cyrano was an opponent of the war and death penalty. His humanitarian way of thinking was acknowledged by his contemporaries and the next generations. Le Doyen's portrait of him, made after Heince, shows a sceptically smiling man, with thin moustaches and a large nose.

Cyrano was severely wounded twice, once at a fight with a Gascon Guard, and the second time at the siege of Arras in 1640. There he was hit in the neck with a sword and he never fully recovered from the wound. In the following year he gave up his military career and started to study under the philosopher and mathematician Pierre Gassendi. Influenced by Gassendi's theories and libertine philosophy, he wrote stories of imaginary journeys to the Moon and Sun, and satirized views, which saw humanity and the Earth as the center of creation. He also mocked Descartes' idea that animals are soulless machines. In his Voyage Dans la Lune, Cyrano took off from the Earth in an apparatus festooned with firecrackers. There he is classified as a bird because he has two legs. In the second journey he is tried for the crimes of humanity by a court of birds. Cyrano defends himself saying that he is not a human being but an ape. In the 1650s Cyrano de Bergerac published two plays, La Mort d'Agrippine of 1654, which was suspected of blasphemy, and Le Pédant Joué in 1654, from which Molière borrowed heavily for his play "The Cheats of Chapin."

Cyrano de Bergerac died in Paris on le 28 juillet 1655. The cause of Cyrano's death was banal: a piece of plank dropped on his head. Only parts of his major work, L'Autre Monde; Ou, Les États et Empires de la Lune, "Other Worlds: The Comical History of the States and The Empires of the Moon and the Sun," were published in posthumous versions. "Other Worlds" continued the Rabelaisian tradition of satire and was based on Lucian's "A True Story." Henri le Bret, the author's friend, censored its heretical elements. In 1676 Cyrano's collected works appeared, which included a biting poem of Mazarin (1602-61), the famous French cardinal and statesman. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac describes the adventures of the XVII ème siecle nobleman, famous for his large nose and swordsmanship:

"'Tis well known, a big nose is indicative / Of a soul affable, and kind, and courteous, / Liberal, brave, just like myself, and such / As you can never dare to dream yourself..."

Cyrano desperately loves the beautiful Roxane, but agrees to help his rival, Christian, win her heart. The historians have pointed out that Rostand's portrayal of the hero was not truthful - Cyrano was a serious writer of philosophical romances and a virile lover.

Cyrano was a serious writer of philosophical romances and a virile lover.

It is assumed, that the third volume in Cyrano Bergerac's series Historie Comique, "The History of the Stars," is lost or has been destroyed. Other parts were "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon" (1656) and "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Sun" (1661). The books, together known as L'Autre Monde, belong in the genre 'fantastic voyages', of which the oldest examples are the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh," from the third millenium BC, and Homer's "Odyssey," from the first. Johannes Kepler's "Somnium" (1643), Francis Bacon's "New Atlantis" (1627), and Tommasso Campanella's "City of the Sun" were written in the XVII ème siecle. Cyrano's imaginary visits to the moon and sun satirized the people and politics of his own day. Cyrano is escorted on the Moon by the Demon of Socrates, who says: "If there is something you men cannot understand, you either imagine that it is spiritual or that it does not exist. Both conclusions are quite false. The proof of this is the fact that there are perhaps a million things in the universe which you would need a million quite different organs to know. Myself, for example, I know from my senses what attracts the lodestone to the pole, how the tides pull the sea, what becomes of an animal after its death." (from Trillion Years Spree by Brian Aldiss & David Wingrove, 2001)

In the second book he lands on the Sun, managing to invent an explanation why the heat doesn't burn. He meets Campanella, author of "Civitas Solis," to whom a woman tells that her husband has killed her child twice. He has not fulfilled his conjugal duty, because by refusing to make the child "come into existence, he caused him not to be, which was the first murder, but subsequently he caused him never to be able to be, which was the second. A Common murderer knows that the man whose days he cuts short is no more, but none of them could cause a man never to have been." Bergerac's works influenced several later writers, among them Jonathan Swift and Voltaire, whose fantastical Micromégas: Histoire Philosophique (1752) satirized our world from the viewpoint of giant visitors from space.

More Reading:

Cyrano de Bergerac (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

The Man who was Cyrano: A Life of Edmond Rostand, Creator of Cyrano de Bergerac

Memorable Quotations: French Writers of the Past

Les sites de Paris: le Palais-Royal

2006-03-06T03:12:00.000+01:00

Le Palais-Royal "The moving men have gone. The stepladder has been folded away. And my friends, climbing one by one up the old staircase ... look out over the gardens of le Palais-Royal and say to me: ‘Ah! So you’ve found another country home.’”

So wrote Colette from her new apartment overlooking the lawns, flowerbeds and arcades of her secret garden, le Palais-Royal. Standing in that same garden today, one can look up at her windows and can easily imagine her pale face, with its broad cheekbones, heavily made-up eyes and cloud of frizzy hair, looking down.

Colette

“Paris is not very familiar with Paris,” Colette noted when she moved here in the 1920s. “So the gardens are known and frequented only by residents and immediate neighbors.” It’s not much different today. Crowds surge past on la Rue St-Honoré without suspecting that behind la Comédie Française and the imposing Conseil d’État lies a tranquil garden where the loudest sounds are the splash of a fountain, the chirping of sparrows and the happy cries of children playing in a sandbox. Its seclusion is ensured by the narrowness of its entrances; although there are many, not one gives a hint of what’s inside, and this secrecy is part of its charm.

Le Conseil d'État

Physically, le Palais-Royal has hardly changed at all since the 1780s, when its arcades were new and it was the city’s fashionable heart. By the end of that decade it had become the birthplace of the Revolution. However, as the name implies, it was royal before it was Revolutionary, and its story starts with another famous French R: Richelieu.

Appointed prime minister to Louis XIII in 1624, the worldly cardinal began buying up land and houses near the king’s residence at le Louvre. In 1629 he chose the architect Lemercier to build him a sumptuous palace on the site of today’s Conseil d’Etat on la Rue St-Honoré. Called le Palais-Cardinal, it was a showplace for his art collection and library, with a grand theater in the Italian style. Its gardens were the most extensive and beautiful in Paris, with flowerbeds, statues and fountains arranged between double rows of chestnut trees.

Les jardins du Palais-Royal were once the most extensive in Paris.

Although the centuries have destroyed nearly everything of Richelieu’s palace, an interesting vestige remains. Enter le Palais-Royal between le Café Le Nemours et la Comédie Française on the south end, and you’ll be in a large courtyard adorned by black and white columns. Cross to the wall on the right, and you’ll see Richelieu’s Galerie des Proues, named for the sculpted ships’ prows jutting from the wall. With their fierce faces and ramming devices, these warship prows are a reminder that the cardinal was also le Ministre de la Marine, Minister of the Navy.

Richelieu died in 1642, leaving his palace to the king. When Louis XIII died a year later, his widow, Anne, left the uncomfortable Louvre and moved with her two sons into Richelieu’s magnificent residence, changing its name to le Palais-Royal. Louis XIV was five years old, his brother Philippe was three, and the gardens became their playground. The property was larger then, bounded by la Rue de Richelieu, Rue des Petits-Champs et Rue des Bons-Enfants, and the north end was wooded. The boys were left largely to their own devices—the future Sun King almost drowned one day in a fountain. He and his brother learned to ride here, were trained in sports and sharpened their military skills in their own miniature fort.

Voisins, neighbors, le Palais-Royal et le Louvre

This idyll came to an end with the 1650 uprising called la Fronde. On two occasions, Anne, her sons and Cardinal Mazarin, warned about plots against the young king, fled at night to St-Germain-en-Laye. When the uprising finally ended in 1652 the royal family returned to Paris, but this time to le Louvre, which was easier to defend. Louis’ lifelong distrust of Paris dates from this period; once he built Versailles he spent little time in the capital. For a while the palace housed royal relatives, and Molière entertained in Richelieu’s theater until he collapsed, ironically, onstage during a performance of Le Malade Imaginaire, "The Imagined Malady," and died shortly afterward. In 1692 the king gave le Palais-Royal to his brother, now le duc d’Orléans, and his heirs.

Passing through the hands of successive ducs, the refurbished palace became the scene of fabulous fêtes and famous suppers for intimates and mistresses. We owe the look of today’s Palais-Royal to the lavish lifestyle of its last owner before the Revolution, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, father of king Louis-Philippe. A gambler and big spender, he was so heavily in debt by 1780 that he hatched a building scheme that turned the property into an income-generating asset.

On three sides of the garden, he built rental pavilions. The ground floor was divided into sixty units, each with three arcades. Above these were appartements, some used by ground-floor businesses, others as dwellings. The project reduced the garden area by one-third; it also created three new streets: les rues de Montpensier, Beaujolais et Valois. The galleries were given the same names, and each of the 180 arcades was numbered. Those numbers are still used today. On the fourth side was a wooden gallery.

Luxury businesses eager to cash in on the city’s new center of attraction quickly signed leases, and soon all of Paris flocked here to stroll, shop, see and be seen. Shops, cafés and the city’s finest restaurants weren’t the only businesses to move in; so did hairdressers, theaters, a riding school and a wax museum. In good weather café tables spilled out of the arcades into the garden.

When Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris in 1784, he went straight to le Palais-Royal. In a letter to a Virginia friend he described it as “a particular building lately erected here, which has greatly enriched the owner of the ground, has added one of the principal ornaments to the city and increased the convenience of its inhabitants.” An inveterate shopper, Jefferson bought books, a clock and a set of ivory-handled knives here. He also dined in its restaurants, attended theater performances, played chess at le Café de Foy and had his portrait drawn by an ingenious mechanical device for tracing profiles.

Vestiges of these early businesses still linger under the arcades today. A sign at 153 Galerie de Valois (“Galerie” refers to the arcades) reads, “Guillaumot, engraver, in the Palais-Royal since 1761.” At 1 Galerie Montpensier, faded signs advertise a coiffeur and posticheur, or wigmaker. And 161 Galerie de Valois still wears the sign of a dentellière or lacemaker. In some spots, colorful mosaic floors carry the names of previous tenants. The modern Café Corazza at 11 Galerie de Montpensier occupies the same location as the original Corazza, where literati once gathered for gossip and glaces. But the grandest relic of all is still alive and thriving: Le Grand Véfour, perhaps Paris’ most beautiful three-star restaurant, began as the humble Café de Chartres in 1784, and then was transformed into an elegant restaurant popular with clients like Napoléon and Josephine. Today its tables carry plaques naming famous diners like Vict

or Hugo and Émile Zola, and waiters are pleased to point out Colette’s favorite table in the corner.

By the time Jefferson sat for his portrait in 1789, le Palais-Royal was a vortex of Revolutionary activity. It was uniquely suited for this role, since police were forbidden to enter the Orléans domain. In addition, the well-known antipathy of le duc for Marie-Antoinette and her circle, coupled with his popularity with the Parisian mob, turned it into an “anti-Versailles.” Activists gathered in the garden and Revolutionary fervor culminated on le 12 juillet 1789, when a provincial lawyer named Camille Desmoulins made an incendiary speech outside le Café de Foy. Tearing a leaf from a chestnut tree, he turned it into a cockade, “green, for hope,” and called the citizenry to arms. Six thousand impassioned listeners responded. They decked themselves with leaves and, after plundering arms storehouses and gunsmiths’ shops, stormed the Bastille two days later. For the next few years the garden was the scene of murders, burnings in effigy and grisly torchlight processions with severed heads brandished on spikes.

The Reign of Terror was in full swing when a young woman from Normandie, bent on avenging the recently eliminated Girondins, entered Badin’s cutlery shop at 177 Galerie de Valois. Selecting a sturdy kitchen knife, she paid for it and, later that evening, plunged it into the chest of Jean-Paul Marat as he lay in his bath. Immediately arrested, Charlotte Corday was guillotined four days later.

The Death of Marat by David.

The guillotine also awaited le duc d’Orléans, although by 1793 he was calling himself Philippe-Egalité. After he lost his head, the government seized the property, but the shops and businesses remained, and in the frivolous post-Revolutionary years of the “merveilleuses” and their dandies, their popularity increased. Along with restaurants, cafés, jewelers and wigmakers were more and more billiard rooms, gambling salons and (ahem) licentious young "ladies" who became an international attraction.

Napoléon, who enjoyed his first sexual encounter in la Galerie de Montpensier, later used le palais as offices, but after Waterloo and the restoration of the monarchy, Louis XVIII returned the mansion to the Orléans family. By then the wooden gallery sheltered sleazy sideshows and less expensive filles de joie. The new duc ended all that. Louis-Philippe cleaned up both palace and gardens and tore down the wooden gallery. When the 1830 revolution put him on the throne of France, he lived here for several years before moving to the Tuileries, so le palais was briefly royal again. With the prostitutes gone and gambling outlawed, the shops’ popularity waned and le Palais-Royal began a long decline.

It would remain a sleeping beauty for over a hundred years. During this time artists and writers discovered it. Colette lived here twice, first in small rooms on the mezzanine from 1927 to 1929 and then, from 1938 to 1954, in a second-floor apartment in the Beaujolais gallery. Her friend Jean Cocteau lived above 66 Galerie de Montpensier from 1939 to 1963.

Today le Ministère de la Culture occupies part of the former palace, the gardens are glorious again, and shops and galleries fill the arcades. A few that survived the long sleep including an amazing tobacconist’s shop called À l’Oriental, behind la Comédie Française are still an attraction. Besides everything for the smoker, it offers an eclectic collection of small antiques and curiosities. Down the arcade are several venerable shops selling French and foreign military and civilian decorations, as well as Drapeaux de France, Flags of France, at 13 Galerie de Montpensier, whose window displays of lead soldiers in battle formation are a magnet for little boys (and their fathers). A few dusty antique shops, rare books and stamp dealers remain, some of which are open only on weekends or by appointment.

The first sign that le Palais-Royal was waking up was the controversy surrounding Culture Minister Jack Lang’s decision, in 1986, to install Daniel Buren’s columns in the courtyard. This was years before la pyramide arrived at le Louvre, and many Parisians, including some at the adjoining Conseil d’État, were outraged at the idea of a modern installation of black and white striped columns in this lovely XVIII ème siecle enclave. But demonstrations and even lawsuits failed to dislodge it, and the controversy succeeded in pushing le Palais-Royal back into the spotlight.

Daniel Buren's outrageous black and white striped columns defile the courtyard of le Palais-Royal.

Another poor excuse for "sculpture" defiling the courtyard of le Palais-Royal. Not surprisingly, this one is popularly known as (ahem) "The Royal Balls."

One of the first new businesses to move in was the city’s most beautiful parfumerie, les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido, at 142 Galerie de Valois. Attracted to the place for its seclusion and other-worldliness, perfumer Serge Lutens created this jewel-box boutique with hand-painted walls and ceiling in 1992. Today it carries twenty-one of his exotic perfumes, some of which are available nowhere else.

Recent years have seen a new flock of high-end shops settling in this magical garden. Didier Ludot has several addresses: 20 et 24 Galerie de Montpensier for vintage couture, and 125 Galerie de Valois for his little black dresses. La Galerie de Valois also has Le Prince Jardinier’s fancy gardening equipment and clothing at numero 121, L’Eclaireur’s black-pearl jewelry and Italian housewares at 131, and Pierre Hardy’s open-toed stilettos, favorites of Gwyneth and Madonna, at 156. Designer Marc Jacobs is scheduled to move into la Galerie de Montpensier by the end of 2005.

Not far from Charlotte Corday’s cutlery shop, IBU Gallery, at 166 Galerie de Valois, displays the work of the artist Irena Borenza Ustjanowski, who’s known by her initials. She perished with her husband, famed breadmaker, Lionel Poilâne, in a helicopter crash several years ago. Her collaborator, Cyril Ermel, now presents her bold modern jewelry, sculpture and furniture. More art can be found outdoors, where le Ministère de la Culture (whose garden this is) has opened it up to changing exhibits.

Two charming shops in la Galerie de Beaujolais are right beneath Colette’s former apartment. La Boutique du Palais-Royal, at numero 93, is packed with colorful playthings, from wooden tops to elaborate marionettes; next door, Anna Joliet is a tiny shop filled with music boxes that play everything from “La Vie en Rose” to “Hey Jude.”

And what of Colette, who lived upstairs? She spent the last fifteen years of her life here, increasingly immobilized by arthritis but always writing. “We should not be unreasonably perturbed when our precious senses become dulled with age,” she wrote. “More than once of late, turning my eyes from my book ... toward the superb quadrangle that I am privileged to view from my window, I have thought ‘The children in the garden are not nearly so noisy this year.’” She died in her bed on le 3 août 1954. A state funeral was held in the courtyard of le Palais-Royal, within sight of her beloved country home in the heart of Paris.

(Colette was a French novelist born in 1873. She belonged in time, to the generation of such authors as Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, André Gide, and Paul Claudel. Colette's career spanned from her early 20s to her mid-70s. Her main themes were joys and pains of love, and female sexuality in the male-dominated world. All her works are more or less autobiographical but Colette intentionally blurred the boundaries between fiction and fact. She wrote over 50 novels and scores of short stories.)

This post was adapted from Paris Notes and other sources.

More Reading:

Place in the World Called Paris

Cheri and The Last of Cheri

Break of Day

On this day: Aviation Pioneer Clément Ader died,le 5 Mars 1926

2006-03-05T19:52:00.000+01:00

French aviation pioneer Clément Ader

Clément Ader was an early enthusiast and pioneer of aviation. He was born on le 4 février 1841 in Muret, Haute Garonne. He is remembered as a pioneer of aviation who constructed a balloon at his own expense during the Franco-German War of 1870-71. In 1876 he quit his job in the French government's Administration of Bridges and Highways to make more money to support his hobby. Though little known in the U.S., Ader flew before the Wright brothers.

Ader was an electrical and mechanical genius. He originally studied electrical engineering. In 1878, Ader improved Alexander Graham Bell's recently-invented telephone and established the first telephone network in Paris in 1880. In 1881, he invented Théâtrophone, a system of telephonic transmission where two channels allowed binaural hearing and gave listeners an exact idea of the respective positions of the actors on a set. The ultra-sensitive microphones Ader built for le Théâtrophone marked the discovery of the stereo effect. He used twelve of these microphones to transmit the sounds of l'opéra de Paris, via lines laid through the Paris sewers, to the Exhibition Hall at le Palais de l'Industrie, a distance of three kilometres (2 miles) away. Up to 48 listeners were able to hear l'opéra using two receivers each, one for each ear. This was the first public broadcast of entertainment.

Clément Ader discovered stereo sound and was the first to publicly broadcast entertainment.

Ader then turned to mechanical flight and concentrated all of his time and money on it until the end of his life. Using the studies of Louis Mouillard (1834-1837) on the flight of birds, he constructed his first flying machine in 1886, l'Éole, the "Zephyr." It was a bat-like design run by a lightweight steam engine of his own invention (4 cylinders developing 20 horsepower (15 kilowats). The engine drove a four-blade propeller. The wings, with a span of 14 yards, were equipped with a system of warping. The machine weighed 650 pounds (300 kilograms). On le 9 octobre 1890, Ader attempted to fly l'Éole. He succeeded in taking off and flew a distance of approximately 50 metres (160 feet) before witnesses on a friend's estate near Paris. However, the plane then crashed and was wrecked. The steam engine was unsuitable for sustained and controlled flight. Nevertheless, Ader's short hop was the first demonstration that a manned heavier-than-air machine could take off from level ground under its own power.

L'Éole, "the Zephyr"

Following the wreck of l'Éole, Ader undertook the construction of an aircraft he called l' Éole II. Most sources agree that work on this aircraft was never completed, and it was abandoned in favour of the Avion III, However, Ader claimed in later life that he flew l'Éole II in août 1892 for a distance of 200 metres in Satory.

L'Avion III on display in Paris, 1900

Ader's progress attracted the interest of le ministre de guerre, Charles de Freycinet. With the backing of the French War office, Ader developed and constructed l' Avion III. It was like an enormous bat of linen and wood, with a 16-yard wingspan, equipped with two puller propellers of four blades, each powered by a steam engine of 30 hp (22 kW). After extensive taxi tests, Ader attempted a flight at Satory on le 14 octobre 1897. Some witnesses contend that l'Avion rolled, took off towards the sky and, before the official commission, flew a distance of more than 300 yards, while others contend that l'Avion III crashed before even taking off. In any event, the commission was not impressed and withdrew its funding, but kept the results secret. After the Wright brothers made their flight, the commission released reports on Ader's flights, stating that they were successful.

All three of Ader's planes suffered from the same design flaw: there was no method of lateral control.

Abandoning everything, and in particular public demonstrations, the "father of aviation" died on le 5 mars 1926 in Toulouse in obscurity. His Avion is still displayed at le musée du Conservatoire des Arts et Industrie de Paris. Non-French aviation historians often discredit any claims of priority, since all flights ended in crashes, many were disputed, and Ader greatly exaggerated his achievements in later life. Nonetheless, Ader's flight of l'Éole on le 9 octobre 1890 remains relatively undisputed, and Ader is still admired for his efforts. In 1938, France issued a postage stamp honoring him, and Airbus named one of its aircraft assembly sites in Toulouse after him.

L'Avion III, on display today in Paris

More Reading:

Picture History of Early Aviation, 1903-1913

Flight: 100 Years of Aviation

Pioneer Aircraft: Putnam's History of Aircraft

LOUIS LA VACHE ABDUCTED!

2006-03-05T17:23:00.000+01:00

ABDUCTED! GO HERE TO SEE THE SHOCKING EVIDENCE!
Follow the other links there to see evidence de plus enlèvements! Will Louis be safely returned? Will this make the cover of National Enquirer? These are the burning questions at this grim hour! (Hat tip to "DoctorDentons" for reporting this horrible abduction! Via Lucianne.)

On this day: Painter Berthé Morisot died, le 2 Mars 1895

2006-03-02T23:37:00.000+01:00

Berthé Morisot par Édouard Manet.

Berthé Morisot, une peintre impressioniste française, died on le 2 mars 1895. Born on le 14 janvier 1841 in Bourges, Cher, France into a successful bourgeois family who encouraged her and her sister Edma Morisot in their exploration of art. She was the granddaughter of the influential Rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

Berthé Morisot demonstrated the possibilities for women artists in avant-garde art movements at the end of the XIX ème siecle. Once Morisot settled on pursuing art, her family did not impede her career.

After copying masterpieces from le musée du Louvre in the late 1850s under Joseph Guichard, Berthé and Edma began painting outdoor scenes while studying with the well known landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. Berthé worked with Corot, who became a family friend, from 1862 to 1868. She first exhibited her paintings at the prestigious state-run art show, le Salon, in 1864, and her work was shown there regularly for the next decade. Corot was an important landscape painter of the Barbizon school and introduced her to other artists and teachers. She took up plein air techniques and painted small pieces outdoors either as finished works or as studies for larger works completed in the studio.

Le partie de cache-cache, ("Hide and Seek")

Morisot's first acceptance in the Salon de Paris came in 1864 with two landscape paintings, and she continued to show regularly in the Salon until 1874, the year of the first impressionist exhibition. She was acquainted with Édouard Manet from 1868. At the age of thirty-three in 1874 she married Eugène Manet, Édouard's younger brother. She convinced Manet to attempt plein air painting, and drew him into the circle of acquaintance of the painters who became known as les impressionistes. Manet never really considered himself to be un impressioniste nor did he ever agree to show with the group, though he is often considered to be the leader of the group.

The Harbor at L'Orient, 1869

Morisot, along with Camille Pissarro, was one of only two artists whose work exhibited in all of the original impressioniste shows. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was another painter well-known by Morisot.

Le berceau, "The Cradle"

Like Mary Cassatt, during her lifetime, Berthé Morisot was relegated to the category of "feminine" artists because of their usual subject matter - women, children, and domestic scenes. However, as a doctrinaire impressioniste, Morisot painted what she saw in her immediate, everyday life. As a woman securely in the haute bourgeoisie she saw domestic interiors, holiday spots, other women, and children. Morisot's subject matter shows the equivalent of that of her impressionist colleagues. Edgar Degas, the dandy male bourgeois, painted rehearsals of the ballet, horse races, and nude women in appartements (rather than in studios). Claude Monet painted his garden, his children, and his neighbor's haystacks. Female impressionistes painted their social milieu in a way consistent with the impressioniste approach to subject matter.

In 1878, Berthé Morisot, she gave birth to her daughtre, Julie. Eugéne Manet died in 1892. Morisot's friends rallied around her and Julie and allowed Morisot to continue painting. She had her first solo exhibition in 1892 at the Boussod and Valadon gallery, where she sold a number of works, and she earned further recognition in 1894, when the French government purchased her oil painting "Young Woman in a Ball Gown." Morisot contracted pneumonia in the winter of 1894-1895 and died from it on le 2 mars 1895 in Paris. She was interred in le Cimetière de Passy.

Young Woman in a Ball Gown

After her death, Renoir and Degas organized a retrospective of her work, which garnered serious critical acclaim and ensured her place in art history as one of the founding members of the revolutionary Impressionist movement. Morisot and Cassatt are considered to be the most important women painters of le XIX ème siecle. Today, Morisot's paintings can sell for more than $4 million.

More Reading:

Berthe Morisot

Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt

With Violets

On this day: Composer-Pianist Frédéric Chopin was born, le 1 Mars 1810

2006-03-01T23:39:00.000+01:00

Frédéric Chopin

Polish-French composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin, was one of the masters of piano composition. He wrote chamber music (music for small groups of instruments), songs, and pieces for piano and orchestra. But his fame rests almost entirely on his more than 200 compositions for solo piano.

Chopin was born in Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw, on le 1 mars 1810 according to the statements of the artist himself and his family, but according to his baptismal certificate, which was written several weeks after his birth, the date was le 22 février .

A child prodigy, Chopin played the piano in public when he was only 8 years old. He began to compose soon afterward. Chopin studied at the Warsaw Conservatory from 1826 to 1829 before leaving Poland in 1830. He settled in Paris in 1831, and, except for some travel, lived there the rest of his life.

Chopin reversed the direction taken by his father. His father was French, born in 1771 in Marainville in the province of Lorraine, but already as a child he had established contacts with the Polish families of Count Michal Pac and the manager of his estate, Jan Adam Weydlich. At the age of 16, Mikolaj accompanied them to Poland where he settled down permanently. He never returned to France and did not retain contacts with his French family but brought up his children as Poles. His Polish son Frédéric never returned to Poland and died in France.

Aurore Dudevant, "George Sand"

In 1837, Chopin began a famous love affair with Aurore Dudevant, the novelist whose pen name was George Sand. The affair ended with a quarrel in 1847. Never in robust health, Chopin became became seriously ill with tuberculosis after his affair with George Sand ended. He visited Britain in 1848 then returned to Paris where he died on le 17 october 1849.

A Chopin Nocturne

Chopin was a master of small musical forms. His works for solo piano include three sonatas, four ballades, four large-scale scherzos, about 40 mazurkas in a Polish 3/4 dance rhythm, and about 15 polonaises in a stately Polish dance rhythm. His other solo pieces include more than 25 etudes, 18 waltzes, a barcarole, a berceuse, a bolero, a fantasia, a tarantella, and several rondos. The fantasia is perhaps his greatest single work. His etudes are valuable for their music and for use in teaching piano.

With only two public concerts in as many years, Chopin became a star of Parisian society and a legendary performer at its salons, revered by his great contemporaries Schumann, Liszt, and the painter Eugene Delacroix. His famously fiery concert playing style belied his fragile health.

Chopin's fiery concert playing style belied his fragile health.

Chopin is unique among composers because his music has always been as highly esteemed by musicians as by the public. He was a creator of melody, and some of his pieces now seem as familiar as folk music. Chopin did much to influence piano composition. He had a keen appreciation for the capability of the piano to produce beautiful music. He designed his compositions to display the resources of the instrument to full effect. His best works were written in patterns that he worked out or perfected himself. Chopin also influenced the whole future of music by including Slavic folk harmonies and rhythms in his work. Thus while he adopted France as his home, he never really left Poland musically.

Chopin's music expresses Polish patriotism in the Polish harmonies and rhythms of his mazurkas and polonaises. He ranks as one of music's greatest tone poets because of his superfine imagination and fastidious craftsmanship.

Chopin greatly admired Mozart and requested that the Mozart Requiem be played at his funeral which was held at l'église-de-la-Madeleine. His funeral was attended by more than 3,000 people.

UPDATE
Reader "Monkey's Max" added a comment about an important detail:

"In accordance with Chopin's wishes, his heart was removed from his body and returned to Poland. It was placed in an urn in the Holy Cross Church in Krakowskie Przedmiescie street in Warsaw."

Louis la Vache sincerely thanks "Monkey's Max" for this. When researching the material for this post, Louis KNEW there was a missing detail, but couldn't remember what it was - this is it! None of the three sources Louis used mentioned it, but he had a nagging feeling that something was missing. A swooping bow and hat tip to "Monkey's Max" for supplying this!

Reading about Chopin:

Chopin's Funeral

Frederic Chopin

Chopin: The Man and His Music

Listening to Chopin:

The Very Best of Chopin
0730099210720:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Corelli & Chopin Variations

Chopin for Relaxation
0090266342327:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

The Many Faces of les Boulangeries Française

2006-03-01T04:51:00.000+01:00

Boulangerie Jenny, 1934. This bakery was founded in 1897.

Les français aiment le pain!

While the French don't eat anywhere near as much bread as they did in the XIX ème siecle, (900 grams per person daily - almost two pounds vs. 225 grams - 8 ounces - per person per day now) bread is still an important part of the diet in France and bread is commonly served at all three meals. Bread is the main component of a French breakfast. The local boulangerie is visited daily, sometimes even twice a day. Louis la Vache gives you a look here at the many faces of les boulangeries française.

Max Poilâne, Paris, VI ème, near Jardins du Luxembourg. Poilâne is one of the key figures in the revival of artisan baking in France. He taught former music promoter Basil Kamir how to bake when Basil was re-opening le Moulin de la Vierge. Poilâne is a purist - no pâtisserie here - bread alone!

Gèrard Mulot, Paris, VI ème, in the shadows of l'église-Saint-Sulpice. While known more for his pâtisserie than his pain, Mulot is one of the finest artisan bakers in Paris.

Recettes pour faire le pain:

Confessions of a French Baker: Breadmaking Secrets, Tips, and Recipes

Paris: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World (Williams-Sonoma Collection)

The following book is a fine study of the importance of bread in France generally and Paris particularly. It describes how bread, as the most important food commodity shaped life in Paris:
Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700-1775

Les Sites de Paris: le Petit Palais

2006-02-27T00:54:00.000+01:00

Le Petit Palais, 1900

Across l'avenue Winston Churchill from le Grand Palais at the end of l'avenue des Champs-Élysées in le VIII ème arrondissement is le Petit Palais.

Le 10 décembre 2005 was a proud day for Paris. After a four-year, $85 million renovation, le Petit Palais, situated between the eastern end of l'avenue des Champs-Élysées et la Seine, reopened to the public one day before the 103rd anniversary of its original dedication. On this day, thousands of curious Parisians waited in line to see their much improved “little palace” - little only in name, however, since the City hopes to make it a big cultural attraction.

Winston Churchill surveys l'avenue named for him in front of le Petit Palais.

Newly renovated like its sister, le Grand Palais en face de la rue, le Petit Palais, formally called le Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, was built for the 1900 World’s Fair. Charles Girault was the head architect for both buildings, which were, along with the nearby Pont Alexandre III, part of a harmonious design scheme.

Le Petit Palais, whose function from the beginning was to house the City’s art collection, forms a trapezoid, with an interior garden in the shape of a semicircle. It is a classic Beaux-Arts building built with white stone, marble, brick and concrete. Girault showed restraint with typical Beaux-Arts decoration and achieved a remarkable simplicity, with just the right touch of architectural frill and poetry.

Le Petit Palais, during renovation

In Girault’s day the only means of lighting the museum was with natural light. He proved a master at harnessing and maximizing it, which is evident from the moment you walk under the vaulted entrance. Inspired by the intense luminosity within, you are filled with an almost religious awe. Girault used many architectural tricks to capture this light, including arcades, rows of tall and voluminous bay windows, large portholes cut into the central dome, clerestories and a peristyle around the garden. This quaint and peaceful garden captivated Parisians in the early 1900s, but the light required to nourish it proved harmful to the museum’s collection.

In addition to the building’s luminous interior, many of its decorative elements are worth noting. There are impressive mosaic floors in the galleries and the entrance vestibule, laid by the Italian mosaicist Giandomenico Facchina (he was known for the mosaic decoration he created in l'Opéra Garnier, and for other mosaic terraces, such as the one in la Galerie Vivienne, dans le II ème). He also designed the enamel and gold mosaics lining the garden pool. Gold-plated zinc statues, made using a special molding technique, populate the garden; and frescoes done by various artists between 1903 and 1925 depict scenes of Paris.

The splendid Beaux-Arts entrance to le Petit Palais.

The architectural firm charged with the renovation of le Petit Palais, Chaix et Morel, was responsible for touching up these decorative elements and for addressing the structural integrity of le Petit Palais. At the same time, they had to find a way to increase the museum’s exposition space. An additional sixty-five percent of exhibition space was created for the museum’s permanent collection, all without disturbing the original floor plans. This was achieved by excavating beneath the courtyard garden and moving administrative offices underground. Space was also dug out for an auditorium and teaching studios.

The Chess Players, by Honoré Daumier is one of the 45,000 works of art at le Petit Palais.

The garden has also been restored to its turn-of-the-century style. Symmetrical flowerbeds have been re-laid in the spirit of Jules Vacherot, the head gardener during the 1900 World’s Fair. Inviting wooden benches line the now pedestrian-only avenue Charles-Girault along the north side of the building.

The new aim of le Petit Palais is to broaden accessibility to Paris’ rich heritage of art (which is in keeping with a global plan by the City to enhance its cultural reputation). Adults can now enjoy lectures in the new auditorium; children can participate in story telling, and in the studios they can attend arts and crafts workshops related to the exhibits; and there are even new guided tours for the hard of hearing as well as tactile visits for the visually impaired.

Le Petit Palais boasts a collection of 45,000 works of art. Previously, it could display only about 850 works at a time. The renovation and reorganization of various galleries (which shed new light on the collection) now allow 1,300 works to be on permanent display.

These works showcase the best of the museum’s collection. Originally the collection was made up of primarily XIX ème siecle French art that the City acquired after 1870. Donations and bequests from private collectors quickly increased its size. Significant bequests include medieval sculpture; XVIII ème siecle decorative arts such as enamel timepieces and porcelain boudoir; and Greek and Russian icons from le XV à le XVIII ème siecles, which make le Petit Palais home to France’s largest collection of icons. Recently 4,200 designs of Charles Jacqueau, famed jeweler for Cartier, were donated to the museum. In the 1950s, Matisse made a contribution from his own fauvist collection, including a work by Cézanne. The artistic smorgasbord offered to visitors represents a wide range of art from antiquity to the early XX ème siecle.

Ad for Anis de Flavigny from 1900 with the façade of le Petit Palais.

In le Petit Palais, la ville de Paris hopes to provide the public with unique, ongoing temporary exhibition experiences. An example of this mission is the février 2006 special exhibit, curated by the acclaimed British illustrator Quentin Blake. His black and white sketches have been blown up larger-than-life and affixed to the walls of the exhibit. Museum-goers familiar with the work of Roald Dahl will recognize his drawings. Blake chose the theme of women for the show, called Quentin Blake et les Demoiselles des Bords de Seine, and selected fifty-eight pastels, paintings and prints from among the museum’s collection to go along with his sketches. The works of artists like Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec portray females in the XIX ème siecle. With Blake’s whimsical storybook drawings on the walls, the exhibit proves family-friendly - a sign that the City intends to democratize its art collection as a means of increasing attendance.

Mayor Bertrand Delanoë wrote in a press release that renovating le Petit Palais, the largest City-owned museum in Paris, is part of a conscious effort to re-energize the Parisian museum experience in order “to render culture accessible to all and to urge Parisians to embrace their heritage.” To that end, the permanent collection of le Petit Palais (like that of all City-owned museums) is free to the public (special exhibitions like this year’s upcoming exhibitions on Peru and Rembrandt will have an entrance fee). Gilles Chazal, the head curator and director of the Petit Palais, affirmed just how successful renovation of le Petit Palais has been: “This result is beyond our expectations. This palace is even more beautiful than we could have imagined.”

Still an international capital for the arts, la ville de Paris is making a considerable effort to strengthen its cultural reputation. Evidence of this is clear in the now-finished renovation of le Petit Palais, which not only brought the building up to modern safety standards and expanded its exhibition space, but also went to great lengths to create a modern and world-class museum experience.

No “petit” achievement.

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Paris

Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940

We'll Always Have Paris: American Tourists in France since 1930

On this day: writer Victor Hugo was born, le 26 Février 1802

2006-02-26T14:57:00.000+01:00

Victor Hugo

French poet, dramatist, and novelist Victor Hugo was born on le 26 février 1802in Besançon, France.

The son of a general, he was an accomplished poet before age 20. With his verse drama "Cromwell" (1827), he emerged as an important figure in Romanticism. The production of his poetic tragedy "Hernani" (1830) was a victory for Romantics over traditional classicists in a well-known literary battle. His later plays included "Le Roi s'amuse" (1832) and "Ruy Blas" (1838). His best-known novels are <"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1831), an evocation of medieval life, and "Les Misérables" (1862), the story of the convict Jean Valjean; their huge popularity made him at that time the most successful writer in the world. In later life he was a politician and political writer. He spent the years 1851–70 in exile for his republican views, producing his most extensive and original works, including "Les Châtiments," ("The Punishments") (1853), poems of political satire; "Les Contemplations" (1856); and the first installment of "The Legend of the Centuries" (1859, 1877, 1883). He was made a senator in 1876. He lived for a time at Place des Vosges in Paris. After his death on le 22 mai 1885 in Paris,he was buried in le Panthéon as a national hero.

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Les Misérables

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Memoirs of Victor Hugo

On this day: the Second Republic was established, le 26 Février 1848

2006-02-26T13:52:00.000+01:00

Eugène Delacroix - La liberté guidant le peuple, Liberty leading the People, a symbol of the French Revolution of 1830. Liberté is also called "Marianne."

France was ruled by a monarchy until 1792, when the French Revolution established the First Republic. Napoléon Bonaparte seized control of the Republic in 1799, making himself First Consul, and later Emperor of what is now known as the First French Empire (1804-1814). In the course of several wars, Napoléon's armies conquered many countries, with members of the Bonaparte family being appointed as monarchs of newly established kingdoms. Following Napoléon's defeat in at Waterloo in 1815, the French monarchy was re-established. In 1830, a civil uprising established the constitutional July Monarchy followed by the Second Republic in 1848. The short-lived Second Republic ended in 1852 when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoléon III) proclaimed the Second French Empire. Napoléon III was unseated following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 to be replaced by the Third Republic.

The borders of modern France are roughly the same as those of ancient Gaul, which was inhabited by Celtic Gauls. Gaul was conquered by the Romans in the first century b.c. The Gauls eventually adopted Roman speech and culture. Christianity took root in the second and third centuries a.d.

The French often refer to their country as le hexagone.

In the fourth century a.d., Gaul's eastern frontier along the Rhine was overrun by Germanic tribes, principally the Franks, from whom the ancient name of "Francie" was derived. The modern name "France" derives from the name of the feudal domain of the Capetian Kings of France around Paris. Existence as a separate entity began in 843, with the division of Charlemagne's Carolingian empire into eastern, central and western parts. The western part approximated to much of modern France.

Charlemagne's descendants ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet, Duke of France and Count of Paris, was crowned King of France. His descendants, the Capetian, Valois and Bourbon dynasties progressively unified the country through a series of wars and dynastic inheritance. The monarchy reached its height during le XVII ème siecle and the reign of Louis XIV. At this time France had a tremendous influence over the European politics, economy and culture as well as possessing the largest population in Europe.

The country is currently organized under the Fifth Republic, established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958.

Marianne today

More Reading:

La Belle France: A Short History

Rick Steves' France 2006

On this day: Impressionist Painter Pierre-Augute Renoir was born, le 25 Février 1841

2006-02-25T11:10:00.000+01:00

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

One of the defining painters on the Impressionist movement (though he later distanced himself from it), Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne on le 25 février 1841 to a working-class family. Renoir is noted for his radiant, intimate paintings, particularly of the female nude. Recognized by critics as one of the greatest and most independent painters of his period, Renoir is noted for the harmony of his lines, the brilliance of his color, and the intimate charm of his wide variety of subjects. Unlike other Impressionists he was as much interested in painting the single human figure or family group portraits as he was in landscapes; unlike them, too, he did not subordinate composition and plasticity of form to attempts at rendering the effect of light.

Limoges, a city in central south-western France, is the préfecture of the département de Haute-Vienne , and the administrative capital of the Limousin région. Limoges is known worldwide for its medieval enamels ('Limoges enamels') on copper, for its XIX ème siecle porcelain ('Limoges porcelain') and for its oak barrels (Limousin oak), which are used for ageing Cognac and wine.

Renoir's father, a tailor who had seven children, moved with his family to Paris about 1845. Young Renoir demonstrated his gift at an early age. Quickly recognizing his talent, his parents apprenticed him, at age 13, to work in a porcelain factory, where he learned to decorate plates with bouquets of flowers. Shortly after that, he was painting fans and then cloth panels representing religious themes for missionaries to hang in their churches. His skill and the great pleasure he took in his work soon convinced him he should study painting in earnest. Having saved a little money, he decided, in 1862, to take evening courses in drawing and anatomy at l'École des Beaux-Arts as well as painting lessons at the studio of Charles Gleyre, a Swiss painter who had been a student of the XIX ème siecle Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Although the academic style of his teacher did not suit Renoir, he nevertheless accepted its discipline in order to acquire the elementary skills needed to become a painter.

Renoir felt a much greater affinity with three students who entered the studio a few months later: Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, and Frédéric Bazille. All four students dreamed of an art that was closer to life and free from past traditions. The shared ideals of the four young men quickly led to a strong friendship, and Renoir's early works include Portrait of the Painter Bazille (1867), The Painter Sisley and His Wife (1868), and Monet Painting in His Garden (1873). At the same time in another workshop at the Académie Suisse, the young artists Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro were preoccupied with the same problems as Renoir and his friends. With Bazille as the intermediary, the two groups met frequently.

Lise, the Bohemian, 1868

Circumstances encouraged Renoir to attempt a new freedom and experimentation in his style. The convention of the time was that a painting, even a landscape, had to be executed in the studio. In the spring of 1864, however, Gleyre's four students moved temporarily to Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau (which surrounds the famous château), where the artists devoted themselves to painting directly from nature. The Fontainebleau forest had earlier attracted other artists, among them Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet, who insisted that art represent the reality of everyday life, even though they had not yet completely renounced the constraints imposed by traditional training. In 1863 Édouard Manet took a much bolder step: his picture Déjeuner sur l'herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”) provoked a violent scandal because its subject and technique stressed the observation of modern reality over the repetition of a traditional ideal. Manet's daring made him, in the eyes of these young artists, the leader of a new movement.

Conditions were ripe for the birth of a new pictorial language, and Impressionism, bursting upon the scene, attracted notoriety with the first Impressionist exposition of 1874, held independently of the official Salon. It took 10 years for the movement to acquire its definitive form, its independent vision, and its unique perceptiveness. But one can point to 1874 as the year of departure for the movement that subsequently spawned modern art.

A Young Girl with Daises/Jeune fille avec marguerites

Renoir's work is a perfect illustration of this new approach in thought and technique. By using small, multicoloured strokes, he evoked the vibration of the atmosphere, the sparkling effect of foliage, and especially the luminosity of a young woman's skin in the outdoors. Renoir and his companions stubbornly strove to produce light-suffused paintings from which black was excluded, but their pursuits led to many disappointments: their paintings, so divergent from traditional formulas, were frequently rejected by the juries of the Salon and were extremely difficult to sell. Despite the continuing criticism, some of the Impressionists were making themselves known, as much among art critics as among the lay public. Renoir, because of his fascination with the human figure, was distinctive among the others, who were more interested in landscape. Thus, he obtained several orders for portraits and was introduced, thanks to the publisher Georges Charpentier, to upper-middle-class society, from whom he obtained commissions for portraits, most notably of women and children.

Renoir mastered the ability to convey his immediate visual impressions, and his paintings showed great vitality, emphasizing the pleasures of life despite the financial worries that troubled him. Several of his masterpieces date from this period: La Loge (1874; “The Theatre Box”), Le Moulin de la galette (1876), The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), and Mme Charpentier and Her Children (1878). Charpentier organized a personal exposition for the works of Renoir in 1879 in the gallery La Vie Moderne.

The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

In 1881 and 1882 Renoir made several trips to Algeria, Italy, and Provence, and these eventually had a considerable effect on his art and on his life. He became convinced that the systematic use of the Impressionistic technique was no longer sufficient for him and that small brushstrokes of contrasting colours placed side by side did not allow him to convey the satiny effects of the skin. He also discovered that black did not deserve the opprobrium given to it by his comrades and that, in certain cases, it had a striking effect and gave a great intensity to the other colours. During his journey to Italy, he discovered Raphael and the hallmarks of classicism: the beauty of drawing, the purity of a clear line to define a form, and the expressive force of smooth painting when used to enhance the suppleness and modeling of a body. At this same time, he happened to read "Il libro dell'arte" (1437; A Treatise on Painting) by Cennino Cennini, which reinforced his new ideas. All of these revelations were so powerful and unexpected that they provoked a crisis, and he was tempted to break with Impressionism, which he had already begun to doubt. He felt that until now he had been mistaken in pursuing the ephemeral in art.

Most of his works executed from 1883 to 1884 on are so marked by a new discipline that art historians have grouped them under the title the “Ingres” period (to signify their vague similarity to the technique of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres) or the “harsh,” or “dry,” period. Renoir's experiments with Impressionism were not wasted, however, because he retained a luminous palette. Nevertheless, in paintings from this period, such as The Umbrellas (c. 1883) and many depictions of bathers, Renoir emphasized volume, form, contours, and line rather than color and brushstroke.

His strong reaction against Impressionism continued until about 1890. During these years he made several trips to southern France: Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, and Martigues. The nature of this sunlit region gave greater encouragement to his separation from Impressionism, which to him was associated with the landscapes of the valley of la Seine. Southern France offered him scenes bursting with colour and sensuality. At the same time, the seemingly joyous spontaneity of nature gave him the desire to depart from his newfound adherence to the dictates of classicism. While in southern France, he recovered the instinctive freshness of his art; he painted women at their bath with the same healthful bloom he would give to bouquets of flowers.

Les grandes baignuesses, 1887

Renoir was married in 1890 to Aline Charigot (some sources give the year as 1881), and the exposition that was organized for him in 1892 by the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel was a great success. Renoir's future was assured, and his work of that period reflected his new security and also his confidence in the future.

Les jeunes filles au piano, 1892

Renoir had his first attack of rheumatism in 1894, and, as the attacks became more and more frequent, he spent more and more time in southern France, where the climate was better for his health. About 1899 he sought refuge in the small village of Cagnes; in 1907 he settled there permanently, buying the estate of Les Collettes, where he spent the rest of his life. In 1910 he was no longer able to walk. Although his infirmity became more and more constraining, Renoir never ceased to paint; when his fingers were no longer supple, he continued by binding his paintbrush to his hand.

In spite of his physical decline, Renoir's paintings during this period still embodied a cheerful attitude toward life. His themes became more personal and intimate, focusing on portraits of his wife, his children, and Gabrielle, his maid, who often also posed for his nude paintings. His still lifes were composed of flowers and fruits from his own garden, and the landscapes were those that surrounded him. The nudes, especially, reflect the serenity that he found in his work. Examples of this period include "The Artist's Family" (1896) and "Sleeping Bather" (1897). He attempted to embody his admiration for the female form in sculpture, with the assistance of young Richard Guino. Since Renoir was no longer able to do sculpture himself, Guino became, about 1913, the skillful instrument who willingly followed his directions. He yielded before the personality of Renoir and succeeded so well that the works have all the qualities of Renoir's style.

Renoir's wife died in 1915 after having returned from Gérardmer, where she had gone to see their son Jean, who had been seriously wounded in the war, and who would go on to become an important filmmaker. Renoir survived his wife by four years. Several months before his death, he was able to go to Paris to see his "Portrait of Mme Georges Charpentier" (1876–77), which had been recently acquired by the state. On that occasion, several friends wheeled him for the last time through le Louvre to view the masterpieces that he had venerated throughout his life.

Renoir died on le 3 décembre 1919 at his home in Cagnes.

- • - • -

"One of Renoir's early portraits, A Girl with a Watering Can, has all the tender charm of its subject, delicately unemphasized, not sentimentalized, but clearly relished. Renoir stoops down to the child's height so that we look at her world from her own altitude. This, he hints, is the world that the little one sees - not the actual garden that adults see today, but the nostalgic garden that they remember from their childhood. The child is sweetly aware of her central importance. Solid little girl though she is, she presents herself with the fragile charm of the flowers. Her sturdy little feet in their sensible boots are somehow planted in the garden, and the lace of her dress has a floral rightness; she also is decorative. With the greatest skill, Renoir shows the child, not amid the actual flowers and lawns, but on the path. It leads away, out of the picture, into the unknown future when she will longer be part of the garden but an onlooker, an adult, who will enjoy only her memories of the present now depicted."
- Text from "Sister Wendy's Story of Painting", by Wendy Beckett

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On this day: King Louis-Phillipe abdicates, le 24 Février 1848

2006-02-24T01:49:00.000+01:00

Louis-Philippe, the last king of France

France's last king, Louis-Philippe, abdicated on this day, le 24 février 1848. Louis-Philippe was born on le 6 octobre 1773 in Paris. He reigned as the "Orléanist" king of the French from 1830 until his 1848 abdication. Louis-Philippe was the son of Louis-Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans, and a descendant of King Louis XIII. The relationship between the Orléans and the Bourbon elder line was linked through Louis XIII. The Bourbon elder line had a deep distrust of the intentions of the Orléans family which would succeed to the French throne should the Bourbons die out.

Coat of arms, Louis-Philippe Louis-Philippe was born to his father Louis-Philippe Joseph, duc de Chartres (Later known as Philippe d'Égalité) and his wife Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre. He was the first of three sons and a daughter of the Orléans family, a family which was to have very erratic fortunes for the next sixty years. Exiled from the Royal Court, the Orléans then confined themselves to studies, involving the literature and sciences emerging from the Enlightenment.

Beginning in 1782 Louis-Philippe was tutored by la comtesse de Genlis. La comtesse de Genlis would install in him a fondness for liberal thought (in the republican sense of the term, not in the pejorative sense that "liberalism" came to connote in the XX ème siecle). It's probably during this period that Louis-Philippe picked up his slightly Voltairean brand of Catholicism. In 1785, Louis-Philippe followed his father and was created duc de Chartres. In 1788, with France beginning to destablize with the Revolution looming, the young Louis-Philippe showed his republican sympathies when he participated in breaking down a door a prison cell at Mont Saint-Michel in Normandie on a visit there with la comtesse de Genlis. During the period of octobre 1788 à octobre 1789 the Palais-Royal in Paris, which was the home of the Orléans family, would be used as a center for the Revolutionaries.

During the early stages of the Revolution, Louis-Philippe was a strong supporter of the reformation of French society as a whole which was taking place, however his father's actions during the vote on the execution of King Louis XVI however would change the fortunes of the young duc de Chartres and his family. As Louis-Philippe Joseph (now duc d'Orléans after the death of his father in 1785), continued his support for the liberal factions of the revolution, the Royal family and members of the royal court became increasingly hostile towards the Orléans family. The duc d'Orléans rapidly became more of an icon of liberal reform to the general population of Paris and hundreds of medallions were minted with Orléans' figure framed by the title Père du Peuple,"Father of the People," were seen in the streets.

Louis-Philippe for a time was called le père du Peuple, the father of the people. When his popularity plummeted, the shape of his face inspired political cartoonists to portray him as a pear (see below).

The young Louis-Philippe was growing up in a period which was to change Europe as a whole, and in the process he would involve himself completely in it (a trait of his which would remain when he later became King). In his diary it is reported that he himself took the initiative to join the Jacobin Club, a move which was supported by his father. In juin 1791, Louis-Philippe gained his first opportunity to directly become involved in the affairs of France. In 1785 he was given the hereditary appointment of Colonel of the 14th Regiment of Dragoons (Chartres-Dragons), and when war appeared to be on the horizon in 1791 all proprietary colonels had been ordered to join their Regiments. Louis-Philippe sought to be a model officer. In three instances, he showed his personal bravery. Three days after Louis XVI's flight to Varennes an incident between two local priests and one of the new "constitutional" vicars, which escalated to the point where a crowd had surrounded the inn where they were staying at the time, demanding blood. The young Colonel broke through the crowd extricated the two priests where they then fled, at a river crossing on the same day another crowd had met to do harm to the priests where the young Louis-Philippe put himself in between a peasant armed with a Carbine and the priests, saving the situation. The next day, Louis-Philippe dove into a river saving a drowning local Engineer, earning himself a civic crown by the local municipality. His regiment was moved north to Flanders at the end of 1791 after the declaration of Pillnitz.

Louis-Philippe would serve under his father's friend, le duc de Biron. There he would serve with several officers who would later gain distinction in Napoléon's Empire and afterwards, including a Colonel Berthier and Lieutenant Colonel Alexandre de Beauharnais (Future husband of the Empress Josephine). Louis-Philippe saw the first exchanges of fire of the Revolutionary Wars at Boussu and Quaragnon and a few days later fought at Quiévrain near Jemappes, where he was instrumental in rallying a unit of retreating soldiers. Biron wrote to the War Minister de Grave, complementing and praising the young Colonel, who was then promoted to Brigadier of a Brigade of Cavalry in Lückner's armée du Nord. In l'armée du Nord, Louis-Philippe would serve with four Marshals of France in Macdonald, Mortier (who would later be killed in an assassination attempt on Louis-Philippe), Davout and Oudinot. Dumouriez was appointed to command l'armée du Nord in août 1792, whom Louis-Philippe would serve under in the Valmy campaign as a Division commander. At Valmy, Louis-Philippe had been ordered to establish a battery of Artillery on the crest of the hill of Valmy. The battle of Valmy was an inconclusive one, however the Austro-Prussian Army, suffering from a lack of supplies was forced back across the Rhine river. Once again, Louis-Philippe was praised in a letter by Dumouriez after the battle. Louis-Philippe was then recalled back to Paris to give an account of the Battle at Valmy to the French Government. He was promoted while in Paris to the position of Lieutenant-General, and left in octobre for l'armée du Nord once more where Dumouriez had begun a march into Belgium. Louis-Philippe would command a Division once again when Dumouriez chose to attack an Austrian force located in a strong position on the heights of Cuesmes and Jemappes to the west of Mons. Louis-Philippe's Division would take heavy casualties as it attacked through a wood, retreating in disorder, however Louis-Philippe would rally a group of units dubbing them "the battalion of Mons" and pushed forward along with other French units to finally overwhelm the outnumbered Austrians.

Events in Paris however were to undermine the budding public career of Louis-Philippe. The incompetance of the new Girondist appointed Jean-Nicolas Pache, virtually denuded Dumouriez' armée du Nord of supplies and thousands of troops were deserting his Army rapidly. Louis-Philippe began to feel alienated by the more radical policies of the Republic. He began to think of leaving France after the vote to execute Louis XVI and the 'yes' vote by his father. Dumouriez and Louis-Philippe met on le 22 mars 1793 where Dumouriez urged his subordinate not to become involved in Dumouriez's attempt to work with the Austrians to march his army on Paris and restore the Constitution of 1791. Louis-Philippe was willing to stay in France to fulfill his duties in the army, however he had been already implicated in Dumouriez's plot and he decided to leave France to save his life, with the French government slowly falling into the Reign of Terror. On le 4 avril, Dumouriez and Louis-Philippe left for the Austrian camp, however they were intercepted by Lieutenant-Colonel Davout, who had served at Jemappes with the duc de Chartres. As Dumouriez ordered the Colonel back to he camp, some of his soldiers cried out against the General, now declared a traitor by the National Convention, shots rang out as they fled towards the Austrian Camp. The next day, Dumouriez would make another attempt to rally soldiers against the Convention however he found that the Artillery had declared for the Republic, leaving him and Louis-Philippe with no choice but to go into Exile. At the age of nineteen Louis-Philippe was leaving France, where it would be some twenty-one years before he would step on French soil again. The reaction in Paris to the involvement of Louis-Philippe in the treason of Dumouriez was inevitably going to result in misfortunes for the Orléans family. Philippe, duc d'Orléans, rose in the National Convention condemning his son for his actions, citing that he would not spare his son, much akin to Brutus of old and his son. However letters from the young Louis-Philippe were discovered in transit to his father and were read out to the Convention, Philippe was then put under continuous surveillance. Shortly there after, the Girondists moved to arrest Philippe and the two younger brothers of Louis-Philippe, les ducs de Beaujolais et Montpensier, the latter had been serving in Biron's armée du Nord. The three would be interned in Fort Saint-Jean.

While this was occurring, Louis-Philippe was beginning a period of years in which he would be forced to live in the shadows, avoiding both pro-Republican revolutionaries and Legitimist French emigré centers in both the Austrian Army and in various centers throughout Europe. He first moved to Switzerland under an assumed name where he met up with the comptess de Genlis and his sister Adélaïde at Schaffhausen. From there they travelled to Zürich, where they were then told by Swiss authorities that in the interests of Swiss neutrality that le duc de Chartres would have to leave the city. After being discovered by a group of emigrés in Zug, it became quite apparent that the women of the group, if they had any chance of living a sedentary lifestyle, they would have to separate from le duc de Chartres. Louis-Philippe then left with his faithful valet Baudoin for the heights of the Alpes where he would travel to Basel, where he would sell all but one of his horses before leaving once again to travel throughout Switzerland. Moving from town to town he found himself very much exposed to the stresses of extended travelling. Once he and Baudoin were refused entry to a monastery by a group of monks who believed them to be young vagabonds. Another time he woke up after spending a night in a barn to find himself at the far end of a musket, confronted by a man attempting to keep away thieves. Throughout the journey, he and Baudoin never stayed in one place for any longer than forty-eight hours. Finally in octobre 1793, Louis-Philippe was able to be appointed to the position as a teacher of geography, history, mathematics and modern languages at a salary of 1,400 Francs at a boys' boarding school owned by a Monsieur Jost in Reichenau, a village situated at the source of the river Rhine. He taught at the school under the name 'Monsieur Chabos', and had been at the school for a month before he heard the dreadful news from Paris.

In Paris on the le 1 novembre 1793, Philippe was brought to the Palais de Justice where he appeared in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal later on le 5 novembre. The proceedings were a travesty, with the defence of le duc being completely ignored. Le duc went to the guillotine a day later, proud and calm in going to his death. In Reichenau Louis-Philippe was devastated, feeling in part responsible for his father's death due to the inclusion of his letters to his father as the main incriminating piece of evidence. With the Revolution spiraling out of control, Louis-Philippe began to loathe his Jacobinical past, finding himself very much alone with few friends to count on with so much hostility in Europe towards the Orléans family. After leaving Reichenau, Louis-Philippe was able to remove his now sixteen-year old sister Adélaïde from la comtesse de Genlis, who had had a falling out with Louis-Philippe (now duc d'Orléans after the death of his father). Adélaïde then went to live with her great-aunt la Princesse de Conti at Fribourg, moving then to Bavaria and finally to Hungary. She would afterwards move to join her mother who was living at the time in Spain.

Travelling extensively, Louis-Philippe visited Scandinavia in 1795 where he stayed in Muonio (Torne Valley) for approximately one year.

He also visited United States where he stayed for four years in Philadelphia, New York, and in Boston, where he taught French for a time and lived in lodgings over what is now the Union Oyster House, Boston's oldest restaurant. His visit to Cape Cod in 1797 coincided with the separation of the town of Eastham into two towns, one of which took the name of Orleans, possibly in his honor. He is also thought to have known Isaac Snow of Orleans, Massachusetts, who escaped to France from a British prison hulk during the American Revolution. His only sister, Princess Louise Marie Adelaide Eugènie d'Orléans, married in the U.S.

In 1809 Louis-Philippe married Princess Marie Amalie of Bourbon-Sicilies (1782–1866), daughter of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies.

After the abdication of Napoléon, and the restoration of the monarchy under his cousin King Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe returned to live in France, claiming sympathy with the liberated citizens of the country. He openly sided with the republican opposition; under Louis XVIII and then even more so under the reign of Louis's brother, King Charles X, the popularity of Louis-Philippe grew.

In 1830, the July Revolution overthrew the repressive régime of Charles X. Charles abdicated in favour of his grandson, Henri, le compte de Chambord, whom monarchists regarded as the legitimate Bourbon king and called "Henri V". (Supporters of this grandson, the Bourbon pretender, were called Legitimists. Due to Louis-Philippe's republican policies and his popularity with the masses, the Chamber of Deputies ignored the wishes of the Legitimists that Charles's grandson be accepted as king and instead proclaimed Louis-Philippe as the new French king. The next day, wrapped in a tricolor scarf and preceded by a drummer, he went on foot to l'Hôtel de Ville, the headquarters of the republican party, where he was publicly embraced by le marquis de Lafayette. The republicans acknowledged the impossibility of realizing their own ideals and were prepared to accept a monarchy based on the popular will. The new monarch took the style "King of the French", a constitutional innovation known as popular monarchy which linked the monarch's title to a people, not to the state, as the designations of previous Kings of France did. Louis-Philippe repudiated the legitimist theory of the divine right of kings.

Louis-Philippe became king in 1830.

In 1832, his daughter, Princess Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle (1812–1850), became the first queen of Belgium, when she married King Leopold I.

For a few years, Louis-Philippe ruled in an unpretentious fashion, avoiding the arrogance, pomp and lavish spending of his predecessors. Despite this outward appearance of simplicity, Louis-Philippe's support came from the wealthy middle classes. At first, he was much loved and called the "Citizen King" and the "bourgeois monarch" because of his bourgeois manner and dress, but his popularity suffered as his government was perceived as increasingly reactionary and monarchical. He and his regime were satirized by Honoré Daumier.

Under his management the conditions of the working classes deteriorated, and the income gap widened considerably. An economic crisis in 1847 led to the citizens of France revolting against their king once again. Louis-Philippe became increasingly unpopular. On the right he was opposed by the legitimists (who supported the senior Bourbon line) and by the Bonapartists. The leftist elements organized numerous secret revolutionary societies. The opposition to the government undertook (1847–48) a banquet campaign to propagate the demand for electoral reform. The campaign led to the Revolution of février 1848.

Checkmate! The Republic against Louis-Philippe. A political cartoon from the revolution of février 1848.

On le 24 février 1848, to general surprise, Louis-Philippe abdicated in favour of his young grandson (his son and heir, Prince Ferdinand, having been killed in an accident some years earlier). Fearful of what had happened to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he quickly disguised himself and fled Paris. Escaping with the queen from the Tuileries by a back entrance, in an ordinary cab, they made their way in disguise to Honfleur, on the Normandie coast of la Manche, the English Channel , where the royal couple found refuge in a gardener's cottage. They were ultimately smuggled out of the country by the British consul at Le Havre as "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," arriving at Newhaven "unprovided with anything but the clothes they wore." They settled at Claremont, placed at their disposal by Queen Victoria, under the incognito of le comte et la comtesse de Neuilly. The London Times of le 6 mars 1848 reported that he was received at Newhaven, East Sussex by the rector (Rev. Theyre Smith), the curate (Rev. Frederick Spurrell) and the principal landowner (William Elphick), while his wife was attended by Lydia Elphick and Frances Gray (both daughters of John Gray of the Gray and Dacre Brewery, West Ham, Essex), before travelling by train à Londres. Louis-Philippe as a pear. Another political cartoon from the revolution of février 1848.

The National Assembly initially planned to accept Louis-Philippe's grandson as king. However, pulled along by the tide of public opinion, they accepted the Second Republic proclaimed in controversial circumstances at l'Hôtel de Ville, Paris City Hall. Prince Louis Napoléon Bonaparte executed a coup d'état on le 2 décembre 1851. In 1851 he declared himself president for life. Within a year, he named himself Emperor Napoléon III.

Louis-Philippe and his family lived in England until his death on le 26 août 1850, in Claremont, Surrey. He is buried with his wife Amelia (le 26 avril 1782 – 24 mars 1866) at la chapelle-Royale, the family necropolis he had built in 1816, in Dreux, France.

More Reading:

In the Court of the Pear King: French Culture and the Rise of Realism

Brother to the Sun King: Philippe, Duke of Orleans

Last Days of the Reign of Louis Philippe

La Gare Saint-Lazare

2006-02-23T03:06:00.000+01:00

La Gare Saint-Lazare was immortalized by Claude Monet in 1877 with his painting of the same name.

The fabled Gare Saint-Larzare, "Saint Lazarus," was the first Parisian railway station. Located in the central northern portion of Paris in the VIII ème arrondissement, the original station was built in 1837 next to la Place d'Europe, a little further to the North of the current station. Its single track ran from Paris to Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Rebuilt by Alfred Armand between 1841-1843, it was later extended by Eugène Flachat (1851-1853), notably through the addition of five metal structure covered halls, the largest having a span of 40 metres. Trains leaving here will take one to Normandie and to Grand Bretagne, via Dieppe.

The Beaux-Arts façade of Gare Saint-Lazare

The present building, designed by Juste Lisch and built between 1885-1889 surrounds the older structures and presents a XVII ème siecle Beaux-Arts style façade. A hôtel-terminus was built to accommodate travellers coming to the Universal Exhibition of 1889 and is the first important example of an association between these two functions.

La Gare St-Lazare is an unlikely tourist destination. However, pilgrims on the trail of “The Da Vinci Code” hero Robert Langdon seem to think it’s worth a detour, to paraphrase the Michelin guides. They now flock to it, to see where the errant “symbologist” pretended to take a train. But long before Dan Brown came along, the station and surrounding “Europe” neighborhood drew countless admirers and inspired a roll call of sensitive souls, from comic-opera composer Jacques Offenbach, to poet Stéphane Mallarmé and scores of painters. Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte and Claude Monet immortalized what were then novel glass-and-iron sheds, rails and viaducts, thereby shocking academic artists and "right-thinkers."

Painters Manet, Caillebotte and Monet were inspired by the then-novel glass-and-iron sheds of Gare Saint-Lazare.

St-Lazare may be frayed nowadays. However, as Paris’ first and once its most celebrated railway terminus, it and the luxurious adjoining Hôtel Concorde Saint-Lazare still hide unexpected historical art and architectural treasures.

After the second expansion of the station, a mere decade passed before it received a third expansion, driven by the city’s demographic boom, as peasants and budding petits bourgeois rushed to Paris seeking the Industrial Revolution’s sooty dreams of wealth and freedom.

Little is left of the 1840s station. But the five airy, cathedral-like metallic sheds whose fretwork and sifted light captured the Impressionists’ imagination still stand. They were designed at the outset of the Second Empire, from 1851 to 1853, their now unsung architect the once eminent Eugène Flachat.

In Flachat’s heyday, la Gare St-Lazare represented the razor’s edge of modernity, an elegant nexus of steam, steel and speed, with the added allure of leisure travel. That was why in 1866, at the apogee of Napoléon III's Second Empire, composer Jacques Offenbach chose to set the first act of his rollicking La Vie Parisienne in the station’s forecourt. Here he posted rival rakes Raoul de Gardefeu and Jean-Louis Bobinet, both awaiting the lovely démi-monde Métella, about to arrive from fashionable Trouville. Admittedly, as you face the Beaux-Arts façade of St-Lazare today, it is a challenge to hear in your mind’s ear Offenbach’s tinkling overture. For decades, though, the opéra’s music and ridiculous plot symbolized the frivolous, raffish, exquisitely paradoxical “Gay Paris” of the latter half of le XIX ème siecle , when le quartier Saint-Lazare area was as chic as is today’s Marais.

La Gare Saint-Lazare as it is today (above) - busy, busy, busy - a TGV arrives from Normandie. (below)

In the 1870s, Monet lived at Seine-side Argenteuil, a village served by trains from Gare St-Lazare. It was amid the sinuous rails under the station sheds that he set up his easel in 1877 to paint his series of eleven canvases, somewhat unsurprisingly titled La Gare Saint-Lazare. One of them hangs in le Musée d’Orsay. Some Orsay curators term Monet’s an “almost playful vision of industrialization.” The clouds of eye-stinging steam and cinders seem not only benign but beautiful as they swirl and puff in pink-and-blue harmony inside the man-made air space under the sparkling shed. A slit of sky reminds us of Nature. All else is artifice, the result of what was then termed “progress,” which Monet indeed portrayed with forward-looking optimism. At the 1877 Salon, where the picture was first exhibited, Émile Zola noted, “You can hear the trains rumbling in, see the smoke billow up under the huge roofs... That’s where painting stands today... Our artists must find the poetry of train stations, the same way their forefathers found the poetry of woods and rivers.”

Saint-Lazare was man-made poetry, “a cathedral of the modern age,” as le XIX ème siecle commentators expressed it. The station may seem prosaic today. But walk out a hundred yards or so onto platform 21 or 22 and you will find the approximate spot where Monet worked. Squint to step back in time. Crop out the overhead electric wires, the parasitic constructions applied to walls like tree mushrooms, and especially the skyscape-blocking fiberglass panels of recent decades. On the horizon above the railway cutting, the triangular Second Empire-period corner building that Monet painted is there.

It was from a fenced-in garden near the triangular building that, almost four years before Monet, in 1874, the provocative Edouard Manet painted his Chemin de Fer. This early plein-air canvas shows a young woman with a puppy and an open book in her lap, seated on a stone wall with an iron fence at her back. Beside her stands a child in a blue dress. The child grips the fence’s bars and stares at a train passing below, on its way to the station. The seated woman is oblivious to the speeding train but, as critic Peter Gay has pointed out, the steam is the painting’s “modern hero.” In the composition, what most observers think is the rear of the station is actually a pier of le Pont de l’Europe viaduct.

Manet's Chemin-de-Fer

The ironwork Europe viaduct and the view of the tracks into Saint-Lazare were also the subject of Gustave Caillebotte’s renowned pictures of 1876-1877, both titled Le Pont de l’Europe. Though the viaduct was rebuilt in 1930, if you stand on it today, like Caillebotte’s striding or meditative figures, you will see the same buildings at the eastern end of the viaduct’s span, and the station’s sheds and shelters. It may sound cliché but little has changed.

Caillebotte: Le Pont de l'Europe

The best perspective of Saint-Lazare is from the rear, specifically the rue de Rome near rue de Stockholm. The view embraces the station’s ironwork and glass superstructures, and a curious stair-tower on the main shed’s western edge.

With the 1889 Universal Exposition in mind, from 1885 to 1889 the front of Saint-Lazare was wrapped with an imposing Beaux-Arts-style façade designed by Juste Lisch. The faux mullioned windows, bulls’ eyes and dormers on mansard roofs suggest a château. On the Batignolles side, mount the stone staircase to the ticketing hall and you will pass two fine bas-relief decorations. Look up and you will see elegant ironwork foliage and flowers overhead. The hall was once known as la salle des pas perdus, literally "the hall of lost steps," because travelers would pace its seemingly endless length while awaiting their trains. Crisscrossed with iron rods supporting a steeply raked skylight, the hall’s perspective is startling, and similar to what you might find in one of Paris’ historic covered galleries, such as le Passage des Panoramas near la Bourse, the stock exchange.

An aerial covered passageway links the station to l' Hôtel Concorde Saint-Lazare, also designed by Lisch. It was once nearly as famous as la tour Eiffel. From the top of his tower on le 7 mai 1889, Gustave Eiffel himself announced the birth of what he dubbed the “Grande Dame” of tourist hotels. The handsome lobby, a registered landmark, has double columns, faux loggias, glazed terracotta decorations on the walls, and jellyfish-like crystal chandeliers. Along the corridor leading to the men’s room vintage photographs show the station and hotel under construction, and the flood of 1910. They are small treasures, perhaps, but seem all the more satisfying because they are so unexpected.

For more about these wonderful le XIX ème siecle gares de chemins-fer, see also Gare de Lyon and Le Train Bleu.

Still more:

Manet's Contemplation at the Gare Saint-Lazare

Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare

Gustave Caillebotte

Les Sites de Paris: Canal Saint-Martin

2006-02-22T03:19:00.000+01:00

Farms in Berkeley? Canals in Paris?

With its swinging footbridges and tree-lined quais teeming with people on long hot summer afternoons, le canal Saint-Martin is yet another example of how appealing Paris can be. Rooted in the city’s industrial past, today le canal offers plenty of opportunities for biking, sightseeing, and enjoying Parisian life at its most relaxed.

The tree-lined quais help disguise the fact that this is a hard-working canal Le canal Saint-Martin is one section of an 81-mile waterway network, including le canal Saint-Denis et le canal Ourcq. Commissioned by Napoléon I early in the XIX ème siecle to provide Parisians with clean drinking water, les canals also kept la Seine free of industrial boat traffic.

Connecting to la Seine free just east of I'Île-Saint-Louis, Saint-Martin runs underground between Place de la Bastilleand Place de la République. It ends in le XIX ème arrondissement, where it meets canals Ourcq et Saint-Denis. The latter flows down from the northern stretch of la Seine at l'Île-de-Saint-Denis. Both are fed by the 68-mile long canal de l’Ourcq, which runs north-east of Paris.

Canal Saint-Martin

The populaires neighborhoods that sprung up around canal Saint-Martin served as inspiration to a number of artists before World War II. Its most famous reference point is in Marcel Carné’s 1938 classic “Hôtel du Nord,” starring Arletty. The film was shot in a life-size studio replica of the canal, but the original hotel still stands at 102 quai de Jemmapes.

One of the many footbridges over canal Saint-Martin, this one is in the X ème arrondissement.

The canal drops 80 feet before joining la Seine at la bassin de l’Arsenal, requiring nine locks to do the job. It also takes a significant bend en route to circumvent l’Hôpital Saint-Louis, which still retains its beautiful XVII ème siecle core (visible from 2 Place du Docteur-Alfred-Fournier, X ème).

One of the nine locks on canal Saint-Martin

The canal network became the focus of a 6-year, $85.7 million preservation and development project, launched by former Mayor Jean Tiberi in 2003. In addition to renovating the canals, which were in need of major repairs, the Mairie de Paris is developing recreational programs that appeal to both locals and tourists.

Canal Saint-Martin at dusk looking toward Place de la Bastille. More Reading:

Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine

Floating Through France: Life Between Locks on the Canal du Midi

Planning the French Canals: Bureaucracy, Politics, and Enterprise Under the Restoration

On this day: Composer Léo Delibes was born, le 21 Février 1836

2006-02-21T15:08:00.000+01:00

Léo Delibes

French composer of opéra and music for ballet Léo Delibes was born le 21 février 1836 in Saint-Germain-du-Val. Delibes was the son of a mailman and a musical mother but also the grandson of an opéra singer. He was raised mainly by his mother and uncle following his father's early death. In 1871, at the age of 35, the composer married Léontine Estelle Denain.

Delibes was the first to write music of high quality for the ballet. His pioneering symphonic work for the ballet opened up a field for serious composers. His influence can be traced in the work of Tchaikovsky and others who wrote for the dance. His own music - light, graceful, elegant, with a tendency toward exoticism - reflects the spirit of the Second Empire, the time of Napoléon III, in France.

Delibes studied at le Conservatoire de Paris under the influential opera composer Adolphe Adam. In 1848 he began taking voice lessons, though he would end up a much better organist than singer. In 1853 Delibes became accompanist at le Théâtre-Lyrique. He was appointed accompanist at l'Opéra de Paris in 1863, professor of composition at le Conservatoire in 1881, and a member of le Institute de France in 1884. He served as organist at l'église Pierre de Chaillot between 1865 and 1871.

Delibes first produced works were a series of amusing operettas, parodies, and farces in which Delibes was associated with Jacques Offenbach and other light-opera composers. The first of his many operettas was Deux sous le charbon, written in 1856 for les Folies-Nouvelles. He collaborated with Ludwig Minkus in the ballet La Source (1866), and its success led to commissions to write his large-scale ballets. Delibes achieved true fame in 1870 with the success of his ballet Coppélia, based on a story by E.T.A. Hoffman; its title referred to a doll, depicted in the work, which comes to life. Other ballets include Sylvia (1876), based on a mythological theme. In the meantime, he developed his gifts for opéra. The opéra comique "Le Roi l'a dit" (1873; The King Said So) was followed by the serious opéras Jean de Nivelle (1880) and Lakmé (1883), his masterpiece. Known for its coloratura aria “Bell Song,” ("Où va la jeune Indoue"), Lakmé contains Oriental scenes illustrated with music of a novel, lush and exotic character. Lakmé is also famous for the "Flower Duet", a bacarolle heard in the British Airways commercials.

Delibes wrote several picturesque songs, among which Les Filles de Cadiz (“The Girls of Cadiz”) suggests the style of Bizet.

Delibes added the divertissement to Adam's ballet Le Corsaire; wrote a Mass, a cantata on the theme of Algiers; and composed operettas and occasional music for the theater, such as dances and antique airs for Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, the play that Verdi turned into Rigoletto. Delibes' work is known to have been a great influence on composers such as Tchaikovsky, Camille Saint-Saëns and Claude Debussy. His ballet Sylvia was of special interest to Tchaikovsky.

Delibes died on le 16 janvier 1891 in Paris and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre.

Listening to the music of Léo Delibes:

Lakmé
789368488223:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

100 Best Opéra Classics - includes the "Bell Song" from Lakmé
724358621129:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

The Most Famous Opera Duets - includes the "Flower Song" from Lakmé
724356812925:Product Link on Barnes & Noble.com.

On this day: Author Anaïs Nin was born,le 21 Février 1903

2006-02-21T02:52:00.000+01:00

Anaïs Nin

French-born author Anaïs Nin (pronounced "ana-EASE Neen") was born in Neuilly, a suburb east of Paris, on le 21 février 1903. She spent her childhood in various parts of Europe until, when she was eleven, her father, Spanish composer Joaquin Nin, abandoned his family. In the same year, her French-Danish mother, Rosa Culmell, took her two sons and Anaïs to New York. On the boat that brought Anaïs away from Europe and from her father she began to write her journals. She initially wrote in French and did not begin to write in English until she was seventeen.

While still a teenager, Nin abandoned formal schooling and began working as a model. In 1923 she married Hugo Guiler, who had studied literature and economics and had acquired a good position in an international bank, allowing them to live comfortably. The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Guiler pursued his banking career and Nin began to pursue her interest in writing, where her first published work was a critical evaluation of D. H. Lawrence called "D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study." She also explored the field of psychotherapy, studying under Otto Rank, a disciple of Sigmund Freud.

Anaïs Nin, circa 1920 In Paris Nin and Guiler lived in various appartements, among them a beautiful house in Louveciennes, but Anaïs also often had a studio for herself and lived in a houseboat on la Seine for a while. In Paris she and Hugo supported various avant-garde artists, among them Henry Miller with whom Anaïs started an affair and exchanged hundreds of letters. The book "A Literary Passion" includes a great number of the letters these two artists exchanged over the years and provide an interesting documentary of their struggle for recognition as writers as well as their relationship. Later Hugo Guiler illustrated her books under the pseudonym Ian Hugo, and he became well-known as an engraver and filmmaker.

Including Henry Miller, Nin was a friend, and in some cases lover, of many leading literary figures, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, James Agee, and Lawrence Durrell.

Anaïs moved back to New York just before the outbreak of World War II. After a turbulent time in New York she divided her life between New York and Los Angeles. From being a cult figure of the early feminist movement, Anaïs later rose to international prominence with her writing. She is best known for her diaries but also produced a number of novels and a prose poem in surrealistic style as well as erotic short stories, published posthumously. Characterized by the use of powerful and, at times, disquieting imagery, her work reveals great sensitivity and perception.

Her series "Cities of the Interior" included "Ladders to Fire" (1946), "Children of the Alabtross" (1947), "The Four-Chambered Heart" (1950), and "A Spy in the House of Love" (1954). The series focused on different female types and followed their lives through lovers, art, and analysis. All of Nin's writings have an erotic quality - "sensuality is a secret power in my body," she once wrote. In the early 1940s she wrote a series of specifically sexual pieces, which were edited and published posthumously as "Delta of Venus" (1977) and "Little Birds" (1979). Nin wrote the stories in "Delta of Venus" for a dollar a page in the 1940s.

With the understanding Hugh Guiler, Nin enjoyed a secure marriage for over 50 years. He stayed out of the way of her extramarital life during a series of affairs with Henry Miller, Otto Rank, Gore Vidal, and Edmund Wilson. Nin was able to have in California a second husband, Rupert Pole, a man much younger than her. The bicoastal bigamous marriage had her commuting between New York and California for at least twenty five years.

In the 1960s Nin gained fame with her diaries, which created interest in her earlier works. Nin's diaries cover the years from 1931 to 1977 and provide an insight into her development as a woman and artist. The first volume appeared when she was 63. More than a biographical document, the diary is a work of art. Each volume has an unifying theme. Individuals and scenes are vivid, conversations are presented in dialogue, lengthy observations are juxtaposed with cryptic comments.

In 1973 she received an honorary doctorate from Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974.

Although Nin was criticized as a narcissist, the feminist perspective of her works, psychological insight, and her search for self-knowledge made her a popular lecturer in the universities across the U.S. In 1975 "A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars, and Interviews of Anaïs Nin" was published, where Nin dissociated herself from the political activism of the feminist movement. She did not have faith in the feminist systems, "because systems are corruptible." She advocated journal keeping as a preliminary requirement for a liberated self. "So I feel the great changes in the world will come from a great change in our consciousness," she wrote. The last volumes of her diaries appeared posthumously in the 1980s. Nin died of cancer on le 14 janvier 1977 in Los Angeles.

In 1990 Philip Kaufman made the film based on her novel Henry & June from The Journal of Love — The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932. It starred Maria de Medeiros as Nin, Fred Ward as Henry Miller, and Uma Thurman as June.

Quotes from Anaïs Nin:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

"There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions."

"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them."

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."

"When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others."

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic."

More Reading:

Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anas Nin

Waste of Timelessness & Other Early Stories

Delta of Venus: Erotica