Читать книгу Historic Paris - Jetta Sophia Wolff - Страница 8

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The Palace has gone, burnt to the ground in the war year 1870–71. The gardens alone remain, those beautiful Tuileries gardens, the brightest spot on the right bank of the Seine. Several moss-grown pillars, some remnants of broken arches, the pillars and frontal of the present Jeu de Paume and of the Orangery, are all that is left to-day of the royal dwelling that erewhile stood there. The palace was built at the end of the sixteenth century by Catherine de’ Medici to replace the ancient palace Les Tournelles, in the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges, where King Henri II had died at a festive tournament, his eye and brain pierced by the sword of his great general, Comte de Montmorency. Queen Catherine hated the sight of the palace where her husband had died thus tragically. Its destruction was decreed; and the Queen commanded the erection in its stead of the magnifique bâtiment de l’Hôtel royal, dit des Tuileries des Parisiens, parcequ’il y avait autrefois une Tuilerie au dit lieu.

The site of that big tile-yard was in those days outside the city boundary. The architect, Philibert Delorme, set to work with great ardour. A rough road was made leading from the bac, i.e. the ford across the Seine, now spanned near the spot by the Pont Royal, to the quarries in the neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Vaugirard, whence stone was brought. Thus was born the well-known Rue du Bac. The palace was from the first surrounded by a fine garden, separated until the time of Louis XIV from the Seine on the one side, from the palace on the other, by a ruelle; i.e. a narrow street, a lane.

PALAIS DES TUILERIES

Catherine took up her abode at the new palace as soon as it was habitable; but the Queen-Mother was restless and oppressed, haunted by presentiments of evil. An astrologer had told her she would meet her death beneath the ruins of a mansion in the vicinity of the church, St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. She left her new palace, therefore, bought the site of several houses, appropriated the ground and buildings of an old convent in the neighbourhood of St-Eustache, had erected on the spot a fine dwelling: l’hôtel de la Reine, known later as l’hôtel de Soissons, where we see to-day the Bourse de Commerce. One column of the Queen’s palace still stands there, within it a narrow staircase up which she was wont to climb with her Italian astrologer.

Meanwhile, the Tuileries palace showed no signs of ruin—quite the reverse. Catherine’s son, Charles IX, had a bastion erected in the garden on the Seine side; a small dwelling-house, a pond, an aviary, a theatre, an echo, a labyrinth, an orangery, a shrubbery were soon added. Henri IV began a gallery to join the new palace to the Louvre, a work accomplished only under Louis XIV. Under Henri’s son, Louis XIII, the Tuileries was the centre of the smart life of the day; visitors of distinction, but not of royal rank, were often entertained in royal style in the pavilion in the garden. Under Louis XIV the King’s renowned garden-planner, Le Nôtre, took in hand the spacious grounds and made of them the Jardin des Tuileries, so famous ever since. The fine statues by Coustou, Perrault, Bosi, etc., were soon set up there. The manège was built—a club and riding-school stretching from what is now the Rue de Rivoli from the then Rue Dauphine, now Rue St-Roch, to Rue Castiglione. There the jeunesse dorée of the day learned to hold in hand their fiery thoroughbreds. The cost of subscription was 4000 francs—£160—a year, a vast sum then. Each member was bound to have his personal servant, duly paid and fed. A swing-bridge was set across the moat on the side of the waste land, soon to become Place Louis XV, now Place de la Concorde.

The Garden was not accessible to the public in those days. Until the outbreak of the Revolution, the noblesse or their privileged associates alone had the right to pace its alleys. Soldiers were never permitted to walk there. Once a year only, a great occasion, its gates were thrown open to the peuple.

A period of neglect followed upon the fine work done under Louis XIV. His successor cared nothing for the Tuileries palace and grounds. They fell into a most lamentable state; and, when in the troublous days of the year 1789, Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and their little son took up their abode at the Tuileries, the Dauphin looked round in disgust. “Everything is very ugly here, maman,” he said. It was the Paris home of the unhappy royal family thenceforth until they were led from the shelter of its walls to the Temple prison. It was from the Tuileries they made the unfortunate attempt to fly from France. Stopped at Varennes, the would-be fugitives were led back to the palace across the swing-bridge on the south-western side. Beneath the stately trees of the garden the Swiss Guards were massacred soon afterwards. The Revolutionary authorities had taken possession of the Riding-School, a band of tricolour ribbon was stretched along its frontage and the Assemblée Nationale, which had sat first in the old church, St-Pol, then at the archevêché, installed itself there. There, under successive governments, were decreed the division of France into departments, the suppression of monastic orders, the suspension of the King’s royal power after his flight. And there, in 1792, Louis XVI was tried, and after a sitting lasting thirty-seven hours condemned to death. The Terrace was nicknamed the Jardin National; sometimes it was called the Terre de Coblentz, a sarcastic reference to emigrated nobles who erewhile had disported there. In 1793, potatoes and other vegetables—food for the population of Paris—grew on Le Nôtre’s flower-beds, replacing the gay blossoms of happier times, even as in our own dire war days beans, etc., are grown in the park at Versailles, and the government of the day sat in the Salle des Machines within the Palace walls.

On June 7th, 1794, the Tuileries palace and gardens were the scene of a great Revolutionary fête. A few months later the body of Jean-Jacques Rousseau was laid out in state in the dry bassin before being carried to the Panthéon. Revolutionary fêtes were a great feature of the day, and Robespierre, in the intervals of directing the deadly work of the Guillotine, devised the semi-circular flower-beds surrounded by stone benches for the benefit of the weak and aged who gathered at those merry-makings.

Then it was Napoléon’s turn. The Tuileries became an Imperial palace. For Marie Louise awaiting the birth of the son it was her mission to bear, a subterranean passage was made in order that the Empress might pass unnoticed from the palace to the terrace-walk on the banks of the Seine. The birth took place at the Tuileries, and a year or two later a pavilion was built for the special use of the young “Roi de Rome.” At the Tuileries, in the decisive year 1815, the chiefs of the Armies allied against the Emperor met and camped.

Louis XVIII died there in 1824. In 1848, Louis-Philippe, flying before the people in revolt, made his escape along the hidden passage cut in 1811 for Marie-Louise. The palace was then used as an ambulance for the wounded and for persons who fell fainting in the Paris streets during the tumults of that year. Its last royal master was Napoléon III. The new Emperor set himself at once to restore, beautify and enlarge. The great iron railing and the gates on the side of the Orangery were put up in 1853. A buvette for officers was built in the garden. The Prince Imperial was born at the Tuileries in 1854. During the twenty years of Napoléon’s reign, the Tuileries was the scene of gay, smart life. The crash of 1870 was its doom. The Empress Eugénie fled from its shelter after Sedan. The Commune set fire to its walls. Crumbling arches, blackened pillars remained on the site of the palace until 1883. Then they were razed, cleared away and flower-beds laid out, where grand halls erewhile had stood. The big clock had been saved from destruction. It was placed among the historic souvenirs of the Musée Carnavalet. The Pavillon de Marsan of the Louvre, built by Louis XIV, and the Pavillon de Flore joining the Tuileries, were rebuilt in 1874.