The Discovery of France (79 page)

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Authors: Graham Robb

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16. A boy, probably from the Alps, wearing leather shoes instead of clogs for long-distance walking, sells plaster statuettes in a Normandy village. The woman’s bonnet is typical of the Pays de Caux, though elaborate headdresses were already rare in 1833. The husband inspects a statuette of Napoleon I; the mother and children prefer the Virgin Mary. The shadowy figure behind the parrot on the right is probably the Wandering Jew. Painting by Joseph-Louis-Hippolyte Bellangé, 1833.

17. Cassini map of France, sheet 131, showing Toulon and the Îles d’Hyères, based on surveys carried out in 1778. The fishing port of Saint-Tropez is in the top right. Some travellers called Toulon ‘a northern colony’ because it was the only southern town where French was the majority language. When this map was made, parts of the hinterland and its population were practically unknown.

18. ‘Le Passage du Mont Cenis’ in 1868, three years before the opening of the railway tunnel. During the Napoleonic Wars, this was the main route into Italy. Before the road was opened in 1810, the ascent from Savoy was half as long and twice as steep. Carriages were dismantled and loaded onto mules. Wealthy travellers went up in sedan chairs and descended on sledges. 17. Cassini map of France, sheet 131, showing Toulon and the Îles d’Hyères, based on surveys carried out in 1778. The fishing port of Saint-Tropez is in the top right. Some travellers called Toulon ‘a northern colony’ because it was the only southern town where French was the majority language. When this map was made, parts of the hinterland and its population were practically unknown.

19. Paul Delaroche, Napoleon crossing the Alps by the Great Saint Bernard Pass on 20 May 1800, with the help of a local guide. The pass was patrolled by the paramedical dogs of the hospice at the summit. The only surfaced track was the vestigial Roman road. Mules were the most reliable form of transport, not only in the mountains. Until the mid-nineteenth century, mules and mule-trains accounted for about two-thirds of all traffic on French roads.

20. Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, the oldest church in Paris, as part of the world’s first telecommunications system. Saint-Pierre was built in 1133 on the site of a temple to Mars. It escaped demolition in the Revolution as a ‘Temple of Reason’ and as a plinth for the telegraph tower. It was the first relay station on the first line (1794), which ran from the roof of the Louvre to Saint Catherine’s church in Lille.

21. Carcassonne, c. 1859, at the start of Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration. ‘The process of converting the place from an irresponsible old town into a conscious “specimen” has of course been attended with eliminations; the population has, as a general thing, been restored away’ (Henry James, 1884). There were complaints that Viollet-le-Duc’s steep, blue-slate roofs turned the southern citadel into a northern château. The red, Roman tiles and gentler slopes of the local roofs are more typical of the south. The ‘chemin creux’ (hollow way) is a road fashioned by nature, historical accident and centuries of use. Similar road-ravines were found in Picardy and the west of France. 20. Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, the oldest church in Paris, as part of the world’s first telecommunications system. Saint-Pierre was built in 1133 on the site of a temple to Mars. It escaped demolition in the Revolution as a ‘Temple of Reason’ and as a plinth for the telegraph tower. It was the first relay station on the first line (1794), which ran from the roof of the Louvre to Saint Catherine’s church in Lille.

22. The castle of Pierrefonds, built by Louis d’Orléans (equestrian statue) in the fifteenth century, sold as a ruin after the Revolution, rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc in the 1860s as a fairy-tale palace. Compiègne (town hall, top left) lay on the other side of the forest, which was landscaped and signposted for Napoleon III’s empress, Eugénie. This poster (c. 1895) advertised the Northern railway company’s high-speed link from the Gare du Nord in Paris.

23. Gravity-powered transport: a
schlitteur
in the Vosges, on a poster for the Eastern railway company, c. 1895, by which time many
schlitteurs
were carrying tourists instead of logs.

24. The first railway in France, which ran from the coal port of Andrézieux on the Loire, to Lyon, via the manufacturing town of Saint-Étienne. It was opened to passengers in 1832. Horses were replaced by steam in 1844.

25. Strasbourg, capital of the ‘lost province’ of Alsace, after the defeat by Prussia in 1870. From Marie de Grandmaison’s
Le Tour de France
(1893), in which two brothers discover France on bicycles. Young Alsatian migrants are saying goodbye to their sisters and girlfriends: ‘They are returning to French soil . . . so as to serve one day under the colours of the valiant fatherland.’ The picture is a compendium of Alsatian emblems: the girls’ black bows, red skirts and large aprons, the tall steeple, the gabled houses and the beer-drinkers. The flower is Alsatian madder, which produced a red dye used for military uniforms.

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