Paris during the Second Empire
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During the Second French Empire, the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (1852–1870), Paris was the largest city in continental Europe and a leading center of finance, commerce, fashion, and the arts. The population of the city grew dramatically, from about one million to two million persons, partly because the city was greatly enlarged, to its present boundaries, through the annexation of eleven surrounding communes and the subsequent creation of eight new arrondissements.
In 1853, Napoleon III and his prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, began a massive public works project, constructing new boulevards and parks, theaters, markets and monuments, a project that Napoleon III supported for seventeen years until his downfall in 1870, and which was continued afterward under the Third Republic. The street plan and architectural style of Napoleon III and Haussmann are still largely preserved and manifestly evident in the center of Paris.
The Paris of Napoleon III
In 1852, Paris had many beautiful buildings; but, according to many visitors, it was not a beautiful city. The most significant civic structures, such as the
When Napoleon III staged a
Haussmann's renovation of Paris
In 1853, Napoleon III assigned his new prefect of the Seine department, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the task of bringing more water, air, and light into the city center, widening the streets to make traffic circulation easier, and making it the most beautiful city in Europe.
Haussmann worked on his vast projects for seventeen years, employing tens of thousands of workers. He rebuilt the sewers of Paris so they no longer emptied into the Seine and built a new aqueduct and reservoir to bring in more fresh water. He demolished most of the old medieval buildings on the Île de la Cité and replaced them with a new hospital and government buildings.
In the city center, he conceived four
For the recreation and relaxation of all classes of Parisians, Napoleon III created four new parks at the cardinal points of the compass: the
To better connect his capital with the rest of France, and to serve as the grand gateways to the city, Napoleon III built two new train stations, the
Paris expands – the annexation of 1860
In 1859, Napoleon III issued a decree annexing the suburban communes around Paris:
The population of Paris during the Second Empire
The population of Paris was recorded as 949,000 in 1851. It grew to 1,130,500 by 1856 and was just short of two million by the end of Second Empire, including the 400,000 residents of the suburbs annexed to Paris in 1860.[7] According to a census made by the city of Paris in 1865, Parisians lived in 637,369 apartments or residences. Forty-two percent of the city population, or 780,000 Parisians, were classified as indigent, and thus too poor to be taxed. Another 330,000 Parisians, who occupied 17 percent of the housing of the city, were classified as lower middle class, defined as individuals who paid rents of less than 250 francs. 32 percent of the lodgings in Paris were occupied by the upper-middle class, defined as individuals who paid rents of between 250 and 1500 francs. Three percent of Parisians, or fifty thousand people, were classified as wealthy individuals who paid more than 1500 francs for rent.[8]
Artisans and workers
In the early part of the 19th century, the majority of Parisians were employed in commerce and small shops; but by the mid-19th century, conditions had changed. In 1864, 900,000 of the 1,700,000 inhabitants of Paris were employed in workshops and industry. These workers were typically employed in manufacturing, usually for the luxury market and on a small scale. The average
The market for Parisian products changed during the Second Empire. Previously, the clientele for luxury goods had been very small, mostly restricted to the nobility; and to meet their needs a small number of craftsmen had worked slowly and to very high standards. During the Second Empire, with the growth of the number of wealthy and upper middle class clients, lower-paid specialist craftsmen began to make products in greater quantity and more quickly, but of poorer quality than before. Craftsmen with nineteen different specialties were employed to make high-quality Moroccan leather goods. To make fine dolls, separate craftsmen and women, working separately and usually at home, made the body, the head, the arms, the teeth, the eyes, the hair, the lingerie, the dresses, the gloves, the shoes, and the hats.[11]
Between 1830 and 1850, more heavy industry began to locate in Paris. One tenth of all the steam engines in France were made in the capital. These industrial enterprises were usually located in the outer parts of the city, where there was land and access to the rivers or canals needed to move heavy goods. The metallurgy industry established itself along the Seine in the eastern part of the city. The chemical industry was located near La Villette, in the outer part of the city, or at Grenelle. Factories were established to make matches, candles, rubber, ink, gelatine, glue, and various acids. A thousand workers were employed by the Gouin factory in Batignolles to make steam engines. Fifteen hundred were employed by the Cail factories in Grenelle and Chaillot to make rails and ironwork for bridges. At Levallois-Perret, a young engineer, Gustave Eiffel, started an enterprise to make the frames of iron buildings. The eastern part of the city was subjected to noise, smoke, and the smells of industry. Wealthier Parisians moved to the west end of the city, which was quieter and where the prevailing winds kept out the smoke from the east. When the wealthy and middle-class people deserted the eastern areas, most of the small shops also closed and relocated elsewhere, leaving the outer suburbs of eastern Paris with only factories, and housing occupied by the poor.[12]
Wages and working hours
The artisans and workers of Paris had a precarious existence. 73% of the residents of the working-class areas earned a daily salary between 3.25 and 6 francs; 22% earned less than three francs; only 5% had a salary between 6.5 and 20 francs. Food cost a minimum of one franc a day, and the minimum necessary for lodging was 75 centimes a day. In most industries, except those connected with food, there was a long morte-saison ("dead season"), when the enterprises closed down and their workers were unpaid. To support a family properly, either the wife and children had to work, or the husband had to work on Sundays or longer hours than normal. The situation for women was even worse; the average salary for a woman was only two francs a day. Women workers also faced increasing competition from machines: two thousand sewing machines, just coming into use, could replace twelve thousand women sewing by hand. Women were typically laid off from work before men.[13]
The workday at three-quarters of the enterprises in Paris was twelve hours, with two hours allowed for lunch. Most workers lived far from their place of employment, and public transport was expensive. A train on the Petite Ceinture line cost 75 centimes round-trip, so most workers walked to work with a half-kilogram loaf of bread for their lunch. Construction workers on Haussmann's grand projects in the city center had to leave home at 4 a.m. to arrive at work by 6 a.m., when their workday began. Taverns and wine merchants near the work sites were open at a very early hour; it was common for workers to stop for a glass of white wine before work to counter the effects of what they had drunk the night before.
Office workers were not paid much better than artisans or industrial workers. The first job of novelist Émile Zola, in May 1862, was working as a mail clerk for the book publisher Louis Hachette; he put books into packets and mailed them to customers, for which he was paid 100 francs a month. In 1864, he was promoted to head of publicity for the publisher at a salary of 200 francs a month.[14]
The chiffonniers of Paris
The
The poor and indigent
Twenty-two percent of Parisians earned less than three francs a day, and daily life was a struggle for them. Their numbers grew as new immigrants arrived from other regions of France. Many came to the city early in the Empire to perform the unskilled work needed in demolishing buildings and moving earth for the new boulevards. When that work ended, few of the new immigrants left. The city established bureaux de bienfaisance—or charity bureaus, with an office in each arrondissement—to provide temporary assistance, usually in the form of food, to the unemployed, the sick, the injured, and women who were pregnant. The assistance ended when the recipients recovered; the average payment was 50 francs per family per year. Those who were old or had incurable illnesses were sent to a
For those working-class Parisians who had been laid off or were temporarily in need of money, a special institution existed: the Mont-de-Piété. Founded in 1777, it was a sort of pawn shop or bank for the poor, with a main office on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois and bureaus in twenty arrondissements. The poor could bring any piece of property, from jewels or watches to old sheets, mattresses, and clothing, and receive a loan. In 1869, it received more than 1,500,000 deposits in exchange for loans, two-thirds of which were of less than ten francs. The interest rate on the loans was 9.5 percent, and any object not claimed within a year was sold. The institution collected between 1000 and 1200 watches a day. Many clients used the same watch or object to borrow money every month, when money ran short. Workers would often pawn their tools during a slow season without work.
Below the poor, there was an even lower class, of beggars and vagabonds. A law passed in 1863 made it a crime to be completely without money; those without any money at could be taken to jail, and those unlikely to get any money were taken to the Dépôt de mendicité, or beggar's depot, located in Saint-Denis, where about a thousand beggars were put to work making rope or straps, or sorting rags. They were paid a small amount, and when they had earned a certain sum, they were allowed to leave, but most soon returned; and the majority died at the depot.[17]
The morgue
The Paris morgue was located on the Quai de l'Archevêché on the Île de la Cité, not far from the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-Paris. In order to assist with the identification of unclaimed bodies, it was open to the public. Bodies fished out of the Seine were put on display behind a large glass window, along with the clothes that they had been wearing. A doctor working at the morgue wrote, "A multitude of the curious, of all ages, sexes, and social rank, presses in every day, sometimes moved and silent, often stirred by horror and disgust, sometimes cynical and turbulent."[18] On June 28, 1867, a body found without a head, arms or legs was put on display. The head, arms, and legs were found a few days later, the body was identified, and the murderer tracked down and arrested. The system was macabre but effective; seventy-five percent of the bodies found in the Seine were identified in this way.[19]
The cemeteries
During the Second Empire, Paris had five main cemeteries:
In 1860, Haussmann complained that the cemeteries inside the city posed a serious threat to public health, and proposed to ban burials in the city. His alternative was to have all burials take place in a very large new cemetery, outside the city, served by special funeral trains that would bring the remains and the mourners from the city. Haussmann quietly began acquiring land for the new cemetery. The project ran into strong opposition in the French Senate in 1867, however, and Napoleon decided to postpone it indefinitely.[21]
Public transport
Railroads and stations
In 1863, Paris had eight passenger train stations that were run by eight different companies, each with rail lines connecting to a particular part of the country: the Gare du Nord connected Paris to Great Britain via ferry; the Gare de Strasbourg—now the Gare de l'Est—to Strasbourg, Germany, and eastern Europe; the Gare de Lyon—run by the Company Paris-Lyon-Mediterranée—to Lyon and the south of France; the Gare d'Orleans—now the Gare d'Austerlitz—to Bordeaux and southwest France; the Gare d'Orsay; the Gare de Vincennes; the Gare de l'Ouest Rive Gauche—on the Left Bank where the Gare Montparnasse is today—to Brittany, Normandy, and western France; and the Gare de l'Ouest—on the Right Bank, where the Gare Saint-Lazare is today—also connecting to the west. In addition, there was a huge station just outside the fortifications of the city where all freight and merchandise arrived.[22]
The owners and builders of the railroad stations competed to make their stations the most palatial and magnificent. The owner of the Gare du Nord,
The Gare de l'Ouest, on the right bank, the busiest of the stations, occupied eleven hectares and was home to a fleet of 630 locomotives and 13,686 passenger coaches, including those for first class, second class, and third class. 70 trains a day operated in the peak season and during the Paris expositions. If passengers needed to make a connection, a service of 350 horse-drawn omnibuses operated by the railroad carried passengers to the other stations.
The journey from Paris to Orléans, a distance of 121 kilometers, cost 13 francs 55 centimes for a first-class ticket; 10 francs 15 centimes for a second class ticket; and 7 francs 45 centimes for a 3rd class ticket.[25]
The engineers or drivers of the locomotives, called mechaniciens, had a particularly difficult job; the cabs of the locomotives had no roofs and no sides, and were exposed to rain, hail, and snow. In addition, it was scorching hot, since they had to work in front of the boiler. A locomotive driver earned 10 francs a day.[26]
The new train stations welcomed millions of tourists, including those who came for the two Universal Expositions during the Second Empire. They also welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from other parts of France who came to work and settle in Paris. Immigrants from different regions tended to settle in areas close to the station that served their old region: Alsatians tended to settle around the Gare de l'Est and Bretons around the Gare de l'Ouest, a pattern still found today.[citation needed]
The omnibus and the fiacre
From 1828 to 1855, Parisian public transport was provided by private companies that operated large horse-drawn wagons with seats, a vehicle called an omnibus. The omnibuses of each company had distinct liveries and picturesque names: the Favorites, the Dames Blanches, the Gazelles, the Hirondelles, the Citadines. They served only the city center and wealthier areas, ignoring the working-class areas and the outer suburbs of the city. In 1855, Napoleon III's prefect of police, Pierre-Marie Piétri, required the individual companies to merge under the name Compagnie général de omnibus. This new company had the exclusive rights to provide public transport. It established 25 lines that expanded to 31 with the annexation of the outer suburbs, about 150 kilometers in total length. A ticket cost 30 centimes and entitled the passenger to one transfer. In 1855, the company had 347 cars and carried 36 million passengers. By 1865, the number of cars had doubled and the number of passengers had tripled.[27]
The Paris omnibus was painted in yellow, green, or brown. It carried fourteen passengers on two long benches and was entered from the rear. It was pulled by two horses and was equipped with a driver and conductor dressed in royal blue uniforms with silver-plated buttons, decorated with the gothic letter O, and with a black necktie. The conductor wore a kepi and the driver a hat of varnished leather. In summer, they wore blue and white striped trousers and black straw hats. The omnibus was required to stop any time a passenger wanted to get on or off, but with time, the omnibus became so popular that passengers had to wait in line to get a seat.
The other means of public transport was the
Gas lamps and the City of Light
The gas lights that illuminated Paris at night during the Second Empire were often admired by foreign visitors and helped revive the city nickname Ville-Lumiére, the City of Light. At the beginning of the Empire, there were 8,000 gas lights in the city; by 1870, there were 56,573 used exclusively to light the city streets.[29]
The gas was produced by ten enormous factories—located around the edge of the city, near the circle of fortifications—and was distributed in pipes installed under the new boulevards and streets. Haussmann placed street lamps every twenty meters on the boulevards. Shortly after nightfall, a small army of 750 allumeurs in uniform, carrying long poles with small lamps at the end, went out into the streets, turned on a pipe of gas inside each lamppost, and lit the lamp. The entire city was illuminated within forty minutes. The amount of light was greatly enhanced by the white stone walls of the new Haussmann apartment buildings, which reflected the brilliant gaslight. Certain buildings and monuments were also illuminated: the
The central market – Les Halles
The central market of Paris, Les Halles, had been in the same location on the Right Bank between the Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville since it was established by King Philippe-Auguste in 1183. The first market had walls and gates, but no covering other than tents and umbrellas. It sold food, clothing, weapons, and a wide range of merchandise. By the middle of the 19th century, the open-air market was overcrowded, unsanitary, and inadequate for the needs of the growing city. On September 25, 1851, Napoleon III, then Prince-President, placed the first stone for a new market. The first building looked like a grim medieval fortress and was criticised by the merchants, public, and the Prince-President himself. He stopped construction and commissioned a different architect, Victor Baltard, to come up with a better design. Baltard took his inspiration from The Crystal Palace in London, a revolutionary glass-and-cast-iron structure that had been built in 1851. Baltard's new design had fourteen enormous pavilions with glass and cast-iron roofs resting on brick walls. It covered an area of 70 hectares and cost 60 million francs to build. By 1870, ten of the fourteen pavilions were finished and in use. Les Halles was the major architectural achievement of the Second Empire and became the model for covered markets around the world.[31]
Each night, 6000 wagons converged on Les Halles, carrying meat, seafood, produce, milk, eggs, and other food products from the train stations. The wagons were unloaded by 481 men wearing large hats called les forts (the strong), who carried the food in baskets to the pavilions. Pavilion no. 3 was the hall for meat; no. 9 for seafood; no. 11 for birds and game. Merchants in the pavilions rented their stalls for between one and three francs a day. Fruits and vegetables also arrived at night, brought by carts from farms and gardens around Paris; the farmers rented small spaces of one by two meters on the sidewalk outside the pavilions to sell their produce. The meat was carved, the produce put out on the counters, and the sellers—called "counter criers"—were in place by 5 a.m., when the market opened.
The first buyers in the morning were from institutions: soldiers with large sacks buying food for the army barracks; cooks buying for colleges, monasteries, and other institutions; and owners of small restaurants. Between six and seven in the morning, the fresh seafood arrived from the train stations, mostly from Normandy or Brittany, but some from England and Belgium. The fish were cleaned and put on the eight counters in hall no. 9. They were carefully arranged by sixteen verseurs ("pourers" or "spillers") and advertised in loud voices by 34 counter criers. As soon as the fish appeared, it was sold.
From September 1 until April 30, oysters were sold in pavilion no. 12 for ten centimes each, which was too expensive for most Parisians. The oysters were shipped from Les Halles to customers as far away as Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Butter, cheese, and eggs were sold in pavilion no. 10, the eggs having arrived in large packages containing a thousand eggs each. The butter and milk was checked and tasted by inspectors to make sure it matched advertised quality, and 65 inspectors verified the size and quality of the eggs.
Pavilion no. 4 sold live birds: chickens, pigeons, ducks, and pheasants, as well as rabbits and lambs. It was by far the noisiest and the worst-smelling pavilion, because of the live animals; and it had a special ventilating system. No. 8 sold vegetables, and no. 7 sold fresh flowers. No. 12 had bakers and fruit sellers, and also sold what were known as rogations; these were leftovers from restaurants, hotels, the Palace, and government ministries. The leftovers were sorted and put on plates; and any that looked acceptable were sold. Some leftovers were reserved for pet foods; old bones were collected to make bouillon; uneaten bread crusts from schools and restaurants were used to make croutons for soup and bread-coating for cutlets. Many workers in Les Halles got their meals at this pavilion.
Cooks from good restaurants arrived in the mid-morning to buy meat and produce, parking fiacres in rows in front of the Church of Saint-Eustache. Most of the food was sold by 10 a.m.; seafood remained on sale until noon. The rest of the day was used for recording orders, and for resting until whatever market opened again late that night.[32]
Cafés and restaurants
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The Café Tortoni, famous for its ice cream, on the Boulevard des Italiens (1856)
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The Maison Dorée in about 1860.
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The Café Riche on the Boulevard des Italiens in about 1865
Thanks to the growing number of wealthy Parisians and tourists coming to the city and the new network of railroads that delivered fresh seafood, meat, vegetables, and fruit to Les Halles every morning, Paris during the Second Empire had some of the best restaurants in the world. The greatest concentration of top-class restaurants was on the
The most famous newer restaurants on the Boulevard des Italiens were the Maison Dorée, the Café Riche, and the Café Anglais, the latter two of which faced each other across the boulevard. They, and the other cafés modelled after them, had similar interior arrangements. Inside the door, the clients were welcomed by the dame de comptoir, always a beautiful woman who was very elegantly dressed. Besides welcoming the clients, she was in charge of the distribution of pieces of sugar, two for each demitasse of coffee. A demitasse of coffee cost between 35 and 40 centimes, to which clients usually added a tip of two sous, or ten centimes. An extra piece of sugar cost ten centimes. The floor of the café was lightly covered with sand, so the hurrying waiters would not slip. The technology of the coffee service was greatly improved in 1855 with the invention of the hydrostatic coffee percolator, first presented at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1855, which allowed a café to produce 50,000 demitasses a day.[34]
The Maison Dorée was decorated in an extravagant Moorish style, with white walls and gilded furnishings, balconies and statues. It had six dining salons and 26 small private rooms. The private dining rooms were elegantly furnished with large sofas as well as tables and were a popular place for clandestine romances. They also featured large mirrors, where women had the tradition of scratching messages with their diamond rings. It was a popular meeting place between high society and what was known as the demimonde of actresses and courtesans; it was a favorite dining place of Nana in the novel of that name by Émile Zola.[35]
The Café Riche, located at the corner of the Rue Le Peletier and the Boulevard des Italiens, was richly decorated by its owner, Louis Bignon, with a marble and bronze stairway, statues, tapestries, and velour curtains. It was the meeting place of bankers, actors, actresses, and successful painters, journalists, novelists, and musicians. The upstairs rooms were the meeting places of the main characters in Émile Zola's novel La Curée.
The Café Anglais, across the street from the Café Riche, had a famous chef,
The Boulevard des Italiens also featured the Café Foy, at the corner of the
Just below the constellation of top restaurants, there were a dozen others that offered excellent food at less extravagant prices, including the historic
According to Eugene Chavette, author of an 1867 restaurant guide, there were 812 restaurants in Paris, 1,664 cafés, 3,523 debits de vin, 257 crémeries, and 207
Bread and wine
Bread was the basic diet of the Parisian workers. There was one bakery for every 1349 Parisians in 1867, up from one bakery for every 1800 in 1853. However, the per capita daily consumption of bread of Parisians dropped during the Second Empire, from 500 grams per day per person in 1851 to 415 grams in 1873. To avoid popular unrest, the price of bread was regulated by the government and fixed at about 50 centimes per kilo. The fast-baked baguette was not introduced until 1920, so bakers had to work all night to bake the bread for the next day. In order to make a profit, bakers created a wide variety of what were known as "fantasy" breads, made with better quality flours and with different grains; the price of these breads ranged from 80 centimes to a franc per kilo.[41]
The consumption of wine by Parisians increased during the Second Empire, while the quality decreased. It was unusual for women to drink; but, for both the workers and the middle and upper classes, wine was part of the daily meal. The number of debits de boissons, bars where wine was sold, doubled. Ordinary wine was produced by mixing several different wines of different qualities from different places in a cask and shaking it. The wine sold as ordinary Mâcon was made by mixing wine from Beaujolais, Tavel, and Bergerac. The best wines were treated much more respectfully; in 1855, Napoleon III ordered the classification of Bordeaux wines by place of origin and quality, so that they could be displayed and sold at the Paris Universal Exposition.
Wine was bought and sold at the Halle aux Vins, a large market established by
Absinthe and tobacco
Absinthe had made its appearance in Paris in the 1840s, and it became extremely popular among the "Bohemians" of Paris: artists, writers, and their friends and followers. It was known as the "Goddess with green eyes," and was usually drunk with a small amount of sugar on the edge of the glass. The hour of 5 p.m. was called l'heure verte ("the green hour"), when the drinking usually began, and it continued until late at night.
Before the Second Empire, smoking had usually been limited to certain rooms or salons of restaurants or private homes, but during the Empire, it became popular to smoke on all occasions and in every location, from salons to the dining rooms of restaurants. Cigars imported from Havana were smoked by the Parisian upper class. To meet the growing demand for cigars, the government established two cigar factories in Paris. The one at Gros-Caillou was located on the banks of the Seine near the Palais d'Orsay; it was the place in which ordinary cigars were made, usually with tobacco from Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Mexico, Brazil, or Hungary. The cigars from Gros-Caillou sold for between 10 and 20 centimes each. Another factory, at Reuilly, made luxury cigars with tobacco imported directly from Havana; they sold for 25 to 50 centimes each. The Reuilly factory employed a thousand workers, of whom 939 were women, a type of work culture in the tobacco industry depicted in the opera Carmen (1875) by Georges Bizet. One woman worker could make between 90 and 150 cigars during a ten-hour workday.[43]
The novelty shop and the first department stores
The Second Empire saw a revolution in retail commerce, as the Paris middle class and consumer demand grew rapidly. The revolution was fuelled in large part by Paris fashions, especially the crinoline, which demanded enormous quantities of silk, satin, velour, cashmere, percale, mohair, ribbons, lace, and other fabrics and decorations. Before the Second Empire, clothing and luxury shops were small and catered to a very small clientele; their windows were covered with shutters or curtains. Any who entered had to explain their presence to the clerks, and prices were never posted; customers had to ask for them.
The first novelty stores, which carried a wide variety of goods, appeared in the late 1840s. They had larger, glass windows, made possible by the new use of cast iron in architecture. Customers were welcome to walk in and look around, and prices were posted on every item. These shops were relatively small, and catered only to a single area, since it was difficult for Parisians to get around the city through its narrow streets.
Innovation followed innovation. In 1850, the store named Le Grand Colbert introduced glass show windows from the pavement to the top of the ground floor. The store Au Coin de la Rue was built with several floors of retail space around a central courtyard that had a glass skylight for illumination, a model soon followed by other shops. In 1867, the store named La Ville Saint-Denis introduced the hydraulic elevator to retail.
The new Haussmann boulevards created space for new stores, and it became easier for customers to cross the city to shop. In a short time, the commerce in novelties, fabrics, and clothing began to be concentrated in a few very large department stores.
The new stores pioneered new methods of marketing, from holding annual sales to giving bouquets of violets to customers or boxes of chocolates to those who spent more than 25 francs. They offered a wide variety of products and prices: Bon Marché offered 54 kinds of crinolines, and 30 different kinds of silk. The Grand Magasin du Louvre sold shawls ranging in price from 30 francs to 600 francs.[45]
Painting during the Second Empire
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"The Birth of Venus", by Alexandre Cabanel, was purchased by Napoleon III at the Paris Salon of 1863
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"Napoleon I in 1814", a portrait of Napoleon III's uncle, byJean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier.
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"The Death of Caesar" by Jean-Léon Gérôme, a highly successful academic history painter from the Second Empire.
The Paris Salon
During the Second Empire, the
The Paris Salon was directed by the Count
Ingres, Delacroix, Corot
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The Turkish Bath (1862) byJean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
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The Abduction of Rebecca (1858) by Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the romantic school of painting.
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Saint Michael Defeats the Devil (1849-1861), in theChurch of Saint-Sulpice, one of Delacroix's last major works.
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A landscape (1860) byJean-Baptiste Camille Corot. Corot achieved popular and critical success during the Second Empire after a long period of relative obscurity.
The older generation of painters in Paris during the Second Empire was dominated by
Ingres had begun painting during the reign of Napoleon I, under the teaching of Jacques-Louis David. In 1853, during the reign of Napoleon III, he painted a monumental Apotheosis of Napoleon I on the ceiling of the Hotel de Ville of Paris, which was destroyed in May 1871 when the Communards burned the building. His work combined elements of neoclassicism, romanticism, and innocent eroticism. He painted his famed Turkish Bath in 1862, and he taught and inspired many of the academic painters of the Second Empire.
Delacroix, as the founder of the Romantic school, took French painting in a very different direction, driven by emotion and colour. His friend the poet
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot began his career with study at the École des Beaux-Arts as an academic painter, but gradually began painting more freely and expressing emotions and feelings through his landscapes. His motto was "never lose that first impression which we feel." He made sketches in the forests around Paris, then reworked them into final paintings in his studio. He was showing paintings in the Salon as early as 1827, but he did not achieve real fame and critical acclaim before 1855, during the Second Empire.[48]
Courbet and Manet
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Gustave Courbet's painting of ordinary young women taking a nap by the Seine (1856) caused a scandal at the Paris Salon, much to the delight of the artist.
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Luncheon on the Grass by Édouard Manet caused a scandal at the Paris Salon of 1863 and helped make Manet famous.
Gustave Courbet (1819-1872) was the leader of the school of realist painters during the Second Empire who depicted the lives of ordinary people and rural life, as well as landscapes. He delighted in scandal and condemned the art establishment, the Academy of Fine Arts, and Napoleon III. In 1855, when his submissions to the Salon were rejected, he set up his own exhibit in a nearby building and displayed forty of his paintings there. In 1870, Napoleon III proposed giving the Legion of Honour to Courbet, but he publicly rejected it.
Pre-Impressionism
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Claude Monet exhibited a portrait of his future wife Camille Doncieux at the Paris Salon of 1866 under the title Woman in a Green Dress.
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La Grenouillére by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir studied art in Paris in 1862 and placed a painting in the Paris Salon of 1864.
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A portrait of Manet and his wife by Edgar Degas. (1868–69)
While the official art world was dominated by the Salon painters, another lively art world existed in competition with and opposition to the salon. In an earlier period, this group included the painters
The term "Impressionist" was not invented until 1874; but during the Second Empire, all the major impressionist painters were at work in Paris, inventing their own personal styles. Claude Monet exhibited two of his paintings, a landscape and a portrait of his future wife Camille Doncieux, at the Paris Salon of 1866.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), the son of a banker, studied academic art at the École des Beaux-Arts and travelled to Italy to study the Renaissance painters. In 1868, he began to frequent the Café Guerbois, where he met Manet, Monet, Renoir, and the other artists of a new, more natural school, and began to develop his own style.[50]
Literature
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Victor Hugo lived in exile on the island of Jersey during almost all of the period of the Second Empire, but his works, including Les Miserables of 1862, were immensely popular in Paris.
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Gustave Flaubert published his novel Madame Bovary in 1866 and was charged with immorality for its content. He was acquitted, and the publicity made the novel a huge public success.
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Hachette. He published his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin, in 1867.
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Charles Baudelaire also faced charges of immorality, in his case for his poetry. He was fined, and six of his poems were suppressed.
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Paris stock market and did research for his first stories at the National Library.
The most famous Paris writer of the Second Empire, Victor Hugo, spent only a few days in the city during the entire period of the Second Empire. He was exiled shortly after Napoleon III seized power in 1852, and he did not return until after Napoleon's fall in 1870. The emperor stated publicly that Hugo could return whenever he wanted; but Hugo refused as a matter of principle, and while in exile wrote books and articles ridiculing and denouncing Napoleon III. His novel Les Misérables was published in Paris in April and May 1862 and was a huge popular success, though it was criticized by Gustave Flaubert, who said he found "no truth or greatness in it".[51]
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) left Paris in 1851, just before the Second Empire was proclaimed, partly because of political differences with Napoleon III, but largely because he was deeply in debt and wanted to avoid creditors. After travelling to Belgium, Italy, and Russia, he returned to Paris in 1864 and wrote his last major work, The Knight of Sainte-Hermine, before he died in 1870.
The son of Dumas,
After Victor Hugo, the most prominent writer of the Second Empire was
The most important poet of the Second Empire was
The most prominent of the younger generation of writers in Paris was
Another important writer of the time was
One of the most popular writers of the Second Empire was
Architecture of the Second Empire
-
TheOpera Garnier(1862-1875)
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The grand stairway of the Paris Opera, designed by Charles Garnier, in the style he called simply "Napoleon III"
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The interior of one of the giant glass and iron pavilions of Les Halles designed by Victor Baltard (1853-1870).
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The reading room of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Richelieu site (1854-1875), was designed by Henri Labrouste
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The Church of Saint Augustine (1860-1871), designed by architect Victor Baltard, had a revolutionary iron frame, but a classical Neo-Renaissance exterior.
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The monumental gates of the Parc Monceau designed by the city architect Gabriel Davioud.
The dominant architectural style of the Second Empire was
The industrial revolution was beginning to demand a new kind of architecture: bigger, stronger, and less expensive. The new age of railways, and the enormous increase in travel that it caused, required new train stations, large hotels, exposition halls, and department stores in Paris. While the exteriors of most Second Empire monumental buildings usually remained eclectic, a revolution was taking place; based on the model of The Crystal Palace in London (1851), Parisian architects began to use cast-iron frames and walls of glass in their buildings.[54]
The most dramatic use of iron and glass was in the new central market of Paris, Les Halles (1853-1870), an ensemble of huge iron and glass pavilions designed by Victor Baltard (1805-1874) and Felix-Emmanuel Callet (1792-1854). Jacques-Ignace Hittorff also made extensive use of iron and glass in the interior of the new Gare du Nord train station (1842-1865), although the facade was perfectly neoclassical, decorated with classical statues representing the cities served by the railway. Baltard also used a steel frame in building the largest new church built in Paris during the Empire, the Church of Saint Augustine (1860-1871). While the structure was supported by cast-iron columns, the facade was eclectic. Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) also used iron and glass to create a dramatic cathedral-like reading room for the National Library, Richelieu site (1854-1875).[55]
The Second Empire also saw the completion or restoration of several architectural treasures: the wings of the
Interior decoration
-
A salon of Napoleon III in the Louvre.
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The salon of the Empress Eugénie at the Tuileries Palace.
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One of the salons of Napoleon III, now in the Louvre, in the Second Empire Style. The chair in the foreground, designed for intimate conversations among three persons, was called l'indiscret, or "the indiscreet".
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The chair for intimate conversations called le confident
Comfort was the first priority of Second Empire furniture. Chairs were elaborately upholstered with fringes, tassels, and expensive fabrics. Tapestry work on furniture was very much in style. The structure of chairs and sofas was usually entirely hidden by the upholstery or had copper, shell, or other decorative elements as ornamentation. Novel and exotic new materials—such as
Fashion
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The Empress Eugénie in 1855 (center, in white gown with lavender ribbons), surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, painted by her favourite artist, Franz Xaver Winterhalter.
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Paris boulevard fashion in 1853
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The sculptor François Jouffroy in 1865 wearing the men's fashion of the day, holding his gloves in his hand to show that he could afford them, but did not need them.
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By 1870, the crinoline had gone out of style, and women wore skirts that more closely fit the body.
Women's fashion during the Second Empire was set by the Empress Eugénie. Until the late 1860s, it was dominated by the crinoline dress, a bell-shaped dress with a very wide, full-length skirt supported on a frame of hoops of metal. The dress's waist was extremely narrow, its wear facilitated by wearing a corset with whalebone stays underneath, which also pushed up the bust. The shoulders were often bare or covered by a shawl. The Archbishop of Paris noted that women used so much material in the skirt that none seemed to be left to cover their shoulders. Paris church officials also noted with concern that the pews in a church, which normally could seat one hundred people, could seat only forty women wearing such dresses, thus the Sunday intake of donations fell. In 1867, a young woman was detained at the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires for stealing umbrellas and hiding them under her skirt.[56] The great expanse of the skirt was covered with elaborate lace, embroidery, fringes, and other decoration. The decoration was fantastic and eclectic, borrowing from the era of Louis XVI, the ancient Greeks, the Renaissance, or Romanticism.
In the 1860s, the crinoline dress began to lose its dominance, due to competition from the more natural "style Anglais" (English style) that followed the lines of the body. The English style was introduced by the British
In men's fashion, the long
Opera, Theater and Amusement
By the end of the Second Empire, Paris had 41 theaters that offered entertainment for every possible taste: from grand opera and ballet to dramas, melodramas, operettas, vaudeville, farces, parodies, and more. Their success was in part a result of the new railroads, which brought thousands of spectators from the French provinces and abroad. A popular drama that would have had a run of fifteen performances for a purely Parisian audience could now run for 150 performances with new audiences every night. Of these theaters, five had official status and received substantial subsidies from the Imperial treasury: the
The Paris Opera
At the top of the hierarchy of Paris theaters was the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra (Imperial Opera Theater). The first stone of the new Paris opera house, designed by Charles Garnier, was laid in July 1862, but flooding of the basement caused the construction to proceed very slowly. Garnier himself had his office on the site to oversee every detail. As the building rose, it was covered with a large shed so that the sculptors and artists could create the elaborate exterior decoration. The shed was taken off on 15 August 1867, in time for the Paris Universal Exposition. Visitors and Parisians could see the building's glorious new exterior, but the inside was not finished until 1875, after the fall of the Empire in 1870. Opéra performances were held in the Salle Le Peletier, the theater of the Académie Royale de Musique, on the Rue Le Peletier. It was at that opera house that, on 14 January 1858, a group of Italian extreme nationalists attempted to kill Napoleon III at the entrance, by setting off several bombs that killed eight people, injured 150, and splattered the empress with blood, although the emperor was unharmed.
The opera house on the Rue Le Peletier could seat 1800 spectators. There were three performances a week, scheduled so as not to compete with the other major opera house in the city, the
The first French performance of Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, in March 1861, (with ballets choreographed by Marius Petipa) caused a scandal; most of the French critics and audience disliked both the music and personality of Wagner, who was present in the theater. Each performance was greeted with whistles and jeers from the first notes of overture; after three performances, the opera was pulled from the repertoire.[61] Wagner got his revenge. In February 1871, he wrote a poem, "To the German Army before Paris", celebrating the German siege of the city, which he sent to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck wrote back to Wagner, "you too have overcome the resistance of the Parisians after a long struggle."[62]
The Théâtre Italien, the Théâtre-Lyrique, and the Opéra-Comique
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ThePlace du Chatelet, in 1869. It hosted the first performances of the operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod and Les pêcheurs de perles by Georges Bizet.
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The Théâtre Lyrique was known for its elaborate sets and staging. This engraving depicts the last scene of a production of the opera Rienzi by Richard Wagner in 1869.
-
TheVerdi were staged there, and the famed soprano Adelina Pattisang there regularly during the Second Empire.
Besides the Imperial Opera Theater, Paris had three other important opera houses: the
The
The
The Opéra-Comique was located in the Salle Favart and produced both comedies and serious works. It staged the first performances of Mignon by Ambroise Thomas (1866) and of La grand'tante, the first opera of Jules Massenet (1867).
The Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens and the Théâtre des Variétés
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Hortense Schneider in the title role of the operetta La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein by Jacques Offenbach (1867).
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The interior of the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, where many of the operettas of Jacques Offenbach were first performed, as depicted in 1859.
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A poster to advertise a production of La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein in 1868
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A scene from a production of La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein in 1867.
The Boulevard du Crime, the Cirque Napoleon and the Théâtre du Vaudeville
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The Théâtre de la Gaîté, located on the Boulevard du Crime until 1862, showed popular programs of vaudeville and melodrama.
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The interior of the Théâtre des Funambules. The upper balcony, where the cheapest seats were located, was called Paradis (Paradise).
-
Jules Léotard, a gymnast and the inventor of the flying trapeze, became a Paris sensation in the 1860s. The tight-fitting gymnast's costume (a "leotard") is named for him.
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TheCirque d'Hiver, designed by the architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff, opened in 1852 as the Cirque Napoléon.
-
The Théâtre du Vaudeville on the Place de la Bourse hosted the first performance of The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils in 1852.
At the beginning of the Second Empire, seven popular theaters were grouped side by side along the upper part of the
The next theater was the
The
Performances on the boulevard began at 6 o'clock, but spectators began lining up outside several hours before. The popularity of an actor or theater was measured by the length of the line outside. Street merchants sold oranges, bouquets of flowers, baked apples, and ice cream to those waiting in line. Some spectators, particularly students, obtained discounted tickets by serving as part of the claque, applauding furiously when signalled by a theatre employee.[64]
The Boulevard du Crime came to an end by a decree of the Emperor in May 1862, because Haussmann's plan called for the enlargement of the neighboring Place du Château-d'Eau (now Place de la République) and the building of a new Boulevard Prince-Eugène (now the Boulevard de la République). The largest theaters were relocated: the Gaîté was moved to the Square des Arts-et-Métiers, the Théâtre Lyrique moved to the enlarged Place du Châtelet, as did the Cirque Olympique, which moved to the other side of the square and became the Théâtre du Châtelet. The demolition of the Boulevard du Crime began on 15 July 1862. The night before, the son of the famous mime Deburau performed in the final show at the Funambules dressed in a Pierrot costume that was black instead of white.[65]
The
Promenades
-
The Boulevard des Italiens between 1860 and 1870.
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The Avenue de l'Impératrice (now the Avenue Foch) during the Second Empire. It was the grand entrance for promenades to the Bois de Boulogne.
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A Paris boulevard on New Year's Day 1862.
During the Second Empire, the promenade was an art form and a kind of street theater in which all classes of Parisians participated. It constituted a walk, a horseback ride, or a ride in a carriage entirely for pleasure, in order to see and be seen. It generally took place on the new boulevards, which had wide sidewalks and rows of trees, and in the new parks, which were designed exactly for that purpose. In 1852, Napoleon III created a new department, the Service des Promenades et Plantations, directly under the prefect Haussmann. The first director was
The most popular promenade for the wealthier Parisians began at the
Balls at the Tuileries Palace, the Opera Ball and the Mabille Ball
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The Tuileries Palace in 1867 during the Paris Universal Exposition.
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The Opera Ball, 1856.
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A crowd leaving the Opera Ball, 1860.
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The Bal Mabille in 1858.
Balls and theater were the major social events for Parisians during the Second Empire. The most prestigious of all were the balls held at the Tuileries Palace by the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie. They gave three or four grand balls with 600 guests each year early in the new year. During carnival, there was a series of very elaborate costume balls on the themes of different countries and different historical periods, for which guests sometimes spent small fortunes on their costumes. During Lent, the balls were replaced by concerts by both professionals and amateurs. After Easter, the empress hosted a series of smaller balls for her friends until May.
The masked balls at the Paris Opera on the Rue Le Peletier were the most famous. They were held about a dozen times during each season, on each Saturday evening during carnival. Their purpose was to raise funds for the Académie de la Musique, which ran the opera house. Entry for men cost ten francs, while women were admitted for half-price. Women looking for the opportunity to meet a wealthy banker or nobleman spent ten times or more on their costumes than the admission price. The seats were taken out of the parterre, and the doors opened at midnight. Those who merely wanted to watch the spectacle could rent boxes in the balcony. The attraction was to meet mysterious and interesting masked strangers. There were numerous anecdotes of surprises: a daughter who unknowingly tried to seduce her father, or a mother who tried to seduce her son.[67]
The Bal Mabille was an outdoor ball that rivalled the Opera Ball. It took place on the Avenue Montaigne, near the rond-point (roundabout) of the Champs-Elysées, in a large garden lit by hundreds of gas lamps. It was open on Saturday and Sunday evenings with an admission price of 5 francs on Saturday and 1.5 francs on Sunday. It was attended by aristocrats—such as the Princess Pauline von Metternich—by artists and musicians, and by wealthy foreign tourists. It introduced new dances to Paris, including the polka.[68]
See also
- Napoleon III style
References
Notes and citations
- ^ De Moncan, Patrice, Le Paris d'Haussmann, p. 33.
- ^ De Moncan, Patrice, Le Paris d'Haussmann, p. 28.
- ISBN 2-200-37226-4)
- ISBN 978-2-907970-914)
- ISBN 2-200-37226-4)
- ISBN 978-2755803303), p. 186
- ^ de Moncan, Patrice, Le Paris d'Haussmann, p. 169
- ^ de Moncan, Patrice, Le Paris d'Haussmann
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 43.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 44-45
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 44
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 44-45
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 50.
- ^ Zola, Émile, Nana (Vie d'Émile Zola), p. 524-25
- ^ Mangelier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 73-74
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 50
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 60-61
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 68-69
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 68-69
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 65-66
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé. Paris Impérial p. 66-68
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris - ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans le seconde moitie du XIXe siècle (1871).
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 134.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 136.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris - ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans le seconde moitie du XIXe siècle (1871).
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris - ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans le seconde moitie du XIXe siècle (1871).
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 236-238
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, 238-39.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris- ses organes, ses functions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870, p. 596.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris- ses organes, ses functions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870, p. 596.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, L'Alimentation de Paris, Revue des Deux Mondes, T.74 (1868).
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, L'Alimentation de Paris, Revue des Deux Mondes, T.74 (1868).
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 191.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 191.
- ISBN 978-2-07-042357-6).
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 193.
- ^ Almanach de l'étranger a Paris, Guide pratique pour 1867, cited in Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial
- ^ Zola, Emile, Nana
- ^ Chavette, Eugene, Restaurateurs et restaurés (1867), cited in Maneglier, Paris Impérial.
- ^ Almanach de l'étranger a Paris, Guide pratique pour 1867, cited in Maneglier, Herveé, Paris Impérial
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 219
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris - ses organes, ses functions et sa vie jusqu'en 1870 (1878) p. 150-151.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris - sea organes, see functions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870, p. 184-185
- ^ Milza, Pierre, Napoleon III, p. 486
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 84-85
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, pp 173-174.
- ^ Le Petit Robert (1988)
- ^ Le Petit Robert (1988)
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 196.
- ^ Petit Robert, p. 504-505.
- ^ Letter of G. Flaubert to Madame Roger des Genettes – July 1862
- ^ Zola, Emile, Nana.
- ISBN 978-2877-474658)
- ^ Renault, Christophe and Lazé, Christophe, Les Styles de l'architecture et du mobilier, (2006), Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot.
- ISBN 978-2877-474658)
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 78.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 78.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 78.
- ^ Du Camp, Maxime, Paris- ses organes, ses functions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870, p. 675
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 188.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 188.
- ^ Von Westernhagen, Curt, Wagner - A Biography, Cambridge University Press (1979)
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, pp. 204-206.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, pp. 208
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, pp. 210-211
- ^ de Moncan, Patrice, Les Jardins du Baron Haussmann, p. 23.
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 92-94
- ^ Maneglier, Hervé, Paris Impérial, p. 87-89
Bibliography
- Combeau, Yvan (2013). Histoire de Paris (in French). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ISBN 978-2-13-060852-3.
- de Moncan, Patrice (2012). Le Paris d'Haussmann (in French). Paris: Les Editions du Mécène. ISBN 978-2-90-797098-3.
- du Camp, Maxime (1993). Paris: ses organes, ses fonctions, et sa vie jusqu'en 1870 (in French). Monaco: Rondeau. ISBN 2-910305-02-3.
- Maneglier, Hervé (1990). Paris Impérial- La vie quotidienne sous le Second Empire (in French). Paris: Armand Colin. ISBN 2-200-37226-4.
- Milza, Pierre (2006). Napoléon III (in French). Paris: Tempus. ISBN 978-2-262-02607-3.
- Renault, Christophe. Les Styles de l'architecture et du mobilier (in French). Paris: Jean-Paul Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-87-747465-8.
- Sarmant, Thierry (2012). Histoire de Paris- Politique, Urbanisme, civilisation (in French). Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot. ISBN 978-2-755-8033-03.
- Zola, Émile (1981). La Curée (in French). Gallimard. ISBN 2-07-041141-9.
External links
- Paris: Capital of the 19th Century - Brown University Library