joining them on the rubble heap were the many ex-convents where the
Jacobin and other clubs had convened.
Considerable improvements were made in sewage and drainage and the
provision of an adequate urban water supply. But the overall appearance
of Paris did not change much. There was the new Vendome column,
completed by Gondoin in 1810 with Chaudet's statue of the Emperor on
top, the triumphal arch on the Place du Carrousel, the arcaded rue de
Rivoli, named for his first great military triumph, and the church of the
Madeleine. But otherwise the dream of a city of Xanadu palaces and
Shangri-La monuments and fountains did not materialize. The planned
Arc de Triomphe on the Etoile was still merely a makeshift wooden affair
by 1814.
More significantly, perhaps, there were two new bridges over the Seine
and no less than fourteen highways spiralling out from Paris to convey
the Grande Armee rapidly to any emergency point. Particularly important,
therefore, were the international thoroughfares. Route Two of the
fourteen ran to Amsterdam via Brussels and Antwerp, Route Three to
Hamburg via Liege and Bremen and Route Four to Prussia by way of
Mayenne. Of the southerly routes, the road to Spain was Route Eleven
(Paris-Bayonne) while Six, to Rome via the Simplon and Milan and
Seven, to Turin via Mont-Cenis, linked Italy to the Empire. One of the
ways in which the Emperor wished to emulate his Roman forebears was
as a road builder. It was due to Napoleon's energy that the spectacular
Simplon route across the Alps was opened in 1805 and the Mont Cenis
pass in 1810. For all that, the new roads were not of high quality: it took
120 hours to travel by stagecoach from Paris to Bordeaux, and the simple
fact that most people travelled long distances by foot was one of the
factors in the endurance of the Grand Army.
Economically Paris benefited hugely from the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic periods. The Continental System eliminated British competi
tion and provided an internal market of 8o million people. Particular
beneficiaries were the cotton, chemical and mechanical industries, where
the impact of war stimulated new technologies also. The influx of
foreigners to Paris in this period encouraged the manufacture of luxury
goods. Another, less welcome, influx was the annual immigration of
40,000 seasonal workers, many of whom stayed on in the city in the dead
season to form the kernel of the 'dangerous classes' that are such a feature
of nineteenth-century French literature. This aspect of the economic
boom worried employers and the authorities, who did not want a
concentration of workers in the capital, fe aring overcrowding, famine,
disease, unemployment and riots.
marcin
(Marcin)
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