Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Map by Stephen Ramsay Cartography
- Introduction: The Place de la Bastille
- 1 ‘What's that poor creature doing here?’: the area and the fortress before the Revolution of 1789
- 2 ‘Thought blew the Bastille apart’: the fall of the fortress and the revolutionary years, 1789–1815
- 3 ‘The strategy of the generals of Africa shattered’: the Restoration, Orleanist and Second Republic Years, 1815–1851
- 4 ‘Where is the noise of the storm that I love?’: The Second Empire from Haussmann to the Commune
- 5 ‘Satan's bagpipes’: La Belle Époque's forty-three years of peace
- 6 ‘Villains, stars and everybody in between’: The First War and the entre-deux-guerres
- 7 ‘Slicked hair and splendid sideburns’: Occupation and Liberation
- 8 ‘Let's have some sun!’: post-Gaullism and the Mitterrand years
- 9 ‘A building, not a monument’: the construction of the Bastille Opéra
- 10 ‘A real earthquake’: the impact of the Opéra on the quartier
- 11 Flânerie in the archive: the Faubourg/Bastille today
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The July Column which now stands in the centre of the Place de la Bastille was a long time in the planning. The foundation-stone of a column, which was to sit atop a scale model of the fortress, had been laid on 14 July 1792, but the Convention abandoned the project. Jacques-Louis David, foreshadowing the Egyptophilia of Napoleon's elephant, built a large plaster fountain in 1793 in the form of the goddess Isis, but this was a transitory phenomenon. Not until Louis-Philippe had taken power, in 1830, was it decided to erect a monument not only to 1789 but also to the July Days that had brought him to power. For the revolutionary Faubourg this was a dubious tribute; to quote Jean-Paul Blais:
Marquer dans ce quartier la naissance de la monarchie parlementaire est une récupération affichée de la colère des faubourgs. N'est-ce pas une manière d'affirmer que la liberté et l'ordre appartiennent d'abord au pouvoir dominant?
To mark in this quartier the birth of parliamentary monarchy was a clear-cut recuperation of the anger of the faubourgs. Was it not a way of affirming that liberty and order belong above all to the dominant regime?
Hugo, for his part, was to describe the column as ‘le monument manqué d'une révolution avortée’ / ‘the failed monument of an abortive revolution’, all but disregarding its homage to 1789 and perceiving it, with a measure of accuracy, as a eulogy to the Orleanist monarchy.
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- Information
- The Place de la BastilleThe Story of a Quartier, pp. 44 - 63Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011